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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualitative%20research | Qualitative research is a type of research that aims to gather and analyse non-numerical (descriptive) data in order to gain an understanding of individuals' social reality, including understanding their attitudes, beliefs, and motivation. This type of research typically involves in-depth interviews, focus groups, or observations in order to collect data that is rich in detail and context. Qualitative research is often used to explore complex phenomena or to gain insight into people's experiences and perspectives on a particular topic. It is particularly useful when researchers want to understand the meaning that people attach to their experiences or when they want to uncover the underlying reasons for people's behavior. Qualitative methods include ethnography, grounded theory, discourse analysis, and interpretative phenomenological analysis. Qualitative research methods have been used in sociology, anthropology, political science, psychology, communication studies, social work, folklore, educational research, information science and software engineering research.
Background
Qualitative research has been informed by several strands of philosophical thought and examines aspects of human life, including culture, expression, beliefs, morality, life stress, and imagination. Contemporary qualitative research has been influenced by a number of branches of philosophy, for example, positivism, postpositivism, critical theory, and constructivism.
The historical transitions or 'moments' in qualitative research, together with the notion of 'paradigms' (Denzin & Lincoln, 2005), have received widespread popularity over the past decades. However, some scholars have argued that the adoptions of paradigms may be counterproductive and lead to less philosophically engaged communities. In this regard, Pernecky proposed an alternative way to implementing philosophical concerns in qualitative inquiry so that researchers are able to maintain the needed intellectual mobility and elasticity.
Approaches to inquiry
The use of nonquantitative material as empirical data has been growing in many areas of the social sciences, including learning sciences, development psychology and cultural psychology. Several philosophical and psychological traditions have influenced investigators' approaches to qualitative research, including phenomenology, social constructionism, symbolic interactionism, and positivism.
Philosophical traditions
Phenomenology refers to the philosophical study of the structure of an individual's consciousness and general subjective experience. Approaches to qualitative research based on constructionism, such as grounded theory, pay attention to how the subjectivity of both the researcher and the study participants can affect the theory that develops out of the research. The symbolic interactionist approach to qualitative research examines how individuals and groups develop an understanding of the world. Traditional positivist approaches to qualitative |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore%2064%20demos | The Commodore 64 (C64) demos are demonstrations of what can be done to push the limits of the Commodore 64 computer, made by programmers, musicians and artists.
Though it was not unusual to find demos that displayed a single picture, only music tracks or a programming skill, groups were formed that consisted of members who were skilled in composing music, drawing graphics and programming. Full disk demos were produced, some of which would play music as the next file loaded, without any delay in the sound.
Various effects are achieved in demos, most of them due to undocumented side-effects pertaining to the MOS Technology VIC-II chip. Some examples are:
Sprite scrollers were placed in the border. By tricking the hardware not to draw the border around the screen, sprites could be moved into this area and displayed.
Sprites were multiplexed across vertical raster lines (over 8 sprites, sometimes up to 120 sprites). A common perception is that no more than 8 sprites could appear at once on the screen, but assigning new Y coordinates once it has started being drawn made it reappear further down the screen.
FLD (flexible line distance) moved bitmap or character rows an arbitrary number of vertical raster lines apart, making it possible to arbitrarily move any 8 pixel high graphic block smoothly up and down across the screen. Adding sine curves to this positioning provided a wavy effect.
FLI, or Flexible Line Interpretation, can be used to increase the number of unique colors which can appear in an 8×8 or 8×4 block on the screen. This mode is occasionally extended further with sprites and/or interlacing two bitmaps together (as in SHIFLI or UIFLI). These modes usually cause the left-most 24 pixels of the display to become unusable.
FPP (Flexible Pixel Positioning), basically a variation of the FLI mode, allows the placement of any line of a character-based graphic at any one y-position, allowing for effects like x-rotating logos, barrel-like effects or smooth stretching and waving over the whole screen.
Tec-Tec (also Tech-Tech or Tic Tac) assigns a new x-position to any line of a graphic. By using animated sine waves you could for example wave a logo horizontally over the screen.
VSP (Variable Screen Positioning), also known as HSP, allows arbitrary x-placement of a bitmap, with the bitmap wrapping around at the border.
A Linecruncher allows the user to scroll a bitmap larger than one screen vertically without having to move all the bitmap data manually.
AGSP (Any Given Screen Position) is the combination of VSP and Linecruncher, for example making possible games with colorful bitmap graphics that scrolled, such as Hannes Sommer's "Fred's Back" series.
Followers of the C64 would see the growth of the demo scene. Gone were the single file demos with one scrolling text and no music. Full disk demos were produced, some of which would play music as the next file loaded, without any delay in the sound.
Hidden parts were included as was the oc |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David%20Parnas | David Lorge Parnas (born February 10, 1941) is a Canadian early pioneer of software engineering, who developed the concept of information hiding in modular programming, which is an important element of object-oriented programming today. He is also noted for his advocacy of precise documentation.
Life
Parnas earned his PhD at Carnegie Mellon University in electrical engineering. Parnas also earned a professional engineering license in Canada and was one of the first to apply traditional engineering principles to software design.
He worked there as a professor for many years. He also taught at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (U.S.), at the Department of Computer Science of the Technische Universität Darmstadt (Germany), the University of Victoria (British Columbia, Canada), Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, and University of Limerick (Republic of Ireland).
David Parnas received a number of awards and honors:
ACM "Best Paper" Award, 1979
Norbert Wiener Award for Social and Professional Responsibility, 1987
Two "Most Influential Paper" awards International Conference on Software Engineering, 1991 and 1995
Doctor honoris causa of the Computer Science Department, ETH Zurich, Switzerland, 1986
Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, 1992
Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery, 1994
Doctor honoris causa of the Louvain School of Engineering, University of Louvain (UCLouvain), Belgium, 1996
ACM SIGSOFT's "Outstanding Research" award, 1998
IEEE Computer Society's 60th Anniversary Award, 2007
Doctor honoris causa of the Faculty of Informatics, University of Lugano, Switzerland, 2008
Fellow of the Gesellschaft für Informatik, 2008
Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), 2009
Doctor honoris causa of the Vienna University of Technology (Dr. Tech.H.C.), Vienna Austria, 2011
Work
Modular design
In modular design, his double dictum of high cohesion within modules and loose coupling between modules is fundamental to modular design in software. However, in Parnas's seminal 1972 paper On the Criteria to Be Used in Decomposing Systems into Modules, this dictum is expressed in terms of information hiding, and the terms cohesion and coupling are not used. He never used them.
Technical activism
Dr Parnas took a public stand against the US Strategic Defense Initiative (also known as "Star Wars") in the mid 1980s, arguing that it would be impossible to write an application of sufficient quality that it could be trusted to prevent a nuclear attack. He has also been in the forefront of those urging the professionalization of "software engineering" (a term that he characterizes as "an unconsummated marriage"). Dr. Parnas is also a heavy promoter of ethics in the field of software engineering.
Stance on academic evaluation methods
Parnas has joined the group of scientists which openly criticize the number-of-publications-based approach towards rank |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOA | SOA may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media
Siege of Avalon, a 2000 computer role-playing game
Soldiers of Anarchy, a 2002 real-time tactics computer game
Sons of Anarchy, an FX television series named after the fictitious outlaw motorcycle club it portrays
Sons of Azrael, a deathcore band from Buffalo, New York
State of Alert, a hardcore punk group formed in Washington, D.C.
Computing and technology
Safe operating area, the recommended voltage and current conditions for a semiconductor
Semiconductor optical amplifier
Service-oriented architecture, a set of software design principles and methodologies
SOA governance, a concept for services control in such an architecture
SOA security
Start of Authority record, a type of resource record in the Domain Name System (DNS)
Statement of Applicability (SoA), an ISO/IEC 27001 document for information security management systems
Structure of arrays, a method of arranging records in memory
Enterprises and organizations
School of the Americas, now the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, a U.S. Department of Defense training facility
Siksha 'O' Anusandhan (SOA University), Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India
Security and Intelligence Agency, (Croatian: Sigurnosno-obavještajna agencija or SOA), in Croatia
Scottish Orienteering Association, in Scotland
Society of Actuaries, in North America
Society of Ancients, a UK-based non-profit organization to promote ancient and medieval history and war gaming
Special Operations Australia, a.k.a. Services Reconnaissance Department, a World War II agency
State Oceanic Administration, a Chinese administrative agency
Swiss Olympic Association, the National Olympic Committee representing Switzerland.
Sports
SOA (basketball club), an Ivorian basketball club based in Yamoussoukro
SOA (football club), an Ivorian basketball club based in Yamoussoukro
Other uses
Secondary organic aerosol, a type of particulate matter produced by combustion engines
Southampton Airport Parkway railway station, located in Eastleigh in the county of Hampshire, England
Stimulus onset asynchrony, a measure used in experimental psychology
Super output areas, geographical regions defined in the U.K.'s ONS coding system
Statement of account
See also
Soa (disambiguation)
School of the Arts (disambiguation)
SOAS (disambiguation) |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caudata | The Caudata are a group of amphibians containing the extant salamanders (the order Urodela) and all extinct species of amphibians more closely related to salamanders than to frogs. They are typically characterized by a superficially lizard-like appearance, with slender bodies, blunt snouts, short limbs projecting at right angles to the body, and the presence of a tail in both larvae and adults.
Disagreement exists between different authorities as to the definition of the terms "Caudata" and "Urodela". Some maintain that Urodela should be restricted to the crown group, with Caudata being used for the total group. Others restrict the name Caudata to the crown group and use Urodela for the total group. The former approach seems to be most widely adopted and is used in this article.
Evolution
The origins and evolutionary relationships between the three main groups of amphibians (apodans, urodeles and anurans) is a matter of debate. A 2005 molecular phylogeny, based on rDNA analysis, suggested that the first divergence between these three groups took place soon after they had branched from the lobe-finned fish in the Devonian (around 360 million years ago), and before the breakup of the supercontinent Pangaea. The briefness of this period, and the speed at which radiation took place, may help to account for the relative scarcity of amphibian fossils that appear to be closely related to lissamphibians. However, more recent studies have generally found more recent (Late Carboniferous to Early Permian) age for the basalmost divergence among lissamphibians.
The earliest known fossil salamanders include Kokartus honorarius from the Middle Jurassic of Kyrgyzstan and three species of the apparently neotenic, aquatic Marmorerpeton from England and Scotland of a similar date. They looked superficially like robust modern salamanders but lacked a number of anatomical features that characterise all modern salamanders. Karaurus sharovi from the Upper Jurassic of Kazakhstan resembled modern mole salamanders in morphology and probably had a similar burrowing lifestyle. In 2020, new specimens of the previously enigmatic tetrapod Triassurus from the Middle Triassic of Kyrgyzstan were described, revealing it to be the oldest known caudatan and this conclusion has been supported by subsequent analyses.
The Cryptobranchoidea (primitive salamanders) and the Salamandroidea, also known as Diadectosalamandroidei, (advanced salamanders) are believed to be sister groups. Both seem to have appeared before the end of the Jurassic, the former being exemplified by Chunerpeton tianyiensis, Pangerpeton sinensis, Jeholotriton paradoxus, Regalerpeton weichangensis, Liaoxitriton daohugouensis and Iridotriton hechti, and the latter by Beiyanerpeton jianpingensis. By the Upper Cretaceous, most or all of the living salamander families had probably appeared. However, recent phylogenetic analysis suggest that several fossil species previously thought to represent crown group salama |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAI%20Systems%20Corp.%20v.%20Peak%20Computer%2C%20Inc. | MAI Systems Corp. v. Peak Computer, Inc., 991 F.2d 511 (9th Cir. 1993), was a case heard by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit which addressed the issue of whether the loading of software programs into random-access memory (RAM) by a computer repair technician during maintenance constituted an unauthorized software copy and therefore a copyright violation. The court held that it did, although the United States Congress subsequently enacted an amendment to to specifically overrule this holding in the circumstances of computer repair.
Background
Peak Computer, Inc. is a computer maintenance company that organized in 1990. Peak maintained computer systems for its clients by performing routine maintenance and emergency repairs. When providing maintenance or making emergency repairs, Peak booted the MAI Systems computer, causing the MAI operating system to be loaded from the hard disk into RAM. MAI also alleged that Peak ran MAI's diagnostic software during Peak's service calls.
This case involved the two parties MAI Systems and Peak Computer, as well as defendant Eric Francis, a former MAI Systems Corporation employee who joined Peak Computer, Inc.
Copyright issues
MAI contended that Peak's use of the MAI operating system constituted copyright infringement. MAI argued that the license agreement which permitted an end user to make a copy of the program for their own use did not extend to Peak because Peak was not the licensee and therefore had no rights under the license agreement.
The court agreed and granted partial summary judgment which prohibited Peak from continuing their method of operation. The court determined that a copy of a program made from a hard drive into RAM for purpose of executing the program was, in fact, a copy under the Copyright Act. The judges utilized the criteria set forth by , which states 'A work is "fixed" in a tangible medium of expression when its embodiment in a copy or phonorecord, by or under the authority of the author, is sufficiently permanent or stable to permit it to be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated for a period of more than transitory duration.'
allows copies made as an essential step in utilizing the software to be made without permission of the copyright holder by the owner of a copy of the software. Nonetheless, the court believed that this clause did not apply because end users of MAI's software were mere licensees. The court also considered two additional facts: Peak had unlicensed copies of MAI's operating system at Peak's headquarters and the unlicensed loaning of computers featuring MAI's operating system to Peak's customers.
Based on the above facts, the court found that Peak was liable for copyright infringement.
Trade Secret misappropriation
Several employees left MAI and joined Peak, namely defendant Francis. When MAI's customers learned of their switch, several customers also switched their business based on previously developed business relationshi |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loadable%20kernel%20module | In computing, a loadable kernel module (LKM) is an object file that contains code to extend the running kernel, or so-called base kernel, of an operating system. LKMs are typically used to add support for new hardware (as device drivers) and/or filesystems, or for adding system calls. When the functionality provided by an LKM is no longer required, it can be unloaded in order to free memory and other resources.
Most current Unix-like systems and Microsoft Windows support loadable kernel modules under different names, such as kernel loadable module (kld) in FreeBSD, kernel extension (kext) in macOS (although support for third-party modules is being dropped), kernel extension module in AIX, dynamically loadable kernel module in HP-UX, kernel-mode driver in Windows NT and downloadable kernel module (DKM) in VxWorks. They are also known as kernel loadable modules (or KLM), and simply as kernel modules (KMOD).
Advantages
Without loadable kernel modules, an operating system would have to include all possible anticipated functionality compiled directly into the base kernel. Much of that functionality would reside in memory without being used, wasting memory, and would require that users rebuild and reboot the base kernel every time they require new functionality.
Disadvantages
One minor criticism of preferring a modular kernel over a static kernel is the so-called fragmentation penalty. The base kernel is always unpacked into real contiguous memory by its setup routines; thus, the base kernel code is never fragmented. Once the system is in a state in which modules may be inserted, for example once the filesystems have been mounted that contain the modules, it is likely that any new kernel code insertion will cause the kernel to become fragmented, thereby introducing a minor performance penalty by using more TLB entries, causing more TLB misses.
Implementations in different operating systems
Linux
Loadable kernel modules in Linux are loaded (and unloaded) by the modprobe command. They are located in /lib/modules or /usr/lib/modules and have had the extension .ko ("kernel object") since version 2.6 (previous versions used the .o extension). The lsmod command lists the loaded kernel modules. In emergency cases, when the system fails to boot due to e.g. broken modules, specific modules can be enabled or disabled by modifying the kernel boot parameters list (for example, if using GRUB, by pressing 'e' in the GRUB start menu, then editing the kernel parameter line).
License issues
In the opinion of Linux maintainers, LKM are derived works of the kernel. The Linux maintainers tolerate the distribution of proprietary modules, but allow symbols to be marked as only available to GNU General Public License (GPL) modules.
Loading a proprietary or non-GPL-compatible module will set a 'taint' flag in the running kernel—meaning that any problems or bugs experienced will be less likely to be investigated by the maintainers. LKMs effectively become part of |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XR | XR or Xr may refer to:
Science and technology
Computing
IOS XR, Cisco router software
Cairo (graphics) library, original name
Extended reality, VR and AR
Vehicles
XR, Ford Australia cars
Honda XR series motorcycles
Other uses in science and technology
Extended release medication
OpenXR, VR standard
iPhone XR, a smartphone released in 2018
Other uses
XR (character), a character in the animated TV series Buzz Lightyear of Star Command
Exchange rate, rate at which one currency will be exchanged for another
Extinction Rebellion, environmental movement and advocacy group
Extrapolated Runs, a baseball statistic
Corendon Airlines Europe, IATA airline code
The abbreviation ΧΡ (chi-rho), a symbol for Christ |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locale%20%28computer%20software%29 | In computing, a locale is a set of parameters that defines the user's language, region and any special variant preferences that the user wants to see in their user interface. Usually a locale identifier consists of at least a language code and a country/region code.
Locale is an important aspect of i18n.
General locale settings
These settings usually include the following display (output) format settings:
Number format setting (LC_NUMERIC, C/C++)
Character classification, case conversion settings (LC_CTYPE, C/C++)
Date-time format setting (LC_TIME, C/C++)
String collation setting (LC_COLLATE, C/C++)
Currency format setting (LC_MONETARY, C/C++)
Paper size setting (LC_PAPER, ISO 30112)
Color setting
The locale settings are about formatting output given a locale. So, the time zone information and daylight saving time are not usually part of the locale settings.
Less usual is the input format setting, which is mostly defined on a per application basis.
Programming and markup language support
In these environments,
C
C++
Eiffel
Java
.NET Framework
REBOL
Ruby
Perl
PHP
Python
XML
JSP
JavaScript
and other (nowadays) Unicode-based environments, they are defined in a format similar to BCP 47. They are usually defined with just ISO 639 (language) and ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 (2-letter country) codes.
International standards
In standard C and C++, locale is defined in "categories" of (text collation), (character class), (currency format), (number format), and (time format). The special category can be used to set all locale settings.
There is no standard locale names associated with C and C++ standards besides a "minimal locale" name "C", although the POSIX format is a commonly-used baseline.
POSIX platforms
On POSIX platforms such as Unix, Linux and others, locale identifiers are defined in a way similar to the BCP 47 definition of language tags, but the locale variant modifier is defined differently, and the character set is optionally included as a part of the identifier. The POSIX or "XPG" format is . (For example, Australian English using the UTF-8 encoding is .) Separately, ISO/IEC 15897 describes a different form, , though it's highly dubious whether it is used at all.
In the next example there is an output of command locale for Czech language (cs), Czech Republic (CZ) with explicit UTF-8 encoding:
$ locale
LANG=cs_CZ.UTF-8
LC_CTYPE="cs_CZ.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC="cs_CZ.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="cs_CZ.UTF-8"
LC_COLLATE="cs_CZ.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY="cs_CZ.UTF-8"
LC_MESSAGES="cs_CZ.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER="cs_CZ.UTF-8"
LC_NAME="cs_CZ.UTF-8"
LC_ADDRESS="cs_CZ.UTF-8"
LC_TELEPHONE="cs_CZ.UTF-8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="cs_CZ.UTF-8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="cs_CZ.UTF-8"
LC_ALL=
Specifics for Microsoft platforms
Windows uses specific language and territory strings.
The locale identifier (LCID) for unmanaged code on Microsoft Windows is a number such as 1033 for English (United States) or 1041 for Japanese (Japan). These numbers consist of a lan |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitness%20proportionate%20selection | Fitness proportionate selection, also known as roulette wheel selection, is a genetic operator used in genetic algorithms for selecting potentially useful solutions for recombination.
In fitness proportionate selection, as in all selection methods, the fitness function assigns a fitness to possible solutions or chromosomes. This fitness level is used to associate a probability of selection with each individual chromosome. If is the fitness of individual in the population, its probability of being selected is
where is the number of individuals in the population.
This could be imagined similar to a Roulette wheel in a casino. Usually a proportion of the wheel is assigned to each of the possible selections based on their fitness value. This could be achieved by dividing the fitness of a selection by the total fitness of all the selections, thereby normalizing them to 1. Then a random selection is made similar to how the roulette wheel is rotated.
While candidate solutions with a higher fitness will be less likely to be eliminated, there is still a chance that they may be eliminated because their probability of selection is less than 1 (or 100%). Contrast this with a less sophisticated selection algorithm, such as truncation selection, which will eliminate a fixed percentage of the weakest candidates. With fitness proportionate selection there is a chance some weaker solutions may survive the selection process. This is because even though the probability that the weaker solutions will survive is low, it is not zero which means it is still possible they will survive; this is an advantage, because there is a chance that even weak solutions may have some features or characteristics which could prove useful following the recombination process.
The analogy to a roulette wheel can be envisaged by imagining a roulette wheel in which each candidate solution represents a pocket on the wheel; the size of the pockets are proportionate to the probability of selection of the solution. Selecting N chromosomes from the population is equivalent to playing N games on the roulette wheel, as each candidate is drawn independently.
Other selection techniques, such as stochastic universal sampling or tournament selection, are often used in practice. This is because they have less stochastic noise, or are fast, easy to implement and have a constant selection pressure.
The naive implementation is carried out by first generating the cumulative probability distribution (CDF) over the list of individuals using a probability proportional to the fitness of the individual. A uniform random number from the range [0,1) is chosen and the inverse of the CDF for that number gives an individual. This corresponds to the roulette ball falling in the bin of an individual with a probability proportional to its width. The "bin" corresponding to the inverse of the uniform random number can be found most quickly by using a binary search over the elements of the CDF. It takes i |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic%20operator | A genetic operator is an operator used in genetic algorithms to guide the algorithm towards a solution to a given problem. There are three main types of operators (mutation, crossover and selection), which must work in conjunction with one another in order for the algorithm to be successful. Genetic operators are used to create and maintain genetic diversity (mutation operator), combine existing solutions (also known as chromosomes) into new solutions (crossover) and select between solutions (selection). In his book discussing the use of genetic programming for the optimization of complex problems, computer scientist John Koza has also identified an 'inversion' or 'permutation' operator; however, the effectiveness of this operator has never been conclusively demonstrated and this operator is rarely discussed.
Mutation (or mutation-like) operators are said to be unary operators, as they only operate on one chromosome at a time. In contrast, crossover operators are said to be binary operators, as they operate on two chromosomes at a time, combining two existing chromosomes into one new chromosome.
Operators
Genetic variation is a necessity for the process of evolution. Genetic operators used in genetic algorithms are analogous to those in the natural world: survival of the fittest, or selection; reproduction (crossover, also called recombination); and mutation.
Selection
Selection operators give preference to better solutions (chromosomes), allowing them to pass on their 'genes' to the next generation of the algorithm. The best solutions are determined using some form of objective function (also known as a 'fitness function' in genetic algorithms), before being passed to the crossover operator. Different methods for choosing the best solutions exist, for example, fitness proportionate selection and tournament selection; different methods may choose different solutions as being 'best'. The selection operator may also simply pass the best solutions from the current generation directly to the next generation without being mutated; this is known as elitism or elitist selection.
Crossover
Crossover is the process of taking more than one parent solutions (chromosomes) and producing a child solution from them. By recombining portions of good solutions, the genetic algorithm is more likely to create a better solution. As with selection, there are a number of different methods for combining the parent solutions, including the edge recombination operator (ERO) and the 'cut and splice crossover' and 'uniform crossover' methods. The crossover method is often chosen to closely match the chromosome's representation of the solution; this may become particularly important when variables are grouped together as building blocks, which might be disrupted by a non-respectful crossover operator. Similarly, crossover methods may be particularly suited to certain problems; the ERO is generally considered a good option for solving the travelling salesman problem.
M |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alain%20Colmerauer | Alain Colmerauer (24 January 1941 – 12 May 2017) was a French computer scientist. He was a professor at Aix-Marseille University, and the creator of the logic programming language Prolog.
Early life
Alain Colmerauer was born on 24 January 1941 in Carcassonne. He graduated from the Grenoble Institute of Technology, and he earned a PhD from the Ensimag in Grenoble.
Career
Colmerauer spent 1967–1970 as assistant professor at the University of Montreal, where he created Q-Systems, one of the earliest linguistic formalisms used in the development of the TAUM-METEO machine translation prototype. Developing Prolog III in 1984, he was one of the main founders of the field of constraint logic programming.
Colmerauer became an associate professor at Aix-Marseille University in Luminy in 1970. He was promoted to full professor in 1979. From 1993 to 1995, he was head of the Laboratoire d'Informatique de Marseille (LIM), a joint laboratory of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, the Université de Provence and the Université de la Méditerranée. Despite retiring as emeritus professor in 2006, he remained a member of the artificial intelligence taskforce in Luminy.
Colmerauer won an award from the regional council of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, and in 1985 the Michel Monpetit Award, from the French Academy of Sciences. In 1986, he was made a knight of the Legion of Honour by the French government. He became Fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence in 1991, and in 1997 the Association of Logic Programming bestowed upon him and fourteen other select researchers the title of Founder of Logic Programming. He then received the Association for Constraint Programming's Research Excellence Award in 2008. He was also a correspondent of the French Academy of Sciences in the area of mathematics.
Death
Colmerauer died on 12 May 2017.
References
External links
French computer scientists
Programming language designers
1941 births
2017 deaths
Members of the French Academy of Sciences
Knights of the Legion of Honour
Academic staff of the Université de Montréal
Academic staff of Aix-Marseille University
Grenoble Institute of Technology alumni
People from Carcassonne
20th-century French scientists
21st-century French scientists
20th-century French engineers
21st-century French engineers |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athens%20Wireless%20Metropolitan%20Network | In Athens, Greece a grassroots wireless community network called the Athens Wireless Metropolitan Network (AWMN) was established in 2002. This network utilizes the latest wireless technologies to foster connectivity between individuals and various services. By August 2010, the network had grown to include 1,120 backbone nodes, with over 2,900 client computers actively linked to it. Additionally, there exists an association-club called awmn, further supporting the network's objectives.
Cultural and geographical context
Although the network began in Athens, the capital of Greece, its activities are no longer limited to the single city. It covers a geographical area (110 km from North to South and 85 km from West to East) with the most southern point being Palaia Epidavros (Epidaurus) and the most northern point being the town of Nea Artaki on the island of Euboea. The wide expansion of the network allows isolated areas with poor technological and broadband infrastructure to connect with the Athenian network. The islands of Aegina, Salamina and the regions surrounding Athens are also connected to the network.
