'Is private regulation of the Internet over? Have states taken over?' This book examines the function of self-regulation in cyberspace. It argues that contrary to what is often supposed in the literature, self-regulation is still an indispensable part of regulation of the Internet and will arguably remain so. It is intricately woven into the mesh of rules that governs the Internet today. Private regulation fills substantive or procedural gaps where no state regulation exists or where it is incomplete or ineffective, thus complementing the reach of state regulation. Simultaneously, states supply legal (and financial) frameworks that enable or complement self-regulation. In practice, often unknown to users, their behaviour is regulated by intertwined rules coming from both states and private groups. While each source of rules retains its identity and regulatory strengths, it is dependent on and complementary to the rules and processes of the other to effectively regulate Internet activities. Dr. Jeanne P. Mifsud Bonnici is a Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Law, Information and Converging Technologies, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, UK. This is Volume 16 in the Information Technology and Law (IT&Law) Series

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 15th IFIP WG 5.5 Working Conference on Virtual Enterprises, PRO-VE 2014, held in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, in October 2014. The 73 revised papers were carefully selected from 190 submissions. They provide a comprehensive overview of identified challenges and recent advances in various collaborative network (CN) domains and their applications, with a particular focus on the following areas in support of smart networked environments: behavior and coordination; product-service systems; service orientation in collaborative networks; engineering and implementation of collaborative networks; cyber-physical systems; business strategies alignment; innovation networks; sustainability and trust; reference and conceptual models; collaboration platforms; virtual reality and simulation; interoperability and integration; performance management frameworks; performance management systems; risk analysis; optimization in collaborative networks; knowledge management in networks; health and care networks; and mobility and logistics.

"Internet Today!" is, as the name implies, a survey of the components and facilities of the Internet; it is also a guide to its use, including a discussion of some features of the Internet, followed by exercises designed to create competence in both understanding and implementing the features.
Chapters include: Introduction to the Internet and the World Wide Web; Using a Web Browser; The Basics of Electronic Mail and Using Netscape E-mail; Finding Information on the Web; Directories and Searching; Search Strategies for Search Engines; Writing Your Own Web Pages; Telnet, FTP, and Gopher; Legal Issues, Ethical Issues, Privacy and Security.

This book covers in a great depth the fast growing topic of tools, techniques and applications of soft computing (e.g., fuzzy logic, genetic algorithms, neural networks, rough sets, Bayesian networks, and other probabilistic techniques) in the ontologies and the Semantic Web. The author shows how components of the Semantic Web (like the RDF, Description Logics, ontologies) can be covered with a soft computing methodology.

Electronic and internet voting has become increasingly widespread in recent years, but which countries are the leaders of the movement and who lags behind? Is the digital divide likely to present a permanent challenge to electronic democracy? What are the experiences with regard to online voting, and what are the arguments for and against? Electronic Voting and Democracy examines these issues and the contexts in which they are played out, such as problems of legitimacy and the practical considerations that have driven some countries toward electronic voting faster than others. JOACHIM ASTROM Department of Social Sciences, University of Orebro, Sweden HUBERTUS BUCHSTEIN Professor of Political Science, University of Greifswald, Germany WOLFGANG DRECHSLER Department of Public Administration, University of Tartu, Estonia HANS GESER Department of Political Science, University of Zurich, Switzerland CAROLYN HRIBAR Department of Political Science, Kent State Uniersity, Ohio, USA KIMMO GRONLUND Department of Political Science, Abo Akademi University, Turku, Finland PIA KARGER Federal Ministry of the Interior, Berlin, Germany ROBERT KOFLER Institute for Information Economics, Vienna Univers

This book provides graduate students and practitioners with knowledge of the CORBA standard and practical experience of implementing distributed systems with CORBA's Java mapping. With tested code examples that will run immediately!

Design is an art form in which the designer selects from a myriad of alternatives to bring an "optimum" choice to a user. In many complex of "optimum" is difficult to define. Indeed, the users systems the notion themselves will not agree, so the "best" system is simply the one in which the designer and the user have a congruent viewpoint. Compounding the design problem are tradeoffs that span a variety of technologies and user requirements. The electronic business system is a classically complex system whose tradeoff criteria and user views are constantly changing with rapidly developing underlying technology. Professor Milutinovic has chosen this area for his capstone contribution to the computer systems design. This book completes his trilogy on design issue in computer systems. His first work, "Surviving the Design of a 200 MHz RISC Microprocessor" (1997) focused on the tradeoffs and design issues within a processor. His second work, "Surviving the Design of Microprocessor and Multiprocessor Systems" (2000) considers the design issues involved with assembling a number of processors into a coherent system. Finally, this book generalizes the system design problem to electronic commerce on the Internet, a global system of immense consequence.

