Ethan Jarlewski and five co-workers whose surnames begin with "J" are bureaucratically marooned in jPod, a no-escape architectural limbo on the fringes of a massive Vancouver game design company. The jPodders wage daily battle against the demands of a boneheaded marketing staff, who daily torture employees with idiotic changes to already idiotic games. Meanwhile, Ethan's personal life is shaped (or twisted) by phenomena as disparate as Hollywood, marijuana grow-ops, people-smuggling, ballroom dancing, and the rise of China. JPod's universe is amoral, shameless, and dizzyingly fast-paced like our own. Praise for JPod: "JPod is a sleek and necessary device: the finely tuned output of an author whose obsolescence is thankfully years away."-New York Times Book Review"It's to [Coupland's] credit that in JPod he's still nimble enough to take the post-modern man-too young for Boomer nostalgia and too old for youthful idealism-and drown his sorrows in a willful, joyful satire that revels in the same cultural conventions that it sends up."-Rocky Mountain News "It's time to admire [Coupland's] virtuoso tone and how he has refined it over 11 novels. The master ironist just might redefine E. M. Forster's famous dictate 'Only connect' for the Google age."-USA Today "Zeitgeist surfer Douglas Coupland downloads his brain into JPod."-Vanity Fair

    So begins Suspended, the first computer game to obsess seven-year-old Michael, to worm into his head and change his sense of reality. Thirty years later he will write: "Computer games have taught me the things you can't learn from people."Gamelife is the memoir of a childhood transformed by technology. Afternoons spent gazing at pixelated maps and mazes train Michael's eyes for the uncanny side of 1980s suburban Illinois. A game about pirates yields clues to the drama of cafeteria politics and locker-room hazing. And in the year of his parents' divorce, a spaceflight simulator opens a hole in reality.In telling the story of his youth through seven computer games, Michael W. Clune captures the part of childhood we live alone.

    Drawing on interviews as well as the authors' own lifelong experience with videogames, the book discusses each game's development, predecessors, critical reception, and influence on the industry. It also features hundreds of full-color screenshots and images, including rare photos of game boxes and other materials. Vintage Games is the ideal book for game enthusiasts and professionals who desire a broader understanding of the history of videogames and their evolution from a niche to a global market.

    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.

    Whether it is recounting the struggles over the game"Tetris," offering blow-by-blow narrative of Nintendo's bitter legal warfare or its see-saw competition with other companies for market leadership, Game Over is a masterful piece of business journalism and technical reportage-a book both cautionary and hugely entertaining.

    This Self-Paced Training Kit is designed to help maximize your performance on 70-680, the required exam for the Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS): Windows 7, Configuration certification.This 2-in-1 kit includes the official Microsoft study guide, plus practice tests on CD to help you assess your skills. It comes packed with the tools and features exam candidates want most—including in-depth, self-paced training based on final exam content; rigorous, objective-by-objective review; exam tips from expert, exam-certified authors; and customizable testing options. It also provides real-world scenarios, case study examples, and troubleshooting labs to give you the skills and expertise you can use on the job.Work at your own pace through the lessons and lab exercises. This official study guide covers installing, upgrading, and migrating to Windows 7; configuring network connectivity, applications, and devices; implementing backup and recovery; configuring User Account Control (UAC), mobility options, and new features such as DirectAccess and BranchCache; and managing system updates.Then assess yourself using the 200 practice questions on CD, featuring multiple customizable testing options to meet your specific needs. Choose timed or untimed testing mode, generate random tests, or focus on discrete objectives. You get detailed explanations for right and wrong answers—including pointers back to the book for further study. You also get an exam discount voucher—making this kit an exceptional value and a great career investment.

     As someone that has used the Bash shell almost daily for over 15 years, I've accumulated several command line "tricks" that have saved me time and frustration. Bash Command Line Pro Tips is a collection of 10 techniques that you can put to use right away to increase your efficiency at the command line. Here is what you will learn by reading Bash Command Line Pro Tips: Tip 1: Tab Completion Tip 2: Change to the Previous Directory Tip 3: Reuse the Last Item from the Previous Command Line Tip 4: Rerun a Command That Starts with a given String Tip 5: Command Substitution Tip 6: Use a for Loop at the Command Line Tip 7: Rerun the Previous Command with Root Privileges Tip 8: Rerun the Previous Command While Substituting a String Tip 9: Reuse a Word on the Same Command Line Tip 10: Fix Typos and Shorten Lengthy Commands with Aliases Scroll up, click the "Buy Now With 1-Click" button to start leaning these powerful Linux Command Line Tips.

    The patterns apply to the development process as well as to architecture and coding practices. The content is based on a presentation developed by Scott Guthrie and delivered by him at the Norwegian Developers Conference (NDC) in June of 2013 (part 1, part 2), and at Microsoft Tech Ed Australia in September 2013 (part 1, part 2). Many others updated and augmented the content while transitioning it from video to written form. Who should read this book Developers who are curious about developing for the cloud, are considering a move to the cloud, or are new to cloud development will find here a concise overview of the most important concepts and practices they need to know. The concepts are illustrated with concrete examples, and each chapter includes links to other resources that provide more in-depth information. The examples and the links to additional resources are for Microsoft frameworks and services, but the principles illustrated apply to other web development frameworks and cloud environments as well. Developers who are already developing for the cloud may find ideas here that will help make them more successful. Each chapter in the series can be read independently, so you can pick and choose topics that you're interested in. Anyone who watched Scott Guthrie's "Building Real World Cloud Apps with Windows Azure" presentation and wants more details and updated information will find that here. Assumptions This ebook expects that you have experience developing web applications by using Visual Studio and ASP.NET. Familiarity with C# would be helpful in places.

