The most successful business book of the last decade, Reengineering the Corporation is the pioneering work on the most important topic in business today: achieving dramatic performance improvements. This book leads readers through the radical redesign of a company's processes, organization, and culture to achieve a quantum leap in performance. Michael Hammer and James Champy have updated and revised their milestone work for the New Economy they helped to create -- promising to help corporations save hundreds of millions of dollars more, raise their customer satisfaction still higher, and grow ever more nimble in the years to come.

Make life at the office easier for server administrators by helping them build resilient Ubuntu server systems About This Book Tackle the issues you come across in keeping your Ubuntu server up and running Build server machines and troubleshoot cloud computing related issues using Open Stack Discover tips and best practices to be followed for minimum maintenance of Ubuntu Server 3 Who This Book Is For This book is for a vast audience of Linux system administrators who primarily work on Debian-based systems and spend long hours trying fix issues with the enterprise server. Ubuntu is already one of the most popular OSes and this book targets the most common issues that most administrators have to deal with. With the right tools and definite solutions, you will be able to keep your Ubuntu servers in the pink of health. What You Will Learn Deploy packages and their dependencies with repositories Set up your own DNS and network for Ubuntu Server Authenticate and validate users and their access to various systems and services Maintain, monitor, and optimize your server resources and avoid tremendous load Get to know about processes, assigning and changing priorities, and running processes in background Optimize your shell with tools and provide users with an improved shell experience Set up separate environments for various services and run them safely in isolation Understand, build, and deploy OpenStack on your Ubuntu Server In Detail Ubuntu is becoming one of the favorite Linux flavors for many enterprises and is being adopted to a large extent. It supports a wide variety of common network systems and the use of standard Internet services including file serving, e-mail, Web, DNS, and database management. A large scale use and implementation of Ubuntu on servers has given rise to a vast army of Linux administrators who battle it out day in and day out to make sure the systems are in the right frame of operation and pre-empt any untoward incidents that may result in catastrophes for the businesses using it. Despite all these efforts, glitches and bugs occur that affect Ubuntu server's network, memory, application, and hardware and also generate cloud computing related issues using OpenStack. This book will help you end to end. Right from setting up your new Ubuntu Server to learning the best practices to host OpenStack without any hassles. You will be able to control the priority of jobs, restrict or allow access users to certain services, deploy packages, tackle issues related to server effectively, and reduce downtime. Also, you will learn to set up OpenStack, and manage and monitor its services while tuning the machine with best practices. You will also get to know about Virtualization to make services serve users better. Chapter by chapter, you will learn to add new features and functionalities and make your Ubuntu server a full-fledged, production-ready system. Style and approach This book contains topic-by-topic discussion in an easy-to-understand language with loads of examples to help you take care of Ubuntu Server. Plenty of screenshots will guide you through a step-by-step approach.

A complete guide for Python programmers to master scientific computing using Python APIs and tools About This Book The basics of scientific computing to advanced concepts involving parallel and large scale computation are all covered. Most of the Python APIs and tools used in scientific computing are discussed in detail The concepts are discussed with suitable example programs Who This Book Is For If you are a Python programmer and want to get your hands on scientific computing, this book is for you. The book expects you to have had exposure to various concepts of Python programming. What You Will Learn Fundamentals and components of scientific computing Scientific computing data management Performing numerical computing using NumPy and SciPy Concepts and programming for symbolic computing using SymPy Using the plotting library matplotlib for data visualization Data analysis and visualization using Pandas, matplotlib, and IPython Performing parallel and high performance computing Real-life case studies and best practices of scientific computing In Detail In today's world, along with theoretical and experimental work, scientific computing has become an important part of scientific disciplines. Numerical calculations, simulations and computer modeling in this day and age form the vast majority of both experimental and theoretical papers. In the scientific method, replication and reproducibility are two important contributing factors. A complete and concrete scientific result should be reproducible and replicable. Python is suitable for scientific computing. A large community of users, plenty of help and documentation, a large collection of scientific libraries and environments, great performance, and good support makes Python a great choice for scientific computing. At present Python is among the top choices for developing scientific workflow and the book targets existing Python developers to master this domain using Python. The main things to learn in the book are the concept of scientific workflow, managing scientific workflow data and performing computation on this data using Python. The book discusses NumPy, SciPy, SymPy, matplotlib, Pandas and IPython with several example programs. Style and approach This book follows a hands-on approach to explain the complex concepts related to scientific computing. It details various APIs using appropriate examples.

