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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OoVoo
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OoVoo
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ooVoo was a video chat and a messaging app developed by ooVoo LLC and owned by Krush Technologies, LLC. ooVoo had applications for Android, iOS, Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, Windows Phone, and Facebook. The original Microsoft Windows app was released in 2007. It was discontinued on November 25, 2017.
Features
ooVoo allowed users to communicate through free messaging, voice, and video chat. ooVoo video conferencing technology enabled high-quality video and audio calls with up to twelve participants simultaneously, HD video and desktop sharing.
History
ooVoo was founded in 2006 by Ohio entrepreneur Clay Mathile based on technology developed at Arel Communications and Software (Formerly NASDAQ:ARLCF). Arel was founded in 1982 and specialized in remote e-learning and collaboration solutions. On March 13, 2006, Arel Communications was taken private by its current owners and relaunched as ooVoo.
In June 2007, ooVoo for Microsoft Windows launched, allowing high-quality video chat from anywhere in the world. In February 2008, video call recording and phone calling were introduced. In May 2008, ooVoo for Apple's OS X launched, creating cross-platform capabilities for video chat. In February 2009, ooVoo 2.0 launched and featured browser-based video chat rooms and video chat through a web link with no download required. An open API was also launched with version 2.0, and allowed developers to build customized applications and widgets. In May 2009, ooVoo introduced the first air-to-ground three-way video conversation. ooVoo version 2.2 was launched in July 2009, and introduced business plans geared for multiple seats and desktop sharing. New pay-as-you-go options and international phone calling were also introduced.
In January 2010, ooVoo released its app for Android mobile devices.
On 2 June 2011, ooVoo launched its social video chat service on Apple's iPhone (and other iOS devices), making its free HD Video chat service cross platforms, including: PC, Mac, Android and iPhone.
On July 22, 2013, ooVoo released a Software Development Kit (SDK), allowing other applications to leverage its video chat technology (current apps leveraging the ooVoo SDK: Flinch, Heystax).
On June 10, 2014, ooVoo released its app for Windows Phone devices.
On September 9, 2014, ooVoo released its Video SDK for WebRTC.
On November 25, 2017, ooVoo announced via Twitter that it will be shutting down, citing a lack of profit.
Accolades
ooVoo won PC Magazine'''s Software Innovation "Best in Show" Award at the DigitalLife Expo in September 2007.
In March 2008, ooVoo won the "Webware 100" award for Communication.
ooVoo won PC Magazine'''s Best Mobile Product of 2011 in the Android Category
ooVoo won the Tabby Award in the Social category for its Android app in August 2013.
ooVoo was a nominee and finalist for a Mobby Award in the Business Collaboration category for its Android app in September 2015.
ooVoo was honored in 2016 with a Mobile Excellence Award for Best Social Community.
2016 CES Innovation Award Honoree.
References
VoIP software
MacOS instant messaging clients
Windows instant messaging clients
Software development kits
Videotelephony
2007 software
Webcams
Universal Windows Platform apps
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37913608
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch%20Time
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Launch Time
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Launch Time is a new concept for handling Ethernet packets proposed for the Linux kernel. It is an attempt to add some isochronous capability to the kernel by hinting at what time a packet should be sent out. When sending a packet to socket, an additional bit (MSG_LAUNCHTIME) is specified in the "sendto" flags field. If this bit is set, then the buffer passed to the socket includes the desired send time or "launch time". The sendto syscall will shave off the launchtime from the packet and add it to the msghdr passed to the lower layers of the network stack.
The UDP + IPv4/IPv6 are planned to be extended to support this, and if launchtime is requested, they will try to call a new send message routine in the network driver which allows passing the launchtime parameter, in addition to those of the normal send message present in the driver. Before Launch time is used the network driver will have to be initialized using an ioctl.
Support
Very few network controllers support launchtime today. The Intel i210 Gigabit Ethernet controller does, but there is no support in the igb driver as of December 2012.
Launch time can be supported in FPGA based network cards, but it is not common for TCP/IP Offload Engines to support launch time. The Endace DAG cards are an exception, but have no support for Linux networking using the normal network stack, only using a proprietary API.
The linux_igb_avb project at SourceForge does support launch time for user space applications.
References
Linux kernel
Ethernet
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7834778
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short%20Stories%20%28Miyuki%20Nakajima%20album%29
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Short Stories (Miyuki Nakajima album)
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is the 28th studio album by Japanese singer-songwriter Miyuki Nakajima, released in November 2000. The album features commercially successful double A-Side single "Earthly Stars (Unsung Heroes)"/"Headlight, Taillight", which became the number-one hit in later years and sold more than a million copies in Japan alone.
Track listing
All songs written and composed by Miyuki Nakajima, arranged by Ichizo Seo (except "Powdery Snow" co-arranged by David Campbell).
"" – 5:11
"" – 5:17
"" – 4:35
"" – 6:15
"Merry-Go-Round" – 5:54
"" – 4:24
"" – 3:43
"" – 2:32
"" – 6:32
"Tell Me, Sister" – 5:23
"" – 4:57
Personnel
Band
Miyuki Nakajima – vocals
Ichizo Seo – keyboards, strings arrangement & conduct
Hideo Yamaki – tomtom, cymbals
Russ Kunkel – drums
Vinnie Colaiuta – drums
Gregg Bissonette – drums
Neil Stubenhaus – bass guitar
Hideki Matsubara – bass guitar
Leland Sklar – bass guitar
Michael Thompson – electric and acoustic guitar
Masayoshi Furukawa – electric guitar, 12-strings acoustic guitar
Elton Nagata – keyboards, acoustic and electric piano
Shingo Kobayashi – keyboards, acoustic piano
Jon Gilutin – acoustic and electric piano, hammond B-3, keyboards
Yasuharu Nakanishi – keyboards
Keishi Urata- computer programming
Seiichi Takubo – computer programming
Yousuke Sugimoto – computer programming
Brandon Fields – tenor sax
Backing vocalists
Fumikazu Miyashita – backing and harmony vocals
Yasuhiro Kido – backing vocals
Katsumi Maeda – backing vocals
Toshiro Kirigaya – backing vocals
Etsuro Wakakonai – backing vocals
Julia Waters – backing vocals
Maxine Waters – backing vocals
Carmen Twillie – backing vocals
Monalisa Young – backing vocals
Clydene Jackson Edwards – backing vocals
Oren Waters – backing vocals
Luther Waters – backing vocals
Johnny Britt – backing vocals
Joseph Powell – backing vocals
Terry Young – backing vocals
Rick Logan – backing vocals
Randy Crenshaw – backing vocals
John Batdorf – backing vocals
Additional personnel
David Campbell – strings arrangement, conducting
Suzie Katayama – conducting
Masatsugu Shinozaki – violin, concertmaster
Joel Derouin – violin, concertmaster
Bruce Dukov – violin
Mario De Leon – violin
Armen Garabedian – violin
Berj Garabedian – violin
Endre Grant – violin
Peter Kent – violin
Rachel Purkin – violin
Michele Richards – violin
John Wittenberg – violin
Charlie Bisharat – violin
Brian Leonard – violin
Robert Peterson – violin
Haim Shtrim – violin
Kiyo Kido – violin
Jun Yamamoto – violin
Yumiko Hirose – violin
Osamu Inou – violin
Kei Shinozaki – violin
Yu Sugino – violin
Naoyuki Takahashi – violin
Kathrine Cash – violin
Tsunehiro Shigyo – violin
Keiko Nakamura – violin
Machia Saito – violin
Crusher Kimura – violin
Takashi Kato – violin
Masayoshi Fujiyama – violin
Hitoshi Imano – violin
Yukikane Murata – violin
Jun Takeuchi – violin
Akihiko Suzuki – violin
Takayuki Oshigane – violin
Akiko Kato – violin
Hiroki Muto – violin
Masako Mabuchi – viola
Yuji Yamada – viola
Gentaro Sakaguchi – viola
Denyse Buffum – viola
Matthew Funes – viola
Janet Lakatos – viola
Karie Prescott – viola
Joshin Toyama – viola
Gentaro Sakaguchi – viola
Kaori Naruse – viola
Masaharu Karita – cello
Tomoya Kikuchi – cello
Hiroki Kashiwagi – cello
Yoshihiko Maeda – cello
Masahiro Tanaka – cello
Susumu Miyake – cello
Steve Richards – cello
Daniel Smith – cello
Rudolph Stein – cello
Paula Hoochatter – cello
Don Markese – tin whistle, recorder
Chart positions
Album
Single
References
Miyuki Nakajima albums
2000 albums
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56075
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop%20Grumman%20E-2%20Hawkeye
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Northrop Grumman E-2 Hawkeye
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The Northrop Grumman E-2 Hawkeye is an American all-weather, carrier-capable tactical airborne early warning (AEW) aircraft. This twin-turboprop aircraft was designed and developed during the late 1950s and early 1960s by the Grumman Aircraft Company for the United States Navy as a replacement for the earlier, piston-engined E-1 Tracer, which was rapidly becoming obsolete. The aircraft's performance has been upgraded with the E-2B and E-2C versions, where most of the changes were made to the radar and radio communications due to advances in electronic integrated circuits and other electronics. The fourth major version of the Hawkeye is the E-2D, which first flew in 2007. The E-2 was the first aircraft designed specifically for its role, as opposed to a modification of an existing airframe, such as the Boeing E-3 Sentry. Variants of the Hawkeye have been in continuous production since 1960, giving it the longest production run of any carrier-based aircraft.
The E-2 also received the nickname "Super Fudd" because it replaced the WF (later E-1) "Willy Fudd". In recent decades, the E-2 has been commonly referred to as the "Hummer" because of the distinctive sounds of its turboprop engines, quite unlike that of turbojet and turbofan jet engines. In addition to U.S. Navy service, smaller numbers of E-2s have been sold to the armed forces of Egypt, France, Israel, Japan, Mexico, Singapore and Taiwan.
Grumman also used the basic layout of the E-2 to produce the Grumman C-2 Greyhound cargo aircraft.
Development
Background
Continual improvements in airborne radars through 1956 led to the construction of AEW airplanes by several different countries and several different armed forces. The functions of command and control and sea and air surveillance were also added. The first carrier-based aircraft to perform these missions for the U.S. Navy and its allies was the Douglas AD Skyraider, which was replaced in US Navy service by the Grumman E-1 Tracer, which was a modified version of the S-2 Tracker twin-engine anti-submarine warfare aircraft, where the radar was carried in an aerofoil-shaped radome carried above the aircraft's fuselage.
E-2A and E-2B Hawkeye
In 1956, the U.S. Navy developed a requirement for an airborne early warning aircraft where its data could be integrated into the Naval Tactical Data System aboard the Navy's ships, with a design from Grumman being selected to meet this requirement in March 1957. Its design, initially designated W2F-1, but later redesignated the E-2A Hawkeye, was the first carrier plane that had been designed from its wheels up as an AEW and command and control airplane. The design engineers at Grumman faced immense challenges, including the requirement that the aircraft be able to operate from the older modified s. These vessels were built during World War II and were smaller than modern carriers, being later modified to allow them to operate jet aircraft. Consequently, various height, weight and length restrictions had to be factored into the E-2A design, resulting in some handling characteristics which were less than ideal. However, the E-2A never operated from the modified Essex class carriers.
The first prototype, acting as an aerodynamic testbed only, flew on 21 October 1960. The first fully equipped aircraft followed it on 19 April 1961 and entered service with the US Navy as the E-2A in January 1964. By 1965, the project had accumulated so many development issues that it was cancelled after 59 aircraft had already been built. In particular, difficulties were being experienced due to inadequate cooling in the closely packed avionics compartment. Early computers and complex avionics systems generated considerable heat and could fail without proper ventilation. These issues continued long after the aircraft entered service. At one point, reliability was so bad that the entire fleet of aircraft was grounded.
After Navy officials had been forced to explain to Congress why four production contracts had been signed before avionics testing had been completed, action was taken; Grumman and the US Navy scrambled to improve the design. The unreliable rotary drum computer was replaced by a Litton L-304 digital computer and various avionics systems were replaced – the upgraded aircraft were designated E-2Bs. In total, 49 of the 59 E-2As were upgraded to E-2B standard. These aircraft replaced the E-1B Tracers in the various US Navy AEW squadrons.
E-2C Hawkeye and upgrades
Although the upgraded E-2B was a vast improvement on the unreliable E-2A, it was an interim measure. The US Navy knew the design had much greater capability and had yet to achieve the performance and reliability parameters set out in the original 1957 design. In April 1968, a reliability improvement program was initiated. In addition, now that the capabilities of the aircraft were starting to be realized, more were desired; 28 new E-2Cs were ordered to augment the 49 E-2Bs that would be upgraded. Improvements in the new and upgraded aircraft were concentrated in the radar and computer performance.
Two E-2A test machines were modified as E-2C prototypes, the first flying on 20 January 1971. Trials proved satisfactory and the E-2C was ordered into production. The first production aircraft performed its initial flight on 23 September 1972. The original E-2C, known as Group 0, consisted of 55 aircraft; the first aircraft became operational in 1973 and serving on carriers in the 1980s and 1990s, until they were replaced in first-line service by Group II aircraft. US Navy Reserve used some aircraft for tracking drug smugglers. The type was commonly used in conjunction with Grumman F-14 Tomcat fighters; monitoring airspace and then vectoring Tomcats over the Link-4A datalink to destroy potential threats with long range AIM-54C Phoenix missiles.
The next production run, between 1988 and 1991, saw 18 aircraft built to the Group I standard. Group I aircraft replaced the E-2's older APS-125 radar and T56-A-425 turboprops with their successors, the APS-139 radar system and T56-A-427 turboprops. The first Group I aircraft entered service in August 1981. Upgrading the Group 0 aircraft to Group I specifications was considered, but the cost was comparable to a new production aircraft, so upgrades were not conducted. Group I aircraft were only flown by the Atlantic fleet squadrons. This version was followed within a few years by the Group II, which had the improved APS-145 radar. A total of 50 Group II aircraft were delivered, 12 being upgraded Group I aircraft. This new version entered service in June 1992 and served with the Pacific and Atlantic Fleet squadrons.
By 1997, the US Navy intended that all front line squadrons would be equipped, for a total of 75 Group II aircraft. Grumman merged with Northrop in 1994 and plans began on the Group II Plus, also known as the Group II / NAV upgrade. This kept the same computer and radar as the Group II while upgrading the pilot avionics, such as replacing the mechanical Inertial Navigation System (INS) with a more reliable and accurate laser Ring Gyroscope-driven INS, installing dual Multifunction Display Units (MFCDUs) (vice one in the Group II) and integrating GPS into the weapon system. A variant of the Group II with upgrades to the mission computer and CIC workstations is referred to as the MCU/ACIS, these were produced in small numbers due to production of the Hawkeye 2000 soon after its introduction. All Group II aircraft had their 1960s vintage computer processors replaced by a mission computer with the same functionality via modern computer technology, referred to as the GrIIM RePr (Group II Mission Computer Replacement Program, pronounced "grim reaper").
Another upgrade to the Group II was the Hawkeye 2000, which featured the same APS-145 radar but incorporated an upgraded mission computer and CIC (Combat Information Center) workstations (Advanced Control Indicator Set or ACIS and carries the U.S. Navy's new CEC (cooperative engagement capability) data-link system. It is also fitted with a larger capacity vapor cycle avionics cooling system. Starting in 2007 a hardware and software upgrade package began to be added to existing Hawkeye 2000 aircraft. This upgrade allows faster processing, double current trackfile capacity and access to satellite information networks. Hawkeye 2000 cockpits being upgraded include solid-state glass displays and a GPS-approach capability. The remaining Hawkeye Group II NAV Upgrade aircraft received GPS approach capability, but did not get the solid-state glass displays.
In 2004, the E-2C's propeller system was changed; a new eight-bladed propeller system named NP2000 was developed by the Hamilton-Sundstrand company to replace the old four-bladed design. Improvements included reduced vibrations and better maintainability as a result of the ability to remove prop blades individually instead of having to remove the entire prop and hub assembly. The propeller blades are of carbon fiber construction with steel leading edge inserts and de-icing boots at the root of the blade.
E-2D Advanced Hawkeye
Once considered for replacement by the "Common Support Aircraft", this concept was abandoned. The latest E-2 version is the E-2D Advanced Hawkeye, which features an entirely new avionics suite including the new AN/APY-9 radar, radio suite, mission computer, integrated satellite communications, flight management system, improved T56-A-427A engines, a glass cockpit and aerial refueling. The APY-9 radar features an active electronically scanned array, which adds electronic scanning to the mechanical rotation of the radar in its radome. The E-2D includes provisions for the copilot to act as a "Tactical 4th Operator" (T4O), who can reconfigure his main cockpit display to show radar, IFF, Link 16 (JTIDS)/CEC and access all acquired data. The E-2D's first flight occurred on 3 August 2007. On 8 May 2009, an E-2D used its Cooperative Engagement Capability system to engage an overland cruise missile with a Standard Missile SM-6 fired from another platform in an integrated fire-control system test. These two systems will form the basis of the Naval Integrated Fire Control – Counter Air (NIFC-CA) when fielded in 2015; the USN is investigating adding other systems to the NIFC-CA network in the future.
The APY-9 radar has been suspected of being capable of detecting fighter-sized stealth aircraft, which are typically optimized against high frequencies like Ka, Ku, X, C and parts of the S-bands. Small aircraft lack the size or weight allowances for all-spectrum low-observable features, leaving a vulnerability to detection by the UHF-band APY-9 radar, potentially detecting fifth-generation fighters like the Russian Sukhoi Su-57 and the Chinese Chengdu J-20 and Shenyang J-31. Historically, UHF radars had resolution and detection issues that made them ineffective for accurate targeting and fire control; Northrop Grumman and Lockheed claim that the APY-9 has solved these shortcomings in the APY-9 using advanced electronic scanning and high digital computing power via space/time adaptive processing. According to the Navy's NIFC-CA concept, the E-2D could guide fleet weapons, such as AIM-120 AMRAAM and SM-6 missiles, onto targets beyond a launch platform's detection range or capabilities.
Deliveries of initial production E-2Ds began in 2010. On 4 February 2010, Delta One conducted the first E-2D carrier landing aboard USS Harry S. Truman as a part of carrier suitability testing. On 27 September 2011, an E-2D was successfully launched by the prototype Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS) at Naval Air Engineering Station Lakehurst. On 12 February 2013, the Office of the Secretary of Defense approved the E-2D to enter full-rate production. The Navy plans for an initial operational capability by 2015. In June 2013, the 10th E-2D was delivered to the Navy, with an additional 10 aircraft in various stages of manufacturing and predelivery flight testing. On 18 July 2013, Northrop Grumman was awarded a $113.7 million contract for five full-rate production Lot 2 E-2D Advanced Hawkeye aircraft. On 13 August 2013, Northrop Grumman was awarded a $617 million contract for five E-2Ds until full-rate production Lot 1. On 30 June 2014, Northrop Grumman was awarded a $3.6 billion contract to supply 25 more E-2D, for a total contracted number of 50 aircraft; 13 E-2D models had been delivered by that time.
In December 2016, an E-2D flew for the first time fitted with an aerial refueling capability. This feature will allow the aircraft to double its time on station to five hours and increase total mission time from four to seven hours. The refueling modification will start being built into the 46th plane (out of 75 planned) for delivery in late 2020 costing an additional $2 million per aircraft and the Navy plans to retrofit the feature on all previous Hawkeyes for $6 million per plane.
Design
The E-2 is a high-wing airplane, with one Allison T56 turboprop engine (5250 shp rating) on each wing and retractable tricycle landing gear. As with all carrier-borne airplanes, the E-2 is equipped with a tail hook for recovery (landing) and the nose gear can attach to a shuttle of the aircraft carrier's catapults for launch (takeoff). A distinguishing feature of the Hawkeye is its 24-foot (7.3 m) diameter rotating radar dome (rotodome) that is mounted above its fuselage and wings. This carries the E-2's primary antennas for its long-range radar and IFF systems. No other carrier-borne aircraft possesses one of these. Land-based aircraft with rotodomes include the Boeing E-3 Sentry, a larger AWACS airplane operated by the U.S. Air Force and NATO air forces in large numbers. The similarly placed stationary radome of the E-2's piston-engined predecessor, the E-1 Tracer, also mandated the E-2's adoption of a modern version of Grumman's long-patented Sto-Wing folding wing system, preventing the folded wing panels from making contact with the E-2's rotodome.
The aircraft is operated by a crew of five, with the pilot and co-pilot on the flight deck and the combat information center officer, air control officer and radar operator stations located in the rear fuselage directly beneath the rotodome.
In U.S. service, the E-2 Hawkeye provides all-weather airborne early warning and command and control capabilities for all aircraft-carrier battle groups. In addition, its other purposes include sea and land surveillance, the control of the aircraft carrier's fighter planes for air defense, the control of strike aircraft on offensive missions, the control of search and rescue missions for naval aviators and sailors lost at sea, relaying radio communications, air-to-air and ship-to-air. It can also serve in an air traffic control capacity in emergency situations when land-based ATC is unavailable.
The E-2C and E-2D Hawkeyes use advanced electronic sensors combined with digital computer signal processing, especially its radars, for early warning of enemy aircraft attacks and anti-ship missile attacks, controlling the carrier's combat air patrol (CAP) fighters, and secondarily for surveillance of the surrounding sea and land for enemy warships and guided-missile launchers and any other electronic surveillance missions as directed.
Operational history
US Navy
The E-2A entered U.S. Navy service in January 1964 and in April 1964 with VAW-11 at NAS North Island. The first deployment was aboard the aircraft carrier during 1965.
Since entering combat during the Vietnam War, the E-2 has served the US Navy around the world, acting as the electronic "eyes of the fleet".
In August 1981, a Hawkeye from VAW-124 "Bear Aces" directed two F-14 Tomcats from VF-41 "Black Aces" in an intercept mission in the Gulf of Sidra that resulted in the downing of two Libyan Sukhoi Su-22s. Hawkeyes from VAW-123 aboard the aircraft carrier directed a group of F-14 Tomcat fighters flying the Combat Air Patrol during Operation El Dorado Canyon, the joint strike of two Carrier Battle Groups in the Mediterranean Sea against Libyan terrorist targets during 1986.
More recently, E-2Cs provided the command and control for both aerial warfare and land-attack missions during the Persian Gulf War. Hawkeyes have supported the U.S. Coast Guard, the U.S. Customs Service, and American federal and state police forces during anti-drug operations.
In the mid-1980s, several U.S. Navy E-2Cs were made available to the U.S. Coast Guard and the U.S. Customs Service for counter-narcotics (CN) and maritime interdiction operations (MIO). This also led to the Coast Guard building a small cadre of Naval Flight Officers (NFOs), starting with the recruitment and interservice transfer of Navy flight officers with E-2 flight experience and the flight training of other junior Coast Guard officers as NFOs. A fatal aircraft mishap on 24 August 1990 involving a Coast Guard E-2C at the former Naval Station Roosevelt Roads in Puerto Rico prompted the Coast Guard to discontinue flying E-2Cs and to return its E-2Cs to the Navy. The U.S Customs Service also returned its E-2Cs to the Navy and concentrated on the use of former U.S. Navy P-3 Orion aircraft in the CN role.
E-2C Hawkeye squadrons played a critical role in air operations during Operation Desert Storm. In one instance, a Hawkeye crew provided critical air control direction to two F/A-18 Hornet aircrew, resulting in the shootdown of two Iraqi MiG-21s. During Operations Southern Watch and Desert Fox, Hawkeye crews continued to provide thousands of hours of air coverage, while providing air-to-air and air-to-ground command and control in a number of combat missions.
The E-2 Hawkeye is a crucial component of all U.S. Navy carrier air wings; each carrier is equipped with four Hawkeyes (five in some situations), allowing for continuous 24-hour-a-day operation of at least one E-2 and for one or two to undergo maintenance in the aircraft carrier's hangar deck at all times. Until 2005, the US Navy Hawkeyes were organized into East and West coast wings, supporting the respective fleets. However, the East coast wing was disestablished, all aircraft were organized into a single wing based at Point Mugu, California. Six E-2C aircraft were deployed by the US Naval Reserve for drug interdiction and homeland security operations until 9 March 2013, when the sole Reserve squadron, VAW-77 'Nightwolves', was decommissioned and its six aircraft sent to other squadrons.
During Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom all ten Regular Navy Hawkeye squadrons flew overland sorties. They provided battle management for attack of enemy ground targets, close-air-support coordination, combat search and rescue control, airspace management, as well as datalink and communication relay for both land and naval forces. During the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, three Hawkeye squadrons (two Regular Navy and one Navy Reserve) were deployed in support of civilian relief efforts including Air Traffic Control responsibilities spanning three states, and the control of U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Marine Corps, U.S. Coast Guard and Army National Guard and Air National Guard helicopter rescue units.
Hawkeye 2000s first deployed in 2003 aboard with VAW-117, the "Wallbangers" (formerly the "Nighthawks") and CVW-11. U.S. Navy E-2C Hawkeyes have been upgraded with eight-bladed propellers as part of the NP2000 program; the first squadron to cruise with the new propellers was VAW-124 "Bear Aces". The Hawkeye 2000 version can track over 2,000 targets simultaneously while also detecting 20,000 targets to a range greater than and simultaneously guide 40–100 air-to-air intercepts or air-to-surface engagements.
In 2014, several E-2C Hawkeyes from the Bear Aces of VAW-124 were deployed from as flying command posts and air traffic controllers over Iraq during Operation Inherent Resolve against the Islamic State.
VAW-120, the E-2C fleet replacement squadron began receiving E-2D Advanced Hawkeyes for training use in July 2010. On 27 March 2014, the first E-2Ds were delivered to the VAW-125. The E-2D achieved Initial Operational Capability (IOC) in October 2014 when VAW-125 was certified to have five operational aircraft. This began training on the aircraft for its first operational deployment, scheduled for 2015 aboard . The E-2D will play a larger role than that of the E-2C, with five E-2Ds aboard each carrier instead of the current four C-models, requiring the acquisition of 75 total E-2Ds. On 11 March 2015, the Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group departed Naval Station Norfolk and returned to port on 23 November 2015, concluding the first operational use of the E-2D.
Other operators
E-2 Hawkeyes have been sold by the U.S. Federal Government under Foreign Military Sales (FMS) procedures to the armed forces of Egypt, France, Israel, Japan, Singapore and Taiwan.
Egypt
Egypt purchased five E-2C Hawkeyes, that entered service in 1987 and were upgraded to Hawkeye 2000 standard. One additional upgraded E-2C was purchased. The first upgraded aircraft was delivered in March 2003 and deliveries were concluded in late 2008. Egypt requested two additional excess E-2C aircraft in October 2007; deliveries began in 2010. They all operate in 601 AEW Brigade, Cairo-West.
Egypt used the E-2C Hawkeye in a bombing operation in 2015 against ISIL in Libya.
France
The French Naval Aviation (Aeronavale) operates three E-2C Hawkeyes and has been the only operator of the E-2 Hawkeye from an aircraft carrier besides the U.S. Navy. The French nuclear-powered carrier, , currently carries two E-2C Hawkeyes on her combat patrols offshore. The third French E-2C Hawkeye has been upgraded with eight-bladed propellers as part of the NP2000 program. In April 2007, France requested the purchase of an additional aircraft.
The Flottille 4F of the French Navy's Aeronavale was stood up on 2 July 2000 and flies its E-2C Hawkeyes from its naval air station at Lann-Bihoue, deploying to the Charles de Gaulle. They took part in operations in Afghanistan and Libya.
In September 2019 Florence Parly, French Minister of the Armed Forces, announced that three new E-2D Advanced Hawkeyes would be purchased in 2020 to replace the E-2Cs in service.
Japan
On 6 September 1976, Soviet Air Forces pilot Viktor Belenko successfully defected, landing his MiG-25 'Foxbat' at Hakodate Airport, Japan. During this incident, the Japan Self-Defense Forces' (JASDF) radar lost track of the aircraft when Belenko flew his MiG-25 at a low altitude, prompting the JASDF to consider procurement of airborne early warning aircraft.
Initially, the E-3 Sentry airborne warning and control system aircraft was considered to be the prime candidate for the airborne early warning mission by the JASDF. However, the Japanese Defense Agency realized that the E-3 would not be readily available due to USAF needs and opted to procure E-2 Hawkeye aircraft. The Japan Air Self-Defense Force bought thirteen E-2C aircraft to improve its early warning capabilities. The E-2C was put into service with the Airborne Early Warning Group (AEWG) at Misawa Air Base in January 1987.
On 21 November 2014, the Japanese Ministry of Defense officially decided to procure the E-2D version of the Hawkeye, instead of the Boeing 737 AEW&C design. In June 2015, the Japanese government requested to buy four E-2Ds through a Foreign Military Sale.
In September 2018 the Defense Security Cooperation Agency notified Congress of the possible sale of up to 9 E-2Ds to Japan.
Mexico
In 2004, three former Israel Air Force E-2C aircraft were sold to the Mexican Navy to perform maritime and shore surveillance missions. These aircraft were upgraded locally by IAI. The first Mexican E-2C was rolled out in January 2004.
Singapore
The Republic of Singapore Air Force acquired four Grumman E-2C Hawkeye airborne early warning aircraft in 1987, which are assigned to the 111 Squadron "Jaeger" based at Tengah Air Base.
In April 2007, it was announced that the four E-2C Hawkeyes were to be replaced with four Gulfstream G550s which would become the primary early warning aircraft of the Singapore Air Force. On 13 April 2012, the newer G550 AEWs officially took over duty from the former. Singapore has close ties with the Israel military which has also acquired the G550 AEW.
Israel
Israel was the first export customer; its four Hawkeyes were delivered during 1981, complete with the folding wings characteristic of carrier-borne aircraft.
The four examples were soon put into active service before and during the 1982 Lebanon War during which they won a resounding victory over Syrian air defenses and fighter control. They were central to the Israeli victory in the air battles over the Bekaa Valley during which over 90 Syrian fighters were downed. The Hawkeyes were also the linchpins of the operation in which the IAF destroyed the surface-to-air missile (SAM) array in the Bekaa, coordinating the various stages of the operation, vectoring planes into bombing runs and directing intercepts. Under constant escort by F-15 Eagles, there were always two Hawkeyes on station off the Lebanese coast, controlling the various assets in the air and detecting any Syrian aircraft upon their takeoff, eliminating any chance of surprise.
The Israeli Air Force (IAF) operated four E-2s for its homeland AEW protection through 1994. The IAF was the first user of the E-2 to install air-to-air refueling equipment.
Three of the four Israeli-owned Hawkeyes were sold to Mexico in 2002 after they had been upgraded with new systems; the remaining example was sent to be displayed in the Israeli Air Force Museum. In 2010, Singapore began retiring its E-2Cs as well. Both Israel and Singapore now employ the Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) Eitam, a Gulfstream G550-based platform with Elta's EL/W-2085 sensor package (a newer derivative of the airborne Phalcon system) for their national AEW programs.
Taiwan
Taiwan acquired four E-2T aircraft from the US on 22 November 1995. On 15 April 2006 Taiwan commissioned two new E-2K Hawkeyes at an official ceremony at the Republic of China Air Force (ROCAF) base in Pingtung Airport in southern Taiwan.
The four E-2Ts were approved for upgrade to Hawkeye 2000 configuration in a 2008 arms deal. The four E-2T aircraft were upgraded to what became known as E-2K standard in two batches, the first batch of two aircraft were sent to the United States in June 2010, arriving home in late 2011; on their return the second batch of two aircraft were sent for upgrade, returning to Taiwan in March 2013.
Offers
In August 2009, the U.S. Navy and Northrop Grumman briefed the Indian Navy on the E-2D Advanced Hawkeye on its potential use to satisfy its current shore-based and future carrier-based Airborne Early Warning and Control (AEW&C) requirements. The Indian Navy has reportedly expressed interest in acquiring up to six Hawkeyes.
Variants
W2F-1 Original designation of the Hawkeye, changed to E-2A in 1962.
E-2A Initial production version, was W2F-1 before 1962. 59 built.
TE-2A Two E-2As converted as crew trainers.
YC-2A Two E-2As, BUNOs 148147 and 148148, converted as prototypes of the C-2 Greyhound
E-2B As E-2A but fitted with improved computing, enlarged outer fins. 52 converted from E-2A.
YE-2C Two E-2As, BUNOs 148712 and 148713, converted as E-2C prototypes. Designated as YE-2C and NE-2C respectively. These airframes then finished out their useful life being used as TE-2C pilot trainers.
E-2C As the E-2B but with all new electronics, surveillance radar and search radar, 63 built. In "plus-models" the E-2C also has upgraded turboprop engines.
E-2C Group 0
Initial production version of E-2C, fitted with AN/APS-120 or AN/APS-125 radar. Lengthened nose compared to earlier versions
E-2C Group I
New radar (AN/APS-139), plus upgraded mission computer and upgraded engines. 18 new build aircraft.
E-2C Group 2
AN/APS-145 radar, further improved electronics.
E-2C Group 2 Plus (Nav Upgrade)
Avionics upgrade, inclusion of GPS into weapon system.
E-2C Hawkeye 2000
New mission computer, Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC) and additional satellite communications aerial. Originally designated Group 2+.
E-2D A variant with new avionics suite, improved engines, a new "glass cockpit" and the potential for air-to-air refueling.
E-2T/K E-2C variant for Republic of China (Taiwan), with parts taken from retired E-2Bs (USN BuNos 151709, 151710, 151724, 152479). However, these aircraft have the same level of electronics as the E-2C Group II Hawkeyes with their APS-145 radars and are referred to as E-2T, with "T" standing for Taiwan. On July 31, 1999, Taiwan was approved to acquire two additional E-2s built to Hawkeye 2000 standard. Later, the four original E-2Ts were also upgraded to the same standard. The upgraded aircraft were referred to as E-2Ks.
Operators
Egyptian Air Force
French Navy
Flottille 4F (E-2C Hawkeye 2000)
Japan Air Self-Defense Force
601st Squadron (E-2C)
603rd Squadron (E-2C)
Mexican Navy
1st Early Warning and Reconnaissance Naval Air Squadron
Republic of China Air Force
United States Navy
VAW-112
VAW-113
VAW-115
VAW-116
VAW-117
VAW-120
VAW-121
VAW-123
VAW-124
VAW-125
VAW-126
VX-20
VX-1
Former operators
Israeli Air Force
Republic of Singapore Air Force
U.S. Coast Guard
U.S. Navy (decommissioned squadrons)
VAW-77
VAW-78
VAW-88
VAW-110
VAW-114
VAW-122
VAW-127
Aircraft on display
E-2B, BuNo 150540, National Naval Aviation Museum, Naval Air Station Pensacola, Florida
E-2B, BuNo 152476, Patuxent River Naval Air Museum, NAS Patuxent River, Maryland
E-2B, BuNo 152484, Air Victory Museum, Medford, New Jersey
E-2B, BuNo 150541, NAS Norfolk Air Park (adjacent Gate 4), Naval Station Norfolk/Chambers Field (former NAS Norfolk), Virginia. Early E-2C variant nose cap installed for static display.
E-2C, BuNo 159496, Naval Air Station Fallon, Nevada.
E-2C, BuNo 160012, Garden City, NY as part of Cradle of Naval Aviation Display
E-2C, 944, Israeli Air Force Museum, Hatzerim Air Base, Israel
E-2C, BuNo 160992, on base memorial display, NAS Point Mugu, California
E-2C, BuNo 161227, flight deck display aboard USS Midway Museum, San Diego, California
E-2C, BuNo 161098, on display at former NAS Atlanta, GA
E-2C, BuNo 161344, awaiting restoration at Yanks Air Museum, Chino, CA
E-2C, BuNo 162796, Republic of Singapore Air Force Museum, 400 Airport Road, Singapore
E-2C, BuNo 164494, National Naval Aviation Museum, Naval Air Station Pensacola, FL. This aircraft was the last to launch from prior to her inactivation.
Specifications (E-2C)
See also
References
Notes
Bibliography
Donald, David, ed. "E-2 Hawkeye". Warplanes of the Fleet. AIRtime, 2004. .
Godfrey, David W. H. "Hawkeye:A New Dimension in Tactical Warfare". Air International, January 1977, Vol 12 No 1. Bromley, UK:Fine Scroll. pp. 7–13, 42–44.
Jackson, Mark. Jane's All The World's Aircraft 2003–2004. Coulsdon, UK: Jane's Information Group, 2003. .
Neubeck, Ken. E-2 Hawkeye Walk Around. Squadron/Signal Publications, 2008. .
Swanborough, Gordon and Peter M. Bowers. United States Navy Aircraft since 1911. London:Putnam, Second edition, 1976. .
Taylor, John W. R. Jane's All The World's Aircraft 1976–77. London:Jane's Yearbooks, 1976. .
Winchester, Jim. "E-2 Hawkeye Developments". Air International, December 2005, Vol 69 No 6. Stamford, UK:Key Publishing. pp. 46–49.
Winchester, Jim, ed. Military Aircraft of the Cold War (The Aviation Factfile). London: Grange Books plc, 2006. .
External links
E-2 fact file and E-2C Hawkeye history page on US Navy site
E-2 page on GlobalSecurity.org
E-2D Hawkeye: The Navy's New AWACS on Defense Industry Daily
"Northrop Grumman E-2D Advanced Hawkeye Completes First Flight", Northrop Grumman, 3 August 2007
Gallery of photographs of the French E-2C Hawkeye on NetMarine.net
Taiwan Air Power E-2T page
E-02 Hawkeye
E-02 Hawkeye
1960s United States military reconnaissance aircraft
Carrier-based aircraft
AWACS aircraft
High-wing aircraft
Twin-turboprop tractor aircraft
Aircraft first flown in 1960
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27506488
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeFlyer
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FreeFlyer
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FreeFlyer is a commercial off-the-shelf software application for satellite mission analysis, design and operations. FreeFlyer's architecture centers on its native scripting language, known as FreeForm Script. As a mission planning tool, it encompasses several capabilities, including precise orbit modeling, 2D and 3D visualization, sensor modeling, maneuver modeling, maneuver estimation, plotting, orbit determination, tracking data simulation, and space environment modeling.
FreeFlyer implements standard astrodynamics models such as the JGM-2, EGM-96, LP-165 gravity potential models; the Jacchia-Roberts, Harris-Priester, and NRL-MSIS atmospheric density models; the International Reference Ionosphere model; and the International Geomagnetic Reference Field magnetic field model.
Background
a.i. solutions, Inc. is the owner and developer of FreeFlyer which has been in use since 1997. FreeFlyer is utilized by NASA, NOAA, and the USAF for space mission operations, mission assurance, and analysis support.
Operational and analysis support
FreeFlyer has been used to support many spacecraft missions, for mission planning analysis, operational analysis, or both. Specific mission examples include the International Space Station (ISS), the JSpOC Mission System, the Earth Observing System, Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), and Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission (MMS).
FreeFlyer has also been successfully used to conduct analysis in both the high-performance computing (HPC) and service-oriented architecture (SOA) environments.
Software tiers
FreeFlyer is one stand-alone product with no added modules, though it does have two tiers of rising functionality.
FreeFlyer scripting
The FreeFlyer Engineer and Mission tiers contain an integrated scripting language and development environment. The scripting language is an object-oriented script with objects and commands. Objects include properties and methods.
An example of FreeFlyer scripting is this:
// Create a spacecraft object
Spacecraft sc1;
// Propagate and view the spacecraft for two days
While (sc1.ElapsedTime < TIMESPAN(2 days));
Step sc1;
View sc1;
End;
References
External links
3D graphics software
Aerospace engineering software
Astronomy software
Mathematical software
Physics software
Science software for Windows
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackshades
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Blackshades
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Blackshades is a malicious trojan horse used by hackers to control infected computers remotely. The malware targets computers using operating systems based on Microsoft Windows. According to US officials, over 500,000 computer systems have been infected worldwide with the software.
In 2014, the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) arrested hundreds of people who had Blackshade in their computer. Before the FBI crackdown, Blackshades was sold for US$40 on Hack Forums, and reportedly generated US$350,000 in sales.
Functionality
Blackshades infects computer systems by downloading onto a victim's computer when the victim accesses a malicious webpage (sometimes downloading onto the victim's computer without the victim's knowledge, known as a drive-by download) or through external storage devices, such as USB flash drives. Blackshades has the ability to infect and hack multiple computers from the release of a bait that the hacker can make use of, an improved version of blackshades was released shortly after the original release of the primary version, when hacking organizations like Octagonun and Cyber-Sec, decided to develop special features for coupling to the software such as undetectability, DDoS / TCP Flood, and backdoor persistence features.
Blackshades can reportedly be used remotely to access an infected computer without authorization. Blackshades allows hackers to perform many actions on an infected computer remotely without authorization, including the ability to:
Access and modify files on the victim's computer.
Log keystrokes on the victim's computer.
Access to the webcam of the victim.
It makes all infected computers subordinate to DDoS attack commands, using them as robots to carry out extremely effective attacks against targets.
Download and execute files on the victim's computer.
Use the victim's computer as a proxy server.
Blackshades reportedly can be used by computer hackers with little experience or by script kiddies, hackers that use programs developed by others to attack computer systems.
Blackshades can also act as ransomware. Hackers using Blackshades can restrict access to the victim's computer and demand a ransom paid to the hacker in order for the restriction to be lifted.
Detection and removal
Many antivirus programs can successfully detect and remove Blackshades, however hackers using the Blackshades software usually avoid detection of Blackshades infections by using software that obfuscates the Blackshades binary to avoid detection by antivirus programs, which the Blackshades organization also sold along with the Blackshades software.
Blackshades in the media
In 2012, Citizen Lab and EFF reported on the use of Blackshades to target opposition forces in Syria.
In 2015, Stefan Rigo from Leeds was given a 40-week suspended sentence for using BlackShades against 14 people, 7 of whom he knew personally. It is reported he paid for the software using his ex-girlfriend's payment card.
FBI crackdown
In 2012, the FBI ran a sting operation called "Operation Card Shop", which led to 24 arrests of hackers in eight countries. One of those arrested was Michael Hogue (also known as xVisceral in online hacking communities). Hogue, a co-creator of Blackshades, was arrested and indicted on charges under , more commonly known as the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. He was sentenced to five years of probation, 20 years suspended prison sentence.
In 2014, the FBI coordinated a worldwide operation to combat the use of the malware, leading to the arrest of almost one hundred people in nineteen countries. On May 19, charges were laid in the United States against five individuals: two men identified as developers of Blackshades and three other men who sold the software or used it to infiltrate other people's computers. Exactly 359 searches were conducted and more than 1,100 electronic devices have been seized as part of the operation. According to the FBI, over 500,000 computers in more than 100 countries were infected by the malware. Blackshades sold typically for US$40, and reportedly generated US$350,000 in sales.
References
External links
International Blackshades Malware Takedown - FBI
International Blackshades Malware Takedown - The Guardian
Blackshades – Coordinated Takedown Leads to Multiple Arrests - Symantec
Windows trojans
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59161710
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BIM%20Collaboration%20Format
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BIM Collaboration Format
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The BIM Collaboration Format (BCF) is a structured file format suited to issue tracking with a building information model. BCF is designed primarily for defining views of a building model and associated information on collisions and errors connected with specific objects in the view. The BCF file format allows users of different BIM software, and/or different disciplines to collaborate on issues with the project. The use of the BCF format to coordinate changes to a BIM are an important aspect of OpenBIM.
The format was developed by Tekla and Solibri and later adopted as a standard by buildingSMART. Most major BIM modelling platforms support some integration with BCF, typically through plug-ins provided by the BCF server vendor.
Although BCF was originally conceived as a file base there are now many implementations using the server based collaborative workflow described in the bcfAPI, including an Open Source implementation as part of the Open Source BIMcollective.
Research work has been done in Denmark looking into using BCF for a broader range of information management and exchange in the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) sector.
Supporting software
There are two main categories of support for BCF. Authoring software and coordination software. Authoring software can generate and share BCF issues. Coordination software is most powerful at coordinating issues and presenting a user interface for management and tracking of issues. Coordination software is typically a web service which allows for easy and real time coordination across multiple authoring software platforms and geographies. Most software has a mix of these functions.
BCF is supported natively by authoring software such as Vectorworks, ArchiCAD, Tekla Structures, Quadri, DDS CAD, BIMcollab ZOOM, BIMsight, Solibri, Navisworks, and Simplebim. Standalone BCF plugins include BCF Manager, and BCFier. Coordination software as cloud services offering BCF based issue tracking include BIMcollab, BIM Track, Vrex, Bimsync, Bricks app, and OpenProject.
See also
Industry Foundation Classes
aecXML
References
External links
buildingSMART standards library
Building information modeling
Data modeling
Building engineering
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58158412
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norton%20Core
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Norton Core
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Norton Core is a discontinued mesh WiFi router that was introduced at the 2017 CES by Symantec (now NortonLifeLock) as a part of their Norton brand. It was marketed as a "Secure WiFi Router," as it protects connected devices by defending the network against online threats and blocking unsafe websites. The network can be controlled through a mobile app where users can view their "security score," set up and manage their router, and manage devices connected to it. It competes with the Bitdefender Box and CUJO AI. TIME rated Norton Core as one of the "25 Best Inventions of 2017."
Norton Core faced limited acceptance from the public, and was criticized for requiring an expensive subscription. As a result, the Norton Core router was discontinued on January 31, 2019, with the sale of it ending immediately. Support will end on January 31, 2022, revised from its original 2021 date.
Specifications
Norton Core consists of a 2.4 to 5 GHz frequency band, 1 GB of RAM, 4 GB of memory, a 1.7 GHz Qualcomm processor, Bluetooth 4.0 support, four Ethernet ports (1 WAN, 3 LAN), and two USB ports. There were silver and gold color options for the router.
Notes
External links
Website
Networking hardware
Products introduced in 2017
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22479089
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HubSpot
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HubSpot
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HubSpot is an American developer and marketer of software products for inbound marketing, sales, and customer service. Hubspot was founded by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah in 2006.
Its products and services aim to provide tools for customer relationship management, social media marketing, content management, lead generation, web analytics, search engine optimization, live chat, and customer support.
History
HubSpot was founded by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2006.
The company grew from $255,000 in revenues in 2007, to $15.6 million in 2010. Later that year HubSpot acquired Oneforty, the Twitter app store founded by Laura Fitton. The company also introduced new software for personalizing websites for each visitor. According to Forbes, HubSpot started out targeting small companies but "moved steadily upmarket to serve larger businesses of up to 1000 employees." HubSpot filed for an initial public offering with the Securities and Exchange Commission on August 25, 2014, requesting they be listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol HUBS. They raised more than $140 million by selling shares for $25 apiece. The stock has exploded since, hitting an all-time high of $841.26 on November 12th, 2021. In July 2017, HubSpot acquired Kemvi, which applies artificial intelligence and machine learning to help sales teams. The company reported revenues of $1 Billion in 2021.
In February 2021, Axios reported that HubSpot would be acquiring The Hustle, a content and email newsletter company focused on small business owners and entrepreneurs.
In September 2021, HubSpot announced Yamini Rangan as their new CEO, while Brian Halligan stepped out from the role and became an Executive Chairman at the company.
During 2021 HubSpot saw its employee base grow by 39%, added over 1,600 employees to its roster, bringing its total headcount to 5,895 employees according to its annual public filing.
Software and services
HubSpot provides tools for social media marketing, content management, web analytics, landing pages, customer support, and search engine optimization.
HubSpot has integration features for salesforce.com, SugarCRM, NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, and others. There are also third-party services such as templates, and extensions. Additionally, HubSpot offers consulting services and an online resource academy for learning inbound marketing tactics. It also hosts user group conferences and inbound marketing and certification programs. HubSpot promotes their inbound marketing concepts through their own marketing, and has been called "a prolific creator of content" such as blogs, social media, webinars and white papers.
In 2010, an article in the Harvard Business Review said that HubSpot's most effective inbound marketing feature was its free online tools. One such tool, the Marketing Grader, assessed and scored website performance. The company introduced a Twitter tracking feature in 2011.
In November 2016, HubSpot launched HubSpot Academy, an online training platform that provides various digital marketing training programs.
In 2018, Hubspot integrated Taboola on the dashboard, a global pay-per-click native ad network.
In November 2019, Hubspot acquired PieSync, a customer data synchronization platform.
HubSpot CRM Free
The company launched HubSpot CRM Free in 2014. The CRM product tracks and manages interactions between a company and its customers and prospects. It enables companies to forecast revenue, measure sales team productivity, and report on revenue sources. The software as a service product is free and integrates with Gmail, G Suite, Microsoft Office for Windows, and other software.
Tech industry reviews
HubSpot has been described as unique because it strives to provide its customers with an all-in-one approach. A 2012 review in CRM Search said HubSpot was not the best business solution in each category, but that taken as a whole, it was the best "marketing solution" that combined many tools into one package. It identified HubSpot's "strengths" as the sophistication of its call to action (marketing) tool, its online ecosystem, and its "ease of use". Its weakness was described as having "more breadth than depth". The review said the lack of customization and design tools could be limiting and that it was missing advanced features such as business process management (BPM) tools to manage workflow.
Conferences
HubSpot hosts an annual marketing conference for HubSpot users and partners called "INBOUND". The event is typically located in Boston. In 2019, Hubspot hosted its largest conference in the event's history, with a record of over 26,000 attendees from 110 countries. The first INBOUND conference took place in 2012. Since then, speakers such as Michelle Obama, Tig Notaro, and Issa Rae have spoken at their events.
Controversy
In July 2015, Hubspot's CMO, Mike Volpe, was dismissed for violating HubSpot's code of business conduct. It was found that he tried to obtain a draft copy of the book Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start Up Bubble, written by his former employee Daniel Lyons. According to an article in The Boston Globe, records obtained under the Freedom of Information Act indicated that HubSpot executives considered the book "a financial threat to HubSpot" and Volpe used "tactics such as email hacking and extortion" in the attempt to prevent the book from being published.
In April 2016, after his book was published, Lyons wrote in The New York Times that HubSpot had a "frat house" atmosphere. He also called the company a "digital sweatshop" in which workers had little job security. Later that month, HubSpot's founders gave an official response to the book, in which they addressed several, but not all, of Lyons' claims.
Reception
The Boston Business Journal named HubSpot a "Best Place to Work in 2012". In 2015, the company was named the best large company to work for in Massachusetts by The Boston Globe. In 2017, HubSpot was named seventh by CNBC as one of the best places to work. Glassdoor named HubSpot the best place to work in 2020.
References
Further reading
External links
Technology companies based in the Boston area
Companies based in Cambridge, Massachusetts
Marketing companies established in 2006
Digital marketing companies of the United States
Search engine optimization
Software companies based in Massachusetts
Web analytics
Marketing software
Companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange
2006 establishments in Massachusetts
CRM software companies
Software companies of the United States
2014 initial public offerings
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria%20Klawe
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Maria Klawe
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Maria Margaret Klawe ( ; born 1951) is a computer scientist and the fifth president of Harvey Mudd College (since July 1, 2006). Born in Toronto in 1951, she became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2009. She was previously Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science at Princeton University. She is known for her advocacy for women in STEM fields.
Biography
Klawe was born in Toronto, Ontario. She lived in Scotland from ages 4 to 12, and then returned to Canada, living with her family in Edmonton, Alberta.
Klawe studied at the University of Alberta, dropped out to travel the world, and returned to earn her B.Sc. in 1973. She stayed at Alberta for her graduate studies, and in 1977 she earned her Ph.D. there in mathematics. She joined the mathematics faculty at Oakland University as an assistant professor in 1977 but only stayed for a year. She started a second Ph.D., in computer science, at the University of Toronto, but was offered a faculty position there before completing the degree. When she made the decision to get a PhD in computer science she had never studied the subject before. There weren't many undergraduate classes at the time so she enrolled in upper-level courses and studied about 16 hours a day to do well. She spent eight years in industry, serving at IBM's Almaden Research Center in San Jose, California, first as a research scientist, then as manager of the Discrete Mathematics Group and manager of the Mathematics and Related Computer Science Department. She and her husband Nick Pippenger then moved to the University of British Columbia, where she stayed for 15 years and served as head of the Department of Computer Science from 1988 to 1995, vice president of student and academic services from 1995 to 1998, and dean of science from 1998 to 2002.
From UBC she moved to Princeton and then Harvey Mudd College, where she is the first woman president. When she arrived at Mudd only about 30% of students and faculty were female. Today about 50% of the students and over 40% of the faculty are female. She became a citizen of the United States on January 29, 2009. Later in 2009, she joined the board of directors of the Microsoft Corporation.
Awards and honors
Klawe was inducted as a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery in 1996, a founding fellow of the Canadian Information Processing Society in 2006, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2009, a fellow of the American Mathematical Society in 2012, and a fellow of the Association for Women in Mathematics in 2019.
She has been awarded honorary doctorates from Ryerson Polytechnic University in 2001, the University of Waterloo in 2003, Queen's University in 2004, Dalhousie University in 2005, Acadia University in 2006, the University of Alberta in 2007, the University of Ottawa in 2008, the University of British Columbia in 2010, the University of Toronto in 2015, Concordia University in 2016, and McGill University in 2018
She was the winner of the 2014 Woman of Vision ABIE Award for Leadership from the Anita Borg Institute.
In 2018 she was featured among "America's Top 50 Women In Tech" by Forbes.
She also served as the president of the Association for Computing Machinery from 2002 to 2004, and in 2004 won the A. Nico Habermann award.
Research
Some of Klawe's best-cited research works concern algorithms for solving geometric optimization problems, distributed leader election, and the art gallery problem, and studies of the effects of gender on electronic game-playing. She founded the Aphasia Project, a collaboration between UBC and Princeton to study aphasia and develop cognitive aids for people suffering from it, after her friend Anita Borg developed brain cancer.
Advocacy for technical women
Klawe has been heavily involved with increasing the representation of women in STEM fields. While Klawe was the dean at UBC, she became the NSERC-IBM chair for Women in Science and Engineering. She was in charge of increasing female participation in science and engineering. During her five years as the chair appointment she increased female computer science majors from 16% to 27% and increased the number of female computer science faculty from 2 to 7. In 1991, together with Nancy Leveson, she founded CRA-W (The Computing Research Association's Committee on the Status of Women in Computing Research) and served as its first co-chair. She was also a personal friend of Anita Borg and served as the chair of the Board of Trustees of the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology from 1996 to 2011. Klawe was a huge advocate for salary negotiation by women, disagreeing with Microsoft's CEO Satya Nadella, when he said "It's not really about asking for a raise, but knowing and having faith that the system will give you the right raise. That might be one of the initial 'super powers,' that quite frankly, women (who) don't ask for a raise have. It's good karma. It will come back."
Klawe believes that women should take an entry level computer science course during their first year at college that focuses on portraying the field as fun and engaging rather than trying to convince women to stay. She believes that if programming courses are taken at the middle school level then they have another four years of high school for peer pressure to get them disinterested again." This is what she does at Harvey Mudd. She attributes the lack of women in technical fields due to how the media portrays women. In an interview with PBS she explains how TV shows in the 1970s showed men along with women who had successful careers such as doctors or lawyers and that caused the number of women going into medicine skyrocket. Klawe emphasizes that the introductory courses offered need to be presented in a problem-solving environment, not a competitive one where a few males dominate the conversation. Klawe believes the "testosterone culture" prevents women from continuing on with CS because the males that know everything scare away anyone who is trying to learn. Currently, Klawe is working on helping biology majors learn computer science by working with UCSD to create a biology themed introductory computer science course. Another project she's working on is an online course called MOOC aimed at 10th grade students.
Art
Klawe has also exhibited her watercolors.
See also
Timeline of women in science
References
External links
Biography of Maria Klawe at Human Archives
Summary of Maria Klawe at Microsoft
Maria Klawe Video produced by Makers: Women Who Make America
1951 births
Living people
Heads of universities and colleges in the United States
American computer scientists
Businesspeople from Toronto
Canadian corporate directors
Canadian mathematicians
American women computer scientists
Women corporate directors
Researchers in geometric algorithms
American women mathematicians
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Fellows of the American Mathematical Society
Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery
Fellows of the Association for Women in Mathematics
Presidents of the Association for Computing Machinery
Directors of Microsoft
IBM employees
Harvey Mudd College faculty
Princeton University faculty
Scientists from Toronto
University of Alberta alumni
University of Toronto faculty
University of British Columbia people
20th-century American scientists
21st-century American scientists
20th-century American businesspeople
20th-century American businesswomen
21st-century American businesspeople
20th-century Canadian businesspeople
21st-century Canadian businesspeople
20th-century American engineers
21st-century American engineers
20th-century American mathematicians
21st-century mathematicians
20th-century women engineers
21st-century women engineers
20th-century women mathematicians
21st-century women mathematicians
Women heads of universities and colleges
Naturalized citizens of the United States
21st-century American businesswomen
20th-century Canadian women scientists
21st-century Canadian women scientists
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68727334
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telkom%20Institute%20of%20Technology%20Jakarta
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Telkom Institute of Technology Jakarta
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Telkom Institute of Technology Jakarta, (Indonesian: Institut Teknologi Telkom Jakarta; abbreviated as ITTelkom Jakarta), is a private university located in Indonesia. This institute was formerly known as Akademi Teknik Telekomunikasi Sandhy Putra Jakarta which was established in 2002. ITTelkom Jakarta is managed by Telkom Foundation (Indonesian: Yayasan Pendidikan Telkom; abbreviated as YPT) and affiliated with other Telkom campuses in several major cities of Indonesia.
History
ITTelkom Jakarta was formerly known as Sandhy Putra Jakarta Telecommunication Engineering Academy, which was established on May 13, 2002. Its famous name, which was often used for marketing purposes, is Jakarta Telkom Academy. ITTelkom Jakarta was established on June 2, 2021, by the Decree of Minister of Higher Education (Kemdikbudristek) of the Republic of Indonesia number 232/E/O/2021 with three new study programs of S1 (Bachelor's degree) in Telecommunication Engineering, Information Technology and Information Systems. These new study programs are an addition to the Diploma degree of Telecommunication Engineering study program that has been established since 2002.
On August 21, 2021, a Grand Launching of ITTelkom Jakarta was lively held in a hybrid method of event while still implementing health protocol of COVID-19.
Rektor
Dr. Ir. Agus Achmad Suhendra, M.T. (2021-2025)
Academic
ITTelkom Jakarta organizes 4 study programs under 1 faculty, namely the Faculty of Engineering. The 4 study programs are Telecommunications Engineering (Bachelor's and Diploma degree), Information Technology and Information Systems. These study programs are designed to have characteristics which focus on the applications of Technology, Information and Communication (ICT) in the fields of Creative Industry, Digital Economy and Entrepreneurship (abbreviated as CDE).
Laboratory
In supporting the teaching and learning activities in ITTelkom Jakarta, campus facilities are provided from lectures infrastructure to the green campus atmosphere. The 3:1 comparison of land use and building area of campus A in ITTelkom Jakarta enables campus to implement a green campus concept and environmental conservation initiation. The campus facilities and infrastructure consist of 8 lecture halls, 1 shared office for lecturers and staff, 12 laboratories, library, public as well as student facilities. Laboratories in ITTelkom Jakarta are as follows:
Electrical Laboratory
Electronics Laboratory
Digital Communication System Laboratory
Microcontroller Laboratory
Wireless Laboratory
Antenna Laboratory
Fiber Optic Laboratory
FTTH Laboratory
CCNA Laboratory
Multimedia Laboratory
As for the Campus B of ITTelkom Jakarta is supported by infrastructures, such as:
Lecturers and TPA Administration Rooms
Information Systems Laboratory
Information Technology Laboratory
Visual Communication Design Laboratory
Informatics Laboratory
Lecture Halls
Library
Student Room
Student Center
Canteen
Campus
Campus A
Campus A of ITTelkom Jakarta is located at Daan Mogot street KM. 11 Cengkareng District, West Jakarta. Postal code 11710.
Campus B
Campus B of ITTelkom Jakarta is located at is at Halimun Raya road No. 2 Setiabudi District, South Jakarta.
Conferences
As a part of implementing The Tri Dharma of Higher Education, ITTelkom Jakarta (through its department of research and community service, namely PPM) continuously strives to support the collaboration of its lecturers in research and community service activities. Since 2019, PPM successfully held CENTIS (Conference on Telematics and Information Society) for 3 consecutive years. With a reference to the vision of the institution to become an international standard campus, the implementation of CENTIS in 2022 and years afterwards is expected to improve its level into an International Conference.
Student Affairs
In order to further engage students in non-academic activities with the purpose of making achievements, supervisory and preparation conducted in ITTelkom Jakarta student organizations is in line with the agenda of the Pusat Prestasi Nasional (Puspresnas) under the Ministry of Education, Culture, Research and Technology (Kemdikbudristek). To support this program, it is mandatory for ITTelkom Jakarta students to participate in various student activities which later be recorded in a Transcript of Student Activities (TAK). Areas of student activities include:
SPIRITUAL:
IMMA
ROHKRIS
CULTURAL ARTS:
MUSIC
HADROH & MARAWIS
FIFO
SCIENTIFIC:
Innovation (SONIC)
ALC (Language Club)
SPORT:
Basket
Futsal
Taekwondo
Badminton
Table Tennis
E-Sport
References
Universities in Indonesia
Universities in Jakarta
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P.%20W.%20Singer
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P. W. Singer
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Peter Warren Singer (born 1974) is an American political scientist, an international relations scholar and a specialist on 21st century warfare. He is a New York Times bestselling author of both nonfiction and fiction, who has been described in the Wall Street Journal as “the premier futurist in the national-security environment."
Career
He is currently Strategist for the New America Foundation , a Professor of Practice at Arizona State University and a founder of Useful Fiction LLC. He has also received the title of a "mad scientist" for the US Army's Training and Doctrine Command.
Singer previously worked at the Harvard University Belfer Center, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and was Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, where he was Director of the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence. Singer also served as coordinator of the Defense Policy Task Force for Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign as well as contributing editor for Popular Science.
Singer has been named to the "Top 100 Global Thinkers" list by Foreign Policy. Defense News named him one of the 100 most influential people on defense issues. He also served on the advisory group for Joint Forces Command, helping the U.S. military visualize and plan for the future. In 2015, he was named by Onalytica analysis as one of the ten most influential voices on cybersecurity.
In addition to his work on conflict issues, Singer was a member of the State Department's Advisory Committee on International Communications and Information Policy.
Singer has provided commentary on technology and military affairs for many of the major TV and radio outlets, including ABC News Nightline, Al Jazeera, BBC, CBS-60 Minutes, CNN, Fox, NPR, The Daily Show, and the NBC Today Show. He is also a founder and organizer of the U.S.–Islamic World Forum, a global conference that brings together leaders from across the United States and the Muslim world, and the Cyber Citizenship initiative, which seeks to build skills among K-12 students to have greater resilience from online threats of misinformation and disinformation.
Singer has also worked with a variety of entertainment world projects for Warner Brothers, DreamWorks, and Universal , including the movies Traitor, and Whistleblower, the TV series Strike Back and Curiosity, as well as the 24: Redemption movie/DVD. Singer served as consultant on the bestselling Activision video game series Call of Duty.
Books
Corporate Warriors
His first book Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry (Cornell University Press, 2003, ) was the first to explore the new industry of private companies providing military services for hire, an issue that soon became important with the use and abuse of these companies in Iraq. The book was named best book of the year by the American Political Science Association, among the top five international affairs books of the year by the Gelber Prize, and a "top ten summer read" by Businessweek.
Wired for War
Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century (Penguin, 2009, ) is a best-selling book by P. W. Singer. It explores how science fiction has started to play out on modern day battlefields, with robots used more and more in war. Singer's 2009 book tour included stops on NPR's Fresh Air, the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, the opening of the TED conference, the Royal Court of the United Arab Emirates and presentations at 75 venues around the United States.
Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone Needs to Know
Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press, 2014, ) is a book by P. W. Singer and Allan Friedman. The book explores how the Internet and cybersecurity works, why it matters, and what can be done. It was featured on Charlie Rose, NPR's Fresh Air, CNBC Squawkbox, the SXSW conference, and named to the official reading lists for the U.S. Army, U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy.
Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War
Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War (Eamon Dolan/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015, ) is Singer's first novel, co-written with August Cole. The book created the concept of FICINT, short for "Fictional Intelligence." FICINT has been defined by the authors as "a hybrid of narrative and research analysis, designed both to entertain and educate." Using the format of a novel, Ghost Fleet melded nonfiction style research on emerging trends and technology with a fictional exploration of what war at sea, on land, in the air, space, and cyberspace will be like in the future. Publishers Weekly described it: "Tom Clancy fans will relish Singer and Cole's first novel, a chilling vision of what might happen in a world war." The book was subsequently placed on the reading list of organization ranging from all the US military services to the CIA and Royal Air Force. The US Navy also later named a robotic ship program "Ghost Fleet."
LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media
LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media (Eamon Dolan/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018, ) is a book by P. W. Singer and Emerson T. Brooking. The book examines the history of communications, the rise of open-source intelligence, the failed promise of cyber-utopianism, the advent of internet-based information warfare, and the growing political influence of Silicon Valley. Singer and Brooking identify a new mode of conflict, "LikeWar", in which competing viral phenomena influence the outcome of both military operations and political campaigns. Singer has described "cyberwar" as hacking computer networks and "likewar" as hacking people on them, "where the object is to drive something viral through a mix of likes, shares, and sometimes lies." In a starred review, Booklist described it as, "required reading for everyone living in a democracy and all who aspire to," while Amazon and Foreign Affairs named it a book of the year.
Burn-In: A Novel of the Real Robotic Revolution
Burn-In: A Novel of the Real Robotic Revolution (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020, ) is the second novel of "useful fiction" by Singer and August Cole. It used the format of a technothriller to share 300 nonfiction insights about the trends of AI and automation and their political, economic, and social effects.
On December 15, 2020, it was announced that a drama based on the novel was in development by CBS with Rideback as the production company and Robert Doherty, Daniel Lin, Lindsey Liberatore, P.W. Singer, and August Cole as executive producers.
See also
The Brookings Institution
Military use of children
Notes
External links
P.W. Singer Author website
Curriculum vitae
Brookings Institution
Wired for War book website
Video (with audio-only available) of conversation with Singer and John Horgan on Bloggingheads.tv
Interview with Peter Singer on Child Soldiers, Private Soldiers and Robots by Theory Talks
Interview on Wired for War at the Pritzker Military Museum & Library
Audio: Peter Singer in conversation on the BBC World Service discussion programme The Forum
American political scientists
International relations scholars
American military writers
Harvard University alumni
Living people
1974 births
Year of birth uncertain
Princeton School of Public and International Affairs alumni
Brookings Institution people
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organized%20crime
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Organized crime
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Organized crime is a category of transnational, national, or local groupings of highly centralized enterprises run by criminals to engage in illegal activity, most commonly for profit. While organized crime is generally thought of as a form of illegal business, some criminal organizations, such as terrorist groups, rebel forces, and separatists, are politically motivated. Sometimes criminal organizations force people to do business with them, such as when a gang extorts money from shopkeepers for "protection". Street gangs may often be deemed organized crime groups or, under stricter definitions of organized crime, may become disciplined enough to be considered organized. A criminal organization can also be referred to as a gang, mafia, mob, ring, or syndicate; the network, subculture, and community of criminals involved in organized crime may be referred to as the underworld or gangland. Sociologists sometimes specifically distinguish a "mafia" as a type of organized crime group that specializes in the supply of extra-legal protection and quasi-law enforcement. Academic studies of the original "Mafia", the Sicilian Mafia, which predates the other groups, generated an economic study of organized crime groups and exerted great influence on studies of the Russian mafia, the Chinese Triads, the Hong Kong Triads, and the Japanese Yakuza.
Other organizations — including states, churches, militaries, police forces, and corporations — may sometimes use organized-crime methods to conduct their activities, but their powers derive from their status as formal social institutions. There is a tendency to distinguish “traditional” organized crime (which is often gang-like and more working-class in nature, frequently involves secret subcultures, and is often formed around shared ostracized ethnic, regional, socioeconomic, territorial, or cultural identities) from certain other forms of crime that also usually involve organized or group criminal acts, such as white-collar crime, financial crimes, political crimes, war crimes, state crimes, and treason. This distinction is not always apparent and academics continue to debate the matter. For example, in failed states that can no longer perform basic functions such as education, security, or governance (usually due to fractious violence or to extreme poverty), organized crime, governance, and war sometimes complement each other. The term "oligarchy" has been used to describe democratic countries whose political, social, and economic institutions come under the control of a few families and business oligarchs that may be deemed or may devolve into organized crime groups in practice. By their very nature, kleptocracies, mafia states, narco-states or narcokleptocracies, and states with high levels of clientelism and political corruption are either heavily involved with organized crime or tend to foster organized crime within their own governments.
In the United States, the Organized Crime Control Act (1970) defines organized crime as "[t]he unlawful activities of [...] a highly organized, disciplined association [...]". Criminal activity as a structured process is referred to as racketeering. In the UK, police estimate that organized crime involves up to 38,000 people operating in 6,000 various groups. Historically, the largest organized crime force in the United States has been La Cosa Nostra (Italian-American Mafia), but other transnational criminal organizations have also risen in prominence in recent decades. A 2012 article in a U.S. Department of Justice journal stated that: "Since the end of the Cold War, organized crime groups from Russia, China, Italy, Nigeria, and Japan have increased their international presence and worldwide networks or have become involved in more transnational criminal activities. Most of the world's major international organized crime groups are present in the United States." The US Drug Enforcement Administration's 2017 National Drug Threat Assessment classified Mexican transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) as the "greatest criminal drug threat to the United States," citing their dominance "over large regions in Mexico used for the cultivation, production, importation, and transportation of illicit drugs" and identifying the Sinaloa, Jalisco New Generation, Juárez, Gulf, Los Zetas, and Beltrán-Leyva cartels as the six Mexican TCO with the greatest influence in drug trafficking to the United States. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 16 has a target to combat all forms of organised crime as part of the 2030 Agenda.
In some countries, football hooligans can be considered a criminal organization if it engages in illicit and violent activities.
Models of organized crime
Various models have been proposed to describe the structure of criminal organizations.
Organizational
Patron-client networks
Patron-client networks are defined by fluid interactions. They produce crime groups that operate as smaller units within the overall network, and as such tend towards valuing significant others, familiarity of social and economic environments, or tradition. These networks are usually composed of:
Hierarchies based on 'naturally' forming family, social and cultural traditions;
'Tight-knit' focus of activity/labor;
Fraternal or nepotistic value systems;
Personalized activity; including family rivalries, territorial disputes, recruitment and training of family members, etc.;
Entrenched belief systems, reliance of tradition (including religion, family values, cultural expectations, class politics, gender roles, etc.); and,
Communication and rule enforcement mechanisms dependent on organizational structure, social etiquette, history of criminal involvement, and collective decision-making.
Bureaucratic/corporate operations
Bureaucratic/corporate organized crime groups are defined by the general rigidity of their internal structures. They focus more on how the operations works, succeeds, sustains itself or avoids retribution, they are generally typified by:
A complex authority structure;
An extensive division of labor between classes within the organization;
Meritocratic (as opposed to cultural or social attributes);
Responsibilities carried out in an impersonal manner;
Extensive written rules/regulations (as opposed to cultural praxis dictating action); and,
'Top-down' communication and rule enforcement mechanisms.
However, this model of operation has some flaws:
The 'top-down' communication strategy is susceptible to interception, more so further down the hierarchy being communicated to;
Maintaining written records jeopardizes the security of the organization and relies on increased security measures;
Infiltration at lower levels in the hierarchy can jeopardize the entire organization (a 'house of cards' effect); and,
Death, injury, incarceration or internal power struggles dramatically heighten the insecurity of operations.
While bureaucratic operations emphasize business processes and strongly authoritarian hierarchies, these are based on enforcing power relationships rather than an overlying aim of protectionism, sustainability or growth.
Youth and street gangs
An estimate on youth street gangs nationwide provided by Hannigan, et al., marked an increase of 35% between 2002 and 2010. A distinctive gang culture underpins many, but not all, organized groups; this may develop through recruiting strategies, social learning processes in the corrective system experienced by youth, family or peer involvement in crime, and the coercive actions of criminal authority figures. The term “street gang” is commonly used interchangeably with “youth gang,” referring to neighborhood or street-based youth groups that meet “gang” criteria. Miller (1992) defines a street gang as “a self-formed association of peers, united by mutual interests, with identifiable leadership and internal organization, who act collectively or as individuals to achieve specific purposes, including the conduct of illegal activity and control of a particular territory, facility, or enterprise." Some reasons youth join gangs include to feel accepted, attain status, and increase their self-esteem. A sense of unity brings together many of the youth gangs that lack the family aspect at home.
"Zones of transition" are deteriorating neighborhoods with shifting populations. In such areas, conflict between groups, fighting, "turf wars", and theft promote solidarity and cohesion. Cohen (1955): working class teenagers joined gangs due to frustration of inability to achieve status and goals of the middle class; Cloward and Ohlin (1960): blocked opportunity, but unequal distribution of opportunities lead to creating different types of gangs (that is, some focused on robbery and property theft, some on fighting and conflict and some were retreatists focusing on drug taking); Spergel (1966) was one of the first criminologists to focus on evidence-based practice rather than intuition into gang life and culture. Participation in gang-related events during adolescence perpetuate a pattern of maltreatment on their own children years later. Klein (1971) like Spergel studied the effects on members of social workers’ interventions. More interventions actually lead to greater gang participation and solidarity and bonds between members. Downes and Rock (1988) on Parker's analysis: strain theory applies, labeling theory (from experience with police and courts), control theory (involvement in trouble from early childhood and the eventual decision that the costs outweigh the benefits) and conflict theories. No ethnic group is more disposed to gang involvement than another, rather it is the status of being marginalized, alienated or rejected that makes some groups more vulnerable to gang formation, and this would also be accounted for in the effect of social exclusion, especially in terms of recruitment and retention. These may also be defined by age (typically youth) or peer group influences, and the permanence or consistency of their criminal activity. These groups also form their own symbolic identity or public representation which are recognizable by the community at large (include colors, symbols, patches, flags and tattoos).
Research has focused on whether the gangs have formal structures, clear hierarchies and leadership in comparison with adult groups, and whether they are rational in pursuit of their goals, though positions on structures, hierarchies and defined roles are conflicting. Some studied street gangs involved in drug dealing - finding that their structure and behavior had a degree of organizational rationality. Members saw themselves as organized criminals; gangs were formal-rational organizations, Strong organizational structures, well defined roles and rules that guided members’ behavior. Also a specified and regular means of income (i.e., drugs). Padilla (1992) agreed with the two above. However some have found these to be loose rather than well-defined and lacking persistent focus, there was relatively low cohesion, few shared goals and little organizational structure. Shared norms, value and loyalties were low, structures "chaotic", little role differentiation or clear distribution of labor. Similarly, the use of violence does not conform to the principles behind protection rackets, political intimidation and drug trafficking activities employed by those adult groups. In many cases gang members graduate from youth gangs to highly developed OC groups, with some already in contact with such syndicates and through this we see a greater propensity for imitation. Gangs and traditional criminal organizations cannot be universally linked (Decker, 1998), however there are clear benefits to both the adult and youth organization through their association. In terms of structure, no single crime group is archetypal, though in most cases there are well-defined patterns of vertical integration (where criminal groups attempt to control the supply and demand), as is the case in arms, sex and drug trafficking.
Individual difference
Entrepreneurial
The entrepreneurial model looks at either the individual criminal or a smaller group of organized criminals, that capitalize off the more fluid 'group-association' of contemporary organized crime. This model conforms to social learning theory or differential association in that there are clear associations and interaction between criminals where knowledge may be shared, or values enforced, however, it is argued that rational choice is not represented in this. The choice to commit a certain act, or associate with other organized crime groups, may be seen as much more of an entrepreneurial decision - contributing to the continuation of a criminal enterprise, by maximizing those aspects that protect or support their own individual gain. In this context, the role of risk is also easily understandable, however it is debatable whether the underlying motivation should be seen as true entrepreneurship or entrepreneurship as a product of some social disadvantage.
The criminal organization, much in the same way as one would assess pleasure and pain, weighs such factors as legal, social and economic risk to determine potential profit and loss from certain criminal activities. This decision-making process rises from the entrepreneurial efforts of the group's members, their motivations and the environments in which they work. Opportunism is also a key factor – the organized criminal or criminal group is likely to frequently reorder the criminal associations they maintain, the types of crimes they perpetrate, and how they function in the public arena (recruitment, reputation, etc.) in order to ensure efficiency, capitalization and protection of their interests.
Multi-model approach
Culture and ethnicity provide an environment where trust and communication between criminals can be efficient and secure. This may ultimately lead to a competitive advantage for some groups; however, it is inaccurate to adopt this as the only determinant of classification in organized crime. This categorization includes the Sicilian Mafia, ’Ndrangheta, ethnic Chinese criminal groups, Japanese Yakuza (or Boryokudan), Colombian drug trafficking groups, Nigerian organized crime groups, Corsican mafia, Korean criminal groups and Jamaican posses. From this perspective, organized crime is not a modern phenomenon - the construction of 17th and 18th century crime gangs fulfill all the present day criteria of criminal organizations (in opposition to the Alien Conspiracy Theory). These roamed the rural borderlands of central Europe embarking on many of the same illegal activities associated with today's crime organizations, with the exception of money laundering.
When the French revolution created strong nation states, the criminal gangs moved to other poorly controlled regions like the Balkans and Southern Italy, where the seeds were sown for the Sicilian Mafia - the linchpin of organized crime in the New World.
Computational approach
While most of the conceptual frameworks used to model organised crime emphasize the role of actors and/or activities, computational approaches built on the foundations of data science and Artificial Intelligence are focusing on deriving new insights on organised crime from big data. For example, novel machine learning models have been applied to study and detect urban crime and online prostitution networks. Big Data have also been used to develop online tools predicting the risk for an individual to be a victim of online sex trade or getting drawn into online sex work. In addition, data from Twitter and Google Trends have been used to study the public perceptions of organised crime.
Typical activities
Organized crime groups provide a range of illegal services and goods. Organized crime often victimizes businesses through the use of extortion or theft and fraud activities like hijacking cargo trucks and ships, robbing goods, committing bankruptcy fraud (also known as "bust-out"), insurance fraud or stock fraud (inside trading). Organized crime groups also victimize individuals by car theft (either for dismantling at "chop shops" or for export), art theft, bank robbery, burglary, jewelry and gems theft and heists, shoplifting, computer hacking, credit card fraud, economic espionage, embezzlement, identity theft, and securities fraud ("pump and dump" scam). Some organized crime groups defraud national, state, or local governments by bid rigging public projects, counterfeiting money, smuggling or manufacturing untaxed alcohol (rum-running) or cigarettes (buttlegging), and providing immigrant workers to avoid taxes.
Organized crime groups seek out corrupt public officials in executive, law enforcement, and judicial roles so that their criminal rackets and activities on the black market can avoid, or at least receive early warnings about, investigation and prosecution.
Activities of organized crime include loansharking of money at very high interest rates, assassination, blackmailing, bombings, bookmaking and illegal gambling, confidence tricks, copyright infringement, counterfeiting of intellectual property, fencing, kidnapping, prostitution, smuggling, drug trafficking, arms trafficking, oil smuggling, antiquities smuggling, organ trafficking, contract killing, identity document forgery, money laundering, bribery, seduction, electoral fraud, insurance fraud, point shaving, price fixing, illegal taxicab operation, illegal dumping of toxic waste, illegal trading of nuclear materials, military equipment smuggling, nuclear weapons smuggling, passport fraud, providing illegal immigration and cheap labor, people smuggling, trading in endangered species, and trafficking in human beings. Organized crime groups also do a range of business and labor racketeering activities, such as skimming casinos, insider trading, setting up monopolies in industries such as garbage collecting, construction and cement pouring, bid rigging, getting "no-show" and "no-work" jobs, political corruption and bullying.
Violence
Assault
The commission of violent crime may form part of a criminal organization's 'tools' used to achieve criminogenic goals (for example, its threatening, authoritative, coercive, terror-inducing, or rebellious role), due to psycho-social factors (cultural conflict, aggression, rebellion against authority, access to illicit substances, counter-cultural dynamic), or may, in and of itself, be crime rationally chosen by individual criminals and the groups they form. Assaults are used for coercive measures, to "rough up" debtors, competition or recruits, in the commission of robberies, in connection to other property offenses, and as an expression of counter-cultural authority; violence is normalized within criminal organizations (in direct opposition to mainstream society) and the locations they control. Whilst the intensity of violence is dependent on the types of crime the organization is involved in (as well as their organizational structure or cultural tradition) aggressive acts range on a spectrum from low-grade physical assaults to murder. Bodily harm and grievous bodily harm, within the context of organized crime, must be understood as indicators of intense social and cultural conflict, motivations contrary to the security of the public, and other psycho-social factors.
Murder
Murder has evolved from the honor and vengeance killings of the Yakuza or Sicilian mafia which placed large physical and symbolic importance on the act of murder, its purposes and consequences, to a much less discriminate form of expressing power, enforcing criminal authority, achieving retribution or eliminating competition. The role of the hit man has been generally consistent throughout the history of organized crime, whether that be due to the efficiency or expediency of hiring a professional assassin or the need to distance oneself from the commission of murderous acts (making it harder to prove criminal culpability). This may include the assassination of notable figures (public, private or criminal), once again dependent on authority, retribution or competition. Revenge killings, armed robberies, violent disputes over controlled territories and offenses against members of the public must also be considered when looking at the dynamic between different criminal organizations and their (at times) conflicting needs.
Vigilantism
In an ironic twist, criminal syndicates are often known to commit acts of vigilantism by enforcing laws, investigating certain criminal acts and punishing those who violate such rules. People who are often targeted by organized criminals tend to be individualistic criminals, people who committed crimes that are considered particularly heinous by society, rivals and/or terrorist groups. One reason why criminal groups might commit vigilantism in their neighborhoods is to prevent heavy levels of community policing, that could be harmful to their illicit businesses; additionally the vigilante acts could help the gangs to ingratiate themselves in their communities.
During the roaring twenties, the Ku Klux Klan was known to be staunch enforcers of prohibition, as a result Italian, Irish, Polish, and Jewish mobsters would at times have violent confrontations against the KKK, on one occasion FBI informant and notorious mobster Gregory Scarpa kidnapped and tortured a local Klansmen into revealing the bodies of Civil rights workers who had been killed by the KKK. During World War II, America had a growing number of Nazi supporters that formed the German American Bund, which was known to be threatening to local Jewish people, as a result Jewish mobsters (such a Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel and Jack Ruby) were often hired by the American Jewish community to help defend against the Nazi bund, even going as far as attacking and killing Nazi sympathizers during bund meetings. Vigilante groups such as the Black Panther Party, White Panther Party and Young Lords have been accused of committing crimes in order to fund their political activities.
While protection racketeering is often seen as nothing more than extortion, criminal syndicates that participate in protection rackets have at times provided genuine protection against other criminals for their clients, the reason for this is because the criminal organization would want the business of their clients to do better so that the gang can demand even more protection money, additionally if the gang has enough knowledge of the local fencers, they may even be able to track down and retrieve any objects that were stolen from the business owner, to further help their clients the gang may also force out, disrupt, vandalize, steal from or shutdown competing businesses for their clients. In Colombia the insurgent groups were trying to steal land, kidnap family members, and extort money from the drug barons, as a result the drug lords of the Medellín Cartel formed a paramilitary vigilante group known as Muerte a Secuestradores ("Death to Kidnappers") to defend the cartel against the FARC and M-19, even kidnapping and torturing the leader of M-19 before leaving him chained in front of a police station. During the Medellín Cartel's war against the Colombian government, the Cali Cartel formed and operated a vigilante group called Los Pepes (which also comprised members of the Colombian government, police and former members of the Medellín Cartel) to bring about the downfall of Pablo Escobar, they did so by bombing the properties of the Medellín Cartel and kidnapping, torturing and/or killing Escobar's associates as well as working alongside the Search Bloc, which would eventually lead to the dismantling of the Medellín Cartel and the death of Pablo Escobar. Because of the high levels of corruption, the Oficina de Envigado would do things to help the police and vice versa, to the point where the police and the cartel would do operations together against other criminals, additionally the leaders of La Oficina would often act as judges to mediate disputes between the various different drug gangs throughout Colombia, which according to some helped prevent a lot of disputes from turning violent.
On Somalia coastline many people rely on fishing for economic survival, because of this Somali pirates are often known to attack foreign vessels who partake in illegal fishing and overfishing in their waters and vessels that illegally dump waste into their waters, as a result marine biologists say that the local fishery is recovering. In Mexico a vigilante group called Grupos de autodefensa comunitaria was formed to counter the illegal loggers, the La Familia Michoacana Cartel and the Knights Templar Cartel, as they grew they were being joined by former cartel members and as they got bigger they began to sell drugs in order to buy weapons, the Knights Templar Cartel was eventually defeated and dissolved by the vigilantes actions but they ended up forming their own cartel called Los Viagras, which has links with the Jalisco New Generation Cartel. The Minuteman Project is a far-right paramilitary organization that seeks to prevent illegal immigration across the US-Mexico border, however doing so is detrimental to gangs like Mara Salvatrucha, who make money through people smuggling, as a result MS-13 is known to commit acts of violence against members of the Minutemen. Throughout the world there are various anti-gang vigilante groups, who profess to be fighting against gang influence, but share characteristics and acts similarly to gangs, including Sombra Negra, Friends Stand United, People Against Gangsterism and Drugs, OG Imba. Gangs that are involved in drug trafficking often commit violent acts to stop or force out independent dealers, drug dealers with no gang ties, to keep them from taking customers.
In America there is an animal welfare organization called Rescue Ink, in which outlaw biker gang members volunteer to rescue animals in need and combat against people who commit animal cruelty, such as stopping the killing stray cats, breaking up dog fighting rings and rescuing pets from abusive owners. In the American prison system, prison gangs are often known to physically harm and even kill inmates who have committed such crimes as child murder, being serial killers, pedophilia, hate crimes, domestic violence, rape and inmates who have committed crimes against the elderly, animals, the disabled, the poor and the less fortunate. In many minority communities and poor neighborhoods, residents often distrust law enforcement, as a result the gang syndicates often take over to "police" their neighborhoods by committing acts against people who had committed crimes such as bullying, muggings, home invasions, hate crimes, stalking, rape, domestic violence and child molestation, as well as mediating disputes between neighbors, the ways that the gangs would punish such individuals could range from forced apologies, being threatened, being forced to return stolen objects, vandalizing property, arson, being forced to move, being assaulted and/or battered, kidnappings, false imprisonment, torture and/or being murdered. Some criminal syndicates have been known to hold their own "trials" for members of theirs who had been accused of wrongdoing, the punishments that the accused member would face if "found guilty" would vary depending on the offense.
Terrorism
In addition to what is considered traditional organized crime involving direct crimes of fraud swindles, scams, racketeering and other acts motivated for the accumulation of monetary gain, there is also non-traditional organized crime which is engaged in for political or ideological gain or acceptance. Such crime groups are often labelled terrorist groups or narcoterrorists.
There is no universally agreed, legally binding, criminal law definition of terrorism. Common definitions of terrorism refer only to those violent acts which are intended to create fear (terror), are perpetrated for a religious, political or ideological goal, deliberately target or disregard the safety of non-combatants (e.g., neutral military personnel or civilians), and are committed by non-government agencies. Some definitions also include acts of unlawful violence and war, especially crimes against humanity (see the Nuremberg Trials), Allied authorities deeming the German Nazi Party, its paramilitary and police organizations, and numerous associations subsidiary to the Nazi Party "criminal organizations". The use of similar tactics by criminal organizations for protection rackets or to enforce a code of silence is usually not labeled terrorism though these same actions may be labeled terrorism when done by a politically motivated group.
Notable groups include the Medellin Cartel, Corleonesi Mafia, various Mexican Cartels, and Jamaican Posse.
Other
Arms trafficking
Arson
Coercion
Extortion
Protection racket
Sexual assault
Financial crime
Organized crime groups generate large amounts of money by activities such as drug trafficking, arms smuggling, extortion, theft, and financial crime. These illegally sourced assets are of little use to them unless they can disguise it and convert it into funds that are available for investment into legitimate enterprise. The methods they use for converting its ‘dirty’ money into ‘clean’ assets encourages corruption. Organized crime groups need to hide the money's illegal origin. This allows for the expansion of OC groups, as the ‘laundry’ or ‘wash cycle’ operates to cover the money trail and convert proceeds of crime into usable assets. Money laundering is bad for international and domestic trade, banking reputations and for effective governments and rule of law. This is due to the methods used to hide the proceeds of crime. These methods include, but are not limited to: buying easily transported values, transfer pricing, and using "underground banks." Launderers will also co-mingle illegal money with revenue made from businesses in order to further mask their illicit funds. Accurate figures for the amounts of criminal proceeds laundered are almost impossible to calculate, rough estimates have been made, but only give a sense of the scale of the problem and not quite how great the problem truly is. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime conducted a study, they estimated that in 2009, money laundering equated to about 2.7% of global GDP being laundered; this is equal to about 1.6 trillion US dollars. The Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering (FATF), an intergovernmental body set up to combat money laundering, has stated that "A sustained effort between 1996 and 2000 by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) to produce such estimates failed." However, anti-money laundering efforts that seize money laundered assets in 2001 amounted to $386 million. The rapid growth of money laundering is due to:
the scale of organized crime precluding it from being a cash business - groups have little option but to convert its proceeds into legitimate funds and do so by investment, by developing legitimate businesses and purchasing property;
globalization of communications and commerce - technology has made rapid transfer of funds across international borders much easier, with groups continuously changing techniques to avoid investigation; and,
a lack of effective financial regulation in parts of the global economy.
Money laundering is a three-stage process:
Placement: (also called immersion) groups ‘smurf’ small amounts at a time to avoid suspicion; physical disposal of money by moving crime funds into the legitimate financial system; may involve bank complicity, mixing licit and illicit funds, cash purchases and smuggling currency to safe havens.
Layering: disguises the trail to foil pursuit. Also called ‘heavy soaping’. It involves creating false paper trails, converting cash into assets by cash purchases.
Integration: (also called ‘spin dry): Making it into clean taxable income by real-estate transactions, sham loans, foreign bank complicity and false import and export transactions.
Means of money laundering:
Money transmitters, black money markets purchasing goods, gambling, increasing the complexity of the money trail.
Underground banking (flying money), involves clandestine ‘bankers’ around the world.
It often involves otherwise legitimate banks and professionals.
The policy aim in this area is to make the financial markets transparent, and minimize the circulation of criminal money and its cost upon legitimate markets.
Counterfeiting
Counterfeiting money is another financial crime. The counterfeiting of money includes illegally producing money that is then used to pay for anything desired. In addition to being a financial crime, counterfeiting also involves manufacturing or distributing goods under assumed names. Counterfeiters benefit because consumers believe they are buying goods from companies that they trust, when in reality they are buying low quality counterfeit goods. In 2007, the OECD reported the scope of counterfeit products to include food, pharmaceuticals, pesticides, electrical components, tobacco and even household cleaning products in addition to the usual films, music, literature, games and other electrical appliances, software and fashion. A number of qualitative changes in the trade of counterfeit products:
a large increase in fake goods which are dangerous to health and safety;
most products repossessed by authorities are now household items rather than luxury goods;
a growing number of technological products; and,
production is now operated on an industrial scale.
Tax evasion
The economic effects of organized crime have been approached from a number of both theoretical and empirical positions, however the nature of such activity allows for misrepresentation. The level of taxation taken by a nation-state, rates of unemployment, mean household incomes and level of satisfaction with government and other economic factors all contribute to the likelihood of criminals to participate in tax evasion. As most organized crime is perpetrated in the liminal state between legitimate and illegitimate markets, these economic factors must adjusted to ensure the optimal amount of taxation without promoting the practice of tax evasion. As with any other crime, technological advancements have made the commission of tax evasion easier, faster and more globalized. The ability for organized criminals to operate fraudulent financial accounts, utilize illicit offshore bank accounts, access tax havens or tax shelters, and operating goods smuggling syndicates to evade importation taxes help ensure financial sustainability, security from law enforcement, general anonymity and the continuation of their operations.
Cybercrime
Internet fraud
Identity theft is a form of fraud or cheating of another person's identity in which someone pretends to be someone else by assuming that person's identity, typically in order to access resources or obtain credit and other benefits in that person's name. Victims of identity theft (those whose identity has been assumed by the identity thief) can suffer adverse consequences if held accountable for the perpetrator's actions, as can organizations and individuals who are defrauded by the identity thief, and to that extent are also victims. Internet fraud refers to the actual use of Internet services to present fraudulent solicitations to prospective victims, to conduct fraudulent transactions, or to transmit the proceeds of fraud to financial institutions or to others connected with the scheme. In the context of organized crime, both may serve as means through which other criminal activity may be successfully perpetrated or as the primary goal themselves. Email fraud, advance-fee fraud, romance scams, employment scams, and other phishing scams are the most common and most widely used forms of identity theft, though with the advent of social networking fake websites, accounts and other fraudulent or deceitful activity has become commonplace.
Copyright infringement
Copyright infringement is the unauthorized or prohibited use of works under copyright, infringing the copyright holder's exclusive rights, such as the right to reproduce or perform the copyrighted work, or to make derivative works. Whilst almost universally considered under civil procedure, the impact and intent of organized criminal operations in this area of crime has been the subject of much debate. Article 61 of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) requires that signatory countries establish criminal procedures and penalties in cases of willful trademark counterfeiting or copyright piracy on a commercial scale. More recently copyright holders have demanded that states provide criminal sanctions for all types of copyright infringement. Organized criminal groups capitalize on consumer complicity, advancements in security and anonymity technology, emerging markets and new methods of product transmission, and the consistent nature of these provides a stable financial basis for other areas of organized crime.
Cyberwarfare
Cyberwarfare refers to politically motivated hacking to conduct sabotage and espionage. It is a form of information warfare sometimes seen as analogous to conventional warfare although this analogy is controversial for both its accuracy and its political motivation. It has been defined as activities by a nation-state to penetrate another nation's computers or networks with the intention of causing civil damage or disruption. Moreover, it acts as the "fifth domain of warfare," and William J. Lynn, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense, states that "as a doctrinal matter, the Pentagon has formally recognized cyberspace as a new domain in warfare . . . [which] has become just as critical to military operations as land, sea, air, and space." Cyber espionage is the practice of obtaining confidential, sensitive, proprietary or classified information from individuals, competitors, groups, or governments using illegal exploitation methods on internet, networks, software and/or computers. There is also a clear military, political, or economic motivation. Unsecured information may be intercepted and modified, making espionage possible internationally. The recently established Cyber Command is currently debating whether such activities as commercial espionage or theft of intellectual property are criminal activities or actual "breaches of national security." Furthermore, military activities that use computers and satellites for coordination are at risk of equipment disruption. Orders and communications can be intercepted or replaced. Power, water, fuel, communications, and transportation infrastructure all may be vulnerable to sabotage. According to Clarke, the civilian realm is also at risk, noting that the security breaches have already gone beyond stolen credit card numbers, and that potential targets can also include the electric power grid, trains, or the stock market.
Computer viruses
The term "computer virus" may be used as an overarching phrase to include all types of true viruses, malware, including computer worms, Trojan horses, most rootkits, spyware, dishonest adware and other malicious and unwanted software (though all are technically unique), and proves to be quite financially lucrative for criminal organizations, offering greater opportunities for fraud and extortion whilst increasing security, secrecy and anonymity. Worms may be utilized by organized crime groups to exploit security vulnerabilities (duplicating itself automatically across other computers a given network), while a Trojan horse is a program that appears harmless but hides malicious functions (such as retrieval of stored confidential data, corruption of information, or interception of transmissions). Worms and Trojan horses, like viruses, may harm a computer system's data or performance. Applying the Internet model of organized crime, the proliferation of computer viruses and other malicious software promotes a sense of detachment between the perpetrator (whether that be the criminal organization or another individual) and the victim; this may help to explain vast increases in cyber-crime such as these for the purpose of ideological crime or terrorism. In mid July 2010, security experts discovered a malicious software program that had infiltrated factory computers and had spread to plants around the world. It is considered "the first attack on critical industrial infrastructure that sits at the foundation of modern economies," notes the New York Times.
White-collar crime and corruption
Corporate crime
Corporate crime refers to crimes committed either by a corporation (i.e., a business entity having a separate legal personality from the natural persons that manage its activities), or by individuals that may be identified with a corporation or other business entity (see vicarious liability and corporate liability). Corporate crimes are motivated by either the individuals desire or the corporations desire to increase profits. The cost of corporate crimes to United States taxpayers is about $500 billion. Note that some forms of corporate corruption may not actually be criminal if they are not specifically illegal under a given system of laws. For example, some jurisdictions allow insider trading. The different businesses that organized crime figures have been known to operate is vast, including but not limited to pharmacies, import-export companies, check-cashing stores, tattoo parlors, zoos, online dating sites, liquor stores, motorcycle shops, banks, hotels, ranches and plantations, electronic stores, beauty salons, real estate companies, daycares, framing stores, taxicab companies, phone companies, shopping malls, jewelry stores, modeling agencies, dry cleaners, pawn shops, pool halls, clothing stores, freight companies, charity foundations, youth centers, recording studios, sporting goods stores, furniture stores, gyms, insurance companies, security companies, law firms, and private military companies.
Labor racketeering
Labor Racketeering, as defined by the United States Department of Labor, is the infiltrating, exploiting, and controlling of employee benefit plan, union, employer entity, or workforce that is carried out through illegal, violent, or fraudulent means for profit or personal benefit. Labor racketeering has developed since the 1930s, affecting national and international construction, mining, energy production and transportation sectors immensely. Activity has focused on the importation of cheap or unfree labor, involvement with union and public officials (political corruption), and counterfeiting.
Political corruption
Political corruption is the use of legislated powers by government officials for illegitimate private gain. Misuse of government power for other purposes, such as repression of political opponents and general police brutality, is not considered political corruption. Neither are illegal acts by private persons or corporations not directly involved with the government. An illegal act by an officeholder constitutes political corruption only if the act is directly related to their official duties. Forms of corruption vary, but include bribery, extortion, cronyism, nepotism, patronage, graft, and embezzlement. While corruption may facilitate criminal enterprise such as drug trafficking, money laundering, and human trafficking, it is not restricted to these activities. The activities that constitute illegal corruption differ depending on the country or jurisdiction. For instance, certain political funding practices that are legal in one place may be illegal in another. In some cases, government officials have broad or poorly defined powers, which make it difficult to distinguish between legal and illegal actions. Worldwide, bribery alone is estimated to involve over 1 trillion US dollars annually. A state of unrestrained political corruption is known as a kleptocracy, literally meaning "rule by thieves".
Drug trafficking
There are three major regions that center around drug trafficking, known as the Golden Triangle (Burma, Laos, Thailand), Golden Crescent (Afghanistan) and Central and South America. There are suggestions that due to the continuing decline in opium production in South East Asia, traffickers may begin to look to Afghanistan as a source of heroin."
With respect to organized crime and accelerating synthetic drug production in East and Southeast Asia, especially the Golden Triangle, Sam Gor, also known as The Company, is the most prominent international crime syndicate based in Asia-Pacific. It is made up of members of five different triads. Sam Gor is understood to be headed by Chinese-Canadian Tse Chi Lop. The Cantonese Chinese syndicate is primarily involved in drug trafficking, earning at least $8 billion per year. Sam Gor is alleged to control 40% of the Asia-Pacific methamphetamine market, while also trafficking heroin and ketamine. The organization is active in a variety of countries, including Myanmar, Thailand, New Zealand, Australia, Japan, China and Taiwan. Sam Gor previously produced meth in Southern China and is now believed to manufacture mainly in the Golden Triangle, specifically Shan State, Myanmar, responsible for much of the massive surge of crystal meth in recent years. The group is understood to be headed by Tse Chi Lop, a Chinese-Canadian gangster born in Guangzhou, China. Tse is a former member of the Hong Kong-based crime group, the Big Circle Gang. In 1988, Tse immigrated to Canada. In 1998, Tse was convicted of transporting heroin into the United States and served nine years behind bars. Tse has been compared in prominence to Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán and Pablo Escobar.
The U.S. supply of heroin comes mainly from foreign sources which include Southeast Asia's Golden Triangle, Southwest Asia, and Latin America. Heroin comes in two forms. The first is its chemical base form which presents itself as brown and the second is a salt form that is white. The former is mainly produced in Afghanistan and some south-west countries while the latter had a history of being produced in only south-east Asia, but has since moved to also being produced in Afghanistan. There is some suspicion white Heroin is also being produced in Iran and Pakistan, but it is not confirmed. This area of Heroin production is referred to as the Golden Crescent. Heroin is not the only drug being used in these areas. The European market has shown signs of growing use in opioids on top of the long-term heroin use.
Human trafficking
Sex trafficking
Human trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation is a major cause of contemporary sexual slavery and is primarily for prostituting women and children into sex industries. Sexual slavery encompasses most, if not all, forms of forced prostitution. The terms "forced prostitution" or "enforced prostitution" appear in international and humanitarian conventions but have been insufficiently understood and inconsistently applied. "Forced prostitution" generally refers to conditions of control over a person who is coerced by another to engage in sexual activity. Official numbers of individuals in sexual slavery worldwide vary. In 2001 International Organization for Migration estimated 400,000, the Federal Bureau of Investigation estimated 700,000 and UNICEF estimated 1.75 million. The most common destinations for victims of human trafficking are Thailand, Japan, Israel, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Turkey and the United States, according to a report by UNODC.
Illegal immigration and people smuggling
See Snakehead (gang), Coyotaje
People smuggling is defined as "the facilitation, transportation, attempted transportation or illegal entry of a person or persons across an international border, in violation of one or more countries laws, either clandestinely or through deception, such as the use of fraudulent documents". The term is understood as and often used interchangeably with migrant smuggling, which is defined by the United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime as "...the procurement, in order to obtain, directly or indirectly, a financial or other material benefit, of the illegal entry of a person into a state party of which the person is not a national". This practice has increased over the past few decades and today now accounts for a significant portion of illegal immigration in countries around the world. People smuggling generally takes place with the consent of the person or persons being smuggled, and common reasons for individuals seeking to be smuggled include employment and economic opportunity, personal and/or familial betterment, and escape from persecution or conflict.
Contemporary slavery and forced labor
The number of slaves today remains as high as 12 million to 27 million. This is probably the smallest proportion of slaves to the rest of the world's population in history. Most are debt slaves, largely in South Asia, who are under debt bondage incurred by lenders, sometimes even for generations. It is the fastest growing criminal industry and is predicted to eventually outgrow drug trafficking.
Historical origins
Pre-nineteenth century
Today, crime is sometimes thought of as an urban phenomenon, but for most of human history it was the rural interfaces that encountered the majority of crimes (bearing in mind the fact that for most of human history, rural areas were the vast majority of inhabited places). For the most part, within a village, members kept crime at very low rates; however, outsiders such as pirates, highwaymen and bandits attacked trade routes and roads, at times severely disrupting commerce, raising costs, insurance rates and prices to the consumer. According to criminologist Paul Lunde, "Piracy and banditry were to the pre-industrial world what organized crime is to modern society."
As Lunde states, "Barbarian conquerors, whether Vandals, Goths, the Norse, Turks or Mongols are not normally thought of as organized crime groups, yet they share many features associated with thriving criminal organizations. They were for the most part non-ideological, predominantly ethnically based, used violence and intimidation, and adhered to their own codes of law." In Ancient Rome, there was an infamous outlaw called Bulla Felix who organized and led a gang of up to six hundred bandits. Terrorism is linked to organized crime, but has political aims rather than solely financial ones, so there is overlap but separation between terrorism and organized crime.
Fencing in Ming and Qing China
A fence or receiver (銷贓者), was a merchant who bought and sold stolen goods. Fences were part of the extensive network of accomplices in the criminal underground of Ming and Qing China. Their occupation entailed criminal activity, but as fences often acted as liaisons between the more respectable community to the underground criminals, they were seen as living a "precarious existence on the fringes of respectable society".
A fence worked alongside bandits, but in a different line of work. The network of criminal accomplices that was often acquired was essential to ensuring both the safety and the success of fences.
The path into the occupation of a fence stemmed, in a large degree, from necessity. As most fences came from the ranks of poorer people, they often took whatever work they could – both legal and illegal.
Like most bandits operated within their own community, fences also worked within their own town or village. For example, in some satellite areas of the capital, military troops lived within or close to the commoner population and they had the opportunity to hold illegal trades with commoners.
In areas like Baoding and Hejian, local peasants and community members not only purchased military livestock such as horses and cattle, but also helped to hide the "stolen livestock from military allured by the profits". Local peasants and community members became fences and they hid criminal activities from officials in return for products or money from these soldiers.
Types of fences
Most fences were not individuals who only bought and sold stolen goods to make a living. The majority of fences had other occupations within the "polite" society and held a variety of official occupations. These occupations included laborers, coolies, and peddlers. Such individuals often encountered criminals in markets in their line of work, and, recognizing a potential avenue for an extra source of income, formed acquaintances and temporary associations for mutual aid and protection with criminals. In one example, an owner of a tea house overheard the conversation between Deng Yawen, a criminal and others planning a robbery and he offered to help to sell the loot for an exchange of spoils.
At times, the robbers themselves filled the role of fences, selling to people they met on the road. This may actually have been preferable for robbers in certain circumstances, because they would not have to pay the fence a portion of the spoils.
Butchers were also prime receivers for stolen animals because of the simple fact that owners could no longer recognize their livestock once butchers slaughtered them. Animals were very valuable commodities within Ming China and a robber could potentially sustain a living from stealing livestock and selling them to butcher-fences.
Although the vast majority of the time, fences worked with physical stolen property, fences who also worked as itinerant barbers also sold information as a good. Itinerant barbers often amassed important sources of information and news as they traveled, and sold significant pieces of information, often to criminals in search of places to hide or individuals to rob. In this way, itinerant barbers also served the role as a keeper of information that could be sold to both members of the criminal underground, as well as powerful clients in performing the function of a spy.
He or she not only sold items such as jewelry and clothing but was also involved in trafficking hostages that bandits had kidnapped. Women and children were the easiest and among the most common "objects" the fences sold. Most of the female hostages were sold to fences and then sold as prostitutes, wives or concubines. One example of human trafficking can be seen from Chen Akuei's gang who abducted a servant girl and sold her to Lin Baimao, who in turn sold her for thirty parts of silver as wives. In contrast to women, who required beauty to sell for a high price, children were sold regardless of their physical appearance or family background. Children were often sold as servants or entertainers, while young girls were often sold as prostitutes.
Network of connections
Like merchants of honest goods, one of the most significant tools of a fence was their network of connections. As they were the middlemen between robbers and clients, fences needed to form and maintain connections in both the "polite" society, as well as among criminals. However, there were a few exceptions in which members of the so-called "well-respected" society became receivers and harborers. They not only help bandits to sell the stolen goods but also acted as agents of bandits to collect protection money from local merchants and residents. These "part-time" fences with high social status used their connection with bandits to help themselves gain social capital as well as wealth.
It was extremely important to their occupation that fences maintained a positive relationship with their customers, especially their richer gentry clients. When some members of the local elites joined the ranks of fences, they not only protect bandits to protect their business interests, they actively took down any potential threats to their illegal profiting, even government officials. In the Zhejiang Province, the local elites not only got the provincial commissioner, Zhu Wan, dismissed from his office but also eventually "[drove] him to suicide". This was possible because fences often had legal means of making a living, as well as illegal activities and could threaten to turn in bandits to the authorities.
It was also essential for them to maintain a relationship with bandits. However, it was just as true that bandits needed fences to make a living. As a result, fences often held dominance in their relationship with bandits and fences could exploit their position, cheating the bandits by manipulating the prices they paid bandits for the stolen property.
Safe houses
Aside from simply buying and selling stolen goods, fences often played additional roles in the criminal underground of early China. Because of the high floating population in public places such as inns and tea houses, they often became ideal places for bandies and gangs to gather to exchange information and plan for their next crime. Harborers, people who provided safe houses for criminals, often played the role of receiving stolen goods from their harbored criminals to sell to other customers. Safe houses included inns, tea houses, brothels, opium dens, as well as gambling parlors and employees or owners of such institutions often functioned as harborers, as well as fences. These safe houses locate in places where there are high floating population and people from all kinds of social backgrounds.
Brothels themselves helped these bandits to hide and sell stolen goods because of the special Ming Law that exempted brothels from being held responsible "for the criminal actions of their clients." Even though the government required owners of these places to report any suspicious activities, lack of enforcement from the government itself and some of the owners being fences for the bandits made an ideal safe house for bandits and gangs.
Pawnshops were also often affiliated with fencing stolen goods. The owners or employees of such shops often paid cash for stolen goods at a price a great deal below market value to bandits, who were often desperate for money, and resold the goods to earn a profit.
Punishments for fences
Two different Ming Laws, the Da Ming Lü 大明律 and the Da Gao 大诰, drafted by the Hongwu Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang, sentenced fences with different penalties based on the categories and prices of the products that were stolen.
In coastal regions, illegal trading with foreigners, as well as smuggling, became a huge concern for the government during the middle to late Ming era. In order to prohibit this crime, the government passed a law in which illegal smugglers who traded with foreigners without the consent of the government would be punished with exile to the border for military service.
In areas where military troops were stationed, stealing and selling military property would result in a more severe punishment. In the Jiaqing time, a case was recorded of stealing and selling military horses. The emperor himself gave direction that the thieves who stole the horses and the people who helped to sell the horses would be put on cangue and sent to labor in a border military camp.
In the salt mines, the penalty for workers who stole salt and people who sold the stolen salt was the most severe. Anyone who was arrested and found guilty of stealing and selling government salt was put to death.
Nineteenth century
During the Victorian era, criminals and gangs started to form organizations which would collectively become London's criminal underworld. Criminal societies in the underworld started to develop their own ranks and groups which were sometimes called families and were often made up of lower-classes and operated on pick-pocketry, prostitution, forgery and counterfeiting, commercial burglary and even money laundering schemes. Unique also were the use of slang and argots used by Victorian criminal societies to distinguish each other, like those propagated by street gangs like the Peaky Blinders. One of the most infamous crime bosses in the Victorian underworld was Adam Worth, who was nicknamed "the Napoleon of the criminal world" or "the Napoleon of Crime" and became the inspiration behind the popular character of Professor Moriarty.
Organized crime in the United States first came to prominence in the Old West and historians such as Brian J. Robb and Erin H. Turner traced the first organized crime syndicates to the Coschise Cowboy Gang and the Wild Bunch. The Cochise Cowboys, though loosely organized, were unique for their criminal operations in the Mexican border, in which they would steal and sell cattle as well smuggled contraband goods in between the countries. In the Old west there were other examples of gangs that operated in ways similar to an organized crime syndicate such as the Innocents gang, the Jim Miller gang, the Soapy Smith gang, the Belle Starr gang and the Bob Dozier gang.
Twentieth century
Donald Cressey's Cosa Nostra model studied Mafia families exclusively and this limits his broader findings. Structures are formal and rational with allocated tasks, limits on entrance, and influence the rules established for organizational maintenance and sustainability. In this context there is a difference between organized and professional crime; there is well-defined hierarchy of roles for leaders and members, underlying rules and specific goals that determine their behavior and these are formed as a social system, one that was rationally designed to maximize profits and to provide forbidden goods. Albini saw organized criminal behavior as consisting of networks of patrons and clients, rather than rational hierarchies or secret societies.
The networks are characterized by a loose system of power relations. Each participant is interested in furthering his own welfare. Criminal entrepreneurs are the patrons and they exchange information with their clients in order to obtain their support. Clients include members of gangs, local and national politicians, government officials and people engaged in legitimate business. People in the network may not directly be part of the core criminal organization. Furthering the approach of both Cressey and Albini, Ianni and Ianni studied Italian-American crime syndicates in New York and other cities.
Kinship is seen as the basis of organized crime rather than the structures Cressey had identified; this includes fictive godparental and affinitive ties as well as those based on blood relations and it is the impersonal actions, not the status or affiliations of their members, that define the group. Rules of conduct and behavioral aspects of power and networks and roles include the following:
family operates as a social unit, with social and business functions merged;
leadership positions down to middle management are kinship based;
the higher the position, the closer the kinship relationship;
group assigns leadership positions to a central group of family members, including fictive god-parental relationship reinforcement;
the leadership group are assigned to legal or illegal enterprises, but not both; and,
transfer of money, from legal and illegal business, and back to illegal business is by individuals, not companies.
Strong family ties are derived from the traditions of southern Italy, where family rather than the church or state is the basis of social order and morality.
The "disorganized crime" and choice theses
One of the most important trends to emerge in criminological thinking about OC in recent years is the suggestion that it is not, in a formal sense, "organized" at all. Evidence includes lack of centralized control, absence of formal lines of communication, fragmented organizational structure. It is distinctively disorganized. For example, Seattle's crime network in the 1970s and 80s consisted of groups of businessmen, politicians and of law enforcement officers. They all had links to a national network via Meyer Lansky, who was powerful, but there was no evidence that Lansky or anyone else exercised centralized control over them.
While some crime involved well-known criminal hierarchies in the city, criminal activity was not subject to central management by these hierarchies nor by other controlling groups, nor were activities limited to a finite number of objectives. The networks of criminals involved with the crimes did not exhibit organizational cohesion. Too much emphasis had been placed on the Mafia as controlling OC. The Mafia were certainly powerful but they "were part of a heterogeneous underworld, a network characterized by complex webs of relationships." OC groups were violent and aimed at making money but because of the lack of structure and fragmentation of objectives, they were "disorganized".
Further studies showed neither bureaucracy nor kinship groups are the primary structure of organized crime, rather they were in partnerships or a series of joint business ventures. Despite these conclusions, all researchers observed a degree of managerial activities among the groups they studied. All observed networks and a degree of persistence, and there may be utility in focusing on the identification of organizing roles of people and events rather than the group's structure. There may be three main approaches to understand the organizations in terms of their roles as social systems:
organizations as rational systems: Highly formalized structures in terms of bureaucracy's and hierarchy, with formal systems of rules regarding authority and highly specific goals;
organizations as natural systems: Participants may regard the organization as an end in itself, not merely a means to some other end. Promoting group values to maintain solidarity is high on the agenda. They do not rely on profit maximization. Their perversity and violence in respect of relationships is often remarkable, but they are characterized by their focus on the connections between their members, their associates and their victims; and,
organizations open systems: High levels of interdependence between themselves and the environment in which they operate. There is no one way in which they are organized or how they operate. They are adaptable and change to meet the demands of their changing environments and circumstances.
Organized crime groups may be a combination of all three.
International governance approach
International consensus on defining organized crime has become important since the 1970s due its increased prevalence and impact. e.g., UN in 1976 and EU 1998. OC is "...the large scale and complex criminal activity carried on by groups of persons, however loosely or tightly organized for the enrichment of those participating at the expense of the community and its members. It is frequently accomplished through ruthless disregard of any law, including offenses against the person and frequently in connection with political corruption." (UN) "A criminal organization shall mean a lasting, structured association of two or more persons, acting in concert with a view to committing crimes or other offenses which are punishable by deprivation of liberty or a detention order of a maximum of at least four years or a more serious penalty, whether such crimes or offenses are an end in themselves or a means of obtaining material benefits and, if necessary, of improperly influencing the operation of public authorities." (UE) Not all groups exhibit the same characteristics of structure. However, violence and corruption and the pursuit of multiple enterprises and continuity serve to form the essence of OC activity.
There are eleven characteristics from the European Commission and Europol pertinent to a working definition of organized crime. Six of those must be satisfied and the four in italics are mandatory. Summarized, they are:
more than two people;
their own appointed tasks;
activity over a prolonged or indefinite period of time;
the use discipline or control;
perpetration of serious criminal offenses;
operations on an international or transnational level;
the use violence or other intimidation;
the use of commercial or businesslike structures;
engagement in money laundering;
exertion of influence on politics, media, public administration, judicial authorities or the economy; and,
motivated by the pursuit of profit and/or power,
with the Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (the Palermo Convention) having a similar definition:
organized criminal: structured group, three or more people, one or more serious crimes, in order to obtain financial or other material benefit;
serious crime: offense punishable by at least four years in prison; and,
structured group: Not randomly formed but doesn't need formal structure,
Others stress the importance of power, profit and perpetuity, defining organized criminal behavior as:
nonideological: i.e., profit driven;
hierarchical: few elites and many operatives;
limited or exclusive membership: maintain secrecy and loyalty of members;
perpetuating itself: Recruitment process and policy;
willing to use illegal violence and bribery;
specialized division of labor: to achieve organization goal;
monopolistic: Market control to maximize profits; and,
has explicit rules and regulations: Codes of honor.
Definitions need to bring together its legal and social elements. OC has widespread social, political and economic effects. It uses violence and corruption to achieve its ends: "OC when group primarily focused on illegal profits systematically commit crimes that adversely affect society and are capable of successfully shielding their activities, in particular by being willing to use physical violence or eliminate individuals by way of corruption."
It is a mistake to use the term "OC" as though it denotes a clear and well-defined phenomenon. The evidence regarding OC "shows a less well-organized, very diversified landscape of organizing criminals…the economic activities of these organizing criminals can be better described from the viewpoint of 'crime enterprises' than from a conceptually unclear frameworks such as 'OC'." Many of the definitions emphasize the ‘group nature’ of OC, the ‘organization’ of its members, its use of violence or corruption to achieve its goals and its extra-jurisdictional character...OC may appear in many forms at different times and in different places. Due to the variety of definitions, there is “evident danger” in asking “what is OC?” and expecting a simple answer.
The locus of power and organized crime
Some espouse that all organized crime operates at an international level, though there is currently no international court capable of trying offenses resulting from such activities (the International Criminal Court's remit extends only to dealing with people accused of offenses against humanity, e.g., genocide). If a network operates primarily from one jurisdiction and carries out its illicit operations there and in some other jurisdictions it is ‘international,' though it may be appropriate to use the term ‘transnational’ only to label the activities of a major crime group that is centered in no one jurisdiction but operating in many. The understanding of organized crime has therefore progressed to combined internationalization and an understanding of social conflict into one of power, control, efficiency risk and utility, all within the context of organizational theory. The accumulation of social, economic and political power have sustained themselves as a core concerns of all criminal organizations:
social: criminal groups seek to develop social control in relation to particular communities;
economic: seek to exert influence by means of corruption and by coercion of legitimate and illegitimate praxis; and,
political: criminal groups use corruption and violence to attain power and status.
Contemporary organized crime may be very different from traditional Mafia style, particularly in terms of the distribution and centralization of power, authority structures and the concept of 'control' over one's territory and organization. There is a tendency away from centralization of power and reliance upon family ties towards a fragmentation of structures and informality of relationships in crime groups. Organized crime most typically flourishes when a central government and civil society is disorganized, weak, absent or untrustworthy.
This may occur in a society facing periods of political, economic or social turmoil or transition, such as a change of government or a period of rapid economic development, particularly if the society lacks strong and established institutions and the rule of law. The dissolution of the Soviet Union and the Revolutions of 1989 in Eastern Europe that saw the downfall of the Communist Bloc created a breeding ground for criminal organizations.
The newest growth sectors for organized crime are identity theft and online extortion. These activities are troubling because they discourage consumers from using the Internet for e-commerce. E-commerce was supposed to level the playing ground between small and large businesses, but the growth of online organized crime is leading to the opposite effect; large businesses are able to afford more bandwidth (to resist denial-of-service attacks) and superior security. Furthermore, organized crime using the Internet is much harder to trace down for the police (even though they increasingly deploy cybercops) since most police forces and law enforcement agencies operate within a local or national jurisdiction while the Internet makes it easier for criminal organizations to operate across such boundaries without detection.
In the past criminal organizations have naturally limited themselves by their need to expand, putting them in competition with each other. This competition, often leading to violence, uses valuable resources such as manpower (either killed or sent to prison), equipment and finances. In the United States, James "Whitey" Bulger, the Irish Mob boss of the Winter Hill Gang in Boston turned informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). He used this position to eliminate competition and consolidate power within the city of Boston which led to the imprisonment of several senior organized crime figures including Gennaro Angiulo, underboss of the Patriarca crime family. Infighting sometimes occurs within an organization, such as the Castellamarese war of 1930–31 and the Boston Irish Mob Wars of the 1960s and 1970s.
Today criminal organizations are increasingly working together, realizing that it is better to work in cooperation rather than in competition with each other (once again, consolidating power). This has led to the rise of global criminal organizations such as Mara Salvatrucha, 18th Street gang and Barrio Azteca. The American Mafia, in addition to having links with organized crime groups in Italy such as the Camorra, the 'Ndrangheta, Sacra Corona Unita and Sicilian Mafia, has at various times done business with the Irish Mob, Jewish-American organized crime, the Japanese Yakuza, Indian mafia, the Russian mafia, Thief in law and Post-Soviet Organized crime groups, the Chinese Triads, Chinese Tongs and Asian street gangs, Motorcycle Gangs and numerous White, Black and Hispanic prison and street gangs. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime estimated that organized crime groups held $322 billion in assets in 2005.