Recently the island of Euboea connected with more links with AWMN for redundancy purposes and the next stage will be to join the wireless 'islets' located in Corinth, Lamia (city) and Volos. There are also plans to reach even more remote cities of Greece such as Patras.
This year AWMN connected most of the Greek communities and managed to cross the Greek borders. It has initiated a VPN connection with wlan slovenija network in Slovenia with the vision to connect all the wireless communities of Europe into one network.
Project history
AWMN was formed as a community back in 2002. Due to tremendous problems with broadband services in Greece in 2002 the number of such services available to home users was extremely limited. It was mainly due to this problem that AWMN was founded as an alternative broadband network, which allowed its users to experience real broadband services.
However, after a short period from its birth AWMN started to change. An increasing number of people started to have an interest in the network, expressing their interest in joining this project. The number of network nodes started to grow exponentially, and the network's character changed from an alternative telecom network to a social network of people based on their interest in the IT/Telecom sector.
The network was always something alternative to just pure internet access medium. While now users and backbone nodes owners live in a much more mature broadband environment, they have not stopped being excited and active in the AWMN network. More services are emerging and more uses of high speed symmetrical broadband are being found, tested, developed and freely enjoyed by the users for the users.
The objectives of the project include the following:
Creating, developing and maintaining a Wireless Community Network which will provide broadband services to its members.
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UCK | UCK may refer to:
Ubuntu Customization Kit, for a live CD of the Ubuntu operating system
Uckfield railway station, East Sussex, England
Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA; )
National Liberation Army (NLA; )
See also
UÇK (disambiguation) |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data%20degradation | Data degradation is the gradual corruption of computer data due to an accumulation of non-critical failures in a data storage device. The phenomenon is also known as data decay, data rot or bit rot.
Example
Below are several digital images illustrating data degradation, all consisting of 326,272 bits. The original photo is displayed first. In the next image, a single bit was changed from 0 to 1. In the next two images, two and three bits were flipped. On Linux systems, the binary difference between files can be revealed using command (e.g. ).
Primary storages
Data degradation in dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) can occur when the electric charge of a bit in DRAM disperses, possibly altering program code or stored data. DRAM may be altered by cosmic rays or other high-energy particles. Such data degradation is known as a soft error. ECC memory can be used to mitigate this type of data degradation.
Secondary storages
Data degradation results from the gradual decay of storage media over the course of years or longer. Causes vary by medium:
Solid-state media
EPROMs, flash memory and other solid-state drive store data using electrical charges, which can slowly leak away due to imperfect insulation. Modern flash controller chips account for this leak by trying several lower threshold voltages (until ECC passes), prolonging the age of data. Multi-level cells with much lower distance between voltage levels cannot be considered stable without this functionality.
The chip itself is not affected by this, so reprogramming it approximately once per decade prevents decay. An undamaged copy of the master data is required for the reprogramming. A checksum can be used to assure that the on-chip data is not yet damaged and ready for reprogramming.
Magnetic media
Magnetic media, such as hard disk drives, floppy disks and magnetic tapes, may experience data decay as bits lose their magnetic orientation. Higher temperature speeds up the rate of magnetic loss. As with solid-state media, re-writing is useful as long as the medium itself is not damaged (see below). Modern hard drives use Giant magnetoresistance and have a higher magnetic lifespan on the order of decades. They also automatically correct any errors detected by ECC through rewriting. The reliance on a factory servo track can complicate data recovery if it becomes unrecoverable, however.
Floppy disks and tapes are poorly protected against ambient air. In warm/humid conditions, they are prone to the physical decomposition of the storage medium.
Optical media
Optical media such as CD-R, DVD-R and BD-R, may experience data decay from the breakdown of the storage medium. This can be mitigated by storing discs in a dark, cool, low humidity location. "Archival quality" discs are available with an extended lifetime, but are still not permanent. However, data integrity scanning that measures the rates of various types of errors is able to predict data decay on optical media well ahead of uncorrect |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1601%20in%20science | The year 1601 CE in science and technology included many events, some of which are listed below.
Computer science
January 1 – Retrospectively the epoch reference date from which ANSI dates are counted in COBOL and other computer languages, and the base of Windows FILETIME timestamps which are stored as a 63 bit counter, whose last valid timestamp is 30828/9/14 02:48:05.4775807.
Exploration
August 26 – Olivier van Noort completes his circumnavigation of the world.
Mathematics
Johannes Kepler is appointed imperial mathematician to the Habsburg Empire.
Physiology and medicine
Giulio Cesare Casseri publishes a treatise on the anatomy of the vocal and auditory organs in Ferrara.
Births
possible date – Edward Somerset, 2nd Marquess of Worcester, English inventor (d. 1667)
Deaths
October 24 – Tycho Brahe, Danish astronomer (b. 1546)
References
17th century in science
1600s in science |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kannel%20%28telecommunications%29 | In computing, Kannel is an open-source WAP gateway. It provides the essential part of the WAP infrastructure as open source software to everyone so that the market potential for WAP services, both from wireless operators and specialized service providers, will be realized as efficiently as possible.
Kannel also works as an SMS gateway for GSM networks. Almost all GSM phones can send and receive SMS messages, so this is a way to serve many more clients than just those using WAP.
History
The Kannel project was founded by Wapit Ltd. in June, 1999. Wapit no longer exists and the project is coordinated by the members of the Kannel Group which include the wireless business industry companies 3G LAB Ltd. (UK), Wapme Systems AG (DE), ANAM (IE) andlobal Networks Inc. (CH) among other individual developers and contributors. The Kannel Group is in the process of forming a legal body for the Kannel Project, the Kannel Software Foundation (KSF). ANAM has retired from supporting Kannel, and in 2006 also Wapme Systems has stopped its business operations.
Core developers
The project development coordination is led by The Kannel Group, with Stipe Tolj, Andreas Fink and Alexander Malysh as chairmen. Various other individual developers around the world contribute code and file problem-reports.
References
External links
Official Kannel project site
Free software programmed in C
Free system software
Unix software |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal%20Palace%20railway%20station | Crystal Palace railway station is a Network Rail and London Overground station in the London Borough of Bromley in south London. It is located in the Anerley area between the town centres of Crystal Palace and Penge, from . It is one of two stations built to serve the site of the 1851 exhibition building, the Crystal Palace, when it was moved from Hyde Park to Sydenham Hill after 1851.
The station was opened on 10 June 1854 by the West End of London and Crystal Palace Railway (WEL&CPR) to take the crowds to the relocated Palace. It was formerly known as Crystal Palace (Low Level) to differentiate it from the nearby and now largely demolished Crystal Palace (High Level) railway station.
The station serves trains running between London Bridge and London Victoria in addition to services terminating at Beckenham Junction and Sutton. Since 23 May 2010, the station has also been a terminus of the East London Line of the London Overground. This has been the catalyst for plans for a substantial redevelopment of the station.
History
From the outset trains were operated by the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway (LBSCR). Initially the station was the terminus of a spur line from Sydenham. In 1856 the station was able to take through train services to Wandsworth via West Norwood and Streatham Hill, following the completion of the 746 yard (690 m) Crystal Palace Tunnel. Although relatively short, the tunnel was regarded as a major engineering achievement as it was cut "through the same treacherous material [clay], through the hill on which the Crystal Palace stands, and immediately under one of the great water towers, a superincumbent weight of 2,200 tons which taxed in its execution all the skill and workmanship of the eminent contractors."
In 1857, an eastward connection was made to (for the Brighton line to the south) and in 1858 the WEL&CPR was extended as far as Beckenham. From 1860 direct services were extended to London Victoria.
As originally constructed, the station contained three island platforms, arranged to provide two terminal bay platforms and two through lines with platforms on either side. By the 1890s the central island had been removed and replaced by carriage sidings.
The frontage of the station was rebuilt in 1875, and was described: "Although the Roman Catholic chapel room is no longer used the station still has a cathedral-like atmosphere as one passes from the period booking hall to the vault-like station and the stairs down to the original station area".
This is a description of the station trainshed roof above the staircases at the west end. Originally the whole length of the platforms beyond the bottom of the massive staircases was covered by an elegant dual bow-spring arch iron roof. This was removed as a precautionary measure shortly after the collapse of the similar structure at Charing Cross in 1905.
In 1905–08, Crystal Palace station was included in a proposal for an unusual new form of underground railway, |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kahan%20summation%20algorithm | In numerical analysis, the Kahan summation algorithm, also known as compensated summation, significantly reduces the numerical error in the total obtained by adding a sequence of finite-precision floating-point numbers, compared to the obvious approach. This is done by keeping a separate running compensation (a variable to accumulate small errors), in effect extending the precision of the sum by the precision of the compensation variable.
In particular, simply summing numbers in sequence has a worst-case error that grows proportional to , and a root mean square error that grows as for random inputs (the roundoff errors form a random walk). With compensated summation, using a compensation variable with sufficiently high precision the worst-case error bound is effectively independent of , so a large number of values can be summed with an error that only depends on the floating-point precision of the result.
The algorithm is attributed to William Kahan; Ivo Babuška seems to have come up with a similar algorithm independently (hence Kahan–Babuška summation). Similar, earlier techniques are, for example, Bresenham's line algorithm, keeping track of the accumulated error in integer operations (although first documented around the same time) and the delta-sigma modulation.
The algorithm
In pseudocode, the algorithm will be:
function KahanSum(input)
var sum = 0.0 // Prepare the accumulator.
var c = 0.0 // A running compensation for lost low-order bits.
for i = 1 to input.length do // The array input has elements indexed input[1] to input[input.length].
var y = input[i] - c // c is zero the first time around.
var t = sum + y // Alas, sum is big, y small, so low-order digits of y are lost.
c = (t - sum) - y // (t - sum) cancels the high-order part of y; subtracting y recovers negative (low part of y)
sum = t // Algebraically, c should always be zero. Beware overly-aggressive optimizing compilers!
next i // Next time around, the lost low part will be added to y in a fresh attempt.
return sum
This algorithm can also be rewritten to use the Fast2Sum algorithm:
function KahanSum2(input)
var sum = 0.0 // Prepare the accumulator.
var c = 0.0 // A running compensation for lost low-order bits.
for i = 1 to input.length do // The array input has elements indexed input[1] to input[input.length].
var y = input[i] + c // c is zero the first time around.
(sum,c) = Fast2Sum(sum,y) // sum + c is an approximation to the exact sum.
next i // Next time around, the lost low part will be added to y in a fresh attempt.
return sum
Worked example
This example will be given in decimal. Computers typically use binary arithmetic, but the principle being illust |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewisham%20station | Lewisham is a National Rail and Docklands Light Railway station in Lewisham, south-east London which first opened in 1849. On the National Rail network it is measured from and is operated by Southeastern.
Station layout
There are four platforms for main-line trains: 3 and 4 on the North Kent Line, and 1 and 2 on the Mid-Kent line which is also used as a loop off the South Eastern Main Line.
The current station which dates from 1857 is constructed of yellow stock brick with stone dressing and has an unusual survival of a wooden clapboard building at the back. The facade has a pleasing symmetry of three windows, three entrance doors, and three windows.
Original doors sash windows skirting tiling and banisters are present inside. The original corniced ceiling of the main hall is currently concealed by a lowered fake ceiling. Platform 3 has kept its original canopy with its elaborate cast iron brackets which depict cherries. some of the original chamfered wood and cast iron supports of the original canopy survive on platform 2.
The station has similarities with other listed stations built at around the same time such as the listed Ladywell railway station, Blackheath station and Gravesend railway station which has the same elaborate cast iron supporting brackets as can be found at Lewisham.
Platforms 5 and 6 are served by Docklands Light Railway trains to Bank and Stratford. The Docklands Light Railway station opened in 1999 following a southward extension from Island Gardens.
The original canopy over platform 4 was demolished at some point post 1990.
The original canopy over the main entrance was demolished in 2009 at a cost of £790k and replaced with a steel version.
From December 2009, Lewisham was fitted with electric ticket gates, in line with the Government's new strategy to give all Greater London National Rail stations Oyster card accessibility and closing access to those who attempt to travel without tickets. This was controversial as it involved the closure of the gate on Platform 4 and led to a petition signed by over 1,000.
British Transport Police also maintains a neighbourhood policing presence at Lewisham.
History
Opening and early years (1849–1922)
The North Kent line opened on 30 July 1849 by the South Eastern Railway linking Strood with the London and Greenwich Railway route to London Bridge. The original station was located east of the Lewisham Road overbridge with access off Lewisham Road.
With the opening of the Mid-Kent line on 1 January 1857 a new station was built to the west so both lines could be served. For a period Old Lewisham Station was also kept open
Eleven passengers were killed in the 1857 Lewisham rail crash when a train ran into the back of a stationary train.
In 1898 the South Eastern Railway and the London Chatham and Dover Railway agreed to work as one railway company under the name of the South Eastern and Chatham Railway.
Southern Railway (1923–1947)
Following the Railways Act 1921 (also know |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4Kids%20TV | 4Kids TV (often stylized as 4K!DSTV and formerly known as FoxBox from September 14, 2002 to January 15, 2005) was an American television programming block and Internet-based video on demand children's network operated by 4Kids Entertainment. It originated as a weekly block on Saturday mornings on the Fox network, which was created out of a four-year agreement reached on January 22, 2002, between 4Kids Entertainment and Fox to lease the five-hour Saturday morning time slot occupied by the network's existing children's program block, Fox Kids. It was targeted at children aged 7–11. The 4Kids TV block was part of the Fox network schedule, although it was syndicated to other broadcast television stations in certain markets where a Fox affiliate declined to air it.
History
The block aired a preview special on September 1, 2002, and was formally launched on September 14, 2002, under the name "FoxBox", a joint venture between the Fox Broadcasting Company and 4Kids Entertainment, replacing Fox Kids, which the network announced it would discontinue as a result of the 2001 purchase of Fox Family Worldwide by The Walt Disney Company (which resulted in much of the content featured on the block moving to Disney's networks and blocks). The block was rebranded as 4Kids TV on January 22, 2005. 4Kids Entertainment was fully responsible for the content of the block and collected all of the advertising revenue accrued from it. However, Fox's standards and practices department still handled content approval and responsibility of editing the series to meet FCC broadcast standards.
The programming block aired on Saturday mornings in most areas of the United States, though some stations carried it on Sundays (often due to scheduling conflicts resulting from the block airing on stations affiliated with other minor networks that had their own older children's anime program blocks which competed with FoxBox/4Kids TV, including the Kids' WB on The WB and later The CW, and for its first year, the Disney's One Too block on UPN). On October 2, 2007, 4Kids Entertainment announced it would program a competing Saturday morning lineup for The CW, the new block, The CW4Kids (later renamed Toonzai, with the original name becoming a secondary brand), premiered on May 24, 2008, replacing the Kids' WB programming block, which had been carried over to The CW from one of its predecessors, The WB, when it launched on September 23, 2006. The block was renamed as Toonzai on August 14, 2010, and continued to air until it ended August 18, 2012, being replaced by Vortexx a week later and the block continued to air until it ended on September 27, 2014.
On November 10, 2008, 4Kids Entertainment announced that 4Kids TV would conclude at the end of the year due to intervening conflicts between Fox and 4Kids, as the latter company had not paid the network for the time lease for some time, while the network was unable to maintain the guaranteed 90% clearance for the block due to affiliate refusa |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygienic%20macro | In computer science, hygienic macros are macros whose expansion is guaranteed not to cause the accidental capture of identifiers. They are a feature of programming languages such as Scheme, Dylan, Rust, Nim, and Julia. The general problem of accidental capture was well known in the Lisp community before the introduction of hygienic macros. Macro writers would use language features that would generate unique identifiers (e.g., gensym) or use obfuscated identifiers to avoid the problem. Hygienic macros are a programmatic solution to the capture problem that is integrated into the macro expander. The term "hygiene" was coined in Kohlbecker et al.'s 1986 paper that introduced hygienic macro expansion, inspired by terminology used in mathematics.
The hygiene problem
Variable shadowing
In programming languages that have non-hygienic macro systems, it is possible for existing variable bindings to be hidden from a macro by variable bindings that are created during its expansion. In C, this problem can be illustrated by the following fragment:
#define INCI(i) { int a=0; ++i; }
int main(void)
{
int a = 4, b = 8;
INCI(a);
INCI(b);
printf("a is now %d, b is now %d\n", a, b);
return 0;
}
Running the above through the C preprocessor produces:
int main(void)
{
int a = 4, b = 8;
{ int a = 0; ++a; };
{ int a = 0; ++b; };
printf("a is now %d, b is now %d\n", a, b);
return 0;
}
The variable a declared in the top scope is shadowed by the a variable in the macro, which introduces a new scope. As a result, a is never altered by the execution of the program, as the output of the compiled program shows:
a is now 4, b is now 9
Standard library function redefinition
The hygiene problem can extend beyond variable bindings. Consider this Common Lisp macro:
(defmacro my-unless (condition &body body)
`(if (not ,condition)
(progn
,@body)))
While there are no references to variables in this macro, it assumes the symbols "if", "not", and "progn" are all bound to their usual definitions in the standard library. If, however the above macro is used in the following code:
(flet ((not (x) x))
(my-unless t
(format t "This should not be printed!")))
The definition of "not" has been locally altered and so the expansion of my-unless changes.
Program-defined function redefinition
Of course, the problem can occur for program-defined functions in a similar way:
(defun user-defined-operator (cond)
(not cond))
(defmacro my-unless (condition &body body)
`(if (user-defined-operator ,condition)
(progn
,@body)))
; ... later ...
(flet ((user-defined-operator (x) x))
(my-unless t
(format t "This should not be printed!")))
The use site redefines user-defined-operator and hence changes the behavior of the macro.
Strategies used in languages that lack hygienic macros
The hygiene problem can be resolved with conventional macros using several alternative solutions.
Obfuscation
The simplest solution, if temporary s |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Municipalities%20of%20%C3%85land | The 16 municipalities () of Åland are divided into three sub-regions: Mariehamn, the countryside and the archipelago.
Population data as of:
Area data as of:
See also
Politics of Åland
Government of Åland
Parliament of Åland
References
External links
The official ÅSUB website
Aland
Åland-related lists |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Static%20single-assignment%20form | In compiler design, static single assignment form (often abbreviated as SSA form or simply SSA) is a property of an intermediate representation (IR) that requires each variable to be assigned exactly once and defined before it is used. Existing variables in the original IR are split into versions, new variables typically indicated by the original name with a subscript in textbooks, so that every definition gets its own version. In SSA form, use-def chains are explicit and each contains a single element.
One can expect to find SSA in a compiler for Fortran, C, C++, or Java (Android Runtime); whereas in functional language compilers, such as those for Scheme and ML, continuation-passing style (CPS) is generally used. SSA is formally equivalent to a well-behaved subset of CPS excluding non-local control flow, which does not occur when CPS is used as intermediate representation. So optimizations and transformations formulated in terms of one immediately apply to the other.
History
SSA was developed in the 1980s by several researchers at IBM and Kenneth Zadeck of Brown University. A 1986 paper introduced birthpoints, identity assignments, and variable renaming such that variables had a single static assignment. A subsequent 1987 paper by Jeanne Ferrante and Ronald Kaplan proved that the renaming done in the previous paper removes all false dependencies for scalars. In 1988, Barry Rosen, Mark N. Wegman, and Kenneth Zadeck replaced the identity assignments with Φ-functions, introduced the name "static single-assignment form", and demonstrated a now-common SSA optimization. The name Φ-function was chosen by Rosen to be a more publishable version of "phony function". Alpern, Wegman, and Zadeck presented another optimization, but using the name "single static assignment". Finally, in 1989, Rosen, Wegman, and Zadeck and (independently) Cytron and Ferrante worked on methods of computing SSA form. A few days before the submission deadline, the researchers realized they had substantially the same algorithm, and a 5-author paper was the result.
Benefits
The primary usefulness of SSA comes from how it simultaneously simplifies and improves the results of a variety of compiler optimizations, by simplifying the properties of variables. For example, consider this piece of code:
y := 1
y := 2
x := y
Humans can see that the first assignment is not necessary, and that the value of y being used in the third line comes from the second assignment of y. A program would have to perform reaching definition analysis to determine this. But if the program is in SSA form, both of these are immediate:
y1 := 1
y2 := 2
x1 := y2
Compiler optimization algorithms that are either enabled or strongly enhanced by the use of SSA include:
Constant propagation – conversion of computations from runtime to compile time, e.g. treat the instruction a=3*4+5; as if it were a=17;
Value range propagation – precompute the potential ranges a calculation could be, allowing for the |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP%20Utility%20Data%20Center | The Utility Data Center, or UDC, was a product of Hewlett-Packard. It was arguably the first attempt to sell a private cloud. It featured a graphical interface that allowed the user to construct a server "farm," including servers, OS provisioning, networking, firewalls, load balancers, and storage.
The product began in 2002 as an intellectual property acquisition, from a small services vendor, Terraspring, that had used the product to manage their own data center.
Originally termed project slinky, it was largely based out of the Fort Collins campus, and spent the first few releases porting the original solution from a stack based upon Solaris, Cisco switches, and WebSphere, to one based on HP-UX, HP Procurve, and Bluestone's Application server. Then the team spent considerable effort improving reliability, improving security, and creating packaging, procedures and documentation to make the solution salable as a product.
HP was on its second beta release when Sun Microsystems acquired Terraspring entirely, forming the basis for the Sun N1 Grid Engine.
The project was notable, in that it was a private cloud offering, based not on the manipulation of VMs, but the allocation of bare-metal servers contained in racks. The storage was distributed to the servers via SAN Brocade switches and the manipulation of the switches via a Java-based application that commanded the infrastructure out of band, largely with SNMP.
The farms were internally represented in an XML called FML (Farm Markup language), and enacted via a Java-based engine that managed provisioning, complete with safe "clean-room" networks for safe disk wipe and load between customer allocations, and one of the first uses of SAN gateway to act as a sort of "SAN firewall" to limit WWN spoofing, that at the time, was less well understood in SANs than the equivalent LAN spoofing. Internal discussions at the time were the inspiration for what later became the introduction of Brocade's "Secure Fabric OS" the first SAN switch to introduce the notion of WWN authentication.
Though the product did see three major deployments, the project was canceled on September 27, 2004. Opinions differ on the exact reasons, but there are three likely factors: 1) The $1 million base price for the smallest UDC: a single resource rack, a single XP 128, and a single management rack. 2) The loss of first-mover advantage spending so much time stabilizing the product, and porting to the HP hardware/software ecosystem. 3) When the "dotcom bubble bursting" reached its highest point, a significant portion of the target market segment (ISPs and IDCs) for UDC went bankrupt.
External links
HP Utility Data Center
Sun acquires Terraspring
Utility Data Center |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User-mode%20Linux | User-mode Linux (UML) is a virtualization system for the Linux operating system based on an architectural port of the Linux kernel to its own system call interface, which enables multiple virtual Linux kernel-based operating systems (known as guests) to run as an application within a normal Linux system (known as the host). A Linux kernel compiled for the um architecture can then boot as a process under another Linux kernel, entirely in user space, without affecting the host environment's configuration or stability.
This method gives the user a way to run many virtual Linux machines on a single piece of hardware, allowing some isolation, typically without changing the configuration or stability of the host environment because each guest is just a regular application running as a process in user space.
Applications
Numerous things become possible through the use of UML. One can run network services from a UML environment and remain totally sequestered from the main Linux system in which the UML environment runs. Administrators can use UML to set up honeypots, which allow one to test the security of one's computers or network. UML can serve to test and debug new software without adversely affecting the host system. UML can also be used for teaching and research, providing a realistic Linux networked environment with a high degree of safety.
In UML environments, host and guest kernel versions don't need to match, so it is entirely possible to test a "bleeding edge" version of Linux in User-mode on a system running a much older kernel. UML also allows kernel debugging to be performed on one machine, where other kernel debugging tools (such as kgdb) require two machines connected with a null modem cable.
Some web hosting providers offer UML-powered virtual servers for lower prices than true dedicated servers. Each customer has root access on what appears to be their own system, while in reality one physical computer is shared between many people.
libguestfs has supported a UML backend since version 1.24 as an alternative to using QEMU or KVM.
Integration into the Linux kernel
The UML guest application (a Linux binary ELF) was originally available as a patch for some Kernel versions above 2.2.x, and the host with any kernel version above 2.2.x supported it easily in the thread mode (i.e., non-SKAS3).
As of Linux 2.6.0, it is integrated into the main kernel source tree. A method of running a separate kernel address space (SKAS) that does not require host kernel patching has been implemented. This improves performance and security over the old Traced Thread approach, in which processes running in the UML share the same address space from the host's point of view, which leads the memory inside the UML to not be protected by the memory management unit. Unlike the current UML using SKAS, buggy or malicious software inside a UML running on a non-SKAS host could be able to read the memory space of other UML processes or even the UML kernel memory.
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ab%20initio%20%28disambiguation%29 | Ab initio is a Latin term used in English, meaning from the beginning.
Ab initio may also refer to:
Ab Initio (company), an ETL Tool Software Company in the field of Data Warehousing.
Ab initio quantum chemistry methods
Marriages annulled under the Catholic Church are considered as annulled ab initio, meaning that the marriage was invalid from the beginning |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtle%20%28disambiguation%29 | A turtle is a reptile, most of whose body is shielded by a special bony or cartilaginous shell.
