After a shipwrecked Spanish Manila galleon is discovered off the coast of Acapulco the investigators are stunned when its newly found treasure is stolen from under their noses. Alicia Myles and the Gold team are asked to investigate. Through the Swiss and Italian Alps and Mexico, they confront, chase and capture the ruthless thieves who are, in turn, being hunted by a far deadlier criminal kingpin. They are told that, to find the galleon’s principal treasure, they must follow a series of clues set down in ancient diaries, shadowing the poignant journey of one of the shipwreck’s few survivors. With intense danger looming on all sides, Alicia and her team end up tracking the treasure across a vast enemy encampment, through a highly dangerous and menacing ship-graveyard, surrounded by adversaries and finally forced into a decisive, deadly sea battle. . .

    With no prior knowledge of game development or 3D required, you will learn from scratch, taking each concept at a time working up to a full 3D mini-game. You'll learn scripting with C# or JavaScript and master the Unity development environment with easy-to-follow stepwise tasks. If you're a designer or animator who wishes to take their first steps into game development or prototyping, or if you've simply spent many hours sitting in front of video games, with ideas bubbling away in the back of your mind, Unity and this book should be your starting point. No prior knowledge of game production is required, inviting you to simply bring with you a passion for making great games.

    New JVM-based languages like Groovy, Scala, and Clojure are redefining what it means to be a Java developer. The core Standard and Enterprise APIs now co-exist with a large and growing body of open source technologies. Multicore processors, concurrency, and massive data stores require new patterns and approaches to development. And with Java 7 due to release in 2011, there's still more to absorb.The Well-Grounded Java Developer is a unique guide written for developers with a solid grasp of Java fundamentals. It provides a fresh, practical look at new Java 7 features along with the array of ancillary technologies that a working developer will use in building the next generation of business software.

    It teaches Clojure from the basics to advanced topics using practical, real-world application examples. Blow through the theory and dive into practical matters like unit-testing and environment set-up, all the way through building a scalable web-application using domain-specific languages, Hadoop, HBase, and RabbitMQ. About the TechnologyClojure is a modern Lisp for the JVM, and it has the strengths you'd expect: first-class functions, macros, support for functional programming, and a Lisp-like, clean programming style. About this BookClojure in Action is a practical guide focused on applying Clojure to practical programming challenges. You'll start with a language tutorial written for readers who already know OOP. Then, you'll dive into the use cases where Clojure really shines: state management, safe concurrency and multicore programming, first-class code generation, and Java interop. In each chapter, you'll first explore the unique characteristics of a problem area and then discover how to tackle them using Clojure. Along the way, you'll explore practical matters like architecture, unit testing, and set-up as you build a scalable web application that includes custom DSLs, Hadoop, HBase, and RabbitMQ. What's InsideA fast-paced Clojure tutorial Creating web services with Clojure Scaling through messaging Creating DSLs with Clojure's macro system Test-driven development with Clojure Distributed programming with Clojure, and moreThis book assumes you're familiar with an OO language like Java, C#, or C++ but requires no background in Lisp or Clojure itself.================================== Table of ContentsPART 1 GETTING STARTED Introduction to Clojure A whirlwind tour Building blocks of Clojure Polymorphism with multimethods Clojure and Java interop State and the concurrent world Evolving Clojure through macros PART 2 GETTING REAL Test-driven development and more Data storage with Clojure Clojure and the web Scaling through messaging Data processing with Clojure More on functional programming Protocols, records, and type More macros and DSLs

    But aren't you curious about what else the Web can do for you? Or if there are better, faster, or easier ways to do what you're already doing? Let the world's foremost technology writer, Mark Frauenfelder, help you unlock the Internet's potential--and open up a richer, nimbler, and more useful trove of resources and services, including:EXPRESS YOURSELF, SAFELY. Create and share blogs, podcasts, and online video with friends, family, and millions of potential audience members, while protecting yourself from identity theft and fraud.DIVIDE AND CONQUER. Tackle even the most complex online tasks with ease, from whipping up a gorgeous Web site to doing all your work faster and more efficiently within your browser, from word processing to investing to planning a party.THE RIGHT WAY, EVERY TIME. Master state-of-the-art techniques for doing everything from selling your house to shopping for electronics, with hundreds of carefully researched tips and tricks.TIPS FROM THE INSIDERS. Mark has asked dozens of the best bloggers around to share their favorite tips on getting the most out of the Web.

