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54150745

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TASKING

TASKING

TASKING Germany GmbH is a leading provider of embedded software development tools headquartered in Munich, Germany. TASKING development tools are used by automotive manufacturers and the world's largest Tier 1 supplier to realize high-performance applications in safety-critical areas. These customers and those from adjacent industries, trust TASKING development tools to develop the latest applications while achieving optimum reliability, functional safety, and performance. History Founded as a software consulting company in 1977, they developed their first C compiler in 1986. In 1988, TASKING launched its first embedded toolset for the 8051 family of single-chip microcontrollers. The company gained a presence in the U.S. market by merging with Boston System Office (BSO) in 1989 and shortly thereafter developed a second-generation compiler designed to support the C166 and DSP56K. In 1998 TASKING partnered with Infineon Technologies to develop the first TriCore development solution. Altium acquired TASKING in 2001 and they began working on their third-generation compiler technology, the Viper compiler. This compiler technology was designed to increase the speed and code efficiency for the TriCore development toolset. The C166 toolset was upgraded to the third-generation compiler technology in 2006, providing significant increase in speed optimization and code size. 2014 saw the introduction of both a compiler for the Renesas RH850 family and an Automotive Safety Support Program (Safety Kit) for ISO 26262 certification. The TASKING TriCore toolset received a major update in 2015 and another update in 2017. These updates further increased speed and decreased code size, but the major focus of these updates was additional support for the Infineon AURIX and Infineon AURIX G2 multi-core processors. In 2016 the Safety Checker product was released. Safety Checker provides static code analysis to verify that no unauthorized access to protected memory occurs. In 2017, the VX Toolset for TriCore v6.2 was released. Also released in 2017 was a stand-alone embedded debugger. Products TASKING provides embedded software development tools for the following processors: Infineon TriCore/AURIX Infineon/ST Micro C166/ST10 Freescale Qorivva STMicroelectronics SPC 5 Renesas RH850 Bosch GTM-IP MCS (generic timer module) 8051 and others The most popular TASKING product is the VX Toolset for TriCore. It contains a full set of tools for developing and troubleshooting software for the TriCore, AURIX, and AURIX 2G processors from Infineon Technologies. This development package includes C/C++ compilers for the TriCore, plus C compilers for the Generic Timer Module (GTM), Hardware Safety Module (HSM), 8051 (SCR), and Peripheral Co-Processor (PCP). Additional tools include a pin mapper, debugger, linker, and assemblers. Non-compiler tools: Safety Kit — a complete ISO 26262 qualification program that inspects the full journey of the software and its intended application. Safety Checker — automatically detects interference between software elements with different Automotive Safety Integrity Levels (ASIL) by checking access restrictions on the memory of single and multi-core systems. Stand-alone Embedded Debugger — a cost-effective solution to verify software functionality during development and an effective solution for verifying software during mass production. See also List of EDA companies Electronics Electronic engineering FPGAs Embedded systems References Further reading https://www.heise.de/developer/meldung/TASKING-C-Compiler-in-Eclipse-integriert-2070820.html https://www.elektronikpraxis.vogel.de/tasking-compiler-technologie-gratis-zum-testen-a-501472/ https://www.elektroniknet.de/elektronik/elektronikfertigung/europaeischer-hauptsitz-nun-in-muenchen-135595.html https://www.embedded-world.de/de/ausstellerprodukte/embwld18/produkt-9949953/tasking-vx-toolset-for-tricore-aurix https://www.elektronik-informationen.de/tasking-vx-toolset-in-neuer-version/150/23272/348044 https://www.electronicsweekly.com/news/products/software-products/altium-tasking-tricore-vx-toolset-v3-2-for-embedded-software-2009-03/ https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20050222005870/en/Altium-Offers-TASKING-TriCore-VX-toolset-v2.2-Supporting https://www.channel-e.de/nachrichten/article/tasking-c-compiler-fuer-mcus-mit-power-architektur.html External links Software companies established in 1977 Software companies of Germany Companies based in Munich Electronic design automation companies Development software companies

300462

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan%20Perlis

Alan Perlis

Alan Jay Perlis (April 1, 1922 – February 7, 1990) was an American computer scientist and professor at Purdue University, Carnegie Mellon University and Yale University. He is best known for his pioneering work in programming languages and was the first recipient of the Turing Award. Biography Perlis was born to a Jewish family in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Taylor Allderdice High School in 1939. In 1943, he received his bachelor's degree in chemistry from the Carnegie Institute of Technology (later renamed Carnegie Mellon University). During World War II, he served in the U.S. Army, where he became interested in mathematics. He then earned both a master's degree (1949) and a Ph.D. (1950) in mathematics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). His doctoral dissertation was titled "On Integral Equations, Their Solution by Iteration and Analytic Continuation". In 1952, he participated in Project Whirlwind. He joined the faculty at Purdue University and in 1956, moved to the Carnegie Institute of Technology. He was chair of mathematics and then the first head of the computer science department. In 1962, he was elected president of the Association for Computing Machinery. He was awarded the inaugural Turing Award in 1966, according to the citation, "for his influence in the area of advanced programming techniques and compiler construction." This is a reference to the work he had done on Internal Translator in 1956 (described by Donald Knuth as the first successful compiler), and as a member of the team that developed the programming language ALGOL. In 1971, Perlis moved to Yale University to take the chair of computer science and hold the Eugene Higgins chair. In 1977, he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering. In 1982, he wrote an article, "Epigrams on Programming", for Association for Computing Machinery's (ACM) SIGPLAN journal, describing in one-sentence distillations many of the things he had learned about programming over his career. The epigrams have been widely quoted. He remained at Yale until his death in 1990. Publications Publications, a selection: 1957. Internal Translator (IT): A Compiler for the 650. With J. W. Smith and H. R. Van Zoeren. 1965. An introductory course in computer programming. With Robert T. Braden. 1970. A view of programming languages. With Bernard A. Galler 1975. Introduction to computer science 1977. In Praise of APL: A Language for Lyrical Programming 1978. Almost Perfect Artifacts Improve only in Small Ways: APL is more French than English 1981. Software Metrics: An Analysis and Evaluation. With Frederick Sayward and Mary Shaw 1986. FAC: A Functional APL Language. With Tu Hai-Chen. About Alan Perlis See also List of pioneers in computer science References External links Oral history interview with Allen Newell at Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Newell discusses the development of the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University, including the work of Perlis and Raj Reddy, and the growth of the computer science and artificial intelligence research communities. Alan J. Perlis Papers, 1942–1989. Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis Jewish American military personnel 1922 births 1990 deaths American computer scientists Carnegie Mellon University alumni Carnegie Mellon University faculty Scientists from Pittsburgh Presidents of the Association for Computing Machinery Programming language designers Turing Award laureates Yale University faculty United States Army soldiers United States Army personnel of World War II Military personnel from Pittsburgh Lisp (programming language) people Computer science educators Taylor Allderdice High School alumni Jewish American scientists