Olivia is a vegetarian. Ivy is a vampire. And they're twins?!?Ever since Olivia discovered that her long-lost twin sister, Ivy, is a vampire, she's been soaking up everything Ivy will tell her about Franklin Grove's vampire community. It's all top secret, and Olivia's sworn that she'll never tell another soul. But now, nosy tabloid reporter Serena Star is snooping around. As she gets closer and closer to the truth, it's up to Ivy and Olivia to throw her off track. This is one fangtastic news story that can't get out!

In fourteen sweeping and sublime stories, five of which have been published in The New Yorker , the bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Known World shows that his grasp of the human condition is firmer than ever Returning to the city that inspired his first prizewinning book, Lost in the City , Jones has filled this new collection with people who call Washington, D.C., home. Yet it is not the city's power brokers that most concern him but rather its ordinary citizens. All Aunt Hagar's Children turns an unflinching eye to the men, women, and children caught between the old ways of the South and the temptations that await them further north, people who in Jones's masterful hands, emerge as fully human and morally complex, whether they are country folk used to getting up with the chickens or people with centuries of education behind them. In the title story, in which Jones employs the first-person rhythms of a classic detective story, a Korean War veteran investigates the death of a family friend whose sorry destiny seems inextricable from his mother's own violent Southern childhood. In "In the Blink of God's Eye" and "Tapestry" newly married couples leave behind the familiarity of rural life to pursue lives of urban promise only to be challenged and disappointed. With the legacy of slavery just a stone's throw away and the future uncertain, Jones's cornucopia of characters will haunt readers for years to come.

The first book in a new trilogy from L. J. Smith! Elena Gilbert is alive again. When Elena sacrificed herself to save the two vampire brothers who love her the handsome, brooding Stefan and the sleek and dangerous Damon she was consigned to a fate beyond death. Until a powerful supernatural force pulled her back. Now Elena is not just human. She has powers and gifts that were bestowed on her in the afterlife. What's more, her blood pulses with an overwhelming and unique force that makes her irresistible to any vampire. Stefan wants to find a way to keep Elena safe so that they can make a life together. Damon, however, is driven by an insatiable desire for power, and wants Elena to rule as his princess. When Stefan is lured away from Fell's Church, Damon seizes his chance to convince her that he is the brother she is meant to be with. . . . But a darkness is infiltrating the town, and Damon, always the hunter, is now the hunted; he becomes the prey of a malevolent creature that can possess him at will, and who desires not just Elena's blood but her death.

In picture-perfect Rosewood, Pennsylvania, ash-blond highlights gleam in the winter sun and frozen lakes sparkle like Swarovski crystals. But pictures often lie and so do Rosewood's four prettiest girls. Hanna, Aria, Spencer, and Emily have been lying ever since they became friends with beautiful Alison DiLaurentis. Ali made them do terrible things things they had to keep secret for years . And even though Ali was killed at the end of seventh grade, their bad-girl ways didn't die with her. Hanna's on a mission to corrupt Rosewood's youth, starting with a very attractive sophomore. Aria's snooping into her boyfriend's past. Spencer's stealing from her family. And pure little Emily's abstaining from abstinence. The girls should be careful, though. They thought they were safe when Ali's killer was arrested and A's true identity was finally revealed. But now there's a new A in town turning up the heat. And this time Rosewood is going to burn.

On the verge of giving up anchored to dreams that never came true and to people who have long since disappeared from their lives Van Booy's characters walk the streets of these stark and beautiful stories until chance meetings with strangers force them to face responsibility for lives they thought had continued on without them.