    Dwarves are mystical craftsmen, humans are big and strong, and halflings breed explosively, but none of them can match elves for sheer magical firepower.Angrod Veneanar is a young elf. He’s nearing the end of a long apprenticeship and looking forward to going home. As a nobleman he loves wine and women—he doesn’t care at all about shadow conspiracies, forgotten magics, or long-lost royal heirs. Unfortunately, there is a prophecy, and it looks like he’s in it.Now he’s on the run. Accused of murder, what seems like the entire kingdom wants him dead. He has knights, mages, and even arcane assassins on his trail. Worse, something is riding in his head and threatening to take over his body.To survive, Angrod must use all his skill in weapons and wizardry. He must find new allies and uncover fresh strength. And if he is to stand a chance of defeating his greatest enemy, he must rediscover a master spell that’s been lost for centuries. If he doesn’t, he’s just going home—to die.

    It features a “60-Second Secret Plan” for starting off, tips on running shoes and other equipment, and sample structured programs for improving health and endurance. In addition, there are quizzes to help newcomers assess their current fitness levels, a runner’s diary to track progress, and inspirational stories about sport’s life-changing effects. Colorful sidebars cover everything from how running produces chemical changes in the brain that improve one’s mood to strategies for adding distance to a weekly program.

    Each chapter spotlights a common mistake, gives real-life examples, uses a generous dose of humor, and provides a practical course of action to recover from the error. The book draws from the experience of Seacoast Church as well as pastors such as Craig Groeschel, Chris Hodges, Perry Nobel, Mark Batterson, Dave Ferguson, Scott Chapman, Dino Rizzo, Ron Hamilton, and Dave Browning, Church leaders will be encouraged to realize that they are not the only ones who struggle, and that turning their situation around may not be as daunting a task as they think. This is a field guide for the common pastor based on actual churches of all sizes.

    But if you haven't seen the performance improvements you expected, or still don't feel confident enough to use Spark in production, this practical book is for you. Authors Holden Karau and Rachel Warren demonstrate performance optimizations to help your Spark queries run faster and handle larger data sizes, while using fewer resources.Ideal for software engineers, data engineers, developers, and system administrators working with large-scale data applications, this book describes techniques that can reduce data infrastructure costs and developer hours. Not only will you gain a more comprehensive understanding of Spark, you'll also learn how to make it sing.With this book, you'll explore:How Spark SQL's new interfaces improve performance over SQL's RDD data structureThe choice between data joins in Core Spark and Spark SQLTechniques for getting the most out of standard RDD transformationsHow to work around performance issues in Spark's key/value pair paradigmWriting high-performance Spark code without Scala or the JVMHow to test for functionality and performance when applying suggested improvementsUsing Spark MLlib and Spark ML machine learning librariesSpark's Streaming components and external community packages

    You can now easily extend the framework, change its behavior, and replace whole components to bend it to your will, all without messy hacks. This pioneering book is the first resource that deep dives into the new Rails 3 APIs and shows you how use them to write better web applications and make your day-to-day work with Rails more productive. Rails Core developer Jose Valim guides you through seven different tutorials, each of them using test-driven development to build a new Rails extension or application that solves common problems with these new APIs. You will understand how the Rails rendering stack works and customize it to read templates from the database while you learn how to mimic Active Record behavior, like validations, in any other object. You will find out how to write faster, leaner controllers, and you'll learn how to mix Sinatra applications into your Rails apps, so you can choose the most appropriate tool for the job. In addition, you will improve your productivity by customizing generators and responders. This book will help you understand Rails 3's inner workings, including generators, template handlers, internationalization, routing, and responders. With the knowledge you'll gain, you'll be ready to tackle complicated projects more easily than ever before, creating solutions that are well-tested, modular, and easy to maintain.

    The exam is designed to ensure that someone who is handling computer security in a company has a standardized body of knowledge. The book is composed of 10 domains of the Common Body of Knowledge. In each section, it defines each domain. It also provides tips on how to prepare for the exam and take the exam. It also contains CISSP practice quizzes to test ones knowledge. The first domain provides information about risk analysis and mitigation. It also discusses security governance. The second domain discusses different techniques for access control, which is the basis for all the security disciplines. The third domain explains the concepts behind cryptography, which is a secure way of communicating that is understood only by certain recipients. Domain 5 discusses security system design, which is fundamental for operating the system and software security components. Domain 6 is a critical domain in the Common Body of Knowledge, the Business Continuity Planning, and Disaster Recovery Planning. It is the final control against extreme events such as injury, loss of life, or failure of an organization. Domains 7, 8, and 9 discuss telecommunications and network security, application development security, and the operations domain, respectively. Domain 10 focuses on the major legal systems that provide a framework in determining the laws about information system.