Turtle(s) may also refer to:
Bird
European turtle dove (archaic name: turtle)
Computing
Turtle (robot), a class of educational robots used most prominently in the 1970s and 1980s
Turtle (syntax), a Terse RDF Triple language
Turtle F2F, a tool for exchanging content in an anonymous and secure way over a friend-to-friend (F2F) network
Turtle graphics, using a relative cursor, the "turtle"
Turtles, small values near the end of the list in sorting; See Comb sort
Entertainment
Fictional characters
Turtle (comics), in DC Comics, two antagonists of The Flash
Turtle (Entourage), in the HBO television series
The Great and Powerful Turtle, or "The Turtle", a character in the Wild Cards novels
Turtle, a character in Barbara Kingsolver's novels, The Bean Trees and Pigs in Heaven
Gaming
Turtle (game term), a defensive gaming strategy
Turtles (video game), a 1981 arcade game by Konami
Turtle Entertainment, a German esports organiser
Music
The Turtles, an American folk-rock band, known for their 1967 song "Happy Together"
Turtles (South Korean band), a K-Hip-Hop band
"Turtle", a South Korean song from twicetagram by TWICE
Other media
Turtle (magazine), a 1979–2014 American bi-monthly for preschoolers
Turtle: The Incredible Journey, a 2009 German–British–Austrian documentary
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, a superhero franchise
Places
Turtle Mountain (Alberta), Canada
United States
Turtle, Missouri, a ghost town
Turtle, Wisconsin, a town
Turtle Mountains (California)
Turtle Mound, a prehistoric archaeological site in Florida
Turtle Pond, Central Park, Manhattan, New York
Rio Turtle or Turtle Rock, West Virginia
Retail brands
Turtle's Records & Tapes, a defunct American retail chain
Turtles (chocolate), a type of candy trademarked by DeMet's Candy Company
Watercraft
Turtle (submersible), the first military diving bell, built during the American Revolutionary War
DSV Turtle, a retired ocean research submersible of the US Navy
Other uses
Turtle beans
Botts' dots, often called turtles in Washington and Oregon
Turtle, a member of the Ancient Order of Turtles, or Turtle Club
Turtle, a member of NASA Astronaut Group 22
Turtle, a type of spinning float, a breakdancing move
People named Turtle
John Turtle (born 1937), Australian academic and endocrinologist
Roger Turtle (fl. 1326 – 1344), English politician
Tommy Turtle (1950–2020), a British Army officer from Ireland
Turtle Bunbury (born 1972), Irish historian and author
See also
TIRTL, a traffic logger and speed measurement device
Turtling (disambiguation)
Chelys, an ancient Greek lyre meaning "Turtle" or "Tortoise" |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full%20Service%20Network | Full Service Network is a Western Pennsylvania facility based Competitive Local Exchange Carrier (CLEC) providing services which include High Speed Internet and Broadband Phone Service. It was founded in 1989 by University of Pittsburgh student David E. Schwencke.
Company History
Founded in 1989 as a software company, Full Service Network soon entered the telecommunications landscape in the early 1990s.
Throughout the decade as land line phone services became competitive, FSN focused mostly on serving the commercial market of small to mid-size businesses. In 1998, FSN entered the residential market and had over 10,000 residential subscribers in Western PA and thousands more across Pennsylvania. They no longer provide residential phone and internet to new customers.
Since its beginning, FSN has steadily grown and now employs around 85 people in the US Steel Tower in downtown Pittsburgh. In 2012, Full Service Network was recognized by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette as one of Pittsburgh's Top Work Places. And in 2013, the Pittsburgh Business Times awarded FSN with a "Best Places to Work in Western Pennsylvania" honor. As of 2016, Full Service Network has been recognized by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette as one of Pittsburgh's Top Work Places for 3 years in a row.
Other Full Service Networks
Time Warner TV Venture in Florida 1994 to 1997
Not related to the current day Full Service Network in Pittsburgh, formerly the Full Service Network, also known as FSN was an 18-month trial interactive television service launched by Time Warner Inc. in Orlando, Florida. The FSN was active between 1994 and 1997 targeting an initial number of 4,000 households with services that ranged from video-on-demand to ordering fast food using just the TV remote. At its time, it was dubbed the "most futuristic network introduced so far."
The trial aimed to study how interactive services would work, as well as their costs and advertising capabilities. It also aimed to find out "what people will want when the equipment that is now so expensive becomes affordable several years down the road."
The World's First Interactive TV Network
Time Warner's Full Service Network was described as "the first in the world to integrate emerging cable, computer, and telephone technologies over a fiber-optic and coaxial cable network." This meant that the service offered traditional cable, interactive television, telephone services, and high-speed PC access to on-line services.
Regardless of its first-time advantages, the FSN was not television's first attempt at interactivity, nor was it Time Warner Cable's first attempt. Previous efforts included 1977's QUBE, a service offered by Warner-Amex (a joint venture between Warner Cable and American Express) initially in Columbus, OH, then expanding into cities such as Dallas, and Pittsburgh; as well as the 1950s children television show Winky Dink and You, which prompted interactivity through the use of plastics 'Magic Screens' that parents wo |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency%20Vets | Emergency Vets is a reality television series that airs on the U.S. cable network Animal Planet. First aired in 1998, it depicts the working and outside lives of the veterinarians at Alameda East Veterinary Hospital in Denver, Colorado, USA, plus the animals that they treat. At its peak of popularity, Emergency Vets alternated with The Crocodile Hunter as Animal Planet's most popular show.
The show stopped first-run production because Alameda East was occupied with building and eventually moving into a new facility in Denver. In 2004, a new documentary called E-Vets: The Cutting Edge aired on Animal Planet, showing the changes in Alameda East Veterinary Hospital since the show's final episode. The documentary scored good ratings and has been rerun several times as part of the Whoa! Sunday umbrella anthology show on Animal Planet, as well as inspiring a follow-up episode first aired in 2005 that took viewers on a tour of the new Alameda East facility while showing cases of animals receiving cutting-edge treatment at the new hospital. Another documentary, Emergency Vets 20 Most Unusual Cases, aired on Whoa! Sunday in 2006, featuring 20 cases from the series including follow-ups with the families and interviews with the doctors involved.
In 2007, Animal Planet announced that the real-life drama at Alameda East would return to prime-time airwaves under a new title, E-Vet Interns. The new series features six new veterinary interns during their first year of residency practice at the new Alameda East hospital, as well as familiar faces Dr. Robert Taylor, Dr. Kevin Fitzgerald, Dr. Preston Stubbs, and Dr. Holly Knor. In preparation for the new show's debut on January 22, 2007, Animal Planet aired a new E-Vets special, E-Vets: Things Pets Swallow, featuring memorable cases from the Emergency Vets years dealing with dramatic objects that animals have ingested.
Staff
Emergency Vets featured a mix of surgeons, general practitioners, specialists, veterinary technicians, and Alameda East's annual class of 4–6 interns per year. Among the staff members featured regularly:
Surgeons
Dr. Robert A. Taylor, founder of Alameda East, who specializes in orthopedic surgery
Dr. Steve Petersen, surgeon and director of Alameda East's intern program who left the hospital and the show in 1999
Dr. Mark Albrecht, surgeon who replaced Petersen in the 2000 season; departed the hospital before the start of the 2001 season
Dr. Preston Stubbs, surgeon who replaced Albrecht after his departure in the 2001 season
General Practitioners
Dr. Kevin Fitzgerald, general practitioner who specializes in treating exotic animals, especially reptiles
Dr. Holly Knor, general practitioner specializing in animal pregnancies and associated issues
Dr. Andrea Oncken, general practitioner who left the hospital and the show in 1998
Dr. Jeff Steen, graduate of the Alameda East intern program who joined the staff as a general practitioner in 2000; specializes in dental issues
Dr. Ted Owe |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomicity%20%28database%20systems%29 | In database systems, atomicity (; from ) is one of the ACID (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability) transaction properties. An atomic transaction is an indivisible and irreducible series of database operations such that either all occur, or none occur. A guarantee of atomicity prevents partial database updates from occurring, because they can cause greater problems than rejecting the whole series outright. As a consequence, the transaction cannot be observed to be in progress by another database client. At one moment in time, it has not yet happened, and at the next it has already occurred in whole (or nothing happened if the transaction was cancelled in progress).
An example of an atomic transaction is a monetary transfer from bank account A to account B. It consists of two operations, withdrawing the money from account A and saving it to account B. Performing these operations in an atomic transaction ensures that the database remains in a consistent state, that is, money is neither lost nor created if either of those two operations fails.
The same term is also used in the definition of First normal form in database systems, where it instead refers to the concept that the values for fields may not consist of multiple smaller value to be decomposed, such as a string into which multiple names, numbers, dates, or other types may be packed.
Orthogonality
Atomicity does not behave completely orthogonally with regard to the other ACID properties of transactions. For example, isolation relies on atomicity to roll back the enclosing transaction in the event of an isolation violation such as a deadlock; consistency also relies on atomicity to roll back the enclosing transaction in the event of a consistency violation by an illegal transaction.
As a result of this, a failure to detect a violation and roll back the enclosing transaction may cause an isolation or consistency failure.
Implementation
Typically, systems implement Atomicity by providing some mechanism to indicate which transactions have started and which finished; or by keeping a copy of the data before any changes occurred (read-copy-update). Several filesystems have developed methods for avoiding the need to keep multiple copies of data, using journaling (see journaling file system). Databases usually implement this using some form of logging/journaling to track changes. The system synchronizes the logs (often the metadata) as necessary after changes have successfully taken place. Afterwards, crash recovery ignores incomplete entries. Although implementations vary depending on factors such as concurrency issues, the principle of atomicity – i.e. complete success or complete failure – remain.
Ultimately, any application-level implementation relies on operating-system functionality. At the file-system level, POSIX-compliant systems provide system calls such as open(2) and flock(2) that allow applications to atomically open or lock a file. At the process level, POSIX Threads prov |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTT%20Docomo | is a Japanese mobile phone operator. The name is officially an abbreviation of the phrase, "do communications over the mobile network", and is also from a compound word dokomo, meaning "everywhere" in Japanese. The company is headquartered in Sanno Park Tower, Nagatachō, Chiyoda, Tokyo. Docomo provides phone, video phone (FOMA and Some PHS), i-mode (internet), and mail (i-mode mail, Short Mail, and SMS) services. It is the largest wireless carrier in Japan, with 82.632 million subscribers .
Docomo was spun off from its parent company Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT) in August 1991 to take over the mobile cellular operations. NTT held a majority stake in the company until Docomo's re-privatization in 2020.
It provides 2G (mova) PDC cellular services, 3G (FOMA) W-CDMA, 4G LTE and 5G NR services. Its businesses also included PHS (Paldio), paging, and satellite. Docomo ceased offering a PHS service on January 7, 2008. In late 2020, Docomo was bought back by NTT for about $40 billion.
Customers
NTT Docomo is a subsidiary of Japan's incumbent telephone operator, NTT. The majority of NTT Docomo's shares are owned by NTT (which is 33.71% government-owned). While some NTT shares are publicly traded, control of the company by Japanese interests (government and civilian) is guaranteed by the number of shares available to buyers. It provides wireless voice and data communications to subscribers in Japan. NTT Docomo is the creator of W-CDMA technology as well as mobile i-mode service.
NTT Docomo had over 53 million customers (as of March 2008), which is more than half of Japan's cellular market. The company provides a wide variety of mobile multimedia services. These include i-mode which provides e-mail and internet access to over 50 million subscribers, FOMA, which was launched in 2001 as the world's first 3G mobile service based on W-CDMA, Xi, a 4G LTE mobile service which was launched on December 24, 2010, Premium 4G, a LTE Advanced service which was launched on March 27, 2015, and DoCoMo 5G, a 5G NR service which launched on March 25, 2020.
In addition to wholly owned subsidiaries in Europe and North America, the company is expanding its global reach through strategic alliances with mobile and multimedia service providers in Asia-Pacific and Europe. NTT Docomo is listed on the Tokyo (9437), London (NDCM), and New York (DCM) stock exchanges.
On April 19, 2008, it was announced that Ryuji Yamada, the current co-president of NTT Docomo, will be promoted as the president of NTT Docomo in June 2008. Masao Nakamura will stay in NTT Docomo as a director and also the senior adviser. Since October 2006, when the introduction to the service which allows the user to carry their original phone number with a new provider was made, NTT Docomo has lost many users to KDDI and SoftBank. This promotion was made in order to get more users for NTT Docomo. The company was the last major global mobile carrier to offer Apple's iPhone, which it finally did with the re |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International%20Computer%20Driving%20Licence | International Computer Driving License (ICDL), formerly known as European Computer Driving Licence (ECDL), is a computer literacy certification program provided by ECDL Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation.
The ICDL / ECDL certification is a globally recognised information and communication technology (ICT) and digital literacy qualification.
In 1995, the ECDL certification programme was developed through a task force of the Council of European Professional Informatics Societies (CEPIS) and was recommended by the European Commission High Level Group, ESDIS, to be a Europe-wide certification scheme. The task force compared several national certification schemes and chose the CDL from Finland as the basis for piloting and later adoption into the ECDL.
Contents
Though the ICDL does not refer to Microsoft or its Office software suite by name in the official course syllabus, training occurs almost exclusively with Microsoft's products as they are ubiquitous in the business world.
For the Base certificate, there are no pre-requisites regarding computer use.
Levels
The ICDL Base certificate comprises all four of these modules:
basic operation of a computer (with Microsoft Windows or Ubuntu in some editions)
basic operation of the internet
basic use of Microsoft Word or LibreOffice Writer
basic use of Microsoft Excel or LibreOffice Calc
The ICDL Standard certificate involves the aforementioned Base module, and three of the following modules:
databases (with Microsoft Access or LibreOffice Base)
creating and using presentations (Microsoft PowerPoint)
collaborating online (mostly Microsoft Teams)
IT security
editing images (with Photoshop or GIMP)
The ICDL Advanced certificate comprises one of the following modules; the ICDL Expert certificate three of the following modules:
advanced use of Microsoft Word
advanced use of Microsoft Excel
advanced use of Microsoft Access
advanced use of Microsoft PowerPoint
Testing
In order to take the tests, a candidate buys an ECDL Skills Card, which usually is issued electronically and serves as a login to the testing platform. To prepare for a module test, the candidate may use ECDL diagnostic tests. Testing is done using software which simulates the Windows/Microsoft Office environment. The candidate's mouse movements and keystrokes are monitored and the result of the test is reported immediately after the test is completed.
Value
The ICDL certificates are seen as valuable in business/government administration - as they save the time to evaluate an applicant's computer skills. In professions like publishing, graphic and web design, science or information technology, a completed ICDL course is not a desired quality however as the work requires specialist skills and experience with other software.
References
External links
ECDL Foundation
ICDL Asia
ICDL Arabia
ICDL Africa
ICDL USA
Information technology qualifications
Digital divide
Educational qualifications in the United Kingdom |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datakortet | Datakortet is the Norwegian licensee of the European Computer Driving Licence. Datakortet is located in Kirkenes and its products are distributed through 400 test centers in Norway. Over 200,000 Norwegians participate in the ECDL program.
Datakortet's wholly owned subsidiary, Norsk Test AS, issues national boating licenses under a contract with the Norwegian Maritime Directorate.
References
Technology companies of Norway |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECDL | ECDL is an acronym which may refer to:
El Canto del Loco, a Spanish pop group
European Computer Driving Licence, a computer literacy certification
European Conference on Digital Libraries, an international conference series
External Cavity Diode Laser, a configuration of a stable diode laser. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile%20processor | A mobile processor is a microprocessor designed for mobile devices such as laptops, and cell phones.
A CPU chip is designed for portable computers to run fanless, under 10 to 15W, which is cool enough without a fan. It is typically housed in a smaller chip package, but more importantly, in order to run cooler, it uses lower voltages than its desktop counterpart and has more sleep mode capability. A mobile processor can be throttled down to different power levels or sections of the chip can be turned off entirely when not in use. Further, the clock frequency may be stepped down under low processor loads. This stepping down conserves power and prolongs battery life.
Today's CPUs are usually more than just a single unit. They are split into "cores", each acting like an individual CPU. They also use "threading", allowing each core to do multiple tasks, amplifying the performance.
In laptops
One of the main characteristics differentiating laptop processors from other CPUs is low-power consumption, however, they are not without tradeoffs; they also tend to not perform as well as their desktop counterparts.
The notebook processor has become an important market segment in the semiconductor industry. Notebook computers are a popular format of the broader category of mobile computers. The objective of a notebook computer is to provide the performance and functionality of a desktop computer in a portable size and weight.
Cell phones and PDAs use "system on a chip" integrated circuits that use less power than most notebook processors.
While it is possible to use desktop processors in laptops, this practice is generally not recommended, as desktop processors heat faster than notebook processors and drain batteries faster.
Examples
Current
ARM architecture (used in Chromebooks, Windows 10 laptops, Linux netbooks and recent Macs)
Apple M series
MediaTek
Nvidia: Tegra
Qualcomm: Snapdragon
Rockchip
Samsung Electronics: Exynos
x86
AMD: Ryzen, Athlon, and A-Series APU
Intel: Xeon mobile, Core, Pentium, and Celeron
Former
PowerPC
Motorola and Freescale Semiconductor made PowerPC G4 processors for the pre-Intel Apple Computer notebooks.
x86
Transmeta: Crusoe and Efficeon
Intel: Pentium M
AMD: Mobile Athlon II, Mobile Athlon 64, Mobile Sempron
References
Laptops
Mobile computers
Mobile phones
Microprocessors |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian%20Academy%20of%20Sciences | The Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS; Rossíyskaya akadémiya naúk) consists of the national academy of Russia; a network of scientific research institutes from across the Russian Federation; and additional scientific and social units such as libraries, publishing units, and hospitals.
Peter the Great established the academy (then the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences) in 1724 with guidance from Gottfried Leibniz. From its establishment, the academy benefitted from a slate of foreign scholars as professors; the academy then gained its first clear set of goals from the 1747 Charter. The academy functioned as a university and research center throughout the mid-18th century until the university was dissolved, leaving research as the main pillar of the institution. The rest of the 18th century continuing on through the 19th century consisted of many published academic works from Academy scholars and a few Academy name changes, ending as The Imperial Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences right before the Soviet period.
Now headquartered in Moscow, the academy (RAS) is a non-profit organization established in the form of a federal state budgetary institution chartered by the Government of Russia. In 2013, the Russian government restructured RAS, assigning control of its property and research institutes to a new government agency headed by Mikhail Kotyukov.
, the academy included 1,008 institutions and other units; in total about 125,000 people were employed of whom 47,000 were scientific researchers.
Membership
There are three types of membership in the RAS: full members (academicians), corresponding members, and foreign members. Academicians and corresponding members must be citizens of the Russian Federation when elected. However, some academicians and corresponding members were elected before the collapse of the USSR and are now citizens of other countries. Members of RAS are elected based on their scientific contributions – election to membership is considered very prestigious.
In the years 2005–2012, the academy had approximately 500 full and 700 corresponding members. But in 2013, after the Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences and the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences became incorporated into the RAS, a number of the RAS members accordingly increased. The last elections to the renewed Russian Academy of Sciences were organized from May 30 to June 3, 2022.
As of mid-April 2023, the academy had 1973 living Russian members (full: 860, corresponding: 1113) and 460 foreign members.
Since 2015, the academy also awards, on a competitive basis, the honorary scientific rank of a RAS Professor to the top-level researchers with Russian citizenship. Now there are 715 scientists with this rank. RAS professorship is not a membership type but its holders are considered as possible candidates for membership; some professors became members already in 2016, in 2019 or in 2022 and are henceforth titled "RAS professor, corresponding member of the RAS" (1 |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dream%20Center | The Dream Center is a Pentecostal network of community centers in Los Angeles, California, established in 1994. The president of Dream Center is Matthew Barnett.
History
The organization was founded in 1994 by Matthew Barnett and Tommy Barnett of Dream City Church as a home missions project of the Southern California District of the Assemblies of God.
In 1996, after purchasing the old Queen of Angels Hospital in Echo Park, it transformed it into social center for the homeless, prostitutes and members of street gangs.
In 2001, Pastor Matthew Barnett and the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel merged the Dream Center with the Angelus Temple, making Barnett the senior pastor over Angelus Temple as well as the Dream Center.
Associated Dream Centers have been established in other cities. As of 2022, the organization has established 84 centers in other cities and countries around the world.
Programs
Dream Center offers a food bank, clothing and
assistance programs for victims of disaster, domestic violence, drug addiction, human trafficking and prisoners.
Controversy
In 2005, some Hurricane Katrina evacuees staying at the Dream Center said they had difficulty receiving donations. In response to the complaints several social activists, led by Ted Hayes, an advocate for the homeless, called a news conference demanding an investigation of the Dream Center. After visiting the Dream Center, however, and being given a tour of the facility, the activists concluded that the accusations were groundless. "There is no basis to the complaints we've heard," Hayes said, "The horror stories reported to us do not exist."
In 2017, a subsidiary of the Dream Center, in partnership with a private equity fund, purchased the Art Institutes, South University, and Argosy University systems of for-profit colleges from Education Management Corporation. The transaction received significant scrutiny, due to concerns about Dream Center's ability to successfully manage the acquired schools, and criticism that the transaction was designed to allow the schools to avoid increased regulation of for-profit colleges. The transaction, which was not approved by the Department of Education under the Obama Administration, was approved in 2017 by Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. In 2019, at least 30 of the art institutes and related colleges were closed, with some closures announced abruptly in the middle of the academic year. Some of the Art Institute programs were transferred to Studio Enterprise, a Los Angeles creative arts training firm funded by principals of the private equity firm Colbeck Capital Management.
References
External links
Christian missions in North America
Christian organizations established in 1993
Religious organizations based in the United States
Echo Park, Los Angeles |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe%20ColdFusion | Adobe ColdFusion is a commercial rapid web-application development computing platform created by J. J. Allaire in 1995. (The programming language used with that platform is also commonly called ColdFusion, though is more accurately known as CFML.) ColdFusion was originally designed to make it easier to connect simple HTML pages to a database. By version 2 (1996) it had become a full platform that included an IDE in addition to a full scripting language.
Overview
One of the distinguishing features of ColdFusion is its associated scripting language, ColdFusion Markup Language (CFML). CFML compares to the scripting components of ASP, JSP, and PHP in purpose and features, but its tag syntax more closely resembles HTML, while its script syntax resembles JavaScript. ColdFusion is often used synonymously with CFML, but there are additional CFML application servers besides ColdFusion, and ColdFusion supports programming languages other than CFML, such as server-side Actionscript and embedded scripts that can be written in a JavaScript-like language known as CFScript.
Originally a product of Allaire and released on July 2, 1995, ColdFusion was developed by brothers Joseph J. Allaire and Jeremy Allaire. In 2001 Allaire was acquired by Macromedia, which in turn was acquired by Adobe Systems Inc in 2005.
ColdFusion is most often used for data-driven websites or intranets, but can also be used to generate remote services such as REST services, WebSockets, SOAP web services or Flash remoting. It is especially well-suited as the server-side technology to the client-side ajax.
ColdFusion can also handle asynchronous events such as SMS and instant messaging via its gateway interface, available in ColdFusion MX 7 Enterprise Edition.
Main features
ColdFusion provides a number of additional features out of the box. Main features include:
Simplified database access
Client and server cache management
Client-side code generation, especially for form widgets and validation
Conversion from HTML to PDF
Data retrieval from common enterprise systems such as Active Directory, LDAP, SMTP, POP, HTTP, FTP, Microsoft Exchange Server and common data formats such as RSS and Atom
File indexing and searching service based on Apache Solr
GUI administration
Server, application, client, session, and request scopes
XML parsing, querying (XPath), validation and transformation (XSLT)
Server clustering
Task scheduling
Graphing and reporting
Simplified file manipulation including raster graphics (and CAPTCHA) and zip archives (introduction of video manipulation is planned in a future release)
Simplified web service implementation (with automated WSDL generation / transparent SOAP handling for both creating and consuming services - as an example, ASP.NET has no native equivalent for <CFINVOKE WEBSERVICE="http://host/tempconf.cfc?wsdl" METHOD="Celsius2Fahrenheit" TEMP="#tempc#" RETURNVARIABLE="tempf">)
Other implementations of CFML offer similar or enhanced functionality |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual%20function | In object-oriented programming, in languages such as C++, and Object Pascal, a virtual function or virtual method is an inheritable and overridable function or method for which dynamic dispatch is facilitated. This concept is an important part of the (runtime) polymorphism portion of object-oriented programming (OOP). In short, a virtual function defines a target function to be executed, but the target might not be known at compile time.
Most programming languages, such as JavaScript, PHP and Python, treat all methods as virtual by default and do not provide a modifier to change this behavior. However, some languages provide modifiers to prevent methods from being overridden by derived classes (such as the final and private keywords in Java and PHP).
Purpose
The need of the virtual function or abstract method can be understood as follows:
A class is a user-defined data type. It is used to model an identified Entity in the problem domain. The information required of an entity becomes fields or data members of the class, The actions required of the entity becomes member functions or methods of the class. However, in some situations, It is not possible to provide definition to one or more methods of the class. Let us understand the concept in the following scenario.
The identified Entity is Two-dimensional figure. It has two dimensions. Its area is required to be computed. Triangle, Rectangle, Square, Circle etc. are all two-dimensional figures. However the formula to compute area is different for each of the figures.
In C++, the abstract function is defined as a Pure Virtual Function. A class is a abstract class in C++ if it at least has one pure virtual function. Now in C++, the two-dimensional figure class is implemented as follows:class TwoDFigure {
protected:
int d1;
int d2;
public:
TwoDFigure(int d1, int d2) {
this->d1 = d1;
this->d2 = d2;
}
// Pure Virtual Function
// abstract function as no definition
virtual void computeArea() = 0;
};The object or an instance of abstract class cannot be created. In other words, it cannot be instantiated. It makes Inheritance and Overriding compulsory.
The concept of the virtual function solves the following problem:
In object-oriented programming, when a derived class inherits from a base class, an object of the derived class may be referred to via a pointer or reference of the base class type instead of the derived class type. If there are base class methods overridden by the derived class, the method actually called by such a reference or pointer can be bound (linked) either 'early' (by the compiler), according to the declared type of the pointer or reference, or 'late' (i.e., by the runtime system of the language), according to the actual type of the object is referred to.
Virtual functions are resolved 'late'. If the function in question is 'virtual' in the base class, the most-derived class's implementation of the function is called according to the |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard%20library | In computer programming, a standard library is the library made available across implementations of a programming language. These libraries are conventionally described in programming language specifications; however, contents of a language's associated library may also be determined (in part or whole) by more informal practices of a language's community.
Overview
A language's standard library is often treated as part of the language by its users, although the designers may have treated it as a separate entity. Many language specifications define a core set that must be made available in all implementations, in addition to other portions which may be optionally implemented. The line between a language and its libraries therefore differs from language to language. Indeed, some languages are designed so that the meanings of certain syntactic constructs cannot even be described without referring to the core library. For example, in Java, a string literal is defined as an instance of the java.lang.String class; similarly, in Smalltalk, an anonymous function expression (a "block") constructs an instance of the library's BlockContext class. Conversely, Scheme contains multiple coherent subsets that suffice to construct the rest of the language as library macros, and so the language designers do not even bother to say which portions of the language must be implemented as language constructs, and which must be implemented as parts of a library.