Develop analytical location-based web applications with QGIS About This Book Tame geographic information workflows with QGIS blueprints for smart web applications Create geographic web applications using QGIS and free/open source software Blueprints provide real-world applications covering many use cases Who This Book Is For This book encompasses relatively experienced GIS developers who have a strong grounding in the fundamentals of GIS development. They will have used QGIS before, but are looking to understand how to develop more complex, layered map applications that expose various data sets, utilize different visualizations, and are consumable (usable) by end users What You Will Learn Review geographic information principles and the application of these principles in the QGIS free/open source ecosystem Perform advanced analysis with site selection, hydrologic, and topological networks Build performant web applications by tile caching and generating static assets Provide collaborative editing capabilities for your team or community Develop custom and dynamic analysis and visualization capabilities Select the best components from desktop and web, for your use case Integrate it with social media and crowdsourcing In Detail QGIS, the world’s most popular free/open source desktop geographic information system software, enables a wide variety of use cases involving location – previously only available through expensive specialized commercial software. However, designing and executing a multi-tiered project from scratch on this complex ecosystem remains a significant challenge. This book starts with a primer on QGIS and closely related data, software, and systems. We’ll guide you through six use-case blueprints for geographic web applications. Each blueprint boils down a complex workflow into steps you can follow to reduce time lost to trial and error. By the end of this book readers should be able to build complex layered applications that visualize multiple data sets, employing different types of visualization, and give end users the ability to interact with and manipulate this data for the purpose of analysis. Style and approach This is a comprehensive guide to the application of QGIS and free/open source software in creating web applications from analysis. Step-by-step blueprints guide the reader through analytical and web development topics and designs.

Learn to design and implement reliable Python applications on the Raspberry Pi using a range of external libraries, the Raspberry Pis GPIO port, and the camera module About This Book Learn the fundamentals of Python *ing and application programming Design user-friendly command-line and graphical user interfaces A step-by-step guide to learning Python programming with the Pi Who This Book Is For This book is designed for those who are unfamiliar with the art of Python development and want to get to know their way round the language and the many additional libraries that allow you to get a full application up and running in no time. What You Will Learn Fundamentals of Python applications Designing applications for multi-threading Interacting with electronics and physical devices Debugging applications when they go wrong Packaging and installing Python modules User interface design using Qt Building easy to use command-line interfaces Connecting applications to the Internet In Detail The Raspberry Pi is one of the smallest and most affordable single board computers that has taken over the world of hobby electronics and programming, and the Python programming language makes this the perfect platform to start coding with. The book will start with a brief introduction to Raspberry Pi and Python. We will direct you to the official documentation that helps you set up your Raspberry Pi with the necessary equipment such as the monitor, keyboard, mouse, power supply, and so on. It will then dive right into the basics of Python programming. Later, it will focus on other Python tasks, for instance, interfacing with hardware, GUI programming, and more. Once you get well versed with the basic programming, the book will then teach you to develop Python/Raspberry Pi applications. By the end of this book, you will be able to develop Raspberry Pi applications with Python and will have good understanding of Python programming for Raspberry Pi. Style and approach An easy-to-follow introduction to Python *ing and application development through clear conceptual explanations backed up by real-world examples on the Raspberry Pi.

