Intended as both a classroom and reference text, this book breaks all molds by being the first book of its kind specifically designed to help readers tap their creative energy to understand and apply difficult programming concepts.

Managed DirectX was released with the latest version of the core DirectX libraries in DirectX9. It enables developers using the new .NET languages (i.e. C#, VB.NET, etc.) to develop rich multimedia applications with DirectX. Unfortunately the Managed DirectX runtime was released without adequate documentation, and developers are having a hard time figuring out the best way to write managed applications. This book covers how to use the Managed DirectX objects, how they differ from the core DirectX libraries, and how to create these rich multimedia applications in C#. It also covers in depth graphics techniques and the new high-level shader language shipping with DirectX9.

Written in a straight-forward style, using a games-based approach that makes learning beginning-level programming fun and easy, this book focuses on teaching first time programmers how to program using Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition as a foundation.

Robin's book comes at the perfect time. With the extremely popular 2.0 release, more people will discover OpenOffice.org's incredible value. A book like Robin's is important because it helps people master the OpenOffice.org tools they need to get things done.

In this book, Seumas Miller examines the moral foundations of contemporary social institutions. Offering an original general theory of social institutions, he posits that all social institutions exist to realize various collective ends, indeed, to produce collective goods. He analyzes key concepts such as collective responsibility and institutional corruption. Miller also provides distinctive special theories of particular institutions, including governments, welfare agencies, universities, police organizations, business corporations, and communications and information technology entities. These theories are philosophical and, thus, foundational and synoptic in character. They are normative accounts of a sampling of contemporary social institutions, not descriptive accounts of all social institutions, both past and present. Miller also addresses various ethical challenges confronting contemporary institutional designers and policy makers, including the renovation of the international financial system, the “dumbing down” of the media, the challenge of world poverty, and human rights infringements by security agencies combating global terrorism.

Framed uses fin de siècle British crime narrative to pose a highly interesting question: why do female criminal characters tend to be alluring and appealing while fictional male criminals of the era are unsympathetic or even grotesque? In this elegantly argued study, Elizabeth Carolyn Miller addresses this question, examining popular literary and cinematic culture from roughly 1880 to 1914 to shed light on an otherwise overlooked social and cultural type: the conspicuously glamorous New Woman criminal. In so doing, she breaks with the many Foucauldian studies of crime to emphasize the genuinely subversive aspects of these popular female figures. Drawing on a rich body of archival material, Miller argues that the New Woman Criminal exploited iconic elements of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century commodity culture, including cosmetics and clothing, to fashion an illicit identity that enabled her to subvert legal authority in both the public and the private spheres.

Since the end of the Cold War, there has been increasing interest in the global dimensions of a host of public policy issues - issues involving war and peace, terrorism, international law, regulation of commerce, environmental protection, and disparities of wealth, income, and access to medical care. Especially pressing is the question of whether it is possible to formulate principles of justice that are valid not merely within a single society but across national borders. The thirteen essays in this volume explore a range of issues that are central to contemporary discussions of global politics. Written by prominent philosophers, political scientists, economists, and legal theorists, they offer valuable contributions to current debates over the nature of justice and its implications for the development of international law and international institutions.

In this collection, thirteen prominent philosophers and political scientists address the nature of liberalism, its origins, and its meaning and proper interpretation. Some essays examine the writings of liberalism's earliest defenders or the influence of classical liberalism on the American founders. Some focus on the Progressive movement and the rise of the administrative state, while others defend particular conceptions of liberalism or examine liberal theories of justice. Several essays discuss the U.S. Constitution. Other essays address the limits of economic freedom or focus on the nature and extent of property rights and the government's power of eminent domain.

Divisions abound about whether politics should be held to a higher moral standard or whether pragmatic considerations or realpolitik should prevail. The two poles are represented most conspicuously by Aristotle, for whom the proper aim of politics is moral virtue, and Machiavelli, whose prince in contrast exalted political pragmatism over morality. The fourteen contributors to this volume are predominantly arrayed on the Aristotelian end of the continuum, although several moral skeptics and pragmatists do enter the fray. These essays address perennial concerns in political and moral theory and underscore the rekindled yearning of many to hold the political realm to a higher standard despite the skepticism of dissenters who question the likelihood or even the desirability of success.

Recent and ongoing developments in science and technology--such as the prevention and treatment of disease through genetics and the development of increasingly sophisticated computer systems with wide-ranging applications--hold out the promise of vastly improving the quality of human life, but they can also raise serious ethical, legal, and public policy questions. The thirteen essays in this volume address these questions and related issues from a variety of perspectives.

What constitutes a just tax system, and what are its moral foundations? Should a society's tax regime be designed to achieve a just distribution of wealth among its citizens, or should such a regime be designed to promote economic growth, rising standards of living, and increasing levels of employment? Are these two goals compatible or incompatible? Why should justice not require, or at least lead to, an increase in general prosperity? The essays in this volume examine the history of tax policies and the normative principles that have informed the selection of various types of taxes and tax regimes; economic data to discover which tax policies lead to economic growth; particular theories of justice or property rights regarding the design of tax systems; and other essays propose specific tax reforms. Still others challenge traditional theories of taxation, offering new ways of understanding the fiscal relationship between governments and their citizens.

Fifteen philosophers, social scientists, and academic lawyers assess various aspects of bioethics. Some detail its development and challenge the field's basic assumptions. Others consider bioethics's role in contemporary society and examine it in policy administration as well as in its interaction with other branches of philosophical inquiry. Chapters also focus on specific issues, including the responsibilities of researchers to subjects in clinical trials; the proper criteria for determining when a living organism has died; the allocation of scarce, life-saving medical resources; and the subsidization of pharmaceutical products for those who may be deprived of the benefits of modern medicine.

In the first attempt to fully explore the controversial issues associated with the commercial application of nanotechnology, you'll find a thorough analysis of intellectual property and patents, financing and legal concerns, regulatory measures particularly in the field of nanomedicine, and environmental regulations. The authors include a set of guideposts you can follow in your due diligence of the business and legal issues pertaining to the technology.

Who should have the last word on fundamental policy issues? This book analyzes the rise of two contenders - the people, through direct democracy, and the courts. Introduced in the U.S. during the Progressive Era and now available in nearly half the states, direct democracy has surged in recent decades. Through ballot measures, voters have slashed taxes, mandated government spending, imposed term limits on elected officials, enacted campaign finance reform, barred affirmative action, banned same-sex marriage, and adopted many other controversial laws. In several states, citizens now bypass legislatures to make the most important policy decisions. However, the "people's rule" is not absolute. This book demonstrates that courts have used an expanding power of judicial review to invalidate citizen-enacted laws at remarkably high rates. The resulting conflict between the people and the courts threatens to produce a popular backlash against judges and raises profound questions about the proper scope of popular sovereignty and judicial power in a constitutional system.

Medical historians have traditionally claimed that modern hospitals emerged during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Premodern hospitals, according to many scholars, existed mainly as refuges for the desperately poor and sick, providing patients with little or no medical care. Challenging this view in a compelling survey of hospitals in the East Roman Empire, Timothy Miller traces the birth and development of Byzantine xenones, or hospitals, from their emergence in the fourth century to their decline in the fifteenth century, just prior to the Turkish conquest of Constantinople. These sophisticated medical facilities, he concludes, are the true ancestors of modern hospitals. In a new introduction to this paperback edition, Miller describes the growing scholarship on this subject in recent years.