Currently, Lua is being used in areas ranging from embedded systems to Web development and is widely spread in the game industry, where knowledge of Lua is an indisputable asset. "Programming in Lua" is the official book about the language, giving a solid base for any programmer who wants to use Lua. Authored by Roberto Ierusalimschy, the chief architect of the language, it covers all aspects of Lua 5---from the basics to its API with C---explaining how to make good use of its features and giving numerous code examples. "Programming in Lua" is targeted at people with some programming background, but does not assume any prior knowledge about Lua or other scripting languages. This Second Edition updates the text to Lua 5.1 and brings substantial new material, including numerous new examples, a detailed explanation of the new module system, and two new chapters centered on multiple states and garbage collection.

    This change is being driven by powerful new cognitive tools, enabled by the internet, which are greatly accelerating scientific discovery. There are many books about how the internet is changing business or the workplace or government. But this is the first book about something much more fundamental: how the internet is transforming the nature of our collective intelligence and how we understand the world.Reinventing Discovery tells the exciting story of an unprecedented new era of networked science. We learn, for example, how mathematicians in the Polymath Project are spontaneously coming together to collaborate online, tackling and rapidly demolishing previously unsolved problems. We learn how 250,000 amateur astronomers are working together in a project called Galaxy Zoo to understand the large-scale structure of the Universe, and how they are making astonishing discoveries, including an entirely new kind of galaxy. These efforts are just a small part of the larger story told in this book--the story of how scientists are using the internet to dramatically expand our problem-solving ability and increase our combined brainpower.This is a book for anyone who wants to understand how the online world is revolutionizing scientific discovery today--and why the revolution is just beginning.

    Now, internationally renowned performance expert Brendan Gregg has brought together proven methodologies, tools, and metrics for analyzing and tuning even the most complex environments. Systems Performance: Enterprise and the Cloud focuses on Linux(R) and Unix(R) performance, while illuminating performance issues that are relevant to all operating systems. You'll gain deep insight into how systems work and perform, and learn methodologies for analyzing and improving system and application performance. Gregg presents examples from bare-metal systems and virtualized cloud tenants running Linux-based Ubuntu(R), Fedora(R), CentOS, and the illumos-based Joyent(R) SmartOS(TM) and OmniTI OmniOS(R). He systematically covers modern systems performance, including the "traditional" analysis of CPUs, memory, disks, and networks, and new areas including cloud computing and dynamic tracing. This book also helps you identify and fix the "unknown unknowns" of complex performance: bottlenecks that emerge from elements and interactions you were not aware of. The text concludes with a detailed case study, showing how a real cloud customer issue was analyzed from start to finish. Coverage includes - Modern performance analysis and tuning: terminology, concepts, models, methods, and techniques - Dynamic tracing techniques and tools, including examples of DTrace, SystemTap, and perf - Kernel internals: uncovering what the OS is doing - Using system observability tools, interfaces, and frameworks - Understanding and monitoring application performance - Optimizing CPUs: processors, cores, hardware threads, caches, interconnects, and kernel scheduling - Memory optimization: virtual memory, paging, swapping, memory architectures, busses, address spaces, and allocators - File system I/O, including caching - Storage devices/controllers, disk I/O workloads, RAID, and kernel I/O - Network-related performance issues: protocols, sockets, interfaces, and physical connections - Performance implications of OS and hardware-based virtualization, and new issues encountered with cloud computing - Benchmarking: getting accurate results and avoiding common mistakes This guide is indispensable for anyone who operates enterprise or cloud environments: system, network, database, and web admins; developers; and other professionals. For students and others new to optimization, it also provides exercises reflecting Gregg's extensive instructional experience.