This rise in cooperation between criminal organizations has meant that law enforcement agencies are increasingly having to work together. The FBI operates an organized crime section from its headquarters in Washington, D.C. and is known to work with other national (e.g., Polizia di Stato, Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police), federal (e.g., Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Drug Enforcement Administration, United States Marshals Service, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, United States Secret Service, US Diplomatic Security Service, United States Postal Inspection Service, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, United States Border Patrol, and the United States Coast Guard), state (e.g., Massachusetts State Police Special Investigation Unit, New Jersey State Police organized crime unit, Pennsylvania State Police organized crime unit and the New York State Police Bureau of Criminal Investigation) and city (e.g., New York City Police Department Organized Crime Unit, Philadelphia Police Department Organized crime unit, Chicago Police Organized Crime Unit and the Los Angeles Police Department Special Operations Division) law enforcement agencies.
Academic analysis
Criminal psychology
Criminal psychology is defined as the study of the intentions, behaviors, and actions of a criminal or someone who allows themselves to participate in criminal behavior. The goal is understand what is going on in the criminal's head and explain why they are doing what they are doing. This varies depending on whether the person is facing the punishment for what they did, are roaming free, or if they are punishing themselves. Criminal psychologists get called to court to explain the inside the mind of the criminal.
Rational choice
This theory treats all individuals as rational operators, committing criminal acts after consideration of all associated risks (detection and punishment) compared with the rewards of crimes (personal, financial etc.). Little emphasis is placed on the offenders’ emotional state. The role of criminal organizations in lowering the perceptions of risk and increasing the likelihood of personal benefit is prioritized by this approach, with the organizations structure, purpose, and activity being indicative of the rational choices made by criminals and their organizers.
Deterrence
This theory sees criminal behavior as reflective of an individual, internal calculation by the criminal that the benefits associated with offending (whether financial or otherwise) outweigh the perceived risks. The perceived strength, importance or infallibility of the criminal organization is directly proportional to the types of crime committed, their intensity and arguably the level of community response. The benefits of participating in organized crime (higher financial rewards, greater socioeconomic control and influence, protection of the family or significant others, perceived freedoms from 'oppressive' laws or norms) contribute greatly to the psychology behind highly organized group offending.
Social learning
Criminals learn through associations with one another. The success of organized crime groups is therefore dependent upon the strength of their communication and the enforcement of their value systems, the recruitment and training processes employed to sustain, build or fill gaps in criminal operations. An understanding of this theory sees close associations between criminals, imitation of superiors, and understanding of value systems, processes and authority as the main drivers behind organized crime. Interpersonal relationships define the motivations the individual develops, with the effect of family or peer criminal activity being a strong predictor of inter-generational offending. This theory also developed to include the strengths and weaknesses of reinforcement, which in the context of continuing criminal enterprises may be used to help understand propensities for certain crimes or victims, level of integration into the mainstream culture and likelihood of recidivism / success in rehabilitation.
Enterprise
Under this theory, organized crime exists because legitimate markets leave many customers and potential customers unsatisfied. High demand for a particular good or service (e.g., drugs, prostitution, arms, slaves), low levels of risk detection and high profits lead to a conducive environment for entrepreneurial criminal groups to enter the market and profit by supplying those goods and services. For success, there must be:
an identified market; and,
a certain rate of consumption (demand) to maintain profit and outweigh perceived risks.
Under these conditions competition is discouraged, ensuring criminal monopolies sustain profits. Legal substitution of goods or services may (by increasing competition) force the dynamic of organized criminal operations to adjust, as will deterrence measures (reducing demand), and the restriction of resources (controlling the ability to supply or produce to supply).
Differential association
Sutherland goes further to say that deviancy is contingent on conflicting groups within society, and that such groups struggle over the means to define what is criminal or deviant within society. Criminal organizations therefore gravitate around illegal avenues of production, profit-making, protectionism or social control and attempt (by increasing their operations or membership) to make these acceptable. This also explains the propensity of criminal organizations to develop protection rackets, to coerce through the use of violence, aggression and threatening behavior (at times termed 'terrorism'). Preoccupation with methods of accumulating profit highlight the lack of legitimate means to achieve economic or social advantage, as does the organization of white-collar crime or political corruption (though it is debatable whether these are based on wealth, power or both). The ability to effect social norms and practices through political and economic influence (and the enforcement or normalization of criminogenic needs) may be defined by differential association theory.
Critical criminology and sociology
Social disorganization
Social disorganization theory is intended to be applied to neighborhood level street crime, thus the context of gang activity, loosely formed criminal associations or networks, socioeconomic demographic impacts, legitimate access to public resources, employment or education, and mobility give it relevance to organized crime. Where the upper- and lower-classes live in close proximity this can result in feelings of anger, hostility, social injustice and frustration. Criminals experience poverty; and witness affluence they are deprived of and which is virtually impossible for them to attain through conventional means. The concept of neighborhood is central to this theory, as it defines the social learning, locus of control, cultural influences and access to social opportunity experienced by criminals and the groups they form. Fear of or lack of trust in mainstream authority may also be a key contributor to social disorganization; organized crime groups replicate such figures and thus ensure control over the counter-culture. This theory has tended to view violent or antisocial behavior by gangs as reflective of their social disorganization rather than as a product or tool of their organization.
Anomie
Sociologist Robert K. Merton believed deviance depended on society's definition of success, and the desires of individuals to achieve success through socially defined avenues. Criminality becomes attractive when expectations of being able to fulfill goals (therefore achieving success) by legitimate means cannot be fulfilled. Criminal organizations capitalize on states with a lack of norm by imposing criminogenic needs and illicit avenues to achieve them. This has been used as the basis for numerous meta-theories of organized crime through its integration of social learning, cultural deviance, and criminogenic motivations. If crime is seen as a function of anomie, organized behavior produces stability, increases protection or security, and may be directly proportional to market forces as expressed by entrepreneurship- or risk-based approaches. It is the inadequate supply of legitimate opportunities that constrains the ability for the individual to pursue valued societal goals and reduces the likelihood that using legitimate opportunities will enable them to satisfy such goals (due to their position in society).
Cultural deviance
Criminals violate the law because they belong to a unique subculture - the counter-culture - their values and norms conflicting with those of the working-, middle- or upper-classes upon which criminal laws are based. This subculture shares an alternative lifestyle, language and culture, and is generally typified by being tough, taking care of their own affairs and rejecting government authority. Role models include drug dealers, thieves and pimps, as they have achieved success and wealth not otherwise available through socially-provided opportunities. It is through modeling organized crime as a counter-cultural avenue to success that such organizations are sustained.
Alien conspiracy/queer ladder of mobility
The alien conspiracy theory and queer ladder of mobility theories state that ethnicity and 'outsider' status (immigrants, or those not within the dominant ethnocentric groups) and their influences are thought to dictate the prevalence of organized crime in society. The alien theory posits that the contemporary structures of organized crime gained prominence during the 1860s in Sicily and that elements of the Sicilian population are responsible for the foundation of most European and North American organized crime, made up of Italian-dominated crime families. Bell's theory of the 'queer ladder of mobility' hypothesized that 'ethnic succession' (the attainment of power and control by one more marginalized ethnic group over other less marginalized groups) occurs by promoting the perpetration of criminal activities within a disenfranchised or oppressed demographic. Whilst early organized crime was dominated by the Irish Mob (early 1800s), they were relatively substituted by the Sicilian Mafia and Italian-American Mafia, the Aryan Brotherhood (1960s onward), Colombian Medellin cartel and Cali cartel (mid-1970s - 1990s), and more recently the Mexican Tijuana Cartel (late 1980s onward), Mexican Los Zetas (late 1990s to onward), the Russian Mafia (1988 onward), terrorism-related organized crime Al-Qaeda (1988 onward), the Taliban (1994 onward), and Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) (2010s to onward) . Many argue this misinterprets and overstates the role of ethnicity in organized crime. A contradiction of this theory is that syndicates had developed long before large-scale Sicilian immigration in the 1860s, with these immigrants merely joining a widespread phenomenon of crime and corruption.
Legislative frameworks and policing measures
International
Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (the 'Palermo Convention') - the international treaty against organized crime; includes the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children and the Protocol against the Smuggling of Migrants by Land, Sea and Air
Canada
Criminal Code, RSC 1985, c C-46, ss 467.1 to 467.2 .
India
Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act
Republic of Ireland
Criminal Assets Bureau
Italy
Article 41-bis prison regime
United Kingdom
Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005
United States
Federal Anti-Racketeering Act (the 'Hobbs Act') 1946
Federal Wire Act 1961
Bank Secrecy Act 1970
Organized Crime Control Act 1970
Title 21 of the United States Code 1970
Continuing Criminal Enterprise (contemporary)
Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (the 'RICO Act') 1970
Money Laundering Control Act 1986
United States Patriot Act 2001
Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act of 2009
By nation
List of criminal enterprises, gangs and syndicates
Timeline of organized crime
Organized crime in Afghanistan
Organized crime in Albania
Organized crime in Australia
Organized crime in Bulgaria
:Category:Organized crime in Canada
Organized crime in China
Organized crime in France
Organized crime in Greece
Organized crime in India
Organized crime in Ireland
Organized crime in Italy
Organized crime in Japan
Organized crime in Kenya
Organized crime in Kyrgyzstan
Organized crime in Lebanon
Organized crime in the Netherlands
Organized crime in Nigeria
Organized crime in Pakistan
Organized crime in Russia
Organized crime in South Korea
Organized crime in Sweden
Organized crime in Turkey
Organized crime in Ukraine
Organized crime in the United Kingdom
:Category:Organized crime in the United States
Organized crime in Vietnam
References
External links
Mob Life: Gangster Kings of Crime — slideshow by Life magazine
UNODC - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime — sub-section dealing with organised crime worldwide
"Organized Crime" — Oxford Bibliographies Online: Criminology
Illegal occupations
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4959416
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LView
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LView
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LView Pro (LVP) is a bitmap graphics editor for computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system developed by Leonardo H. Loureiro, who owns the copyright to the software and the LView registered trademark. LView Pro is distributed by CoolMoon Corp.
Commercial history
The first version of LView software, 1.0, was released as freeware on the Internet in early 1993, and was the Windows based image viewer bundled with the pioneer web browser Mosaic.
In 1994, the first version of LView Pro was sold as a shareware product by MMedia Research. Retail versions of LView Pro, 2.0 and newer, were introduced in 1997. LView quickly gained popularity and was frequently ranked above Corel Paint Shop Pro, McAfee VirusScan, Netscape Communicator, Internet Explorer, Quake II, and others, on CNET's Download.com list of the most popular downloads in all categories.
In 2001, versions of LView Pro started being titled using the year of release, the current version - as of May 2006 - is labeled LView Pro 2006.
In June 2005, after a 12-year run with MMedia Research, distribution rights to LView Pro were transferred to CoolMoon Corp.
In October 2017, after a 12-year run with CoolMoon Corp, registration fees for the use of LView Pro 2006 were waived by the author of the software.
Version history
LView software started as a pioneer JPEG viewer, one of the first to be available for download on the Internet. Major versions 1.* (1.0 to 1.D2) offered limited image editing capabilities (crop, rotate, color adjustments, etc.) in addition to
common image viewing operations (zooming, slideshows, etc.).
Major versions 2.x (2.0 to 2.85) featured more extensive editing capabilities (brushes, selections, histograms, gradients, etc.) as well as new editors for Web Picture Galleries, Contact Sheets, and others. Versions from 2001 to the
current, support advanced image editing tools (layers, transparency, objects, etc.), similar to those found on commercial titles like Adobe Photoshop.
References
Notes
List of selected books referencing LView software
Raster graphics editors
1993 software
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5956
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circe
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Circe
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Circe (; , ) is an enchantress and a minor goddess in Greek mythology. She is either a daughter of the god Helios and the Oceanid nymph Perse or the goddess Hecate and Aeëtes. Circe was renowned for her vast knowledge of potions and herbs. Through the use of these and a magic wand or staff, she would transform her enemies, or those who offended her, into animals.
The best known of her legends is told in Homer's Odyssey when Odysseus visits her island of Aeaea on the way back from the Trojan War and she changes most of his crew into swine. He manages to persuade her to return them to human shape, lives with her for a year and has sons by her, including Latinus and Telegonus. Her ability to change others into animals is further highlighted by the story of Picus, an Italian king whom she turns into a woodpecker for resisting her advances. Another story tells of her falling in love with the sea-god Glaucus, who prefers the nymph Scylla to her. In revenge, Circe poisoned the water where her rival bathed and turned her into a dreadful monster.
Depictions, even in Classical times, diverged from the detail in Homer's narrative, which was later to be reinterpreted morally as a cautionary story against drunkenness. Early philosophical questions were also raised about whether the change from being a human endowed with reason to being an unreasoning beast might not be preferable after all, and the resulting debate was to have a powerful impact during the Renaissance. Circe was also taken as the archetype of the predatory female. In the eyes of those from a later age, this behaviour made her notorious both as a magician and as a type of the sexually-free woman. She has been frequently depicted as such in all the arts from the Renaissance down to modern times.
Western paintings established a visual iconography for the figure, but also went for inspiration to other stories concerning Circe that appear in Ovid's Metamorphoses. The episodes of Scylla and Picus added the vice of violent jealousy to her bad qualities and made her a figure of fear as well as of desire.
Classical literature
Family
By most accounts, she was the daughter of Helios, the god of the Sun, and Perse, one of the three thousand Oceanid nymphs. In Orphic Argonautica, her mother is called Asterope instead. Her brothers were Aeëtes, keeper of the Golden Fleece and father of Medea, and Perses. Her sister was Pasiphaë, the wife of King Minos and mother of the Minotaur. Other accounts make her and her niece Medea the daughters of Hecate, the goddess of witchcraft by Aeëtes, usually said to be her brother instead. She was often confused with Calypso, due to her shifts in behavior and personality, and the association that both of them had with Odysseus.
According to Greek legend, Circe lived in the island of Aeaea. Although Homer is vague when it comes to the island's whereabouts, in his epic poem Argonautica, the early 3rd BC author Apollonius of Rhodes locates Aeaea somewhere south of Aethalia (Elba), within view of the Tyrrhenian shore (that is, the western coast of Italy). In the same poem, Circe's brother Aeëtes describes how Circe was transferred to Aeaea: "I noted it once after taking a ride in my father Helios' chariot, when he was taking my sister Circe to the western land and we came to the coast of the Tyrrhenian mainland, where she dwells to this day, very far from the Colchian land."
A scholiast on Apollonius Rhodius claims that Apollonius is following Hesiod's tradition in making Circe arrive in Aeaea on Helios' chariot, while Valerius Flaccus writes that Circe was borne away by winged dragons. Roman poets associated her with the most ancient traditions of Latium, and made her home to be on the promontory of Circeo.
Homer describes Circe as "a dreadful goddess with lovely hair and human speech". Apollonius writes that she (just like every other descendant of Helios) had flashing golden eyes that shot out rays of light, with the author of Argonautica Orphica noting that she had hair like fiery rays.
In The Cure for Love it is implied that Circe might have been taught the knowledge of herbs and potions from her mother Perse, who seems to have had similar skills.
Pre-Odyssey
In the Argonautica, Apollonius relates that Circe purified the Argonauts for the murder of Medea's brother Absyrtus, possibly reflecting an early tradition. In this poem, the Argonauts find Circe bathing in salt water; the animals that surround her are not former lovers transformed but primeval 'beasts, not resembling the beasts of the wild, nor yet like men in body, but with a medley of limbs'. Circe invites Jason, Medea and their crew into her mansion; uttering no words, they show her the still bloody sword they used to cut Absyrtus down, and Circe immediately realizes they've visited her to be purified of murder. She purifies them by slitting the throat of a suckling pig and letting the blood drip on them. Afterwards, Medea tells Circe their tale in great detail, albeit omitting the part of Absyrtus' murder; nevertheless Circe is not fooled, and greatly disapproves of their actions. However, out of pity for the girl, and on account of their kinship, she promises not to be an obstacle on their way, and orders Jason and Medea to leave her island immediately.
The sea-god Glaucus was in love with a beautiful maiden, Scylla, but she spurned his affections no matter how he tried to win her heart. Glaucus went to Circe, and asked her for a magic potion to make Scylla fall in love with him too. But Circe was smitten by Glaucus herself, and fell in love with him. But Glaucus did not love her back, and turned her offer of marriage down. Enraged, Circe used her knowledge of herbs and plants to take her revenge; she found the spot where Scylla usually took her bath, and poisoned the water. When Scylla went down to it to bathe, dogs sprang from her thighs and she was transformed into the familiar monster from the Odyssey. In another, similar story, Picus was a Latian king whom Circe turned into a woodpecker. He was the son of Saturn, and a king of Latium. He fell in love and married a nymph, Canens, to whom he was utterly devoted. One day as he was hunting boars, he came upon Circe, who was gathering herbs in the woods. Circe fell immediately in love with him; but Picus, just like Glaucus before him, spurned her and declared that he would remain forever faithful to Canens. Circe, furious, turned Picus into a woodpecker. His wife Canens eventually wasted away in her mourning.
During the war between the gods and the giants, one of the giants, Picolous, fled the battle against the gods and came to Aeaea, Circe's island. He attempted to chase Circe away, only to be killed by Helios, Circe's ally and father. From the blood of the slain giant an herb came into existence; moly, named thus from the battle (malos) and with a white-coloured flower, either for the white Sun who had killed Picolous or the terrified Circe who turned white; the very plant, which mortals are unable to pluck from the ground, that Hermes would later give to Odysseus in order to defeat Circe.
Homer's Odyssey
In Homer's Odyssey, an 8th-century BC sequel to his Trojan War epic Iliad, Circe is initially described as a beautiful goddess living in a palace isolated in the midst of a dense wood on her island of Aeaea. Around her home prowl strangely docile lions and wolves. She lures any who land on the island to her home with her lovely singing while weaving on an enormous loom, but later drugs them so that they change shape. One of her Homeric epithets is polypharmakos, "knowing many drugs or charms".
Circe invites the hero Odysseus' crew to a feast of familiar food, a pottage of cheese and meal, sweetened with honey and laced with wine, but also mixed with one of her magical potions that turns them into swine. Only Eurylochus, who suspects treachery, does not go in. He escapes to warn Odysseus and the others who have remained with the ship. Before Odysseus reaches Circe's palace, Hermes, the messenger god sent by the goddess of wisdom Athena, intercepts him and reveals how he might defeat Circe in order to free his crew from their enchantment. Hermes provides Odysseus with moly to protect him from Circe's magic. He also tells Odysseus that he must then draw his sword and act as if he were going to attack her. From there, as Hermes foretold, Circe would ask Odysseus to bed, but Hermes advises caution, for the treacherous goddess could still "unman" him unless he has her swear by the names of the gods that she will not take any further action against him. Following this advice, Odysseus is able to free his men.
After they have all remained on the island for a year, Circe advises Odysseus that he must first visit the Underworld, something a mortal has never yet done, in order to gain knowledge about how to appease the gods, return home safely and recover his kingdom. Circe also advises him on how this might be achieved and furnishes him with the protections he will need and the means to communicate with the dead. On his return, she further advises him about two possible routes home, warning him, however, that both carry great danger.
Post-Odyssey
Towards the end of Hesiod's Theogony (c. 700 BC), it is stated that Circe bore Odysseus three sons: Agrius (otherwise unknown); Latinus; and Telegonus, who ruled over the Tyrsenoi, that is the Etruscans. The Telegony, an epic now lost, relates the later history of the last of these. Circe eventually informed her son who his absent father was and, when he set out to find Odysseus, gave him a poisoned spear. When Telegonus arrived to Ithaca, Odysseus was away in Thesprotia, fighting the Brygi. Telegonus began to ravage the island; Odysseus came to defend his land. With the weapon Circe gave him, Telegonus killed his father unknowingly. Telegonus then brought back his father's corpse to Aeaea, together with Penelope and Odysseus' son by her, Telemachus. After burying Odysseus, Circe made the other three immortal.
Circe married Telemachus, and Telegonus married Penelope by the advice of Athena. According to an alternative version depicted in Lycophron's 3rd-century BC poem Alexandra (and John Tzetzes' scholia on it), Circe used magical herbs to bring Odysseus back to life after he had been killed by Telegonus. Odysseus then gave Telemachus to Circe's daughter Cassiphone in marriage. Some time later, Telemachus had a quarrel with his mother-in-law and killed her; Cassiphone then killed Telemachus to avenge her mother's death. On hearing of this, Odysseus died of grief.
Dionysius of Halicarnassus (1.72.5) cites Xenagoras, the 2nd-century BC historian, as claiming that Odysseus and Circe had three different sons: Rhomos, Anteias, and Ardeias, who respectively founded three cities called by their names: Rome, Antium, and Ardea.
In the later 5th-century CE epic Dionysiaca, its author Nonnus mentions Phaunus, Circe's son by the sea god Poseidon.
Other works
Three ancient plays about Circe have been lost: the work of the tragedian Aeschylus and of the 4th-century BC comic dramatists Ephippus of Athens and Anaxilas. The first told the story of Odysseus' encounter with Circe. Vase paintings from the period suggest that Odysseus' half-transformed animal-men formed the chorus in place of the usual Satyrs. Fragments of Anaxilas also mention the transformation and one of the characters complains of the impossibility of scratching his face now that he is a pig.
The theme of Circe turning men into a variety of animals was elaborated by later writers. In his episodic work The Sorrows of Love (first century BC), Parthenius of Nicaea interpolated another episode into the time that Odysseus was staying with Circe. Pestered by the amorous attentions of King Calchus the Daunian, the sorceress invited him to a drugged dinner that turned him into a pig and then shut him up in her sties. He was only released when his army came searching for him on the condition that he would never set foot on her island again.
Among Latin treatments, Virgil's Aeneid relates how Aeneas skirts the Italian island where Circe dwells and hears the cries of her many male victims, who now number more than the pigs of earlier accounts: The roars of lions that refuse the chain, / The grunts of bristled boars, and groans of bears, / And herds of howling wolves that stun the sailors' ears. In Ovid's 1st-century poem Metamorphoses, the fourth episode covers Circe's encounter with Ulysses (the Roman name of Odysseus), whereas book 14 covers the stories of Picus and Glaucus.
Plutarch took up the theme in a lively dialogue that was later to have several imitators. Contained in his 1st-century Moralia is the Gryllus episode in which Circe allows Odysseus to interview a fellow Greek turned into a pig. After his interlocutor informs Odysseus that his present existence is preferable to the human, they engage in a philosophical dialogue in which every human value is questioned and beasts are proved to be of superior wisdom and virtue.
Later literature
Giovanni Boccaccio provided a digest of what was known of Circe during the Middle Ages in his De mulieribus claris (Famous Women, 1361–1362). While following the tradition that she lived in Italy, he comments wryly that there are now many more temptresses like her to lead men astray.
There is a very different interpretation of the encounter with Circe in John Gower's long didactic poem Confessio Amantis (1380). Ulysses is depicted as deeper in sorcery and readier of tongue than Circe and through this means he leaves her pregnant with Telegonus. Most of the account deals with the son's later quest for and accidental killing of his father, drawing the moral that only evil can come of the use of sorcery.
The story of Ulysses and Circe was retold as an episode in Georg Rollenhagen's German verse epic, Froschmeuseler (The Frogs and Mice, Magdeburg, 1595). In this 600-page expansion of the pseudo-Homeric Batrachomyomachia, it is related at the court of the mice and takes up sections 5–8 of the first part.
In Lope de Vega's miscellany La Circe – con otras rimas y prosas (1624), the story of her encounter with Ulysses appears as a verse epic in three cantos. This takes its beginning from Homer's account, but it is then embroidered; in particular, Circe's love for Ulysses remains unrequited.
As "Circe's Palace", Nathaniel Hawthorne retold the Homeric account as the third section in his collection of stories from Greek mythology, Tanglewood Tales (1853). The transformed Picus continually appears in this, trying to warn Ulysses, and then Eurylochus, of the danger to be found in the palace, and is rewarded at the end by being given back his human shape. In most accounts Ulysses only demands this for his own men.
In her survey of the Transformations of Circe, Judith Yarnall comments of this figure, who started out as a comparatively minor goddess of unclear origin, that "What we know for certain – what Western literature attests to – is her remarkable staying power…These different versions of Circe's myth can be seen as mirrors, sometimes clouded and sometimes clear, of the fantasies and assumptions of the cultures that produced them." After appearing as just one of the characters that Odysseus encounters on his wandering, "Circe herself, in the twists and turns of her story through the centuries, has gone through far more metamorphoses than those she inflicted on Odysseus's companions."
Reasoning beasts
One of the most enduring literary themes connected with the figure of Circe was her ability to change men into animals. There was much speculation concerning how this could be, whether the human consciousness changed at the same time, and even whether it was a change for the better. The Gryllus dialogue was taken up by another Italian writer, Giovan Battista Gelli, in his La Circe (1549). This is a series of ten philosophical and moral dialogues between Ulysses and the humans transformed into various animals, ranging from an oyster to an elephant, in which Circe sometimes joins. Most argue against changing back; only the last animal, a philosopher in its former existence, wants to. The work was translated into English soon after in 1557 by Henry Iden. Later the English poet Edmund Spenser also made reference to Plutarch's dialogue in the section of his Faerie Queene (1590) based on the Circe episode which appears at the end of Book II. Sir Guyon changes back the victims of Acrasia's erotic frenzy in the Bower of Bliss, most of whom are abashed at their fall from chivalric grace, But one above the rest in speciall, / That had an hog beene late, hight Grille by name, / Repined greatly, and did him miscall, / That had from hoggish forme him brought to naturall.
Two other Italians wrote rather different works that centre on the animal within the human. One was Niccolò Machiavelli in his unfinished long poem, L'asino d'oro (The Golden Ass, 1516). The author meets a beautiful herdswoman surrounded by Circe's herd of beasts. After spending a night of love with him, she explains the characteristics of the animals in her charge: the lions are the brave, the bears are the violent, the wolves are those forever dissatisfied, and so on (Canto 6). In Canto 7 he is introduced to those who experience frustration: a cat that has allowed its prey to escape; an agitated dragon; a fox constantly on the look-out for traps; a dog that bays the moon; Aesop's lion in love that allowed himself to be deprived of his teeth and claws. There are also emblematic satirical portraits of various Florentine personalities. In the eighth and last canto he has a conversation with a pig that, like the Gryllus of Plutarch, does not want to be changed back and condemns human greed, cruelty and conceit.
The other Italian author was the esoteric philosopher Giordano Bruno, who wrote in Latin. His Cantus Circaeus (The Incantation of Circe) was the fourth work on memory and the association of ideas by him to be published in 1582. It contains a series of poetic dialogues, in the first of which, after a long series of incantations to the seven planets of the Hermetic tradition, most humans appear changed into different creatures in the scrying bowl. The sorceress Circe is then asked by her handmaiden Moeris about the type of behaviour with which each is associated. According to Circe, for instance, fireflies are the learned, wise, and illustrious amidst idiots, asses, and obscure men (Question 32). In later sections different characters discuss the use of images in the imagination in order to facilitate use of the art of memory, which is the real aim of the work.
French writers were to take their lead from Gelli in the following century. Antoine Jacob wrote a one-act social comedy in rhyme, Les Bestes raisonnables (The Reasoning Beasts, 1661) which allowed him to satirise contemporary manners. On the isle of Circe, Ulysses encounters an ass that was once a doctor, a lion that had been a valet, a female doe and a horse, all of whom denounce the decadence of the times. The ass sees human asses everywhere, Asses in the town square, asses in the suburbs, / Asses in the provinces, asses proud at court, / Asses browsing in the meadows, military asses trooping, / Asses tripping it at balls, asses in the theatre stalls. To drive the point home, in the end it is only the horse, formerly a courtesan, who wants to return to her former state.
The same theme occupies La Fontaine's late fable, "The Companions of Ulysses" (XII.1, 1690), that also echoes Plutarch and Gelli. Once transformed, every animal (which include a lion, a bear, a wolf and a mole) protest that their lot is better and refuse to be restored to human shape. Charles Dennis shifted this fable to stand at the head of his translation of La Fontaine, Select Fables (1754), but provides his own conclusion that When Mortals from the path of Honour stray, / And the strong passions over reason sway, / What are they then but Brutes? / 'Tis vice alone that constitutes / Th'enchanting wand and magic bowl, The exterior form of Man they wear, / But are in fact both Wolf and Bear, / The transformation's in the Soul.
Louis Fuzelier and Marc-Antoine Legrand titled their comic opera of 1718 Les animaux raisonnables. It had more or less the same scenario transposed into another medium and set to music by Jacques Aubert. Circe, wishing to be rid of the company of Ulysses, agrees to change back his companions, but only the dolphin is willing. The others, who were formerly a corrupt judge (now a wolf), a financier (a pig), an abused wife (a hen), a deceived husband (a bull) and a flibbertigibbet (a linnet), find their present existence more agreeable.
The Venetian Gasparo Gozzi was another Italian who returned to Gelli for inspiration in the 14 prose Dialoghi dell'isola di Circe (Dialogues from Circe's Island) published as journalistic pieces between 1760 and 1764. In this moral work, the aim of Ulysses in talking to the beasts is to learn more of the human condition. It includes figures from fable (The fox and the crow, XIII) and from myth to illustrate its vision of society at variance. Far from needing the intervention of Circe, the victims find their natural condition as soon as they set foot on the island. The philosopher here is not Gelli's elephant but the bat that retreats from human contact into the darkness, like Bruno's fireflies (VI). The only one who wishes to change in Gozzi's work is the bear, a satirist who had dared to criticize Circe and had been changed as a punishment (IX).
There were two more satirical dramas in later centuries. One modelled on the Gryllus episode in Plutarch occurs as a chapter of Thomas Love Peacock's late novel, Gryll Grange (1861), under the title "Aristophanes in London". Half Greek comedy, half Elizabethan masque, it is acted at the Grange by the novel's characters as a Christmas entertainment. In it Spiritualist mediums raise Circe and Gryllus and try to convince the latter of the superiority of modern times, which he rejects as intellectually and materially regressive. An Italian work drawing on the transformation theme was the comedy by Ettore Romagnoli, La figlia del Sole (The Daughter of the Sun, 1919). Hercules arrives on the island of Circe with his servant Cercopo and has to be rescued by the latter when he too is changed into a pig. But, since the naturally innocent other animals had become corrupted by imitating human vices, the others who had been changed were refused when they begged to be rescued.
Also in England, Austin Dobson engaged more seriously with Homer's account of the transformation of Odysseus' companions when, though Head, face and members bristle into swine, / Still cursed with sense, their mind remains alone. Dobson's "The Prayer of the Swine to Circe" (1640) depicts the horror of being imprisoned in an animal body in this way with the human consciousness unchanged. There appears to be no relief, for only in the final line is it revealed that Odysseus has arrived to free them. But in Matthew Arnold's dramatic poem "The Strayed Reveller" (1849), in which Circe is one of the characters, the power of her potion is differently interpreted. The inner tendencies unlocked by it are not the choice between animal nature and reason but between two types of impersonality, between divine clarity and the poet's participatory and tragic vision of life. In the poem, Circe discovers a youth laid asleep in the portico of her temple by a draught of her ivy-wreathed bowl. On awaking from possession by the poetic frenzy it has induced, he craves for it to be continued.
Sexual politics
With the Renaissance there began to be a reinterpretation of what it was that changed the men, if it was not simply magic. For Socrates, in Classical times, it had been gluttony overcoming their self-control. But for the influential emblematist Andrea Alciato, it was unchastity. In the second edition of his Emblemata (1546), therefore, Circe became the type of the prostitute. His Emblem 76 is titled Cavendum a meretricibus; its accompanying Latin verses mention Picus, Scylla and the companions of Ulysses, and concludes that 'Circe with her famous name indicates a whore and any who loves such a one loses his reason'. His English imitator Geoffrey Whitney used a variation of Alciato's illustration in his own Choice of Emblemes (1586) but gave it the new title of Homines voluptatibus transformantur, men are transformed by their passions. This explains her appearance in the Nighttown section named after her in James Joyce's novel Ulysses. Written in the form of a stage script, it makes of Circe the brothel madam, Bella Cohen. Bloom, the book's protagonist, fantasizes that she turns into a cruel man-tamer named Mr Bello who makes him get down on all fours and rides him like a horse.
By the 19th century, Circe was ceasing to be a mythical figure. Poets treated her either as an individual or at least as the type of a certain kind of woman. The French poet Albert Glatigny addresses "Circé" in his Les vignes folles (1857) and makes of her a voluptuous opium dream, the magnet of masochistic fantasies. Louis-Nicolas Ménard's sonnet in Rêveries d'un païen mystique (1876) describes her as enchanting all with her virginal look, but appearance belies the accursed reality. Poets in English were not far behind in this lurid portrayal. Lord de Tabley's "Circe" (1895) is a thing of decadent perversity likened to a tulip, A flaunting bloom, naked and undivine... / With freckled cheeks and splotch'd side serpentine, / A gipsy among flowers.
That central image is echoed by the blood-striped flower of T.S.Eliot's student poem "Circe's Palace" (1909) in the Harvard Advocate. Circe herself does not appear, her character is suggested by what is in the grounds and the beasts in the forest beyond: panthers, pythons, and peacocks that look at us with the eyes of men whom we knew long ago. Rather than a temptress, she has become an emasculatory threat.
Several female poets make Circe stand up for herself, using the soliloquy form to voice the woman's position. The 19th-century English poet Augusta Webster, much of whose writing explored the female condition, has a dramatic monologue in blank verse titled "Circe" in her volume Portraits (1870). There the sorceress anticipates her meeting with Ulysses and his men and insists that she does not turn men into pigs—she merely takes away the disguise that makes them seem human. But any draught, pure water, natural wine, / out of my cup, revealed them to themselves / and to each other. Change? there was no change; / only disguise gone from them unawares. The mythological character of the speaker contributes at a safe remove to the Victorian discourse on women's sexuality by expressing female desire and criticizing the subordinate role given to women in heterosexual politics.
Two American poets also explored feminine psychology in poems ostensibly about the enchantress. Leigh Gordon Giltner's "Circe" was included in her collection The Path of Dreams (1900), the first stanza of which relates the usual story of men turned to swine by her spell. But then a second stanza presents a sensuous portrait of an unnamed woman, very much in the French vein; once more, it concludes, 'A Circe's spells transform men into swine'. This is no passive victim of male projections but a woman conscious of her sexual power. So too is Hilda Doolittle's "Circe", from her collection Hymen (1921). In her soliloquy she reviews the conquests with which she has grown bored, then mourns the one instance when she failed. In not naming Ulysses himself, Doolittle universalises an emotion with which all women might identify. At the end of the century, British poet Carol Ann Duffy wrote a monologue entitled Circe which pictures the goddess addressing an audience of 'nereids and nymphs'. In this outspoken episode in the war between the sexes, Circe describes the various ways in which all parts of a pig could and should be cooked.
Another indication of the progression in interpreting the Circe figure is given by two poems a century apart, both of which engage with paintings of her. The first is the sonnet that Dante Gabriel Rossetti wrote in response to Edward Burne-Jones' "The Wine of Circe" in his volume Poems (1870). It gives a faithful depiction of the painting's Pre-Raphaelite mannerism but its description of Circe's potion as 'distilled of death and shame' also accords with the contemporary (male) identification of Circe with perversity. This is further underlined by his statement (in a letter) that the black panthers there are 'images of ruined passion' and by his anticipation at the end of the poem of passion's tide-strown shore / Where the disheveled seaweed hates the sea. The Australian A. D. Hope's "Circe – after the painting by Dosso Dossi", on the other hand, frankly admits humanity's animal inheritance as natural and something in which even Circe shares. In the poem, he links the fading rationality and speech of her lovers to her own animal cries in the act of love.
There remain some poems that bear her name that have more to do with their writers' private preoccupations than with reinterpreting her myth. The link with it in Margaret Atwood's "Circe/Mud Poems", first published in You Are Happy (1974), is more a matter of allusion and is nowhere overtly stated beyond the title. It is a reflection on contemporary gender politics that scarcely needs the disguises of Augusta Webster's. With two other poems by male writers it is much the same: Louis Macneice's, for example, whose "Circe" appeared in his first volume, Poems (London, 1935); or Robert Lowell's, whose "Ulysses and Circe" appeared in his last, Day by Day (New York, 1977). Both poets have appropriated the myth to make a personal statement about their broken relationships.
Parallels and sequels
Several Renaissance epics of the 16th century include lascivious sorceresses based on the Circe figure. These generally live in an isolated spot devoted to pleasure, to which lovers are lured and later changed into beasts. They include the following:
Alcina in the Orlando Furioso (Mad Roland, 1516, 1532) of Ludovico Ariosto, set at the time of Charlemagne. Among its many sub-plots is the episode in which the Saracen champion Ruggiero is taken captive by the sorceress and has to be freed from her magic island.
The lovers of Filidia in Il Tancredi (1632) by Ascanio Grandi (1567–1647) have been changed into monsters and are liberated by the virtuous Tancred.
Armida in Torquato Tasso's La Gerusalemme liberata (Jerusalem Delivered, 1566–1575, published 1580) is a Saracen sorceress sent by the infernal senate to sow discord among the Crusaders camped before Jerusalem, where she succeeds in changing a party of them into animals. Planning to assassinate the hero, Rinaldo, she falls in love with him instead and creates an enchanted garden where she holds him a lovesick prisoner who has forgotten his former identity.
Acrasia in Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene, mentioned above, is a seductress of knights and holds them enchanted in her Bower of Bliss.
Later scholarship has identified elements from the character of both Circe and especially her fellow enchantress Medea as contributing to the development of the mediaeval legend of Morgan le Fay. In addition, it has been argued that the fairy Titania in William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream (1600) is an inversion of Circe. Titania (daughter of the Titans) was a title by which the sorceress was known in Classical times. In this case the tables are turned on the character, who is queen of the fairies. She is made to love an ass after, rather than before, he is transformed into his true animal likeness.
It has further been suggested that John Milton's Mask Presented at Ludlow Castle (1634) is a sequel to Tempe Restored, a masque in which Circe had figured two years earlier, and that the situation presented there is a reversal of the Greek myth. At the start of the masque, the character Comus is described as the son of Circe by Bacchus, god of wine, and the equal of his mother in enchantment. He too changes travelers into beastly forms that 'roll with pleasure in a sensual sty'. Having waylaid the heroine and immobilized her on an enchanted chair, he stands over her, wand in hand, and presses on her a magical cup (representing sexual pleasure and intemperance), which she repeatedly refuses, arguing for the virtuousness of temperance and chastity. The picture presented is a mirror image of the Classical story. In place of the witch who easily seduces the men she meets, a male enchanter is resisted by female virtue.
In the 20th century, the Circe episode was to be re-evaluated in two poetic sequels to the Odyssey. In the first of these, Giovanni Pascoli's L'Ultimo Viaggio (The Last Voyage, 1906), the aging hero sets out to rediscover the emotions of his youth by retracing his journey from Troy, only to discover that the island of Eea is deserted. What in his dream of love he had taken for the roaring of lions and Circe's song was now no more than the sound of the sea-wind in autumnal oaks (Cantos 16–17).
This melancholy dispelling of illusion is echoed in The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel (1938) by Nikos Kazantzakis. The fresh voyage in search of new meaning to life recorded there grows out of the hero's initial rejection of his past experiences in the first two sections. The Circe episode is viewed by him as a narrow escape from death of the spirit: With twisted hands and thighs we rolled on burning sands, / a hanging mess of hissing vipers glued in sun!... / Farewell the brilliant voyage, ended! Prow and soul / moored in the muddy port of the contented beast! / O prodigal, much-traveled soul, is this your country? His escape from this mire of sensuality comes one day when the sight of some fishermen, a mother and her baby enjoying the simple comforts of food and drink, recalls him to life, its duties and delights. Where the attempt by Pascoli's hero to recapture the past ended in failure, Kazantzakis' Odysseus, already realising the emptiness of his experiences, journeys into what he hopes will be a fuller future.
Visual representations
Ancient art
Scenes from the Odyssey are common on Greek pottery, the Circe episode among them. The two most common representations have Circe surrounded by the transformed sailors and Odysseus threatening the sorceress with his sword. In the case of the former, the animals are not always boars but also include, for instance, the ram, dog and lion on the 6th-century BC Boston kylix. Often the transformation is only partial, involving the head and perhaps a sprouting tail, while the rest of the body is human. In describing an otherwise obscure 5th-century Greek bronze in the Walters Art Museum that takes the form of a man on all fours with the foreparts of a pig, the commentator asks in what other way could an artist depict someone bewitched other than as a man with an animal head. In these scenes Circe is shown almost invariably stirring the potion with her wand, although the incident as described in Homer has her use the wand only to bewitch the sailors after they have refreshed themselves. One exception is the Berlin amphora on which the seated Circe holds the wand towards a half transformed man.
In the second scene, Odysseus threatens the sorceress with a drawn sword, as Homer describes it. However, he is sometimes depicted carrying spears as well, as in the Athens lekythos, while Homer reports that it was a bow he had slung over his shoulder. In this episode Circe is generally shown in flight, and on the Erlangen lekythos can clearly be seen dropping the bowl and wand behind her. Two curiously primitive wine bowls incorporate the Homeric detail of Circe's handloom, at which the men approaching her palace could hear her singing sweetly as she worked. In the 5th-century skyphos from Boeotia an apparently crippled Odysseus leans on a crutch while a woman with negroid features holds out a disproportionately large bowl. In the other, a pot-bellied hero brandishes a sword while Circe stirs her potion. Both these may depict the scene as represented in one or other of the comic satyr plays which deal with their encounter. Little remains of these now beyond a few lines by Aeschylus, Ephippus of Athens and Anaxilas. Other vase paintings from the period suggest that Odysseus' half-transformed animal-men formed the chorus in place of the usual satyrs. The reason that it should be a subject of such plays is that wine drinking was often central to their plot. Later writers were to follow Socrates in interpreting the episode as illustrating the dangers of drunkenness.<ref>Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 1.10e 'By way of denouncing drunkenness the poet [Homer] . . changes the men who visited Kirke into lions and wolves because of their self-indulgence' (trans. Gullick) quoted on the Theoi website.</ref>
Other artefacts depicting the story include the chest of Cypselus described in the travelogue by Pausanias. Among its many carvings 'there is a grotto and in it a woman sleeping with a man upon a couch. I was of opinion that they were Odysseus and Circe, basing my view upon the number of the handmaidens in front of the grotto and upon what they are doing. For the women are four, and they are engaged on the tasks which Homer mentions in his poetry'. The passage in question describes how one of them 'threw linen covers over the chairs and spread fine purple fabrics on top. Another drew silver tables up to the chairs, and laid out golden dishes, while a third mixed sweet honeyed wine in a silver bowl, and served it in golden cups. The fourth fetched water and lit a roaring fire beneath a huge cauldron'. This suggests a work of considerable detail, while the Etruscan coffin preserved in Orvieto's archaeological museum has only four figures. At the centre Odysseus threatens Circe with drawn sword while an animal headed figure stands on either side, one of them laying his hand familiarly on the hero's shoulder. A bronze mirror relief in the Fitzwilliam Museum is also Etruscan and is inscribed with the names of the characters. There a pig is depicted at Circe's feet, while Odysseus and Elpenor approach her, swords drawn.
Portraits in character
During the 18th century painters began to portray individual actors in scenes from named plays. There was also a tradition of private performances, with a variety of illustrated works to help with stage properties and costumes. Among these was Thomas Jefferys' A Collection of the Dresses of Different Nations, Antient and Modern (1757–72) which included a copperplate engraving of a crowned Circe in loose dress, holding a goblet aloft in her right hand and a long wand in her left. Evidence of such performances during the following decades is provided by several portraits in character, of which one of the earliest was the pastel by Daniel Gardner (1750–1805) of "Miss Elliot as Circe". The artist had been a pupil of both George Romney and Joshua Reynolds, who themselves were soon to follow his example. On the 1778 engraving based on Gardner's portrait appear the lines from Milton's Comus: The daughter of the Sun, whose charmed cup / Whoever tasted, lost his upright shape / And downward fell into a grovelling swine, in compliment to the charm of this marriageable daughter of a country house. As in the Jefferys' plate, she wears a silver coronet over tumbled dark hair, with a wand in the right hand and a goblet in the left. In hindsight the frank eyes that look directly at the viewer and the rosebud mouth are too innocent for the role Miss Elliot is playing.
The subjects of later paintings impersonating Circe have a history of sexual experience behind them, starting with "Mary Spencer in the character of Circe" by William Caddick, which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1780. The subject here was the mistress of the painter George Stubbs. A portrait of "Mrs Nesbitt as Circe" by Reynolds followed in 1781. Though this lady's past was ambiguous, she had connections with those in power and was used by the Government as a secret agent. In the painting she is seated sideways, wearing a white, loose-fitting dress, with a wand in her right hand and a gilded goblet near her left. A monkey is crouching above her in the branches of a tree and a panther fraternizes with the kitten on her knee. While the painting undoubtedly alludes to her reputation, it also places itself within the tradition of dressing up in character.
Soon afterwards, the notorious Emma Hamilton was to raise this to an art form, partly by the aid of George Romney's many paintings of her impersonations. Romney's preliminary study of Emma's head and shoulders, at present in the Tate Gallery, with its piled hair, expressive eyes and mouth, is reminiscent of Samuel Gardener's portrait of Miss Elliot. In the full-length "Lady Hamilton as Circe" at Waddesdon Manor, she is placed in a wooded landscape with wolves snarling to her left, although the tiger originally there has now been painted out. Her left arm is raised to cast a spell while the wand points downward in her right. After Emma moved to Naples and joined Lord Hamilton, she developed what she called her "Attitudes" into a more public entertainment. Specially designed, loose-fitting tunics were paired with large shawls or veils as she posed in such a way as to evoke figures from Classical mythology. These developed from mere poses, with the audience guessing the names of the classical characters and scenes that she portrayed, into small, wordless charades.
The tradition of dressing up in character continued into the following centuries. One of the photographic series by Julia Margaret Cameron, a pupil of the painter George Frederic Watts, was of mythical characters, for whom she used the children of friends and servants as models. Young Kate Keown sat for the head of "Circe" in about 1865 and is pictured wearing a grape and vineleaf headdress to suggest the character's use of wine to bring a change in personality. The society portrait photographer Yevonde Middleton, also known as Madame Yevonde, was to use a 1935 aristocratic charity ball as the foundation for her own series of mythological portraits in colour. Its participants were invited to her studio afterwards to pose in their costumes. There Baroness Dacre is pictured as Circe with a leafy headdress about golden ringlets and clasping a large Baroque porcelain goblet.
A decade earlier, the illustrator Charles Edmund Brock extended into the 20th century what is almost a pastiche of the 18th-century conversation piece in his "Circe and the Sirens" (1925). In this the Honourable Edith Chaplin (1878–1959), Marchioness of Londonderry, and her three youngest daughters are pictured in a garden setting grouped about a large pet goat. Three women painters also produced portraits using the convention of the sitter in character. The earliest was Beatrice Offor (1864–1920), whose sitter's part in her 1911 painting of Circe is suggested by the vine-leaf crown in her long dark hair, the snake-twined goblet she carries and the snake bracelet on her left arm. Mary Cecil Allen was of Australian origin but was living in the United States at the time "Miss Audrey Stevenson as Circe" was painted (1930). Though only a head and shoulders sketch, its colouring and execution suggest the sitter's lively personality. Rosemary Valodon (born 1947), from the same country, painted a series of Australian personalities in her goddess series. "Margarita Georgiadis as Circe" (1991) is a triptych, the central panel of which portrays an updated, naked femme fatale reclining in tropical vegetation next to a pig's head.
One painting at least depicts an actress playing the part of Circe. This is Franz von Stuck's striking portrait of Tilla Durieux as Circe (1913). She played this part in a Viennese revival of Calderon's play in 1912 and there is a publicity still of her by Isidor Hirsch in which she is draped across a sofa and wearing an elaborate crown. Her enticing expression and the turn of her head there is almost exactly that of Van Stuck's enchantress as she holds out the poisoned bowl. It suggests the use of certain posed publicity photos in creating the same iconic effect as had paintings in the past. A nearly contemporary example was the 1907 photo of Mme Geneviève Vix as Circe in the light opera by Lucien Hillenacher at the Opéra-Comique in Paris. The posing of the actress and the cropping of the image so as to highlight her luxurious costume demonstrates its ambition to create an effect that goes beyond the merely theatrical. A later example is the still of Silvana Mangano in her part as Circe in the 1954 film Ulysses, which is as cunningly posed for effect.
Musical treatments
Cantata and song
Beside the verse dramas, with their lyrical interludes, on which many operas were based, there were poetic texts which were set as secular cantatas. One of the earliest was Alessandro Stradella's La Circe, in a setting for three voices that bordered on the operatic. It was first performed at Frascati in 1667 to honour Cardinal Leopoldo de Medici and contained references to its surroundings. In the opening recitative, Circe explains that it was her son Telegonus who founded Frascati. The other characters with whom she enters into dialogue are the south wind (Zeffiro) and the local river Algido. In the following century, Antonio Vivaldi's cantata All'ombra di sospetto (In the shadow of doubt, RV 678) is set for a single voice and depicts Circe addressing Ulysses. The countertenor part is accompanied by flute, harpsichord, cello, and theorbo and features two recitatives and two arias. The piece is famous for the dialogue created between flute and voice, conjuring the moment of flirtation before the two become lovers.
The most successful treatment of the Ulysses episode in French was Jean-Baptiste Rousseau's poem Circé (1703), that was specifically written to be a cantata. The different verse forms employed allow the piece to be divided by the musicians that set it in order to express a variety of emotions. The poem opens with the abandoned Circe sitting on a high mountain and mourning the departure of Ulysses. The sorceress then calls on the infernal gods and makes a terrible sacrifice: A myriad vapours obscure the light, / The stars of the night interrupt their course, / Astonished rivers retreat to their source / And even Death's god trembles in the dark. But though the earth is shaken to its core, Love is not to be commanded in this way and the wintery fields come back to life.
The earliest setting was by Jean-Baptiste Morin in 1706 and was popular for most of the rest of the century. One of its final moralising minuets, Ce n'est point par effort qu'on aime (Love won't be forced) was often performed independently and the score reprinted in many song collections. The flautist Michel Blavet arranged the music for this and the poem's final stanza, Dans les champs que l'Hiver désole (In the fields that Winter wastes), for two flutes in 1720. The new setting of the cantata three years later by Francois Collin de Blamont was equally successful and made the name of its nineteen-year-old composer. Originally for voice and bass continuo, it was expanded and considerably revised in 1729, with parts for flute, violin and viol added. Towards the end of the century, the choral setting by Georges Granges de Fontenelle (1769–1819) was equally to bring its young composer fame.
Rousseau's poem was also familiar to composers of other nationalities. Set for mezzo-soprano and full orchestra, it was given almost operatic treatment by the court composer Luigi Cherubini in 1789. Franz Seydelmann set it for soprano and full orchestra in Dresden in 1787 at the request of the Russian ambassador to the Saxon Court, Prince Alexander Belosselsky. Although he spoke highly of Seydelmann's work, it is now judged grandiloquent and banal. The later setting by the Austrian composer Sigismond von Neukomm for soprano and full orchestra (Op. 4 1810) is better regarded.
Recent treatments of the Circe theme include the Irish composer Gerard Victory's radio cantata Circe 1991 (1973–75), David Gribble's A Threepenny Odyssey, a fifteen-minute cantata for young people which includes the episode on Circe's Isle, and Malcolm Hayes' Odysseus remembers (2003–04), which includes parts for Circe, Anticleia and Tiresias. Gerald Humel's song cycle Circe (1998) grew out of his work on his 1993 ballet with Thomas Höft. The latter subsequently wrote seven poems in German featuring Circe's role as seductress in a new light: here it is to freedom and enlightenment that she tempts her hearers. Another cycle of Seven Songs for High Voice and Piano (2008) by the American composer Martin Hennessey includes the poem "Circe's Power" from Louise Glück's Meadowlands (1997).
There have also been treatments of Circe in popular music, in particular the relation of the Odysseus episode in Friedrich Holländer's song of 1958. In addition, text in Homeric Greek is included in the "Circe's Island" episode in David Bedford's The Odyssey (1976). This was the ancestor of several later electronic suites that reference the Odysseus legend, with "Circe" titles among them, having little other programmatic connection with the myth itself.
Classical ballet and programmatic music
After classical ballet separated from theatrical spectacle into a wordless form in which the story is expressed solely through movement, the subject of Circe was rarely visited. It figured as the first episode of three with mythological themes in Les Fêtes Nouvelles (New Shows), staged by Sieur Duplessis le cadet in 1734, but the work was taken off after its third performance and not revived. The choreographer Antoine Pitrot also staged Ulysse dans l'isle de Circée, describing it as a ballet sérieux, heroï-pantomime in 1764. Thereafter there seems to be nothing until the revival of ballet in the 20th century.
In 1963, the American choreographer Martha Graham created her Circe with a score by Alan Hovhaness. Its theme is psychological, representing the battle with animal instincts. The beasts portrayed extend beyond swine and include a goat, a snake, a lion and a deer. The theme has been described as one of 'highly charged erotic action', although set in 'a world where sexual frustration is rampant'. In that same decade Rudolf Brucci composed his Kirka (1967) in Croatia.
There is a Circe episode in John Harbison's Ulysses (Act 1, scene 2, 1983) in which the song of the enchantress is represented by ondes Martenot and tuned percussion. After the sailors of Ullyses are transformed into animals by her spell, a battle of wills follows between Circe and the hero. Though the men are changed back, Ulysses is charmed by her in his turn. In 1993, a full scale treatment of the story followed in Gerald Humel's two-act Circe und Odysseus. Also psychological in intent, it represents Circe's seduction of the restless hero as ultimately unsuccessful. The part played by the geometrical set in its Berlin production was particularly notable.
While operas on the subject of Circe did not cease, they were overtaken for a while by the new musical concept of the symphonic poem which, whilst it does not use a sung text, similarly seeks a union of music and drama. A number of purely musical works fall into this category from the late 19th century onwards, of which one of the first was Heinrich von Herzogenberg's Odysseus (Op.16, 1873). A Wagnerian symphony for large orchestra, dealing with the hero's return from the Trojan war, its third section is titled "Circe's Gardens" (Die Gärten der Circe).
In the 20th century, Ernst Boehe's cycle Aus Odysseus Fahrten (From Odysseus' Voyage, Op. 6, 1903) was equally programmatic and included the visit to Circe's Isle (Die Insel der Circe) as its second long section. After a depiction of the sea voyage, a bass clarinet passage introduces an ensemble of flute, harp and solo violin over a lightly orchestrated accompaniment, suggesting Circe's seductive attempt to hold Odysseus back from traveling further. Alan Hovhaness' Circe Symphony (No.18, Op. 204a, 1963) is a late example of such programmatic writing. It is, in fact, only a slightly changed version of his ballet music of that year, with the addition of more strings, a second timpanist and celesta.
With the exception of Willem Frederik Bon's prelude for orchestra (1972), most later works have been for a restricted number of instruments. They include Hendrik de Regt's Circe (Op. 44, 1975) for clarinet, violin and piano; Christian Manen's Les Enchantements De Circe (Op. 96, 1975) for bassoon and piano; and Jacques Lenot's Cir(c)é (1986) for oboe d'amore. The German experimental musician Dieter Schnebel's Circe (1988) is a work for harp, the various sections of which are titled Signale (signals), Säuseln (whispers), Verlockungen (enticements), Pein (pain), Schläge (strokes) and Umgarnen (snare), which give some idea of their programmatic intent.
Thea Musgrave's "Circe" for three flutes (1996) was eventually to become the fourth piece in her six-part Voices from the Ancient World for various combinations of flute and percussion (1998). Her note on these explains that their purpose is to 'describe some of the personages of ancient Greece' and that Circe was 'the enchantress who changed men into beasts'. A recent reference is the harpsichordist Fernando De Luca's Sonata II for viola da gamba titled "Circe's Cave" (L'antro della maga Circe).
Opera
La Circe by Pietro Andrea Ziani, first performed for the birthday of the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I in Vienna in 1665.
Circe, an opera composed by Henri Desmarets in 1694.
La Circe, a 1779 opera seria by Josef Mysliveček.
Rolf Riehm's 2014 opera Sirenen is based on Homer's account as well as several modern texts related to the meeting of Odysseus and Circe.
Scientific interpretations
In later Christian opinion, Circe was an abominable witch using miraculous powers to evil ends. When the existence of witches came to be questioned, she was reinterpreted as a depressive suffering from delusions.
In botany, the Circaea are plants belonging to the enchanter's nightshade genus. The name was given by botanists in the late 16th century in the belief that this was the herb used by Circe to charm Odysseus' companions. Medical historians have speculated that the transformation to pigs was not intended literally but refers to anticholinergic intoxication with the plant Datura stramonium. Symptoms include amnesia, hallucinations, and delusions. The description of "moly" fits the snowdrop, a flower that contains galantamine, which is a long lasting anticholinesterase and can therefore counteract anticholinergics that are introduced to the body after it has been consumed.
Other influence
The gens Mamilia – described by Livy as one of the most distinguished families of LatiumTitus Livius, Ab Urbe Condita, 1:49. – claimed descent from Mamilia, a granddaughter of Odysseus and Circe through Telegonus. One of the most well known of them was Octavius Mamilius (died 498 BC), princeps of Tusculum and son-in-law of Lucius Tarquinius Superbus the seventh and last king of Rome.
Linnaeus named a genus of the Venus clams (Veneridae) after Circe in 1778 (species Circe scripta (Linnaeus, 1758) and others).
Her name has been given to 34 Circe, a large, dark main-belt asteroid first sighted in 1855.
There are a variety of chess variants named Circe in which captured pieces are reborn on their starting positions. The rules for this were formulated in 1968.
The Circe effect, coined by the enzymologist William Jencks, refers to a scenario where an enzyme lures its substrate towards it through electrostatic forces exhibited by the enzyme molecule before transforming it into a product. Where this takes place, the catalytic velocity (rate of reaction) of the enzyme may be significantly faster than that of others.
In popular culture
See also
Nostalgie de la boue
Urganda - a figure in Iberian myth often identified as Circe.
References
Bibliography
Ancient
Hesiod, Theogony, in The Homeric Hymns and Homerica with an English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White, Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1914. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
Homer; The Odyssey with an English Translation by A.T. Murray, PH.D. in two volumes. Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1919. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica; with an English translation by R. C. Seaton. William Heinemann, 1912.
Apollodorus, Apollodorus, The Library, with an English Translation by Sir James George Frazer, F.B.A., F.R.S. in 2 Volumes. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1921. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
Vergil, Aeneid. Theodore C. Williams. trans. Boston. Houghton Mifflin Co. 1910. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
Ovid. Metamorphoses. Translated by A. D. Melville; introduction and notes by E. J. Kenney, Oxford University Press, 2008.
Hyginus, Gaius Julius, The Myths of Hyginus. Edited and translated by Mary A. Grant, Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1960.
Publius Ovidius Naso, Remedia Amoris in The Love Poems: The Amores, Ars Amatoria and Remedia Amoris, with an English translation by A. S. Kline. 2001. Full text available at poetryintranslation.com.
Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca Historica. Vol 1-2. Immanel Bekker. Ludwig Dindorf. Friedrich Vogel. in aedibus B. G. Teubneri. Leipzig. 1888-1890. Greek text available at the Perseus Digital Library.
Maurus Servius Honoratus, In Vergilii carmina comentarii. Servii Grammatici qui feruntur in Vergilii carmina commentarii; recensuerunt Georgius Thilo et Hermannus Hagen. Georgius Thilo. Leipzig. B. G. Teubner. 1881. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
Plutarch, Moralia. 16 vols. (vol. 13: 13.1 & 13.2, vol. 16: index), transl. by Frank Cole Babbitt (vol. 1–5) et al., series: "Loeb Classical Library" (LCL, vols. 197–499). Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press et al., 1927–2004.
Parthenius of Nicaea, Parthenius of Nicaea: the poetical fragments and the Erōtika pathēmata J.L. Lightfoot, 2000, . Reviewed by Christopher Francese at The Bryn Mawr Classical Review
Lactantius Placidus, Commentarii in Statii Thebaida.
Modern
Grimal, Pierre, The Dictionary of Classical Mythology, Wiley-Blackwell, 1996, . "Circe" p. 104.
Milton, John, A Masque Presented at Ludlow Castle [Comus] line 153 "mother Circe".
Smith, William; Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology'', London (1873). "Circe".
External links
CIRCE on The Theoi Project
CIRCE on Greek Mythology Link
CIRCE from greekmythology.com
Characters in the Argonautica
Characters in the Odyssey
Children of Helios
French literature
Greek goddesses
Greek mythological witches
Italian literature
Magic goddesses
Metamorphoses characters
Characters in Greek mythology
Women in Greek mythology
Metamorphoses into animals in Greek mythology
Morgan le Fay
Opera history
Fictional witches
Pigs in literature
Shapeshifting
Witchcraft in folklore and mythology
Deities in the Aeneid
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullrun%20%28decryption%20program%29
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Bullrun (decryption program)
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Bullrun (stylized BULLRUN) is a clandestine, highly classified program to crack encryption of online communications and data, which is run by the United States National Security Agency (NSA). The British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) has a similar program codenamed Edgehill. According to the Bullrun classification guide published by The Guardian, the program uses multiple methods including computer network exploitation, interdiction, industry relationships, collaboration with other intelligence community entities, and advanced mathematical techniques.
Information about the program's existence was leaked in 2013 by Edward Snowden. Although Snowden's documents do not contain technical information on exact cryptanalytic capabilities because Snowden did not have clearance access to such information, they do contain a 2010 GCHQ presentation which claims that "vast amounts of encrypted Internet data which have up till now been discarded are now exploitable". A number of technical details regarding the program found in Snowden's documents were additionally censored by the press at the behest of US intelligence officials. Out of all the programs that have been leaked by Snowden, the Bullrun Decryption Program is by far the most expensive. Snowden claims that since 2011, expenses devoted to Bullrun amount to $800 million. The leaked documents reveal that Bullrun seeks to "defeat the encryption used in specific network communication technologies".
Naming and access
According to the NSA's Bullrun Classification Guide, Bullrun is not a Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI) control system or compartment, but the codeword has to be shown in the classification line, after all other classification and dissemination markings. Furthermore, any details about specific cryptographic successes were recommend to be additionally restricted (besides being marked Top Secret//SI) with Exceptionally Controlled Information labels; a non-exclusive list of possible Bullrun ECI labels was given as: APERIODIC, AMBULANT, AUNTIE, PAINTEDEAGLE, PAWLEYS, PITCHFORD, PENDLETON, PICARESQUE, and PIEDMONT without any details as to what these labels mean.
Access to the program is limited to a group of top personnel at the Five Eyes (FVEY), the NSA and the signals intelligence agencies of the United Kingdom (GCHQ), Canada (CSE), Australia (ASD), and New Zealand (GCSB). Signals that cannot be decrypted with current technology may be retained indefinitely while the agencies continue to attempt to decrypt them.
Methods
Through the NSA-designed Clipper chip, which used the Skipjack cipher with an intentional backdoor, and using various specifically designed laws such as CALEA, CESA and restrictions on export of encryption software as evidenced by Bernstein v. United States, the U.S. government had publicly attempted in the 1990s to ensure its access to communications and ability to decrypt. In particular, technical measures such as key escrow, a euphemism for a backdoor, have met with criticism and little success.
The NSA encourages the manufacturers of security technology to disclose backdoors to their products or encryption keys so that they may access the encrypted data. However, fearing widespread adoption of encryption, the NSA set out to stealthily influence and weaken encryption standards and obtain master keys—either by agreement, by force of law, or by computer network exploitation (hacking).
According to a Bullrun briefing document, the agency had successfully infiltrated both the Secure Sockets Layer as well as some virtual private networks (VPNs). The New York Times reported that: "But by 2006, an N.S.A. document notes, the agency had broken into communications for three foreign airlines, one travel reservation system, one foreign government's nuclear department and another's Internet service by cracking the virtual private networks that protected them. By 2010, the Edgehill program, the British counterencryption effort, was unscrambling VPN traffic for 30 targets and had set a goal of an additional 300."
As part of Bullrun, NSA has also been actively working to "Insert vulnerabilities into commercial encryption systems, IT systems, networks, and endpoint communications devices used by targets". The New York Times has reported that the random number generator Dual_EC_DRBG contains a back door, which would allow the NSA to break encryption keys generated by the random number generator. Even though this random number generator was known to be insecure and slow soon after the standard was published, and a potential NSA kleptographic backdoor was found in 2007 while alternative random number generators without these flaws were certified and widely available, RSA Security continued using Dual_EC_DRBG in the company's BSAFE toolkit and Data Protection Manager until September 2013. While RSA Security has denied knowingly inserting a backdoor into BSAFE, it has not yet given an explanation for the continued usage of Dual_EC_DRBG after its flaws became apparent in 2006 and 2007. It was reported on December 20, 2013 that RSA had accepted a payment of $10 million from the NSA to set the random number generator as the default. Leaked NSA documents state that their effort was “a challenge in finesse” and that “Eventually, N.S.A. became the sole editor” of the standard.
By 2010, the leaked documents state that the NSA had developed "groundbreaking capabilities" against encrypted Internet traffic. A GCHQ document warned however "These capabilities are among the SIGINT community's most fragile, and the inadvertent disclosure of the simple 'fact of' could alert the adversary and result in immediate loss of the capability." Another internal document stated that "there will be NO 'need to know.'" Several experts, including Bruce Schneier and Christopher Soghoian, had speculated that a successful attack against RC4, an encryption algorithm used in at least 50 percent of all SSL/TLS traffic at the time, was a plausible avenue, given several publicly known weaknesses of RC4. Others have speculated that NSA has gained ability to crack 1024-bit RSA/DH keys. RC4 has since been prohibited for all versions of TLS by RFC 7465 in 2015, due to the RC4 attacks weakening or breaking RC4 used in SSL/TLS.
Fallout
In the wake of Bullrun revelations, some open source projects, including FreeBSD and OpenSSL, have seen an increase in their reluctance to (fully) trust hardware-based cryptographic primitives.
Many other software projects, companies and organizations responded with an increase in the evaluation of their security and encryption processes. For example, Google doubled the size of their TLS certificates from 1024 bits to 2048 bits.
Revelations of the NSA backdoors and purposeful complication of standards has led to a backlash in their participation in standards bodies. Prior to the revelations the NSA's presence on these committees was seen as a benefit given their expertise with encryption.
There has been speculation that the NSA was aware of the Heartbleed bug, which caused major websites to be vulnerable to password theft, but did not reveal this information in order to exploit it themselves.
Etymology
The name "Bullrun" was taken from the First Battle of Bull Run, the first major battle of the American Civil War. Its predecessor "Manassas", is both an alternate name for the battle and where the battle took place. "EDGEHILL" is from the Battle of Edgehill, the first battle of the English Civil War.
See also
HTTPS
IPsec
Mass surveillance
Mass surveillance in the United Kingdom
Mass surveillance in the United States
MUSCULAR
PRISM
Tailored Access Operations
Transport Layer Security
Voice over IP
References
External links
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/09/crucial-unanswered-questions-about-nsa-bullrun-program
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/09/05/us/documents-reveal-nsa-campaign-against-encryption.html?_r=0
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/10/defending_again_1.html
Cryptography Opening Discussion: Speculation on "BULLRUN" John Gilmore
https://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/crypto_wont_help.pdf
American secret government programs
Mass surveillance
National Security Agency operations
GCHQ operations
Intelligence agency programmes revealed by Edward Snowden
Encryption debate
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAD/CAM
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CAD/CAM
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CAD/CAM refers to the integration of Computer-aided design (CAD) and Computer-aided manufacturing (CAM). Both of these require powerful computers. CAD software helps designers and draftsmen; CAM "reduces manpower costs" in the manufacturing process.
Overview
Both CAD and CAM are computer-intensive. Although, in 1981, Computervision was #1 and IBM was #2, IBM had a major advantage: its systems could accommodate "eight to 20" users at a time, whereas most competitors only had enough power to accommodate "four to six." CAD/CAM was described by The New York Times as a "computerized design and manufacturing process" that made its debut "when Computervision pioneered it in the 1970's."
Other 1980s major players in CAD/CAM included General Electric and Parametric Technology Corporation; the latter subsequently acquired Computervision, which had been acquired by Prime Computer.
CAD/CAM originated in the 1960s; an IBM 360/44 was used to build via CNC the wings of an airplane.
Computer-aided design (CAD)
One goal of CAD is to allow quicker iterations in the design process; another is to enable smoothly transitioning to the CAM stage. Although manually created drawings historically facilitated "a designer's goal of displaying an idea," it did not result in a machine-readable result that could be modified
and subsequently be used to directly build a prototype. It can also be used to "ensure that all the separate parts of a product will fit together as intended."
CAD, when linked with simulation, can also enable bypassing building a less than satisfactory test version, resulting in having "dispensed with the costly, time-consuming task of building a prototype."<ref
Computer-aided manufacturing (CAM)
In Computer-aided manufacturing (CAM), using computerized specifications, a computer directs machines such as lathes and milling machines to perform work that otherwise would be controlled by a lathe or milling machine operator. This process, which is called Numerical Control (NC OR CNC), is what came to be known as 20th century Computer-aided manufacturing (CAM), and it originated in the 1960s. Early 21st century CAM introduced use of 3D printers.
CAM, although it requires initial expenditures for equipment, covers this outlay with reduced labor cost and speedy transition from
CAD to finished product, especially when the result is both timely and "ensuring one-time machining success rate."
See also
Computer-aided technologies
CAD/CAM dentistry
CAD/CAM in the footwear industry
References
Software
Computer-aided engineering
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noop%20scheduler
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Noop scheduler
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The NOOP scheduler is the simplest I/O scheduler for the Linux kernel. This scheduler was developed by Jens Axboe.
Overview
The NOOP scheduler inserts all incoming I/O requests into a simple FIFO queue and implements request merging. This scheduler is useful when it has been determined that the host should not attempt to re-order requests based on the sector numbers contained therein. In other words, the scheduler assumes that the host is unaware of how to productively re-order requests.
There are (generally) three basic situations where this situation is desirable:
If I/O scheduling will be handled at a lower layer of the I/O stack. Examples of lower layers that might handle the scheduling include block devices, intelligent RAID controllers, Network Attached Storage, or an externally attached controller such as a storage subsystem accessed through a switched Storage Area Network. Since I/O requests are potentially rescheduled at the lower level, resequencing IOPs at the host level uses host CPU time on operations that will just be undone at the lower level, increasing latency/decreasing throughput for no productive reason.
Because accurate details of sector position are hidden from the host system. An example would be a RAID controller that performs no scheduling on its own. Even though the host has the ability to re-order requests and the RAID controller does not, the host system lacks the visibility to accurately re-order the requests to lower seek time. Since the host has no way of judging whether one sequence is better than another, it cannot restructure the active queue optimally and should, therefore, pass it on to the device that is (theoretically) more aware of such details.
Because read/write head movement doesn't impact application performance enough to justify the reordering overhead. This is usually the case with non-rotational media such as flash drives or solid-state drives (SSDs).
However, NOOP is not necessarily the preferred I/O scheduler for the above scenarios. Typical to performance tuning, all guidance shall be based on observed work load patterns (undermining one's ability to create simplistic rules of thumb). If there is contention for available I/O bandwidth from other applications, it is still possible that other schedulers will generate better performance by virtue of more intelligently carving up that bandwidth for the applications deemed most important. For example, running an LDAP directory server may benefit from deadline's read preference and latency guarantees. At the same time, a user with a desktop system running many different applications may want to have access to CFQ's tunables or its ability to prioritize bandwidth for particular applications over others (ionice).
If there is no contention between applications, then there are little to no benefits from selecting a scheduler for the above-listed three scenarios. This is due to a resulting inability to deprioritize one workload's operations in a way that makes additional capacity available to another workload. In other words, if the I/O paths are not saturated and the requests for all the workloads fail to cause an unreasonable shifting around of drive heads (which the operating system is aware of), the benefit of prioritizing one workload may create a situation where CPU time spent scheduling I/O is wasted instead of providing desired benefits.
The Linux kernel also exposes the sysfs parameter as a scheduler-agnostic configuration, making it possible for the block layer's requests merging logic to be disabled either entirely, or only for more complex merging attempts. This reduces the need for the NOOP scheduler as the overhead of most I/O schedulers is associated with their attempts to locate adjacent sectors in the request queue in order to merge them. However, most I/O workloads benefit from a certain level of requests merging, even on fast low-latency storage such as SSDs.
See also
Anticipatory scheduling
Deadline scheduler
CFQ scheduler
References
External links
Understanding and Optimizing Disk I/O
Workload Dependent Performance Evaluation of the Linux 2.6 I/O Schedulers
Best practices for the Kernel-based Virtual Machine (provides general info on I/O schedulers)
Linux I/O schedulers benchmarked anticipatory vs. CFQ vs. deadline vs. noop
Disk scheduling algorithms
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiaya%20Jia
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Jiaya Jia
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Jiaya Jia (simplified Chinese: 贾佳亚) is a tenured professor of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). He is an IEEE Fellow, the associate editor-in-chief of one of IEEE’s flagship and premier journals- Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (TPAMI), as well as on the editorial board of International Journal of Computer Vision (IJCV).
Early life and education
Jiaya Jia joined CUHK in 2004 as an assistant professor, and was promoted to associate and full professor in 2010 and 2015 respectively. He obtained his PhD degree in computer science jointly from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and Microsoft Research in 2004. From March 2003 to August 2004, he was a visiting scholar at Microsoft. He conducted collaborative research at Adobe Research in 2007.
Career
Jiaya Jia is a distinguished scientist in the fields of computer vision and artificial intelligence. His research team at CUHK, DV Lab, is one of the largest vision AI research teams in the world and has been making significant contribution to advanced development of computer vision algorithms and technologies with focuses on image/video understanding, detection and segmentation, multi-modal AI, computational imaging, practical optimization, and advanced learning for visual content since 2000. Jiaya Jia has published 200+ top papers and was cited 30,000+ times on Google Scholar. 40+ PhDs and fellows from this group are now active in academia and industry, and have become prominent AI tech leaders as professors, directors in major research labs, and founders of several successful startups.
Jiaya Jia assumes the position of associate editor-in-chief of IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (TPAMI) since 2021 and is the first associate editor-in-chief in 42 years since the journal was published. He is also on the editorial board of International Journal of Computer Vision (IJCV). Furthermore, Jiaya Jia has served as the area chair of ICCV, CVPR, AAAI, ECCV, and several other premium international AI conferences for years. He was on program committees of major conferences in graphics and computational imaging, including ICCP, SIGGRAPH, and SIGGRAPH Asia, as well as review committee for international authoritative journals.
Research
The research areas of Jiaya Jia are computer vision, machine learning, and computational imaging, which includes Semantic segmentation and instance segmentation, image recognition and classification, 3D detection, segmentation and reconstruction, filtering, deblurring and super-resolution, motion estimation, depth estimation, and general image matching.
Jiaya Jia has made outstanding contributions to computer vision technology, algorithms and engineering, and is among the world's leading experts in the field. His research partners include numerous renowned multinational technology companies, such as Microsoft, Qualcomm, Adobe, Intel, NVIDIA, Amazon, Lenovo and Huawei. Jia has cultivated a number of outstanding talents with Master's and PhDs who continue to engage in scientific research and development in computer vision.
Many technologies in image analysis and processing developed by Jiaya Jia are still leading in the field worldwide. Wherein, his achievements in image deblurring, filtering, image sparse processing, multi-band image signal fusion and enhancement, large range motion estimation, texture and structure-based layering, etc. have been published in the industry's most influential conferences and publications, and implemented in the real-world applications. These achievements have demonstrated outstanding performance in established systems, and most of which are open source so as to enable wider applications across industries such as aviation, medical imaging, safety management, robotic design, meteorological analysis and many more.
Selected publications
In his over 20 years of research experience, Jiaya Jia has published 200+ top papers that have been cited more than 30,000 times. Call-for-use volume of his algorithm product interface has exceeded 50 million times daily.
According to CUHK Website in August 2021, Jiaya Jia has accumulatively published over 200 scientific papers in books, journals and conferences such as Motion Deblurring: Algorithms and Systems, Computer Vision – A Reference Guide, IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (TPAMI), International Journal of Computer Vision (IJCV) "Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR)", and "European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV)". Representative papers include:
Jiaya Jia: Mathematical Models and Practical Solvers for Uniform Motion Deblurring (in Motion Deblurring: Algorithms and Systems), Cambridge University Press, ISBN 9781107044364, 2014;
Jiaya Jia: “Matte Extraction” Book: Computer Vision - A Reference Guide, Springer, Editor-in-chief: Ikeuchi, Katsushi;
Jiaya Jia, Chi-Keung Tang：Image Stitching Using Structure Deformation，IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (TPAMI), Vol. 30, No. 4, 2008;
Jiaya Jia, Jian Sun, Chi-Keung Tang, Heung-Yeung Shum：Drag-and-Drop Pasting，ACM Transactions on Graphics (also in SIGGRAPH 2006), Vol. 25, No. 3, 2006.
Xiaojuan Qi, Zheng zhe Liu, Renjie Liao, Philip HS Torr, Raquel Urtasun, Jiaya Jia：GeoNet++: Iterative Geometric Neural Network with Edge-Aware Refinement for Joint Depth and Surface Normal Estimation，IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (TPAMI). Accepted.
Selected honors and awards
Associate editor-in-chief of IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (TPAMI) since 2021, the associate editor-in-chief in 42 years since the journal was published;
Area chair for CVPR 2021, AAAI 2021, and ICCV 2021;
Area chair for CVPR 2020, AAAI 2020, and ECCV 2020;
1st Place of WAD Drivable Area Segmentation Challenge 2018;
1st Place of LSUN'17 Instance and Semantic Segmentation Challenges;
1st Place of COCO Instance Segmentation Challenge 2017; 2nd Place in COCO Detection Challenge 2017;
1st Place of ImageNet Scene Parsing Challenge 2016 with the paper PSPNet presented in CVPR 2017.
References
Chinese University of Hong Kong faculty
Chinese computer scientists
Fellow Members of the IEEE
Machine learning researchers
Microsoft Research people
Artificial intelligence researchers
Living people
Year of birth missing (living people)
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180109
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright%20law%20of%20the%20European%20Union
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Copyright law of the European Union
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The copyright law of the European Union is the copyright law applicable within the European Union. Copyright law is largely harmonized in the Union, although country to country differences exist. The body of law was implemented in the EU through a number of directives, which the member states need to enact into their national law. The main copyright directives are the Copyright Term Directive, the Information Society Directive and the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market. Copyright in the Union is furthermore dependent on international conventions to which the European Union is a member (such as the TRIPS Agreement and conventions to which all Member States are parties (such as the Berne Convention)).
History
Attempts to harmonise copyright law in Europe (and beyond) can be dated to the signature of the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works on 9 September 1886: all European Union Member States are parties of the Berne Convention, and compliance with its dispositions is now obligatory before accession. The first major step taken by the European Economic Community to harmonise copyright laws came with the decision to apply common standard for the copyright protection of computer programs, enacted in the Computer Programs Directive in 1991. A common term of copyright protection, 70 years from the death of the author, was established in 1993 as the Copyright Duration Directive.
The implementation of directives on copyright has been rather more controversial than for many other subjects, as can be seen by the six judgments for non-transposition of the Information Society Directive. Traditionally, copyright laws vary considerably between member states, particularly between civil law and common law jurisdictions. Changes in copyright law have also become linked to protests against the World Trade Organization and globalisation in general.
Sources of law
The first decisions of the European Court of Justice covering copyright were made under the non-discrimination provision of Article 6 EC (formerly Art. 7), and under the provisions of Article 36 which allows for restrictions on trade between Member States if justified by the protection of industrial and commercial property (including copyright). The directives were made under the internal market provisions of the treaties, notably Article 95 EC (formerly Art. 100a)
Protected rights
The following rights are protected by European Union law:
right of reproduction for authors, performers, producers of phonograms and films and broadcasting organisations
right of communication to the public for authors, performers, producers of phonograms and films and broadcasting organisations
right of distribution for authors and for performers, producers of phonograms and films and broadcasting organisations
right of fixation for performers and broadcasting organisations
right of rental and/or lending for authors, performers, producers of phonograms and films, with an associated right of equitable remuneration for lending and/or rental for authors and performers
right of broadcasting for performers, producers of phonograms and broadcasting organisations
right of communication to the public by satellite and cable for authors, performers, producers of phonograms and broadcasting organisations
right of computer program reproduction, distribution and rental for authors
Moral rights are usually considered to be a matter for the national laws of the Member States, although some countries classify some of the above rights, especially the right of communication to the public, among the moral rights of the author rather than under his rights of exploitation.
Duration of protection
The rights of authors are protected within their lifetime and for seventy years after their death; this includes the resale rights of artists. For films and other audiovisual works, the seventy-year period applies from the last death among the following people, whether or not they are considered to be authors of the work by the national law of the Member State: the principal director (who is always considered to be an author of the audiovisual work), the author of the screenplay, the author of the dialogue and the composer of music specifically created for use in the cinematographic or audiovisual work.
The rights of performers last for 50 years from the distribution or communication of the performance, or for 50 years from the performance itself if it had never been communicated to the public during this period. The rights of phonogram producers last for 50 years after publication of the phonogram, or for 50 years after its communication to the public if it had never been published during that period, or for 50 years after its creation if it had never been communicated to the public. The rights of film producers last for 50 years after the communication of the film to the public, or for 50 years after its creation if it had never been communicated to the public during that period. The rights of broadcasting organisations last for 50 years after the first transmission of a broadcast. The European Commission proposed this be extended to 95 years and following this suggestion the European Parliament passed legislation to increase the term to 70 years.
Where a work enjoyed a longer period of protection under national law on 1 July 1995, its period of protection is not shortened. Otherwise, these terms of protection apply to all works which were protected in a Member State of the European Economic Area on 1 July 1995. This provision had the effect of restoring the copyrights in certain works which had entered the public domain in countries with shorter copyright terms. The EU Information Society Directive modified the term of protection of phonograms, calculating from the date of publication instead of from an earlier date of communication to the public, but did not restore the protection of phonograms which had entered the public domain under the former rules. All periods of protection run until 31 December of the year in which they expire.
Resale right
The Resale Rights Directive created a right for the creators of works of art to participate in the proceeds of the resale of their work. This right, which is sometime known by its French name droit de suite, is personal to the artist and can only be transferred by inheritance. It is calculated as a proportion of the resale price (net of tax), which varies between 4 and 5 percent for the portion of the resale price up to EUR 50,000 and 0.25% for the portion of the resale price above EUR 500,000. The total royalty is limited at EUR 12,500, equivalent to a resale price of EUR 2,000,000. Member States may choose to exempt sales of less than EUR 3000 from royalty. Works of art which are covered by this resale right are "works of graphic or plastic art such as pictures, collages, paintings, drawings, engravings, prints, lithographs, sculptures, tapestries, ceramics, glassware and photographs, provided they are made by the artist herself or himself or are copies which have been made in limited numbers by the artist or under his or her authority."
Database rights
The Database Directive created a sui generis protection for databases which do not meet the criterion of originality for copyright protection. It is specifically intended to protect "the investment of considerable human, technical and financial resources" in creating databases (para. 7 of the preamble), whereas the copyright laws of many Member States specifically exclude effort and labour from the criteria for copyright protection. To qualify, the database must show "qualitatively and/or quantitatively a substantial investment in either the obtaining, verification or presentation of the contents". Their creators have the right "to prevent extraction and/or re-utilization of the whole or of a substantial part, evaluated qualitatively and/or quantitatively, of the contents of that database." This is taken to include the repeated extraction of insubstantial parts of the contents if this conflicts with the normal exploitation of the database or unreasonably prejudices the legitimate interests of the creator of the database.
Member States may limit this right in the following cases:
extraction for private use from a non-electronic database;
extraction for the purposes of teaching or research, to the extent justified by the non-commercial purpose;
extraction and/or reutilisation for the purposes of public security or an administrative or judicial procedure.
Database rights last for fifteen years from:
the "completion" of the database, that is to say the point at which the criterion of substantial investment is fulfilled, or from
the date at which the database is made available to the public, whichever is the later. The protection period runs until 31 December of the year in which it expires. If there is a "substantial change" in the database which would be qualified as a "substantial new investment", a new protection period is granted for the resulting database.
Limitations
Temporary copying which is the result of the transmission of a work or of its legal use is not covered by the exclusive right of reproduction.
Member states can implement other limitations from the list in Information Society Directive Article 5, or retain limitations which were already in force on 22 June 2001. Permitted limitations are:
art. 5.2(a) paper reproductions by photocopying or similar methods, except of sheet music, if there is compensation for rightsholders;
art. 5.2(b) reproductions made for private and non-commercial use if there is compensation for rightholders;
art. 5.2(c) reproductions by public libraries, educational institutions or archives for non-commercial use;
art. 5.2(d) preservation of recordings of broadcasts in official archives;
art. 5.2(e) reproductions of broadcasts by social, non-commercial institutions such as hospitals and prisons, if there is compensation to rightholders;
art. 5.3(a) use for illustration for teaching or scientific research, to the extent justified by the non-commercial purpose;
art. 5.3(b) uses directly related to a disability, to the extent justified by the disability;
art. 5.3(c) press reviews and news reporting;
art. 5.3(d) quotations for the purposes of criticism or review;
art. 5.3(e) uses for the purposes of public security or in administrative, parliamentary or judicial proceedings;
art. 5.3(f) uses of political speeches and extracts of public lectures, to the extent justified by public information;
art. 5.3(g) uses during religious or official celebrations;
art. 5.3(h) uses of works, such as architecture or sculpture, which are located permanently in public places;
art. 5.3(i) incidental inclusion in another work;
art. 5.3(j) use for the advertisement of the public exhibition or sale of art;
art. 5.3(k) caricature, parody or pastiche;
art. 5.3(l) use in connection with the demonstration or repair of equipment;
art. 5.3(m) use of a protected work (e.g., plans) for the reconstruction of a building;
art. 5.3(n) communication of works to the public within the premises of public libraries, educational institutions, museums or archives.
No new limitations may come into force after 22 June 2001 except those in the permitted limitations given in the Information Society Directive. Limitations may only be applied in balance with the Berne three-step test that asks the exceptions be "certain special cases which do not conflict with a normal exploitation of the work or other subject-matter and do not unreasonably prejudice the legitimate interests of the rightholder". However it was agreed at the time of drafting the WIPO Copyright and Performances and Phonograms Treaties that this wording "neither reduces nor extends the scope of applicability of the limitations and exceptions permitted by the Berne Convention."
This explicit list of exceptions stands in contrast to the open-ended Fair Use doctrine employed by the United States, and the European Union has typically been staunchly against considering frameworks resembling Fair Use. The use of short snippets of news articles in aggregation sites like Google News, covered by fair use in the United States, has been the subject of dispute between Google and European governments, following the passage of ancillary copyright for press publishers in Germany and the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market EU-wide.
Protection of rights
The Enforcement Directive covers the remedies that are available in the civil courts and harmonises the rules on standing, evidence, interlocutory measures, seizure and injunctions, damages and costs and judicial publication. Germany recognises the so-called whereby the burden of proof is on the alleged infringer in an infringement lawsuit.
Collection monopolies
Copyright collecting societies in the European Union usually hold monopolies in their respective national markets. Some countries create a statutory monopoly, while others recognise effective monopolies through regulations. In Austria, the Society of Authors, Composers and Publishers (, AKM) has a statutory monopoly. German law recognizes GEMA as an effective monopoly, and consequently the burden of proof is on the accused infringer that a work is not managed by GEMA.
See also
Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA)
Copyright Duration Directive
European Pirate Party
European Union 70-year recording copyright extension
EU copyright case-law
Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market
European copyright law is harmonised to a large extent. However, EU legislation allows for differences in the manner of member state application. pages related to specific copyright acts are listed below
Copyright law of France
Copyright law of Germany
Copyright law of Ireland
Copyright law of the Netherlands
Copyright law of Poland
Copyright law of Romania
Copyright law of Spain
References
External links
Summaries of EU legislation > Internal market > Businesses in the internal market > Intellectual property > Copyright and related rights
European Commission > Internal Market > Copyright > Documents
List of EU copyright Durations
Treaties
Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works (from WIPO)
Rome Convention for the Protection of Performers, Producers of Phonograms and Broadcasting Organisations
Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (from WTO)
WIPO Copyright Treaty (from WIPO)
WIPO Performers and Phonograms Treaty (from WIPO)
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536539
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captive%20portal
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Captive portal
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A captive portal is a web page accessed with a web browser that is displayed to newly connected users of a Wi-Fi or wired network before they are granted broader access to network resources. Captive portals are commonly used to present a landing or log-in page which may require authentication, payment, acceptance of an end-user license agreement, acceptable use policy, survey completion, or other valid credentials that both the host and user agree to adhere by. Captive portals are used for a broad range of mobile and pedestrian broadband services – including cable and commercially provided Wi-Fi and home hotspots. A captive portal can also be used to provide access to enterprise or residential wired networks, such as apartment houses, hotel rooms, and business centers.
The captive portal is presented to the client and is stored either at the gateway or on a web server hosting the web page. Depending on the feature set of the gateway, websites or TCP ports can be white-listed so that the user would not have to interact with the captive portal in order to use them. The MAC address of attached clients can also be used to bypass the login process for specified devices.
Uses
Captive portals are primarily used in open wireless networks where the users are shown a welcome message informing them of the conditions of access (allowed ports, liability, etc.). Administrators tend to do this so that their own users take responsibility for their actions and to avoid any legal responsibility. Whether this delegation of responsibility is legally valid is a matter of debate.
Often captive portals are used for marketing and commercial communication purposes. Access to the Internet over open Wi-Fi is prohibited until the user exchanges personal data by filling out a web-based registration form in a web browser. The web-based form either automatically opens in a web browser, or appears when the user opens a web browser and tries to visit any web page. In other words, the user is "captive" - unable to access the Internet freely until the user is granted access to the Internet and has "completed" the captive portal. This allows the provider of this service to display or send advertisements to users who connect to the Wi-Fi access point. This type of service is also sometimes known as "social Wi-Fi", as they may ask for a social network account to login (such as Facebook). Over the past few years, such social Wi-Fi captive portals have become commonplace with various companies offering marketing centered around Wi-Fi data collection.
The user can find many types of content in the captive portal, and it's frequent to allow access to the Internet in exchange for viewing content or performing a certain action (often, providing personal data to enable commercial contact); thus, the marketing use of the captive portal is a tool for lead generation (business contacts or potential clients).
Implementation
There is more than one way to implement a captive portal.
HTTP redirect
A common method is to direct all World Wide Web traffic to a web server, which returns an HTTP redirect to a captive portal. When a modern, internet-enabled device first connects to a network, it sends out an HTTP request to a detection URL predefined by its vendor and expects an HTTP status code 200 OK or 204 No Content. If the device receives a HTTP 200 status code, it assumes it has unlimited internet access. Captive portal prompts are displayed when you are able to manipulate this first HTTP message to return a HTTP status code of 302 (redirect) to the captive portal of your choice. specifies 511 Network Authentication Required code.
ICMP redirect
Client traffic can also be redirected using ICMP redirect on the layer 3 level.
Redirect by DNS
When a client requests a World Wide Web resource, DNS is queried by the browser. In a captive portal, the firewall will make sure that only the DNS server(s) provided by the network's DHCP can be used by unauthenticated clients (or, alternatively, it will forward all DNS requests by unauthenticated clients to that DNS server). This DNS server will return the IP address of the captive portal page as a result of all DNS lookups.
In order to perform redirection by DNS the captive portal uses DNS hijacking to perform an action similar to a man-in-the-middle attack. To limit the impact of DNS poisoning, a TTL of 0 is typically used.
Limitations
Security
Captive portals have been known to have incomplete firewall rule sets.
DNS tunneling
In some deployments, the rule set will route DNS requests from clients to the Internet, or the provided DNS server will fulfill arbitrary DNS requests from the client. This allows a client to bypass the captive portal and access the open Internet by tunneling arbitrary traffic within DNS packets.
Automatic submission
Some captive portals may be configured to allow appropriately equipped user agents to detect the captive portal and automatically authenticate. User agents and supplemental applications such as Apple's Captive Portal Assistant can sometimes transparently bypass the display of captive portal content against the wishes of the service operator as long as they have access to correct credentials, or they may attempt to authenticate with incorrect or obsolete credentials, resulting in unintentional consequences such as accidental account locking.
MAC spoofing
A captive portal that uses MAC addresses to track connected devices can sometimes be circumvented by re-using a MAC address of previously authenticated device. Once a device has been authenticated to the captive portal using a valid credentials, the gateway adds that device's MAC address to its "whitelist"; since MAC addresses can easily be spoofed, any other device can pretend to be the authenticated device and bypass the captive portal. Once the IP and MAC addresses of other connecting computers are found to be authenticated, any machine can spoof the MAC address and Internet Protocol (IP) address of the authenticated target, and be allowed a route through the gateway. For this reason some captive portal solutions created extended authentication mechanisms to limit the risk for usurpation.
Require Web Browser
Captive portals often require the use of a web browser; this is usually the first application that users start after connected to the Internet, but users who first use an email client or other application that relies on the Internet may find the connection not working without explanation, and will then need to open a web browser to validate. This may be problematic for users who do not have any web browser installed on their operating system. It is however sometimes possible to use email and other facilities that do not rely on DNS (e.g. if the application specifies the connection IP rather than the hostname). A similar problem can occur if the client uses AJAX or joins the network with pages already loaded into its web browser, causing undefined behavior (for example, corrupt messages appear) when such a page tries HTTP requests to its origin server.
Similarly, as HTTPS connections cannot be redirected (at least not without triggering security warnings), a web browser that only attempts to access secure websites before being authorized by the captive portal will see those attempts fail without explanation (the usual symptom is that the intended website appears to be down or inaccessible).
Platforms that have Wi-Fi and a TCP/IP stack but do not have a web browser that supports HTTPS cannot use many captive portals. Such platforms include the Nintendo DS running a game that uses Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection. Non-browser authentication is possible using WISPr, an XML-based authentication protocol for this purpose, or MAC-based authentication or authentications based on other protocols.
It is also possible for a platform vendor to enter into a service contract with the operator of a large number of captive portal hotspots to allow free or discounted access to the platform vendor's servers via the hotspot's walled garden. For example, in 2005 Nintendo and Wayport partnered to provide free Wi-Fi access to Nintendo DS users at certain McDonald's restaurants. Also, VoIP SIP ports could be allowed to bypass the gateway to allow phones to work.
See also
HTTP proxy
Proximity marketing
Mobile location analytics
References
External links
Android Captive Portal Setup
Captive-Portal Identification Using DHCP or Router Advertisements (RAs)
Computer network security
Web technology
Wireless access points
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41611908
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List%20of%203D%20rendering%20software
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List of 3D rendering software
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This page provides a list of 3D rendering software. This is not the same as 3D modeling software, which involves the creation of 3D models, for which the software listed below can produce realistically rendered visualisations. Also not included are general-purpose packages which can have their own built-in rendering capabilities; these can be found in the List of 3D computer graphics software and List of 3D animation software. See 3D computer graphics software for more discussion about the distinctions.
See also
List of computer-aided design editors
List of 3D computer graphics software
List of 3D animation software
List of 3D modeling software
References
3d Rendering Software
3D graphics software
Software
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1208732
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dell%20XPS
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Dell XPS
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Dell XPS ("eXtreme Performance System") is a line of consumer-oriented high-end laptop and desktop computers manufactured by Dell.
Overview
The XPS name dates back to 1990 when Dell was more focused on corporate business than consumers. Gateway was number one in the high-end consumer market. In early 1993, there was a staff meeting to address how to pursue this emerging market. At this time, Dell's annual revenue was less than $500 million and Michael Dell was involved in most decisions. At this meeting, it was decided to launch a new high-end product line to compete with Gateway. Vernon Weiss was assigned as product manager to spearhead and manage the marketing of the new product. He worked with Brian Zucker who led the architecture and engineering effort. In September 1993, the first two versions of the XPS line were announced. The first generation of the XPS system was available as either a desktop or a tower case. This new product line was so far ahead of the competition that it was featured on the cover of the October 1993 issue of PC/Computing.
For the next three years, with Vernon Weiss and Brian Zucker continuing to evolve the product line, the XPS systems beat the competition in over 100 magazine reviews and covers, being the first to adopt the latest PC technology available and bring it to the consumers at an attractive price. The XPS mainly competes against computers such as Acer's Aspire, HP's Pavilion and Envy, Lenovo's X1, Samsung's Sens, and Apple MacBook Pro.
From 1997 to 2001, as Dell grew into a large corporation, the XPS line lost its position as the leading-edge performance machines and became essentially just a line for fast computers. In 2005 Dell revamped the XPS line to compete with Alienware (now owned by Dell) and Falcon Northwest.
In 2005, Dell separated its home desktop systems into two lines: Dell Dimension and XPS. Consumer notebooks were also separated into two lines: Inspiron and XPS. While the XPS designation used to mean the hardware was high-end and well suited for gaming, that is no longer the case. For example, the XPS 200 is limited to extremely low-end video cards, while the XPS M140 is only configurable with Intel video, thus making both systems unsuited for gaming or high-end usage.
Dell had considered buying Alienware from 2002, but did not take any action until March 22, 2006 when they purchased the company. Alienware maintained its autonomy in terms of design and marketing. However, Alienware's access to Dell's supply chain management, purchasing power, and economies of scale lowered its operating costs. The XPS line initially had the same specifications as those offered by the Alienware division. In 2008, Dell introduced "Studio XPS" and Dell advertised it as a performance computer line while Alienware was being advertised for gaming. On June 2, 2009, The M17x was introduced as the First Alienware/Dell branded system.
XPS Tower 8000 series
XPS Tower (8940)
The 2020 Dell XPS 8940 features Intel's 10th-generation i5, i7 and i9 CPUs.
XPS Tower (8930)
The 2017 Dell XPS 8930 features Intel's 8th-generation i5 and i7 CPUs on an LGA 1151 socket.
XPS Tower (8910)
Dell XPS Towers were released in July 2016. Three systems were introduced: the XPS Tower, XPS Tower VR, and the XPS Tower Special Edition. All systems are introduced with 6th-generation (Skylake) i5 and i7 CPUs, at least 8 GiB of DDR4 memory, and are designed with an easy to open chassis for simple expandability. One of the main differences from the 8900 is that now the m.2 connector supports 4 PCI-E lanes instead of 1. The VR and Special Edition meet and exceed the minimum recommended specifications for running virtual reality and the Special Edition passed testing for the Oculus Ready and HTC Vive Optimized certification programs.
XPS 8900
The Dell XPS 8900 was released in October 2015. It is designed for moderate to heavy gaming and high-end workstation performance. It features Intel's 6th-generation (Skylake) i5 and i7 CPUs on an LGA 1151 socket. It also includes an upgrade to higher-bandwidth DDR4 memory.
XPS 8700
The Dell XPS 8700 was released in 2013. It was designed for moderate to heavy gaming and high-end workstation performance. It features a Dell 0KWVT8 motherboard with an LGA-1150 socket. It comes with a quad-core Intel Core i7 processor and an Nvidia Geforce GTX 660. A special edition is available with an AMD Radeon R9 270.
System specifications
Memory:
Type: unbuffered, non-ECC, dual-channel DDR3 (Up to 1600 MHz)
Maximum: 32 GiB, with 2, 4 or 8 GiB in base
Video:
Integrated: Intel HD Graphics 4600 (Up to 1.7 GiB system)
Additional:
Nvidia Geforce GTX 660 (1.5 GiB GDDR5)
AMD Radeon R9 270 (2 GiB GDDR5)
Communications:
Network Adapter: 10/100/1000 Mbit/s integrated network card
Wireless: Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n and Bluetooth 4.0
WLAN options (The DW1520 card, and the DW1501 card are IEEE 802.11n certified):
Chip: Broadcom BCM4313 (b/g/n (2.4 GHz) 150 Mbit/s) + FCC ID: QDS-BRCM10 50 + "Dell Wireless 1501 WLAN Half Mini-Card"
Chip: Broadcom BCM4322 (a/b/g/n-draft (2.4 or 5 GHz) 300 Mbit/s) + FCC ID: QDS-BRCM10 31 + "Dell Wireless 1510 Wireless-N WLAN Mini-Card"
Chip: Broadcom BCM43224 (a/b/g/n (2.4 or 5 GHz) 300 Mbit/s) + FCC ID: QDS-BRCM10 41 + "Dell Wireless 1520 Wireless-N WLAN Mini-Card"
Motherboard:
Dell 0KWVT8
CPU:
Intel Core i7 4790 (8 MiB L3 Cache;3.6 GHz Base Clock, Turbo to 4.0 GHz)
Integrated Graphics — Intel HD 4600
XPS 8500
Released on May 2, 2012, the Dell XPS 8500 is the first version in this series to have the third-generation Intel Quad Core i5 and i7 processor added to it. This version of the XPS's motherboard uses the Intel Chipset H77 with socket LGA 1155 and has USB 3.0 ports built into the front. The "Special Edition" version of this desktop, (starting price $999 as of Jan '13), comes standard with such advanced features as an Intel Core i7, Blu-ray drive and a 32 GiB Intel mSATA SSD mounted on the motherboard to enhance the operational speed of the traditional hard disk.
System specifications
Memory:
Type: unbuffered, non-ECC, quad-channel DDR3 (Up to 1600 MHz)
Maximum: 32 GiB, with 2/4/8 GiB in base
Video:
Integrated: Intel HD Graphics 2500/4000 (Up to 1 GiB system)
Additional:
Nvidia Geforce GT 620 – 1 GiB GDDR5
Nvidia Geforce GT 640 – 1 GiB GDDR5
Nvidia Geforce GTX 660 – 1.5 GiB GDDR5
AMD Radeon HD 7570 – 1 GiB GDDR5
AMD Radeon HD 7770 – 2 GiB GDDR5
AMD Radeon HD 7870 – 2 GiB GDDR5
Communications:
Network Adapter: 10/100/1000 Mbit/s integrated network card
Wireless: Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n; Bluetooth 4.0
XPS 8300
This series uses Intel H67 socket 1155 Sandy bridge CPU's, such as i5-2320 and i7-2600K.
Motherboard:
Dell 0Y2MRG (DH67M01 TB0420)
Memory:
Type: unbuffered, non-ECC, quad-channel DDR3
Maximum: 32 GiB, with 2/4/8 GiB in base
WLAN options (The DW1520 card, and the DW1501 card are IEEE 802.11n certified):
Chip: Broadcom BCM4313 (b/g/n (2.4 GHz) 150 Mbit/s) + FCC ID: QDS-BRCM10 50 + "Dell Wireless 1501 WLAN Half Mini-Card"
Chip: Broadcom BCM4322 (a/b/g/n-draft (2.4 or 5 GHz) 300 Mbit/s) + FCC ID: QDS-BRCM10 31 + "Dell Wireless 1510 Wireless-N WLAN Mini-Card"
Chip: Broadcom BCM43224 (a/b/g/n (2.4 or 5 GHz) 300 Mbit/s) + FCC ID: QDS-BRCM10 41 + "Dell Wireless 1520 Wireless-N WLAN Mini-Card"
XPS 8100
Released in 2010, the Dell Studio XPS 8100 was a mid-range, all-purpose PC aimed at home users. It had a Core i5-650 processor, 4 GiB of DDR3 RAM, 1 TB of hard drive space and an NVIDIA GTS 240 graphics card as standard.
XPS One 27"
The Dell XPS One 27" is an all-in-one PC that, hence its name, features a 27-inch screen with a resolution of 2560 pixels wide and a height of 1440 pixels. It is the recipient of CNET's 2012 Editor's Choice Award, and it was also awarded as PCMag's best all-in-one PC of 2012.
CNET editor Rich Brown, who authored the review awarding the XPS One 27" the Editor's Choice Award, noted that it "boasts the highest-display resolution among Windows 8 all-in-ones, and at an aggressive price."
On its page discussing PCMag's selections for the best products of the year, it said that the all-in-one "manages to put almost every technology and feature we're looking for in a compact stylish chassis."
There are reports from many buyers complaining of a quality control issue on the screen. There are dust particles trapped between the screen and the touch panel. Some buyers even received several exchanges or screens replacements and the issue still remains. Some people may not notice but turning the brightness up will show these spots. They look like dead pixels.
Studio XPS
The Studio XPS, also referred to as Studio XPS 435MT, was released November 16, 2008. This is a PC with performance somewhat between the XPS 420 and 630. Its processor is the Intel Core i7. The current Studio XPS models, however, are not as gamer-oriented, with only one PCIe x16 slot and a 475 watt power supply. It has RAID0/1 support, however, as well as the capability of up to 24 GB of RAM. Later this model was renamed to the Studio XPS 9000, later succeeded by a newer version, the Studio XPS 9100.
XPS One 20 and XPS One 24
Released on November 19, 2007, the Dell XPS One is an all-in-one desktop designed for "minimal fuss and maximum cordless connectivity", and ships with the power cord, and a wireless keyboard with a touchpad and wireless mouse prepared to the system. The XPS One comes in 20-inch (XPS One 20) and 24-inch (XPS One 24) models. The 20-inch model has an Intel Core 2 Duo E4500, while the 24-inch model has an Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200. The 20-inch model has 2 GB of dual-channel DDR2 SDRAM @ 667 MHz, while the 24-inch model has 4 GB of dual-channel DDR2 SDRAM @ 800 MHz. The XPS One 20 has integrated Intel GMA 3100 graphics, while the XPS One 24 has integrated Intel GMA X4500HD graphics, and can be customized with an nVidia GeForce 9600M GT graphics card when chosen with PRODUCT (RED). The XPS One 20 has a WSXGA (1680×1050) resolution with 16.7 million colors, a 1000:1 contrast ratio, an 80° viewing angle, and a 5 ms response time. The XPS One 24 has a WUXGA (1900×1200) resolution with 16.7 million colors, a 1200:1 contrast ratio, an 89° viewing angle, and a 6 ms response time. The 20-inch model has integrated High Definition Audio and 10 watt stereo speakers, while the 24-inch model has SoundBlaster Audigy HD software with 25 watt premium JBL speakers with an integrated subwoofer. The XPS One 20 and XPS One 24 were subsequently discontinued by Dell.
XPS 18
The Dell XPS 18 was announced in April 2013. It is an all-in-one computer that also functions as a large tablet. It has a screen size of 18.4 inches.
XPS H Series
A system that came out circa 1996/97. It contained an Intel Pentium II (Klamath) CPU, EDO DRAM, and an i440FX chipset.
XPS D series
A system that came out in 1997. It contained an Intel Pentium II (Klamath) CPU, SDRAM, and an i440LX chipset.
XPS R series
A system that was introduced in 1998. It contained an Intel Pentium II (Deschutes) CPU, SDRAM, and an i440BX chipset.
XPS T series
A system that was introduced in 1999. It contained an Intel Pentium III CPU, SDRAM, and an i440BX chipset. An "r" suffix was used for Socket 370 versions, while no suffix was used for Slot 1 versions.
XPS B series
A system that was introduced in 2000. It contained an Intel Pentium III CPU, 128 MB of RDRAM, an ATi RAGE graphics card, and an i820 chipset. An "r" suffix was used for Socket 370 versions, while no suffix was used for Slot 1 versions. Later models (especially the "R" series) had a built in DVD drive.
XPS Gen 2
Included Pentium 4 processor with Hyper-Threading Technology (3.4 GHz, 800 MHz Bus, Microsoft Windows XP Professional, 400 MHz dual-channel DDR SDRAM (400 MHz), Supports SATA and IDE hard drives, 1 AGP Slot, 4 PCI slots, Sound Blaster Audigy², and Dell Wireless Keyboard and Mouse. Video Card included was ATI Radeon 9800 Pro (AGP x8).
It was powered by a 460 watt proprietary power supply and featured decorative LEDs on the front of the case that the user could change the colors of in the BIOS.
XPS Gen 3
Base configuration had a Pentium 4 processor at a speed of 3.0 GHz or higher, 512 MiB of DDR, 400 MHz memory, a single 80 GB 7200 RPM hard drive, an ATI Radeon X800 XT graphics card, and a Sound Blaster Audigy² audio card. It came pre-installed with Windows XP Home Edition.
XPS Gen 4
Base configuration had a Pentium 4 processor at a speed of 3.0 GHz or higher, 512 MiB of DDR2, 533 MHz memory, a single 160 GB 7200 RPM hard drive, an NVIDIA GeForce 6800 graphics card, and a Sound Blaster Audigy² audio card. It came pre-installed with Windows XP Home Edition.
XPS Gen 5
Used a Pentium 4 HT processor with 512 KiB, 1 MiB, or 2 MiB of L2 Cache. It can support up to 8 GiB of DDR2 memory @ 533 MHz or 667 MHz.
XPS 200 series
XPS 200
This model was available from late 2005 to the end of the third quarter of 2006. It was replaced by the XPS 210, which is nearly identical to its predecessor. The main exception in this case is the upgrade to an Intel Core 2 Duo processor and other minor adjustments.
XPS 210
A small-form-factor case that is 67% smaller than the XPS 410. It does not use full-size PCI slots. The XPS 200 is aimed at being a low-impact machine, meaning it blends in better with the room's features. It is more of a multimedia computer than an actual gaming machine, despite the XPS name. The main difference between the XPS 210 and its predecessor, the XPS 200, is the upgrade to the Intel Core 2 Duo processor line. This makes the XPS 210 faster than the XPS 200.
XPS 400 series
XPS 400
This model was available during late 2005 and the first half of 2006. It was replaced by the XPS 410, which is nearly identical with the exception of an optional Intel Core 2 Duo processor and slightly different audio and video card options
XPS 410
The former intermediate model of the XPS series and bigger brother to the Dimension E520. It features a base configuration of an Intel Core 2 Duo processor, and a 2.4 GHz Core 2 Quad is also available as an option. Other base options include the Nvidia GeForce 7300LE, 7200RPM SATA-300 hard drive, and dual-channel DDR2 RAM. The case is nearly identical to that of the Dimension E520, with an additional 3.5-inch drive bay being added. The case is physically taller because of this. The power supply is also slightly more powerful than the Dimension E520 (375 W vs 305 W, respectively and has an added 6 pin PCIe power cable). The XPS 410 replaced the XPS 400. It was replaced by the XPS 420. XPS 410 units were also sold as the Dimension 9200, allowing Dell to continue selling remaining units after the XPS 410 was discontinued.
In an odd twist, the Dimension 9200 was the final desktop in the Dimension line, effectively making an XPS unit the last in the Dimension family.
XPS 420
Now discontinued, it features similar components to the XPS 410, but it used different case design and new features. This was Dell's media based computer featuring the Dell Xcelerator (a simple and effective Video Recorder), and an LCD screen in the case, running Windows Vista SideShow. As usual with the 4XX Line of XPS's, it did not allow for SLI Graphics. The XPS 420 added support for 45 nm Core2 Duo/Quad/ and Extreme CPUs up to the QX9650.
XPS 430
Similar to 420, with DDR3 RAM and without the LCD on the computer chassis.
Studio XPS 435T (or Studio XPS 9000/9100), Studio XPS 435MT
The Dell XPS 435T was a mid-tower desktop that originally shipped with a Nehalem-based Intel Core i7 processor. The system's motherboard used Intel's X58 chipset, allowing for 3 memory channels over 6 available DIMM slots. The XPS 435T is able to support Westmere-based Core i7 and Xeon processors (supporting up to 6 cores) with the latest BIOS update.
The XPS435MT was a smaller Mini Tower version that shared the X58 chipset. Unlike the 435T, the 435MT's BIOS was never updated to support Westmere-based Core i7 or Xeon chips. The motherboard is a variation of the MSI 7591 MicroATX.
XPS 600 series
XPS 600
The former flagship model of the XPS series that features an Intel dual-core Pentium D 950 processor, dual Nvidia GeForce 7900GTX in SLI mode, 7200 RPM SATA hard drive, and dual-channel DDR2 RAM. This case has not changed significantly over the past several generations, with the large aluminum plate on the front. Discontinued a few days after XPS 700 launch and succeeded by the XPS 700.
XPS 625
A version of the XPS 630 but with AMD Phenom II chips and ATI Graphics.
XPS 630
This 2008's desktop at one time filled the gap between the media-oriented XPS 420/430 and the high-end XPS 730x. There is no physical difference(s) between the 630 and the 630i. The marketing concept was to use an "i" to designate systems installed with an Intel chipset, and an "a" for systems with AMD-installed chipsets, but since Intel-based chipsets were the only models ever sold, this designation holds little significance. The 630 features a Dell-modified Nvidia nForce 650i chipset that supports both SLI and CrossFire configurations, but lacks ESA certification (the only ESA-certified component in the 630i is Dell's "Master Input/Output" (or "MIO") printed circuit board). The XPS 630 at one time came standard with an Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 CPU and dual Nvidia GeForce 8800GT graphics cards.
Problems and solutions
There were several issues with the XPS 630 including problems with the chassis fan control, chassis LED lights, and non-shipment of the LightFX 2.0 lightshow control software. limited PCIe slot configuration (8,8,1,1 unlike OEM Nvidia 650i SLI motherboards which also offer the 16,1,1,1 configuration), constant HDD LED activity, and a reliability issue due to a problem inherent in the Nvidia 650i SLI chipset that can surface when overclocking with 4 or more gigabytes of RAM. The problems resulted in PC PRO revoking their Recommended award for the system.
The July 22, 2009 release of a Softex Media Plug-in has provided some of the features originally advertised in LightFX. BIOS updates were issued to patch the constant HDD LED activity. Some 630i owners have bypassed the aforementioned problems by swapping out the Dell-modified 650i motherboard with OEM motherboards such as the EVGA nForce 780i SLI FTW. The motherboard has 8 lanes wired for each PCIe slot, which can restrict performance if using a single high-performance graphics card. Performance is equivalent to other systems with 650i chipset motherboards when using two graphics cards in SLI mode.
XPS 700 series
XPS 700
Targeted at the gaming community, this model featured the Intel Pentium D Extreme processors in speeds up to 3.7 GHz with dual nVidia GeForce 7900 GTX in SLI mode, a 7200RPM SATA hard drive and dual-channel DDR2 RAM. This desktop was advertised as being overclockable but was not. Dell would later offer a free XPS 720 motherboard upgrade program to all XPS 700 and 710 owners so that these machines could be overclocked with the bios. The aluminum case featured a distinctive "leaning" design. The XPS 700 used significantly larger power supplies (750 watt and 1 kilowatt) than the other XPS models to accommodate higher-end video cards and overclocked CPUs. Unlike its forerunners, it used a BTX motherboard, thereby limiting upgradability. It was replaced by the XPS 710 and many customers were offered a free motherboard upgrade to XPS 720 specification following complaints about the system.
XPS 710
The formal flagship model of the XPS series that features the new Intel Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Extreme processors, as well as Core 2 Quad processors. Other features include dual nVidia GeForce 7950 GX2 in Quad SLI mode, 7200RPM SATA hard drive, dual-channel DDR2 RAM. The XPS 710 uses significantly larger power supplies than the other XPS models to accommodate higher-end video cards and overclocked CPUs. It was replaced by the XPS 720.
XPS 720, XPS 720 H2C
Announced on November 24, 2007, the XPS 720 is the same as the XPS 720 H2C, except it does not have the "dual-stage radiator cooling technology." It comes in two versions, the Red Special Edition, which is the same as the Black normal one, they both come with a 1 kW power supply.
The H2C edition computer has included a dual-stage radiator cooling technology, and a motherboard capable of overclocking its quad core Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6800. The H2C comes standard with dual Nvidia GeForce 8800GTX cards running in SLI at a price of $6,780. The XPS 720 H2C uses slightly higher quality parts than other XPS classes. At the time it was one of the most powerful and fastest pre-built systems an individual could purchase by a significant margin.
XPS 730 H2C
The 730 H2C had H2C (a high-performance cooling system) as standard, which was ideal for gaming and overclocking. Its motherboard, the Nvidia nForce 790i Ultra, was capable of overclocking its quad core Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9770 up to 3.64 GHz. Dual channel DDR3 SDRAM system memory was available in United States and UK. There was a choice of colors also at some outlets. The basic model specs of the PC were: Intel Core 2 Extreme Processor QX9650 (3.46 GHz Overclocked), DUAL 1 GiB ATI Radeon 3870 X2 Crossfire X Graphics Card, 2 GiB Memory, 1 TB 7200rpm Dual HDD. The base price in the UK was £2,499. The system also came with an improved H2C cooling device, seen on ultra high gaming computers. This has since been replaced by the XPS 730x (see above).
XPS 730X, XPS 730X H2C
Released on November 16, 2008, the XPS 730X is essentially an XPS 730 with the new Intel Core i7 which also used the new Intel X58 chipset Motherboards.
The XPS 730X H2C was the higher-end version of the 730X that made use of H2Ceramic cooling and often shipped with factory-overclocked Core i7 Extreme Edition processors.
The 730X also integrates Alienware's AlienFX and a new theatre lighting system. The internals of the 730X have also been redone for ease of upgrades, although most of the inside remains the same. The 730X supported a Tri-Channel of 6 GB of DDR3. The graphics card support was either a dual or single NVIDIA Geforce GTX 285, or a single ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2. The 730X originally shipped with Windows Vista, but eventually offered Windows 7 near the end of its availability.
Dell internally discontinued the XPS 730X and XPS 730X H2C in its US online store on August 1, 2009 and cancelled any remaining orders after August 15, 2009. It has been mentioned that this was done to focus more attention for customers seeking gaming computers, such as Alienware. The desktop was officially discontinued on September 17, 2009 (see Dell XPS 730x).
Dell returned to develop their XPS performance line. The three new laptops, released in October 2010, have many new features and specifications from the old models. They feature JBL speakers with Waves MaxxAudio 3 technology, and have integrated 3D graphics. The line is the first to be Skype-certified for video chat. They have Intel i5 and i7 processors. The X-Fi upgrade offered by Dell is not actually a hardware upgrade but a software-based processing package which "provides premium audio quality, effects and features".
XPS 11
XPS 11 (9P33)
Dell announced the XPS 11 in June 2013. It features an 11.6-inch screen that can be folded backwards almost 360 degrees to act as a tablet. It shipped with Windows 8.1 and a "Haswell" Intel Core i5 processor.
XPS 12
XPS 12 (9Q23)
The XPS 12 is a convertible laptop. The convertible mirrors the general aesthetic of the Dell XPS 13 ultrabook and other models in the XPS lineup, although the hybrid swaps out its predecessors' aluminum look for a carbon-fiber exterior. The lid and exterior edge are framed by a machined aluminum edge, while the interior consists of a magnesium-alloy palm rest coated in matte black paint. The Dell XPS 12's body was made with a fingerprint-resisting coating. It possesses a hinged, flip-screen LCD. Applying a push to the top of the screen frees the 12.5 inches, 1920×1080 resolution, 400-nit brightness display from the magnetic locks that hold it in place. The convertible's 1.7 GHz Core i5-3317U processor sports Intel HD Graphics 4000 integrated graphics, which combine with 4 GiB of RAM and a 128 GB solid-state drive and Core i5 processor, but ups the memory to 8 GiB and the storage to 256 GB. Some models configuration includes the Core i7 processor, 8 GiB of RAM, and the 256 GB SSD.
XPS 12 (9Q33)
In July 2013, Dell released its XPS 12 with Intel Haswell (4th Generation) processor. This upgrade came as a boost in the Ultrabook's performance as well as battery life. Dell also added near field communication in this device.
XPS 12 (9250)
In 2015, Dell released a new XPS 12 with Intel Skylake Core M processors. The hinge system was removed and replaced with a fully detachable display. The device has a 4K Ultra HD (3860×2160) display, a kickstand and an 8MP rear camera and a 5MP front camera. The new XPS 12 has an all-metal build from the new XPS 13.
XPS 13
XPS 13 (L321X, Early 2012)
The Dell XPS 13 was unveiled at CES 2012. It is the company's first Ultrabook, a term coined by Intel. The XPS 13 features a 13.3-inch screen (1366×768 Non-Touch Corning Gorilla Glass) and uses flash memory to help with fast booting. The XPS 13 features certain unique design elements. The edges are rounded and the bottom is made of carbon fibre, with a gentle silicone surface treatment. A battery level indicator was also present, and is functional when powered off. Note: Intel Chipset is 2nd generation I series.