10290198

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List%20of%20Massachusetts%20Institute%20of%20Technology%20alumni

List of Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni

This list of Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni includes students who studied as undergraduates or graduate students at MIT's School of Engineering; School of Science; MIT Sloan School of Management; School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences; School of Architecture and Planning; or Whitaker College of Health Sciences. Since there are more than 120,000 alumni (living and deceased), this listing cannot be comprehensive. Instead, this article summarizes some of the more notable MIT alumni, with some indication of the reasons they are notable in the world at large. All MIT degrees are earned through academic achievement, in that MIT has never awarded honorary degrees in any form. The MIT Alumni Association defines eligibility for membership as follows: The following persons are Alumni/ae Members of the Association: All persons who have received a degree from the Institute; and All persons who have been registered as students in a degree-granting program at the Institute for (i) at least one full term in any undergraduate class which has already graduated; or (ii) for at least two full terms as graduate students. As a celebration of the new MIT building dedicated to nanotechnology laboratories in 2018, a special silicon wafer was designed and fabricated with an image of the Great Dome. This One.MIT image is composed of more than 270,000 individual names, comprising all the students, faculty, and staff at MIT during the years 1861–2018. A special website was set up to document the creation of a large wall display in the building, and to facilitate the location of individual names in the image. Politics and public service United States International Architecture and design Christopher Charles Benninger (MCP 1971) – award-winning architect and urban planner in India, Sri Lanka, prepared capital plan of Bhutan Walter Danforth Bliss – architect from California, with many buildings on the National Register of Historic Places Gordon Bunshaft (BArch 1933, MArch 1935) – architect of Lever House (New York City), Beinecke Library (Yale), Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (Washington DC); Pritzker Prize (1988) Ogden Codman, Jr. (1884) – Beaux-Arts domestic architect, interior designer Vishaan Chakrabarti (MCP 1993)— architect and dean of UC Berkeley's College of Environmental Design John Desmond (MArch) – designed numerous public buildings in Baton Rouge, including the River Center Daniel Chester French (1871, one year) – sculptor of Abraham Lincoln (Lincoln Memorial), John Harvard (Harvard Yard), Minute Man (Concord, Massachusetts) Cass Gilbert (1880) – architect of the US Supreme Court Building, Woolworth Building (New York City) Charles Sumner Greene (1891) – partner in Greene and Greene, domestic architects of Arts & Crafts style, Gamble House (Pasadena) Henry Mather Greene (1891) – partner in Greene and Greene, domestic architects of Arts & Crafts style, Gamble House (Pasadena) Marion Mahony Griffin (1894) – co-designer of the master plan for Canberra, Australia Nathanael Herreshoff (SB 1870) – naval architect-engineer, yacht designer Raymond Hood (1903) – architect of Rockefeller Center (New York City), Tribune Tower (Chicago) Lois Lilley Howe (SB 1890) – second woman in the US to found an architecture firm Jarvis Hunt – Chicago architect Myron Hunt (SB 1893) – architect of Huntington Art Gallery, Rose Bowl (Pasadena) Piotr Kowalski (SB 1952) – artist, sculptor, architect, professor Roger K. Lewis (BArch 1964; MArch 1967) – architect, urban planner, professor, author Austin W. Lord (1888) – architect of the administration buildings, Isthmian Canal Commission, Panama; director of the School of Architecture at Columbia University Kevin A. Lynch (SB 1947) – urban planner, author of the seminal book The Image of the City John O. Merrill (SB 1921) – structural engineer, architect, leader of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill Eleanor Manning O'Connor (SB 1906) – architect, educator, public housing advocate I. M. Pei (BArch 1940) – architect, Louvre Pyramid (Paris), Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (Cleveland), Bank of China (Hong Kong), MIT Buildings 18, 54, 66, E15; AIA Gold Medal (1979), Pritzker Prize (1983) Donald W. Southgate (1887–1953) – architect in Nashville, Tennessee Sumner Spaulding (1892–1952) – architect, graduated in 1916, designed many buildings in California Louis Sullivan (one year) – influential founder of the Chicago School; "father of skyscrapers"; "father of modernism"; AIA Gold Medal (1944) James Knox Taylor (1880) – Supervisory Architect of Denver Mint, Philadelphia Mint, many post offices, court houses, other federal buildings Robert Taylor (1892) – MIT's first black graduate, architect of the Tuskegee Institute Harry Mohr Weese (BArch 1938) – architect, historic preservation advocate, designed first group of stations for Washington Metro system Business and entrepreneurship See also List of companies founded by Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni Computers and Internet Brandon Wade (SB 1993) - Founder of Seeking Arrangement Joseph Alsop (SB 1967) – co-founder of Progress Software Efi Arazi – Israeli industrialist and businessman, founder of Scitex Corporation Shiva Ayyadurai (SB 1987 SM 1989 SM 1990 PHD 2007) – scientist and inventor Sanju Bansal – co-founder of MicroStrategy Hugo Barra – VP of International for Xiaomi, former VP and product spokesman for Google Android Katie Bouman (PhD 2017) – developer of the algorithm used in filtering the first images of a black hole taken by the Event Horizon Telescope Anant Bhardwaj (Ph.D. dropout) – founder of Instabase Larry DeMar (SB 1979) – programmer for Williams, co-creator of Defender and Robotron: 2084, and founder of Leading Edge Design John J. Donovan (Postdoc 1969) – founder of Cambridge Technology Partners, and Open Environment Corporation Eran Egozy Co-founder, CTO, and VP of Harmonix Systems; now clarinetist and professor of music at MIT Arash Ferdowsi (dropped out); co-founder of CTO at Dropbox Carly Fiorina (SM 1989) – former CEO of Hewlett-Packard Philip Gale (1978–1998) – writer of TotalAccess, computer prodigy, and Internet software developer Andy Gavin – co-founder of Naughty Dog and creator of the first video game with a full 3D environment, Crash Bandicoot Shuman Ghosemajumder – author of Open Music Model, click fraud czar at Google Cecil H. Green (SB 1924, SM 1924) – co-founder of Texas Instruments William R. Hewlett (SM 1936) – co-founder of Hewlett-Packard Danny Hillis (SB 1978, SM 1981, PhD 1988) – co-founder of Thinking Machines and former Disney Fellow Mark Horowitz (SB 1978, SM 1978) – founder of Rambus Drew Houston – co-founder and CEO of Dropbox Irwin M. Jacobs (SM 1957, ScD 1959) – co-founder of Qualcomm with Andrew Viterbi, current chairman and former CEO; former MIT professor (1959–1966) Brewster Kahle (SB 1982) – internet archivist, founder of Alexa Mitch Kapor – software entrepreneur, founder of Lotus Corporation Earl Killian – software architect with 26 