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A computer does not need to be electronic, nor even have a processor, nor RAM, nor even a hard disk. While popular usage of the word "computer" is synonymous with a personal electronic computer, the modern definition of a computer is literally: "A device that computes, especially a programmable [usually] electronic mac... |
Historically, computers evolved from mechanical computers and eventually from vacuum tubes to transistors. However, conceptually computational systems as flexible as a personal computer can be built out of almost anything. For example, a computer can be made out of billiard balls (billiard ball computer); an often quot... |
There is active research to make computers out of many promising new types of technology, such as optical computers, DNA computers, neural computers, and quantum computers. Most computers are universal, and are able to calculate any computable function, and are limited only by their memory capacity and operating speed.... |
A computer will solve problems in exactly the way it is programmed to, without regard to efficiency, alternative solutions, possible shortcuts, or possible errors in the code. Computer programs that learn and adapt are part of the emerging field of artificial intelligence and machine learning. |
The term hardware covers all of those parts of a computer that are tangible objects. Circuits, displays, power supplies, cables, keyboards, printers and mice are all hardware. |
Software refers to parts of the computer which do not have a material form, such as programs, data, protocols, etc. When software is stored in hardware that cannot easily be modified (such as BIOS ROM in an IBM PC compatible), it is sometimes called "firmware". |
Firmware is the technology which has the combination of both hardware and software such as BIOS chip inside a computer. This chip (hardware) is located on the motherboard and has the BIOS set up (software) stored in it. |
When unprocessed data is sent to the computer with the help of input devices, the data is processed and sent to output devices. The input devices may be hand-operated or automated. The act of processing is mainly regulated by the CPU. Some examples of hand-operated input devices are: |
Black people is a term used in certain countries, often in socially based systems of racial classification or of ethnicity, to describe persons who are perceived to be dark-skinned compared to other given populations. As such, the meaning of the expression varies widely both between and within societies, and depends si... |
Different societies apply differing criteria regarding who is classified as "black", and these social constructs have also changed over time. In a number of countries, societal variables affect classification as much as skin color, and the social criteria for "blackness" vary. For example, in North America the term bla... |
The Romans interacted with and later conquered parts of Mauretania, an early state that covered modern Morocco, western Algeria, and the Spanish cities Ceuta and Melilla during the classical period. The people of the region were noted in Classical literature as Mauri, which was subsequently rendered as Moors in English... |
Numerous communities of dark-skinned peoples are present in North Africa, some dating from prehistoric communities. Others are descendants of the historical Trans-Saharan trade in peoples and/or, and after the Arab invasions of North Africa in the 7th century, descendants of slaves from the Arab Slave Trade in North Af... |
In the 18th century, the Moroccan Sultan Moulay Ismail "the Bloodthirsty" (1672–1727) raised a corps of 150,000 black slaves, called his Black Guard, who coerced the country into submission. |
According to Dr. Carlos Moore, resident scholar at Brazil's University of the State of Bahia, in the 21st century Afro-multiracials in the Arab world, including Arabs in North Africa, self-identify in ways that resemble multi-racials in Latin America. He claims that black-looking Arabs, much like black-looking Latin Am... |
Egyptian President Anwar Sadat had a mother who was a dark-skinned Nubian Sudanese woman and a father who was a lighter-skinned Egyptian. In response to an advertisement for an acting position, as a young man he said, "I am not white but I am not exactly black either. My blackness is tending to reddish". |
Due to the patriarchal nature of Arab society, Arab men, including during the slave trade in North Africa, enslaved more black women than men. They used more black female slaves in domestic service and agriculture than males. The men interpreted the Qur'an to permit sexual relations between a male master and his female... |
Some succeeded their fathers as rulers, such as Sultan Ahmad al-Mansur, who ruled Morocco from 1578 to 1608. He was not technically considered as a mixed-race child of a slave; his mother was Fulani and a concubine of his father. Such tolerance for black persons, even when technically "free", was not so common in Moroc... |