Dell also offers a developer's version of the XPS 13 running Ubuntu Linux.
XPS 13 (L322X, Early 2013)
The slightly heavier, revised version of L321X. Difference with the previous version include: 4-8 DDR3L RAM, up to 1600 MHz, Mobile Intel 7 series express chipset QS77 (Panther Point, 3rd generation I series), Intel HD 4000 graphics instead of 3000, two USB 3.0 ports, an upgraded wireless card, and a 13.3-inch HD WLED, HD/FHD TrueLife with Gorilla glass LCD.
XPS 13 (9333, Late 2013)
Released in 2013. Includes a 13.3" LED backlit touch screen display with 1920×1080 resolution and Corning Gorilla Glass, Intel Core fourth generation i5-4200U or i7-4500U processor (with integrated chipset and Intel HD 4400 Graphics), Windows 8.1 (64-bit), 4 or 8 GiB Dual Channel DDR3 1600 MHz RAM, 128 or 256 GB mSATA SSD, Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 7260 + Bluetooth wireless, and 55 WHr 6-Cell Battery. However, Dell has not fixed the issue with this generation – a high pitched noise emitting from the keyboard area to the right.
XPS 13 (9343, Early 2015)
Announced at CES and released in January 2015, the latest XPS 13 comes with the new Intel Broadwell processors and a renovated 3200×1800 touchscreen of 13.3" set in a very thin frame, and claims up to 15 hours of battery life and many other
XPS 13 (9350, Late 2015)
Released in October 2015, the 9350 is similar to the 9343 but with the new Intel Skylake processor (6th generation I series) and a Thunderbolt 3 (with USB 3.1 Gen 2 support) in lieu of the mini-DisplayPort. There was also another model with i7-6560 CPU and Iris 540 graphics released later for better graphics performance. One of the biggest improvements was an increase in available integrated RAM memory to 16 GiB DDR3L (in highest versions). It was criticized for the placement of the webcam in the bottom bezel.
XPS 13 (9360, Late 2016 and Late 2017)
Released in October 2016, the 9360 is similar to the 9350 but with the new Intel Kaby Lake processor (7th generation U series) or, in some models from late 2017 onwards, Intel's 8th generation (Kaby Lake-R) U series processors. The XPS 13 Developer Edition comes preloaded with Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.
XPS 13 2-in-1 (9365, Early 2017)
The 9365 is similar to the late 2016 XPS 13 (9360) but with a flexible hinge allowing it to fold over into tablet mode.
The laptop also features face recognition to login.
XPS 13 (9370, Early 2018)
Released in January 2018, the 9370 has an entirely new design refresh, with a smaller footprint and lighter chassis. The battery capacity dropped from 60 watt-hours to 52 watt-hours, most likely due to the smaller form factor. This refresh has Intel's 8th generation Core i5 and Core i7 processors, and starts at $USD999, $USD200 more than the 9360. Dell has dropped the barrel-style connector, previously used to charge the device, and now includes two Thunderbolt 3, a micro SD card reader, one USB-C port and one headphone jack. Dell is also offering a model in white, which uses a different palm rest material than the previous carbon fiber palm rest and deck on the 9360.
XPS 13 (9380, Early 2019)
Released in January 2019, the 9380 has the webcam back at the top of its monitor. Dell again includes two Thunderbolt 3, a micro SD card reader, one USB-C port and one headphone jack. This refresh has Intel's 8th generation Core i3-8145U, i5-8265U, and Core i7-8565U processors, codenamed Whiskey Lake. The base i3 model starts at $949 (USD) but with only 4 GB of RAM, and goes up all the way to $1,659 (USD) with the i7 model.
XPS 13 2-in-1 (7390, Mid 2019)
The XPS-13 2-in-1 is one of the first in the line-up to be offered with a 10th generation 10 nm Intel Ice Lake processor with Intel Iris Plus integrated graphics. It has a new 13.4 inch screen with aspect ratio of 16:10, and was launched in August 2019. This model has a soldered SSD which cannot be upgraded, and unlike the 2017 model which is silent and fanless, this model does have two fans for active cooling.
XPS 13 (7390, Late 2019)
Following the launch of the XPS 13 2-in-1, the refreshed XPS was offered with a new 10th generation 14 nm Comet Lake processor up to an 6-core i7-10710U with Intel UHD integrated graphics. It is physically identical to the early 2019 XPS 13 9380.
XPS 13 (9300, Early 2020)
The XPS 13 (9300), like the 2-in-1 7390 updates to the new 10th generation 10 nm Intel Ice Lake processors up to an i7-1065G7, features a new 13.4" inch screen with an aspect ratio of 16:10 and a front-facing webcam supporting Windows Hello facial recognition. Compared to the previous XPS 13 7390, it has a better battery life, larger touchpad and larger keys albeit with slightly reduced travel. It was launched during CES 2020.
XPS 13 (9310, Late 2020)
The XPS 13 (9310) was released on September 30, 2020 in USA and Canada. It has the same chassis as the previous generation and features Intel's new 11th generation 10 nm Tiger Lake processors along with support for Thunderbolt 4.
XPS 13 2-in-1 (9310, Late 2020)
The XPS 13 2-in-1 (9310) was released on September 30, 2020 in USA and Canada along with the 9310. It has almost the same build as the late 2019 2-in-1; the weight has decreased, at 2.8 pounds from 2.9, and the keyboard layout was tweaked. It features Intel's new 11th generation 10 nm Tiger Lake processors, which use Intel's improved Intel Iris Xe integrated graphics.
XPS 13 (9305, Mid 2021)
The XPS 13 (9305) returns to a 16:9 aspect ratio screen based upon the Intel 11th gen i5 and i7 processors. While similar to the 9310, the 9305 includes an additional USB-C port (3 in total) and utilizes an earlier generation chassis with a narrower keyboard (2019 era). The 9305 is intended to be a lower cost model; the screen only comes in 1080p resolution and the maximum hard drive and memory sizes are 512GB and 16GB respectively.
XPS 14
XPS 14 (L401X)
This XPS was released in the summer of 2011 and is a 14-inch HD WLED screen with resolution up to 1366×768 (touch screen iCESs optional) bundled in Intel Core i3-360M processor (2.4 GHz, 2Core/4Threads, 3M cache), 4 GiB 1333 MHz DDR3 SDRAM. Its base-price at release is $USD999 and comes with i3 360 m . it can be customized up to the intel core i7 740Qm . It is equipped with a 2011 1 GiB NVIDIA GeForce GT 420M Graphics (for Core-i5 processors) and GT 425M (for Core-i7 processors). It can also be customized with up to 8 GiB of DDR3 memory. The computer can either have a 500 GB 7200 RPM SATA hard drive, or a 256 GB solid state drive. This laptop has a sleek anodized aluminium LCD back cover. It also had World's first camera with Hi-Definition Video Streaming with Skype (2.0MP, H.264 Camera), JBL 2.0 Speakers with Waves MaxxAudio v3.0 enhancement for a 6-Way audio performance, Biometric – Fast Access facial recognition system.
XPS 14 (L421X)
The XPS 14 was released in the summer of 2012 and is a 14-inch laptop. Its base-price at release is $USD999 and it can be customized up to the third generation Intel Core i7. It is equipped with a 2012 NVIDIA GT 630M (on higher models) or Intel HD graphics 4000 (on the base model), and can be customized with up to 8 GiB of DDR3 memory. The computer can either have a 500 GB 7200 RPM SATA hard drive, or a 256 GB SSD. This laptop is an ultrabook featuring a long battery life (claimed to be 9hours) and a sleek aluminium unibody shell.
XPS 15
XPS 15 (L501X/L502X, October 2010 )
The XPS 15 was released in October 2010 and is a 15.6-inch laptop. Its base-price at release is $849 and it can be customized up to the Intel Core i7. It is equipped with a 2010 NVIDIA GT 435M or 420M video card, and can be customized with up to 8 GiB of DDR3 memory. This made it a good gaming laptop for its time. The base model comes with 500 GB 7200 rpm SATA hard drive, but options include a 640 GB 7200 RPM SATA hard drive, or a 256 GiB SSD. It also contains a 16x DVD/Blu-ray reader/burner, and a 9-in-1 media card reader. The screen resolution is either 1366×768 or 1920×1080. The Nvidia graphics card used in Dell 15 (L501x) turns off or on automatically for specific applications demanding dedicated graphics. It has integrated JBL 2.1 Speakers + Waves MaxxAudio enhancement. It is equipped with 2 MP webcam. It has two USB 3.0 ports and one eSATAp port. The following year the XPS 15 (L502x) had both its processor and graphics card upgraded, with the processor being upgraded from the Arrandale to the Sandy Bridge chipset and the graphics upgraded to either a Nvidia 525M or 540M with 1 or 2 GiB of RAM respectively.
XPS 15 (L521X, Summer 2012)
The Dell XPS 15 L521X was first released in Summer 2012. Includes a 15.6-inch screen (1920x1080 Corning Gorilla Glass FHD WLED with TrueLife) and was much thinner than its predecessor. Its design was similar to Dell XPS 13 L321X and Dell XPS 14 L421X: the edges are rounded and the bottom is made of carbon fiber, with a gentle silicone surface treatment. It features Intel HM77 Express Chipset with Intel Core i5/i7 (3rd generation, up to i7-3632QM) CPU, from 4 to 16 GiB replaceable DDR3 memory (2 slots), GeForce GT630M / GT640M with 1 GiB / 2 GiB of GDDR5 and one mSATA mini card slot paired with classic 2.5 inch SATA slot.
XPS 15 (9530, October 2013)
The Dell XPS 15 Touch Screen laptop (9530, using Haswell) was first released in October 2013, is a high-end notebook. It was the fourth generation XPS 15, which has taken many of the design elements of the Ivy Bridge Edition XPS 15 but fixes the cooling/throttling, adds a Haswell CPU and an updated GeForce GT 750M, no optical drive, and a relatively high-resolution 3200×1800 display. The XPS 15 shipped with Windows 8.1. Worth mention is that there are three different models of the new XPS 15 available right now. The base model XPS 15 comes with a 1920×1080 touchscreen display (it is unclear if this is a TN panel or not), 500 GB HDD with 32 GiB msata SSD cache, dual-core i5-4200H CPU, 8 GiB RAM, integrated HD 4400 Graphics, and a 61Wh battery. A mid-range model has a quad-core i7-4702HQ CPU, 3200×1800 PPS (similar to IPS) touchscreen, 16 GiB RAM, GT 750M GDDR5 GPU, a 1 TB HDD with 32 GiB SSD cache, and a 61 Wh battery. The high-end edition is mostly the same as the mid-range model but replaces the HDD with a 512 GB mSATA SSD and adds a larger 91 Wh battery in place of the 2.5" drive. There is also higher resolution 4k 3840x2160, slightly better CPU - i7-4712HQ.
The 9530 has been criticized for the instability of 802.11ac Wi-Fi. Currently this model has an issue with respect to an annoying electrical/hissing noise called 'Coil Whine'.
XPS 15 (9550, October 2015)
On October 8, 2015, Dell refreshed the XPS 15 (9550) with the Skylake microarchitecture. A 15.6-inch UltraSharp™ InfinityEdge display is included to fit into the body of a relatively small notebook that responds well to standard Windows 8.1 swipes and commands. Edge-to-edge Gorilla Glass NBT covers the screen. The chiclet-keys of backlight keyboard are matte black and feature a slightly concave surface area. This redesigned model offers PCIe SSDs up to 1 TB, up to 32 GiB of DDR4 RAM through two SODIMM slots, GeForce GTX 960M with 2 GiB GDDR5, a 3×3 802.11ac Wi-Fi card, and featuring Thunderbolt 3 through Type-C, though this port is only able to achieve Thunderbolt 2 speeds.
XPS 15 (9560, Early 2017)
A slightly updated model 9560 was released in February 2017. The new model aligned with the previous model 9550 in terms of dimension and exterior ports, but inside the CPU and GPU were upgraded to Kaby Lake and GTX 1050, respectively. This model suffered from many thermal issues at high work loads, causing the computer to not be able to use all of its power.
XPS 15 2-in-1 (9575, Early 2018)
The XPS 15 2-in-1 (9575) is similar to the XPS 15 (9560) but with a flexible hinge allowing it to fold over into tablet mode. This convertible laptop features the 8th Generation Intel mobile processors with AMD GPUs integrated into the chip package. It was announced at CES 2018. This XPS 15 utilizes LPDDR3 RAM, which is soldered and not upgradable.
XPS 15 (9570, May 2018)
The XPS 15 (9570) is the updated version of the XPS 15 (9560) model. This new model brings options for the new Coffee Lake quad-core Core i5, hexa-core Core i7 and Core i9 processors, with the option for the latter, the eight-core Core i9-8950HK, being clocked at 2.9 GHz, with a boost clock of 4.8 GHz and the ability to be overclocked as well. This new model also comes with an option for the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050Ti graphics card, and has the optional fingerprint scanner integrated into the power button. The webcam placement has also been shifted to be underneath the DELL logo on the bottom of the display. The non-touch Full HD variant also now offers 100% sRGB color space coverage on its IPS display, and its Thunderbolt 3 port now supports all four PCIe lanes, unlike the previous models, which only had support for two lanes.
XPS 15 (7590, 2019)
The XPS 15 (7590) was released with an OLED display option (the UltraSharp 4K Ultra HD (3840 x 2160)). It features 9th Gen Intel Core processors (up to Core i9-9980HK), Wi-Fi 6 technology, and optional NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 GPU. It supports up to 64 GiB of memory with a bandwidth of 2666 MHz, as well as 2 TB PCIe SSD storage. Launched on 27 June.
As of 2019, Dell has revamped their naming code system.
7xxx= 7 series being the most premium offer.
5xxx= 5 series being the premium offer after 7xxx series.
XPS 15 (9500, 2020)
The biggest changes in XPS 15 (2020) are that Dell goes all USB-C and 16:10 display aspect ratio. The XPS 15 also got a smaller and higher resolution webcam of 720p, and more powerful speakers that aim up out of the laptop. It also got updated inside, including 10th Gen Intel Comet Lake CPU,
up to 64 GiB DDR4 RAM, up to 2 TB PCIe3 x4 SSD storage, Intel UHD Graphics + Nvidia GTX 1650 Ti GPU. DELL also offers two types of 15.6-inch Infinity Edge display (1920 x 1200 or 3840 x 2400), and two different capacity batteries (56 Wh or 86 Wh). Size: 13.57 x 9 x 0.7 inches, Weight: 4 pounds (non-touch, 56Whr battery), 4.5 pounds (touch, 86Whr battery). That makes it thinner and lighter than the previous version.
XPS 15 (9510, 2021)
The 2021 XPS 15 comes equipped with up to the Intel’s 11th Gen Tiger Lake Core i9-11900H and 3050 Ti. It features up to 64GB of DDR4-3200 and up to 4TB of m.2 SSD storage, but it can be upgraded to hold a maximum of two 4TB SSDs. The XPS 15 offers display options for either a 4K UHD+ (3840x2400) InfinityEdge touch display with a VESA DisplayHDR400 certification, or FHD (1920 x 1200) panels, plus a 3.5K (3456 x 2160) InfinityEdge OLED touch display option. Ports have also been upgraded, the XPS 15 offers two Thunderbolt 4 ports and a regular USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C port.
Comparison
XPS 15z
XPS 15z (L511Z)
The XPS 15z was released in May 2011 and is a 15.6-inch laptop. It is branded as the thinnest 15 inch PC on the market. It is noted for having a very similar design to the current generation Apple Macbook Pro computer, and even sported a silver aluminum casing. Its base-price at release is US$999 (A$1399) and it can be customized up to the dual-core Intel Core i7. it is equipped with a NVIDIA GeForce GT 525M 1 GiB video card (Australian version is equipped with 2 GiB video RAM), and can be customized up to 8 GiB of DDR3 memory. The computer can either have a 750 GB 7200 RPM hard drive or a 256 GB solid state drive. It also contains a 8x slot-loading CD/DVD reader/burner. The American version has a base screen resolution of 1366×768, while the Australian release is 1920×1080 pixels. On 6 September 2011, Dell upgraded the choices for the optional extra Core i5 and i7 processors. Throughout its production, the XPS 15z was plagued with DCP latency related sound spikes due to faulty network drivers provided by Dell. The solution was to use third party drivers, as discovered by a community of forum users. Another chronic issue was the lower right corner of the LCD going dim at random times. Replacement of the entire LCD assembly would only temporarily solve this problem. Production of the XPS 15z ceased in the first half of 2012, but its design was carried on by the XPS 14z.
XPS 17
XPS 17 (L701X)
The Dell XPS 17, released in October 2010, was a desktop replacement laptop in the XPS Laptop line. It was priced at $949 for the base configuration, but can be customized heavily. Options include a processor upgrade up to the new Intel Core i7-840QM (Nehalem-based), an Nvidia GeForce GT 555 3 GiB graphics card, up to 16 GiB of DDR3 RAM memory, 1.28 TB Hard Drive space (2×0.64 TB @ 7200 RPM), a 17.3-inch 1600×900 resolution screen, and a Blu-ray Disc drive. It also has an LCD upgrade of 1920×1080 (Full HD) and 3D display kit.
XPS 17 (L702X)
Same as L701X, except this model contains the second-generation Intel Core i7 (Sandy Bridge-based) processors and capability for Full HD Display and Full HD 3D Display. Also, the discrete graphics have been improved to Nvidia GeForce GT 550M 1 GiB or GT 555M 3 GiB graphics card for Full HD 3D Display; Can be customized with up to 16 GiB of DDR3 RAM (8 GiB × 2) or 32 GiB (4 slots @ 8 GiB) of RAM with the 3D model only Model: HMT41GS6MFR8C (Hynix) Issues have been reported with the charging port and the charger falling out with the only slight movements.
XPS 17 (9700, 2020)
On May 14, 2020, Dell reintroduced a new XPS 17, with thinner bezels and new thermal designs. It offers Intel's latest 10th Gen Core i9 45 W processors, 64 GiB of RAM, and 2 TB of storage.
XPS 17 (9710, 2021)
In May 2021 Dell introduced an updated XPS 17. It now offers Intel's latest 11th Gen Core i5, i7, i9 processors.
XPS M1730
The XPS M1730 was announced on October 5, 2007 as the newest 17-inch XPS laptop computer. Compared to its predecessor, the XPS M1710, the model M1730 was physically redesigned with a completely new chassis available in a grey, white, blue, or red. Like the M1710, the M1730 offered unique user- and software-changeable LED lighting in the touchpad, fan outlets/inlets, as well as the lid and speaker grilles. Also like its predecessor, it featured a 17-inch widescreen. From the components angle, it supported overclockable Intel Core 2 Extreme processors (2.8 GHz to 3.4 GHz overclocked via the X7900 or X9000 Processor), dual NVIDIA GeForce 9800M GTX video cards in SLI, up to two 7200 RPM SATA hard drives available in RAID, and up to 8 GiB DDR2 SDRAM . A Blu-ray Disc Drive was an option in some models. New with this latest version was a built in optional AGEIA physics card to enable PhysX enhanced titles take advantage of hardware accelerated physics, the option for 64 GB solid state drives, a back lit keyboard including a number pad, and a Logitech gaming LCD display above the keyboard.
Criticism
The M1730 has been criticized for its increase in weight and size compared to previous models, and for having only marginal performance gains in select games. The last complaint is likely due to a late Nvidia release of a mobile version of the 8800M video card which Dell added to the list of options following the release of the M1730.
Upgrades
Following the initial release of the M1730, the option to have dual 8800M GTX graphics cards in SLI was made available. This is said to have a 174% power increase (as quoted by Dell) over the dual 8700M GTs in SLI which were previously the highest available option. More recently an option to have dual 9800M GT and 9800M GTX graphics cards in SLI has been added to the line.
The 9800M GTX SLI is currently the highest supported graphics card with 1 GiB GDDR3 VRAM for the M1730, as opposed to the 9800M GT SLI and 8800M GTX SLI only with 512 MB of available Video Memory and slightly higher amount of stream processors. Thus, performs slightly better than the 9800M GT and 8800M GTX cards. The availability of the 9800M GTX SLI is rare, and may only be purchased in limited Dell direct outlets and on eBay. And in most cases, they are either out of stock, not on sale any longer or selling the previous 9800M GT and 8800M GTX graphics cards.
XPS M1530
This 15.4-inch laptop, released on November 28, 2007, features the Santa Rosa platform. The XPS M1530 is almost identical in design to the XPS M1330 except that it has 4 different colors (blue, black, pink and red) and it is a bit thicker and heavier with a 15.4-inch CCFL or LED screen. It can be configured with Intel Core 2 Duo mobile processors up to T7800 (2.6 GHz) / T9500 (2.6 GHz, 6 MiB L2 cache) / X9000 (2.8 GHz), up to 8 GiB DDR2 SDRAM at 667 MHz, up to 320 or 500 GB 5400 rpm or with faster 160, 240 or 320 GB 7200 rpm hard drive or an optional 128 GB SSD, and can be configured with a 128 MiB DDR2 Geforce 8400GS or 256 MiB DDR3 8600M GT GPU. Wireless draft-n is also available (802.11n). The XPS M1530 includes a biometric fingerprint reader and a 2 MP webcam. Another option for this laptop is a glossy 1920×1200 display, even though it is 9 inches smaller than Dell's 24 inch monitor. The system weight starts at 2.62 kg (5.78 lbs) and is dependent upon configuration. The laptop contains an internal slot for a Dell mobile broadband card.
XPS M1530 is no longer available for purchase on Dell's website as of early August 2009. Dell became aware that the problem was limited to Nvidia chip production, the BIOS was updated to A12 which improves thermal control but does not prevent it from reoccurring. The problem associated with Nvidia GPU's was the chip material used could not stand high temperatures.
XPS M1330
This 13.3-inch high-end laptop, released on June 26, 2007, features the Santa Rosa platform. This 13.3-inch screen either with CCFL or WLED; the WLED-backlit version has a 0.3 MP camera, as opposed to the 2 MP camera with the CCFL screen, but the model with WLED screen is thinner and brighter than the previous XPS 1210 version. Moreover, XPS 1330 can also feature a biometric fingerprint reader, usually found in business class laptops like the Latitude series. The XPS M1330 also offers the NVIDIA GeForce Go 8400M GS graphics card as an option. Originally, it could only be configured with Intel Core 2 Duo mobile processors up to T7700 (2.4 GHz), but could later be configured with processors up to the Intel Core 2 Duo T9500. Noted for its light weight of only 1.8 kg, the XPS M1330 is also available in the product red line along with other Dell computers.
XPS M1330 is no longer available for purchase on Dell's USA website as of early August 2009. It has been replaced by the M1340 (Studio XPS 13).
Problems
The most reported issue with M1330 laptops has been overheating. Dell became aware of the problem and found that it was limited to Nvidia chip production G84- and G86-GPU's, as a result, the BIOS was updated to A12, which improves thermal control but does not prevent it from reoccurring. The problem associated with Nvidia GPU's was the chip material used could not stand high temperatures. This problem was exacerbated by poor thermal contact between the chip and the heat pipe (the gap is too big). Some people have overcome the graphics chip over-heating problem by fashioning a heat sink using a copper plate and thermal paste to fill the gap between the heat pipe and the graphics chip.
Also, there have been several cases reported involving M1330 laptops to be cosmetically defective in manufacture, such as loose hinge covers and unusually and uneven gaps between plastic parts, as well as customer complaints concerning "CPU whine".
Studio XPS 13 (M1340)
Similar to the Studio XPS 16 but trimmed down into a 13.3-inch 720p 16:10 aspect ratio screen, it has an illuminated QWERTY keyboard and includes leather accents on the lid. Its full body is piano black and silver.
The Studio XPS graphics offerings are currently the integrated Nvidia 9400M G (same as used in MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBooks) and the more powerful Nvidia GeForce 9500M GE (which is composed of an integrated GeForce 9400M G and discrete GeForce 9200M GS with 256 MB of GDDR3 memory). When configured with the 9500M GE you are able to switch between the 9400M G running standalone and the 9400M G with the 9200M GS in Windows Vista, without logging out and back in like you must with Apple products due to the availability of Hybrid SLI. Although this model is still available in Europe with the 512 MB nVidia GeForce 210M graphics card and the NVIDIA GeForce MCP79MX Chipset.
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo P7350, P8600, P8700, P8800, P9500, P9600 or P9700.
Memory:3, 4, 6, or 8 GiB of shared dual channel DDR3 SDRAM @ 1066 MHz.
Chipset: Nvidia 730i
Graphics: integrated Nvidia GeForce 9400M G with 256 MB of graphics memory, or integrated 9400M + discrete GeForce 9200M (referred to officially as a "9500M").
Display: 13.3" Edge-to-Edge with CCFL-backlit, 1280×800 resolution or 13.3" Edge-to-Edge with LED-backlit, 1280×800 resolution and TrueLife.
Storage: 1 x SATA (250 GB, 320 GB or 500 GB HDD at 7200 RPM or 256 GB Solid State Drive)
Optical Drive: 8X slot-load dual-layer DVD+/-RW drive or 2X tray-load Blu-ray Disc Combo drive.
Battery: 6-cell (56 Wh) or 6-cell (56 Wh) w/additional 9-cell (85 Wh) Lithium-ion battery.
Camera: 1.3 MP or 2 MP webcam.
Wi-Fi Card: Dell Wireless 1510 802.11a/b/g/draft/n half-mini card.
Bluetooth: Dell Wireless Bluetooth Internal 370 (2.1 EDR).
I/O ports: 1 USB 2.0 port, 1 USB/eSATA Combo port, 1 Gigabit Ethernet port, 1 VGA output, 1 HDMI output, 1 DisplayPort output, 2 headphone jack, 1 microphone jack, 1 54 mm Express Card slot, 1 8-in-1 memory card reader, 1 IR receiver and 1 power adapter connecter.
XPS M1340 is no longer available for purchase on Dell's USA website as of March 2010. No replacement 13-inch Studio XPS has been announced.
Studio XPS 16
Studio XPS 16 (M1640)
Released early January 2009, it features a 15.6-inch 720p or a 16.0-inch 1080p 16:9 aspect ratio screen. It is equipped with either a 512 MiB ATI Radeon HD 3670 or 1024 MiB ATI Radeon HD 4670 graphics card, an Intel Core 2 Duo processor, a DVD+/- RW or a Blu-ray ROM combo drive, and Windows Vista or Windows 7. It has an illuminated QWERTY keyboard and leather accents on the lid are optional. Its full body is onyx black and silver.
Studio XPS 16 (M1645)
Same as above, featuring a quad core Intel Core i7 Clarksfield processor on an intel PM55 chipset mainboard and a 1 GB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4670 or 5730. Some of these XPS systems were found to have throttling issues when demanding applications like games were run on them. Dell was able to provide a fix for the issue with the help of community input. The fix involved bios updates and a more powerful AC adapter. Other laptops were also found to suffer from the same throttling issue.
Studio XPS 16 (M1647)
Same as above, featuring a dual core Intel Core i5 or Intel Core i7 Clarksfield processor. The M1647 motherboard still uses the Intel PM55 chipset (as the M1645) but overall the motherboard uses less power than its predecessor.
Gen 3
XPS M2010
The XPS M2010 was announced on May 31, 2006 as a top-of-the-line briefcase-styled mobile desktop with a 20.1-inch widescreen with a WSXGA+ resolution and TrueLife. The outside of the case had a leather-like appearance. The XPS M2010 used an ATI Mobility Radeon X1800 graphics with 256 MiB of graphics memory and had support for dual hard drives. The laptop could be customized with an Intel Core 2 Duo T2500, T5600, T7400 or T7600 and 1 GiB, 2 GiB or 4 GiB of DDR2 SDRAM @ 667 MHz (Although machine can take 2x2 GiB @ 677 MHz RAM, it will only operate at 3.25 GiB @ 500 MHz due to chipset limitation as well as FSB limitation). The laptop expanded to a full desktop set, including a detachable bluetooth keyboard, bluetooth mouse, and radio-frequency Media Center remote. It was praised for the high quality sound system which included 8 separate ¾" speakers below the screen and a 1¾" subwoofer on the bottom of the machine, ported to the right hand side. While the computer could be folded and carried as a briefcase with its built-in carrying handle, at 18.3 lb it was generally considered too heavy to be a true desktop replacement.
XPS M1710
The XPS M1710 was announced on April 18, 2006 as a higher-end 17-inch WUXGA TrueLife widescreen XPS desktop replacement available in black or red. The system was marketed to gamers, sharing a chassis design and many components with the lower end Inspiron E1705/9400 and the Precision M90 mobile workstation. The base design featured an Intel Core Duo processor, NVIDIA GeForce Go 7900GS or 7900 GTX, 7200 RPM SATA hard drive, DDR2 SDRAM, a magnesium alloy case including a 1 inch subwoofer complimenting the two treble heavy stereo speakers. User configurable multicolor LED lighting was present in the touchpad, fans, speakers and lid with the ability to have them change color/intensity via Dell QuickSet software or via QuickSet plugins to music with bass giving more red-shifted changes and treble more blue-shifted (an SDK developer kit for custom dynamic link libraries could be obtained for integration to many system processes and even games). Technical support was segregated for the XPS line with access to an "exclusive" XPS-branded segment of DELL's business support division. The unit was built on the foundation of a Precision M90 chassis. Later models offered the Core 2 Duo processor, the Nvidia GeForce 7950GTX GPU, and optional Blu-ray and/or an unlocked Core 2 Duo processor, which could be overclocked "officially" to 3.16 GHz, although at least 3.5Ghz has been reported as possible. As the mainboard used the Intel 945 chipset, the XPS M1710 could not address more than 3.25 GiB of RAM though Dell specified "up to 4 GB RAM". This computer was replaced by the XPS M1730. The chipset although capable of AHCI operation was never implemented by Dell, leaving any future SATA hard drive upgrade paths crippled to IDE legacy operation, protocols, and bandwidth. Further evidence of untapped capacity involves the use of replacing the video cards with a Dell Precision Quadro FX 1600M (essentially an 8700M GT with comparable performance to the flagship DX9 7950 Go GTX card), allowing for DirectX 10 functionality in a laptop not designed to do so (with the card being unidentified, but the LCD verified by the BIOS, leaving argument that some design foresight was in place for at least a path to using the Quadro FX 1600 and even FX 3600M in this machine in a BIOS revision).
Note that there are severe overheating problems with the graphics card in this model., and just like the Precision M90, GPU failures due to cracking in the type of solder used on the Nvidia chipsets to bind them to the substrate were common, and settled via a class-action lawsuit with Nvidia in later years.
XPS M1210
A high performance ultra-portable (12.1-inch screen) notebook featuring a new case design, Intel Core Duo processor technology, an optional dedicated NVIDIA GeForce 7400 Go video card and an optional integrated web camera (1.3 megapixel). The M1210 also has optional WWAN (wireless wide area networking) features supporting 3G broadband services. With the standard battery, the laptop weights 1.9 kilograms. Unlike other 12-inch notebook computers, the M1210 features a built-in optical drive rather than an external. This model was discontinued as of July 31, 2007.
Gen 2
Inspiron XPS Gen 2/XPS M170 – This successor to the Inspiron XPS, had replaced the desktop Pentium 4 with a Pentium M processor, which provided almost the same level of performance as the desktop Pentium 4 and reduced the weight from 9.06 lb to 8.6 lb. It featured a 17-inch widescreen display at the same resolution as the first generation. Due to the use of a mobile processor, this laptop was thinner and lighter than most other high performance gaming notebooks of its time. It has a design very similar to the XPS M1710. It was initially given the Nvidia GeForce 256 MiB 6800 Ultra Go GPU which was a Dell exclusive at the time. The laptop was rebranded as XPS M170 soon after the GeForce Go 7800 GTX was incorporated. The Inspiron 9300 was based on it, being substantially the same laptop with an ATI Mobility Radeon X300 in the base model.
XPS M140 – The lower end model XPS computer that has a chassis identical to a Dell Inspiron E1405 laptop. This model features a choice of several Intel mobile processors, 14.1-inch widescreen and between 512 MiB to 2 GiB of RAM. This model being more media-oriented than gaming currently does not feature a dedicated graphics card. This model has been replaced by the E1405, a 14.1-inch laptop physically similar the M140. It features the newer Intel Core Duo processors and Intel's 945 chipset. It is no longer classified as an XPS laptop, however.
Gen 1
Inspiron XPS – The first XPS laptop, which was a rebranded Inspiron 9100, was a very heavy desktop-replacement laptop starting at 9.06 pounds without power supply (which added an additional 2.5 pounds). This was because it was offered with either a 3.4 GHz desktop Pentium 4 HT "Prescott" processor, or the 3.4 GHz "Gallatin" Pentium 4 Extreme Edition processor at the same clock speed, which gave off tremendous amounts of heat due to their high clock speeds and inefficient microarchitecture, despite a very large copper-based heatsink that spanned the width of the unit with three fans. Other features included a 1920×1200 15.4-inch LCD, and subwoofer integrated into the bottom of the battery casing, with the 12-cell battery (the 16-cell battery does not include a subwoofer.) Earlier models came with an ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 with 128 MB of memory, and later models with the Mobility Radeon 9800 with 256 MB of memory. The Mobility Radeon 9800 was based on the R420 core, the same as early ATI Radeon X700 and X800 desktop graphics cards, but with half the pixel pipelines disconnected.
A popular modification to the GPU was to bridge two traces in the top right corner of the PCB surrounding the exposed core with a conductive pen to unlock these pipelines. This could only be done on cores made before week 43 of 2004. Dell promised graphics card upgradeability, but only delivered the arguably small 9700 to 9800 step for 9700 owners (at a rather steep $399 price tag, including technician to install it), and never delivered the promised upgrade to the 9800 owners.
This model also suffers from a whine on the headphone and microphone jacks that are located on the left of the unit. This is because of shared space with the leftmost fan, and the spinning of said fan causes interference. There is no known fix than to otherwise use a USB, FireWire/1394 or PCMCIA-based audio device or card for sound output.
XPS 10
The XPS 10 was an ARM-based convertible tablet with a keyboard stand, similar to Microsoft's Surface RT. The tablet, which ran Windows RT, was unveiled on August 30, 2012 and discontinued in September 2013.
Special Editions
Dell has introduced a handful of "speciality" models which were based upon particular models in the XPS series, but had unique characteristics. These included custom cases and higher-performance parts (processors, video cards, etc.). Some of these models are considerably rare because they were produced in limited quantities and were either extremely expensive or give-away only (as was the case of the XPS X-Men Edition, see below).
XPS 600 Renegade
The first example of a special edition in Dell's XPS series was the XPS 600 Renegade released in early 2006, which included an Intel Pentium D Extreme Edition 965 processor that was overclocked at the factory from 3.73 GHz to 4.26 GHz. Despite the overclock, Dell honored Intel's warranty for the processor. The case featured an air-brush paint job completed by Mike Lavallee. Most notably, the machine was the first commercially available system to feature a Quad-SLI configuration, with four custom NVIDIA GeForce 7900GTX graphics cards with 512 MiB of memory. It also included a Western Digital hard drive spinning at 10,000 RPM. The XPS 600 Renegade had an introduction price of $9,930.
XPS X-Men Give Away
In 2007 Dell announced a special X-Men version XPS desktop system that was going to be given away. The system had a value of around $10,000 and featured a one-of-a-kind quad NVIDIA video cards and Intel Pentium 965 Extreme Edition processor. The case resembled a standard XPS 710 series with X-Men artwork on the side.
W.O.W. M1730
At CES in 2008, Dell announced a World of Warcraft edition of the M1730 laptop. This version of the M1730 cost around $4,500 and featured an overclockable Intel Extreme Edition Core 2 Duo processor, NVIDIA SLI DX10 graphics cards, PhysX card, with a Full HD 17-inch widescreen. It also came pre-loaded with World of Warcraft and Burning Crusade expansion, as well as other limited edition merchandise including a custom backpack.
(PRODUCT)RED
In March 2008, Dell introduced the XPS RED as a part of the (PRODUCT)RED line of products. A portion of the profits made on this special edition are being put towards research for a cure for the AIDS virus.
Awards
The Dell XPS 13 and 15 laptops won the COMPUTEX d&i awards in 2016
Dell XPS 15 (9500): Best in Class, Rated 5/5
"The Dell XPS 15 is easily the best 15-inch laptop on the market, and in a lot of ways it's the best laptop period." — TechRadar
Dell XPS 17 (9700): Editor's Choice, Rated 4.5/5
"If you were waiting for a bigger screen with this design, you’re finally getting one (and getting the performance to match)." — Tom's Hardware
Dell XPS 15 7590: The best laptops for 2020
"The XPS 15 is easily the best all-around 15-inch laptop on the market today, making it the ultimate video-editing laptop too." — Digital Trends
References
External links
Official Dell XPS Website
Official Dell E3 Product Page (Requires Flash)
Dell M2010 US Business configurator – may expire/change
Dell UK store configurator; different options available. May expire/change
Dell XPS Generation 2 FAQ. Subject to change
Service manuals
Dell M1730
Dell M2010
Dell XPS 7590 Service manual
XPS 15 9500 Service Manual
Dell XPS M1730 product details
Dell XPS M1330 product Details
XPS
XPS
Consumer electronics brands
Convertible laptops
Ultrabooks
Computer-related introductions in 2008
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale%20doctrine
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First-sale doctrine
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The first-sale doctrine (also sometimes referred to as the "right of first sale" or the "first sale rule") is an American legal concept that limits the rights of an intellectual property owner to control resale of products embodying its intellectual property. The doctrine enables the distribution chain of copyrighted products, library lending, giving, video rentals and secondary markets for copyrighted works (for example, enabling individuals to sell their legally purchased books or CDs to others). In trademark law, this same doctrine enables reselling of trademarked products after the trademark holder puts the products on the market. In the case of patented products, the doctrine allows resale of patented products without any control from the patent holder. The first sale doctrine does not apply to patented processes, which are instead governed by the patent exhaustion doctrine.
Overview of copyright law application
Copyright law grants a copyright owner an exclusive right "to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending". 17 U.S.C. 106(3). This is called a "distribution right" and differs from the copyright owner's "reproduction right" which involves making copies of the copyrighted works. Rather than the right to copy, the distribution right involves the right to transfer physical copies or phonorecords (i.e., recorded music) of the copyrighted work. For example, the distribution right could be infringed when a retailer acquires and sells to the public unlawfully made audio or video tapes. Although the retailer may not have copied the work in any way and may not have known that the tapes were made unlawfully, they nevertheless infringe the distribution right by the sale. The distribution right allows the copyright owner to seek redress from any member in the chain of distribution.
The first-sale doctrine creates a basic exception to the copyright holder's distribution right. Once the work is lawfully sold or even transferred gratuitously, the copyright owner's interest in the material object in which the copyrighted work is embodied is exhausted. The owner of the material object can then dispose of it as they see fit. Thus, one who buys a copy of a book is entitled to resell it, rent it, give it away, or destroy it. However, the owner of the copy of the book will not be able to make new copies of the book because the first-sale doctrine does not limit the restrictions allowed by the copyright owner's reproduction right. The rationale of the doctrine is to prevent the copyright owner from restraining the free alienability of goods. Without the doctrine, a possessor of a copy of a copyrighted work would have to negotiate with the copyright owner every time they wished to dispose of their copy. After the initial transfer of ownership of a legal copy of a copyrighted work, the first-sale doctrine eliminates the copyright holder's right to control ownership of that specific copy.
The doctrine was first recognized by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1908 (see Bobbs-Merrill Co. v. Straus) and subsequently codified in the Copyright Act of 1908. In the Bobbs-Merrill case, the publisher, Bobbs-Merrill, had inserted a notice in its books that any retail sale at a price under $1.00 would constitute an infringement of its copyright. The defendants, who owned Macy's department store, disregarded the notice and sold the books at a lower price without Bobbs-Merrill's consent. The Supreme Court held that the exclusive statutory right to "vend" applied only to the first sale of the copyrighted work.
Today, this rule of law is codified in 17 U.S.C. § 109(a), which provides:
"Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106 (3), the owner of a particular copy or phonorecord lawfully made under this title, or any person authorized by such owner, is entitled, without the authority of the copyright owner, to sell or otherwise dispose of the possession of that copy or phonorecord."
The elements of the first sale doctrine can be summarized as follows: (1) the copy was lawfully made with the authorization of the copyright owner; (2) ownership of the copy was initially transferred under the copyright owner's authority; (3) the defendant is a lawful owner of the copy in question; and (4) the defendant's use implicates the distribution right only; not the reproduction or some other right given to the copyright owner.
Limitations
The first sale doctrine only limits the distribution rights of copyright holders. This principle sometimes clashes with the holder's other rights, such as the right of reproduction and derivative work rights. For example, in Lee v. A.R.T. Co., the defendant bought plaintiff's artworks in the form of notecards and then mounted them on ceramic tiles, covering the artworks with transparent epoxy resin. Despite plaintiff's assertion of violation of his right to prepare derivative works, the 7th Circuit held that the derivative work right was not violated and that defendant's sale of the tiles was protected under the first sale doctrine. However, based on very similar facts, the 9th Circuit in Mirage Editions, Inc. v. Albuquerque A.R.T. Company held that plaintiff's right to prepare derivative works was infringed and that the first sale doctrine did not protect the defendant under such circumstances.
Application to digital copies
The first-sale doctrine does not neatly fit transfers of copies of digital works because an actual transfer does not actually happen – instead, the recipient receives a new copy of the work while, at the same time, the sender has the original copy (unless that copy is deleted, either automatically or manually). For example, this exact issue played out in Capitol Records, LLC v. ReDigi Inc., a case involving an online marketplace for pre-owned digital music.
E-books have the same issue. Because the first sale doctrine does not apply to electronic books, libraries cannot freely lend e-books indefinitely after purchase. Instead, electronic book publishers came up with business models to sell the subscriptions to the license of the text. This results in e-book publishers placing restrictions on the number of times an e-book can circulate and/or the amount of time a book is within a collection before a library's license expires, then the book no longer belongs to them.
The question is whether the first-sale doctrine should be retooled to reflect the realities of the digital age. Physical copies degrade over time, whereas digital information may not. Works in digital format can be reproduced without any flaws and can be disseminated worldwide without much difficulty. Thus, applying the first sale doctrine to digital copies affects the market for the original to a greater degree than transfers of physical copies. The U.S. Copyright Office stated that "[t]he tangible nature of a copy is a defining element of the first sale doctrine and critical to its rationale."
The Court of Justice of the European Union ruled, on July 3, 2012, that it is indeed permissible to resell software licenses even if the digital good has been downloaded directly from the Internet, and that the first sale doctrine applied whenever software was originally sold to a customer for an unlimited amount of time, as such sale involves a transfer of ownership, thus prohibiting any software maker from preventing the resale of their software by any of their legitimate owners. The court requires that the previous owner must no longer be able to use the licensed software after the resale, but finds that the practical difficulties in enforcing this clause should not be an obstacle to authorizing resale, as they are also present for software which can be installed from physical supports, where the first-sale doctrine is in force. The ruling applies to the European Union, but could indirectly find its way to North America; moreover the situation could entice publishers to offer platforms for a secondary market. In a notable case, the High Court of Paris found against Valve for not allowing the resale of games from the Steam digital storefront, requiring Valve to comply with the European Union Directives of first-sale doctrine within three months, pending appeals.
Ownership requirement
For the first sale doctrine to apply, lawful ownership of the copy or phonorecord is required. As §109(d) prescribes, first sale doctrine does not apply if the possession of the copy is "by rental, lease, loan, or otherwise without acquiring ownership of it".
Some software and digital content publishers claim in their end-user license agreements (EULA) that their software or content is licensed, not sold, and thus the first sale doctrine does not apply to their works. These publishers have had some success in contracting around first sale doctrine through various clickwrap, shrink wrap, and other license agreements. For example, if someone buys MP3 songs from Amazon.com, the MP3 files are merely licensed to them and hence they may not be able to resell those MP3 files. However, MP3 songs bought through iTunes Store may be characterized as "sales" because of Apple's language in its EULA and hence they may be resellable, if other requirements of first sale doctrine are met.
Courts have struggled and taken dramatically different approaches to sort out when only a license was granted to the end user as compared to ownership. Most of these cases involved software-licensing agreements. In general, courts look beneath the surface of the agreements to conclude whether the agreements create a licensing relationship or if they amount to, in substance, sales subject to first sale doctrine under §109(a). Thus, specifying that the agreement grants only a "license" is necessary to create the licensing relationship, but not sufficient. Other terms of the agreement should be consistent with such a licensing relationship.
In Vernor v. Autodesk, Inc. the 9th Circuit created a three-factor test to decide whether a particular software licensing agreement is successful in creating a licensing relationship with the end user. The factors include: 1) whether a copyright owner specifies that a user is granted a license; 2) whether the copyright owner significantly restricts the user's ability to transfer the software to others; and 3) whether the copyright owner imposes notable use restrictions on the software. In Vernor, Autodesk's license agreement specified that it retains title to the software and the user is only granted a non-exclusive license. The agreement also had restrictions against modifying, translating, or reverse-engineering the software, or removing any proprietary marks from the software packaging or documentation. The agreement also specified that software could not be transferred or leased without Autodesk's written consent, and could not be transferred outside the Western Hemisphere. Based on these facts, the 9th Circuit held that the user is only a licensee of Autodesk's software, not an owner and hence the user could not resell the software on eBay without Autodesk's permission.
However, the same 9th Circuit panel that decided Vernor v. Autodesk, refused to apply Vernor three-factor test in UMG v. Augusto to a purported licensing agreement created when UMG sent unsolicited promotional CDs to music critics. The promotional CDs' packaging contained the language: "This CD is the property of the record company and is licensed to the intended recipient for personal use only. Acceptance of this CD shall constitute an agreement to comply with the terms of the license. Resale or transfer of possession is not allowed and may be punishable under federal and state laws." Augusto tried to sell these CDs on eBay and UMG argued that first sale doctrine did not apply since the CDs were not sold and only a licensing relationship was created. However the court held that first sale doctrine applies when a copy is given away and that recipients of the promotional CDs did not accept the terms of the license agreement by merely not sending back the unsolicited CDs.
In the case UsedSoft v Oracle, the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that the sale of a software product, either through a physical support or download, constituted a transfer of ownership in EU law, thus the first sale doctrine applies; the ruling thereby breaks the "licensed, not sold" legal theory, but leaves open numerous questions.
Importation of copies
Section 602(a)(1) of the US copyright statute states that "importation into the United States, without the authority of the owner of copyright under this title, of copies or phonorecords of a work that have been acquired outside the United States is an infringement of the exclusive right to distribute copies or phonorecords." This provision provides the copyright owner an opportunity to stop goods from entering the United States market altogether.
Application of this provision created difficult legal issues in the context of gray market products. Gray market dealers buy the genuine goods in foreign countries at a significant discount from U.S. prices. They then import these genuine goods into the U.S. and sell them at discount prices, undercutting the authorized U.S. dealers. The gray market exists where the price for goods outside the US is lower than the price inside.
On the surface, §602(a), barring unauthorized importation, would seem to clash with the first-sale doctrine, which permits the resale of lawfully made copies. The issue comes down to whether §602(a) creates an affirmative right to bar all unauthorized importation, or does the first-sale doctrine limit the reach of §602(a), thus permitting the resale of at least some lawfully made imported copies.
In 1998, the U.S. Supreme Court in Quality King v. L'Anza found that first-sale doctrine applied to imported goods at least where the imported goods are first lawfully made in the United States, shipped abroad for resale, and later reenter the United States. That case involved importation of hair care products bearing copyrighted labels. A unanimous Supreme Court found that the first-sale doctrine does apply to importation into the US of copyrighted works (the labels), which were made in the US and then exported.
However, the Supreme Court did not decide the issue where gray-market products are initially manufactured abroad and then imported into the US. The Court indicated that importation of goods made outside the US could perhaps be barred under §602(a), since such goods would not be "lawfully made under this title". Such products might be lawfully made, either by the copyright owner or a licensee, but they would not be lawfully made under US copyright law. Rather, they would be lawfully made under the copyright laws of the other country; and the first-sale doctrine would therefore not limit the §602 importation restriction.
The 2008 case Omega v. Costco involved this exact unresolved issue, where the defendant Costco obtained authentic Omega watches, which feature a copyrighted design on the back of the watches, through the gray market and resold them in its stores in the US. Omega manufactured these watches outside the US and did not authorize their importation into the US. Based on the Quality King case, the 9th Circuit held that "application of first-sale doctrine to foreign-made copies would impermissibly apply" the Copyright Act extraterritorially. However, the court stated that first-sale doctrine might still apply to a foreign manufactured copy if it was imported "with the authority of the U.S. copyright owner". The Supreme Court granted certiorari to Omega v. Costco, and affirmed 4–4. However, as an evenly split decision, it set precedent only in the 9th Circuit, not nationwide.
However, in Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., in 2013, the United States Supreme Court held in a 6–3 decision that the first-sale doctrine applies to goods manufactured abroad with the copyright owner's permission and then imported into the US. The case involved a plaintiff who imported Asian editions of textbooks that had been manufactured abroad with the publisher-plaintiff's permission. The defendant, without permission from the publisher, imported the textbooks and resold on eBay. The Supreme Court's holding severely limits the ability of copyright holders to charge vastly different prices in different markets due to ease of arbitrage. The decision removes the incentive to US manufacturers of shifting manufacturing abroad purely in an attempt to circumvent the first-sale doctrine.
Exceptions
Record rentals
The Record Rental Amendment of 1984, codified in 17 USC §109(b) prohibits an owner of a phonorecord that embodies a sound recording or musical work from renting it to the public for direct or indirect commercial advantage. This exception was designed to prevent music stores from renting records and thereby facilitating home copying.
Section 109(b) is an exception to the first sale doctrine, but it is limited in several ways. It applies only to rentals, and not to resale or other transfers. It is also limited to a subset of sound recordings—only those sound recordings that contain only a musical work. It does not apply to sound recordings that contain other content, such as commentaries or dialog soundtrack, or to non-musical sound recordings, for example audiobooks. Lastly, libraries and educational institutions are exempt from this restriction, and may rent or loan musical sound recordings.
Software rentals
The Copyright Software Rental Amendments Act of 1990 amended §109(b) further to prohibit rentals of computer software for direct or indirect commercial advantage. The exception does not apply to lending of a copy by a nonprofit library for nonprofit purposes, provided the library affixes an appropriate warning. The amendment also specifically excluded:
A computer program which is embodied in a machine or product and which cannot be copied during the ordinary operation or use of the machine or product; or
A computer program embodied in or used in conjunction with a limited purpose computer that is designed for playing video games and may be designed for other purposes.
Overview of trademark law application
With reference to trade in tangible merchandise, such as the retailing of goods bearing a trademark, the first sale doctrine serves to immunize a reseller from infringement liability. Such protection to the reseller extends to the point where said goods have not been altered so as to be materially different from those originating from the trademark owner.
See also
European Union law
Copyright law of the European Union
Information Society Directive 2001/29/EC, including the right to make a copy for private use
Computer Programs Directive 2009/24/EC, including the first-sale doctrine applied to licensed computer software
Droit de suite, policy in French and EU law as far as regards copyright on works of art
Exhaustion of rights – A concept in EU law similar to the US "First-sale doctrine" as far as regards patents
Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market
Copyright infringement
Digital rights management
Fair use
Limitations on exclusive rights: Computer programs
Vault Corp. v. Quaid Software Ltd., a 1988 case on the extent of software copyright
References
General references
The VSDA (Video Software Dealer's Association) 's list of lobbying priority issues includes protection of the First Sale Doctrine.
Explanation of the "Betamax Case"
Quality King Distributors, Inc. v. L'anza Research International, Inc., 1998 WL 96265 syllabus (summary), Court decision written by Justice Stevens, Justice Ginsburg's Concurrence and 1998 B.C. Intell. Prop. & Tech. F. 040801 report of the decision
Davidson & Associates v. Internet Gateway Inc ruling
Blizzard v BnetD
Thomas Hoeren: Der Erschöpfungsgrundsatz bei Software, GRUR August 2010, 665 - 673 (German law)
External links
Full text of 17 U.S.C. § 109
Legal doctrines and principles
United States copyright law
United States trademark law
de:Erschöpfungsgrundsatz
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49182492
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana%20%28software%29
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Nirvana (software)
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Nirvana was virtual object storage software developed and maintained by General Atomics.
It can also be described as metadata, data placement and data management software that lets organizations manage unstructured data on multiple storage devices located anywhere in the world in order to orchestrate global data intensive workflows, and search for and locate data no matter where it is located or when it was created. Nirvana does this by capturing system and user-defined metadata to enable detailed search and enact policies to control data movement and protection. Nirvana also maintains data provenance, audit, security and access control.
Nirvana can reduce storage costs by identifying data to be moved to lower cost storage and data that no longer needs to be stored.
History
Nirvana is the result of research started in 1995 at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) (which was founded by and run at the time by General Atomics), in response to a DARPA sponsored project for a Massive Data Analysis System. Led by General Atomics computational plasma physicist Dr. Reagan Moore, development continued through the cooperative efforts of General Atomics and the SDSC on the Storage Resource Broker (SRB), with the support of the National Science Foundation (NSF). SRB 1.1 was delivered in 1998, demonstrating a logical distributed file system with a single Global Namespace across geographically distributed storage systems.
In 2003, General Atomics turned over operation of the SDSC to the University of California San Diego (UCSD) and Dr. Moore became a full-time professor there establishing the Data Intensive Computing Environments (DICE) Center, continuing development of SRB. In that same year, General Atomics acquired the exclusive license to develop a commercial version of SRB, calling it Nirvana.
The DICE team ended development of SRB in 2006 and started a rules oriented data management project called iRODS for open source distribution. Dr. Moore and his DICE team relocated to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where iRODS is now maintained by the iRODS Consortium. General Atomics continued development of Nirvana at their San Diego headquarters, focusing on capabilities to serve government and commercial users, including high scalability, fail-over, performance, implementation, maintenance and support.
In 2009, General Atomics won a data management contract with the US Department of Defense (DOD) High Performance Computing Modernization Program. The requirements of this contract focused General Atomics to expand Nirvana’s performance, scalability, security and ease of use. A major deliverable involved integrating Nirvana with Oracle Corporation's SAM-QFS filesystem to provide a policy-based Hierarchical Storage Management (HSM) system with near real-time event synchronization. General Atomics also announced that digital marketing firm infoGROUP deployed Nirvana to create a Global Name Space across three of infoGROUP’s computer operations centers in the Omaha area.
In 2012, General Atomics released Nirvana version 4.3.
In 2014, General Atomics changed the Nirvana business model from a large government contract, fee for service model, to a standard commercial software model.
In 2015, General Atomics initiated a strategic relationship with pixitmedia/arcastream in the United Kingdom, integrating Nirvana with pixitmedia and arcastream’s products.
In 2016, General Atomics released Nirvana version 5.0.
In May 2018, probes of Nirvana marketing and support URLs under the General Atomics corporate umbrella (www.Nirvanastorage.com, www.ga.com/nirvana and https://www.nirvanaware.com) and more recently branded integration offerings such as "Nirvana EasyHSM" (www.ga.com/easyhsm (mentioned in a Jan. 2017 marketing slideshare at )) return "cannot be found" from www.ga.com or connection timeout. A "Nirvana" keyword search at www.ga.com returns only pages with archived indications. Nirvana pages and press releases archived by General Atomics are retrievable via http://www.ga.com/?Key=Search&q=nirvana
Architecture and Operation
Nirvana is client-server software composed of Location Agents that reside on, or access, Storage Resources. A Storage Resource can be a networked-attached storage (NAS) system, object storage system or cloud storage service. Nirvana catalogs the location of the files and objects in these storage resources into its Metadata Catalog (MCAT) and tags the files with storage system metadata (Owner, File Name, File Size and Creation, Change, Modification and Access Timestamps) and additional user-defined, domain specific metadata. System and user-defined metadata can be used to search for a file or object (or groups of files and objects) and also control access to and move those files and objects from one storage resource to another. The MCAT creates a single Global Namespace across all Storage Resources connected to it so users and administrators can search for, access, and move data across multiple heterogeneous storage systems from multiple vendors across geographically dispersed data centers. The MCAT is connected to and interacts with a relational database management system to support its operation. Multiple MCATs can be deployed for horizontal scale-out and failover. Various Clients can interact with Nirvana including the supplied Web browser and Java based GUI Clients, a Command Line Interface, a native Windows virtual network drive interface, and user-developed applications via supplied APIs.
Nirvana operation is controlled by three daemons; Metadata, Sync and ILM. The Metadata Daemon can extract metadata automatically from an instrument creating data, from within the file's actual data using predefined and customizable templates and metadata parsing policies, or capturing user input via the GUI or Command Line Interface. The Sync Daemon, running in the background, detects when files are added to, or deleted from, the underlying Storage Resource filesystems. When filesystem changes are observed by the Sync Daemon, the changes are registered and updated in MCAT. The ILM Daemon routinely queries the MCAT and executes actions including migration, replication, or backup on a specified schedule. For example, an administrator can set a policy to free up space on an expensive primary storage system by migrating that data to distributed retention locations based on criteria such as: storage consumption watermarks (percent full), all data associated with a specific project, or data that hasn't been accessed in over one year. The policies are extremely flexible. User-defined metadata attributes (e.g. Project, Principal investigator, Data source, Location, Temperature, etc.) can also be used to move data. Nirvana ILM policy execution occurs behind the scenes, transparent to end-users or applications.
Use Cases
Data Aware Cloud Storage Gateway
Nirvana's ILM functionality can be used as a Cloud Storage Gateway, where data stored locally, on premises, can be moved to popular cloud storage services based on Nirvana's various metadata attributes and policies. In 2015, General Atomics and ArcaStream announced a Cloud Storage Appliance that uses IBM's Spectrum Scale for on premises storage and integrates with cloud storage providers Amazon S3, and Google Cloud Storage.
Advanced Search
Nirvana can be used to conduct search queries to find data of interest using both system and user-defined metadata. Queries are either entered in the Command Line Interface or through the Web browser client shown below.
Virtual Collections
Nirvana can automate the grouping and distribution of data files into a virtual collection - based on user-friendly logical rules. For example, user-defined metadata can be used to identify data files needing to be transferred between collaborators with domain-specific attributes (experiment, study, project, etc.).
Data Provenance
In many fields, it is helpful to know the provenance and processing pipeline used to produce derived results. Nirvana tracks data within workflows, through all transformations, analyses, and interpretations. With Nirvana, data can be shared and used with verified provenance of the conditions under which it was generated – so results are reproducible and analyzable for defects.
Audit
Nirvana can be used to audit every transaction on a data file within a workflow. An audit trail can be stored containing information such as date of transaction, success or error code, user performing transaction, type of transaction and notes, etc. Audit trails, like everything else with Nirvana, can be easily queried and filtered.
Security and Access Control
Nirvana can be used to control access to data by setting up specific access control lists by user, group etc. using user-defined metadata attributes (Project, Study, etc.) and by setting access privilege levels where users assigned higher levels can see more information than others assigned lower levels. Nirvana supports single sign-on and access by integrating with the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) and Active Directory, using Challenge-response authentication, Grid Security Infrastructure (GSI), and Kerberos. Data can only be viewed and modified by users authorized to do so.
File System Analysis
Nirvana can be used to analyze the makeup of a shared filesystem to determine what type of data is being stored, how much space it takes up, when it was last accessed, and who stored it. With this information, storage administrators can determine the most appropriate type of storage system to use and when to move unused data to lower cost archive storage. In the example below, Nirvana's analysis of data stored on an expensive enterprise NAS storage system showed most data hadn't been accessed in over 2 years. The analysis further showed that most files were very small, and over half the storage was consumed by just two users. Using this data, the organization replaced their enterprise storage system with less expensive object storage to better manage the many small, seldom accessed, files.
References
Data processing
Data analysis software
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2367595
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical%20jukebox
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Optical jukebox
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An optical jukebox is a robotic data storage device that can automatically load and unload optical discs, such as Compact Disc, DVD, Ultra Density Optical or Blu-ray and can provide terabytes (TB) or petabytes (PB) of tertiary storage. The devices are often called optical disk libraries, robotic drives, or autochangers. Jukebox devices may have up to 2,000 slots for disks, and usually have a picking device that traverses the slots and drives. The arrangement of the slots and picking devices affects performance, depending on the space between a disk and the picking device. Seek times and transfer rates vary depending upon the optical technology used.
Jukeboxes are used in high-capacity archive storage environments such as imaging, medical, and video. Hierarchical storage management is a strategy that moves little-used or unused files from fast magnetic storage to optical jukebox devices in a process called migration. If the files are needed, they are migrated back to magnetic disk. Optical disc libraries are also useful for making backups and in disaster recovery situations. Today one of the most important uses for jukeboxes is to archive data. Archiving data is different from backups in that the data is stored on media designed to last up to 100 years. The data is usually written on Write Once Read Many (WORM)-type discs so it cannot be erased or changed.
Jukeboxes typically contain internal SCSI- or SATA-based recordable drives (CD-ROM, CD-R, DVD-ROM, DVD-R, DVD-RAM, UDO or Blu-ray) that connect directly to a file server and are managed by a third-party jukebox management software. This software controls the movement of media within the jukebox, and the pre-mastering of data prior to the recording process.
Before the advent of the modern SAN and much cheaper hard disks, high-volume storage on DVD was more cost-effective than magnetic media. Jukebox capacities have greatly increased with the release of the 50 gigabyte (GB) dual layer Blu-ray (BD) format, with a road-map to increase to eight layers and 200 GB per disc. The current format, used in the DISC7000, allows 35 TB of storage from a single 700-disc jukebox. Optical disc libraries like the TeraStack Solution can store up to 142 TB of online and nearline data with a nominal power draw of 425 watts. These two units show the wide variance of product attributes.
History
One of the first examples of an optical jukebox was the unit designed and built at the Royal Aerospace Establishment at Farnborough, England. The unit had twin read/write heads, 12" WORM disks and the carousels were pneumatically driven. It was produced to replace the 1/2 inch magnetic tape devices that were being used to store satellite data.
Management software
The core functionality of optical library management software can be broken down into four parts: robotic control, filesystem authoring, file tracking, and access control.
Robotic control
All optical libraries comply with the standard SCSI command set. These commands are used for control and library geometry querying.
When the management software is run, it will send inquiry requests to the optical library for the status of its contents. Number and type of drives, number and status of slots and other essential information is gathered.
Following this, the management software may request data off of a particular piece of media or it may wish to perform some write operations on it. Any of these actions would require specific move commands sent from the management application to the optical library. An example of this would be to move a media from slot 50 to the drive number 3.
Filesystem authoring
Optical library management software handles all of the writing and reading of the filesystem content on the optical media.
Once a media has been placed in a drive from its home slot, many operations can be taken. For example: The creation of a UDF filesystem on a blank media, the writing of a single file, or the reading of some data off of the filesystem on the media.
Filesystem types available for optical media range from ISO standard technologies like UDF to proprietary formats.
File tracking
Optical library management software will often track the files and folders extant on a piece of optical media by means of a database. Any filesystem data pertaining to an individual media would be available in this database. For example: paths and names of files and folders, file sizes, and all of the metadata that a modern filesystem may keep.
Access control
Optical library management software makes itself available to the OS in an assortment of ways.
One of these ways in a Windows environment, is by way of virtual drive letters. Essentially, the whole of an optical library can be viewed, read to and written to via a virtual filesystem while the management software handles all of the media movement and I/O requests invisibly in the background.
Another way that access to the optical library may be accomplished is by way of CIFS shares (more often seen with Unix-type optical library management applications).
Access time issues
All the jukeboxes work best when only a few users need to access the discs at the same time. Small jukeboxes have only one or two CD, DVD, UDO or Blu-ray drives, so only one or two users can share the jukebox at the same time. If additional users want to use a new disc, they have to wait for the disc to be swapped by the robotics in the jukebox. This takes from 4 to 9 seconds. Larger jukeboxes have six or more readers, so more users can simultaneously access the different discs at the same time.
A more efficient recommendation is to have a disk cache attached to the jukebox for a higher number of simultaneous users. This way, the configuration operates in a FILO (First In Last Out) Manner. Here, files accessed are only sent back to the optical discs after they have been utilized. Changes may or may not be saved or versioned based on the user configuration and accessibility settings on the storage management software that runs the optical jukebox.
The number of drives in the jukebox can be up to six depending on the size of the jukebox. The drives will read and write the data to the RAID / Disc cache and then present to end users. This way the 4–6 seconds read time only occurs during the initial data read process, then the data is sent to the cache.
References
External links
DISC Archiving Systems – BD Series (former NSM GmbH)
Optical computer storage
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1121115
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal%20Jukebox
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Personal Jukebox
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The Personal Jukebox (also known as PJB-100 or Music Compressor) was the first consumer hard drive-based digital audio player. Introduced in 1999, it preceded the Apple iPod, SanDisk Sansa, and other similar players. It was designed and developed by Compaq Research (SRC and PAAD groups) starting in May 1998. Compaq did not release the player themselves, but licensed the design to HanGo Electronics Co., Ltd. of South Korea.
Compaq Research published a software development kit for the unit, which enabled users to develop tools, drivers and applications for different operating systems.
History
Development
The PJB was created as a personal audio appliance prototype by DEC Systems Research Center and Palo Alto Advanced Development group (PAAD). The project started in May 1998, a month before the Digital Equipment Corporation merger into Compaq was completed, and a final product was brought to market in November 1999. The PJB was the first hard-disk-based MP3 player made available on the market.
The "100" in the "PJB-100" name was chosen from the capacity of the original 4.86 GB hard drive in the first Personal Jukebox. With this drive, the unit was expected to hold about 100 popular (45 minute) music CDs encoded at 128 kbit/s. The name was kept for the later models with bigger hard drives, even though these could store a larger number of albums.
The PJB-100 was the first MP3 portable to garner a "Milestone" product designation from MP3 Newswire, which they defined in their January 2000 review of the PJB-100 as "any product whose breakthrough innovations are so significant, they influence the future course of its industry".
Licensing, marketing and distribution
Instead of manufacturing the player themselves, Compaq licensed the design to HanGo, which called it the "Personal Jukebox - PJB-100". The license from Compaq to HanGo was worldwide exclusive - nobody else could license the technology from Compaq during the term of the HanGo license. HanGo granted a distribution agreement to US company Hy-Tek Manufacturing of Sugar Grove, IL in 2001. HanGo rebranded the units sold through Hy-Tek as the "Compressor".
HanGo took the PJB-100 into mass production and introduced it to the public at the Las Vegas COMDEX in November 1999. The first units were sold in a special auction held by MP3.com, with bids exceeding US$1000. Some winners received their players before the end of 1999. The first auctioned units were hand-built by the Compaq engineers who designed it, and had single-digit serial numbers.
Specifications
Measurements: 150×80×26 mm (5.9×3.15×1.0 inches) (W×H×D)
Weight: 280g (9.9 ounces), 304g (10.7 ounces) including battery
Playback: MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3 (MP3) at bitrates of 8 to 320kbit/s and a sample rate of 44.1kHz (playback support for WAV is in the firmware, but is not enabled - it was used by the developers before the MP3 decoder was licensed from Fraunhofer IIS).
Audio signal-to-noise ratio (S/N): >90dB
Audio total harmonic distortion (THD): <0.1%
Frequency response: 20Hz to 20kHz
Audio output power: >50 mW at 32 ohm impedance
Hardware
Digital signal processor (DSP)
The heart of the PJB is its Digital Signal Processor. It controls the hard-drive, buttons, LCD, USB interface and handles MP3-decoding for playback. The PJB uses a 24 bit Motorola 56309 DSP running at 33 MHz. The MP3 codec (which is about 2 MB in assembly DSP code) was licensed from Thomson and Fraunhofer IIS.
Memory
The PJB has 12 MB of DRAM and 1 MB of flash memory.
The DRAM is used to buffer data (between 8 and 12 minutes of music, depending on the bitrate used for encoding) from the hard disk during playback. The buffer allows the disk to be run only intermittently, preserving battery life. When the hard-disk is stopped, battery life is preserved; the ramp-loaded heads also retract from the disk surface, helping to reduce the possibility of damage.
The flash memory houses the firmware as well as the bootstrap.
Communication interface
To transfer data, the PJB is equipped with a USB 1.1 Type B connector. Inside is a Philips PDIUSBD12 USB peripheral controller, which averages a raw throughput of about 400 kB/s. Early prototypes used Ethernet instead of USB for data transmission. USB was used in production models because it was more common than Ethernet on standard home computers in 1998.
Display
The PJB's LCD has a resolution of 128×64 pixels (2:1 ratio) at a diameter of 3 inches (76.2 mm). Later versions of the PJB also featured a backlit display (the backlight comes on when the unit is powered on, or a button is pressed and turns off automatically after a few seconds). The character set the PJB uses internally is Latin-1 (ISO-8859-1), with some minor variations. One of the Compaq developers stated that "it's missing some of the symbols in the range 160 to 255 (because I got bored when I was creating them :-). Upper case accented characters are rendered unaccented, because that looks better within the font's 9 pixel height. There are some glyphs in the range 0 to 31, used for the symbols on the screen.
Hard drive
While flash players could store between 32 and a maximum of 128 MB at the time, the first PJB could store 4.86 GB of music. While the PJB-100 was updated as bigger drives became available, it was also possible for end users to replace the hard drive (although voiding the warranty in that case).
Buttons/controls
The PJB has 6 buttons on the front:
Left/Previous/Rewind
Right/Next/Forward
Up
Down
Play/Pause
Stop/Power off
Volume is adjusted by a wheel on the unit's right side, using a digital mechanism (it can be turned indefinitely). It also is possible to click or push the wheel, which pauses playback and turns the unit off after about one minute. When the unit is powered off and the wheel is pressed for a few seconds, playback resumes. This also works when the buttons are locked, in case the main controls cannot be easily accessed.
On the same side is also a small switch which locks the unit’s controls (except for the wheel).
Battery and power supply
The PJB is not powered by dry cell batteries like most other players at the time of its development, but by a provided HanGo Lithium ion battery. HanGo sold a more powerful 1600 mA battery to be used in the PJB.
The PJB includes a 5V power supply which charges the battery and enables playback without a battery in the unit at all. The charging control circuit for the battery is built into the PJB itself, not the power supply, so the use of a replacement power supply requires only the proper voltage and sufficient current capacity.
Accessories
Included accessories
Compared to other players, the PJB included accessories. Details varied from distributor to distributor, but UHU/Portacomp AG included:
Koss Porta Pro headphones
Leather case with belt clip
5 V power supply with converters for European and American power outlets (except UK)
1350 mW/3.6 V Li-Ion battery (see the battery section)
USB 1.1 compliant A-B connector cable
Cinch-Audio cable 3.5 mm to RCA
Manual (in German and English)
CD with drivers and Jukebox Manager software (Windows, Mac OS/OS X, Linux)
Optional accessories
Accessories were offered by distributors (among them headphones and speakers, also for use with other audio hardware than the PJB and replacements for the included accessories):
1600 mAh Li-Ion Battery
Waterproof neoprene bag for use of the PJB at a beach or pool
Audio-cassette adapter for playback on car/home stereos
Swan-neck car-holder
Magnetic mounts to attach the PJB within a car
Power-supply-adapters for car cigarette-lighters
Firmware
Features and version history
The latest firmware version, which surfaced in December 2003, is v2.3.3-alpha; the latest stable version is v2.3.2, introduced in mid-2001. Initially, the functions provided by the player were basic: when music was played back, selecting another track would immediately start this track and stop the current one; playlists had to be created on the computer; files could only be uploaded to the PJB, but not downloaded back to the computer. New firmware versions came out regularly, but were mostly bug fixes with very few new functions introduced.
Later firmware versions added some of the most requested features:
Files could be transferred from player to PC
The ability to browse without interrupting playback
Some (hidden) games were added
File system and table of contents (TOC)
The PJB's disk is not formatted as FAT or FAT32 as is the case with most of the players that were released later, and enables those to be mounted as another drive in an operating system. Instead, a unique file system is used, which, while losing the mounting ability, is optimized for the structure of MP3 files (having a cluster size of 128 kB, which equals about 8 seconds of 128-kBit-encoded MP3-music). Therefore, managing actions like defragging become unnecessary. The file system allows the linking of Tracks into various Discs/Sets. Therefore, each track is ideally only stored once on the disc and recurring occurrences of it (for example in playlists or samplers) are just links to the original file. This may help to preserve a good amount of disk space and allows for more tracks to be stored on the disk.
All of this info is stored in the TOC (table of contents). The TOC is stored in a human-readable text-format and can be downloaded, changed with a text editor and re-uploaded to the PJB again. A copy of the TOC is always stored on the unit as well, so errors and damage to the original TOC can usually be fixed.
Software
Software development kit
The original developers at Compaq Research designed an SDK (Software Development Kit) for the unit and published it under the Open Source GPL license in 2000.
Drivers
The PJB does not integrate itself as a USB mass storage device into modern operating systems. Special drivers are required to make the operating system recognize an attached PJB. Drivers for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS were included, while drivers for Linux were developed by the open source community.
Jukebox Manager (Windows, Mac OS)
The included management tool for the PJB is the Jukebox Manager (the latest Windows version is v1.5.6). It can create/delete/manage Sets, Discs and Tracks (when uploading, the user can choose which ID3-tag will represent which level). It can also encode CDs directly onto the PJB and query the CDDB for the proper disc/track information. Finally it can update the firmware. If manipulating some values in the Windows Registry, a hidden menu appears, which can be used to debug and in some cases repair a damaged TOC. The Jukebox Manager does not make use of some of the firmware’s later features, such as downloading tracks back to the computer and does not provide advanced features such as mass-uploading, synchronizing or creating playlists from M3U-playlists.
Linux projects
There are Linux projects operating on SourceForge (some under the banner of the OpenPJB project). These range from Jukebox-Manager-like applications with a GUI for various window managers to projects making the PJB's file system mountable as a drive in Linux. Some of the projects include:
Jukebox Manager (KDE)
GNOME/GTK+ GUI Personal Jukebox Manager (GNOME)
Emacs PJB Manager
PJB File System for Linux (Kernel 2.3/4, 2.6)
PJB VFS module (for use with Nautilus)
pjmirror (written in Perl to synchronize the PJB with data on the PC)
External links
The new and improved PJB-100 User Group at Yahoo! Groups
PJB-100 Info site
Info on hard-disk upgrades from above site
Ultimate PJB-100 FAQ
Motherboard modification instructions
pjbExploder (Windows) project home page
OpenPJB Project Multi-platform command line tools and SDK
Jukebox Manager (Linux/KDE) project home page
pjbmanager (Linux/GNOME) project home page
Microsoft Windows 2000 drivers and instructions (download from PJB-100 Yahoo! group, registration necessary)
Microsoft Windows XP drivers and instructions (download from PJB-100 Yahoo! group, registration necessary)
Recent Linux 2.6 kernel drivers (download from PJB-100 Yahoo! group, registration necessary)
File System info - The PJB's file system and other technical info for developers (PDF)
- Patent covering one of the key technologies of the PJB: Buffering data into RAM and playing it back from there
- Patent covering an aspect of buffering data in RAM
Digital audio players
Audiovisual introductions in 1999
Jukebox-style media players
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian%20university%20scientific%20research%20organizations
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Canadian university scientific research organizations
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Expenditures by Canadian universities on scientific research and development accounted for about 40% of all spending on scientific research and development in Canada in 2006.
Research in the natural and social sciences in Canada, with a few important exceptions, is almost exclusively funded by the Canadian taxpayer and is distributed to universities by five important federal funding agencies, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). Additional monies are also provided by the Canada Research Chairs organization, which provides financing for the staffing of research personnel at Canadian universities and the Canada Foundation for Innovation, which supports the acquisition of scientific research infrastructure by Canadian universities, colleges, research hospitals, and non-profit research institutions.
In 2006, total spending on scientific and industrial research in Canada amounted to C$28.067 billion or about 2 percent of GDP. In 2006, Canadian universities spent C$10.890 billion on research and development, representing about 40 percent of all R&D spending in Canada and about .66 percent of Canada's GDP.
Below are the names of those university institutions that carry out both natural and social science research, although the emphasis here is on the former. The largest part of funding from NSERC, is received by 15 universities, not surprisingly the largest in the country, which have formed an association named the U15. The list below ranks the members of this group in order of NSERC grant size. A number of thematically specialized virtual university research organizations, the Networks of Excellence, have been established and are listed here. Also included are the names of some particular research organizations and projects notable for their large size or for other characteristics. This is followed by a brief description of the expenditures on scientific research and development by sector. Finally the list includes those support organizations that fund scientific research at the university level or contribute to its success in other ways.
U15 largest Canadian research universities
University of Toronto
Toronto, Ontario.
NSERC Funding 2003: C$M 54,264
Number of Canada Research Chairs – 245
Research institutes
Natural science research
Institute for Aerospace Studies
Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics
Centre for the Analysis of Genome Evolution and Function (CAGEF)
Terrence Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research
Canadian Drosophila Microarray Centre
Centre for Environment
The Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences
Proteomics Research Centre
Engineering Research
Centre for Advanced Coating Technologies
Centre for Applied Power Electronics
Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering
Canadian Aeronautics and Space Institute
Emerging Communications Technology Institute
Energenius Centre for Advanced Nanotechnology
Hitachi Survey Research Centre
Intelligent Transportation Systems
Institute for Knowledge Innovation and Technology
Centre for Landscape Research InterNetwork
Lassonde Institute (Engineering Geoscience)
Centre for Microelectronics Assembly and Packaging
Molecular Design and Information Technology Center (MDIT)
Centre for Nuclear Engineering
Positron Emission Tomography Centre
Pulp and Paper Centre
Medical research
Sunnybrook Research Institute
Institute of Medical Science
Sunnybrook Centre for studies in Aging
Banting and Best Diabetes Centre
Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine
Centre for Health Promotion
Heart & Stroke/Richard Lewar Centre for Cardiovascular Research
Institute for Human Development, Life Course and Aging
Centre for International Health, Faculty of Medicine
R. Samuel McLaughlin Centre for Molecular Medicine
Centre for the Neurobiology of Stress
Centre for research in Neurodegenerative Diseases
U of T Centre for the Study of Pain
Sleep Medicine and Circadian Biology
Social science research
Joint Centre for Bioethics
Clarkson Centre for Business Effectiveness and Board Effectiveness
Capital Markets Institute
CERIS – The Ontario Metropolis Centre
Institute for Competitiveness & Prosperity
Centre of Criminology
Centre for research in Education (Medical)
International Centre for Educational Change
G8 Information Centre
Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology
Centre for Industrial Relations
Centre for research into Information Studies
Centre for Innovation Law and Policy
Centre for Integrative and Anti-Racism Studies
Institute for International Business
Centre for International Studies
Knowledge Media and Design Institute
Laidlaw Centre (Institute of Child Study)
Centre for Management of Technology and Entrepreneurship
Centre for Media and Culture in Education
Centre for Modern Language
Multimedia Centre for Learning in the Humanities
Munk Centre for International Studies
Institute for Policy Analysis
Centre de Recherches en éducation Franco-ontarienne
Centre for Applied Social Research
Atkinson Centre for Society and Child Development
Imperial Oil Centre for Studies in Science, Mathematics and Technology Education
Centre for Study of Education and Work
Centre for the Study of the United States
Centre for Teacher Development
Centre for Technology and Social Development
Transformative Learning Centre
Centre for Urban and Community Studies
Centre for Research in Women's Health
Institute for Women's Studies and Gender Studies
Centre for Women's Studies in Education
University of British Columbia
Vancouver, British Columbia.
NSERC Funding 2003: C$M 43,004
Number of Canada Research Chairs – 148
Research institutes
Land & Food Systems
Avian Research Centre
UBC Dairy Education and Research Centre
UBC Centre for Aquaculture and Environmental Research (CAER)
Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO)
Soil-Water Environmental Laboratory
UBC Botanical Garden and Centre for Plant Research
Wine Research Centre
Natural Science and Engineering
Institute for Aboriginal Health
Institute for Applied Mathematics (IAM)
Canadian Institute for Advanced Research
Institute of Health Promotion Research
Institute of Mental Health
Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences (PIMS)
Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies
Rick Hansen Institute (RHI)
Robotics & Intelligent Systems (IRIS)
Sustainable Development Research Institute (SDRI)
Institute for Systems Biology (ISB)
Social Science
Institute of Asian Research
BC Children's Hospital Research Institute
English Language Institute (ELI)
Institute for European Studies
Human Early Learning Partnership
Liu Institute for Global Issues
Institute for Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute (SICI)
UBC also operates 65 research centres.
University of Alberta
Edmonton, Alberta.
NSERC Funding 2003 C$M 36,291
Number of Canada Research Chairs – 100
Centres and institutes
Agricultural, Life and Environmental Sciences
Alberta Poultry Research Centre
Alberta Veterinary Research Institute (AVRI)
Centre for Enhanced Forest Management (EFM)
Dairy Research and Technology Centre (DRTC)
Environmental Research and Studies Centre
Material Culture Institute (MCI)
Engineering
Alberta Centre for Surface Engineering and Science
Construction Research Institute for Canada (CIRC)
Imperial Oil Centre for Oil Sands Innovation
Health Sciences Council
Alberta Centre on Aging
Alberta Institute for Human Nutrition
Community-University Partnership (CUP)
The John Dossetor Health Ethics Centre
Medicine and Dentistry
Alberta Asthma Centre
Alberta Centre for Prions and Protein Folding Diseases
Alberta Diabetes Research Institute
Alberta Institute for Viral Immunology (AIVI)
Alberta Peptide Institute (API)
Alberta Transplant Applied Genomics Centre (ATAGC)
Canadian VIGOUR Centre
Centre for Health Evidence
Centre for Neuroscience
Digestive Health Care Centre for Colon Cancer (DHCCC)
Glaxo Wellcome Heritage Research Institute
Magnetic Resonance Diagnostics Centre (MRDC)
Muttart Diabetes Research & Training Centre
Perinatal Research Group
Women and Children's Health Research Institute (WCHRI)
Nursing
Institute for Philosophical Nursing Research
International Institute for Qualitative Methodology
International Nursing Centre
Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences
Centre for Community Pharmacy Research and Interdisciplinary Studies (c/COMPRIS)
Noujaim Institute
School of Public Health
Alberta Centre for Injury Control and Research
Centre for Health Promotion Studies
Rehabilitation Medicine
Centre for Studies in Clinical Education (CSCE)
Institute for Stuttering Treatment and Research (ISTAR)
Rehabilitation Research Centre
Science
Alberta Centre for Earth Observation Sciences (CEOS)
Alberta Cooperative Conservation Research Unit
Alberta Ingenuity Centre for Carbohydrate Science
Alberta Ingenuity Centre for Machine Learning
Applied Mathematics Institute
Centre for Mathematical Biology
Centre for Particle Physics
Institute for Geophysical Research (IGR)
Institute for Space Science, Exploration and Technology (ISSET)
Statistics Centre
Theoretical Physics Institute
McGill University
Montreal, Quebec.
Number of Canada Research Chairs – 133
Number of Canada Excellence Research Chairs – 2
NSERC Funding 2003: C$M 34,984
Research facilities
Downtown Campus – Faculty of Science and Faculty of Engineering
Mathematics, Natural Sciences and Engineering:
Bone and Periodontal Research, Centre for
Advanced Materials, McGill Institute for (MIAM)
Biodiversity Science, Quebec Centre for
Bioinformatics, McGill Centre for
Brain, Language and Music, Centre for Research on (CRBLM)
Cell Imaging and Analysis Network (CIAN)
Comparative Medicine and Animal Resources Centre
Developmental Biology Research Initiative (DBRI)
Experimental Ecology and Evolution, Laboratory for (LE3)
High Energy Physics, Centre for
Institut des sciences mathématiques de Montréal (ISM)
Intelligent Machines, Centre for (CIM)
Music, Media and Technology, Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in (CIRMMT)
Pain, Alan Edwards Centre for Research on
Physics of Materials, Centre for the (CPM)
Self-Assembled Chemical Structures, Centre for (CSACS)
Sustainability in Engineering and Design, Trottier Institute for
Aerospace Engineering, McGill Institute for
High Field NMR Facility
Nanotools Microfab Laboratory
Phytotron
Redpath Museum
Sheldon Biotechnology Centre
Advanced Systems & Technologies on Communications, Centre for (SYTAcom)
Water Resources Management, Brace Centre for
Intelligent Machines, Centre for (CIM)
McGill Metals Processing Centre
Trottier Institute for Sustainability in Engineering and Design (TISED)
Downtown Campus – Faculty of Medicine and Faculty of Dentistry
Alan Edwards Centre for Research on Pain
Anesthesia Research Unit
Artificial Cells & Organs Research Centre
Biomedical Ethics Unit
Centre for Advanced Bone and Periodontal Research
Centre for Applied Mathematics in Bioscience and Medicine (CAMBAM)
Centre for Bone and Periodontal Research
Centre for Bioinformatics
Centre for Biorecognition and Biosensors
Centre of Genomics and Policy
Centre for Research in Neuroscience
Centre for Nursing Research
Centre for Research on Brain, Language and Music
Centre for Research in Reproduction and Development
Centre for Structural Biology (GRASP Research Group)
Comparative Medicine and Animal Resources Centre
Cystic Fibrosis Translational Research Centre (CFTRc)
Douglas Mental Health University Institute
Facility for Electron Microscopy Research (FEMR)
Institute for Health and Social Policy
J.D. MacLean Centre for Tropical Diseases
Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research (McGill AIDS Centre)
Ludmer Centre for Neuroinformatics & Mental Health
McGill Centre for Studies in Aging
McGill International TB Centre
McGill Centre for Translational Research in Cancer
McGill Centre for the Convergence of Health and Economics (MCCHE)
McGill University and Genome Quebec Innovation Centre
Microbiome and Disease Tolerance Centre
Montreal Neurological Institute-Hospital
Research Institute MUHC
Rosalind and Morris Goodman Cancer Research Centre
Steinberg Centre for Simulation and Interactive Learning
The Network for Oral and Bone Health Research
Macdonald campus
Bioresource Engineering Machine Shop
CT Scanning Laboratory for Agricultural and Environmental Research
Ecological Agriculture Projects
Fermentation and Bioprocessing Laboratory
Flow Cytometry Core Facility
Lyman Entomological Museum and Research Laboratory
Macdonald Campus Farm
J.S. Marshall Radar Observatory
Mary Emily Clinical Nutrition Unit
McGill University Herbarium
Morgan Arboretum
Pilot Plant
Plant Science Field Research Facilities
Plant Science Research Greenhouses and Phytorium
Soil and Plant Analysis Laboratory
The Trace Metal Analysis Laboratory
Off campus
Bellairs Research Institute (Barbados)
Gault Nature Reserve (Mont-Saint-Hilaire)
Mont-Saint-Hilaire Nature Conservation Centre
McGill Arctic Research Station
McGill Sub-Arctic Research Station
Molson Nature Reserve (Ste-Anne de Bellevue)
Wilder and Helen Penfield Nature Reserve (Lake Memphrémagog)
Interuniversity/ Interinstitutional(based at McGill or elsewhere)
CLUMEQ Supercomputer Centre
Coriolis II (Rimouski)
Huntsman Marine Science Centre
McGill University and Genome Quebec Innovation Centre
Pulp and Paper Research Institute – Canada (PAPRICAN)
Quebec Interuniversity Centre for Social Statistics (QICSS)
Centre for the Study of Learning and Performance (CSLP)
University of Waterloo
Waterloo, Ontario
NSERC Funding 2003: C$M 29,763
Number of Canada Research Chairs – 48
Research centres and institutes
Canadian Centre of Arts & Technology (CCAT)
Canadian Centre for Cultural Innovation (CCCI)
Centre for Accounting Research & Education (CARE)
Centre for Advanced Studies in Finance (CASF)
Centre for Advancement of Trenchless Technologies at Waterloo (CATT)
Centre for Applied Cryptographic Research (CACR)
Centre for Business, Entrepreneurship & Technology (CBET)
Centre for Computational Mathematics in Industry & Commerce (CCMIC)
Centre for Contact Lens Research (CCLR)
Centre for Cultural Management (CCM)
Centre for Education in Mathematics & Computing (CEMC)
Centre for Mental Health Research (CMHR)
Centre for Molecular Beams & Laser Chemistry
Centre for Theoretical Neuroscience
Heritage Resource Centre
Institute for Computer Research (ICR)
Institute for Innovation Research (IIR)
Institute for Polymer Research (IPR)
Institute for Quantitative Finance & Insurance (IQFI)
Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC)
Institute for Risk Research (IRR)
Institute for Vision Science & Technology (IVST)
Institute of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Institute of Insurance and Pension Research (IIPR)
Integrated Centre for Visualization, Design & Manufacturing (ICVDM)
Mid-Size City Research Centre (MCRC)
Nortel Networks Institute for Advanced Information Technology (NNI)
Schlegel – UW Research Institute for Aging (RIA)
Survey Research Centre (SRC)
Waterloo Centre for the Advancement of Co-operative Education (WatCACE)
Waterloo Centre for Atmospheric Sciences
Waterloo Centre for Automotive Research (WatCAR)
Waterloo Centre for German Studies
Waterloo Institute for Groundwater Research (WIGR)
Waterloo Institute for Health Informatics Research (WIHIR)
University of Waterloo Management of Integrated Manufacturing Systems Research Group (WATMIMS)
Université Laval
Québec, Québec
NSERC Funding 2003: C$M 28,128
Number of Canada Research Chairs – 80
Network of Centres of Excellence
ArcticNet
Geoide
Canadian Institute for Photonic Innovations
Instituts de recherche
Institut des nutraceutiques et des aliments fonctionnels (INAF)
Institut d'éthique appliquée (IDÉA)
Institut d'études anciennes (IEA)
Institut Hydro-Québec en environnement, développement et société (IHQEDS)
Institut québécois des hautes études internationales (IQHEI)
Institut sur le patrimoine culturel (IPAC)
Institut sur le vieillissement et la participation sociale des aînés (IVPSA)
Institut Technologies de l'Information et Sociétés (ITIS)
Centres de recherche
Centre d'analyse des politiques publiques (CAPP)
Centre de recherche en aménagement et développement (CRAD)
Centre de recherche en biologie de la reproduction (CRBR)
Centre de recherche en cancérologie (CRC)
Centre de recherche en économie agroalimentaire (CRÉA)
Centre de recherche en endocrinologie moléculaire et oncologique (CREMO)
Centre de recherche en géomatique (CRG)
Centre de recherche en horticulture (CRH)
Centre de recherche en infectiologie (CRI)
Centre de recherche en modélisation, information et décision (CERMID)
Centre de recherche en neurosciences (CRN)
Centre de recherche en rhumatologie et immunologie (CRRI)
Centre de recherche en sciences et ingénierie des macromolécules (CERSIM)
Centre de recherche en sciences et technologie du lait (STELA)
Centre de recherche et d'intervention sur la réussite scolaire (CRIRES)
Centre de recherche et d'intervention sur l'éducation et la vie au travail (CRIEVAT)
Centre de recherche Hôpital Laval
Centre de recherche interdisciplinaire sur la violence familiale et la violence faite aux femmes (CRI-VIFF)
Centre de recherche interuniversitaire sur la formation et la profession enseignante (CRIFPE)
Centre de recherche interuniversitaire sur la littérature et la culture québécoises (CRILCQ)
Centre de recherche interuniversitaire sur la mondialisation et le travail (CRIMT)
Centre de recherche sur la fonction, la structure et l'ingénierie des protéines (CREFSIP)
Centre de recherche sur l'adaptation des jeunes et des familles à risque (JEFAR)
Centre de recherche sur l'aluminium (REGAL-LAVAL)
Centre de recherche sur le bois (CRB)
Centre de recherche sur le cerveau, le comportement et la neuropsychiatrie (CRCN)
Centre de recherche sur le métabolisme énergétique (CREME)
Centre de recherche sur les infrastructures en béton (CRIB)
Centre de recherche sur les maladies lipidiques (CRML)
Centre de recherche sur les propriétés des interfaces et la catalyse (CERPIC)
Centre de recherche sur les technologies de l'organisation réseau (CENTOR)
Centre de recherche Université Laval-Robert-Giffard (CRULRG)
Centre de santé et de services sociaux de la Vieille-Capitale (CLSC Haute-Ville-Des-** Rivières) (CSSSVC)
Centre d'édition et de documentation Fonds Gustave-Guillaume (FGG)
Centre d'étude de la forêt (CEF)
Centre d'études interaméricaines (CEI)
Centre d'études Marie-de-l'Incarnation (CEMI)
Centre d'études nordiques (CEN)
Centre d'excellence pour la santé buccodentaire et le vieillissement
Centre d'optique, photonique et laser (COPL)
Centre hospitalier affilié universitaire de Québec (CHA)
Centre hospitalier universitaire de Québec (CHUQ)
Centre interdisciplinaire de recherche en réadaptation et intégration sociale (CIRRIS)
Centre interdisciplinaire de recherches sur les activités langagières (CIRAL)
Centre interuniversitaire de recherche sur le saumon atlantique (CIRSA)
Centre interuniversitaire d'études et de recherches autochthones (CIÉRA)
Centre interuniversitaire d'études québécoises (CIEQ)
Centre interuniversitaire d'études sur les lettres, les arts et les traditions (CELAT)
Centre interuniversitaire en calcul mathématique algébrique (CICMA)
Centre interuniversitaire sur le risque, les politiques économiques et l'emploi (CIRPÉE)
Centre jeunesse de Québec (CJQ)
University of Saskatchewan
Saskatoon, Saskatchewan
NSERC Funding 2006/7 C$M 26.5
All Research Funding 2006/7 C$M 140.6
Number of Canada Research Chairs – 40
Internal Research Centers and Institutes (partial list)
Canadian Centre for Health and Safety in Agriculture
Canadian Centre for Nuclear Innovation
Centre for High Performance Computing
Global Institute for Food Security
Institute For Computer and Information Technology
Institute of Space and Atmospheric Studies
Saskatchewan Drug Research Institute
Saskatchewan Structural Sciences Centre
Subatomic Physics Institute
Toxicology Centre
Plasma Physics Laboratory
Saskatchewan Isotope Laboratory
Research Centers and Institutes Operating with Independent Boards from The University
Canadian Light Source – Synchrotron light source operated as a national facility
Saskatchewan Population Health and Evaluation Research Unit, Inc.
Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization- Vaccine Research with Level 3 laboratory
Université de Montréal
Montreal, Quebec.
NSERC Funding 2003: C$M 21,759
Number of Canada Research Chairs – 93
Centres de recherche
Agora Jules Dupuit (AJD)
Centre Canadien d'études allemandes et européennes (CCEAE)
Centre d'études et de recherches internationales (CERIUM)
Centre d'études ethniques des universités montréalaises (CEETUM)
Centre d'étude des religions de l'Université de Montréal (CERUM)
Centre d'excellence en neuromique (CEN)
Centre d'excellence pour le développement des jeunes enfants (CEDJE)
Centre de droit des affaires et du commerce international (CDACI)
Centre de formation et d'expertise en recherche en administration des services infirmiers (FERASI)
Centre de recherche en droit public (CRDP)
Centre de recherche en éthique de l'Université de Montréal (CREUM)
Centre de recherche en neuropsychologie et cognition (CERNEC)
Centre de recherche en reproduction animale (CRRA)
Centre de recherche en sciences neurologiques (CRSN)
Centre de recherche interdisciplinaire sur la violence familiale et la violence faite aux ** femmes (CRI-VIFF)
Centre de recherche interdisciplinaire sur les problèmes conjugaux et les aggressions ** sexuelles (CRIPCAS)
Centre de recherche interdisciplinaire sur les technologies émergentes (CITÉ)
Centre de recherche interuniversitaire sur la formation et la profession enseignante (CRIFPE)
Centre de recherche interuniversitaire sur la littérature et la culture québécoises (CRILCQ/U.Montréal)
Centre de recherche interuniversitaire sur la mondialisation et le travail (CRIMT)
Centre de recherche Léa-Roback sur les inégalités sociales de santé de Montréal
Centre de recherche sur l'intermédialité (CRI)
Centre de recherche sur les politiques et le développement social (CPDS)
Centre de recherche sur les transports (CRT)
Centre de recherches mathématiques (CRM)
Centre des langues patrimoniales (CLP)
Centre international de criminologie comparée (CICC)
Centre interuniversitaire d'études démographiques (CIED)
Centre interuniversitaire de recherche en économie quantitative CIREQ-CRDE
Centre interuniversitaire de recherche en toxicologie (CIRTOX)
Centre interuniversitaire québécois de statistiques sociales (CIQSS)
Centre Robert-Cedergren de l'Université de Montréal
Équipe de recherche et d'action en santé mentale et culture (ÉRASME)
Groupes de recherche
Groupe d'astrophysique de l'Université de Montréal
Groupe d'étude des protéines membranaires (GÉPROM)
Groupe d'étude et de recherche sur la sécurité internationale (GERSI)
Groupe de physique des particules (GPP)
Groupe de physique numérique (PhysNum)
Groupe de physique numérique des matériaux
Groupe de recherche DÉFI Apprentissage (GDA)
Groupe de recherche Diversité Urbaine (GRDU)
Groupe de recherche en architecture urbaine (GRAU)
Groupe de recherche en conception assistée par ordinateur (GRCAO)
Groupe de recherche en conservation de l'environnement bâti (GRCEB)
Groupe de recherche en épidémiologie des zoonoses et santé publique
Groupe de recherche en gestion thérapeutique (GRGT)
Groupe de recherche en linguistique du texte (GRELT)
Groupe de recherche en médecine équine du Québec (GREMEQ)
Groupe de recherche en modélisation biomédicale (GRMB)
Groupe de recherche en physique et technologie des couches minces (GCM)
Groupe de recherche en sciences de la vision (GRSV)
Groupe de recherche en toxicologie humaine (TOXHUM)
Groupe de recherche et d'action sur la victimisation des enfants – Alliance de recherche ** pour le développement des enfants dans leur communauté (GRAVE-ARDEC)
Groupe de recherche et développement en gestion informatisée de la santé animale (DSA R&D)
Groupe de recherche IF (GRIF)
Groupe de recherche interdépartemental sur les conditions d'enseignement et d'apprentissage ** (GRICEA)
Groupe de recherche interdisciplinaire en santé (GRIS)
Groupe de recherche interuniversitaire en sciences infirmières de Montréal (GRISIM)
Groupe de recherche interuniversitaire en tutoriel intelligent (GRITI)
Groupe de recherche Language, Organisation et Gouvernance (LOG)
Groupe de recherche sur l'apprentissage et l'évaluation multimédias interactifs (GRAEMI)
Groupe de recherche sur l'avènement et la formation des institutions cinématographique et ** scénique (GRAFICS)
Groupe de recherche sur l'Amérique latine (GRAL)
Groupe de recherche sur l'inadaptation psychosociale chez l'enfant (GRIP)
Groupe de recherche sur la démographie québécoise (GRDQ)
Groupe de recherche sur le système nerveux autonome (GRSNA)
Groupe de recherche sur le système nerveux central (GRSNC)
Groupe de recherche sur les animaux de compagnie (GRAC)
Groupe de recherche sur les aspects sociaux de la santé et de la prévention (GRASP)
Groupe de recherche sur les environnements de travail (GRET)
Groupe de recherche sur les jeunes et les médias (GRJM)
Groupe de recherche sur les maladies infectieuses du porc (GREMIP)
Groupe de recherche universitaire sur le médicament (GRUM)
Immigration et métropoles, Centre de recherche interuniversitaire de Montréal sur l'immigration, l'intégration et la dynamique urbaine
Institutes de recherche
Institut d'études européennes de l'Université de Montréal et de l'Université McGill
Institut de biotechnologie vétérinaire et alimentaire (IBVA)
Institut de recherche en biologie végétale (IRBV)
Institut de recherche en immunologie et en cancérologie de l'Université de Montréal (IRIC)
Institut international de recherche en éthique biomédicale (IIREB)
Laboratoires de recherche
Laboratoire d'intégration des technologies informatiques à l'enseignement médical (LITIEM)
Laboratoire d'étude de l'architecture potentielle (LEAP)
Laboratoire de muséographie
Laboratoire de recherche et d'intervention portant sur les politiques et les professions en ** éducation (LABRIPROF)
Laboratoire de recherche sur les musiques du monde (LRMM)
Laboratoire de recherches métaboliques sur le foie et l'exercice
Laboratoire LexUM
Observatiores de recherche
Observatoire de linguistique Sens-Texte (OLST)
Observatoire du mont Mégantic (OMM)
Observatoire international de la création musicale (OICM)
Observatoire SITQ du développement urbain et immobilier
Observatoire sur la ville intérieure
Réseaux de recherche
Calcul Québec
Réseau Biocontrôle
Réseau de calcul et de modélisation mathématique (RCM2)
Réseau québécois de recherche en synthèse organique (RQRSO)
Unité de santé internationale (USI)
Centres de recherche hospitaliers
Centre de recherche de l'Institut de Cardiologie de Montréal (ICM)
Centre de recherche de l'Institut Philippe-Pinel de Montréal
Centre de recherche de l'Institut universitaire de gériatrie de Montréal
Centre de recherche de l'Hôpital du Sacré-Coeur
Centre de recherche du Centre hospitalier de l'UdeM (CRCHUM)
Centre de recherche du CHU Sainte-Justine
Centre de recherche Fernand-Seguin de l'Hôpital Louis-H. Lafontaine
Centre de recherche Guy-Bernier Hôpital Maisonneuve-Rosemont
Centre de recherche interdisciplinaire en réadaptation du Montréal métropolitain (CRIR)
Institut de recherches cliniques de Montréal (IRCM)
Laboratoire de génétique et médecine génomique en inflammation
Service de recherche de l'hôpital Rivière-des-Prairies
Queen's University
Kingston, Ontario
NSERC Funding 2003: C$M 21,571
Number of Canada Research Chairs – 54
University centres and institutes
Centre for Neuroscience Studies (formerly Centre for the Study of Molecular Neuroscience)
Centre for Water and the Environment
GeoEngineering Centre
High Performance Computing Virtual Laboratory (HPCVL)
Human Mobility Research Centre
Sudbury Neutrino Observatory Institute
Southern African Research Centre
Faculty centres and institutes
Cancer Research Institute
(Cancer Clinical Trials Division)
(Cancer Biology & Genetics Division)
(Cancer Care & Epidemiology Division)
Centre for Health Services and Policy Research
Centre for International Relations Charles Pentland
Centre for Manufacturing of Advanced Ceramics and Nanomaterials Vladimir Krstic
Centre for Studies in Primary Care Richard Birtwhistle
Centre for the Study of Democracy
Fuel Cell Research Centre
John Deutsch Institute for the Study of Economic Policy
Industrial Relations Centre
Institute for Intergovernmental Relations Thomas Courchene
The Monieson Centre Yolande Chan
Surveillance Studies Centre, David Murakami Wood
McMaster University
Hamilton, Ontario.
NSERC Funding 2003: C$M 20,694
Number of Canada Research Chairs – 62
Research institutes
Origins Institute
McMaster Institute for Applied Radiation Sciences(McIARS)
McMaster Institute for Energy Studies
McMaster Institute of Environment & Health
Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition
McMaster Institute for Molecular Biology & Biotechnology
McMaster Institute for Polymer Production Technology
McMaster Manufacturing Research Institute
McMaster Palaeogenetics Institute (MPI)
Population Health Research Institute (PHRI)
Research Institute for Quantitative Studies in Economics & Population
Research centres
Antimicrobial Research Centre
Bertrand Russell Research Centre
Brockhouse Institute for Materials Research
Canadian Cochrane Centre
CanChild Centre for Childhood Disability Research
Centre for Advanced Polymer Processing & Design
Centre for Electrophotonic Materials & Devices
Centre for Functional Genomics
Centre for Gene Therapeutics
Centre for Evaluation of Medicines
Centre for Health Economics and Policy Analysis
Centre for Minimal Access Surgery
Centre for Peace Studies
Centre for Spatial Analysis
Father Sean O'Sullivan Research Centre (St. Joseph's Hospital)
Firestone Institute for Respiratory Health
Henderson Research Centre
Management of Innovation & New Technology Research Centre
Mohawk-McMaster Institute for Applied Health Sciences
McMaster Centre for Automotive Materials
McMaster Ancient DNA Centre
McMaster Centre for Pulp & Paper Research
McMaster eBusiness Research Centre (MeRC)
Network for Evaluation of Education and Training Technologies
Offord Centre for Child Studies
Population Health Research Institute
R. Samuel McLaughlin Centre for Gerontological Health Research
Research Centre for the Promotion of Women's Health
Statistics Canada Research Data Centre
Steel Research Centre
Surgical Outcomes Research Centre
Research facilities
Adaptive Systems Laboratory
Applied Dynamics Laboratory
Canadian International Labour Network
Canadian Workers & Social Cohesion in a Global Era
Communications Research Laboratory
Earthquake Engineering Research Group
Ecowise: The McMaster Eco-Research Program for Hamilton Harbour
Flow Cytometry Facility
Generalized Electronic Learning Group
Geographical Information Systems Laboratory
Health & Social Services Utilization Research Unit
Health Information Research Unit
High Throughput Screening Laboratory
Independence and Economic Security of the Older Population
Intestinal Disease Research Program
Machining Systems Laboratory
McMaster Advanced Control Consortium
McMaster Experimental Economics Laboratory
McMaster Health Sciences International
McMaster Membrane Research Group
McMaster Nuclear Reactor
McMaster Working Group on the Middle Ages and Renaissance
Mobix Lab
Nursing Effectiveness, Utilization & Outcomes Research Unit
Power Research Laboratory
Program for Educational Research and Development
Program in Policy Decision Making
Robotics and Manufacturing Research Laboratory
SHARCNET
Smooth Muscle Research Program
Social and Economic Dimensions of an Aging Population
Software Engineering Research Group
Supportive Cancer Care Research Unit
Water Resources Environmental Information Systems Laboratory
Walter W. Smeltzer Corrosion Laboratory
William J. McCallion Planetarium
Work Function Unit at the School of Rehabilitation Science
University of Manitoba
Winnipeg, Manitoba
NSERC Funding 2009/10 C$M 19.9
Number of Canada Research Chairs – 44
University research centres, institutes, facilities and groups
Aerospace Materials Engineering Facility
Applied Electromagnetics Facility
Canadian Centre for Agri-food Research in Health and Medicine (with St. Boniface General Hospital and Agriculture and Agri-food Canada)
Canadian Wheat Board Centre for Grain Storage Research
Centre for Aboriginal Health Research (with Health Sciences Centre)
Centre for Architectural Structures and Technology (C.A.S.T.)
Centre for Defence and Security Studies
Centre for Earth Observation Science (CEOS)
Centre for Global Public Health
Centre for Globalization and Cultural Studies
Centre for Hellenic Civilization
Centre for Higher Education Research and Development (CHERD)
Centre for Human Models of Disease
Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics
Centre for the Research and Treatment of Atherosclerosis
Centre on Aging
Crystallography and Mineralogy Research Facility
Digital Image Analysis Facility
Great-West Life Manitoba Breast Cancer Research and Diagnosis Centre (with CancerCare Manitoba)
Health, Leisure and Human Performance Research Institute
Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences (with St. Boniface General Hospital)
Institute for the Humanities
Institute of Industrial Mathematical Sciences
Internet Innovation Centre
Legal Research Institute
Manitoba Centre for Health Policy
Manitoba Centre for Proteomics and Systems Biology (with Health Sciences Centre)
Manitoba Institute of Cell Biology (with CancerCare Manitoba)
Manitoba Centre for Nursing and Health Research (MCNHR)
Manitoba Institute for Materials
Manitoba Regional Materials and Surface Characterization Facility
Manitoba Research Data Centre
National Centre for Livestock and the Environment
Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) Facility
RESOLVE (Prairie Research Network on Family Violence)
Richardson Centre for Functional Foods and Nutraceuticals (RCFFN)
Spinal Cord Research Centre
Transport Institute
Winnipeg Institute for Theoretical Physics (with University of Winnipeg)
W.R. McQuade Structural Engineering Laboratory
Research groups include:
Aquatic Biology Research Group
Community Acquired Infections Research Group
Composite Materials and Structures Group
Developmental Health Research Group
Mood and Anxiety Disorders Research Group
Psychiatric Neuroimaging Research Group
Centres of Excellence
Allergen
ArcticNet
Auto21
Canadian Arthritis Network
Canadian Stroke Network
Canadian Water Network
GEOIDE
Graphics, Animation and New Media Canada
PrioNet Canada
MITACS
University of Calgary
Calgary, Alberta.
NSERC Funding 2003: C$M 19,714
Number of Canada Research Chairs – 75
University research institutes and centres
Alberta Global Forum
Calgary Centre for Financial Research – under development
Calgary Centre for Innovative Technology (CCIT)
Calgary Institute for the Humanities]
Canadian Centre for the Study of Higher Education
Centre for Advanced Technologies of Life Sciences (CAT)
Centre for Bioengineering Research and Education (CBRE)
Centre for Environmental Engineering Research and Education (CEERE)
Centre for Gifted Education
Centre for Health and Policy Studies (CHAPS)
Centre for Information Security and Cryptography
Centre for Innovation Studies (THECIS)
Centre for Mathematics in Life Sciences
Centre for Microsystems Engineering (CME)
Centre for Military and Strategic Studies (CMSS)
Centre for Public Interest Accounting (CPIA)
Centre for Research in the Fine Arts (CRFA)
Centre for Social Work Research and Development
iNFORMATICS Research Centre
Institute for Advanced Policy Research
Institute for Biocomplexity and Informatics
Institute for Gender Research
Institute for Quantum Science and Technology (formerly the Institute for Quantum Information Science)
Institute for Space Research
Institute for Sustainable Energy, Environment and Economy
Institute for United States Policy Research
Institute of Professional Communication (IPC)
International Institute for Resource Industries and Sustainable Studies (IRIS)
Kananaskis Field Stations
Language Research Centre
Latin American Research Centre (LARC)
Markin Institute for Public Health
Pipeline Engineering Centre (PEC)
Risk Studies Centre
World Tourism Education and Research Centre
Partnerships, institutes and centres
Alberta Bone & Joint Health Institute
Alberta Civil Liberties Research Centre
Alberta Gaming Research Institute (AGRI)]
Alberta Sulpher Research Ltd.
Alberta Synchrotron Institute (ASI)
Arctic Institute of North America
Bamfield Marine Sciences Centre
Banff International Research Station]
Canadian Energy Research Institute (CERI)]
Canadian Institute of Resources Law]
Canadian Research Institute for Law and the Family
Centre for Leadership and Learning
Hotchkiss Brain Institute
Institute of Health Economics (IHE)
Institute of Infection, Immunity & Inflammation
Institute of Maternal and Child Health
Libin Cardiovascular Institute of Alberta
Macleod Institute for Environmental Analysis
McCaig Institute for Bone and Joint Health
Pacific Institute for Mathematical Sciences
Pine Creek Research Centre for Sustainable Water Resources
Prairie Regional Data Centre]
Research and Education for Solutions to Violence and Abuse (RESOLVE)
Southern Alberta Cancer Research Institute]
Telecommunications Research Laboratories (TRLabs)
Van Horne Institute for International Transportation
Vocational and Rehabilitation Research Institute, The (VRRI)
Centres of Excellence
AUTO21
Canadian Arthritis Network
Canadian Bacterial Diseases Network (CBDN)
Canadian Genetic Diseases Network (CGDN)
Canadian Language & Literacy Research Network
Canadian Stroke Network (CSN)
Canadian Water Network (CWN)
Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Systems (IRIS)
Intelligent Sensing for Innovative Structures (ISIS)
Mathematics of Information Technology and Complex Systems
Micronet – Microelectronic Devices, Circuits and Systems
PrioNet Canada
PENCE Inc. Protein Engineering Network
Stem Cell Network (STEMNet)
Sustainable Forest Management Network (SFM)
TeleLearning Network
University of Western Ontario
London, Ontario.
NSERC Funding 2003: C$M 17,288
Number of Canada Research Chairs – 61
Science research centres and facilities
The Biotron Institute for Experimental Climate Change Research
CCP Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Chemical Physics
ERW Environmental Research Western
ISW Interface Science Western
Laboratory for Stable Isotope Science
The Nanofabrication Laboratory
ORCCA Ontario Research Centre for Computer Algebra
POLARIS Portable Observatories for Lithosphere Analysis and Research
SHARCNET Shared Hierarchical Academic Research Computing Network
SSW Surface Science Western
WINS Western Institute for Nanomaterials Science
Engineering research centres
Advanced Fluid Mechanics Research Group
Biomaterials and Medical Devices Research Group BM2D
Biomedical Engineering
Boundary Layer Wind Tunnel Laboratory
Chemical Reactor Engineering Centre (CREC)
Concurrent Engineering and Agile Manufacturing
ECE Robotics and Real-Time Systems Lab
Environmental Research Western
Facility for Intelligent Decision Support (FIDS)
Geotechnical Research Centre
Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction (ICLR)
Multi-Disciplinary Accident Research Team
Optomechatronics Research Laboratory
SHARCNet
The Three Little Pigs Research Project at The Insurance Research Lab for Better Homes
Western Fluidization Group
Health science research facilities
Faculty Research Centres
National Centre for Audiology
Canadian Centre for Activity & Aging
www.uwo.ca/actage
www.ccaa-outreach.com
International Centre for Olympic Studies
Additional Research Facilities
Kid Skills Research Laboratory
National Rowing Centre
Nursing Research Unit
Western Qualitative Health Research Network
The R. Samuel McLaughlin Foundation Exercise & Pregnancy Laboratory (EPL)
Research Facilities
School of Communication Sciences & Disorders
School of Kinesiology
School of Nursing
School of Occupational Therapy
School of Physical Therapy
Canadian Language & Literacy Research Network (CLLRNet)
Social science research centres and research groups
Aging and Health Research Centre
Allan O'Brien Multilevel Governance Laboratory
American Studies
Animal Cognition Research Group
Behavioural Neuroendocrinology Research Group
Canadian Language and Literacy Research Network (collaborative)
Centre for Avian Physiology, Neurobiology and Behavior
Centre for the Brain and Mind
Centre for the Study of International Economic Relations (CSIER)
Centre for the Study of Theory and Criticism
Child Development Research Facility
CIBC Human Capital and Productivity Project
CIHR Group for Action and Perception
Culture, Cognition and Behavior Research Group (a collaboration with Sociology and Anthropology)
Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction
Intergroup Relations and Social Justice Research Group
Kilee Patchell-Evans Autism Research Group
Moral, Political and Legal Philosophy Research Group
Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict Research Group
Philosophy and Psychology Research Group (a collaboration with Philosophy)
Political Economy Research Group (PERG)
Population Studies Centre
Psychoneuroimmunology Research Group
Research Unit for Work and Productivity
RBC Financial Group Economic Policy Research Institute (EPRI)
Self-Regulation Research Group (collaboration for Social, Development, Clinical and Behavioral and Cognitive Neuroscience areas)
The Aboriginal Policy Research Consortium
Transition Economies Research Forum (TERF)
Workforce Aging in the New Economy
Affiliated research institutes
Robarts Research Institute
Lawson Health Research Institute
London Regional Cancer Program
Dalhousie University
Halifax, Nova Scotia.
NSERC Funding 2003: C$M 14,839
Number of Canada Research Chairs – 50
Research centres, institutes, and groups
Atlantic Centre of Excellence for Women's Health
Atlantic Health Promotion Research Centre
Atlantic Institute of Criminology
Atlantic Research Data Centre (ARDC)
Centre for African Studies
Centre for Foreign Policy Studies
Dalhousie Infectious Disease Research Alliance (DIDRA)
Dalhousie Inflammation Group
Dalhousie Multiple Sclerosis Research Unit
Energy at Dalhousie
Health Law Institute
International Ocean Institute
Law and Technology Institute
Marine and Environmental Law Institute
Neuroscience Institute
Pediatric Pain Research Lab
Population Health Research Unit (PHRU)
Institute for Research in Materials
Technical research facilities
Aquatron
Atlantic Region Magnetic Resonance Centre
Canadian Institute of Fisheries Technology (CIFT)
Canadian Residential Energy End-use Data and Analysis Center (CREEDAC)
Centre for Water Resources Studies (CWRS)
Cosmogenic Nuclide Exposure Dating Facility
Minerals Engineering Centre (MEC)
Nova Scotia CAD/CAM Centre (NSCCC)
Slowpoke Facility
Trace Analysis Research Centre (TARC)
Affiliated research organizations
IWK Health Centre
Global Information Networking Institute
The Nova Scotia Hospital,
QEII Health Sciences Centre
Saint John Regional Hospital
University of Ottawa
Ottawa, Ontario.
NSERC Funding 2003: C$M 14,127
Number of Canada Research Chairs – 49
uOttawa research centres and institutes
Centre for Advanced Research in Environmental Genomics (CAREG)
Centre for Catalysis Research and Innovation
Centre for Hazard Mitigation and Emergency Management
Centre for Interdisciplinary Research on Citizenship and Minority Studies (CIRCEM)
Centre for Neural Dynamics
Centre for Research in Biopharmaceuticals and Biotechnology
Centre for Research in Photonics
Centre for Research on Educational and Community Services (CRECS)
Centre for Research on Environmental Microbiology (CREM)
Centre for Research on French Canadian Culture
Centre on Governance
CGA Accounting Research Centre
CGA Tax Research Centre
Human Rights Research and Education Centre
Institute for the Prevention of Crime (IPC)
Institute of Canadian Studies
Institute of Population Health
Institute of the Environment
Institute for Science, Society and Policy
Institute of Women's Studies
Research Centre for Sport in Canadian Society
University of Ottawa Centre for Neuromuscular Disease
Affiliated research institutes
Kidney Research Centre
Ottawa Hospital Research Institute (OHRI)
University of Ottawa Eye Institute
The Ottawa Hospital Regional Cancer Centre
University of Ottawa Heart Institute
Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute
Institute of Mental Health Research
Élisabeth Bruyère Research Institute
University of Guelph
Guelph, Ontario.
Number of Canada Research Chairs – 39
UoG ranks 14th among the top 50 research universities in Canada, but is not a member of U15.