Contents
Standard libraries typically include definitions for commonly used algorithms, data structures, and mechanisms for input and output. Depending on the constructs made available by the host language, a standard library may include:
Subroutines
Macro definitions
Global variables
Class definitions
Templates
Most standard libraries include definitions for at least the following commonly used facilities:
Algorithms (such as sorting algorithms)
Data structures (such as lists, trees, and hash tables)
Interaction with the host platform, including input/output and operating system calls
Philosophies
Philosophies of standard library design vary widely. For example, Bjarne Stroustrup, designer of C++, writes:
This suggests a relatively small standard library, containing only the constructs that "every programmer" might reasonably require when building a large collection of software. This is the philosophy that is used in the C and C++ standard libraries.
By contrast, Guido van Rossum, designer of Python, has embraced a much more inclusive vision of the standard library. Python offers us easy-to-code, object-oriented, high-level language means. In the Python tutorial, he writes:
Van Rossum goes on to list libraries for processing XML, XML-RPC, email messages, and localization, facilities that the C++ standard library omits. This other philosophy is often found in scripting languages (as in Python or Ruby) or languages that use a virtual machine, such as Java or the .NET Framework languages. In C++, such facilit |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latent%20typing | In computer programming, latent typing refers to a type system where types are associated with values and not variables. An example latently typed language is Scheme. This typically requires run-time type checking and so is commonly used synonymously with dynamic typing.
See also
Duck typing
References
Data types
Type systems |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport%20in%20Mumbai | Transport in Mumbai is achieved by both public, and private transport. As of 2015, 52% of commuters use public transport. Mumbai has the largest organized bus transport network among major Indian cities.
Mumbai's public transport consists primarily of rapid transit on exclusive suburban railway lines augmented by commuter rail on main lines serving outlying suburbs, the bus services of the three municipalities making up the metropolitan area, public taxis and auto rickshaws, as well as ferry services. A metro and a monorail system were inaugurated in 2014. A commercial seaplane service was also introduced in 2014.
Road
Bus
Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport (BEST) has a fleet of single, double decker buses and air-conditioned Tata Marcopolo CNG mini buses. BEST runs their buses all over Mumbai and outskirts like Navi Mumbai, Thane and Mira-Bhayandar.
Navi Mumbai Municipal Transport (NMMT) operates air-conditioned Volvo buses from Navi Mumbai to Bandra, Dadar, Mantralaya & Borivali and non A/C buses from Navi Mumbai to Mulund, Kurla, Dadar, Andheri, Dindoshi & Mantralaya.
Thane Municipal Transport (TMT) operates their buses from Thane to Mulund, Borivali, Mira Road, BKC & Andheri.
Mira-Bhayandar Municipal Transport (MBMT) operates their buses from Mira-Bhayandar to Andheri, Thane and Borivali.
Taxis
Taxis arrived in 1911 to complement horse cars. Black and yellow Fiat taxis are an integral part of the city's heritage and have been depicted in numerous Bollywood movies. Metered taxis ply throughout Mumbai and have a monopoly from Bandra to Churchgate on the Western line and Sion to Chatrapati Shivaji Terminus on the Central line. Beyond Sion and Bandra auto rickshaws are not allowed and one has to hire a taxi. However, between Sion to Thane and Bandra to Bhayandar, both Taxis and autorickshaws are available to transport passengers.
Silver-Green taxis run by Meru and Yellow-Red by Gold cabs and Black by Mega Cabs
Blue and silver air-conditioned metered taxis known as "Cool Cabs"
Some private taxi operators provide yellow number plate cars for transportation
Mumbai is served by two intra-city highways: Old Mumbai-Pune Highway and Mumbai-Ahmedabad Highway.
Number of taxis
There are around 58,000 taxis in Greater Mumbai and 98,566 in Mumbai MMR.
Classic black and yellow taxi numbers on Greater Mumbai roads had fallen to 20,000 by 2010 as 35,000 new taxis such as Maruti Alto, Wagon R and Omni, Tata Indica and Hyundai Santro joined the ranks. Recently State Transport Authority of Maharashtra State has also introduced the on-call facility to book these taxis, one can call 022-61234567 to book black and yellow (Non-AC) and CoolCabs (AC) taxis. Radio cab services have been introduced by some private companies. However, these taxis need to be booked in advance by calling their call center number.
Taxi Regulations
Law requires the driver of an unengaged taxi to take a passenger wherever they want to go, regardless of distance or time, if |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer%20simulation | Computer simulation is the process of mathematical modelling, performed on a computer, which is designed to predict the behaviour of, or the outcome of, a real-world or physical system. The reliability of some mathematical models can be determined by comparing their results to the real-world outcomes they aim to predict. Computer simulations have become a useful tool for the mathematical modeling of many natural systems in physics (computational physics), astrophysics, climatology, chemistry, biology and manufacturing, as well as human systems in economics, psychology, social science, health care and engineering. Simulation of a system is represented as the running of the system's model. It can be used to explore and gain new insights into new technology and to estimate the performance of systems too complex for analytical solutions.
Computer simulations are realized by running computer programs that can be either small, running almost instantly on small devices, or large-scale programs that run for hours or days on network-based groups of computers. The scale of events being simulated by computer simulations has far exceeded anything possible (or perhaps even imaginable) using traditional paper-and-pencil mathematical modeling. In 1997, a desert-battle simulation of one force invading another involved the modeling of 66,239 tanks, trucks and other vehicles on simulated terrain around Kuwait, using multiple supercomputers in the DoD High Performance Computer Modernization Program.
Other examples include a 1-billion-atom model of material deformation; a 2.64-million-atom model of the complex protein-producing organelle of all living organisms, the ribosome, in 2005;
a complete simulation of the life cycle of Mycoplasma genitalium in 2012; and the Blue Brain project at EPFL (Switzerland), begun in May 2005 to create the first computer simulation of the entire human brain, right down to the molecular level.
Because of the computational cost of simulation, computer experiments are used to perform inference such as uncertainty quantification.
Simulation versus model
A computer model is the algorithms and equations used to capture the behavior of the system being modeled. By contrast, computer simulation is the actual running of the program that contains these equations or algorithms. Simulation, therefore, is the process of running a model. Thus one would not "build a simulation"; instead, one would "build a model (or a simulator)", and then either "run the model" or equivalently "run a simulation".
History
Computer simulation developed hand-in-hand with the rapid growth of the computer, following its first large-scale deployment during the Manhattan Project in World War II to model the process of nuclear detonation. It was a simulation of 12 hard spheres using a Monte Carlo algorithm. Computer simulation is often used as an adjunct to, or substitute for, modeling systems for which simple closed form analytic solutions are not possible. There ar |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer%20Graphics%20Metafile | Computer Graphics Metafile (CGM) is a free and open international standard file format for 2D vector graphics, raster graphics, and text, and is defined by ISO/IEC 8632.
Overview
All graphical elements can be specified in a textual source file that can be compiled into a binary file or one of two text representations. CGM provides a means of graphics data interchange for computer representation of 2D graphical information independent from any particular application, system, platform, or device.
As a metafile, i.e., a file containing information that describes or specifies another file, the CGM format has numerous elements to provide functions and to represent entities, so that a wide range of graphical information and geometric primitives can be accommodated. Rather than establish an explicit graphics file format, CGM contains the instructions and data for reconstructing graphical components to render an image using an object-oriented approach.
Although CGM is not widely supported for web pages and has been supplanted by other formats in the graphic arts, it is still prevalent in engineering, aviation, and other technical applications.
The initial CGM implementation was effectively a streamed representation of a sequence of Graphical Kernel System (GKS) primitive operations. It has been adopted to some extent in the areas of technical illustration and professional design, but has largely been superseded by formats such as SVG and DXF.
The World Wide Web Consortium has developed WebCGM, a profile of CGM intended for the use of CGM on the Web.
History
1986 – ANSI X3 122-1986 (ANSI X3 committee)
1987 – ISO 8632-1987 (ISO)
1991 – ANSI/ISO 8632-1987 (ANSI and ISO)
1992 – ISO 8632:1992, a.k.a. CGM:1992 (ISO)
1999 – ISO/IEC 8632:1999, 2nd Edition (ISO/IEC JTC1/SC24)
December 17, 2001 – WebCGM (W3C)
January 30, 2007 – WebCGM 2.0 (W3C)
March 1, 2010 – WebCGM 2.1 (W3C Recommendation)
Further reading
Arnold, D.B. and P.R. Bono, CGM and CGI: Metafile and Interface Standards for Computer Graphics, Springer-Verlag, New York, NY, 1988.
Henderson, L.R., and Gebhardt, CGM: SGML for Graphics, The Gilbane Report, Fall 1994.
Henderson, L.R., and A.M. Mumford, The CGM Handbook, Academic Press, San Diego, CA, 1993.
Bono, P.R., J.L. Encarnacao, L.M. Encarnacao, and W.R. Herzner, PC Graphics With GKS, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1990.
Vaughan Tay (2001) Making It Work, 5th ed
See also
Comparison of graphics file formats
References
External links
General
Overview of CGM Standards
CGM File Format Summary
WebCGM Resource Page
Technology Reports: WebCGM
Use of CGM as a Scalable Graphics Format
CGM Open - Reference documents & related materials for CGM and WebCGM
Standards
WebCGM 1.0, W3C Recommendation, 17 December 2001
WebCGM 2.0, W3C Recommendation, 30 January 2007
WebCGM 2.1, W3C Recommendation, 1 March 2010
ISO/IEC 8632-1:1999 Part 1: Functional specification
ISO/IEC 8632-1:1999 Part 1: Technical Corrigendum 1
ISO/IEC 8632-1:1999 Part 1: Technical |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List%20of%20SOE%20F%20Section%20networks%20and%20agents | This article lists the clandestine networks, also known as circuits, (réseaux in French) established in France by F Section of the British Special Operations Executive during World War II. The SOE agents assigned to each network are also listed. SOE agents, with a few exceptions, were trained in the United Kingdom before being infiltrated into France. Some agents served in more than one network and are listed more than once.
The clandestine networks and agents were "dedicated to encourage and aid resistance" to the German occupation of the country. Activities included gathering intelligence, organizing and supplying indigenous resistance groups, and sabotaging transportation, communications, and industrial facilities. A typical SOE network had three agents: (1) Circuit organiser: leader, planner, and recruiter of new members. 2) Wireless Radio Operator: send and receive wireless messages to and from SOE headquarters in London, encode and decode messages, maintain wireless sets. (3) Courier or messenger: travel between organiser, wireless operator, and resistance groups to deliver and receive messages, and, on occasion, deliver explosives and other equipment. Large networks sometimes had more than one courier and wireless operator.
Each network was given a name and each agent belonging to the network had one or more code names and aliases which he used in France. For example, SOE organiser George Reginald Starr was the organiser of the Wheelwright network and known as "Hilaire" to French contacts in the Resistance and to other SOE personnel.
Nearly 50 SOE networks were operating in France when the country was liberated from German control in 1944. Forty-three circuits were no longer existent at that time of which 31 had been destroyed by the Germans.
Approximately 470 SOE agents served in France during World War II. The Valençay SOE Memorial in Valençay, France lists the names of 91 men and 13 women who were killed, executed, or died in prison while serving as SOE agents.
Networks, operations, and personnel
Asymptote
Operation Asymptote was mounted in February 1944, while the Operational Instructions were quite clear, the disguised objective was to rescue two agents Émile Bollaert and Pierre Brossolette who had been captured on 2 February 1944 while trying to leave Brittany by boat. F. F. E. Yeo-Thomas (alias Shelley, alias Asymptote alias Cheval) and Maurice Lostrie (alias Trieur) were dropped on the night of 24 February 1944 by a RAF Halifax of 161 Squadron on DZ (Drop-zone) Sarrall, 16 km NE of Montluçon, Allier. Yeo-Thomas was captured by the Gestapo on 21 March 1944. Brossolette died while trying to escape the next day.
Autogiro
The first SOE network, organised in Paris by Pierre de Vomécourt in May 1941, but destroyed in May 1942 after being betrayed by Mathilde Carre.
Georges Bégué – wireless operator; the first SOE agent in France, arriving by parachute the night of 5/6 May 1941.
Noel Fernand Rauol Burdeyron (real name, Norman F. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Am486 | The Am486 is a 80486-class family of computer processors that was produced by AMD in the 1990s. Intel beat AMD to market by nearly four years, but AMD priced its 40 MHz 486 at or below Intel's price for a 33 MHz chip, offering about 20% better performance for the same price.
While competing 486 chips, such as those from Cyrix, benchmarked lower than the equivalent Intel chip, AMD's 486 matched Intel's performance on a clock-for-clock basis.
While the Am386 was primarily used by small computer manufacturers, the Am486DX, DX2, and SX2 chips gained acceptance among larger computer manufacturers, especially Acer and Compaq, in the 1994 time frame.
AMD's higher clocked 486 chips provided superior performance to many of the early Pentium chips, especially the 60 and 66 MHz launch products. While equivalent Intel 80486DX4 chips were priced high and required a minor socket modification, AMD priced low. Intel's DX4 chips initially had twice the cache of the AMD chips, giving them a slight performance edge, but AMD's DX4-100 usually cost less than Intel's DX2-66.
The enhanced Am486 series supported new features like extended power-saving modes and an 8 KiB Write-Back L1-Cache, later versions even got an upgrade to 16 KiB Write-Back L1-Cache.
The 133 MHz AMD Am5x86 was a higher clocked enhanced Am486.
One derivative of the Am486 family is the core used in the AMD Élan SC4xx family of microcontrollers marketed by AMD.
Features
Am486 models
WT = Write-Through cache strategy, WB = Write-Back cache strategy
References
External links
AMD: Enhanced Am486 Microprocessors
AMD: 30 Years of Pursuing the Leader. Part 2
cpu-collection.de AMD Am486 processor images and descriptions
Am486
X86 microarchitectures |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halifax%20f.p. | Halifax f.p. is an Australian television crime series produced by Nine Network from 1994 to 2002. The series stars Rebecca Gibney as Doctor Jane Halifax, a forensic psychiatrist investigating cases involving the mental state of suspects or victims. The series is set in Melbourne.
The producers of the film were Beyond Simpson Le Mesurier; Australian Film Finance Corporation and aired on the Nine Network Australia Pty Ltd. The budget for each episode was an average of AU$1.3 million. Funding came in part from the Australian Film Finance Corporation and Film Victoria.
The show was a set of 21 stand-alone television films, spread over six series. Each was between 90 and 120 minutes long, with a new "episode" airing roughly every few months during its eight-year run. The series aired in more than 60 countries. In August–October 2020, a short weekly revival of the series, called Halifax: Retribution, was also aired.
Cast
Main
Rebecca Gibney as Dr Jane Halifax, a forensic psychiatrist
Recurring
Robyn Nevin as Angela Halifax, Jane's mother
Steve Bisley as Jonah Cole, a rogue cop who becomes Jane's lover
David Roberts as Lead Detective, who is Angela Halifax’ boyfriend
Guests
Andrew McFarlane as Owen Toser, Jane's psychiatric colleague, who is also her ex-boyfriend
Sophie Lee as Corri Neale, psychiatric patient, who becomes a murder victim
Aaron Blabey as Tony Lobianco
Adrian Wright as Grammar school teacher
Nicholas Eadie as Ian Moffat, a Grammar school teacher / Ian Laser, a QC’s secret lover
Troy Beckwith as Grammar school student
John Walton as Kaz (Police Sergeant)
Peter Adams as Premier of Victoria
Steven Vidler as Steve Kingsley
Deborra-Lee Furness as Brigit Grant
Frances O'Connor as Frances, a mentally unstable murder suspect
Paul Sonkkila as Jane's colleague
Ben Mendelsohn as Peter Donaldson, a Conservatory of Music student, who is also Jane's former psychiatric patient and a murder suspect
Amanda Douge as Lauren Hayward, a Conservatory of Music student, who is Peter Donaldson's girlfriend
Mark Hennessy as Kovacs, a murderer, and former psychiatric patient
Robert Hughes as Presenter of ”City Tonight”
Radha Mitchell as Sarah, a victim's sister
Colin Friels as Police Officer Kevin Tait (‘The Toecutters’)
Tim Robertson as Police Officer (‘The Toecutters’)
Peter Hardy as Police Officer Tony Roman (‘The Toecutters’)
Jason Clarke
Belinda McClory as Paula Kingsley
Jacqueline McKenzie as Sharon Sinclair, murder suspect
Marshall Napier as Dr Dale Counahan, Sharon Sinclair's psychologist
Richard Roxburgh as Sergeant Paul Santos, who is also Jane's former psychiatric patient
Angela Punch McGregor as Personal Assistant
Brett Climo as Danny. a photographer, who is also Jane's old uni friend
Steve Jacobs as Convicted rapist
Gary Day as Sergeant Mick Snow
Annie Jones as Alison Hart, a former rape victim
Peter Hosking as Homicide police officer
Max Phipps as Detective Inspector Derrida, from the drug squad
B |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcars%20in%20New%20Orleans | Streetcars in New Orleans have been an integral part of the city's public transportation network since the first half of the 19th century. The longest of New Orleans' streetcar lines, the St. Charles Avenue line, is the oldest continuously operating street railway system in the world. Today, the streetcars are operated by the New Orleans Regional Transit Authority (RTA).
There are currently five operating streetcar lines in New Orleans: The St. Charles Avenue Line, the Riverfront Line, the Canal Street Line (which has two branches), and the Loyola Avenue Line and Rampart/St. Claude Line (which are operated as one through-routed line). The St. Charles Avenue Line is the only line that has operated continuously throughout New Orleans' streetcar history (though service was interrupted after Hurricane Katrina in August 2005 and resumed only in part in December 2006, as noted below). All other lines were replaced by bus service in the period from the late 1940s to the early 1960s. Preservationists were unable to save the streetcars on Canal Street, but were able to convince the city government to protect the St. Charles Avenue Line by granting it historic landmark status. In the later 20th century, trends began to favor rail transit again. A short Riverfront Line started service in 1988, and service returned to Canal Street in 2004, 40 years after it had been shut down.
The wide destruction wrought on the city by Hurricane Katrina and subsequent floods from the levee breaches in August 2005 knocked all the streetcar lines out of operation and damaged many of the streetcars. Service on a portion of the Canal Street line was restored in December of that year, with the remainder of the line and the Riverfront line returning to service in early 2006. On December 23, 2007, the Regional Transit Authority (RTA) extended service on the St. Charles line from Napoleon Avenue to the end of historic St. Charles Avenue (the "Riverbend"). On June 22, 2008 service was restored to the end of the line at South Carrollton Avenue & South Claiborne Avenue.
History
The definitive history of New Orleans streetcars is found in Louis Hennick and Harper Charlton, The Streetcars of New Orleans, which is the source for this summary of New Orleans streetcar history.
Beginnings
On April 23, 1831, the Pontchartrain Railroad Company (PRR) established the first rail service in New Orleans along a five-mile line running north on Elysian Fields Avenue from the Mississippi River toward Lake Pontchartrain. These first trains, however, were pulled by horses because the engines had not yet arrived from England. The PRR received its first working steam engine the next year, and first put it into service on September 27, 1832. Service continued in a mixed fashion, running sometimes with locomotives, and at other times with horse traction. A round trip fare at that time was seventy-five cents.
Those first operations included inter-city and suburban railroad lines, and horse-drawn (or m |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The%20Matrix%20%28franchise%29 | The Matrix is an American cyberpunk media franchise consisting of four feature films, beginning with The Matrix (1999) and continuing with three sequels, The Matrix Reloaded, The Matrix Revolutions (both 2003), and The Matrix Resurrections (2021). The first three films were written and directed by the Wachowskis and produced by Joel Silver. The screenplay for the fourth film was written by David Mitchell and Aleksandar Hemon, was directed by Lana Wachowski, and was produced by Grant Hill, James McTeigue, and Lana Wachowski. The franchise is owned by Warner Bros., which distributed the films along with Village Roadshow Pictures. The latter, along with Silver Pictures, are the two production companies that worked on the first three films.
The series features a cyberpunk story of the technological fall of humanity, in which the creation of artificial intelligence led the way to a race of powerful and self-aware machines that imprisoned humans in a virtual reality system—the Matrix—to be farmed as a power source. Occasionally, some of the prisoners manage to break free from the system and, considered a threat, become pursued by the artificial intelligence both inside and outside of it. The films focus on the plight of Neo (Keanu Reeves), Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss), and Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) trying to free humanity from the system while pursued by its guardians, such as Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving, Abdul-Mateen II, and Jonathan Groff). The story incorporates references to numerous norms particularly philosophical, religious, and spiritual ideas, among others the dilemma of choice vs. control, the brain in a vat thought experiment, messianism, and the concepts of inter-dependency and love. Influences include the principles of mythology, anime, and Hong Kong action films (particularly "heroic bloodshed" and martial arts movies). The film series is notable for its use of heavily choreographed action sequences and "bullet time" slow motion effects, which revolutionized action films to come.
The characters and setting of the films are further explored in other media set in the same fictional universe, including animation, comics, and video games. The comic "Bits and Pieces of Information" and The Animatrix short film "The Second Renaissance" act as prequels to the films, explaining how the franchise's setting came to be. The video game Enter the Matrix connects the story of the Animatrix short "Final Flight of the Osiris" with the events of Reloaded, while the online video game The Matrix Online was a direct sequel to Revolutions. These were typically written, commissioned, or approved by the Wachowskis.
The first film was an important critical and commercial success, winning four Academy Awards, introducing popular culture symbols such as the red pill and blue pill, and influencing action filmmaking. For those reasons, it has been added to the National Film Registry for preservation. Its first sequel was also a commercia |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halt%20and%20Catch%20Fire%20%28computing%29 | In computer engineering, Halt and Catch Fire, known by the assembly mnemonic HCF, is an idiom referring to a computer machine code instruction that causes the computer's central processing unit (CPU) to cease meaningful operation, typically requiring a restart of the computer. It originally referred to a fictitious instruction in IBM System/360 computers (introduced in 1964), making a joke about its numerous non-obvious instruction mnemonics.
With the advent of the MC6800 (introduced in 1974), a design flaw was discovered by programmers. Due to incomplete opcode decoding, two illegal opcodes, 0x9D and 0xDD, will cause the program counter on the processor to increment endlessly, which locks the processor until reset. Those codes have been unofficially named HCF. During the design process of the MC6802, engineers originally planned to remove this instruction, but kept it as-is for testing purposes. As a result, HCF was officially recognized as a real instruction. Later, HCF became a humorous catch-all term for instructions that may freeze a processor, including intentional instructions for testing purposes, and unintentional illegal instructions. Some are considered hardware defects, and if the system is shared, a malicious user can execute it to launch a denial-of-service attack.
In the case of real instructions, the implication of this expression is that, whereas in most cases in which a CPU executes an unintended instruction (a bug in the code) the computer may still be able to recover, in the case of an HCF instruction there is, by definition, no way for the system to recover without a restart.
The expression catch fire is a facetious exaggeration of the speed with which the CPU chip would be switching some bus circuits, causing them to overheat and burn.
Origins
The Z1 (1938) and Z3 (1941) computers built by Konrad Zuse contained illegal sequences of instructions which damaged the hardware if executed by accident.
Apocryphal stories connect this term with an illegal opcode in IBM System/360. A processor, upon encountering the instruction, would start switching bus lines very fast, potentially leading to overheating.
In a computer's assembly language, mnemonics are used that are directly equivalent to machine code instructions. The mnemonics are frequently three letters long, such as ADD, CMP (to compare two numbers), and JMP (jump to a different location in the program). The HCF instruction was originally a fictitious assembly language instruction, said to be under development at IBM for use in their System/360 computers, along with many other amusing three-letter acronyms like XPR (Execute Programmer) and CAI (Corrupt Accounting Information), and similar to other joke mnemonics such as "SDI" for "Self Destruct Immediately" and "CRN" for "Convert to Roman Numerals". A list of such mnemonics, including HCF, shows up as "Overextended Mnemonics" in the April 1980 Creative Computing flip-side parody issue.
In modern CPUs
CPU designers som |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus%20contention | Bus contention is an undesirable state in computer design where more than one device on a bus attempts to place values on it at the same time.
Bus contention is the kind of telecommunication contention that occurs when all communicating devices communicate directly with each other through a single shared channel, and contrasted with "network contention" that occurs when communicating devices communicate indirectly with each other, through point-to-point connections through routers or bridges.
Bus contention can lead to erroneous operation, excess power consumption, and, in unusual cases, permanent damage to the hardware—such as burning out a MOSFET.
Description
Most bus architectures requires devices sharing a bus to follow an arbitration protocol carefully designed to make the likelihood of contention negligible. However, when devices on the bus have logic errors, manufacturing defects, or are driven beyond their design speeds, arbitration may break down and contention may result. Contention may also arise on systems which have a programmable memory mapping when illegal values are written to the registers controlling the mapping.
Most small-scale computer systems are carefully designed to avoid bus contention on the system bus. They use a single device, called bus arbiter, that controls which device is allowed to drive the bus at each instant, so bus contention never happens in normal operation. The standard solution to bus contention between memory devices, such as EEPROM and SRAM, is the three-state bus with a bus arbiter.
Some networks, such as Token Ring, are also designed to avoid bus contention, so bus contention never happens in normal operation.
Most networks are designed with hardware robust enough to tolerate occasional bus contention on the network. CAN bus, ALOHAnet, Ethernet, etc., all experience occasional bus contention in normal operation, but use some protocol (such as Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance, carrier-sense multiple access with collision detection, or automatic repeat request) to minimize the times that contention occurs, and to re-send data that was corrupted in a packet collision.
See also
Network on a chip
Parallel communication
Serial communication
References
Computer buses |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midgard%20%28software%29 | Midgard is an open source persistent storage framework. It provides an object-oriented and replicated environment for building data-intensive applications.
Midgard also ships with MidCOM content management system (CMS) built on the Midgard framework. MidCOM's features include web-based authoring WYSIWYG interfaces and a component interface for installing additional web functionalities, including wikis and blogs.
Midgard is built on the GNOME stack of libraries like GLib and libgda, and has language bindings for C, Python, Objective-C and PHP. Communications between applications written in the different languages happen over D-Bus. The CMS functionalities run on the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) platform. Midgard can also be used with PHPCR, the PHP implementation of the Java Content Repository standard. In early 2000s (decade) there was also a pure-PHP implementation of the Midgard API called Midgard Lite that has since been re-implemented as the midgard-portable project.