Design a complete workflow with Blender to create stunning 3D scenes and films step-by-step! About This Book Give life to a character within a full animated short film by learning the rigging and animation process Make use of the powerful tools available in Blender to produce professional-quality 3D characters and environments Discover advanced techniques by adding fur to a character, creating a grass field, and fine-tuning a shot with post-processing effects to enhance your creations Who This Book Is For This book will give any beginner the necessary skills and knowledge to create own 3D projects with Blender. You don't need to have any previous experience in 3D modeling, but if you do, then this book is a great way get you started with Blender. This book is for anyone who wants to learn Blender by creating concrete projects. What You Will Learn Understand the basics of 3D and how to navigate your way around the Blender interface Create a 3D robot toy model from start to finish using the basic modeling tools of Blender Make a full alien character using the skin mesh modifier and the sculpting tools with an artistic approach Use re-topology techniques to create a clean 3D version of the previously sculpted alien Model a full haunted house and its environment using more advanced modeling tools and techniques such as the Array Modifier, Instance duplication, or Curves Discover the power of the texture paint tool in order to add color to the haunted house Get to know the Cycles render engine by creating different materials for the house and the environment In Detail Blender is a powerful tool, stable, with an integral workflow that will allow you to understand your learning of 3D creation with serenity. Today, it is considered to be one of the most complete 3D packages on the market and it is free and open source! It is very efficient for many types of productions, such as 3D animated or live action films, architecture, research, or even game creation with its integrated game engine and its use of the Python language. Moreover, Blender has an active community that contributes to expanding its functionalities. Today, it is used in many professional products and by many companies. Through this book, you will create many types of concert projects using a step-by-step approach. You will start by getting to know the modeling tools available in Blender as you create a 3D robot toy. Then, you will discover more advanced techniques such as sculpting and re-topology by creating a funny alien character. After that, you will create a full haunted house scene. For the last project, you will create a short film featuring a rat cowboy shooting cheese in a rat trap! This will be a more complex project in which you learn how to rig, animate, compose advanced material, composite, and edit a full sequence. Each project in this book will give you more practice and increase your knowledge of the Blender tools. By the end of this book, you will master a workflow that you will be able to apply to your own creations. Style and approach This is an easy-to-follow book that is based on four concrete projects, with increasing levels of difficulty. Each chapter will teach you how to create these projects step-by-step. New tools and techniques are introduced in a theoretical and practical way, so you can apply them in your own projects later.

Design and develop modern web applications with Google's bold and productive language through engaging example projects About This Book Full of engaging and varied example projects to equip you to build your own web applications Learn the Dart language and key libraries Productively create fast and reliable web applications Who This Book Is For If you are a front- or back-end web developer who is looking to build complex full-featured web applications without the quagmire of disconnected JavaScript frameworks, this book is a practical walkthrough of substantial applications that will have you and your team coding Dart in a productive manner. This book will give you a compiled, optional typed, scalable environment to rapidly develop applications. As Dart was designed to be familiar, any developer with even a small amount of knowledge of JavaScript or another programming language will be at home with the language immediately and will be coding quickly. What You Will Learn Master the core Dart language, type system, and key development tools Connect to existing web services, process JSON, and create your own framework for the data display Run and debug the Dart server and web applications and compile them in JavaScript Handle form data and encryption Build and deploy server applications on the major OSes and implement the REST API Work with PostgreSQL—an industry standard relational database system Create robust applications with unit tests, documentation, and diagnostic logging Develop command-line applications, and explore the key data structures and libraries In Detail Designed to create next generation apps, Google’s Dart offers a much more robust framework and also supersedes JavaScript in several aspects. Familiar yet innovative, compact yet scalable, it blows away the accumulated JavaScript legacy limitations. Dart was designed for great tool-ability and developer productivity, allowing you to create better application faster than before. Google chose it for their billion dollar advertising business and you have its power for your projects too. This book will introduce you the Dart language starting from its conception to its current form, and where it headed is through engaging substantial practical projects. You will be taken through building typical applications and exploring the exciting new technologies of HTML5. With example code projects such as a live data monitoring and viewing system, a blogging system, a slides presentation application, and more, then this book will walk you through step by step through building data-driven web applications with ease and speed. Style and approach A varied collection of compelling practical Dart projects that are developed progressively with full explanations of concepts and implementation. Each project introduces features of the language and environment, demonstrating how Dart can be used in rich structured web applications.

Class trip! Roscoe wants to be on his best behavior for a class trip to the apple orchard. But no matter how hard he tries, he still ends up in a very sticky situation!

In 1853, few Japanese people knew that a country called America even existed. For centuries, Japan had isolated itself from the outside world by refusing to trade with other countries and even refusing to help shipwrecked sailors, foreign or Japanese. The country's people still lived under a feudal system like that of Europe in the Middle Ages. But everything began to change when American Commodore Perry and his troops sailed to the Land of the Rising Sun, bringing with them new science and technology, and a new way of life.