Research Centres, Institutes and Groups
Guelph-Waterloo Center for Graduate Work in Chemistry and Biochemistry (GWC2)
Guelph-Waterloo Physics Institute (GWPI)
Advanced Analysis Centre
Advanced Foods and Materials Network (AFMNet)
Advanced Robotics & Intelligent Systems Lab
Agri-Technology Commercialization Centre
Aquaculture Centre
AquaSanitas – A Centre for Water Safety and Security
Arboretum Gene Bank
Axelrod Institute of Ichthyology
Bioconversion Network
Biophysics Interdepartmental Group (BIG)
Biodiversity Institute of Ontario
Bioproducts Discovery and Development Centre
Business Development Office
Centre for the Study of Animal Welfare
Canadian Agricultural Trade Policy and Competitive Research Network
Canadian Arthritis Network Core Facility
Canadian Co-operative Wildlife Health Centre
Canadian Language and Literacy Research Network
Canadian Pollination Initiative
Canadian Research Institute in Food Safety (CRIFS)
Centre for Agricultural Renewable Energy and Sustainability
Centre for Biodiversity Genomics
Centre for Food and Soft Materials Science
Centre for the Genetic Improvement of Livestock
Centre for Land and Water Stewardship
Centre for Nutrition Modelling
Centre for Psychological Services
Centre for Public Health and Zoonoses
Controlled Environment Systems Research Facility
Couple and Family Therapy Centre
Electrochemical Technology Centre
Food Safety Network
Genomics Facility/Advanced Analysis Centre
Guelph Food Technology Centre (GFTC)
Guelph Transgenic Plant Research Complex
Guelph Turfgrass Institute (GTI)
Hagen Aqualab
Health and Performance Centre
Human Nutraceutical Research Unit
Institute for Comparative Cancer Investigation
Institute for Robotics & Intelligent Systems
International Leadership Research Network
Laboratory Services
Landscape Architecture Community Outreach Centre
Mathematics of Information Technology and Complex Systems
Metals in the Human Environment Research Network
Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Centre
Organization and Management Solution
Ontario Rural Wastewater Centre
Poultry Welfare Centre
Research Programs (U of G / OMAFRA enhanced partnership)
Shared Hierarchical Academic Research Computing Network
Sudbury Neutrino Observatory
TransCanada Institute
Urban Systems Environment Design Centre
Veterinary Teaching Hospital
Weather Innovation Centre
Networks of Centers of Excellence
Health and life sciences
Accel-Rx Health Sciences Accelerator – Accel-Rx (2014–2019) – Vancouver, British Columbia,
Aging Gracefully across Environments using Technology to Support Wellness, Engagement and Long Life – AGE-WELL (2014–2019) – Toronto Rehabilitation Institute – University Health Network, Toronto, Ontario,
Allergy, Genes and Environment Network – AllerGen (2004–2019) – McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario,
Biotherapeutics for Cancer Treatment – BioCanRx (2014–2019) – Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, Ottawa, Ontario,
Canadian Frailty Network – CFN (2012–2017) – Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario,
Canadian Glycomics Network – GlycoNet (2014–2019) – University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta,
Cardiac Arrhythmia Network of Canada – CANet (2014–2019) – Western University, London, Ontario,
CellCAN Regenerative Medicine and Cell Therapy Network – CellCAN (2014–2018) – Hôpital Maisonneuve-Rosemont, Montréal, Quebec,
Centre for Commercialization of Cancer Immunotherapy – C3i (2016–2021) – Montréal, Quebec,
Centre for Commercialization of Regenerative Medicine – CCRM (2011–2017) – Toronto, Ontario,
Centre for Drug Research and Development – CDRD (2008–2018) – Vancouver, British Columbia,
Centre for Imaging Technology Commercialization – CIMTEC (2011–2018) – London, Ontario,
Centre for Probe Development and Commercialization – CPDC (2008–2018) – Hamilton, Ontario,
Centre for Surgical Invention and Innovation – CSII (2009–2017) – Hamilton, Ontario,
Centre for the Commercialization of Antibodies and Biologics – CCAB (2014–2019) – Toronto, Ontario,
Children and Youth in Challenging Contexts – CYCC (2011–2019) – Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia,
CQDM (2009–2017) – Montréal, Quebec,
Exactis Innovation – Exactis (2014–2019) – Montreal, Quebec,
MedDev Commercialization Centre – MDCC (2014–2019) – University of Ottawa Heart Institute, Ottawa, Ontario,
NEOMED (2014–2018) – Montréal, Quebec,
NeuroDevNet (2009–2019) – University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia,
Pan-Provincial Vaccine Enterprise – PREVENT (2008–2017) – Saskatoon, Saskatchewan,
Promoting Relationships and Eliminating Violence Network – PREVNet (2005–2009) – Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario and York University, Toronto, Ontario,
Stem Cell Network – SCN (2000–2011) – University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario,
The Prostate Centre's Translational Research Initiative for Accelerated Discovery and Development – PC-TRiADD (2008–2018) – Vancouver, British Columbia,
Translating Emergency Knowledge for Kids – TREKK (2011–2019) – University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba
Information and communication
Canadian Digital Media Network – CDMN (2009–2019) – Kitchener, Ontario,
Centre of Excellence in Next Generation Networks – CENGN (2014–2019) – Ottawa, Ontario,
MiQro Innovation Collaborative Centre – C2MI (2011–20121) – Bromont, Quebec,
Smart Cybersecurity Network – SERENE-RISC (2014–2018) – Université de Montréal, Montréal, Quebec,
Wavefront (2011–20121) – Vancouver, British Columbia
Environment
ArcticNet (2003–2018) – Université Laval, Québec, Quebec
Canadian Water Network – CWN (2001–2017) – University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario
Green Aviation Research and Development Network – GARDN (2009–2018) – Montréal, Quebec,
Marine Environmental, Observation, Prediction and Response Network – MEOPAR (2012–2017) – Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia,
Ocean Networks Canada Innovation Centre – ONC Innovation Centre (2009–2018) – Victoria, British Columbia
Natural resources
BioFuelNet (2012–2017) – McGill University, Montréal, Quebec,
Leading Operational Observations and Knowledge for the North – LOOKNorth (2011–2020) – St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador,
TECTERRA (2009–2016) – Calgary, Alberta,
Ultra Deep Mining Network – UDMN (2014–2018) – Sudbury, Ontario
Manufacturing and engineering
Refined Manufacturing Acceleration Process – ReMAP (2014–2018) – Toronto, Ontario
Cross-sectoral
Advanced Applied Physics Solutions Inc. – AAPS (2008–2017) – Vancouver, British Columbia,
GreenCentre Canada – GCC (2009–2019) – Kingston, Ontario,
India-Canada Centre for Innovative Multidisciplinary Partnerships to Accelerate Community Transformation and Sustainability – IC-IMPACTS (2012–2017), University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia,
MaRS Innovation – MI (2008–2017) – Toronto, Ontario,
Natural Products Canada – NPC (2016–2021) – Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island
Notable university-related research organizations and projects
Domestic
Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics – University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario
Organization for the theoretical study of gravity, quantum mechanics and cosmology
Canadian Institute for Advanced Research – HQ, Toronto, Ontario
A virtual institute for the study of cosmology, gravity, geology, biology, nanotechnology and other advanced scientific topics
Sudbury Neutrino Observatory – Sudbury, Ontario
Underground observatory for the study of neutrinos
Tri-University Meson Facility (TRIUMF) – University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia
Particle accelerator for the study of mesons
Remotely Operated Platform for Ocean Science (ROPOS)
Robotic study of Canada's Pacific Ocean floor
Lithoprobe
Canada's largest earth sciences project involving researchers from universities, the private sector and the federal government.
Globec Canada
Project for the study of the effect of environmental change on ocean life.
Ottawa Hospital Research Institute
A key medical research centre with a focus on cancer research, specifically the use of oncolytic viruses.
International
High Energy Physics – CERN (Geneva) the Large Hadron Collider and the Atlas Experiment
Canada's participation in the world's largest physics project coordinated by the TRIUMF Particle Physics Research Centre at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.
The Gemini Project
Canada's participation in the construction of large astronomical telescopes in Hawaii and Chile.
Canada and the Ocean Drilling Project
Canada's participation in an international programme studying the Earth's crust under the oceans.
The North Water Project
Canada's participation in an international project studying open water areas of the Arctic Ocean
Research and development expenditures in Canada by sector
Canadian Gross Expenditure on R&D (GERD) by Performing Sectors – 2006 Estimates, C$ Millions
Business Enterprises: 14,850, 52.4%
Higher Education: 10,890, 38.4%
Federal Government: 2,145, 7.6%
Provincial Government: 345, 1.2%
Provincial Research Organizations: 127, 0.4%
Total: 28,357, 100.0%
Support organizations
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council – Ottawa, Ontario (Federal government funding agency for Canadian university research)
Canadian Institutes of Health Research
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada – Ottawa, Ontario (Federal government funding agency for Canadian university research)
Canada Research Chair – Ottawa, Ontario (Federal government funding agency for special Canadian university research staffing)
Canadian Foundation for Innovation – Ottawa, Ontario (Federal government funding agency for research infrastructure for Canadian universities, colleges, research hospitals, and non-profit research institutions)
CANARIE, Canadian Advanced Network and Research for Industry and Education
Foundations in Canada – This is a list of philanthropic organizations in Canada. A number of these organization make financial contributions to university research in Canada.
See also
Canadian government scientific research organizations
Canadian industrial research and development organizations
U15 (universities)
List of Canadian nuclear facilities
Science and technology in Canada
Royal Society of Canada
References
Public web site of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
NSERC.gc.ca
Web sites for the "Group of Thirteen" Canada's largest research universities
Scientific organizations based in Canada
Higher education in Canada
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camino%20%28web%20browser%29
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Camino (web browser)
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Camino (from the Spanish word meaning "path") is a discontinued free, open source, GUI-based Web browser based on Mozilla's Gecko layout engine and specifically designed for the OS X operating system. In place of an XUL-based user interface used by most Mozilla-based applications, Camino used Mac-native Cocoa APIs. On May 30, 2013, the Camino Project announced that the browser is no longer being developed.
As Camino's aim was to integrate as well as possible with OS X, it used the Aqua user interface and integrated a number of OS X services and features such as the Keychain for password management and Bonjour for scanning available bookmarks across the local network. Other notable features included an integrated pop-up blocker and ad blocker, and tabbed browsing that included an overview feature allowing tabs to be viewed all at once as pages.
The browser was developed by the Camino Project, a community organization. Mike Pinkerton had been the technical lead of the Camino project since Dave Hyatt moved to the Safari team at Apple Inc. in mid-2002.
History
In late 2001, Mike Pinkerton and Vidur Apparao started a project within Netscape to prove that Gecko could be embedded in a Cocoa application. In early 2002 Dave Hyatt, one of the co-creators of Firefox (then called Phoenix), joined the team and built Chimera, a small, lightweight browser wrapper, around their work. "Chimera" is a mythological beast with parts taken from various animals and as the new browser represented an early example of Carbon/C++ code interacting with Cocoa/Objective-C code, the name must have seemed apt.
The first downloadable build of Chimera 0.1 was released on February 13, 2002. The early releases became popular due to their fast page-loading speeds (as compared with then-dominant Mac browser, Microsoft's Internet Explorer version 5 or OmniGroup's OmniWeb, which then used the Cocoa text system as its rendering engine).
Hyatt was hired by Apple Computer in mid-2002 to start work on what would become Safari. Meanwhile, the Chimera developers got a small team together within Netscape, with dedicated development and QA, to put together a Netscape-branded technology preview for the January 2003 Macworld Conference. However, two days before the show, AOL management decided to abandon the entire project. Despite this setback, a skeleton crew of QA and developers released Camino 0.7 on March 3, 2003.
The name was changed from Chimera to Camino for legal reasons. Because of its roots in Greek mythology, Chimera has been a popular choice of name for hypermedia systems. One of the first graphical web browsers was called Chimera, and researchers at the University of California, Irvine, have also developed a complete hypermedia system of the same name. Camino is Spanish for "path" or "road" (as in El Camino Real, aka the Royal Road), and the name was chosen to continue the "Navigator" motif.
While version 0.7 was primarily a Netscape-driven release kept afloat at the end by open source, version 0.8 was, according to lead developer Pinkerton, "a triumph of open source and open process. People from all around the world helped with patches, QA, bug triage, localization, artwork, and evangelism."
In March 2005, Camino's Web site was moved from the Mozilla Foundation's domain mozilla.org to the Camino Project's domain caminobrowser.org.
In September 2005, Pinkerton accepted a position at Google where he worked closely with Google's Firefox team and continued to work on Camino during his "twenty percent" time.
Camino 1.0, released on February 14, 2006, was the first browser of the Mozilla family to appear as a universal binary, thanks largely to the efforts of Mark Mentovai, another of the Camino developers.
Camino 2.0, released on November 18, 2009, introduced many new interface features to the browser including movable tabs and tab preview. It was the first Camino release to be Acid2-compliant.
With the release of Camino 2.1 in 2011, the developers announced plans to transition to WebKit for future versions, as Mozilla had dropped support for Gecko embedding.
The final release was 2.1.2 released on March 14, 2012.
On May 30, 2013, Stuart Morgan announced on Camino Blog that Camino has reached its end and is no longer being developed.
Standards compliance
Camino 2.0, released on November 18, 2009, introduced many new interface features to the browser including moveable tabs and tab preview. It was the first Camino release to be Acid2-compliant.
The final release (2.1.2) scores a 99/100 on the Acid3 test.
Camino's HTML5 support via the HTML5 test standards testbed is limited.
Multilingual support
Camino 2.1.2 is available in the following languages:
Dutch
German
English (US)
French
Italian
Japanese
Swedish
Chinese (Simplified)
Norwegian
Spanish
Version compatibility
See also
Browser timeline
Comparison of web browsers
List of web browsers
Java Embedding Plugin
K-Meleon
References
External links
Mike Pinkerton talks about Camino – "Open Source Developers at Google" Speaker Series
2002 software
Articles which contain graphical timelines
Discontinued web browsers
Free software programmed in Objective-C
Free web browsers
Gecko-based software
Gopher clients
Mozilla
News aggregator software
MacOS-only free software
MacOS web browsers
Portable software
Software using the Mozilla license
Products and services discontinued in 2013
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warcraft%20II%3A%20Tides%20of%20Darkness
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Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness
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Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness is a fantasy real-time strategy computer game developed by Blizzard Entertainment and released for DOS in 1995 and Mac OS in 1996 by Blizzard's parent, Davidson & Associates. A sequel to Warcraft: Orcs & Humans, the game was met with positive reviews and won most of the major PC gaming awards in 1996. In 1996, Blizzard released an expansion pack, Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal, for DOS and Mac OS, and a compilation, Warcraft II: The Dark Saga, for the PlayStation and Sega Saturn. The Battle.net edition, released in 1999, included Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal, provided Blizzard's online gaming service, and replaced the MS-DOS version with a Windows one.
In Warcraft II, as in many real-time strategy (RTS) games, players collect resources to produce buildings and units in order to defeat an opponent in combat. Players gain access to more advanced units upon construction of tech buildings and research. The majority of the display screen shows the part of the territory on which the player is currently operating, and, using the small minimap, the player can select another location to view and operate on. The fog of war completely hides all territory (appears black) which the player has not explored: terrain that has been explored is always visible in gray tones, but enemy units remain visible only so long as they stay within a friendly unit's visual radius. Buildings remain displayed as the player last saw them, and do not register unobserved changes such as being built, damaged, or repaired, etc.
Warcraft II was a commercial hit, with global sales above 3 million units by 2001; roughly two-thirds were sold in the United States. The game strongly influenced the company's next successful RTS, the futuristic StarCraft (1998) in gameplay, and in attention to personality and storyline. In 1996, Blizzard announced Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans, an adventure game in the Warcraft universe, but canceled the project in 1998. Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, released in 2002, used parts of Warcraft Adventures''' characters and storyline, but extended the gameplay used in Warcraft II.
GameplayWarcraft II is a real-time strategy game. In Warcraft II one side represents the human inhabitants of Lordaeron and allied races, and the other controls the invading orcs and their allied races. Each side tries to destroy the other by collecting resources and creating an army. The game is played in a medieval setting with fantasy elements, where both sides have melee, ranged, naval and aerial units, and spellcasters.
ModesWarcraft II allows players to play AI opponents in separate Human and Orc campaigns, and in stand-alone scenarios. Most of the campaign missions follow the pattern "collect resources, build buildings and units, destroy opponents". However, some have other objectives, such as rescuing troops or forts, or escorting important characters through enemy territory.
The game's map editor allows players to develop scenarios for use in multiplayer contests and against AI opponents. The editor runs under the Mac and also under either Windows 95 or, if the WinG library was installed, under Windows 3.
The scenarios can be played against the AI or in multiplayer games with up to eight players participating. The DOS version initially provided multiplayer games by null modem cable, modem or IPX, and Mac players could also play via TCP/IP or AppleTalk. Blizzard quickly released a facility to connect with Kali, which allows programs to access the Web by means of IPX.
Economy and warWarcraft II requires players to collect resources, and to produce buildings and units in order to defeat an opponent in combat. The Human Town Hall and Orc Great Hall produce basic workers that dig gold from mines and chop wood from forests and then deliver them to their Halls. Both buildings can be upgraded twice, each increasing usable resources per load from the workers. Players can also construct Shipyards, which can produce both combat ships and Oil Tankers. Tankers build construction offshore Oil Platforms and then deliver the oil to buildings on the shoreline. As all three resources are non-renewable, players must use them efficiently; forests can also serve as defensive walls.
Workers can also construct Farms, each of which provides food for up to four units, and additional units cannot be produced until enough Farms are built. Farms, being very tough for their cost, are also employed as defensive walls.
Humans and Orcs have sets of buildings with similar functions, but different names and graphics, for producing ground, naval, and air units. All but basic combat units require the assistance of other buildings, or must be produced at buildings that have prerequisite buildings, or both. Many buildings can upgrade combat units. When advanced units appear, the Orcs have a strong advantage in ground combat, while the Humans have the more powerful fleet and spellcasters. The most advanced ground combatants on each side can be upgraded and taught some spells, which are different for the two sides. Some campaign missions feature hero units, which are more powerful than normal units of the same type, have unique pictures and names, and must not die, as that causes the failure of the mission.
User interface
The main screen has five areas:
Along the top are the menu button and counts of the player's resources: gold from gold mines, wood from trees, oil from oil patches and food from farms
The largest area of the screen, to the right, shows the part of the territory on which the player is currently operating. This enables the player to select friendly units and buildings.
The top left is the minimap, which shows the whole territory at smaller scale and highlights the part on which the player is currently operating. By clicking or dragging in the minimap, the player can select another location to appear in the larger display.
The unit descriptions in the area in middle on the left shows the units and/or buildings. If units of the same type are selected, this area have an icon for each unit, showing the unit's vital statistics including the unit's health.
If a single unit or building is selected, the area at the bottom left shows the actions the object can perform and all completed upgrades that apply to this type of unit or building.
Initially most of the main map and minimap are blacked out, but the visible area expands as the player's units explore the map. The fog of war completely hides all territory which the player has not explored, and shows only terrain but hides opponents units and buildings if none of the player's units are present.
All functions can be invoked by both the mouse and shortcut keys, including game setup, the menu options and some gameplay functions including scrolling and pausing the game. Units and buildings can be selected by clicking or bandboxing (i.e. using the mouse to draw a box around the units to be selected), and then their actions can be controlled by the mouse or keys.
Storyline
The Second War
The First War brought the Fall of Azeroth, following the Orc campaign in Warcraft: Orcs & Humans. The survivors of Azeroth have fled by sea to the Human kingdom of Lordaeron, and the Orcs have decided to conquer Lordaeron, in what is known as the Second War. Both sides have acquired allies and new capabilities, including naval and air units, and more powerful spellcasters.
In the Second War, the Orcs are successful at first, but the Humans and their allies take the initiative, partly thanks to an Orc rebellion initiated by the warlock Gul'dan, who seeks to raise the sunken Tomb of Sargeras. Eventually, the Alliance forces push the Horde to Blackrock Spire, but Anduin Lothar, commander of the Alliance, is slain there. At the final battle around the Dark Portal in Azeroth, the Alliance exterminates one Orc clan and captures the Orc supreme commander and the remnants of his forces. Hoping to avoid further invasions, the Alliance destroys the Dark Portal.
The game's narrative is continued in the expansion pack Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal.
Development
After seeing the excellent response of Warcraft: Orcs & Humans, released in November 1994, Blizzard Entertainment started working on Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness. Development began in February 1995 and the game was released in December for MS-DOS and in August 1996 for the Macintosh. Blizzard later explained that the small budgets of the time allowed short development times. The response of Warcraft: Orcs & Humans also allowed Blizzard to recruit additional top-class developers. The company's initial design combined modern and fantasy elements, such as fighter pilots ambushed by a fire-breathing dragon. However, they found that this was unsatisfactory, and that there was plenty of content for a fantasy RTS. The initial release of Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness ran over a local area network using IPX but not over the Internet communications protocol TCP/IP. Kali, which used the Internet as if it was a local area network, became very popular and Blizzard quickly provided to players a program that made it easy to set up multiplayer Warcraft II games using Kali.
In 1996 Blizzard published Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal, an expansion pack initially contracted out to Cyberlore Studios. This contract was cancelled as Blizzard, unhappy after a milestone check-in, moved development in-house. The expansion introduced new Human and Orc campaigns, featuring new and much more powerful heroes. Later that year the company released Warcraft II: Battle Chest, a compilation of Tides of Darkness and Beyond the Dark Portal, for DOS and Windows 3.
Several non-canon expansion packs were released, these expansion packs are not a part of the human and orc campaign story. In 1996 WizardWorks published W!Zone, an expansion pack developed by Sunstorm Interactive, Inc. and authorized by Blizzard Entertainment. It was followed by W!Zone II: Retribution, an expansion pack published by WizardWorks and authorized by Blizzard Entertainment. In 1997 Maverick Software published The Next 70 Levels an expansion pack developed by Maverick Software and authorized by Blizzard Entertainment. It was followed by The Next 350 Levels, an expansion pack published by Maverick Software and authorized by Blizzard Entertainment
Blizzard sold exclusive worldwide rights to develop, publish, and distribute console versions of the game to Electronic Arts. In 1997 Electronic Arts released Warcraft II: The Dark Saga for the Sony PlayStation and Sega Saturn, which combined the campaigns of Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness and Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal. The Dark Saga also allowed players to automate upgrade of buildings and production of units, and to select more troops at once, facilities that were not extended to the DOS and Mac versions. Early betas of The Dark Saga included a working two-player mode which utilized the consoles' respective link cable peripherals, but Electronic Arts eliminated this feature before the final release.
In 1999 Blizzard published the Warcraft II: Battle.net Edition for Windows and Mac, which combined the original game and the expansion pack, retained the Macintosh facilities and replaced the DOS version with a Windows version that included Blizzard's online service, Battle.net, for multiplayer games. After considering new content, Blizzard preferred to make it easy for new and older fans to play each other. Battle.net Edition included some user interface enhancements from StarCraft – a hot key to center on events, assigning numbers to groups of units, and double-clicking to select all units of a type. However they excluded production queues and waypoints.
Reception
SalesWarcraft II debuted at #2 on PC Data's monthly computer game sales chart for December 1995, behind Myst. It held the spot in January 1996, but dropped to #3 in its third month. The game stayed in PC Data's top 3 from April through October, securing first place in April, August and September. After falling to #5 in November, it exited the top 10 the following month. Warcraft II achieved worldwide sales of 500,000 units within three months of release, and of over 1.2 million by November. This made it the world's most commercially successful computer game of the year as of November, according to PC Data. In the United States, it was the second-best-selling computer game of 1996, again behind Myst. The game sold 835,680 copies and earned $34.5 million in the region for the year. To capitalize on this success, Blizzard released the Warcraft Battlechest on November 11, which bundled Warcraft: Orcs & Humans with Warcraft II and the Beyond the Dark Portal add-on.Warcraft II claimed position 13 in PC Data's monthly sales rankings for January 1997, while the Warcraft Battlechest SKU took sixth place. The original game exited the top 20 after a 16th-place finish in February. However, the Battlechest consistently continued to chart through May, peaking at ninth in February. After an absence in June, it returned to the top 10 for two months, before falling to #16 in September and exiting PC Data's top 20 in October. The Warcraft Battlechest was the United States' 17th-highest computer game seller of the year, with sales of 262,911 units.
By April 1998, Warcraft IIs basic SKU had sold 1.02 million units and earned $39.8 million in revenue in the United States. This led PC Data to declare it the country's sixth-best-selling computer game for the period between January 1993 and April 1998. Warcraft II as a whole reached 2 million global sales by July 1998, and passed 2.5 million by year's end. By September 1999, it had sold 1,250,675 units in the United States alone, which led PC Data to declare it the country's sixth-best-selling computer game since January 1993. Sales continued the following month, when the Warcraft II Battle.net Edition SKU finished 20th for October in the country. As of 2001, worldwide sales of Warcraft II had surpassed 3 million units, with two-thirds derived from the United States.
Critical reviewsWarcraft II: Tides of Darkness earned enthusiastic reviews, elevating Blizzard to the elite along with Westwood Studios, id Software and LucasArts. The rivalry between Blizzard's series and Westwood Studios' Command & Conquer series fueled the RTS boom of the late 1990s.
In 1996 GameSpot, Next Generation, and Computer Games Magazine regarded the AI as better than in Warcraft: Orcs & Humans, and Computer Games Magazine also said that Warcraft II "surpasses the original game in almost every way". GameSpot approved how the innovative fog of war forced players to scout continuously, and IGN's retroview agreed. Next Generation said that the new units and resources open up a multitude of strategic possibilities, but that the game's greatest improvement over the original Warcraft is its intuitive new control system which allows players to select multiple units at once and access command menus by right-clicking. The Adrenaline Vault noted that players must manage their resources, as all resources run out. GameSpots retrospective review was enthusiastic about the variety of strategies that players with different styles can use, and The Adrenaline Vault noted that maps set in winter often allow ground units to walk on the ice. Macworlds Michael Gowen wrote, "This game set the standard for the genre and still represents one of the best titles available. If you haven't played it, you have missed something."
Andy Butcher reviewed Warcraft 2: Tides of Darkness for Arcane magazine, commenting that "Warcraft 2 is a great game. Despite its limitations, it's challenging, fun, easy to get into, and very addictive. The ability to play either side means that there are a vast number of missions on offer, and a level designer gives yet more longevity."PC Gamer US named Warcraft II the best game of 1995. The editors called it an "easy" choice, and wrote that "Warcraft II stand[s] out — way out — as the most impressive, most entertaining, game of 1995". The magazine also presented Warcraft II with the award for 1995's "Best Multi-Player Game". The editors of Macworld gave the game their 1996 "Best Strategy Game" award. It also won Computer Game Reviews 1995 "Military Sim of the Year" award, tied with Steel Panthers. The same year, Next Generation listed it as number 10 on their "Top 100 Games of All Time", explaining that "The strategy is complex, the classy SVGA graphics keep the player in touch with everything that's going on, and WarCraft II features the best use of sampled speech we've ever experienced." Warcraft II was a runner-up for Computer Gaming Worlds 1995 "Strategy Game of the Year" award, which ultimately went to Command & Conquer and Heroes of Might and Magic (tie). The editors wrote that Warcraft II "will keep you glued to the computer for hours on end", and noted that it "could have won had the competition not been so strong." MacUser declared Warcraft II one of 1996's top 50 CD-ROMs. In 1996, Computer Gaming World declared Warcraft II the 28th-best computer game ever released.
The IGN review considered WarCraft II in general a well-balanced game, but GameSpots retrospective review regarded Ogre-Mages with the Bloodlust spell as too powerful. IGN found that searching for the survivors of a defeated opponent could be tedious, and that the first few missions were very easy, although the final ones were challenging.
In 1996 GameSpot, Computer Games Magazine and Entertainment Weekly praised the SVGA graphics. The retrospective reviews by IGN and GameSpot enjoyed smaller details, such as the increasingly humorous responses when a player's units were repeatedly clicked, the "critters" that wandered around, and the detonating of Sappers/Bombers. WarCraft II won most of the major PC gaming awards in 1996, and sold millions of copies. Players were still playing in 2002, on DOS or using the Battle.net edition.
In 1998, PC Gamer declared it the 9th-best computer game ever released, and the editors called it "a sequel that isn't just more of the same; it's bigger and better in every way".
Retrospective reviews by IGN and GameSpot emphasized the ability to join multiplayer games on local networks or using Kali, and the simple but effective map editor, with which some users published maps on the Web. Another GameSpot review in 1996 commented that the campaigns are rather short, but the scenario builder and multiplayer options were ample compensation.
In 2006, Warcraft II was inducted into GameSpot's list of the greatest games of all time.
The Dark SagaGameSpot described the ports of the consoles Sony PlayStation and Sega Saturn, combining Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness and Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal, as practically identical to the PC version. Electronic Gaming Monthly and GamePro, however, asserted that the graphics are significantly downgraded, and the interface, though somewhat simplified with the additions of auto-upgrading, auto-building, and the ability to select more than nine units at once, is still more cumbersome and difficult to learn than the PC version's. Absolute PlayStation, in contrast, regarded the graphics as impressive and the console buttons as easy to use.Absolute PlayStation, Sega Saturn Magazine, Electronic Gaming Monthly, and GamePro commented that the console versions have no multiplayer capability, but were impressed with the number of campaign and skirmish maps. Most reviews of the Saturn version criticized the lack of support for the Sega NetLink peripheral, which could have enabled online multiplayer. The two GameSpot reviews noted that, while most campaign missions follow the "resource, build, destroy" pattern, some have other objectives.
Most reviews for the PlayStation and Saturn versions suggested that players with PCs should not buy the console versions, but recommended the game to those who use only consoles. Electronic Gaming Monthly gave the Saturn version their "Game of the Month" award and later named both console versions a runner-up for "Strategy Game of the Year". Absolute PlayStation omitted comparisons with the PC and praised the console versions. Sega Saturn Magazine called it "a highly enjoyable and compelling strategy warfare game" and praised the Saturn version as superior to the PC original.
Battle.net EditionGameSpot thought the AI was predictable but very efficient and the multiplayer facilities, while four years old, made it more enjoyable than at least half the new RTS games released in 1999. The Battle.net service was already reliable after being refined through experience on Diablo and StarCraft, and the fact that it was free would be attractive both to new users and those of earlier editions. While the production values were those of 1995, the cartoonish graphics and excellent sound effects and musical score were still enjoyable in 1999.
ReviewsPyramid''
Notes
References
External links
Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness entry at developer Blizzard's website
1995 video games
Blizzard games
Video games about demons
DOS games ported to Windows
Classic Mac OS games
PlayStation (console) games
Real-time strategy video games
Sega Saturn games
Video game sequels
Video games developed in the United States
Video games scored by Matthew Simmonds
Video games with expansion packs
Warcraft games
Windows games
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1947%20Michigan%20Wolverines%20football%20team
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1947 Michigan Wolverines football team
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The 1947 Michigan Wolverines football team represented the University of Michigan in the 1947 Big Nine Conference football season. In its tenth year under head coach Fritz Crisler, Michigan compiled a perfect 10–0 record, won the Big Ten Conference championship, and defeated the USC Trojans by a score of 49–0 in the 1948 Rose Bowl game. Although ranked second in the AP Poll at the end of the regular season, the Wolverines were selected as the nation's No. 1 team by a 226–119 margin over Notre Dame in an unprecedented AP Poll taken after the bowl games. The 1947 team outscored its opponents, 394–53, and has been selected as the best team in the history of Michigan football.
The 1947 Michigan Wolverines included five players who have been inducted into the College or Pro Football Halls of Fame: left halfback Bob Chappuis (who finished second in the 1947 Heisman Trophy voting), right halfback Bump Elliott (who received the Chicago Tribune trophy as the Big Ten MVP), defensive quarterback Pete Elliott, defensive end Len Ford, and tackle Al Wistert. Offensive tackle Bruce Hilkene was the team captain, and quarterback Howard Yerges was the field general who became known as "Crisler's 'second brain.'" Jack Weisenburger was the "spinning fullback" and the 1947 Big Ten rushing leader.
The 1947 Wolverines were the first team fully to embrace the concept of defensive and offensive specialization. Previously, most players had played their positions on both offense and defense. In 1947, Fritz Crisler established separate offensive and defensive squads. Only Bump Elliott and Jack Weisenberger played on both squads. In November 1947, Time magazine ran a feature article about the 1947 Wolverines focusing on the new era of specialization marked by Crisler's decision to field separate offensive and defensive units. The Time article noted: "Michigan's sleight-of-hand repertory is a baffling assortment of double reverses, buck-reverse laterals, crisscrosses, quick-hits and spins from seven different formations. Sometimes, watching from the side lines, even Coach Crisler isn't sure which Michigan man has the ball. Michigan plays one team on offense, one on defense...Whenever Michigan's defensive team regains the ball, Crisler orders: 'Offense unit, up and out,' and nine men pour onto the field at once." Crisler's single-wing formation in action was "so dazzling in its deception" that the media nicknamed the 1947 team the "Mad Magicians".
Schedule
Season summary
Pre-season
The 1946 Michigan football team compiled a record of 6–2–1 and closed the season with four consecutive wins over ranked opponents by a combined score of 162 to 19. In December 1946, lineman Bruce Hilkene was selected as the captain of the 1947 team. Hilkene had previously been selected as the captain of the 1945 team, but he was transferred as a Navy trainee and did not play for Michigan in 1945. Coming off a strong finish, the 1947 team featured a number of veterans from the 1946 squad. The returning veterans included halfback Bob Chappuis who set a Big Ten Conference record for total offense in 1946 and finished second in the voting for the Chicago Tribune Trophy as the Most Valuable Player in the Big Ten. Other returning starters included quarterback Howard Yerges, halfbacks Bump Elliott and Gene Derricotte, fullback Jack Weisenburger, ends Len Ford and Bob Mann, and linemen Hilkene, Bill Pritula, Quentin Sickels, Dominic Tomasi, and J. T. White. With a solid veteran core, the 1947 Wolverines were expected to be one of the best teams in the country.
Week 1: Michigan State
On September 27, 1947, Michigan opened the season with a non-conference game against Michigan State College. Playing in Ann Arbor in front of 73,115 spectators, the Wolverines defeated the Spartans, 55–0. The game was the first as head coach of the Spartans for "Biggie" Munn, who had been an assistant coach at Michigan from 1938 to 1945. Michigan dominated the game, outgaining Michigan State 504 yards to 56. Michigan head coach Fritz Crisler played second, third, and fourth string players later in the game, using 37 players in all. Bob Chappuis ran for three touchdowns and threw a touchdown pass for another. Jim Brieske made seven of eight point after touchdown (PAT) attempts in the game.
Michigan scored twice in the first quarter on touchdown runs by Jack Weisenburger and Chappuis. The second touchdown was set up by a 53-yard run by Bump Elliott. The Wolverines added two more touchdowns in the second quarter on short runs by Chappuis and Bump Elliott. Three more touchdowns followed in the third quarter, including a long touchdown pass from Chappuis to Len Ford with Ford running the last 35 yards after the catch. Center Dan Dworsky also scored on a 36-yard fumble return.
Michigan's starting lineup against Michigan State was Ford (left end), Hilkene (left tackle), Soboleski (right guard), Dworsky (center), Wilkins (right guard), Pritula (right tackle), McNeill (right end), Weisenburger (quarterback), Derricotte (left halfback), Bump Elliott (right halfback), and Kempthorn (fullback).
Week 2: Stanford
In the second week of the season, Michigan hosted Stanford. The game was the first between the two schools since the 1902 Rose Bowl which Michigan won by a 49-0 margin. In the 1947 rematch, Michigan scored 28 points in the first quarter and won the game 49-13.
Michigan's starting lineup against Stanford was Mann (left end), Hilkene (left tackle), Soboleski (right guard), White (center), Wilkins (right guard), Pritula (right tackle), Rifenburg (right end), Yerges (quarterback), Chappuis (left halfback), Bump Elliott (right halfback), and Weisenburger (fullback).
Week 3: Pittsburgh
In the third week of the season, Michigan hosted Pittsburgh. Michigan dominated the game, winning by a 69-0 score and outgaining the Panthers 496 yards to 69. One week earlier, Notre Dame had beaten Pitt by a score of 40-6. Pitt converted only one first down in the entire game. After the first quarter in Ann Arbor, the score was 0-0. Michigan's offense began to click in the second quarter with three touchdowns, followed by three more in the third quarter and four in the fourth quarter. The game's highlights included a 70-yard touchdown pass from Bob Chappuis to Bob Mann, a 40-yard interception return by Bump Elliott, an 80-yard punt return by Gene Derricotte. Michigan's ten touchdowns were scored by Mann (2), Derricotte, Jack Weisenburger, Bump Elliott, Don Kuick, Tom Peterson, and Len Ford. Jim Brieske converted 9 of 10 PAT attempts. In The New York Times, Walter W. Ruch wrote: "Angered by the fact that it had not been able to score in the first quarter, it 'poured it on.'"
Michigan's starting lineup against Pitt was Ford (left end), Wistert (left tackle), Soboleski (right guard), Dworsky (center), Sickels (right guard), Dendrinos (right tackle), McNeill (right end), Pete Elliott (quarterback), Derricotte (left halfback), Bump Elliott (right halfback), and Kempthorn (fullback).
Week 4: at Northwestern
On October 18, 1948, Michigan played its first road game against Northwestern at Dyche Stadium in Evanston, Illinois. Michigan jumped out to a 49-7 lead after three quarters. Playing against Michigan's third team, the Wildcats scored 14 points in the fourth quarter for a final score of 49-21. Highlights of the game included a 59-yard punt return by Gene Derricotte and a 52-yard touchdown run on an end around by Bob Mann. Michigan's seven touchdowns were scored by Jack Weisenburger (2), Bob Chappuis, Bump Elliott, Henry Fonde, Tom Peterson, and Mann. Jim Brieske converted all seven PATs for Michigan. After four games, Michigan had scored 222 points in 240 minutes, prompting comparisons to Michigan's "Point-a-Minute" teams of the early 1900s.
Michigan's starting lineup against Northwestern was Ford (left end), Wistert (left tackle), Soboleski (right guard), Dworsky (center), Sickels (right guard), Kohl (right tackle), McNeill (right end), Pete Elliott (quarterback), Derricotte (left halfback), Fonde (right halfback), and Peterson (fullback).
Week 5: Minnesota
In the fifth week of the season, Michigan played its homecoming game against Minnesota. Michigan won a close game by a score of 13-6. Michigan scored first on a long touchdown pass from Bob Chappuis to Bump Elliott. The final touchdown in the fourth quarter followed a 24-yard interception return by Jack Weisenburger to the Minnesota 21-yard line. Gene Derricotte scored after faking to the right and then running through a hole on the left side and into the endzone. Chappuis was held to 26 rushing yards, less than two yards per carry. While Michigan won a close game over Minnesota, No. 2 Notre Dame defeated Iowa in South Bend, 21-0. In the AP Poll released after these games, Notre Dame passed Michigan to take the No. 1 ranking.
Michigan's starting lineup against Minnesota was Mann (left end), Hilkene (left tackle), Tomasi (right guard), White (center), Wilkins (right guard), Pritula (right tackle), Rifenburg (right end), Yerges (quarterback), Chappuis (left halfback), Bump Elliott (right halfback), and Weisenburger (fullback).
Week 6: at Illinois
In the sixth week of the season, Michigan traveled to Champaign, Illinois for Illinois' homecoming game. For the second straight week, Michigan won by a narrow margin 14-7. Late in the first quarter, Michigan took a 7-0 lead on a 74-yard punt return by Bump Elliott and a PAT by Jim Brieske. Illinois tied the game in the second quarter on a run by Russ Steger. Michigan's winning touchdown was set up by a 52-yard passing play from Bob Chappuis to Bump Elliott. Elliott was tackled the four-yard line, and Fonde ran for the touchdown. Brieske again converted the PAT. Neither team scored in the second half.
Michigan's starting lineup against Minnesota was Mann (left end), Hilkene (left tackle), Tomasi (right guard), White (center), Wilkins (right guard), Pritula (right tackle), Rifenburg (right end), Yerges (quarterback), Chappuis (left halfback), Bump Elliott (right halfback), and Weisenburger (fullback).
Week 7: Indiana
In the sixth week of the season, Michigan regained its momentum and defeated Indiana 35-0 in Ann Arbor. In a game played amid intermittent snow flurries, highlights included a 61-yard run by Weisenburger in the second quarter and a 50-yard pass from Bob Chappuis to Dick Rifenburg in the fourth quarter. Michigan's five touchdowns were scored by Bump Elliott (2), Howard Yerges, Dick Rifenburg, and Henry Fonde. Notre Dame defeated Army, 27-7, and retained the No. 1 ranking in the AP Poll.
Michigan's starting lineup against Minnesota was Mann (left end), Hilkene (left tackle), Tomasi (right guard), White (center), Wilkins (right guard), Pritula (right tackle), Rifenburg (right end), Yerges (quarterback), Chappuis (left halfback), Bump Elliott (right halfback), and Weisenburger (fullback).
Week 8: at Wisconsin
In the eighth week, Michigan traveled to Camp Randall Stadium in Madison, Wisconsin to play Wisconsin. Michigan won the game, 40-6, to clinch the Big Nine championship irrespective of the outcome of the following week's game against Ohio State. The game was played in cold, cloudy conditions amid rain and snow. Wisconsin came into the game on a four-game winning streak and "had been given a good chance to win." The New York Times wrote that Michigan's "overwhelming superiority" was too much for the Badgers as Bob Chappuis "threw passes long and short and sliced through the Wisconsin line with increasing effectiveness." Chappuis threw three touchdown passes, and Gene Derricotte returned a punt 77 yards for a touchdown. Michigan's six touchdowns were scored by Howard Yerges (2), Derricotte, Weisenburger, Rifenburg, and Tom Peterson. While Michigan defeated Wisconsin by 34 points, Notre Dame won a narrow victory against Northwestern, 26-19. After these games, Allison Danzig wrote:"While Notre Dame was yielding as many touchdowns to Northwestern's intercepting Couriers as its six previous opponents combined had scored, the Maize and Blue was furnishing one of the season's finest offensive displays in rain, snow and mud. Against a Wisconsin eleven that had won first-ten rating, Bob Chappuis, Bump Elliott and associates executed Crisler's clever concepts of attack with a speed, power and finish in their running and passing operations that marked one of the campaign's high spots."
In the AP Poll following week eight, Michigan retook the No. 1 spot.
Michigan's starting lineup against Minnesota was Mann (left end), Hilkene (left tackle), Tomasi (right guard), White (center), Wilkins (right guard), Pritula (right tackle), Rifenburg (right end), Yerges (quarterback), Chappuis (left halfback), Bump Elliott (right halfback), and Kempthorn (fullback).
Week 9: Ohio State
On November 22, 1947, Michigan concluded the regular season with a 21-0 win at home against rival Ohio State. Bump Elliott, Bob Chappuis, and Jack Weisenburger each ran for touchdowns, and Jim Brieske converted all three PATs. Late in the game, the fans at Michigan Stadium began chanting, "California, Here I Come." At the end of the game, Fritz Crisler was "streaming tears of joy as he walked off the field."
Michigan's starting lineup against Ohio State was Mann (left end), Hilkene (left tackle), Tomasi (right guard), White (center), Wilkins (right guard), Pritula (right tackle), Rifenburg (right end), Yerges (quarterback), Chappuis (left halfback), Bump Elliott (right halfback), and Weisenburger (fullback).
Final AP Poll
Despite the Wolverines' win over Ohio State, Notre Dame, after defeating Tulane 59-6, overtook Michigan in the AP Poll released on November 24, 1947. In a close vote, Notre Dame scored 1,798 points, and Michigan scored 1,768 points. Notre Dame's margin was reduced to eight points (1,184 points for Notre Dame, 1,176 points for Michigan) in the AP Poll released on December 2, 1947. On December 6, Notre Dame beat No. 3 USC, 38-7. In the final AP Poll released two days later, Notre Dame received 107 of 146 first place votes and edged Michigan by 1,410 points to 1,289. Although Michigan would defeat USC three weeks later by an even larger margin that Notre Dame, the final AP Poll in the late 1940s was taken at the end of the regular season and before any bowl games were played. At the time, Notre Dame did not participate in Bowl games. Accordingly, on December 10, 1947, the Dr. Henry L. Williams Trophy was presented to Notre Dame for finishing No. 1 in the final polling.
Rose Bowl: USC
As the Big Nine Conference champions, Michigan played in the 1948 Rose Bowl against the University of Southern California. The game was Michigan's first appearance in a bowl game since its 49-0 victory over Stanford in the 1902 Rose Bowl. The 1947 team duplicated that score, defeating USC 49-0 in the 1948 Rose Bowl. The 49-point margin was the worst defeat in the history of the USC football program, and Michigan's 491 yards of total offense set a Rose Bowl record. The Wolverines threw four touchdown passes, and Jack Weisenburger ran for three touchdowns. Michigan completed 17 of 27 passes for 272 passing yards in the game.
On its second drive of the game, Michigan drove 63 yards for the game's first touchdown. The drive featured a 21-yard pass from Chappuis to Bump Elliott and a 17-yard gain to the nine-yard line on a pass from Chappuis to Dick Rifenburg. Weisenburger ran for the touchdown from the one-yard line, and Jim Brieske kicked the PAT. In the second quarter, Michigan increased its lead on a drive featuring a 23-yard gain to the 10-yard line on a pass from Chappuis to Gene Derricotte. Weisenburger again ran it in from the one-yard line with Brieske again kicking the PAT. Late in the second quarter, a 52-yard punt by Weisenburger pinned the Trojans inside their one-yard line. USC punted, giving Michigan good field position. They scored on a drive that featured a 27-yard gain on a pass from Chappuis to Bump Elliott and a 16-yard run by Chappuis, and concluded with an 11-yard jump pass from Chappuis to Elliott. Brieske converted his third PAT, and Michigan led 21-0 at halftime.
In the third quarter, Michigan added to its lead on 18-yard touchdown pass in which Chappuis rolled out to his right and threw across the field to quarterback Howard Yerges, who was open at the nine-yard line. Yerges caught the ball and ran it in for a touchdown, giving Michigan a 28-0 lead. The Wolverines closed the game with three touchdowns in the fourth quarter. The touchdowns came on a one-yard run by Weisenberger, a 46-yard pass from Henry Fonde to Derricotte who was open at the 25-yard line and ran untouched down the right sideline, and a 29-yard pass from Yerges to Rifenburg. Brieske converted all seven PATs for Michigan.
Michigan's starting lineup in the Rose Bowl was Mann (left end), Hilkene (left tackle), Tomasi (right guard), White (center), Wilkins (right guard), Pritula (right tackle), Rifenburg (right end), Yerges (quarterback), Chappuis (left halfback), Bump Elliott (right halfback), and Weisenburger (fullback).
National championship controversy
Response to Michigan's Rose Bowl win
After the final AP Poll, Michigan went on to beat USC in the 1948 Rose Bowl, a greater margin that by which Notre Dame had beaten USC (38-7). Michigan's 49–0 victory was the largest margin of victory ever against a USC team and the most points scored in Rose Bowl history. Football writer Pete Rozelle reported on the reaction of the assembled writers in the Rose Bowl press box. "From Grantland Rice down through the ranks of the nation's top sports writers assembled in the Rose Bowl press box yesterday there was nothing but glowing expletives for the synchronized Michigan Wolverine wrecking crew that powered over Southern California, 49-0. While for the most part hedging from a comparison of Michigan with Notre Dame, the consensus of the scribes was that the offensive-minded Ann Arbor squad deserved no less than a co-rating with the Irish as America's Number One Collegiate eleven." Grantland Rice, the dean of the nation's sports writers, wrote of Michigan: "It is the best all-around college football team I've seen this year. The backfield's brilliant passing and running skill gives Michigan the most powerful offense in the country." Red Smith of the New York Herald Tribune said, "No other team that I have seen this season did things with so little effort. Crisler has so many that do so much."
Debate over which team was best
Notre Dame supporters argued that the post-season AP poll was final and should not be revisited. They contended that Michigan had run up the score on USC, noted that Notre Dame had not had an opportunity to play in a bowl game, and asserted that Michigan and other Big Nine schools were unwilling to schedule Notre Dame in the regular season.
Detroit Free Press sports editor, Lyall Smith, argued the debate should be answered by comparing the two team's performance against common opponents. Smith noted: "They played three common foes. Notre Dame beat Pitt, 40–6, a margin of 34 points: Michigan beat Pitt 59–0. Notre Dame defeated Northwestern, 26 to 19, a margin of seven points: Michigan beat the 'Cats 49 to 21, for a 28-point advantage. Notre Dame dropped USC, 36 to 7, in what Coach Frank Leahy termed his team's 'greatest game of the year,' while Michigan slaughtered the same Trojans, 49 to 0. Against those three common opponents the Irish scored 104 points to 32. Michigan's margin was 167 to 21." Smith also pointed to Michigan's strength of schedule: "The teams Michigan played won 42 games, lost 48 and tied five. Notre Dame's adversaries won only 30, lost 45, and tied 6."
Special post-bowl AP poll
In response to the debate over which team deserved to be recognized as the nation's best, the Associated Press decided to hold a post-bowl poll. The AP reported on the rationale for the special poll this way: "The Associated Press is polling sports editors of its member papers throughout the country to help settle the argument as to which is the better football team – Michigan or Notre Dame. The AP's final poll of the top ten teams, released December 8 at the conclusion of the regulation season, resulted in Notre Dame winning first place with 1,410 points. Michigan was second with 1,289... Returns so far received indicate that voting in this latest poll is likely to be the heaviest ever recorded." Another AP report indicated the special poll was "conducted by popular demand" to answer "the burning sports question of the day" and to do so "at the ballot box."
Michigan was voted No. 1 in the post-bowl poll by a vote of 226 to 119. The AP reported: "The nation's sports writers gave the final answer Tuesday to the raging controversy on the relative strength of the Notre Dame and Michigan football teams, and it was the Wolverines over the Irish by almost two to one—including those who saw both powerhouses perform... In the over-all total, 226 writers in 48 states and the District of Columbia picked Michigan, 119 balloted for Notre Dame, and 12 called it a draw. Opinion of the 54 writers who saw both in action last fall coincided at almost the same ratio, with 33 giving the nod to Michigan, 17 to Notre Dame, and four voting for a tie." The 357 votes cast in the post-bowl poll represented "the largest ever to take part in such an AP voting."
Commenting on the special poll, Michigan coach Fritz Crisler said "the men who voted couldn't have made a mistake if they had picked either team." He described Notre Dame coach Frank Leahy as a "superb coach." Notre Dame President, Father John Cavanagh said, "We at Notre Dame feel grateful for the magnanimous statement of Coach Crisler. I listened to Michigan against Southern California and have only praise for the skill and accomplishment of your fine team."
Despite the magnanimous statements of Coach Crisler and Father Cavanagh, the reversed decision in the post-bowl poll only stoked the debate over which team was best. Said one columnist: "Hottest argument of the moment is the one over which had the better football team, Michigan or Notre Dame." Forty years later, the debate was still ongoing. In 1988, Michigan center Dan Dworsky noted: "Notre Dame still claims that national championship and so do we."
Players
Varsity letter winners
On January 5, 1948, head coach Fritz Crisler announced that he had awarded varsity letters to 35 members of the 1947 football team. The 35 letter winners were:
Jim Brieske – placekicker, and started 1 game at center
Bob Chappuis – left halfback (9 games)
Pete Dendrinos – tackle
Gene Derricotte – quarterback (1 game)
Dan Dworsky – fullback (1 game), center (1 game)
Bump Elliott – right halfback (10 games)
Pete Elliott – quarterback
Henry Fonde – halfback
Len Ford – left end (1 game)
Lloyd Heneveld – guard
Don Hershberger – end
Bruce Hilkene – left tackle (8 games)
Robert Hollway – end
George Johnson – tackle
Kurt Kampe, Jr. guard
Dick Kempthorn – fullback (1 game)
George Kiesel – quarterback
Ralph Kohl – right tackle (1 game)
Don Kuick – halfback
Bob Mann – left end (8 games)
Don McClelland – guard
Ed McNeill – left end (1 game), right end (1 game)
Tom Peterson – fullback (1 game)
Bill Pritula – right tackle (9 games)
Dick Rifenburg – right end (9 games)
Quentin Sickels – right guard (1 game)
Joe Soboleski – left guard (3 games)
Wally Teninga – halfback
Dominic Tomasi – left guard (7 games)
J. T. White – center (8 games)
Jack Weisenburger – fullback (7 games), left halfback (1 game)
Stu Wilkins – right guard (9 games)
Irv Wisniewski – end
Alvin Wistert – left tackle (2 games)
Howard Yerges – quarterback (started 9 games)
Reserves
John M. Andersen – end
James L. Atchison – tackle
Robert M. Ballou – tackle
Richards S. Brown – end
John D. Combes – halfback
John Eizonas – tackle
Bob Erben – center
Alan Fitch – guard
Daniel Frank -
John Ghindia – quarterback
David L. Gomberg – tackle
Norman E. Jackson – tackle
Donald A. Jones
John J. Kulpinski – center
Conrad B. Kuzma -halfback
Charlie Lentz – halfback
John C. Linville – guard
Hugh R. Mack – quarterback
John E. Maturo – guard
James Morrish – halfback
Frank Nakamura – guard
Donald Nichols – center
Alton Noble – halfback
John Padjen, Jr. – guard
James H. Poppy – tackle
Prentice Ryan – halfback
Ralph Salucci – guard
Irwin Small – quarterback
Kenneth L. Smith
Richard Strauss – tackle
Robert E. Twining – tackle
Kenneth J. Varrige – guard
Edward W. Wedge
John H. Wilcox – halfback
Individual awards and honors
Captain: Bruce Hilkene
1947 All-Americans: Bob Chappuis (first-team All-American on teams selected by the Associated Press, United Press, Saturday Evening Post, Collier's Weekly, the Walter Camp Football Foundation, the Football Writers Association of America, and the Central Press, NEA and INS wire services); Bump Elliott (first-team All-American on the Saturday Evening Post team; second-team on teams selected by the Associated Press, the United Press, the Central Press, and the Football Writers Association of America); Len Ford (second-team All-American on teams selected by the United Press and Central Press); Bob Mann (second-team All-American on the team selected by the Associated Press); J. T. White (second-team All-American on the team selected by the Football Writers Association of America).
All-Conference: Bob Mann, Howard Yerges, Bob Chappuis, Bump Elliott
Most Valuable Player: Bump Elliott
Meyer Morton Award: Alvin Wistert
Heisman Trophy voting: Bob Chappuis finished 2nd in the Heisman voting behind Johnny Lujack. Lujack had 742 points, and Chappuis had 555.
College Football Hall of Fame: Bob Chappuis, Bump Elliott, Al Wistert
Coaching staff
Head coach: Fritz Crisler
Assistant coaches: Jack Blott (head line coach), George Ceithaml, Forrest Jordan (assistant line coach), Clifford Keen, Ernest McCoy (chief scout), Bennie Oosterbaan (backfield coach), Arthur Valpey (end coach), Walter Weber (freshman coach)
Trainer: Jim Hunt
Manager: E. Kirk McKinney Jr.
References
External links
1947 Football Team – Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan Athletics History
Michigan
Michigan Wolverines football seasons
College football national champions
Big Ten Conference football champion seasons
Rose Bowl champion seasons
College football undefeated seasons
Michigan Wolverines football
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Configuration%20management
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Configuration management
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Configuration management (CM) is a systems engineering process for establishing and maintaining consistency of a product's performance, functional, and physical attributes with its requirements, design, and operational information throughout its life. The CM process is widely used by military engineering organizations to manage changes throughout the system lifecycle of complex systems, such as weapon systems, military vehicles, and information systems. Outside the military, the CM process is also used with IT service management as defined by ITIL, and with other domain models in the civil engineering and other industrial engineering segments such as roads, bridges, canals, dams, and buildings.
Introduction
CM applied over the life cycle of a system provides visibility and control of its performance, functional, and physical attributes. CM verifies that a system performs as intended, and is identified and documented in sufficient detail to support its projected life cycle. The CM process facilitates orderly management of system information and system changes for such beneficial purposes as to revise capability; improve performance, reliability, or maintainability; extend life; reduce cost; reduce risk and liability; or correct defects. The relatively minimal cost of implementing CM is returned manyfold in cost avoidance. The lack of CM, or its ineffectual implementation, can be very expensive and sometimes can have such catastrophic consequences such as failure of equipment or loss of life.
CM emphasizes the functional relation between parts, subsystems, and systems for effectively controlling system change. It helps to verify that proposed changes are systematically considered to minimize adverse effects. Changes to the system are proposed, evaluated, and implemented using a standardized, systematic approach that ensures consistency, and proposed changes are evaluated in terms of their anticipated impact on the entire system. CM verifies that changes are carried out as prescribed and that documentation of items and systems reflects their true configuration. A complete CM program includes provisions for the storing, tracking, and updating of all system information on a component, subsystem, and system basis.
A structured CM program ensures that documentation (e.g., requirements, design, test, and acceptance documentation) for items is accurate and consistent with the actual physical design of the item. In many cases, without CM, the documentation exists but is not consistent with the item itself. For this reason, engineers, contractors, and management are frequently forced to develop documentation reflecting the actual status of the item before they can proceed with a change. This reverse engineering process is wasteful in terms of human and other resources and can be minimized or eliminated using CM.
History
Configuration Management originated in the United States Department of Defense in the 1950s as a technical management discipline for hardware material items—and it is now a standard practice in virtually every industry. The CM process became its own technical discipline sometime in the late 1960s when the DoD developed a series of military standards called the "480 series" (i.e., MIL-STD-480, MIL-STD-481 and MIL-STD-483) that were subsequently issued in the 1970s. In 1991, the "480 series" was consolidated into a single standard known as the MIL–STD–973 that was then replaced by MIL–HDBK–61 pursuant to a general DoD goal that reduced the number of military standards in favor of industry technical standards supported by standards developing organizations (SDO). This marked the beginning of what has now evolved into the most widely distributed and accepted standard on CM, ANSI–EIA–649–1998. Now widely adopted by numerous organizations and agencies, the CM discipline's concepts include systems engineering (SE), Integrated Logistics Support (ILS), Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI), ISO 9000, Prince2 project management method, COBIT, ITIL, product lifecycle management, and Application Lifecycle Management. Many of these functions and models have redefined CM from its traditional holistic approach to technical management. Some treat CM as being similar to a librarian activity, and break out change control or change management as a separate or stand alone discipline.
Overview
CM is the practice of handling changes systematically so that a system maintains its integrity over time. CM implements the policies, procedures, techniques, and tools that manage, evaluate proposed changes, track the status of changes, and maintain an inventory of system and support documents as the system changes. CM programs and plans provide technical and administrative direction to the development and implementation of the procedures, functions, services, tools, processes, and resources required to successfully develop and support a complex system. During system development, CM allows program management to track requirements throughout the life-cycle through acceptance and operations and maintenance. As changes inevitably occur in the requirements and design, they must be approved and documented, creating an accurate record of the system status. Ideally the CM process is applied throughout the system lifecycle. Most professionals mix up or get confused with Asset management (AM, see also ISO/IEC 19770), where it inventories the assets on hand. The key difference between CM and AM is that the former does not manage the financial accounting aspect but on service that the system supports or in other words, that the later (AM) is trying to realize value from an IT asset.
The CM process for both hardware- and software-configuration items comprises five distinct disciplines as established in the MIL–HDBK–61A and in ANSI/EIA-649. These disciplines are carried out as policies and procedures for establishing baselines and for performing a standard change-management process. The IEEE 12207 process IEEE 12207.2 also has these activities and adds "Release management and delivery".
The five disciplines are:
CM Planning and Management: a formal document and plan to guide the CM program that includes items such as:
Personnel
Responsibilities and resources
Training requirements
Administrative meeting guidelines, including a definition of procedures and tools
Baselining processes
Configuration control and configuration-status accounting
Naming conventions
Audits and reviews
Subcontractor/vendor CM requirements
Configuration Identification (CI): consists of setting and maintaining baselines, which define the system or subsystem architecture, components, and any developments at any point in time. It is the basis by which changes to any part of a system are identified, documented, and later tracked through design, development, testing, and final delivery. CI incrementally establishes and maintains the definitive current basis for Configuration Status Accounting (CSA) of a system and its configuration items (CIs) throughout their lifecycle (development, production, deployment, and operational support) until disposal.
Configuration Control: includes the evaluation of all change-requests and change-proposals, and their subsequent approval or disapproval. It covers the process of controlling modifications to the system's design, hardware, firmware, software, and documentation.
Configuration Status Accounting: includes the process of recording and reporting configuration item descriptions (e.g., hardware, software, firmware, etc.) and all departures from the baseline during design and production. In the event of suspected problems, the verification of baseline configuration and approved modifications can be quickly determined.
Configuration Verification and Audit: an independent review of hardware and software for the purpose of assessing compliance with established performance requirements, commercial and appropriate military standards, and functional, allocated, and product baselines. Configuration audits verify that the system and subsystem configuration documentation complies with the functional and physical performance characteristics before acceptance into an architectural baseline.
Software
The software configuration management (SCM) process is looked upon by practitioners as the best solution to handling changes in software projects. It identifies the functional and physical attributes of software at various points in time, and performs systematic control of changes to the identified attributes for the purpose of maintaining software integrity and traceability throughout the software development life cycle.
The SCM process further defines the need to trace changes, and the ability to verify that the final delivered software has all of the planned enhancements that are supposed to be included in the release. It identifies four procedures that must be defined for each software project to ensure that a sound SCM process is implemented. They are:
Configuration identification
Configuration control
Configuration status accounting
Configuration audits
These terms and definitions change from standard to standard, but are essentially the same.
Configuration identification is the process of identifying the attributes that define every aspect of a configuration item. A configuration item is a product (hardware and/or software) that has an end-user purpose. These attributes are recorded in configuration documentation and baselined. Baselining an attribute forces formal configuration change control processes to be effected in the event that these attributes are changed.
Configuration change control is a set of processes and approval stages required to change a configuration item's attributes and to re-baseline them.
Configuration status accounting is the ability to record and report on the configuration baselines associated with each configuration item at any moment of time.
Configuration audits are broken into functional and physical configuration audits. They occur either at delivery or at the moment of effecting the change. A functional configuration audit ensures that functional and performance attributes of a configuration item are achieved, while a physical configuration audit ensures that a configuration item is installed in accordance with the requirements of its detailed design documentation.
Configuration management database
ITIL specifies the use of a Configuration management system (CMS) or Configuration management database (CMDB) as a means of achieving industry best practices for Configuration Management. CMDBs are used to track Configuration Items (CIs) and the dependencies between them, where CIs represent the things in an enterprise that are worth tracking and managing, such as but not limited to computers, software, software licenses, racks, network devices, storage, and even the components within such items.
The benefits of a CMS/CMDB includes being able to perform functions like root cause analysis, impact analysis, change management, and current state assessment for future state strategy development. Example systems, commonly identifies themselves as IT Service Management (ITSM) systems, include FreshService, ServiceNow and Samanage.
Information assurance
For information assurance, CM can be defined as the management of security features and assurances through control of changes made to hardware, software, firmware, documentation, test, test fixtures, and test documentation throughout the life cycle of an information system. CM for information assurance, sometimes referred to as Secure Configuration Management, relies upon performance, functional, and physical attributes of IT platforms and products and their environments to determine the appropriate security features and assurances that are used to measure a system configuration state. For example, configuration requirements may be different for a network firewall that functions as part of an organization's Internet boundary versus one that functions as an internal local network firewall.
Maintenance systems
Configuration management is used to maintain an understanding of the status of complex assets with a view to maintaining the highest level of serviceability for the lowest cost. Specifically, it aims to ensure that operations are not disrupted due to the asset (or parts of the asset) overrunning limits of planned lifespan or below quality levels.
In the military, this type of activity is often classed as "mission readiness", and seeks to define which assets are available and for which type of mission; a classic example is whether aircraft on board an aircraft carrier are equipped with bombs for ground support or missiles for defense.
Operating system configuration management
Configuration management can be used to maintain OS configuration files. Example systems include Ansible, Bcfg2, CFEngine, Chef, Nix, Otter, Puppet, Quattor, SaltStack, Terraform, Pulumi and Vagrant. Many of these systems utilize Infrastructure as Code to define and maintain configuration.
The Promise theory of configuration maintenance was developed by Mark Burgess, with a practical implementation on present day computer systems in the software CFEngine able to perform real time repair as well as preventive maintenance.
Preventive maintenance
Understanding the "as is" state of an asset and its major components is an essential element in preventive maintenance as used in maintenance, repair, and overhaul and enterprise asset management systems.
Complex assets such as aircraft, ships, industrial machinery etc. depend on many different components being serviceable. This serviceability is often defined in terms of the amount of usage the component has had since it was new, since fitted, since repaired, the amount of use it has had over its life and several other limiting factors. Understanding how near the end of their life each of these components is has been a major undertaking involving labor-intensive record keeping until recent developments in software.
Predictive maintenance
Many types of component use electronic sensors to capture data which provides live condition monitoring. This data is analyzed on board or at a remote location by computer to evaluate its current serviceability and increasingly its likely future state using algorithms which predict potential future failures based on previous examples of failure through field experience and modeling. This is the basis for "predictive maintenance".
Availability of accurate and timely data is essential in order for CM to provide operational value and a lack of this can often be a limiting factor. Capturing and disseminating the operating data to the various support organizations is becoming an industry in itself.
The consumers of this data have grown more numerous and complex with the growth of programs offered by original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). These are designed to offer operators guaranteed availability and make the picture more complex with the operator managing the asset but the OEM taking on the liability to ensure its serviceability.
Standards
A number of standards support or include configuration management, including:
ANSI/EIA-649-1998 National Consensus Standard for Configuration Management
EIA-649-A 2004 National Consensus Standard for Configuration Management
ANSI EIA-649-C 2019 Configuration Management Standard
ISO 10007 Quality management systems – Guidelines for configuration management
Federal Standard 1037C
GEIA Standard 836–2002 Configuration Management Data Exchange and Interoperability
IEEE 829 Standard for Software Test Documentation
MIL-STD-973 Configuration Management (cancelled on 20 September 2000)
NATO STANAG 4427 Configuration Management in Systems Life Cycle Management including
NATO ACMP 2000 Policy on Configuration Management
NATO ACMP 2009 Guidance on Configuration Management
NATO ACMP 2100 Configuration Management Contractual Requirements
CMMI CMMI for Development, Version 1.2 Configuration Management
CMII-100E CMII Standard for Enterprise Configuration Management
Extended List of Configuration Management & Related Standards
ITIL Service Asset and Configuration Management
ISO 20000:1 2011& 2018 Service Management System.
ECSS-M-ST-40C Rev.1 Configuration and information management
Guidelines
IEEE 828-2012 Standard for Configuration Management in Systems and Software Engineering, published date:2012-03-16
ISO 10007:2017 Quality management – Guidelines for configuration management
NATO ACMP-2009 – Guidance on configuration management
ANSI/EIA-632-1998 Processes for Engineering a System
ANSI/EIA-649-1998 National Consensus Standard for Configuration Management
GEIA-HB-649 – Implementation Guide for Configuration Management
EIA-836 Consensus Standard for Configuration Management Data Exchange and Interoperability
MIL-HDBK-61B Configuration Management Guidance, 7 April 2020
MIL-STD-3046 Configuration Management, 6 March 2013 and canceled on June 1, 2015
Defense Acquisition Guidebook, elements of CM at 4.3.7 SE Processes, attributes of CM at 5.1.7 Lifecycle support
Systems Engineering Fundamentals, Chapter 10 Configuration Management
Configuration Management Plan United States Dept. of Defense Acquisition document
Construction
More recently configuration management has been applied to large construction projects which can often be very complex and have a huge number of details and changes that need to be documented. Construction agencies such as the Federal Highway Administration have used configuration management for their infrastructure projects. There are construction-based configuration management tools that aim to document change orders and RFIs in order to ensure a project stays on schedule and on budget. These programs can also store information to aid in the maintenance and modification of the infrastructure when it is completed. One such application, ccsNet, was tested in a case study funded by the Federal Transportation Administration (FTA) in which the efficacy of configuration management was measured through comparing the approximately 80% complete construction of the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transit Agency (LACMTA) first and second segments of the Red Line, a $5.3 billion rail construction project. This study yielded results indicating a benefit to using configuration management on projects of this nature.
See also
Change detection
Granular Configuration Automation
Comparison of open source configuration management software
Dependency
List of software engineering topics
Interchangeable parts
Continuous configuration automation
System configuration
Systems management
References
Method engineering
Technical communication
Version control systems
Computer occupations
Systems engineering
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61158238
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector%20Packet%20Processing
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Vector Packet Processing
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Vector Packet Processing (VPP) platform is an extensible, open-source framework, which offers the functionality of network switches or routers. Vector processing is the process of processing multiple packets at a time, with low latency. Single packet processing and high latency are present in the scalar processing approach, which VPP aims to make obsolete.
This open-source, Linux Foundation backed framework is part of the Fast Data Project (FD.io). VPP uses the Data Plane Development Kit device drivers and libraries for many of its layer 1 functions - however, this functionality is separated into an optional plugin-in for VPP.
Technology
In order to push for scalability of networks, VPP reads the largest available sector of packets in the networks I/O layer. Instead of processing each packet individually throughout an entire graph with several nodes, VPP selects the entire vector of packets and pushes them through a graph node, before moving on to the next node. The instruction cache then adapts to the process and the remaining packets are processed even faster, due to the previously learned instructions from the first vector packet.
External links
FD.io Project Pages
VPP User Documentation
FD.io Wiki on VPP
References
Free routing software
Networking hardware
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12702088
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor%20of%20Computer%20Science
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Doctor of Computer Science
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The degree of Doctor of Computer Science (DCS, DCompSci, DSc.Comp, D.C.Sc.) is an applied research doctorate in computer science awarded on the basis of advanced study and research in the field of computer science. While it is considered a terminal degree and requires coursework and research beyond the masters' level, the DCS is not considered equivalent to a Ph.D. or a Doctor of Science (D.Sc or Sc.D) in computer science.
Structure
Typical entry requirements include master's degrees in computer science or a related field. The degree is intended for those who will make meaningful contributions to either the theory or practice of computing and as such involves both research and taught courses beyond master's degree level. Applied doctorates such as the DCS are aimed at practitioners with professional careers in the field rather than at those aiming for research careers in academia. The DCS is normally completed in three years, with a split of approximately two years of coursework and one year equivalent (36 credits out of a total of 96) spent on the dissertation.
Relationship to the Ph.D.
Structurally, the Doctor of Computer Science differs from the PhD in that the DCS has, as noted above, a three year duration, with only one year equivalent on the dissertation, while an American Ph.D. normally requires a minimum of four years, with at least three years spent on the dissertation.
There are two active definitions of what comprises a research doctorate or similar in the U.S. The National Center for Education Statistics defines a Doctor's degree-research/scholarship as "A Ph.D. or other doctor's degree that requires advanced work beyond the master's level, including the preparation and defense of a dissertation based on original research, or the planning and execution of an original project demonstrating substantial artistic or scholarly achievement." The awarding institution defines which degrees meet this description themselves. The National Science Foundation defines a research doctorate as "a doctoral degree that (1) requires completion of an original intellectual contribution in the form of a dissertation or an equivalent culminating project (e.g., musical composition) and (2) is not primarily intended as a degree for the practice of a profession." Under this definition, the
DCS, which (as noted above) is intended for professionals in the field of computer science, is not recognized by the National Science Foundation as a research doctorate equivalent to a Ph.D in Computer Science.
References
Computer Science
Information technology qualifications
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2853516
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backbone%20network
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Backbone network
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A backbone or core network is a part of a computer network which interconnects networks, providing a path for the exchange of information between different LANs or subnetworks. A backbone can tie together diverse networks in the same building, in different buildings in a campus environment, or over wide areas. Normally, the backbone's capacity is greater than the networks connected to it.
A large corporation that has many locations may have a backbone network that ties all of the locations together, for example, if a server cluster needs to be accessed by different departments of a company that are located at different geographical locations. The pieces of the network connections (for example: ethernet, wireless) that bring these departments together is often mentioned as network backbone. Network congestion is often taken into consideration while designing backbones.
One example of a backbone network is the Internet backbone.
History
The theory, design principles, and first instantiation of the backbone network came from the telephone core network when traffic was purely voice. The core network was the central part of a telecommunications network that provided various services to customers who were connected by the access network. One of the main functions was to route telephone calls across the PSTN.
Typically the term referred to the high capacity communication facilities that connect primary nodes. A core network provided paths for the exchange of information between different sub-networks.
In the United States, local exchange core networks were linked by several competing interexchange networks; in the rest of the world, the core network has been extended to national boundaries.
Core networks usually had a mesh topology that provided any-to-any connections among devices on the network. Many main service providers would have their own core/backbone networks that are interconnected. Some large enterprises have their own core/backbone network, which are typically connected to the public networks.
Functions
Core networks typically provided the following functionality:
Aggregation: The highest level of aggregation in a service provider network. The next level in the hierarchy under the core nodes is the distribution networks and then the edge networks. Customer-premises equipment (CPE) do not normally connect to the core networks of a large service provider.
Authentication: The function to decide whether the user requesting a service from the telecom network is authorized to do so within this network or not.
Call Control/Switching: call control or switching functionality decides the future course of call based on the call signalling processing. E.g. switching functionality may decide based on the "called number" that the call be routed towards a subscriber within this operator's network or with number portability more prevalent to another operator's network.
Charging: This functionality of the collation and processing of charging data generated by various network nodes. Two common types of charging mechanisms found in present-day networks are prepaid charging and postpaid charging. See Automatic Message Accounting
Service Invocation: Core network performs the task of service invocation for its subscribers. Service invocation may happen based on some explicit action (e.g. call transfer) by user or implicitly (call waiting). It's important to note however that service "execution" may or may not be a core network functionality as third party network/nodes may take part in actual service execution.
Gateways: Gateways shall be present in the core network to access other networks. Gateway functionality is dependent on the type of network it interfaces with.
Physically, one or more of these logical functionalities may simultaneously exist in a given core network node.
Besides above-mentioned functionalities, the following also formed part of a telecommunications core network:
O&M: Operations & Maintenance centre or Operations Support Systems to configure and provision the core network nodes. Number of subscribers, peak hour call rate, nature of services, geographical preferences are some of the factors which impact the configuration. Network statistics collection (Performance Management), alarm monitoring (Fault Management) and logging of various network nodes actions (Event Management) also happens in the O&M centre. These stats, alarms and traces form important tools for a network operator to monitor the network health and performance and improvise on the same.
Subscriber Database: Core network also hosts the subscribers database (e.g. HLR in GSM systems). Subscriber database is accessed by core network nodes for functions like authentication, profiling, service invocation etc.
Distributed backbone
A distributed backbone is a backbone network that consists of a number of connectivity devices connected to a series of central connectivity devices, such as hubs, switches, or routers, in a hierarchy. This kind of topology allows for simple expansion and limited capital outlay for growth, because more layers of devices can be added to existing layers. In a distributed backbone network, all of the devices that access the backbone share the transmission media, as every device connected to this network is sent all transmissions placed on that network.
Distributed backbones, in all practicality, are in use by all large-scale networks. Applications in enterprise-wide scenarios confined to a single building are also practical, as certain connectivity devices can be assigned to certain floors or departments. Each floor or department possesses a LAN and a wiring closet with that workgroup's main hub or router connected to a bus-style network using backbone cabling. Another advantage of using a distributed backbone is the ability for network administrator to segregate workgroups for ease of management.
There is the possibility of single points of failure, referring to connectivity devices high in the series hierarchy. The distributed backbone must be designed to separate network traffic circulating on each individual LAN from the backbone network traffic by using access devices such as routers and bridges.
Collapsed backbone
A conventional backbone network spans distance to provide interconnectivity across multiple locations. In most cases, the backbones are the links while the switching or routing functions are done by the equipment at each location. It is a distributed architecture.
A collapsed backbone (also known as inverted backbone or backbone-in-a-box) is a type of backbone network architecture. In the case of a collapsed backbone, each location features a link back to a central location to be connected to the collapsed backbone. The collapsed backbone can be a cluster or a single switch or router. The topology and architecture of a collapsed backbone is a star or a rooted tree.
The main advantages of the collapsed backbone approach are
ease of management since the backbone is in a single location and in a single box, and
since the backbone is essentially the back plane or internal switching matrix of the box, proprietary, high performance technology can be used.
However, the drawback of the collapsed backbone is that if the box housing the backbone is down or there are reachability problem to the central location, the entire network will crash. These problems can be minimized by having redundant backbone boxes as well as having secondary/backup backbone locations.
Parallel backbone
There are a few different types of backbones that are used for an enterprise-wide network. When organizations are looking for a very strong and trustworthy backbone they should choose a parallel backbone. This backbone is a variation of a collapsed backbone in that it uses a central node (connection point). Although, with a parallel backbone, it allows for duplicate connections when there is more than one router or switch. Each switch and router are connected by two cables. By having more than one cable connecting each device, it ensures network connectivity to any area of the enterprise-wide network.
Parallel backbones are more expensive than other backbone networks because they require more cabling than the other network topologies. Although this can be a major factor when deciding which enterprise-wide topology to use, the expense of it makes up for the efficiency it creates by adding increased performance and fault tolerance. Most organizations use parallel backbones when there are critical devices on the network. For example, if there is important data, such as payroll, that should be accessed at all times by multiple departments, then your organization should choose to implement a Parallel Backbone to make sure that the connectivity is never lost.
Serial backbone
A serial backbone is the simplest kind of backbone network. Serial backbones consist of two or more internet working devices connected to each other by a single cable in a daisy-chain fashion. A daisy chain is a group of connectivity devices linked together in a serial fashion. Hubs are often connected in this way to extend a network. However, hubs are not the only device that can be connected in a serial backbone. Gateways, routers, switches and bridges more commonly form part of the backbone. The serial backbone topology could be used for enterprise-wide networks, though it is rarely implemented for that purpose.
See also
Backhaul
References
External links
IPv6 Backbone Network Topology
Computer networks by scale
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1963471
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content-addressable%20network
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Content-addressable network
|
The content-addressable network (CAN) is a distributed, decentralized P2P infrastructure that provides hash table functionality on an Internet-like scale. CAN was one of the original four distributed hash table proposals, introduced concurrently with Chord, Pastry, and Tapestry.
Overview
Like other distributed hash tables, CAN is designed to be scalable, fault tolerant, and self-organizing. The architectural design is a virtual multi-dimensional Cartesian coordinate space, a type of overlay network, on a multi-torus. This n-dimensional coordinate space is a virtual logical address, completely independent of the physical location and physical connectivity of the nodes. Points within the space are identified with coordinates. The entire coordinate space is dynamically partitioned among all the nodes in the system such that every node possesses at least one distinct zone within the overall space.
Routing
A CAN node maintains a routing table that holds the IP address and virtual coordinate zone of each of its neighbors. A node routes a message towards a destination point in the coordinate space. The node first determines which neighboring zone is closest to the destination point, and then looks up that zone's node's IP address via the routing table.
Node joining
To join a CAN, a joining node must:
Find a node already in the overlay network.
Identify a zone that can be split
Update the routing tables of nodes neighboring the newly split zone.
To find a node already in the overlay network, bootstrapping nodes may be used to inform the joining node of IP addresses of nodes currently in the overlay network.
After the joining node receives an IP address of a node already in the CAN, it can attempt to identify a zone for itself. The joining node randomly picks a point in the coordinate space and sends a join request, directed to the random point, to one of the received IP addresses. The nodes already in the overlay network route the join request to the correct device via their zone-to-IP routing tables. Once the node managing the destination point's zone receives the join request, it may honor the join request by splitting its zone in half, allocating itself the first half, and allocating the joining node the second half. If it does not honor the join request, the joining node keeps picking random points in the coordinate space and sending join requests directed to these random points until it successfully joins the network.
After the zone split and allocation is complete, the neighboring nodes are updated with the coordinates of the two new zones and the corresponding IP addresses. Routing tables are updated and updates are propagated across the network.
Node departing
To handle a node departing, the CAN must
identify a node is departing
have the departing node's zone merged or taken over by a neighboring node
update the routing tables across the network.
Detecting a node's departure can be done, for instance, via heartbeat messages that periodically broadcast routing table information between neighbors. After a predetermined period of silence from a neighbor, that neighboring node is determined as failed and is considered a departing node. Alternatively, a node that is willingly departing may broadcast such a notice to its neighbors.
After a departing node is identified, its zone must be either merged or taken over. First the departed node's zone is analyzed to determine whether a neighboring node's zone can merge with the departed node's zone to form a valid zone. For example, a zone in a 2d coordinate space must be either a square or rectangle and cannot be L-shaped. The validation test may cycle through all neighboring zones to determine if a successful merge can occur. If one of the potential merges is deemed a valid merge, the zones are then merged. If none of the potential merges are deemed valid, then the neighboring node with the smallest zone takes over control of the departing node's zone. After a take-over, the take-over node may periodically attempt to merge its additionally controlled zones with respective neighboring zones.
If the merge is successful, routing tables of neighboring zones' nodes are updated to reflect the merge. The network will see the subsection of the overlay network as one, single zone after a merge and treat all routing processing with this mindset. To effectuate a take-over, the take-over node updates neighboring zones' nodes' routing tables, so that requests to either zone resolve to the take-over node. And, as such, the network still sees the subsection of the overlay network as two separate zones and treats all routing processing with this mindset.
Developers
Sylvia Ratnasamy, Paul Francis, Mark Handley, Richard Karp, Scott Shenker
See also
Chord
Pastry
Tapestry
References
Routing
Distributed data storage
Peer-to-peer computing
Hash based data structures
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44578
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big%20O%20notation
|
Big O notation
|
Big O notation is a mathematical notation that describes the limiting behavior of a function when the argument tends towards a particular value or infinity. Big O is a member of a family of notations invented by Paul Bachmann, Edmund Landau, and others, collectively called Bachmann–Landau notation or asymptotic notation.
In computer science, big O notation is used to classify algorithms according to how their run time or space requirements grow as the input size grows. In analytic number theory, big O notation is often used to express a bound on the difference between an arithmetical function and a better understood approximation; a famous example of such a difference is the remainder term in the prime number theorem. Big O notation is also used in many other fields to provide similar estimates.
Big O notation characterizes functions according to their growth rates: different functions with the same growth rate may be represented using the same O notation. The letter O is used because the growth rate of a function is also referred to as the order of the function. A description of a function in terms of big O notation usually only provides an upper bound on the growth rate of the function.
Associated with big O notation are several related notations, using the symbols , and , to describe other kinds of bounds on asymptotic growth rates.
Formal definition
Let , the function to be estimated, be a real or complex valued function and let , the comparison function, be a real valued function. Let both functions be defined on some unbounded subset of the positive real numbers, and be strictly positive for all large enough values of . One writes
if the absolute value of is at most a positive constant multiple of for all sufficiently large values of . That is, if there exists a positive real number and a real number such that
In many contexts, the assumption that we are interested in the growth rate as the variable goes to infinity is left unstated, and one writes more simply that
The notation can also be used to describe the behavior of near some real number (often, ): we say
if there exist positive numbers and such that for all with
As is chosen to be non-zero for values of sufficiently close to , both of these definitions can be unified using the limit superior:
if
In computer science, a slightly more restrictive definition is common: and are both required to be functions from the positive integers to the nonnegative real numbers; if there exist positive integer numbers and such that for all . Where necessary, finite ranges are (tacitly) excluded from 's and 's domain by choosing sufficiently large. (For example, is undefined at .)
Example
In typical usage the notation is asymptotical, that is, it refers to very large . In this setting, the contribution of the terms that grow "most quickly" will eventually make the other ones irrelevant. As a result, the following simplification rules can be applied:
If is a sum of several terms, if there is one with largest growth rate, it can be kept, and all others omitted.
If is a product of several factors, any constants (terms in the product that do not depend on ) can be omitted.
For example, let , and suppose we wish to simplify this function, using notation, to describe its growth rate as approaches infinity. This function is the sum of three terms: , , and . Of these three terms, the one with the highest growth rate is the one with the largest exponent as a function of , namely . Now one may apply the second rule: is a product of and in which the first factor does not depend on . Omitting this factor results in the simplified form . Thus, we say that is a "big O" of . Mathematically, we can write . One may confirm this calculation using the formal definition: let and . Applying the formal definition from above, the statement that is equivalent to its expansion,
for some suitable choice of and and for all . To prove this, let and . Then, for all :
so
Usage
Big O notation has two main areas of application:
In mathematics, it is commonly used to describe how closely a finite series approximates a given function, especially in the case of a truncated Taylor series or asymptotic expansion
In computer science, it is useful in the analysis of algorithms
In both applications, the function appearing within the is typically chosen to be as simple as possible, omitting constant factors and lower order terms.
There are two formally close, but noticeably different, usages of this notation:
infinite asymptotics
infinitesimal asymptotics.
This distinction is only in application and not in principle, however—the formal definition for the "big O" is the same for both cases, only with different limits for the function argument.
Infinite asymptotics
Big O notation is useful when analyzing algorithms for efficiency. For example, the time (or the number of steps) it takes to complete a problem of size might be found to be . As grows large, the term will come to dominate, so that all other terms can be neglected—for instance when , the term is 1000 times as large as the term. Ignoring the latter would have negligible effect on the expression's value for most purposes. Further, the coefficients become irrelevant if we compare to any other order of expression, such as an expression containing a term or . Even if , if , the latter will always exceed the former once grows larger than (). Additionally, the number of steps depends on the details of the machine model on which the algorithm runs, but different types of machines typically vary by only a constant factor in the number of steps needed to execute an algorithm. So the big O notation captures what remains: we write either
or
and say that the algorithm has order of time complexity. The sign "" is not meant to express "is equal to" in its normal mathematical sense, but rather a more colloquial "is", so the second expression is sometimes considered more accurate (see the "Equals sign" discussion below) while the first is considered by some as an abuse of notation.
Infinitesimal asymptotics
Big O can also be used to describe the error term in an approximation to a mathematical function. The most significant terms are written explicitly, and then the least-significant terms are summarized in a single big O term. Consider, for example, the exponential series and two expressions of it that are valid when is small:
The second expression (the one with O(x3)) means the absolute-value of the error ex − (1 + x + x2/2) is at most some constant times x3 when x is close enough to 0.
Properties
If the function can be written as a finite sum of other functions, then the fastest growing one determines the order of . For example,
In particular, if a function may be bounded by a polynomial in , then as tends to infinity, one may disregard lower-order terms of the polynomial. The sets and are very different. If is greater than one, then the latter grows much faster. A function that grows faster than for any is called superpolynomial. One that grows more slowly than any exponential function of the form is called subexponential. An algorithm can require time that is both superpolynomial and subexponential; examples of this include the fastest known algorithms for integer factorization and the function .
We may ignore any powers of inside of the logarithms. The set is exactly the same as . The logarithms differ only by a constant factor (since ) and thus the big O notation ignores that. Similarly, logs with different constant bases are equivalent. On the other hand, exponentials with different bases are not of the same order. For example, and are not of the same order.
Changing units may or may not affect the order of the resulting algorithm. Changing units is equivalent to multiplying the appropriate variable by a constant wherever it appears. For example, if an algorithm runs in the order of , replacing by means the algorithm runs in the order of , and the big O notation ignores the constant . This can be written as . If, however, an algorithm runs in the order of , replacing with gives . This is not equivalent to in general. Changing variables may also affect the order of the resulting algorithm. For example, if an algorithm's run time is when measured in terms of the number of digits of an input number , then its run time is when measured as a function of the input number itself, because .
Product
Sum
If and then . It follows that if and then . In other words, this second statement says that is a convex cone.
Multiplication by a constant
Let be a nonzero constant. Then . In other words, if , then
Multiple variables
Big O (and little o, Ω, etc.) can also be used with multiple variables. To define big O formally for multiple variables, suppose and are two functions defined on some subset of . We say
if and only if there exist constants and such that for all with for some
Equivalently, the condition that for some can be written , where denotes the Chebyshev norm. For example, the statement
asserts that there exist constants C and M such that
whenever either or holds. This definition allows all of the coordinates of to increase to infinity. In particular, the statement
(i.e., ) is quite different from
(i.e., ).
Under this definition, the subset on which a function is defined is significant when generalizing statements from the univariate setting to the multivariate setting. For example, if and , then if we restrict and to , but not if they are defined on .
This is not the only generalization of big O to multivariate functions, and in practice, there is some inconsistency in the choice of definition.
Matters of notation
Equals sign
The statement "f(x) is O(g(x))" as defined above is usually written as . Some consider this to be an abuse of notation, since the use of the equals sign could be misleading as it suggests a symmetry that this statement does not have. As de Bruijn says, is true but is not. Knuth describes such statements as "one-way equalities", since if the sides could be reversed, "we could deduce ridiculous things like from the identities and ." In another letter, Knuth also pointed out that "the equality sign is not symmetric with respect to such notations", as, in this notation, "mathematicians customarily use the = sign as they use the word "is" in English: Aristotle is a man, but a man isn't necessarily Aristotle".
For these reasons, it would be more precise to use set notation and write (read as: "f(x) is an element of O(g(x))", or "f(x) is in the set O(g(x))"), thinking of O(g(x)) as the class of all functions h(x) such that |h(x)| ≤ C|g(x)| for some constant C. However, the use of the equals sign is customary.
Other arithmetic operators
Big O notation can also be used in conjunction with other arithmetic operators in more complicated equations. For example, denotes the collection of functions having the growth of h(x) plus a part whose growth is limited to that of f(x). Thus,
expresses the same as
Example
Suppose an algorithm is being developed to operate on a set of n elements. Its developers are interested in finding a function T(n) that will express how long the algorithm will take to run (in some arbitrary measurement of time) in terms of the number of elements in the input set. The algorithm works by first calling a subroutine to sort the elements in the set and then perform its own operations. The sort has a known time complexity of O(n2), and after the subroutine runs the algorithm must take an additional steps before it terminates. Thus the overall time complexity of the algorithm can be expressed as . Here the terms are subsumed within the faster-growing O(n2). Again, this usage disregards some of the formal meaning of the "=" symbol, but it does allow one to use the big O notation as a kind of convenient placeholder.
Multiple uses
In more complicated usage, O(·) can appear in different places in an equation, even several times on each side. For example, the following are true for :
The meaning of such statements is as follows: for any functions which satisfy each O(·) on the left side, there are some functions satisfying each O(·) on the right side, such that substituting all these functions into the equation makes the two sides equal. For example, the third equation above means: "For any function f(n) = O(1), there is some function g(n) = O(en) such that nf(n) = g(n)." In terms of the "set notation" above, the meaning is that the class of functions represented by the left side is a subset of the class of functions represented by the right side. In this use the "=" is a formal symbol that unlike the usual use of "=" is not a symmetric relation. Thus for example does not imply the false statement
Typesetting
Big O is typeset as an italicized uppercase "O", as in the following example: . In TeX, it is produced by simply typing O inside math mode. Unlike Greek-named Bachmann–Landau notations, it needs no special symbol. Yet, some authors use the calligraphic variant instead.
Orders of common functions
Here is a list of classes of functions that are commonly encountered when analyzing the running time of an algorithm. In each case, c is a positive constant and n increases without bound. The slower-growing functions are generally listed first.
The statement is sometimes weakened to to derive simpler formulas for asymptotic complexity. For any and is a subset of for any so may be considered as a polynomial with some bigger order.
Related asymptotic notations
Big O is widely used in computer science. Together with some other related notations it forms the family of Bachmann–Landau notations.
Little-o notation
Intuitively, the assertion " is " (read " is little-o of ") means that grows much faster than . Let as before f be a real or complex valued function and g a real valued function, both defined on some unbounded subset of the positive real numbers, such that g(x) is strictly positive for all large enough values of x. One writes
if for every positive constant there exists a constant such that
For example, one has
and both as
The difference between the definition of the big-O notation and the definition of little-o is that while the former has to be true for at least one constant M, the latter must hold for every positive constant , however small. In this way, little-o notation makes a stronger statement than the corresponding big-O notation: every function that is little-o of g is also big-O of g, but not every function that is big-O of g is also little-o of g. For example, but
As g(x) is nonzero, or at least becomes nonzero beyond a certain point, the relation is equivalent to
(and this is in fact how Landau originally defined the little-o notation).
Little-o respects a number of arithmetic operations. For example,
if is a nonzero constant and then , and
if and then
It also satisfies a transitivity relation:
if and then
Big Omega notation
Another asymptotic notation is , read "big omega". There are two widespread and incompatible definitions of the statement
as ,
where a is some real number, ∞, or −∞, where f and g are real functions defined in a neighbourhood of a, and where g is positive in this neighbourhood.
The Hardy–Littlewood definition is used mainly in analytic number theory, and the Knuth definition mainly in computational complexity theory; the definitions are not equivalent.
The Hardy–Littlewood definition
In 1914 Godfrey Harold Hardy and John Edensor Littlewood introduced the new symbol , which is defined as follows:
as if
Thus is the negation of .
In 1916 the same authors introduced the two new symbols and , defined as:
as if ;
as if
These symbols were used by Edmund Landau, with the same meanings, in 1924. After Landau, the notations were never used again exactly thus; became and became .
These three symbols , as well as (meaning that and are both satisfied), are now currently used in analytic number theory.
Simple examples
We have
as
and more precisely
as
We have
as
and more precisely
as
however
as
The Knuth definition
In 1976 Donald Knuth published a paper to justify his use of the -symbol to describe a stronger property. Knuth wrote: "For all the applications I have seen so far in computer science, a stronger requirement ... is much more appropriate". He defined
with the comment: "Although I have changed Hardy and Littlewood's definition of , I feel justified in doing so because their definition is by no means in wide use, and because there are other ways to say what they want to say in the comparatively rare cases when their definition applies."
Family of Bachmann–Landau notations
The limit definitions assume for sufficiently large . The table is (partly) sorted from smallest to largest, in the sense that (Knuth's version of) on functions correspond to on the real line (the Hardy-Littlewood version of , however, doesn't correspond to any such description).
Computer science uses the big , big Theta , little , little omega and Knuth's big Omega notations. Analytic number theory often uses the big , small , Hardy–Littlewood's big Omega (with or without the +, − or ± subscripts) and notations. The small omega notation is not used as often in analysis.
Use in computer science
Informally, especially in computer science, the big O notation often can be used somewhat differently to describe an asymptotic tight bound where using big Theta Θ notation might be more factually appropriate in a given context. For example, when considering a function T(n) = 73n3 + 22n2 + 58, all of the following are generally acceptable, but tighter bounds (such as numbers 2 and 3 below) are usually strongly preferred over looser bounds (such as number 1 below).
The equivalent English statements are respectively:
T(n) grows asymptotically no faster than n100
T(n) grows asymptotically no faster than n3
T(n) grows asymptotically as fast as n3.
So while all three statements are true, progressively more information is contained in each. In some fields, however, the big O notation (number 2 in the lists above) would be used more commonly than the big Theta notation (items numbered 3 in the lists above). For example, if T(n) represents the running time of a newly developed algorithm for input size n, the inventors and users of the algorithm might be more inclined to put an upper asymptotic bound on how long it will take to run without making an explicit statement about the lower asymptotic bound.
Other notation
In their book Introduction to Algorithms, Cormen, Leiserson, Rivest and Stein consider the set of functions f which satisfy
In a correct notation this set can, for instance, be called O(g), where
The authors state that the use of equality operator (=) to denote set membership rather than the set membership operator (∈) is an abuse of notation, but that doing so has advantages. Inside an equation or inequality, the use of asymptotic notation stands for an anonymous function in the set O(g), which eliminates lower-order terms, and helps to reduce inessential clutter in equations, for example:
Extensions to the Bachmann–Landau notations
Another notation sometimes used in computer science is Õ (read soft-O): f(n) = Õ(g(n)) is shorthand for for some k. Some authors write O* for the same purpose. Essentially, it is big O notation, ignoring logarithmic factors because the growth-rate effects of some other super-logarithmic function indicate a growth-rate explosion for large-sized input parameters that is more important to predicting bad run-time performance than the finer-point effects contributed by the logarithmic-growth factor(s). This notation is often used to obviate the "nitpicking" within growth-rates that are stated as too tightly bounded for the matters at hand (since logk n is always o(nε) for any constant k and any ).
Also the L notation, defined as
is convenient for functions that are between polynomial and exponential in terms of
Generalizations and related usages
The generalization to functions taking values in any normed vector space is straightforward (replacing absolute values by norms), where f and g need not take their values in the same space. A generalization to functions g taking values in any topological group is also possible.
The "limiting process" x → xo can also be generalized by introducing an arbitrary filter base, i.e. to directed nets f and g. The o notation can be used to define derivatives and differentiability in quite general spaces, and also (asymptotical) equivalence of functions,
which is an equivalence relation and a more restrictive notion than the relationship "f is Θ(g)" from above. (It reduces to lim f / g = 1 if f and g are positive real valued functions.) For example, 2x is Θ(x), but is not o(x).
History (Bachmann–Landau, Hardy, and Vinogradov notations)
The symbol O was first introduced by number theorist Paul Bachmann in 1894, in the second volume of his book Analytische Zahlentheorie ("analytic number theory"). The number theorist Edmund Landau adopted it, and was thus inspired to introduce in 1909 the notation o; hence both are now called Landau symbols. These notations were used in applied mathematics during the 1950s for asymptotic analysis.
The symbol (in the sense "is not an o of") was introduced in 1914 by Hardy and Littlewood. Hardy and Littlewood also introduced in 1916 the symbols ("right") and ("left"), precursors of the modern symbols ("is not smaller than a small o of") and ("is not larger than a small o of"). Thus the Omega symbols (with their original meanings) are sometimes also referred to as "Landau symbols". This notation became commonly used in number theory at least since the 1950s.
In the 1970s the big O was popularized in computer science by Donald Knuth, who introduced the related Theta notation, and proposed a different definition for the Omega notation.
Landau never used the big Theta and small omega symbols.
Hardy's symbols were (in terms of the modern O notation)
and
(Hardy however never defined or used the notation , nor , as it has been sometimes reported).
Hardy introduced the symbols and (as well as some other symbols) in his 1910 tract "Orders of Infinity", and made use of them only in three papers (1910–1913). In his nearly 400 remaining papers and books he consistently used the Landau symbols O and o.
Hardy's notation is not used anymore. On the other hand, in the 1930s, the Russian number theorist Ivan Matveyevich Vinogradov introduced his notation , which has been increasingly used in number theory instead of the notation. We have
and frequently both notations are used in the same paper.
The big-O originally stands for "order of" ("Ordnung", Bachmann 1894), and is thus a Latin letter. Neither Bachmann nor Landau ever call it "Omicron". The symbol was much later on (1976) viewed by Knuth as a capital omicron, probably in reference to his definition of the symbol Omega. The digit zero should not be used.
See also
Asymptotic expansion: Approximation of functions generalizing Taylor's formula
Asymptotically optimal algorithm: A phrase frequently used to describe an algorithm that has an upper bound asymptotically within a constant of a lower bound for the problem
Big O in probability notation: Op, op
Limit superior and limit inferior: An explanation of some of the limit notation used in this article
Master theorem (analysis of algorithms): For analyzing divide-and-conquer recursive algorithms using Big O notation
Nachbin's theorem: A precise method of bounding complex analytic functions so that the domain of convergence of integral transforms can be stated
Orders of approximation
Computational complexity of mathematical operations
References and notes
Further reading
External links
Growth of sequences — OEIS (Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences) Wiki
Introduction to Asymptotic Notations
Landau Symbols
Big-O Notation – What is it good for
Big O Notation explained in plain english
An example of Big O in accuracy of central divided difference scheme for first derivative
A Gentle Introduction to Algorithm Complexity Analysis
Mathematical notation
Asymptotic analysis
Analysis of algorithms
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3199082
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ShapeWriter
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ShapeWriter
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ShapeWriter (previously known as Shorthand-Aided Rapid Keyboarding (SHARK)) was a keyboard text input method for tablet, handheld PCs, and mobile phones invented by Shumin Zhai and Per Ola Kristensson at IBM Almaden Research Center and the Department of Computer and Information Science at Linköping University.
Using ShapeWriter text entry software, a user draws words on a graphical keyboard using a pen. Instead of tapping the keys, the user draws a pen gesture that connects all the letters in the desired word. After some usage the user learns the movement pattern for the commonly used words and can write them faster than is possible on a traditional virtual keyboard.
The first system described by Shumin Zhai and Per Ola Kristensson (2003) was only a prototype system that could recognize about 100 pen gestures for the top 100 words used in the English language. It used a handwriting recognition algorithm that relied on dynamic programming to recognize the word patterns drawn from a lexicon. The next version described by Per Ola Kristensson and Shumin Zhai (2004) has a fundamentally different recognition engine that can recognize 50,000 - 60,000 words with low latency. This system introduced the notion that every word in a large lexicon should be possible to write by tracing the letters. It is this system that was the basis for the software release on IBM alphaWorks that is generally associated with the term "ShapeWriter".
ShapeWriter was acquired by Nuance Communications, and taken off the market in 2010., its technology presumably incorporated as part of Nuance's FlexT9 app in 2011.
iPhone
ShapeWriter was made available for the iPhone approximately in 2008 and was revised several times (including ShapeWriter Lite and ShapeWriter Pro or Plus) before being pulled due to its sale to Nuance Communications (see following entry).
Those who purchased the iPhone version continued to use it and it also functioned on iPads v. 1 and 2 until 2013.
As of 2013 it no longer functions on iOS devices and is no longer available in Apple's App Store.
Android
ShapeWriter software was made available as a free application for Android (operating system) smartphones through the Android Market. As a touchscreen keyboard replacement, it had over 50,000 users on Android worldwide. It was available only for Android OS versions 1.6 or higher. ShapeWriter for Android was available in 7 European languages including English, Spanish, and German. There was also a Beta release for Android 1.5 phones including the HTC Hero and Droid Eris.
ShapeWriter, Inc. was purchased by Nuance Communications and the ShapeWriter software was removed from the Android Market indefinitely on June 20, 2010.
References
Zhai, S. and Kristensson, P.O. (2003). Shorthand Writing on Stylus Keyboard. Proc. CHI 2003, ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.
Kristensson, P.O. and Zhai, S. (2004). SHARK²: A Large Vocabulary Shorthand Writing System for Pen-Based Computers. Proc. UIST 2004, ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology.
Zhai, S. and Kristensson, P.O. (2006). Introduction to Shape Writing. IBM Research Report RJ10393, November 1, 2006.
Notes
External links
An Alternative Text Input Method, 27th Internationalization and Unicode Conference, Berlin 2005
Download a version of ShapeWriter for tablet PC
More scientific articles about ShapeWriter are available here
United States Patent 7,250,938 System and method for improved user input on personal computing devices
US Patent 7,251,367; System and method for recognizing word patterns based on a virtual keyboard layout, December 20, 2002
Mobile technology
Pointing-device text input
Android (operating system) software
Android virtual keyboards
Virtual keyboards
Computer-related introductions in 2003
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29271614
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackers%20in%20Wonderland
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Hackers in Wonderland
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Hackers in Wonderland is a 2000 documentary film, produced and directed by Russell Barnes, about hackers in the United Kingdom. The documentary contains interviews with the hackers, revealing what drives them to hack, and their opinions about hacktivism.
External links
Hackers in Wonderland on YouTube
British documentary films
Hacking (computer security)
Documentary films about the Internet
British films
Internet-based activism
Hacker culture
Works about computer hacking
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10812211
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JX%20%28operating%20system%29
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JX (operating system)
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JX is a microkernel operating system with both the kernel and applications implemented using the Java programming language.
Overview
JX is implemented as an extended Java virtual machine (the JX Core), adding support to the Java system for necessary features such as protection domains and hardware access, along with a number of components written in Java that provide kernel facilities to applications running on the computer. Because Java is a type-safe language, JX is able to provide isolation between running applications without needing to use hardware memory protection. This technique, known as language-based protection means that system calls and inter-process communication in JX does not cause an address space switch, an operation which is slow on most computers. JX runs on standard PCs, with support for a limited range of common hardware elements. It is Free software, developed by the University of Erlangen.
The primary benefits of JX include:
base on a small trusted computing base (TCB) security system
lack of address space switching compare to most other microkernel systems
it is a highly flexible operating system with different configuration possibilities
See also
JavaOS
References
External links
Project home page
The JX Operating System
The Structure of a Type-Safe Operating System
A Java Operating System as the Foundation of a Secure Network Operating System
Operating system kernels
Microkernels
Free software operating systems
Microkernel-based operating systems
Discontinued Java virtual machines
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35901925
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reeves%20AN/MSQ-77%20Bomb%20Directing%20Central
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Reeves AN/MSQ-77 Bomb Directing Central
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The Reeves AN/MSQ-77 Bomb Directing Central, Radar (nickname "Miscue 77") was a USAF automatic tracking radar/computer system for command guidance of military aircraft during Vietnam War bomb runs at nighttime and during bad weather. Developed from the Reeves AN/MSQ-35, the AN/MSQ-77 reversed the process of Radar Bomb Scoring by continually estimating the bomb impact point before bomb release with a vacuum tube ballistic computer. Unlike "Course Directing Centrals" which guided aircraft to a predetermined release point, the AN/MSQ-77 algorithm continuously predicted bomb impact points during the radar track while the AN/MSQ-77's control commands adjusted the aircraft course. A close air support regulation prohibited AN/MSQ-77 Combat Skyspot bombing within of friendly forces unless authorized by a Forward Air Controller, and "on several occasions" strikes were as close as .
Post-war the MSQ-77 was used on US and other training ranges for Radar Bomb Scoring (RBS). The AN/MSQ-77 was also periodically used for post-Vietnam commanding of bombers during simulated ground directed bombing to maintain aircrew and radar crew GDB proficiency (RBS could be used to score the simulated GDB mission). Most AN/MSQ-77s were replaced by solid-state equipment near the end of the Cold War.
History
Ground radar systems for automated guidance of aircraft to a predetermined point (e.g., for bomb release using a bombsight or avionics radar) included the July 1951 AN/MPQ-14 Radar Course Directing Central. By 1954 the MARC (Matador Airborne Radio Control) used the AN/MSQ-1A for missile guidance to the terminal dive point, and SAGE GCI provided computer-controlled guidance of aircraft to continuously computed interception points (1958 AN/FSQ-7 Bomarc missile guidance and the later Ground to Air Data Link Subsystem for fighters). Despite the availability of solid-state military guidance computers in 1961, planning for a USAF vacuum-tube trajectory computer/radar system began in early 1965. In October 1965, F-100s tested the AN/MSQ-77 at Matagorda Island General Bombing and Gunnery Range on the Texas Gulf Coast.
In March 1966, AN/MSQ-77 operations using the "reverse MSQ method" began and continued through August 1973 for guiding B-52s and tactical fighters and bombers ("chiefly flown by F-100's"). By March 1967, 15,000 Skyspot sorties had been flown, and raids controlled by AN/MSQ-77s included those of Operation Menu from Bien Hoa Air Base, Operation Niagara, and Operation Arc Light. Additional AN/MSQ-77 missions included those with MC-130 Commando Vault aircraft to clear landing zones and at least 1 helicopter evacuation of wounded on August 13, 1966.
Commando Club To allow command guidance bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong targets out of range of the initial Skyspot AN/MSQ-77 sites, the "1st CEVG began "Combat Keel" tests using F-4s guided by an MSQ-77 on the USS Thomas J. Gary" in the Gulf of Tonkin during late 1967 after the March 1967 "Combat Target" task force recommended a closer site. By 1 November 1967, the USAF Heavy Green operation had prepared a Laos mountaintop site and installed an MSQ-77 variant in rugged shelters without trailer frames, wheels, etc. for helicopter transport. Although the central's range was limited by the UHF radio reliability for A/C commands during the bomb run, "Commando Club" used a relay aircraft to retransmit communications between Lima Site 85 and the bomber. LS-85's operations ended with the 1968 Battle of Lima Site 85 defeat by sappers after North Vietnam had correlated bombings were occurring during LS-85 transmissions (the site's central and other buildings were destroyed by a later U.S. air raid.)
Additional casualties of AN/MSQ-77 personnel included 1 killed in an enemy rocket attack and 6 Skyspot personnel killed in a 1966 ambush on a survey mission. Following -77 modifications in 1968, subsequent changes included a solid-state digital printer for RBS ("Digital Data System") and implementation of a USAF suggestion for RBS to use a late-1970s programmable calculator to supersede the Bomb Trajectory Group, eliminating alignment procedures for its amplifiers. In 1989, remains of an F-4C Weapon System Officer shot down during a November 10, 1967, AN/MSQ-77 bomb run were recovered in Southeast Asia.
Developed from the AN/MSQ-77 and also used in Vietnam was the monopulse India-band Reeves AN/TSQ-96 Bomb Directing Central with a solid state Univac 1219B ballistic computer (Mark 152 fire control computer), and the AN/MSQ-77/96 systems for GDB were replaced by the US Dynamics AN/TPQ-43 Radar Bomb Scoring Set ("Seek Score"). There were 5 MSQ-77s at Nellis Air Force Base in 1994, and the "MSQ-77 or equivalent" was still listed in 2005 as support equipment for airdrops from Ground Radar Aerial Delivery System (GRADS) aircraft. The AN/MSQ-77 antenna at the "Combat Skyspot Memorial" on Andersen Air Force Base was destroyed by a typhoon .
Locations
Initial AN/MSQ-77 sites were the production plant Reeves-Ely had built in 1958 at Roosevelt Field on East Gate Blvd in Garden City, New York; and the Matagorda Island test site also used for "Busy Skyspot" training of Vietnam crews (moved to Bergstrom AFB in 1970). Deployment sites were the Vietnam War operating locations, the wartime site at the Nellis Range, and post-war CONUS RBS and overseas sites (e.g., Korea). The last AN/MSQ-77 locations (e.g., at museums after retirements) included the Ellsworth Air Force Base Museum (near the Antelope Butte, Belle Fourche, Conner, & Horman RBS sites) and:
Serial Number 1: ...
Serial Number ? Detachment 7, !CEVG Ashland, Maine
Serial number 7: Detachment 12, 1CEVG Hawthorne, Nevada from June 1982 until site decommissioning in August 1986 and relocation to Detachment 17, 1CEVG Havre, Montana. Upon decommissioning of Havre, MT Serial Number 7 went to Detachment 18, Forsyth, Montana for SAC Bomb-Comp 1987 and then to Detachment 20, 1CEVG Conrad, Montana in early 1988. Was later modified by replacing the Cassegrain antenna with a Fresnel lens antenna, as was used on the MSQ-46. After the antenna (and associated equipment) modification, S/N 7 was used by the HQ 1CEVG "Bug" team to validate new site locations.
Serial number 10: Eighth Air Force Museum (Barksdale AFB) after use at Hawthorne Bomb Plot (), Guam, and Vietnam War OL 24 Served as "Secondary" radar at Mobile Duty Location (MDL) 35 Climax, KS from Jan - Jun 1982
Serial Number 11: ...
Serial Number 12: TBD after use at Vietnam War OL-27 (BROMO), and initial testing at Bryan Field, Texas (1st AN/TSQ-81: variant of AN/MSQ-77)
Serial Number 13: destroyed Lima Site 85 variant previously used at Vietnam War OL-23 and tested at Bryan Field
Serial Number 21: Used as "Primary" radar at Mobile Duty Location (MDL) 35 Climax, KS from Jan - Jun 1982. MSQ-77 S/N 10 served as "Secondary" for the ORI/BUY NONE missions at MDL 35 during that timeframe.
Equipment and functions
In addition to the communication and maintenance van, other AN/MSQ-77 trailers were the radar van with roof-mounted Cassegrain antenna, "control and plotting van, two diesel generator vans, [and] an administrative and supply van" which were emplaced as a military installation at the surveyed site. The primary modification for the AN/MSQ-77 was the control equipment for aircraft guidance (ballistic computer, guidance/release circuitry, and UHF command equipment). The central also had an added beacon tracking capability used when the aircraft had a receiver/transmitter (e.g., Motorola SST-181 X Band Beacon Transponder) to increase the range so the radar site could be located farther from the hostile region of bombing targets. Beacon track upgrades included radar circuitry to switch the heterodyne receiver to demodulate the transponder frequency, compensation for the transponder delay, and modification of the central's plotting board circuitry to allow display for increased ranges. The plots were of tracks calculated by the computer's Aircraft Coordinates and Plotting Group which converted radar spherical data to plotting board cartesian coordinates (non-inertial east, north, up coordinate system) using sine/cosine voltages and radar-estimated range respectively from the Antenna Group (azimuth/elevation resolvers) and from the Track Range Computer. Additional A/C Coordinates amplifiers computed the velocity components (not plotted) which along with the track position components were provided as initial bomb conditions to the ballistic computer (Bomb Trajectory Group).
Bomb Trajectory Group
The Bomb Trajectory Group (BTG) was the AN/MSQ-77's analog ballistic computer using 3-dimensional double-integration to continually predict the bomb impact point from an aircraft track during a bomb run. The Cartesian aircraft data were propagated by the BTG mathematical modeling which included aerodynamics for different bombs, Earth "curvature and Coriolis corrections", and vacuum tube integrating amplifiers. The integration was based on the varying aircraft position and velocity prior to the bomb release, so as with the use of the Norden bombsight analog computer in World War II, a nearly steady bomb run was required for the AN/MSQ-77 to provide sufficient bombing accuracy. As in the 1950s Nike missile guidance system(s), electro-mechanical servos controlled sine/cosine resolvers in a feedback loop for computing the simulated bomb's horizontal velocity and along with the drop rate, the simulated bomb's airspeed and dive angle ("Pitch Servo"). Likewise, a "Z servo" allowed the Air Resistance Circuits to adjust for altitude-varying air density, and the drag aerodynamics were vectorized by a servo operating potentiometers to pick-off 3 bomb-specific deceleration voltages based on each cartesian velocity voltage.
Ground directed bombing
The AN/MSQ-77 radar track began after the aircraft (A/C) arrived near the Initial Point (IP) on a heading toward the target. When the computer's groundspeed and elevation rate servos had stabilized to the A/C cartesian velocity from the differentiating amplifiers, an operator placed the central into "computer track" to provide rate-aided tracking signals to the radar. With the computer track and the central having target position, A/C heading, & bomb type information; and with the Bomb Trajectory Group's servos tracking the bomb-in-aircraft course and pitch, the operator then activated the BTG integrators for the computer simulation to begin integrating a bomb trajectory from the A/C coordinates at that integration start point. Acceleration voltages from the BTG dynamic models were double-integrated by the 6 computer amplifiers which generated 3 voltages for the simulated bomb displacement (altitude, north, & east deltas) which were summed to the A/C position (simulated bomb release point, BRP). Use of the continually-changing current A/C position as the simulated BRP ensured a more accurate Earth Curvature Correction (ECC) was generated for the simulated bomb's horizontal range from the radar. When the simulated bomb's altitude (simulated BRP altitude - integrated altitude delta + altitude ECC) equalled the target height, the integration automatically stopped and the integrated displacements were held as constant altitude, north, and east delta voltages. Subsequent summing of more current simulated bomb release points (A/C bomb run positions after the integration ended) with the integrator deltas generated a path of simulated bomb impact (SBI) points that moved relative to the A/C position throughout the remainder of the bomb run. The latest SBI was the AN/MSQ-77's best estimate of the impact position if bomb release was from the current A/C position:
The AN/MSQ-77 control algorithm continually commanded the A/C so the BTG simulated bomb impact point, which was plotted separately from the A/C track, would move toward the target. While the A/C was being guided, an AN/MSQ-77 bomb release algorithm used a model for the future path of simulated bomb impact points to predict the nearest impact to the target (a No Go condition aborted before effecting an outlying bomb release). Instead of releasing from the A/C position corresponding to the nearest predicted impact point, the AN/MSQ-77 began the bomb release sequence just prior, which accounted for the delay in generating the radio command, in transmitting the command, and in the A/C effecting the mechanical release. The delay time was based on calibration testing of the AN/MSQ-77 with A/C bomb release circuity (e.g., mean bomb release time for salvo drops from B-52s).
Accuracy
Although the 1967 Commando Club missions against North Vietnam by the 7th Air Force were temporarily suspended due to successful enemy defenses on November 18, the AN/MSQ-77 variant at LS-85 had effected a direct hit (zero miss distance) as well as a miss—its Commando Club CEP through November 16 for "14 runs was 867 feet". The suspension period for modifying attack tactics was used to reduce GDB errors of LS-85 since other Skyspot sites had been more accurate. AN/MSQ-77 errors included the typical automatic tracking radar errors such as the antenna lag due to the conical scan tracking, Track Range Computer error, any inaccuracy of the A/C transponder delay value used by the central, and the range offset of the A/C transponder antenna from the actual position of the bomb release point(s) on the A/C (particularly negligible when the radar was tracking from the side of the A/C). The AN/MSQ-77 compensation for antenna lag during rate-aided computer track used a telescopic CCTV system with operator's joystick to aim the antenna axis toward the A/C (e.g., bomb bay section of the fuselage). Additional AN/MSQ-77 errors were in the bomb trajectory algorithm (e.g., different simulation rates for each of 6 integrating amplifiers) and in the bomb release algorithm.
References
1965 establishments in the United States
1965 in military history
Computer-related introductions in 1965
1990 in military history
20th-century history of the United States Air Force
Analog computers
Aviation ground support equipment
Cold War military computer systems of the United States
Ballistics
Ground radars
Military equipment of the Vietnam War
Radars of the United States Air Force
Military equipment introduced in the 1960s
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182737
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To%20Sir%2C%20with%20Love
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To Sir, with Love
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To Sir, with Love is a 1967 British drama film that deals with social and racial issues in an inner city school. It stars Sidney Poitier and features Christian Roberts, Judy Geeson, Suzy Kendall and singer Lulu making her film debut. James Clavell directed from his own screenplay, which was based on E. R. Braithwaite's 1959 autobiographical novel of the same name.
The film's title song "To Sir with Love", sung by Lulu, peaked at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the United States for five weeks in the autumn of 1967 and ultimately was the best-selling single in the United States of that year. The movie ranked number 27 on Entertainment Weeklys list of the 50 Best High School Movies.
A made-for-television sequel, To Sir, with Love II (1996), was released nearly three decades later, with Poitier reprising his starring role.
Plot
Mark Thackeray, an immigrant to Britain from British Guiana, must wait a long period to hear about an engineering job he applied for. In the meantime, he accepts a teaching post at North Quay Secondary School in the tough East End of London, as an interim position, despite having no teaching experience.
Most of the school's pupils have been rejected from other schools, and their conduct drove the last teacher to resign. The pupils, led by Bert Denham and Pamela Dare (who develops a strong crush on Thackeray), behave badly: their antics range from disruptive behaviour to distasteful pranks. Thackeray retains a calm demeanour, but loses his temper when he discovers something being burned in the classroom stove, which turns out to be a girl's sanitary towel. He orders the boys out of the classroom, then reprimands all the girls, either for being responsible or passively observing, for what he says is their slutty behaviour. Thackeray is angry with himself for allowing his pupils to get the better of him. Changing his approach, he informs the class they will no longer study from textbooks. Until the end of term, when they are due to leave school, he will treat them as adults and expects them to behave as such ("You will show respect to me and each other at all times. You will address me as 'Sir' or 'Mr. Thackeray'. Boys will be addressed by their last names; the girls will be likewise addressed, and as 'Miss'."); they can discuss whatever issues they wish, including relationships, marriage, sex, and applying for jobs. He gradually wins the class over, except for Denham, who continually baits him.
Thackeray arranges a class outing to the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Natural History Museum in South Kensington, which goes well. The trip is represented by a series of still photographs as Lulu sings "To Sir With Love".
He loses some support when he defuses a potentially violent situation between Potter and a gym teacher, Mr Bell. In class, he demands that Potter apologise directly to Bell, even if he believes Bell was wrong. The group later refuses to invite Thackeray to the class dance. When mixed-race student Seales'
White English mother dies, the class takes up a collection for a wreath but refuse to accept Thackeray's donation; and the students refuse to deliver the wreath to Seales' house in person because their parents wouldn't approve of their visiting a "coloured" person's house. The headmaster tells Thackeray that the "adult approach" has failed, and future outings are cancelled. Thackeray is to take over the boys' gym classes until the headmaster can find a replacement. Meanwhile, Thackeray receives the engineer job offer in the post.
Pamela Dare's mother asks for Thackeray to talk to her daughter about her behaviour at home, but this annoys Pamela, who Thackeray believes is in love with him. During a gym class, Denham smugly challenges Thackeray to a boxing match. Denham delivers several blows to Thackeray's face, but the bout comes to an abrupt end when Thackeray delivers one punch to Denham's mid-section. However, Thackeray compliments Denham's ability and suggests he teach boxing to the younger pupils next year. Denham expresses his admiration for Thackeray to his classmates; Thackeray regains their respect and is invited to the class dance. Later, when Thackeray attends the funeral of Seales' White English mother, he is touched to find that his lectures on personal choices and responsibility have had an effect and the entire class has attended.
At the dance, Pamela, having overcome her sadness and irritation at Thackeray's (imagined) rejection of her, persuades Thackeray to be her partner for the "Ladies Choice" dance. Afterward, the class presents to Thackeray "a little present to remember us by". Thackeray is moved and retires to his classroom.
Two younger, rowdy pupils rush into the classroom, in what appears an attempt to be alone together. The two laugh at the sentimentality of Thackeray's gifts, a silver tankard and card, "To Sir, with love", with the departing class's signatures. They joke that they will be in his class next year. After they leave, in the film's memorable closing, Thackeray stands up and conspicuously tears up the engineering job offer, reconciled to the work he has ahead of him. He then takes a flower from the vase on his desk, places it in his lapel, and leaves.
Cast
Sidney Poitier as Mr Mark Thackeray
Judy Geeson as Pamela Dare
Christian Roberts as Bert Denham
Suzy Kendall as Miss Gillian Blanchard
Lulu as Barbara "Babs" Pegg
Faith Brook as Miss Grace Evans
Geoffrey Bayldon as Mr Theo Weston
Patricia Routledge as Clinty Clintridge
Ann Bell as Mrs Dare
Christopher Chittell as Potter
Adrienne Posta as Moira Joseph
Edward Burnham as Mr Florian, headmaster
Rita Webb as Mrs Joseph
Gareth Robinson as Tich Jackson
Lynne Sue Moon as Miss Wong
Anthony Villaroel as Seales
Richard Willson as Curly
Michael Des Barres as Williams
Fred Griffiths as Market Stallholder
Marianne Stone as Gert
Fiona Duncan as Euphemia Phillips
Mona Bruce as Josie Dawes
Dervis Ward as Mr Bell (P.T. Teacher)
Peter Attard as Ingham
Sally Cann as Schoolgirl
The Mindbenders as Themselves
Production
Sidney Poitier and James Clavell wanted to do the film, but Columbia was reluctant. They agreed to make the film for small fees, provided Poitier got 10% of the gross and Clavell 30% of the profits. "When we were ready to shoot, Columbia wanted either a rape or a big fight put in," said Martin Baum. "We held out, saying this was a gentle story, and we won."
The film was shot in Wapping (including the Wapping railway station) and Shadwell in the East End of London, in the Victoria and Albert Museum and at Pinewood Studios.