patents, MIPS Steve Kirsch (SB 1980, SM 1980) – inventor of the optical mouse, co-founder of Frame Technology Corporation and founder of Infoseek Corporation Alan Kotok (SB 1962, SM 1962) – chief architect PDP-10, associate chairman World Wide Web Consortium Pavel Krapivin (SB 2002) – co-founder of Doostang Susan Landau (PhD 1983) – Guggenheim Fellow and cybersecurity expert Daniel Lewin (SM 1998) – founder of Akamai Jack Little (SB 1978) – co-founder of MathWorks, which created and sells MATLAB Sonita Lontoh (M.Eng 2004) – green technology executive Steve Mann – co-creator of the SixthSense device Patrick McGovern (SB 1960) – founder of IDG/Computerworld Steve Meretzky (SB 1979) – computer game designer Robert Metcalfe (SB 1969) – entrepreneur, founder of 3Com; inventor of Ethernet Pranav Mistry (PhD) – co-creator of the SixthSense device Nicholas Negroponte (B.Arch, M.Arch 1966) – founder, MIT Media Lab, One Laptop per Child Association Kathy Nelson (SB – Electrical Engineering 1993) – creator of world's first holographic video game Robert Noyce (PhD 1953) – integrated circuit pioneer, co-founder of Intel, Draper Prize (1969) Ken Olsen (SB 1950, SM 1952) – founder of Digital Equipment Corporation William Poduska (SB 1960, SM 1960, ScD 1962) – computer engineer and entrepreneur, founder of Prime Computer and Apollo Computer William A. Porter (MBA 1967) – founder of E*TRADE Allen Razdow (SB 1976) – founder of Mathsoft Inc.; inventor of Mathcad Alex Rigopulos (SB 1994, SM 1994) – founder of Harmonix Music Systems, developer of Guitar Hero and Rock Band Larry Roberts (SB 1961, SM 1961, PhD 1963) – member of design group for original ARPANET, co-founder of Caspian Networks and Packetcom, former CEO of DHL Sheldon Roberts (SM 1949, ScD 1952) – one of the "traitorous eight" who founded Fairchild Semiconductor; co-founder of Amelco which later became Teledyne Douglas T. Ross (SM 1954) – founder of SofTech, Inc. Michael J. Saylor – co-founder of MicroStrategy Megan Smith (SB 1986, SM 1988) – Google executive; former CEO of PlanetOut, early smartphones at General Magic, 3rd United States Chief Technology Officer (2014–17) Robert Spinrad (PhD) – computer pioneer; director of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center Ray Stata (SB 1958, SM 1958) – founder of Analog Devices Lisa Su (SB 1990, SM 1991, PhD 1994) – CEO of Advanced Micro Devices Eric Swanson – co-founder of Sycamore Networks Theodore Tso – Google software engineer, maintainer of the ext4 filesystem Philippe Villers (SM 1960) – founder of Computervision, which is now part of Parametric Technology Corporation Andrew Viterbi (SB 1957, SM 1957) – electrical engineer; inventor of the Viterbi algorithm; co-founder of Qualcomm; former UCLA and UCSD professor Christopher Weaver (SM 1985) – founder of Bethesda Softworks and co-founder of ZeniMax Media Matt Denesuk (SB, 1987) - SVP, Data Analytics & AI at Royal Caribbean Group; founder of Noodle.ai, Chief Data Science Officer of GE. Engineering Colin Angle – co-founder of iRobot Satya N. Atluri (Sc.D Aeronautics & Astronautics, 1969) – engineer; recipient of 2013 Padma Bhushan 2013, 2015 Crichlow Trust Prize from AIAA Karel Bossart (SM 1927) – designer of the SM-65 Atlas missile Vanu Bose - Electrical Engineer, founder of Vanu Inc, and son of Amar Bose William David Coolidge (SB 1896) – physicist who made major contributions to X-ray machines, director of the General Electric Research Laboratory Charles Stark Draper (SB 1926, SM 1928, SD 1938) – engineer and inventor; the "father of inertial navigation"; inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1981 Helen Greiner – co-founder of iRobot Charles Townsend Ludington – aviation pioneer Francis "Des" Lynch (ScD Mechanical Engineering 1968) - Patented several inventions including the ideal dimple patterns for Titleist golf balls Ernest Boyd MacNaughton (SB 1902) – bank president; president of The Oregonian; president of Reed College Fred Mannering (PhD 1983) - professor University of South Florida; Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher Jim Marggraff (SB Electrical Engineering, SM Computer Science) – inventor of the LeapPad Learning System, Fly pentop computer, and Livescribe smartpen Lissa Martinez (SM 1980) – ocean engineer Mohammad Modarres – Eminent Professor of the University of Maryland; founder of world's first graduate curriculum in reliability engineering Henry M. Paynter (SB civil engineering 1944, SM mathematics and science 1949, ScD hydroelectric engineering 1951, all MIT) – inventor of bond graphs Nicholas A. Peppas – professor of engineering, University of Texas at Austin, pioneer in drug delivery, biomaterials, hydrogels and nanobiotechnology Thuan Pham (SB Computer Science & Engineering 1990, SM 1991) – CTO of Uber RJ Scaringe (SM, PhD) – CEO of Rivian, Plymouth, Michigan, United States Tom Scholz – founder of the rock group Boston and Scholz Research & Development, Inc., manufacturers of Rockman sound equipment Dorian Shainin (SB 1936) – quality paradigm pioneer and guru; considered one of the world's foremost experts in the fields of industrial problem solving, product reliability and quality engineering; known for the creation and development of the "Red X" concept Mareena Robinson Snowden – first Black woman to earn a Ph.D. in nuclear engineering Suhas Pandurang Sukhatme – former Chairman of Atomic Energy Regulatory Board of India Christine Taylor-Butler (civil engineering 1981) – children's author Manufacturing and defense Vaughn Beals – CEO of Harley-Davidson Amar Bose – founder and chairman of Bose Corporation Wesley G. Bush – chairman, CEO and President of Northrop Grumman Morris Chang – chairman of the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), the largest semiconductor foundry in the world Nick DeWolf – co-founder of Teradyne John Dorrance – founder of Campbell Soup Company Donald Douglas – founder of Douglas Aircraft Company Pierre S. du Pont – Du Pont Company and General Motors executive T. Coleman du Pont – Du Pont Company president; US Senator Armand V. Feigenbaum – quality expert William Clay Ford, Jr. – chairman of Ford Motor Company Bernardo Garza Sada – founder and president of the ALFA conglomerate of Mexico Kenneth Germeshausen – co-founder, and the first "G", of the defense contractor EG&G Bernard Marshall Gordon (SB 1949, SM 1949) – electrical engineer, inventor, philanthropist, co-founded Analogic Corporation, National Medal of Technology (1986) George Hatsopoulos – founder of Thermo Electron Corporation Charles Koch – co-owner, Chairman and CEO of Koch Industries, the second largest private company in the US David H. Koch – co-owner of Koch Industries; Vice-Presidential candidate for the Libertarian Party Jay Last – one of the "traitorous eight" who founded Fairchild Semiconductor; co-founder of Amelco, which became Teledyne James McDonnell – co-founder of McDonnell Douglas Alan Mulally – president and CEO of Ford Motor Company William Emery Nickerson – co-founder of Gillette, now part of Procter & Gamble Willard Rockwell – founder of Rockwell International Henry Singleton – founder of Teledyne Alfred P. Sloan, Jr. – automobile entrepreneur, former CEO of General Motors Wong Tsu – first engineer of the Boeing Company Uncas