The project follows the synchronized, 6 month release cycle that is implemented by several major open source projects like Ubuntu and GNOME. Because of this, the version numbering reflects the year and month of a release. The version 8.09 Ragnaroek has been designated as a "Long Term Support" release.
Especially the templating and page composition features of Midgard have received praise, earning honorary mentions in several CMS Watch surveys. It also got score of 42 out of 45 in the Celebrity CMS Deathmatch of 2009
Etymology
The name Midgard comes from Nordic mythology, meaning Middle earth, the world of humans. Most of the Midgard developer community comes from the Baltic region, and the project has been referred by CMS Watch as the Hanseatic League of Content Management.
History
Midgard Project was started in early 1998 by Jukka Zitting and Henri Bergius for a Finnish historical reenactment organization —Harmaasudet— as a system for them to publish their material online.
Since the organization didn't have resources to maintain a large development project by itself, the open source model was chosen for creating a community of contributors to the system. The version 1.0 of Midgard was released to the public on May 8, 1999. It attracted a steady stream of users, and the development project flourished despite quite primitive early user interfaces.
Commercial services for the platform started to appear in early 2000. One of the first adopters was Envida, a Dutch company that realized the potential of Midgard for Web hosting purposes. First proprietary application for the platform was Hong Kong Linux Center (HKLC) Nadmin Studio content management system.
In early 2000s (decade), Midgard developers participated actively in OSCOM, the collaborative organization for open source content management systems. This included development of shared content editing clients like Twingle and tutorials in various conferences. Midgard also featured in F.U.D., the Wyona Pictures do |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%20%28programming%20language%29 | R is a programming language for statistical computing and graphics supported by the R Core Team and the R Foundation for Statistical Computing. Created by statisticians Ross Ihaka and Robert Gentleman, R is used among data miners, bioinformaticians and statisticians for data analysis and developing statistical software. The core R language is augmented by a large number of extension packages containing reusable code and documentation.
According to user surveys and studies of scholarly literature databases, R is one of the most commonly used programming languages in data mining. R ranks 16th in the TIOBE index, a measure of programming language popularity, in which the language peaked in 8th place in August 2020.
The official R software environment is an open-source free software environment released as part of the GNU Project and available under the GNU General Public License. It is written primarily in C, Fortran, and R itself (partially self-hosting). Precompiled executables are provided for various operating systems. R has a command line interface. Multiple third-party graphical user interfaces are also available, such as RStudio, an integrated development environment, and Jupyter, a notebook interface.
History
R was started by professors Ross Ihaka and Robert Gentleman as a programming language to teach introductory statistics at the University of Auckland. The language took heavy inspiration from the S programming language with most S programs able to run unaltered in R as well as from Scheme's lexical scoping allowing for local variables. The name of the language comes from being an S language successor and the shared first letter of the authors, Ross and Robert. Ihaka and Gentleman first shared binaries of R on the data archive StatLib and the s-news mailing list in August 1993. In June 1995, statistician Martin Mächler convinced Ihaka and Gentleman to make R free and open-source under the GNU General Public License. Mailing lists for the R project began on 1 April 1997 preceding the release of version 0.50. R officially became a GNU project on 5 December 1997 when version 0.60 released. The first official 1.0 version was released on 29 February 2000.
The Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN) was founded in 1997 by Kurt Hornik and Fritz Leisch to host R's source code, executable files, documentation, and user-created packages. Its name and scope mimics the Comprehensive TeX Archive Network and the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network. CRAN originally had three mirrors and 12 contributed packages. As of December 2022, it has 103 mirrors and 18,976 contributed packages.
The R Core Team was formed in 1997 to further develop the language. , it consists of Chambers, Gentleman, Ihaka, and Mächler, plus statisticians Douglas Bates, Peter Dalgaard, Kurt Hornik, Michael Lawrence, Friedrich Leisch, Uwe Ligges, Thomas Lumley, Sebastian Meyer, Paul Murrell, Martyn Plummer, Brian Ripley, Deepayan Sarkar, Duncan Temple Lang, Luke Tierney, and Sim |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flex%20machine | The Flex Computer System was developed by Michael Foster and Ian Currie of Royal Signals and Radar Establishment (RSRE) in Malvern, England, during the late 1970s and 1980s. It used a tagged storage scheme to implement a capability architecture, and was designed for the safe and efficient implementation of strongly typed procedures.
The hardware was custom and microprogrammable, with an operating system, (modular) compiler, editor, garbage collector and filing system all written in ALGOL 68RS.
There were (at least) two incarnations of Flex, implemented using hardware with writable microcode. The first was supplied by Logica to an RSRE design, and the second used an ICL PERQ. The microcode alone was responsible for storage allocation, deallocation and garbage collection. This immediately precluded a whole class of errors arising from the misuse (deliberate or accidental) of pointers.
A notable feature of Flex was the tagged, write-once filestore. This allowed arbitrary code and data structures to be written and retrieved transparently, without recourse to external encodings. Data could thus be passed safely from program to program.
In a similar way, remote capabilities allowed data and procedures on other machines to be accessed over a network connection, again without the application program being involved in external encodings of data, parameters or result values.
The whole scheme allowed abstract data types to be safely implemented, as data items and the procedures permitted to access them could be bound together, and the resulting capability passed freely around. The capability would grant access to the procedures, but could not be used in any way to obtain access to the data.
Another notable feature of Flex was the notion of shaky pointers, more recently often called weak references, which points to blocks of memory that could be freed at the next garbage collection. This is used for example for cached disc blocks or a list of spare procedure work-spaces.
COMFLEX, a packet switching network capable of transmitting data at magnetic-disc speed, was developed alongside Flex. It made feasible the use of remote file-stores, remote capabilities, and remote procedure calls.
See also
Royal Radar Establishment Automatic Computer
Ten15
PS-algol
References
Further reading
Martin C. Atkins: An Introduction to Ten15 - A personal retrospective. (includes a section about RSRE's Flex)
Computers designed in the United Kingdom
Capability systems
Malvern, Worcestershire
Mainframe computers
Science and technology in Worcestershire |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flex | Flex or FLEX may refer to:
Computing
Flex (language), developed by Alan Kay
FLEX (operating system), a single-tasking operating system for the Motorola 6800
FlexOS, an operating system developed by Digital Research
FLEX (protocol), a communication protocol for pagers
Flex, a family of automatic test equipment produced by Teradyne
FLEx, a piece of software used in language documentation
Apache Flex, formerly Adobe Flex, technologies for developing rich internet applications
Flex (lexical analyser generator), a lexical analyser generator and a free software alternative to lex
Flex machine, a computer developed by RSRE in the 1980s
CSS Flexible Box Layout, commonly known as Flexbox, a CSS 3 web layout model
Science and technology
Bending, also known as flexure, as used in mechanics
Flexion, in anatomy, a position made possible by the joint angle decreasing
Femtosecond Lenticule EXtraction, a form of refractive eye surgery
Flex circuit, a flexible printed circuit used in electronic assemblies
FLEX mission, a future satellite launch mission by the European Space Agency
Flex temp, a reduced takeoff thrust setting which trades excess performance for reduced engine wear
Flex-fuel, a flexible-fuel vehicle
Inflection point, of a curve in geometry
Power cord, or flex, a flexible electrical cable
Music
Flex (album), Lene Lovich's 1979 second album
Flex (EP) a 2003 EP by Pitch Black
"Flex" (Dizzee Rascal song), 2007
"Flex" (Mad Cobra song), 1992
"Flex" (Polo G song), 2020
"Flex", a 2021 song by TFN
"Flex (Ooh, Ooh, Ooh)", a 2015 song by Rich Homie Quan
Flex, a break in the recitation tone before the mediation in Gregorian chant
A "flex" in a "flex bar", a technique used in battle rap.
Organizations
Flex (club), a nightclub in Vienna, Austria
Flex (company) (NASDAQ symbol: FLEX), a contract electronics maker based in Singapore
Flex FM, a London-based radio station
Flex-Elektrowerkzeuge, a German producer of power tools
Flex Linhas Aéreas, a Brazilian regional airline
People
Flex (singer), Félix Danilo Gómez (born 1974), Panamanian singer
Flex Alexander, Mark Alexander Knox (b. 1970), an American actor and comedian
Funkmaster Flex, Aston George Taylor Jr (b. 1968), an American hip hop DJ
Walter Flex (1887–1917), German author
Other uses
Amazon Flex, a platform for gig workers performing deliveries for Amazon
Flex (comics), a fictional superhero
Flex (film), a commercial/short film by English director Chris Cunningham
Flex (magazine), an American bodybuilding magazine
Flex (TV program), a 2021 Philippine variety show
Fleet Landing Exercises, a series of landing exercises conducted by the Fleet Marine Force, a combined-United States Navy/Marine landing force
Flex Your Rights, a civil-liberties non-profit based in Washington DC, US
Ford Flex, a crossover SUV produced from 2009-2019
Future Leaders Exchange, an American student exchange program for high school students from the former Soviet Union
See also
Bend (d |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architecture%20Neutral%20Distribution%20Format | The Architecture Neutral Distribution Format (ANDF) in computing is a technology allowing common "shrink wrapped" binary application programs to be distributed for use on conformant Unix systems, translated to run on different underlying hardware platforms. ANDF was defined by the Open Software Foundation and was expected to be a "truly revolutionary technology that will significantly advance the cause of portability and open systems", but it was never widely adopted.
As with other OSF offerings, ANDF was specified through an open selection process. OSF issued a Request for Technology for architecture-neutral software distribution technologies in April, 1989. Fifteen proposals were received, based on a variety of technical approaches, including obscured source code, compiler intermediate languages, and annotated executable code.
The technology of ANDF, chosen after an evaluation of competing approaches and implementations, was Ten15 Distribution Format, later renamed TenDRA Distribution Format, developed by the UK Defence Research Agency.
Adoption
ANDF was intended to benefit both software developers and users. Software developers could release a single binary for all platforms, and software users would have freedom to procure multiple vendors' hardware competitively. Programming language designers and implementors were also interested because standard installers would mean that only a single language front end would need to be developed.
OSF released several development 'snapshots' of ANDF, but it was never released commercially by OSF or any of its members. Various reasons have been proposed for this: for example, that having multiple installation systems would complicate software support.
After OSF stopped working on ANDF, development continued at other organizations.
See also
TenDRA Compiler
UNCOL
Java bytecode
Common Language Runtime
LLVM
Compilation
Software portability
WebAssembly
SafeTSA
Oberon slim binaries
References
Bibliography
Stavros Macrakis, "The Structure of ANDF: Principles and Examples", Open Software Foundation, RI-ANDF-RP1-1, January, 1992.
Stavros Macrakis, "Protecting Source Code with ANDF", Open Software Foundation, November, 1992.
Open Systems Foundation. "OSF Architecture-Neutral Distribution Format Rationale", June 1991.
Open Systems Foundation. "A Brief Introduction to ANDF", January 1993. Available at Google Groups
Abstract machines
Cross-compilers
Executable file formats
Computer-related introductions in 1991 |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flex%20%28lexical%20analyser%20generator%29 | Flex (fast lexical analyzer generator) is a free and open-source software alternative to lex.
It is a computer program that generates lexical analyzers (also known as "scanners" or "lexers").
It is frequently used as the lex implementation together with Berkeley Yacc parser generator on BSD-derived operating systems (as both lex and yacc are part of POSIX), or together with GNU bison (a version of yacc) in *BSD ports and in Linux distributions. Unlike Bison, flex is not part of the GNU Project and is not released under the GNU General Public License, although a manual for Flex was produced and published by the Free Software Foundation.
History
Flex was written in C around 1987 by Vern Paxson, with the help of many ideas and much inspiration from Van Jacobson. Original version by Jef Poskanzer. The fast table representation is a partial implementation of a design done by Van Jacobson. The implementation was done by Kevin Gong and Vern Paxson.
Example lexical analyzer
This is an example of a Flex scanner for the instructional programming language PL/0.
The tokens recognized are: '+', '-', '*', '/', '=', '(', ')', ',', ';', '.', ':=', '<', '<=', '<>', '>', '>=';
numbers: 0-9 {0-9}; identifiers: a-zA-Z {a-zA-Z0-9} and keywords: begin, call, const, do, end, if, odd, procedure, then, var, while.
%{
#include "y.tab.h"
%}
digit [0-9]
letter [a-zA-Z]
%%
"+" { return PLUS; }
"-" { return MINUS; }
"*" { return TIMES; }
"/" { return SLASH; }
"(" { return LPAREN; }
")" { return RPAREN; }
";" { return SEMICOLON; }
"," { return COMMA; }
"." { return PERIOD; }
":=" { return BECOMES; }
"=" { return EQL; }
"<>" { return NEQ; }
"<" { return LSS; }
">" { return GTR; }
"<=" { return LEQ; }
">=" { return GEQ; }
"begin" { return BEGINSYM; }
"call" { return CALLSYM; }
"const" { return CONSTSYM; }
"do" { return DOSYM; }
"end" { return ENDSYM; }
"if" { return IFSYM; }
"odd" { return ODDSYM; }
"procedure" { return PROCSYM; }
"then" { return THENSYM; }
"var" { return VARSYM; }
"while" { return WHILESYM; }
{letter}({letter}|{digit})* {
yylval.id = strdup(yytext);
return IDENT; }
{digit}+ { yylval.num = atoi(yytext);
return NUMBER; }
[ \t\n\r] /* skip whitespace */
. { printf("Unknown character [%c]\n",yytext[0]);
return UNKNOWN; }
%%
int yywrap(void){return 1;}
Internals
Th |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shim%20%28computing%29 | In computer programming, a shim is a library that transparently intercepts API calls and changes the arguments passed, handles the operation itself or redirects the operation elsewhere. Shims can be used to support an old API in a newer environment, or a new API in an older environment. Shims can also be used for running programs on different software platforms than they were developed for.
Shims for older APIs typically come about when the behavior of an API changes, thereby causing compatibility issues for older applications which still rely on the older functionality; in such cases, the older API can still be supported by a thin compatibility layer on top of the newer code. Shims for newer APIs are defined as: "a library that brings a new API to an older environment, using only the means of that environment."
Examples
Web polyfills implement newer web standards using older standards and JavaScript, if the newer standard is not available in a given web browser.
Support of AppleTalk on Macintosh computers, during the brief period in which Apple Computer supported the Open Transport networking system. Thousands of Mac programs were based on the AppleTalk protocol; to support these programs, AppleTalk was re-implemented as an OpenTransport "stack", and then re-implemented as an API shim on top of this new library.
The Microsoft Windows Application Compatibility Toolkit (ACT) uses the term to mean backward compatible libraries. Shims simulate the behavior of older versions of Windows for legacy applications that rely on incorrect or deprecated functionality, or correct the way in which poorly written applications call unchanged APIs, for example to fix least-privileged user account (LUA) bugs.
bind.so is a shim library for Linux that allows any application, regardless of permissions, to bind to a listening socket or specify outgoing IP address. It uses the LD_PRELOAD mechanism, which allows shims and other libraries to be loaded into any program.
In the type tunnel pattern, a generic interface layer uses a family of shims to translate a heterogeneous set of types to a single primitive type used by an underlying API.
See also
Adapter pattern
Application virtualization
Driver wrapper
Glide wrapper
Glue code
Stub (computer science)
Thunk (compatibility mapping)
Windows on Windows (WoW)
Wrapper library
References
External links
Microsoft Dev-Center - Windows 8 Client and Server 2012 application Compatibility
Microsoft TechNet - Understanding Shims
Application programming interfaces
Compatibility layers |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open%20Transport | Open Transport was the name given by Apple Inc. to its implementation of the Unix-originated System V STREAMS networking stack. Based on code licensed from Mentat's Portable Streams product, Open Transport was built to provide the classic Mac OS with a modern TCP/IP implementation, replacing MacTCP. Apple also added its own implementation of AppleTalk to the stack to support legacy networks.
History
STREAMS
Prior to the release of Open Transport, the classic Mac OS used a variety of stand-alone INITs to provide networking functionality. The only one that was widely used throughout the OS was the AppleTalk system. Among the other protocol stacks supported, MacTCP was becoming increasingly important as the Internet boom started to gain momentum. MacTCP emulated the Berkeley sockets system, widely used among Unix-like operating systems.
MacTCP and the previous generation AppleTalk library were slow on PowerPC-based Macintoshes because they were written for previous generation 680x0-based Macintoshes and therefore ran under emulation on PowerPC-based machines. MacTCP was also lacking in features, however, and a major upgrade was clearly needed if Apple was to keep its hand in the Internet market.
Through the late 1980s several major efforts to re-combine the many Unix derivatives into a single system were underway, and the most significant among these was the AT&T-led System V. System V included an entirely new networking stack, STREAMS, replacing the existing Berkeley sockets system. STREAMS had a number of advantages over sockets, including the ability to support multiple networking stacks at the same time, the ability to plug in modules into the middle of existing stacks to provide simple mechanisms for filtering and similar duties, while offering a single application programming interface to the user programs. At the time it appeared STREAMS would become the de facto standard.
This change in the market led Apple to move to support STREAMS as well. It also presented two practical advantages to the company; STREAMS' multiprotocol support would allow them to support both TCP/IP and AppleTalk from a single interface, and a portable cross-platform version of STREAMS was available for purchase commercially, one that included a high-quality TCP implementation. Using STREAMS also appeared to offer a way to "one up" Microsoft, whose own TCP/IP networking system, Winsock, was based on the apparently soon-to-be-obsolete sockets.
OT
Open Transport was introduced in May 1995 with the Power Mac 9500. It was included with System 7.5.2, a release for the new PCI based Power Macs, and became available for older hardware later. MacTCP was not supported on PCI-based Macs, but older systems could switch between MacTCP and Open Transport using a Control Panel called Network Software Selector. Unlike MacTCP, Open Transport allowed users to save and switch between configuration sets.
Developer opinion on Open Transport was divided. Some felt it offered enormous |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television%20in%20the%20Netherlands | Television in the Netherlands was officially introduced in 1951. In the Netherlands, the television market is divided between a number of commercial networks, such as RTL Nederland, and a system of public broadcasters sharing three channels, NPO 1, NPO 2, and NPO 3. Imported programmes (except those for children), as well as news interviews with responses in a foreign language, are almost always shown in their original language, with subtitles.
Reception
In the Netherlands, television can be watched analog or digital (the latter with the option of HDTV or UHD). Over 2018, 89.2% of Dutch viewers received television digitally. Analogue television is only available via some cable operators and some fiber to the home providers, since the Dutch government ended analogue reception via airwaves in 2006. Dutch largest cable company Ziggo began to phase out the analogue signal in 2018. Watching digital television is possible through a variety of ways, the most common being:
Digital television over cable (in most cases through a set-top box with a smart card or through a Conditional-access module).
Ziggo is the major supplier of cable television in the Netherlands. Other companies are Caiway, DELTA, Kabelnoord and a few smaller local companies.
Satellite television
Canal Digitaal is the only satellite provider.
Digital terrestrial television
KPN Digitenne is the only terrestrial provider.
Internet television (IPTV)
KPN, Tele2 and T-Mobile are the major suppliers of IPTV.
Fiber to the home
KPN is the major operator of FTTH with its subsidiaries KPN Glasvezel, Glashart and Reggefiber. Other companies are Caiway and DELTA.
Which television channels can be received is heavily dependent on the operator and in most cases also the channel package that is paid for. However, there is a small selection of channels that every operator must carry. Since 2014, these are the following channels:
NPO 1
NPO 2
NPO 3
VRT 1 (Flanders (Belgium))
Canvas (Flanders (Belgium))
Ketnet (Flanders (Belgium))
Regional (provincial) broadcasters (when available)
Local broadcaster (when available)
Public channels
The Netherlands has three nationwide channels for publicly funded television (NPO). These channels can only make a fixed maximum amount of money from commercials. These commercials never interrupt broadcasts, and are only shown in between shows. The broadcasting organisations that use these channels are basically representative of the Dutch society. Every broadcasting company has members and the number of members gives them a status that is connected to the number of hours of broadcasting. Acceptance or refusal of entry is decided politically on the guidance of public opinion.
In 2005, there was a sharp political debate over government plans to cut funding to public broadcasters and to abolish statutory broadcaster NPS.
National
The three national television channels are:
NPO 1
NPO 2
NPO 3
NPO Zapp
NPO Zappelin
Thematic
The three digital television channels that are |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless%20Internet%20service%20provider | A wireless Internet service provider (WISP) is an Internet service provider with a network based on wireless networking. Technology may include commonplace Wi-Fi wireless mesh networking, or proprietary equipment designed to operate over open 900 MHz, 2.4 GHz, 4.9, 5, 24, and 60 GHz bands or licensed frequencies in the UHF band (including the MMDS frequency band), LMDS, and other bands from 6 GHz to 80 GHz.
In the US, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) released Report and Order, FCC 05-56 in 2005 that revised the FCC’s rules to open the 3650 MHz band for terrestrial wireless broadband operations. On November 14, 2007 the Commission released Public Notice (DA 07-4605) in which the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau announced the start date for licensing and registration process for the 3650-3700 MHz band.
As of July 2015, there are over 2,000 fixed wireless broadband providers operating in the US, servicing nearly 4 million customers.
History
Initially, WISPs were only found in rural areas not covered by cable television or DSL. The first WISP in the world was LARIAT, a non-profit rural telecommunications cooperative founded in 1992 in Laramie, Wyoming by electrical engineer and InfoWorld columnist Brett Glass. LARIAT originally used WaveLAN equipment, manufactured by the NCR Corporation, which operated on the 900 MHz unlicensed radio band. LARIAT was taken private in 2003 and continues to exist as a for-profit wireless ISP.
Another early WISP was a company called Internet Office Parks in Johannesburg, South Africa that was founded by Roy Pater, Brett Airey and Attila Barath in January 1996 when they realized the South African Telco, Telkom could not keep up with the demand for dedicated Internet links for business use. Using what was one of the first wireless LAN products available for wireless barcode scanning in stores, called Aironet (now owned by Cisco), they worked out if they ran a dedicated Telco link into the highest building in a business area or CBD they could wirelessly "cable" up all the other buildings back to this main point and would only require one link from the Telco to connect up hundreds of businesses at the same time. In turn each "satellite" building was wired up with Ethernet so each business connected into the Ethernet LAN could instantly get Internet access. Due to the immaturity of wireless technology, security issues and being forced constantly by Telkom SA (Then the government Telco in South Africa) to cease its service, the company closed its doors in Jan 1999.
There were 879 Wi-Fi based WISPs in the Czech Republic as of May 2008, making it the country with most Wi-Fi access points in the whole EU.; which was a consequence of the then defacto monopoly of the former telecom operator on fixed data networks. The providing of wireless Internet has a big potential of lowering the "digital gap" or "Internet gap" in the developing countries. Geekcorps actively help in Africa with among others wireless network |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MobileStar | MobileStar Network was a wireless Internet service provider which first gained notability in deploying Wi-Fi Internet access points in Starbucks coffee shops, American Airlines Admiral Club locations across the United States and at Hilton Hotels. Founded by Mark Goode and Greg Jackson in 1998, MobileStar was the first wireless ISP to place a WiFi hotspot in an airport, a hotel, or a coffee shop. MobileStar's core value proposition was to provide wireless broadband connectivity for the business traveler in all the places s/he was likely to "sleep, eat, move, or meet." MobileStar's founder, Mark Goode, was the first to coin the now industry standard expression "hotspot," as a reference to a location equipped with an 802.11 wireless access point.
MobileStar's financing was initially provided by Greg Jackson. A predecessor entity, PLANCOM (Public Local Area Network Communications), was disbanded and the intellectual property moved into MobileStar Network. During the Series A financing round, funds were obtained from high-net-worth investors, corporate investors including Proxim and Comdisco, and institutional investors from New York. The Series B investors, who invested $38 million, included the Mayfield Fund and Blueprint Ventures.
MobileStar's initial deployments used a frequency hopping product supplied by Proxim. As reported in the EE Times, "In a move that represents the first use of unlicensed wireless LAN technology in the industrial scientific and medical (ISM) bands to develop a nationwide Internet-access network, Proxim Inc. has teamed up with Dallas-based MobileStar Network Inc. to link its 2.4-GHz unlicensed RangeLAN2 wireless LAN to a national network of Internet access points." However, after the IEEE 802.11b standard was adopted, MobileStar converted its network infrastructure to the 802.11b industry standard. The initial infrastructure was manufactured and financed by Cisco.
MobileStar's founders faced many challenges in developing the company: evolving technology standards, fluid business models, no industry standard billing system, and questions about the competitive value of a site license agreement instead of licensed spectrum. Over time each of these issues were addressed and the agreement with Starbucks in late 2000 signaled a maturing of the marketplace. American Airlines also entered into an agreement with MobileStar as did Hilton Hotels As more laptop vendors included integrated 802.11 wireless connectivity within their laptops, users came to expect broadband connectivity in their residences, workplaces, and in public locations such as airports, coffee shops, and hotels. License-free broadband connectivity exploded with the advent of the iPhone in 2007, further validating the premise that license-free spectrum could open up a large domain of connectivity at a cost far less than licensed spectrum. The rise of voice over IP (VOIP) communications operating on the 2.4 MHz spectrum via the 802.11 standard was another |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive%20television | Interactive television is a form of media convergence, adding data services to traditional television technology. It has included on-demand delivery of content, online shopping, and viewer polls. Interactive TV is an example of how new information technology can be integrated vertically into established technologies and commercial structures.
History
Prior to the development of interactive television, interaction could only be simulated. In the 1950s, there were limited efforts to provide an illusion of interactive experience, most overtly with Winky Dink and You, which encouraged viewers to draw on a vinyl sheet they would attach to a television set. QUBE operated an interactive cable television service in Ohio from 1977 to 1984.
An interactive video-on-demand (VOD) television service was proposed in 1986 in Japan, where there were plans to develop an "Integrated Network System" service. It was intended to include various interactive services, including videotelephony, home shopping, online banking, remote work, and home entertainment services. However, it was not possible to practically implement such an interactive VOD service until the adoption of DCT and ADSL technologies made it possible in the 1990s. In early 1994, British Telecommunications (BT) began testing an interactive VOD television trial service in the United Kingdom. It used the DCT-based MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 video compression standards, along with ADSL technology.