Reception
Upon its U.S. release, Bosley Crowther began his review by contrasting the film with Poitier's role and performance in the 1955 film Blackboard Jungle; unlike that earlier film, Crowther says "a nice air of gentility suffuses this pretty color film, and Mr. Poitier gives a quaint example of being proper and turning the other cheek. Although he controls himself with difficulty in some of his confrontations with his class, and even flares up on one occasion, he never acts like a boor, the way one of his fellow teachers (played by Geoffrey Bayldon) does. Except for a few barbed comments by the latter, there is little intrusion of or discussion about the issue of race: It is as discreetly played down as are many other probable tensions in this school. To Sir, with Love comes off as a cozy, good-humored and unbelievable little tale."
Halliwell's Film and Video Guide describes it as "sentimental non-realism" and quotes a Monthly Film Bulletin review (possibly contemporary with its British release), which claims that "the sententious script sounds as if it has been written by a zealous Sunday school teacher after a particularly exhilarating boycott of South African oranges".
The Time Out Film Guide says that it "bears no resemblance to school life as we know it" and the "hoodlums' miraculous reformation a week before the end of term (thanks to teacher Poitier) is laughable". Although agreeing with the claims about the film's sentimentality, and giving it a mediocre rating, the Virgin Film Guide asserts: "What makes [this] such an enjoyable film is the mythic nature of Poitier's character. He manages to come across as a real person, while simultaneously embodying everything there is to know about morality, respect and integrity."
The film premiered and became a hit one month before another film about troubled schools, Up the Down Staircase, appeared.
The novel's author E.R. Braithwaite loathed the film, although it provided him with some financial security, particularly because of its betrayal of the novel’s interracial relationship.
To Sir, with Love holds an 89% "Fresh" rating on the review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes based on 28 reviews. The film grossed $42,432,803 at the box office in the United States, yielding $19,100,000 in rentals, on a $640,000 budget, making it the sixth highest grossing picture of 1967 in the US. Poitier especially benefited from that film's success considering he agreed on a mere $30,000 fee in exchange for 10% of the gross box office and thus arranged one of the most impressive payoffs in film history. In fact, although Columbia insisted on an annual cap to Poitier of $25,000 to fulfill that percentage term, the studio was forced to revise the deal with Poitier when they calculated they would be committed to 80 years of those payments.
Soundtrack
The soundtrack album features music by Lulu, The Mindbenders, and incidental music by Ron Grainer. The original album was released on Fontana Records. It was re-released onto CD in 1995. AllMusic rated it three stars out of five.
The title song was a Cash Box Top 100 number-one single for three weeks.
"To Sir With Love" (lyrics: Don Black; music: Mark London) – Lulu
School Break Dancing "Stealing My Love from Me" (lyrics & music: Mark London) – Lulu
Thackeray meets Faculty, Then Alone
Music from Lunch Break "Off and Running" (lyric: Toni Wine; music: Carole Bayer) – The Mindbenders
Thackeray Loses Temper, Gets an Idea
Museum Outings Montage "To Sir, with Love" - Lulu
A Classical Lesson
Perhaps I Could Tidy Your Desk
Potter's loss of temper in gym
Thackeray reads letter about job
Thackeray and Denham box in gym
The funeral
End of Term Dance "It's Getting Harder all the Time" (lyrics: Ben Raleigh; music: Charles Abertine) – The Mindbenders
To Sir With Love – Lulu
James Clavell and Lulu's manager Marion Massey were angered and disappointed when the title song was not included in the nominations for the Academy Award for Best Original Song at the 40th Academy Awards in 1968. Clavell and Massey raised a formal objection to the exclusion, but to no avail.
Awards and honours
Other honours
The film is recognized by American Film Institute in these lists:
2004: AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs:
"To Sir With Love" – Nominated
See also
The Hindi film Imtihan (1974) starring Vinod Khanna as the teacher, and Tanuja as his love interest, was inspired by the film
The Egyptian comedy Madrast Al-Mushaghebeen was inspired by the film.
Up the Down Staircase, also released in 1967
List of teachers portrayed in films
References
External links
Christian Roberts and Judy Geeson discuss making To Sir, with Love on its 50th anniversary, The Spectrum, Accessed June 7, 2017.
1967 films
1960s coming-of-age drama films
1960s high school films
British coming-of-age drama films
British films
British high school films
British teen drama films
Columbia Pictures films
English-language films
Biographical films about educators
Films about teacher–student relationships
Cultural depictions of British men
Films about race and ethnicity
Films based on British novels
Films directed by James Clavell
Films set in London
Films shot at Pinewood Studios
Films shot in London
Films with screenplays by James Clavell
Films scored by Ron Grainer
1967 drama films
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark%20Williams%20Company
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Mark Williams Company
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The Mark Williams Company was a small software company in Chicago, Illinois (later moved to Northbrook, Illinois) that created Coherent, one of the first Unix-like operating systems for IBM PCs and several C programming language compilers. It was founded by Robert Swartz in 1977 and discontinued operations in 1995. The name comes from the middle name of Robert Swartz's father, William Mark Swartz.
Robert Swartz moved the company (originally producing a soft drink called Dr. Enuf) into software with his father's help and the company became known as the Mark Williams Company.
Mark Williams won a patent lawsuit centered on 'byte ordering'. Separately and at that time, Linux had made serious inroads in the UNIX clone market. Since Coherent was a commercially available package and Linux was distributed freely on the Internet via their GNU public license, Coherent sales plummeted and Swartz had no choice but to cease operations in 1995.
Products
Produced Coherent, a clone of Unix.
csd, C source debugger.
Let's C, low-cost professional C compiler for the IBM PC.
Mark Williams C for CP/M-86.
Mark Williams C for the Atari ST, first major C programming environment for the ST computers.
XYBasic, a process control BASIC running on CP/M that could be burned on to memory (EPROM) and run on an 8080 standalone processor.
References
External links
START Vol. 1 No. 3 Mark Williams C & Menu by Arick Anders
START Vol. 2 No. 2 Mark Williams C 2.0 by Arick Anderson
Mark Williams Company documentation
Defunct software companies of the United States
Software companies established in 1980
American companies disestablished in 1995
Unix history
American companies established in 1980
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft%20Excel
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Microsoft Excel
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Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet developed by Microsoft for Windows, macOS, Android and iOS. It features calculation or computation capabilities, graphing tools, pivot tables, and a macro programming language called Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). Excel forms part of the Microsoft Office suite of software.
Features
Basic operation
Microsoft Excel has the basic features of all spreadsheets, using a grid of cells arranged in numbered rows and letter-named columns to organize data manipulations like arithmetic operations. It has a battery of supplied functions to answer statistical, engineering, and financial needs. In addition, it can display data as line graphs, histograms and charts, and with a very limited three-dimensional graphical display. It allows sectioning of data to view its dependencies on various factors for different perspectives (using pivot tables and the scenario manager).> A PivotTable is a tool for data analysis. It does this by simplifying large data sets via PivotTable fields It has a programming aspect, Visual Basic for Applications, allowing the user to employ a wide variety of numerical methods, for example, for solving differential equations of mathematical physics, and then reporting the results back to the spreadsheet. It also has a variety of interactive features allowing user interfaces that can completely hide the spreadsheet from the user, so the spreadsheet presents itself as a so-called application, or decision support system (DSS), via a custom-designed user interface, for example, a stock analyzer, or in general, as a design tool that asks the user questions and provides answers and reports. In a more elaborate realization, an Excel application can automatically poll external databases and measuring instruments using an update schedule, analyze the results, make a Word report or PowerPoint slide show, and e-mail these presentations on a regular basis to a list of participants. Excel was not designed to be used as a database.
Microsoft allows for a number of optional command-line switches to control the manner in which Excel starts.
Functions
Excel 2016 has 484 functions. Of these, 360 existed prior to Excel 2010. Microsoft classifies these functions in 14 categories. Of the 484 current functions, 386 may be called from VBA as methods of the object "WorksheetFunction" and 44 have the same names as VBA functions.
With the introduction of LAMBDA, Excel will become Turing complete.
Macro programming
VBA programming
The Windows version of Excel supports programming through Microsoft's Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), which is a dialect of Visual Basic. Programming with VBA allows spreadsheet manipulation that is awkward or impossible with standard spreadsheet techniques. Programmers may write code directly using the Visual Basic Editor (VBE), which includes a window for writing code, debugging code, and code module organization environment. The user can implement numerical methods as well as automating tasks such as formatting or data organization in VBA and guide the calculation using any desired intermediate results reported back to the spreadsheet.
VBA was removed from Mac Excel 2008, as the developers did not believe that a timely release would allow porting the VBA engine natively to Mac OS X. VBA was restored in the next version, Mac Excel 2011, although the build lacks support for ActiveX objects, impacting some high level developer tools.
A common and easy way to generate VBA code is by using the Macro Recorder. The Macro Recorder records actions of the user and generates VBA code in the form of a macro. These actions can then be repeated automatically by running the macro. The macros can also be linked to different trigger types like keyboard shortcuts, a command button or a graphic. The actions in the macro can be executed from these trigger types or from the generic toolbar options. The VBA code of the macro can also be edited in the VBE. Certain features such as loop functions and screen prompt by their own properties, and some graphical display items, cannot be recorded but must be entered into the VBA module directly by the programmer. Advanced users can employ user prompts to create an interactive program, or react to events such as sheets being loaded or changed.
Macro Recorded code may not be compatible with Excel versions. Some code that is used in Excel 2010 cannot be used in Excel 2003. Making a Macro that changes the cell colors and making changes to other aspects of cells may not be backward compatible.
VBA code interacts with the spreadsheet through the Excel Object Model, a vocabulary identifying spreadsheet objects, and a set of supplied functions or methods that enable reading and writing to the spreadsheet and interaction with its users (for example, through custom toolbars or command bars and message boxes). User-created VBA subroutines execute these actions and operate like macros generated using the macro recorder, but are more flexible and efficient.
History
From its first version Excel supported end-user programming of macros (automation of repetitive tasks) and user-defined functions (extension of Excel's built-in function library). In early versions of Excel, these programs were written in a macro language whose statements had formula syntax and resided in the cells of special-purpose macro sheets (stored with file extension .XLM in Windows.) XLM was the default macro language for Excel through Excel 4.0. Beginning with version 5.0 Excel recorded macros in VBA by default but with version 5.0 XLM recording was still allowed as an option. After version 5.0 that option was discontinued. All versions of Excel, including Excel 2010 are capable of running an XLM macro, though Microsoft discourages their use.
Charts
Excel supports charts, graphs, or histograms generated from specified groups of cells. It also supports Pivot Charts that allow for a chart to be linked directly to a Pivot table. This allows the chart to be refreshed with the Pivot Table. The generated graphic component can either be embedded within the current sheet or added as a separate object.
These displays are dynamically updated if the content of cells changes. For example, suppose that the important design requirements are displayed visually; then, in response to a user's change in trial values for parameters, the curves describing the design change shape, and their points of intersection shift, assisting the selection of the best design.
Add-ins
Additional features are available using add-ins. Several are provided with Excel, including:
Analysis ToolPak: Provides data analysis tools for statistical and engineering analysis (includes analysis of variance and regression analysis)
Analysis ToolPak VBA: VBA functions for Analysis ToolPak
Euro Currency Tools: Conversion and formatting for euro currency
Solver Add-In: Tools for optimization and equation solving
Excel for the web
Excel for the web is a free lightweight version of Microsoft Excel available as part of Office on the web, which also includes web versions of Microsoft Word and Microsoft PowerPoint.
Excel for the web can display most of the features available in the desktop versions of Excel, although it may not be able to insert or edit them. Certain data connections are not accessible on Excel for the web, including with charts that may use these external connections. Excel for the web also cannot display legacy features, such as Excel 4.0 macros or Excel 5.0 dialog sheets. There are also small differences between how some of the Excel functions work.
Data storage and communication
Number of rows and columns
Versions of Excel up to 7.0 had a limitation in the size of their data sets of 16K (214 = ) rows. Versions 8.0 through 11.0 could handle 64K (216 = ) rows and 256 columns (28 as label 'IV'). Version 12.0 onwards, including the current Version 16.x, can handle over 1M (220 = ) rows, and (214, labeled as column 'XFD') columns.
File formats
Microsoft Excel up until 2007 version used a proprietary binary file format called Excel Binary File Format (.XLS) as its primary format. Excel 2007 uses Office Open XML as its primary file format, an XML-based format that followed after a previous XML-based format called "XML Spreadsheet" ("XMLSS"), first introduced in Excel 2002.
Although supporting and encouraging the use of new XML-based formats as replacements, Excel 2007 remained backwards-compatible with the traditional, binary formats. In addition, most versions of Microsoft Excel can read CSV, DBF, SYLK, DIF, and other legacy formats. Support for some older file formats was removed in Excel 2007. The file formats were mainly from DOS-based programs.
Binary
OpenOffice.org has created documentation of the Excel format. Two epochs of the format exist: the 97-2003 OLE format, and the older stream format. Microsoft has made the Excel binary format specification available to freely download.
XML Spreadsheet
The XML Spreadsheet format introduced in Excel 2002 is a simple, XML based format missing some more advanced features like storage of VBA macros. Though the intended file extension for this format is .xml, the program also correctly handles XML files with .xls extension. This feature is widely used by third-party applications (e.g. MySQL Query Browser) to offer "export to Excel" capabilities without implementing binary file format. The following example will be correctly opened by Excel if saved either as Book1.xml or Book1.xls:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<Workbook xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:spreadsheet"
xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office"
xmlns:x="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:excel"
xmlns:ss="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:spreadsheet"
xmlns:html="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40">
<Worksheet ss:Name="Sheet1">
<Table ss:ExpandedColumnCount="2" ss:ExpandedRowCount="2" x:FullColumns="1" x:FullRows="1">
<Row>
<Cell><Data ss:Type="String">Name</Data></Cell>
<Cell><Data ss:Type="String">Example</Data></Cell>
</Row>
<Row>
<Cell><Data ss:Type="String">Value</Data></Cell>
<Cell><Data ss:Type="Number">123</Data></Cell>
</Row>
</Table>
</Worksheet>
</Workbook>
Current file extensions
Microsoft Excel 2007, along with the other products in the Microsoft Office 2007 suite, introduced new file formats. The first of these (.xlsx) is defined in the Office Open XML (OOXML) specification.
Old file extensions
Using other Windows applications
Windows applications such as Microsoft Access and Microsoft Word, as well as Excel can communicate with each other and use each other's capabilities. The most common are Dynamic Data Exchange: although strongly deprecated by Microsoft, this is a common method to send data between applications running on Windows, with official MS publications referring to it as "the protocol from hell". As the name suggests, it allows applications to supply data to others for calculation and display. It is very common in financial markets, being used to connect to important financial data services such as Bloomberg and Reuters.
OLE Object Linking and Embedding allows a Windows application to control another to enable it to format or calculate data. This may take on the form of "embedding" where an application uses another to handle a task that it is more suited to, for example a PowerPoint presentation may be embedded in an Excel spreadsheet or vice versa.
Using external data
Excel users can access external data sources via Microsoft Office features such as (for example) connections built with the Office Data Connection file format. Excel files themselves may be updated using a Microsoft supplied ODBC driver.
Excel can accept data in real-time through several programming interfaces, which allow it to communicate with many data sources such as Bloomberg and Reuters (through addins such as Power Plus Pro).
DDE: "Dynamic Data Exchange" uses the message passing mechanism in Windows to allow data to flow between Excel and other applications. Although it is easy for users to create such links, programming such links reliably is so difficult that Microsoft, the creators of the system, officially refer to it as "the protocol from hell". In spite of its many issues DDE remains the most common way for data to reach traders in financial markets.
Network DDE Extended the protocol to allow spreadsheets on different computers to exchange data. Starting with Windows Vista, Microsoft no longer supports the facility.
Real Time Data: RTD although in many ways technically superior to DDE, has been slow to gain acceptance, since it requires non-trivial programming skills, and when first released was neither adequately documented nor supported by the major data vendors.
Alternatively, Microsoft Query provides ODBC-based browsing within Microsoft Excel.
Export and migration of spreadsheets
Programmers have produced APIs to open Excel spreadsheets in a variety of applications and environments other than Microsoft Excel. These include opening Excel documents on the web using either ActiveX controls, or plugins like the Adobe Flash Player. The Apache POI opensource project provides Java libraries for reading and writing Excel spreadsheet files. ExcelPackage is another open-source project that provides server-side generation of Microsoft Excel 2007 spreadsheets. PHPExcel is a PHP library that converts Excel5, Excel 2003, and Excel 2007 formats into objects for reading and writing within a web application. Excel Services is a current .NET developer tool that can enhance Excel's capabilities. Excel spreadsheets can be accessed from Python with xlrd and openpyxl. js-xlsx and js-xls can open Excel spreadsheets from JavaScript.
Password protection
Microsoft Excel protection offers several types of passwords:
Password to open a document
Password to modify a document
Password to unprotect the worksheet
Password to protect workbook
Password to protect the sharing workbook
All passwords except password to open a document can be removed instantly regardless of the Microsoft Excel version used to create the document. These types of passwords are used primarily for shared work on a document. Such password-protected documents are not encrypted, and a data sources from a set password is saved in a document's header. Password to protect workbook is an exception – when it is set, a document is encrypted with the standard password “VelvetSweatshop”, but since it is known to the public, it actually does not add any extra protection to the document. The only type of password that can prevent a trespasser from gaining access to a document is password to open a document. The cryptographic strength of this kind of protection depends strongly on the Microsoft Excel version that was used to create the document.
In Microsoft Excel 95 and earlier versions, the password to open is converted to a 16-bit key that can be instantly cracked. In Excel 97/2000 the password is converted to a 40-bit key, which can also be cracked very quickly using modern equipment. As regards services that use rainbow tables (e.g. Password-Find), it takes up to several seconds to remove protection. In addition, password-cracking programs can brute-force attack passwords at a rate of hundreds of thousands of passwords a second, which not only lets them decrypt a document but also find the original password.
In Excel 2003/XP the encryption is slightly better – a user can choose any encryption algorithm that is available in the system (see Cryptographic Service Provider). Due to the CSP, an Excel file can't be decrypted, and thus the password to open can't be removed, though the brute-force attack speed remains quite high. Nevertheless, the older Excel 97/2000 algorithm is set by the default. Therefore, users who do not change the default settings lack reliable protection of their documents.
The situation changed fundamentally in Excel 2007, where the modern AES algorithm with a key of 128 bits started being used for decryption, and a 50,000-fold use of the hash function SHA1 reduced the speed of brute-force attacks down to hundreds of passwords per second. In Excel 2010, the strength of the protection by the default was increased two times due to the use of a 100,000-fold SHA1 to convert a password to a key.
Microsoft Excel Viewer
Microsoft Excel Viewer was a freeware program for Microsoft Windows for viewing and printing spreadsheet documents created by Excel. Microsoft retired the viewer in April 2018 with the last security update released in February 2019 for Excel Viewer 2007 (SP3).
The first version released by Microsoft was Excel 97 Viewer. Excel 97 Viewer was supported in Windows CE for Handheld PCs. In October 2004, Microsoft released Excel Viewer 2003. In September 2007, Microsoft released Excel Viewer 2003 Service Pack 3 (SP3). In January 2008, Microsoft released Excel Viewer 2007 (featuring a non-collapsible Ribbon interface). In April 2009, Microsoft released Excel Viewer 2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2). In October 2011, Microsoft released Excel Viewer 2007 Service Pack 3 (SP3).
Microsoft advises to view and print Excel files for free to use the Excel Mobile application for Windows 10 and for Windows 7 and Windows 8 to upload the file to OneDrive and use Excel for the web with a Microsoft account to open them in a browser.
Quirks
In addition to issues with spreadsheets in general, other problems specific to Excel include numeric precision, misleading statistics functions, mod function errors, date limitations and more.
Numeric precision
Despite the use of 15-figure precision, Excel can display many more figures (up to thirty) upon user request. But the displayed figures are not those actually used in its computations, and so, for example, the difference of two numbers may differ from the difference of their displayed values. Although such departures are usually beyond the 15th decimal, exceptions do occur, especially for very large or very small numbers. Serious errors can occur if decisions are made based upon automated comparisons of numbers (for example, using the Excel If function), as equality of two numbers can be unpredictable.
In the figure, the fraction 1/9000 is displayed in Excel. Although this number has a decimal representation that is an infinite string of ones, Excel displays only the leading 15 figures. In the second line, the number one is added to the fraction, and again Excel displays only 15 figures. In the third line, one is subtracted from the sum using Excel. Because the sum in the second line has only eleven 1's after the decimal, the difference when 1 is subtracted from this displayed value is three 0's followed by a string of eleven 1's. However, the difference reported by Excel in the third line is three 0's followed by a string of thirteen 1's and two extra erroneous digits. This is because Excel calculates with about half a digit more than it displays.
Excel works with a modified 1985 version of the IEEE 754 specification. Excel's implementation involves conversions between binary and decimal representations, leading to accuracy that is on average better than one would expect from simple fifteen digit precision, but that can be worse. See the main article for details.
Besides accuracy in user computations, the question of accuracy in Excel-provided functions may be raised. Particularly in the arena of statistical functions, Excel has been criticized for sacrificing accuracy for speed of calculation.
As many calculations in Excel are executed using VBA, an additional issue is the accuracy of VBA, which varies with variable type and user-requested precision.
Statistical functions
The accuracy and convenience of statistical tools in Excel has been criticized, as mishandling missing data, as returning incorrect values due to inept handling of round-off and large numbers, as only selectively updating calculations on a spreadsheet when some cell values are changed, and as having a limited set of statistical tools. Microsoft has announced some of these issues are addressed in Excel 2010.
Excel MOD function error
Excel has issues with modulo operations. In the case of excessively large results, Excel will return the error warning instead of an answer.
Fictional leap day in the year 1900
Excel includes February 29, 1900, incorrectly treating 1900 as a leap year, even though e.g. 2100 is correctly treated as a non-leap year. The bug originated from Lotus 1-2-3 (deliberately implemented to save computer memory), and was also purposely implemented in Excel, for the purpose of bug compatibility. This legacy has later been carried over into Office Open XML file format.
Thus a (not necessarily whole) number greater than or equal to 61 interpreted as a date and time are the (real) number of days after December 30, 1899, 0:00, a non-negative number less than 60 is the number of days after December 31, 1899, 0:00, and numbers with whole part 60 represent the fictional day.
Date range
Excel supports dates with years in the range 1900–9999, except that December 31, 1899, can be entered as 0 and is displayed as 0-jan-1900.
Converting a fraction of a day into hours, minutes and days by treating it as a moment on the day January 1, 1900, does not work for a negative fraction.
Conversion problems
Entering text that happens to be in a form that is interpreted as a date, the text can be unintentionally changed to a standard date format. A similar problem occurs when a text happens to be in the form of a floating-point notation of a number. In these cases the original exact text cannot be recovered from the result. Formatting the cell as TEXT before entering ambiguous text prevents Excel from converting to a date.
This issue has caused a well known problem in the analysis of DNA, for example in bioinformatics. As first reported in 2004, genetic scientists found that Excel automatically and incorrectly converts certain gene names into dates. A follow-up study in 2016 found many peer reviewed scientific journal papers had been affected and that "Of the selected journals, the proportion of published articles with Excel files containing gene lists that are affected by gene name errors is 19.6 %." Excel parses the copied and pasted data and sometimes changes them depending on what it thinks they are. For example, MARCH1 (Membrane Associated Ring-CH-type finger 1) gets converted to the date March 1 (1-Mar) and SEPT2 (Septin 2) is converted into September 2 (2-Sep) etc. While some secondary news sources reported this as a fault with Excel, the original authors of the 2016 paper placed the blame with the researchers misusing Excel.
In August 2020 the HUGO Gene Nomenclature Committee (HGNC) published new guidelines in the journal Nature regarding gene naming in order to avoid issues with "symbols that affect data handling and retrieval." So far 27 genes have been renamed, including changing MARCH1 to MARCHF1 and SEPT1 to SEPTIN1 in order to avoid accidental conversion of the gene names into dates.
Errors with large strings
The following functions return incorrect results when passed a string longer than 255 characters:
incorrectly returns 16, meaning "Error value"
, when called as a method of the VBA object (i.e., in VBA), incorrectly returns "false".
Filenames
Microsoft Excel will not open two documents with the same name and instead will display the following error:
A document with the name '%s' is already open. You cannot open two documents with the same name, even if the documents are in different folders. To open the second document, either close the document that is currently open, or rename one of the documents.
The reason is for calculation ambiguity with linked cells. If there is a cell ='[Book1.xlsx]Sheet1'!$G$33, and there are two books named "Book1" open, there is no way to tell which one the user means.
Versions
Early history
Microsoft originally marketed a spreadsheet program called Multiplan in 1982. Multiplan became very popular on CP/M systems, but on MS-DOS systems it lost popularity to Lotus 1-2-3. Microsoft released the first version of Excel for the Macintosh on September 30, 1985, and the first Windows version was 2.05 (to synchronize with the Macintosh version 2.2) in November 1987. Lotus was slow to bring 1-2-3 to Windows and by the early 1990s, Excel had started to outsell 1-2-3 and helped Microsoft achieve its position as a leading PC software developer. This accomplishment solidified Microsoft as a valid competitor and showed its future of developing GUI software. Microsoft maintained its advantage with regular new releases, every two years or so.
Microsoft Windows
Excel 2.0 is the first version of Excel for the Intel platform. Versions prior to 2.0 were only available on the Apple Macintosh.
Excel 2.0 (1987)
The first Windows version was labeled "2" to correspond to the Mac version. This included a run-time version of Windows.
BYTE in 1989 listed Excel for Windows as among the "Distinction" winners of the BYTE Awards. The magazine stated that the port of the "extraordinary" Macintosh version "shines", with a user interface as good as or better than the original.
Excel 3.0 (1990)
Included toolbars, drawing capabilities, outlining, add-in support, 3D charts, and many more new features.
Excel 4.0 (1992)
Introduced auto-fill.
Also, an easter egg in Excel 4.0 reveals a hidden animation of a dancing set of numbers 1 through 3, representing Lotus 1-2-3, which is then crushed by an Excel logo.
Excel 5.0 (1993)
With version 5.0, Excel has included Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), a programming language based on Visual Basic which adds the ability to automate tasks in Excel and to provide user-defined functions (UDF) for use in worksheets. VBA includes a fully featured integrated development environment (IDE). Macro recording can produce VBA code replicating user actions, thus allowing simple automation of regular tasks. VBA allows the creation of forms and in‑worksheet controls to communicate with the user. The language supports use (but not creation) of ActiveX (COM) DLL's; later versions add support for class modules allowing the use of basic object-oriented programming techniques.
The automation functionality provided by VBA made Excel a target for macro viruses. This caused serious problems until antivirus products began to detect these viruses. Microsoft belatedly took steps to prevent the misuse by adding the ability to disable macros completely, to enable macros when opening a workbook or to trust all macros signed using a trusted certificate.
Versions 5.0 to 9.0 of Excel contain various Easter eggs, including a "Hall of Tortured Souls", a Doom-like minigame, although since version 10 Microsoft has taken measures to eliminate such undocumented features from their products.
5.0 was released in a 16-bit x86 version for Windows 3.1 and later in a 32-bit version for NT 3.51 (x86/Alpha/PowerPC)
Excel 95 (v7.0)
Released in 1995 with Microsoft Office for Windows 95, this is the first major version after Excel 5.0, as there is no Excel 6.0 with all of the Office applications standardizing on the same major version number.
Internal rewrite to 32-bits. Almost no external changes, but faster and more stable.
Excel 97 (v8.0)
Included in Office 97 (for x86 and Alpha). This was a major upgrade that introduced the paper clip office assistant and featured standard VBA used instead of internal Excel Basic. It introduced the now-removed Natural Language labels.
This version of Excel includes a flight simulator as an Easter Egg.
Excel 2000 (v9.0)
Included in Office 2000. This was a minor upgrade but introduced an upgrade to the clipboard where it can hold multiple objects at once. The Office Assistant, whose frequent unsolicited appearance in Excel 97 had annoyed many users, became less intrusive.
Excel 2002 (v10.0)
Included in Office XP. Very minor enhancements.
Excel 2003 (v11.0)
Included in Office 2003. Minor enhancements, the most significant being the new Tables.
Excel 2007 (v12.0)
Included in Office 2007. This release was a major upgrade from the previous version. Similar to other updated Office products, Excel in 2007 used the new Ribbon menu system. This was different from what users were used to, and was met with mixed reactions. One study reported fairly good acceptance by users except highly experienced users and users of word processing applications with a classical WIMP interface, but was less convinced in terms of efficiency and organization. However, an online survey reported that a majority of respondents had a negative opinion of the change, with advanced users being "somewhat more negative" than intermediate users, and users reporting a self-estimated reduction in productivity.
Added functionality included the SmartArt set of editable business diagrams. Also added was an improved management of named variables through the Name Manager, and much-improved flexibility in formatting graphs, which allow (x, y) coordinate labeling and lines of arbitrary weight. Several improvements to pivot tables were introduced.
Also like other office products, the Office Open XML file formats were introduced, including .xlsm for a workbook with macros and .xlsx for a workbook without macros.
Specifically, many of the size limitations of previous versions were greatly increased. To illustrate, the number of rows was now 1,048,576 (220) and columns was 16,384 (214; the far-right column is XFD). This changes what is a valid A1 reference versus a named range. This version made more extensive use of multiple cores for the calculation of spreadsheets; however, VBA macros are not handled in parallel and XLL add‑ins were only executed in parallel if they were thread-safe and this was indicated at registration.
Excel 2010 (v14.0)
Included in Office 2010, this is the next major version after v12.0, as version number 13 was skipped.
Minor enhancements and 64-bit support, including the following:
Multi-threading recalculation (MTR) for commonly used functions
Improved pivot tables
More conditional formatting options
Additional image editing capabilities
In-cell charts called sparklines
Ability to preview before pasting
Office 2010 backstage feature for document-related tasks
Ability to customize the Ribbon
Many new formulas, most highly specialized to improve accuracy
Excel 2013 (v15.0)
Included in Office 2013, along with a lot of new tools included in this release:
Improved Multi-threading and Memory Contention
FlashFill
Power View
Power Pivot
Timeline Slicer
Windows App
Inquire
50 new functions
Excel 2016 (v16.0)
Included in Office 2016, along with a lot of new tools included in this release:
Power Query integration
Read-only mode for Excel
Keyboard access for Pivot Tables and Slicers in Excel
New Chart Types
Quick data linking in Visio
Excel forecasting functions
Support for multi-selection of Slicer items using touch
Time grouping and Pivot Chart Drill Down
Excel data cards
Excel 2019, Office 365 and subsequent (v16.0)
Microsoft no longer releases Office or Excel in discrete versions. Instead, features are introduced automatically over time using Windows Update. The version number remains 16.0. Thereafter only the approximate dates when features appear can now be given.
Dynamic Arrays. These are essentially Array Formulas but they "Spill" automatically into neighboring cells and does not need the ctrl-shift-enter to create them. Further, dynamic arrays are the default format, with new "@" and "#" operators to provide compatibility with previous versions. This is perhaps the biggest structural change since 2007, and is in response to a similar feature in Google Sheets. Dynamic arrays started appearing in pre-releases about 2018, and as of March 2020 are available in published versions of Office 365 provided a user selected "Office Insiders".
Apple Macintosh
1985 Excel 1.0
1988 Excel 1.5
1989 Excel 2.2
1990 Excel 3.0
1992 Excel 4.0
1993 Excel 5.0 (part of Office 4.x—Final Motorola 680x0 version and first PowerPC version)
1998 Excel 8.0 (part of Office 98)
2000 Excel 9.0 (part of Office 2001)
2001 Excel 10.0 (part of Office v. X)
2004 Excel 11.0 (part of Office 2004)
2008 Excel 12.0 (part of Office 2008)
2010 Excel 14.0 (part of Office 2011)
2015 Excel 15.0 (part of Office 2016—Office 2016 for Mac brings the Mac version much closer to parity with its Windows cousin, harmonizing many of the reporting and high-level developer functions, while bringing the ribbon and styling into line with its PC counterpart.)
OS/2
1989 Excel 2.2
1990 Excel 2.3
1991 Excel 3.0
Mobile
Excel Mobile is a spreadsheet program that can edit XLSX files. It can edit and format text in cells, calculate formulas, search within the spreadsheet, sort rows and columns, freeze panes, filter the columns, add comments, and create charts. It can't add columns or rows except at the edge of the document, rearrange columns or rows, delete rows or columns, or add spreadsheet tabs. The 2007 version has the ability to use a full-screen mode to deal with limited screen resolution, as well as split panes to view different parts of a worksheet at one time. Protection settings, zoom settings, autofilter settings, certain chart formatting, hidden sheets, and other features are not supported on Excel Mobile, and will be modified upon opening and saving a workbook. In 2015, Excel Mobile became available for Windows 10 and Windows 10 Mobile on Windows Store.
Summary
Impact
Excel offers many user interface tweaks over the earliest electronic spreadsheets; however, the essence remains the same as in the original spreadsheet software, VisiCalc: the program displays cells organized in rows and columns, and each cell may contain data or a formula, with relative or absolute references to other cells.
Excel 2.0 for Windows, which was modeled after its Mac GUI-based counterpart, indirectly expanded the installed base of the then-nascent Windows environment. Excel 2.0 was released a month before Windows 2.0, and the installed base of Windows was so low at that point in 1987 that Microsoft had to bundle a runtime version of Windows 1.0 with Excel 2.0. Unlike Microsoft Word, there never was a DOS version of Excel.
Excel became the first spreadsheet to allow the user to define the appearance of spreadsheets (fonts, character attributes, and cell appearance). It also introduced intelligent cell re-computation, where only cells dependent on the cell being modified are updated (previous spreadsheet programs recomputed everything all the time or waited for a specific user command). Excel introduced auto-fill, the ability to drag and expand the selection box to automatically copy a cell or row contents to adjacent cells or rows, adjusting the copies intelligently by automatically incrementing cell references or contents. Excel also introduced extensive graphing capabilities.
Security
Because Excel is widely used, it has been attacked by hackers. While Excel is not directly exposed to the Internet, if an attacker can get a victim to open a file in Excel, and there is an appropriate security bug in Excel, then the attacker can gain control of the victim's computer. UK's GCHQ has a tool named TORNADO ALLEY with this purpose.
See also
Comparison of spreadsheet software
Comparison of risk analysis Microsoft Excel add-ins
Numbers (spreadsheet)—the iWork equivalent
Spreadmart
References
General sources
External links
– official site
1985 software
Articles with example code
Classic Mac OS software
Computer-related introductions in 1985
Excel
Spreadsheet software for macOS
Spreadsheet software for Windows
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharable%20Content%20Object%20Reference%20Model
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Sharable Content Object Reference Model
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Shareable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) is a collection of standards and specifications for web-based electronic educational technology (also called e-learning). It defines communications between client side content and a host system (called "the run-time environment"), which is commonly supported by a learning management system. SCORM also defines how content may be packaged into a transferable ZIP file called "Package Interchange Format."
SCORM is a specification of the Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Initiative from the Office of the United States Secretary of Defense.
SCORM 2004 introduced a complex idea called sequencing, which is a set of rules that specifies the order in which a learner may experience content objects. In simple terms, they constrain a learner to a fixed set of paths through the training material, permit the learner to "bookmark" their progress when taking breaks, and assure the acceptability of test scores achieved by the learner. The standard uses XML, and it is based on the results of work done by AICC, IEEE LTSC, and Ariadne.
Technology
SCORM was designed to be web-based and utilizes JavaScript to facilitate communication between the client side content and the run-time environment. Each SCORM version specifies the methods that the run-time environment should support and how those methods should behave. Content launched by the run time environment can then call those methods utilizing JavaScript.
Versions
SCORM 1.1
It was the first version of SCORM. These early adoptions revealed that the SCORM idea was workable, but it needed to be sufficiently robust for widespread implementation.
SCORM 1.2
This was the first version that was widely used. It is still widely used and is supported by most Learning Management Systems.
SCORM 2004
This is the current version. It is based on new standards for API and content object-to-runtime environment communication, with many ambiguities of previous versions resolved. Includes ability to specify adaptive sequencing of activities that use the content objects. Includes ability to share and use information about the success status for multiple learning objectives or competencies across content objects and across courses for the same learner within the same learning management system. A more robust test suite helps ensure good interoperability.
SCORM 2004 editions
3rd Edition (October 2005) – clarification of various conformance requirements and of the interaction between content objects and the runtime environment for sequencing; some new conformance requirements to improve interoperability.
4th Edition Released (March 31, 2009) – more stringent interoperability requirements, more flexible data persistence
SCORM 2004 specification books
Overview – introduces SCORM and describes how the other books relate
Run-Time Environment – describes runtime API and data model used for communication between content objects and learning management systems
Sequencing and Navigation – describes how sequencing between learning activities is defined and interpreted
Compliance Requirements – detailed list of the conformance requirements that are verified by the ADL SCORM conformance test suite.
Experience API (Tin Can API)
The Experience API (also known as xAPI or Tin Can API) was finalized to version 1.0 in April 2013. The Experience API solves many of the problems inherent with older versions of SCORM. Just like SCORM, ADL is the steward of the Experience API. AICC with their cmi5 planned to use xAPI as their transport standard, but AICC membership decided to dissolve the organization and transferred cmi5 to ADL.
The Experience API (Tin Can API) is a web service that allows software clients to read and write experiential data in the form of “statement” objects. In their simplest form, statements are in the form of “I did this”, or more generally “actor verb object”. More complex statement forms can be used. There is also a built-in query API to help filter recorded statements, and a state API that allows for a sort of “scratch space” for consuming applications. Experience API statements are stored in a data store called a Learning Record Store, which can exist on its own or within a Learning Management System.
SCORM timeline
January 1999 — Executive Order 13111 signed tasking the DoD to develop common specifications and standards for e-learning across both federal and private sectors.
January 2000 — SCORM Version 1.0
January 2001 — SCORM Version 1.1
October 2001 — SCORM Version 1.2
January 2004 — SCORM 2004 (1st Edition)
July 2004 — SCORM 2004 (2nd Edition)
June 2006 — Department of Defense Instruction (DoDI) 1322.26 Requiring DoD Use of SCORM
October 2006 — SCORM 2004 (3rd Edition)
March 2009 — SCORM 2004 (4th Edition)
2009 — The first three specification books were adopted as technical reports by ISO/IEC JTC1/SC36, standard number ISO/IEC TR 29163.
October 2010 — ADL awards a Broad Agency Announcement to Rustici Software to conduct research and community interviews in an effort to begin the creation of the next generation of SCORM. This is called Project Tin Can.
September 2011 — The initial draft of the next generation of SCORM (named the Tin Can API) is released.
June 2012 — .9 version of the Tin Can API is released.
August 2012 — .95 version of the Tin Can API is released.
April 2013 — 1.0.0 version of the Tin Can API is released, project name was changed to "Experience API" or xAPI, but many still refer to it as the Tin Can API.
Compatible software
Server software
Sakai, free, community source, educational software platform.
Content editing software
Scenari
Articulate Storyline
Articulate Rise
ISpring Suite
Adobe Captivate
See also
Authoring tool
Computer aided instruction
Educational technology
LETSI
SLOOP Project
References
External links
E-learning
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith%20Marzullo
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Keith Marzullo
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Keith Marzullo is the inventor of Marzullo's algorithm, which is part of the basis of the Network Time Protocol and the Windows Time Service. On August 1, 2016 he became the Dean of the University of Maryland College of Information Studies after serving as the Director of the NITRD National Coordination Office. Prior to this he was a Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at University of California, San Diego. In 2011 he was inducted as a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery.
Research
RAMP (Reliable Adaptive Multipath Networks)
GriPhyN (Master-worker computation in a wide-area network)
MURI (Dependent failure models & Collaborative backup for withstanding network catastrophes)
Mobility (Fault-tolerance for mobile agents & personal computational grids)
Publications
1999
Walfredo Cirne and Keith Marzullo. The computational Co-op: Gathering clusters into a metacomputer. Proceedings 13th International Parallel Processing Symposium and 10th Symposium on Parallel and Distributed Processing (IPPS/SPDP 1999). IEEE Computer Society 1999, pp. 160–6. Los Alamitos, CA, USA.
Meng-Jang Lin and Keith Marzullo. Directional gossip: gossip in a wide area network. Dependable Computing - EDDC-3. Third European Dependable Computing Conference. Proceedings (Lecture Notes in Computer Science Vol.1667). Springer-Verlag. 1999, pp. 364–79. Berlin, Germany.
Chanathip Namprempre, Jeremy Sussman, and Keith Marzullo. Implementing causal logging using OrbixWeb interception. Proceedings of the Fifth USENIX Conference on Object-Oriented Technologies and Systems (COOTS'99). USENIX Assoc. 1999, pp. 57–67. Berkeley, CA, USA.
Dag Johansen, Keith Marzullo, and Kåre Lauvset. An approach towards an agent computing environment. Proceedings. 19th IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems. Workshops on Electronic Commerce and Web-based Applications. Middleware. IEEE Computer Society 1999, pp. 78–83. Los Alamitos, CA, USA.
Dag Johansen, Keith Marzullo, Fred B. Schneider, Kjetil Jacobsen, and Dmitrii Zagorodnov. NAP: practical fault-tolerance for itinerant computations. Proceedings. 19th IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (Cat. No.99CB37003). IEEE Computer Society 1999, pp. 180–9. Los Alamitos, CA, USA.
2000
Meng-Jang Lin, Keith Marzullo and Stefano Massini. Gossip versus deterministically constrained flooding on small networks. In 14th International Conference on Distributed Computing (DISC 2000), Toledo, Spain, 4-6 Oct. 2000), pp. 253–267.
Jeremy Sussman, Keith Marzullo and Idit Keidar. Optimistic Virtual Synchrony. In Proceedings 19th IEEE Symposium on Reliable Distributed Systems (SRDS-2000), Nürnberg, Germany, 16-18 Oct. 2000, pp. 42–51.
Idit Keidar, Jeremy Sussman, Keith Marzullo and Danny Dolev. A client-server oriented algorithm for virtually synchronous group membership in WANs. In Proceedings 20th IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems, Taipei, Taiwan, 10–13 April 2000, pp. 356–365.
2001
Lorenzo Alvisi, Thomas Bressoud, Amr El-Khasab, Keith Marzullo, and Dmitrii Zagorodnov. Wrapping Server-Side to Mask Connection Failures. INFOCOMM 2001, Anchorage, Alaska, 22–26 April 2001, pp. 329–337 Vol.1.
Kåre J. Lauvset, Dag Johansen and Keith Marzullo, TOS: Kernel Support for Distributed Systems Management, Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on Applied Computing (SAC), Las Vegas, NV, March 2001.
Karan Bhatia, Keith Marzullo, and Lorenzo Alvisi, Scalable Causal Message Logging for Wide-Area Environments, European conference on Parallel Computing (Euro-Par), Manchester, UK, August 2001.
2002
Lorenzo Alvisi, Karan Bhatia, and Keith Marzullo, Causality tracking in causal message-logging protocols, Distributed Computing, 15(1):1-15, February 2002
Idit Keidar, Jeremy B. Sussman, Keith Marzullo, and Danny Dolev, Moshe: A group membership service for WANs, ACM Transactions on Computer Systems, 20(3): 191–238, February 2002.
Dag Johansen D, Kåre Lauvset, and Keith Marzullo. An extensible software architecture for mobile components. Proceedings Ninth Annual IEEE International Conference and Workshop on the Engineering of Computer-Based Systems. IEEE Computer Society. 2002, pp. 231–237. Los Alamitos, CA, USA.
Kåre Lauvset, Dag Johansen, and Keith Marzullo. Factoring mobile agents. Proceedings Ninth Annual IEEE International Conference and Workshop on the Engineering of Computer-Based Systems. IEEE Computer Society 2002, pp. 253–257. Los Alamitos, CA, USA.
2003
Flavio Junqueira, Ranjita Bhagwan, Keith Marzullo, Geoff Voelker and Stefan Savage, The Phoenix recovery system: Rebuilding from the ashes of an Internet catastrophe. Proceedings of the Ninth Workshop on Hot Topics in Operating Systems, May 18–21, 2003, Lihue, HI
Karan Bhatia, Keith Marzullo and Lorenzo Alvisi, Scalable causal message logging for wide-area environments. Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience, 2003
Kjetil Jacobsen, Xianan Zhang and Keith Marzullo. Group Membership and Wide-Area Master Worker Computations. ICDCS 2003
Flavio Junqueira and Keith Marzullo. Synchronous Consensus for Dependent Process Failures. ICDCS 2003
Dmitrii Zagorodnov, Keith Marzullo, Lorenzo Alvisi and Thomas Bressoud. Engineering fault-tolerant TCP/IP services using FT-TCP. IEEE Dependable Computing and Communications Symposium (DSN-2003)
Jeremy Sussman and Keith Marzullo. The Bancomat Problem: An Example of Resource Allocation in a Partitionable Asynchronous System. Journal of Theoretical Computer Science 291(1), January 2003.
References
External links
University of Maryland Profile
University of California San Diego Profile
Google Scholar Profile
National Science Foundation Profile
American computer scientists
University of California, San Diego faculty
Living people
Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery
Year of birth missing (living people)
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22797051
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked%20Witch%20Software
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Wicked Witch Software
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Wicked Witch Software is an Australian independent video game developer with over 20 years experience and was founded in 2001 by managing director, Daniel Visser. Wicked Witch Software have produced more than 50 games across platforms including Android, iOS, PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo, and Steam.
Wicked Witch Software have provided work for local and international developers and publishers including Microsoft, Torus, Krome and Tru Blu.
History
Wicked Witch Software purports to focus 70 per cent of development on licensed projects and 30 per cent on original projects.
Following the PC game “Space Chimps”, Wicked Witch Software worked on 2 Nintendo DS titles NRL’s “Mascot Mania” and AFL’s “Mascot Manor” - two action-adventure games based on the Mascots of each sports league which were released in 2009.
It designs and works on original game concepts while developing games under contract for other developers and publishers. Acquiring talented people, Wicked Witch has successfully created its own development pipelines and environment using all the latest PC and game console technology.
In 2014 Mattel and Wicked Witch Software developed and released an iOS game based on Whac-A-Mole. Wicked Witch developed and Tru Blu released AFL Live 2 for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 and rugby titles Rugby League Live 2 Gold NRL and Jonah Lomu Rugby Gold Rugby Union for iOS and Android.
In 2019, Wicked Witch Software collaborated on Microsoft's Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition remaster. Developed by Forgotten Empires, Tantalus and Wicked Witch Software, Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition included new content and gameplay.
Wicked Witch Software developed and Tru Blu published the AFL Evolution series, with AFL Evolution 2 being released across consoles and PC in 2020.
Wicked Witch Software developed and Tru Blu published Rugby Challenge titles with the Rugby Union license. Rugby Challenge 4 was released in 2020.
Games
References
External links
Wicked Witch Official Site
Wicked Witch on Facebook
Wicked Witch on Twitter
Video game companies of Australia
Australian companies established in 2001
Video game companies established in 2001
Video game development companies
Companies based in Melbourne
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18612359
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United%20States%20Air%20Force%20Combat%20Rescue%20Officer
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United States Air Force Combat Rescue Officer
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Combat Rescue Officer (CRO) is a Special Warfare Officer career field in the United States Air Force. Its Air Force Specialty Code (AFSC) is 19ZXC and it was created to strengthen USAF Special Warfare personnel recovery capabilities by providing commissioned officer leadership that possessed an operational skillset paralleling that of the enlisted pararescuemen (PJ). The CRO specialty includes direct combatant command and control of Combat Search and Rescue (CSAR) operations. They plan, manage and execute the six tasks of CSAR: prepare, report, locate, support, recover, and reintegrate isolated personnel and materiel. CROs conduct strategic, operational and tactical level planning, provide battle staff expertise, manage theater personnel recovery operations and conduct combat special operations.
History
The CRO specialty was created on December 8, 2000. In 2001, the first three Combat Rescue Officers were assigned, including Col. (as of 2010) Vincent Savino, first commander of the 38th Rescue Squadron, activated that year.
Overview
CROs command day-to-day activities to organize, train and equip assigned personnel to conduct Personnel Recovery operations. They deploy as a direct combatant commander of operations. CROs provide subject matter expertise to command battle staffs and theater command and control structure.
CRO duties and responsibilities include planning missions and leading CSAR assets, pararescue and Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape operations, including aerospace interface in the recovery objective area. Supporting joint and combined forces engaged in conventional and special operations air, ground, and/or maritime personnel recovery operations. Advising on readiness of forces based on force status reports, inspections, training exercise and evaluation results. Developing plans and coordinating activities to report, locate and support isolated personnel or materiel. Planning and conducting missions to recover personnel and materiel, coordinating evacuation of isolated personnel to friendly control. Developing plans and executing the debriefing and reintegration of recovered personnel. Ensuring CSAR activities are organized, and teams/units are trained and equipped to perform the full military spectrum of CSAR and Coalition/Joint PR. Inspecting and evaluating CSAR activities, functions, and personnel.
Training and selection process
The selection process is broken into two phases. Phase I requires an in depth application that summarizes the professional history and qualifications of the individual applying. Heavy consideration is given to prior military service, academic achievement, and leadership abilities. A board of field grade officers review the applications and select the group that will go on to Phase II of selection.
Phase II takes place at Fairchild Air Force Base, Washington. This phase includes three mile running sessions, 1,500 meter swims, and rucksack marches up to six miles. The goal of Phase II is to place the candidates under extreme fatigue and constant stress to see how they think and act under circumstances that are similar to the real world battlefront. Many young officers going into Phase II drop out or are eliminated, leaving a fraction of the original class.
CRO training consists of the following:
Combat Rescue Officer (CRO) / Pararescue (PJ) Indoctrination Course, Lackland Air Force Base, Texas (9 weeks)
The mission of the Indoctrination Course is to select and train future CRO and PJs. At this school, participants undergo extensive physical conditioning with swimming, running, functional weight training and calisthenics. This course helps prepare students for the rigors of training and the demands of these lifestyles. Other training includes water confidence training, obstacle courses, rucksack marches, and academics to prepare the candidates for follow-on training courses (e.g. diving physics/dive tables). Graduation of this course allows the individual to begin learning the special skills that make CROs and PJs highly regarded rescue operators throughout the joint community.
Army Airborne School, Fort Benning, Georgia (3 weeks)
Students learn the basic parachuting skills required to infiltrate an objective area by static line airdrop. This course includes ground operations week, tower week, and "jump week" when participants make five parachute jumps. Personnel who complete this training are awarded the basic parachutist rating and are allowed to wear the Parachutist Badge.
Air Force Combat Diver School, Navy Diving and Salvage Training Center, Naval Support Activity Panama City, Florida (5.5 weeks)
The course is divided into four blocks of instruction: (1) Diving Theory, (2) Infiltration/Exfiltration Methods, (3) Open Circuit Diving Operations, and (4) Closed Circuit Diving Operations. The primary focus of AFCDC is to develop Pararescuemen/Combat Rescue Officers and Combat Controller/Special Tactics Officers into competent, capable and safe combat divers/swimmers. The course provides commanders with divers/swimmers capable of undertaking personnel recovery and special operations waterborne missions. AFCDC provides diver training through classroom instruction, extensive physical training, surface and sub-surface water confidence pool exercises, pool familiarization dives, day/night tactical open water surface/sub-surface infiltration swims, open/closed circuit diving procedures and underwater search and recovery procedures. The session culminates with a waterborne field training exercise.
Navy Underwater Egress Training, Naval Air Station Pensacola, Florida (1 day)
This course teaches how to safely escape from an aircraft that has landed in the water. Instruction includes principles, procedures and techniques necessary to escape a sinking aircraft.
Air Force Basic Survival School, Fairchild Air Force Base, Washington (2.5 weeks)
This course teaches basic survival techniques for remote areas using minimal equipment. This includes instruction of principles, procedures, equipment and techniques that help individuals to survive, regardless of climatic conditions or unfriendly environments, and return home.
Army Military Free Fall Parachutist School, Yuma Proving Ground, Arizona (4 weeks)
This course instructs free fall parachuting (HALO) using a high performance parafoil. The course provides wind tunnel training, in-air instruction focusing on student stability, aerial maneuvers, air sense and parachute opening procedures. Each student receives a minimum of 30 free fall jumps including two day and two night jumps with supplemental oxygen, rucksack and load-bearing equipment.
Advanced Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) course, Fairchild Air Force Base, Washington (4 weeks)
This course teaches advanced SERE skills associated with the tactical PR planning for report, locate, support, recovery and reintegration tasks of the personnel recovery mission. Additionally, this course provides the CRO with knowledge in Joint Personnel Recovery program management and the AF SERE activities.
Air Force Combat Rescue Officer Entry Level Course, Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico (17 weeks)
Initial qualification course to instruct the CRO candidate on Ground Force Commander competencies to include terminal area operations and tactical employment of rescue forces. The CRO candidate is evaluated on his ability to command and control ground and aviation support assets during dynamic rescue and recovery operations.
- Ground skills include: leadership, weapons, small unit tactics, ground mobility, communications, technical rescue, and other field craft skills.
- Employment skills include: fast rope, rope ladder, hoist, rappelling, amphibious operations (surface & subsurface), precision aerial operations (static-line and military free-fall parachuting).
CRO candidates graduate as non-rated officer aircrew on HH-60 and HC-130 aircraft. Application includes academics, practical training, testing, and evaluation in academics and field environments, flying training, and flight aircraft.
Introduction to Personnel Recovery (PR 101), Fort Belvoir, Virginia (3 days)
PR 101 is conducted by the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (JPRA) and is an introduction to the DoD Personnel Recovery system.
Joint Aerospace Command and Control Course, Hurlburt Field, Florida (3 weeks)
Teaches the application of joint air operations.
See also
List of United States Air Force rescue squadrons
List of United States Air Force special tactics squadrons
United States Air Force Pararescue
References
External links
Airforce.com profile
United States Air Force specialisms
Combat rescue officer
Air force special forces units
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximus%20%28BBS%29
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Maximus (BBS)
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Maximus is a bulletin board system, originally developed by Scott J. Dudley through his company, Lanius Corporation. The software was first written and released for both MS-DOS and OS/2, with later versions supporting 32-bit Windows operating systems. The MS-DOS version interfaced with the serial port (and thus the modem) through a FOSSIL driver. Version 1.0 was released in 1990, with versions 2.0 and 3.01 following in 1991 and 1995. The source code for Maximus and its companion utilities, such as Squish, was released under the GNU General Public License in 2002. It has since been ported to run under Linux, and other Unix-like operating systems.
By default, Maximus provides a relatively basic interface for BBS callers rendered in either ANSI or ASCII, compared with other BBS software. Menu layout is auto-generated and simply-drawn. With some effort, however, it is very customisable, including a provision for a system operator to supply RIP graphics for users. When BBS systems were popular, Maximus often appealed to system operators who wanted a system that appeared light-weight, but also to those who wanted great flexibility in their ability to customise their system's looks and behaviour.
Maximus configuration is entirely through editing text files, prior to running a compiler to convert the text files to binary configuration files. Maximus has supported two independent programming languages for system operators to customise their BBS. Both are compiled to Maximus-recognised byte-code before being used:
The MECCA language is primarily display-oriented, providing basic tokens to indicate actions such as colour changes for text displayed to a user, and simple functionality for designing things such as menus that require user input, or writing certain information to files on disk to exchange information with BBS door programs.
Since the release of version 3.0 of Maximus, in December 1995, the MEX language is a more structured, Turing-complete programming language, that borrows ideas from C, Pascal, BASIC, and a selection of similar languages. MEX provides supports for functions, structures, arrays, strings, and several additional complex concepts. Using MEX, system operators can write reasonably complex programs to run on their BBS and interact with users.
See also
Squish - the primary mail format used by Maximus, and Fidonet mail tossing application used to process it.
List of BBS software
References
Further reading
Review of version 1.02 in PC Magazine of Sep 10, 1991, p. 260 continues on p. 267
External links
The Maximus Home Page (archive from 2009)
Bulletin board system software
DOS software
OS/2 software
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41771027
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paritosh%20Pandya
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Paritosh Pandya
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Paritosh K. Pandya is an Indian computer scientist based at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) in Mumbai, India.
Paritosh Pandya studied for a BE degree in Electronics at the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda (1980), MTech degree in Computer Science at IIT Kanpur (1982), and a PhD in Computer Science at Bombay University/TIFR (1988).
From 1988, Paritosh Pandya has held academic posts at TIFR. He was a researcher at the Oxford University Computing Laboratory in England during 1989–91, on leave from TIFR, undertaking research with Jonathan Bowen, Jifeng He, and Tony Hoare, amongst others, as part of the ESPRIT ProCoS project on "Provably Correct Systems". He then returned to TIFR, where he has spent most of his career. Pandya leads the Theoretical Computer Science Group there.
Pandya's main research interest is in the area of formal methods, including real-time systems. He has been especially involved with research concerning Duration Calculus, including the DCVALID model-checking tool. His most cited paper, "Finding Response Times in a Real-Time System", with over 1,500 citations on Google Scholar in 2021, was joint work with Mathai Joseph, published in The Computer Journal in 1986. This paper won a 2020 Test-of-Time Award, announced at the 27th IEEE Real-Time and Embedded Technology and Applications Symposium (RTAS 2021).
Paritosh Pandya has been a member of the Editorial Board for the Formal Aspects of Computing journal published by Springer.
References
External links
Paritosh Pandya on Mendeley
Year of birth missing (living people)
Living people
Place of birth missing (living people)
Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda alumni
IIT Kanpur alumni
University of Mumbai alumni
Tata Institute of Fundamental Research alumni
Indian computer scientists
Theoretical computer scientists
Formal methods people
Members of the Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford
Tata Institute of Fundamental Research faculty
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62014233
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia%20Sky
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Gaia Sky
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Gaia Sky is a libre and open-source astronomy visualisation desktop and VR program with versions for Windows, Linux and macOS. It is created and developed by Toni Sagristà Sellés in the framework of ESA's Gaia mission to create a billion-star multi-dimensional map of our Milky Way Galaxy, in the Gaia group of the Astronomisches Rechen-Institut (ZAH, Universität Heidelberg). Gaia Sky is a product of the outreach working group of the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium. The software is released under the Mozilla Public License.
The inner workings of Gaia Sky are described in detail in the paper Gaia Sky: Navigating the Gaia Catalog.
Gaia Sky offers many advanced features like the stereoscopic (3D), planetarium and panorama renderers. It also works with virtual reality headsets through SteamVR, is fully scriptable with Python and features game controller support that makes it possible to operate it even with a racing wheel.
Gaia Sky is used by ESA to aid in the video production of Gaia Data Releases. A video made with Gaia Sky was also featured in the Astronomy Picture of the Day website.
Data
The installer packages of Gaia Sky contain the program but no data at all. In order to use Gaia Sky, at least a download of the base data package, containing the Solar System with low-resolution textures, is necessary. Gaia Sky offers a built-in download manager which connects to the servers at the Astronomisches Rechen-Institut in Heidelberg to fetch the desired datasets. The downloading and deploying processes are seamless to the user.
Several datasets are available, offering higher resolution textures, different cuts of the Gaia eDR3 catalog (up to 1.46 billion stars), other star catalogs such as the Hipparcos catalog, different galaxy maps (dust, HII regions, etc.), nebulae or extragalactic catalogs such as NBG or Sloan Digital Sky Survey.
All datasets are specified in JSON files following a comprehensible and well documented format.
References
External links
Official website
Gaia Sky source repository
Official documentation
Release list
AUR package
Flatpak (Flathub link)
Version 3.0.0 teaser trailer
Free educational software
Planetarium software for Linux
Science software for MacOS
Educational software for Linux
Educational software for Windows
Free astronomy software
Cross-platform free software
Science software for Linux
Science software for Windows
Freeware
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32260893
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless%20lock
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Wireless lock
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Wireless lock is a protection concept for authenticated LAN or WLAN network clients offered from various vendors in various functional shapes and physical designs. In contrast to wireless keys, wireless lock puts emphasis on automatic locking instead of just locking by time-out or unlocking.
The wireless lock concept supports initialising the client with authentication and log-on as electronic key solutions. Beyond that a wireless lock supports automatic log-off after user leaves unlocked network client and independent from time-out conditions. Protection comes into effect, while integrated or galvanically attached and paired receiver/transceiver stays connected with protected client object as soon as wireless token gets separated from client exceeding a set maximum allowed distance, generally the manual reach required for operating keyboard attached to client.
Currently (2011-07) there is no general standard supporting inter-operability of wireless lock concepts.
Most offered air interface solution is based on ISO/IEC 18000-3 HF (13,56 MHz) passive RFID tags and near field communication (NFC)-like reader specification.
Most offered authentication procedures make use of IETF public key infrastructure (PKI).
Comfortable solutions support single sign-on servicing.
Bluetooth BLE profile proximity is said to support such application.
Usage principles
The wireless token serves as an independent second authentication factor. Local pairing of token with protected networked client object is the authentication procedure. Personalisation of token with user is a preparative action that may be administered apart from network. Allocated user credentials shall be served from networked authorisation server for allowed access to data and function and from authentication server for allowed access to network and clients.
A wireless communication distance metrics sets the protected object to "locked", as soon as the set distance level between paired transmitter and receiver of a wireless signal transmission is exceeded. The protected object returns to status "unlocked" as soon as the distance gets lesser and the received signal strength level higher than set limit.
Transmitters may be worn by the owner of an object, whereas the other receiver item gets attached to the protected object for logically protecting it to usage by the owner only.
Basic electronic gadget is a wireless token that communicates with a counterpart attached to the object to be controlled wirelessly. User guides for mode of operation recommend to bear a very light designed alarm token with a necklace, a wristband or similarly directly bound to the body. Very low transmission power levels secure low electromagnetic interference as well as entirely biologically harmless operation
After setting the object to protect to work and initially pairing the two wireless token devices with each other, the protected object refuses operation when exceeding the set distance between token and protected object.
Advanced solutions offer communications on the basis of standardized communication protocols and based on standardized air interface links.
Simple solutions make use of passive RFID tokens, thus requiring a higher transmission level from a reader attached to the protected object and illuminating the token for response. Chosen frequency band and allowed maximum transmission power level define the possible reach for the response from the token in the vicinity of the protected object.
Applications
Application is mainly known PC locking under for authenticated log-in conditions. Protected object controlling works with the token at hands working as a transceiver (RFID passive) or beacon transmitter (RFID active. Currently some similar applications are offered by several no-name vendors and under non-guaranteed specification.
Standardization
Relevant existing standard for such application is Bluetooth V4.0 Low Energy of 2009-12-17 with the profiles Find Me and Proximity.
Security modes
Published concepts for secure key transmission are published in several context. Standardisation in IETF (PKI), W3C (XML), ITU (X.509) is going on.
Basically there are different concepts available for implementing a sound security concept:
Active token sends fixed identity to be read by receiver (not robust against attacks)
Transceiver sends initial code in challenge-response procedure and active token answers agreed code to prevent from fraudulent attacking
Transceiver sends with varied power levels to stimulate various response levels from passive tag
Transceiver and token communicate bi-directional for travel time (time of flight, TOF) estimates
Beaconing token sends with varied power levels to support RSSI estimation with receiver
Metrics options
The metrics options for detecting separation of protected object and authenticated user have to take into account various physical phenomena and thus offer a variety of signal processing to overcome
multipath propagation
indirect and direct paths
multipath fading
excess reach of nearby colliding transmitters
higher populations of transmitters
The safe approach is travel time estimation with ultra-short pulses (e.g. UWB and CSS), the cheap approach is RSSI estimate with just variation of power levels.
Standards based products available
Many current product offers with reference to communication standards are just prototypes. Basic design is proposed e.g. with Texas Instruments sample offer using Bluetooth V4.0 low energy protocol standard and with comparable proposals of other chip foundries.
Critics
Currently (2011-07) there is no certified product according to ISO/IEC 15408 security requirements on offer. However any workable solution is better than nothing compared to logged-in work positions left unobserved.
Freeware implementation
Well known implementation is LINUX and WINDOWS available BlueProximity solution. The hosting on PC like systems allows for detecting presence of mobile phones in proximity to PC-attached Bluetooth dongle or equivalent interface. PC gets locked on leave. Reported and other simple deficiencies of this solution are:
just local locking logically independent of other security means
wide variety of overall receiver sensitivity and RSSI feedback dynamics
wide variety of transmitter efficiency adjusting to RSSI feedback
varying lock-up distance with any combination of transmitter and receiver
manual setting the pairing of mobile phone and PC interface
no integration to network authentication and authorisation management
no integration to user role management and access credentials for application access
lack of protection against MIM attacking and other relevant attacking concepts
However this Bluetooth based approach is the best protected solution compared to other proprietary approaches without means comparable to mobile phone SIM locking or to Bluetooth link protection.
Advantages
Basic infrastructure requirements with wireless locking are very low. There are no additional server function requirements beyond public key infrastructure standards. The infrastructure requirement to include wireless receiver to protected objects via integration or using dongles is state-of-the-art. All tampering may be detected automatically. Attachment of receiver/transmitter in dongle shaping to protected object is easily made via USB port. Small security application will make use of protection mechanisms of operating system of protected object. Neither dongle nor protected unit may be compromised as long as any tampering of security application gets detected.
Major advantage with wireless locking comes with automating log-off. Hence common lacking of caution by mobile users may be entirely compensated. Automatic wireless authentication factors do not require any handling. The only requirement to the user just to wear a token without any keying is unsurpassed in comfort and functional value. Wireless locking provides additional security for networks against fraudulent access and usage. Reported security deficits with second factor authentication may be compensated by reducing all burdens with keeping, handling and wearing such factors.
Transmission power of the wireless token for the object may be very low in the 1 mW range, as just the distance between the bearer and the item to be protected shall be bridged. That is a level causing no harm in any environment nor electromagnetic interference to sensitive may occur, i.e. interference with medical devices may be neglected.
Wireless locking offers best robustness against de-authentication attacks. Continuous connection based encrypted key exchange between active token and receiver dongle provides a sufficient security level prepared for certification under ISO/IEC 15408 common criteria specification. Initially connection based encrypted key exchange serves for a lower security level which appears sufficient for most requirements.
Disadvantages
All known approaches for wireless locking are either proprietary or just industrial standard, as e.g. ZigBee, ANT or other communication platforms, hence requiring special pairing of token and receiver/transmitter resp. Adherence to wireless air interface standards and wireless communications protocols compensates for such top level standardisation gap.
Unidirectional communication between beaconing token and receiver dongle may be hacked with Man-in-the-middle attack. However, connection based challenge-response initialisation serves a much higher security level.
Clear specification of battery wear is not published with all known vendors' offerings.
See also
Transmission concepts
Bluetooth
Bluetooth low energy
Near Field Communication
Wireless PAN
Public Key Infrastructure
Smart key
WBAN
WLAN
IEEE 802.11
IEEE 802.15.1
IEEE 802.16
References
Radio-frequency identification
Tracking
Ubiquitous computing
Wireless locating
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65633625
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CID-201
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CID-201
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CID-201 was a digital computer produced in Cuba in 1970.
History
Cuba had already produced the analog computer SILNA 999. In 1969, the Cuban leader Fidel Castro asked during a visit to the University of La Habana if Cuba could produce a digital computer.
The (CID, "Center for Digital Researches") was formed.
The project was directed by Luis Carrasco and mostly designed by Orlando Ramos.
The first version was designed using transistors.
After the introduction of integrated circuits, the design was changed.
It was inspired on the American 1959 PDP-1.
The components were mostly Japanese, due to the American embargo on Cuba.
On 18 April 1970, the first computer was produced.
It was named CID-201 following the earlier digital watch CID-101.
It could do 25 000 additions/second.
Its memory held 4 096 12-bit words.
It was considered a third-generation computer.
It could be programmed in LEAL (, "algorithmic language").
A later version is the CID-201 A.
The CID also produced the CID-201 B, CID-300, CID-1408 and CID-1417.
Among the peripherals produced, several thousands of displays were exported to the Soviet Union.
Application
The first computer was installed in the sugar refinery Camilo Cienfuegos to control the railroad traffic during the sugarcane harvest.
Another one was installed in the Ecuador refinery.
Several thousand computers were produced.
It was also used in the education of Cuban technicians.
Legacy
On 2010, the Cuban Administración Postal issued a stamp commemorating the CID-201.
See also
History of computer hardware in Soviet Bloc countries
References
External links
1970 establishments in Cuba
Cuban inventions
12-bit computers
Minicomputers
Science and technology in Cuba
Computer-related introductions in 1970
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6478057
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diagnostic%20program
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Diagnostic program
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A diagnostic program (also known as a Test Mode) is an automatic computer program sequence that determines the operational status within the software, hardware, or any combination thereof in a component, a system, or a network of systems. Diagnostic programs ideally provide the user with guidance regarding any issues or problems found during its operation.
Diagnostics programs may be simple or complex, operating unknowingly within everyday devices or awaiting their invocation to make more complex performance assessments. Everyday examples are a microwave oven that displays code F6 to warn of a shorted temperature probe or a garage door opener that flashes its control board's LED four times warning of critically misaligned safety sensors and impending shutdown.
Diagnostic programs are also inserted into consumer electronic products and electronic games. Sometimes if the owner of an electronic device asks the manufacturer how to access the hidden diagnostic program, they may reply to the consumer saying that the information is considered to be "proprietary" and cannot be shared.
History
Early diagnostics programs were procedural instructions performed by humans, not by computer programs. See Built-in test equipment that enabled system operators to perform testing and diagnostics.
As computers became smaller, more mobile, computer programs were used to perform diagnostics tasks. In the late 1960s, Volkswagen introduced the first on-board computer system with diagnostics provisions.
Methods of operation
The diagnostics program for a device or system may be independently located or integrated within. These Methods of Operation are arranged, more-or-less, in order of increasing complexity and their increasing value of diagnostics information.
Background monitoring of system indicators, for statistical analysis of trends, and for recording abnormal events.
Solution-based diagnostics, that test for known failure modes by identifying if their known symptoms are detected.
Black box, which is testing of a mechanism without knowing how it works, and merely focusing on the accuracy of output data based on a known input.
White box, which uses knowledge of a mechanism's inner functions for direct testing.
Operation-oriented, a combination of both black and white box, with one or more black-box operations interleaved with one or more white-box operations. This mode of testing is not preferred, however, some complex systems do not have the necessary interfaces to perform one or the other type independently.
Integrated background diagnostics, that perform testing of system components during idle-time of a system.
Operation-interleaved diagnostics, that incorporate diagnostics into the normal operation of a system component, thus any marginal operating mode is immediately diagnosed. Examples of hardware components with features that assist a diagnostic program are:
Modern hard drives have Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology (SMART) commands that provide information about internal error conditions, e.g., spin retry counts, bad sector counts, etc.
Some systems may use Error Correcting Code (ECC) memory that logs memory failure events that were automatically corrected.
Architectures
Single-purpose diagnostic, also referred to as "Defined-purpose" diagnostic, such as a program that validates the Windows DirectX configuration.
Multi-purpose diagnostic, a monolithic program that performs multiple tasks that may or may not be suitable for all uses. This would be similar to a hammer that will perform well with nails, less so with screws, and poorly with nuts and bolts.
Modular diagnostic, which combines sets of single-purpose diagnostics, Lego-like, into an environment easily tailored to particular industry requirements. Key to its design is its reusable hardware and software operating system that performs all of its diagnostics programs. Application examples are:
manufacturing testing with an emphasis on checking assembly-related issues and optimizing for time
end-user targeted diagnostics, with an easy to comprehend non-technical presentation, and an emphasis on solutions
service/warranty testing, focusing on identifying a failed or marginal field-replaceable unit (FRU)
refurbishing centric, which attempts to determine if a system can be resold or reused, with an emphasis on depth of testing, at a cost to time spent testing
Knowledge-Driven diagnostic system (such as a technician or diagnostician) where the knowledge acquired over time is used as a "mental model" of the system's operation and informs the diagnostic system through logical reasoning to one or more possible or likely causes for a situation to exist.
Example diagnostics program applications
A BIOS embedded or UEFI embedded Power-on self-test (POST) program that performs a basic check of the system's hardware components before commencing normal operation
A BIOS embedded or UEFI embedded hardware diagnostic program in OEM PCs
Diagnostics that are run on-demand when a user needs assistance, typically within the primary operating system of the computer (e.g.Windows)
"Off-line diagnostics" that are run outside the primary operating system, typically to reduce the masking influence of software on hardware issues
Household refrigerators that display diagnostics of their internal temperature, ice machine functionality, etc.
The 1996 Onboard Diagnostics II system (OBD II) that standardized the diagnostics port across all models of cars and light trucks allowing vehicle owners and repair technicians access to the vehicle's error code and emissions history.
Personal computer users have diagnostics options from both software and hardware sources, e.g., Hewlett-Packard's (HP's) diagnostics guide for confirming hardware failures.
Industrial production test equipment that diagnoses electronic devices or systems.
When an electronic device such as a Bop It says its version number such as "one point three six" and starts playing through a set of sounds one after the other.
References
Utility software types
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53367148
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol%20Spradling
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Carol Spradling
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Carol Spradling is an American professor, computer scientist, and Director of the School of Computer Science and Information Systems at Northwest Missouri State University in Maryville, Missouri. She is known for her work with computer ethics, profession-based education, interactive media, and expanding the involvement of underrepresented groups and women in computing. Spradling teaches computer science courses, and serves as a provost fellow and a liaison to the Northland Center For Advanced Professional Studies program. Spradling served on the Missouri Department of Higher Education Panel on The Role of Faculty in Establishing and Implementing a Blueprint for
Missouri Higher Education.
Spradling is the co-founder of the Missouri Iowa Nebraska Kansas Women in Computing Conference, a regional meeting that coincides and is modeled after the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing.
Started in 2011 and held biannually, the conference gathers students, faculty, and technology leaders as part of a nationwide effort to address the decline of women in the computer science professions and discuss strategies for improving representation in the field from underrepresented groups. She is active in the National Center for Women & Information Technology Academic Alliance.
She is the recipient of the 2012 Missouri Governor's Award for Excellence in Education and received the Dean's Faculty Award for Service in 2014.
Selected publications
2014. Using interdisciplinary teams to develop comprehensive integrated digital marketing communication campaigns, Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges, 29(5), Pages 208–218.
2013. Computer science curriculum 2013: social and professional recommendations from the ACM/IEEE-CS task force, Proceedings of the 44th ACM technical symposium on Computer science education.
2012. Proposed revisions to the social and professional knowledge area for CS2013, Proceedings of the 43rd ACM technical symposium on Computer Science Education.
2009. A comprehensive survey on the status of social and professional issues in United States undergraduate computer science programs and recommendations., Computer science education, 19.3, Pages 137–153.
2009. From the man on the moon to 2001 and beyond: the evolving social and ethical impact of computers a session to commemorate SIGCSE' 40 anniversary, Proceedings of the 40th ACM technical symposium on Computer science education, Volume 41, Issue 1.
2008. Ethics training and decision-making: do computer science programs need help?, ACM SIGCSE Bulletin 40.1, Pages 153–157.
2008. Examining the data on computer ethics in the classroom, ACM SIGCAS Computers and Society: Volume 38 Issue 2.
2008. An interdisciplinary major emphasizing multimedia, ACM SIGCSE Proceedings of the 39th SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education, Pages 388–391.
2007. A study of social and professional ethics in undergraduate computer science programs: Faculty perspectives , ETD collection for University of Nebraska - Lincoln.Paper AAI3255458.
See also
Association for Computing Machinery's Council on Women in Computing (ACM-W)
Governance in higher education
References
External links
Official website
Association for Computing Machinery ACM-W
Missouri Department of Education Preparing Missourians to Succeed
National Center for Women and Information Technology
American computer scientists
American women academics
Buena Vista University alumni
Educators from Missouri
Northwest Missouri State University faculty
Northwest Missouri State University alumni
University of Nebraska–Lincoln alumni
Living people
American women computer scientists
People from Maryville, Missouri
1950 births
Engineers from Missouri
21st-century American women
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12629600
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nexus%20One
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Nexus One
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The Nexus One (codenamed HTC Passion) is an Android smartphone designed and manufactured by HTC as Google's first Nexus smartphone. The Nexus became available on January 5, 2010, and features the ability to transcribe voice to text, an additional microphone for dynamic noise suppression, and voice guided turn-by-turn navigation to drivers.
The device was sold SIM unlocked and not restricted to use on a single network provider. Google offered T-Mobile US and AT&T versions of the phone online in the United States before closing the online store in July 2010. A version for use on Vodafone (European) networks was announced on April 26, 2010, available in the United Kingdom four days later. On March 16, 2010, the Nexus One became available on the Google web store (Play Store) for sale in Canada for use with most Canadian carriers. In May 2010, Google announced the closing of the web store, with the intention to distribute the phone through partners around the world.
History
A trademark application for the name "Nexus One" was filed by Google Inc. on December 10, 2009. The Nexus One trademark was filed in International Trademark Class 9 for "Computer & Software Products & Electrical & Scientific Products" with description of "Mobile phones". On March 15, 2010 it was announced that the application had been declined due to the mark already being granted on December 30, 2008 to Integra Telecom.
On December 12, 2009, Google confirmed in a blog post that they had begun internal testing of the device. Google stated that a "mobile lab device" had been given to its employees, at that time Google had not yet confirmed that a device would be sold to consumers. Wireless phone and data services for the device were not activated nor billed to Google; it was up to the employees to activate and pay for wireless service on their own.
As of April 2010, the Nexus One had shipped to the US, the UK, Hong Kong, Germany and Singapore, although the phone was not fully localized for non-US markets – the lack of satnav outside the US, UK and Ireland, and the US English "voice keyboard" being the most obvious shortcomings. A June 2010 update saw Google Navigation being enabled for additional 11 countries.
Litigation
Upon the announcement of the Nexus One, Google received a cease-and-desist complaint by the estate of sci-fi author Philip K. Dick implying that the Nexus One namesake capitalized on intellectual property from his 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. Isa Dick Hackett, daughter of Philip K. Dick, and several bloggers believed that the choice of name "Nexus One" as Google's first Android phone was a direct reference to the "Nexus-6" model series of androids in Dick's novel.
Apple targeted the Nexus One in a patent lawsuit against HTC, which was settled in December 2012.
The Nexus One' reportedly had problems with 3G connectivity and touchscreen at launch. Updates were issued for the operating system, including the addition of multi-touch abilities in the Android web browser and Google Maps functions. While the updates reportedly also somewhat improved 3G connectivity for the T-Mobile USA version of the device, similar issues with the AT&T compatible version have not yet been addressed. A class action lawsuit is pending against Google on the matter, as the phone has problems connecting to 3G networks in areas with less than ideal coverage.
Features
Hardware
At time of launch, the Nexus One had a 3.7 inch AMOLED screen with PenTile matrix pixel arrangement. The raster resolution is 480×800 pixels, however each pixel in the PenTile RGBG display is represented by only two subpixels on average, using subpixel rendering rather than the three found in most displays, meeting the definition of WVGA according to the Video Electronics Standards Association specifications for measuring resolution.
Citing supply shortages of AMOLED displays, HTC announced on July 26, 2010 that the Nexus One would begin using Super LCD display technology instead of AMOLED. The Super LCD display was described as having greater power efficiency and color accuracy than the AMOLED display, while sacrificing the lauded color saturation and deep blacks of the original display. As of January 15, 2011 or earlier, all Nexus One's available via Brightstar, Google's worldwide distribution partner for Android development phones, shipped with Super LCD instead of AMOLED.
The capacitive touchscreen which uses the Synaptics ClearPad 2000 sensor supports multi-touch gestures limited to single finger input and 2×1D two finger gestures. It has an illuminated trackball which can emit different colors of light based on the type of notification being received. A voice processor developed by Audience uses a second microphone (on the back) to suppress background noise during phone conversations. A 4-conductor TRRS style 3.5mm stereo headset jack is also provided, adding microphone and pause/resume/next/previous functions to the stereo earphones.
The phone features a 5.0-megapixel auto-focus camera with LED flash and digital zoom, GPS receiver, Bluetooth 2.0, and 802.11b/g Wi-Fi abilities. The Snapdragon processor allows for many advanced abilities including 720p video playback. There is built in hardware decoding for H.263, H.264 and MPEG-4 video, and can play MP3, AAC+, Ogg Vorbis, WAV, and MIDI audio, and display JPEG, GIF, PNG, and BMP image formats. It has a micro USB port which conforms to the GSMA Universal Charging Solution instead of the common mini-USB port, or HTC's mini-USB compatible format (ExtUSB). The microSD card slot allows expansion up to 32 gigabytes of card storage. Applications can be installed either to the 512 MB internal flash memory, of which 190 MB are available for that purpose, or to the microSD card. Many applications, however, are not optimized for installation on external memory, and high data I/O throughput to the microSD may cause applications running off external memory to freeze.
Network frequencies
As of March 16, 2010, there are two versions of the Nexus One, which differ in the 3G frequencies they support. The GSM frequencies supported by both models are 850 MHz, 900 MHz, 1800 MHz and 1900 MHz. Additionally, the original Nexus One (PB99100) also included UMTS frequency bands 1 (2100 MHz), 4 (1700 MHz), and 8 (900 MHz). The second version of the Nexus One (PB99110) supports UMTS frequency bands 1 (2100 MHz), 2 (1900 MHz), and 5 (850 MHz).
The UMTS radio supports High Speed Packet Access, HSDPA at 7.2 Mbit/s, and HSUPA at 2 Mbit/s.
Software
The Nexus One was released with Android 2.1 Eclair. The integrated Media Gallery, developed by Cooliris, provides several new features allowing the user to browse, edit, and share photos and videos on the phone.
Later, an OTA update of Android 2.2 Froyo was released, which introduced a number of highlights: a new Home screen, support for Adobe Flash 10.1, better Microsoft Exchange support, Wi-Fi tethering, SD-card installable applications, cloud to device messaging for two-way push sync functionality and an overall 2-5x performance improvement.
The Android 2.2 update caused the Nexus One to develop a serious Wi-Fi connectivity issue which causes the Wi-Fi to continually lose its connection and fail to reconnect. There are reports that Android 2.2.1 had fixed this issue, although there has been no official word from Google.
As of January 28, 2011, Android-based phones have access to more than 210,000 applications through Google Play.
The Nexus One OTA update to Gingerbread (2.3.3) started on February 23, 2011.
The Nexus One currently runs the Google Android 2.3.6, Gingerbread, operating system.
Google has stated it will not update the Nexus One to Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich saying the hardware is “too old”; however, third party ROMs were made.
Platform development and modification
The Nexus One ships with an unlockable bootloader allowing developers to participate in the Android Open Source Project in addition to developing applications. The Nexus One bootloader can be unlocked and various partitions on the device can be flashed with the fastboot utility which is part of the Android Open Source Project. Fastboot runs on Linux, Mac OS, or Windows and accesses the Nexus One through the USB port.
The bootloader of the Nexus One is accessed by holding volume down while powering up the device.
Users are able to gain root privileges on the device by first unlocking its bootloader using the fastboot command fastboot oem unlock and flashing a package that adds the functionality to the system or by uploading specially crafted data packages via the adb program without the need to unlock the bootloader. Unlocking the bootloader or rooting the device allows the user to install non-official firmware images. Additionally, obtaining root privileges enables a user to override protected operating system features, and install arbitrary software. If the fastboot command is used to unlock the bootloader, the user is presented with a Google-created screen stating that unlocking the bootloader will void the warranty as well as void any insurance plan, which the user is required to accept.
A NASA project, PhoneSat, which builds nanosatellites using unmodified consumer-grade off-the-shelf smartphones, used a Nexus One smartphone running Android 2.3.3 as the onboard computer in their PhoneSat 1.0 version.
Comparison with other phones
Though the multi-touch experience of the Nexus One is generally similar to that of other multi-touch enabled smartphones (e.g., iPhone, Palm Pre, etc), the Nexus One hardware uses software to "enable" multi-touch ability, resulting in x/y axis confusion and preventing some multi-touch applications (e.g., games) from working as they should, compared to other phones. As of an update released February 2, 2010 it has pinch-to-zoom functionality in the phone's Browser, Gallery and Maps applications. In addition to these official applications, 3rd party apps that support multi-touch gestures are available.
HTC Desire
HTC later released the HTC Desire, which has very similar specifications to the Nexus One. The Desire features an optical trackpad rather than a trackball, physical buttons rather than the touch sensitive buttons and an FM radio but lacks the noise cancelling dual microphones present in the Nexus One. The Desire is solely branded as HTC and runs HTC Sense rather than the stock version of Android. Sense can be switched off to get the stock Android experience however this was disabled on the retail HTC Desire.
Reception
It was praised for its display, processor, and design. However, commentators believed that the phone didn't have enough unique features to gain an advantage against competitors. David Pogue of The New York Times praised the Nexus One for its "gleaming, attractive features; it’s hard to choose which is more gratifying: the speed — instant, smooth response when you’re opening programs and scrolling – or the huge, 3.7-inch touch screen, which has much finer resolution than the iPhone," however criticized its dictation, multitouch screen gestures, and animated wallpapers. Joshua Topolsky of Engadget believed that although the Nexus One was a good smartphone, it is "at its core just another Android smartphone. It's a particularly good one, don't get us wrong – certainly up there with the best of its breed -- but it's not in any way the Earth-shattering, paradigm-skewing device the media and community cheerleaders have built it up to be. It's a good Android phone, but not the last word – in fact, if we had to choose between this phone or the Droid right now, we would lean towards the latter". Kent German of CNET praised the Nexus One's display, processor, and voice functions, however criticized the media player and the requirement to store applications on the phone's internal storage.
Goldman Sachs slashed their estimates for sales of the phone in 2010 by 70% due to the half-hearted marketing efforts by carriers.
Support
Initially, Google did not provide telephone support and consumers were forced to use its online Android forum. At this time , Google has stopped all support for the phone and customers are directed to contact HTC.
On July 16, 2010, Google announced that the next shipment of Nexus One smartphones would be the last to be sold on their web store, stating "While the global adoption of the Android platform has exceeded our expectations, the web store has not. It’s remained a niche channel for early adopters, but it’s clear that many customers like a hands-on experience before buying a phone." The device continued to be sold through retail stores, and other channel partners as of 2010.
As of November 1, 2010 Google have closed the Nexus One support forums, redirecting users to the Google Mobile forum, which only has categories for software. The message shown to users was: "The Nexus One forum will be archived and become read-only on November 1st. Please see the Nexus One Terms of Sale for details regarding support. If you have questions about using applications on your Nexus One post them to the Google Mobile Forum."
As of the 2011 announcement of Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich, HTC has announced that there will be no more software updates for the Nexus One, as the hardware is now too old to run the new version of Android effectively.
See also
HTC Desire
Google Nexus
Notes
References
External links
Official HTC Support
Official Nexus One specifications
Google Nexus
Smartphones
Android (operating system) devices
Digital audio players
HTC mobile phones
Mobile phones introduced in 2010
Discontinued smartphones
Mobile phones with user-replaceable battery
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35894726
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platypux
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Platypux
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Platypux was a French Linux distribution of the Slackware family, developed by Pierre-Aimé and Jacques-Olivier.
History
Despite Platypux being a Slackware derivative, it was built using the source code provided by the Linux From Scratch project (LFS) that enables the developers to learn the internal workings of a Linux-based system, in order to build a custom Linux distro, so it can naturally fit on its intended audience and purposes.
Platypux V8.0 is only supported by x86 (32bits) platforms, both desktop and laptops, it is available for install from a live-DVD. Its kernel supports PAE in order to enable full access to RAM memory over the 4GiB limit.
Origin of the name
Platypux has been developed using the source code from the Linux From Scratch project, but also counts on source code for BLFS (Beyond Linux From Scratch) and ALFS (Automated Linux From Scratch) Linux distros. The Linux kernel alongside the several preinstalled packages comprehend the Linux distribution.
Platypux is a pun of platypus and tux, the Linux mascot. A platypus is an exotic animal which despite being a mammal shares oviparity with amphibians an others, making it an exotic Linux distro with parts from "penguins", a GNU and other third party components.
Preinstalled software packages
Some of the preinstalled packages for Platypux V8.0 are:
Xfce Window Manager.
GIMP image editor (with XSane support)
Inkscape Scalable Vector Graphics editor.
SRWare Iron web browser.
Pidgin instant messaging.
The LibreOffice suite.
Versions
The release history of Platypux is as follows:
Version 1.0 released on December 29, 2008. First version, Slackware based.
V2.0 released on February 20, 2009. Support added for USB flash drive and other removable drives, support for the Wacom tablet and other upgrades.
V3.0 released on April 19, 2009. Featured Conky and Wifi-radar
V4.0 released on September 2, 2009. From this version on, WiFi setup is saved on each PC. Java MPlayer 1.0 is introduced.
V5.0 released on June 13, 2010. System compiled from the LFS and BLFS source code.
V6.0 released on January 1, 2011. LibreOffice added. Libraries and utilities were updated. Linux 2.6.36 kernel sources are available in the live DVD. Save configuration was improved. WICD is used for network configuration. A package manager was added for building and downloading lzm.
V7.0 released on May 29, 2011. NFS was corrected, the gFTP client and wireless device firmware was added. Linux kernel 2.6.37.6 added with AUFS and LZMA support. Thunderbird was introduced.
V8.0 released on November 9, 2011. Several applets added (sound, keyboard, batteries, and others), NVIDIA graphics card support with privative drivers (can be activated thanks to nvidia-xconfig). Added XZM compression for AUFS. XFCE window manager replaces Openbox.
V9.0 is to be announced, it is under development.
See also
List of Linux distributions
References
External links
Slackware
Linux distributions
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rompler
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Rompler
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A rompler is an electronic music instrument that plays pre-fabricated sounds based on audio samples. The term rompler is a blend of the terms ROM and sampler. In contrast to samplers, romplers do not record audio and have limited or no capability for generating original sounds. Both may have additional sound editing features, such as layering several waveforms and modulation with ADSR envelopes, filters and LFOs.
The waveforms are commonly stored in form of PCM-encoded waveforms which were similar to those stored in WAV or AIFF file formats, although in some hardware design other encodings and forms of (usually lossless) compression could be used.
The core characteristic of a rompler, compared to a sampler, is that they do not have the ability to record new samples, or in case of software instruments, the ability to add user samples from disk.
Note that earlier digital synthesizers, which used short-cycle sampled waveforms, are usually not considered romplers but are either called "PCM synthesizers" or "wavetable synthesizers" because the sampled waveform in this case is usually only made of a single full cycle (or a handful of full cycles) of the wave and would therefore be a fraction of a second in length, whereas in case of a sampler or a rompler, the recording would usually contain the sample's decay and sometimes even release sections, such as with a recorded drum hit or piano note. Also, in their usage of sampled waves filters (usually digital) were employed to gradually alter the timbre of cycling wave which makes them somewhat similar to analog subtractive synthesizers. However in many such designs, the attack section of a sound was often sampled as a full, longer sample, and then crossfaded or mixed with the looping PCM waveform, such as with Roland's Linear Arithmetic synthesis and its competitors from other manufacturers, further blurring the difference.
Hardware romplers emerged in the late 1980s, as price drops of memory chips allowed for longer recording storage to be used without making the instruments prohibitively expensive. They were meant to displace previous FM and PCM-based digital synthesizers in the market, by offering more realistic sound of real, acoustic and electronic instruments, and by the early 1990s they became the dominant technology for mainstream keyboards. The most successful early romplers are considered to be Korg M1 workstation, and E-mu Proteus module.
Before the emergence of software virtual instruments, computer sound hardware gradually shifted from synthesizer based sound and music reproduction (such as with Commodore SID or Yamaha OPN chips) to PCM-based chips, such as Commodore Amiga's Paula. Combined with computer's RAM and disk storage, these chips allowed for longer PCM recordings to be reproduced, and games and other software often used rompler-like software technology to reproduce music, most notable example being music trackers on Amiga. Later computer sound hardware employed hardware rompler and sample-based synthesizers (such as Gravis Ultrasound and E-mu/Creative SoundBlaster) to increase number of voices and reduce CPU usage for sound processing.
As the processing power of personal computers grew, these hardware synthesizers were gradually abandoned and sound hardware of contemporary computers now usually has only PCM reproduction converters with all synthesis and reproduction logic implemented in software. Modern computers are capable of real-time reproduction of large number of voices, as well as real-time emulation of analogue sound circuits. With the introduction of digital audio workstations, musicians started to employ more and more virtual instruments, so a market for software romplers, as a source of instantly available sampled instruments, also emerged. Some popular examples of software romplers are reFX Nexus and IK Multimedia Sampletank.
References
Electronic musical instruments
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David%20Canfield%20Smith
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David Canfield Smith
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David Canfield Smith is an American computer scientist best known for inventing computer icons and the programming technique known as programming by demonstration. His primary emphasis has been in the area of computer-human interface (CHI) design. His goal was to make computers easier for ordinary people to use. He is one of the pioneers of the modern graphical user interface (GUI) for computers, having invented such techniques as the “desktop metaphor,” dialog boxes, and universal commands.
Personal life and influence
Smith was born in Roanoke, Virginia on March 29, 1945. Smith graduated from Chillicothe (Ohio) High School in 1963 and was inducted into the Chillicothe High School Distinguished Alumni Hall of Fame in 2007
Oberlin College
Smith attended Oberlin College, where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree with honors in mathematics in 1967. During his senior year, Smith realized he didn't want to pursue a career as a mathematics professor, which had been his goal up to then. Fortunately, the field of computer science was just getting started; it seemed tailor made to funnel his interest in mathematics into solving real world problems. He developed an initial interest in artificial intelligence (AI) after reading Computers and Thought by Edward A. Feigenbaum and Julian Feldman. That inspirational book suggested that AI was the future of computing, and Smith wanted to be involved. While it took thirty years longer than people had expected, today AI does seem to be the future of computing. (For better or worse.)
Stanford University
In 1967 he began pursuing his Ph.D. in computer science at Stanford University. He joined the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL). Following Feigenbaum and Feldman, Smith wanted to make a computer able to learn. His thought was that if a computer could learn, then it could apply that ability to the task of learning itself, and thus learn how to learn better. After a few iterations, it should become an expert learner. At that point people could apply it to some of the thorny problems of human civilization, and real scientific progress could be made. However progress was slow in AI and would remain slow for the rest of the century, due to the underpowered computers of the day. It wasn’t until the turn of the century that computers finally became powerful enough for artificial neural nets (ANNs) to reach their potential. ANNs are the source of the current renaissance in AI. The only question is are they going to become too powerful and supplant humans as the dominant species on Earth?
In the meantime, Smith was becoming disillusioned with AI. He turned to Alan Kay, a computer science assistant professor at Stanford who also worked in the AI lab, for help. One day Kay uttered one of the most consequential sentences in Smith’s life. Kay said, “I don’t want to make a smarter computer; I want to use computers to make people smarter.” This was an epiphany for Smith. “I want to do that too!” he thought. He asked Kay to be his thesis advisor, and Kay agreed. In their first meeting to discuss the thesis (he hadn't yet thought of a topic), Kay handed Smith a stack of books on art and philosophy, including Visual Thinking by Rudolf Arnheim, The Act of Creation by Arthur Koestler, Art and Illusion by Ernst Gombrich, and The Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field by Jacques Hadamard. This surprised Smith a great deal, since he had been expecting books on algorithms and data structures, programming language design, compiler construction techniques, etc. etc. But Kay believed that ideas outside of Computer Science were essential to the advancement of the field. Smith was baffled by this at first. Now he realizes that those books have been the most important ones in his career; he has referred to them repeatedly, and they have guided his thinking ever since.
Smith completed his Ph.D. in 1975.
Pygmalion
Pygmalion is the name of Smith's thesis at Stanford. It contained two new innovations: the concepts of computer icons and programming by demonstration. Smith named this program Pygmalion after the famous sculptor Pygmalion from Roman mythology. The program was implemented in the brand new programming language Smalltalk on the brand new personal computer the Xerox Alto.
The development of icons
(needs to be rewritten) Smith and his fellow students at Stanford would often come together to brainstorm solutions to problems. This typically involved a blackboard. They would sketch out images and diagrams describing the solution. Then they would sit down and translate those diagrams into a programming language that a computer would accept. That is where problems arose. The translation distance between the images and the linear code was large. Trying to bridge it led to many errors. It occurred to Smith that if the computer could just execute the blackboard sketches directly, they would be done. And a whole class of errors would go away. So he decided to make this the goal of his Ph.D. research. He would create an executable electronic blackboard.
<picture>
When creating Pygmalion, Smith wanted objects that could be directly manipulated in the system. Smith was inspired by the belief within certain religions, that images portraying holy figures embody some of the holiness of that figure. Smith viewed the objects in Pygmalion as having both visual and mechanical schematics that they represent. He saw a religious icon and the objects he was drawing as having the same double meaning, thus he named these objects icons.
Career timeline
1963-1967: Pursued a B.A. in Mathematics at Oberlin College
1967-1975: Pursued a Ph.D. in Computer Science at Stanford University. During this time, Smith also worked at Xerox PARC, where he associated with Alan Kay’s Learning Research Group which developed Smalltalk, one of the first object-oriented programming languages. Smith’s thesis project Pygmalion was written in Smalltalk.
1975-1976: Programmer in Douglas Englebart’s Augmentation Research Center (ARC) at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI). Smith was drawn to ARC because of the many forward-looking papers coming out of it and by Englebart's The Mother of All Demos. However, Smith didn't feel that Englebart was keeping up with the cutting-edge research that he had just seen at PARC. Most importantly, Englebart was committed to time-sharing systems, whereas PARC was blazing the way in personal computers.
1976-1983: User Interface Designer at Xerox in the Xerox Systems Development Division. Smith was one of the six principal designers of the user interface for the Xerox Star computer.
1983-1984: User Interface Designer at VisiCorp – At the time, Smith joined VisiCorp, it was larger than Microsoft and produced four of the top ten best selling personal computer applications - including VisiCalc. He joined VisiCorp because he admired VisiCalc inventors Bob Frankston and Dan Bricklin. Similar to them, he wanted to contribute a breakthrough PC application. Consequently, he prototyped a new application that was going to do for relational databases what VisiCalc had done for financial modelling. Unfortunately, VisiCorp went out of business before he could turn his prototype into a product. Smith describes this as one of the biggest disappointments of his career.
1984-1985: Cofounder, System Architect, & User Interface Designer at Dest Systems – Smith, and other former employees of VisiCorp, formed a start-up under the umbrella of Dest Corporation to combine Dest's OCR reader with mass storage devices, such as optical disks to transform large amounts of paper documentation into a searchable and editable electronic form. The team was influenced by statistics such as: the documentation for the Boeing 747 weighed more than the airplane itself. Again, Smith and his team prototyped the product, but Dest suffered financial difficulties before they could fully execute it.
1985-1988: Cofounder and Vice President of Human Interfaces at Cognition – This was a Massachusetts start-up that attempted to do for mechanical engineers what workstations such as Daisy's and Mentor Graphics did for electrical engineers. Architecturally, it was based on Ivan Sutherland's Sketchpad; it used constraint-based geometry to portray mechanical devices such as the windshield raising-lowering mechanism in cars. The dimensions, angles, and other measurements in the diagrams were linked to mathematical formulas. When the values in the formulas changed, the diagrams automatically updated to represent the changes. The engineer always had an accurate visual picture of his mathematical model. Smith designed a simple interface modeled on an engineer's notebook. It had sketch notes for the diagrams, math notes for the formulas, text notes for textual descriptions, and others. These could all be placed into the pages of a notebook. It was a modular design that made it easy to incorporate new note types as users invented them. The product was finished and sold, but Cognition was never profitable and went out of business. Cognition had been implemented on dedicated high-power workstations, which became uncompetitive due to the increasing power of low-cost personal computers using Intel chips. However, the Cognition interface was successful and won a General Motors competition to become its User Interface Management System (UIMS).
1988-1996: User Interface Designer at Apple – Smith worked in Apple's Advanced Technology Group where he and Allen Cypher invented KidSim, with important contributions by Alan Kay. KidSim was based on Smith’s idea of programming by demonstration. But the project invented an equally powerful idea: visual rule programming.
1996-2002: Cofounder and User Interface Designer of Stagecast – After the Advanced Technology Group was abolished by Apple, Smith and some of his Apple coworkers formed a start-up called Stagecast to turn KidSim into a product. They renamed KidSim to Creator. Creator was developed, refined, and extended by a dedicated team of engineers at Stagecast. Creator was completed (versions 1.0 and 2.0) and was sold into schools. But that was a tough market around the turn of the century before the iPad, and eventually Stagecast went out of business due to a lack of funding. Today, tablet computers like the iPad would be a perfect platform for Creator, and the App Store would be the perfect way to sell it.
2002-2003: Human-computer interface designer at IBM
2004-2009: Retired – Smith and his wife Janet traveled the country in an RV. He is currently writing a book about their travels.
2009-current: Still retired. Living in Bend, Oregon. Enjoying hiking, camping, skiing, reading, and photography. Especially enjoying having the time to pursue his nontechnical interests.
Xerox Star
(needs to be rewritten) Smith served as a user interface designer for the Xerox System Development Division between 1976 and 1983. His role as one of the six principal designers for the Xerox Star constitute his main contributions to the field of human-computer interaction. The other five designers were Larry Clark, Eric Harslem, Charles Irby, Ralph Kimball, and Jim Reilly. While working on the Star, Smith helped develop four main features: the desktop metaphor, dialog boxes, the icon designs, and universal commands.
Desktop metaphor
(needs to be rewritten) The desktop metaphor is the representation of common office objects in a computer's user interface. Smith and his colleagues were trying to develop a computer for the office. Prior computers were not tailored to the office and what Smith called "knowledge workers". He made a distinction between how these knowledge workers and secretaries - who were the common computer users at the time - wanted to use a computer. To introduce a computer that knowledge workers could easily understand and interact with, Smith believed it was imperative to incorporate objects and ideas they were already familiar with. This led him to represent common office items, such as documents, folders, file cabinets, and wastebaskets, in his icon designs for the Star.
Dialog boxes
(needs to be rewritten) A dialog box is a small window that contain clickable options, allowing users to communicate a command to the computer. By presenting a list of options within these boxes, users don't need to memorize them.
Icons
(needs to be rewritten) Smith designed the initial icons of the office icons for Xerox Star. As development on the Star progressed and drew closer to completion, he and the other designers decided that the icons needed a more professional look. The six of them began interviewing graphic design artists that could polish his initial drafts. They soon met Norm Cox - an artist already working for Xerox in Dallas, Texas. After Cox created several new sets of the icons, they conducted user tests to finalize which set would be more appropriate for the Star system. These tests were used to determine which of the different sets were most aesthetically pleasing, identifiable to the real world object they represented - such as a printer or mailbox - and how fast users could locate a given type of icon in a screen full of them.
Universal commands
(needs to be rewritten) A universal command is a command that work in all applications of a system. In Smith's own words, “This simplifies the system as a whole without reducing its power. Some of the universal commands for the Star were: Again, Copy, Copy Properties, Delete, Move, Show Properties, and Undo.
Apple
KidSim
For eight years, Alan Kay, Allen Cypher, and Smith worked closely together in the Advanced Technology Group to find a way to teach children how to program. During this project, they faced two main issues. The first issue was how to input programs without boring or overwhelming students and the second was how to understand how a program works once it is written. Their efforts were ultimately successful and they developed a system called KidSim (for Kids' Simulations). The system enabled children as young as preschoolers to program video games that other children could play.
Component software
One of Smith's side projects at Apple was component software. In hardware, the designer does not descend to the level of individual transistors and resistors, but rather, goes to a component catalogue, selects a set of integrated circuits, and pieces them together. However, in software, the designer deals with the lowest level elements: conditional statements, variables, and procedure calls. Sometimes a library will provide predefined routines that can be called, thereby saving the designer the work of implementing them. However, these libraries often don't do what is needed or they cannot be used properly. Component software attempted to enable software components for use in an analogous way with hardware components. Like many of Smith's other projects, it did not continue past the prototype stage.
OpenDoc
Another one of Smith's side projects was OpenDoc. Apple wanted to implement a new document architecture. In OpenDoc, a user could write documents using an open-ended collection of multimedia components. The architecture was flexible enough to allow new types of components to be included as people thought of them. For this project, Smith acted as the user interface consultant and contributed a new universal command: Link. Link would later be added to the list of universal commands such as cut, copy, paste, and undo, that worked with all components. Link established a dynamic connection between components. For example, between a spreadsheet component and a database component, when a change was made in one of these components, the same change was made it the other. This command reduced the amount of manual updating needed to change materials and provided a significant increase in functionality with almost no increase in complexity. Unfortunately, OpenDoc was quickly discontinued.
Extensible programming language
Finally, Smith designed a new extensible programming language for use within the Advanced Technology Group. This language used the PLisp technology previously developed by Larry Tesler, Horace Enea, and Smith at Stanford. Not only could new programming constructs be added to the language, enabling a programmer to use those constructs in a program, but such extensions could be made at compile time. That is, the programmer could include a preface at the beginning of a program which would dynamically add features just for the program that follows. However, this language was never implemented.
Stagecast Creator
Stagecast Creator is a visual programming language based on the concept of programming by example. It was intended to teach children how to program. Smith believed that programming was not inherently hard, but that the true problem was that computer scientists had failed to create an easier way to learn and do it. Creator was a solution to this problem. Through user testing groups of 4th, 5th, and 6th graders, Smith and his team discovered the programming language was most successful within the 5th grade groups. He believed that the 5th graders were “around the age where they didn’t have the creativity and enthusiasm crushed out of them by the education system, yet old enough to be inventive”. Smith wanted a new way to engage kids and actually teach them how to think, instead of how to memorize facts. Although the kids looked at creating simulations with Creator as making video games, Smith believed he was implicitly teaching them the scientific method. By using Creator, kids were creating theories and hypotheses, and experiments to test them, executing those experiments, and then observing the results to confirm or disprove their hypotheses.
Creator is a continuation of Smith's KidSim project at Apple. In 1997, Steve Jobs eliminated the Advanced Technology Group that Smith was working for. This meant that KidSim would no longer receive funding. However, Apple gave Smith and about 12 other employees of the former Advanced Technology Group permission to continue the project on their own. In 1997, Smith and his fellow employees created a start-up, Stagecast, Inc., to continue their work with KidSim. The goal of that firm was to finish the Java implementation of KidSim and sell it as a commercial product. Soon after founding the company, KidSim was renamed Creator. The first version was finished in 2000 and the second version in 2001. , it is still available for purchase at the official Stagecast website, www.stagecast.com. However, Stagecast, Inc. went out of business in 2002 due to a lack of funding from venture capitalists in Silicon Valley. In his own words, Smith said several venture capitalists told his company, "We love your software, and could we please have a copy for our kids? But we aren’t going to fund you because we’ve never made money on educational software." Smith called the disbandment of Stagecast, Inc., the second greatest disappointment of his career.
Retirement
Smith and his wife Janet retired at the beginning of 2004, sold their house, and bought an RV. For the next five years they toured the country visiting scenic locations, photographing historical sites, and meeting a variety of people. They eventually visited all of the national parks in the contiguous United States as well as many national monuments, recreation areas, historic sites, and state and local parks, both in the U.S. and Canada. Smith is currently writing a book about those years called Travels with Janet, inspired by John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley: In Search of America.
Once back on solid ground, Smith and his wife bought a house in Bend, Oregon, where they live a quiet (compared to the Bay Area), uneventful (compared to Silicon Valley start-ups), and some might say boring (except where grandkids are involved) existence. Janet continues to teach piano with a reduced studio, simply because she loves it. Smith continues to read a lot—but mostly nontechnical stuff for a change. He has recently been collaborating with Dr. Henry Lieberman of MIT inspired by his imaginative book Why Can’t We All Get Along? The idea is to investigate radically new user interfaces. Just like Janet, I do this simply because I love it.
References
1945 births
Living people
American computer scientists
Oberlin College alumni
Stanford University alumni
People from Roanoke, Virginia
People from Bend, Oregon
Scientists at PARC (company)
Scientists from Virginia
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland%20Jupiter-8
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Roland Jupiter-8
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The Jupiter-8, or JP-8, is an eight-voice polyphonic analog subtractive synthesizer introduced by Roland Corporation in early 1981.
The Jupiter-8 was Roland's flagship synthesizer for the first half of the 1980s. Although it lacked the soon-to-be standard of MIDI control, later production series of the Jupiter-8 did include Roland's proprietary DCB interface. The instrument had many advanced features for its time, including the ability to split the keyboard into two zones, with separate patches active on each zone. Two years after the release of the Jupiter-8, Roland released the more affordable Jupiter-6 synthesizer with built-in MIDI control but an otherwise slightly reduced set of features. In 2011, three decades after the release of the original Jupiter series, Roland released the fully digital Jupiter-80 and Jupiter-50 synthesizers as successors to the 1980s originals. They were in turn succeeded by the Jupiter-X and Jupiter-Xm in 2019. A Jupiter-8 plug-out was included already installed on the Roland System-8 synthesizer, in 2017.
Features and architecture
The Jupiter-8 is an 8-voice polyphonic analog synthesizer. Each voice features two discrete VCOs with cross-modulation and sync, pulse-width modulation, a non-resonant high-pass filter, a resonant Low-pass filter with 2-pole (12 dB/octave) and 4-pole (24 dB/octave) settings, an LFO with variable waveforms and routings, and two envelope generators (one invertible).
Features include adjustable polyphonic portamento and a hold function for infinite sustain of notes and arpeggios. A versatile arpeggiator can be synchronized with external equipment by using the proprietary Roland DCB interface, clock input via CV jacks on the rear panel. An assignable bender can be used to control pitch or filter frequency.
The Jupiter-8 includes balanced stereo XLR outputs as well as unbalanced 1/4" outputs. In addition to monophonic and polyphonic modes, the Jupiter-8 includes a unique polyphonic unison mode, in which all 16 oscillators can be stacked onto one note, but divide down if more keys are pressed. No other polyphonic synthesizer at the time had this feature.
A Zilog Z80 CPU was used for managing storage of patches, scanning the keyboard and front-panel controls for changes, displaying the current patch number and other information on the display and taking care of the auto-tune function, among other operations. The VCF was based on the custom Roland IR3109 IC (also used in the filter circuits of the Jupiter-6, later Jupiter-4 and Promars units, MKS-80 rev 4, Juno-6/Juno-60/Juno-106, SH-101, MC-202, JX-3P and packaged in the 80017a chip used in the Juno-106 and MKS-30, among others). The VCA was the BA662, used also in Juno-6/60/106, JX-3P and TB-303. The envelopes were generated in hardware by the Roland IR3R01 chip (also in the Juno 6/60), and are much faster (1ms attack) than the software-generated envelopes used in the later Jupiter-6, Juno-106 and MKS-80 "Super Jupiter".
Reliability
There are claims that early models had unstable tuning, mainly due to DAC board resolution. Beginning with serial number 171700, the 12-bit DAC was upgraded to a 14-bit DAC. This increased the resolution of the CV voltages that control the analog circuitry. The soldered-in battery typically lasts ten years or more, ranking these boards among the lowest-maintenance of their generation.
In the present day
The wide range of sounds that the Jupiter-8 can produce, the efficient front panel layout (each synthesizer sound parameter adjustment had its own dedicated controller), and its sturdy construction, make the Jupiter-8 a venerable and desirable instrument even 35 years after it was first produced. Units in good condition still fetch significantly more at auction than most new synthesizers, suggesting that the Jupiter-8 will continue to be heard for years to come. While the characteristic sound of the Jupiter-8 can be heard on many songs from the early 1980s onward, it is still being recorded to this day. For example, Alicia Keys can be seen playing one in the video for her number one hit "No One" from September 2007.
Jupiter changes and successors
Throughout the production of the JP-8 there were several changes. Starting at serial #171700 the D/A converter on the Interface board was changed from 12-bit to 14-bit. This change was made mainly to improve tuning stability. The problem with the 12-bit digital-to-analog converter on the original JP-8 is that it could cause the autotune to be inaccurate in some instances. Some say to avoid these early JP-8's while others say they haven't experienced tuning problems. Starting at serial #242750 the LEDs of the display were changed to brighter ones. Starting at serial #282880 the JP-8 came standard with a DCB port. These newer JP-8's may be referred to as JP-8A's. DCB, or Digital Control Bus, was Roland's pre-MIDI interface that allowed the JP-8 to talk to other DCB enabled hardware, such as the Roland MC-4 and MC-8 microcomposers. Previous JP-8's had the option of having the OC-8 retrofit installed to give it DCB capability.
The Jupiter-6 was released 2 years after the JP-8 and was an attempt at more affordable version of Roland's flagship. It features a similar voice architecture and appearance. It stored fewer patches, and had six voices. In order to make it cheaper to manufacture, a move towards integrated circuits (Curtis) was made, to replace discrete circuits used in JP-8's oscillators and amplifiers. The JP-6 is built using CEM3340 chip for its oscillators, and CEM3360 for its voltage controlled amplifiers. These changes imparted a change in sonic character, meaning that the JP-6 is not simply a less-expensive version of the JP-8, but an instrument with its own distinct sound. Additionally, the Jupiter-6 features a true multimode resonant filter, built-in MIDI, unison detune function and the ability to activate multiple waveforms on a single oscillator.
The Roland MKS-80 "Super Jupiter" is a MIDI-controlled, rack-mountable sound module with a similar voice architecture to the Jupiter-8. However, its first released incarnation in 1984 (revision 3 and 4) used hardware identical to its predecessor, the Jupiter-6 (which had a combination of Curtis VCO and VCA chips combined with Roland's own proprietary filters). In 1985, Roland released another revision of the MKS-80, known as "Rev 5," which used different VCO, VCA, and filter circuits. As a result, the MKS-80 Rev 5 can sound quite different from its predecessors. The Rev 5 filter was also used in the JX-8P, JX-10 and MKS-70 synthesizers.
At the 2007 NAMM show, French music software manufacturer Arturia announced, and subsequently released a software Jupiter-8 called Jupiter-8V. A 2007 review in Sound on Sound stated, "8V sounds much like Jupiter 8, but does a zillion things that the original could not." The Jupiter-8V is available in VST, AU, RTAS and AAX plugin formats.
The Roland VariOS provides a mildly successful digital approximation of the Jupiter-8 using its "Varios-8" software.
In 2011, Roland released the JUPITER-80 and JUPITER-50, which inherit much of the visual style of the Jupiter-8 and include Roland's SuperNATURAL, an extensive synthesis engine that includes virtual analog synthesis akin to a digital recreation of earlier Roland analog synths, as well as PCM-based recreations of purely digital synths by the company and acoustic modelling of real instruments. Emulations of the original Jupiter-8 sounds were later released as a software instrument for both keyboards on Roland Axial as part of the Synth Legends series.
On October 1, 2015, Roland released the Boutique line of compact synthesizers, which includes the JP-08 unit which has the same parameters and sound design as the Roland Jupiter-8. It uses Roland's ACB technology (Analog Circuit Behavior), which emulates the behavior of each single component of the original Jupiter-8 circuit. However, the JP-08 has only half the polyphony of the Jupiter-8, with 4 voices. An evolution of the JP-08, closer to the original Jupiter-8 with 8 voices, was released in 2017 as plug-out synthesizer bundled as standard with the SYSTEM-8.
In 2021, Black Corporation announced their ISE-NIN synthesizer, which is based on and inspired by the Jupiter-8.
Notable users
Notable users of the Roland Jupiter-8.
In alphabetical order (by given name or group name):
ABBA
Damon Albarn
BT
Jonathan Cain of Journey, most notably on the song "Separate Ways"
Vince Clarke
Duran Duran - "Hungry Like the Wolf", "Save A Prayer"
"Rio" is also said to feature the Jupiter-8, but it was actually the Roland Jupiter-4 with its arpeggiator in random mode.
Marvin Gaye - the Jupiter 8 and the TR-808 were the primary tools on his 1982 masterwork, Midnight Love.
Michael Jackson - Thriller
Nero
Howard Jones
Giorgio Moroder
Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD) - Junk Culture
Queen - albums Hot Space, The Works and A Kind Of Magic
Charanjit Singh - Synthesizing: Ten Ragas to a Disco Beat
Sparks
Tangerine Dream - Poland
Tears for Fears
Ultravox
Notes
References
Further reading
External links
Roland JP-08 / Jupiter 8 Facebook User Group
Owner's manual
Vintage Synth entry
Synth Museum entry
Arturia Jupiter V8 software plug-in clone
MP3 demo of the JP-8 and its arpeggiator, by Tomislav Babic
Jupiter-8 Test Report - GreatSynthesizers
Jupiter-8
Analog synthesizers
Polyphonic synthesizers
Japanese inventions
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2626998
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer%20Weekly
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Computer Weekly
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Computer Weekly is a digital magazine and website for IT professionals in the United Kingdom. It was formerly published as a weekly print magazine by Reed Business Information for over 45 years. Topics covered within the magazine include outsourcing, security, data centres, information management, cloud computing, and mobile computing to computer hacking and strategy for IT management.
History
The magazine was available free to IT professionals who met the circulation requirements. A small minority of issues were sold in retail outlets, with the bulk of revenue received from display and recruitment advertising. The magazine is still available for free as a PDF digital edition. Computer Weekly was available in print and digital format and the readership was audited by BPA Worldwide, which verified its circulation twice yearly. The circulation figure was 135,035 according to the publisher's statement in August 2007.
Bryan Glick is the editor-in-chief of Computer Weekly, having joined in November 2009.
Computer Weekly won the UK Periodical Publishers Association (PPA) "Campaign of the Year" Award five times in seven years as it was involved in IT-related campaigns such as the costs of the NHS computer system, websites for disabled people and the Chinook crash on Mull of Kintyre.
The magazine was transferred to a digital edition in May 2011 after TechTarget bought the Computer Weekly website and events. On September 22, 2016, the magazine celebrated its 50th anniversary. At the time, its circulation figures was 200,000 magazines per week, and 400,000 magazines once monthly and quarterly regional editions were counted.
On 28th July 2021, Computer Weekly launched the voting for its Most Influential Woman in UK Technology awards.
Website
The website, ComputerWeekly.com, provides users with IT news and analysis, white papers, and case studies. ComputerWeekly.com also provides information via webinars, podcasts, blogs, desktop alerts, and RSS feeds.
The site also features the "Downtime" is a section of the magazine that included a daily 2 column Dilbert comic strip.
Webinars
Webinars are presented on the site, lasting 45 minutes, beginning with a 5-minute introduction from the chair followed by presentations from an analyst and a specific case study. Viewers can email the panel with their questions throughout the webinar.
Users are required to register for each webinar and this is then viewed using an interface that allows users to watch the video of the webinar alongside supporting PowerPoint presentation slides.
The interface allows the user to enlarge and download slides, view speaker information, and supporting case studies. When viewed on-demand, the user can also pause, skip and select specific sections from the webinar to view.
Podcasts
Podcasts are audio downloads provided in an MP3 format which are available on-demand. They are generated by the ComputerWeekly.com editorial team.
Blogs
The blogs cover key issues facing IT decision-makers and bloggers include David Lacey, Cliff Saran, Karl Flinders, Matt Scott, Adrian Bridgwater, and Caroline Baldwin.
Computer Weekly CW500 club
The Computer Weekly CW500 Club is a forum for senior IT directors in UK organizations. The club was launched in 1993 and was set up to provide business inspiration and networking opportunities for heads of IT. Membership is by invitation only, and members meet once a month in London to hear their peers talk on topical IT management issues.
UKtech50
In 2010, Computer Weekly launched the UKtech50 – a list of the 50 most influential people in the UK IT. The list is composed annually and announced at an event, typically in late November or early December. Past winners of UKtech50 are Philip Clarke, then the CIO of Tesco and now its CEO; Mike Lynch, founder and then-CEO of Autonomy; and Warren East, CEO of ARM.
References
External links
1966 establishments in the United Kingdom
2011 disestablishments in the United Kingdom
Defunct computer magazines published in the United Kingdom
Internet properties established in 2011
Magazines established in 1966
Magazines disestablished in 2011
Online magazines published in the United Kingdom
Online magazines with defunct print editions
Weekly magazines published in the United Kingdom
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19641510
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1974%20Rose%20Bowl
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1974 Rose Bowl
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The 1974 Rose Bowl was the 60th edition of the college football bowl game, played at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California, on Tuesday, January 1. The Ohio State Buckeyes of the Big Ten Conference defeated the USC Trojans of the Pacific-8 Conference, Sophomore quarterback Cornelius Greene of Ohio State was named Player of the Game. This was the sole win for the Big Ten in the Rose Bowl in the 1970s.
Teams
Ohio State
The Ohio State Buckeyes began the 1973 season ranked third and went undefeated, with a tie. They were led by tailback Archie Griffin on offense and a defense that held its opponents to less than 100 yards per game of total offense. Going into the showdown at #4 Michigan, they had risen to #1 by outscoring their first nine opponents 361–33, including three straight shutouts of Northwestern, Illinois, and Michigan State.