This book introduces wireless personal communications from the point of view of wireless communication system researchers. Existing sources on wireless communications put more emphasis on simulation and fundamental principles of how to build a study model. In this volume, the aim is to pass on to readers as much knowledge as is essential for completing model building of wireless communications, focusing on wireless personal area networks (WPANs). This book is the first of its kind that gives step-by-step details on how to build the WPANs simulation model. It is most helpful for readers to get a clear picture of the whole wireless simulation model by being presented with many study models. The book is also the first treatise on wireless communication that gives a comprehensive introduction to data-length complexity and the computational complexity of the processed data and the error control schemes. This volume is useful for all academic and technical staff in the fields of telecommunications and wireless communications, as it presents many scenarios for enhancing techniques for weak error control performance and other scenarios for complexity reduction of the wireless data and image transmission. Many examples are given to help readers to understand the material covered in the book. Additional resources such as the MATLAB codes for some of the examples also are presented.

Mobile Intention Recognition addresses problems of practical relevance for mobile system engineers: how can we make mobile assistance systems more intelligent? How can we model and recognize patterns of human behavior which span more than a limited spatial context? This text provides an overview on plan and intention recognition, ranging from the late 1970s to very recent approaches. This overview is unique as it discusses approaches with respect to the specificities of mobile intention recognition. This book covers problems from research on mobile assistance systems using methods from artificial intelligence and natural language processing. It thus addresses an extraordinary interdisciplinary audience.

This research book presents some specific multimedia systems that have been developed and applied in practice. More specifically, it consists of an editorial, an introductory chapter and six chapters as below. * Use of Multi-attribute Decision Making for Combining Audio-Lingual and Visual-Facial Modalities in Emotion Recognition. . Cooperative Learning assisted by Automatic Classification within Social Networking Services. . Improving Peer-to-Peer Communication in e-Learning by Development of an Advanced Messaging System. * Fuzzy-based Digital Video Stabilization in Static Scenes. * Development of Architecture, Information Archive and Multimedia Formats for Digital e-Libraries. * Layered Ontological Image for Intelligent Interaction to extend User Capabilities on Multimedia Systems in a Folksonomy Driven Environment.

This authorised book is the perfect gift for fans of the #1 plush property Based on the bestselling squishy toy, this adorable collector's guide is the perfect gift for any Squishmallows fan! They're lovable, they're squishy-they're Squishmallows! This OFFICIAL Collector's Guide is packed with quirky tidbits, top-ten lists, bios & stats, and a "rarity factor" for Squishmallows' collectible characters. Filled with hundreds of colorful photos and unique art styles. Avid fans, new collectors, young or old, Squishmallows: The Collector's Guide is perfect for just about anyone! Squishmallows are plush toys that are here to fill your hearts with love and affection. Since 2017, the versatile Squishmallows have grown into an international phenomenon and offer comfort, support, and warmth as friends, couch companions, bedtime buddies, and travel teammates. With more than 500 Squishmallows characters to collect, young fans can aspire to be like their favorite characters. Each Squishmallow has its own unique name and storyline to add to the fun.

'I loved her then, I love her now. Annie's back and she's better than ever! Fun, feel good and feisty - Annie Valentine is the woman you want to share a cocktail with!' Portia MacIntosh Can she get her life back online?Tired of being underestimated, Annie Valentine is determined to prove to everyone that she can make her life a success. Her job as a personal shopper is brilliant, but she's now intent on setting up a shoe and handbag empire of her own. To get there, she'll do anything and go anywhere - the handbag factories of Italy are calling! But what started out as a fun after hours project is getting slightly out of hand. Because Annie is working around the clock to bag the perfect bargain, and her family life and relationship with adorable Ed is feeling the strain. Annie knows she is getting in too deep, but the more she tries to pull back, the more risks she takes. Soon, everything Annie loves is on the line and perhaps the only way to have it all is to step into the real world again.... Fans of Sophie Kinsella, Lindsey Kelk and Paige Toon will love this laugh-out-loud romantic comedy from bestselling author Carmen Reid. What readers are saying! "If you love shopping as much as you love a great read, try this. Wonderful." Bestselling author, Katie Fforde "Annie Valentine is a wonderful character - I want her to burst into my life and sort out my wardrobe for me!" Bestselling author, Jill Mansell "You will enjoy getting to know Annie Valentine; laughing with her and crying with her. You may even fall in love with her . . . I have! A fantastic read!" Reader review "Fantastic read, couldn't put it down" Reader review "Can't wait to read the next one!" Reader review

As the IoT market is booming, several issues are delaying the full realization of the technology. IoT devices, in cybersecurity terms, greatly increase security risk. This means that any scientific work that offers cybersecurity strategies will excite security experts who will be glad to expand their knowledge base on IoT cybersecurity. As a result of the booming of the IoT market, business competitors are jockeying for a piece of the market. This means that solutions from researchers that address compatibility issues will be greatly welcomed by IoT technology developers. Connectivity providers are likely to embrace solutions to challenges of bandwidth since a growing IoT market must be followed up by bandwidth-intensive IoT applications which tend to jostle for space on the current client-server model. Overpromising followed by underdelivering, has been the current approach by many innovators and the mismatch results in losses in production, orphaned technologies accompanied by frequent system failures. Solutions that address IoT performance issues are likely to excite many start-ups. Solutions to challenges of fragmentation presented by thousands of devices from different manufacturers operating on proprietary ecosystems are likely to be warmly embraced by many IoT brands developers. As such, a publication that specifically addresses the challenges faced in the rolling out of IoT technologies is sorely needed.