In early 1991, non-Arabs of the Zaghawa tribe of Sudan attested that they were victims of an intensifying Arab apartheid campaign, segregating Arabs and non-Arabs (specifically people of sub-Saharan African descent). Sudanese Arabs, who controlled the government, were widely referred to as practicing apartheid against ... |
American University economist George Ayittey accused the Arab government of Sudan of practicing acts of racism against black citizens. According to Ayittey, "In Sudan... the Arabs monopolized power and excluded blacks – Arab apartheid." Many African commentators joined Ayittey in accusing Sudan of practising Arab apart... |
Alan Dershowitz described Sudan as an example of a government that "actually deserve(s)" the appellation "apartheid." Former Canadian Minister of Justice Irwin Cotler echoed the accusation. |
In South Africa, the period of colonization resulted in many unions and marriages between European men and African women from various tribes, resulting in mixed-race children. As the Europeans acquired territory and imposed rule over the Africans, they generally pushed mixed-race and Africans into second-class status. ... |
The apartheid bureaucracy devised complex (and often arbitrary) criteria in the Population Registration Act of 1945 to determine who belonged in which group. Minor officials administered tests to enforce the classifications. When it was unclear from a person's physical appearance whether the individual should be consid... |
Sandra Laing is a South African woman who was classified as Coloured by authorities during the apartheid era, due to her skin colour and hair texture, although her parents could prove at least three generations of European ancestors. At age 10, she was expelled from her all-white school. The officials' decisions based ... |
During the apartheid era, those classed as "Coloured" were oppressed and discriminated against. But, they had limited rights and overall had slightly better socioeconomic conditions than those classed as "Black". The government required that Blacks and Coloureds live in areas separate from Whites, creating large townsh... |
In the post-apartheid era, the Constitution of South Africa has declared the country to be a "Non-racial democracy". In an effort to redress past injustices, the ANC government has introduced laws in support of affirmative action policies for Blacks; under these they define "Black" people to include "Africans", "Colour... |
In 2008, the High Court in South Africa ruled that Chinese South Africans who were residents during the apartheid era (and their descendants) are to be reclassified as "Black people," solely for the purposes of accessing affirmative action benefits, because they were also "disadvantaged" by racial discrimination. Chine... |
Other than by appearance, "Coloureds" can usually be distinguished from "Blacks" by language. Most speak Afrikaans or English as a first language, as opposed to Bantu languages such as Zulu or Xhosa. They also tend to have more European-sounding names than Bantu names. |
Historians estimate that between the advent of Islam in 650CE and the abolition of slavery in the Arabian Peninsula in the mid-20th century, 10 to 18 million sub-Saharan Black Africans were enslaved by Arab slave traders and transported to the Arabian Peninsula and neighboring countries. This number far exceeded the nu... |
Genetic studies have found significant African female-mediated gene flow in Arab communities in the Arabian Peninsula and neighboring countries, with an average of 38% of maternal lineages in Yemen are of direct African descent, 16% in Oman-Qatar, and 10% in Saudi Arabia-United Arab Emirates. |
Distinctive and self-identified black communities have been reported in countries such as Iraq, with a reported 1.2 million black people, and they attest to a history of discrimination. African-Iraquis have sought minority status from the government, which would reserve some seats in Parliament for representatives of t... |
About 150,000 East African and black people live in Israel, amounting to just over 2% of the nation's population. The vast majority of these, some 120,000, are Beta Israel, most of whom are recent immigrants who came during the 1980s and 1990s from Ethiopia. In addition, Israel is home to over 5,000 members of the Afri... |
Additionally, there are around 60,000 non-Jewish African immigrants in Israel, some of whom have sought asylum. Most of the migrants are from communities in Sudan and Eritrea, particularly the Niger-Congo-speaking Nuba groups of the southern Nuba Mountains; some are illegal immigrants. |
Beginning several centuries ago, during the period of the Ottoman Empire, tens of thousands of Black Africans were brought by slave traders to plantations and agricultural areas situated between Antalya and Istanbul in present-day Turkey. Some of their descendants remained in situ, and many migrated to larger cities an... |
The Siddi are an ethnic group inhabiting India and Pakistan whose members are descended from Bantu peoples from Southeast Africa that were brought to the Indian subcontinent as slaves by Arab and Portuguese merchants. Although it is commonly believed locally that "Siddi" derives from a word meaning "black", the term is... |