The Buckeyes and Wolverines then battled to a 10–10 tie, making it uncertain who would win the vote among Big Ten athletic directors to determine the league's Rose Bowl representative. Although the Big Ten had done away with its "no repeat" rule a year earlier, many projected that Michigan would win the vote since Ohio State had gone to Pasadena the prior year. But Michigan starting quarterback Dennis Franklin had broken his collarbone late in the Ohio State game; perhaps influenced by the injury, the athletic directors voted to send Ohio State to the Rose Bowl. Michigan head coach Bo Schembechler called it a gross injustice.
USC
USC was the defending national champion and began the season ranked first. But a 7–7 tie vs. Oklahoma and a 23–14 loss to Notre Dame dropped the Trojans to #9. They then needed a miracle comeback to beat Stanford getting a touchdown and field goal sandwiched around an onside kick in the last minute of the game. They went into the Rose Bowl decider as a slight underdog against #8 UCLA, but forced six turnovers and knocked off the
Scoring summary
First quarter
USC – Chris Limahelu, 47-yard field goal
OSU - Pete Johnson, 1-yard run (Blair Conway kick)
Second quarter
USC - Limahelu, 42-yard field goal
USC - J.K. McKay, 10-yard pass from Anthony Davis (Pat Haden pass to McKay 2-point conversion)
OSU – Johnson, 1-yard run (Conway kick)
Third quarter
USC - Davis, 1-yard run (Limahelu kick)
OSU - Johnson 4-yard run (kick blocked)
OSU - Cornelius Greene, 1-yard run (Conway kick)
Fourth quarter
OSU - Bruce Elia, 2-yard run, (Greene run 2-point conversion)
OSU - Archie Griffin, 47-yard run (Conway kick)
Game notes
Similar to the previous year, the game was tied at halftime, then dominated by the victor in the second half. USC regained the lead briefly at 21–14 early in the third quarter, then Ohio State scored four unanswered touchdowns to
Kicker Chris Limahelu's 47-yard field goal was the longest ever by a Trojan, breaking a 64-year-old record (Limahelu died of prostate cancer in 2010 at age 59). This was the last time Ohio State defeated USC until 2017 in the Cotton Bowl. The Trojans won the next seven meetings from 1974 to 2009, including three Rose Bowls (January 1975, 1980, 1985).
This was the second of three consecutive Rose Bowls involving these two teams, and USC won the other two. Ohio State stopped a four-game winning streak by the Pac-8 (now Pac-12), but the next Big Ten victories were seven and fourteen years away. The Buckeyes' next Rose Bowl win came in January 1997, stopping previously undefeated Arizona State.
References
External links
Rose Bowl
Rose Bowl Game
Ohio State Buckeyes football bowl games
USC Trojans football bowl games
Rose Bowl
January 1974 sports events in the United States
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940594
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill%20%28command%29
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Kill (command)
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In computing, kill is a command that is used in several popular operating systems to send signals to running processes.
Implementations
Unix and Unix-like
In Unix and Unix-like operating systems, kill is a command used to send a signal to a process. By default, the message sent is the termination signal, which requests that the process exit. But kill is something of a misnomer; the signal sent may have nothing to do with process killing. The kill command is a wrapper around the kill() system call, which sends signals to processes or process groups on the system, referenced by their numeric process IDs (PIDs) or process group IDs (PGIDs). kill is always provided as a standalone utility as defined by the POSIX standard. However, most shells have built-in kill commands that may slightly differ from it.
There are many different signals that can be sent (see signal for a full list), although the signals in which users are generally most interested are SIGTERM ("terminate") and SIGKILL ("kill"). The default signal sent is SIGTERM. Programs that handle this signal can do useful cleanup operations (such as saving configuration information to a file) before quitting. However, many programs do not implement a special handler for this signal, and so a default signal handler is called instead. Other times, even a process that has a special handler has gone awry in a way that prevents it from properly handling the signal.
All signals except for SIGKILL and SIGSTOP ("stop") can be "intercepted" by the process, meaning that a special function can be called when the program receives those signals. The two exceptions SIGKILL and SIGSTOP are only seen by the host system's kernel, providing reliable ways of controlling the execution of processes. SIGKILL kills the process, and SIGSTOP pauses it until a SIGCONT ("continue") is received.
Unix provides security mechanisms to prevent unauthorized users from killing other processes. Essentially, for a process to send a signal to another, the owner of the signaling process must be the same as the owner of the receiving process or be the superuser.
The available signals all have different names, and are mapped to certain numbers. It is important to note that the specific mapping between numbers and signals can vary between Unix implementations. SIGTERM is often numbered 15 while SIGKILL is often numbered 9.
Examples
A process can be sent a SIGTERM signal in four ways (the process ID is '1234' in this case):
kill 1234
kill -s TERM 1234
kill -TERM 1234
kill -15 1234
The process can be sent a SIGKILL signal in three ways:
kill -s KILL 1234
kill -KILL 1234
kill -9 1234
Other useful signals include HUP, TRAP, INT, SEGV and ALRM. HUP sends the SIGHUP signal. Some daemons, including Apache and Sendmail, re-read configuration files upon receiving SIGHUP, so the kill command may be used for this too. A SIGINT signal can be generated very simply by pressing in most Unix shells. It is also common for to be mapped to SIGTSTP ("terminal stop"), and for (backslash) to be mapped to SIGQUIT, which can force a program to do a core dump.
Related programs
killall - on some variations of Unix, such as Solaris, this utility is automatically invoked when the system is going through a shutdown. It behaves much like the kill command above, but instead of sending a signal to an individual process, the signal is sent to all processes on the system. However, on others such as IRIX, Linux, and FreeBSD, an argument is supplied specifying the name of the process (or processes) to kill. For instance, to kill a process such as an instance of the XMMS music player invoked by xmms, the user would run the command killall xmms. This would kill all processes named xmms, and is equivalent to kill `pidof xmms` on systems like Solaris.
pkill - signals processes based on name and other attributes. It was introduced in Solaris 7 and has since been reimplemented for Linux, NetBSD and OpenBSD. pkill makes killing processes based on their name much more convenient: e.g. to kill a process named firefox without pkill (and without pgrep), one would have to type kill `ps --no-headers -C firefox -o pid` whereas with pkill, one can simply type pkill firefox.
xkill - if called without any parameters, the mouse cursor changes from an arrow to an "x" icon, and the user can click on a window to force the X server to close the connection with the client owning the window. This often causes the process to terminate when it detects that its connection to the X server has been closed.
Microware OS-9
The kill command is also available as a shell builtin in the OS-9 shell. It is used to kill another process by process ID.
Example
Stop the process with the process ID "7":
$ kill 7
Microsoft Windows and ReactOS
In Microsoft's command-line interpreter Windows PowerShell, kill is a predefined command alias for the Stop-Process cmdlet.
Microsoft Windows XP, Vista and 7 include the command taskkill to terminate processes. The usual syntax for this command is taskkill /im "IMAGENAME". An "unsupported" version of kill was included in several releases of the Microsoft Windows Resource Kits available for Windows 98.
GNU versions of kill have been ported via Cygwin and run inside of the Unix environment subsystem that Microsoft Windows Services for UNIX provides (Microsoft acquired Windows Services for Unix wholesale via their purchase of Softway Systems and their Interix product on September 17, 1999).
The ReactOS implementation is based on the Windows variant. It was developed by Andrew Riedi, Andrew Nguyen, and He Yang. It is licensed under the GPLv2.1 or later.
Examples
Find all processes beginning with the letter "p" that were developed by Microsoft and use more than 10 MB of memory and kill them:
PS C:\> ps p* | where { $_.Company -like "Microsoft*" -and $_.WorkingSet -gt 10MB } | kill -confirm
Confirm
Are you sure you want to perform this action?
Performing operation "Stop-Process" on Target "powershell (6832)".
[Y] Yes [A] Yes to All [N] No [L] No to All [S] Suspend [?] Help (default is "Y"): A
PS C:\>
Here is a simpler example, which asks the process Explorer.exe to terminate:
PS C:\> taskkill /im explorer.exe
This example forces the process to terminate:
PS C:\> taskkill /f /im explorer.exe
Processes can also be killed by their PID number:
PS C:\> taskkill /pid 3476
Microsoft Singularity
Singularity shell, the standard shell for Microsoft Research's microkernel operating system Singularity includes a kill command to terminate background processes.
Examples
Stop the process with the name "SampleProcess":
Singularity>kill SampleProcess
Stop the process with the process identifier "42":
Singularity>kill 42
Plan 9 from Bell Labs
Under Plan 9 from Bell Labs, the kill program does not actually perform this termination, nor does it take process IDs. Rather, it takes the actual names of processes and outputs the commands for rc, the shell used by Plan 9, to kill the process.
A similar command provided is called slay, which does the same but for processes that refuse to be killed this way.
Examples
For example, to kill all instances of troff, one types:
kill troff | rc
Others
The command has also been ported to the IBM i operating system.
See also
Signal
xkill
killall
pkill
signal.h
References
Further reading
External links
Command:
System call:
Unix SUS2008 utilities
Unix process- and task-management-related software
Plan 9 commands
Inferno (operating system) commands
Process (computing)
Windows administration
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59204320
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaspersky%20bans%20and%20allegations%20of%20Russian%20government%20ties
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Kaspersky bans and allegations of Russian government ties
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The company Kaspersky Lab has faced controversy over allegations that it has engaged with the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB)—ties which the company has actively denied. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security banned Kaspersky products from all government departments on 13 September 2017, alleging that Kaspersky Lab had worked on secret projects with Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB). In October 2017, subsequent reports alleged that hackers working for the Russian government stole confidential data from the home computer of a National Security Agency contractor in 2015 via Kaspersky antivirus software. Kaspersky denied the allegations, stating that the software had detected Equation Group malware samples which it uploaded to its servers for analysis in its normal course of operation. The company has since announced commitments to increased accountability, such as soliciting independent reviews and verification of its software's source code, and announcing that it would migrate some of its core infrastructure for foreign customers from Russia to Switzerland.
Alleged Russian intelligence collaboration
According to the International New York Times, Kaspersky has "become one of Russia's most recognized high-tech exports, but its market-share in the United States has been hampered by its origins". According to Gartner, "There's no evidence that they have any back-doors in their software or any ties to the Russian mafia or state... but there is still a concern that you can’t operate in Russia without being controlled by the ruling party". CEO Eugene Kaspersky's prior work for the Russian military and his education at a KGB-sponsored technical college has led to allegations of being employed by Russia to expose US cyberweapons, though he denies this. Analysts such as Gartner's Peter Firstbrook say suspicions about the firm’s Russian roots have hindered its expansion in the US. The company has denied that it has direct ties with or has engaged with the Russian government.
In August 2015, Bloomberg News reported that Kaspersky Lab changed course in 2012, as "high-level managers have left or been fired, their jobs often filled by people with closer ties to Russia's military or intelligence services. Some of these people actively aid criminal investigations by the FSB, the KGB’s successor, using data from some of the 400 million customers". Kaspersky criticized Bloomberg's coverage on his blog, calling the coverage sensationalist and guilty of exploiting paranoia to increase readership.
From July 2017 to December 2017, U.S. government agencies phased out their use of Kaspersky software. In July 2017, the United States' General Services Administration (GSA) removed Kaspersky Lab from its list of vendors authorized to do business with the U.S. government amid further reports by Bloomberg and McClatchy DC alleging that Kaspersky Lab had worked on secret projects with Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB). Anti-Russian sentiment had also grown in the country in the wake of an investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Kaspersky denied these reports, stating that it did not have "inappropriate ties" with any government, and "never received a request from the Russian government or any affiliated organization to create or participate in any secret projects, including one for anti-DDoS protection".
On 8 September 2017, U.S. electronics store chain Best Buy pulled Kaspersky products amid concerns over these ties. On 13 September 2017, the Department of Homeland Security issued an order stating that in 90 days Kaspersky products will be banned from use within the U.S. civilian federal government, citing "[concerns] about the ties between certain Kaspersky officials and Russian intelligence and other government agencies, and requirements under Russian law that allow Russian intelligence agencies to request or compel assistance from Kaspersky and to intercept communications transiting Russian networks."
NSA theft controversy
On 6 October 2017, The Wall Street Journal - citing "multiple people with knowledge of the matter" - alleged that in 2015, hackers working for the Russian government used Kaspersky antivirus software to steal classified material from a home computer belonging to a National Security Agency (NSA) contractor. According to the report, the incident occurred in 2015 and remained undiscovered until early 2016. The stolen material reportedly included "details about how the NSA penetrates foreign computer networks, the computer code it uses for such spying and how it defends networks inside the U.S." The New York Times reported that the hacks had been discovered by Israeli intelligence agents who had themselves hacked into Kaspersky's network. On 11 October 2017, The Wall Street Journal additionally alleged that Russian intelligence uses Kaspersky software to scan computers worldwide for material of interest. The company once again denied the reports, arguing that they were "baseless paranoia" and a "witch hunt", and considered it suspicious that major U.S. media outlets simultaneously "went for us almost in full force and they fantasized simultaneously, as if receiving an order, but they've got confused in details."
On 23 October 2017, Kaspersky announced a "Global Transparency Initiative", under which it would be more accountable for security issues surrounding its products, and would allow third-party analysts to validate its products and other business practices in order to validate their integrity. The company stated that trust "must be repeatedly earned through an ongoing commitment to transparency and accountability", and that this program was a "reaffirmation of the company's commitment to earning and maintaining the trust of their customers and partners every day."
On 25 October 2017, Kaspersky confirmed that the incident described by The Wall Street Journal had occurred in 2014, and was the result of the software having detected a ZIP file containing samples and source code from the Equation Group. The user had enabled the Kaspersky Security Network (KSN) features of the software, so the files were automatically uploaded to Kaspersky as a malware sample to KSN for analysis, under the assumption that it was a new malware variant. Eugene Kaspersky stated that he ordered that the sample be destroyed. Kaspersky claimed that the antivirus software had been temporarily disabled by the PC's user in order to install a pirated copy of Microsoft Office. When the software was re-enabled, it detected both the Equation Group code, as well as unrelated backdoor infections created by a keygen program for Office, which may have facilitated third-party access to the computer.
On 13 November 2017, the British intelligence agency MI6 raised suspicions over Kaspersky Lab software after it was distributed free to more than 2 million UK Barclays customers. On 2 December 2017, Barclay's announced that they would no longer provide their new customers with the company's software. Also around 2 December 2017, Britain's National Cyber Security Center advised, as a national security precaution, that UK government departments avoid Russia-based anti-virus software such as Kaspersky, but stated there was "no compelling case at present to extend that advice" to the wider public. On 9 December 2017, the U.S. government banned Kaspersky from federal civilian and military computers as part of a broader defense bill.
Twitter advertising ban
In January 2018, Twitter banned Kaspersky from advertising on Twitter, stating that "Kaspersky Lab operates using a business model that inherently conflicts with acceptable Twitter Ads business practices", and citing the Department of Homeland Security's warning about Kaspersky.
Data-centers-move
On 15 May 2018, Kaspersky Lab announced that it would be migrating some "core infrastructure" from Russia to new data centers in Switzerland. Kaspersky software and antivirus definitions for foreign markets will be compiled and digitally signed in Switzerland by the end of 2018 (products targeting Russia will still be compiled on existing domestic infrastructure), and user data for most foreign markets will be stored and processed on Swiss servers by the end of 2019. The Swiss operations will be overseen by a third-party organization holding "all access necessary to verify the trustworthiness of our products and business processes", and will be accompanied by one of the three planned "Transparency Center" facilities, at which "responsible stakeholders" will be allowed to inspect Kaspersky's source code and business practices to verify their integrity. Kaspersky stated that this move was "first and foremost in response to the evolving, ultra-connected global landscape and the challenges the cyber-world is currently facing", and was a further step in its goal to be more accountable and trustworthy in its business practices.
Lawsuits against US federal government
In December 2017 and February 2018 the company sued the Trump administration, arguing the ban to be a bill of attainder and a violation of due process, and arguing that the government unfairly tarnished Kaspersky's reputation. Both cases were dismissed on May 30, 2018 by Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, a former presiding judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, declaring both as unsubstantial.
See also
Duqu 2.0
==References==
Antivirus software
Espionage
Hacking (computer security)
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18891293
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CADO%20Systems
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CADO Systems
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CADO Systems was a minicomputer and software manufacturer in 1976. In 1983 was acquired by Contel Business Systems. In 1989 Contel Business Systems merged with NDS and became VERSYSS. CADO was formed by former staff of McDonnell-Douglas Information Systems. CADO was based in Torrance Ca. and had a manufacturing plant and systems software engineering team in Cork, Ireland.
Business model
Contel and CADO focused their marketing on vertical markets. The computers and operating systems were tailored to rapid development and deployment of market-specific applications for small businesses, including:
Finance (General Ledger, Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable)
Wholesale distribution (Inventory, Point of Sales, Sales Analysis)
Travel (Ticketing, Passenger Management)
Medical (Billing, Patient Records)
CADO Systems was one of the first manufacturer of (Intel) microcomputer-based business system with disk drives, application software, a compiler for the proprietary (BASIC-like) interpreted language "CADOL". The first prototype used an 8008 and sprang to life in 1973. By 1975, CADO was selling computers.
The first systems built were the 8080 "/1" systems with 3 KB of main memory and an 8-inch floppy drive. They could handle one serial port connected to one CRT-based terminal with keyboard - one user.
By the late seventies, these had grown into the /4 systems with 16, 32 and later 48 KB of memory. These multitasked by using a hardware tick to XOR the base address of where the native ("CADOL" a basic like-) interpreter took instructions from. These also used 8085 processors. The memory switching trick was done with proprietary hardware. The "/4" system had four serial ports, therefore four terminals, therefore four users. They could also be connected to modems instead and spoke various protocols such as X.25.
The /8 was two /4s sharing a common (hard) disk drive. It was effectively an eight-user system built out of two 8085s.
Around the time of the /8, development the CADO CAT computer came into being. It looked like a fruit-coloured iMac, but it was 20 years earlier. It had an integrated CRT and disk drives, which by that time (1981) had been shrunk to 5 inches wide and could fit inside the CRT enclosure. Earlier CADO computers used external hard drives, all of which were quite large.
The CAT product line consisted of:
CAT I
CAT II
CAT III
The CAT III was a three-user system. The primary user sat at the CAT III system console, which contained the CPU, floppy drive, and hard disk. Other users connected to the system by way of serial terminals. By the end of the CAT series, over 25,000 systems and 200,000 terminals were manufactured. If the CAT had had a bit-mapped display, it would have seemed like the first Apple Macintosh without the Xerox GUI.
The terminals were proprietary also: they were similar to standard VT terminals, but with custom firmware programming to support input commands (protected fields).
All CADO systems up to that point had the system and CADOL interpreter reside in EPROM, so as soon as power was applied it read track 0 sector 0 of the diskette and began executing CADOL code. The IL codes for the interpreter written by Jim Ferguson looked similar to Tannenbaum's optimized IL codes from his empirical study. The language was extended by Richard Sexton, who added Pascal/C like syntax and 65 KB instead of 256 byte program overlay sizes. Previous to that, CADOL worked in programs no longer than 256 bytes of IL code long and when the programmers had code that hit about the 200-byte mark they would have to issue a LOAD statement to load the next 256 bytes of CADOL IL codes. At some point when a fair number of applications had been written, the loading of overlays was made transparent by Sexton's modifications to the interpreter up to an apparent program of 65 KB. Dan Lanham rewrote the compiler. This was all done in Intel 8085 assembly.
After the /8, the technical staff wanted to gang more of these machines together, but the marketing department demanded 16-bit systems. The Motorola 68000 was the preferred choice of software people, but Bob Thorne, VP of hardware, delivered the bad news: Motorola only had a great CPU while Intel had a CPU and chipset family of CTCs, interrupt controllers, serial ports, DMA controllers and x86 became the rule much to the shock and horror of the software staff, who thought Thorne should just build all those bits he didn't have. But Bob was instead working on two disk controllers as these were not off the shelf chips quite yet. One design, not used was based on 8x300 bipolar parts but it never saw the light of day.
The 16-bit 8086 tiger systems began development in Intel development systems as there were no working commercial 8086-based computers at the time.
The Tiger was radically different. All previous CADO computers had been single-board systems that would probably be familiar to anybody who has ever seen a modern motherboard; the parts were just bigger, and there were fewer of them.
But the Tiger looked more like a DEC computer - it had a (Multibus) backplane
that would hold up to 10 plug-in cards into this mainframe, and was one of if not the first multi-microprocessor based mainframe systems.
There were three plug-in cards: the "terminal" card had an 8086 chip and 16 serial ports, the "cpu" card had the (8086) cpu that ran CADOL III and an optional disk processor used an 8089. One had to have one cpu card, one terminal card although you could have many of these in increments of 16 serial ports, later also in increments of 8 ports.
With the 8086 came the net and around 1984 or 1986 CADO connected to the UUCP-based Usenet news and mail networks and finally had a UNIX system, requisitioned to run mail and news which engineering considered vital while the rest of the company had no idea what it was.
Before the first Tiger was sold though, George Ryan, the founder of the company, left and the IBM PC came out. And this was in many ways the end of CADO. At one time one of the fastest-growing companies in California, CADO was then sold to/merged with Contel.
In 1983, Contel introduced the Tiger ATS line of computers. These consisted of:
Tiger 8
Tiger 16
Tiger 32
Tiger 64
The numbers designated how many users could connect to the machine at once. The chassis size ranged from a little larger than a breadbox (Tiger 8) to the size of a small household refrigerator (Tiger 64). The Tiger 32 and Tiger 64 models used multiple 8086 and 8089 processors to manage user requests.
In 1989, VERSYSS introduced the VERSYSS/Solution 1 line of computers. These differed dramatically from earlier systems. Instead of a completely proprietary hardware solution and operating systems, these were based on commodity components. The operating system was a variant of AT&T's SYSVR3. To provide backward-compatibility with older applications, the older MMOS was run on proprietary boards connected to the system bus. Thus, users were completely unaware that they were using a Unix system.
VS/1 model 150
VS/1 model 250
VS/1 model 500
In 1993, VERSYSS partnered with IBM to port their MMOS to the RS/6000 line of systems. At that point, almost all proprietary hardware requirements were dropped except the terminal firmware.
Other Products
In 1985 Contel produced the CADOS emulator to run CADO software on standard IBM PC hardware.
References
Kent, Allen. Encyclopedia of Microcomputers, CRC Press, .
Oral history interview with George M. Ryan, Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota. Ryan, former chairman and CEO of CADO Systems Corporation, discusses his work in the development and distribution of data processing equipment from the early 1950s through the early 1990s.
American companies established in 1976
American companies disestablished in 1983
Computer companies established in 1976
Computer companies disestablished in 1983
Defunct computer companies of the United States
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4922604
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John%20Guttag
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John Guttag
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John Vogel Guttag (born March 6, 1949) is an American computer scientist, professor, and former head of the department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT.
Education and career
John Guttag was raised in Larchmont, New York, the son of Irwin Guttag (1916–2005) and Marjorie Vogel Guttag.
John Vogel Guttag received a bachelor's degree in English from Brown University in 1971, and a master's degree in Applied Mathematics from Brown in 1972. In 1975, he received a doctorate in Computer Science from the University of Toronto. He was a member of the faculty at the University of Southern California from 1975 to 1978, and joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty in 1979.
From 1993 to 1998, he served as associate department head for computer science of MIT's Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department. From January 1999 through August 2004, he served as head of that department. EECS, with approximately 2000 students and 125 faculty members, is the largest department at MIT.
He helped student Vanu Bose start a company with software-defined radio technology developed at MIT.
Guttag also co-heads the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory's Networks and Mobile Systems Group. This group studies issues related to computer networks, applications of networked and mobile systems, and advanced software-based medical instrumentation and decision systems. He has also done research, published, and lectured in the areas of software engineering, mechanical theorem proving, hardware verification, compilation, software radios, and medical computing.
Guttag serves on the board of directors of Empirix and Avid Technology, and on the board of trustees of the Massachusetts General Hospital Institute of Health Professions. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2006 he was inducted as a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery.
He is one of the founders of Health[at]Scale Technologies, a machine learning and artificial intelligence company.
Selected publications
References
External links
MIT Bio
CSAIL Bio
Health at Scale Technologies
Living people
American computer scientists
Formal methods people
Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery
Brown University alumni
University of Toronto alumni
University of Southern California faculty
MIT School of Engineering faculty
Massachusetts General Hospital people
1949 births
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55986221
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onyeka%20Okongwu
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Onyeka Okongwu
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Onyeka Okongwu (born December 11, 2000) is an American professional basketball player for the Atlanta Hawks of the National Basketball Association (NBA). He played college basketball for the USC Trojans.
Okongwu was a four-year starter at Chino Hills High School in California, playing alongside Lonzo and LaMelo Ball. As a freshman, he helped his team win the state championship and achieve national success, while being named MaxPreps co-National Freshman of the Year. In his junior and senior seasons, Okongwu led Chino Hills to two more state titles, earning back-to-back California Mr. Basketball honors. He was considered a five-star recruit by ESPN and Rivals. In his only college season, Okongwu played for USC and was named to the first team All-Pac-12.
High school career
Okongwu attended Chino Hills High School in Chino Hills, California and started on the varsity basketball team since his freshman season. In his first year, he was teammates with brothers Lonzo, LiAngelo, and LaMelo Ball, who helped elevate the team into the national spotlight. His team ranked number one in the country with a 35–0 record and captured the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) Open Division state title. Okongwu shared MaxPreps National Freshman of the Year honors with his teammate, LaMelo Ball, after averaging 7.9 points, 7.2 rebounds, and 3.1 blocks per game.
As a sophomore, Okongwu helped Chino Hills reach the CIF Southern Section Open Division semifinals and the CIF State Southern Regional semifinals. In his junior season, he led his team to CIF Southern Section Division I and CIF Division I championships. He averaged 28 points, 14 rebounds, and four blocks per game, earning California Mr. Basketball and USA Today All-USA California first team honors. As a senior, Okongwu led Chino Hills to a runner-up finish at the CIF Southern Section Division I tournament and its second consecutive CIF Division I state title. After averaging 27 points, 11 rebounds, 4.3 blocks, and four assists per game, he repeated as California Mr. Basketball, becoming the fifth player to ever do so, and received USA Today All-USA California first team distinction.
Recruiting
Okongwu finished his freshman season with offers to play college basketball for UCLA and USC. On May 14, 2018, he committed to USC over UCLA and Arizona State. He was drawn to the program because of its proximity and coaching staff. Okongwu left high school as a five-star recruit on ESPN and Rivals and as a four-star recruit on 247Sports.
College career
Okongwu immediately established himself as USC's best player. In his collegiate debut on November 5, 2019, he recorded 20 points, 13 rebounds and a school-record eight blocks to lead the Trojans to a 77–48 victory over Florida A&M. He became the first USC player to post a double-double in his debut since Taj Gibson in 2006. On November 19, he scored a career-high 33 points, including 17 free throws, in a 91–84 win over Pepperdine. The performance helped him claim Pac-12 Conference player and freshman of the week honors on November 25. On December 1, Okongwu recorded 27 points on 12-of-14 shooting, 14 rebounds and three blocks in a 77–62 victory over Harvard at the Orlando Invitational. He scored 28 points, 24 of which came in the second half, and grabbed 12 rebounds in a December 15 win over Long Beach State. One day later, Okongwu was named Pac-12 freshman of the week for his second time.
Okongwu continued his consistency into the Pac-12 season. On January 2, 2020, he had another strong performance, with 27 points on 12-of-14 shooting and 12 rebounds in a 65–56 win over Washington State. On January 24, he tallied 23 points, 14 rebounds and six blocks in a 79–70 double-overtime loss to Oregon. At the conclusion of the regular season, Okongwu was named to the first team All-Pac-12 and the Pac-12 All-Freshman Team. He led USC with 16.2 points, 8.6 rebounds and 2.7 blocks per game. The Pac-12 Tournament and the NCAA Tournament were canceled due to concerns over the COVID-19 pandemic. On March 25, 2020, Okongwu announced that he would enter the 2020 NBA draft and forgo his final three years of college basketball eligibility. Analysts regarded him as one of the best prospects in the draft.
Professional career
Atlanta Hawks (2020–present)
Okongwu was selected with the sixth overall pick in the 2020 NBA draft by the Atlanta Hawks. On November 24, 2020, the Atlanta Hawks announced that they had signed Okongwu. On July 21, 2021, the Atlanta Hawks announced that Okongwu had undergone surgery to repair a torn labrum in his right shoulder and Okongwu would be expected to be sidelined for about six months.
Career statistics
NBA
Regular season
|-
| style="text-align:left;"| 2020–21
| style="text-align:left;"| Atlanta
| 50 || 4 || 12.0 || .644 || .000 || .632 || 3.3 || .4 || .5 || .7 || 4.6
|- class="sortbottom"
| style="text-align:center;" colspan="2"| Career
| 50 || 4 || 12.0 || .644 || .000 || .632 || 3.3 || .4 || .5 || .7 || 4.6
Playoffs
|-
| style="text-align:left;"| 2021
| style="text-align:left;"| Atlanta
| 18 || 0 || 9.2 || .548 || .000 || .667 || 2.7 || .1 || .3 || .7 || 2.7
|- class="sortbottom"
| style="text-align:center;" colspan="2"| Career
| 18 || 0 || 9.2 || .548 || .000 || .667 || 2.7 || .1 || .3 || .7 || 2.7
College
|-
| style="text-align:left;"| 2019–20
| style="text-align:left;"| USC
| 28 || 28 || 30.6 || .616 || .250 || .720 || 8.6 || 1.1 || 1.2 || 2.7 || 16.2
Personal life
Onyeka Okongwu was born to Nigerian immigrants in Los Angeles. Okongwu's older brother, Nnamdi, had also played basketball for Chino Hills High School. In 2014, Nnamdi suffered a brain injury in a skateboarding accident and died after spending three days on life support. Okongwu had worn the number 21 jersey in honor of his brother, who had worn the same number while playing basketball. Since being drafted to the NBA by the Hawks, he switched to wearing number 17 as his old number is retired for Dominique Wilkins, representing the age of his brother when he passed. He also has a younger brother, Chukwuemeka, and a younger sister, Chinemya.
Okongwu is the son of Nigerian parents, Kate and Mike Okongwu. His mother, who is a registered nurse, moved to the United States from Nigeria in 1999.
Okongwu father passed away in 2021.
References
External links
USC Trojans bio
2000 births
Living people
African-American basketball players
American men's basketball players
American sportspeople of Nigerian descent
Atlanta Hawks draft picks
Atlanta Hawks players
Basketball players from Los Angeles
Centers (basketball)
Chino Hills High School alumni
People from Chino Hills, California
Power forwards (basketball)
Sportspeople from San Bernardino County, California
USC Trojans men's basketball players
21st-century African-American sportspeople
20th-century African-American sportspeople
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1341811
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sympathetic%20magic
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Sympathetic magic
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Sympathetic magic, also known as imitative magic, is a type of magic based on imitation or correspondence.
Similarity and contagion
James George Frazer coined the term "sympathetic magic" in The Golden Bough (1889); Richard Andree, however, anticipated Frazer, writing of sympathy-enchantment () in his 1878 Ethnographische Parallelen und Vergleiche. Frazer subcategorised sympathetic magic into two varieties: that relying on similarity, and that relying on contact or "contagion":
Imitation
Imitation involves using effigies, fetishes or poppets to affect the environment of people, or occasionally people themselves. Voodoo dolls are an example of fetishes used in this way. Such as using a lock of hair on the doll creating a "link" known as a "taglock" between the doll and the person the hair came from so whatever happens to the doll will also happen on the person.
Correspondence
Correspondence is based on the idea that one can influence something based on its relationship or resemblance to another thing. Many popular beliefs regarding properties of plants, fruits and vegetables have evolved in the folk-medicine of different societies owing to sympathetic magic. This include beliefs that certain herbs with yellow sap can cure jaundice, that walnuts could strengthen the brain because of the nuts' resemblance to brain, that red beet-juice is good for the blood, that phallic-shaped roots will cure male impotence, etc; many of these fall under the Doctrine of Signatures.
Many traditional societies believed that an effect on one object can cause an analogous effect on another object, without an apparent causal link between the two objects. For instance, many folktales feature a villain whose "life" exists in another object, and who can only be killed if that other object is destroyed, as in the Russian folktale of Koschei the Deathless. (For literary versions, see horcruxes in the Harry Potter books; the Dungeons & Dragons term lich has become common in recent fantasy literature.) Mircea Eliade wrote that in Uganda, a barren woman is thought to cause a barren garden, and her husband can seek a divorce on purely economic grounds.
Many societies have been documented as believing that, instead of requiring an image of an individual, influence can be exerted using something that they have touched or used. Consequently, the inhabitants of Tanna, Vanuatu in the 1970s were cautious when throwing away food or losing a fingernail, as they believed these small scraps of personal items could be used to cast a spell causing fevers. Similarly, an 18th-century compendium of Russian folk magic describes how someone could be influenced through sprinkling cursed salt on a path frequently used by the victim, while a 15th-century crown princess of Joseon Korea is recorded as having cut her husband's lovers' shoes into pieces and burnt them.
Hypotheses about prehistoric sympathetic magic
Sympathetic magic has been considered in relation to Paleolithic cave paintings such as those in North Africa and at Lascaux in France. The theory, which is partially based on studies of more modern hunter-gatherer societies, is that the paintings were made by magic practitioners who could potentially be described as shamans. The shamans would retreat into the darkness of the caves, enter into a trance state and then paint images of their visions, perhaps with some notion of drawing power out of the cave walls themselves. This goes some way towards explaining the remoteness of some of the paintings (which often occur in deep or small caves) and the variety of subject matter (from prey animals to predators and human hand-prints). In his book Primitive Mythology, Joseph Campbell stated that the paintings "...were associated with the magic of the hunt." For him, this sympathetic magic was akin to a participation mystique, where the paintings, drawn in a sanctuary of "timeless principle", were acted upon by rite.
In 1933, Leo Frobenius, discussing cave paintings in North Africa, pointed out that many of the paintings did not seem to be mere depictions of animals and people. To him, it seemed as if they were acting out a hunt before it began, perhaps as a consecration of the animal to be killed. In this way, the pictures served to secure a successful hunt. While others interpreted the cave images as depictions of hunting accidents or of ceremonies, Frobenius believed it was much more likely that "...what was undertaken [in the paintings] was a consecration of the animal effected not through any real confrontation of man and beast but by a depiction of a concept of the mind."
In 2005, Francis Thackeray published a paper in the journal Antiquity, in which he recognised that there was a strong case for the principle of sympathetic magic in southern Africa in prehistory. For example, a rock engraving from Wonderwerk Cave in South Africa (dated at 4000 years before the present, BP) showed a zebra which had probably been "symbolically wounded", with incisions on the rump being associated with wounds. Ochre on the engraved slab could represent blood. A prehistoric rock painting at Melikane in Lesotho shows what appear to be men (shamans) bending forward like animals, with two sticks to represent the front legs of an antelope. Thackeray suggests that these men, perhaps shamans or "medicine-men" dressed under animal skins, were associated with hunting rituals of the kind recorded by H. Lichtenstein in 1812 in South Africa, in which a hunter simulated an antelope which was symbolically killed by other hunters, in the belief that this was essential for a successful hunt. Such rituals could be represented in prehistoric art such as paintings at Melikane in Lesotho. Thackeray suggests that the Melikane therianthropes are associated with both trance and the principle of sympathetic hunting magic In 2005, in the journal Antiquity, Francis Thackeray suggests that there is even a photograph of such rituals, recorded in 1934 at Logageng in the southern Kalahari, South Africa. Such rituals may have been closely associated with both roan antelope and eland, and other animals.
In the Brandberg in Namibia, in the so-called "White Lady" panel recorded by the Abbe Henri Breuil and Harald Pager, there are "symbolic wounds" on the belly of a gemsbok-like therianthrope (catalogued as T1), which might relate to the principle of sympathetic hunting magic and trance, as suggested by Thackeray in 2013.
At the Apollo 11 cave in Namibia, Erich Wendt discovered mobile art about 30,000 years old, including a stone broken in two pieces, with a gemsbok-like therianthrope that closely resembles the Brandberg therianthrope which Thackeray catalogues as T1. Both examples of art may be related to sympathetic hunting magic and shamanism.
In 2013, Thackeray emphasised that in southern Africa, the principle of sympathetic hunting magic and shamanism (trance) were not mutually exclusive.
However, as with all prehistory, it is impossible to be certain due to the limited evidence and the many pitfalls associated with trying to understand the prehistoric mindset with a modern mind.
See also
Apotropaic magic – Magic intended to repel evil
; the belief that replicating all aspects of a past experiment will also replicate the results
― in psychology, the belief, often subconscious, that objects or locations associated with a good or bad past experience still have good or bad qualities
; coined by Emanuel Swedenborg
― magical principle that any two objects that were once in contact will maintain an invisible connection unless it is deliberately broken
― purported ability to receive mental images of a past event by touching an object associated with the event
Sigil – magical symbol, often representing a deity, a spirit, or the desired outcome of the spell
Quantum entanglement – documented scientific phenomenon in which a group of particles created together in a certain way can continue to exert an influence on each other, no matter the distance between them
References
Bibliography
(reprint of the 1954 Phaidon Verlag edition)
Thackeray, J.F. 2005. The wounded roan: a contribution to the relation of hunting and trance in southern African rock art. Antiquity 79:5-18.
Thackeray, J.F. 2005. Eland, hunters and concepts of ‘sympathetic control’ expressed in southern African rock art. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 15,1:27-34.
Thackeray, J.F. & Le Quellec, J.-L. 2007. A symbolically wounded therianthrope at Melikane Rock Shelter, Lesotho. http://antiquity.ac.uk/ProjGall/thackeray1/index.html
Thackeray, J.F. 2013. The principle of “sympathetic magic” in the context of hunting, trance and southern African rock art. The Digging Stick 30 (1), 1-4.
External links
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Anthropology
Anthropology of religion
Magic (supernatural)
Talismans
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654139
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken%20Batcher
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Ken Batcher
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Ken Batcher, full name Kenneth Edward Batcher (December 1935 – August 2019) was an emeritus professor of Computer Science at Kent State University. He also worked as a computer architect at Goodyear Aerospace in Akron, Ohio for 28 years.
Early life and education
He was born in December 1935 in Queens, New York City, to Lois and Ralph Batcher. He died in August 2019 in Stow Ohio. His parents met at Iowa State University and later relocated to New York City after graduation. His father, Ralph R. Batcher, was the Chief Engineer of The A. H. Grebe Radio Company until its bankruptcy in 1932. He graduated from Brooklyn Technical High School.
Batcher graduated from Iowa State University with B.E. degree in 1957. In 1964, Batcher received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois.
His career and achievements
Among the designs he worked on at Goodyear were the:
Massively Parallel Processor (16,384 custom bit-serial processors {8 to a chip} organized in a SIMD 128 x 128 processor array with additional CPU rows for fault-tolerance) which was located at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, and is now in the Smithsonian. This unit predates Danny Hillis' Thinking Machines Corporation's Connection Machine
The Goodyear STARAN associative processor arrays, a version of which (called ASPRO) was found in the US Navy Northrop Grumman E-2 Hawkeye radar planes.
He published several technical papers and owns 14 patents of his own. "He discovered two parallel sorting algorithms: the odd-even mergesort and the bitonic mergesort". He is also a discoverer of scrambling data method in a random access memory which allows accesses along multiple dimensions. These memories were used in the STARAN and the MPP parallel processors.
Awards
In 1980 he received an Arnstein Award presented by Goodyear Aerospace Corporation for technical achievement.
In 1990, Batcher was awarded the ACM/IEEE Eckert-Mauchly Award for his pioneering work on parallel computers. He holds 14 patents.
In 2007, Batcher was awarded the IEEE Seymour Cray Computer Engineering Award; "For fundamental theoretical and practical contributions to massively parallel computation, including parallel sorting algorithms, interconnection networks, and pioneering designs of the STARAN and MPP computers."
He is credited with discovering two important parallel sorting algorithms: the odd-even mergesort and the bitonic mergesort.
Batcher is known for his half-serious, half-humorous definition that "A supercomputer is a device for turning compute-bound problems into I/O-bound problems."
Publications
Sorting Networks and their Applications, 1968 Spring Joint Computer Conference, AFIPS Proc. vol. 32, pp 307–314.
As author or co-author in "Journal articles"
On the Number of Stable States in a NOR Network, IEEE Trans. on Computers, vol. EC-14, no. 6, pp 931–932, Dec. 1965.
The Multi-Dimensional Access Memory in STARAN, IEEE Trans. on Computers, vol. C-26, no. 2, pp 174–177, Feb. 1977.
Design of a Massively Parallel Processor, IEEE Trans. on Computers, vol. C-29, no. 9, pp 836–840, Sept. 1980.
Bit-Serial Parallel Processing Systems, IEEE Trans. on Computers, vol. C-31, no. 5, pp 377–384, May 1982.
Adding Multiple-Fault Tolerance to Generalized Cube Networks, IEEE Trans. on Parallel and Distributed Systems vol. 5, no. 8, pp 785–792, Aug. 1994 (co-authored with C. J. Shih).
A Multiway Merge Sorting Network, IEEE Trans. on Parallel and Distributed Systems, vol. 6, no. 2, pp 211–215, Feb. 1995 (co-authored with De-Lei Lee).
Minimizing Communication in the Bitonic Sort, IEEE Trans. on Parallel and Distributed Systems, vol. 11, no. 5, pp 459–474, May 2000 (co-authored with Jae-Dong Lee).
Book chapters authored by Kenneth E. Batcher
The STARAN Computer, Infotech State of the Art Report on Supercomputers, vol. 2, pp 33–49, 1979.
MPP: A High-Speed Image Processor, Algorithmically Specialized Parallel Computers, edited by Snyder, Jamieson, Gannon, and Siegel, Academic Press, 1985, pp 59–68.
The Massively Parallel Processor System Overview, The Massively Parallel Processor, edited by J. L. Potter, The MIT Press, 1985, pp 142–149.
Array Unit, The Massively Parallel Processor edited by J. L. Potter, The MIT Press, 1985, pp 150–169.
Array Control Unit, The Massively Parallel Processor edited by J. L. Potter, The MIT Press, 1985, pp 170–190.
Staging Memory, The Massively Parallel Processor edited by J. L. Potter, The MIT Press, 1985, pp 191–204.
MPP System Software, The Massively Parallel Processor edited by J. L. Potter, The MIT Press, 1985, pp 261–275.
Retrospective: Architecture of a Massively Parallel Processor, 25 Years of the Int'l. Symposia on Computer Architecture - Selected Papers, edited by Gurindar Sohi, ACM Press, 1998, pp 15–16.
U.S. patents with Kenneth E. Batcher as the inventor or one of the inventors
The patent number is followed by the title and the year issued.
3,183,363 Logic Mechanization System, 1965 (multiple inventors)
3,300,762 Multiple Response Resolver Apparatus, 1967
3,418,632 Means for Merging Sequences of Data, 1968
3,428,946 Means for Merging Data 1969
3,605,024 Apparatus for Shifting Data in a Long Register, 1971
3,681,781 Storing and Retrieval Method, 1972
3,711,692 Determination of Number of Ones in a Data Field by Addition, 1973
3,786,448 Multiple Access Plated Wire Memory, 1974 (multiple inventors)
3,800,289 Multi-Dimensional Access Solid State Memory, 1974
3,812,467 Permutation Network, 1974
3,936,806 Solid State Associative Processor Organization, 1976
4,314,349 Processing Element for Parallel Array Processors, 1982
4,727,474 Staging Memory for Massively Parallel Processor, 1988
5,153,843 Layout of Large Multistage Interconnection Networks, 1992
See also
Batcher odd–even mergesort
Bitonic sorter
References
Batcher, K. E., "Design of a Massively Parallel Processor," IEEE Transactions on Computers, Vol. C29, September 1980, 836-840.
External links
Batcher's web page at Kent State University
Literature
Leonard Uhr. Multi-Computer Architectures for Artificial Intelligence: Toward Fast, Robust, Parallel Systems. — John Wiley & Sons, 1987. — 358 p. — .
Laxmikant V. Kalé, Edgar Solomonik Sorting (англ.) // Encyclopedia of Parallel Computing : encyclopedia — Springer, 2011. — P. 1855-1861. — .
Selim G. Akl Bitonic Sort (англ.) // Encyclopedia of Parallel Computing : encyclopedia. — Springer, 2011. — P. 139-146. — .
Sherenaz W. Al-Haj Baddar, Kenneth E. Batcher. Bitonic merging // Designing Sorting Networks: A New Paradigm. — Springer, 2012. — С. 2-5. — 148 с. — .
Donald E. Knuth. Networks for sorting // The art of computer programming. — 2. — Addison-Wesley, 1998. — Т. 3. — С. 212-247. — 780 с. — .
Thomas H. Cormen, Charles E. Leiserson, Ronald L. Rivest, Clifford Stein. Bitonic sorting // Introduction to algorithms. — 2. — MIT Press, 2001. — С. 608-611. — 984 с. — .
Berthold Vöcking, Helmut Alt, Martin Dietzfelbinger, Rüdiger Reischuk, Christian Scheideler, Heribert Vollmer, Dorothea Wagner. Algorithms Unplugged. — Springer, 2010. — С. 36. — 406 с. — .
The SIMD Model of Parallel Computation. Robert Cypher, Jorge L.C. Sanz. — Springer, 2012. — С. 28. — 149 с. — .
Maurice Herlihy, Nir Shavit. The Art of Multiprocessor Programming, Revised Reprint. — Elsevier, 2012. — С. 292. — 536 с. — .
Russ Miller, Laurence Boxer. Bitonic sort on parallel computers // Algorithms Sequential & Parallel: A Unified Approach. — Cengage Learning, 2012. — С. 146-148. — 416 с. — .
Computer designers
Computer systems researchers
Computer hardware researchers
Computer hardware engineers
Theoretical computer scientists
American computer scientists
American electrical engineers
Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery
Kent State University faculty
Grainger College of Engineering alumni
People from Akron, Ohio
Living people
Seymour Cray Computer Engineering Award recipients
1935 births
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51122626
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOVEit
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MOVEit
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MOVEit is a managed file transfer software produced by Ipswitch, Inc. MOVEit encrypts files and uses secure File Transfer Protocols to transfer data with automation, analytics and failover options. The software has been used in the healthcare industry by companies such as Rochester Hospital and Medibank, as well as thousands of IT departments in financial services, high technology, and government.
History
MOVEit was released in 2002 by Standard Networks. In 2006, the company released integration between MOVEit and antivirus software to stop the transfer of infected files.
Ipswitch acquired MOVEit in 2008 when the company purchased Standard Networks. MOVEit Cloud was announced in 2012 as a cloud-based file transfer management software. MOVEit Cloud was the first enterprise-class cloud managed file transfer software. It is scalable with and can share files system-to-system, group, or person-to-person.
In 2013, MOVEit clients were released for the IOS and Android platform. The release included a configuration wizard, as well as email Encryption.
Ipswitch Analytics was released in 2015 to monitor and report data through the MOVEit software. The analytic data includes an activity monitor and automated report creation. Ipswitch Analytics can access data from MOVEit file transfer and automation servers. That same year, Ipswitch Failover was released. The software can return recovery point objectives (RPO) in seconds with a recovery time objectives (RTO) of less than a minute, which increases the availability of MOVEit.
References
File transfer protocols
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9570763
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software%20repository
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Software repository
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A software repository, or "repo" for short, is a storage location for software packages. Often a table of contents is also stored, along with metadata. A software repository is typically managed by source control or repository managers. Package managers allow automatically installing and updating repositories (sometimes called "packages").
Overview
Many software publishers and other organizations maintain servers on the Internet for this purpose, either free of charge or for a subscription fee. Repositories may be solely for particular programs, such as CPAN for the Perl programming language, or for an entire operating system. Operators of such repositories typically provide a package management system, tools intended to search for, install and otherwise manipulate software packages from the repositories. For example, many Linux distributions use Advanced Packaging Tool (APT), commonly found in Debian based distributions, or yum found in Red Hat based distributions. There are also multiple independent package management systems, such as pacman, used in Arch Linux and equo, found in Sabayon Linux.
As software repositories are designed to include useful packages, major repositories are designed to be malware free. If a computer is configured to use a digitally signed repository from a reputable vendor, and is coupled with an appropriate permissions system, this significantly reduces the threat of malware to these systems. As a side effect, many systems that have these capabilities do not require anti-malware software such as anti-virus software.
Most major Linux distributions have many repositories around the world that mirror the main repository.
In an enterprise environment, a software repository is usually used to store artifacts, or to mirror external repositories which may be inaccessible due to security restrictions. Such repositories may provide additional functionality, like access control, versioning, security checks for uploaded software, cluster functionality etc. and typically support a variety of formats in one package, so as to cater for all the needs in an enterprise, and thus aiming to provide a single point of truth. Popular examples are JFrog Artifactory and Nexus repository.
At client side, a package manager helps installing from and updating the repositories.
At server side, a software repository is typically managed by source control or repository managers. Some of the repository managers allow to aggregate other repository location into one URL and provide a caching proxy. When doing continuous builds many artifacts are produced and often centrally stored, so automatically deleting the ones which are not released is important.
Package management system vs. package development process
A package management system is different from a package development process.
A typical use of a package management system is to facilitate the integration of code from possibly different sources into a coherent stand-alone operating unit. Thus, a package management system might be used to produce a distribution of Linux, possibly a distribution tailored to a specific restricted application.
A package development process, by contrast, is used to manage the co-development of code and documentation of a collection of functions or routines with a common theme, producing thereby a package of software functions that typically will not be complete and usable by themselves. A good package development process will help users conform to good documentation and coding practices, integrating some level of unit testing.
Selected repositories
The following table lists a few languages with repositories for contributed software. The "Autochecks" column describes the routine checks done.
Very few people have the ability to test their software under multiple operating systems with different versions of the core code and with other contributed packages they may use. For the R programming language, the Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN) runs tests routinely.
To understand how this is valuable, imagine a situation with two developers, Sally and John. Sally contributes a package A. Sally only runs the current version of the software under one version of Microsoft Windows, and has only tested it in that environment. At more or less regular intervals, CRAN tests Sally's contribution under a dozen combinations of operating systems and versions of the core R language software. If one of them generates an error, she gets that error message. With luck, that error message details may provide enough input to allow enable a fix for the error, even if she cannot replicate it with her current hardware and software. Next, suppose John contributes to the repository a package B that uses a package A. Package B passes all the tests and is made available to users. Later, Sally submits an improved version of A, which unfortunately, breaks B. The autochecks make it possible to provide information to John so he can fix the problem.
This example exposes both a strength and a weakness in the R contributed-package system: CRAN supports this kind of automated testing of contributed packages, but packages contributed to CRAN need not specify the versions of other contributed packages that they use. Procedures for requesting specific versions of packages exist, but contributors might not use those procedures.
Beyond this, a repository such as CRAN running regular checks of contributed packages actually provides an extensive if ad hoc test suite for development versions of the core language. If Sally (in the example above) gets an error message she does not understand or thinks is inappropriate, especially from a development version of the language, she can (and often does with R) ask the core development-team for the language for help. In this way, the repository can contribute to improving the quality of the core language software.
(Parts of this table were copied from a "List of Top Repositories by Programming Language" on Stack Overflow)
Many other programming languages, among them C, C++, and Fortran, do not possess a central software repository with universal scope. Notable repositories with limited scope include:
Netlib, mainly mathematical routines for Fortran and C, historically one of the first open software repositories;
Boost, a strictly curated collection of high-quality libraries for C++; some code developed in Boost later became part of the C++ standard library.
Package managers
Package managers help manage repositories and the distribution of them. If a repository is updated, a package manager will typically allow the user to update that repository through the package manager. They also help with managing things such as dependencies between other software repositories. Some examples of Package Managers include:
Repository managers
Relationship to continuous integration
As part of the development lifecycle, source code is continuously being built into binary artifacts using continuous integration. This may interact with a binary repository manager much like a developer would by getting artifacts from the repositories and pushing builds there. Tight integration with CI servers enables the storage of important metadata such as:
Which user triggered the build (whether manually or by committing to revision control)
Which modules were built
Which sources were used (commit id, revision, branch)
Dependencies used
Environment variables
Packages installed
Artifacts and packages
Artifacts and packages inherently mean different things. Artifacts are simply an output or collection of files (ex. JAR, WAR, DLLS, RPM etc.) and one of those files may contain metadata (e.g. POM file). Whereas packages are a single archive file in a well-defined format (ex. NuGet) that contain files appropriate for the package type (ex. DLL, PDB). Many artifacts result from builds but other types are crucial as well. Packages are essentially one of two things: a library or an application.
Compared to source files, binary artifacts are often larger by orders of magnitude, they are rarely deleted or overwritten (except for rare cases such as snapshots or nightly builds), and they are usually accompanied by much metadata such as id, package name, version, license and more.
Metadata
Metadata describes a binary artifact, is stored and specified separately from the artifact itself, and can have several additional uses. The following table shows some common metadata types and their uses:
See also
Package manager
RPM Package Manager
Synaptic
FreeBSD Ports
Definitive Media Library
dpkg
Simtel
APTonCD
References
Repository
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20383149
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clay%20Matthews%20III
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Clay Matthews III
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William Clay Matthews III (born May 14, 1986) is a former American football linebacker. The six-time Pro Bowl selection and two-time All-Pro played primarily with the Green Bay Packers. He is the all-time quarterback sack leader for the Green Bay Packers.
After attending Agoura High School in Agoura Hills, California, Matthews was a walk-on student athlete at the University of Southern California for the USC Trojans football team under head coach Pete Carroll. At USC, Matthews was a standout special-teams player, winning three consecutive Special Teams Player of the Year awards from 2006 to 2008. He also played reserve outside linebacker during those years before moving into a starting role his senior season. During his college career, he was a part of three Pac-10 Championship teams.
Matthews was considered a top prospect for the 2009 NFL Draft. He was ultimately selected by the Green Bay Packers in the first round of the draft (26th overall) after the team traded up to make the selection. In his rookie year, Matthews recorded 10 sacks while playing outside linebacker. He topped that total in 2010 with 13.5 sacks, helping the Packers to their Super Bowl XLV victory against the Pittsburgh Steelers. Matthews continued his role as a leading pass rusher, recording at least six sacks in the first nine seasons he played. He also has showed his athleticism and abilities by playing both inside and outside linebacker during the 2014 and 2015 seasons.
A member of the Matthews family of football players, he is the brother of former NFL linebacker Casey Matthews, the son of former NFL linebacker Clay Matthews Jr., and the nephew of Pro Football Hall of Fame offensive lineman Bruce Matthews.
Early life
Matthews was born in the Northridge section of Los Angeles, the son of Leslie and Clay Matthews Jr., a professional football player. The family has a history of professional football players. Matthews's grandfather was Clay Matthews Sr. His brother is linebacker Casey Matthews, and his uncle is Bruce Matthews. He also has cousins involved in football: Kevin Matthews, Jake Matthews, and Mike Matthews. His two older brothers, Kyle and Brian, both members of National Championship teams during their time with USC Trojans football, are currently in the real estate business in California and Ohio, respectively. His sister, Jennifer is often featured on NFL Network where she discusses fantasy football (gridiron).
High school career
Matthews attended Agoura High School in Agoura Hills, California, where he played for the Chargers. Physically, Matthews was a late bloomer. His father was the team's defensive coordinator, but declined to start his son because he was physically undersized. Matthews began developing physically in his senior season, but only garnered interest from Division I FCS schools and local community colleges. He has described his own recruiting status out of high school as "not applicable." Like his father and uncle, Matthews opted to attend the University of Southern California with hopes of becoming a walk-on for the Trojans football team.
College career
Matthews attended the University of Southern California and played for the Trojans from 2004 to 2008 under head coach Pete Carroll. Though he was the son of an All-Pro NFL linebacker, he entered USC as an unheralded, walk-on student athlete. During his first season, USC's 2004 BCS National Championship, he played only on the scout team and turned down several playing opportunities during garbage time during the fourth quarters of games to preserve his redshirt status and remaining seasons of NCAA eligibility. He remained a nonathletic scholarship (a "walk on") reserve linebacker during the 2005 season, and played mainly on special teams. He was granted full athletic scholarship status at the beginning of the 2006 season. Matthews continued to play reserve linebacker in the 2006 and 2007 seasons, and made two starts in 2007 in place of injured teammate Brian Cushing. He was awarded USC's Co-Special Teams Player of the Year in 2006 and 2007 and blocked two field goals in the later season.
During the off season, Matthews committed to weight training and conditioning programs to gain size and improve his performance level and stamina. At the beginning of the 2008 season, defensive coordinator Nick Holt, Carroll, and Norton decided to try using Matthews in a hybrid "elephant" position, where Matthews would stand in the position of defensive end, but use the speed and tactics of a linebacker; the coaches had used Cushing in the position in a similar manner in 2006. The experiment was successful, as Matthews recorded 4.5 sacks while playing alongside his other NFL-bound teammates Brian Cushing, Rey Maualuga, and Kaluka Maiava. Furthermore, Matthews continued his spectacular special-teams play and was awarded USC's Co-Special Teams Player of the Year in 2008, making him the only player in USC history to be awarded three consecutive Special Teams Player of the Year awards. Matthews was a participant in the 2009 Senior Bowl and was considered a top prospect for the 2009 NFL Draft.
Matthews was one of 12 senior USC football players, including the four linebackers Cushing, Maiava, Matthews, and Maualuga, invited to the 2009 NFL Scouting Combine. Matthews, Maualuga and Cushing, were featured on the cover of Sports Illustrateds 2009 NFL Draft Preview magazine, as all three were regarded by it as potential first-round selections.
Professional career
Green Bay Packers
On August 7, 2008, the Green Bay Packers traded Brett Favre to the New York Jets for what would become the Jets' third-round draft pick (83rd overall) in the 2009 NFL Draft.
On draft day, April 25, 2009, the Packers traded their second-round pick (41st overall, Darius Butler), their third-round pick (73rd overall, Derek Cox, Jacksonville Jaguars), and the 83rd overall pick acquired for Favre (Brandon Tate) to the New England Patriots for a first-round pick (26th overall) and a fifth-round pick (162nd overall, Jamon Meredith) in that year's draft.
The Packers used the first-round pick obtained from the Patriots to acquire Matthews with the 26th overall selection in the 2009 NFL Draft.
Kevin Greene, the former All-Pro linebacker who is third on the all-time sack list with 160 (most ever by a linebacker), was hired by Dom Capers in 2009 to coach the outside linebacker position. He saw a lot of himself in Matthews, but feared the Packers would not be able to draft him. Analysts were shocked when the Packers traded up for Matthews, whom they did not regard as a first-round draft prospect due to his limited playing experience at USC (only starting the final ten games of his senior season.) Greene later stated that Matthews has a "set of skills that I have not seen in an outside linebacker. Clay has a set of skills that I didn't have. He has another gear I didn't have. He's better than Kevin Greene was."
2009 season
Matthews scored his first career touchdown during a Monday Night Football game on October 5, 2009 against the Minnesota Vikings when he stripped the ball from running back Adrian Peterson and ran the ball back for a touchdown.
In Week 10 against the Dallas Cowboys, Matthews had another outstanding game: recording one tackle, recovering two fumbles forced by cornerback Charles Woodson, and sacking Dallas quarterback Tony Romo to make him a nominee again for the Pepsi NFL Rookie of the Week. For the second time in as many nominations, he was voted Rookie of the Week for week 10.
In Week 12 against the Detroit Lions, he made three tackles, assisted on two more, and sacked Daunte Culpepper twice. He was nominated for and won the Pepsi NFL Rookie of the Week award for his performance.
Matthews had arguably the best game in his young career in Week 13 when he was awarded the NFC Defensive Player of the Week award. Matthews had six tackles, two sacks and a forced fumble in the Packers' 27–14 win over the Baltimore Ravens.
In the Packers' December 13, 2009, contest against the Chicago Bears at Soldier Field, Matthews recorded his eighth sack of the season which put him into a three-way tie with former Packers Tim Harris and Vonnie Holiday for the team record of most sacks in a rookie season (1982–present). The following week, Matthews recorded two more sacks vs the Pittsburgh Steelers to claim the rookie record.
He was added to the 2010 Pro Bowl NFC squad, replacing Lance Briggs. He was the first Packers' rookie to earn a Pro Bowl selection since wide receiver James Lofton in 1978.
Matthews recorded 51 tackles, 10 sacks, seven pass deflections, three fumble recoveries, and a forced fumble in his rookie season. He played in all 16 games, starting at ROLB in 13 of them. He led the Packers in QB pressures, with 45.5. He finished third for the NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year, losing to his former USC teammate Brian Cushing. He was named NFC Defensive Rookie of the Year and set the Packer record for most sacks in a season by a rookie, with 10.0.
2010 season
Matthews took a different approach to the game in the 2010 season. After seeing him double-teamed and constantly chipped by running backs in the NFC wild card game against the Arizona Cardinals, Dom Capers decided to move him around the field. Matthews eventually ended up playing mostly at LOLB, but he would roam around the field, playing also at the ROLB position and sometimes in the middle. He finished the season with 60 tackles, 13.5 sacks (fourth in the league), four pass deflections, two forced fumbles, and an interception through 15 games in 2010. He became the first Packer to record six sacks in the first two games of the season and had 8.5 sacks in the first five weeks, but slowed down the latter part of the season (five sacks in the last 10 games due to a stress fracture in his lower leg). Matthews was named to the 2011 Pro Bowl NFC roster for the second straight year and was named to the All-Pro team for the first time in his career. Matthews was awarded with the NFL's defensive player of the month award for September after recording six sacks in the first two weeks of the 2010 season. Matthews recorded a career-high 55.0 quarterback pressures. He was named SN-NFL Defensive Player of the Year and NFC Defensive Player of the Year, and won the Butkus Award. He finished a close second (17 votes to 15) to Troy Polamalu in the AP NFL Defensive Player of the Year voting, notable in that both led their defenses to Super Bowl XLV.
He set the Packers' record for most sacks in a single postseason with 3.5. In the Super Bowl, won by the Packers over the Pittsburgh Steelers, he recorded three tackles, a pass deflection, and a game-changing forced fumble. On the first play of the fourth quarter with the Steelers driving to take the lead with the score 21–17 in favor of Green Bay and the ball on the Packer 33 yard line, he tackled Steelers running back Rashard Mendenhall, who fumbled the ball, recovered by Desmond Bishop. This play was featured by NFL Films SoundFx, Matthews was mic’d up. Matthews knew the play would be coming off of the right side of the offensive line. He called for teammate Ryan Pickett to “spill it”, which meant making Mendenhall redirect his running path further from the center of the line of scrimmage. Matthews’ instincts on this tone-setting play is primarily featured in the Packers Hall of Fame. The Packers never lost the lead, winning their fourth Super Bowl title and first since Super Bowl XXXI, 31–25.
2011 season
Matthews finished the 2011 season with 50 tackles, and a career low six sacks despite playing 15 of the 16 games. He led the Packers in quarterback pressures for the third straight season, with 53.5. Although some of his numbers plummeted from the previous season, he improved in other aspects of his game. He recorded a career-high three interceptions, nine pass deflections, and three forced fumbles. He also recorded his third career defensive touchdown by picking off Eli Manning for a pick-six. Matthews played almost exclusively at the LOLB position, not roaming around the field like he did the previous season due to the struggling defense. Matthews did not play a single snap at the ROLB position until Week 11 and finished the entire season with only seven rushes from the ROLB spot. Matthews claimed he had his best overall season despite the low numbers. The Packers struggled to find pass pressure from the side opposite of Matthews and the loss of defensive end Cullen Jenkins due to free agency and safety Nick Collins due to a career-ending neck injury, placed the Packers last in total defense despite leading the league in interceptions, with 31. Linebacker coach Kevin Greene stated that he has never seen a pass rusher get double teamed as much as Clay had that season. The defensive line struggled, finishing the season with six total sacks after recording 18 the year before. Matthews was named to his third-straight Pro Bowl as a starter. Prior to the 2011 season, Matthews was named the second-best pass rusher (second only to DeMarcus Ware) and the fourth-best linebacker in the league by ESPN (behind Patrick Willis, James Harrison, and Ware).
2012 season
Heading into the 2012 season, the defense needed to improve. Finishing with the 32nd-ranked defense in the NFL was described by Matthews as "unacceptable." The Packers picked six straight defensive players in the draft, including Matthews's former teammate, Nick Perry, out of USC. Because of Perry's larger size (10 pounds heavier) and not being accustomed to playing pass coverage, he was put at the LOLB position, and Matthews was moved back to the ROLB position he played at in his rookie year. The Packers hoped that by drafting Perry, as well as Michigan State DE Jerel Worthy and Iowa DE Mike Daniels, opposing teams would no longer be able to consistently double-team Matthews, allowing pressure to open up on all sides.
Prior to the 2012 season, Sporting News ranked Matthews as the second-best outside linebacker in the league, only behind Cowboys' star DeMarcus Ware. Matthews started out the season with a bang. He recorded 2.5 sacks in the 30–22 season opener loss to the eventual NFC champion San Francisco 49ers and then posted a career-high 3.5 sacks against the Chicago Bears on Thursday night. Matthews became one of only six players in NFL history to record six or more sacks in the first two games of the season, and is the only player ever to do it twice. Entering Week 9 against the Arizona Cardinals, he was second in the league in sacks with nine. Matthews had to leave the game in the second half after his left hamstring started to tighten up. He was eventually ruled out for weeks 11 through 13. After missing four straight games with the hamstring injury, Matthews recorded six tackles, two sacks, and a pass deflection in a 21–13 victory over the Chicago Bears. This victory crowned the Packers as NFC North champions for the second year in a row. Matthews totaled three tackles and a sack in a 37–34 season ending loss to the Minnesota Vikings. He finished the season with 43 tackles, 13.0 sacks (fifth in the league), two passes defended, and a forced fumble. Matthews was selected to his fourth straight Pro Bowl, but dropped out due to injury, and was named to the All-Pro team for the second time.
In the off-season, Matthews became the highest-paid linebacker in NFL history when the Packers and he made a deal worth $66 million over the next five seasons.
2013 season
Playing in only 11 games during the 2013 season, Matthews recorded 41 tackles (26 solo), a team-high 7.5 sacks, and three forced fumbles. During the Packers' Week 5 matchup with the Detroit Lions on October 6, 2013, Matthews broke his right thumb and missed the next four games. On November 10, in a game at home against the Philadelphia Eagles, he returned to the playing field, donning a large "club" cast over his entire right hand. Without the ability to use his fingers to grab or apply pressure or leverage, Matthews was left to be fairly ineffective during this game. The following week, he returned to the field with a less restrictive device that allowed his fingers to remain free. The device seemed to improve his performance the following week. After completing only two tackles (one solo) with no sacks, stuffs, hits, or hurries on the quarterback against the Philadelphia Eagles, in the Packers' Week 11 match-up against the New York Giants the following week, Matthews had four tackles, including a sack with the less restrictive device. After the Giants game, Matthews went on to accumulate 4.5 more sacks and 17 tackles (10 solo) over the next five weeks. In Week 16, during the second to last game of the regular season against the Pittsburgh Steelers, Matthews refractured his thumb sacking Ben Roethlisberger and was out for the remainder of the season.
2014 season
Prior to the 2014 season, the Packers signed veteran free agent Julius Peppers to bring an additional pass rush to help Matthews. After a Week 8 loss to the New Orleans Saints, where the Packers defense gave up almost 500 yards of offense, including 172 yards rushing from Mark Ingram, Packers defensive coordinator Dom Capers and head coach Mike McCarthy decided to alter Matthews's position, alternating him between outside linebacker and middle linebacker during games, depending on the play call. The move paid huge dividends for both Matthews and the Packers defense, as the defense improved drastically over the final eight games of the season. After spending the first half of the season ranked near the bottom in the league in defense, the Packers finished the season ranked a respectable 14th in the NFL in total defense. Matthews's sack numbers also increased in the second half of the season. After only getting 2.5 sacks in the first eight games, Matthews had 8.5 sacks in the final eight games, including back-to-back two-sack games against the Buffalo Bills and Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Matthews finished the season with 11 sacks, 9 passes defended, one interception (his first since 2011), and two forced fumbles. For the first time in his NFL career, Matthews started every game during the regular season.
2015 season
Matthews helped lead his team to the NFC Divisional Round playoff game against the Arizona Cardinals, a game that it lost 26–20 in overtime. Matthews made comments that the Packers should have touched the ball in overtime and "go to college rules". He was ranked 57th on the NFL Top 100 Players of 2016.
Matthews was among the athletes indicated in The Dark Side: Secrets of the Sports Dopers, an Al Jazeera documentary on illegal performance-enhancing drugs use. (In August 2016, after an investigation, the NFL cleared Matthews and two other of its players of wrongdoing, citing "no credible evidence.")
Every Friday during the football season, Matthews appeared on Wisconsin's Afternoon News with John Mercure on Newsradio 620 WTMJ to discuss football.
2016 season
In the 2016 season, Matthews appeared in 12 games and started nine. He recorded 24 tackles, of which 20 were solo, five sacks, and one forced fumble. Despite posting a career-low in tackles and sacks, Matthews was ranked 82nd by his peers on the NFL Top 100 Players of 2017.
2017 season
On September 28, 2017, during the Week 4 game against the Chicago Bears, Matthews became the Packers' all-time sacks leader when he sacked the Bears' quarterback Mike Glennon. On December 10, 2017, during a game against the Cleveland Browns, Matthews recorded a key quarterback pressure in overtime. This pressure resulted in an interception to secure a victory for the Packers. Before and after the game, Matthews donned a Clay Matthews Jr. Browns #57 jersey as an homage to his father.
Matthews finished the 2017 season with 7.5 total sacks and 3 pass deflections. Matthews was double-teamed for most of the season, finishing with 39 total tackles. Matthews forced a fumble and recovered a fumble as well.
2018 season
On June 2, 2018, Matthews, who was pitching to Packers offensive lineman Lucas Patrick in the off-season Green & Gold Charity Softball Game, had a ball hit directly back to him. The line drive resulted in a broken nose for Matthews; surgery followed the incident. During the Packers' training camp for 2018, Matthews decided to wear a visor to add additional protection for his rhinoplasty. Matthews wore an Oakley, Inc. style clear visor with a Speedflex revolution helmet. During Week 2 against the Minnesota Vikings, Matthews was called for a controversial roughing the passer penalty that nullified an interception with 1:37 left in the fourth quarter. The game ended in a 29–29 tie. During Week 3 against the Washington Redskins, Matthews was again called for roughing the passer, becoming the first player to commit three roughing-the-passer penalties in the first three games of the season since 2001, as the Packers lost 31–17.
On October 15, 2018 Matthews recorded his last sack at Lambeau Field. Against the San Francisco 49ers on Monday Night Football, with 3:52 remaining in the 4th quarter, on a 3rd & 10 play from the SF 23, Matthews brought down C.J. Beathard at the SF 11 for a key loss of -12 yards.
After the conclusion of the 2018 season, Matthews became an unrestricted free agent.
Los Angeles Rams
2019 season
On March 19, 2019, Matthews signed a two-year contract with the Los Angeles Rams.
Matthews made his debut with the Rams in Week 1 against the Carolina Panthers, making three tackles and sacking Cam Newton once as the Rams won 30–27. In Week 2 against the New Orleans Saints, Matthews recorded another sack against Teddy Bridgewater as the Rams won 27–9. In Week 3 against the Cleveland Browns, Matthews sacked Baker Mayfield twice in the 20–13 win. In Week 5, after the Rams' 30–29 loss to the Seattle Seahawks, it was announced that Matthews suffered a broken jaw and would undergo surgery. He ended up missing three games, finishing the season with 13 starts.
In the off-season, on March 19, 2020, Matthews was released by the Rams. He did not play during the 2020 season.
NFL career statistics
Regular season
Postseason
Personal life
For charity, Matthews agreed to model and test a Depend adult incontinence brief under his uniform during the 2012 season to benefit the Jimmy V Foundation. Matthews is active in the sports memorabilia circuit; selling exclusive game-used equipment through Fanatics, Inc. and signing autographs exclusively with Waukesha Sportscards in Wisconsin. Matthews and his wife Casey built a large estate in the Oaks of Calabasas gated community, it went on sale in 2020 with an asking price close to $30,000,000. Matthews and his wife Casey Noble-Matthews have three children together: William Clay IV, Madeline Joy and Colton.
Non-sports media appearances
Matthews made an appearance on the February 8, 2011 of WWE Smackdown, when he ran down to the ring to assist in Edge's World Heavyweight Championship match against Dolph Ziggler as a backup referee, as Vickie Guerrero was the original special referee for that match. Guerrero injured her ankle (kayfabe) after trying to spear Edge, and he won the match and the championship after spearing Ziggler twice, while she was being attended to at ringside for her injury. Shortly after the second spear, Matthews ran down to the ring to make the three-count and give Edge the win. This episode took place in Green Bay, the same week the Green Bay Packers won the Super Bowl XLV after WWE invited the winning team to the show that is taking place in their hometown.
Matthews and his former Packers teammates Josh Sitton, David Bakhtiari, T. J. Lang, and Don Barclay had cameo appearances in the film Pitch Perfect 2. He also stars in season 1 episode 21 of The Mindy Project, as well as making a cameo in the 2015 film Entourage (film). Also in 2015, Matthews was primarily featured in an online episode for Houzz. Matthews aided in the renovation of his brother and sister-in-law’s Cleveland, Ohio home. Matthews would frequently call in to The Dan Patrick Show during the NFL regular season during his playing career.
In 2018, Matthews was featured along with his wife Casey on Tanked. In their aforementioned Calabasas, California estate, an 800 gallon aquarium was installed in his home library, next to his framed uniform worn in Super Bowl XLV.
Main commercial sponsorships for Matthews during his NFL career included: Nike, Inc., Gillette, Verizon, Old Spice, Jack Link's Beef Jerky, Campbell Soup Company, Hyundai Motor Company, Fathead (brand), State Farm (alongside teammates Aaron Rodgers and B.J. Raji) and The Wonderful Company brand pistachios, even with a peanut allergy.
References
External links
USC bio
Green Bay Packers bio
Los Angeles Rams bio
ESPN profile
1986 births
Living people
American football linebackers
Green Bay Packers players
Los Angeles Rams players
Matthews football family
National Conference Pro Bowl players
People from Agoura Hills, California
Players of American football from Los Angeles
Unconferenced Pro Bowl players
USC Trojans football players
People from Northridge, Los Angeles
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37139944
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application%20performance%20engineering
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Application performance engineering
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Application performance engineering is a method to develop and test application performance in various settings, including mobile computing, the cloud, and conventional information technology (IT).
Methodology
According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology, nearly four out of every five dollars spent on the total cost of ownership of an application is directly attributable to finding and fixing issues post-deployment. A full one-third of this cost could be avoided with better software testing.
Application performance engineering attempts to test software before it is published. While practices vary among organizations, the method attempts to emulate the real-world conditions that software in development will confront, including network deployment and access by mobile devices. Techniques include network virtualization.
See also
Network virtualization
Performance engineering
Service virtualization
Software performance testing
References
Further reading
Practical Performance Analyst - Performance Engineering Community & Body Of Knowledge
"Application performance engineering," Computerworld. January 28, 2011.
The Mandate for Application Performance Engineering by Jim Metzler.
Application Performance Engineering: A Lifecycle Approach to Achieving Confidence in Application Performance
Application Performance Engineering Hub Blog
The 2011 Application & Service Delivery Handbook
Application software
Software testing
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7366298
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-state%20drive
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Solid-state drive
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A solid-state drive (SSD) is a solid-state storage device that uses integrated circuit assemblies to store data persistently, typically using flash memory, and functioning as secondary storage in the hierarchy of computer storage. It is also sometimes called a semiconductor storage device, a solid-state device or a solid-state disk, even though SSDs lack the physical spinning disks and movable read–write heads used in hard disk drives (HDDs) and floppy disks.
Compared with electromechanical drives, SSDs are typically more resistant to physical shock, run silently, and have higher IOPS and lower latency. SSDs store data in semiconductor cells. cells can contain between 1 and 4 bits of data. SSD storage devices vary in their properties according to the number of bits stored in each cell, with single-bit cells ("Single( Level Cells" or "SLC") being generally the most reliable, durable, fast, and expensive type, compared with 2- and 3-bit cells ("Multi-Level Cells/MLC" and "Triple-Level Cells/TLC"), and finally quad-bit cells ("QLC") being used for consumer devices that do not require such extreme properties and are the cheapest per gigabyte of the four. In addition, 3D XPoint memory (sold by Intel under the Optane brand), stores data by changing the electrical resistance of cells instead of storing electrical charges in cells, and SSDs made from RAM can be used for high speed, when data persistence after power loss is not required, or may use battery power to retain data when its usual power source is unavailable. Hybrid drives or solid-state hybrid drives (SSHDs), such as Apple's Fusion Drive, combine features of SSDs and HDDs in the same unit using both flash memory and a HDD in order to improve the performance of frequently-accessed data. Bcache allows to achieve a similar effect purely in software, using combinations of dedicated regular SSDs and HDDs.
SSDs based on NAND Flash will slowly leak charge over time if left for long periods without power. This causes worn-out drives (that have exceeded their endurance rating) to start losing data typically after one year (if stored at 30 °C) to two years (at 25 °C) in storage; for new drives it takes longer. Therefore, SSDs are not suitable for archival storage. 3D XPoint is a possible exception to this rule; it is a relatively new technology with unknown long-term data-retention characteristics.
SSDs can use traditional HDD interfaces and form factors, or newer interfaces and form factors that exploit specific advantages of the flash memory in SSDs. Traditional interfaces (e.g. SATA and SAS) and standard HDD form factors allow such SSDs to be used as drop-in replacements for HDDs in computers and other devices. Newer form factors such as mSATA, M.2, U.2, NF1, XFMEXPRESS and EDSFF (formerly known as Ruler SSD) and higher speed interfaces such as NVM Express (NVMe) over PCI Express (PCIe) can further increase performance over HDD performance.
SSDs have a limited lifetime number of writes, and also slow down as they reach their full storage capacity.
Development and history
Early SSDs using RAM and similar technology
An early—if not the first—semiconductor storage device compatible with a hard drive interface (e.g. an SSD as defined) was the 1978 StorageTek STC 4305. The STC 4305, a plug-compatible replacement for the IBM 2305 fixed head disk drive, initially used charge-coupled devices (CCDs) for storage and consequently was reported to be seven times faster than the IBM product at about half the price ($400,000 for 45 MB capacity) It later switched to DRAM. Before the StorageTek SSD there were many DRAM and core (e.g. DATARAM BULK Core, 1976) products sold as alternatives to HDDs but these products typically had memory interfaces and were not SSDs as defined.
In the late 1980s, Zitel offered a family of DRAM based SSD products, under the trade name "RAMDisk", for use on systems by UNIVAC and Perkin-Elmer, among others.
Flash-based SSDs
The basis for flash-based SSDs, flash memory, was invented by Fujio Masuoka at Toshiba in 1980 and commercialized by Toshiba in 1987. SanDisk Corporation (then SanDisk) founders Eli Harari and Sanjay Mehrotra, along with Robert D. Norman, saw the potential of flash memory as an alternative to existing hard drives, and filed a patent for a flash-based SSD in 1989. The first commercial flash-based SSD was shipped by SanDisk in 1991. It was a 20 MB SSD in a PCMCIA configuration, and sold OEM for around $1,000 and was used by IBM in a ThinkPad laptop. In 1998, SanDisk introduced SSDs in 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch form factors with PATA interfaces.
In 1995, STEC, Inc. entered the flash memory business for consumer electronic devices.
In 1995, M-Systems introduced flash-based solid-state drives as HDD replacements for the military and aerospace industries, as well as for other mission-critical applications. These applications require the SSD's ability to withstand extreme shock, vibration and temperature ranges.
In 1999, BiTMICRO made a number of introductions and announcements about flash-based SSDs, including an 18 GB 3.5-inch SSD. In 2007, Fusion-io announced a PCIe-based Solid state drive with 100,000 input/output operations per second (IOPS) of performance in a single card, with capacities up to 320 GB.
At Cebit 2009, OCZ Technology demonstrated a 1 TB flash SSD using a PCI Express ×8 interface. It achieved a maximum write speed of 0.654 gigabytes per second (GB/s) and maximum read speed of 0.712 GB/s. In December 2009, Micron Technology announced an SSD using a 6 gigabits per second (Gbit/s) SATA interface.
In 2016, Seagate demonstrated 10 GB/s sequential read and write speeds from a 16-lane PCIe 3.0 SSD and also demonstrated a 60 TB SSD in a 3.5-inch form factor. Samsung also launched to market a 15.36 TB SSD with a price tag of US$10,000 using a SAS interface, using a 2.5-inch form factor but with the thickness of 3.5-inch drives. This was the first time a commercially available SSD had more capacity than the largest currently available HDD.
In 2018, both Samsung and Toshiba introduced to market 30.72 TB SSDs using the same 2.5-inch form factor but with 3.5-inch drive thickness using a SAS interface. Nimbus Data announced and reportedly shipped 100 TB drives using a SATA interface, a capacity HDDs are not expected to reach until 2025. Samsung introduced an M.2 NVMe SSD with read speeds of 3.5 GB/s and write speeds of 3.3 GB/s. A new version of the 100 TB SSD was launched in 2020 at a price of US$40,000, with the 50 TB version costing US$12,500.
In 2019, Gigabyte Technology demonstrated an 8 TB 16-lane PCIe 4.0 SSD with 15.0 GB/s sequential read and 15.2 GB/s sequential write speeds at Computex 2019. It included a fan, as new, high speed SSDs run at high temperatures. Also in 2019, NVMe M.2 SSDs using the PCIe 4.0 interface were launched. These SSDs have read speeds of up to 5.0 GB/s and write speeds of up to 4.4 GB/s. Due to their high speed operation, these SSDs use large heatsinks and, if they do not receive sufficient cooling airflow, will typically thermally throttle down after roughly 15 minutes of continuous operation at full speed. Samsung also introduced SSDs capable of 8 GB/s sequential read and write speeds and 1.5 million IOPS, capable of moving data from damaged chips to undamaged chips, to allow the SSD to continue working normally, albeit at a lower capacity.
Enterprise flash drives
Enterprise flash drives (EFDs) are designed for applications requiring high I/O performance (IOPS), reliability, energy efficiency and, more recently, consistent performance. In most cases, an EFD is an SSD with a higher set of specifications, compared with SSDs that would typically be used in notebook computers. The term was first used by EMC in January 2008, to help them identify SSD manufacturers who would provide products meeting these higher standards. There are no standards bodies who control the definition of EFDs, so any SSD manufacturer may claim to produce EFDs when in fact the product may not actually meet any particular requirements.
An example is the Intel DC S3700 series of drives, introduced in the fourth quarter of 2012, which focuses on achieving consistent performance, an area that had previously not received much attention but which Intel claimed was important for the enterprise market. In particular, Intel claims that, at a steady state, the S3700 drives would not vary their IOPS by more than 10–15%, and that 99.9% of all 4 KB random I/Os are serviced in less than 500 µs.
Another example is the Toshiba PX02SS enterprise SSD series, announced in 2016, which is optimized for use in server and storage platforms requiring high endurance from write-intensive applications such as write caching, I/O acceleration and online transaction processing (OLTP). The PX02SS series uses 12 Gbit/s SAS interface, featuring MLC NAND flash memory and achieving random write speeds of up to 42,000 IOPS, random read speeds of up to 130,000 IOPS, and endurance rating of 30 drive writes per day (DWPD).
SSDs based on 3D XPoint have higher random (higher IOPS) but lower sequential read/write speeds than their NAND-flash counterparts. They can have up to 2.5 million IOPS.
Drives using other persistent memory technologies
In 2017, the first products with 3D XPoint memory were released under Intel's Optane brand. 3D Xpoint is entirely different from NAND flash and stores data using different principles.
Architecture and function
The key components of an SSD are the controller and the memory to store the data. The primary memory component in an SSD was traditionally DRAM volatile memory, but since 2009, it is more commonly NAND flash non-volatile memory.
Controller
Every SSD includes a controller that incorporates the electronics that bridge the NAND memory components to the host computer. The controller is an embedded processor that executes firmware-level code and is one of the most important factors of SSD performance. Some of the functions performed by the controller include:
Bad block mapping
Read and write caching
Encryption
Crypto-shredding
Error detection and correction via error-correcting code (ECC) such as BCH code
Garbage collection
Read scrubbing and read disturb management
Wear leveling
The performance of an SSD can scale with the number of parallel NAND flash chips used in the device. A single NAND chip is relatively slow, due to the narrow (8/16 bit) asynchronous I/O interface, and additional high latency of basic I/O operations (typical for SLC NAND, ~25 μs to fetch a 4 KiB page from the array to the I/O buffer on a read, ~250 μs to commit a 4 KiB page from the IO buffer to the array on a write, ~2 ms to erase a 256 KiB block). When multiple NAND devices operate in parallel inside an SSD, the bandwidth scales, and the high latencies can be hidden, as long as enough outstanding operations are pending and the load is evenly distributed between devices.
Micron and Intel initially made faster SSDs by implementing data striping (similar to RAID 0) and interleaving in their architecture. This enabled the creation of SSDs with 250 MB/s effective read/write speeds with the SATA 3 Gbit/s interface in 2009. Two years later, SandForce continued to leverage this parallel flash connectivity, releasing consumer-grade SATA 6 Gbit/s SSD controllers which supported 500 MB/s read/write speeds. SandForce controllers compress the data before sending it to the flash memory. This process may result in less writing and higher logical throughput, depending on the compressibility of the data.
Wear leveling
If a particular block is programmed and erased repeatedly without writing to any other blocks, that block will wear out before all the other blocks—thereby prematurely ending the life of the SSD. For this reason, SSD controllers use a technique called wear leveling to distribute writes as evenly as possible across all the flash blocks in the SSD.
In a perfect scenario, this would enable every block to be written to its maximum life so they all fail at the same time. The process to evenly distribute writes requires data previously written and not changing (cold data) to be moved, so that data which are changing more frequently (hot data) can be written into those blocks. Relocating data increases write amplification and adds to the wear of flash memory. Designers seek to minimize both.
Memory
Flash memory
Most SSD manufacturers use non-volatile NAND flash memory in the construction of their SSDs because of the lower cost compared with DRAM and the ability to retain the data without a constant power supply, ensuring data persistence through sudden power outages. Flash memory SSDs were initially slower than DRAM solutions, and some early designs were even slower than HDDs after continued use. This problem was resolved by controllers that came out in 2009 and later.
Flash-based SSDs store data in metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) integrated circuit chips which contain non-volatile floating-gate memory cells. Flash memory-based solutions are typically packaged in standard disk drive form factors (1.8-, 2.5-, and 3.5-inch), but also in smaller more compact form factors, such as the M.2 form factor, made possible by the small size of flash memory.
Lower-priced drives usually use quad-level cell (QLC), triple-level cell (TLC) or multi-level cell (MLC) flash memory, which is slower and less reliable than single-level cell (SLC) flash memory. This can be mitigated or even reversed by the internal design structure of the SSD, such as interleaving, changes to writing algorithms, and higher over-provisioning (more excess capacity) with which the wear-leveling algorithms can work.
Solid-state drives that rely on V-NAND technology, in which layers of cells are stacked vertically, have been introduced.
DRAM
SSDs based on volatile memory such as DRAM are characterized by very fast data access, generally less than 10 microseconds, and are used primarily to accelerate applications that would otherwise be held back by the latency of flash SSDs or traditional HDDs.
DRAM-based SSDs usually incorporate either an internal battery or an external AC/DC adapter and backup storage systems to ensure data persistence while no power is being supplied to the drive from external sources. If power is lost, the battery provides power while all information is copied from random access memory (RAM) to back-up storage. When the power is restored, the information is copied back to the RAM from the back-up storage, and the SSD resumes normal operation (similar to the hibernate function used in modern operating systems).
SSDs of this type are usually fitted with DRAM modules of the same type used in regular PCs and servers, which can be swapped out and replaced by larger modules.
Such as i-RAM, HyperOs HyperDrive, DDRdrive X1, etc.
Some manufacturers of DRAM SSDs solder the DRAM chips directly to the drive, and do not intend the chips to be swapped out—such as ZeusRAM, Aeon Drive, etc.
A remote, indirect memory-access disk (RIndMA Disk) uses a secondary computer with a fast network or (direct) Infiniband connection to act like a RAM-based SSD, but the new, faster, flash-memory based, SSDs already available in 2009 are making this option not as cost effective.
While the price of DRAM continues to fall, the price of Flash memory falls even faster.
The "Flash becomes cheaper than DRAM" crossover point occurred approximately 2004.
3D XPoint
In 2015, Intel and Micron announced 3D XPoint as a new non-volatile memory technology. Intel released the first 3D XPoint-based drive (branded as Intel® Optane™ SSD) in March 2017 starting with a data center product, Intel® Optane™ SSD DC P4800X Series, and following with the client version, Intel® Optane™ SSD 900P Series, in October 2017. Both products operate faster and with higher endurance than NAND-based SSDs, while the areal density is comparable at 128 gigabits per chip. For the price per bit, 3D XPoint is more expensive than NAND, but cheaper than DRAM.
Other
Some SSDs, called NVDIMM or Hyper DIMM devices, use both DRAM and flash memory. When the power goes down, the SSD copies all the data from its DRAM to flash; when the power comes back up, the SSD copies all the data from its flash to its DRAM. In a somewhat similar way, some SSDs use form factors and buses actually designed for DIMM modules, while using only flash memory and making it appear as if it were DRAM. Such SSDs are usually known as ULLtraDIMM devices.
Drives known as hybrid drives or solid-state hybrid drives (SSHDs) use a hybrid of spinning disks and flash memory. Some SSDs use magnetoresistive random-access memory (MRAM) for storing data.
Cache or buffer
A flash-based SSD typically uses a small amount of DRAM as a volatile cache, similar to the buffers in hard disk drives. A directory of block placement and wear leveling data is also kept in the cache while the drive is operating. One SSD controller manufacturer, SandForce, does not use an external DRAM cache on their designs but still achieves high performance. Such an elimination of the external DRAM reduces the power consumption and enables further size reduction of SSDs.
Battery or supercapacitor
Another component in higher-performing SSDs is a capacitor or some form of battery, which are necessary to maintain data integrity so the data in the cache can be flushed to the drive when power is lost; some may even hold power long enough to maintain data in the cache until power is resumed. In the case of MLC flash memory, a problem called lower page corruption can occur when MLC flash memory loses power while programming an upper page. The result is that data written previously and presumed safe can be corrupted if the memory is not supported by a supercapacitor in the event of a sudden power loss. This problem does not exist with SLC flash memory.
Most consumer-class SSDs do not have built-in batteries or capacitors; among the exceptions are the Crucial M500 and MX100 series, the Intel 320 series, and the more expensive Intel 710 and 730 series. Enterprise-class SSDs, such as the Intel DC S3700 series, usually have built-in batteries or capacitors.
Host interface
The host interface is physically a connector with the signalling managed by the SSD's controller. It is most often one of the interfaces found in HDDs. They include:
Serial attached SCSI (SAS-3, 12.0 Gbit/s) generally found on servers
Serial ATA and mSATA variant (SATA 3.0, 6.0 Gbit/s)
PCI Express (PCIe 3.0 ×4, 31.5 Gbit/s)
M.2 (6.0 Gbit/s for SATA 3.0 logical device interface, 31.5 Gbit/s for PCIe 3.0 ×4)
U.2 (PCIe 3.0 ×4)
Fibre Channel (128 Gbit/s) almost exclusively found on servers
USB (10 Gbit/s)
Parallel ATA (UDMA, 1064 Mbit/s) mostly replaced by SATA
(Parallel) SCSI ( 40 Mbit/s- 2560 Mbit/s) generally found on servers, mostly replaced by SAS; last SCSI-based SSD was introduced in 2004
SSDs support various logical device interfaces, such as Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI) and NVMe. Logical device interfaces define the command sets used by operating systems to communicate with SSDs and host bus adapters (HBAs).
Configurations
The size and shape of any device are largely driven by the size and shape of the components used to make that device. Traditional HDDs and optical drives are designed around the rotating platter(s) or optical disc along with the spindle motor inside. If an SSD is made up of various interconnected integrated circuits (ICs) and an interface connector, then its shape is no longer limited to the shape of rotating media drives. Some solid-state storage solutions come in a larger chassis that may even be a rack-mount form factor with numerous SSDs inside. They would all connect to a common bus inside the chassis and connect outside the box with a single connector.
For general computer use, the 2.5-inch form factor (typically found in laptops) is the most popular. For desktop computers with 3.5-inch hard disk drive slots, a simple adapter plate can be used to make such a drive fit. Other types of form factors are more common in enterprise applications. An SSD can also be completely integrated in the other circuitry of the device, as in the Apple MacBook Air (starting with the fall 2010 model). , mSATA and M.2 form factors also gained popularity, primarily in laptops.
Standard HDD form factors
The benefit of using a current HDD form factor would be to take advantage of the extensive infrastructure already in place to mount and connect the drives to the host system. These traditional form factors are known by the size of the rotating media (i.e., 5.25-inch, 3.5-inch, 2.5-inch or 1.8-inch) and not the dimensions of the drive casing.
Standard card form factors
For applications where space is at a premium, like for ultrabooks or tablet computers, a few compact form factors were standardized for flash-based SSDs.
There is the mSATA form factor, which uses the PCI Express Mini Card physical layout. It remains electrically compatible with the PCI Express Mini Card interface specification while requiring an additional connection to the SATA host controller through the same connector.
M.2 form factor, formerly known as the Next Generation Form Factor (NGFF), is a natural transition from the mSATA and physical layout it used, to a more usable and more advanced form factor. While mSATA took advantage of an existing form factor and connector, M.2 has been designed to maximize usage of the card space, while minimizing the footprint. The M.2 standard allows both SATA and PCI Express SSDs to be fitted onto M.2 modules.
Some high performance, high capacity drives uses standard PCI Express add-in card form factor to house additional memory chips, permit the use of higher power levels, and allow the use of a large heat sink. There are also adapter boards that converts other form factors, especially M.2 drives with PCIe interface, into regular add-in cards.
Disk-on-a-module form factors
A disk-on-a-module (DOM) is a flash drive with either 40/44-pin Parallel ATA (PATA) or SATA interface, intended to be plugged directly into the motherboard and used as a computer hard disk drive (HDD). DOM devices emulate a traditional hard disk drive, resulting in no need for special drivers or other specific operating system support. DOMs are usually used in embedded systems, which are often deployed in harsh environments where mechanical HDDs would simply fail, or in thin clients because of small size, low power consumption, and silent operation.
storage capacities range from 4 MB to 128 GB with different variations in physical layouts, including vertical or horizontal orientation.
Box form factors
Many of the DRAM-based solutions use a box that is often designed to fit in a rack-mount system. The number of DRAM components required to get sufficient capacity to store the data along with the backup power supplies requires a larger space than traditional HDD form factors.
Bare-board form factors
Form factors which were more common to memory modules are now being used by SSDs to take advantage of their flexibility in laying out the components. Some of these include PCIe, mini PCIe, mini-DIMM, MO-297, and many more. The SATADIMM from Viking Technology uses an empty DDR3 DIMM slot on the motherboard to provide power to the SSD with a separate SATA connector to provide the data connection back to the computer. The result is an easy-to-install SSD with a capacity equal to drives that typically take a full 2.5-inch drive bay. At least one manufacturer, Innodisk, has produced a drive that sits directly on the SATA connector (SATADOM) on the motherboard without any need for a power cable. Some SSDs are based on the PCIe form factor and connect both the data interface and power through the PCIe connector to the host. These drives can use either direct PCIe flash controllers or a PCIe-to-SATA bridge device which then connects to SATA flash controllers.
Ball grid array form factors
In the early 2000s, a few companies introduced SSDs in Ball Grid Array (BGA) form factors, such as M-Systems' (now SanDisk) DiskOnChip and Silicon Storage Technology's NANDrive (now produced by Greenliant Systems), and Memoright's M1000 for use in embedded systems. The main benefits of BGA SSDs are their low power consumption, small chip package size to fit into compact subsystems, and that they can be soldered directly onto a system motherboard to reduce adverse effects from vibration and shock.
Such embedded drives often adhere to the eMMC and eUFS standards.
Comparison with other technologies
Hard disk drives
Making a comparison between SSDs and ordinary (spinning) HDDs is difficult. Traditional HDD benchmarks tend to focus on the performance characteristics that are poor with HDDs, such as rotational latency and seek time. As SSDs do not need to spin or seek to locate data, they may prove vastly superior to HDDs in such tests. However, SSDs have challenges with mixed reads and writes, and their performance may degrade over time. SSD testing must start from the (in use) full drive, as the new and empty (fresh, out-of-the-box) drive may have much better write performance than it would show after only weeks of use.
Most of the advantages of solid-state drives over traditional hard drives are due to their ability to access data completely electronically instead of electromechanically, resulting in superior transfer speeds and mechanical ruggedness. On the other hand, hard disk drives offer significantly higher capacity for their price.
Some field failure rates indicate that SSDs are significantly more reliable than HDDs but others do not. However, SSDs are uniquely sensitive to sudden power interruption, resulting in aborted writes or even cases of the complete loss of the drive. The reliability of both HDDs and SSDs varies greatly among models.
As with HDDs, there is a tradeoff between cost and performance of different SSDs. Single-level cell (SLC) SSDs, while significantly more expensive than multi-level (MLC) SSDs, offer a significant speed advantage. At the same time, DRAM-based solid-state storage is currently considered the fastest and most costly, with average response times of 10 microseconds instead of the average 100 microseconds of other SSDs. Enterprise flash devices (EFDs) are designed to handle the demands of tier-1 application with performance and response times similar to less-expensive SSDs.
In traditional HDDs, a rewritten file will generally occupy the same location on the disk surface as the original file, whereas in SSDs the new copy will often be written to different NAND cells for the purpose of wear leveling. The wear-leveling algorithms are complex and difficult to test exhaustively; as a result, one major cause of data loss in SSDs is firmware bugs.
The following table shows a detailed overview of the advantages and disadvantages of both technologies. Comparisons reflect typical characteristics, and may not hold for a specific device.
Memory cards
While both memory cards and most SSDs use flash memory, they serve very different markets and purposes. Each has a number of different attributes which are optimized and adjusted to best meet the needs of particular users. Some of these characteristics include power consumption, performance, size, and reliability.
SSDs were originally designed for use in a computer system. The first units were intended to replace or augment hard disk drives, so the operating system recognized them as a hard drive. Originally, solid state drives were even shaped and mounted in the computer like hard drives. Later SSDs became smaller and more compact, eventually developing their own unique form factors such as the M.2 form factor. The SSD was designed to be installed permanently inside a computer.
In contrast, memory cards (such as Secure Digital (SD), CompactFlash (CF), and many others) were originally designed for digital cameras and later found their way into cell phones, gaming devices, GPS units, etc. Most memory cards are physically smaller than SSDs, and designed to be inserted and removed repeatedly.
SSD failure
SSDs have very different failure modes from traditional magnetic hard drives. Because solid-state drives contain no moving parts, they are generally not subject to mechanical failures. Instead, other kinds of failure are possible (for example, incomplete or failed writes due to sudden power failure can be more of a problem than with HDDs, and if a chip fails then all the data on it is lost, a scenario not applicable to magnetic drives). On the whole, however, studies have shown that SSDs are generally highly reliable, and often continue working far beyond the expected lifetime as stated by their manufacturer.
The endurance of an SSD should be provided on its datasheet in one of two forms:
either n DW/D (n drive writes per day)
or m TBW (max terabytes written), short TBW.
So for example a Samsung 970 EVO NVMe M.2 SSD (2018) with 1 TB has an endurance of 600 TBW.
SSD reliability and failure modes
An early investigation by Techreport.com that ran from 2013 to 2015 involved a number of flash-based SSDs being tested to destruction to identify how and at what point they failed. The website found that all of the drives "surpassed their official endurance specifications by writing hundreds of terabytes without issue"—volumes of that order being in excess of typical consumer needs. The first SSD to fail was TLC-based, with the drive succeeding in writing over 800 TB. Three SSDs in the test wrote three times that amount (almost 2.5 PB) before they too failed. The test demonstrated the remarkable reliability of even consumer-market SSDs.
A 2016 field study based on data collected over six years in Google's data centres and spanning "millions" of drive days found that the proportion of flash-based SSDs requiring replacement in their first four years of use ranged from 4% to 10% depending on the model. The authors concluded that SSDs fail at a significantly lower rate than hard disk drives. (In contrast, a 2016 evaluation of 71,940 HDDs found failure rates comparable to those of Google's SSDs: the HDDs had on average an annualized failure rate of 1.95%.) The study also showed, on the down-side, that SSDs experience significantly higher rates of uncorrectable errors (which cause data loss) than do HDDs. It also led to some unexpected results and implications:
In the real world, MLC-based designs – believed less reliable than SLC designs – are often as reliable as SLC. (The findings state that "SLC [is] not generally more reliable than MLC".) But generally it is said, that the write endurance is the following:
SLC NAND: 100,000 erases per block
MLC NAND: 5,000 to 10,000 erases per block for medium-capacity applications, and 1,000 to 3,000 for high-capacity applications
TLC NAND: 1,000 erases per block
Device age, measured by days in use, is the main factor in SSD reliability and not amount of data read or written, which are measured by terabytes written or drive writes per day. This suggests that other aging mechanisms, such as "silicon aging", are at play. The correlation is significant (around 0.2–0.4).
Raw bit error rates (RBER) grow slowly with wear-out—and not exponentially as is often assumed. RBER is not a good predictor of other errors or SSD failure.
The uncorrectable bit error rate (UBER) is widely used but is not a good predictor of failure either. However SSD UBER rates are higher than those for HDDs, so although they do not predict failure, they can lead to data loss due to unreadable blocks being more common on SSDs than HDDs. The conclusion states that although more reliable overall, the rate of uncorrectable errors able to impact a user is larger.
"Bad blocks in new SSDs are common, and drives with a large number of bad blocks are much more likely to lose hundreds of other blocks, most likely due to Flash die or chip failure. 30–80% of SSDs develop at least one bad block and 2–7% develop at least one bad chip in the first four years of deployment."
There is no sharp increase in errors after the expected lifetime is reached.
Most SSDs develop no more than a few bad blocks, perhaps 2–4. SSDs that develop many bad blocks often go on to develop far more (perhaps hundreds), and may be prone to failure. However most drives (99%+) are shipped with bad blocks from manufacture. The finding overall was that bad blocks are common and 30–80% of drives will develop at least one in use, but even a few bad blocks (2–4) is a predictor of up to hundreds of bad blocks at a later time. The bad block count at manufacture correlates with later development of further bad blocks. The report conclusion added that SSDs tended to either have "less than a handful" of bad blocks or "a large number", and suggested that this might be a basis for predicting eventual failure.
Around 2–7% of SSDs will develop bad chips in their first four years of use. Over two thirds of these chips will have breached their manufacturers' tolerances and specifications, which typically guarantee that no more than 2% of blocks on a chip will fail within its expected write lifetime.
96% of those SSDs that need repair (warranty servicing), need repair only once in their life. Days between repair vary from "a couple of thousand days" to "nearly 15,000 days" depending on the model.
Data recovery and secure deletion
Solid-state drives have set new challenges for data recovery companies, as the method of storing data is non-linear and much more complex than that of hard disk drives. The strategy by which the drive operates internally can vary largely between manufacturers, and the TRIM command zeroes the whole range of a deleted file. Wear leveling also means that the physical address of the data and the address exposed to the operating system are different.
As for secure deletion of data, ATA Secure Erase command could be used. A program such as hdparm can be used for this purpose.
Reliability metrics
The JEDEC Solid State Technology Association (JEDEC) has published standards for reliability metrics:
Unrecoverable Bit Error Ratio (UBER)
Terabytes Written (TBW) – the number of terabytes that can be written to a drive within its warranty
Drive Writes Per Day (DWPD) – the number of times the total capacity of the drive may be written to per day within its warranty
Applications
Due to their generally prohibitive cost versus HDDs at the time, until 2009, SSDs were mainly used in those aspects of mission critical applications where the speed of the storage system needed to be as high as possible. Since flash memory has become a common component of SSDs, the falling prices and increased densities have made it more cost-effective for many other applications. For instance, in the distributed computing environment, SSDs can be used as the building block for a distributed cache layer that temporarily absorbs the large volume of user requests to the slower HDD based backend storage system. This layer provides much higher bandwidth and lower latency than the storage system, and can be managed in a number of forms, such as distributed key-value database and distributed file system. On the supercomputers, this layer is typically referred to as burst buffer. With this fast layer, users often experience shorter system response time. Organizations that can benefit from faster access of system data include equity trading companies, telecommunication corporations, and streaming media and video editing firms. The list of applications which could benefit from faster storage is vast.
Flash-based solid-state drives can be used to create network appliances from general-purpose personal computer hardware. A write protected flash drive containing the operating system and application software can substitute for larger, less reliable disk drives or CD-ROMs. Appliances built this way can provide an inexpensive alternative to expensive router and firewall hardware.
SSDs based on an SD card with a live SD operating system are easily write-locked. Combined with a cloud computing environment or other writable medium, to maintain persistence, an OS booted from a write-locked SD card is robust, rugged, reliable, and impervious to permanent corruption. If the running OS degrades, simply turning the machine off and then on returns it back to its initial uncorrupted state and thus is particularly solid. The SD card installed OS does not require removal of corrupted components since it was write-locked though any written media may need to be restored.
Hard-drive cache
In 2011, Intel introduced a caching mechanism for their Z68 chipset (and mobile derivatives) called Smart Response Technology, which allows a SATA SSD to be used as a cache (configurable as write-through or write-back) for a conventional, magnetic hard disk drive. A similar technology is available on HighPoint's RocketHybrid PCIe card.
Solid-state hybrid drives (SSHDs) are based on the same principle, but integrate some amount of flash memory on board of a conventional drive instead of using a separate SSD. The flash layer in these drives can be accessed independently from the magnetic storage by the host using ATA-8 commands, allowing the operating system to manage it. For example, Microsoft's ReadyDrive technology explicitly stores portions of the hibernation file in the cache of these drives when the system hibernates, making the subsequent resume faster.
Dual-drive hybrid systems are combining the usage of separate SSD and HDD devices installed in the same computer, with overall performance optimization managed by the computer user, or by the computer's operating system software. Examples of this type of system are bcache and dm-cache on Linux, and Apple's Fusion Drive.
File-system support for SSDs
Typically the same file systems used on hard disk drives can also be used on solid state drives. It is usually expected for the file system to support the TRIM command which helps the SSD to recycle discarded data (support for TRIM arrived some years after SSDs themselves but is now nearly universal). This means that the file system does not need to manage wear leveling or other flash memory characteristics, as they are handled internally by the SSD. Some log-structured file systems (e.g. F2FS, JFFS2) help to reduce write amplification on SSDs, especially in situations where only very small amounts of data are changed, such as when updating file-system metadata.
While not a native feature of file systems, operating systems should also aim to align partitions correctly, which avoids excessive read-modify-write cycles. A typical practice for personal computers is to have each partition aligned to start at a 1 MiB (= 1,048,576 bytes) mark, which covers all common SSD page and block size scenarios, as it is divisible by all commonly used sizes - 1 MiB, 512 KiB, 128 KiB, 4 KiB, and 512 B. Modern operating system installation software and disk tools handle this automatically.
Linux
Initial support for the TRIM command has been added to version 2.6.28 of the Linux kernel mainline.
The ext4, Btrfs, XFS, JFS, and F2FS file systems include support for the discard (TRIM or UNMAP) function.
Kernel support for the TRIM operation was introduced in version 2.6.33 of the Linux kernel mainline, released on 24 February 2010. To make use of it, a file system must be mounted using the discard parameter. Linux swap partitions are by default performing discard operations when the underlying drive supports TRIM, with the possibility to turn them off, or to select between one-time or continuous discard operations. Support for queued TRIM, which is a SATA 3.1 feature that results in TRIM commands not disrupting the command queues, was introduced in Linux kernel 3.12, released on November 2, 2013.
An alternative to the kernel-level TRIM operation is to use a user-space utility called that goes through all of the unused blocks in a filesystem and dispatches TRIM commands for those areas. utility is usually run by cron as a scheduled task. , it is used by the Ubuntu Linux distribution, in which it is enabled only for Intel and Samsung solid-state drives for reliability reasons; vendor check can be disabled by editing file using instructions contained within the file itself.
Since 2010, standard Linux drive utilities have taken care of appropriate partition alignment by default.
Linux performance considerations
During installation, Linux distributions usually do not configure the installed system to use TRIM and thus the /etc/fstab file requires manual modifications. This is because of the notion that the current Linux TRIM command implementation might not be optimal. It has been proven to cause a performance degradation instead of a performance increase under certain circumstances. Linux sends an individual TRIM command to each sector, instead of a vectorized list defining a TRIM range as recommended by the TRIM specification.
For performance reasons, it is recommended to switch the I/O scheduler from the default CFQ (Completely Fair Queuing) to NOOP or Deadline. CFQ was designed for traditional magnetic media and seek optimization, thus many of those I/O scheduling efforts are wasted when used with SSDs. As part of their designs, SSDs offer much bigger levels of parallelism for I/O operations, so it is preferable to leave scheduling decisions to their internal logic especially for high-end SSDs.
A scalable block layer for high-performance SSD storage, known as blk-multiqueue or blk-mq and developed primarily by Fusion-io engineers, was merged into the Linux kernel mainline in kernel version 3.13, released on 19 January 2014. This leverages the performance offered by SSDs and NVMe, by allowing much higher I/O submission rates. With this new design of the Linux kernel block layer, internal queues are split into two levels (per-CPU and hardware-submission queues), thus removing bottlenecks and allowing much higher levels of I/O parallelization. As of version 4.0 of the Linux kernel, released on 12 April 2015, VirtIO block driver, the SCSI layer (which is used by Serial ATA drivers), device mapper framework, loop device driver, unsorted block images (UBI) driver (which implements erase block management layer for flash memory devices) and RBD driver (which exports Ceph RADOS objects as block devices) have been modified to actually use this new interface; other drivers will be ported in the following releases.
macOS
Versions since Mac OS X 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard) support TRIM but only when used with an Apple-purchased SSD. TRIM is not automatically enabled for third-party drives, although it can be enabled by using third-party utilities such as Trim Enabler. The status of TRIM can be checked in the System Information application or in the system_profiler command-line tool.
Versions since OS X 10.10.4 (Yosemite) include sudo trimforce enable as a Terminal command that enables TRIM on non-Apple SSDs. There is also a technique to enable TRIM in versions earlier than Mac OS X 10.6.8, although it remains uncertain whether TRIM is actually utilized properly in those cases.
Microsoft Windows
Prior to version 7, Microsoft Windows did not take any specific measures to support solid state drives. From Windows 7, the standard NTFS file system provides support for the TRIM command. (Other file systems on Windows 7 do not support TRIM.)
By default, Windows 7 and newer versions execute TRIM commands automatically if the device is detected to be a solid-state drive. However, because TRIM irreversibly resets all freed space, it may be desirable to disable support where enabling data recovery is preferred over wear leveling. To change the behavior, in the Registry key the value can be set to . This prevents the mass storage driver issuing the TRIM command.
Windows implements TRIM command for more than just file-delete operations. The TRIM operation is fully integrated with partition- and volume-level commands such as format and delete, with file-system commands relating to truncate and compression, and with the System Restore (also known as Volume Snapshot) feature.
Windows Vista
Windows Vista generally expects hard disk drives rather than SSDs. Windows Vista includes ReadyBoost to exploit characteristics of USB-connected flash devices, but for SSDs it only improves the default partition alignment to prevent read-modify-write operations that reduce the speed of SSDs. Most SSDs are typically split into 4 KiB sectors, while most systems are based on 512 byte sectors with their default partition setups unaligned to the 4 KiB boundaries.
Defragmentation
Defragmentation should be disabled on solid-state drives because the location of the file components on an SSD doesn't significantly impact its performance, but moving the files to make them contiguous using the Windows Defrag routine will cause unnecessary write wear on the limited number of P/E cycles on the SSD. The Superfetch feature will not materially improve performance and causes additional overhead in the system and SSD, although it does not cause wear. Windows Vista does not send the TRIM command to solid-state drives, but some third-party utilities such as SSD Doctor will periodically scan the drive and TRIM the appropriate entries.
Windows 7
Windows 7 and later versions have native support for SSDs. The operating system detects the presence of an SSD and optimizes operation accordingly. For SSD devices Windows disables SuperFetch and ReadyBoost, boot-time and application prefetching operations. Despite the initial statement by Steven Sinofsky before the release of Windows 7, however, defragmentation is not disabled, even though its behavior on SSDs differs. One reason is the low performance of Volume Shadow Copy Service on fragmented SSDs. The second reason is to avoid reaching the practical maximum number of file fragments that a volume can handle. If this maximum is reached, subsequent attempts to write to the drive will fail with an error message.
Windows 7 also includes support for the TRIM command to reduce garbage collection for data which the operating system has already determined is no longer valid. Without support for TRIM, the SSD would be unaware of this data being invalid and would unnecessarily continue to rewrite it during garbage collection causing further wear on the SSD. It is beneficial to make some changes that prevent SSDs from being treated more like HDDs, for example cancelling defragmentation, not filling them to more than about 75% of capacity, not storing frequently written-to files such as log and temporary files on them if a hard drive is available, and enabling the TRIM process.
Windows 8.1 and later
Windows 8.1 and later Windows systems also support automatic TRIM for PCI Express SSDs based on NVMe. For Windows 7, the KB2990941 update is required for this functionality and needs to be integrated into Windows Setup using DISM if Windows 7 has to be installed on the NVMe SSD. Windows 8/8.1 also support the SCSI unmap command for USB-attached SSDs or SATA-to-USB enclosures. SCSI Unmap is a full analog of the SATA TRIM command. It is also supported over USB Attached SCSI Protocol (UASP).
The graphical Windows Disk Defragmenter in Windows 8.1 also recognizes SSDs distinctly from hard disk drives in a separate Media Type column. While Windows 7 supported automatic TRIM for internal SATA SSDs, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 support manual TRIM (via an "Optimize" function in Disk Defragmenter) as well as automatic TRIM for SATA, NVMe and USB-attached SSDs.
ZFS
Solaris as of version 10 Update 6 (released in October 2008), and recent versions of OpenSolaris, Solaris Express Community Edition, Illumos, Linux with ZFS on Linux, and FreeBSD all can use SSDs as a performance booster for ZFS. A low-latency SSD can be used for the ZFS Intent Log (ZIL), where it is named the SLOG. This is used every time a synchronous write to the drive occurs. An SSD (not necessarily with a low-latency) may also be used for the level 2 Adaptive Replacement Cache (L2ARC), which is used to cache data for reading. When used either alone or in combination, large increases in performance are generally seen.
FreeBSD
ZFS for FreeBSD introduced support for TRIM on September 23, 2012. The code builds a map of regions of data that were freed; on every write the code consults the map and eventually removes ranges that were freed before, but are now overwritten. There is a low-priority thread that TRIMs ranges when the time comes.
Also the Unix File System (UFS) supports the TRIM command.
Swap partitions
According to Microsoft's former Windows division president Steven Sinofsky, "there are few files better than the pagefile to place on an SSD". According to collected telemetry data, Microsoft had found the pagefile.sys to be an ideal match for SSD storage.
Linux swap partitions are by default performing TRIM operations when the underlying block device supports TRIM, with the possibility to turn them off, or to select between one-time or continuous TRIM operations.
If an operating system does not support using TRIM on discrete swap partitions, it might be possible to use swap files inside an ordinary file system instead. For example, OS X does not support swap partitions; it only swaps to files within a file system, so it can use TRIM when, for example, swap files are deleted.
DragonFly BSD allows SSD-configured swap to also be used as file-system cache. This can be used to boost performance on both desktop and server workloads. The bcache, dm-cache, and Flashcache projects provide a similar concept for the Linux kernel.
Standardization organizations
The following are noted standardization organizations and bodies that work to create standards for solid-state drives (and other computer storage devices). The table below also includes organizations which promote the use of solid-state drives. This is not necessarily an exhaustive list.
Commercialization
Availability
Solid-state drive technology has been marketed to the military and niche industrial markets since the mid-1990s.
Along with the emerging enterprise market, SSDs have been appearing in ultra-mobile PCs and a few lightweight laptop systems, adding significantly to the price of the laptop, depending on the capacity, form factor and transfer speeds. For low-end applications, a USB flash drive may be obtainable for anywhere from $10 to $100 or so, depending on capacity and speed; alternatively, a CompactFlash card may be paired with a CF-to-IDE or CF-to-SATA converter at a similar cost. Either of these requires that write-cycle endurance issues be managed, either by refraining from storing frequently written files on the drive or by using a flash file system. Standard CompactFlash cards usually have write speeds of 7 to 15 MB/s while the more expensive upmarket cards claim speeds of up to 60 MB/s.
The first flash-memory SSD based PC to become available was the Sony Vaio UX90, announced for pre-order on 27 June 2006 and began shipping in Japan on 3 July 2006 with a 16 GB flash memory hard drive. In late September 2006 Sony upgraded the SSD in the Vaio UX90 to 32 GB.
One of the first mainstream releases of SSD was the XO Laptop, built as part of the One Laptop Per Child project. Mass production of these computers, built for children in developing countries, began in December 2007. These machines use 1,024 MiB SLC NAND flash as primary storage which is considered more suitable for the harsher than normal conditions in which they are expected to be used. Dell began shipping ultra-portable laptops with SanDisk SSDs on April 26, 2007. Asus released the Eee PC netbook on October 16, 2007, with 2, 4 or 8 gigabytes of flash memory. In 2008 two manufacturers released the ultrathin laptops with SSD options instead of uncommon 1.8" HDD: this was a MacBook Air, released by the Apple in a January 31, with an optional 64 GB SSD (The Apple Store cost was $999 more for this option, as compared with that of an 80 GB 4200 RPM HDD), And the Lenovo ThinkPad X300 with a similar 64 gigabyte SSD, announced in February 2008 and upgraded to 128 GB SSD option on August 26, 2008, with release of ThinkPad X301 model (an upgrade which added approximately $200 US).
In 2008, low-end netbooks appeared with SSDs. In 2009, SSDs began to appear in laptops.
On January 14, 2008, EMC Corporation (EMC) became the first enterprise storage vendor to ship flash-based SSDs into its product portfolio when it announced it had selected STEC, Inc.'s Zeus-IOPS SSDs for its Symmetrix DMX systems. In 2008, Sun released the Sun Storage 7000 Unified Storage Systems (codenamed Amber Road), which use both solid state drives and conventional hard drives to take advantage of the speed offered by SSDs and the economy and capacity offered by conventional HDDs.
Dell began to offer optional 256 GB solid state drives on select notebook models in January 2009. In May 2009, Toshiba launched a laptop with a 512 GB SSD.
Since October 2010, Apple's MacBook Air line has used a solid state drive as standard. In December 2010, OCZ RevoDrive X2 PCIe SSD was available in 100 GB to 960 GB capacities delivering speeds over 740 MB/s sequential speeds and random small file writes up to 120,000 IOPS. In November 2010, Fusion-io released its highest performing SSD drive named ioDrive Octal utilising PCI-Express x16 Gen 2.0 interface with storage space of 5.12 TB, read speed of 6.0 GB/s, write speed of 4.4 GB/s and a low latency of 30 microseconds. It has 1.19 M Read 512 byte IOPS and 1.18 M Write 512 byte IOPS.
In 2011, computers based on Intel's Ultrabook specifications became available. These specifications dictate that Ultrabooks use an SSD. These are consumer-level devices (unlike many previous flash offerings aimed at enterprise users), and represent the first widely available consumer computers using SSDs aside from the MacBook Air. At CES 2012, OCZ Technology demonstrated the R4 CloudServ PCIe SSDs capable of reaching transfer speeds of 6.5 GB/s and 1.4 million IOPS. Also announced was the Z-Drive R5 which is available in capacities up to 12 TB, capable of reaching transfer speeds of 7.2 GB/s and 2.52 million IOPS using the PCI Express x16 Gen 3.0.
In December 2013, Samsung introduced and launched the industry's first 1 TB mSATA SSD. In August 2015, Samsung announced a 16 TB SSD, at the time the world's highest-capacity single storage device of any type.
While a number of companies offer SSD devices as of 2018 only five of the companies that offer them actually manufacture the Nand Flash devices that are the storage element in SSDs.