Whitaker – founder of AMP Incorporated (now a division of Tyco International) Rick Woodward – president of Woodward Iron Company, owner of Birmingham Barons Finance and consulting Roger Ward Babson – entrepreneur, founder of Babson Institute (now Babson College), 1940 presidential nominee on the Prohibition Party ticket Michael Brennan – pioneering finance academic, former president of the American Finance Association Richard Carrión – CEO of Banco Popular de Puerto Rico, and of Popular, Inc. Wesley Chan – investment partner at Google Ventures Lisa Endlich – business author, former vice-president at Goldman Sachs Mark Gorenberg – partner of the venture capital firm Hummer Winblad Venture Partners Robert C. Hancké – Belgian economist Michael Hammer – pioneer of Business Process Reengineering, founder of Hammer and Co. Mansoor Ijaz – founder and chairman of Crescent Investment Management Ltd; developer of the CARAT trading system Shantanurao Laxmanrao Kirloskar – founder of Kirloskar Group Arthur Dehon Little – entrepreneur, founder of the eponymous management consulting firm Arthur D. Little in 1886 Mark Mobius – emerging markets investor and fund manager Kenichi Ohmae – former director of the Japan arm of McKinsey & Company, management consultants Tom Perkins – founder of venture capital firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers John S. Reed – chairman of the New York Stock Exchange Ed Seykota – commodity trader Jim Simons – mathematician; philanthropist; founder of Renaissance Technologies hedge fund John Thain – former CEO of Merrill Lynch, former Chief Executive Officer of the New York Stock Exchange William Toy – director at CDC, New York and Goldman Sachs; developer of the Black–Derman–Toy interest rate model Nigel Wilson – CEO of Legal & General Health care and biotechnology David Benaron – digital health entrepreneur, physician George A. Herzlinger - (BS, PhD physics) - medical innovation entrepreneur who invented and, with Regina, founded firms that built and sold an intra aortic balloon pump and a standard-of-care rapid infuser that have saved thousands of lives Regina E. Herzlinger - (BS economics) - First woman to be tenured and chaired at HBS and to serve on large corporate health care Boards of Directors, including John Deere and Cardinal Health; author of three best-selling health care trade books. Known as the "Godmother of Consumer-Driven health care." Paul F. Levy (SB, MCP 1974) – former president of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center hospitals, former Executive Director of Boston's MWRA Harbor Cleanup project Bernard Sherman (PhD astrophysics) – Canadian billionaire, philanthropist, and founder of Apotex Robert A. Swanson – co-founder of Genentech Ron Williams – CEO of Aetna Miscellaneous David A. Aaker – consultant and author of Marketing Aditya Birla – industrialist, deceased son of basant Kumar Birla and father of Kumar Mangalam who heads Aditya Birla Group Joseph Chung – co-founder of Art Technology Group with fellow MIT grad Jeet Singh Jack Crichton – oil and natural gas industrialist from Texas; Republican candidate for governor in 1964 Samuel Face – inventor and co-developer of advances in concrete and piezoelectric technologies Victor Kwok-king Fung – prominent Hong Kong billionaire businessman and political figure Antonio Galloni – Wine critic and founder of Vinous Eugenio Garza Sada – Mexican businessman, philanthropist and founder of the Tec de Monterrey Krisztina "Z" Holly (SB 1989, SM 1992) - co-founder of Stylus Innovation, curator of first TEDx, founder of MIT Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation, former vice provost for innovation at University of Southern California John Legere – CEO of T-Mobile, post-graduate school, received M.S. from MIT Nikolaos Mavridis – founder of the Interactive Robots and Media Lab David McGrath – founder of TAD Resources, now part of Adecco Dana G. Mead – former CEO and chair of Tenneco Hamid R. Moghadam – co-founder, chairman and CEO of Prologis Stewart Nelson – founder of Systems Concepts Eric P. Newman – numismatist Arthur S. Obermayer – founder of the Moleculon Research Corporation; philanthropist John Ofori-Tenkorang – Director General of the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT), Ghana Generoso Pope – founder and owner of The National Enquirer Alexander N. Rossolimo – founding chairman of Center for Security and Social Progress Michael J. Saylor – founder of MicroStrategy Alan Spoon (SB 1973) – former president of The Washington Post Company Leelila Strogov – general assignment reporter for Fox 11 News Richard Tomlinson – British intelligence officer Helmut Weymar – founder of Commodities Corporation Education Theodosios Alexander (publishes as Theodosios Korakianitis) (MIT graduate degrees: SM in Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering 1982; SM in Ocean Systems Management; SM in Mechanical Engineering; ScD in Mechanical Engineering 1987) – Dean of Parks College of Engineering, Aviation and Technology of Saint Louis University; Professor and Chair of Energy Engineering, Queen Mary, University of London; former James Watt Professor at the University of Glasgow, Scotland; former Mechanical Engineering Professor at Washington University in St. Louis Joseph E. Aoun (PhD 1982) – president of Northeastern University, linguist, author Andrew Armacost (SM 1995, PhD 2000) – dean of the United States Air Force Academy Dennis Assanis (SM in Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering 1983, SM in Mechanical Engineering 1983, SM in Management 1986, PhD in Power and Propulsion 1986) – former Jon R. and Beverly S. Holt Professor and Arthur F. Thurnau Professor at the University of Michigan; Provost and Senior VP for Academic Affairs at Stony Brook University Larry Bacow (SB 1972) – president of Harvard University, former president of Tufts University, lawyer, economist, author Merrill J. Bateman (PhD 1965) – former president of Brigham Young University; Mormon Presiding Bishop Scott C. Beardsley – dean of the University of Virginia Darden School of Business Lawrence Berk (SB 1932, Architectural Engineering) – founder and former president of Berklee College of Music (1945–1978) William R. Brody (SB 1965, SM 1966) – former president of Johns Hopkins University, current president of Salk Institute Marion Hamilton Carter (1893) - educator, journalist, author Emily Calandrelli (SM 2013) - aerospace engineer and STEM communicator Jared Cohon (SM 1972, PhD 1973) – former president of Carnegie Mellon University William Cooper (PhD 1976) – president of University of Richmond Allan Cullimore – former president of New Jersey Institute of Technology (1920–1947) Laura D'Andrea Tyson (PhD 1974) – chairman of the CEA under Clinton; former dean of the Haas School of Business; former dean of the London Business School Woodie Flowers (SM 1968, ME 1971, PhD 1973) – MIT professor, created Introduction to Design (2.70), founder of FIRST Robotics Competition, starting host of Scientific American Frontiers (1990–93) Philip Friedman (PhD 1972) – president of Golden Gate University David Garrison – founding chair, University of Houston–Clear Lake Physics Department Thomas P. Gerrity – former dean of Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania Hollis Godfrey (1889) – former president of Drexel University Eric Grimson (BSc 1975) – computer scientist and Chancellor of MIT Amos Horev (SB, SM) – former president of Technion Shirley Jackson (SB 1968, PhD 1973) – president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, physicist Martin C. Jischke (SM, PhD 1968) – former president of Purdue University Theodora J. Kalikow (Sc.M. 1970) – former president of the University of Maine at Farmington and the University of Southern Maine Salman Khan – founder and executive director of Khan Academy Joseph Klafter – chemical physics professor, the eighth President of Tel Aviv University Martin C. Libicki (BS Mathematics) – professor at the Frederick S. Pardee RAND Graduate School in Santa Monica, California John Maeda (SB, SM 1989) – former president of Rhode Island School of Design (2008–2013), graphic designer, computer scientist, author, venture capitalist Modesto Maidique (SB 1962, SM 1964, EE 1966, PhD 1970) – former president of Florida International University Julianne Malveaux (PhD 1980) – president of Bennett College Alan Marcus (PhD 1981) -- economist; professor at the Carroll School of Management, Boston College. The first recipient of the Mario Gabelli Endowed Professorship. David McClain (PhD 1974) – president of University of Hawaii Frederic Mishkin (SB 1973, PhD 1976) – economist; professor at Columbia Business School; Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (2006–2008); appeared in the documentary Inside Job Leo E. Morton (SM 1987) – chancellor of University of Missouri-Kansas City Gretchen Ritter (Ph.D.) – dean of the Cornell University College of Arts and Sciences. Richard Santagati (SM 1979) – former president of Merrimack College Rahmat Shoureshi – researcher, professor, and provost of New York Institute of Technology (NYIT) Reed Shuldiner (Ph.D. 1985) – Alvin L. Snowiss Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School Nam-Pyo Suh (SB 1959, SM 1961) – president of KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology) Lawrence H. Summers (SB 1975) – former president of Harvard University, economist, former presidential advisor Subra Suresh (ScD 1981) – former president of Carnegie Mellon University, former Director of the National Science Foundation, former Dean of the School of Engineering at MIT Ahmed Tewfik (PhD 1987) – IEEE Signal Processing Society President, former chair of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Cockrell School of Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin Lee T. Todd, Jr. (SM 1970, EE 1971, PhD 1974) – president of University of Kentucky Hal Varian (SB 1969) – chief economist at Google, founding dean of the School of Information at UC Berkeley Patrick Henry Winston (SB 1965, SM 1967, PhD 1970) – author of standard textbooks on artificial intelligence and programming languages, MIT professor, co-founded Ascent Technology Elisabeth Zinser (SM 1982) – president of Southern Oregon University Humanities, arts, and social sciences Saleem Ali (PhD 2001) – Blue and Gold Distinguished Professor of Energy and Environment at the University of Delaware, National Geographic Emerging Explorer, World Economic Forum Young Global Leader Steve Altes (SB 1984, SM 1986) – humorist, National Medal of Technology recipient, writer of Geeks & Greeks graphic novel about MIT Stephen R. Barley (PhD 1984) – professor of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University Harry Binswanger – philosopher, associate of Ayn Rand Michael Brame (PhD 1970) – professor of linguistics at the University of Washington Dylan Bruno – actor John W. Campbell (physics, dropped out) – writer, longtime editor of Astounding Science Fiction James Eckhouse (1976, dropped out) – actor, Beverly Hills, 90210 Alia Farid – contemporary artist Nate Greenslit (PhD) – musician, writer and academic Herbert Kalmus (1903) – inventor of Technicolor, star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame Dean Karlan (PhD) – development economist and founder of Innovations for Poverty Action Kealoha, born Steven Wong (1999) – performance poet; Hawaii's first Poet Laureate and National Poetry Slam Legend; storyteller; Hawaii's SlamMaster Paul Krugman (PhD) – New York Times columnist, John Bates Clark Medal and Nobel Prize winner (economics) Ned Lagin – played keyboards and synthesizer at a number of the Grateful Dead shows between 1970 and 1975 and on a few mid–1970s albums Hugh Lofting – author of Dr. Dolittle series of books; trained at MIT as civil engineer, 1904–05 Dan Massey – sexual freedom scholar, religious philosopher, human rights activist, chief engineer at BBN Technologies, and senior scientist at Science Applications International Corporation Rajesh Mehta (SB Humanities and Engineering 1986)– hybrid trumpeter, composer, educational technology consultant Marisa Morán Jahn – multimedia artist and founder of Studio REV- Charles Murray – researcher, co-author of The Bell Curve Alan Rath (BS 1982) – electronic, kinetic, and robotic sculptor John Shelton Reed (BS 1964) – sociologist, author of The Enduring South, elected to the Fellowship of Southern Writers Ellen Swallow Richards (BS 1873) – founder of the modern home economics discipline and first woman admitted to MIT Tom Scott (SB 1966) – winner of Academy Awards for sound mixing for The Right Stuff and Amadeus Jamshied Sharifi – Tony Award winning composer Erland Van Lidth De Jeude – Hollywood actor, opera singer David Walter – British BBC and ITN correspondent and later, political advisor (winner of Kennedy Memorial Scholarship to MIT) Samuel Washington Weis – painter James Woods (1969, dropped out) – Hollywood actor, Oscar nominee, Emmy winner Science and technology Colin Adams – mathematician, knot theory expert, teacher, writer, math humorist Rakesh Agrawal – National Medal of Technology and Innovation Laureate and Professor of Chemical Engineering at Purdue University Buzz Aldrin – combat pilot, astronaut, second man to walk on the Moon Pauline Morrow Austin – meteorologist, Director of Weather Radar at MIT, research staff in Radiation Laboratory Adrian Bejan – professor of mechanical engineering, namesake of the Bejan number Gordon Bell – computer engineer and manager, designer of DEC PDP, manager of the VAX project Stephen Benton – invented rainbow hologram, pioneered digital holography Katie Bouman – computer game designer and programmer, developed Zork adventure game Manuel Blum – computer scientist, received Turing Award (1995) for studies in computational complexity theory Katie Bouman – computer scientist and electrical engineer involved in developing the algorithm used in filtering the first images of a black hole taken by the Event Horizon Telescope Dan Bricklin – co-inventor of Visicalc, the first WYSIWYG PC spreadsheet program Alice G. Bryant – otolaryngologist and inventor of surgical tools Edward M. Burgess – chemist, inventor of the Burgess reagent Christopher Chen - William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Boston University. David D. Clark – led the development of TCP/IP (the protocol that underlies the Internet) Wesley A. Clark – computing pioneer, creator of the LINC (the first minicomputer) Fernando Corbató – retired