The Negritos are believed to be the first inhabitants of Southeast Asia. Once inhabiting Taiwan, Vietnam, and various other parts of Asia, they are now confined primarily to Thailand, the Malay Archipelago, and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Negrito means "little black people" in Spanish (negrito is the Spanish dimin... |
The term "Moors" has been used in Europe in a broader, somewhat derogatory sense to refer to Muslims, especially those of Arab or Berber descent, whether living in North Africa or Iberia. Moors were not a distinct or self-defined people. Medieval and early modern Europeans applied the name to Muslim Arabs, Berbers, Bla... |
Isidore of Seville, writing in the 7th century, claimed that the Latin word Maurus was derived from the Greek mauron, μαύρον, which is the Greek word for black. Indeed, by the time Isidore of Seville came to write his Etymologies, the word Maurus or "Moor" had become an adjective in Latin, "for the Greeks call black, m... |
Afro-Spaniards are Spanish nationals of West/Central African descent. They today mainly come from Angola, Brazil, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Equatorial Guinea, Ghana, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Nigeria and Senegal. Additionally, many Afro-Spaniards born in Spain are from the former Spanish colony Equatorial Guinea. Today,... |
According to the Office for National Statistics, at the 2001 census there were over a million black people in the United Kingdom; 1% of the total population described themselves as "Black Caribbean", 0.8% as "Black African", and 0.2% as "Black other". Britain encouraged the immigration of workers from the Caribbean aft... |
As African states became independent in the 1960s, the Soviet Union offered many of their citizens the chance to study in Russia. Over a period of 40 years, about 400,000 African students from various countries moved to Russia to pursue higher studies, including many Black Africans. This extended beyond the Soviet Unio... |
Due to the Ottoman slave trade that had flourished in the Balkans, the coastal town of Ulcinj in Montenegro had its own black community. As a consequence of the slave trade and privateer activity, it is told how until 1878 in Ulcinj 100 black people lived. The Ottoman Army also deployed an estimated 30,000 Black Africa... |
Indigenous Australians have been referred to as "black people" in Australia since the early days of European settlement. While originally related to skin colour, the term is used to today to indicate Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander ancestry in general and can refer to people of any skin pigmentation. |
Being identified as either "black" or "white" in Australia during the 19th and early 20th centuries was critical in one's employment and social prospects. Various state-based Aboriginal Protection Boards were established which had virtually complete control over the lives of Indigenous Australians – where they lived, t... |
After the First World War, however, it became apparent that the number of mixed-race people was growing at a faster rate than the white population, and by 1930 fear of the "half-caste menace" undermining the White Australia ideal from within was being taken as a serious concern. Dr. Cecil Cook, the Northern Territory P... |
The official policy became one of biological and cultural assimilation: "Eliminate the full-blood and permit the white admixture to half-castes and eventually the race will become white". This led to different treatment for "black" and "half-caste" individuals, with lighter-skinned individuals targeted for removal from... |
The second half of the 20th century to the present has seen a gradual shift towards improved human rights for Aboriginal people. In a 1967 referendum over 90% of the Australian population voted to end constitutional discrimination and to include Aborigines in the national census. During this period many Aboriginal acti... |
In 1978 Aboriginal writer Kevin Gilbert received the National Book Council award for his book Living Black: Blacks Talk to Kevin Gilbert, a collection of Aboriginal people's stories, and in 1998 was awarded (but refused to accept) the Human Rights Award for Literature for Inside Black Australia, a poetry anthology and ... |
This nationwide acceptance and recognition of Aboriginal people led to a significant increase in the number of people self-identifying as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander. The reappropriation of the term "black" with a positive and more inclusive meaning has resulted in its widespread use in mainstream Australian c... |
In the Colonial America of 1619, John Rolfe used negars in describing the slaves who were captured from West Africa and then shipped to the Virginia colony. Later American English spellings, neger and neggar, prevailed in a northern colony, New York under the Dutch, and in metropolitan Philadelphia's Moravian and Penns... |
By the 1900s, nigger had become a pejorative word in the United States. In its stead, the term colored became the mainstream alternative to negro and its derived terms. After the African-American Civil rights movement, the terms colored and negro gave way to "black". Negro had superseded colored as the most polite word... |