    With this book, Raymond shares his knowledge, experience, and anecdotal stories, allowing all of us to get a better understanding of the operating system that affects millions of people every day. This book has something for everyone, is a casual read, and I highly recommend it!--Jeffrey Richter, Author/Consultant, Cofounder of WintellectVery interesting read. Raymond tells the inside story of why Windows is the way it is.--Eric Gunnerson, Program Manager, Microsoft CorporationAbsolutely essential reading for understanding the history of Windows, its intricacies and quirks, and why they came about.--Matt Pietrek, MSDN Magazine's Under the Hood ColumnistRaymond Chen has become something of a legend in the software industry, and in this book you'll discover why. From his high-level reminiscences on the design of the Windows Start button to his low-level discussions of GlobalAlloc that only your inner-geek could love, The Old New Thing is a captivating collection of anecdotes that will help you to truly appreciate the difficulty inherent in designing and writing quality software.--Stephen Toub, Technical Editor, MSDN MagazineWhy does Windows work the way it does? Why is Shut Down on the Start menu? (And why is there a Start button, anyway?) How can I tap into the dialog loop? Why does the GetWindowText function behave so strangely? Why are registry files called hives?Many of Windows' quirks have perfectly logical explanations, rooted in history. Understand them, and you'll be more productive and a lot less frustrated. Raymond Chen--who's spent more than a decade on Microsoft's Windows development team--reveals the hidden Windows you need to know.Chen's engaging style, deep insight, and thoughtful humor have made him one of the world's premier technology bloggers. Here he brings together behind-the-scenes explanations, invaluable technical advice, and illuminating anecdotes that bring Windows to life--and help you make the most of it.A few of the things you'll find inside:What vending machines can teach you about effective user interfaces A deeper understanding of window and dialog management Why performance optimization can be so counterintuitive A peek at the underbelly of COM objects and the Visual C++ compiler Key details about backwards compatibility--what Windows does and why Windows program security holes most developers don't know about How to make your program a better Windows citizen

    Designed for readers who don't need the academic formality, it's a fast and easy computer science guide. It teaches essential concepts for people who want to program computers effectively. First, it introduces discrete mathematics, then it exposes the most common algorithms and data structures. It also shows the principles that make computers and programming languages work.

    Previously undocumented, these 23 patterns allow designers to create more flexible, elegant, and ultimately reusable designs without having to rediscover the design solutions themselves.The authors begin by describing what patterns are and how they can help you design object-oriented software. They then go on to systematically name, explain, evaluate, and catalog recurring designs in object-oriented systems. With Design Patterns as your guide, you will learn how these important patterns fit into the software development process, and how you can leverage them to solve your own design problems most efficiently. Each pattern describes the circumstances in which it is applicable, when it can be applied in view of other design constraints, and the consequences and trade-offs of using the pattern within a larger design. All patterns are compiled from real systems and are based on real-world examples. Each pattern also includes code that demonstrates how it may be implemented in object-oriented programming languages like C++ or Smalltalk.

    Big Blue, as the company is known, tends to rely for its success on magical thinking but that magic ran out a long time ago. The company got in trouble back in the 1990s and had to hire for the first time an outside CEO, Lou Gerstner, to save the day. Gerstner pushed IBM into services with spectacular results but this hurt the company, too. As services have became commoditized IBM could only compete by offshoring the work and quality suffered. The other negative impact of Gerstner was his compensation which was for the first time in IBM history very high. Only the Watson family had become rich running IBM with later CEOs like John Opel and John Akers living comfortable lives with lots of perks, but they never got BIG RICH. That changed with Gerstner. Sam Palmisano an IBM lifer followed Gerstner as CEO and followed, too, the Gerstner playbook. Palmisano retired three years ago with a retirement package worth $241 million, replaced by IBM's first woman CEO, Ginni Rometty, who certainly expects a comparable golden parachute. In order to achieve these numbers, though, IBM has essentially sacrificed both its customers and employees. In order to have ever growing earnings per share the company has cut labor to the bone, off-shored everything it can, dropped quality, deliberately underbid contracts to win them then not performed. IBM's acquisition policy is one of buying companies to get their sales then cutting costs to the bone and under-delivering. This and share buybacks have kept earnings growing until this house of cards recently began to fall. Ginni Rometty, who will end up taking the fall for Palmisano's flawed strategy, has stated a very specific earnings goal for 2015 that she will destroy the company to achieve if she must. This book how IBM fell from grace, where it is headed, and what specifically can be done to save the company before it is too late.

    It covers the basic steps needed to create a vSphere HA and vSphere DRS cluster and to implement vSphere Storage DRS. Even more important, it explains the concepts and mechanisms behind HA, DRS and Storage DRS which will enable you to make well educated decisions. This book will take you in to the trenches of HA, DRS and Storage DRS and will give you the tools to understand and implement e.g. HA admission control policies, DRS resource pools, Datastore Clusters and resource allocation settings. On top of that each section contains basic design principles that can be used for designing, implementing or improving VMware infrastructures and fundamental supporting features like (Storage) vMotion, Storage I/O Control and much more are described in detail for the very first time. This book is also the ultimate guide to be prepared for any HA, DRS or Storage DRS related question or case study that might be presented during VMware VCDX, VCP and or VCAP exams.Coverage includes: HA node types HA isolation detection and response HA admission control VM Monitoring HA and DRS integration DRS imbalance algorithm Resource Pools Impact of reservations and limits CPU Resource Scheduling Memory Scheduler DPM Datastore Clusters Storage DRS algorithm Influencing SDRS recommendationsBe prepared to dive deep!

    Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) is a key component of the .NET Framework 3.0, giving you the power to create richer and more compelling applications than you dreamed possible. Whether you want to develop traditional user interfaces or integrate 3D graphics, audio/video, animation, dynamic skinning, rich document support, speech recognition, or more, WPF enables you to do so in a seamless, resolution-independent manner. Windows Presentation Foundation Unleashed is the authoritative book that covers it all, in a practical and approachable fashion, authored by .NET guru and Microsoft developer Adam Nathan. - Covers everything you need to know about Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML) - Examines the WPF feature areas in incredible depth: controls, layout, resources, data binding, styling, graphics, animation, and more - Features a chapter on 3D graphics by Daniel Lehenbauer, lead developer responsible for WPF 3D - Delves into non-mainstream topics: speech, audio/video, documents, bitmap effects, and more - Shows how to create popular UI elements, such as features introduced in the 2007 Microsoft Office System: Galleries, ScreenTips, custom control layouts, and more - Demonstrates how to create sophisticated UI mechanisms, such as Visual Studio-like collapsible/dockable panes - Explains how to develop and deploy all types of applications, including navigation-based applications, applications hosted in a Web browser, and applications with great-looking non-rectangular windows - Explains how to create first-class custom controls for WPF - Demonstrates how to create hybrid WPF software that leverages Windows Forms, ActiveX, or other non-WPF technologies - Explains how to exploit new Windows Vista features in WPF applications

    It's used worldwide by companies who need to produce reliable, efficient, and scalable applications. Invest in learning Erlang now.Moore's Law is the observation that the amount you can do on a single chip doubles every two years. But Moore's Law is taking a detour. Rather than producing faster and faster processors, companies such as Intel and AMD are producing multi-core devices: single chips containing two, four, or more processors. If your programs aren't concurrent, they'll only run on a single processor at a time. Your users will think that your code is slow.Erlang is a programming language designed for building highly parallel, distributed, fault-tolerant systems. It has been used commercially for many years to build massive fault-tolerated systems that run for years with minimal failures.Erlang programs run seamlessly on multi-core computers: this means your Erlang program should run a lot faster on a 4 core processor than on a single core processor, all without you having to change a line of code.Erlang combines ideas from the world of functional programming with techniques for building fault-tolerant systems to make a powerful language for building the massively parallel, networked applications of the future.This book presents Erlang and functional programming in the familiar Pragmatic style. And it's written by Joe Armstrong, one of the creators of Erlang.It includes example code you'll be able to build upon. In addition, the book contains the full source code for two interesting applications:A SHOUTcast server which you can use to stream music to every computer in your house, and a full-text indexing and search engine that can index gigabytes of data. Learn how to write programs that run on dozens or even hundreds of local and remote processors. See how to write robust applications that run even in the face of network and hardware failure, using the Erlang programming language.

    What sets this book apart is its focus on learning. The authors have made the content of OOAD accessible, usable for the practitioner." Ivar Jacobson, Ivar Jacobson Consulting"I just finished reading HF OOA&D and I loved it! The thing I liked most about this book was its focus on why we do OOA&D-to write great software!" Kyle Brown, Distinguished Engineer, IBM"Hidden behind the funny pictures and crazy fonts is a serious, intelligent, extremely well-crafted presentation of OO Analysis and Design. As I read the book, I felt like I was looking over the shoulder of an expert designer who was explaining to me what issues were important at each step, and why." Edward Sciore, Associate Professor, Computer Science Department, Boston College Tired of reading Object Oriented Analysis and Design books that only makes sense after you're an expert? You've heard OOA&D can help you write great software every time-software that makes your boss happy, your customers satisfied and gives you more time to do what makes you happy.But how?Head First Object-Oriented Analysis & Design shows you how to analyze, design, and write serious object-oriented software: software that's easy to reuse, maintain, and extend; software that doesn't hurt your head; software that lets you add new features without breaking the old ones. Inside you will learn how to:Use OO principles like encapsulation and delegation to build applications that are flexible Apply the Open-Closed Principle (OCP) and the Single Responsibility Principle (SRP) to promote reuse of your code Leverage the power of design patterns to solve your problems more efficiently Use UML, use cases, and diagrams to ensure that all stakeholders are communicating clearly to help you deliver the right software that meets everyone's needs.By exploiting how your brain works, Head First Object-Oriented Analysis & Design compresses the time it takes to learn and retain complex information. Expect to have fun, expect to learn, expect to be writing great software consistently by the time you're finished reading this!

