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A leading consumer advocate reveals how to protect your money, time, and integrity from corrupt businesses Once upon a time store prices were simple and fair, businesses stood behind their products with guarantees free of fine print and loopholes, and companies genuinely seemed to care about their valued customers—but those days are long gone. In this groundbreaking expose, consumer advocate Christopher Elliot reveals the broken relationship between American consumers and businesses and explains how companies came to believe that fooling their customers was a viable, and profitable, business plan. Scammed explores how companies control information to mislead, distort the truth, and even outright lie to their consumers. Exposes the various ways companies have led their war against information—from seductive ads, disingenuous fine print, and unconventional promotions that involve seeding discussion forums and blogs with company-friendly comments Offers consumers insider knowledge of the system, reasonable expectations, and a clear understanding of the games businesses play Christopher Elliott is one of the nation's foremost consumer advocates Protect yourself, your time, and your money from the predators of the consumer world. Armed with knowledge, readers will become far more discerning and every business's worst nightmare.

Discourse analysis and rhetoric are very much developed in communication, linguistics, cognitive science and artificial intelligence. Besides theoretical investigations, discourse analysis is central in a number of application areas such as dialogue and negotiation, the semantic web, question answering or authoring systems. Music is also a natural language, more abstract and mathematical, which follows very strict construction principles. However, there is very limited and no recent literature on Music Discourse analysis using computational principles. This book aims at developing a central issue in musical discourse: modeling rhetoric and argumentation. It also contributes to the development of high-level multimedia annotation schemes for non-verbal communication.

TO HAVE A FAMILY OF HER OWN…Perpetually single Sasha Lambert would do anything to have a baby. But days before her trip to the sperm bank she met a lonely little boy…and his irresistible father. Despite widower Jacob Windsor's announcement that he was not interested in marriage, Sasha could see he desperately needed some help with his adorable son.What choice did a natural-born do-gooder have? Sasha would help father and son to reconnect, gaining some invaluable lessons on mommyhood. And hope that when the time came, one very determined single dad would agree to grant her baby wish…and maybe a trip to the altar, as well!

Advances in computer technology have conveniently coincided with trends in numerical analysis toward increased complexity of computational algorithms based on finite difference methods. It is no longer feasible to perform stability investigation of these methods manually–and no longer necessary. As this book shows, modern computer algebra tools can be combined with methods from numerical analysis to generate programs that will do the job automatically. Comprehensive, timely, and accessible–this is the definitive reference on the application of computerized symbolic manipulations for analyzing the stability of a wide range of difference schemes. In particular, it deals with those schemes that are used to solve complex physical problems in areas such as gas dynamics, heat and mass transfer, catastrophe theory, elasticity, shallow water theory, and more. Introducing many new applications, methods, and concepts, Computer-Aided Analysis of Difference Schemes for Partial Differential Equations * Shows how computational algebra expedites the task of stability analysis–whatever the approach to stability investigation * Covers ten different approaches for each stability method * Deals with the specific characteristics of each method and its application to problems commonly encountered by numerical modelers * Describes all basic mathematical formulas that are necessary to implement each algorithm * Provides each formula in several global algebraic symbolic languages, such as MAPLE, MATHEMATICA, and REDUCE * Includes numerous illustrations and thought-provoking examples throughout the text For mathematicians, physicists, and engineers, as well as for postgraduate students, and for anyone involved with numeric solutions for real-world physical problems, this book provides a valuable resource, a helpful guide, and a head start on developments for the twenty-first century.