In the first 200 years that black people were in the United States, they primarily identified themselves by their specific ethnic group (closely allied to language) and not by skin color. Individuals identified themselves, for example, as Ashanti, Igbo, Bakongo, or Wolof. However, when the first captives were brought t... |
The US racial or ethnic classification "black" refers to people with all possible kinds of skin pigmentation, from the darkest through to the very lightest skin colors, including albinos, if they are believed by others to have West African ancestry (in any discernible percentage), or to exhibit cultural traits associat... |
By that time, the majority of black people in the United States were native-born, so the use of the term "African" became problematic. Though initially a source of pride, many blacks feared that the use of African as an identity would be a hindrance to their fight for full citizenship in the US. They also felt that it ... |
In 1988, the civil rights leader Jesse Jackson urged Americans to use instead the term "African American" because it had a historical cultural base and was a construction similar to terms used by European descendants, such as German American, Italian American, etc. Since then, African American and black have often had ... |
The U.S. census race definitions says a "black" is a person having origins in any of the black (sub-Saharan) racial groups of Africa. It includes people who indicate their race as "Black, African Am., or Negro" or who provide written entries such as African American, Afro-American, Kenyan, Nigerian, or Haitian. The Cen... |
From the late 19th century, the South used a colloquial term, the one-drop rule, to classify as black a person of any known African ancestry. This practice of hypodescent was not put into law until the early 20th century. Legally the definition varied from state to state. Racial definition was more flexible in the 18th... |
The concept of blackness in the United States has been described as the degree to which one associates themselves with mainstream African-American culture, politics, and values. To a certain extent, this concept is not so much about race but more about political orientation, culture and behavior. Blackness can be contr... |
Due to the often political and cultural contours of blackness in the United States, the notion of blackness can also be extended to non-black people. Toni Morrison once described Bill Clinton as the first black President of the United States, because, as she put it, he displayed "almost every trope of blackness". Chris... |
In July 2012, Ancestry.com reported on historic and DNA research by its staff that discovered that Obama is likely a descendant through his mother of John Punch, considered by some historians to be the first African slave in the Virginia colony. An indentured servant, he was "bound for life" in 1640 after trying to esc... |
Approximately 12 million Africans were shipped to the Americas during the Atlantic slave trade from 1492 to 1888, with 11.5 million of those shipped to South America and the Caribbean. Brazil was the largest importer in the Americas, with 5.5 million African slaves imported, followed by the British Caribbean with 2.76 ... |
The concept of race in Brazil is complex. A Brazilian child was never automatically identified with the racial type of one or both of his or her parents, nor were there only two categories to choose from. Between an individual of unmixed West African descent and a very light mulatto individual, more than a dozen racial... |
Scholars disagree over the effects of social status on racial classifications in Brazil. It is generally believed that achieving upward mobility and education results in individuals being classified as a category of lighter skin. The popular claim is that in Brazil, poor whites are considered black and wealthy blacks a... |
From the years 1500 to 1850, an estimated 3.5 million captives were forcibly shipped from West/Central Africa to Brazil; the territory received the highest number of slaves of any country in the Americas. Scholars estimate that more than half of the Brazilian population is at least in part descended from these individu... |
By the 2000 census, demographic changes including the end to slavery, immigration from Europe and Asia, assimilation of multiracial persons, and other factors resulted in a population in which 6.2% of the population identified as black, 40% as pardo, and 55% as white. Essentially most of the black population was absorb... |
Because of the acceptance of miscegenation, Brazil has avoided the binary polarization of society into black and white. In addition, it abolished slavery without a civil war. The bitter and sometimes violent racial tensions that have divided the US are notably absent in Brazil. According to the 2010 census, 6.7% of Bra... |
In the US, African Americans, who include multiracial people, earn 75% of what white people earn. In Brazil, people of color earn less than 50% of what whites earn. Some have posited that the facts of lower socioeconomic status for people of color suggest that Brazil practices a kind of one-drop rule, or discrimination... |
