Wireless Public Safety Networks, Volume One: Overview and Challenges presents the latest advances in the wireless Public Safety Networks (PSNs) field, the networks established by authorities to either prepare the population for an eminent catastrophe, or as support during crisis and normalization phases. Maintaining communication capabilities in a disaster scenario is crucial for avoiding loss of lives and damages to property. Wireless Public Safety Networks examines past communication failures that have directly contributed to the loss of lives. This book will give readers a broad view of the PSNs field, analyzing the benefits PSNs may bring to society, the main challenges related to the establishment and maintenance of these networks, the latest advancements in the field, and future perspectives.

The Paradox of Transgression in Games looks at transgressive games as an aesthetic experience, tackling how players respond to game content that shocks, disturbs, and distresses, and how contemporary video games can evoke intense emotional reactions. The book delves into the commercial success of many controversial videogames: although such games may appear shocking for the observing bystander, playing them is experienced as deeply rewarding for the player. Drawing on qualitative player studies and approaches from media aesthetics theory, the book challenges the perception of games as innocent entertainment, and examines the range of emotional, moral, and intellectual experiences of players. As they explore what players consider transgressive, the authors ask whether there is something about the gameplay situation that works to mitigate the sense of transgression, stressing gameplay as an aesthetic experience. Anchoring the aesthetic game experience both in play studies as well as in aesthetic theory, this book will be an essential resource for scholars and students of game studies, aesthetics, media studies, philosophy of art, and emotions.

This book explores hybrid play as a site of interdisciplinary activity-one that is capable of generating new forms of mobility, communication, subjects, and artistic expression as well as new ways of interacting with and understanding the world. The chapters in this collection explore hybrid making, hybrid subjects, and hybrid spaces, generating interesting conversations about the past, current and future nature of hybrid play. Together, the authors offer important insights into how place and space are co-constructed through play; how, when, and for what reasons people occupy hybrid spaces; and how cultural practices shape elements of play and vice versa. A diverse group of scholars and practitioners provides a rich interdisciplinary perspective, which will be of great interest to those working in the areas of games studies, media studies, communication, gender studies, and media arts.

CMDB Systems: Making Change Work in the Age of Cloud and Agile shows you how an integrated database across all areas of an organization's information system can help make organizations more efficient reduce challenges during change management and reduce total cost of ownership (TCO). In addition, this valuable reference provides guidelines that will enable you to avoid the pitfalls that cause CMDB projects to fail and actually shorten the time required to achieve an implementation of a CMDB. Drawing upon extensive experience and using illustrative real world examples, Rick Sturm, Dennis Drogseth and Dan Twing discuss: Unique insights from extensive industry exposure, research and consulting on the evolution of CMDB/CMS technology and ongoing dialog with the vendor community in terms of current and future CMDB/CMS design and plans Proven and structured best practices for CMDB deployments Clear and documented insights into the impacts of cloud computing and other advances on CMDB/CMS futures

The second edition of Disney Stories: Getting to Digital will be of interest to lovers of Disney history and also to lovers of Hollywood history in general. The first edition was planned as a short history of the companies evolution from analog storytelling to a digital online presence that closed the chapter on early Disney films with the release of the groundbreaking Snow White. The purpose of the new edition is to bring to readers a more complete view of the analog-digital story by including three new chapters on film that cover key developments from the live-animation hybrids of the 1940s to CAPS and CGI in the 1990s and VR in the 2010s. It also includes in the discussion of cross-media storytelling the acquisition of the exceptional story property, Star Wars, and discusses how Disney has brought the epic into the Disney Master Narrative by creating Galaxy's Edge in its US theme parks. Krystina Madej's engaging portrayal of the long history of Disney's love affair with storytelling and technology brings to life the larger focus of innovation in creating characters and stories that captivate an audience, and together with Newton Lee's detailed experience of Disney during the crucial 1995-2005 era when digital innovation in online and games was at its height in the company, makes for a fast-paced captivating read. Disney Stories first edition explored the history of Disney, both analog and digital. It described in detail how Walt Disney used inventive and often ground-breaking approaches in the use of sound, color, depth, and the psychology of characters to move the animation genre from short visual gags to feature-length films with meaningful stories that engaged audience's hearts as well as tickled their funny bones. It showed Walt's comprehensive approach to engaging the public across all media as he built the Disney Master Narrative by using products, books, comics, public engagements, fan groups such as the Mickey Mouse club, TV, and, of course, Disneyland, his theme park. Finally it showed how, after his passing, the company continued to embrace Walt's enthusiasm for using new technology to engage audiences through their commitment to innovation in digital worlds. It describes in detail the innovative storybook CD-ROMs, their extensive online presence, the software they used and created for MMORGs such as Toontown, and the use of production methods such as agile methodology. This new edition provides insight on major developments in Disney films that moved them into the digital world.

