When Mr and Mrs Little (Hugh Laurie and Geena Davis) visit an orphanage to find a brother for their son George (Jonathan Lipnicki) they come away with a charming talking mouse called Stuart. After initial misgivings, George and Stuart begin to get on famously, and everything seems to be going perfectly; but unknown to the family, the neighbourhood cats have ganged together with the sole intention of getting rid of Stuart. Co-written by M. Night Shyamalan ('The Sixth Sense') and featuring state-of-the-art computer-generated effects and Michael J. Fox as the voice of Stuart.

Drama based on the teenage years of writer and director Lori Petty. Agnes (Jennifer Lawrence) is the oldest of three daughters who finds herself caring for her younger siblings when her single mother (Selma Blair) turns to prostitution, drugs and alcohol after meeting a pimp named Duval (Bokeem Woodbine), who seems to have a fondness for Agnes. With their house overrun by gamblers, criminals and other seedy characters the girls struggle to lead a normal life. Cammie (Chloë Grace Moretz) escapes the chaos of the house only to sit in bars and Bee (Sophi Bairley) wants nothing more than to run away and be adopted, while Agnes tries to earn enough money to support her family and manage the expectations of being a star basketball player.

FROM GROWING UP IN DETROIT, where he marched as a ten-year-old with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., to attending the inauguration of President Barack Obama, where he narrowly avoided the Purple Tunnel of Doom but still saw nothing, David Alan Grier examines how he -- and America -- have changed for the better and the funnier.

Within these pages, Grier imagines being called to serve in President Obama's cabinet as the "secretary of mirth"; takes you to a wild and emotional election night party he hosted that didn't go as planned; explains the true meaning of the "magical Negro"; recalls the formative episodes from his life -- including being rejected by the Black Panthers at their headquarters door and turning down the initial offer to work on "In Living Color" -- and for the first time ever sneaks you backstage at "Dancing with the Stars," where he exposes the inner workings of the show -- the camaraderie between dancers and stars, the excruciatingly painful rehearsals, the outrageous preparations, and each hysterical moment of his four-episode appearance and subsequent public meltdown.

Grier unabashedly muses on politics, culture, and race while recounting his own life story in this edgy, timeless, hilarious, and revelatory memoir and look at all things Barack.

"Barack Like Me" is David Alan Grier at his best -- the man, comic, and twenty-first-century thinker -- funny, brilliant, and original.

In his new book, David Alan Grier tells the stories that technical papers omit. Moving beyond the stereotypes of nerds and social misfits, "The Company We Keep" explores the community of people who build, use, and govern modern computing technology. The essays are both insightful and intimate, showing the impact of technology and the human character behind it. This book examines the development of digital technology by describing how this technology affects the communities that build, adapt, govern, and dispose of it. Centering on Washington, DC, many of the essays use Washington not only as an example of a community but also as a metaphor for how computing technology has connected individuals more closely and more firmly to the centers of political power, economic power, social power, and cultural power. Based on the author's popular column "The Known World" in "Computer" magazine.

Publication is a key element of science and engineering, as it not only spreads new ideas and practices but also sustains technical communities. This ReadyNote is intended to help new authors--engineers and scientists who are just beginning to write and publish--prepare technical ideas for publication and protect the publications that contain those ideas. It will also be useful in guiding more experienced authors through commonly misunderstood copyright issues as well as procedures specific to the Computer Society and its parent organization, the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers.

There are many ways of approaching the problem of writing technical articles, publishing information, and protecting ideas. This concise guide presents a few strategies that are simple to use and have been successful in the past.

Thought-provoking drama starring Kevin Bacon as Walter, a convicted paedophile who has served his sentence for his previous crimes and is determined not to relapse. Taking a job in a lumber yard, he starts a relationship with a local woman and, although he lives in fear of his past crimes being discovered, begins to rebuild his life as best he can. When a suspicious policeman starts harrassing him, and when he finds a house across the road from a school, it seems as if his urges are not buried as deep as he had thought.

This Festschrift, Unimagined Futures - ICT Opportunities and Challenges, is the first Festschrift in the IFIP AICT series. It examines key challenges facing the ICT community today. While addressing the contemporary challenges, the book provides the opportunity to look back to help understand the contemporary scene and identify appropriate future responses to them. Experts in different areas of the ICT scene have contributed to this IFIP 60th anniversary book, which will be a key input to the ICT community worldwide on setting policy priorities and agendas for the coming decade. In addition, a number of contributions look specifically at the role of professionals and of national, regional, and global organizations in disseminating the benefits of ICT to humanity worldwide.

Before Palm Pilots and iPods, PCs and laptops, the term "computer" referred to the people who did scientific calculations by hand. These workers were neither calculating geniuses nor idiot savants but knowledgeable people who, in other circumstances, might have become scientists in their own right. "When Computers Were Human" represents the first in-depth account of this little-known, 200-year epoch in the history of science and technology.

Beginning with the story of his own grandmother, who was trained as a human computer, David Alan Grier provides a poignant introduction to the wider world of women and men who did the hard computational labor of science. His grandmother's casual remark, "I wish I'd used my calculus," hinted at a career deferred and an education forgotten, a secret life unappreciated; like many highly educated women of her generation, she studied to become a human computer because nothing else would offer her a place in the scientific world.

The book begins with the return of Halley's comet in 1758 and the effort of three French astronomers to compute its orbit. It ends four cycles later, with a UNIVAC electronic computer projecting the 1986 orbit. In between, Grier tells us about the surveyors of the French Revolution, describes the calculating machines of Charles Babbage, and guides the reader through the Great Depression to marvel at the giant computing room of the Works Progress Administration.

"When Computers Were Human" is the sad but lyrical story of workers who gladly did the hard labor of research calculation in the hope that they might be part of the scientific community. In the end, they were rewarded by a new electronic machine that took the place and the name of those who were, once, the computers.

This Festschrift, Unimagined Futures - ICT Opportunities and Challenges, is the first Festschrift in the IFIP AICT series. It examines key challenges facing the ICT community today. While addressing the contemporary challenges, the book provides the opportunity to look back to help understand the contemporary scene and identify appropriate future responses to them. Experts in different areas of the ICT scene have contributed to this IFIP 60th anniversary book, which will be a key input to the ICT community worldwide on setting policy priorities and agendas for the coming decade. In addition, a number of contributions look specifically at the role of professionals and of national, regional, and global organizations in disseminating the benefits of ICT to humanity worldwide.