Top ten reasons Samantha Madison is in deep trouble 10. Her big sister is the most popular girl in school 9. Her little sister is a certified genius 8. She's in love with her big sister's boyfriend 7. She got caught selling celebrity portraits in school 6. And now she's being forced to take art classes 5. She's just saved the president of the United States from an assassination attempt 4. So the whole world thinks she is a hero 3. Even though Sam knows she is far, far from being a hero 2. And now she's been appointed teen ambassador to the UN And the number-one reason Sam's life is over1. The president's son just might be in love with her

Princesses just want to have fun. . . . And Mia does too, despite the fact that the student government over which she presides is suddenly broke. But Grandmère's got a wacky scheme to raise the money, catapult Mia to theatrical fame, and link her romantically with an eligible teen bachelor who's not her boyfriend. No wonder Michael seems to think she's a psycho, or worse: not much fun. Is it possible that Mia, soon-to-be star of the stage, president of the student body, and future ruler of Genovia, doesn't know how to party?

Newbery Medal-winning author Beverly Cleary gives readers a hero they'll relate to and root for in this comical and inspiring novel about Henry Huggins's mission to prove himself worthy of his very own paper route. All the older kids work their own paper route, but because Henry is not eleven yet, Mr. Capper won't let him. Desperate to change his mind, Henry tries everything he can think of to show he's mature and responsible enough for the job. From offering free kittens to new subscribers, to hauling hundreds of pounds of old newspapers for his school's paper drive, there's nothing Henry won't try. But it might just be the irrepressible Ramona Quimby who shows Mr. Capper just how capable Henry is.

In the first novel from Newbery Award-winning author Beverly Cleary, boys and girls alike will instantly be charmed by an average boy whose life is turned upside down when he meets a lovable puppy with a nose for mischief. Just as Henry Huggins is complaining that nothing exciting ever happens, a friendly dog sits down beside him and looks pleadingly at his ice-cream cone. From that moment on, the two are inseparable. But when Ribsy's original owner appears, trying to reclaim his dog, Henry's faced with the possibility of losing his new best friend. Has Klickitat Street seen the last of rambunctious Ribsy?

Become an expert at writing fast and high performant code in Clojure 1.7.0 About This Book Enhance code performance by using appropriate Clojure features Improve the efficiency of applications and plan their deployment A hands-on guide to designing Clojure programs to get the best performance Who This Book Is For This book is intended for intermediate Clojure developers who are looking to get a good grip on achieving optimum performance. Having a basic knowledge of Java would be helpful. What You Will Learn Identify performance issues in Clojure programs using different profiling tools Master techniques to achieve numerical performance in Clojure Use Criterium library to measure latency of Clojure expressions Exploit Java features in Clojure code to enhance performance Avoid reflection and boxing with type hints Understand Clojure's concurrency and state-management primitives in depth Measure and monitor performance, and understand optimization techniques In Detail Clojure treats code as data and has a macro system. It focuses on programming with immutable values and explicit progression-of-time constructs, which are intended to facilitate the development of more robust programs, particularly multithreaded ones. It is built with performance, pragmatism, and simplicity in mind. Like most general purpose languages, various Clojure features have different performance characteristics that one should know in order to write high performance code. This book shows you how to evaluate the performance implications of various Clojure abstractions, discover their underpinnings, and apply the right approach for optimum performance in real-world programs. It starts by helping you classify various use cases and the need for them with respect to performance and analysis of various performance aspects. You will also learn the performance vocabulary that experts use throughout the world and discover various Clojure data structures, abstractions, and their performance characteristics. Further, the book will guide you through enhancing performance by using Java interoperability and JVM-specific features from Clojure. It also highlights the importance of using the right concurrent data structure and Java concurrency abstractions. This book also sheds light on performance metrics for measuring, how to measure, and how to visualize and monitor the collected data. At the end of the book, you will learn to run a performance profiler, identify bottlenecks, tune performance, and refactor code to get a better performance. Style and approach An easy-to-follow guide full of real-world examples and self-sufficient code snippets that will help you get your hands dirty with high performance programming with Clojure.