Though Brazilians of at least partial African heritage make up a large percentage of the population, few blacks have been elected as politicians. The city of Salvador, Bahia, for instance, is 80% people of color, but voters have not elected a mayor of color. Journalists like to say that US cities with black majorities,... |
Critics note that people of color have limited media visibility. The Brazilian media has been accused of hiding or overlooking the nation's Black, Indigenous, Multiracial and East Asian populations. For example, the telenovelas or soaps are criticized for featuring actors who resemble northern Europeans rather than act... |
These patterns of discrimination against non-whites have led some academic and other activists to advocate for use of the Portuguese term negro to encompass all African-descended people, in order to stimulate a "black" consciousness and identity. This proposal has been criticized since the term pardo is considered to i... |
The Times is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register and became The Times on 1 January 1788. The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times (founded in 1821) are published by Times Newspapers, since 1981 a subsidiary of News UK, itself wholly ow... |
The Times is the first newspaper to have borne that name, lending it to numerous other papers around the world, including The Times of India (founded in 1838), The Straits Times (Singapore) (1845), The New York Times (1851), The Irish Times (1859), Le Temps (France) (1861-1942), the Cape Times (South Africa) (1872), th... |
The Times is the originator of the widely used Times Roman typeface, originally developed by Stanley Morison of The Times in collaboration with the Monotype Corporation for its legibility in low-tech printing. In November 2006 The Times began printing headlines in a new font, Times Modern. The Times was printed in broa... |
Though traditionally a moderate newspaper and sometimes a supporter of the Conservative Party, it supported the Labour Party in the 2001 and 2005 general elections. In 2004, according to MORI, the voting intentions of its readership were 40% for the Conservative Party, 29% for the Liberal Democrats, and 26% for Labour.... |
The Times was founded by publisher John Walter on 1 January 1785 as The Daily Universal Register, with Walter in the role of editor. Walter had lost his job by the end of 1784 after the insurance company where he was working went bankrupt because of the complaints of a Jamaican hurricane. Being unemployed, Walter decid... |
The Times used contributions from significant figures in the fields of politics, science, literature, and the arts to build its reputation. For much of its early life, the profits of The Times were very large and the competition minimal, so it could pay far better than its rivals for information or writers. Beginning i... |
Thomas Barnes was appointed general editor in 1817. In the same year, the paper's printer James Lawson, died and passed the business onto his son John Joseph Lawson(1802–1852). Under the editorship of Barnes and his successor in 1841, John Thadeus Delane, the influence of The Times rose to great heights, especially in ... |
The Times was the first newspaper to send war correspondents to cover particular conflicts. W. H. Russell, the paper's correspondent with the army in the Crimean War, was immensely influential with his dispatches back to England. |
In other events of the nineteenth century, The Times opposed the repeal of the Corn Laws until the number of demonstrations convinced the editorial board otherwise, and only reluctantly supported aid to victims of the Irish Potato Famine. It enthusiastically supported the Great Reform Bill of 1832, which reduced corrup... |
The third John Walter, the founder's grandson, succeeded his father in 1847. The paper continued as more or less independent, but from the 1850s The Times was beginning to suffer from the rise in competition from the penny press, notably The Daily Telegraph and The Morning Post. |
During the 19th century, it was not infrequent for the Foreign Office to approach The Times and ask for continental intelligence, which was often superior to that conveyed by official sources.[citation needed] |
The Times faced financial extinction in 1890 under Arthur Fraser Walter, but it was rescued by an energetic editor, Charles Frederic Moberly Bell. During his tenure (1890–1911), The Times became associated with selling the Encyclopædia Britannica using aggressive American marketing methods introduced by Horace Everett ... |
In editorials published on 29 and 31 July 1914, Wickham Steed, the Times's Chief Editor, argued that the British Empire should enter World War I. On 8 May 1920, also under the editorship of Steed, The Times in an editorial endorsed the anti-Semitic fabrication The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion as a genuine do... |
The following year, when Philip Graves, the Constantinople (modern Istanbul) correspondent of The Times, exposed The Protocols as a forgery, The Times retracted the editorial of the previous year. |