Learn how to program JavaScript while creating interactive audio applications with JavaScript for Sound Artists: Learn to Code With the Web Audio API! William Turner and Steve Leonard showcase the basics of JavaScript language programing so that readers can learn how to build browser based audio applications, such as music synthesizers and drum machines. The companion website offers further opportunity for growth. Web Audio API instruction includes oscillators, audio file loading and playback, basic audio manipulation, panning and time. This book encompasses all of the basic features of JavaScript with aspects of the Web Audio API to heighten the capability of any browser. Key Features Uses the readers existing knowledge of audio technology to facilitate learning how to program using JavaScript. The teaching will be done through a series of annotated examples and explanations. Downloadable code examples and links to additional reference material included on the books companion website. This book makes learning programming more approachable to nonprofessional programmers The context of teaching JavaScript for the creative audio community in this manner does not exist anywhere else in the market and uses example-based teaching

Learn how to program JavaScript while creating interactive audio applications with JavaScript for Sound Artists: Learn to Code With the Web Audio API! William Turner and Steve Leonard showcase the basics of JavaScript language programing so that readers can learn how to build browser based audio applications, such as music synthesizers and drum machines. The companion website offers further opportunity for growth. Web Audio API instruction includes oscillators, audio file loading and playback, basic audio manipulation, panning and time. This book encompasses all of the basic features of JavaScript with aspects of the Web Audio API to heighten the capability of any browser. Key Features Uses the readers existing knowledge of audio technology to facilitate learning how to program using JavaScript. The teaching will be done through a series of annotated examples and explanations. Downloadable code examples and links to additional reference material included on the books companion website. This book makes learning programming more approachable to nonprofessional programmers The context of teaching JavaScript for the creative audio community in this manner does not exist anywhere else in the market and uses example-based teaching

This book provides a broad description of the development and (computational) application of many-electron approaches from a multidisciplinary perspective. In the context of studying many-electron systems Computer Science, Chemistry, Mathematics and Physics are all intimately interconnected. However, beyond a handful of communities working at the interface between these disciplines, there is still a marked separation of subjects. This book seeks to offer a common platform for possible exchanges between the various fields and to introduce the reader to perspectives for potential further developments across the disciplines. The rapid advances of modern technology will inevitably require substantial improvements in the approaches currently used, which will in turn make exchanges between disciplines indispensable. In essence this book is one of the very first attempts at an interdisciplinary approach to the many-electron problem.

Analyses a variety of approaches to development and publishing, across a multitude of platforms and genres, to provide a new vision for the next twenty years of game development. Considers technical advances in adjacent markets and how they will impact the games industry over the next twenty years. Includes insightful interviews from leading game and entertainment industry figures.

Locating Imagination in Popular Culture offers a multi-disciplinary account of the ways in which popular culture, tourism and notions of place intertwine in an environment characterized by ongoing processes of globalization, digitization and an increasingly ubiquitous nature of multi-media. Centred around the concept of imagination, the authors demonstrate how popular culture and media are becoming increasingly important in the ways in which places and localities are imagined, and how they also subsequently stimulate a desire to visit the actual places in which people's favourite stories are set. With examples drawn from around the globe, the book offers a unique study of the role of narratives conveyed through media in stimulating and reflecting desire in tourism. This book will have appeal in a wide variety of academic disciplines, ranging from media and cultural studies to fan- and tourism studies, cultural geography, literary studies and cultural sociology.

