Kategoria BISAC: Business & Economics >> Commerce

The payment card business has evolved from its inception in the 1950s as a way to handle payment for expense-account lunches (the Diners Club card) into today's complex, sprawling industry that drives trillions of dollars in transaction volume each year. Paying with Plastic is the definitive source on an industry that has revolutionized the way we borrow and spend. More than a history book, Paying with Plastic delivers an entertaining discussion of the impact of an industry that epitomizes the notion of two-sided markets: those in which two or more customer groups receive...

Globalization brings far more benefits to the U.S. economy than it takes away. In a timely response to books that fuel anxiety over globalization, William Gamble shows that both Europe and emerging economic powers like China and India have serious long-terms problems linked to their cultures, political structures, occasional instability, and state ownership of companies. These and other factors will eventually put a brake on the economic growth and manufacturing output of the Old World and hot emerging economies. As Gamble proves, American institutions, while imperfect, are stable,...

Legal Programming: Designing Legally Compliant RFID and Software Agent Architectures for Retail Processes and Beyond provides a process-oriented discussion of the legal concerns presented by agent-based technologies, processes and programming. It offers a general outline of the potential legal difficulties that could arise in relation to them, focusing on the programming of negotiation and contracting processes in a privacy, consumer and commercial context. The authors will elucidate how it is possible to create form of legal framework and design methodology for...

Medical Informatics and biomedical computing have grown in quantum measure over the past decade. An abundance of advances have come to the foreground in this field with the vast amounts of biomedical and genomic data, the Internet, and the wide application of computer use in all aspects of medical, biological, and health care research and practice. MEDICAL INFORMATICS: Knowledge Management and Data Mining in Biomedicine covers the basic foundations of the area while extending the foundational material to include the recent leading-edge research in the field. The newer...

Certification and Security in Inter-Organizational E-Services presents the proceeding of CSES 2004 - the 2nd International Workshop on Certification and Security in Inter-Organizational E-Services held within IFIP WCC 2004 in August, 2004, in Toulouse, France. Certification and security share a common technological basis in the reliable and efficient monitoring of executed and running processes; they likewise depend on the same fundamental organizational and economic principles. As the range of services managed and accessed through communication networks grows throughout...

Home-Oriented Informatics and Telematics is an essential reference for both academic and professional researchers in the field of home informatics. The home is a key aspect of society and the widespread use of computers and other information appliances is transforming the way in which we live, work and communicate in the information age. This area of study has seen remarkable growth in the last few years as information technology has encroached into every corner of home and social spheres.

The papers selected here cover a growing range of topics, including...

Past, Present and Future of Research in the Information Society examines the role of research and the production of knowledge in the information society, with special emphasis on developing areas of the world.

Past, Present and Future of Research in the Information Society is based on a three day conference that immediately precedes the second phase of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), in Tunisia (November 2005). Core issues of the conference lie at the intersection of computer science and engineering, information and communication...