'While reading Tyranny of the Moment, I found myself both charmed and challenged. The subject is an important one, and Thomas Hylland Eriksen handles it with style, a light touch, and many amiable provocations.' Todd Gitlin The turn of the millennium is characterized by exponential growth in everything related to communication -- from the internet and email to air traffic. Tyranny of the Moment deals with some of the most perplexing paradoxes of this new information age. Who would have expected that apparently time-saving technology results in time being scarcer than ever? And has this seemingly limitless access to information led to confusion rather than enlightenment? Eriksen argues that slow time -- private periods where we are able to think and correspond without interruption -- is now one of the most precious resources we have. Since we are theoretically 'online' 24 hours a day, we must fight for the right to be unavailable -- the right to live and think more slowly. It is not only that working hours have become longer -- Eriksen also shows how the logic of this new information technology has permeated every area of our lives. Exploring phenomena such as the internet, wap telephones, multi- channel television and email, Eriksen examines this non-linear and fragmented way of communicating to reveal how it affects working conditions in the economy, changes in family life and, ultimately, personal identity. Eriksen argues that a culture lacking a sense of its past, and therefore of its future, is effectively static. Although solutions are suggested, he demonstrates that there is no easy way out.

Das in zwei B nden erschienene Standardwerk bietet eine umfassende, konomisch fundierte Darstellung der Strukturen und Problembereiche der aktuellen Massenmedien. Band 1 stellt das Mediensystem insgesamt dar, analysiert die Grundprobleme der Medienwirtschaft und bietet eine mikro- und makro konomische Darstellung der Printmedien Zeitung, Zeitschrift und Anzeigenblatt.

Elementare konomische Konzepte werden vorgestellt und auf die Medienbranche angewendet. Printmedien, Radio, Fernsehen und Multimediaanwendungen werden auf ihre konomischen Gesetzm igkeiten und ihre Beziehungen untereinander hin analysiert; die Analyse wird in den Kontext aktueller Geschehnisse in der Medienbranche eingebettet. F r Studenten der Publizistik bzw. der Medien konomie, die mehr ber die Zw nge und Gesetzm igkeiten ihrer Branche wissen wollen.

Wilde’s scintillating drawing-room comedy revolves around a blackmail scheme that forces a married couple to reexamine their moral standards. A supporting cast of young lovers, society matrons, and a formidable femme fatale exchange sparkling repartee, keeping the action of the play at a lively pace.

There is not a GOOD woman in London who would not applaud me. We have been too lax. We must make an example. I propose to begin to-night. [Picking up fan.] Yes, you gave me this fan to-day; it was your birthday present. If that woman crosses my threshold, I shall strike her across the face with it.

Lord Alfred Douglas’ translation of Wilde’s great play (originally written in French), with all well-known Beardsley illustrations, including suppressed plates. The best edition. 28 Beardsley illustrations; introduction by Robert Ross.

In the last 50 years the world has been completely transformed through the use of IT. We have now reached a new inflection point. Here we present, for the first time, how in-memory computing is changing the way businesses are run. Today, enterprise data is split into separate databases for performance reasons. Analytical data resides in warehouses, synchronized periodically with transactional systems. This separation makes flexible, real-time reporting on current data impossible. Multi-core CPUs, large main memories, cloud computing and powerful mobile devices are serving as the foundation for the transition of enterprises away from this restrictive model. We describe techniques that allow analytical and transactional processing at the speed of thought and enable new ways of doing business. The book is intended for university students, IT-professionals and IT-managers, but also for senior management who wish to create new business processes by leveraging in-memory computing.

The dramatic growth in practical applications for machine learning over the last ten years has been accompanied by many important developments in the underlying algorithms and techniques. For example, Bayesian methods have grown from a specialist niche to become mainstream, while graphical models have emerged as a general framework for describing and applying probabilistic techniques. The practical applicability of Bayesian methods has been greatly enhanced by the development of a range of approximate inference algorithms such as variational Bayes and expectation propagation, while new models based on kernels have had a significant impact on both algorithms and applications.
This completely new textbook reflects these recent developments while providing a comprehensive introduction to the fields of pattern recognition and machine learning. It is aimed at advanced undergraduates or first-year PhD students, as well as researchers and practitioners. No previous knowledge of pattern recognition or machine learning concepts is assumed. Familiarity with multivariate calculus and basic linear algebra is required, and some experience in the use of probabilities would be helpful though not essential as the book includes a self-contained introduction to basic probability theory.
The book is suitable for courses on machine learning, statistics, computer science, signal processing, computer vision, data mining, and bioinformatics. Extensive support is provided for course instructors, including more than 400 exercises, graded according to difficulty. Example solutions for a subset of the exercises are available from the book web site, while solutions for the remainder can be obtained by instructors from the publisher. The book is supported by a great deal of additional material, and the reader is encouraged to visit the book web site for the latest information.