With the purpose of building upon standard web technologies, open linked data serves as a useful way to connect previously unrelated data and to publish structured data on the web. The application of these elements leads to the creation of data commons called semantic web. Cases on Open-Linked Data and Semantic Web Applications brings together new theories, research findings and case studies which cover the recent developments and approaches towards applied open linked data and semantic web in the context of information systems. By enhancing the understanding of open linked data in business, science and information technologies, this reference source aims to be useful for academics, researchers, and practitioners. With the purpose of building upon standard web technologies, open linked data serves as a useful way to connect previously unrelated data and to publish structured data on the web. The application of these elements leads to the creation of data commons called semantic web.

Enterprise IT infrastructure is getting increasingly complex. With the increase in complexity has arisen the need to manage it. Management in general can be seen as the process of assuring that a managed entity meets its expectations in a controlled and predictable manner. Examples of managed entities are not only components, entire systems, processes, but also people such as employees, developers, or operators, and entire organizations. Traditional management has addressed some of these issues in varied manner. The emergence of Web services has added a new complexity to the management problem and poses a new set of problems. But it also adds to the mix a set of technologies that will make the task of management simpler. Management of Web services will be critical as businesses come to rely on them as a substantial source of their revenue. The book tries to cover the broad area of web services, the concepts, implications for the enterprise, issues involved in their management and how they are being used for management themselves. The book is intended as a reference for current practice and future directions for web services and their management. The book is directed at: * Computing professionals, academicians and students to learn about the important concepts behind the web services paradigm and how it impacts the enterprise in general and how it affects traditional application, network and system management.

Under Quality of Service (QoS) routing, paths for flows are selected based upon the knowledge of resource availability at network nodes and the QoS requirements of flows. QoS routing schemes proposed differ in the way they gather information about the network state and select paths based on this information. We broadly categorize these schemes into best-path routing and proportional routing. The best-path routing schemes gather global network state information and always select the best path for an incoming flow based on this global view. On the other hand, proportional routing schemes proportion incoming flows among a set of candidate paths. We have shown that it is possible to compute near-optimal proportions using only locally collected information. Furthermore, a few good candidate paths can be selected using infrequently exchanged global information and thus with minimal communication overhead.

Localized Quality Of Service Routing For The Internet, describes these schemes in detail demonstrating that proportional routing schemes can achieve higher throughput with lower overhead than best-path routing schemes. It first addresses the issue of finding near-optimal proportions for a given set of candidate paths based on locally collected flow statistics. This book will also look into the selection of a few good candidate paths based on infrequently exchanged global information. The final phase of this book will describe extensions to proportional routing approach to provide hierarchical routing across multiple areas in a large network.

Localized Quality Of Service Routing For The Internet is designed for researchers and practitioners in industry, and is suitable for graduatelevel students in computer science as a secondary text.

Social Media Abyss plunges into the paradoxical condition of the new digital normal versus a lived state of emergency. There is a heightened, post-Snowden awareness; we know we are under surveillance but we click, share, rank and remix with a perverse indifference to technologies of capture and cultures of fear. Despite the incursion into privacy by companies like Facebook, Google and Amazon, social media use continues to be a daily habit with shrinking gadgets now an integral part of our busy lives. We are thrown between addiction anxiety and subliminal, obsessive use. Where does art, culture and criticism venture when the digital vanishes into the background? Geert Lovink strides into the frenzied social media debate with Social Media Abyss - the fifth volume of his ongoing investigation into critical internet culture. He examines the symbiotic yet problematic relation between networks and social movements, and further develops the notion of organized networks. Lovink doesn't just submit to the empty soul of 24/7 communication but rather provides the reader with radical alternatives. Selfie culture is one of many Lovink's topics, along with the internet obsession of American writer Jonathan Franzen, the internet in Uganda, the aesthetics of Anonymous and an anatomy of the Bitcoin religion. Will monetization through cybercurrencies and crowdfunding contribute to a redistribution of wealth or further widen the gap between rich and poor? In this age of the free, how a revenue model of the 99% be collectively designed? Welcome back to the Social Question.

The present economic and social environment has given rise to new situations within which companies must operate. As a first example, the globalization of the economy and the need for performance has led companies to outsource and then to operate inside networks of enterprises such as supply chains or virtual enterprises. A second instance is related to environmental issues. The statement about the impact of ind- trial activities on the environment has led companies to revise processes, to save - ergy, to optimize transportation.... A last example relates to knowledge. Knowledge is considered today to be one of the main assets of a company. How to capitalize, to manage, to reuse it for the benefit of the company is an important current issue. The three examples above have no direct links. However, each of them constitutes a challenge that companies have to face today. This book brings together the opinions of several leading researchers from all around the world. Together they try to develop new approaches and find answers to those challenges. Through the individual ch- ters of this book, the authors present their understanding of the different challenges, the concepts on which they are working, the approaches they are developing and the tools they propose. The book is composed of six parts; each one focuses on a specific theme and is subdivided into subtopics.