iCon or A Concise Introduction to Data Compression

iCon: Steve Jobs, the Greatest Second Act in the History of Business

Author: Jeffrey S Young

iCon takes a look at the most astounding figure in a business era noted for its mavericks, oddballs, and iconoclasts. Drawing on a wide range of sources, Jeffrey Young and William Simon provide new perspectives on the legendary creation of Apple, detail Jobs’s meteoric rise, and the devastating plunge that left him not only out of Apple, but out of the computer-making business entirely. This unflinching and completely unauthorized portrait reveals both sides of Jobs’s role in the remarkable rise of the Pixar animation studio, also re-creates the acrimony between Jobs and Disney’s Michael Eisner, and examines Jobs’s dramatic his rise from the ashes with his recapture of Apple. The authors examine the takeover and Jobs’s reinvention of the company with the popular iMac and his transformation of the industry with the revolutionary iPod. iCon is must reading for anyone who wants to understand how the modern digital age has been formed, shaped, and refined by the most influential figure of the age–a master of three industries: movies, music, and computers.

Library Journal

With Simon (coauthor, The Art of Intrusion), journalist Young here updates Steve Jobs: The Journey Is the Reward, his biography of the Apple Computer CEO. The authors, who call Jobs the "rock star of high tech," chronicle the remarkable comeback of the technology wunderkind who had been forced out of Apple in 1985. Jobs subsequently started Pixar, which compiled an impressive track record in developing animated films such as Toy Story and Finding Nemo. He eventually returned to Apple in 1997, where he was instrumental in developing the iMac and the iPod. Many biographies of Jobs suffer from his refusal to cooperate, and this one also betrays a hurried incompleteness, as if the authors were fearful that Jobs might achieve something new that they would be unable to include in time for publication. The book occasionally has a gossipy tone, especially in its overuse of unnamed sources, questionable when the reporting is not terribly flattering. In the final analysis, it's left to the reader to decide whether Jobs is a genius, a megalomaniac, or maybe both. Although the authors make a valiant effort to dissect Jobs's enigmatic life, without his cooperation this book is just another "unofficial" biography. It's uncertain whether we will ever get to know the real Steve Jobs any better. Suitable for public libraries.-Richard Drezen, Washington Post/NYC Bureau Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Go to: Game Physics Engine Development with CDROM or Pro Java 6 3D Game Development

A Concise Introduction to Data Compression

Author: David Salomon

Compressing data is an option naturally selected when faced with problems of high costs or restricted space. Written by a renowned expert in the field, this book offers readers a succinct, reader-friendly foundation to the chief approaches, methods and techniques currently employed in the field of data compression.

Part I presents the basic approaches to data compression and describes a few popular techniques and methods commonly used to compress data. The reader discovers essential concepts, such as variable-length and prefix codes, statistical distributions and run-length encoding. Part II then concentrates on advanced techniques, such as arithmetic coding, orthogonal transforms, subband transforms and the Burrows-Wheeler transform.

Features:

o Clear overview of the principles underlying this field

o Outlines the essentials of the various approaches to compressing data

o Contains many learning aids such as: chapter introductions and summaries, chapter-end exercises, comprehensive glossary, etc.

o Provides several examples of important compression algorithms

o Offers a supplementary author-maintained website, with errata and auxiliary material - davidsalomon.name/DCugAdvertis/DCug.html

o An ideal introductory volume to David Salomon's fourth edition of Data Compression: The Complete Reference

Complete and clear, this book is the perfect resource for undergraduates in computer science and requires a minimum of mathematics. It is also ideal for readers with a basic knowledge of computer science wanting to learn about data compression.

David Salomon is a professor emeritus of ComputerScience at California State University, Northridge. He has authored numerous articles and books, including Coding for Data and Computer Communications, Guide to Data Compression Methods, Data Privacy and Security, Computer Graphics and Geometric Modeling, Foundations of Computer Security, Transformations and Projections in Computer Graphics, and Variable-length Codes for Data Compression.

Table of Contents:

Preface     vii
Basic Concepts     1
Introduction     5
Approaches to Compression     21
Variable-Length Codes     25
Run-Length Encoding     41
Intermezzo: Space-Filling Curves     46
Dictionary-Based Methods     47
Transforms     50
Quantization     51
Chapter Summary     58
Huffman Coding     61
Huffman Encoding     63
Huffman Decoding     67
Adaptive Huffman Coding     76
Intermezzo: History of Fax     83
Facsimile Compression     85
Chapter Summary     90
Dictionary Methods     93
LZ78     95
Intermezzo: The LZW Trio     98
LZW     98
Deflate: Zip and Gzip     108
Chapter Summary     119
Advanced Techniques     121
Arithmetic Coding     123
The Basic Idea     124
Implementation Details     130
Underflow     133
Final Remarks     134
Intermezzo: The Real Numbers     135
Adaptive Arithmetic Coding     137
Range Encoding     140
Chapter Summary     141
Image Compression     143
Introduction     144
Approaches to Image Compression     146
Intermezzo: History of Gray Codes     151
Image Transforms     152
Orthogonal Transforms     156
The Discrete Cosine Transform     160
Intermezzo: Statistical Distributions     178
JPEG     179
Intermezzo: Human Vision and Color     184
The Wavelet Transform     198
Filter Banks     216
WSQ, Fingerprint Compression     218
Chapter Summary     225
Audio Compression     227
Companding     230
The Human Auditory System     231
Intermezzo: Heinrich Georg Barkhausen     234
Linear Prediction     235
[mu]-Law and A-Law Companding     238
Shorten     244
Chapter Summary     245
Other Methods     247
The Burrows-Wheeler Method     248
Intermezzo: Fibonacci Codes     253
Symbol Ranking     254
SCSU: Unicode Compression     258
Chapter Summary      263
Bibliography     265
Glossary     271
Solutions to Puzzles     281
Answers to Exercises     283
Index     305