MIT professor, Turing Award (1990), co-founder of the Multics project Shiladitya DasSarma (PhD 1985) – pioneering microbiologist and professor at University of Maryland School of Medicine who deciphered genetic code for Halobacterium NRC-1 Peter J. Denning (SM 1965, PhD 1968) – computer scientist, professor, co-founder of the Multics project, pioneered virtual memory Jack Dennis – retired MIT professor, co-founder of the Multics project Peter Diamandis – founder and chairman of the X PRIZE Foundation, co-founder and chairman of Singularity University, and co-author of New York Times bestseller Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think Whitfield Diffie – pioneer of public-key cryptography and the Diffie-Hellman protocol, Turing Award (2015) K. Eric Drexler – pioneer nanotechnologist, author, co-founded Foresight Institute Harold Eugene "Doc" Edgerton (SM 1927, ScD 1931) – former MIT Institute professor; co-founder, and the "E", of EG&G; stroboscope photography pioneer; Oscar winner 1940 Theodore Miller Edison (1898–1992) – only child of Thomas Alva Edison who graduated from college; inventor with over 80 patents Farouk El-Baz – Supervisor of Lunar Science Planning, Apollo Program, NASA Kelly Falkner (PhD 1989) – oceanographer, Antarctic researcher Bran Ferren (Class of 1974) – Designer, Technologist, Engineer, entertainment technology expert, prolific inventor, Academy Award nominee Carl Feynman – computer scientist; son of the physicist Richard Feynman Mike Fincke (SB Aero/Astro 1989, SB EAPS 1989) – NASA astronaut. Marron William Fort (SB 1926, SM 1927, PhD 1933) – first African-American to earn a PhD in engineering Bob Frankston (SB 1970, SM EE 1974) – co-inventor of Visicalc (first WYSIWYG PC spreadsheet program); critic of telecommunications public policy Limor Fried – open-source hardware pioneer, founder of Adafruit Industries Simson Garfinkel – journalist, author, computer security researcher, entrepreneur, computer science professor Ivan Getting – co-inventor of the Global Positioning System (GPS), Draper Prize (2003) Jim Gettys – an original developer of X Window, former director of GNOME Martha Goodway – archaeometallurgist at the Smithsonian Institution Bill Gosper (SB 1965) – mathematician, a founder of the original hacker community, pioneer of symbolic computing, originator of hashlife Julia R. Greer (SB 1997) – materials science professor at Caltech, pioneer in the fields of nanomechanics and architected materials, CNN 2020 Visionary Gerald Guralnik (SB 1958) – Professor of Physics, Brown University; co-discoverer of Higgs mechanism and Higgs boson in 1964 with C.R. Hagen; awarded J. J. Sakurai Prize for Theoretical Particle Physics in 2010 C. R. Hagen (SB, SM 1958, PhD. 1963) – Professor of Physics, University of Rochester; co-discoverer of Higgs mechanism and Higgs boson in 1964 with Gerald Guralnik; awarded J. J. Sakurai Prize for Theoretical Particle Physics in (2010) George Ellery Hale – astronomer, founded several astronomical observatories, developed Throop College of Technology into Caltech Karen Hao (SB 2015), award-winning AI journalist William W. Happ - (MS) - Silicon transistor pioneer at Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory, and Professor at Arizona State University. Guadalupe Hayes-Mota - (SB 2008, SM 2016, MBA 2016) - biotechnologist and business director. Asegun Henry (SM, PhD 2009) – mechanical engineer Caroline Herzenberg (SB 1953) – physicist Julian W. Hill (PhD 1928) – inventor of nylon C.-T. James Huang (PhD 1982) – generative linguist, Professor and Director of Graduate Studies at Harvard, Fellow of the Linguistic Society of America (2015), recipient of the Linguistic Society of Taiwan's Lifetime Achievement Award (2014) David A. Huffman – computer scientist known for Huffman coding used in lossless data compression Jerome C. Hunsaker (SM 1912, ScD 1923) – pioneering aeronautical engineer, airship designer, former head of MIT Mechanical Engineering Department Anya Hurlbert (PhD, 1989) - visual neuroscientist William Jeffrey – defense technology expert, former director of National Institute of Standards and Technology Thomas Kailath – entrepreneur, retired Stanford professor, IEEE Medal of Honor (2007) Rudolf E. Kálmán – electrical engineer, theoretical mathematician, co-inventor of Kalman Filter algorithm, Draper Prize (2008) Jordin Kare – high energy laser physicist, developer of "mosquito laser zapper" Gregor Kiczales — computer scientist, professor at the University of British Columbia, Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery Leonard Kleinrock – computing and Internet pioneer, one of the key group of designers of the original ARPANET Henry Kloss (1953, dropped out) – audio engineer; entrepreneur; founder of Acoustic Research, KLH, Advent, Kloss Video, Cambridge SoundWorks, Tivoli Audio Loren Kohnfelder – introduced the term "public key certificate" for public key cryptography in secure network communication Raymond Kurzweil (SB 1970) – inventor, entrepreneur in music synthesizers, OCR and speech-to-text processing Leslie Lamport – computing pioneer in temporal logic, developer of LaTeX, Turing Award (2013) Robert S. Langer – biochemical engineer, biomedical researcher, MIT professor, inventor, entrepreneur, Draper Prize (2002) Norman Levinson (SB SM 1934, ScD 1935) – theoretical mathematician, former Institute Professor at MIT, developed Levinson recursion Daniel Levitin – neuroscientist, music producer, author of This Is Your Brain on Music Soung Chang Liew (SB 1984, SM 1986, PhD 1988) – information engineering professor Steven R. Little (PhD 2005) - chemical engineer, pharmaceutical scientist, and department chair of Chemical Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering Maureen D. Long (PhD 2006) - observational seismologist Edward Norton Lorenz – mathematician, meteorologist, MIT professor emeritus, invented chaos theory, discovered Lorenz attractor Joseph Lykken (PhD 1982) – theoretical physicist, proposed "weak scale superstring" theory Danilo M Maceda Jr Founder Anonymous Philippines – technology policy expert, software entrepreneur, film writer, software engineer, computer programmer (dropout for hacking CIA server) Hiram Percy Maxim – inventor of the "Maxim Silencer" and founder of the American Radio Relay League John F. McCarthy Jr. (BS 1950, MS 1951) – director of MIT Center for Space Research and director of Lewis Research Center, NASA Douglas McIlroy (PhD 1959) – mathematician, software engineer, professor, developed component-based software engineering, an original developer of Unix, member of National Academy of Engineering Diane McKnight (BS 1975, MS 1978, PhD 1979) – engineering professor, limnologist, biogeochemist, Antarctic researcher Faye McNeill (PhD 2005) – American atmospheric chemist and Professor of Chemical Engineering at Columbia University Parisa Mehrkhodavandi (PhD 2002) – chemist Fulvio Melia (PhD 1985) – theoretical astrophysicist, professor, author, editor, general educator Holly Michael, (PhD 2005) – hydrogeologist and professor Arnold Mindell (MSc 1961) – physicist, author, psychologist – developer of Process Oriented Psychology Douglas J. Mink (SB 1973, SM 1974) – astronomer, software developer, co-discovered rings