Sega Channel, a service that allowed Sega Genesis owners to download video games on demand via cable television signals, began rolling out in the United States in 1994 and was discontinued in 1998. It has been described as a form of interactive television.
The first patent of interactive connected TV was granted in 1999 in the United States; it expired in 2015.
ATSC 3.0, also known as "NextGen TV", adds interactivity features to terrestrial television. As of April 2022, broadcasters in 60 media markets in the United States were using ATSC 3.0.
Forms of interaction
Interactive TV includes programs that directly incorporate polls, questions, comments, and other forms of audience response back into the show. For example, Australian media producer Yahoo!7's Fango mobile app allows viewers to provide material that producers can insert into live programming. During the 2012 Australian Open, viewers used the app to suggest questions for commentator Jim Courier to ask players in post-match interviews.
"One-screen" formats involve interaction on the TV screen, using the remote control. Remote-control user interfaces are known in human-computer interaction research as "lean back" interaction, and as a 10-foot user interface. Second screen interactive TV, also called Enhanced TV by ABC and ESPN, uses a personal computer or mobile application. Chat Television, developed in 1996, was the first example of a second screen interactive TV format. The system synchronized online services with television broadcasts, grouping users by |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MiNT | MiNT (MiNT is Now TOS) is a free software alternative operating system kernel for the Atari ST series. It is a multi-tasking alternative to TOS and MagiC. Together with the free system components fVDI device drivers, XaAES graphical user interface widgets, and TeraDesk file manager, MiNT provides a free TOS compatible replacement OS that can multitask.
History
Work on MiNT began in 1989, as the developer Eric Smith was trying to port the GNU library and related utilities on the Atari ST TOS. It soon became much easier to add a Unix-like layer to the TOS, than to patch all of the GNU software, and MiNT began as a TOS extension to help in porting.
MiNT was originally released by Eric Smith as "MiNT is Not TOS" (a recursive acronym in the style of "GNU's Not Unix") in May 1990. The new Kernel got traction, with people contributing a port of the MINIX file system and a port to the Atari TT.
At the same time, Atari was looking to enhance the TOS with multitasking abilities. MiNT could fulfill the job, and Atari hired Eric Smith. MiNT was adopted as an official alternative kernel with the release of the Atari Falcon, slightly altering the MiNT acronym into "MiNT is Now TOS". Atari bundled MiNT with a multitasking version of the Graphics Environment Manager (GEM) under the name MultiTOS as a floppy disk based installer.
After Atari left the computer market, MiNT development continued as FreeMiNT, and became maintained by a team of volunteers. FreeMiNT development follows a classic open-source approach, with the source code hosted on a publicly browsable FreeMiNT Git repository on GitHub and development discussed in a public mailing list., which is maintained on SourceForge, after an earlier (2014) move from AtariForge, where it was maintained for almost 20 years.
MiNT software ecosystem
FreeMiNT provides only a kernel, so several distributions support MiNT, like VanillaMint, EasyMint, STMint, and BeeKey/BeePi.
Although FreeMiNT can use the graphical user interface of the TOS (the Graphics Environment Manager GEM and the Application Environment Services or AES), it is better served with an enhanced AES which can use its multi-tasking abilities.
The default one is currently XaAES, which is developed as a FreeMiNT kernel module. The older N.AES also works, however the modern alternative is MyAES.
References
External links
MiNT is Now TOS—an interview with Mr Eric R. Smith, the creator of MiNT
Atari ST software
Disk operating systems
Free software operating systems
Atari operating systems |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EmuTOS | EmuTOS is a replacement for TOS (the operating system of the Atari ST and its successors), released as free software. It is mainly intended to be used with Atari emulators and clones, such as Hatari or FireBee. EmuTOS provides support for more modern hardware and avoids the use of the old, proprietary TOS as it is usually difficult to obtain.
Features and compatibility
Unlike the original TOS, the latest EmuTOS can work (sometimes with limited support) on all Atari hardware, even on some Amiga computers, and has support for features not available before: ColdFire CPU, IDE, FAT partitions and emulators' "Native Features" support.
Support lacks for some deprecated OS APIs, though all Line-A API functions are included. By design, EmuTOS lacks support for non-documented OS features. It has some support for Atari Falcon sound matrix, including DSP support since version 1.1, and while VDI supports 1-, 2-, 4- and 8-bit interleaved graphics modes, support for Atari Falcon (or Amiga) 16-bit resolutions is completely missing. Therefore, certain old games, demos and applications, and also some Falcon-specific software may not work.
Gallery
Releases
Release 0.9.1: support for Firebee evaluation boards, 256 colours display for VIDEL systems and XBIOS DMA sound functions. EmuCON2 shell with TAB completion, and renaming of folders was added. A full-featured desktop is now included also with the smallest 192k ROM version.
Release 0.9.2 (and its bugfix release 0.9.3): support for SD/MMC Cards, the external IDE connector and poweroff functions on the Firebee platform. CompactFlash can be used, IDE media handling, FAT partition and media change detection were enhanced. Fixes and improvements for EmuTOS-RAM booting, fVDI compatibility and general VDI speed, ACSI and XHDI support (see Atari TOS).
Release 0.9.4: compiled with -O2 by default for better performance (except for 192k version), use less RAM and add new variant for ColdFire Evaluation Boards with BaS_gcc ("BIOS"). Desktop can now display text files and move files/folders with Control key.
Release 0.9.5: fix issues with STeem emulator hard disk emulation, add Alt+arrow mouse emulation, Pexec mode 7 support, dual keyboard support, user can specify boot partition at startup, recovery from exceptions in user programs, stack initialization on Amiga, translated text object alignment improvements, support for all line-A functions completed.
Release 0.9.6: Fixes for real TT HW and full VDI support for Atari TT video and all resolutions. Enable MIDI input, add EmuCON 'mode' command and support for etv_term() function. Many fixes.
Release 0.9.7: support for extended MBR partitions, MonSTer board, Eiffel on CAN bus on ColdFire EVB and Apollo Core 68080. FreeMiNT support on non-Atari hardware. Desktop 'Install devices', 'Install icon' and 'Remove desktop icon' features. Standalone version of EmuCON2.
Release 1.1: Add support for colour icons, colour windows, Falcon DSP, interrupt-driven I/O for MFP and TT- |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal%20Society%20for%20Asian%20Affairs | The Royal Society for Asian Affairs (RSAA) is a learned society based in London (United Kingdom). Its objective is to advance public knowledge and understanding of Asia through its worldwide networks, its public events, its publications and its support to research. It is independent of governments and political bodies and does not take institutional positions on issues of policy at its meetings or in its publications.
The Society was founded in 1901 as the Central Asian Society to "promote greater knowledge and understanding of Central Asia and surrounding countries". The geographical extent of the society's interest has since expanded to include the whole of Asia. Taylor & Francis publishes the society's journal, Asian Affairs, which has been in print since 1914.
History
The society was founded in 1901 to promote greater knowledge and understanding of Central Asia and surrounding countries. But although Central Asia dominated the Society’s early interests, from the outset its members took the view that any Asian developments that could have a bearing on British interests in Central Asia fell within the Society’s remit. So when, in 1975, the Society changed its name to the Royal Society for Asian Affairs, it was acknowledging in its name what had been the practical reality since its earliest days.
Activities
Meetings were traditionally held at a range of central London locations including the Royal Astronomical Society, the Society of Antiquaries, the Medical Society of London and the Army and Navy Club. Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, all RSAA activities are online and many are open to the general public. Lectures are given by authoritative speakers roughly every two weeks on current affairs, history, culture and travel connected with all parts of Asia. Members of the Society receive the Society's journal, Asian Affairs, and have free access to the entire back catalogue. They also have access to other events and social functions.
Education
The Society's library and archive are currently housed at Hailebury where they may be consulted by prior arrangement.
The journal of the society, Asian Affairs, is published quarterly by Taylor and Francis. It has been continuously in publication since 1914. It contains original articles and book reviews.
The Society has for many years run Schools' days jointly with the School of Oriental and African Studies, London for sixth-form students. These offer interested A-level students an opportunity to hear talks on a wide range of Asian topics and to try out a variety of Asian languages.
Through travel awards to young people, the RSAA supports practical projects and research that have the potential to contribute to advances in scholarly or other public knowledge including, but not limited to, post-graduate degrees, journalism and travel writing. The Society also administers grants to support medical electives in asian countries on behalf of the JPT Family Trust.
Awards
The Royal Socie |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaj%20Tak | () is an Indian leading Hindi-language news channel owned by TV Today Network, part of the New Delhibased media conglomerate Living Media group (India Today Group).
Aaj Tak HD
On 14 December 2018, Aaj Tak launched India's first Hindi high-definition channel, Aaj Tak HD. Aaj Tak HD broadcasts news and two extra shows like Duniya Aaj Tak aired from 2019 () covering world news, Business Aaj Tak aired from 2019 () covering the financial news of India & Worldwide.
Aaj Tak HD also broadcast Movie Masala aired between 2019 and 2020 () covering the news of Bollywood.
History
Aaj Tak was first broadcast on DD Metro of Doordarshan (DD) in the year 1995. This was then broadcast as a news program of 10 to 20 minutes. Aaj Tak came into existence in December 2000 as an independent news channel and then it became the first complete Hindi news channel in the country to be broadcast twenty-four hours. One of the anchors at the time was Surendra Pratap Singh. The tagline for Aaj Tak was "यह थी ख़बर आज तक, इंतज़ार कीजिए कल तक" (). Aaj Tak was the first news channel in India to use OB vans.
By the time the channel came into existence, it had a reach of 52 lakh households and since then it has become the channel to broadcast in three crore households and its viewership in news channels is 56%. On 14 December 2018, Aaj Tak launched India's first Hindi high-definition channel, Aaj Tak HD. A channel rebranding took place in January 2021.
Staff
Executive staff
Aroon Purie, Chairperson, India Today Group
Kalli Purie, Vice-chairperson, India Today Group
Anjana Om Kashyap Executive Editor
Sweta Singh Executive Editor
Sudhir Chaudhary Consulting Editor
Vikrant Gupta Chief Sports Editor
Past staff
Past anchors have included Rohit Sardana and Surendra Pratap Singh. Uday Shankar has worked as a news director during the initial years of .
Prabhu Chawla
Abhinandan Sekhri
Punya Prasun Bajpai
Boria Majumdar
Ashutosh Rana
Controversies
The channel has been penalized for propagation of fake news and condemned for being partial and supporting the ideology of the ruling government.
In October 2020, Aaj Tak was fined ₹1 lakh and asked to broadcast apologies for fake news regarding Sushant Singh Rajput. The channel published fabricated last tweets by the actor on the channel, claiming that they were made by him a few days before his death and then deleted. Aaj Tak later removed its article with this fake news published in it.
Aaj Tak was fined ₹5 lakh by BARC (Broadcast Audience Research Council) for viewership manipulation in a TRP scam.
Between 4 and 5 April 2020, Aaj Tak had broadcast reports about Tablighi Jamaat. A complaint was filed with the News Broadcasting Standards Authority (NBSA) in which Aaj Tak was accused of intending to "develop hatred in the minds of the people against a particular community" during the COVID-19 pandemic in India.
On 16 June 2021, the NBSA directed that Aaj Tak's broadcasts be taken down from all Internet platforms |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MoOLIT | MoOLIT (Motif OPEN LOOK Intrinsics Toolkit) is a graphical user interface library and application programming interface (API) created by Unix System Laboratories in an attempt to create a bridge between the two competing look-and-feels for Unix workstations at the time: OPEN LOOK and OSF Motif.
The library provides common GUI features such as boxes, menus, lists, and buttons, but allows choosing which look and feel they wanted at runtime. MoOLIT development was a short-lived project, as the industry was moving towards Motif as the de facto GUI standard, a trend culminating in the COSE initiative in 1993.
MJM Software (a subsidiary of Melillo Consulting, Inc.) licensed the MoOLIT source in 1992 and ported it to Sun, HP, IBM, and DEC platforms. Their MoOLIT 5.1 product includes full Motif support for the traditional OLIT widgets not implemented in the USL version. This version of MoOLIT adds the Motif look and feel to legacy OPEN LOOK applications.
References
External links
Motif FAQ: (338) How can I convert my OLIT programs to the Motif look & feel?
Widget toolkits
Unix programming tools |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandstorm%20%28disambiguation%29 | A sandstorm is a storm caused by strong wind and sand or dust.
Sandstorm may refer to:
Games and computing
Sandstorm (vehicle), a robotic vehicle developed by Carnegie Mellon for the DARPA Grand Challenge race
Sandstorm (Transformers), several characters in the Transformers toyline
Sandstorm (Dungeons & Dragons), a 3.5 edition Dungeons & Dragons sourcebook
Sand Storm (video game), a 1992 action game
SANDstorm hash, a cryptographic hash function
Sandstorm: Pirate Wars, a 2016 video game
Companies
Sandstorm Enterprises, a computer security tools company in Massachusetts
The Sandstorm report, Price Waterhouse's report that led to the closure of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International in 1991
Film, television and theatre
Sandstorm (1982 film), a 1982 Algerian film
Sand Storm (2016 film), a 2016 Israeli film
Bawandar, a 2000 Indian film (English title: The Sand Storm)
The Sandstorm, a 2004 play by Sean Huze
Music
"Sandstorm" (instrumental), a 1999 trance instrumental by Darude
"Sandstorm" (Cast song), a 1995 song on Cast's debut album, All Change
"Sandstorm", a song on Rasmus Seebach's 2013 album, Ingen kan love dig i morgen
"Sandstorm", a song by Level 42 on their 1982 album The Early Tapes (also known as Strategy)
"Sandstorm", a song by La Bionda (1978) |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banyan%20VINES | Banyan VINES is a discontinued network operating system developed by Banyan Systems for computers running AT&T's UNIX System V.
VINES is an acronym for Virtual Integrated NEtwork Service. Like Novell NetWare, VINES's network services are based on the Xerox XNS stack.
James Allchin, who later worked as Group Vice President for Platforms at Microsoft until his retirement on January 30, 2007, was the chief architect of Banyan VINES.
VINES technology
VINES ran on a low-level protocol known as VIP—the VINES Internetwork Protocol—that was essentially identical to the lower layers of the Xerox Network Systems (XNS) protocols. Addresses consist of a 32-bit address and a 16-bit subnet that map to the 48-bit Ethernet address to route to machines. This means that, like other XNS-based systems, VINES can only support a two-level internet.
A set of routing algorithms, however, set VINES apart from other XNS systems at this level. The key differentiator, ARP (Address Resolution Protocol), allowed VINES clients to automatically set up their own network addresses. When a client first boots up, it broadcast a request on the subnet asking for servers, which responds with suggested addresses. The client used the first to respond, although the servers could hand off "better" routing instructions to the client if the network changed. The overall concept resembled AppleTalk's AARP system, with the exception that VINES required at least one server, whereas AARP functioned as peer-to-peer. Like AARP, VINES required an inherently "chatty" network, sending updates about the status of clients to other servers on the internetwork.
Rounding out its lower-level system, VINES used RTP (the Routing Table Protocol), a low-overhead message system for passing around information about changes to the routing, and ARP to determine the address of other nodes on the system. These closely resembled the similar systems used in other XNS-based protocols. VINES also included ICP (the Internet Control Protocol), which it used to pass error-messages and metrics.
At the middle layer level, VINES used fairly standard software. The unreliable datagram service and data-stream service operated essentially identically to UDP and TCP on top of IP. VINES added a reliable message service as well, a hybrid of the two that offered guaranteed delivery of single packets.
Banyan offered customers TCP/IP as an extra cost option for owners of standard Vines servers. This extra charge for TCP/IP on VINES servers continued long after TCP/IP server availability had become commoditized.
At the topmost layer, VINES provided the standard file and print services, as well as the unique StreetTalk, a globally consistent name service. Banyan has a version of StreetTalk that ran natively on an NT server. Using a globally distributed, partially replicated database, StreetTalk could meld multiple widely separated networks into a single network that allowed seamless resource-sharing. It accomplished this through |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coprocessor | A coprocessor is a computer processor used to supplement the functions of the primary processor (the CPU). Operations performed by the coprocessor may be floating-point arithmetic, graphics, signal processing, string processing, cryptography or I/O interfacing with peripheral devices. By offloading processor-intensive tasks from the main processor, coprocessors can accelerate system performance. Coprocessors allow a line of computers to be customized, so that customers who do not need the extra performance do not need to pay for it.
Functionality
Coprocessors vary in their degree of autonomy. Some (such as FPUs) rely on direct control via coprocessor instructions, embedded in the CPU's instruction stream. Others are independent processors in their own right, capable of working asynchronously; they are still not optimized for general-purpose code, or they are incapable of it due to a limited instruction set focused on accelerating specific tasks. It is common for these to be driven by direct memory access (DMA), with the host processor (a CPU) building a command list. The PlayStation 2's Emotion Engine contained an unusual DSP-like SIMD vector unit capable of both modes of operation.
History
To make the best use of mainframe computer processor time, input/output tasks were delegated to separate systems called Channel I/O. The mainframe would not require any I/O processing at all, instead would just set parameters for an input or output operation and then signal the channel processor to carry out the whole of the operation. By dedicating relatively simple sub-processors to handle time-consuming I/O formatting and processing, overall system performance was improved.
Coprocessors for floating-point arithmetic first appeared in desktop computers in the 1970s and became common throughout the 1980s and into the early 1990s. Early 8-bit and 16-bit processors used software to carry out floating-point arithmetic operations. Where a coprocessor was supported, floating-point calculations could be carried out many times faster. Math coprocessors were popular purchases for users of computer-aided design (CAD) software and scientific and engineering calculations. Some floating-point units, such as the AMD 9511, Intel 8231/8232 and Weitek FPUs were treated as peripheral devices, while others such as the Intel 8087, Motorola 68881 and National 32081 were more closely integrated with the CPU.
Another form of coprocessor was a video display coprocessor, as used in the Atari 8-bit family, TI-99/4A, and MSX home computers, which were called "Video Display Controllers". The Amiga custom chipset includes such a unit known as the Copper, as well as a blitter for accelerating bitmap manipulation in memory.
As microprocessors developed, the cost of integrating the floating point arithmetic functions into the processor declined. High processor speeds also made a closely integrated coprocessor difficult to implement. Separately packaged mathematics coprocessors are |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open%20architecture | Open architecture is a type of computer architecture or software architecture intended to make adding, upgrading, and swapping components with other computers easy. For example, the IBM PC, Amiga 500 and Apple IIe have an open architecture supporting plug-in cards, whereas the Apple IIc computer has a closed architecture. Open architecture systems may use a standardized system bus such as S-100, PCI or ISA or they may incorporate a proprietary bus standard such as that used on the Apple II, with up to a dozen slots that allow multiple hardware manufacturers to produce add-ons, and for the user to freely install them. By contrast, closed architectures, if they are expandable at all, have one or two "expansion ports" using a proprietary connector design that may require a license fee from the manufacturer, or enhancements may only be installable by technicians with specialized tools or training.
Computer platforms may include systems with both open and closed architectures. The Mac mini and Compact Macintosh are closed; the Macintosh II and Power Mac G5 are open. Most desktop PCs are open architecture.
Similarly, an open software architecture is one in which additional software modules can be added to the basic framework provided by the architecture. Open APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) to major software products are the way in which the basic functionality of such products can be modified or extended. The Google APIs are examples. A second type of open software architecture consists of the messages that can flow between computer systems. These messages have a standard structure that can be modified or extended per agreements between the computer systems. An example is IBM's Distributed Data Management Architecture.
Open architecture allows potential users to see inside all or parts of the architecture without any proprietary constraints. Typically, an open architecture publishes all or parts of its architecture that the developer or integrator wants to share. The open business processes involved with an open architecture may require some license agreements between entities sharing the architecture information. Open architectures have been successfully implemented in many diverse fields, including the U.S. Navy.
See also
Open network architecture for equal-access requirements in telecommunications
Open-source software for software that can be modified and rebuilt
Open-source hardware
Open platform
Open standard
References
Computer architecture
Software architecture
Open-source hardware |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damn%20Small%20Linux | Damn Small Linux (DSL) is a discontinued computer operating system for the x86 family of personal computers. It is free and open-source software under the terms of the GNU GPL and other free and open source licenses. It was designed to run graphical user interface applications on older PC hardware, for example, machines with 486 and early Pentium microprocessors and very little random-access memory (RAM). DSL is a Live CD with a size of 50 megabytes (MB). What originally began as an experiment to see how much software could fit in 50 MB eventually became a full Linux distribution. It can be installed on storage media with small capacities, like bootable business cards, USB flash drives, various memory cards, and Zip drives.
History
DSL was originally conceived and maintained by John Andrews. For five years the community included Robert Shingledecker who created the MyDSL system, DSL Control Panel and other features. After issues with the main developers, Robert was, by his account, exiled from the project. He currently continues his work on Tiny Core Linux which he created in April 2008.
DSL was originally based on Model-K, a 22 MB stripped down version of Knoppix, but soon after was based on Knoppix proper, allowing much easier remastering and improvements.
System requirements
DSL supports only x86 PCs. The minimum system requirements are a 486 processor and 8 MB of RAM. DSL has been demonstrated browsing the web with Dillo, running simple games and playing music on systems with a 486 processor and 16 MB of RAM. The system requirements are higher for running Mozilla Firefox and optional add-ons such as the OpenOffice.org office suite.
Features
, version 4.4.10 of DSL, released November 18, 2008, was current. It includes the following software:
Text editors: Beaver, Nano, Vim
File managers: DFM, emelFM
Graphics: mtPaint (raster graphics editor), xzgv (image viewer)
Multimedia: gphone, XMMS with MPEG-1 and Video CD (VCD) support
Office: Siag Office (spreadsheet program), Ted (word processor) with spell checker, Xpdf (viewer for Portable Document Format (PDF) documents)
Internet:
Web browsers: Dillo, Firefox, Netrik
Sylpheed (E-mail client)
naim (AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), ICQ, and IRC client)
AxyFTP (File Transfer Protocol (FTP) client), BetaFTPD (FTP server)
Monkey (web server)
Server Message Block (SMB) client
Rdesktop (Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) client, Virtual Network Computing (VNC) viewer
Others: Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) client, Secure Shell (SSH) and secure copy protocol (SCP) client and server; Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP), Point-to-Point Protocol over Ethernet (PPPoE), Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) support; FUSE, Network File System (NFS), SSH Filesystem (SSHFS) support; UnionFS; generic and Ghostscript printing support; PC card, Universal Serial Bus (USB), Wi-Fi support; calculator, games, system monitor; many command-line tools
DSL has built-in scripts to download and install Adv |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-balancing%20binary%20search%20tree | In computer science, a self-balancing binary search tree (BST) is any node-based binary search tree that automatically keeps its height (maximal number of levels below the root) small in the face of arbitrary item insertions and deletions.
These operations when designed for a self-balancing binary search tree, contain precautionary measures against boundlessly increasing tree height, so that these abstract data structures receive the attribute "self-balancing".
For height-balanced binary trees, the height is defined to be logarithmic in the number of items. This is the case for many binary search trees, such as AVL trees and red–black trees. Splay trees and treaps are self-balancing but not height-balanced, as their height is not guaranteed to be logarithmic in the number of items.
Self-balancing binary search trees provide efficient implementations for mutable ordered lists, and can be used for other abstract data structures such as associative arrays, priority queues and sets.
Overview
Most operations on a binary search tree (BST) take time directly proportional to the height of the tree, so it is desirable to keep the height small. A binary tree with height h can contain at most 20+21+···+2h = 2h+1−1 nodes. It follows that for any tree with n nodes and height h:
And that implies:
.
In other words, the minimum height of a binary tree with n nodes is rounded down; that is, .
However, the simplest algorithms for BST item insertion may yield a tree with height n in rather common situations. For example, when the items are inserted in sorted key order, the tree degenerates into a linked list with n nodes. The difference in performance between the two situations may be enormous: for example, when n = 1,000,000, the minimum height is .
If the data items are known ahead of time, the height can be kept small, in the average sense, by adding values in a random order, resulting in a random binary search tree. However, there are many situations (such as online algorithms) where this randomization is not viable.
Self-balancing binary trees solve this problem by performing transformations on the tree (such as tree rotations) at key insertion times, in order to keep the height proportional to Although a certain overhead is involved, it is not bigger than the always necessary lookup cost and may be justified by ensuring fast execution of all operations.
While it is possible to maintain a BST with minimum height with expected time operations (lookup/insertion/removal), the additional space requirements required to maintain such a structure tend to outweigh the decrease in search time. For comparison, an AVL tree is guaranteed to be within a factor of 1.44 of the optimal height while requiring only two additional bits of storage in a naive implementation. Therefore, most self-balancing BST algorithms keep the height within a constant factor of this lower bound.
In the asymptotic ("Big-O") sense, a self-balancing BST structure containing n i |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunicate | A tunicate is a marine invertebrate animal, a member of the subphylum Tunicata ( ). It is part of the Chordata, a phylum which includes all animals with dorsal nerve cords and notochords (including vertebrates). The subphylum was at one time called Urochordata, and the term urochordates is still sometimes used for these animals. They are the only chordates that have lost their myomeric segmentation, with the possible exception of the 'seriation of the gill slits'. However, doliolids still display segmentation of the muscle bands.
Some tunicates live as solitary individuals, but others replicate by budding and become colonies, each unit being known as a zooid. They are marine filter feeders with a water-filled, sac-like body structure and two tubular openings, known as siphons, through which they draw in and expel water. During their respiration and feeding, they take in water through the incurrent (or inhalant) siphon and expel the filtered water through the excurrent (or exhalant) siphon. Adult ascidian tunicates are sessile, immobile and permanently attached to rocks or other hard surfaces on the ocean floor. Thaliaceans (pyrosomes, doliolids, and salps) and larvaceans on the other hand, swim in the pelagic zone of the sea as adults.
Various species of ascidians, the most well-known class of tunicates, are commonly known as sea squirts, sea pork, sea livers, or sea tulips.
The earliest probable species of tunicate appears in the fossil record in the early Cambrian period. Despite their simple appearance and very different adult form, their close relationship to the vertebrates is evidenced by the fact that during their mobile larval stage, they possess a notochord or stiffening rod and resemble a tadpole. Their name derives from their unique outer covering or "tunic", which is formed from proteins and carbohydrates, and acts as an exoskeleton. In some species, it is thin, translucent, and gelatinous, while in others it is thick, tough, and stiff.
