Companies operating in today's roller-coaster economy have increasingly turned to competitive intelligence (CI) as an effective means of building and maintaining a business edge. Revealing their secrets for monitoring competitive forces and keeping on top of the trends, opportunities, and threats within their industries, this book presents 15 leading CI researchers and their hard-earned secrets. These CI researchers are from such Fortune 100 firms as Compaq Computer, Dell Computer, Lockheed Martin, Merck, and United Technologies. The tips, techniques, and models provided can be successfully applied to any business intelligence project, and the range of sources and strategies discussed will help any organization stay several steps ahead of the competition.

The Encyclopedia of Leadership is a comprehensive reference guide to over 200 of the most important business leadership principles, theories, tools, and techniques. Each entry features a brief, one-page summary of an influential theory or tool—often illustrated graphically—followed by a worksheet or exercise. Thoroughly cross-referenced, it allows busy leaders to find what they need, review it, and even implement it—often in as little as 15 minutes.

Martin Gardner, as the Master of Mathematical Games and Puzzles, has used his personal exuberance and his fascination with puzzles and magic to entice a wide range of readers into a world of mathematical discovery. As the author of Scientific American's "Mathematical Games" column for 25 years, he gained a large following among puzzlers, magicians, and mathematicians. In the years since then, Gardner has continued to write articles for academic journals and popular magazines. Forty-one of those pieces, never before published in book form, are collected in this volume. Truly a treat for Martin Gardner's many fans, the articles span a wide range of topics. They include games of chance (and why a "computer" will always beat a human player), word ladders and mathematical word play games, tiling puzzles, magic squares, computer and calculator "magic" tricks, and other mathematical puzzles. Providing the tools to furnish our all-too-sluggish minds with an athletic workout, Gardner's problems foster an agility of the mind as they entertain.

The tradition of a publication based on the Gathering for Gardner continues with this new carefully selected and edited collection in which Martin Gardner and friends inspire and entertain. The contributors to this volume—virtually a list of Who's Who in the World of Puzzles—trace their inspiration to Martin Gardner's puzzle column in Scientific American and to his contributions to the world of recreational mathematics. Tribute to a Mathemagician contains an author index for the two previous books in the collection of books based on the Gatherings for Gardner.

MSDN Magazine is a developers' guide to Microsoft tools, development environments, and technologies for Windows and the Web. It provides technical experts with real-world solutions, business applications for new technology, and first looks at the latest products. MSDN Magazine covers all development angles including distributed computing, Web development, and Windows application development. The focus of MSDN Magazine is to generate creative and accurate content on using Microsoft development technologies across the entire spectrum of desktop to enterprise and .NET applications. As part of Microsoft's indispensable MSDN family of developer resources (msdn.microsoft.com), MSDN Magazine provides in-depth, cutting-edge information written by industry experts and edited by Microsoft professionals.

Trading strategies: Beyond the glitter / Lumber: The other weather market / Putting put call parity to work / Bull call ladders / Futures strategy lab: The price movement index (PMI) / Options Strategy Lab: ADX credit spread system / Options news / Congress continues Amaranth query ...

Douglas R. Stinson's Cryptography: Theory and Practice is a mathematically intensive examination of cryptography, including ciphers, the Data Encryption Standard (DES), public key cryptography, one-way hash functions, and digital signatures. Stinson's explication of "zero-sum proofs"--a process by which one person lets another person know that he or she has a password without actually revealing any information--is especially good. If you are new to the math behind cryptography but want to tackle it, the author covers all of the required background to understand the real mathematics here. Cryptography includes extensive exercises with each chapter and makes an ideal introduction for any math-literate person willing to get acquainted with this material.

Ace your course in Fourier analysis with this powerful study guide! With its clear explanations, hundreds of fully solved problems, and comprehensive coverage of the applications of Fourier series, this useful tool can sharpen your problem-solving skills, improve your comprehension, and reduce the time you need to spend studying. It also includes hundreds of additional practice problems for you to work on your own, at your own speed to help you get ready for tests. Featuring theorem proofs as well as real-world application examples, this comprehensive guide is also the perfect tutor for brushing up for graduate or professional exams!

Beyond the hype about dot-coms, WAP phones and dot-com entrepreneurs, what impacts will e-commerce have on society? How will it affect jobs and local communities? What will it mean for energy use, transport and the future shape of our cities? How can we ensure that everyone enjoys the benefits of the new digital technologies? With contributions from leading researchers at many of Britain's most influential think-tanks, this book is a groundbreaking exploration of the social and environmental impacts and opportunities of e-commerce. This is an essential book for anyone - from CEO to consumer- who wants to understand the impact of the new economy on our environment.

Principles of Soil and Plant Water Relations combines biology and physics to show how water moves through the soil-plant-atmosphere continuum. This text explores the instrumentation and the methods used to measure the status of water in soil and plants. The basic methods of tensiometry, pyschrometry, stomatal porometry, as well as newer methods of tension infiltrometry; time domain reflectometry are examined. Principles are clearly presented with the aid of diagrams, anatomical figures, and images of instrumentation. An added feature includes short biographies of important scientists at the end of each chapter. Intended for graduate students in plant and soil science programs, this book also serves as a useful reference for agronomists, plant ecologists, and agricultural engineers.

Code Check Electrical, 4th edition, outlines the principles behind the various accepted electrical codes and provides information on the code requirements for all types of residential electrical systems. It is cross-referenced to the most recent National Electrical Code. The Code Check series is one of Taunton’s most successful book lines, selling over 400,000 copies. Spiral bound, with durable laminated pages, the books in this series are designed to be used on-site for quick reference, ensuring that all jobs meet the highest safety standards while drastically reducing code violation call-backs. The Code Check series is endorsed by the International Conference of Building Officials (ICBO)

JavaScript is carrying more and more programming load lately as Ajax has become popular. Scripting Ajax from scratch isn't much fun, but fortunately there are libraries to help. Prototype and Scriptaculous will let you get much more work done in much less time, automating tasks from processing XMLHTTP requests to creating animations that draw attention to your interfaces. This Short Cut demonstrates how to use Prototype for a wide range of tasks, including event handling, DOM processing, string and form process, and Ajax communications. It explores Scriptaculous' visual effects library, from pulsate to squish to fold and beyond. Need interface components? You'll find form autocompletion as well as drag and drop support.

You don't have to know everything about a car to drive one, and you don't need to know everything about Ruby to start programming with it. Written for both experienced and new programmers alike, Learning Ruby is a just-get-in-and-drive book -- a hands-on tutorial that offers lots of Ruby programs and lets you know how and why they work, just enough to get you rolling down the road. Interest in Ruby stems from the popularity of Rails, the web development framework that's attracting new devotees and refugees from Java and PHP. But there are plenty of other uses for this versatile language. The best way to learn is to just try the code! You'll find examples on nearly every page of this book that you can imitate and hack.

A CAN Networking Introduction / Beginner’s Guide to Programming: Lesson 2 / BIPED Experiments / Developing the Guardian 5 Robot / RFID Localization / The Day that Robots Took Over the Park / Use the Magic of Infrared Remote Control on Your Bot

Unravel the history behind of one of the most fascinating ancient civilisations with this engaging, entertaining and educational guide to the ancient Egyptians. With a complete rundown of ancient Egyptian history and culture alongside insights in to the everyday lives of the Egyptians, you’ll discover how they kept themselves entertained, the gory details of mummification, the amazing creation of the pyramids, the deciphering of hieroglyphs and much more.