around Uranus, bicycling activist Bill Parker – artist, engineer, inventor of the modern plasma lamp Bradford Parkinson – co-inventor of the Global Positioning System (GPS), Draper Prize (2003) Robert A. "Bob" Pease (SB 1961) – analog integrated circuit design expert, technical author Irene Pepperberg (SB 1969) – Brandeis University professor, researcher in animal cognition, trained Alex (parrot) Alan Perlis (SM 1949, PhD 1950) – computer scientist, professor, pioneer of programming languages, winner of the first Turing Award (1966) Radia Perlman (SB 1973, SM 1976, PhD 1988) – computer scientist, network engineer, invented numerous data network technologies, "mother of the Internet" David Pesetsky (PhD 1982) – generative linguist, Ferrari P. Ward Professor of Modern Languages and Linguistics and Head of the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at the MIT Edward Rebar (PhD 1997) – biologist, senior vice president, and chief technology officer at Sangamo Therapeutics ChoKyun Rha (SB ’62, SM ’64, SM ’66, SCD ’67) – food technologist, professor at MIT Adam Riess (SB 1992) – physicist, Nobel Prize winner in Physics awarded in 2011 for demonstrating the acceleration of the universe's rate of expansion Louis W. Roberts (PhD 1946) – microwave physicist, chief of the Microwave Laboratory at NASA's Electronics Research Center, director of the John A. Volpe National Transportation Systems Center Jerome Saltzer – retired MIT professor, timesharing computing pioneer, co-founder of the Multics project, Director of Project Athena Frederick P. Salvucci (SB 1961, SM 1962) – civil engineer, transportation planner, MIT professor, former Massachusetts Secretary of Transportation, public transit advocate, Big Dig advocate George W. Santos – pioneer in bone marrow transplantation Bob Scheifler – computer scientist, leader of the X Window System project, architect of Jini Julie Segre – epithelial biologist, Chief of the Human Genome Research Institute Oliver Selfridge – computer scientist, father of machine perception Claude Shannon – mathematician, electrical engineer, and cryptographer known as "the father of information theory" Amy B. Smith (SB 1984, SM 1995) – mechanical engineer, inventor, former Peace Corps volunteer, MIT senior lecturer and researcher in appropriate technology, MacArthur Fellow (2004) Oliver R. Smoot – namesake of the smoot unit of measurement, former chair of ANSI; former president of ISO Richard M. Stallman (grad student, dropped out) – computer programmer; Free Software activist; creator of EMACS editor, GNU; MacArthur Fellow (1990) Guy L. Steele, Jr. (SM 1977, PhD 1980) – computer scientist, programming language expert, an original editor of the Jargon File (Hacker's Dictionary) Bert Sutherland (SM, PhD) – managed research laboratories, including Sun Microsystems Laboratories (1992–1998), the Systems Science Laboratory at Xerox PARC (1975–1981), and the Computer Science Division of Bolt, Beranek and Newman Ivan Sutherland (PhD 1963) – computer graphics pioneer, former professor, ARPAnet and Internet pioneer, co-founded Evans & Sutherland, Turing Award (1988) Lynne Talley (PhD 1982) – physical oceanographer, professor Badri Nath Tandon (1961) – gastroenterologist, textbook author, Sasakawa WHO Health Prize and Padma Bhushan winner Andrew S. Tanenbaum (SB 1965) – computer scientist, professor, textbook author (operating systems), creator of Minix (the precursor to Linux) Frederick Terman – electrical engineer; former provost of Stanford University; "father of Silicon Valley" Ray Tomlinson – innovator of email systems, pioneered the use of the "@" symbol for email Leonard H. Tower Jr. – early Free Software activist, software hacker John G. Trump – electrical engineer, inventor, and physicist Kay Tye – neuroscientist, MIT assistant professor Ann M. Valentine – chemist, professor at Yale and Temple University Manuel Sandoval Vallarta – MIT professor, founder of the Physics Institute at UNAM; mentor of Nobel laureate Richard Feynman Susie Wee – Women in Technology International laureate; CTEO of Collaboration at Cisco Robert Williams Wood – optical physicist, developed "black light", ultraviolet and infrared photography Joshua Wurman – meteorologist, inventor, developed the Doppler On Wheels, Bistatic Weather Radar Networks, founder and president of Center for Severe Weather Research (CSWR) Jenny Y Yang (PhD 2007) – chemist Edward Yourdon – computer pioneer, author, lecturer, popularized the term "Y2K Bug" Gregorio Y. Zara – inventor of the first two-way videophone; National Scientist of the Philippines Günter M. Ziegler – mathematician, Free University of Berlin professor, ex-president of the German Mathematical Society, recipient of the Chauvenet and Leroy P. Steele prizes Sports Jimmy Bartolotta (2009) – professional basketball player Charles Butt, Jr. (1941) – rowing coach Skip Dise (2003) – member of 2010 US National Rowing Team Adam Edelman (2014) – American-born Israeli Olympic skeleton athlete Johan Harmenberg – épée fencer, gold medal winner in the 1980 Olympics, world champion Larry Kahn – tiddlywinks champion Dave Lockwood – tiddlywinks champion Jeff Sagarin (1970) – sports statistician Zeke Sanborn – Olympic gold medalist Jason Szuminski (2000) – major league pitcher Steve Tucker (1991) – two-time member of the US Olympic rowing team Miscellaneous Katy Croff Bell – National Geographic explorer Sylvester Q. Cannon (SB Mining Engineering) – Apostle of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints Csaba Csere (1978 SB, 2 Mechanical Engineering) – automotive journalist, editor of Car and Driver Janet Hsieh (2001) – Taiwanese-American television personality, violinist, author, and model; host of Fun Taiwan Jeff Hwang – US Air Force fighter pilot, 1999 winner of Mackay Trophy J. Kenji López-Alt (2002 SB, 4, Architecture) – celebrity chef, author of The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science Ray Magliozzi (1972 SB, 21B, Humanities and Science) – radio personality, Car Talk Tom Magliozzi (1958 SB, 14A, Economic Policy and Engineering) – radio personality, Car Talk Lalit Pande (1972 SM, 2 Mechanical Engineering) – environmentalist and Padma Shri awardee Randal Pinkett – chairman and CEO of BCT Partners; winner of television show The Apprentice Princess Ubol Ratana of Thailand (1973 SB, 18 Mathematics) – Aafia Siddiqui (1995 SB, 7 Biology / Life Science) – neuroscientist; alleged Al-Qaeda operative; convicted of assaulting with a deadly weapon and attempting to kill US soldiers and FBI agents Ellen Spertus (1990 SB, 1992 SM, 1998 PhD, Computer Science) – professor, computer scientist, 2001's "Sexiest Geek Alive" Kelvin Teo (SM 2006) – young entrepreneur and season 1 winner of Malaysian reality show Love Me Do Robert Varkonyi (1983 SB, 15 Management, 1983 SB, 6 Computer Science and Engineering) – winner of the 2002 World Series of Poker Main Event Nobel laureate alumni , the MIT Office of the Provost says that 76 Nobel awardees had or currently have a formal connection to MIT. Of this group, 29 have earned MIT degrees (MIT has never awarded honorary degrees in any form). Astronaut alumni See also List of companies founded by MIT alumni References Lists of people by university or college in Massachusetts