Artificial Intelligence Techniques in IoT Sensor Networks is a technical book which can be read by researchers, academicians, students and professionals interested in artificial intelligence (AI), sensor networks and Internet of Things (IoT). This book is intended to develop a shared understanding of applications of AI techniques in the present and near term. The book maps the technical impacts of AI technologies, applications and their implications on the design of solutions for sensor networks. This text introduces researchers and aspiring academicians to the latest developments and trends in AI applications for sensor networks in a clear and well-organized manner. It is mainly useful for research scholars in sensor networks and AI techniques. In addition, professionals and practitioners working on the design of real-time applications for sensor networks may benefit directly from this book. Moreover, graduate and master's students of any departments related to AI, IoT and sensor networks can find this book fascinating for developing expert systems or real-time applications. This book is written in a simple and easy language, discussing the fundamentals, which relieves the requirement of having early backgrounds in the field. From this expectation and experience, many libraries will be interested in owning copies of this work.

This book offers critical perspectives on the digital 'iconic', exploring how the notion of the iconic is re-appropriated and re-made online, and the consequences for humanity and society. Examining cross-cultural case studies of iconic images in digital spaces, the author offers original and critical analyses, theories and perspectives on the notion of the 'iconic', and on its movement, re-appropriation and meaning making on digital platforms. A carefully curated selection of case studies illustrates topics such as phantom memory; martyrdom; denigration and pornographic recoding; digital games as simulacra; and memes as 'artification'. Situating the notion of the iconic firmly within contemporary cultures, the author takes a thematic approach to investigate the iconic as an unstable and unfinished phenomenon online as it travels through platforms temporally and spatially. The book will be an important resource for academics and students in the areas of media and communications, digital culture, cultural studies, visual communication, visual culture, journalism studies and digital humanities.

This book offers a clear understanding of the concept of context-aware machine learning including an automated rule-based framework within the broad area of data science and analytics, particularly, with the aim of data-driven intelligent decision making. Thus, we have bestowed a comprehensive study on this topic that explores multi-dimensional contexts in machine learning modeling, context discretization with time-series modeling, contextual rule discovery and predictive analytics, recent-pattern or rule-based behavior modeling, and their usefulness in various context-aware intelligent applications and services. The presented machine learning-based techniques can be employed in a wide range of real-world application areas ranging from personalized mobile services to security intelligence, highlighted in the book. As the interpretability of a rule-based system is high, the automation in discovering rules from contextual raw data can make this book more impactful for the application developers as well as researchers. Overall, this book provides a good reference for both academia and industry people in the broad area of data science, machine learning, AI-Driven computing, human-centered computing and personalization, behavioral analytics, IoT and mobile applications, and cybersecurity intelligence.

With annual gross sales surpassing 100 billion U.S. dollars each of the last two years, the digital games industry may one day challenge theatrical-release movies as the highest-grossing entertainment media in the world. In their examination of the tremendous cultural influence of digital games, Daniel Reardon and David Wright analyze three companies that have shaped the industry: Bethesda, located in Rockville, Maryland, USA; BioWare in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada; and CD Projekt Red in Warsaw, Poland. Each company has used social media and technical content in the games to promote players' belief that players control the companies' game narratives. The result has been at times explosive, as empowered players often attempted to co-op the creative processes of games through discussion board forum demands, fund-raising campaigns to persuade companies to change or add game content, and modifications ("modding") of the games through fan-created downloads. The result has changed the way we understand the interactive nature of digital games and the power of fan culture to shape those games.

