Why do so many people go on about queuing? Have we always been obsessed with traffic? And why do so many of us now eat lunch at our computers - al desko? We spend our days catching buses and trains, writing emails, shopping, queuing...But we know almost nothing about these activities. Exploring the history of these subjects as they come up during a typical day, starting with eating breakfast and ending with sleeping, Joe Moran tells a story about hidden social and cultural changes in Britain since the Second World War. Drawing on his academic research on everyday life, but writing with wit and lucidity for a popular audience, he shows that we know less about ourselves than we think...

“Do you want to write clearer, livelier prose? This witty primer will help.” —The New York Times Book Review An exploration of how the most ordinary words can be turned into verbal constellations of extraordinary grace through the art of building sentences The sentence is the common ground where every writer walks. A good sentence can be written (and read) by anyone if we simply give it the gift of our time, and it is as close as most of us will get to making something truly beautiful. Using minimal technical terms and sources ranging from the Bible and Shakespeare to George Orwell and Maggie Nelson, as well as scientific studies of what can best fire the reader's mind, author Joe Moran shows how we can all write in a way that is clear, compelling and alive. Whether dealing with finding the ideal word, building a sentence, or constructing a paragraph, First You Write a Sentence informs by light example: much richer than a style guide, it can be read not only for instruction but for pleasure and delight. And along the way, it shows how good writing can help us notice the world, make ourselves known to others, and live more meaningful lives. It's an elegant gem in praise of the English sentence.

An accessible introduction to probability, stochastic processes, and statistics for computer science and engineering applications Second edition now also available in Paperback. This updated and revised edition of the popular classic first edition relates fundamental concepts in probability and statistics to the computer sciences and engineering. The author uses Markov chains and other statistical tools to illustrate processes in reliability of computer systems and networks, fault tolerance, and performance. This edition features an entirely new section on stochastic Petri nets—as well as new sections on system availability modeling, wireless system modeling, numerical solution techniques for Markov chains, and software reliability modeling, among other subjects. Extensive revisions take new developments in solution techniques and applications into account and bring this work totally up to date. It includes more than 200 worked examples and self-study exercises for each section. Probability and Statistics with Reliability, Queuing and Computer Science Applications, Second Edition offers a comprehensive introduction to probability, stochastic processes, and statistics for students of computer science, electrical and computer engineering, and applied mathematics. Its wealth of practical examples and up-to-date information makes it an excellent resource for practitioners as well. An Instructor's Manual presenting detailed solutions to all the problems in the book is available from the Wiley editorial department.

In this history of roads and what they have meant to the people who have driven them, one of Britain's favourite cultural historians reveals how a relatively simple road system turned into a maze-like pattern of roundabouts, flyovers, and spaghetti junctions. Using a unique blend of travel writing, anthropology, history and social observation, he explores how Britain's roads have their roots in unexpected places, from Napoleon's role in the numbering system to the surprising origin of sat-nav. Full of quirky nuggets of history, such as the day trips organised to see the construction of the M1 and the 2.5m Mills and Boons used to build the M6 Toll Road, On Roads also celebrates innovators whose work we take for granted, such as the designers of the road sign system. On subjects ranging from speed limits to driving on the left, and the 'non-places where we stop to the unwritten laws of traffic jams, these hidden stories have never been told together, until now.

As a comprehensive resource focusing on the basics of distributed transactional objects for components, this book addresses the needs of both Window and UNIX developers.

Developed from a successful course on queueing theory for students in operational research, this textbook develops a wide variety of realistic queueing systems. The models are developed carefully and linked to important examples. The material assumes a background in calculus and probability. Topics include birth-death models, Markov chains, and transient solutions, and the book includes numerous exercises with solutions.