Quality and performance
In general, performance of any particular device can vary significantly in different operating conditions. For example, the number of parallel threads accessing the storage device, the I/O block size, and the amount of free space remaining can all dramatically change the performance (i.e. transfer rates) of the device.
SSD technology has been developing rapidly. Most of the performance measurements used on disk drives with rotating media are also used on SSDs. Performance of flash-based SSDs is difficult to benchmark because of the wide range of possible conditions. In a test performed in 2010 by Xssist, using IOmeter, 4 kB random 70% read/30% write, queue depth 4, the IOPS delivered by the Intel X25-E 64 GB G1 started around 10,000 IOPs, and dropped sharply after 8 minutes to 4,000 IOPS, and continued to decrease gradually for the next 42 minutes. IOPS vary between 3,000 and 4,000 from around 50 minutes onwards for the rest of the 8+ hour test run.
Designers of enterprise-grade flash drives try to extend longevity by increasing over-provisioning and by employing wear leveling.
Sales
SSD shipments were 11 million units in 2009, 17.3 million units in 2011 for a total of US$5 billion, 39 million units in 2012, and were expected to rise to 83 million units in 2013
to 201.4 million units in 2016 and to 227 million units in 2017.
Revenues for the SSD market (including low-cost PC solutions) worldwide totalled $585 million in 2008, rising over 100% from $259 million in 2007.
See also
Board solid-state drive
List of solid-state drive manufacturers
Hard disk drive
RAID
Flash Core Module
RAM drive
References
Further reading
"Solid-state revolution: in-depth on how SSDs really work". Lee Hutchinson. Ars Technica. June 4, 2012.
Mai Zheng, Joseph Tucek, Feng Qin, Mark Lillibridge, "Understanding the Robustness of SSDs under Power Fault", FAST'13
Cheng Li, Philip Shilane, Fred Douglis, Hyong Shim, Stephen Smaldone, Grant Wallace, "Nitro: A Capacity-Optimized SSD Cache for Primary Storage", USENIX ATC'14
External links
Background and general
A guide to understanding Solid State Drives
Understanding SSDs and New Drives from OCZ
Charting the 30 Year Rise of the Solid State Disk Market
Investigation: Is Your SSD More Reliable Than A Hard Drive? - long term SSD reliability review
SSD return rates review by manufacturer (2012), hardware.fr - French (English) a 2012 update of a 2010 report based on data from a leading French tech retailer
Other
JEDEC Continues SSD Standardization Efforts
Linux & NVM: File and Storage System Challenges (PDF)
Linux and SSD Optimization
Understanding the Robustness of SSDs under Power Fault (USENIX 2013, by Mai Zheng, Joseph Tucek, Feng Qin and Mark Lillibridge)
20th-century inventions
Computer storage devices
Non-volatile memory
Solid-state computer storage
Solid-state computer storage media
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lock%20%28computer%20science%29
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Lock (computer science)
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In computer science, a lock or mutex (from mutual exclusion) is a synchronization primitive: a mechanism that enforces limits on access to a resource when there are many threads of execution. A lock is designed to enforce a mutual exclusion concurrency control policy, and with a variety of possible methods there exists multiple unique implementations for different applications.
Types
Generally, locks are advisory locks, where each thread cooperates by acquiring the lock before accessing the corresponding data. Some systems also implement mandatory locks, where attempting unauthorized access to a locked resource will force an exception in the entity attempting to make the access.
The simplest type of lock is a binary semaphore. It provides exclusive access to the locked data. Other schemes also provide shared access for reading data. Other widely implemented access modes are exclusive, intend-to-exclude and intend-to-upgrade.
Another way to classify locks is by what happens when the lock strategy prevents the progress of a thread. Most locking designs block the execution of the thread requesting the lock until it is allowed to access the locked resource. With a spinlock, the thread simply waits ("spins") until the lock becomes available. This is efficient if threads are blocked for a short time, because it avoids the overhead of operating system process re-scheduling. It is inefficient if the lock is held for a long time, or if the progress of the thread that is holding the lock depends on preemption of the locked thread.
Locks typically require hardware support for efficient implementation. This support usually takes the form of one or more atomic instructions such as "test-and-set", "fetch-and-add" or "compare-and-swap". These instructions allow a single process to test if the lock is free, and if free, acquire the lock in a single atomic operation.
Uniprocessor architectures have the option of using uninterruptible sequences of instructions—using special instructions or instruction prefixes to disable interrupts temporarily—but this technique does not work for multiprocessor shared-memory machines. Proper support for locks in a multiprocessor environment can require quite complex hardware or software support, with substantial synchronization issues.
The reason an atomic operation is required is because of concurrency, where more than one task executes the same logic. For example, consider the following C code:
if (lock == 0) {
// lock free, set it
lock = myPID;
}
The above example does not guarantee that the task has the lock, since more than one task can be testing the lock at the same time. Since both tasks will detect that the lock is free, both tasks will attempt to set the lock, not knowing that the other task is also setting the lock. Dekker's or Peterson's algorithm are possible substitutes if atomic locking operations are not available.
Careless use of locks can result in deadlock or livelock. A number of strategies can be used to avoid or recover from deadlocks or livelocks, both at design-time and at run-time. (The most common strategy is to standardize the lock acquisition sequences so that combinations of inter-dependent locks are always acquired in a specifically defined "cascade" order.)
Some languages do support locks syntactically. An example in C# follows:
public class Account // This is a monitor of an account
{
private decimal _balance = 0;
private object _balanceLock = new object();
public void Deposit(decimal amount)
{
// Only one thread at a time may execute this statement.
lock (_balanceLock)
{
_balance += amount;
}
}
public void Withdraw(decimal amount)
{
// Only one thread at a time may execute this statement.
lock (_balanceLock)
{
_balance -= amount;
}
}
}
The code lock(this) can lead to problems if the instance can be accessed publicly.
Similar to Java, C# can also synchronize entire methods, by using the MethodImplOptionsSynchronized attribute.
[MethodImpl(MethodImplOptions.Synchronized)]
public void SomeMethod()
{
// do stuff
}
Granularity
Before being introduced to lock granularity, one needs to understand three concepts about locks:
lock overhead: the extra resources for using locks, like the memory space allocated for locks, the CPU time to initialize and destroy locks, and the time for acquiring or releasing locks. The more locks a program uses, the more overhead associated with the usage;
lock contention: this occurs whenever one process or thread attempts to acquire a lock held by another process or thread. The more fine-grained the available locks, the less likely one process/thread will request a lock held by the other. (For example, locking a row rather than the entire table, or locking a cell rather than the entire row);
deadlock: the situation when each of at least two tasks is waiting for a lock that the other task holds. Unless something is done, the two tasks will wait forever.
There is a tradeoff between decreasing lock overhead and decreasing lock contention when choosing the number of locks in synchronization.
An important property of a lock is its granularity. The granularity is a measure of the amount of data the lock is protecting. In general, choosing a coarse granularity (a small number of locks, each protecting a large segment of data) results in less lock overhead when a single process is accessing the protected data, but worse performance when multiple processes are running concurrently. This is because of increased lock contention. The more coarse the lock, the higher the likelihood that the lock will stop an unrelated process from proceeding. Conversely, using a fine granularity (a larger number of locks, each protecting a fairly small amount of data) increases the overhead of the locks themselves but reduces lock contention. Granular locking where each process must hold multiple locks from a common set of locks can create subtle lock dependencies. This subtlety can increase the chance that a programmer will unknowingly introduce a deadlock.
In a database management system, for example, a lock could protect, in order of decreasing granularity, part of a field, a field, a record, a data page, or an entire table. Coarse granularity, such as using table locks, tends to give the best performance for a single user, whereas fine granularity, such as record locks, tends to give the best performance for multiple users.
Database locks
Database locks can be used as a means of ensuring transaction synchronicity. i.e. when making transaction processing concurrent (interleaving transactions), using 2-phased locks ensures that the concurrent execution of the transaction turns out equivalent to some serial ordering of the transaction. However, deadlocks become an unfortunate side-effect of locking in databases. Deadlocks are either prevented by pre-determining the locking order between transactions or are detected using waits-for graphs. An alternate to locking for database synchronicity while avoiding deadlocks involves the use of totally ordered global timestamps.
There are mechanisms employed to manage the actions of multiple concurrent users on a database—the purpose is to prevent lost updates and dirty reads. The two types of locking are pessimistic locking and optimistic locking:
Pessimistic locking: a user who reads a record with the intention of updating it places an exclusive lock on the record to prevent other users from manipulating it. This means no one else can manipulate that record until the user releases the lock. The downside is that users can be locked out for a very long time, thereby slowing the overall system response and causing frustration.
Where to use pessimistic locking: this is mainly used in environments where data-contention (the degree of users request to the database system at any one time) is heavy; where the cost of protecting data through locks is less than the cost of rolling back transactions, if concurrency conflicts occur. Pessimistic concurrency is best implemented when lock times will be short, as in programmatic processing of records. Pessimistic concurrency requires a persistent connection to the database and is not a scalable option when users are interacting with data, because records might be locked for relatively large periods of time. It is not appropriate for use in Web application development.
Optimistic locking: this allows multiple concurrent users access to the database whilst the system keeps a copy of the initial-read made by each user. When a user wants to update a record, the application determines whether another user has changed the record since it was last read. The application does this by comparing the initial-read held in memory to the database record to verify any changes made to the record. Any discrepancies between the initial-read and the database record violates concurrency rules and hence causes the system to disregard any update request. An error message is generated and the user is asked to start the update process again. It improves database performance by reducing the amount of locking required, thereby reducing the load on the database server. It works efficiently with tables that require limited updates since no users are locked out. However, some updates may fail. The downside is constant update failures due to high volumes of update requests from multiple concurrent users - it can be frustrating for users.
Where to use optimistic locking: this is appropriate in environments where there is low contention for data, or where read-only access to data is required. Optimistic concurrency is used extensively in .NET to address the needs of mobile and disconnected applications, where locking data rows for prolonged periods of time would be infeasible. Also, maintaining record locks requires a persistent connection to the database server, which is not possible in disconnected applications.
Disadvantages
Lock-based resource protection and thread/process synchronization have many disadvantages:
Contention: some threads/processes have to wait until a lock (or a whole set of locks) is released. If one of the threads holding a lock dies, stalls, blocks, or enters an infinite loop, other threads waiting for the lock may wait forever.
Overhead: the use of locks adds overhead for each access to a resource, even when the chances for collision are very rare. (However, any chance for such collisions is a race condition.)
Debugging: bugs associated with locks are time dependent and can be very subtle and extremely hard to replicate, such as deadlocks.
Instability: the optimal balance between lock overhead and lock contention can be unique to the problem domain (application) and sensitive to design, implementation, and even low-level system architectural changes. These balances may change over the life cycle of an application and may entail tremendous changes to update (re-balance).
Composability: locks are only composable (e.g., managing multiple concurrent locks in order to atomically delete item X from table A and insert X into table B) with relatively elaborate (overhead) software support and perfect adherence by applications programming to rigorous conventions.
Priority inversion: a low-priority thread/process holding a common lock can prevent high-priority threads/processes from proceeding. Priority inheritance can be used to reduce priority-inversion duration. The priority ceiling protocol can be used on uniprocessor systems to minimize the worst-case priority-inversion duration, as well as prevent deadlock.
Convoying: all other threads have to wait if a thread holding a lock is descheduled due to a time-slice interrupt or page fault.
Some concurrency control strategies avoid some or all of these problems. For example, a funnel or serializing tokens can avoid the biggest problem: deadlocks. Alternatives to locking include non-blocking synchronization methods, like lock-free programming techniques and transactional memory. However, such alternative methods often require that the actual lock mechanisms be implemented at a more fundamental level of the operating software. Therefore, they may only relieve the application level from the details of implementing locks, with the problems listed above still needing to be dealt with beneath the application.
In most cases, proper locking depends on the CPU providing a method of atomic instruction stream synchronization (for example, the addition or deletion of an item into a pipeline requires that all contemporaneous operations needing to add or delete other items in the pipe be suspended during the manipulation of the memory content required to add or delete the specific item). Therefore, an application can often be more robust when it recognizes the burdens it places upon an operating system and is capable of graciously recognizing the reporting of impossible demands.
Lack of composability
One of lock-based programming's biggest problems is that "locks don't compose": it is hard to combine small, correct lock-based modules into equally correct larger programs without modifying the modules or at least knowing about their internals. Simon Peyton Jones (an advocate of software transactional memory) gives the following example of a banking application:
design a class that allows multiple concurrent clients to deposit or withdraw money to an account; and give an algorithm to transfer money from one account to another. The lock-based solution to the first part of the problem is:
class Account:
member balance: Integer
member mutex: Lock
method deposit(n: Integer)
mutex.lock()
balance ← balance + n
mutex.unlock()
method withdraw(n: Integer)
deposit(−n)
The second part of the problem is much more complicated. A routine that is correct for sequential programs would be
function transfer(from: Account, to: Account, amount: integer)
from.withdraw(amount)
to.deposit(amount)
In a concurrent program, this algorithm is incorrect because when one thread is halfway through , another might observe a state where has been withdrawn from the first account, but not yet deposited into the other account: money has gone missing from the system. This problem can only be fixed completely by taking locks on both account prior to changing any of the two accounts, but then the locks have to be taken according to some arbitrary, global ordering to prevent deadlock:
function transfer(from: Account, to: Account, amount: integer)
if from < to // arbitrary ordering on the locks
from.lock()
to.lock()
else
to.lock()
from.lock()
from.withdraw(amount)
to.deposit(amount)
from.unlock()
to.unlock()
This solution gets more complicated when more locks are involved, and the function needs to know about all of the locks, so they cannot be hidden.
Language support
Programming languages vary in their support for synchronization:
Ada provides protected objects that have visible protected subprograms or entries as well as rendezvous.
The ISO/IEC C standard provides a standard mutual exclusion (locks) API since C11. The current ISO/IEC C++ standard supports threading facilities since C++11. The OpenMP standard is supported by some compilers, and allows critical sections to be specified using pragmas. The POSIX pthread API provides lock support. Visual C++ provides the synchronize attribute of methods to be synchronized, but this is specific to COM objects in the Windows architecture and Visual C++ compiler. C and C++ can easily access any native operating system locking features.
C# provides the lock keyword on a thread to ensure its exclusive access to a resource.
VB.NET provides a SyncLock keyword like C#'s lock keyword.
Java provides the keyword synchronized to lock code blocks, methods or objects and libraries featuring concurrency-safe data structures.
Objective-C provides the keyword @synchronized to put locks on blocks of code and also provides the classes NSLock, NSRecursiveLock, and NSConditionLock along with the NSLocking protocol for locking as well.
PHP provides a file-based locking as well as a Mutex class in the pthreads extension.
Python provides a low-level mutex mechanism with a Lock class from the threading module.
The ISO/IEC Fortran standard (ISO/IEC 1539-1:2010) provides the lock_type derived type in the intrinsic module iso_fortran_env and the lock/unlock statements since Fortran 2008.
Ruby provides a low-level mutex object and no keyword.
Rust provides the Mutex<T> struct.
x86 assembly provides the LOCK prefix on certain operations to guarantee their atomicity.
Haskell implements locking via a mutable data structure called an MVar, which can either be empty or contain a value, typically a reference to a resource. A thread that wants to use the resource ‘takes’ the value of the MVar, leaving it empty, and puts it back when it is finished. Attempting to take a resource from an empty MVar results in the thread blocking until the resource is available. As an alternative to locking, an implementation of software transactional memory also exists.
Go provides a low-level Mutex object in standard's library sync package. It can be use for locking code blocks, methods or objects.
See also
Critical section
Double-checked locking
File locking
Lock-free and wait-free algorithms
Monitor (synchronization)
Mutual exclusion
Read/write lock pattern
Semaphore (programming)
References
External links
Tutorial on Locks and Critical Sections
Concurrency control
Software design patterns
Articles with example C Sharp code
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877606
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GE%20Healthcare
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GE Healthcare
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GE Healthcare is a subsidiary of American multinational conglomerate General Electric incorporated in New York and headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. As of 2017, the company is a manufacturer and distributor of diagnostic imaging agents and radiopharmaceuticals for imaging modalities that are used in medical imaging procedures. The company offers dyes that are used in magnetic-resonance-imaging procedures. GE Healthcare also manufactures medical diagnostic equipment including CT image machines. Further, it develops Health technology for medical imaging and information technologies, medical diagnostics, patient monitoring systems, disease research, drug discovery, and biopharmaceutical manufacturing. The company was incorporated in 1994 and operates in more than 100 countries. GE Healthcare operates as a subsidiary of General Electric.
History
19th century
In 1893, C.F. Samms and J.B. Wantz founded the Victor Electric Company in a basement. By 1896 they made electrostatic generators for exciting X-ray tubes and electrotherapeutic devices.
They had a staff of six and a capital of $3,000 invested in the company.
Victor Electric
plunged into the X-ray business and by 1896 (one year after Roentgen’s discovery) were making X-ray machines. The business grew rapidly and so, in 1896, moved into new premises three times the original size, but this did not solve the space problems and the company made 3 moves by 1899.
Victor Electric had competitors. In 1896, G.A.Frye began making X-ray tubes, which in 1897 was purchased by Swett & Lewis as the first merger in the X-ray business.
20th century
During the first years, it was easier to keep up with the competition than space requirements. By 1903, Victor Electric had outgrown its facilities at 418 Dearborn St. in Chicago and bought two floors of a building at 55 Market Street, Chicago. This was again only a temporary stop; by 1910 it was too small and the firm moved again in 1911 to a building at the corner of Jackson Blvd. and Damen Avenue. This was the first permanent home of Victor Electric Co. They stayed there 35 years and during this time, gradually acquired all the space in the building and several around it.
During the first 20 years of the X-ray business, many new names appeared. In 1901 the Western Electric Coil Co. was formed. In 1902 MacAlaster & Wiggin purchased the X-ray tube business of Swett & Lewis. Two other companies were the Radio Electric Co., which was later to be known as Snook-Roentgen Manufacturing and the Scheidel Western X-Ray Coil Co. In 1907, Homer Clyde Snook introduced the Snook apparatus, the first interrupterless device produced for X-ray work. The Snook apparatus was manufactured in England.
In 1916, the first significant merger took place, Scheidel Western, Snook-Roentgen, MacAlaster & Wiggin, and Victor Electric Co. were merged with Victor, the surviving name. Victor's two founders had key roles in the new firm; C.F.Samms was company president and J.B.Wantz was Vice-President of manufacturing and engineering.
Four years later, in 1920, a second major merger was accomplished when Victor was acquired by General Electric
which was, at that time, the foremost manufacturer of X-ray tubes.
The marriage of Victor Electric and General Electric became complete of July 28, 1926 when Victor was declared a wholly owned affiliate of General Electric. The merger brought renewed vitality to the organization and Victor entered the foreign market with equipment sold and serviced in nearly 70 countries. In 1930, the name was changed from Victor to General Electric X-Ray Corporation.
World War II saw the dramatic use of X-rays in industry for non-destructive testing of war materials. It also saw the broad use of X-rays as a medical tool for military services.
As the war ended, GE X-Ray Corporation continued to grow. Greater production capacity and greater expertise was needed in the core business of building X-ray tubes. Since the tubes were made from hand-blown glass, the decision was made to move the company 90 miles north to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in order to tap into the enormous amount of glass-blowing talent in Milwaukee's beer-brewing industry. The company moved from Jackson Blvd. in Chicago to a site in the city of West Milwaukee, which had been used for building turbochargers during the war. The street in front was renamed Electric Avenue, and the General Electric X-Ray Corporation had a new home in 1947.
In 1951, the corporate structure was dissolved and the name changed to General Electric X-Ray Department. This new name lasted less than 10 years as the department divested itself of its industrial X-ray business, widened its medical business, and took on the name of GE Medical Systems Department. One of the reasons for the name of Medical Systems was due to the increase in the electro-medical business, which began in 1961 with the introduction of patient monitoring equipment. By 1967 modular equipment was developed which was soon popular in cardiac and intensive care units. Early in 1960, pacemakers were developed in Corporate Research & Development in Schenectady, New York, and in 1969 the Standby Pacemaker was developed.
In 1968, the Biomedical Business Section opened its first factory in Edgerton Avenue. Late in 1970 a surgical package was introduced and in 1971, equipment to monitor blood gasses during surgery was introduced.
Later in 1971, Biomedical opened a 9,000 square meter admin and engineering building opposite its factory and in 1972, the section was renamed The cardio-Surgical Product Section. With the growth of its medical business, the General Electric Company upgraded the department to The Medical Systems Division in 1971. Also in 1971, a major expansion programme was started and the Waukesha factory was planned. Work started in July 1972, and was completed in 1973.
In 1973, work on CT was started and eventually the first CT machine was installed in 1976. Development continued to the first CT 8800, and after long negotiations, GE acquired the medical division of EMI Group Ltd. in late 1980 soon after the 1979 takeover of EMI medical division by Thorn Electric company.
The American Anti-Trust Authorities stopped the takeover in the USA however, and the EMI factory in Chicago was bought up by Omni-Medical, who continued to make CTs for a number of years.
Meanwhile, back at GE, the Patient Monitoring Department was sold off in 1981. The initial boost provided by the EMI takeover turned into the doldrums as Reaganomics sent the US dollar soaring, so in 1984 GE bought a 49% share of YMS (Yokogawa Medical Systems), a Japanese company.
In 1983, GE Medical started investing heavily in Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) technology, investing nearly 1 billion US dollars in a new plant in Waukesha, and the MR Signa was born, which would go on to become the very successful MR model range. The magnet plant in Florence (USA) was opened a short time later, giving GE its own magnet production. In the same year, GE divested its dental X-ray division to form Gendex Dental Systems.
In 1985 GE acquired Technicare from Johnson and Johnson. Originally named Ohio Nuclear (and in 1979, after another fusion, Ohio Nuclear Unirad), the name was changed to Technicare in 1982. Technicare (with headquarters in Cleveland, Ohio) had been producing a range of rotate-stationary CTs with an installed base in the thousands, as well as some X-ray diagnostic equipment and a nascent MRI product range.
Up to this time, the medical Systems Division had simply been divided into domestic and international, but in 1987 it was decided to re-organize into the three "poles" of America, Europe and Pacific. In 1988, GE Medical Europe merged with CGR (a medical equipment supplier based in France) to form General Electric CGR Medical Systems. The European headquarters were moved from Hammersmith (UK) to Buc near Paris.
In 1992, GE had a setback after long negotiations to buy Picker International, who were a major producer of CT and MR equipment. The deal was not approved by the American authorities, and so GE just bought the Picker Service organization in the U.K., leaving the rest of Picker intact.
In 1994, it was decided to change the name in Europe from GE-CGR back to General Electric Medical Systems. At the close of 1998, GE Medical acquired the Nuclear and MR businesses of Elscint, (then a division of Elron, based in Haifa, Israel), the CT business being bought by Picker, and in the same year Marquette Medical Systems became a wholly owned subsidiary of GE Medical. In 1998, GE medical bought Diasonics Vingmed Ltd. from Elbit Medical Imaging (of Haifa, Israel), thus expanding its ultrasound imaging business.
21st century
In 2001, GE Medical Systems acquired San Francisco, CA, based CT maker Imatron, Inc for $210 million. Imatron produced an Electron beam tomography (EBT) scanner that performs imaging applications used by physicians specializing in cardiology, pulmonology and gastroenterology. The formal Imatron business was later incorporated into GE Healthcare's Diagnostic Imaging business segment. In early 2002, GE Healthcare had acquired MedicaLogic (creator of the former Logician, an ambulatory Electronic Medical Records system) for approximately $32 million.
By Jan 2003, GE acquired Millbrook Corporation, maker of Millbrook Practice Manager, a billing and scheduling system for doctors' offices.
GE Healthcare IT would later merge the two products into one, although the stand-alone EMR product is still available and in development. Also in April 2002, GE Healthcare completed the acquisition of Visualization Technology, Inc., Boston, MA; a manufacturer of intra-operative medical devices and related products for use in minimally invasive image guided surgery.
In 2003, GE Healthcare acquired Instrumentarium (including its Datex-Ohmeda division), a producer, manufacturer, and supplier of anesthesia machines and mechanical ventilators. To satisfy regulatory concerns in the United States and in Europe, GE Healthcare was forced to divest Instrumentarium's Ziehm Imaging mobile C-arm business, as well as its Spacelabs patient-monitoring unit. Currently, GE Healthcare owns 80% of all anesthesia machines in the United States and 60% of the machines in the world. The former Instrumentarium business was incorporated into GE Healthcare's Clinical Systems business segment.In 2004, the former Amersham plc business segments were separated into the GE Healthcare Medical Diagnostics and Life Sciences business segments and 1 May 2013, both the business were combined again under the GE Life Sciences brand with Kieran Murphy taking the leadership role. Also in 2004, GE Healthcare along with other healthcare companies built a research reactor for neutron and unit cell research at GE's European Research Center near Garching (outside of Munich), Germany. It is the only such reactor currently in operation. In 2005, Sir William Castell, CEO of GE Healthcare and former CEO of Amersham plc stepped down as CEO to become Chairman of the Wellcome Trust—a charity that fosters and promotes human and animal research—in the United Kingdom. Former GE Medical Systems CEO Joe Hogan became the overall CEO for the GE Healthcare business. In 2005, Dental Imaging operations were separated from GE Healthcare. The PaloDEx Group Oy was founded and continues the business with its subsidiaries Instrumentarium Dental and SOREDEX. Specifically, Instrumentarium Dental continues the brands Orthopantomograph and intraoral systems FOCUS and SIGMA, formerly known as Instrumentarium Imaging or GE Healthcare products.
In September 2005, GE Healthcare and IDX Systems Corporation announced that they entered into a definitive, $1.2 billion merger agreement for GE to acquire IDX, a leading healthcare information technology (IT) provider. The acquisition was completed in January 2006. IDX was folded into GE Healthcare Integrated IT Solutions, which specializes in clinical information systems and healthcare revenue management.
On 4 February 2008, GE Healthcare announced that it had completed the acquisition of Whatman plc (LSE:WHM), a global supplier of filtration products and technologies at 270p per share in cash for each Whatman share, valuing Whatman at approximately £363 million (approximately $713 million.) In July 2008, Joseph Hogan announced his intent to leave his post as CEO of GE Healthcare to take the role of CEO at ABB. On July 17, 2008, GE Healthcare announced John Dineen had been chosen to replace outgoing CEO Joseph Hogan. Mr. Dineen had been head of GE's Transportation division since 2005. On March 24, 2010, GE Healthcare announced acquisition of MedPlexus. In late April, 2010, GE Healthcare announced it was investing €3 million in the Technology Research for Independent Living Centre (TRIL). The Irish centre seeks to enhance independence for elderly people through technological innovation.
In July 2015, GE Healthcare partnered with the 2015 CrossFit Games to provide athletes with mobile imaging equipment.
In January 2016, it was announced GE Healthcare's global headquarters will move to Chicago effective early 2016.
In June 2017, GE announced Kieran Murphy as the new CEO of GE Healthcare, with former CEO John Flannery's appointment as CEO of GE.
In April 2018, GE announced the sale of several healthcare information technology assets for $1.05 billion to Veritas Capital.
In June 2018, GE announced plans to spin off GE Healthcare into its own company, representing the conglomerate's efforts to shrink and focus more on the aviation, power and renewable energy sectors. The plan was put on hold after selling the biopharma business to Danaher for $21.4 billion.
In January 2020, GE announced Mahesh Palashikar As New President, CEO of its south Asia division. In November of the same year the business announced it would acquire Prismatic Sensors AB.
In 2021, GE started a collaboration with Spectronic Medical to create AI-based software. In September the business announced it would acquire BK Medical from Altaris Capital Partners for $1.45 billion.
Criticism
Gadolinium-based contrast agents
In 1994, The firm ignored advice of its safety experts to proactively restrict the use of its MRI contrast Omniscan and tried to conceal evidence of its risks by telling its researchers to "burn the data", as revealed during a trial opposing debilitated consumers due to its accumulation in multiple organs.
In 2009, Ge Healthcare sued for defamation a radiologist at the University of Copenhagen Hospital who linked the uses of Omniscan to gadolinium induced fibrosis after 20 of his patients (from which 1 died) suffered from it after its administration.
in 2017, Ge Healthcare opposed the EMA suspending the use of Omniscan (along other linear agents), despite evidence of the high cytotoxicity of gadodiamide and its likelihood to dissociate after deposition.
In a 2020 study, their other MRI dye Clariscan was retained more in the cerebrum, cerebellum, kidney and liver of rats than those injected Dotarem, its original drug. Although the authors didn't provide a possible explanation, differences in the chelation process of gadolinium ions (Guerbet's process being patented) or quality assurance could be causes of increased retention in vivo.
Other
According to The Independent, the firm has received more money back in tax benefits (£1.6 million) in the UK over the past 12 years than it has paid in. Its UK operations are all ultimately owned by a holding company in the Netherlands. Tax paid was £250,000, 1.7% of its £14.3m profit. The group employs 22,000 people in the UK.
It supplies a cloud based imaging system to the East Midlands Radiology Consortium which was described in October 2017 as breaking down, so that medical images had to be sent between hospitals by taxi.
Operations
GE Healthcare has a range of products and services that include medical imaging and information technologies, electronic medical records, medical diagnostics, and patient monitoring systems. GE Healthcare consists of 9 primary business units:
Detection and Guidance Solutions (DGS), led by
devices for X-ray, bone densitometry and digital mammography.
Healthcare Digital, headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, USA.
Healthcare Digital provides clinical & financial information technology such as departmental IT products, RIS/PACS (Radiology Information Systems/Picture Archiving and Communication Systems), VIS (Cardiovascular Information Systems), Cloud based products as well as revenue cycle management and practice applications. The GE Health Cloud is their latest cloud offering with case exchange and multi-disciplinary teams (MDT) capabilities.
Former IDX, GE Healthcare's IT business will have its global headquarters in Barrington, Illinois, with major offices in South Burlington, Vermont; Boston; Seattle; and London, along with satellite offices both within and outside the United States.
Life Care Solutions (LCS), led by Thierry Leclercq, headquartered in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA.
Provides stuff for critical care, ECG, anesthesia delivery, neonatal intensive care, labor & delivery, preoperative and home care.
Magnetic Resonance (MR), led by Jie Xue, headquartered in Waukesha (near Milwaukee), Wisconsin, USA
Provider of magnetic resonance (MR) imaging systems.
Molecular Imaging & Computed Tomography (MICT), led by Michael Barber, headquartered in Waukesha (near Milwaukee), Wisconsin, USA.
Provides computed tomography (CT), positron emission tomography (PET) and molecular imaging technologies.
Surgery, led by Gustavo Perez, headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA.
Provides tools and technologies for cardiac, surgical and interventional care, from cardiac catheterization labs, diagnostic monitoring systems, data management systems to mobile fluoroscopic imaging systems, navigation and 3D visualization instrumentation.
Ultrasound (US), led by Anders Wold.
Produces ultrasound products for general imaging, cardiology, women's health, point of care and primary care, as well as related IT stuff.
Global Services, led by Jan Makela, headquartered in Greater Milwaukee Area, WI, USA.
While it has offices around the globe, GE Healthcare has major regional operations in Buc (suburb of Paris), France; Helsinki, Finland; Kraków, Poland; Budapest, Hungary; Yizhuang (suburb of Beijing), China; Hino & Tokyo, Japan and Bangalore, India.
Its biggest R&D centre is in Bangalore, India, built at a cost of $500 million.
References
External links
LinkedIn Page
Facebook Page
Twitter Page
Companies based in Buckinghamshire
Amersham
Manufacturing companies based in Chicago
Electronics companies of the United States
Health care companies established in 2004
Magnetic resonance imaging
Medical technology companies of the United States
Pharmaceutical companies of the United States
Radiopharmaceuticals
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1142712
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The%20Age%20of%20Intelligent%20Machines
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The Age of Intelligent Machines
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The Age of Intelligent Machines is a non-fiction book about artificial intelligence by inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil. This was his first book and the Association of American Publishers named it the Most Outstanding Computer Science Book of 1990. It was reviewed in The New York Times and The Christian Science Monitor. The format is a combination of monograph and anthology with contributed essays by artificial intelligence experts such as Daniel Dennett, Douglas Hofstadter, and Marvin Minsky.
Kurzweil surveys the philosophical, mathematical and technological roots of artificial intelligence, starting with the assumption that a sufficiently advanced computer program could exhibit human-level intelligence. Kurzweil argues the creation of humans through evolution suggests that humans should be able to build something more intelligent than themselves. He believes pattern recognition, as demonstrated by vision, and knowledge representation, as seen in language, are two key components of intelligence. Kurzweil details how quickly computers are advancing in each domain.
Driven by the exponential improvements in computer power, Kurzweil believes artificial intelligence will be possible and then commonplace. He explains how it will impact all areas of people's lives, including work, education, medicine, and warfare. As computers acquire human level faculties Kurzweil says people will be challenged to figure out what it really means to be human.
Background
Ray Kurzweil is an inventor and serial entrepreneur. In 1990 when this book was published he had already started three companies: Kurzweil Computer Products, Kurzweil Music Systems, and Kurzweil Applied Intelligence. The companies developed and sold reading machines for the blind, music synthesizers, and speech recognition software respectively. Optical character recognition, which he used in the reading machine, and speech recognition are both featured centrally in the book as examples of pattern recognition problems. After the publication of The Age of Intelligent Machines he expanded on its ideas with two follow-on books: The Age of Spiritual Machines and the best selling The Singularity is Near.
Content
Definition and history
Kurzweil starts by trying to define artificial intelligence. He leans towards Marvin Minsky's "moving frontier" formulation: "the study of computer problems which have not yet been solved". Then he struggles with defining intelligence itself and concludes "there appears to be no simple definition of intelligence that is satisfactory to most observers". That leads to a discussion about whether evolution, the process, could be considered intelligent.
Kurzweil concludes that evolution is intelligent, but with an IQ only "infinitesimally greater than zero". He penalizes evolution for the extremely long time it takes to create its designs. The human brain operates much more quickly, evidenced by the rate of progress in the last few thousand years, so the brain is more intelligent than its creator. Kurzweil concludes from this that there is no theoretical reason why the human brain cannot create something more intelligent than itself, and suggests "a sufficient number of decades or centuries into the future" humans will in fact be surpassed by their creations.
The field of artificial intelligence presupposes that the human brain is a machine, and that an alternative implementation could be built, as a computer program, which would have the same faculties as the real thing. Kurzweil traces the philosophical underpinnings of this tenet, as well as the opposing view that properties such as consciousness and free will are unique to the human mind. Kurzweil starts with Plato and touches quickly on Descartes, Newton, Kant, Wittgenstein and ends with Hubert Dreyfus. Kurzweil also presents the mathematical roots of Artificial Intelligence including contributions by Bertrand Russell, Alan Turing, Alonzo Church, and Kurt Gödel. The Turing test is introduced as a way to gauge whether the field of artificial intelligence has succeeded or not.
Chess and pattern recognition
Kurzweil discusses how computers play chess in detail, building to his prediction that "we will see a [computer] world champion by the year 2000". The Chinese strategy game of go, however, has proven much more difficult for computers to play well. He considers go to be a "level 3" problem, the type of problem where there is no single unifying formula which solves it. Then Kurzweil reveals that pattern recognition, which is crucial to artificial intelligence, is also a level 3 problem.
Kurzweil traces various ways of doing pattern recognition, from the rise and fall of perceptrons to random neural nets and decision trees, finally explaining that intelligence is a hierarchy of heterogeneous processes "communicating and influencing each other". He believes Marvin Minsky's society of mind and Jerome Lettvin's society of neurons are useful models. Kurzweil differentiates logical thinking from pattern recognition, and explains that AI has had much more trouble with pattern recognition, exemplified by efforts to create artificial vision.
Kurzweil estimates that the human vision system does the equivalent of 100 trillion multiplications per second where "a typical personal computer" of the day could only do 100,000 multiplications per second. The way out of this dilemma is parallel processing, having millions or billions of simultaneous processes all computing at the same time, something Kurzweil felt would happen in the future. Kurzweil also discusses speech recognition, which like vision requires complex pattern recognition.
Knowledge and art
In addition to pattern recognition, representative knowledge is also an important aspect of intelligence. Kurzweil details several types of expert systems in medicine, insurance and one for garage mechanics. Knowledge is expressed by language and Kurzweil discusses the state of language understanding including projects such as Terry Winograd's SHRDLU. Kurzweil says robotics is where all AI technologies are used: "vision, pattern recognition, knowledge engineering, decision-making, natural-language understanding and others". He explains how robots are increasingly successful in structured environments like factories, and predicts that "effective robotic servants in the home will probably not appear until early next century".
As a high school student Kurzweil built a computer which could compose music and demonstrated it on the national TV show I've Got a Secret. In The Age of Intelligent Machines he discusses the relationship between artificial intelligence and the production of music and visual art by computers. He includes the freehand drawings of AARON as well as plotter art by Colette Bangert and Charles Bangert. He briefly mentions artificial life, shows a number of computer generated fractals, and writes that "the role of the computer is not to displace human creativity but rather to amplify it."
Impact
Kurzweil explains that the "functionality per unit cost" in the computer industry has been increasing exponentially for decades. He says computer memory costs one one-hundred millionth of what it did in 1950, for example. Kurzweil admits exponential trends do not last forever, but is convinced computer power could increase by millions of times beyond the 1990 level. If these trends continue, Kurzweil argues, we will see a "translating telephone" by 2010, intelligent assistants by the mid-1990s, and a "completely driverless car" by "well into the first half" of the 21st century. He anticipates we will prove our identity by finger and voice prints and that artificial people will be present as holograms or robots.
Kurzweil goes into detail about the Turing test and explains that "sometime between 2020 and 2070" the test will be passed to such a degree that "no reasonable person familiar with the field" will question the result.
Even as artificial intelligence replaces whole industries, Kurzweil insists there will still be a net gain of jobs. He says fields like "communication, teaching, learning, selling, strategic-decicion making and innovation" will continue to be staffed by humans. At work he predicts people will use electronic documents that will be a "web of relationships" like Ted Nelson's hypertext instead of linear like a book.
As far as education Kurzweil feels children will have portable computers on which to run "intelligent and entertaining courseware". Papers, exams, electronic mail and even "love notes" will be sent over wireless networks. All the advanced capability will alter the domain of warfare as well, leading to laser and particle beam weapons, and planes without human pilots. Medicine will entail computer diagnosticians, coordinated data banks of patient histories, realistic simulations for drug designers, and robotically assisted surgery. This leaves humans open to do research, organize knowledge and administer "comfort and caring".
Handicapped individuals will be greatly assisted by the advancing technology with reading machines, hearing machines, and robotic exoskeletons. Kurzweil believes the prejudice the handicapped now suffer will abate with their new abilities. Kurzweil concludes the book by explaining that all of these advances will challenge us; as computers do ever more tasks that used to be our sole domain, as our intelligence is rivaled and then eclipsed by machines, he feels we will need to figure out what makes us human.
Style
Sprinkled throughout the book are 23 essays, 4 of them by Kurzweil himself and 19 others by invited authors: Margaret Litvin, Daniel Dennett, Mitchell Waldrop, Sherry Turkle, Blaine Mathieu, Seymour Papert, Douglas Hofstadter, Marvin Minsky, Edward Feigenbaum, Jeff Pepper, K. Fuchi, Brian Oakley, Harold Cohen, Charles Ames, Michael Lebowitz, Roger Schank and Christopher Owens, Allen Newell, Margaret Boden, and George Gilder. The book closes with a "chronology" listing events from the age of the dinosaurs to the year 2070, fifty pages of end notes and suggested readings, a glossary and an index.
Reception
Jay Garfield in the New York Times wrote that Kurzweil is "clear, current and informative" when writing about areas he has worked directly in, but "sloppy and vague" when talking about philosophy, logic and psychology. Of the prediction for a "translating telephone" by the first decade of the 21st century, Garfield says Kurzweil overlooks "the mammoth difficulties that confront anyone who tries to accomplish such a task".
The Futurist calls it an "impressive volume" which is "handsomely illustrated" and "a feast for the mind and eye"., while Simson Garfinkel in The Christian Science Monitor says The Age of Intelligent Machines is "a tour de force history of artificial intelligence" yet laments that "although the book is orderly, it is not organized" and complains that "details are missing throughout".
Linda Strauss writing for Science, Technology, & Human Values calls the book "a rich assemblage of glittering parts, rather awkwardly joined". She points out that Kurzweil really cannot define artificial intelligence, the subject of the book, because he cannot define intelligence. Instead he relies on the Turing test and on Marvin Minsky's notion of intelligence as a moving horizon of unsolved problems. Strauss feels Kurzweil does not consider the cultural and societal implications of his futuristic visions.
Notes
References
External links
Books by Ray Kurzweil
1990 non-fiction books
Computer books
Futurology books
Technology books
Transhumanist books
Books about cognition
MIT Press books
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57009374
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IDA%20Indoor%20Climate%20and%20Energy
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IDA Indoor Climate and Energy
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IDA Indoor Climate and Energy (IDA ICE) is a Building performance simulation (BPS) software. IDA ICE is a simulation application for the multi-zonal and dynamic study of indoor climate phenomenas as well as energy use. The implemented models are state of the art, many studies show that simulation results and measured data compare well.
User interface
The user interface of IDA ICE makes it easy to create simple cases but also offers the flexibility to go into detail of advanced studies. Many inputs are adaptable to local requirements such as climate data, material data, system components or result reports. IDA ICE provides a 3D environment for geometry modeling, the table-based input of boundary conditions provide good visual feedback and enables efficient quality check. A simple procedure for calculating and reporting cooling, heating, air demand, and energy, together with a built-in version handling system, makes it efficient to compare different systems and results.
Advanced daylight calculation are achieved by interfacing the Radiance lighting simulation tool with result visualization in the 3D environment. A module for Appendix G of ASHRAE 90.1-2010 is available, this is used for example in LEED and BREEAM. The integrated radiosity method with single reflexion and one measuring point can be used for whole-year daylight analysis and allows modeling daylight-based control strategies (e.g. shading devices, artificial lightening).
There is also the "Early Stage Building Optimization" (ESBO) user interface which makes it possible for users to experiment with variations in both buildings and systems at an early stage with a minimum of user input. A full range of component models for renewable energy studies is available, with boreholes, stratified tanks, heat pumps, solar collectors, CHP, PV, wind turbines, etc.
An interface with OpenFOAM for detailed CFD studies is in development.
Strengths
IDA ICE can be used for complete energy and design studies, involving the envelope, systems, plant and control strategies. The equation-based approach enables solving more complex mathematical problems than software using imperative programming languages. The IDA ICE model library features viewable code; the model equations can be viewed and adapted, every variable in the whole system can be logged. The flexible architecture of the software makes it easy to develop the software continuously to adapt it to local requirements and languages, and to expand it with new capabilities. Additional features like parametric simulation runs and visual scripting support decision making in a parametric design process. The coupling with optimization engines like GenOpt is available directly in the program.
The big advantage compared to other BPS software is the coupled simulation of building envelope, systems and controls. IDA ICE library components are either written in the Neutral Model Format (NMF) or Modelica. The software is fully scriptable with Common LISP. The IDA general purpose solver comes with a variable timestep, which guarantees that no event in the system will be missed.
Input
IDA ICE supports IFC BIM models generated by tools such as ArchiCAD, Revit, MagiCAD, and others. Geometry an shading on site can also be imported from SketchUp, Rhino or other geometry tools. Solar influx is evaluated through windows (also internal) with full 3D accounting for the local shading situation. Additionally it has an integrated geometry editor where building and zone geometry can be modeled with 2D architectural drawings or pictures serving as template.
Climate files like EnergyPlus weather files (EPW) or ASHRAE climate files, can be downloaded and installed. The table-based input structure allows full interoperability with MS Excel and comparable software. Modern features like copy and paste and Drag&drop combined with visual input data check make input data management easier.
Output
IDA ICE output include tables, charts, reports and plots. 3D visualizations (both stills and animations) show geometry, solar shadings, color coded input data as well as results. Arrow animations in 3D visualize ventilation air flows, window energy balance, and wind driven flows. There are special reports for LEED submittal forms included. The diagram plots deliver vector graphics which allows detailed result analysis in custom reports. Results can be exported to Microsoft Word or Excel. A single zone IDA ICE model with default systems comprises a total of approximately 2 000 time dependent variables, any of which may be plotted.
Predfined output files and reports cover
Zone heat and energy balances: solar radiation, occupants, equipment, lights, mechanical ventilation, heating and cooling devices, air leakage, heat bridge losses and surface transmission
Control signals: window opening and shading, signals for secondary and primary systems
Building occupancy: for each zone or the whole building
Heat and mass transfer: detailed heat fluxes of surfaces and air streams
Indoor air quality: CO2-content of indoor air and moisture levels, air change rate
Comfort indices: operative temperature, surface temperatures, PPD and PMV, unmet load hours, EN15251 comfort results and daylight availability
Energy demand: total energy separated by application, including energy costs based on time-dependent prices, primary energy results and CO2 emission
References
Solar architecture
Building engineering software
Simulation software
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40195412
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SolydXK
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SolydXK
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SolydXK is a Dutch Linux distribution based on Debian. It aims to be simple to use, providing an environment that is stable, secure, and ideal for small businesses, non-profit organizations and home users.
SolydXK includes proprietary software such as Adobe Flash, Steam and optional closed-source drivers to provide initial multimedia usage and gaming on Linux.
History
SolydXK originated in 2012 as an unofficial version of "Linux Mint Debian edition" (LMDE) using the KDE Plasma 4 workspaces.
In November 2012, Linux Mint ceased maintaining both the KDE and Xfce versions of LMDE. SolydXK was started to support these two desktop environments. "SolydX" refers to the Xfce version, while "SolydK" refers to the KDE version. The project name is an amalgam of the two names.
Features
The two core editions for SolydXK, SolydX and SolydK, are officially available in 64-bit Live CDs with installers.
The distribution installs with common software such as Firefox, LibreOffice, XChat/Quassel, Pidgin/Kopete, and GIMP for a variety of common tasks. Both editions also provide Steam and PlayOnLinux installed for gaming, and a driver manager to easily enable the best gaming performance.
SolydXK, originally based on Debian testing, since January 2015 is built on Debian Stable.
There are also Community Editions, not officially tested nor supported by the SolydXK team. Examples are the SolydXK Enthusiast's Edition - versions of SolydX and SolydK that follow Debian testing, the 32-bit community editions and the version for Raspberry Pi 3.
Version history
References
External links
SolydXK on Twitter
SolydXK on OpenSourceFeed Gallery
Computer-related introductions in 2013
2013 software
Debian-based distributions
X86-64 Linux distributions
Linux distributions
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34293791
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO/IEC%20JTC%201/SC%2036
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ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 36
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ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 36 Information Technology for Learning, Education and Training is a standardization subcommittee (SC), which is part of the Joint Technical Committee ISO/IEC JTC 1 of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), that develops and facilitates standards within the field of information technology (IT) for learning, education and training (LET). ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 36 was established at the November 1999 ISO/IEC JTC 1 plenary in Seoul, Korea. The subcommittee held its first plenary meeting in March 2000 in London, United Kingdom. The international secretariat of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 36 is the Korean Agency for Technology and Standards (KATS), located in the Republic of Korea.
Scope
The scope of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 36 is “Standardization in the field of information technologies for learning, education, and training (ITLET) to support individuals, groups, or organizations, and to enable interoperability and reusability of resources and tools.”
The following exclusions apply to the ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 36 scope:
ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 36 shall not create standards or technical reports that define educational standards, cultural conventions, learning objectives, or specific learning content.
In the area of work of this subcommittee, standards and technical reports will not duplicate work done by other ISO or IEC technical committees, subcommittees, or working groups with respect to their component, specialty, or domain. Instead, when appropriate, normative or informative references to other standards shall be included. Examples include documents on special topics such as multimedia, web content, cultural adaptation, and security.
The Chairperson and Committee Manager of SC36
<Chairperson>
Mr. Frank Farance: 1999 – 2005
Dr. Bruce Peoples: 2005 – 2012
Mr. Erlend Overby: 2013 – 2021
Dr. Jon Mason: 2022 – 2024
<Committee Manager>
United States: 1999 – 2003
United Kingdom: 2004 – 2007
Republic of Korea: 2008 – present
Structure
ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 36 is made up of 5 Working Groups (WGs), 3 Advisory Groups (AG) and 1 Ad-Hoc Group(AHG). Each Working Group carries out specific tasks in standards development within the field of ITLET, where the focus of each working group is described in the group’s terms of reference. The Working Groups of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 36 are:
Collaborations
ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 36 works in close collaboration with a number of other organizations or subcommittees, both internal and external to ISO or IEC, in order to avoid conflicting or duplicative work.
Organizations internal to ISO or IEC that collaborate with or are in liaison to ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 36 include:
ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 17, Cards and personal identification
ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 27, IT Security techniques
ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 32, Data management and interchange
ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 34, Document description and processing languages
ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 35, User interfaces
ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 39, Sustainability for and by information technology
ISO/TC 37, Terminology and other language and content resources
ISO/TC 46, Information and documentation
ISO/TC 176, Quality management and quality assurance
ISO/TC 215, Health informatics
ISO/TC 232, Learning services outside formal education
ISO/PC 288, Educational organizations management systems – Requirements with guidance for use
ISO/PC 288/WG1, Educational organizations management systems
Organizations external to ISO or IEC that collaborate with, or are in liaison to, ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 36 include:
<Current in 2021>
Agence universitaire de la Francophonie (AUF)
International Information Centre for Terminology(Infoterm)
IEEE LTSC, Learning Technology Standards Committee
<Past>
Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL)
Aviation Industry Computer-Based Training Committee (AICC)
Cartago Alliance
CEN TC 353, Information and Communication Technologies for Learning, Education and Training
Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI)
IMS Global Learning Consortium
International Federation for Learning, Education, and Training Systems Interoperability (LETSI)
International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF)
W3C:Indie UI, W3C Web Accessibility Independent User Interface
Schema.org
Member countries
Countries pay a fee to ISO to be members of subcommittees.
The 20 "P" (participating) members of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 36 are: Australia (SA), Canada (SCC), China (SAC), Finland (SFS), France (AFNOR), Germany (DIN), India (BIS), Italy (UNI), Japan (JISC), Kazakhstan(KAZMEST), Republic of Korea (KATS), Netherlands (NEN), Norway (SN), Portugal (IPQ), Russian Federation (GOST R), Slovakia (SOSMT), South Africa (SABS), Spain (AENOR), Ukraine (DSTU), United Kingdom (BSI).
The 27 "O" (observer) members of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 36 are: Algeria (IANOR), Argentina (IRAM), Austria (ASI), Belgium (NBN), Bosnia and Herzegovina (BAS), Colombia (ICONTEC), Czech Republic (UNMZ), Ethiopia(ESA), Ghana (GSA), Greece(NQIS ELOT), Hong Kong (ITCHKSAR), Hungary (MSZT), Indonesia (BSN), Iran, Islamic Republic of (ISIRI), Ireland (NSAI), Kenya (KEBS), New Zealand (SNZ), Pakistan (PSQCA), Philippines(BPS), Romania (ASRO), Saudi Arabia (SASO), Serbia (ISS), Sweden (SIS), Switzerland (SNV), Tunisia (INNORPI), Turkey (TSE). Uganda (UNBS)
※ Note: Name of Country(Name of National Body)
Published standards
As of 2022, ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 36 has 55 published standards within the field of Information technology for learning, education and training, including:
Meetings
Since the 1999-11 JTC1 Plenary in Seoul, SC36 holds plenary meetings every 6 months in the months of March and September until 2011, and has held plenary meetings every 1 year in the months of June since 2012.
* (Webex) has been counted since 2013
See also
ISO/IEC JTC1
List of ISO Standards
Korean Agency for Technology and Standards
International Organization for Standardization
International Electrotechnical Commission
References
External links
ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 36 page at ISO
036
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170381
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReplayTV
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ReplayTV
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ReplayTV was a brand of digital video recorder (DVR), a term synonymous with personal video recorder (PVR). It is a consumer video device which allows users to capture television programming to internal hard disk storage for later viewing (and time shifting). The first ReplayTV model was introduced in January 1999 during the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, at the same time as a competing DVR model from rival company TiVo. After the sale of assets to DirecTV, ReplayTV's only ongoing activity was maintenance of the electronic program guide service by D&M Holdings, which was to be discontinued on July 31, 2011. However, on July 29, 2011, a notice was placed on the ReplayTV website stating that service would be continued without interruption for lifetime subscribers and monthly subscribers may have a short interruption in service. On September 2, 2011, programming contact through the ReplayTV dialup system was terminated without any update message being sent to subscribers or posted on replaytv.com. DNNA filed for bankruptcy on July 20, 2015. EPG data from their servers ran out on July 15, 2015. Even with the end of support from DNNA, third-party solutions are available to provide Electronic Program Guide data to Replays.
History
ReplayTV was founded in 1997. Initial sales to consumers were launched in April 1999, while volume production and sales did not begin until later in 2000. ReplayTV was purchased by SONICblue in 2001.
On March 23, 2003, SONICblue filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and on April 16 sold most of its assets, including ReplayTV, to the Japanese electronics giant D&M Holdings. SONICblue was fighting a copyright infringement suit over the ReplayTV's ability to skip commercials when it filed for bankruptcy.
On December 19, 2005, Digital Networks North America announced that it was exiting the hardware business as soon as current inventory was sold out. ReplayTV would then concentrate on PC software sales of its DVR technology in a partnership with Hauppauge Computer Works, a manufacturer of television cards for PCs.
On December 13, 2007, D&M Holdings sold most of the assets of ReplayTV to DirecTV. It still provided electronic program guide service to existing customers, using content from Tribune Media Services. The domains replay.com, replaytv.com, and replaytv.net used by the ReplayTV units to access the electronic program guide are owned by DirecTV.
On June 15, 2011, D&M Holdings announced it was permanently discontinuing the ReplayTV electronic program guide service:"The ReplayTV Electronic Programming Guide (EPG) Service will be permanently discontinued on July 31, 2011. After this date, owners of ReplayTV DVR units will still be able to manually record analog TV programs, but will not have the benefit of access to the interactive program guide. Effective immediately, monthly billing for the ReplayTV service to remaining customers has been suspended."
On June 14, 2011, D&M announced they would continue providing guide service. The following was appearing on the ReplayTV website:Important Announcement. After the announced shutdown of the ReplayTV programming guide service, we have had many positive, enthusiastic comments about the ReplayTV DVR products and services. In light of this response, ReplayTV and its parent company Digital Networks North America, Inc. have decided to continue the electronic programming guide service pursuant to the terms of your service activation agreement. We thank you very much for all of your support and enthusiasm over the many years these products have been sold.
Around July 4, 2015, new guide data was not being sent to ReplayTV units. The last day of guide data was July 15. ReplayTV said they were working on the problem, although it was never fixed. It is assumed this problem is a result of the bankruptcy.
Bankruptcy
On July 20, 2015, ReplayTV.com had this posting
Digital Networks North America, Inc. filed for chapter 7 bankruptcy relief with the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware on July 20, 2015 and has ceased all business operations. A chapter 7 trustee will be appointed by the Bankruptcy Court to oversee the administration and liquidation of the bankruptcy estate for Digital Networks North America, Inc. Creditors will receive a notice of the bankruptcy filing by mail.
Bankruptcy confirmed.
Legal battle
On October 31, 2001, numerous TV companies, including the three major networks, filed a lawsuit against SONICblue, which at the time marketed the ReplayTV device. They alleged that the ReplayTV 4000 series was part of an “unlawful scheme” that “attacks the fundamental economic underpinnings of free television and basic nonbroadcast services” according to the lawsuit.
The TV industry attacked ReplayTV for two reasons:
The machines enabled people to record television programs and then watch them without commercials via the optional "Commercial Advance" feature. This had the potential to undercut advertising revenues which the lawsuit called "the lifeblood of most television channels".
The machines allowed users to share programs they have recorded with others via the "Send Show" feature, which transmits digital copies of shows not only on a local network, but also over the Internet to other ReplayTV owners, thereby enabling people who had not paid for premium channels to watch premium content for free.
Both the “Commercial Advance” and the “Send Show” features were alleged to violate U.S. copyright and other federal and state laws, according to the TV industry plaintiffs, who wanted sales of the ReplayTV 4000 devices—slated for shipment on Nov. 15, 2001—stopped.
The lawsuit against SONICblue was stayed when the company filed for bankruptcy protection in March 2003. In August 2003, the ReplayTV 5500 series went on sale without the Autoskip and Send Show features though the features continued to be enabled on the earlier models.
Operation
ReplayTV service is only available in the United States via its subscription program. The hardware is no longer sold and the subscription service was ended in June 2011. The subscriptions service's feature of searchable program guides will end effective July 31, 2011. After this date, owners of ReplayTV DVR units will still be able to manually record analog TV programs, but will not have the benefit of access to the interactive program guide. Older units were only able to accomplish this download via a dial-up connection. Later models were also capable of downloading program guides via the user's existing internet connection (broadband or DSL), as well as via the dialup connection.
Like other DVRs, ReplayTV allows users to record television programs. The subscription service was operated on a monthly fee, or one time payment, lifetime subscription. Each individual unit required a separate subscription. Older units, like the 2000 and 3000 series, did not require monthly subscription fees, and those units that are still in operation continue to receive programming data without a subscription until July 31, 2011. The price of the original ReplayTV units was higher than comparable TiVo units by approximately the same amount as TiVo's lifetime subscription, so a lifetime subscription was essentially priced into the units.
Some ReplayTV models allow automatic commercial skipping with no user intervention. It scanned for the black frames local television stations used to insert commercials.
Hardware and features
The "4000 Series" and "5000 Series" ReplayTV units have Ethernet connections that allow the user to stream shows to another similar ReplayTV unit within the same local network, transfer shows to another similar ReplayTV unit (either on the local network or across the Internet) or to a personal computer. This capability enables users to move recorded programs to PCs using third-party programs. These units also have the capability to automatically skip commercial advertisements during playback (known as "Commercial Advance", which was trademarked by the original company). This commercial advance feature used several heuristics to detect commercials and had an accuracy of about 90 to 95 percent. Recording of television programs could be accomplished either manually, or through use of the program guide using various criteria. Shows to be recorded could also be described via thematic categories.
The most recent "5500 Series" ReplayTV units had the ability to stream shows to another similar ReplayTV unit within the same local network, but when loaded with up-to-date system software they can no longer transfer shows to other ReplayTV units across the Internet. The "5500 Series" units have also had the automatic commercial advance feature removed in favor of a manual "Show|Nav" feature. The units are otherwise identical to the "5000 Series" units. System software releases prior to version 5.1 build 144 retain the original features even in 5500-series hardware devices, but the software is automatically updated to 5.1 build 144 via through-the-web software updates.
The "4000 Series", "5000 Series" and "5500 Series" ReplayTV units stored the content using MPEG2.
Video: mpeg2video, yuv420p, 720x480, 29.97 frame/s, 7413 kbit/s
Audio: mp2, 48000 Hz, stereo, 192 kbit/s
The operating system used on the "4000 Series", "5000 Series" and "5500 Series" was Vxworks. Several versions of the software were released, some older versions supported commercial advance even on newer units.
Other features
Beginning with the earliest models, ReplayTV units had an undocumented "random access skip" feature. While playing a recorded program, the user could enter a number from the remote control, then press the QuickSkip button to advance that number of minutes forward in the program, or press the "Skip Back" button to go back that number of minutes. If no number was entered, the skip buttons would advance 30 seconds or retreat ten seconds, respectively. This feature spanned several models of ReplayTV. Users could also type a number followed by pressing Jump to go to that exact minute in the recording.
Models
The first models released were the 2000 series from ReplayTV (the company name at that time). In 1999, the price of the ReplayTV 2001 was $995 and it
provided 6 hours of video storage. The ReplayTV model 2004 was $1,995 and provided 26 hours. Each of these models included a lifetime offer of
program guide service. The ReplayTV 2020 model, offering 20 hours of recording storage, was also released in 1999 at a cost of $699. It replaced the previously released models.
In the year 2000 the 3000-series models were released, as well as an equivalent "ShowStopper" model branded by Panasonic.
This was followed by the 4000 line in the fall of 2001. The 4000-series models were the first to include an ethernet port, and to support the
sharing of shows between different units either locally (using video streaming) or over the Internet (by duplicating the content).
In 2002 the 4500-series was released. These had hardware that was much like the 4000-series, but they could be purchased without lifetime program guide service for a substantially reduced price. All subsequent models also unbundled the guide service from the hardware. Units without lifetime activation become
almost completely unusable if the monthly activation is terminated.
2005 products with list prices (no longer available):
ReplayTV RTV5504 40-Hour Digital Video Recorder ($149.99)
ReplayTV RTV5508 80-Hour Digital Video Recorder ($299.99)
ReplayTV RTV5516 160-Hour Digital Video Recorder ($449.99)
ReplayTV RTV5532 320-Hour Digital Video Recorder ($799.99)
The ReplayTV 5000 series included a JP1 remote which could be reprogrammed or upgraded using free software.
Subscription
The ReplayTV subscription has two different options, a monthly recurring charge of $12.95, or one-time lifetime activation fee of $299. Subscriptions for additional units were $6.95 a month. PC edition customers are charged $20 per year and come with one year of service.
On June 15, 2011, ReplayTV announced that it would be permanently discontinuing its Electronic Programming Guide Service (the channel guide) on July 31, 2011. "After this day, your ReplayTV DVR will still be able to manually record analog TV programs, but will not have the benefit of access to the interactive program guide. All billing for your service has been suspended."
Their website states the reasoning as being that the industry conversion to HDTV is complete, and customers should contact their local providers for options.
However, there may be options to keep service alive after official support ends using the WiRNS application as all units should be permanently activated if they contact ReplayTV servers before July 31, 2011.
On July 29, 2011, D&M Holdings reversed their previous decision and will continue the ReplayTV electronic program guide service. "For monthly subscribers of the ReplayTV service, we are exploring options by which you may continue paying for and receiving such service going forward. We apologize in advance should there be any minor disruptions in the ReplayTV service while we implement the continuation of the programming guide. Thank you. ReplayTV"
On or around July 4, 2015, DirectTV apparently turned off their guide servers at production.replaytv.net. On July 15, 2015, the last guide data disappeared from ReplayTV units; it is doubtful that the guide data will return. However, alternatives exist which can provide ReplayTVs with guide data for as long as they (the Replay units themselves) are functional. Three such options are LaHO, WiRNS and Perc Data.
See also
Commercial skipping
References
External links
(dead)
Digital video recorders
Interactive television
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56421131
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List%20of%20computer%20hardware%20manufacturers%20in%20the%20Soviet%20Union
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List of computer hardware manufacturers in the Soviet Union
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This is a list of computer hardware manufacturers in the Soviet Union:
List
Major Soviet hardware manufacturers and ministry affiliations in 1988:
Ministry of the Electronics Industry
Elka Plant
Leningrad Svetlana Association
Exiton Plant in Pavlovskiy Posad (завод «Экситон»)
Voronezh Elektronika Association (НПО «Электроника»)
Zelenograd Complex
Ministry of Instrument Making
V. I. Lenin Kiev Elektronmash Production Association (Киевское производственное объединение «Электронмаш» им. В. И. Ленина)
Kiev Plant of Computers and Electronic Control Machines (VUM) (Киевский завод вычислительных и управляющих машин - ВУМ)
Kishinev Calculating Machine Plant
Kursk Calculating Machines Plant
Leningrad Electrical Machines Plant (Ленинградский Электромашиностроительный Завод)
Livny Experimental Factory of Computer Graphics (Ливенский завод средств машинной графики)
Moscow Elektronmash Scientific Production Association
Orel Computer Machines Plant
Ryazan Order of Lenin Factory of Calculating Analytical Machinery
Impulse Severodonetsk Scientific Production Association (Северодонецкое научно-производственное объединение «Импульс»)
Smolensk Calculating Machine Factory
Taurage Calculating Machine Assemblies Plant (Tauragės skaičiavimo mašinų elementų gamykla)
Tbilisi Control Computer Works
Lenin Vilnius Computer Factory
Vilnius Sigma Association
Vinnytsia Terminal Plant (Завод «Терминал»)
Ministry of Radio Technology
Kazan Computer Plant (Казанский завод ЭВМ)
Minsk Computer Technology Production Corporation (Минское производственное объединение вычислительной техники)
Moscow Calculating Machines Plant (SAM; Московский завод счётно-аналитических машин)
Moscow Radio Plant (Московский Радиозавод)
Penza Computer Work (Завод вычислительных электронных машин)
Yerevan Electronics Plant (Ереванский завод "Электрон")
See also
List of computer hardware manufacturers
References
Soviet
Soviet computer hardware
Soviet computer hardware
Soviet computer hardware
Soviet computer hardware
Computer hardware manufacturers
Computer hardware
Computing in the Soviet Union
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nethergate
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Nethergate
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Nethergate is a computer-based historical fantasy role-playing game published by Spiderweb Software for the Macintosh and Microsoft Windows platforms. The game was released in 1998 by Jeff Vogel, and was Spiderweb Software's first game to feature a 45° isometric viewing angle. Nethergate offers players the choice to play on either side of the story, as Celts or Romans. The game's plot allows for several endings and many side quests, which accompany the main story. Spiderweb Software released a remake called Nethergate Resurrection in May 2007.
Plot
The player begins with a party of four characters, who are either "A small band of Roman Soldiers sent to the Shadowvale to complete a mysterious mission", or a "Band of Celtic warriors told by your chief to go to the village of Nethergate for mysterious reasons". Shadowvale is an isolated valley controlled by the Brigantes, and the game's events take place during the time of Boudica's rebellion in AD 60/61. The linear missions of the Romans and the Celts complement each other to a certain extent. The Romans are first faced with retrieving a satchel with vital information for Shadow Valley Fort from a nearby mine infested with Goblins, while the Celts' first mission is to acquire a bronze token from a nearby pit in which Goblins have made their fortification. From there, both sides make their way to the house of the Three Crones, who are very similar to the Three Fates of Greek mythology. The Crones aid the player if they have a Roman party and give tasks to accomplish, but imprison them if the player has a Celtic party.
The next location is a ruined Faerie hall, in which the party acquires a contract between the Sidhe and the village of Nethergate, explaining that the party must retrieve three magical items: a Fomorian's Stone Skull, The Eye of Cathrac, and the Crown of Annwn. Once these items have been acquired, the party journeys to the Spire of Ages, where the Celts aid the Faerie leader in escaping this world, while the Romans attempt to interrupt him. In the "best" ending for both sides, Shadow Valley Fort is destroyed, the village of Nethergate is evacuated, and the enchanted weapons meant for the Celts are destroyed.
Gameplay
Nethergate gameplay uses an isometric view, and is somewhat intermediate between that of Blades of Exile and Avernum, as it combines the pseudo-3D of Avernum with a battle and conversation system resembling Blades of Exile. Romans and Celts have unique traits for their statistics. Romans have better armour and weapons than Celts, but Celts have better magic, potion-making, and general skills for the wilderness.
Nethergate is unique among Spiderweb Software games in being the only game to use a spell system consisting of Spell Circles, instead of the "Mage" and "Priest" spell system featured in the Blades of Exile and Avernum series. Certain Circles have skill restrictions on them based on the character's level of Druidism, skill in other circles, and Faction. These are:
Health Circle – available to Celts and Romans; can only be as high as Druidism skill; contains spells used for healing and curing characters
War Circle – available to Celts and Romans; can only be as high as Druidism skill; contains spells used for shielding and boosting the player's characters, as well as causing harm to enemies
Beast Circle – available to Celts at the start of the game, but Romans must earn it by completing a quest; may only be as high as War Circle skill for Celts, with a fixed value for Romans; contains spells for summoning creatures
Craft Circle – available to Celts at the start of the game, but Romans must earn it by completing a quest; may only be as high as the War Circle skill for Celts, with a fixed value for Romans; contains spells for aiding in travel around the game
Spirit Circle – available to Celts at the start of the game, but Romans must find it; may only be as high as the lower of Craft or Beast Circle as Celts, with a fixed value for Romans; contains spells for damaging magical creatures and blocks
Nether Circle – a grouping of five spells which may only be used by the Celts; also the most powerful and hard-to-find spells.
Reception
Nethergate was reviewed in 2000 in Dragon #273 in the "Silicon Sorcery" column.
The editors of Computer Games Strategy Plus nominated Nethergate for their 1999 "Role-Playing Game of the Year" award, which ultimately went to Planescape: Torment. They wrote of Nethergate: "Take an old-fashioned role-playing game and add a full-blown editor and voila, instant gameplay. And it gives you more gameplay for your gaming dollar than most commercial games".
Nethergate: Resurrection
A revamped version of Nethergate titled Nethergate: Resurrection was released for Macintosh on May 21, 2007, with the Windows version released on August 9. Changes to the game include:
Use of the Blades of Avernum game engine, which also provides a quest log, a nicer automap, and improved graphical features.
Two new dungeons, several new quests, and many new magic items.
The game is universal on Intel Macintosh and compatible with Windows Vista.
Saved games from Nethergate are not compatible with Nethergate: Resurrection. Customers who had purchased the original game also received a thirteen-dollar discount.
References
External links
Spiderweb Software Homepage
1998 video games
Fiction set in Roman Britain
Indie video games
Classic Mac OS games
Video games set in the Roman Empire
Spiderweb Software games
Video games developed in the United States
Video games with isometric graphics
Windows games
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45268288
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenStudio
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OpenStudio
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OpenStudio is a suite of free and open-source software applications for building energy analysis used in building information modeling. OpenStudio applications run on Microsoft Windows, Macintosh, and Linux platforms. Its primary application is a plugin for proprietary SketchUp, that enables engineers to view and edit 3D models for EnergyPlus simulation software.
OpenStudio was first released in April 2008 by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, a part of the U.S. Department of Energy. NREL reports an average of 700 OpenStudio downloads per month. Google's strategist for SketchUp, remarked that "OpenStudio is lauded around our office as one of the most complicated plug-ins ever written for SketchUp".
OpenStudio was designed to work with SketchUp, because many architects already use SketchUp for building designs. The integration allows architects to analyze a design's energy performance before beginning construction.
The first private organization selected by NREL to conduct OpenStudio courses was Performance Systems Development, a New York-based training institute. Courses will be conducted for building professionals, software developers, and utility administrators.
Harshul Singhal and Chris Balbach teaches OpenStudio to the engineers on regular basis under this contract. From May 2018, Harshul Singhal started teaching OpenStudio through The Energy Simulation Academy (TESA) which is another private organization selected by NREL to conduct such training.
Features
OpenStudio includes a Sketchup Plug-in and other associated applications:
The Sketchup Plug-in allows users to create 3D geometry needed for EnergyPlus using the existing drawing tools.
RunManager manages simulations and workflows and gives users access to the output files through a graphical interface.
ResultsViewer enables browsing, plotting, and comparing EnergyPlus output data, especially time series.
Sketchup Plugin
The OpenStudio Sketchup Plug-in allows users to use the standard SketchUp tools to create and edit EnergyPlus zones and surfaces. It allows SketchUp to view EnergyPlus input files in 3D. The plug-in allows users to mix EnergyPlus simulation content with decorative content.
The plug-in adds the building energy simulation capabilities of EnergyPlus to the SketchUp environment. Users can launch an EnergyPlus simulation of the model and view the results without leaving SketchUp.
The Plug-in allows engineers to:
Create and edit EnergyPlus zones and surfaces
Launch EnergyPlus and view the results without leaving SketchUp
Match interzone surface boundary conditions
Search for surfaces and subsurfaces by object name
Add internal gains and simple outdoor air for load calculations
Add the ideal HVAC system for load calculations
Set and change default constructions
Add daylighting controls and illuminance map
See also
Building information modeling
SketchUp
Trimble Navigation
References
OpenStudio Online Training, The Energy Simulation Academy
External links
OpenStudio Suite, U.S. DOE
OpenStudio Plug-in, U.S. DOE
Project homepage
GitHub project
OpenStudio Online Training
2008 software
Building information modeling
Cross-platform free software
Free computer-aided design software
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59726366
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mermaids%20%28charity%29
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Mermaids (charity)
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Mermaids is a British charity and advocacy organisation that supports gender variant and transgender youth. They also provide inclusion and diversity training.
Formation
Mermaids was founded in 1995 by a group of parents of gender nonconforming children, originally acting as a small helpline. They aim to provide support for transgender youths up to 20 years of age. It became a Charitable incorporated organisation in 2015.
National Lottery funding
In December 2018, the charity was designated £500,000 in funding by the National Lottery. However, the funding was put under review after criticism of the charity, including by Irish comedy writer Graham Linehan, who created a post on Mumsnet calling for members of the forum to email their concerns to the National Lottery. In response to this, on 18 January 2019, YouTuber Hbomberguy began a livestream attempting to 101% complete the video game Donkey Kong 64, with a goal of $500. The stream became popular and raised over $350,000 USD for Mermaids. Among other guests, the stream featured an appearance by American politician Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. On 19 February 2019, the National Lottery concluded its review into the charity and announced that it would follow through with the promised donation, stating that "did not find any grounds to withhold the grant.".
Harassment of staff
In 2017, Mermaids reported that it and its volunteers had been the victims of online harassment, leading to concerns by parents whose children are supported by the organisation. CEO Green stated that she had been falsely accused of forcibly castrating her transgender daughter, Jackie. Her daughter maintained that "If my mum had not helped me, I would not be here today" and transgender journalist Paris Lees wrote: "Susie Green is saving lives and I wish my parents had known about Mermaids when I was growing up". Green raised concerns "that the social media backlash may put people off coming to the charity for help."
Training
Writing in The Daily Telegraph, Kim Thomas said that some campaigners, including Safe Schools Alliance and Transgender Trend, have criticised some resources used by Mermaids in trainings on the grounds that they reinforce rigid gender roles, and that they might cause non-conforming children to identify as transgender. On the other hand, Attitude quoted Kate Lister as saying that the resource is "a visual representation of gender identifying markers... At no point does anyone suggest children who act in ways that do not conform to a gender are trans. At no point does anyone suggest gay children are trans." Likewise Mermaids released a statement that they have never encouraged teachers "to state that 'tomboys' should be transgender", and that they do not provide classroom talks or lesson materials for schools, contrary to what had been reported in some newspapers.
Media
The 2018 ITV drama series Butterfly, about a young transgender girl, was substantially informed by Mermaids and its CEO, Susie Green, a consultant on the series who worked with creator Tony Marchant. Marchant and cast members Emmett J. Scanlan and Anna Friel also met families involved with Mermaids to inform their creative processes.
In July 2020, the charity complained that the BBC had no longer included links to themselves on BBC LGBT advice pages, alongside two other organisations. The BBC said that Mermaids was removed after complaints were made about the information it provided, and for impartiality reasons.
Government policy
The charity criticised the UK Government's decision to disband the LGBT advisory board without a planned replacement in April 2021, describing the move as "very concerning".
Challenge to LGB Alliance charitable status
In June 2021, Mermaids along with other charities including Stonewall began raising funds to appeal the awarding of charitable status to LGB Alliance, describing the latter group's activities as "denigrating trans people". The appeal is expected to be heard between March and May 2022, although a final date has not been set.
Data breach
In June 2019, The Times revealed that they had discovered a data breach by Mermaids in which confidential emails had been made readily available through their website. The Times stated that these included names of transgender children and their parents, together with contact details and intimate medical information. The newspaper reported that there were internal emails from the trustees that criticised the leadership by Susie Green, as well as criticism from parents. Mermaids issued a press release on the same day, which acknowledged that a data breach had occurred, and that they had informed the Information Commissioner's Office and had corrected the breach. The press release stated that the breach was limited to internal emails and that no emails to and from families were part of the information leaked; The Times disputed this. After an investigation, Mermaids were required to pay a £25,000 fine.
References
External links
1995 establishments in the United Kingdom
Crisis hotlines
LGBT charities
LGBT health organizations
LGBT political advocacy groups in the United Kingdom
Organizations established in 1995
Health charities in the United Kingdom
Transgender organisations in the United Kingdom
LGBT youth organisations based in the United Kingdom
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43904108
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cities%3A%20Skylines
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Cities: Skylines
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Cities: Skylines is a 2015 city-building game developed by Colossal Order and published by Paradox Interactive. The game is a single-player open-ended city-building simulation. Players engage in urban planning by controlling zoning, road placement, taxation, public services, and public transportation of an area. Players work to maintain various elements of the city, including its budget, health, employment, and pollution levels. Players are also able to maintain a city in a sandbox mode, which provides more creative freedom for the player.
Cities: Skylines is a progression of development from Colossal Order's previous Cities in Motion titles, which focused on designing effective transportation systems. While the developers felt they had the technical expertise to expand to a full city simulation game, their publisher Paradox held off on the idea, fearing the market dominance of SimCity. After the critical failure of the 2013 SimCity game, however, Paradox greenlit the title. The developer's goal was to create a game engine capable of simulating the daily routines of nearly a million unique citizens, while presenting this to the player in a simple way, allowing the player to easily understand various problems in their city's design. This includes realistic traffic congestion, and the effects of congestion on city services and districts. Since the game's release, various expansions and other DLC have been released for the game. The game also has built-in support for user-generated content.
The game was first released for the Windows, macOS, and Linux operating systems in March 2015, with ports to the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 game consoles being released in 2017 and for the Nintendo Switch in September 2018 developed by Tantalus Media. The game received favourable reviews from critics, and was a commercial success, with more than six million copies sold on all platforms as of March 2019.
Gameplay
The player starts with a plot of land – equivalent to a area – along with an interchange exit from a nearby highway, as well as a starting amount of in-game money. The player proceeds to add roads and residential, industrial, and commercial zones and basic services like power, water, and sewage, to encourage residents to move in and supply them with jobs.
As the city grows beyond certain population tiers, the player unlocks new city improvements, including schools, fire stations, police stations, health care facilities and waste management systems, tax and government edicts, mass transit systems, and other features for managing the city. One such feature enables the player to designate parts of their city as districts. Each district can be configured by the player to restrict the types of developments permitted or to enforce specific regulations within the district's bounds, such as only allowing for industrial sectors devoted to agriculture, offering free public transportation to residents of the district to reduce traffic, raising or reducing taxes for the various classes of development, or, with the Green Cities DLC, imposing a toll for fossil-fuel vehicles entering a district while excluding hybrid and electric vehicles, akin to some forms of congestion pricing.
Buildings in the city have various development levels that are met by improving the local area, with higher levels providing more benefits to the city. For example, a commercial store will increase in level if nearby residents are more educated, which in turn will allow it to hire more employees and increase tax revenue for the city. When the player has accumulated enough residents and money, they can purchase neighbouring plots of land, each equivalent in size to the starting land area, allowing them to build up eight additional parcels out of 25 within a area. The parcel limitation is to allow the game to run across the widest range of personal computers, but players can use Steam Workshop modifications to open not only all of the game's standard 25-tile building area, but the entire map (81 tiles, ).
The game also features a robust transportation system based on Colossal Order's previous Cities in Motion, allowing the player to plan out effective public transportation for the city in order to reduce traffic congestion and generate transit revenue. Roads can be built straight or free-form, and the grid used for zoning adapts to the shape of the adjacent roads; cities need not follow a square grid plan. Roads of varying widths (up to major freeways) accommodate different traffic volumes, and variant road types (for example, avenues lined with trees or highways with sound barriers) offer reduced noise pollution or increased property values in the surrounding area at an increased cost to the player. The road system can be augmented with various forms of public transportation such as buses, taxis, trams, elevated trains, ferries, and subway systems. Another DLC, "Sunset Harbour" allows the building of fishing ports and introduces new policies for fishing.
Modding, via the addition of user-generated content such as buildings or vehicles, is supported in Cities: Skylines through the Steam Workshop. The creation of an active content-generating community was stated as an explicit design goal. The game includes several pre-made terrains to build on, and also includes a map editor to allow users to create their own maps, including the use of real-world geographic features. Mods are also available to affect core gameplay elements; pre-packaged mods include the ability to bypass the aforementioned population tier unlock system, unlimited funds, and a higher difficulty setting.
Development
Finnish developer Colossal Order, a thirteen-person studio at the time Cities: Skylines was released, had established its reputation with the Cities in Motion series, which primarily dealt with constructing transportation systems in pre-defined cities. They wanted to move from this into a larger city simulation like the SimCity franchise, and in preparation, developed Cities in Motion 2 using the Unity game engine to assure they had the capability to develop this larger effort. They pitched their ideas to their publisher, Paradox Interactive, but these initial pitches were focused on a political angle of managing a city rather than planning of it; the player would have been mayor of the city and set edicts and regulations to help their city grow. Paradox felt that these ideas did not present a strong enough case as to go up against the well-established SimCity, and had Colossal Order revise their approach.
The situation changed when the 2013 version of SimCity was released, and was critically panned due to several issues. Having gone back and forth with Colossal Order on the city simulation idea, Paradox used the market opportunity to greenlight the development of Cities: Skylines.
One goal of the game was to successfully simulate a city with up to a million residents. To help achieve this goal, the creators decided to simulate citizens navigating the city's roads and transit systems, to make the effects of road design and transit congestion a factor in city design. In this, they found that the growth and success of a city was fundamentally tied to how well the road system was laid out. Colossal Order had already been aware of the importance of road systems from Cities in Motion, and felt that the visual indication of traffic and traffic congestion was an easy-to-comprehend sign of larger problems in a city's design.
To represent traffic, Colossal Order developed a complex system that would determine the fastest route available for a simulated person going to and from work or other points of interest, taking into account available roads and public transit systems nearby. This simulated person would not swerve from their predetermined path unless the route was changed mid-transit, in which case they would be teleported back to their origin instead of calculating a new path from their current location. If the journey required the person to drive, a system of seven rules regulated their behaviour in traffic and how this was shown to the user, such as skipping some rules in locations of the simulation that had little impact while the player was not looking at those locations. This was done to avoid cascading traffic problems if the player adjusted the road system in real time. The city's user-designed transportation system creates a node-based graph used to determine these fastest paths and identifies intersections for these nodes. The system then simulates the movement of individuals on the roads and transit systems, accounting for other traffic on the road and basic physics (such as speed along slopes and the need for vehicles to slow down on tight curves), in order to accurately model traffic jams created by the layout and geography of the system. The developers found that their model accurately demonstrates the efficiency, or lack thereof, of some modern roadway intersections, such as the single-point urban interchange or the diverging diamond interchange.
Release
Cities: Skylines was announced by publisher Paradox Interactive on 14 August 2014 at Gamescom. The announcement trailer emphasized that players could "build [their] dream city," "mod and share online" and "play offline"—the third feature was interpreted by journalists as a jab at SimCity, which initially required an Internet connection during play. Skylines uses an adapted Unity engine with official support for modding. The game was released on 10 March 2015, with Colossal Order committed to continuing to support the game after release.
Tantalus Media assisted Paradox in porting the game to the Xbox One console and for Windows 10, which was released on 21 April 2017. This version includes the After Dark expansion bundled with the game, and supports all downloadable content. Tantalus also ported the game and the After Dark expansion for PlayStation 4, released on 15 August 2017. Both Xbox One and PlayStation 4 versions received physical release versions distributed by Koch Media. Tantalus also ported the game for the Nintendo Switch, which was released on 13 September 2018 and included the "After Dark" and "Snowfall" expansions.
The game was built from the ground up to be friendly to player-created modifications, interfacing with Steam Workshop. Colossal Order found that with Cities in Motion, players had quickly begun to modify the game and expand on it. They wanted to encourage that behaviour in Cities: Skylines, as they recognized that modding ability was important to players and would not devalue the game. Within a month of the game's release, over 20,000 assets had been created in the Workshop, including modifications that enabled a first-person mode and a flying simulator. As of February 2020, over 200,000 user-created items were available. Many of these fans have been able to use crowd-funding services like Patreon to fund their creation efforts. Paradox, recognizing fan-supported mods, started to engage with some of the modders to create official content packs for the game starting in 2016. The first of these was a new set of art deco-inspired buildings created by Matt Crux. Crux received a portion of the sales of the content from Paradox.
An educational version of Cities: Skylines was developed by Colossal Order in conjunction with the group TeacherGaming and released in May 2018. This version includes tutorials and scenarios designed for use in a classroom, as well as a means for teachers to track a student's progress.
Expansion packs
Cities: Skylines offers several DLC expansion packs. Below is a list of major expansion packs provided by the developers. All DLC is developed for the Windows/MacOS/Linux versions first, while release for console versions tends to follow some months later.
Reception
Upon release, Cities: Skylines received "generally positive" reception from critics, according to review aggregator Metacritic. IGN awarded the game a score of 8.5 and said "Don’t expect exciting scenarios or random events, but do expect to be impressed by the scale and many moving parts of this city-builder." Destructoid gave the game a 9 out of 10 with the reviewer stating, "Cities: Skylines not only returns to the ideals which made the city-building genre so popular, it expands them. I enjoyed every minute I played this title, and the planning, building, and nurturing of my city brought forth imagination and creativity from me like few titles ever have." The Escapist gave Cities: Skylines a perfect score, noting its low price point and stated that despite a few minor flaws, it is "the finest city builder in over a decade."
Much critical comparison was drawn between SimCity and Cities: Skylines, with the former seen as the benchmark of the genre by many, including the CEO of Colossal Order. When the game was first announced, journalists perceived it as a competitor to the poorly received, 2013 reboot of SimCity, describing it as "somewhat ... the antidote to Maxis' most recent effort with SimCity" and "out to satisfy where SimCity couldn't." A Eurogamer article touched upon "something of a size mismatch" between developer Colossal Order (then staffed by nine people) and Maxis, and their respective ambitions with Skylines and SimCity. Critics generally considered Cities: Skylines to have superseded SimCity as the leading game of the genre, with The Escapist comparing the two on a variety of factors and finding Cities: Skylines to be the better game in every category considered. However, some critics did consider the absence of disasters and random events to be something that the game lacked in comparison to SimCity, as well as a helpful and substantial tutorial. Disasters were added to the game in the aptly titled Natural Disasters DLC, as well as specialized buildings for detecting and responding to them.
The city government of Stockholm, where Paradox's headquarters are located, used Cities: Skylines to plan a new transportation system. The developer of Bus Simulator 18 planned out the roads and highways of the game's world map through Cities: Skylines before recreating it within their game to provide a seemingly realistic city and its facilities for the game.
In 2020, Rock, Paper, Shotgun rated Cities: Skylines the fourth best management game on the PC.
Sales
Cities: Skylines has been Paradox's best-selling published title: within 24 hours, 250,000 copies had been sold; within a week, 500,000 copies; within a month, one million copies; and on its first anniversary, the game had reached two million copies sold. By its second anniversary, the game had reached 3.5 million sales. In March 2018, it was revealed that the game had sold more than five million copies on the PC platform alone. On the game's fourth anniversary in March 2019, Colossal Order announced that Cities: Skylines had surpassed six million units sold across all platforms.
Notes
References
External links
2015 video games
City-building games
Construction and management simulation games
Linux games
MacOS games
Nintendo Switch games
Paradox Interactive games
PlayStation 4 games
PlayStation 4 Pro enhanced games
PlayStation Network games
Single-player video games
Video games with Steam Workshop support
Video games developed in Finland
Video games scored by Jonne Valtonen
Video games with expansion packs
Windows games
Xbox Cloud Gaming games
Xbox One games
Xbox One X enhanced games
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU%20Libtool
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GNU Libtool
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GNU Libtool in computer programming is a software development tool that is part of the GNU build system. It is a shell script.
It was created to address the software portability problem when compiling shared libraries from source code.
It hides the differences between computing platforms for the commands which compile shared libraries.
It provides a commandline interface that is identical across platforms and it executes the platform's native commands.
Rationale
Different operating systems handle shared libraries differently.
Some platforms do not use shared libraries at all.
It can be difficult to make a software program portable: the C compiler differs from system to system; certain library functions are missing on some systems; header files may have different names.
One way to handle this is to write conditional code, with code blocks selected by means of preprocessor directives (#ifdef); but because of the wide variety of build environments this approach quickly becomes unmanageable.
The GNU build system is designed to address this problem more manageably.
Libtool helps manage the creation of static and dynamic libraries on various Unix-like operating systems.
Libtool accomplishes this by abstracting the library-creation process, hiding differences between various systems (e.g. Linux systems vs. Solaris).
GNU Libtool is designed to simplify the process of compiling a computer program on a new system, by "encapsulating both the platform-specific dependencies, and the user interface, in a single script".
When porting a program to a new system, Libtool is designed so the porter need not read low-level documentation for the shared libraries to be built, rather just run a configure script (or equivalent).
Use
Libtool is used by Autoconf and Automake, two other portability tools in the GNU build system.
It can also be used directly.
Clones and derivatives
Since GNU Libtool was released, other free software projects have created drop-in replacements under different software licenses.
See also
GNU Compiler Collection
GNU build system
References
External links
Autobook homepage
Autotools Tutorial
Avoiding libtool minefields when cross-compiling
Autotools Mythbuster
Compiling tools
Libtool
Free computer libraries
Cross-platform software
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List%20of%20Shakespearean%20characters%20%28L%E2%80%93Z%29
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List of Shakespearean characters (L–Z)
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This article is an index of characters appearing in the plays of William Shakespeare whose names begin with the letters L to Z. Characters with names beginning with the letters A to K may be found here.
NOTE: Characters who exist outside Shakespeare are marked "(hist)" where they are historical, and "(myth)" where they are mythical. Where that annotation is a link (e.g. (hist)), it is a link to the page for the historical or mythical figure. The annotation "(fict)" is only used in entries for the English history plays, and indicates a character who is fictional.
Contents: A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | Y | Sources | Links
L
Lady (title):
Lady Anne (hist) is the widow of Prince Edward, wooed by Richard over the corpse of her late father-in-law (Henry VI) in Richard III.
Lady Bona (hist) is King Lewis's sister-in-law, whose hopes to marry Edward are thwarted, in Henry VI, Part 3.
Lady Capulet is Juliet's mother in Romeo and Juliet.
Lady Faulconbridge (hist) confesses to her son, the Bastard, that Richard the Lionheart, and not her husband, was his true father, in King John.
For Lady Grey see Queen Elizabeth.
Lady Macbeth (hist), wife to the protagonist in Macbeth, is a central character who conspires with her husband to murder Duncan. She later goes mad and dies, possibly through suicide.
Lady Macduff, wife to Macduff, is murdered, with her children, in Macbeth.
Lady Montague is Romeo's mother in Romeo and Juliet.
Lady Mortimer (hist), daughter of Glendower and wife of Edmund Mortimer (1), sings in Welsh in Henry IV, Part 1.
Lady Northumberland (hist) is the Earl of Northumberland's wife, who dissuades him from joining the rebels at Gaultree Forest in Henry IV, Part 2.
Lady Percy (hist) (sometimes called Kate) is Hotspur's wife, later his widow, in Henry IV, Part 1 and Henry IV, Part 2.
An Old Lady (fict) is a rather worldly friend of Anne Bullen, in Henry VIII.
Two ladies attend on the Queen, in Richard II.
Some ladies corroborate Cornelius' report of the Queen's dying words, in Cymbeline.
Several ladies dance in a masque, in Timon of Athens.
For "Lady" in Cymbeline, see Helen.
Laertes is the son of Polonius and the brother of Ophelia in Hamlet. He fights with Hamlet in the famous fencing scene in the final act.
Lafew is a French lord in All's Well That Ends Well.
Lancaster:
John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster (hist) is uncle to King Richard and father to Bolingbroke in Richard II.
Prince John of Lancaster (hist) is the younger brother of Hal in Henry IV, Part 1, Henry IV, Part 2, and Henry V. He is also the Duke of Bedford who is Regent of France in Henry VI, Part 1.
See also Bolingbroke (Henry IV), Henry V, Henry VI, Queen Margaret, Prince Edward and Lady Anne, all of whom are either "Duke of Lancaster" or "of the House of Lancaster".
Titus Lartius and Cominius are leaders of the Roman forces against the Volscians in Coriolanus.
Launce is a clownish servant of Proteus, in The Two Gentlemen of Verona. He and his dog, Crab, have a tendency to steal the show.
Launcelot Gobbo is a clown in The Merchant of Venice, a servant to Shylock, and later to Lorenzo.
Friar Laurence is confessor and confidant to Romeo in Romeo and Juliet. He instigates the unsuccessful plot involving the potion drunk by Juliet.
Lavatch is a clown in the service of the Countess of Rousillion, in All's Well That Ends Well.
Lavinia is the daughter of Titus in Titus Andronicus. She is raped by Chiron and Demetrius, her tongue is cut out and her hands cut off.
For Lawrence see Laurence.
A Lawyer plucks a white rose, in the rose-plucking scene in Henry VI, Part 1.
King Lear (hist) is the central character in King Lear. He divides his kingdom among his two elder daughters, is rejected by them, runs mad, and dies.
Monsieur LeBeau is a courtier in As You Like It.
Monsieur LeFer is a French soldier. Pistol hopes to ransom him in Henry V.
Legate:
A Legate confers Winchester's Cardinalship (apparently obtained through bribery) in Henry VI, Part 1.
See also Pandulph.
Popilius Lena, a senator, briefly frightens the conspirators into a belief that their plot may have been discovered, with his line "I wish your enterprise today might thrive", in Julius Caesar.
Lennox is a thane in Macbeth.
Leonardo is Bassanio's servant in The Merchant of Venice.
Leonato is the governor of Messina, and the father of Hero, in Much Ado About Nothing.
Leonatus:
Posthumus Leonatus (usually just "Posthumus") is the exiled husband of Imogen, in Cymbeline. Persuaded she has been unfaithful, he orders Pisanio to kill her.
Sicilius Leonantus, father of Posthumus in Cymbeline, appears as a ghost, and pleads to Jupiter to resolve Posthumus' troubles.
The mother of Posthumus and two brothers of Posthumus appear as ghosts in Cymbeline, and plead to Jupiter to resolve Posthumus' troubles.
Leonine is ordered to kill Marina, by Dionyza, in Pericles, Prince of Tyre. She is captured by pirates before he can do so.
Leontes is the king of Sicilia in The Winter's Tale. He wrongly suspects his wife, Hermione, of infidelity.
Marcus Aemilius Lepidus (hist) is one of the Triumvirs, the three rulers of Rome after Caesar's death, in Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra.
Lewis:
King Lewis XI of France (hist), insulted by Edward IV's marriage to Lady Grey, allies himself with Warwick and Margaret in Henry VI, Part 3.
Lewis (hist) is the Dauphin in King John. He marries John's niece, Blanche, to cement an alliance with England. Later he leads forces against John.
Note that "Lewis" in Shakespeare is equivalent to an historical "Louis".
Lieutenant:
A Lieutenant (fict) hands over the Duke of Suffolk to Walter Whitmore, and therefore to his death, in Henry VI, Part 2.
A Lieutenant of the Tower of London appears as Henry's jailer in Henry VI, Part 3.
A Volscian Lieutenant to Aufidius questions Aufidius about his alliance in Coriolanus.
A Roman Lieutenant has one half-line in Coriolanus.
See also Brackenbury, who is Lieutenant of the Tower of London in Richard III.
Numerous characters hold (or purport to hold) the rank of Lieutenant, including Michael Cassio and Bardolph.
Caius Ligarius (hist) is one of the conspirators against Caesar in Julius Caesar.
Limoges (hist) is the Duke of Austria in King John. He is intimidated – and eventually beheaded in battle – by the Bastard.
The Bishop of Lincoln (hist) speaks in favour of Henry's divorce, in the trial scene of Henry VIII.
For Lion see Snug.
For Litio see Hortensio, who calls himself Litio in his disguise as a music master.
Lodovico is a kinsman of Brabantio in Othello.
For Friar Lodowick in Measure for Measure see Vincentio.
London:
The Lord Mayor of London (hist) is fooled by Richard and Buckingham, and supports Richard's succession, in Richard III.
The Mayor of London must make peace between the fighting servants of Gloucester and Winchester, in Henry VI, Part 1.
Longaville (hist), with Berowne and Dumaine, is one of the three companions of The King of Navarre in Love's Labour's Lost.
Lord (title):
A Lord initiates the practical joke on Christopher Sly in the induction to The Taming of the Shrew.
A Lord helps with the preparations for the fencing in Hamlet.
A Lord attends on the Princess of France in Love's Labour's Lost.
A Lord conspires with Lennox in Macbeth.
A Lord of Tarsus reports the approach of Pericles' ships, in Pericles, Prince of Tyre.
A Lord of Mytilene, in Pericles, Prince of Tyre, appears in the shipboard reconciliation scene between Pericles and Marina.
A Lord speaks four words ("It is, my lord") in Much Ado About Nothing.
A Lord who fled from the battle between the Romans and the Britons meets Posthumus, in the battle's aftermath, in Cymbeline.
Two Lords, together with Amiens, report Jaques' encounter with the deer in As You Like It.
Two Lords are followers of Duke Frederick in As You Like It.
Two Lords attend on the bragging Cloten, in Cymbeline.
Two Lords, the brothers Dumaine, attend the King of France before departing to the wars in All's Well That Ends Well, and play an important part in the mock-interrogation of Parolles.
Three Lords of Tyre lead a revolt (of sorts) in Pericles, Prince of Tyre: insisting that they will make Helicanus their ruler if Pericles does not return to Tyre within one year.
Three Lords of Pentapolis comment on Pericles' unimpressive appearance prior to the tournament, in Pericles, Prince of Tyre.
Three Lords are among the flatterers, and false friends, of Timon in Timon of Athens.
Four Lords in All's Well That Ends Well (two of whom may be the brothers Dumaine described as "Two Lords", above) attend the King of France after he is cured, and are considered as potential husbands for Helena.
A number of Volscian Lords, three of them speaking roles, appear in the concluding scene of Coriolanus, and witness Coriolanus' death.
The Lord Chamberlain, in Henry VIII (hist & hist) is a conflation of two historical Lords Chamberlain, one of them Lord Sandys, who is also a character in the play.
The Lord Chancellor (hist) – historically Sir Thomas More, although not identified as such in the play – is among the Privy Counsellors who accuse Cranmer in Henry VIII.
The Lord Chief Justice (hist) is a dramatic foil to Falstaff in Henry IV, Part 2.
The Lord Mayor of London (hist) is fooled by Richard and Buckingham, and supports Richard's succession, in Richard III.
For Lord Rivers see Earl Rivers.
"Lord" is a common designation for supernumerary characters at the royal and ducal courts.
Lorenzo is a Christian in The Merchant of Venice who elopes with Shylock's daughter, Jessica.
Lovell:
Lord Lovell (hist) is a henchman of Richard in Richard III.
Sir Thomas Lovell (hist) is a courtier of King Henry, in Henry VIII.
For Louis see Lewis.
Luce:
Luce is a tarty servant to Adriana in The Comedy of Errors.
See also countrywomen.
Lucentio falls in love with Bianca, and disguises himself as a Latin master in order to woo her. They marry at the end of The Taming of the Shrew.
Lucetta is Julia's maid in The Two Gentlemen of Verona.
Luciana in The Comedy of Errors is shocked to be importuned by her brother-in-law's twin, who she believes to be her sister's husband.
For Lucianus, see Third Player.
Lucilius:
Lucilius is a servant of Timon in Timon of Athens. He loves the daughter of the Old Athenian, and Titus provides him with a fortune, to make him her equal.
Lucilius is a soldier of Brutus' and Cassius' party in Julius Caesar. He pretends to be Brutus during the battle at Philippi.
Lucio, a friend of Claudio, frequently slanders the duke in Measure for Measure, and is eventually forced to marry Kate Keepdown.
Lucius:
Caius Lucius is the Roman ambassador in Cymbeline, and the leader of the Roman forces.
Lucius, a boy, is a servant attending on Brutus, in Julius Caesar.
Lucius is a lord in Timon of Athens, who flatters Titus but proves a false friend.
Lucius is the son of Titus in Titus Andronicus. He ends the play as Emperor of Rome, following the death of most major characters.
Young Lucius, son of Luicus in Titus Andronicus, and usually cast as a child, plays a part in exposing his aunt's rapists.
For Lucius' Servant (in Timon of Athens), see servant.
Lucullus:
Lucullus is a lord in Timon of Athens, who flatters Titus but proves a false friend.
For Lucullus' Servant, see servant
Sir William Lucy (fict) is a soldier and messenger for the English in France in Henry VI, Part 1.
Lychorida is Thaisa's nurse, then (after Thaisa's supposed death in childbirth) Marina's nurse, in Pericles, Prince of Tyre.
Lysander loves Hermia in A Midsummer Night's Dream. For a period in the middle of the play, under the influence of love in idleness, he rejects her and loves Helena.
Lysimachus is the governor of Mytilene, in Pericles, Prince of Tyre. He is converted from debauchery by Marina, and eventually reunites her with her father, Pericles.
M
Macbeth:
Macbeth (hist) is the central character in Macbeth. Influenced by the prophecies of three witches, he murders Duncan to take his place as king of Scotland.
Lady Macbeth (hist), wife to Macbeth, is a central character who conspires with her husband to murder Duncan. She later goes mad and dies, possibly through suicide.
Macduff:
Macduff is the Thane of Fife in Macbeth. Not being "born of woman", he fights on Malcolm's side at the end of the play, and kills Macbeth.
Lady Macduff, wife to Macduff, is murdered, with her children, in Macbeth.
Macduff's Son is murdered on Macbeth's orders.
Macmorris (fict) is an Irish captain in Henry V. He is said to be Shakespeare's only Irish character.
Maecenas (hist) is a follower of Caesar in Antony and Cleopatra.
Malcolm (hist) is the eldest son of Duncan in Macbeth.
Malvolio is steward to, and secretly in love with, Olivia in Twelfth Night. He is gulled by Maria, Sir Toby Belch, Feste, Fabian and Sir Andrew Aguecheek, and is imprisoned as a madman.
Mamillius is the young son of Leontes and Hermione whose death is reported in the trial scene of The Winter's Tale.
Man:
A Man, Troilus' Servant, has one line in Troilus and Cressida.
An Old Man is Gloucester's tenant, who helps with his escape, in King Lear.
An Old Man reports the supernatural happenings on the night of Duncan's murder to Ross, in Macbeth.
The banter of a Porter and a Porter's Man introduces the finale – Elizabeth's christening – in Henry VIII.
Man is occasionally a designation for supernumerary characters.
Marcade, a French messenger brings the Princess of France the news that her father, the king, has died, in Love's Labour's Lost.
Marcellus and Barnardo are soldiers who invite Horatio to see the ghost of Old Hamlet, in Hamlet.
Marcus:
Marcus Andronicus is the brother of Titus Andronicus.
Marcus Aemilius Lepidus (hist) is one of the Triumvirs, the three rulers of Rome after Caesar's death, in Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra.
Marcus Brutus (hist) (usually just Brutus) is a central character of Julius Caesar, who conspires against Caesar's life and stabs him.
See also Mark, especially in the context of the Roman plays, where the two are often interchangeable. Mark Antony, for example, was historically "Marcus Antonius".
Mardian is a eunuch attending on Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra.
Margarelon is a bastard son of Priam who spares the life of Thersites in Troilus and Cressida.
Margaret:
Margaret is a maid, and an unknowing accomplice in the plot against Hero, in Much Ado About Nothing.
Queen Margaret (hist) appears as a naive girl in Henry VI, Part 1 and as an embittered old woman in Richard III. She is a central character of the two intervening plays, Henry VI, Part 2 and Henry VI, Part 3, in which she is the wife of Henry VI, and a leader of his armies. In her most notable scene she supervises the murder/execution of Richard Duke of York.
Maria:
Maria is a maid to Olivia, and the instigator of the plot against Malvolio, in Twelfth Night.
Maria is a lady attending on the Princess of France in Love's Labour's Lost. She becomes romantically entangled with Longaville.
Mariana:
Mariana is the jilted fiancée of Angelo, who sleeps with him in the "bed trick" in Measure for Measure.
Mariana is a friend of the Widow in All's Well That Ends Well.
Marina is the virtuous daughter of the hero in Pericles, Prince of Tyre. Sold into a brothel, she converts her customers from their lives of debauchery.
Mariners:
A number of mariners are supernumerary characters in The Tempest.
See also Sailors.
Mark:
Mark Antony (hist) (Often just Antony, and sometimes Marcus Antonius) turns the mob against Caesar's killers and becomes a Triumvir in Julius Caesar. His romance with Cleopatra drives the action of Antony and Cleopatra.
See also Marcus
Marquess:
The Marquess of Montague (hist) is a follower of Warwick (his brother) in Henry VI, Part 3.
For Marquess of Suffolk see Duke of Suffolk. William De La Pole held both titles during the period dramatised by Shakespeare.
The Marshal of the tournament at Pentapolis is a minor character in Pericles, Prince of Tyre.
Sir Oliver Martext is a foolish priest in As You Like It.
Martius:
Caius Martius Coriolanus (hist) is the central character of Coriolanus, who earns the title "Coriolanus" in recognition of his skill at smiting Volscians in Coriolai.
For Young Martius in Coriolanus, see Boy.
Martius and Quintus, two sons of the title character in Titus Andronicus, have the same story: returning from the wars they sacrifice one of Tamora's sons. They defy their father over Saturninus' claim to the hand of Lavinia. They are framed and executed for Bassianus' murder.
Marullus and Flavius are tribunes of the people, dismayed by the enthusiasm of the commoners for the return of Caesar, in the opening scene of Julius Caesar.
Master:
A Master captains Alonso's ship, in The Tempest.
A Master (fict) ransomes a gentleman in Henry VI, Part 2.
For Master Brook see Master Ford.
Master Ford is a central character in The Merry Wives of Windsor. He suspects his wife of infidelity with Sir John Falstaff. He tests Falstaff in disguise, calling himself Master Brook.
The Master Gunner of Orleans leaves his boy in charge of the artillery, in Henry VI, Part 1.
The Master Gunner's Boy kills Salisbury, in Henry VI, Part 1.
Master Page is the husband of Mistress Page and the father of Anne and William in The Merry Wives of Windsor. He plans to have Anne married to Slender.
See also Captain.
A Mate (fict) ransomes a gentleman in Henry VI, Part 2.
Matthew Gough (hist) is an enemy of Jack Cade's rebels in Henry VI, Part 2.
For Maudlin, see Countrywomen.
Mayor:
The Lord Mayor of London (hist) is fooled by Richard and Buckingham, and supports Richard's succession, in Richard III.
The Mayor of London must make peace between the fighting servants of Gloucester and Winchester, in Henry VI, Part 1.
The Mayor of St. Albans appears briefly in the "Simpcox" episode in Henry VI, Part 2.
The Mayor of York (hist) reluctantly supports the Yorkists in Henry VI, Part 3.
Meg:
See Mistress Page, who is sometimes addressed as "Meg".
See also Margaret.
Melun (hist) is a French lord who fights for the Dauphin's party, in King John.
Menas (hist) a follower of Pompey, suggests cutting loose the boat where the Triumvirs are feasting, in Antony and Cleopatra.
Menecrates (hist) is a follower of Pompey in Antony and Cleopatra.
Menelaus (myth), king of Sparta and husband of the captured Helen, is one of the Greek leaders in Troilus and Cressida.
Menenius Agrippa is a friend and supporter of Coriolanus in his political struggles, in Coriolanus.
Menteth is a thane in Macbeth.
Merchant:
A merchant speaks well of Timon, in the opening scene of Timon of Athens.
Three merchants, one of whom is named Balthasar, add to the confusion in The Comedy of Errors.
Mercutio is the witty friend of Romeo, and kinsman to the Prince, in Romeo and Juliet. He is killed by Tybalt.
Messala is one of the senior soldiers of Brutus' and Cassius' party, in Julius Caesar.
Messenger:
A messenger reports the escape of Antipholus of Ephesus and Dromio of Ephesus to Adriana, in The Comedy of Errors.
A messenger brings a letter from Angelo to the Provost, ordering Claudio's death that night, in Measure for Measure.
A messenger reports Pericles flight from Antioch to Antiochus, in Pericles, Prince of Tyre.
A messenger brings news of a Turkish fleet to the Venetian Senate, in Othello.
A messenger delivers the heads of Quintus and Martius, and Titus' own severed hand, to Titus Andronicus.
A messenger from Bertram briefly visits the brothers Dumaine in All's Well That Ends Well.
A messenger (fict) gets a dressing-down from Katherine and Griffith for his abrupt manner, in Henry VIII.
A messenger to the Roman leaders brings news of the preparations for battle against the Volsces, in Coriolanus.
Two messengers to Claudius in Hamlet (or possibly one messenger appearing twice) bring news of Laertes' rebellious approach, and Hamlet's letter delivered by the sailors.
Two messengers appear in The Two Noble Kinsmen. One has a lengthy speech describing Arcite's first knight.
Two messengers in Cymbeline (or possibly one messenger appearing twice) bring news of the Roman Ambassador's approach, and the disappearance of Imogen.
Three messengers bring bad news to the English lords at Henry V's funeral, in Henry VI, Part 1.
Three messengers, two to Albany and the other to Cordelia, appear in King Lear.
Three messengers are minor characters in Timon of Athens: one negotiates Ventidius' bail, another announces Alcibiades arrival at Timon's first feast with companions, the third announces Alcibiades approach towards Athens with soldiers.
Three messengers, two English bringing messages to Talbot and York, and one French bringing a message to Talbot, appear in Henry VI, Part 1.
Four messengers bring (mostly) bad news to Richard, in Richard III.
Several messengers appear in Much Ado About Nothing: one of them is an important figure in the opening scene.
Numerous messengers appear in Antony and Cleopatra:
A messenger brings "News, my good lord, from Rome" in the opening scene. Antony refuses to hear him.
Three messengers bring news to Antony of various military defeats, and of Fulvia's death.
Two messengers bring news to Caesar of Pompey's (and his allies') naval preparations.
One messenger is a mid-sized role: the unfortunate carrier of the message to Cleopatra that Antony has married Octavia, and who later reports (unflatteringly) on Octavia's looks and bearing.
A messenger brings Antony news that Caesar has taken Toryne.
A messenger summons Canidius to Antony.
A messenger informs Caesar that Antony is come into the field.
Metellus Cimber (hist) is one of the conspirators in Julius Caesar.
Michael:
Michael (fict) is a follower of Jack Cade in Henry VI, Part 2.
Michael Cassio is a lieutenant in Othello. Iago persuades Othello that Cassio is having an affair with Othello's wife, Desdemona.
Michael Williams (fict) (notably played by Michael Williams in Kenneth Branagh's film version) is a soldier who challenges the disguised Henry to a duel, in Henry V.
Sir Michael is a minor character, a follower of the Archbishop of York, in Henry IV, Part 1.
The Duke of Milan is patron to both Valentine and Proteus, and is the father of Silvia, in The Two Gentlemen of Verona.
Baptista Minola is the father of Katherine and Bianca in The Taming of the Shrew.
Miranda is the 15-year-old daughter of Prospero in The Tempest. She falls in love with Ferdinand.
For Monmouth see Hal, who is sometimes called Monmouth or Harry Monmouth, after his place of birth.
Monsieur:
Monsieur LeBeau is a courtier in As You Like It.
Monsieur LeFer is a French soldier. Pistol hopes to ransom him in Henry V.
Montague:
The Marquess of Montague (hist) is a follower of Warwick (his brother) in Henry VI, Part 3.
Montague is Romeo's father, an enemy of Capulet, in Romeo and Juliet.
Lady Montague is Romeo's mother in Romeo and Juliet.
See also Romeo and Benvolio.
Montano is the Governor of Cyprus in Othello.
Sir John Montgomery (historically Thomas Montgomery) is a minor Yorkist character in Henry VI, Part 3.
Montjoy (fict) is the French herald in Henry V.
For Moonshine see Robin Starveling.
Mopsa and Dorcas are shepherdesses, usually portrayed as rather tarty, in The Winter's Tale.
Morgan (real name Belarius) steals the two infant sons of the king in Cymbeline, and raises them as his own.
The Prince of Morocco is an unsuccessful suitor to Portia in The Merchant of Venice.
Mortimer:
Edmund Mortimer (1) (hist) is a claimant to the English throne, and a leader of the rebel forces, in Henry IV, Part 1.
Edmund Mortimer (2) (hist) explains the Yorkist claim to the crown to Richard Duke of York (1), in Henry VI, Part 1.
Lady Mortimer, daughter of Glendower and wife of Edmund Mortimer (1), sings in Welsh in Henry IV, Part 1.
Sir Hugh Mortimer (hist) is an uncle of Richard Duke of York (1) in Henry VI, Part 3.
Sir John Mortimer (hist) is an uncle of Richard Duke of York (1) in Henry VI, Part 3.
See also Jack Cade, who falsely claims to be one John Mortimer, a claimant to the throne.
Morton (fict) is a messenger to the Earl of Northumberland in Henry IV, Part 2.
Moth:
Moth (1) is page to Don Armado in Love's Labour's Lost.
Moth (2) is a fairy in A Midsummer Night's Dream.
For Mother of Posthumus see Leonatus.
Mouldy is nearly pressed into military service by Falstaff in Henry IV, Part 2.
Mowbray:
Lord Mowbray is a rebel leader in Henry IV, Part 2.
Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk (hist) is Bolingbroke's enemy, exiled by Richard, in Richard II.
Murderer:
Three murderers kill Banquo, although his son Fleance escapes them, in Macbeth.
Two murderers report having killed Duke Humphrey in Henry VI, Part 2.
Two murderers kill Clarence on Richard's orders in Richard III.
Musician:
Several musicians, one of whom is a speaking role, are made fun of by the clown in Othello.
Several musicians attend on Cloten in Cymbeline. One of them sings "Hark, hark the lark."
See also Simon Catling, Hugh Rebeck and James Soundpost.
Musicians often appear as supernumerary characters.
Mustardseed is a fairy in A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Mutius, son of the protagonist, tries to prevent his father from pursuing Lavinia and Bassianus, but is killed by his father in Titus Andronicus.
Several Myrmidons (myth) kill Hector on Achilles' orders, in Troilus and Cressida.
N
For Nan see Anne Page, who is sometimes addressed as Nan.
Nathaniel:
Nathaniel is a servant of Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew of Holofernes. He appears as Alexander the Conqueror in the pageant of the Nine Worthies.
The King of Navarre (Ferdinand, loosely based on Henry III) and his three noble companions, Berowne, Dumaine, and Longaville, vow to study and fast for three years, at the outset of Love's Labour's Lost.
Ned:
Ned Poins (fict) is a highwayman, and a close companion of Hal, in Henry IV, Part 1 and Henry IV, Part 2.
See also Edward.
See also Boy.
Nell:
See Mistress Quickly, whose first name is Nell.
A "Nell" is unflatteringly described by Doromio of Syracuse in The Comedy of Errors: she may be the same person as the character Luce, misnamed.
See also Countrywomen.
See also Helen.
Nerissa is Portia's maid in The Merchant of Venice. She marries Gratiano. She disguises herself as a page when Portia disguises herself as a lawyer.
Nestor (myth) is an elderly Greek leader in Troilus and Cressida.
Nicholas/Nick:
Nicholas is a servant of Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew.
Nick (fict) is a follower of Jack Cade in Henry VI, Part 2.
Nick Bottom is a weaver, one of the mechanicals, in A Midsummer Night's Dream. While rehearsing a play, Puck changes Bottom's head for an ass's head. Titania falls in love with him. He plays Pyramus in Pyramus and Thisbe.
Sir Nicholas Vaux (hist) is a minor character in the scene leading to Buckingham's execution, in Henry VIII.
For Nim see Nym.
For Ninacor in Coriolanus, see Roman.
A Nobleman (fict) brings news of Henry's arrest to the Yorkist leaders in Henry VI, Part 3.
Norfolk:
The Duke of Norfolk (hist) is a supporter of the Yorkists in Henry VI, Part 3 and Richard III.
The Duke of Norfolk (hist & hist) is an associate of Buckingham in Henry VIII.
Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk (hist) is Bolingbroke's enemy, exiled by Richard, in Richard II.
Northumberland:
The Earl of Northumberland, Henry Percy, (hist) is an important character in Richard II, where he is Bolingbroke's chief ally, and in Henry IV, Part 1 and Henry IV, Part 2, in which he leads the rebellion against his former ally, who is now king.
The Earl of Northumberland (hist) fights for the Lancastrians in Henry VI, Part 3.
Lady Northumberland (hist) is the Earl of Northumberland's wife, who dissuades him from joining the rebels at Gaultree Forest in Henry IV, Part 2.
See also Seyward in Macbeth.
Nurse:
The Nurse is a bawdy comic character, and a confidante of Juliet, in Romeo and Juliet.
The Nurse helps to deliver Aaron's son to Tamora, in Titus Andronicus. Aaron murders her.
Nym (fict) is a follower of Sir John Falstaff in The Merry Wives of Windsor, and a companion of Pistol and Bardolph in Henry V.
Several nymphs (myth) dance in the masque in The Tempest, and are part of the wedding procession which opens The Two Noble Kinsmen.
O
Hugh Oatcake is a member of the Watch in Much Ado About Nothing.
Oberon (myth) is king of the fairies in A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Octavia (hist), sister of Octavius, marries Mark Antony when he is widowed in Antony and Cleopatra. Their marriage causes great distress to Antony's lover, Cleopatra.
Octavius Caesar (hist) is one of the Triumvirs, the three rulers of Rome after Caesar's death, in Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra.
Officer:
First Officer attends the Venetian Senate in Othello.
An officer arrests Antipholus of Ephesus for debt in The Comedy of Errors.
Two officers in Orsino's service arrest Antonio in Twelfth Night.
Two officers discuss Coriolanus' prospects of becoming consul in Coriolanus.
Two officers, of whom only Second Officer is a speaking role, appear in the last act of King Lear.
Several officers support the Mayor of London in Henry VI, Part 1. One of them reads a proclamation.
Old:
An Old Athenian objects to his daughter's involvement with Lucilius, until Timon offers to endow Lucilius with money to make him her equal, in Timon of Athens.
Old Capulet is a minor character – a kinsman of Capulet – in the party scene of Romeo and Juliet.
Old Clifford (hist), father of Clifford, is a Lancastrian leader in Henry VI, Part 2.
Old Gobbo, the blind old father of Launcelot Gobbo, is a clown in The Merchant of Venice.
Old Hamlet (myth) is the father of the title character in Hamlet. His ghost appears to exhort Hamlet to revenge Old Hamlet's murder by Claudius.
An Old Lady (fict) is a rather worldly friend of Anne Bullen, in Henry VIII.
An Old Man is Gloucester's tenant, who helps with his escape, in King Lear.
An Old Man reports the supernatural happenings on the night of Duncan's murder to Ross, in Macbeth.
Old Shepherd is the kindly father of the Clown in The Winter's Tale, who adopts the abandoned Perdita as his daughter.
Oliver:
Oliver begins As You Like It as a villain: the cruel older brother to Orlando. He later repents, and marries Celia.
Sir Oliver Martext is a foolish priest in As You Like It.
Olivia is a countess, loved by Orsino but in love with Cesario (the male persona of Viola) in Twelfth Night.
One is the speech prefix of a very minor character who speaks to the Porter from offstage, in Henry VIII.
Ophelia, in Hamlet, is a former lover of Hamlet, who is rejected by him, and who goes mad following her father's death at Hamlet's hands. She drowns, possibly a suicide.
Orlando is the male romantic lead in As You Like It.
Orleans:
The Duke of Orleans (hist) fights on the French side in Henry V.
The Master Gunner of Orleans leaves his boy in charge of the artillery, in Henry VI, Part 1.
Orsino is the Duke of Illyria, loved by Viola but in love with Olivia, in Twelfth Night.
Osric is a courtier, treated with contempt by Hamlet in Hamlet.
Oswald is a servant of Gonerill, most noted for getting into fights and losing them, in King Lear.
Othello is the title character of Othello. A Moorish general in the Venetian army, he is persuaded by Iago that his wife Desdemona is having an affair with Michael Cassio.
Some Outlaws, three of which are speaking roles, initially try to rob Valentine, but decide to invite him to be their leader, in The Two Gentlemen of Verona.
Mistress Overdone is a brothel keeper in Measure for Measure.
Owen Glendower (hist), a warrior and magician who tries the patience of Hotspur, leads the Welsh forces in the rebellion in Henry IV, Part 1.
The Earl of Oxford (hist) is a staunch Lancastrian, supporting Henry in Henry VI, Part 3, and Richmond in Richard III.
P
Page:
A page (fict) procures the services of Tyrrell for King Richard in Richard III.
A page pretends to be Christopher Sly's lady, in the induction to The Taming of the Shrew.
A page to Paris witnesses the start of the conflict between Romeo and Paris, and summons watchmen to the scene, in Romeo and Juliet.
A page to the Countess of Rousillion is a very minor role in All's Well That Ends Well.
A page appears briefly in Timon of Athens.