In 1922, John Jacob Astor, son of the 1st Viscount Astor, bought The Times from the Northcliffe estate. The paper gained a measure of notoriety in the 1930s with its advocacy of German appeasement; then-editor Geoffrey Dawson was closely allied with those in the government who practised appeasement, most notably Nevill... |
Kim Philby, a Soviet double agent, was a correspondent for the newspaper in Spain during the Spanish Civil War of the late 1930s. Philby was admired for his courage in obtaining high-quality reporting from the front lines of the bloody conflict. He later joined MI6 during World War II, was promoted into senior position... |
Between 1941 and 1946, the left-wing British historian E.H. Carr was Assistant Editor. Carr was well known for the strongly pro-Soviet tone of his editorials. In December 1944, when fighting broke out in Athens between the Greek Communist ELAS and the British Army, Carr in a Times editorial sided with the Communists, l... |
On 3 May 1966 it resumed printing news on the front page - previously the front page featured small advertisements, usually of interest to the moneyed classes in British society. In 1967, members of the Astor family sold the paper to Canadian publishing magnate Roy Thomson. His Thomson Corporation brought it under the ... |
The Thomson Corporation management were struggling to run the business due to the 1979 Energy Crisis and union demands. Management were left with no choice but to find a buyer who was in a position to guarantee the survival of both titles, and also one who had the resources and was committed to funding the introduction... |
Several suitors appeared, including Robert Maxwell, Tiny Rowland and Lord Rothermere; however, only one buyer was in a position to meet the full Thomson remit, Australian media magnate Rupert Murdoch. Robert Holmes à Court, another Australian magnate had previously tried to buy The Times in 1980. |
In 1981, The Times and The Sunday Times were bought from Thomson by Rupert Murdoch's News International. The acquisition followed three weeks of intensive bargaining with the unions by company negotiators, John Collier and Bill O'Neill. |
After 14 years as editor, William Rees-Mogg resigned the post upon completion of the change of ownership. Murdoch began to make his mark on the paper by appointing Harold Evans as his replacement. One of his most important changes was the introduction of new technology and efficiency measures. In March–May 1982, follow... |
Robert Fisk, seven times British International Journalist of the Year, resigned as foreign correspondent in 1988 over what he saw as "political censorship" of his article on the shooting-down of Iran Air Flight 655 in July 1988. He wrote in detail about his reasons for resigning from the paper due to meddling with his ... |
In June 1990, The Times ceased its policy of using courtesy titles ("Mr", "Mrs", or "Miss" prefixes) for living persons before full names on first reference, but it continues to use them before surnames on subsequent references. The more formal style is now confined to the "Court and Social" page, though "Ms" is now ac... |
In November 2003, News International began producing the newspaper in both broadsheet and tabloid sizes. On 13 September 2004, the weekday broadsheet was withdrawn from sale in Northern Ireland. Since 1 November 2004, the paper has been printed solely in tabloid format. |
On 6 June 2005, The Times redesigned its Letters page, dropping the practice of printing correspondents' full postal addresses. Published letters were long regarded as one of the paper's key constituents. Author/solicitor David Green of Castle Morris Pembrokeshire has had more letters published on the main letters page... |
In a 2007 meeting with the House of Lords Select Committee on Communications, which was investigating media ownership and the news, Murdoch stated that the law and the independent board prevented him from exercising editorial control. |
In May 2008 printing of The Times switched from Wapping to new plants at Broxbourne on the outskirts of London, and Merseyside and Glasgow, enabling the paper to be produced with full colour on every page for the first time. |
On 26 July 2012, to coincide with the official start of the London 2012 Olympics and the issuing of a series of souvenir front covers, The Times added the suffix "of London" to its masthead. |
The Times features news for the first half of the paper, the Opinion/Comment section begins after the first news section with world news normally following this. The business pages begin on the centre spread, and are followed by The Register, containing obituaries, Court & Social section, and related material. The spor... |
The Times's main supplement, every day, is the times2, featuring various lifestyle columns. It was discontinued on 1 March 2010 but reintroduced on 11 October 2010 after negative feedback. Its regular features include a puzzles section called Mind Games. Its previous incarnation began on 5 September 2005, before which ... |
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