    Using Scala, you can write programs more concisely than in Java, as well as leverage the full power of concurrency. Since Scala runs on the JVM, it can access any Java library and is interoperable with Java frameworks. Scala for the Impatient concisely shows developers what Scala can do and how to do it. In this book, Cay Horstmann, the principal author of the international best-selling Core Java(TM), offers a rapid, code-based introduction that's completely practical. Horstmann introduces Scala concepts and techniques in "blog-sized" chunks that you can quickly master and apply. Hands-on activities guide you through well-defined stages of competency, from basic to expert. Coverage includes Getting started quickly with Scala's interpreter, syntax, tools, and unique idioms Mastering core language features: functions, arrays, maps, tuples, packages, imports, exception handling, and more Becoming familiar with object-oriented programming in Scala: classes, inheritance, and traits Using Scala for real-world programming tasks: working with files, regular expressions, and XML Working with higher-order functions and the powerful Scala collections library Leveraging Scala's powerful pattern matching and case classes Creating concurrent programs with Scala actors Implementing domain-specific languages Understanding the Scala type system Applying advanced "power tools" such as annotations, implicits, and delimited continuations Scala is rapidly reaching a tipping point that will reshape the experience of programming. This book will help object-oriented programmers build on their existing skills, allowing them to immediately construct useful applications as they gradually master advanced programming techniques.

    The concepts and techniques described are the actual ones used by real game studios like Electronic Arts and Naughty Dog. The examples are often grounded in specific technologies, but the discussion extends way beyond any particular engine or API. The references and citations make it a great jumping off point for those who wish to dig deeper into any particular aspect of the game development process.Intended as the text for a college level series in game programming, this book can also be used by amateur software engineers, hobbyists, self-taught game programmers, and existing members of the game industry. Junior game engineers can use it to solidify their understanding of game technology and engine architecture. Even senior engineers who specialize in one particular field of game development can benefit from the bigger picture presented in these pages.

    Perl Cookbook is a comprehensive collection of problems, solutions, and practical examples for anyone programming in Perl. The book contains hundreds of rigorously reviewed Perl "recipes" and thousands of examples ranging from brief one-liners to complete applications.The second edition of Perl Cookbook has been fully updated for Perl 5.8, with extensive changes for Unicode support, I/O layers, mod_perl, and new technologies that have emerged since the previous edition of the book. Recipes have been updated to include the latest modules. New recipes have been added to every chapter of the book, and some chapters have almost doubled in size.Covered topic areas include: • Manipulating strings, numbers, dates, arrays, and hashes • Pattern matching and text substitutions • References, data structures, objects, and classes • Signals and exceptions • Screen addressing, menus, and graphical applications • Managing other processes • Writing secure scripts • Client-server programming • Internet applications programming with mail, news, ftp, and telnet • CGI and mod_perl programming • Web programmingSince its first release in 1998, Perl Cookbook has earned its place in the libraries of serious Perl users of all levels of expertise by providing practical answers, code examples, and mini-tutorials addressing the challenges that programmers face. Now the second edition of this bestselling book is ready to earn its place among the ranks of favorite Perl books as well.Whether you're a novice or veteran Perl programmer, you'll find Perl Cookbook, 2nd Edition to be one of the most useful books on Perl available. Its comfortable discussion style and accurate attention to detail cover just about any topic you'd want to know about. You can get by without having this book in your library, but once you've tried a few of the recipes, you won't want to.

    But you've heard at least a dozen definitions of what it is, and heard of at least that many BI tools. Where do you start? Business Intelligence For Dummies makes BI understandable! It takes you step by step through the technologies and the alphabet soup, so you can choose the right technology and implement a successful BI environment. You'll see how the applications and technologies work together to access, analyze, and present data that you can use to make better decisions about your products, customers, competitors, and more.You'll find out how to:Understand the principles and practical elements of BI Determine what your business needs Compare different approaches to BI Build a solid BI architecture and roadmap Design, develop, and deploy your BI plan Relate BI to data warehousing, ERP, CRM, and e-commerce Analyze emerging trends and developing BI tools to see what else may be useful Whether you're the business owner or the person charged with developing and implementing a BI strategy, checking out Business Intelligence For Dummies is a good business decision.