Two pages encounter Touchstone, and sing It Was A Lover And His Lass, in As You Like It.
Anne Page is the daughter of Master and Mistress Page in The Merry Wives of Windsor. She loves Fenton, but her father wishes her to marry Slender and her mother wishes her to marry Caius.
Gardiner's Page is a minor role in Henry VIII.
Master Page is the husband of Mistress Page and the father of Anne and William in The Merry Wives of Windsor. He plans to have Anne married to Slender.
Mistress Page, wife of Master Page, is a title character in The Merry Wives of Windsor. She conspires with Mistress Ford to punish Falstaff's lechery. She plans to have Anne married to Doctor Caius.
William Page is a minor youthful comic character, the son of Master and Mistress Page, and the younger brother of Anne Page in The Merry Wives of Windsor.
See also The Boy, who is sometimes "the page" or "Falstaff's page".
A Painter and a Poet obtain the patronage of Timon in Timon of Athens. They return to him, in the woods, having heard rumours that he has found gold.
Palamon and Arcite are the title characters of The Two Noble Kinsmen. Their friendship endures even though they engage in a mortal quarrel for the love of Emilia.
Pandarus (myth) procures an assignation between his niece Cressida and the prince Troilus, in Troilus and Cressida.
A Pander and a Bawd run the brothel into which Marina is sold, in Pericles, Prince of Tyre.
Cardinal Pandulph (hist) is the Papal legate in King John. He incites the Dauphin against John, but later tries to placate him.
Panthino is a servant of Antonio in The Two Gentlemen of Verona.
Paris:
The Governor of Paris has an oath of allegiance administered to him by Gloucester (but has no lines of his own) in Henry VI, Part 1.
Paris (myth) has captured Helen – Menelaus' wife – and they live together as lovers in Troy. This is the cause of the lengthy wars fought in Troilus and Cressida.
Paris is a suitor to Juliet in Romeo and Juliet. He is killed by Romeo.
Paris' Servant has a clownish exchange with Pandarus in Troilus and Cressida.
For Paris' Page (in Romeo and Juliet), see Page.
Parolles is a cowardly braggart soldier, a companion of Bertram, in All's Well That Ends Well.
For Parson Hugh see Sir Hugh Evans.
Patience (fict) is an attendant on Katherine, in Henry VIII.
The Roman Patricians, of whom only one has individual lines, appear in Coriolanus.
Patroclus (myth) is the friend, or "masculine whore", of Achilles in Troilus and Cressida.
Paulina, strong-willed and good-hearted, is an important foil to Leontes in The Winter's Tale. In the last act, she reveals the statue of Hermione.
Peaseblossom is a fairy in A Midsummer Night's Dream.
The Pedant disguises himself as Vincentio (Lucentio's father) in The Taming of the Shrew, to act as father to Tranio, who has disguised himself as Lucentio.
Don Pedro is the prince of Arragon in Much Ado About Nothing.
Pembroke:
The Earl of Pembroke (hist), together with Salisbury and Bigot, fear for the life of young Arthur, and later discover his body, in King John.
The Earl of Pembroke (hist) is a non-speaking Yorkist in Henry VI, Part 3.
Percy:
The Earl of Northumberland, Henry Percy, (hist) is an important character in Richard II, where he is Bolingbroke's chief ally, and in Henry IV, Part 1 and Henry IV, Part 2, in which he leads the rebellion against his former ally, who is now king.
Hotspur or Harry Percy (hist), brave and chivalrous but hot-headed and sometimes comical, is an important foil to Hal, and leader of the rebel forces, in Henry IV, Part 1.
Lady Percy (hist) (sometimes called Kate) is Hotspur's wife, later his widow, in Henry IV, Part 1 and Henry IV, Part 2.
For Thomas Percy, see Earl of Worcester.
See also Lady Northumberland.
Perdita is the infant daughter of Leontes, abandoned in Bohemia, in The Winter's Tale. She grows up to marry Florizel and is reconciled to her father.
Pericles is the central character of Pericles, Prince of Tyre. In an unfortunate series of adventures, he loses his wife and his daughter, but is eventually reunited with them.
Peter:
Friar Peter assists Isabella and Mariana in the final act of Measure for Measure.
Peter is a servant of Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew.
Peter is a clownish servant of Capulet who attends on the nurse in Romeo and Juliet.
Peter of Pomfret is a prophet in King John. John orders his hanging upon hearing he has predicted that John will yield up his crown.
Peter Quince is a carpenter in A Midsummer Night's Dream. He plays the prologue to Pyramus and Thisbe.
Peter Thump (fict) fights a duel with his master Thomas Horner in Henry VI, Part 2.
See also Simple, whose first name is Peter.
Peto (fict) is a follower of Sir John Falstaff in Henry IV, Part 1 and Henry IV, Part 2.
Petruchio is the central male character in The Taming of the Shrew, who "tames" the title character, Katherine.
Philostrate is master of the revels to Theseus in A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Phebe is a shepherdess, loved by Silvius but who falls in love with the disguised Rosalind, in As You Like It.
Philario is an Italian friend of Posthumus, who introduces him to Jachimo, in Cymbeline.
Philemon is a servant of Cerimon, in Pericles, Prince of Tyre.
Philip:
King Philip of France (hist) allies himself with Constance in support of Arthur's claim, but later makes peace with John in King John.
Philip (the Bastard) Faulconbridge (fict) is a central character in King John, the bravest and most articulate of John's supporters.
Philip is a servant of Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew.
Philo and Demetrius, Romans following Antony, regret his infatuation with Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra.
Philotus is a servant, sent to extract payment of a debt from Timon of Athens.
Phrynia and Timandra are whores, or mistresses of Alcibiades, in Timon of Athens.
Sir Piers of Exton (fict) murders the deposed King Richard in Richard II.
Pinch is a conjuror in The Comedy of Errors.
Pindarus is a servant of Cassius, in Julius Caesar. He aids Cassius' suicide, at Philippi.
Three Pirates rescue Marina from Leonine, then sell her to a brothel at Mytilene, in Pericles, Prince of Tyre.
Pirithous (myth) is a friend of Theseus, in The Two Noble Kinsmen.
Pisanio, the servant of Posthumus, is ordered to murder Imogen, but instead spares her and disguises her as Fidele, in Cymbeline.
Pistol (fict) is a follower of Sir John Falstaff in Henry IV, Part 2 and The Merry Wives of Windsor. He is married to Mistress Quickly, and is a soldier in conflict with Fluellen, in Henry V.
Player:
First Player or Player King leads the company which visits Elsinore in Hamlet. He reads an excerpt as Priam, and plays the king in The Mousetrap.
Second Player or Player Queen, in Hamlet, plays the queen in The Mousetrap.
Third Player, in Hamlet, plays Lucianus in The Mousetrap.
Fourth Player, in Hamlet, reads the prologue to The Mousetrap.
A Player appears in the induction to The Taming of the Shrew.
A number of characters are players, including, in a sense, the whole cast (except for those in the induction) of The Taming of the Shrew.
Plebeians:
A mob of Plebeians, four of them individual speaking roles, hear the funeral orations of Brutus and Antony, in Julius Caesar.
For Plebeians in Coriolanus, see Citizens.
Poet:
A Poet and a Painter obtain the patronage of Timon in Timon of Athens. They return to him, in the woods, having heard rumours that he has found gold.
A Poet appears briefly in Julius Caesar, begging Brutus and Cassius to be friends.
See also Cinna the Poet.
Ned Poins (fict) is a highwayman, and a close companion of Hal, in Henry IV, Part 1 and Henry IV, Part 2.
The Duke of Suffolk (William de la Pole) (hist) is a manipulative character, loved by Queen Margaret, in Henry VI, Part 1 and Henry VI, Part 2.
Polixines is the King of Bohemia in The Winter's Tale. Leontes wrongly believes that Polixines and Hermione are having an affair.
Polonius is a chief adviser in the court of King Claudius in Hamlet, and is the father of Ophelia and Laertes. He is killed by Hamlet, who stabs him through an arras while he is eavesdropping on a conversation between Hamlet and Gertrude.
Polydore (real name Guiderius) is the true heir in Cymbeline, stolen away in infancy by Morgan, and brought up as Morgan's child.
Peter of Pomfret is a prophet in King John. John orders his hanging upon hearing he has predicted that John will yield up his crown.
Pompey:
Pompey is a clown, servant to Mistress Overdone in Measure for Measure.
Pompey or Sextus Pompeius (hist) is the enemy of the Triumvirate in Antony and Cleopatra.
See also Costard, who plays Pompey in the masque of the Nine Worthies.
For Poor Tom see Edgar.
Popilius Lena, a senator, briefly frightens the conspirators into a belief that their plot may have been discovered, with his line "I wish your enterprise today might thrive", in Julius Caesar.
Porter:
A Porter to the Countess of Auvergne locks the doors, believing that he has thereby made Talbot prisoner, in Henry VI, Part 1.
The Porter is a clown in Macbeth.
The banter of a Porter and a Porter's Man introduces the finale – Elizabeth's christening – in Henry VIII.
Portia:
Portia is the central female character in The Merchant of Venice. She disguises herself as a lawyer in an attempt to thwart Shylock's attempt on Antonio's life.
Portia (hist) is the wife of Brutus in Julius Caesar.
Posthumus Leonatus (usually just "Posthumus") is the exiled husband of Imogen, in Cymbeline. Persuaded she has been unfaithful, he orders Pisanio to kill her.
For Potpan, see Servingmen.
For Presenter see John Gower.
Priam:
Priam (myth) is the king of Troy in Troilus and Cressida.
See also Player King.
Priest:
A Priest converses briefly with Lord Hastings in Richard III.
A Priest presides over Ophelia's burial in Hamlet.
A Priest solemnises the marriage of Olivia and Sebastian in Twelfth Night.
Prince (title):
Escalus, Prince of Verona tries to keep the peace between Montague and Capulet, in Romeo and Juliet.
Prince Edward:
Edward, the Black Prince (hist) the eldest son of King Edward III of England and Philippa of Hainault, and father to King Richard II of England. He appears in Edward III (play) and is referred to in Henry V.
Prince Edward (hist) is the son of Henry VI, who joins his mother Queen Margaret as a leader of the Lancastrian forces in Henry VI, Part 3. He is killed by the three Yorks (Edward, George and Richard).
Prince Edward of York later King Edward V (hist) is the eldest son of Edward IV and Queen Elizabeth. He appears in Henry VI, Part 3, and is the elder of the two princes in the tower in Richard III.
Prince Hamlet is the central character of Hamlet. He is a prince of Denmark, called on to avenge his father's (Old Hamlet's) murder by Claudius.
Prince Henry (hist) appears towards the end of King John, as successor to the title character.
Prince John of Lancaster (hist), the younger brother of Hal in Henry IV, Part 1, Henry IV, Part 2, and Henry V. He is also the Duke of Bedford who is Regent of France in Henry VI, Part 1.
The Prince of Arragon is an unsuccessful suitor to Portia in The Merchant of Venice.
The Prince of Morocco is an unsuccessful suitor to Portia in The Merchant of Venice.
For Prince of Tyre see Pericles.
For Prince of Wales see Hal, Prince Edward, Prince Edward of York.
Numerous characters are princes, either because they are rulers of principalities (for example Don Pedro and Pericles), or by descent from a king.
Princess:
The Princess of France (hist) leads a diplomatic mission to Navarre and becomes romantically entangled with the King, in Love's Labour's Lost.
Several characters are princesses in the sense of being descendants of kings, including Katherine in Henry V, Queen Margaret (until she becomes queen), Imogen, Perdita, Gonerill, Regan and Cordelia. Others are described as princesses by virtue of being descendants of ruling dukes, including Rosalind, Celia, Silvia and Miranda. Others are princesses by descent from a ruling prince, for example Marina.
Proculeius (hist) is a follower of Caesar in Antony and Cleopatra. It appears Antony has told Cleopatra to "trust him".
Prologue:
A Prologue and an Epilogue (possibly the same player) appear in The Two Noble Kinsmen.
A Prologue and an Epilogue (possibly the same player) appear in Henry VIII.
A Prologue appears in Troilus and Cressida.
see Peter Quince.
see Fourth Player.
see also Chorus.
Prospero is the central character of The Tempest, the wronged Duke of Milan, set adrift with his daughter Miranda, twelve years before the play begins. He has become a sorcerer and is lord of the enchanted island.
Proteus is one of The Two Gentlemen of Verona. Originally in love with Julia, he proves unfaithful: coveting Silvia and eventually attempting to rape her.
A Provost appears in Measure for Measure.
Publius is a minor character: a senator accompanying Caesar to the Capitol, in Julius Caesar.
Joan la Pucelle (hist), better known to history as Joan of Arc, leads the Dauphin's forces against Talbot and the English in Henry VI, Part 1.
Puck (myth) is a mischievous (male) fairy, a servant of Oberon, in A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Hastings Pursuivant is a minor character who meets his namesake, Lord Hastings, in Richard III.
For Puzel see Joan la Pucelle.
For Pyramus, see Nick Bottom.
Q
Queen (title):
Player Queen or Second Player, in Hamlet, plays the queen in The Mousetrap.
Queen, in Cymbeline, is the scheming wife of the title character, who attempts to manipulate events so that her son, Cloten, inherits the throne.
Three Queens, plead to Theseus to intercede with the tyrant Creon, who has killed their husbands in battle, in The Two Noble Kinsmen.
Queen Eleanor (hist) is the mother of John in King John. She takes a liking to Philip the Bastard, and recruits him to John's court.
Queen Elizabeth (hist) is a suitor to, and then queen to, Edward IV in Henry VI, Part 3 and Richard III. She is a major character in the later play, and a foil to Richard.
The Queen of France (hist) appears in the last act of Henry V.
Queen Gertrude is the protagonist's mother in Hamlet. She has married Claudius.
Queen (unnamed, a composite of the historical Anne of Bohemia and Isabella of Valois) is Richard's queen in Richard II, exiled upon his deposition.
Queen Katherine of Aragon (hist) is the first wife of King Henry in Henry VIII. She falls from grace, is divorced and dies.
Queen Margaret (hist) appears as a naive girl in Henry VI, Part 1 and as an embittered old woman in Richard III. She is a central character of the two intervening plays, Henry VI, Part 2 and Henry VI, Part 3, in which she is the wife of Henry VI, and a leader of his armies. In her most notable scene she supervises the murder/execution of Richard Duke of York.
Numerous characters are, or become, queens including Anne Bullen, Cleopatra, Cordelia, Hermione, Lady Anne, Lady Macbeth and Titania
Mistress Quickly (fict) is an important character in Henry IV, Part 1, Henry IV, Part 2, Henry V, and The Merry Wives of Windsor. She is noted for her lewd malapropisms and double entendres. She is an innkeeper's wife (later his widow) in the Henry plays. She has a different personality, and a different relationship to other characters, in Merry Wives, where she is a servant to Doctor Caius. In Henry V (play) she marries Pistol and later dies of disease.
Peter Quince is a carpenter in A Midsummer Night's Dream. He plays the prologue to Pyramus and Thisbe.
Quintus and Martius, two sons of Titus Andronicus, have the same story: returning from the wars they sacrifice one of Tamora's sons. They defy their father over Saturninus' claim to the hand of Lavinia. They are framed and executed for Bassianus' murder.
R
Ragozine is a prisoner of the state of Vienna in Measure for Measure. He is executed, and his head is sent to Angelo in place of Claudio's.
Rambures (hist) is a French lord in Henry V.
Sir Richard Ratcliffe (hist) is a confidant of Richard in Richard III.
Several reapers dance in the masque in The Tempest.
Hugh Rebeck, Simon Catling and James Soundpost are minor characters, musicians, in Romeo and Juliet.
Regan is the cruel second daughter in King Lear. She is married to the Duke of Cornwall.
Reignier (hist) is the impoverished king of Naples and Jerusalem, and father to Queen Margaret, in Henry VI, Part 1.
Reynaldo is a minor character, an agent of Polonius, in Hamlet.
Richard:
King Richard II (hist) is the title character of Richard II: a king who is deposed and eventually murdered.
Richard, Duke of Gloucester, later King Richard III (hist), brave but evil, is the third son of Richard, Duke of York (1). He is a fairly minor character in Henry VI, Part 2, is more prominent in Henry VI, Part 3, and is the titular antagonist in Richard III.
Richard, Duke of York (1) (hist) is a central character in Henry VI, Part 1, Henry VI, Part 2, and Henry VI, Part 3. He is the Yorkist claimant to the throne of England, in opposition to Henry VI, and he is eventually killed on the orders of Queen Margaret.
Richard, Duke of York (2) (hist) is the younger of the two Princes in the Tower, murdered on the orders of Richard in Richard III.
Sir Richard Ratcliffe (hist) is a confidant of Richard in Richard III.
Sir Richard Vernon is a follower of the rebel forces in Henry IV, Part 1.
See also Philip (the Bastard) Faulconbridge, who is renamed "Sir Richard" by the King in King John, and is often addressed as such.
The Earl of Richmond, later King Henry VII (hist) leads the rebellion against the cruel rule of Richard III, and eventually succeeds him as king.
Earl Rivers (hist), is the brother to Queen Elizabeth in Richard III. He is arrested and executed on the orders of Richard and Buckingham.
Robert:
Robert is a servingman of Mistress Ford: he carries Falstaff to Datchet Mead in a buck-basket, in The Merry Wives of Windsor.
Robert Faulconbridge (fict) is the legitimate brother of the bastard in King John. He inherits his father's property.
See also Justice Shallow, whose first name is Robert.
Robin:
Robin Starveling is a tailor in A Midsummer Night's Dream. He plays "Moonshine" in Pyramus and Thisbe.
See The Boy (who is called Robin in The Merry Wives of Windsor).
See Puck (who is also called Robin Goodfellow).
Roderigo is a gentleman suitor to Desdemona in Othello. He is gulled by Iago throughout the play, and eventually Iago murders him.
Roman:
A Roman (named Ninacor) encounters the Volsce, Adrian, with news that Coriolanus is banished from Rome, in Coriolanus.
Three Romans, with pillage, appear briefly in Coriolanus.
See the other part of a character's title where "Roman" is used as an adjective (e.g. see "Captain" for "Roman Captain").
See also Citizen, which is Shakespeare's more usual description for unnamed Romans. Similarly, see Plebeians, Senators, Tribunes
Romeo is a title character in Romeo and Juliet. The son of Montague, he falls in love with Juliet, the daughter of his father's enemy Capulet, with tragic results.
Rosalind is the central character of As You Like It. She spends the bulk of the play in exile in the Forest of Arden disguised as a boy called Ganymede.
Rosaline
Rosaline is lady attending on the Princess of France in Love's Labour's Lost. She becomes romantically entangled with Berowne.
"Rosaline" is who Romeo is initially in love with in "Romeo and Juliet" before falling for Juliet
See also Rosalind, who is sometimes addressed as Rosaline.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are two former friends of the protagonist in Hamlet, invited to the Danish court to spy on him. They eventually accompany Hamlet towards England, but he escapes while they continue with the journey, to their deaths.
Ross
Lord Ross (hist) is a supporter of Bolingbroke in Richard II.
Ross is a thane in Macbeth.
Rousillon:
The Countess of Rousillon is Bertram's mother, and Helena's protector, in All's Well That Ends Well.
See also Bertram, who is Count of Rousillon.
John Rugby is a servant to Caius in The Merry Wives of Windsor.
Rumour is the prologue to Henry IV, Part 2.
Rutland (hist) is the youngest son of Richard Duke of York (1), killed in battle while still a boy, by Clifford, in Henry VI, Part 3. (Historically Rutland was not the youngest of the four York brothers depicted in the plays. Shakespeare made him so using dramatic licence.)
For Rycas, see Countryman.
Rynaldo is a steward to the Countess of Rousillion, in All's Well That Ends Well. He reveals to the countess that Helena loves Bertram.
S
Sailors:
Several sailors, one of whom is a speaking role, deliver letters in Hamlet.
A sailor brings news of a Turkish fleet to the Venetian Senate, in Othello.
Two sailors appear in the storm scene of Pericles, Prince of Tyre, insisting that Thaisa's body be buried at sea, immediately.
A sailor of Tyre and a sailor of Mytilene, appear briefly in the shipboard reconciliation scene between Pericles and Marina in Pericles, Prince of Tyre.
Numerous characters are sailors (and see also Master, Boatswain, Captain). Also "sailors" is a common designation for supernumerary characters.
Salarino is a friend of Solanio, Antonio, Bassanio, and Lorenzo in The Merchant of Venice.
Salerio is a friend of Solanio, Antonio, Bassanio, and Lorenzo in The Merchant of Venice.
Salisbury:
The Earl of Salisbury (hist) delivers bad news to Constance, in King John.
The Earl of Salisbury (hist) remains loyal to King Richard in Richard II.
The Earl of Salisbury (hist) fights for the king in Henry V. He is killed by the Master Gunner's Boy in Henry VI, Part 1.
The Earl of Salisbury (hist) supports the Yorkists in Henry VI, Part 2.
Sampson and Gregory, two men of the Capulet household, open the main action of Romeo and Juliet with their aggressive and lecherous banter.
Lord Sandys (pronounced "sands") (hist) is a courtier in Henry VIII.
Saturninus becomes emperor of Rome, and marries Tamora, in Titus Andronicus.
Lord Saye (hist) is an enemy of Jack Cade, killed by the rebels, in Henry VI, Part 2.
Lord Scales (hist) is an enemy of Jack Cade's rebels in Henry VI, Part 2.
Scarus (hist?) is a follower of Antony in Antony and Cleopatra. He reports Antony's retreat to Enobarbus.
Schoolmaster:
A Schoolmaster acts as ambassador from Antony to Caesar, in Antony and Cleopatra.
See also Gerald.
A number of characters are schoolmasters, including Holofernes and Sir Hugh Evans.
A Scottish Doctor witnesses Lady Macbeth sleepwalking in Macbeth.
A scout of the French army reports that the English army has regrouped and is ready to attack, in Henry VI, Part 1.
A scribe to the court, and a crier to the court, are minor roles – but they usually have dramatic impact – in the trial scene of Henry VIII.
A scrivener (fict) explains the hypocrisy of Lord Hastings' indictment, in Richard III.
Scroop:
Lord Scroop (hist) is one of the three conspirators against the king's life (with Cambridge and Grey) in Henry V.
Scroop (hist) supports Richard in Richard II.
See also Archbishop of York.
George Seacoal is a member of the Watch in Much Ado About Nothing.
Sebastian:
Sebastian is the twin brother of Viola in Twelfth Night. He is often mistaken for her male persona, Cesario, and Olivia marries him under that misapprehension.
Sebastian is the brother of Alonso in The Tempest. He conspires with Antonio to murder Alonzo and Gonzalo.
See also Julia in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, who calls herself Sebastian in her male disguise.
For "Second...", see entries under the rest of the character's designation (e.g. Murderer for Second Murderer, Player for Second Player, etc.).
A Secretary to Cardinal Wolsey is a minor role in Henry VIII: he has prepared Buckingham's Surveyor's examination.
Seleucus is Cleopatra's treasurer, in Antony and Cleopatra.
Sempronius:
Sempronius is a lord in Timon of Athens, who flatters Titus but proves a false friend.
Sempronius, Caius and Valentine are minor characters, kinsmen and supporters of Titus, in Titus Andronicus.
Senator:
Several Senators, two of which are speaking roles, hear Brabantio's complaint against Othello, in Othello.
At least four Senators, or more (depending upon if and how they are doubled) appear in Timon of Athens:
A Senator is a creditor of Timon, and sends Caphis to collect the debt.
Three Senators anger Alcibiades by insisting upon a death sentence for his friend.
Two Senators visit Timon in the woods, begging his assistance for Athens.
Two further Senators hear of the failure of the previous two Senators' approach to Timon.
Two Senators negotiate Athens' surrender to Alcibiades.
Senators are also supernumerary characters at Timon's second feast.
The Roman Senators, two of them speaking roles, appear in Coriolanus, both as friends and enemies to the title character.
Two Senators and a Tribune discuss the prospects of their impending war with the Britons, in Cymbeline.
Many major characters in the Roman plays are Senators.
Senators are often supernumerary characters in the Roman and Venetian plays.
Duke Senior is the father of Rosalind. He is the true duke, and has been usurped by his brother, Duke Frederick at the start of As You Like It.
For Sennois, see Countryman.
Two Sentinels, one a speaking role, appear with a Sergeant on the walls of Orleans, in Henry VI, Part 1.
A Sentry and the Watch (two of whom are minor speaking roles) witness the death of Enobarbus, in Antony and Cleopatra.
A French Sergeant appears with two Sentinels on the walls of Orleans, in Henry VI, Part 1.
A Sergeant-at-Arms accompanies Brandon in the arrest of Buckingham, in Henry VIII.
Servant:
Diomedes' Servant is sent with a message to Cressida, in Troilus and Cressida.
Paris' Servant has a clownish exchange with Pandarus in Troilus and Cressida.
A servant (who Shakespeare may have intended to be the same character as "Peter") needs the help of Romeo and Benvolio to read the guest list for Capulet's party, in Romeo and Juliet.
A servant to the Lord Chief Justice is abused by Falstaff in Henry IV, Part 2.
A servant to Olivia is a minor character in Twelfth Night.
A servant to Cardinal Wolsey is a minor character in Henry VIII. He announces the arrival of the disguised king and his followers to Wolsey's party.
Two servants (fict) of Piers of Exton are sounding-boards for his plan to murder Richard, in Richard II.
Two servants (plus a third named Philemon) follow Lord Cerimon, in Pericles, Prince of Tyre.
Three unnamed servants appear in King Lear, including one who dies killing the cruel Duke of Cornwall.
Three unnamed servants appear in Julius Caesar:
A servant of Caesar is sent to bid the priests do present sacrifice, on the morning of the ides of March, and reports the ill-omen that the sacrificed beast had no heart.
A servant of Antony comes to the conspirators after the murder of Caesar, to discover whether it is safe for his master to meet them.
A servant of Octavius carries messages between Octavius and Antony.
In Antony and Cleopatra:
A servant of Antony reports that Thidias has been soundly whipped.
A servant informs Cleopatra of the approach of a messenger from Caesar.
"Two or three" servants, two of them speaking roles, lay out a banquet for Pompey and the Triumvirs.
"Three or four" servants speak the unison line "The gods forbid!".
Numerous servants appear in Timon of Athens:
Isidore's Servant pursues his master's claim for money due from Timon. (Isidore is not a character.)
Lucius' Servant (at one point addressed as Lucius) is among the servants clamouring for payment of their master's debts in the second such scene, prompting Timon to announce his second feast.
Lucullus' Servant announces Flaminius' arrival at Lucullus' home, and provides wine.
Two of Varro's servants pursue their master's claim for money due from Timon. (Varro is not a character, although his first servant is at one point addressed as Varro.)
A servant to the First Lord reports that horses are ready, for Lords to leave Timon's first feast.
Three servants of Timon make announcements at Timon's first feast, and later – with Flavius – mourn for Timon's poverty, and the loss of their jobs.
A servant of Timon approaches Sempronius – unsuccessfully – with a request for funds for Timon.
Three of Timon's servants are named characters: Flaminius, Lucilius and Servilius. (See their separate entries.) They may, or may not, have been intended to be doubled with the un-named servants mentioned in the play.
The play may contain other supernumerary servants, depending upon how parts are doubled in performance.
See also Caphis, Hortensius, Philotus and Titus.
Talbot's Servant accompanies the dying Talbot, in Henry VI, Part 1.
For Troilus' Servants, see Boy and Man.
Numerous characters in the plays are servants. Also, "servant" is a common designation for supernumerary characters.
See also Servingman.
Servilius is a servant of Timon of Athens, sent – unsuccessfully – to seek money for his master from Lucius.
Servingman:
A servingman (fict) to the Duke of York brings news of the Duchess of Gloucester's death in Richard II.
Three servingmen to Aufidius discuss the arrival of their master's former arch-enemy as a guest in Coriolanus.
Four servingmen (two of them called "Anthony" and "Potpan") are minor speaking roles in the build-up to Capulet's party in Romeo and Juliet.
Numerous servingmen of Winchester and Gloucester (one of Gloucester's being a minor speaking role) brawl in Henry VI, Part 1.
Several servingmen of the Lord, three of whom are speaking roles, attend the hung-over Christopher Sly, trying to fool him into believing he is a lord, in the induction to The Taming of the Shrew.
Numerous characters in the plays are servingmen. Also, "servingman" is a common designation for supernumerary characters.
See also Servant.
For Servitor, see Servant.
A Sexton supervises Dogberry's inept examination of Conrade and Borachio, in Much Ado About Nothing.
Pompey or Sextus Pompeius (hist) is the enemy of the Triumvirate in Antony and Cleopatra.
Seyton is a servant in Macbeth.
Seyward:
Seyward (hist) is the Earl of Northumberland in Macbeth.
Young Seyward (hist) is the son of the Earl of Northumberland in Macbeth.
Shadow is pressed into military service by Falstaff in Henry IV, Part 2.
Justice Shallow (fict) is an elderly landowner in Henry IV, Part 2 and The Merry Wives of Windsor.
Shepherd:
Old Shepherd is the kindly father of the Clown in The Winter's Tale, who adopts the abandoned Perdita as his daughter.
A Shepherd says that he is Joan's father, but she disowns him, in Henry VI, Part 1.
A number of characters are shepherds or shepherdesses, including Corin, Dorcas, Mopsa and Silvius.
Sheriff:
A Sheriff holds Eleanor in custody in Henry VI, Part 2.
A Sheriff of Wiltshire (fict) denies the condemned Buckingham access to King Richard, in Richard III.
Shylock is a central character in The Merchant of Venice – a Jewish money-lender who claims a pound of Antonio's flesh.
Sicinius Velutus and Junius Brutus, two of the tribunes of the people, are the protagonist's chief political enemies in Coriolanus, and prove more effective than his military foes.
Justice Silence (fict) is an elderly friend of Justice Shallow in Henry IV, Part 2.
Silius is a follower of Antony, in Antony and Cleopatra.
Silvia is the faithful lover of Valentine, and the victim of an attempted rape by Proteus, in The Two Gentlemen of Verona.
Silvius is a shepherd, in love with Phebe, in As You Like It.
Simon Catling, Hugh Rebeck and James Soundpost are minor characters, musicians, in Romeo and Juliet.
Simonides, king of Pentapolis in Pericles, Prince of Tyre, pretends to oppose the romance between his daughter Thaisa and the hero but in fact is delighted by it.
Simpcox (fict) claims to have been cured of blindness in Henry VI, Part 2.
Simpcox's Wife is the wife of Simpcox in Henry VI, Part 2.
Simple is a servant to Slender in The Merry Wives of Windsor.
For Siward see Seyward.
Abraham Slender is a foolish suitor to Anne, and a kinsman of Shallow, in The Merry Wives of Windsor.
Christopher Sly is a drunken tinker in the induction to The Taming of the Shrew. He is gulled into believing he is a lord.
Smith the Weaver (fict) is a follower of Jack Cade in Henry VI, Part 2.
Snare is a constable in Henry IV, Part 2.
Tom Snout is a tinker in A Midsummer Night's Dream. He plays "Wall" in Pyramus and Thisbe.
Snug is a joiner in A Midsummer Night's Dream. He plays the lion in Pyramus and Thisbe.
Solanio is a friend and counterpart of Salerio in The Merchant of Venice.
Soldier:
A soldier discovers that Timon has died, and reports this to the senators, in Timon of Athens.
An English soldier (fict) achieves some plunder at the siege of Orleans "using no other weapon but [Talbot's] name", in Henry VI, Part 1.
Several soldiers, of whom "first soldier" is an important speaking role and "second soldier" a minor speaking role, take part in the capture and mock-interrogation of Parolles, in All's Well That Ends Well.
Two of Coriolanus' soldiers, and one of Aufidius' soldiers, have minor speaking roles in Coriolanus.
Two soldiers of Antony's party capture Lucilius, believing him to be Brutus, in Julius Caesar.
Three soldiers of Brutus' and Cassius' party each speak the one word "stand!" in Julius Caesar.
Four French soldiers (fict), one of them a speaking role, accompany Joan into Rouen disguised as peasants, in Henry VI, Part 1.
Several Soldiers have minor speaking roles in Antony and Cleopatra, including:
a soldier who discusses the progress of the war with Canidius;
four soldiers who hear the strange sound of hautboys beneath the stage;
a soldier who acts as a messenger to Antony;
a group of Antony's soldiers who share the unison line "Good morrow, General!";
one of Antony's soldiers who informs his leader that Enobarbus has deserted to follow Caesar; and
one of Caesar's soldiers who informs Enobarbus that Antony has sent Enobarbus his treasure.
Soldiers give the shout that Hector is slain by Achilles, in Troilus and Cressida.
"Soldiers" is a common designation for supernumerary characters.
Solinus is the Duke of Ephesus in The Comedy of Errors.
Somerset:
The Duke of Somerset (1) (hist) is a follower of King Henry in Henry VI, Part 1.
The Duke of Somerset (2) (hist) appears among the Lancastrian faction in Henry VI, Part 2. His head is carried onstage by Richard (later Richard III) in the opening scene of Henry VI, Part 3.
The Duke of Somerset (3)is a conflation by Shakespeare of two historical Dukes of Somerset (Henry Beaufort, 3rd Duke of Somerset and Edmund Beaufort, 4th Duke of Somerset). He supports both factions at different stages of Henry VI, Part 3.
Somerville (fict) is a follower of Warwick in Henry VI, Part 3.
Son:
Macduff's Son is murdered on Macbeth's orders.
A Son who has killed his father at the Battle of Towton appears in Henry VI, Part 3. See also Father.
Soothsayer:
A Soothsayer wisely warns Caesar to beware the Ides of March, in Julius Caesar.
A Soothsayer attends on Lucius, and eventually interprets the book given to Posthumus by Jupiter, in Cymbeline.
A Soothsayer makes a number of predictions, all of which come true in their own way, in Antony and Cleopatra.
James Soundpost, Simon Catling and Hugh Rebeck are minor characters, musicians, in Romeo and Juliet.
Southwell, with Hume, Jourdain and Bolingbroke, are the supernatural conspirators with Eleanor Duchess of Gloucester in Henry VI, Part 2.
A Spaniard, a Frenchman and a Dutchman are guests of Philario, in Cymbeline.
Speed is the slow-witted servant of Valentine, in The Two Gentlemen of Verona.
A spirit is conjured by Jourdain, Southwell, Hume and Bolingbroke to answer Eleanor's questions, in Henry VI, Part 2.
A number of sprites serve Prospero in The Tempest.
The Mayor of St. Albans appears briefly in the "Simpcox" episode in Henry VI, Part 2.
Robin Starveling is a tailor in A Midsummer Night's Dream. He plays "Moonshine" in Pyramus and Thisbe.
Stafford:
Lord Stafford (hist) is a non-speaking Yorkist in Henry VI, Part 3.
Sir Humphrey Stafford (hist) is an enemy of Jack Cade in Henry VI, Part 2.
Stafford's Brother (hist) is an enemy of Jack Cade in Henry VI, Part 2.
Stanley:
Lord Stanley, Earl of Derby (hist) is a military leader who ultimately reveals his loyalty to the Richmond faction, in spite of his son being a hostage to Richard, in Richard III.
Sir John Stanley supervises Eleanor's penance in Henry VI, Part 2.
Sir William Stanley (hist), the historical brother of Lord Stanley from Richard III, is a minor character of the Yorkist faction in Henry VI, Part 3.
Stephano:
Stephano is a drunken butler in The Tempest. He conspires with Caliban and Trinculo to kill Prospero and become king of the island.
Stephano is a servant of Portia, in The Merchant of Venice.
Steward:
For "Steward" in All's Well That Ends Well, see Rynaldo.
A number of characters are stewards, most notably Flavius, Malvolio and Philostrate.
Three Strangers (one of them named Hostilius) witness Lucius' hypocrisy in claiming he would help Timon, but then failing to do so, in Timon of Athens.
Strato is a servant of Brutus in Julius Caesar. He holds Brutus' sword, so that Brutus may kill himself by running onto it.
Suffolk:
The Duke of Suffolk (hist) is a courtier, cynical about the King's relationship with Anne Bullen, in Henry VIII.
The Duke of Suffolk (William de la Pole) (hist) is a manipulative character, loved by Queen Margaret, in Henry VI, Part 1 and Henry VI, Part 2.
Surrey:
The Duke of Surrey (hist) accuses Aumerle of plotting Woodstock's death in Richard II.
The Earl of Surrey is a supporter of the king in Henry IV, Part 2.
The Earl of Surrey (hist) is a son-in-law of Buckingham in Henry VIII.
A Surveyor to the Duke of Buckingham gives evidence of his (alleged) treachery, in Henry VIII.
Syracuse:
Antipholus of Syracuse, twin of Antipholus of Ephesus – with whom he is often confused, is a central character in The Comedy of Errors.
Dromio of Syracuse, servant to Antipholus of Syracuse and twin of Dromio of Ephesus – with whom he is often confused, is a central character in The Comedy of Errors.
T
For Taborer, see Timothy.
A Tailor is verbally abused by Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew.
Talbot:
John Talbot is the son of Sir John Talbot. They die together bravely in battle in Henry VI, Part 1.
Sir John Talbot (hist) is the leader of the English forces in France, and therefore the chief enemy of Joan, in Henry VI, Part 1.
Talbot's Servant accompanies the dying Talbot, in Henry VI, Part 1.
Tamora is the evil queen of the Goths who marries Saturninus in Titus Andronicus.
Taurus (hist) is a follower of Caesar in Antony and Cleopatra.
Doll Tearsheet (fict) is a whore, who is emotionally involved with Falstaff, and is later arrested for murder in Henry IV, Part 2.
Thaisa, the wife of the title character in Pericles, Prince of Tyre, is buried at sea, believed dead. However her coffin washes up on shore, she is revived by Cerimon, and she becomes a priestess at the temple of Diana.
Thaliard is a lord of Antioch, ordered to kill Pericles, in Pericles, Prince of Tyre.
For Thane see Macbeth, Banquo, Macduff, Lennox, Ross, Menteth, Angus and Cathness, all from Macbeth.
Thersites is a clown, who serves firstly Ajax and later Achilles, in Troilus and Cressida.
Theseus (myth) is the Duke of Athens in A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Two Noble Kinsmen.
Thidias (hist) is a follower of Caesar in Antony and Cleopatra, sent with messages to Cleopatra and to Antony. Antony has him whipped before sending him back to his master.
For "Third...", see entries under the rest of the character's designation (e.g. Murderer for Third Murderer, Player for Third Player, etc.).
For Thisbe see Francis Flute.
Thomas:
Friar Thomas leads an order of friars, and assists Vincentio to disguise himself as a friar, in Measure for Measure.
Sir Thomas Erpingham (hist) is an officer in the English army in Henry V.
Sir Thomas Grey (hist) is one of the three conspirators against the king's life (with Cambridge and Scroop) in Henry V.
Sir Thomas Lovell (hist) is a courtier of King Henry, in Henry VIII.
Sir Thomas Vaughan (hist) is executed, alongside Rivers and Grey, in Richard III.
Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury (hist) is a major character in the last act of Henry VIII: hauled before the privy council by his enemies and threatened with imprisonment, but protected by the king.
Thomas Cromwell (hist) is secretary to Wolsey, and later to the Privy Council, in Henry VIII.
Thomas, Duke of Clarence (hist) is Hal's younger brother, who appears in Henry IV, Part 2 and Henry V.
Thomas Horner (fict) fights a duel with his apprentice Peter Thump in Henry VI, Part 2.
Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk (hist) is Bolingbroke's enemy, exiled by Richard, in Richard II.
For Thomas Percy, see Earl of Worcester.
See also Tom.
Peter Thump (fict) fights a duel with his master Thomas Horner in Henry VI, Part 2.
Thurio is a cowardly suitor to Silvia (and therefore a rival of Valentine) in The Two Gentlemen of Verona.
Timandra and Phrynia are whores, or mistresses of Alcibiades, in Timon of Athens.
Time, personified, acts as a chorus in The Winter's Tale, bridging the sixteen-year gap between the third and fourth acts.
Timon (hist) is the central character of Timon of Athens. His over-generosity leads him into poverty, and his friends abandon him.
Timothy plays a tabor in the Maying ceremony in The Two Noble Kinsmen.
Titania is Queen of the Fairies in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Under the influence of love in idleness, she falls in love with Bottom (with his ass's head).
Titinius is a loyal follower of Cassius, in Julius Caesar. He kills himself with Cassius' sword, at Philippi.
Titus:
Titus is a servant, sent to extract payment of a debt from Timon of Athens.
Titus Andronicus is the central character of Titus Andronicus. Broken and sent mad by Tamora and her followers, he eventually exacts his revenge by killing her sons, and cooking them for her to eat.
Titus Lartius and Cominius are leaders of the Roman forces against the Volscians in Coriolanus.
Sir Toby Belch is a drunken knight, and kinsman to Olivia, in Twelfth Night.
Tom:
Tom Snout is a tinker in A Midsummer Night's Dream. He plays "Wall" in Pyramus and Thisbe.
For Poor Tom see Edgar.
See also Thomas.
For Sir Topas see Feste.
Touchstone is a clown in As You Like It.
Tranio is a servant to Lucentio in The Taming of the Shrew. He disguises himself as Lucentio, to enable Lucentio carry through his disguise.
Travers (fict) is a messenger to the Earl of Northumberland in Henry IV, Part 2.
Trebonius (hist) is one of the conspirators against Julius Caesar.
Tressell and Berkeley (fict) are the two gentlemen accompanying Lady Anne, and Henry VI's coffin, in Richard III.
Tribune:
A Tribune and two Senators discuss the prospects of their impending war with the Britons, in Cymbeline.
Several characters are Tribunes, including Flavius and Marullus in Julius Caesar, and Sicinius and Brutus in Coriolanus.
Trinculo is a clown, a friend to Stephano, in The Tempest.
Troilus (myth) is a young Trojan prince who falls in love with Cressida during the Trojan War in Troilus and Cressida.
Troy/Trojan:For Sir Pandarus of Troy, see Pandarus.For King of Troy see Priam.Numerous characters in Troilus and Cressida are Trojans.Tubal is a wealthy Jew, a friend to Shylock, in The Merchant of Venice.
Tullus Aufidius, leader of the Volscians, is the arch-enemy, and briefly the ally, of the title character in Coriolanus.
A Tutor (fict) fails to save the life of his pupil, Rutland, in Henry VI, Part 3.
Tybalt, cousin to Juliet, is a fiery-tempered character in Romeo and Juliet. He kills Mercutio, and is killed by Romeo.
Sir James Tyrrell (hist) is employed to murder the princes in the tower in Richard III.
U
Ulysses (myth) is one of the Greek leaders in Troilus and Cressida.
Ursula is a maid in Much Ado About Nothing.
V
Valentine:
Valentine is one of The Two Gentlemen of Verona. He falls in love with Silvia, becomes exiled, and leads a band of robbers.
Valentine is an attendant on Orsino in Twelfth Night.
Valentine, Caius and Sempronius are minor characters, kinsmen and supporters of Titus, in Titus Andronicus.
Valentine is Mercutio's brother in Romeo and Juliet. He is mentioned as a guest of Lord Capulet's party.
Valeria is a friend of Volumnia or Virgilia in Coriolanus. She brings news of Coriolanus' exploits.
Valerius is a Thebean, a follower of Creon, who brings news of a forthcoming battle to The Two Noble Kinsmen.
Varrius:
Varrius, a friend of the Duke, is a non-speaking role (although he is addressed by name, and therefore falls just short of being a ghost character) in Measure for Measure.
Varrius is a follower of Pompey in Antony and Cleopatra.
Varro:
Varro and Claudius are guards in Brutus' tent, in Julius Caesar. They do not see Caesar's ghost.For Varro's Servants, in Timon of Athens, see servant.Sir Thomas Vaughan (hist) is executed, alongside Rivers and Grey, in Richard III.
Vaux:
Sir Nicholas Vaux (hist) is a minor character in the scene leading to Buckingham's execution, in Henry VIII.
Vaux (hist) is a minor character of the Lancastrian party in Henry VI, Part 2.
Sicinius Velutus and Junius Brutus, two of the tribunes of the people, are the title character's chief political enemies in Coriolanus, and prove more effective than his military foes.
Duke of Venice:
The Duke of Venice tries the case between Shylock and Antonio in The Merchant of Venice.
The Duke of Venice hears Brabantio's complaint against Othello.
Ventidius:
Ventidius (hist) is a follower of Antony in Antony and Cleopatra.
Ventidius is bailed by Timon in Timon of Athens, then attends Timon's first feast offering to repay the debt, which Timon refuses. Later, however, he refuses Timon's request for funds.
Verges, accompanied by Dogberry, is a clownish officer of the watch in Much Ado About Nothing.
Vernon:
Sir Richard Vernon is a follower of the rebel forces in Henry IV, Part 1.
Vernon (fict) is a supporter of Richard, Duke of York (1) in Henry VI, Part 1.
Escalus, Prince of Verona tries to keep the peace between Montague and Capulet, in Romeo and Juliet.For Duke of Vienna see Vincentio in Measure for Measure.Vincentio:
Vincentio, the Duke of Vienna, is a central character in Measure for Measure. Disguised as Friar Lodowick, he intrigues to achieve justice for Isabella and other virtuous characters.
Vincentio is the father of Lucentio in The Taming of the Shrew.See also The Pedant, who falsely claims to be Vincentio in The Taming of the Shrew.A vintner (who may be the husband of Mistress Quickly) appears briefly in Henry IV, Part 1.
Viola is the central character of Twelfth Night. She disguises herself as a boy and calls herself “Cesario”, to serve on Orsino's staff. Viola falls in love with Orsino, but Orsino is in love with Olivia, and Olivia falls in love with Cesario (Viola).
Virgilia is the hero's wife in Coriolanus.
Volsce/Volscian:
A Volsce (named Adrian) encounters the Roman, Ninacor, and hears the news that Coriolanus is banished from Rome in Coriolanus.See the other part of a character's title where "Volsce" is used as an adjective (e.g. see "Lords" for "Volscian Lords").Voltemand and Cornelius are two ambassadors from Claudius to the Norwegian court, in Hamlet.
Volumnia is Coriolanus' mother. She persuades him not to attack Rome, leading to his destruction, in Coriolanus.
Volumnius (hist) is a friend and follower of Brutus in Julius Caesar. He refuses to assist Brutus' suicide.
W
A Waiting Woman exchanges bawdy banter with Emilia, in The Two Noble Kinsmen.For Wall see Tom Snout.Walter:
Sir Walter Blunt is a soldier and messenger to the king in Henry IV, Part 1. He is killed by Douglas while wearing the king's armour.
Sir Walter Herbert is a follower of Richmond in Richard III.
Walter Whitmore (fict) kills Suffolk in Henry VI, Part 2.
Two Warders of the Tower of London bar Gloucester's entrance: leading to a fight between Gloucester's men and Winchester's men, in Henry VI, Part 1.
Wart is pressed into military service by Falstaff in Henry IV, Part 2.
Earl of Warwick:
The Earl of Warwick (1) (hist) is a supporter of King Henry in Henry IV, Part 2.
The Earl of Warwick (2) (hist) is an important player in the Wars of the Roses, firstly for the Yorkist party, and then for the Lancastrians. He appears in Henry VI, Part 1, Henry VI, Part 2, and Henry VI, Part 3.
Watch/Watchmen:
The Watch of the city of Rouen allows Joan and her soldiers, disguised, to enter the gates, in Henry VI, Part 1.
The Watch (two of whom are minor speaking roles), and a Sentry, witness the death of Enobarbus, in Antony and Cleopatra.
Three Watchmen guard King Edward IV's tent, in Henry VI, Part 3.
Several Watchmen, two of them speaking roles, serve under Dogberry and Verges, and apprehend Conrade and Borachio, in Much Ado About Nothing. Two of them are called Hugh Oatcake and George Seacoal.
Several Watchmen, three of them speaking roles, discover the carnage at Capulet's tomb, at the end of Romeo and Juliet.
Several Volscian Watchmen, two of them speaking roles, try to prevent Menenius meeting Coriolanus.
Smith the Weaver (fict) is a follower of Jack Cade in Henry VI, Part 2.For Weird Sisters, see Witches.The Abbott of Westminster (fict) supports Richard and the Bishop of Carlisle in Richard II.
Earl of Westmoreland:
The Earl of Westmoreland (1) (hist) is one of the leaders of the royal forces in Henry IV, Part 1, Henry IV, Part 2, and Henry V.
The Earl of Westmoreland (2) (hist) fights for King Henry in Henry VI, Part 3.
Walter Whitmore (fict) kills Suffolk in Henry VI, Part 2.
Widow:
A Widow, mother to Diana, provides lodgings to Helena in All's Well That Ends Well.
A Widow marries Hortensio, and behaves shrewishly in the final act of The Taming of the Shrew.
Wife:For Wife of Macduff, see Lady Macduff.For the Merry Wives of Windsor, see Mistress Ford and Mistress Page.Will is a drawer in Henry IV, Part 2.
William:
The Duke of Suffolk (William de la Pole) (hist) is a manipulative character, loved by Queen Margaret, in Henry VI, Part 1 and Henry VI, Part 2.
Sir William Lucy (fict) is a soldier and messenger for the English in France in Henry VI, Part 1.
Sir William Stanley (hist), the historical brother of Lord Stanley from Richard III, is a minor character of the Yorkist faction in Henry VI, Part 3.
William is a foolish youth, a suitor to Audrey, in As You Like It.
William Page is a minor youthful comic character, the son of Master and Mistress Page, and the younger brother of Anne Page in The Merry Wives of Windsor.
Michael Williams (fict) (notably played by Michael Williams in Kenneth Branagh's film version) is a soldier who challenges the disguised Henry to a duel in Henry V.
Willoughby (hist) is a supporter of Bolingbroke in Richard II.
A Sheriff of Wiltshire (fict) denies the condemned Buckingham access to King Richard, in Richard III.
Winchester:
The Bishop of Winchester (hist) (later "the Cardinal") is the chief enemy of Humphrey Duke of Gloucester in Henry VI, Part 1 and Henry VI, Part 2.For The Bishop of Winchester in Henry VIII, see Gardiner.Three Witches initiate Macbeth's lust for the crown of Scotland in Macbeth.
Cardinal Wolsey (hist) orchestrates the fall from grace of Buckingham and Katherine, but himself falls from grace and dies, in Henry VIII.For Woman (in The Two Noble Kinsmen) see Waiting Woman.Woodville:
Woodville (hist) is Lieutenant of the Tower of London in Henry VI, Part 1.See also Queen Elizabeth, Rivers, Dorset and Grey, all of whom are of the Woodville clan.A Wooer of the Jailer's Daughter stays loyal to her throughout her madness, pretends to be Palamon in her presence, and after her cure, marries her, in The Two Noble Kinsmen.
The Earl of Worcester (hist) is the brother of the Earl of Northumberland, and a leader of the rebel forces, in Henry IV, Part 1.
Y
Yorick: Yorick
York:
Archbishop of York:
The Archbishop of York (1) (hist) is one of the rebel leaders in Henry IV, Part 1 and Henry IV, Part 2.
The Archbishop of York (2) (hist) assists Queen Elizabeth and the little Duke of York to obtain sanctuary in Richard III.
Duchess of York:
The Duchess of York (1) (unnamed) character in Richard II, a composite of Isabella of Castile, Duchess of York, died 1392, the mother of Aumerle, and Joan Holland, who bore no children
The Duchess of York (2) (hist) is the wife of Richard, Duke of York (1) in Henry VI, Part 3. She outlives him to mourn the death of two of their sons in Richard III.
Duke of York:
The Duke of York (1) (hist) is the uncle of both Richard and Bolingbroke, and the father of Aumerle, in Richard II.
The Duke of York (2) (hist) is a minor character, the leader of the "v award" in Henry V. (TRIVIA: Historically this character is the same person as Aumerle.)
Richard, Duke of York (1) (hist) is a central character in Henry VI, Part 1, Henry VI, Part 2, and Henry VI, Part 3. He is the Yorkist claimant to the throne of England, in opposition to Henry VI, and he is eventually killed on the orders of Queen Margaret.
Richard, Duke of York (2) (hist) is the younger of the two princes in the tower, murdered on the orders of Richard in Richard III.
The Mayor of York (hist) reluctantly supports the Yorkists in Henry VI, Part 3.
Prince Edward of York later King Edward V (hist) is the eldest son of Edward IV and Queen Elizabeth. He appears in Henry VI, Part 3, and is the elder of the two princes in the tower in Richard III.See also Edmund Mortimer, Aumerle, Queen Elizabeth and Lady Anne, all of whom are "of the House of York" directly or through marriage.Young:
Young Cato is a soldier of Brutus' and Cassius' party, in Julius Caesar.
Young Lucius, son of Lucius in Titus Andronicus, and usually cast as a child, plays a part in exposing his aunt's rapists.
Young Seyward is the son of the Earl of Northumberland in Macbeth.For Young Martius in Coriolanus, see Boy.See also Clifford.Z
Sources
Anne Barton (ed.) New Penguin Shakespeare "The Tempest"
Edward Burns (ed.) The Arden Shakespeare (3rd series) "King Henry VI Part 1"
Andrew S. Cairncross (ed.) The Arden Shakespeare (2nd series) "King Henry VI Part 3"
John D. Cox and Eric Rasmussen (eds.) The Arden Shakespeare (3rd series) "King Henry VI Part 3"
T. W. Craik (ed.) The Arden Shakespeare (3rd series) "King Henry V"
P. H. Davison (ed.) New Penguin Shakespeare "Henry IV Part One"
P. H. Davison (ed.) New Penguin Shakespeare "Henry IV Part Two"
Philip Edwards (ed.) New Penguin Shakespeare "Pericles"
Bertrand Evans (ed.) The Signet Classic "The Two Gentlemen of Verona"
Barbara Everett (ed.) Penguin Shakespeare "All's Well That Ends Well"
R. A. Foakes (ed.) Penguin Shakespeare "Much Ado About Nothing"
R. A. Foakes (ed.) Penguin Shakespeare "Troilus and Cressida"
Charles R. Forker (ed.) The Adren Shakespeare (3rd series) "King Richard II"
Antony Hammond (ed.) The Arden Shakespeare (2nd series) "King Richard III"
Robert B. Heilman (ed.) The Signet Classic "The Taming of the Shrew"
G.R. Hibbard (ed.) Penguin Shakespeare "Coriolanus"
G. R. Hibbard (ed.) Penguin Shakespeare "Timon of Athens"
E. A. J. Honigman (ed.) New Penguin Shakespeare "Richard III"
E. A. J. Honigman (ed.) The Arden Shakespeare (2nd series) "King John"
A. R. Humphreys (ed.) The Arden Shakespeare (2nd series) "King Henry IV Part 1"
A. R. Humphreys (ed.) The Arden Shakespeare (2nd series) "King Henry IV Part 2"
G. K. Hunter (ed.) New Penguin Shakespeare "Macbeth"
G. K. Hunter (ed.) New Penguin Shakespeare "King Lear"
David Scott Kastan (ed.) The Arden Shakespeare (3rd series) "King Henry IV Part 1"
John Kerrigan (ed.) Penguin Shakespeare "Love's Labour's Lost"
Ronald Knowles (ed.) The Arden Shakespeare (3rd series) "King Henry VI Part II"
M. M. Mahood (ed.) New Penguin Shakespeare "Twelfth Night"
Sonia Massai (ed.) Penguin Shakespeare "Titus Andronicus"
Gordon McMullan (ed.) The Arden Shakespeare (3rd series) "King Henry VIII"
Giorgio Melchiori (ed.) The Arden Shakespeare (3rd series) "The Merry Wives of Windsor"
E. Moelwyn Merchant (ed.) New Penguin Shakespeare "The Merchant of Venice"
Kenneth Muir (ed.) New Penguin Shakespeare "Othello"
Kenneth Muir (ed.) The Arden Shakespeare (2nd series) "Macbeth"
J. M. Nosworthy (ed.) New Penguin Shakespeare "Measure for Measure"
H. J. Oliver (ed.) New Penguin Shakespeare "As You Like It"
John Pitcher (ed.) Penguin Shakespeare "Cymbeline"
Lois Potter (ed.) The Arden Shakespeare'' (3rd series) "The Two Noble Kinsmen"
Norman Sanders (ed.) New Penguin Shakespeare "Julius Caesar"
Ernest Schanzer (ed.) New Penguin Shakespeare "The Winter's Tale"
T. J. B. Spencer (ed.) New Penguin Shakespeare "Romeo and Juliet"
T. J. B. Spencer (ed.) New Penguin Shakespeare "Hamlet"
Peter Ure (ed.) The Arden Shakespeare (2nd series) "King Richard II"
Virginia Mason Vaughan and Alden T. Vaughan (eds.) The Arden Shakespeare (3rd series) "The Tempest"
Stanley Wells (ed.) Penguin Shakespeare "The Comedy of Errors"
Stanley Wells (ed.) New Penguin Shakespeare "A Midsummer Night's Dream"
John Wilders (ed.) The Arden Shakespeare (3rd Series) "Antony and Cleopatra"
External links
Open Source Shakespeare character list: counting the number of lines for each character.
Shakespearean characters: L-Z
Lists of theatre characters
Lists of literary characters by writers
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29724958
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital%20program%20and%20project%20management%20software
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Capital program and project management software
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Capital program management software (CPMS) refers to the systems that are currently available that help building owner/operators, program managers, and construction managers, control and manage the vast amount of information that capital construction projects create. A collection, or portfolio of projects only makes this a bigger challenge. These systems go by different names: capital project management software, construction management software, project management information systems.
Generic vs. Construction Project Software
These systems differentiate themselves from 'generic' project management software, and from construction management software in that they are geared towards the way the project owner, not the contractor, architect, or engineer, manage project information and processes. Also, construction management software is more focused on single projects, and execution of construction administration processes, vs. capital program planning, design, and construction. The last 10 years have seen a shift in how project information is managed from the general contractor to the owner.
These systems are also geared towards managing a large portfolio of projects, not just a single project. There are a lot of software applications available that are suitable for managing a single project, but lack the reporting capabilities that would allow stakeholders to get summary data on project status and risks.
In its most basic form, capital program management software is a database that centralizes key project information related to processes, project scope, cost, and schedule. This software enables a methodical approach to data entry, process management, and information retrieval.
Capital program management software differs from generic project management systems in that the former leverages the lessons learned over hundreds, if not thousands, of projects to standardize how information is managed, controlled, and distributed. The software developers have in-house staff that are familiar with processes in construction, and the most common challenges facing construction professionals.
Components
The most widely available CPMS systems include, at the very least, the following components:
Document management – used to store a wide array of files that can include contracts, specifications, drawings, BIM models
Process automation/workflow – used to map out a specific, repetitive and time-consuming process (e.g., budget change) in the software so that it follows a prescribed path in an automated fashion
Schedule management and control – used to track the project schedule of one or more projects, depending on the number of projects corresponding to the overall program
Cost control and management – replaces Excel spreadsheets by providing a controlled system that allows for the methodical entry of cost data, and automated tracking of changes to cost information (e.g., change orders)
Reporting engine and dashboard creation – the engine that allows for stakeholders to make sense of all the data that's stored in the system, and enables informed decision making
Types of information and related processes this software addresses
This information can manifest itself as cost items in a contract (e.g., construction costs, design fees, materials costs, FF&E costs, contingency costs, and more). Information can also relate to construction project schedules, and a broad range of processes whereby information is exchanged by the many stakeholders involved. These processes include payment applications, RFIs, change orders, budget changes, action items, submittals, transmittals, and a host of other communications.
Significance
For projects to be delivered on time, on budget, and within the predefined scope that was agreed upon at the beginning of any project, this information must be available to help project stakeholders (directors of construction, project managers, architects, engineers, contractors, subcontractors, suppliers, others) make informed decisions. Every day, construction professionals must make decisions that rely on accessibility to information. Project managers may delay responses because they're unsure of the validity of the information at their hands, or need to wait to consolidate information from multiple sources to be able to analyze the data. The accuracy and reliability of this information can make a difference between a project being delayed and going over budget.
This challenge is in addition to all the other decisions construction professionals face every day – unforeseen conditions, safety issues, quality control, and a host of other challenges. Capital program management software provides a platform where stakeholders can enter information, retrieve it in a way that makes sense by way of reports, summary screens, or dashboards, and maintain an audit trail (play by play) of what has transpired in a project. It is not uncommon for financial auditors or regulators (depending on the nature of the project and industry) to access these systems to determine compliance with existing regulations.
References
External links
Microsoft Enterprise project management for government
Project management software
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18333210
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clickability
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Clickability
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Clickability, Inc., is a web content management system company. Founded in 1999, it was acquired by Limelight Networks in 2011. Limelight Networks sold Clickability to Upland Software in December 2013.
History
In 1999, John Girard, Jeff Freund, Sean Noonan, and Timur Yarnall started Clickability in San Francisco. After the dot-com bubble burst in 2000, Clickability cut its employee number from 40 to 15.
Clickability raised $7.3 million in 2000. In 2008, it raised $8 million from Shasta Ventures and Convergence Partners. In 2011, Limelight Networks purchased Clickability. In December 2013, Limelight Networks sold Clickability to Upland Software.
Products
Clickability's first product was the "save this" tool, which the company released in late 1999 or early 2000. Other initial products were Internet tools like "email this", "print this", and a "most popular" articles list. Its products were used on hundreds of news websites such as CNN and The Wall Street Journal.
In 2000 and 2001, online advertising was having running into difficulties, so Clickability decided to change its strategy to focus on creating software able to distribute content widely and concurrently to hundreds of websites. The company offered a content management system that allowed customers to administer the material on their websites. According to Information Today, the product had four components. First, Clickability acted as clients' infrastructure as a service by being their web hosting service and content repository. Second, Clickability helped move customers onto its platform. Third, it provided a software as a service by allowing customers to manage the content throughout its creation, review, and distribution. Fourth, it provided an online forum for clients to discuss how to make optimal use of the product. In 2004, InfoWorlds Mike Heck said that Clickability cmPublish Version 4 was a Java-based software that "won't break your budget" and has "essential content creation and administration features".
According to John Wiley & Sons, Clickability in 2009 had 400 million page views every month.
References
External links
Official website
Business software companies
American companies established in 1999
Companies based in San Francisco
Software companies based in California
Software companies of the United States
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644909
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SonicWall
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SonicWall
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SonicWall, originally a private company headquartered in Silicon Valley, and a Dell subsidiary from 2012 to 2016, sells a range of Internet appliances primarily directed at content control and network security. These include devices providing services for network firewalls, unified threat management (UTM), virtual private networks (VPNs), and anti-spam for email. The company also markets information subscription services related to their products. The company solutions also serve to solve problems surrounding compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS).
On March 13, 2012, USA Today said that Dell had announced its intent to acquire SonicWall, which then had 130 patents and 950 employees. Dell's acquisition of SonicWall became official on May 9, 2012.
On June 20, 2016, Dell sold SonicWall (part of its Dell Software) to private equity firm Francisco Partners and Elliott Management.
History
In 1991, Brothers Sreekanth Ravi and Sudhakar Ravi founded the company under the name Sonic Systems to develop Ethernet and Fast Ethernet cards, hubs and bridges for the Apple market.
In the late 1990s, the company released a security product initially called Interpol and later branded SonicWALL, a dedicated hardware appliance with firewall and VPN software intended for the small-business market. As sales for the security appliances rapidly accelerated, the company exited the Apple add-on networking business and refocused exclusively as a network security company.
In late 1999, the company changed its name from Sonic Systems to SonicWALL, Inc. to represent the shift to a network security company, and in November 1999 SonicWall went public with the symbol SNWL.
In 2001, SonicWall upgraded its Global Management System (GMS) software to manage more VPN devices.
Matthew T. Medeiros (formerly of Philips Components) became CEO in March 2003. SonicWall acquired a number of companies through the years, expanding its product line in the process.
In 2005, SonicWall announced the acquisition of enKoo.
In 2007, SonicWall announced the acquisition of Aventail Corporation.
On July 23, 2010, SonicWall announced that it had completed its merger with affiliates of an investor group led by Thoma Bravo, LLC, which included the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan through its private investor department, Teachers' Private Capital. After the merger SonicWall was delisted from NASDAQ.
On March 13, 2012, Dell announced that they had signed a definitive agreement to acquire SonicWall.
On May 20, 2016, Dell announced the sale of Dell Software, which included SonicWall, to private equity firm Francisco Partners and Elliott Management.
In March 2021, the SonicWall SecureFirst partner program received a five-star rating in the 2021 CRN Partner Program Guide.
On January 22, 2021, SonicWall said it was attacked by "highly sophisticated threat actors" in a potential zero-day attack on certain SonicWall secure remote access products. On January 25, former lulzsec hacker Darren Martyn announced exploits against old VPN vulnerabilities. These exploits and the January 2021 attack were unrelated; SonicWall confirmed that the Martyn exploits were patched in 2015.
On January 7, 2022, SonicWall said that some of its email security and firewall products were hit by the Y2k22 bug and released patches after a few days.
References
1991 establishments in California
2012 mergers and acquisitions
Companies acquired by Dell
Companies based in San Jose, California
American companies established in 1991
Software companies established in 1991
Companies formerly listed on the Nasdaq
Computer security companies
Content-control software
Networking companies of the United States
Networking hardware companies
Server appliance
Software companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area
Telecommunications equipment vendors
2016 mergers and acquisitions
1999 initial public offerings
Software companies of the United States
Private equity portfolio companies
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52595194
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SR%20Engineering%20College
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SR Engineering College
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SR Engineering College (EAMCET Code SRHP) is an engineering college located in Warangal, Telangana. SR Engineering College is now SR University.
History
SR Engineering College was established in 2002 and is sponsored by the SR Educational Society. The institution has been ranked Number 134 in NIRF ranking and 1st rank in self-financed private institutions in India by All India ranking for institutions innovation by MHRD. SR Engineering College has been given the status of private University by the State of Telangana and then named SR University. The institution started with 100 employees has now crossed 1000 both teaching and nonteaching.
Campus
The SR Engineering College campus is located in Ananthasagar village of Hasanparthy Mandal in Warangal urban, Telangana, India. It is in 150 acaras, with both separate hostel facilities for girls. There is a huge central library along with Indias largest Technology Business Incubator (TBI) in tier 2 cities.
Schools
SR Engineering College is now SR University offers six schools & ten centers. with Bachelors, Masters, Doctoral programs in the following specialization with the approval of Government of India, Government of Telangana.
School of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence
B.Tech. Computer Science and Engineering
B.Tech. (Computer Science and Engineering) - Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning
B.Tech. (Computer Science and Engineering) - Cyber Security
B.Tech. (Computer Science and Engineering) - Business Systems
B.Tech. (Computer Science and Engineering) - Data Science
M.Tech. (Computer Science and Engineering)
M.Tech. (Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning)
Ph.D. (Computer Science and Engineering)
School of Engineering
Electronics & Communication Engineering
B.Tech. (Electronics & Communication Engineering)
B.Tech. (Electronics & Communication Engineering) - Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning
B.Tech. (Electronics & Communication Engineering) - Internet of Things
M.Tech. (VLSI)
M.Tech. (Internet of Things)
Ph.D. (Electronics and Communication Engineering)
Electrical Engineering
B.Tech. (Electrical and Electronics Engineering)
M.Tech. (Power Electronics)
Ph.D. (Electrical and Electronics Engineering)
Civil Engineering
B.Tech. (Civil Engineering)
M.Tech. (Construction Technology and Management)
Ph.D. (Civil Engineering)
Mechanical Engineering
B.Tech. (Mechanical Engineering)
M.Tech. (Advanced Manufacturing Systems)
Ph.D. (Mechanical Engineering)
School of Business
BBA (Finance & Accounting | Marketing | Business Analytics) MBA (Integrated) - [3+2]
MBA (Master of Business Administration )
MBA (Innovation, Entrepreneurship & Venture Development)
Ph.D. (Management)
School of Agriculture
B.Sc. (Hons) Agriculture
School of Sciences
Ph.D. (Mathematics)
Ph.D. (Physics)
Ph.D. (Chemistry)
Other Institutes of SR Group
S.R. International Institute of Technology
Sparkrill International School
Sumathi Reddy Institute of Technology for Women
S.R. Degree and P.G College
S.R. Residential Junior College for Boys (M.P.C. block)
S.R. Residential Junior College for Boys (Bi.P.C. block)
S.R. Junior College for Girls (Day and Residential)
S.R. Nava Vignana Bharathi Junior College for Boys (Day Scholars)
S.R. Junior College for Girls
S.R. Junior College for Boys
K.N.R Junior College for Boys
S.R. Junior College for Girls
Gems Junior College for Boys, Karimnagar
S.R. IIT Coaching Center
S.R. EAMCET Coaching Center
S.R. Residential High School for Boys (10th class only)
S.R. High School for Boys (Day Scholars) (10th class only)
S.R. High School for Girls (Day and Residential) (10th class only)
S.R. National High School
S.R. Junior college (DAY)
Admissions
Students are admitted into the Six Schools under the following Eligibility Criteria.
A Pass in 10+2 or equivalent examination with 50% aggregate marks.
Candidates have to be successful in SRSAT (SR Scholastic Assessment Test)/ JEE-Main/ State Level Engineering Entrance Exams across India including EAMCET/ Merit in Sports/ Cultural Activities.
Eligibility Criteria for BBA/BBA-MBA
A Pass in 10+2 or equivalent examination with 50% and above in aggregate.
Eligibility Criteria for B.Sc. (Hons.) Agriculture
A Pass in 10+2 or equivalent examination with 50% aggregate marks. Students with Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics/ Biology (PCB) are eligible.
Two years Diploma in Agriculture / Seed Technology after 10th class or equivalent with a first-class.
Rankings
The National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) ranked it 134 among engineering colleges in 2021.
Technology Business Incubator
SR Group launched SRiX (SR Innovation Exchange), a Technology Business Incubator (TBI) in Warangal. This 1,00,000 square foot state-of-the-art TBI is supported by Department of Science & Technology (DST) and Government of India to accelerate the startup eco-system. The TIB (Technology Business Incubator) was started by Kalvakunta Taraka Rama Rao.
Development Centers
Nest for Entrepreneurship in Science & Technology
Center for AI & Deep Learning (CAIDL)
The Industry-Institute Partnership Cell
ENGINEERING PROJECTS IN COMMUNITY SERVICE (EPICS)
INTERNAL QUALITY ASSURANCE CELL (IQAC)
IBM Center of Excellence
Microsoft I-Spark Center
SR – CISCO Local Academy offers CCNA Certification course
References
Engineering colleges in Telangana
All India Council for Technical Education
Educational institutions established in 2002
2002 establishments in Andhra Pradesh
Education in Warangal
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38657408
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indicator%20of%20compromise
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Indicator of compromise
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Indicator of compromise (IoC) in computer forensics is an artifact observed on a network or in an operating system that, with high confidence, indicates a computer intrusion.
Types of indication
Typical IoCs are virus signatures and IP addresses, MD5 hashes of malware files, or URLs or domain names of botnet command and control servers. After IoCs have been identified via a process of incident response and computer forensics, they can be used for early detection of future attack attempts using intrusion detection systems and antivirus software.
Automation
There are initiatives to standardize the format of IoC descriptors for more efficient automated processing. Known indicators are usually exchanged within the industry, where the Traffic Light Protocol is being used.
See also
AlienVault
Mandiant
Malware
Malware Information Sharing Platform
References
Indicators
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696536
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth%20Brown%20%28author%29
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Kenneth Brown (author)
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Kenneth P. Brown Jr. is an American author. He served as president of the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution (AdTI), a former think tank that was based in Arlington, Virginia.
He is best known for authoring reports making accusations about Linux and open source software, notably writing the book Samizdat. Some allegations in Brown's articles were refuted by Microsoft and Andrew Tanenbaum.
Activities
As AdTI's President, Brown oversaw the Institution's policy studies and foundation relationships. He is also Vice-President of the Emerging Markets Group, an overseas market investment and advisory firm. Kenneth Brown also serves on the Board of Directors of the Democratic Century Fund.
Brown has a B.A. in English Literature from George Mason University.
Articles
“One Year Makes the Difference in Access Debate”, Multichannel News, May 1, 2000.
“The Internet Privacy Debate”, International Journal of Communications and Law Policy, March 8, 2001.
“Outsourcing and The Devaluation of Intellectual Property”, Darwinmag.com, (April 26, 2004)
“Samizdat: And Other Issues Regarding the 'Source' of Open Source Code”, May 20, 2004.
Notes
External links
Kenneth Brown, B.A. (biography, International Journal of Communications Law and Policy)
Andrew Tanenbaum, "Ken Brown's Motivation, Release 1.2", Linuxtoday, May 22, 2004.
Andrew Tanenbaum, "Some Notes on the 'Who Wrote Linux' Kerfuffle, Release 1.1", Linuxtoday, May 20, 2004.
Andrew Tanenbaum, "Some Notes on the 'Who wrote Linux' Kerfuffle, Release 1.5", Original article by Andrew Tanenbaum, May 20, 2004.
American technology writers
Year of birth missing (living people)
Living people
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3270037
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music%20on%20Console
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Music on Console
|
Music On Console (MOC) is an ncurses-based console audio player for Linux/UNIX. It was originally written by Damian Pietras, and is currently maintained by John Fitzgerald. It is designed to be powerful and easy to use, with an interface inspired by the Midnight Commander console file manager. The default interface layout comprises a file list in the left pane with the playlist on the right. It is configurable with customizable key bindings, color schemes and interface layouts. MOC comes with several themes defined in text files, which can be modified to create new layouts. It supports ALSA, OSS or JACK outputs.
Supported file formats include: MP3, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, Musepack, Speex, WAV (and other less popular formats supported by libsndfile), MOD, WavPack, AAC, SID, MIDI. Moreover most audio formats recognized by FFMpeg/Libav are also supported (e.g. MP4, Opus, WMA, APE, AC3, DTS - even embedded in video files). New formats support is under development. Internet streams (Icecast, SHOUTcast) are also supported.
MOC has a single playlist (which can be saved in m3u format) and has the concept of a 'music directory' but it has no library file where metadata is saved. Instead this information is read as needed from tags in the files themselves or from tags cache, either upon access or during idle CPU time. If the playlist has extended m3u information, that will be read as well. If the playlist is saved, any read metadata will be stored.
Its text-only nature consumes very little system resources, and it uses an output buffer in a separate thread to avoid skipping under high system loads and to enable gapless playback. Normally, exiting the program only closes the interface - the program daemonizes itself so the audio continues playing in the background.
This client/server architecture is similar to MPD and XMMS2, but unlike those players, the MOC daemon is not accessible over a network, and does not have an open API to communicate with alternate clients. This has both advantages and disadvantages as, while MOC can't be controlled by a remote graphical client (it can be used via SSH), it can securely range the entire filesystem, which is not advisable by a remotely and anonymously accessible server such as MPD.
The binary is named mocp for "MOC Player" because of a conflict with a Qt utility called moc.
References
External links
Free audio software
Free software programmed in C
Linux media players
Free media players
Client/server media players
Software that uses ncurses
Audio software with JACK support
Audio player software for Linux
Console applications
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3498830
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable%20application
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Portable application
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A portable application (portable app), sometimes also called standalone, is a program designed to read and write its configuration settings into an accessible folder in the computer, usually in the folder where the portable application can be found. This makes it easier to transfer the program with the user's preferences and data between different computers. A program that doesn't have any configuration options can also be a portable application.
Portable applications can be stored on any data storage device, including internal mass storage, a file share, cloud storage or external storage such as USB drives and floppy disks—storing its program files and any configuration information and data on the storage medium alone. If no configuration information is required a portable program can be run from read-only storage such as CD-ROMs and DVD-ROMs. Some applications are available in both installable and portable versions.
Some applications which are not portable by default do support optional portability through other mechanisms, the most common being command-line arguments. Examples might include /portable to simply instruct the program to behave as a portable program, or --cfg=/path/inifile to specify the configuration file location.
Like any application, portable applications must be compatible with the computer system hardware and operating system.
Depending on the operating system, portability is more or less complex to implement; to operating systems such as AmigaOS, all applications are by definition portable.
Portable Windows applications
A portable application does not leave its files or settings on the host computer or modify the existing system and its configuration. The application does not write to the Windows registry nor stores its configuration files (such as an INI file) in the user's profile; instead, it stores its configuration files in the portable directory. Another requirement, since file paths will often differ on changing computers due to variation in drive letter assignments, is the need for applications to store them in a relative format. While some applications have options to support this behavior, many programs are not designed to do this. A common technique for such programs is the use of a launcher program to copy necessary settings and files to the host computer when the application starts and move them back to the application's directory when it closes.
An alternative strategy for achieving application portability within Windows, without requiring application source code changes, is application virtualization: An application is "sequenced" or "packaged" against a runtime layer that transparently intercepts its file system and registry calls, then redirects these to other persistent storage without the application's knowledge. This approach leaves the application itself unchanged, yet portable.
The same approach is used for individual application components: run-time libraries, COM components or ActiveX, not only for the entire application. As a result, when individual components are ported in such manner they are able to be: integrated into original portable applications, repeatedly instantiated (virtually installed) with different configurations/settings on the same operating system (OS) without mutual conflicts. As the ported components do not affect the OS-protected related entities (registry and files), the components will not require administrative privileges for installation and management.
Microsoft saw the need for an application-specific registry for its Windows operating system as far back as 2005. It eventually incorporated some of this technology, using the techniques mentioned above, via its Application Compatibility Database using its Detours code library, into Windows XP. It did not make any of this technology available via its system APIs.
Portability on Unix-like systems
Programs written with a Unix-like base in mind often do not make any assumptions. Whereas many Windows programs assume the user is an administrator—something very prevalent in the days of Windows 95/98/ME (and to some degree in Windows XP/2000, though not in Windows Vista or Windows 7)—such would quickly result in "Permission denied" errors in Unix-like environments since users will be in an unprivileged state much more often. Programs are therefore generally designed to use the HOME environment variable to store settings (e.g. $HOME/.w3m for the w3m browser). The dynamic linker provides an environment variable LD_LIBRARY_PATH that programs can use to load libraries from non-standard directories. Assuming /mnt contains the portable programs and configuration, a command line may look like:
HOME=/mnt/home/user LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/mnt/usr/lib /mnt/usr/bin/w3m www.example.com
A Linux application without need for a user-interaction (e.g. adapting a script or environment variable) on varying directory paths can be achieved with the GCC Linker option $ORIGIN which allows a relative library search path.
Not all programs honor this—some completely ignore $HOME and instead do a user look-up in /etc/passwd to find the home directory, therefore thwarting portability.
There are also cross-distro package formats that do not require admin rights to run, like Autopackage, klik (now called AppImage), or CDE, but which gained only limited acceptance and support in the Linux community in the 2000s. Around 2015 the idea of portable and distro independent packing for the Linux ecosystem got more traction when Linus Torvalds discussed this topic on the DebConf 2014 and endorsed later AppImage for his dive log application Subsurface. For instance, MuseScore and Krita followed in 2016 and started to use AppImage builds for software deployment. RedHat released in 2016 the Flatpak system, which is a successor of Alexander Larsson's glick project which was inspired by klik (now AppImage). Similarly, Canonical released in 2016 Snap packages for Ubuntu and many other Linux distros.
Many Mac applications that can be installed by drag-and-drop are inherently portable as Mac application bundles. Examples include Mozilla Firefox, Skype and Google Chrome which do not require admin access and do not need to be placed into a central, restricted area. Applications placed into /Users/username/Applications (~/Applications) are registered with macOS LaunchServices in the same way as applications placed into the main /Applications folder. For example, right-clicking a file in Finder and then selecting "Open With..." will show applications available from both /Applications and ~/Applications. Developers can create Mac product installers which allow the user to perform a home directory install, labelled "Install for me only" in the Installer user interface. Such an installation is performed as the user.
See also
Load drive
List of portable software
WinPenPack
Portable application creators
LiberKey
PortableApps.com
U3
Application virtualization
Turbo (software)
VMware ThinApp
Live USB
Ceedo
Portable-VirtualBox
Windows To Go
Data portability
Interoperability
References
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1037763
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business%20software
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Business software
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Business software (or a business application) is any software or set of computer programs used by business users to perform various business functions. These business applications are used to increase productivity, to measure productivity, and to perform other business functions accurately.
Overview
Much business software is developed to meet the needs of a specific business, and therefore is not easily transferable to a different business environment, unless its nature and operation are identical. Due to the unique requirements of each business, off-the-shelf software is unlikely to completely address a company's needs. However, where an on-the-shelf solution is necessary, due to time or monetary considerations, some level of customization is likely to be required. Exceptions do exist, depending on the business in question, and thorough research is always required before committing to bespoke or off-the-shelf solutions.
Some business applications are interactive, i.e., they have a graphical user interface or user interface and users can query/modify/input data and view results instantaneously. They can also run reports instantaneously. Some business applications run in batch mode: they are set up to run based on a predetermined event/time and a business user does not need to initiate them or monitor them.
Some business applications are built in-house and some are bought from vendors (off the shelf software products). These business applications are installed on either desktops or big servers. Prior to the introduction of COBOL (a universal compiler) in 1965, businesses developed their own unique machine language. RCA's language consisted of a 12-position instruction. For example, to read a record into memory, the first two digits would be the instruction (action) code. The next four positions of the instruction (an 'A' address) would be the exact leftmost memory location where you want the readable character to be placed. Four positions (a 'B' address) of the instruction would note the very rightmost memory location where you want the last character of the record to be located. A two-digit 'B' address also allows a modification of any instruction. Instruction codes and memory designations excluded the use of 8's or 9's. The first RCA business application was implemented in 1962 on a 4k RCA 301. The RCA 301, mid-frame 501, and large frame 601 began their marketing in early 1960.
Many kinds of users are found within the business environment, and can be categorized by using a small, medium, and large matrix:
The small business market generally consists of home accounting software, and office suites such as LibreOffice, Microsoft Office or Google Workspace (formerly G Suite and Google Apps for Work).
The medium size, or small and medium-sized enterprise (SME), has a broader range of software applications, ranging from accounting, groupware, customer relationship management, human resource management systems, outsourcing relationship management, loan origination software, shopping cart software, field service software, and other productivity-enhancing applications.
The last segment covers enterprise level software applications, such as those in the fields of enterprise resource planning, enterprise content management (ECM), business process management (BPM) and product lifecycle management. These applications are extensive in scope and often come with modules that either add native functions or incorporate the functionality of third-party computer programs.
Technologies that previously only existed in peer-to-peer software applications, like Kazaa and Napster, are starting to appear within business applications.
Types of business tools
Enterprise software application (Esa)
Resource Management
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
Digital dashboards, also known as business intelligence dashboards, enterprise dashboards, or executive dashboards. These are visually based summaries of business data that show at-a-glance understanding of conditions through metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs). Dashboards are very popular tools that have arisen in the last few years.
Online analytical processing (OLAP), (which include HOLAP, ROLAP and MOLAP) - are a capability of some management, decision support, and executive information systems that support interactive examination of large amounts of data from many perspectives.
Reporting software generates aggregated views of data to keep the management informed about the state of their business.
Procurement software is business software that helps to automate the purchasing function of organizations.
Data mining is the extraction of consumer information from a database by utilizing software that can isolate and identify previously unknown patterns or trends in large amounts of data. There is a variety of data mining techniques that reveal different types of patterns. Some of the techniques that belong here are statistical methods (particularly business statistics) and neural networks, as very advanced means of analyzing data.
Business performance management (BPM)
Business Process Management (BPM)
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Document management software is made for organizing and managing multiple documents of various types. Some of them have storage functions for security and back-up of valuable business information.
Employee scheduling software- used for creating and distributing employee schedules, as well as for tracking employee hours.
History
Business software is designed to increase profits by cutting costs or speeding the productive cycle. In the early days of white-collar business automation, large mainframe computers were used to tackle the most tedious jobs, like bank cheque clearing and factory accounting.
Factory accounting software was among the most widely-used early business software tools and included the automation of general ledgers, fixed assets inventory ledgers, cost accounting ledgers, accounts receivable ledgers, and accounts payable ledgers (including payroll, life insurance, health insurance, federal and state insurance and retirement).
The early use of software to replace manual white-collar labor was extremely profitable and caused a radical shift in white-collar labor. One computer could in many cases replace many white-collar administrative employees, without requiring any health or retirement benefits.
Building on this success, corporate consumers demanded from IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and other early suppliers, business software to replace the old-fashioned drafting board. Computer-aided drafting for computer-aided manufacturing (CAD-CAM) arrived in the early 1980s. Project management software was also so valued in the early 1980s that it could cost up to $500,000 per copy.
One of the most noticeable, widespread changes in business software was the word processor, whose rapid rise caused the decline of the ubiquitous IBM typewriter in the 1980s, as millions of companies switched to using Word Perfect, and later Microsoft Word. Other popular computer programs for business were mathematical spreadsheet programs such as Lotus 1-2-3, and later Microsoft Excel.
In the 1990s business shifted towards globalism, with the appearance of SAP software, which coordinates a supply-chain of vendors in order to streamline the operation of factory manufacturing. This process was triggered and vastly accelerated by the advent of the internet.
The next phase in the evolution of business software is being driven by the emergence of robotic process automation (RPA), which involves identifying and automating highly repetitive tasks and processes, with an aim to drive operational efficiency, reduce costs and limit human error. Industries at the forefront of RPA adoption include the insurance industry, banking and financial services, the legal industry, and the healthcare industry.
Application support
Business applications are built based on the requirements of business users. Also, these business applications are built to use certain kinds of Business transactions or data items. These business applications run flawlessly until there are no new business requirements or there is no change in underlying Business transactions. Also, the business applications run flawlessly if there are no issues with computer hardware, computer networks (Internet/intranet), computer disks, power supplies, and various software components (middleware, database, computer programs, etc.).
Business applications can fail when an unexpected error occurs. This error could occur due to a data error (an unexpected data input or a wrong data input), an environment error (an in infrastructure-related error), a programming error, a human error, or a workflow error. When a business application fails one needs to fix the business application error as soon as possible so that the business users can resume their work. This work of resolving business application errors is known as business application support.
Reporting errors
The Business User calls the business application support team phone number or sends an e-mail to the business application support team. The business application support team gets all the details of the error from the business user on the phone or from the e-mail. These details are then entered in a tracking software. The tracking software creates a request number and this request number is given to the business user. This request number is used to track the progress on the support issue. The request is assigned to a support team member.
Notification of errors
For critical business application errors (such as an application not available or an application not working correctly), an e-mail is sent to the entire organization or impacted teams so that they are aware of the issue. They are also provided with an estimated time for application availability.
Investigation or analysis of application errors
The business application support team member collects all the necessary information about the business software error. This information is then recorded in the support request. All of the data used by the business user is also used in the investigation. The application program is reviewed for any possible programming errors.
Error resolution
If any similar business application errors occurred in the past then the issue resolution steps are retrieved from the support knowledge base and the error is resolved using those steps. If it is a new support error, then new issue resolution steps are created and the error is resolved. The new support error resolution steps are recorded in the knowledge base for future use. For major business application errors (critical infrastructure or application failures), a phone conference call is initiated and all required support persons/teams join the call and they all work together to resolve the error.
Code correction
If the business application error occurred due to programming errors, then a request is created for the application development team to correct programming errors. If the business user needs new features or functions in the business application, then the required analysis/design/programming/testing/release is planned and a new version of the business software is deployed.
Business process correction
If the business application error occurred due to a workflow issue or human errors during data input, then the business users are notified. Business users then review their workflow and revise it if necessary. They also modify the user guide or user instructions to avoid such an error in the future.
Infrastructure issue correction
If the business application error occurred due to infrastructure issues, then the specific infrastructure team is notified. The infrastructure team then implements permanent fixes for the issue and monitors the infrastructure to avoid the re-occurrence of the same error.
Support follow up and internal reporting
The business application error tracking system is used to review all issues periodically (daily, weekly, and monthly) and reports are generated to monitor the resolved issues, repeating issues, and pending issues. Reports are also generated for the IT/IS management for the improvement and management of business applications.
See also
Accounting software
Business intelligence
Construction software
Customer relationship management
Decision making software
Dashboard (business)
Digital solutions provider (DSP)
Document automation
Document management system
Electronic business
Electronic data processing
Electronic performance support systems
Enterprise software
ERP software
Inventory software
Legal matter management
Management information systems
Operational risk management
Product lifecycle management
Project management software
Retail software
Supply chain management
Production support
Workflow management system
References
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1760074
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CYCLADES
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CYCLADES
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The CYCLADES computer network () was a French research network created in the early 1970s. It was one of the pioneering networks experimenting with the concept of packet switching and, unlike the ARPANET, was explicitly designed to facilitate internetworking.
The CYCLADES network was the first to make the hosts responsible for the reliable delivery of data, rather than this being a centralized service of the network itself. Datagrams were exchanged on the network using transport protocols that do not guarantee reliable delivery, but only attempt best-effort. To empower the network leaves (the hosts) to perform error-correction, the network ensured end-to-end protocol transparency, a concept later to be known as the end-to-end principle. This simplified network design reduced network latency and reduced the opportunities for single point failures. The experience with these concepts led to the design of key features of the Internet protocol in the ARPANET project.
The network was sponsored by the French government, through the Institut de Recherche en lnformatique et en Automatique (IRIA), the national research laboratory for computer science in France, now known as Inria, which served as the co-ordinating agency. Several French computer manufacturers, research institutes and universities contributed to the effort. CYCLADES was designed and directed by Louis Pouzin.
Conception and deployment
The project was launched in 1971. Design and staffing started in 1972, and November 1973 saw the first demonstration, using three hosts and one packet switch.
Pouzin coined the term catenet in 1973, in a note circulated to the International Networking Working Group, to describe a system of packet-switched communication networks interconnected via gateways. He later published these ideas in a 1974 paper "A Proposal for Interconnecting Packet Switching Networks".
Deployment of the network continued in 1974, with three packet switches installed by February, although at that point the network was only operational for three hours each day. By June the network was up to seven switches, and was available throughout the day for experimental use.
A terminal concentrator was also developed that year, since time-sharing was still a prevalent mode of computer use. In 1975, the network shrank slightly due to budgetary constraints, but the setback was only temporary. At that point, the network provided remote login, remote batch and file transfer user application services.
By 1976 the network was in full deployment, eventually numbering 20 nodes with connections to NPL in London, ESA in Rome, and to the European Informatics Network (EIN).
Technical details
CYCLADES used a layered architecture, which was adopted in the Internet. The basic packet transmission like function, named CIGALE, was novel; it provided an unreliable datagram service (the word was coined by Louis Pouzin by combining data and telegram). Since the packet switches no longer had to ensure correct delivery of data, this greatly simplified their design.
The CIGALE network featured a distance vector routing protocol, and allowed experimentation with various metrics. it also included a time synchronization protocol in all the packet switches. CIGALE included early attempts at performing congestion control by dropping excess packets.
The name CIGALE () – French for cicada – originates from the fact that the developers installed a speaker at each computer, so that "it went 'chirp chirp chirp' like cicadas" when a packet passed a computer.
An end-to-end protocol built on top of that provided a reliable transport service, on top of which applications were built. It provided a reliable sequence of user-visible data units called letters, rather than the reliable byte stream of TCP. The transport protocol was able to deal with out-of-order and unreliable delivery of datagrams, using the now-standard mechanisms of end-end acknowledgments and timeouts; it also featured sliding windows and end-to-end flow control.
Demise
By 1976, the French PTT was developing Transpac, a packet network based on the emerging X.25 standard. The academic debates between datagram and virtual circuit networks continued for some time, but were eventually cut short by bureaucratic decisions.
Data transmission was a state monopoly in France at the time, and IRIA needed a special dispensation to run the CYCLADES network. The PTT did not agree to funding by the government of a competitor to their Transpac network, and insisted that the permission and funding be rescinded. By 1981, Cyclades was forced to shut down.
Legacy
The most important legacy of CYCLADES was in showing that moving the responsibility for reliability into the hosts was workable, and produced a well-functioning service network. It also showed that it greatly reduced the complexity of the packet switches. The concept became a cornerstone in the design of the Internet.
The network was a fertile ground for experimentation, and allowed a generation of French computer scientists to experiment with networking concepts. Louis Pouzin and the CYCLADES alumni initiated a number of follow-on projects at IRIA to experiment with local area networks, satellite networks, the Unix operating system, and the message passing operating system Chorus.
Hubert Zimmermann used his experience in CYCLADES to influence the design of the OSI model, which is still a common pedagogical tool.
Gérard Le Lann worked with Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn to incorporate concepts from the CYCLADES project into the original design of the Transmission Control Program.
CYCLADES alumni and researchers at IRIA/INRIA were also influential in spreading adoption of the Internet in France, eventually witnessing the success of the datagram-based Internet, and the demise of the X.25 and ATM virtual circuit networks.
See also
History of the Internet
Internet in France § History
NPL network
References
Notes
Further reading
Louis Pouzin (editor), The Cyclades Computer Network: Toward Layered Network Architectures (North-Holland, Amsterdam, 1982)
External links
Demise of Cyclades
Computer networks
French inventions
History of the Internet
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66849401
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornish%20China%20Clay%20Branches
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Cornish China Clay Branches
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The Cornish China Clay Branches are a number of railway branch lines that serve facilities that produce or process China Clay. The area of Cornwall north of St Austell stretching from Bodmin Moor towards Truro is known for the extraction and processing of commercial volumes of China Clay, and with the expansion of the railways in the 19th century a number of lines were constructed to access various mines and clay-dries. Some branches have closed over the years, but several still operated into the 21st century although much of the China Clay traffic has transferred to road transport. In 2020 rail traffic remained in the shape of regular trains running between Parkandillack and the wharves at Carne Point where the large volumes required to be loaded onto ships for export would make road transport uneconomic.
China Clay areas
While various clay dries were located alongside passenger lines, particularly the Par - Newquay line, most were served by freight-only lines of varying lengths, sometimes meandering to serve the varying locations. The longest branch diverged from the Par - Newquay line at St Dennis Junction, and while one part of this branch continued to the Cornish Main Line at Burngullow, the other ran further west, terminating at Meledor Mill. In addition there were shorter branches diverging between Luxulyan and Roche towards Carbis wharf, Wheal Rose and Carbean, and a further branch extending northward from near St Austell to Lansalon. Outside this area, the most notable freight-only branch serving clay dries was the ex-LSWR line to Wenfordbridge.
Transport of China Clay by rail
China Clay in Cornwall has generally been "mined" from Clay pits by washing the clay and transporting it in suspension to a handling facility known as a "Clay Dry". Here the clay is held in settling tanks and then dried to a powder before being transported. Early use of China Clay was in pottery and it has been transported to the Staffordshire Potteries for over 100 years. For most of that time, dried clay was loaded into open wagons which were covered by a tarpaulin, and due to the nature of the product some China Clay companies owned their own wagons dedicated just to transporting the Clay. In 1945 the Great Western Railway, which served almost all of the China Clay areas in Cornwall, built a fleet of 500 open wagons specifically for the transport of China Clay, and these continued in use by British Railways after nationalisation. In the early 1970s the wagons had a metal bar added over which the tarpaulin was placed making a tent-like cover over the wagon and had zinc linings added, these "Clay-hood" wagons being synonymous with trainload china clay for over 20 years. These wagons worked to all of the Cornish Clay facilities, often being taken to a nearby yard before being formed into complete trains that travelled both to the Stoke-on-Trent area and over the comparatively short distance either to the port of Par or particularly to Carne Point at Fowey where the China Clay was loaded directly into vessels for export.
While bulk transport of China Clay was in open wagons, clay of a particulalrly high quality was bagged and transported in vans. Like the Clay Hoods these were originally of wooden construction and comparatively short wheelbase, but as larger air-braked wagons were introduced in the 1980s these were replaced by larger curtain-sided wagons. At this time rail transport of Clay powder also changed with the introduction of large air-braked bogie wagons of 57 tonne capacity, which also facilitated the transport of "ball clay" where the clay remained in a sticky form rather than a dry powder. These wagons were privately owned by Tiger Rail and became known as "Clay Tigers", being a familiar sight on trains to the potteries, and also on trains to Sittingbourne in Kent and to several locations in Scotland for use in the paper industry. These were supplemented by the conversion of aggregate hoppers for use with China Clay, these often being used for wagonload freight, and the development of a flow of clay slurry in tank wagons which were of both four-wheeled and bogie types and operated specifically to paper mills.
St Dennis junction - Burngullow line
The line from St Dennis Junction to Burngullow has its origins as two separate lines. The northern section was constructed by Squire Treffry as a tramway and opened around 1852 to the China Clay workings on Hendra Downs with a stationary engine at the Hendra Downs end. This line was later altered with a track designed for locomotive haulage diverging from the foot of the Hendra Downs incline and meeting the southern line near Drinnick Mill.
The southern part of the line was originally constructed to Broad Gauge in 1869, and the northern part, constructed to standard gauge, had a third rail added to make it mixed gauge. This extension of the broad gauge was never used and may have been of poor construction. The whole line was converted to standard gauge only as part of the GWR gauge conversion in 1892.
The line from Parkandillack south remained open in 1977, as did the sidings at Drinnick Mill but the track between Parkandillack and St Dennis was lifted. After this closure some wagons ran away over the end of the line and a train consisting of rerailing equipment and a crane hauled by a Class 47 attended, one of the few times that the type operated on the branch.
There were proposals to divert trains to Newquay over the line and away from the Par - Newquay line in the 1990s, but these came to nothing and the line remains freight-only so that in 2006 there was a daily return trip to Parkandillack of China Clay hoppers booked to run Monday to Friday. In 2021 trains continue to run on the branch between Burngullow and Parkandillack hauled by Class 66 locomotives.
Gothers Siding
Originally a loop on the east side of the line allowing trans-shipment of China Clay from a gauge tramway that ran for east and then south to serve Higher Gothers China Clay Works and then beyond to serve Lower Gothers China Clay Works. Constructed in 1879 the siding was referred to as Pochin Siding after H.D. Pochin who owned the Higher Gothers works and constructed the tramway. In 1929 the tramway had a branch added to serve a local Mica works, but the tramway closed in 1932 when H.D. Pochin was merged with other companies to form English China Clays Lovering Pochin, and the siding was lifted soon after.
Whitegates siding
Located west of the village of St Dennis, it consisted of a single siding on the west side of the line with a loading platform and access controlled by a Ground Frame. The siding officially closed on 4 January 1965.
Hendra Downs Tramway
The original purpose of the line when built was to provide easy access to the mines and Clay Works on Hendra Downs. This section of the line continued for about and terminated at an engine house. There is no evidence that this section was locomotive operated and the tracks were removed some time before 1914.
Parkandillack
Originally this short line was built to serve the China Clay Works of the St Dennis & Parkandillack China Clay Company, with an additional siding on the east of the line added in 1925 and a further siding on the western side to serve the works of United China Clays Limited. The original line, some in length, was accessed by a loop on the east side of the line. Due to an increase in traffic caused by the "Carpella Break", in 1911 a Signal Box was built to control movements, but this was closed in 1922 when the "break" was closed by a deviation and was replaced by a Ground Frame. The access loop was extended in 1958 and in 1972 the whole layout was expanded with an additional siding with its own loop. In 2021 there are weekday trains timetabled to destinations such as Fowey Carne Point and Exeter Riverside Yard, although these may run as required.
Treviscoe and Kernick sidings
Originally a loop on the east side of the line to serve the Central Treviscoe and General China Clay and China Stone Company, the loop was controlled by two ground frames and closed in 1934. Less than south of Central Treviscoe was a single siding on the west of the line for the Greater Treviscoe China Clay Company whose works were connected to the siding by a tramway and incline. Access to this siding was controlled by a Ground Frame. In 1911 a set of parallel sidings were installed on the opposite side of the line to Greater Treviscoe siding variously referred to as Treviscoe Siding and Kernick Siding, but later settling on the term Kernick Sidings. A Signal Box opened in 1913 and closed in 1950 to be replaced by 2 Ground Frames, with some track alterations being carried out at the same time. Greater Treviscoe Siding was removed in 1967 and further alterations were made to Kernick Sidings in 1971. These sidings are still in use in 2021, but are considered part of the Parkandillack complex for timetable purposes.
Trethosa siding
A short siding curving away on the south side of the line to serve the English China Clays works. The siding was removed in 1948 and the site has now been excavated as part of a clay pit.
Little Treviscoe Siding
A loop with an additional siding to serve another Clay Dry operated by English China Clays Ltd. Sources differ on the actual facility and the size and location of a tramway that may have fed the siding. The loop was controlled by 2 Ground Frames, and the siding and part of the loop were removed in 1967 so that, by the 1970s, there was just a short siding on the north side of the line remaining. Both the siding and the facility that it served were removed before 2020.
Goonvean
Three separate sidings were located near to Goonvean. Firstly on the south side of the line a complex of up to 3 sidings serving a facility of the Goonvean China Clay Company about distant with access controlled by a Ground Frame, the whole being removed in 1976 with most of the trackbed converted to use as a private road. Restowrack siding on the north side of the line was constructed after 1913 and served another facility run by the Goonvean China Clay Company, also having access controlled by a Ground Frame. Finally a further siding on the south side of the line with a Ground Frame controlling access, serving a small loading platform adjacent to the road. This siding, barely long, was taken out of use in 1965. Access to the three sidings near Goonvean stretches over a length of just .
Luke's sidings
On the south side of the line, two sidings referred to as Luke's Old Siding and Luke's New Siding. Both of these were short open sidings serving different parts of the Goonamarris China Clay and Stone Works with access to each controlled by an individual Ground Frame. Located about apart, the Old siding was removed in 1960 and the New siding in 1963.
West of England Siding
A short siding serving the West of England China Stone Quarries which brought China Clay up by an inclined tramway, and by a second tramway of about running onto Restowrack Downs. From the 1930s until the 1960s this longer line was operated using two Simplex 0-4-0 petrol mechanical locomotives. The siding was removed in 1968.
Drinnick Mill, Nanpean and Carloggas
Two sidings on the east side of the line serving Clay Dries at Drinnick Mill, the second leaving directly from the line, and the first splitting to serve the dries on the east or passing beyond until terminating in two parallel sidings in Nanpean. The track then reversed under the original line to gain access to East Carloggas China Clay Works, and then extending to serve a loading platform, and latterly further clay dries. A map from 1906 shows a station at Drinnick Mill despite there being no record of any timetabled passenger service over the branch, although there was a Stationmaster there until the 1950s, and a goods office until 1966. The lines serving the dries at Drinnick Mill were removed in 1965 but access to Carloggas (or "Drinnick Mill Low Level") and Nanpean continued through the 1970s and into the 1990s where one of the lines at Nanpean was used to store redundant tank wagons. By 1990 clay from here was occasionally added to the Speedlink service from St Blazey yard variously to Mossend Yard or Auchmuty in Scotland. By 2020 all of the tracks have been removed, and the trackbed under the line is in use as a private road.
Carpella sidings and the Carpella Break
Carpella Siding, actually two parallel sidings each servicing a loading platform and protected by a Ground Frame, was connected by a tramway to both the Carpella China Clay Works and Whealburn China Clay Works. However the Carpella United Clay Company owned the right to excavate the area including under the trackbed which resulted in subsidence and the line was severed about beyond the siding on 16 December 1909, meaning that access to the siding was only possible via St Dennis Junction, although both stubs were retained with the gap between them, known as the "Carpella Break" being just in length. In 1921 a single "New Carpella Siding" was opened to serve the Carpella United China Clay Works replacing the tramway, and in April 1922 a short deviation was constructed to reconnect the two halves of the line, the southern stub line having been removed in 1917. The Northern stub siding was removed in 1949 and the original Carpella siding was removed in 1968. New Carpella siding was still in use in the 1970s but all trace of it had been removed by 2020. At this point the line still consisted of wooden sleepers and bull-head rail into the 1990s.
Beacon siding and High Street siding
Originally a short loop, High Street siding served a short loading platform on the north side of the line but in 1928 the loading platform was removed and a siding installed leading from the loop into a works operated by Beacon Clays Ltd and referred to as Beacon Siding. Beacon siding was removed in 1963 and the loop in 1968.
Crugwallins and Burngullow
On the east side of the line were a series of Clay Dries. The northern site was Crugwallins siding which had a loop serving two Clay Dries and protected by a ground frame. Nearer the Cornish Main Line was Burngullow West siding, serving a large Clay Dry, again with a loop, but with access requiring reversal via a headshunt which also provided access to a short loading platform. Burngullow West ceased operation in 1974 but Crugwallins continued to operate into the 1990s. In 2020 all signs of the rail links have been removed but the disused Clay Dries remain, though derelict.
Meledor Mill line
The line opened on 1 June 1874 to Melangoose Mill, with the extension to Meledor Mill opening in 1912. The "Retew branch" was operated by an electric token until 1966 from which time it was operated as a long siding. The line remained open in 1977, but traffic was growing less and closure came in the early 1980s. By 2020 the line beyond West Treviscoe had been swallowed by china clay pits and all sign of the Melangoose Mill buildings had disappeared.
Gaverigan siding
A single loop protected by Ground Frames on the west side of the line, it was still in use in the 1970s.
Trerice siding
A single line on the west side leading into the Wheal Remfrey Brickworks. The brickworks had a small internal railway which operated a pair of 4-wheel diesel-mechanical locomotives by Ruston & Hornsby between 1945 and 1963.
Wheal Remfrey siding
A single siding accessed from a loop on the east side of the line giving access to the Wheal Remfrey China Clay Works. Laid in 1924 with access controlled by two Ground Frames, both the loop and siding were removed in 1966.
Trewheela siding
A wide loop in the east side of the line serving the Trewheela China Clay Company dries. The siding was protected by 2 Ground Frames and was removed in 1966.
Retew siding
A single line on the west side splitting into two to serve the Anchor China Clay Syndicate Limited, plus a single siding on the east side serving the South Fraddon China Clay Company. The clay works were linked by a gauge tramway which was operated by 2 Ruston & Hornsby 0-4-0 diesel-mechanical locomotives both built in 1945. Loco number 90907 was sold on in 1954 and loco number 4 was sold in 1963 after which the track was lifted. Both sidings were protected by Ground Frames and were removed within a year of each other in the early 1970s.
New Halwyn siding
At some time after 1900, a loop on the west side of the line protected by Ground Frames and serving the New Halwyn China Clay Company. An additional loop, controlled by 2 separate Ground Frames, was put in almost parallel with New Halwyn siding but on the opposite side of the line, in 1920. New Halwyn siding ceased operation in 1966 and the loop opposite was removed in 1972.
Melangoose Mill complex
Melangoose Mill is a complex series of sidings and buildings, all located on the west side of the line. Approaching from St Dennis Junction, Anchor Siding North Ground Frame gives access to Wheal Benallick siding which accesses the two parts of Melangoose Clay Works, with a track exiting between the two buildings. This leads onto a parallel track diverging at Anchor Siding South Ground Frame which gives access to Melangoose Mill public siding and then extends to a wagon turntable. This was at one time the end of the line, the wagon turntable giving access to a tramway that ran for about to the Virgina China Clay pit. In 1912 a curve was laid to link the existing line to the tramway which was then extended to Meledon Mill. Almost immediately on the new stretch of line a line diverges as Grove siding, and two additional sidings parallel to the line were added in 1925. At a distance of further is a trailing junction to Anchor Siding which followed the old tramway and served the works of the Anchor China Clay Syndicate. The wagon turntable is part way along this siding. The public siding and the line to the wagon turntable were removed in 1973, as was the connection at Anchor Siding North Ground Frame and the two parallel sidings that had been installed in 1925.
Victoria siding
A single siding protected by a Ground Frame, the double loop installed at Melangoose Mill in 1925 exited onto the siding. The siding was removed in 1965 and the connection with the branch, which had allowed access to the two parallel sidings, was removed in 1972.
West Treviscoe Siding
A single loop siding with gated access and protected by Ground Frames and serving West Treviscoe China Clay Company. The line was removed in 1965.
Tolbenny and Burgotha sidings
Almost opposite each other, Tolbenny siding was on the east side serving a Clay Dry and protected by a gate. It was opened in 1931 and was removed in 1972. Burgootha siding was on the west of the line at the same point as the commencement of a loop and serving the Newquay China Clay Company. The siding was removed in 1965.
Melbur siding
A long siding on the west side of the line serving the Melbur China Clay Works.
Meledor Mill and siding
Alongside the Melbur siding was a loop and siding providing access from the road for general goods and when extended in 1925 the railway ended at the Road, however in 1929 the line was extended across the road to connect directly to Meledor Mill Clay Dries.
Goonbarrow branch
The Goonbarrow Branch was opened by the Cornwall Minerals Railway in 1893, who operated the line until they were taken over by the GWR in 1896. The line itself was quite tightly curved and steep in parts with the approach to Carbean being 1 in 39. Originally a locomotive was based in an engine shed at Stenalees to work the branch, and the tight curvature meant that only small engines were used, often in pairs. The last steam locomotives to operate on the branch were 1600 class locomotives, with a pair based at St Blazey shed for this purpose.
Goonbarrow Juncion itself underwent several changes to trackwork over the years. The origins were as Wheal Henry siding, with Rosevear siding set back from it, and with a signal box provided at the junction. The original signal box closed in 1893 and was replaced by a new one a short distance south. The sidings remained, and the branch was laid just north with a short loop. Four or five sidings were added parallel to the Newquay branch but accessed via the junction in 1910, and in 1931 further sidings were added, accessed by entering the branch and immediately reversing once the pointwork was cleared. These were known as Rocks siding, Wheal Ann siding, and Hallivet siding.
Originally the line was worked as a branch with a staff being collected from the signal box, but from 1964 staff operation was removed and the branch was operated as a long siding. The line was truncated beyond New Caudledown siding in 1965, and the branch officially closed in 1978. However a stub remained and was resleepered with concrete sleepers and flat-bottomed rail and in 2006 there was a daily train of China Clay running Monday-Saturday each way between the sidings at Goonbarrow Junction and Carne Point. By 2014 the truncated branch ended in a pair of wooden sleepers chained to the track with an octagonal red stop sign attached and while the rails continue beyond this for a short distance they are completely covered in moss. In 2020 satellite images show that the stub of the branch is still acting as a headshunt for the Rocks clay dries that cover the site taken up previously by the three sidings added in 1931, but the rest of the branch is completely lost in the ever expanding clay pits.
Sidings at Goonbarrow
In the 1990s Rocks siding and Wheal Henry siding were still in use with Rocks dries still active and two industrial diesel shunters working there, and although these were both stored out of use in 2019, they were both back at work in 2020.
Old Beam siding
Requiring reversal to access, the siding was protected by a Ground Frame and served the North Goonbarrow Clay Company. The headshunt was converted into a loop in 1907, and the siding closed in 1969.
Carnsmerry siding and Imperial siding
Originally a single siding serving the Imperial Goonbarow China Clay works, a second siding was added to serve the Hensbarrow China Clay Company works at Carnsmerry in 1914, at which point a Ground Frame was installed and the headshunt was converted into a loop.
New Caudledown siding
A loop on the north side of the line serving the Lower Lemalson and Caudledown China Clay Company. Branch operation ceased beyond this in 1964 and the "branch" was then operated as a siding.
Rock Hill siding
Two short sidings on the north side of the line protected by a Ground Frame. The sidings were removed in 1946.
Old Caudledown siding
A single siding protected by a Ground Frame and serving a loading platform.
Cleaves siding
A single siding on the west side of the line opposite Stenalees and protected by a Ground Frame, it was removed in 1933.
Oil siding
A short siding on the south side of the line to serve the Carbean China Clay works of J Lovering and Co. The track was laid in late 1925 but was not used until 1926.
New Gunheath siding
A short siding on the north side of the line, it was laid in 1921.
Gunheath sidings
Two sidings serving the works of H D Pochin and Co. plus a short section of line for reversing towards Carbean, an additional siding was added in 1927. The branch sloped down at 1 in 39 to the sidings, and all points were controlled from a Ground Frame.
Carbean
Requiring reversal at Gunheath sidings and then a short run downhill at 1 in 35, there was a loop serving a loading platform and a further reversal here allowed access to the Goods Yard. The points were controlled by a Ground Frame. The siding space at Carbean was quite cramped and shunting often involved multiple movements. By 1992 the location of the siding was partially lost in a clay pit.
Carbis and Wheal Rose branches
The divergance of these two short branches that originally left the Newquay branch over a space of was completely remodelled several times over the years. Initially they were two separate branches with the Wheal Rose branch junction being south of Bugle station and the line running parallel to the Newquay branch before diverging north of the station immediately before the junction for the branch to Carbis Wharf. Around 1910 a short link was added so that trains to and from the Carbis branch could use the Wheal Rose line and avoid using the line through the platform at Bugle. The line through Bugle was doubled in 1930 with no change to the access to the branches, but in 1965 the line was singled again and the connection to the Newquay line north of Bugle station was removed so that both branches merged into a single line which continued as one of the original double-track lines while the Newquay line used the other track.
There were never any run-round facilities and all traffic was propelled down the branch. Both the Carbis Wharf and Wheal Rose lines were still open in 1977 and while the line to Wheal Rose closed in the 1980s the Carbis Wharf line finally closed at the end of the decade. The last train to Carbis Wharf ran on 19 June 1989 when Class 37 number 37669 retrieved a single bogie clay wagon, and the track was lifted in the first months of 1992. In 2020 the line of the branch was still traceable on satellite images, with the last few hundred metres being in use as a road serving a china clay pit.
Wheal Virgin
A short line diverging sharply to the west side of the line. Latterly known as Great Beam works.
Martins new siding
A short siding parallel to the line serving part of the Wheal Rose works.
Wheal Rose siding
A line with a loop serving the Clay Dries at Wheal Rose. The loop was extended into a second siding at a later date.
West Goonbarrow siding
A short siding constructed around 1910 to serve the United China Clay Company works. The works were several feet lower than the line and there was a short incline leading down to the dries, with a catch point and access controlled by a Ground Frame. The siding was closed in 1948 but the tracks were still in situ in 1968.
Rosemellyn siding
A siding with a loop serving the Clay Dries of the Rosemellyn China Clay Company. A Ground frame controlled access to the siding, which was removed in 1948.
Carbis Wharf
A pair of parallel sidings at the end of the line, the southern siding serving the works of the Goonvean and Restowrack China Clay Company at Great Wheal Prosper Clay Dry, and the other with a loading dock used by the Carbis Brickworks. Even after the end of steam there was a daily service to the dries but traffic grew less until the last train, which ran on 25 August 1989, consisted of just a single 46 tonne PGA wagon bound for Mossend Yard. By 2015 the old clay dries had been converted into holiday accommodation.
Trenance valley line
Constructed rather later than most China Clay branches, the Trenance Valley line started when a single siding was laid in 1914 just east of St Austell viaduct, with a Signal Box and trailing crossover controlling access from the Cornish Main Line. The line was extended and the branch created in time to be opened on 1 May 1920, leaving at Trenance Junction and running for just less than . The crossover on the Cornish Main Line was removed in 1932 and the signal box at the junction was closed in 1949. Possibly the only recorded passenger train on the branch was a special consisting of Bubble Car 55015 which traversed the line on 14 July 1963, although a special consisting of a pair of Prairie tanks and several brake vans had run the previous year. The line closed completely on 6 May 1968 and the track was lifted in 1969. Towards the end of steam, trains were hauled by a Pannier tank, which was replaced by a Class 08 shunter which ran the trains after dieselisation. In 2020 the route is still discernable on satellite images over most of its length but none of the rail-assiociated buildings remain.
Lansalon yard
Two long parallel sidings, the northernmost serving a loading platform, and also two short sidings setting back and both located on the north side of the line to serve Boskell China Clay works. These facilities were closed in May 1964 and the line terminated at 1 mile 35 chains, although the tracks were not lifted until August 1966.
Boskell China Clay Works
A long siding splitting into three lines looped together at the extremity. A Ground Frame controlled access.
Lower Ruddle Yard
A short siding on the north side of the line and splitting to run either side of a loading platform, and with a Ground Frame controlling access.
Bojea yard
A pair of sidings either side of a curved loading platform, there was also a small complex of sidings where the line for the yard met the valley line. Originally 4 looped sidings, two were removed in 1964. There was a Ground Frame at each end of the siding complex.
Carlyon Farm siding
A long loop on the east side of the line with a Ground Frame at each end, a siding was added in 1930 to serve the works of Lovering China Clay Ltd. The siding was long, and closed in 1964.
References
Sources
Railway lines in South West England
Standard gauge railways in England
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linda%20Rising
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Linda Rising
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Linda Rising is an American author, lecturer, independent consultant. Rising is credited as having played a major role in having "moved the pattern approach from design into corporate change." She also contributed to the book 97 Things Every Software Architect Should Know, edited by Kevlin Henney and published by O´Reilly in 2009 ().
University education
In 1964, Rising obtained a bachelor's degree in chemistry at the University of Kansas, in 1984 a Master of Science degree in computer science at Southern Illinois University and in 1987 a M. A. in mathematics at the Southwest Missouri State University. In 1992, Rising obtained her PhD degree in computer science from the Arizona State University, with her thesis entitled Information hiding metrics for modular programming languages relating to object-based design metrics.
Teaching
Rising taught as instructor in mathematics and computer science at various universities throughout the midwest from 1977 to 1984 and worked as assistant professor from 1984 to 1987 at Indiana University – Purdue University Fort Wayne.
Industry, consulting and writing
In industry, she worked in the areas of telecommunications, avionics, and tactical weapons systems.
Rising has extended the use of patterns, building upon the work of Christopher Alexander on a pattern language for architecture and the work of the Gang of Four on patterns for software development. She extended the use of patterns to the support of organisational change. Her work and lectures cover patterns, retrospectives, agile development approaches and the change process, topics on which she is an internationally known lecturer.
Since 2010, she is editor of the Insights series of the IEEE Software magazine.
Her book The Pattern Almanac 2000 provides a comprehensive inventory of patterns compiled from publications in patterns conferences and books prior to the year 2000. The patterns are listed by name and divided into categories, and for each pattern a rudimentary description as well as a reference to a book, journal or URL where the actual published pattern can be found is provided. The Pattern Almanac 2000 has been cited as reference on existing patterns and used as starting-point of further research. Rising's indexing of existing patterns is seen as "a significant start toward achieving the ultimate goal of a pattern database."
The study The scrum software development process for small teams by Rising and Norman S. Janoff is cited as first published study in which the scrum, a development process for small teams which includes a series of "sprints" which each last typically between one and four weeks, was tested in real-life projects. The study has been cited for showing "that nonhierarchical teams work more effectively through the complex iterations and time-consuming gestation of a software program" and that "they gain strength through shared successes and failures".
She is editor of the book Design Patterns in Communication Software, a compendium of patterns, which appeared 2001. Contributors to her book include experts from the patterns community such as James O. Coplien and Douglas C. Schmidt. She is author of Fearless Change: Patterns for Introducing New Ideas, co-authored with Mary Lynn Manns and published 2004.
Rising has been keynote speaker at the agile 2007 conference (topic: "Are agilists the bonobos of software development?"), the OOP 2009 conference (topic: "Who Do You Trust?"), the Agile testing days Berlin 2010 (topic: "Deception and Estimation: How we fool ourselves"), at the GOTO Amsterdam 2014 conference (topic: "Science or Stories?"), and at the European Testing Conference 2016 in Bukarest (topic: "The Agile Mindset")
Her work has inspired many in the agile community, for instance Steve Adolph and Paul Bramble, who, together with Alistair Cockburn and Andy Pols, expanded further on Rising's use patterns.
Rising lives in Phoenix, Arizona.
Books
Mary Lynn Manns, Linda Rising: Fearless Change: Patterns for Introducing New Ideas, Addison-Wesley, 2004, - cited ca. 60 times
Linda Rising (Editor), Douglas C. Schmidt (Foreword): Design Patterns in Communication Software, Cambridge University Press, 2001, - abstract - cited ca. 50 times
Linda Rising: The Pattern Almanac 2000, Addison Wesley, 2000, - cited ca. 30 times
Linda Rising: The Patterns Handbook: Techniques, Strategies, and Applications, SIGS Reference Library, Cambridge University Press, 1998,
Linda Rising: Patterns Handbook: Best Practices, Cambridge University Press, 1997, - cited ca. 25 times
Linda Sue Rising: Information hiding metrics for modular programming languages, Doctoral Dissertation, Arizona State University, 1992
References
External links
Homepage
Linda Rising, speaker at QCon
Linda Rising, author overview at InfoQ
Interview on Coding By Numbers Podcast
Arizona State University alumni
American technology writers
University of Kansas alumni
Missouri State University alumni
American chief operating officers
Women corporate executives
American women business executives
American business executives
Southern Illinois University alumni
Indiana University – Purdue University Fort Wayne faculty
20th-century births
Living people
Year of birth missing (living people)
American women academics
21st-century American women
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