    Build hands-on expertise through a series of lessons, exercises, and suggested practices—and help maximize your performance on the job.Provides in-depth, hands-on training you take at your own pace Focuses on job-role-specific expertise for using HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS3 to begin building modern web and Windows 8 apps Features pragmatic lessons, exercises, and practices Creates a foundation of skills which, along with on-the-job experience, can be measured by Microsoft Certification exams such as 70-480 Coverage includes: creating HTML5 documents; implementing styles with CSS3; JavaScript in depth; using Microsoft developer tools; AJAX; multimedia support; drawing with Canvas and SVG; drag and drop functionality; location-aware apps; web storage; offline apps; writing your first simple Windows 8 apps; and other key topics

    In Taiwan, a spate of deaths at gaming cafés is raising a question: why is it that some of us are playing games beyond the limits of our physical wellbeing?Death by Video Game uncovers the real stories behind our video game obsession. Along the way, award-winning journalist Simon Parkin meets the players and game developers at the frontline of virtual extremism, including the New York surgeon attempting to break the Donkey Kong world record; the Minecraft player three years into an epic journey towards the edge of the game's vast virtual world and the German hacker who risked prison to discover the secrets behind Half-Life 2.Investigating the impact of video games on our lives, Death by Video Game will change the way we think about our virtual playgrounds.

    With this concise book, you will quickly gain working knowledge of Sinatra and its minimalist approach to building both standalone and modular web applications. Sinatra serves as a lightweight wrapper around Rack middleware, with syntax that maps closely to functions exposed by HTTP verbs, which makes it ideal for web services and APIs. If you have experience building applications with Ruby, you’ll quickly learn language fundamentals and see under-the-hood techniques, with the help of several practical examples. Then you’ll get hands-on experience with Sinatra by building your own blog engine. Learn Sinatra’s core concepts, and get started by building a simple application Create views, manage sessions, and work with Sinatra route definitions Become familiar with the language’s internals, and take a closer look at Rack Use different subclass methods for building flexible and robust architectures Put Sinatra to work: build a blog that takes advantage of service hooks provided by the GitHub API

    Just some of the features readers will find in this book include:Profiles of some of the most fascinating Japanese video game designers in the industry, along with a critical look at Japanese video games from their earliest beginnings to new, exciting trends that ride the bleeding edge of popular culture.Explanations on why Japanese video games are unique and why they resonate so well with young American players.Fresh insight into classic Japanese video games and the elements that made them so different from American games, the origin of Nintendo, Japan's oldest and largest video game producer, Japanese Role-Playing Games, and much more!In addition, the future of the Japanese gaming industry is also explored.This product is available for sale worldwide.

    Topics include:• Archived Items • Battery Replacement • Calculator Functionality • Checking Your Email • Collections • Contacting Amazon's Kindle Customer Service • Converting PDF Documents to Kindle Format • Discussion Boards • Displaying the Time • Download Problems - What To Do • Formatting Issues in a Kindle Book - What To Do • Games on Your Kindle • Gifting a Kindle Book / Gift Certificates • Internet Access (it’s free) on Your Kindle • Internet Bookmarks• Kindle Reading to You (Text to Speech) • Lending Books• Losing Your Place While Reading • Lost Kindle Tip • Mobile Websites - Access Them on Your Kindle • Password Protection • Permanent Deletion of a Title • Pictures on Your Kindle • Playing Music on Your Kindle • Popular Highlights Feature - Turning it Off • Reset Your Kindle • Samples of Books • Screen Freeze Fix • Screenshots - Printing Out What You See • Social Networking with Facebook and Twitter • Transferring Books to Your Kindle • Transferring Existing Collections to Your New Kindle • Checking the Weather • Wireless Coverage for Your Kindle • Random Tips • Blogs Available on Your KindleMichael Gallagher is the author of several bestselling Kindle “how-to” guides, and his title “Free Kindle Books and How to Find Them” has been the #1 Kindle reference guide for over two years, garnering #53 and #72 on the Top 100 Kindle bestseller lists for all Kindle book titles in 2010 and 2011, respectively. His “Kindle Books and Tips” blog has been the #1 bestselling subscription blog in the Amazon Kindle Store since 2010. You can visit his author page on the Amazon website at http://www.amazon.com/author/gallagher

    Detailed maps of every city and dungeon Strategies for defeating all the enemies Locations of all Heart Containers and Gold Skulltulas Solutions for all puzzles Bonus items revealed All hidden items revealed

    This report provides a brief yet comprehensive introduction to Python for engineers, researchers, and data scientists who are already familiar with another programming language.Author Jake VanderPlas, an interdisciplinary research director at the University of Washington, explains Python’s essential syntax and semantics, built-in data types and structures, function definitions, control flow statements, and more, using Python 3 syntax.You’ll explore:- Python syntax basics and running Python codeBasic semantics of Python variables, objects, and operators- Built-in simple types and data structures- Control flow statements for executing code blocks conditionally- Methods for creating and using reusable functionsIterators, list comprehensions, and generators- String manipulation and regular expressions- Python’s standard library and third-party modules- Python’s core data science tools- Recommended resources to help you learn more