Taxonomy
About 3,000 species of tunicate exist in the world's oceans, living mostly in shallow water. The most numerous group is the ascidians; fewer than 100 species of these are found at depths greater than . Some are solitary animals leading a sessile existence attached to the seabed, but others are colonial and a few are pelagic. Some are supported by a stalk, but most are attached directly to a substrate, which may be a rock, shell, coral, seaweed, mangrove root, dock, piling, or ship's hull. They are found in a range of solid or translucent colours and may resemble seeds, grapes, peaches, barrels, or bottles. One of the largest is a stalked sea tulip, Pyura pachydermatina, which can grow to be over tall.
The Tunicata were established by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck in 1816. In 1881, Francis Maitland Balfour introduced another name for the same group, "Urochorda", to emphasize the affinity of the group to other chordates. No doubt largely because of his influence, various authors supported the t |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced%20Authoring%20Format | The Advanced Authoring Format (AAF) is a file format for professional cross-platform data interchange, designed for the video post-production and authoring environment. It was created by the Advanced Media Workflow Association (AMWA), and is now being standardized through the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE).
History
AAF was originally created by the AMWA, formerly the AAF Association Inc., a trade association created to develop and promote adoption of specifications and technologies, such as AAF, Material Exchange Format (MXF), and Service-oriented architecture (SOA), to facilitate the deployment and operation of efficient media workflows. Technical work of the AMWA is through projects that aim to improve compatibility between AAF, Broadcast Exchange Format (BXF), MXF and XML. The current projects fall into three categories: data models, interface specifications, and application specifications.
AAF was created to help address the problem of multi-vendor, cross-platform interoperability for computer-based digital video production.
The AAF Object Model is now being standardized through SMPTE, including a better definition of the mapping between MXF and AAF essence.
Usage
Capabilities of AAF include the following:
Allows complex relationships to be described in terms of an object model.
Facilitates the interchange of metadata and/or program content.
Provides a way to track the history of a piece of program content from its source elements through final production.
Makes downstream rendering possible (with appropriate equipment).
Provides a convenient way to "wrap" all elements of a project together for archiving.
There are two kinds of data that can be interchanged using AAF:
Essence Data: Audio (including music), video, image, graphics, text, animation, and other forms of multimedia data. So named because they are the essential data within a multimedia program that can be perceived directly by the audience.
Metadata: Data that provides information on how to combine or modify individual sections of essence data, or that provides supplementary information about essence data. The metadata in an AAF file can provide the information needed to combine and modify the sections of essence data in the AAF file to produce a complete multimedia program.
By preserving source referencing, and abstracting the creative decisions that are made, AAF tries to improve workflow and simplify project management.
AAF's rich data model combining metadata and various types of essence has led to its use in non-broadcast applications as well. For example, AAF has been adopted by the DoD/IC Motion Imagery Standards Board (MISB) for their Aerial Surveillance and Photogrammetry Applications standard (ASPA).
Elements of AAF
The core elements of the AAF specification include:
The AAF Object Specification, which defines the structured container by which AAF stores essence data and metadata using an object-oriented model. It defi |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grosch%27s%20law | Grosch's law is the following observation of computer performance, made by Herb Grosch in 1953:
I believe that there is a fundamental rule, which I modestly call Grosch's law, giving added economy only as the square root of the increase in speed — that is, to do a calculation ten times as cheaply you must do it hundred times as fast.
This adage is more commonly stated as
Computer performance increases as the square of the cost. If computer A costs twice as much as computer B, you should expect computer A to be four times as fast as computer B.
Two years before Grosch's statement, Seymour Cray was quoted in Business Week (August 1963) expressing this very same thought:
Computers should obey a square law — when the price doubles, you should get at least four times as much speed.
The law can also be interpreted as meaning that computers present economies of scale: the more costly is the computer, the price–performance ratio linearly becomes better. This implies that low-cost computers cannot compete in the market.
An analysis of rental cost/performance data for computers between 1951 and 1963 by Kenneth E. Knight found that Grosch's law held for commercial and scientific operations (a modern analysis of the same data found that Grosch's law only applied to commercial operations). In a separate study, Knight found that Grosch's law did not apply to computers between 1963-1967 (also confirmed by the aforementioned modern analysis).
Debates
Paul Strassmann asserted in 1997, that "it was never clear whether Grosch's Law was a reflection of how IBM priced its computers or whether it related to actual costs. It provided the rationale that a bigger computer is always better. The IBM sales force used Grosch's rationale to persuade organizations to acquire more computing capacity than they needed. Grosch's Law also became the justification for offering time-sharing services from big data centers as a substitute for distributed computing." Grosch himself has stated that the law was more useful in the 1960s and 1970s than it is today. He originally intended the law to be a "means for pricing computing services".
See also
Metcalfe's law
Moore's law
References
Adages
Computer architecture statements |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gap%20buffer | A gap buffer in computer science is a dynamic array that allows efficient insertion and deletion operations clustered near the same location. Gap buffers are especially common in text editors, where most changes to the text occur at or near the current location of the cursor. The text is stored in a large buffer in two contiguous segments, with a gap between them for inserting new text. Moving the cursor involves copying text from one side of the gap to the other (sometimes copying is delayed until the next operation that changes the text). Insertion adds new text at the end of the first segment; deletion deletes it.
Text in a gap buffer is represented as two strings, which take very little extra space and which can be searched and displayed very quickly, compared to more sophisticated data structures such as linked lists. However, operations at different locations in the text and ones that fill the gap (requiring a new gap to be created) may require copying most of the text, which is especially inefficient for large files. The use of gap buffers is based on the assumption that such recopying occurs rarely enough that its cost can be amortized over the more common cheap operations. This makes the gap buffer a simpler alternative to the rope for use in text editors such as Emacs.
Example
Below are some examples of operations with buffer gaps. The gap is represented by the empty space between the square brackets. This representation is a bit misleading: in a typical implementation, the endpoints of the gap are tracked using pointers or array indices, and the contents of the gap are ignored; this allows, for example, deletions to be done by adjusting a pointer without changing the text in the buffer. It is a common programming practice to use a semi-open interval for the gap pointers, i.e. the start-of-gap points to the invalid character following the last character in the first buffer, and the end-of-gap points to the first valid character in the second buffer (or equivalently, the pointers are considered to point "between" characters).
Initial state:
This is the way [ ]out.
User inserts some new text:
This is the way the world started [ ]out.
User moves the cursor before "started"; system moves "started " from the first buffer to the second buffer.
This is the way the world [ ]started out.
User adds text filling the gap; system creates new gap:
This is the way the world as we know it [ ]started out.
See also
Dynamic array, the special case of a gap buffer where the gap is always at the end
Zipper (data structure), conceptually a generalization of the gap buffer.
Linked list
Circular buffer
Rope (computer science)
Piece table - data structure used by Bravo and Microsoft Word
References
External links
Implementation in C
Overview and implementation in .NET/C#
Brief overview and sample C++ code
Implementation of a cyclic sorted gap buffer in .NET/C#
Use of gap buffer in earl |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pico%20%28programming%20language%29 | Pico is a programming language developed at the Software Languages Lab at Vrije Universiteit Brussel. The language was created to introduce the essentials of programming to non-computer science students.
Pico can be seen as an effort to generate a palatable and enjoyable language for people who do not want to study hard for the elegance and power of a language. They have done it by adapting Scheme's semantics.
While designing Pico, the Software Languages Lab was inspired by the Abelson and Sussman's book "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs". Furthermore, they were influenced by the teaching of programming at high school or academic level.
Pico should be interpreted as 'small', the idea was to create a small language for educational purposes.
Language elements
Comments
Comments are surrounded by backquotes ("`").
Variables
Variables are dynamically typed; Pico uses static scope.
var: value
Functions
Functions are first-class objects in Pico. They can be assigned to variables. For example a function with two parameters param1 and param2 can be defined as:
func(param1, param2): ...
Functions can be called with the following syntax:
func(arg1, arg2)
Operators
Operators can be used as prefix or infix in Pico:
+(5, 2)
5 + 2
Data types
Pico has the following types: string, integer, real and tables.
It does not have a native char type, so users should resort to size 1 strings.
Tables are compound data structures that may contain any of the regular data types.
Boolean types are represented by functions (as in lambda calculus).
Control structures
Conditional evaluation
Only the usual if statement is included
if(condition, then, else)
Code snippets
display('Hello World', eoln)
max(a, b):
if(a < b, b, a)
`http://www.paulgraham.com/accgen.html`
foo(n): fun(i): n := n+i
Implementations
Mac OS, Mac OS X
MacPico
XPico
Windows
WinPico This version is buggy
WinPico stable
Linux
TextPico for Linux
Cross-platform
sPico for DrScheme
External links
Software Languages Lab
Department of Computer Science at VUB
VUB
The Infogroep Pico page
Educational programming languages
Programming languages
1997 software
Programming languages created in 1997 |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal%20Gear | is a franchise of stealth games created by Hideo Kojima. Developed and published by Konami, the first game, Metal Gear, was released in 1987 for MSX home computers. The player often takes control of a special forces operative (usually Solid Snake or Big Boss), who is assigned the task of finding the titular superweapon, "Metal Gear", a bipedal walking tank with the ability to launch nuclear weapons.
Several sequels have been released for multiple consoles, which have expanded the original game's plot, adding characters opposing and supporting Snake, while several prequels have explored the origins of Metal Gear and recurring characters. The third game in the series, Metal Gear Solid for the PlayStation, marked a transition to 3D graphics and gained the series international fame. It was ported two years later by Microsoft Game Studios to Windows, marking the franchise's debut on the platform.
Individual installments have been critically and commercially acclaimed, as well as receiving several awards. The series has sold 60 million units as of June 2023.
The series is credited for pioneering and popularizing stealth video games and "cinematic video games". Notable traits of the series include cinematic cutscenes, intricate storylines, offbeat and fourth-wall humor, and exploration of cyberpunk, dystopian, political and philosophical themes, with references to Hollywood films to add flavor. The franchise has also been adapted into other media, such as comics, novels, and drama CDs. Solid Snake has also gone on to appear in other games, such as the Super Smash Bros. series, Ape Escape 3, and LittleBigPlanet.
Games
Hideo Kojima designed the original Metal Gear, which debuted in Japan and Europe in 1987 for the MSX2 computer platform. A separate team created a heavily modified Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) port of the game that was released in Japan on December 22, 1987, North America in June 1988, and Europe and Australia sometime in 1989. Konami produced an NES sequel, Snake's Revenge, again without Kojima, released in North America and Europe in 1990. One of that game's designers became acquainted with Kojima and asked him to create a "real Metal Gear sequel". In reaction, Kojima began development of Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, which was released in Japan in 1990 for the MSX2.
Following Metal Gear 2s completion, Kojima worked on other projects before directing his third Metal Gear game, Metal Gear Solid, for the PlayStation. It began development in 1994 and debuted at the 1996 Tokyo Game Show, before being released in 1998. The success of Metal Gear Solid resulted in a series of sequels, prequels, spin-offs, ports, and remakes for Microsoft Windows, the Game Boy Color, PlayStation 2, Xbox, GameCube, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Portable, PlayStation Vita, Xbox 360, Nintendo 3DS, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. Metal Gear Solid was followed up by the sequel Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty released in November 2001 for the PlayStation 2. A |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brad%20Garton | Brad Garton (born 1957) is an American composer and computer musician who is professor of music at Columbia University.
He has written, or helped to write, a number of computer music applications, including Real-Time Cmix, music synthesis and signal processing language for real time composition. He received his doctorate in composition from Princeton University. Garton is director-emeritus of the Computer Music Center, Columbia University, formerly the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center.
Garton grew up in Columbus, Indiana. His father, Robert, has served more than 30 years as a Republican in the Indiana state Senate, including a long term as Senate President Pro Tem. Garton majored in pharmacy as a Purdue University student, but spent much of his time on music. Billing himself as "Mr. Science", Garton provided sound effects and keyboards for the band Dow Jones and the Industrials in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He also produced many acts, making a heavy contribution to the Indiana music scene, and with Richard K. Thomas founded Zounds Studios, which continues to produce music and sound for theater. He talked about his life and his formation as a musician in an interview with Peter Shea in February 2007.
References
1957 births
Living people
American male composers
21st-century American composers
People from Columbus, Indiana
21st-century American male musicians
Columbia University faculty |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rescue%20on%20Fractalus%21 | Rescue On Fractalus! is a 1985 first-person shooter computer game created by Lucasfilm Games. It was originally released for the Atari 8-bit family and the Atari 5200 games console. It was also ported to other popular platforms of the day, such as the Apple II, ZX Spectrum (by Dalali Software Ltd), Amstrad CPC, Tandy Color Computer 3 and Commodore 64. The game was one of the first two products from the fledgling Lucasfilm Computer Division Games Group led by Peter Langston. David Fox was the project leader and designer. Music was mainly composed by Charlie Kellner.
Gameplay
Flying
The game uses fractal technology to create the craggy mountains of an alien planet, where the visilibility was drastically reduced by the dense atmosphere. The player controls a fictional "Valkyrie" space fighter (converted for search and rescue duty) from a first-person view, attempting to land and pick up downed Ethercorps pilots. Some of these mountains hold anti-aircraft guns, which have to be avoided or destroyed. Due to the varied terrain, the direction finder has to be used to locate the pilots, whose visual beacons are often masked by mountain ridges.
At higher levels, the enemy Jaggis begin flying kamikaze saucers. The mission area also moves into day/night boundaries. Night missions are particularly difficult, requiring diligent use of the altimeter to avoid crashing.
Flying consumes fuel. The way to replenish this supply is to rescue downed pilots who bring their remaining fuel supplies on board.
The thick atmosphere is sufficiently acidic that downed pilots' craft are being slowly disintegrated. An exposed pilot's survival time outside his craft is less than a minute, due to his flight suit and helmet literally dissolving. This makes it imperative that the player rescue pilots as quickly and efficiently as possible.
Rescue
After landing within sufficient "walking" proximity to the pilot, the player shuts down the engine, also turning off the ship's shields. Turning on the engines prematurely would incinerate the exposed pilot and the shields would prevent him from entering the ship. The downed pilot then disembarks his crashed ship, runs down to the Valkyrie's cockpit, and knocks on the crew entry door; the player can then open up and let the pilot in to complete the rescue. Failing to open the door kills the pilot; his knocking on the hatch becomes at first frantic, then slower and more feeble as he perishes in the corrosive environment. Sometimes the pilot found is an Ace Pilot, indicated visually by their purple helmet. These are worth ten times the score awarded for a normal pilot to the player.
As a twist on this relatively straightforward premise, added at the suggestion of George Lucas, some of the "pilots in distress" are actually hostile aliens in disguise; this twist was kept out of the game's manual and marketing. After landing near a downed pilot, the player watches him run off-screen, and then has to wait for several tense seconds—if it |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List%20of%20cities%20in%20Cuba | This is a list of cities in Cuba with at least 20,000 inhabitants, listed in descending order. Population data refers to city proper and not to the whole municipality, because they include large rural areas with several villages. All figures are accurate and provincial capitals are shown in bold.
See also
List of places in Cuba
Municipalities of Cuba
Provinces of Cuba
References
External links
2012 population statistics of Cuba
Cuba, List of cities in
Cities
Cities
Cuba |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List%20of%20hospitals%20in%20Indiana | The following list of hospitals in the U.S. state of Indiana, sorted by hospital name, is based on data provided by the Indiana State Department of Health.
Adams Memorial Hospital – Decatur
Ascension St. Vincent Kokomo- Kokomo, Indiana
Bedford Regional Medical Center – Bedford
BHC Valle Vista Hospital – Greenwood
Bloomington Hospital of Orange County – Paoli
Bloomington Meadows Hospital – Bloomington
Bluffton Regional Medical Center – Bluffton
Cameron Memorial Community Hospital – Angola
Clark Memorial Health - Jeffersonville
Columbus Regional Health – Columbus
Community Hospital – Munster
Community Hospital of Anderson and Madison County – Anderson
Community Hospital of Bremen – Bremen
Community Hospital East – Indianapolis
Community Hospital North – Indianapolis
Community Hospital South – Indianapolis
Community Howard Regional Health – Kokomo
Community Mental Health Center – Lawrenceburg
Daviess Community Hospital – Washington
Deaconess Cross Pointe Center – Evansville
Deaconess Gateway and Women's Hospital – Newburgh
Deaconess Hospital – Evansville
Dearborn County Hospital – Lawrenceburg
Decatur County Memorial Hospital – Greensburg
DeKalb Memorial Hospital – Auburn
Dukes Memorial Hospital – Peru
Dunn Memorial Hospital – Bedford
Dupont Hospital – Fort Wayne
Elkhart General Hospital – Elkhart
Evansville Psychiatric Children's Center – Evansville
Fayette Memorial Hospital Association – Connersville
Floyd Memorial Hospital and Health Services – New Albany
Four County Counseling Center – Logansport
Franciscan Health Carmel – Carmel
Franciscan Health Crawfordsville – Crawfordsville
Franciscan Health Crown Point – Crown Point
Franciscan Health Dyer – Dyer
Franciscan Health Hammond – Hammond
Franciscan Health Indianapolis – Indianapolis
Franciscan Health Lafayette Central – Lafayette
Franciscan Health Lafayette East – Lafayette
Franciscan Health Michigan City – Michigan City
Franciscan Health Mooresville – Mooresville
Franciscan Health Munster – Munster
Franciscan Health Rensselaer – Rensselaer
Gibson General Hospital – Princeton
Greene County General Hospital – Linton
Good Samaritan Hospital – Vincennes
Goshen General Hospital – Goshen
Grant-Blackford Mental Health – Marion
Greene County General Hospital – Linton
Hamilton Center – Terre Haute
Hancock Regional Hospital – Greenfield
Harrison County Hospital – Corydon
HealthSouth Deaconess Rehabilitation Hospital – Evansville
HealthSouth Hospital of Terre Haute – Terre Haute
Heart Center of Indiana – Indianapolis
Hendricks Regional Health – Danville
Henry County Memorial Hospital – New Castle
Hind General Hospital – Hobart
Indiana University Health Arnett Hospital - Lafayette
Indiana University Health Ball Memorial Hospital – Muncie
Indiana University Health Blackford Hospital - Hartford City
Indiana University Health Bloomington Hospital - Bloomington
Indiana University Health La Porte Hospital – La Porte
Indiana University Health Methodist Hospital - Indianapolis
Indiana University Health North Hosp |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas%20Jordan%20%28general%29 | Thomas Jordan (September 30, 1819 – November 27, 1895) was a Confederate general and major operative in the network of Confederate spies during the American Civil War. A career soldier in the armies of three nations, he had previously fought in the Mexican–American War, and in 1868 was appointed as chief of staff of the Cuban insurgent army, which fought to achieve independence from Spain. He resigned in 1870 and returned to the United States, where he settled in New York City. Jordan was also a newspaper editor and author, writing articles about the American Civil War.
Early life and career
Thomas Jordan was born the oldest child of Gabriel and Elizabeth "Betsey" Seibert Jordan in the Luray Valley, Virginia. He is believed to have been educated in the local schools of Shenandoah County, Virginia (later Page County, Virginia). He received an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point, graduating in 1840.
Jordan entered the army as a second lieutenant in the 3rd U.S. Infantry, and was assigned to the garrison at Fort Snelling, Minnesota. He fought in the Second Florida War against the Seminole Indians. He was among those soldiers who surprised and captured Chief "Tiger Tail" near Cedar Keys in November 1842.
Jordan was assigned to western frontier duty until 1846, when he was promoted to first lieutenant. In the Mexican–American War, he served creditably at the battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma. In 1847, he was promoted to captain and served as a quartermaster. He remained at Vera Cruz for a year after the war in an administrative role. He was next posted to various Southern garrisons and on the Pacific Coast.
As early as 1860, he secretly began a pro-Southern spy network in Washington, D.C., that was particularly active in the period immediately after secession. In early 1861, Jordan passed control of the espionage network to Rose O'Neal Greenhow; however, he continued to receive and evaluate her reports after she was restricted to house arrest in August 1861 and imprisoned in Washington, DC in January 1862. He appeared to be her Confederate Secret Service "handler" during the formative phase of Confederate intelligence.
Civil War
On May 22, 1861, Jordan resigned from the U.S. Army. He was commissioned as a captain in the fledgling Confederate army. Promotion came rapidly and by June 1861, he had become a lieutenant colonel and a staff officer, seeing duty at the First Battle of Manassas as a full colonel and chief of staff under P.G.T. Beauregard. He also was the army's adjutant general and accompanied President Jefferson Davis on a post-battle tour of the field.
Jordan subsequently accompanied Beauregard to the Western Theater to Kentucky. During the advance from Corinth, Mississippi, into Tennessee, he rendered valuable service in preparing the men for the Battle of Shiloh, where he was conspicuous in efficiently managing the flow of orders to and from the various corps commanders and their respective staf |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great%20Soviet%20Encyclopedia | The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (GSE; , BSE) is the largest Soviet Russian-language encyclopedia, published in the Soviet Union from 1926 to 1990. After 2002, the encyclopedia's data was partially included into the later (or Great Russian Encyclopedia) in an updated and revised form. The GSE claimed to be "the first Marxist–Leninist general-purpose encyclopedia".
Origins
The idea of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia emerged in 1923 on the initiative of Otto Schmidt, a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In early 1924 Schmidt worked with a group which included Mikhail Pokrovsky, (rector of the Institute of Red Professors), Nikolai Meshcheryakov (Former head of the Glavit, the State Administration of Publishing Affairs), Valery Bryusov (poet), Veniamin Kagan (mathematician) and Konstantin Kuzminsky to draw up a proposal which was agreed to in April 1924. Also involved was Anatoly Lunacharsky, People's Commissar of Education (Narkompros), who had previously been involved with a proposal by Alexander Bogdanov and Maxim Gorky to produce a Workers' Encyclopedia.
Editions
There were three editions. The first edition of 65 volumes (65,000 entries, plus a supplementary volume about the Soviet Union) was published during 1926–1947, the chief editor being Otto Schmidt (until 1941). The second edition of 50 volumes (100,000 entries, plus a supplementary volume) was published in 1950–1958; chief editors: Sergei Vavilov (until 1951) and Boris Vvedensky (until 1969); two index volumes to this edition were published in 1960. The third edition of 1969–1978 contains 30 volumes (100,000 entries, plus an index volume issued in 1981). Volume 24 is in two books, one being a full-sized book about the USSR, all with about 21 million words, and the chief editor being Alexander Prokhorov (since 1969). In the third edition, much attention was paid to the philosophical problems of natural sciences, physical and chemical sciences, and mathematical methods in various branches of knowledge.
From 1957 to 1990, the Yearbook of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia was released annually with up-to-date articles about the Soviet Union and all countries of the world.
The first online edition, an exact replica of text and graphics of the third (so-called Red) edition, was published by Rubricon.com in 2000.
Editors
Editors and contributors to the GSE included a number of leading Soviet scientists and politicians:
Georgy Aleksandrov (author of article on materialism, first edition)
Hamid Alimjan
Victor Ambartsumian
Valentin Asmus (author of articles on metaphysics, Plato, Schopenhauer, Schleiermacher, Chernyshevsky and Spengler, first edition)
Nikolai Baibakov
Mykola Bazhan
Walter Benjamin (author of article on Goethe, first edition)
Maia Berzina
Nikolay Bogolyubov
Andrei Bubnov (executed in 1938)
Nikolai Bukharin (executed in 1938)
Nikolai Burdenko
Abram Deborin (author of article on Hegel, first edition)
Mikhail Frunze
Victor Glushkov
Igor Grabar
Mikhail Grushevsk |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odd%20Job%20Jack | Odd Job Jack is a Canadian adult animated sitcom starring Don McKellar, about one man's misadventures in temporary employment. Seen on and produced for The Comedy Network, a cable specialty channel, Adult Swim and MuchMusic in Latin America, 2x2 in Russia, Hulu in the United States, and MusiquePlus in the French speaking Canada. A total of 52 episodes were produced over four seasons.
Production
Odd Job Jack is created by Smiley Guy Studios in Toronto, Ontario. The show was originally developed as a web-based cartoon, but quickly moved to cable television distribution. The producers of the show pay homage to their web roots by maintaining a web site that contains unique interactive content to support each episode, largely consisting of Flash games. They advertised this connection as being a "sit.com".
On July 14, 2006 in an email to subscribers, Smiley Guy Studios announced FreeJack, an initiative under which they have started releasing the master files of every character, prop, and background from every episode for the upcoming season under a non-commercial share-friendly license. However, in 2007, after the fourth season the show definitely ended production.
Every episode is structured by the opening theme, the full episode and the closing credits.
Plot
The eponymous character, Jack Ryder, graduates from university with a degree in sociology and becomes a temporary employee at an agency called Odd Jobs which specializes in filling difficult and unusual positions. Each episode ends with Jack adding a chapter to a book which he is writing about his experiences on his laptop.
When not working, Jack often hangs with his eccentric friends, Leopold "Leo" Trench, an agoraphobic computer hacker who, like one of the characters in McKellar's earlier comedy series, Twitch City, is unable to leave his apartment but nonetheless leads a complex and bizarre life, and Bobby Lee, an Asian kid who works in the family store by day, and is a club disc-jockey and masked hero by night.
Jack also spends some time at the beginning and end of each episode at the agency where he attempts to develop a rapport with Betty Styles, the female assignment "associate" while under electronic surveillance from the gruff, imperious, and decidedly unpleasant, manager/owner (Mr. Fister) who is often involved in some way in the bizarre conspiracies, sordid sexual escapades, and crimes which lurk behind the workaday appearances of Jack's assignments.
Mr. Fister never appears in season three, but makes a final appearance in season four, while at the conclusion of season three Betty, after stealing the company jet to rescue Jack from African kidnappers, runs away to a distant country. Instead Jack is greeted in each season four episode with a new assignment associate, each with a personality defect. The first season also featured Jacques, a French Canadian doppelgänger to Jack who serves as an office nemesis.
Season One
Among the unusual situations in which Jack finds employment |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The%20C%20Programming%20Language | The C Programming Language (sometimes termed K&R, after its authors' initials) is a computer programming book written by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie, the latter of whom originally designed and implemented the C programming language, as well as co-designed the Unix operating system with which development of the language was closely intertwined. The book was central to the development and popularization of C and is still widely read and used today. Because the book was co-authored by the original language designer, and because the first edition of the book served for many years as the de facto standard for the language, the book was regarded by many to be the authoritative reference on C.