Develop complete web applications from scratch through practical examples and tips for beginners and more advanced users About This Book Improve your programming experience and become a full stack developer Master real-life web applications, and create and manage four different projects Step-by-step guidance to develop real-world web applications smoothly Who This Book Is For This book is for anyone who wants to discover and explore Yii Framework. Basic programming experience with PHP and object oriented programming is assumed. What You Will Learn Understand basic concepts, along with the installation and customization of Yii Discover models, controllers, and views—concepts applied in a web context—and how they are employed in Yii Use ActiveRecord to manipulate a database Add access control to your web application through authentication and authorization Install and customize an advanced template for multiple applications in the same project Create a RESTful Web Service to allow remote access to data Develop a console application to launch a command in the console as an automated task (cron job) Make code reusable through widgets and components and localize text messages to make a multilanguage web app In Detail Yii is a high-performance PHP framework best for developing Web 2.0 applications. It provides fast, secure, and professional features to create robust projects, however, this rapid development requires the ability to organize common tasks together to build a complete application. It's all too easy to get confused; this is where this book comes in. This book contains a series of practical project examples for developers starting from scratch. Each section contains the most relevant theories for every topic as you walk through developing each project, focusing on key aspects that commonly confuse users. The book starts with all the framework’s basic concepts, such as controllers and views, to introduce you to Yii and creating your first application, a simple news reader. You will be learn to configure URL rules to make a pretty URL, essential for search engine optimization. Next, you will walk through Model and ActiveRecord, key concepts in database interaction. The second application you will develop is a reservation system that allows you to manage rooms, customers, and reservations. For this, you will use database connection through SQL and ActiveRecord. More complex than the first one, this application will introduce you to the advanced template of Yii 2, splitting the app into two parts: a frontend for all visitors and a backend for the admin. Finally, you will move on to the last two applications: one that allows connections from remote clients, through RESTful components of Yii 2, and another that creates and organizes automatic tasks using the console application structure of Yii 2. Style and approach This is a step-by-step guide with each topic introduced in the context of real-world applications, highlighting common cases where users may encounter difficulties.

Concoct dynamic business intelligence dashboards for financial analysis with QlikView About This Book Get accustomed to QlikView features for effective data analysis and visualization in Finance Employ the Memory data store, which refreshes data in real time, providing a faster response to business financial information A step-by step guide to using Qlikview features such as key performance indicators, interactive charts, and tables for financial analysis Who This Book Is For If you are a finance professional with basic knowledge of QlikView functions and wish to increase your knowledge of QlikView to apply it in the field of finance, then this book is for you. A good knowledge of financial aspects is an must-have. What You Will Learn Design Key Performance Indicators and extend your revenue ratio reporting Set up actions within a Text Object and create variables to make a chart toggle between visible and not visible Merge data from multiple sources to get more asset management options Examine good and bad practices in dashboard design and create a Group button to make more data available in less space Analyse the sales dashboard by adding tending lines and forecasting Create input boxes and use the input in formulas to perform “What If” analysis Examine the Key Performance Indicator (KPI) and Inventory Turnover, and investigate the usefulness of Pivot Create a QlikView analysis document and add data to it to gain deep insights In Detail This book is an effective step-by-step tutoring guide for financial analysis using Qlikview. It begins by teaching you the crucial concepts of Qlikview Finance to help you develop an effective understanding of financial data analysis and finance. The book then goes on to cover real-world, practical examples on the use of Qlikview for financial planning and analysis, expense management, risk management, and more. Moving on, topics such as Asset Management QlikView Dashboard and Retail Sales Analysis are covered in a strategic way. We then shift the focus to deal with the concepts of Inventory, Supply Chain, and Plant Coverage Dashboards. The book then reaches its conclusion by dealing with ways to share your QlikView insights. By the end of this book, you will have a good understanding of how to use Qlikview for numerous applications in finance. Style and approach This book is designed to explore what can be done in QlikView to facilitate Financial Analysis. It follows a step-by-step approach and each chapter has easy-to-follow, hands-on examples of important concepts.