Approximately 15% of the global population is affected by some sort of disability, according to the World Report on Disability. Many C-Suite executives perceive digital accessibility (DA) as an endless task. Among the engineering leaders, one in four leaders are reliant on very limited knowledge about digital accessibility. Many countries are increasing their legislative efforts to make web accessibility an important part in web development and testing of software releases. Numerous organizations are facing extreme turbulence when not adhering to international accessibility guidelines while developing their software's and website applications. Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) is a global guide on accessibility recommendations that are developed through the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to help organizations to meet minimum standard accessibility guidelines. It has become critical for every organization to focus on implementing the accessibility checks at every stage of their application development to avoid costly mistakes. Meanwhile, the need for front-end engineers and Quality Assurance (QA) test analysts to learn WCAG best practices is immensely important for the growing need to incorporate accessibility-focused inclusive design, development, and extensive accessibility testing, which are essential for most of the customer-facing websites. In a fast-paced world, incorporating shift left accessibility within development and testing is the new normal. The Web Accessibility Project: Development and Testing Best Practices helps developers address right accessibility attributes to user interface (UI) components. It also helps developers focus on developing manual and automation tests for QA professionals to inject accessibility audit, accessibility functional tests, and accessibility automation tests as part of their Continuous Integration and Continuous Development (CI/CD) models. The book is filled with readily usable best practices to adapt web accessibility early in application development. By applying the accessibility best practices covered in this book, developers can help their organizations rise to a whole new level of accessibility adherence, innovation, and inclusive design. They will also see greater work satisfaction in their professional lives and a way to help improve digital accessibility for end users.

Approximately 15% of the global population is affected by some sort of disability, according to the World Report on Disability. Many C-Suite executives perceive digital accessibility (DA) as an endless task. Among the engineering leaders, one in four leaders are reliant on very limited knowledge about digital accessibility. Many countries are increasing their legislative efforts to make web accessibility an important part in web development and testing of software releases. Numerous organizations are facing extreme turbulence when not adhering to international accessibility guidelines while developing their software's and website applications. Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) is a global guide on accessibility recommendations that are developed through the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to help organizations to meet minimum standard accessibility guidelines. It has become critical for every organization to focus on implementing the accessibility checks at every stage of their application development to avoid costly mistakes. Meanwhile, the need for front-end engineers and Quality Assurance (QA) test analysts to learn WCAG best practices is immensely important for the growing need to incorporate accessibility-focused inclusive design, development, and extensive accessibility testing, which are essential for most of the customer-facing websites. In a fast-paced world, incorporating shift left accessibility within development and testing is the new normal. The Web Accessibility Project: Development and Testing Best Practices helps developers address right accessibility attributes to user interface (UI) components. It also helps developers focus on developing manual and automation tests for QA professionals to inject accessibility audit, accessibility functional tests, and accessibility automation tests as part of their Continuous Integration and Continuous Development (CI/CD) models. The book is filled with readily usable best practices to adapt web accessibility early in application development. By applying the accessibility best practices covered in this book, developers can help their organizations rise to a whole new level of accessibility adherence, innovation, and inclusive design. They will also see greater work satisfaction in their professional lives and a way to help improve digital accessibility for end users.

Systems Programming: Designing and Developing Distributed Applications explains how the development of distributed applications depends on a foundational understanding of the relationship among operating systems, networking, distributed systems, and programming. Uniquely organized around four viewpoints (process, communication, resource, and architecture), the fundamental and essential characteristics of distributed systems are explored in ways which cut across the various traditional subject area boundaries. The structures, configurations and behaviours of distributed systems are all examined, allowing readers to explore concepts from different perspectives, and to understand systems in depth, both from the component level and holistically.

Expert advice from several industrial professionals who have worked for some of the world's biggest tech and interactive companies. Best practices that not only prepare writers on how to apply their craft to new fields, but also prepare them for the common ambiguity they will find in corporate and start-up environments. Breakdown of platforms that shows how tech capabilities can fulfill content expectations and how content can fulfill tech expectations. Basic storytelling mechanics customized to today's popular technologies and traditional gaming platforms.