    It starts by explaining how message queuing works, its history, and how RabbitMQ fits in. Then it shows you real-world examples you can apply to your own scalability and interoperability challenges.About the TechnologyThere's a virtual switchboard at the core of most large applications where messages race between servers, programs, and services. RabbitMQ is an efficient and easy-to-deploy queue that handles this message traffic effortlessly in all situations, from web startups to massive enterprise systems.About the BookRabbitMQ in Action teaches you to build and manage scalable applications in multiple languages using the RabbitMQ messaging server. It's a snap to get started. You'll learn how message queuing works and how RabbitMQ fits in. Then, you'll explore practical scalability and interoperability issues through many examples. By the end, you'll know how to make Rabbit run like a well-oiled machine in a 24 x 7 x 365 environment.Written for developers familiar with Python, PHP, Java, .NET, or any other modern programming language. No RabbitMQ experience required. Purchase of the print book comes with an offer of a free PDF, ePub, and Kindle eBook from Manning. Also available is all code from the book. What's InsideLearn fundamental messaging design patternsUse patterns for on-demand scalabilityGlue a PHP frontend to a backend written in anythingImplement a PubSub-alerting service in 30 minutes flatConfigure RabbitMQ's built-in clusteringMonitor, manage, extend, and tune RabbitMQ========================================​====Table of ContentsPulling RabbitMQ out of the hatUnderstanding messagingRunning and administering RabbitSolving problems with Rabbit: coding and patternsClustering and dealing with failureWriting code that survives failureWarrens and Shovels: failover and replicationAdministering RabbitMQ from the WebControlling Rabbit with the REST APIMonitoring: Houston, we have a problemSupercharging and securing your RabbitSmart Rabbits: extending RabbitMQ

    You'll begin by getting Redis set up properly and then exploring the key-value model. Then, you'll dive into real use cases including simple caching, distributed ad targeting, and more. You'll learn how to scale Redis from small jobs to massive datasets. Experienced developers will appreciate chapters on clustering and internal scripting to make Redis easier to use.About the TechnologyWhen you need near-real-time access to a fast-moving data stream, key-value stores like Redis are the way to go. Redis expands on the key-value pattern by accepting a wide variety of data types, including hashes, strings, lists, and other structures. It provides lightning-fast operations on in-memory datasets, and also makes it easy to persist to disk on the fly. Plus, it's free and open source.About this bookRedis in Action introduces Redis and the key-value model. You'll quickly dive into real use cases including simple caching, distributed ad targeting, and more. You'll learn how to scale Redis from small jobs to massive datasets and discover how to integrate with traditional RDBMS or other NoSQL stores. Experienced developers will appreciate the in-depth chapters on clustering and internal scripting.Written for developers familiar with database concepts. No prior exposure to NoSQL database concepts nor to Redis itself is required. Appropriate for systems administrators comfortable with programming.Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF, Kindle, and ePub formats from Manning Publications.What's InsideRedis from the ground upPreprocessing real-time dataManaging in-memory datasetsPub/sub and configurationPersisting to diskAbout the AuthorDr. Josiah L. Carlson is a seasoned database professional and an active contributor to the Redis community.Table of ContentsPART 1 GETTING STARTEDGetting to know RedisAnatomy of a Redis web applicationPART 2 CORE CONCEPTSCommands in RedisKeeping data safe and ensuring performanceUsing Redis for application supportApplication components in RedisSearch-based applicationsBuilding a simple social networkPART 3 NEXT STEPSReducing memory useScaling RedisScripting Redis with Lua

    Tompkins ... Fleeing a posse, Cleve Logan boards a riverboat loaded with outlaws. Hands are dealt in a desperate game -- and Death will take the last trick!THE RENEGADE HILLS, by Allan K. Echols ... Saddle up -- and ride hell-bent-for-leather down the trail to a hidden valley -- but keep your guns loose in your holsters, 'cause you're riding to an outlaw showdown in the Renegade Hills!LAST-CHANCE RANGE, by Dean Owen ... Byrd Elkhart called the Territory his private range. He strung his barbed wire across forty miles of it, and the other ranchers just stood by with their tails between their legs. But then a different breed of man showed up in the person of Clay Janner, of Texas -- and he was going to drive his scrawny herd over the range even if he had to turn the whole Territory into a six-gun shambles!POWDER SMOKE, by Jackson Gregory ... "Double pay," Bart Warbuck told his gunmen, "and give hundred more to the one who gets Jeff Cody!" -- It was as simple as that if you were Warbuck, had 30 killers on your payroll, and made the law whatever you wanted it to be. But it was hard to take if you were young Cody, and if the only gun you could rely on was the one in your belt. And if you alone could stop Bart Warbuck!If you enjoy this volume of classic Westerns, don't forget to search your favorite ebook store for "Wildside Press Megapack" to see the 220+ other entries in this series, including not just historical fiction, but mysteries, adventure, science fiction, fantasy, horror -- and much, much more!