History
C was created by Dennis Ritchie at Bell Labs in the early 1970s as an augmented version of Ken Thompson's B.
Another Bell Labs employee, Brian Kernighan, had written the first C tutorial,
and he persuaded Ritchie to coauthor a book on the language.
Kernighan would write most of the book's "expository" material, and Ritchie's reference manual became its appendices.
The first edition, published February 22, 1978, was the first widely available book on the C programming language. Its version of C is sometimes termed K&R C (after the book's authors), often to distinguish this early version from the later version of C standardized as ANSI C.
In April 1988, the second edition of the book was published, updated to cover the changes to the language resulting from the then-new ANSI C standard, particularly with the inclusion of reference material on standard libraries. The second edition of the book (and , the most recent) has since been translated into over 20 languages. In 2012, an eBook version of the second edition was published in ePub, Mobi, and PDF formats.
ANSI C, first standardized in 1989 (as ANSI X3.159-1989), has since undergone several revisions, the most recent of which is ISO/IEC 9899:2018 (also termed C17 or C18), adopted as an ANSI standard in June 2018. However, no new edition of The C Programming Language has been issued to cover the more recent standards.
Reception
Byte magazine stated in August 1983, "[The C Programming Language] is the definitive work on the C language. Don't read any further until you have this book!" Jerry Pournelle wrote in the magazine that year that the book "is still the standard ... a bit terse". He continued, "You can learn the C language without getting Kernighan and Ritchie, but that's doing it the hard way. You're also working too hard if you make it the only book on C that you buy."
Influence
The C Programming Language has often been cited as a model for technical writing, with reviewers describing it as having clear presentation and concise treatment. Examples generally consist of complete programs of the type one is likely to encounter in daily use of the language, with an emphasis on system programming. Its authors said
The book introduced the "Hello, World!" program, which prints only the |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White%20book | White book may refer to:
The German White Book claiming the causes of the 1914 war
White paper, a type of official government publication
The C Programming Language, by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie
White Book of Rhydderch, manuscript of Welsh folklore
White Book of Sarnen, a Swiss collection of medieval manuscripts
White Book - German Occupation of Poland, an Extract of Note Addressed to The Allied and Neutral Powers
White Book (CD standard), a standard for video compact discs.
The Little White Book a short collection of creeds by Ben Klassen, founder of the Creativity sect
White Booklet, alternative spelling list of the Dutch language
See also
White paper (disambiguation)
Barebook
Black Book (disambiguation)
Blue book (disambiguation)
Green Book (disambiguation)
Orange Book (disambiguation)
Pink Book (disambiguation)
Plum Book
Yellow Book (disambiguation) |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom%20Gleisner | Thomas Edmund Gleisner (born 24 October 1962) is an Australian comedian, television presenter, producer, director, writer, occasional actor and author. Gleisner currently hosts Network 10's Have You Been Paying Attention?.
Early life and education
Gleisner was educated at Xavier College in Melbourne, Australia. He attended the University of Melbourne in the 1980s, and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Laws in 1987. While he was a university student he began working with Santo Cilauro and Rob Sitch in the 1983 Law Revue Legal A.I.D.S. Gleisner wrote and performed in the 1985 Melbourne University Revue Too Cool for Sandals.
Television, radio, and film
Gleisner was credited as a writer on The D-Generation (1986–1987) but not as a regular performer. He did, however, appear on numerous occasions as a guest star (he featured more prominently in the second season), and on the album The Satanic Sketches.
Gleisner went on to perform in the D-Gen's late-eighties Triple M radio show (and its spin-off album The Breakfast Tapes), and then starred in, and wrote for, ABC TV's The Late Show (1992–1993). His best-remembered performances in The Late Show included the newsreader of Late Show News, the co-host of Countdown Classics with Jane Kennedy and the interviewer of stuntman Rob Sitch in Shitscared, although he appeared in various other sketches (including a recurring role as brainless bush-traveller "Wallaby Jack").
After The Late Show finished, Gleisner co-founded Working Dog Productions, along with Santo Cilauro, Jane Kennedy and Rob Sitch. Their first venture was Frontline which ran on the ABC from 1994 until 1997. Gleisner was a writer/producer/director, and also had a minor role as photocopier repairman Colin Konica.
In 1995, Gleisner starred as mute cop Poncho on Funky Squad on ABC, another Working Dog comedy which he co-created and served on as a writer/producer/directors. Gleisner co-wrote the Working Dog films The Castle (1997), The Dish (2000) and Any Questions for Ben? (2012). He also hosted and co-executive produced the popular Network Ten program The Panel (1998–2004). Gleisner has also appeared with Rob Sitch as a presenter of the ABC TV fly-fishing documentary A River Somewhere (1997–1998). He wrote and directed the Glenn Robbins comedy, All Aussie Adventures (2001–2002, 2004, 2018), was the judge on the improvised comedy program Thank God You're Here from 2006 to 2009, but was replaced by various judges from 2023, and co-wrote/co-produced Working Dog's The Hollowmen (2008), Utopia (2014-2023), and Pacific Heat (2016).
Currently he is host of the popular Australian quiz show Have You Been Paying Attention? (2013–present), and a producer of The Cheap Seats (2021–present).
Books
Gleisner has written four comedic books in the persona of a fictitious cricketer, Warwick Todd, The Warwick Todd Diaries (1997), Warwick Todd: Back in the Baggy Green (1998), Warwick Todd Goes The Tonk (2001) and Warwick Todd – Up in the Block |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendster | Friendster was a social network based in Mountain View, California, founded by Jonathan Abrams and launched in March 2003. Later, the company became a social gaming site based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Before Friendster was redesigned, the service allowed users to contact other members, maintain those contacts, and share online content and media with those contacts. The website was also used for dating and discovering new events, bands and hobbies. Users could share videos, photos, messages, and comments with other members via profiles and networks. It is considered one of the original social networks.
After the launching of Friendster as a social gaming platform in June 2011, the number of registered users reached over 115 million. The company operated mainly from four Asian countries: the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, and Singapore, and over 90% of the site's traffic came from Asia. As of 2008, Friendster had more monthly unique visitors than any other social network in Asia. Friendster remained notably popular in Indonesia through 2012.
The company suspended services in 2015, citing "the evolving landscape in our challenging industry" and lack of engagement by the online community, and ceased trading in 2018.
History
Friendster was founded by Canadian computer programmer Jonathan Abrams in 2002, before MySpace (2003), Hi5 (2004), Facebook (2004) and other social networking sites. Friendster.com went live in 2003 and was adopted by 3 million users within the first few months.
Friendster was one of the first of these sites to attain over 1 million members, although it was preceded by several other smaller social networking sites such as SixDegrees.com (1997) and Makeoutclub (1999).
The name Friendster is a portmanteau of "friend" and Napster. Napster at the time was a controversial peer-to-peer file sharing Internet service that was launched in 1999; by 2000, "Napster" was practically a household name, thanks to several high-profile lawsuits filed against it that year. The original Friendster site was founded in Mountain View, California, and was privately owned. Friendster was based on the "Circle of Friends" social network technique for networking individuals in virtual communities and demonstrates the small world phenomenon. Friendster was considered the top online social network service until around April 2004, when it was overtaken by MySpace in terms of page views, according to Nielsen//NetRatings.
Publications including Time, Esquire, Vanity Fair, Entertainment Weekly, Us Weekly and Spin wrote about Friendster's success, and the founder appeared on magazine covers and late-night talk shows. Friendster's rapid success inspired a generation of niche social networking websites, including Dogster and Elfster.
Friendster had also received competition from all-in-one sites such as Windows Live Spaces, Yahoo! 360, and Facebook. Google offered $30 million to buy out Friendster in 2003, but the offer was turned down. Friendster was then |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probably%20approximately%20correct%20learning | In computational learning theory, probably approximately correct (PAC) learning is a framework for mathematical analysis of machine learning. It was proposed in 1984 by Leslie Valiant.
In this framework, the learner receives samples and must select a generalization function (called the hypothesis) from a certain class of possible functions. The goal is that, with high probability (the "probably" part), the selected function will have low generalization error (the "approximately correct" part). The learner must be able to learn the concept given any arbitrary approximation ratio, probability of success, or distribution of the samples.
The model was later extended to treat noise (misclassified samples).
An important innovation of the PAC framework is the introduction of computational complexity theory concepts to machine learning. In particular, the learner is expected to find efficient functions (time and space requirements bounded to a polynomial of the example size), and the learner itself must implement an efficient procedure (requiring an example count bounded to a polynomial of the concept size, modified by the approximation and likelihood bounds).
Definitions and terminology
In order to give the definition for something that is PAC-learnable, we first have to introduce some terminology.
For the following definitions, two examples will be used. The first is the problem of character recognition given an array of bits encoding a binary-valued image. The other example is the problem of finding an interval that will correctly classify points within the interval as positive and the points outside of the range as negative.
Let be a set called the instance space or the encoding of all the samples. In the character recognition problem, the instance space is . In the interval problem the instance space, , is the set of all bounded intervals in , where denotes the set of all real numbers.
A concept is a subset . One concept is the set of all patterns of bits in that encode a picture of the letter "P". An example concept from the second example is the set of open intervals, , each of which contains only the positive points. A concept class is a collection of concepts over . This could be the set of all subsets of the array of bits that are skeletonized 4-connected (width of the font is 1).
Let be a procedure that draws an example, , using a probability distribution and gives the correct label , that is 1 if and 0 otherwise.
Now, given , assume there is an algorithm and a polynomial in (and other relevant parameters of the class ) such that, given a sample of size drawn according to , then, with probability of at least , outputs a hypothesis that has an average error less than or equal to on with the same distribution . Further if the above statement for algorithm is true for every concept and for every distribution over , and for all then is (efficiently) PAC learnable (or distribution-free PAC learnable). We c |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackers%3A%20Heroes%20of%20the%20Computer%20Revolution | Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution () is a book by Steven Levy about hacker culture. It was published in 1984 in Garden City, New York by Doubleday. Levy describes the people, the machines, and the events that defined the Hacker culture and the Hacker Ethic, from the early mainframe hackers at MIT, to the self-made hardware hackers and game hackers.
The book saw an edition with a new afterword (entitled "Afterword: Ten Years After") by the author in 1994. In 2010, a 25th anniversary edition with updated material was published by O'Reilly.
Summary
Levy traces developments in the history of hacking, beginning with The Tech Model Railroad Club at MIT, whose members were among the first hackers. He discusses the Hacker Ethic, a set of concepts, beliefs, and morals that came out of a symbiotic relationship between the hackers and the machines. The Ethic consisted of allowing all information to be open and accessible in order to learn about how the world worked; using the already available knowledge to create more knowledge.
Several chapters discuss the history of computer gaming, beginning with Spacewar! in September 1961. This paved the way for major gaming companies such as On-Line, Broderbund, and Sirius Software.
Other highlights include:
Conway's Game of Life, a computer simulation written by John Horton Conway which became Bill Gosper's focus in 1970.
Revolt in 2100: Lee Felsenstein and Jude Milhon founded Community Memory, an offshoot of Resource One based in Berkeley, California. Bob Albrecht and his computer-book publishing company Dymax also brought computing to the people by teaching young students to program. Albrecht formed People's Computer Company, a storefront in Menlo Park, California, to offer computer time and classes.
Every Man a God: In Albuquerque, New Mexico, Ed Roberts founded Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems created the Altair 8800, a computer kit that cost only $397.
The Homebrew Computer Club was founded by Fred Moore and Gordon French as a way for electronics hobbyists and hackers to get together and exchange information and talk about their projects. The first meeting took place on March 5, 1975 in Gordon's garage.
Tiny BASIC: Altair BASIC was an interpreter that translated instructions from the BASIC programming language into assembly instructions that the Altair 8800 could understand. It was developed by Bill Gates and Paul Allen, the founders of Microsoft, then styled "Micro-soft", specifically for the 8800 and it would fit in 4K of memory.
In addition, Levy profiles important hacker figures, including John Draper, Bill Gates, Richard Greenblatt, and Steve Wozniak.
Reception
PC Magazine stated that Levy "does capture the essential composite of the hacker personality but fails to accept that the true hacker, driven by machine lust, is equally content to hack in the corporate corridors. He is also naively optimistic about the collective spirit of computing, which he believes will ultimate |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThinkGeek | [[File:ThinkGeek_logo_1999-2014.webp|thumb|right|ThinkGeek logo from 1999 to 2014]]
ThinkGeek was an American retailer that catered to computer enthusiasts and "geek culture". Described as a "Sharper Image for sysadmins", their merchandise has been likened to "toys for adults, novelties designed to appeal to both your inner child and your inner grad student." These include clothing, electronic and scientific gadgets, unusual computer peripherals, office toys, pet toys, child toys, and caffeinated drinks and candy. ThinkGeek was founded in 1999 and was based in Fairfax, Virginia. The brand is currently owned by Geeknet, a subsidiary of GameStop.
History
ThinkGeek was founded in 1999, and originally based in downtown McLean, Virginia. The company was founded by Jen Frazier, Jon Sime, Scott Smith, and Willie Vadnais, all of whom were running a small Internet startup at the time, with ThinkGeek initially starting as a side project. The website's official launch date was August 13, 1999. Andover.net, a Boston area technology news publisher, acquired ThinkGeek in October 1999. Only a few months later Andover.net was acquired by VA Linux, a California-based tech company that specialized in Linux hardware and software products. VA Linux, after several name changes, became Geeknet.
In August 2000, the company moved its offices to Fairfax, Virginia. ThinkGeek grew steadily and increased the number of employees from six in 2004 up to 83 in 2013. Company revenues also increased during this time period, reaching $50 million in sales in 2009 and $118.9 million in 2012. In 2012, ThinkGeek was ranked as one of the top online retailers, listing as #175 on the Internet Retailer Top 500 List.
ThinkGeek's mascot was a monkey named Timmy.
On May 26, 2015, it was announced that pop culture-oriented retailer Hot Topic had made an offer to acquire Geeknet and ThinkGeek for $17.50 per-share, valuing the company at $122 million. However, on May 29, 2015, it was revealed that an unspecified company had made a counter-offer of $20 per-share; Hot Topic was given until June 1, 2015 to exceed this new offer. On June 2, 2015, it was announced that video game retail chain GameStop had acquired Geeknet for $140 million. The deal was completed on July 17, 2015.
On September 25, 2015, ThinkGeek opened its first retail store at The Florida Mall in Orlando, Florida. In 2016, ThinkGeek opened 25 more physical stores in the U.S., along with 25 international stores. The retailer said they were "committed to creating a seamless omnichannel experience for its customers", including store pickups and ship-to-store options.
In June 2019, ThinkGeek announced that it would be discontinuing its online store, and integrating its e-commerce operations into a "curated selection" of GameStop's online operations. New product details from after the standalone site closed were made public in January 2020, including Jigglypuff and Get Schwifty (from Rick and Morty) themed Bluetooth Speakers.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh%20IIsi | The Macintosh IIsi is a personal computer designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer, Inc. from October 1990 to March 1993. Introduced as a lower-cost alternative to the other Macintosh II family of desktop models, it was popular for home use, as it offered more expandability and performance than the Macintosh LC, which was introduced at the same time. Like the LC, it has built-in sound support, as well as support for color displays, with a maximum screen resolution of 640 × 480 in 8-bit color.
The IIsi remained on the market for two and a half years and was discontinued shortly after the introduction of its replacement, the Centris 610.
Hardware
The IIsi's case design is a compact desktop unit not used for any other Macintosh model, one of the few Macintosh designs that was used for a single model. Positioned below the Macintosh IIci as Apple's entry-level professional model, the IIsi's price was lowered by the redesign of the motherboard substituting a different memory controller and the deletion of all but one of the expansion card slots (a single Processor Direct Slot) and removal of the level 2 cache slot.
It shipped with either a 40-MB or 80-MB internal hard disk, and a 1.44-MB floppy disk drive. The Motorola 68882 FPU was an optional upgrade, mounted on a special plug-in card. Ports included SCSI, two serial ports, an ADB port, a floppy drive port, and 3.5mm stereo headphone sound output and microphone sound input sockets.
A bridge card was available for the IIsi to convert the Processor Direct slot to a standard internal NuBus card slot, compatible with other machines in the Macintosh II family. The bridge card included the 68882 FPU to improve floating-point performance. The NuBus card was mounted horizontally above the motherboard.
To cut costs, the IIsi's video shared the main system memory, which also had the effect of slowing down video considerably, especially as the IIsi had 1 MB of slow RAM soldered to the motherboard. David Pogue's book Macworld Macintosh Secrets observed that one could speed up video considerably if one set the disk cache size large enough to force the computer to draw video RAM from faster RAM installed in the SIMM banks.
The IIsi also suffers from sound difficulties: over time, the speaker contacts can fail, causing the sound to periodically drop out. This problem was caused by the very modular construction of the computer, where the mono loudspeaker is on a daughterboard under the motherboard, with springy contacts. Speaker vibrations led to fretting of the touching surfaces. The problem could be solved by removing the motherboard and using a pencil eraser to clean the contacts of the daughterboard holding the loudspeaker. As the IIsi is the only Macintosh to use this case design, these issues were never corrected in a subsequent model. The IIsi was designed to be easily and cheaply manufactured, such that no tools were required to put one together – everything is held in place with clips or la |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scsh | Scsh (a Scheme shell) is computer software, a type of shell for an operating system. It is a Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX) application programming interface (API) layered on the programming language Scheme, in a manner to make the most of Scheme's ability for scripting. Scsh is limited to 32-bit platforms but there is a development version against the latest Scheme 48 that works in 64-bit mode. It is free and open-source software released under the BSD-3-Clause license.
Features
Scsh includes these notable features:
Library support for list, character, and string manipulations;
Regular expressions manipulation support using scheme regular expressions, a domain-specific language (DSL), or little languages, approach to the abilities;
Strong networking support;
High-level support for awk like scripts, integrated into the language as macros;
Abstractions supporting pseudo terminals;
A shell language, modeled using quasi-quotation.
Example
Print a list of all the executables available in the current PATH to the standard output:
#!/usr/local/bin/scsh -s
!#
(define (executables dir)
(with-cwd dir
(filter file-executable? (directory-files dir #t))))
(define (writeln x) (display x) (newline))
(for-each writeln
(append-map executables ((infix-splitter ":") (getenv "PATH"))))
"Acknowledgments"
The reference manual for Scsh includes a spoof Acknowledgments section written by Olin Shivers. It starts:
Who should I thank? My so-called "colleagues", who laugh at me behind my back, all the while becoming famous on my work? My worthless graduate students, whose computer skills appear to be limited to downloading bitmaps off of netnews? My parents, who are still waiting for me to quit "fooling around with computers," go to med school, and become a radiologist? My department chairman, a manager who gives one new insight into and sympathy for disgruntled postal workers?
and concludes with:
Oh, yes, the acknowledgements. I think not. I did it. I did it all, by myself.
See also
Unix shell
Comparison of command shells
References
External links
Sourceforge project page
Downloads
Unix shells
Scheme (programming language) interpreters
Scheme (programming language) implementations
Scripting languages
Software using the BSD license |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungerford%20Bridge%20and%20Golden%20Jubilee%20Bridges | The Hungerford Bridge crosses the River Thames in London, and lies between Waterloo Bridge and Westminster Bridge. Owned by Network Rail Infrastructure Ltd (who use its official name of Charing Cross Bridge) it is a steel truss railway bridge flanked by two more recent, cable-stayed, pedestrian bridges that share the railway bridge's foundation piers, and which are named the Golden Jubilee Bridges.
The north end of the bridge is Charing Cross railway station, and is near Embankment Pier and the Victoria Embankment. The south end is near Waterloo station, County Hall, the Royal Festival Hall, and the London Eye. Each pedestrian bridge has steps and lift access.
History
The first Hungerford Bridge, designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, opened in 1845 as a suspension footbridge. It was named after the then Hungerford Market, because it went from the South Bank, specifically a northern point of Lambeth, soon close to London Waterloo station to that place on the north side of the Thames, specifically to the market (later Charing Cross Station) about 200 yards or metres east of Trafalgar Square partly in the parish of Saint Martin in the Fields, Westminster, the spire of which can be seen from the bridge.
In 1859 the original bridge was bought by the railway company extending the South Eastern Railway into the newly opened Charing Cross railway station. The railway company replaced the suspension bridge with a structure designed by Sir John Hawkshaw, comprising nine spans made of wrought iron lattice girders, which opened in 1864. The chains from the old bridge were re-used in Bristol's Clifton Suspension Bridge. The original brick pile buttresses of Brunel's footbridge are still in use, though the one on the Charing Cross side is now much closer to the river bank than it was originally, due to the building of the Victoria Embankment, completed in 1870. The buttress on the South Bank side still has the entrances and steps from the original steamer pier Brunel built on to the footbridge.
To compensate for the removal of the footbridge, walkways were added on each side, with the western one later being removed when the railway was widened. Another walkway was temporarily added in 1951 when an Army Bailey bridge was constructed for the Festival of Britain. In 1980 a temporary walkway was erected on the western side while the eastern railway bridge and walkway were refurbished. It is one of three bridges in London to carry pedestrians and rolling stock; the others being Fulham Railway Bridge and Barnes Bridge.
The footbridge gained a reputation for being narrow, dilapidated and dangerous; it was the scene of a murder in 1999. In the mid-1990s a decision was made to replace the footbridge with new structures on either side of the existing railway bridge, and a competition was held in 1996 for a new design.
Further justification for new footbridge structures on the west flank and east flank was that the brittle wrought iron support pillars of Sir John |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carte%20network | The Carte network or Carte circuit or Carte organization was an early and illusory attempt at organizing French resistance to the occupation of France by Nazi Germany during the Second World War. The creator of Carte, André Girard, claimed to have "plans in hand for preparing first sabotage teams, then larger guerilla groups, and finally a private army some 300,000 strong" to liberate France. Girard's army existed mainly on paper and in the minds of a community of artists, musicians, and students living on the French Riviera. Girard persuaded the United Kingdom's clandestine organization, the Special Operations Executive, (SOE) that his plan merited British help. Carte was eventually suppressed by the Germans and many of its members ended up in concentration camps or were executed.
Carte and SOE
The Carte network was the brainchild of André Girard, an artist living in Antibes on the French Riviera in 1941. Girard took the code name Carte which also became the name of his resistance network. In April 1941, he persuaded Henri Frager, an architect, to be his second in command and the pair set about recruiting intellectuals, soldiers, and others to become members of the network. Girard envisioned the recruitment of an army from anti-Nazi officers and men serving in the army of Vichy France to rise up against the German occupiers of France. For SOE headquarters in London it seemed "that they had found what they were looking for; a ready-made secret army which only needed arms and orders before it was ready to co-operate in throwing the Germans out of France."
SOE agent Francis Basin made a first contact with Girard in late fall 1941 and agent Peter Churchill was sent to Antibes in January 1942 to assess Girard's claims and the viability of Carte. Based on the reports by Basin and Churchill, in July 1942 Nicolas Bodington, second in command of SOE's F section, landed in Vichy France. In September Bodington filed a report confirming his favourable opinion of the network. Maurice Buckmaster, leader of the French section of SOE, proposed an expansion of SOE to deal with Carte and approved a contribution of supplies and equipment. The potential of Carte was a "dominating influence" over the work of SOE's French section in 1942, work that would come to naught.
The official historian of the SOE, M.R.D. Foot said that Girard "combined an ingenious administrative talent with a total ignorance of security." The ignorance of security was soon demonstrated. Girard drew up in his Antibes apartment a list of more than 200 supporters or potential supporters of Carte. The list included their names, addresses, and other information. In November 1942, an assistant of Girard named André Marsac was carrying the list by train from Marseille to Paris to give it to SOE agent Francis Suttill. While Marsac slept on the train, an agent of Abwehr (German military intelligence) stole the briefcase which contained the list. The Germans did not immediately take acti |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rmdir | In computing, rmdir (or rd) is a command which will remove an empty directory on various operating systems.
Implementations
The command is available in Unix (e.g. macOS, Solaris, AIX, HP-UX), Unix-like (e.g. FreeBSD, Linux), DOS, Digital Research FlexOS, IBM OS/2, Microsoft Windows or ReactOS operating systems. On MS-DOS, the command is available in versions 2 and later. DR DOS 6.0 also includes an implementation of the command.
It is also available in the open source MS-DOS emulator DOSBox and in KolibriOS. The numerical computing environments MATLAB and GNU Octave include an rmdir
function with similar functionality.
Usage
Unix, Unix-like
Normal usage is straightforward:
$ rmdir name_of_directory
where name_of_directory corresponds with the name of the directory one wishes to delete. There are options to this command such as -p in Unix which removes parent directories if they are also empty.
For example:
$ rmdir -p foo/bar/baz
will first remove baz/, then bar/ and finally foo/ thus removing the entire directory tree specified in the command argument.
rmdir will not remove a directory if it is not empty in UNIX. The command will remove a directory and all its contents recursively. For example:
$ rm -r foo/bar/baz
$ rm -rf foo/bar/baz
DOS, OS/2, Windows, ReactOS
Normal usage is identical to Unix-like operating systems:
>rmdir name_of_directory
The equivalent command in MS-DOS and earlier (non-NT-based) versions of Microsoft Windows for deleting non-empty directories is .
In later version of Windows:
>rd /s directory_name
Windows based on the NT kernel (XP, Vista, 7, 8, Server 2003/2008) are case insensitive, just like their earlier predecessors, unless two files of the same name and different case exist. Then case sensitivity applies when selecting which file to use, or if the case does not match either file, one may be chosen by Windows.
Having two files named the same with different case sensitivity is allowed either when Windows Services for Unix is installed or when the Windows Registry settings are set to allow it.
An example of the security risk is:
Using rd/rmdir and two directories with the same name and different case sensitivities exist, one of which contains valid data and/or programs, and the other contains incriminating materials and/or malware. If rd/rmdir gets executed without regard to case sensitivity and Windows chooses the legitimate folder to delete, the only folder left is the undesired one. Windows then uses this folder instead of the previously legitimate one to execute programs, and one may be led to believe it contains legitimate data.
See also
List of Unix commands
List of DOS commands
References
Further reading
External links
rmdir | Microsoft Docs
Unix SUS2008 utilities
Unix file system-related software
Internal DOS commands
MSX-DOS commands
OS/2 commands
ReactOS commands
IBM i Qshell commands
Windows administration |
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