- The first book dedicated to exploring key video games from the 1970s to present day. - Provides a highly accessible overview of the history of video games from PONG, Pac-Man and Tetris to Minecraft, Animal Crossing and Assassin's Creed. - The selection covers a range of historical periods and platforms, genres, commercial impact, artistic choices, contexts of play, typical and atypical representations, uses of games for specific purposes, uses of materials or techniques, specific subcultures, repurposing, transgressive aesthetics, interfaces, moral or ethical impacts, and more.

Welcome to the second volume of Game Audio Programming: Principles and Practices - the first series of its kind dedicated to the art of game audio programming! This volume features more than 20 chapters containing advanced techniques from some of the top game audio programmers and sound designers in the industry. This book continues the tradition of collecting more knowledge and wisdom about game audio programming than any other volume in history. Both audio programming beginners and seasoned veterans will find content in this book that is valuable, with topics ranging from extreme low-level mixing to high-level game integration. Each chapter contains techniques that were used in games that have shipped, and there is a plethora of code samples and diagrams. There are chapters on threading, DSP implementation, advanced middleware techniques in FMOD Studio and Audiokinetic Wwise, ambiences, mixing, music, and more. This book has something for everyone who is programming audio for a game: programmers new to the art of audio programming, experienced audio programmers, and those souls who just got assigned the audio code. This book is for you!

This book provides a systematic overview of watermarking and steganography methods for triangle meshes related to computer graphics and security. The significance of this research has been well recognized by the growing body of work on watermarking, steganography and steganalysis of 3D meshes. With the evolution of the CAD industry and real-world end-user applications such as virtual reality (VR) and 3D printing, 3D meshes have attracted world-wide attention. Besides, the flexible data structure of 3D geometry provides enough space to embed secret information, making it ideal for applications such as copyright protection and covert communication. Our goal of the book is to allow readers to systematically understand 3D mesh information hiding technology and its applications as a whole. The book outlines comprehensive techniques, including handcrafted and deep learning-based techniques, digital and physical techniques in the literature and provides standard evaluation metrics for triangle meshes. The up-to-date geometrical deep learning and 3D printing-related algorithms are also covered. Offering a rich blend of ideas and algorithms, the book is up-to-date and self-contained. It is an excellent reference resource for users who are seeking 3D mesh watermarking and steganography algorithms, as well as for graduate students and researchers wanting to grasp the frontiers of triangular mesh processing on data hiding.

There are several theories of programming. The first usable theory, often called "Hoare's Logic," is still probably the most widely known. In it, a specification is a pair of predicates: a precondition and postcondition (these and all technical terms will be defined in due course). Another popular and closely related theory by Dijkstra uses the weakest precondition predicate transformer, which is a function from programs and postconditions to preconditions. lones's Vienna Development Method has been used to advantage in some industries; in it, a specification is a pair of predicates (as in Hoare's Logic), but the second predicate is a relation. Temporal Logic is yet another formalism that introduces some special operators and quantifiers to describe some aspects of computation. The theory in this book is simpler than any of those just mentioned. In it, a specification is just a boolean expression. Refinement is just ordinary implication. This theory is also more general than those just mentioned, applying to both terminating and nonterminating computation, to both sequential and parallel computation, to both stand-alone and interactive computation. And it includes time bounds, both for algorithm classification and for tightly constrained real-time applications.

"Pro J2ME Polish: Open Source Wireless Java Tools Suite" is written for wireless and other mobile Java programmers who want to "polish" their efficiency and acquire in-depth knowledge about programming real-world J2ME applications. It also uncovers all common device limitations and quirks, and explains how these can be circumvented.

The book describes the open-source tools collection J2ME Polish, and shows how the tools can be used for creating professional J2ME applications. Building multiple devices and multiple locales is easy after studying this book. Author -->Robert Virkus--> offers tips about the more hidden features of J2ME Polish, like the logging framework, the preprocessor, and the game-engine. You will learn to polish up your applications with the powerful GUI that enables you to design standard J2ME applications with simple CSS text files. You'll also learn to write portable, fast applications while using all available features on your target devices simultaneously.

a balanced blend of theoretical and practical information that enables readers to develop 3D worlds quickly and efficiently.