30049903

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MikroSim

MikroSim

MikroSim is an educational software computer program for hardware-non-specific explanation of the general functioning and behaviour of a virtual processor, running on the Microsoft Windows operating system. Devices like miniaturized calculators, microcontroller, microprocessors, and computer can be explained on custom-developed instruction code on a register transfer level controlled by sequences of micro instructions (microcode). Based on this it is possible to develop an instruction set to control a virtual application board at higher level of abstraction. General Initially MikroSim was developed to be a processor simulation software to be widely available in educational areas. Since MikroSim operability starts on the basis of microcode development, defined as a sequence of micro instructions (microcoding) for a virtual control unit, the software's intention is on first approach a microcode simulator with various levels of abstractions including the ability of CPU simulators and instruction set emulators. In the current software revision it is feasible for a microcode controlled virtual application to operate on own coded instruction sets. With MikroSim typical and well-known concepts in the area of computer engineering like computer architecture and instruction set architecture are non-specifically treated, which have been established since the early days of the information era and being still valid. In this fashion the simulation software gains a timeless, free didactical benefit without being restricted on special developments of the past and in the future. The detailed documentation and the bilingual application's graphical user interface (GUI) in German and English, as well as the software's upward compatibility given to some extent by Microsoft's operating system Windows, are reasons for being a well-established, valuable e-learning tool in the field of computer engineering since 1992 for educational use. History of development The software is based on a version written under Turbo Pascal compiled for MS-DOS operating systems which has been used for educational purposes in computer engineering and computer science at the Philipps-University Marburg (Germany) until 1992. The concept was picked up by Martin Perner during his study of physics (1990–95) in summer 1992, revised, and converted into a windows application compiled with Microsoft Visual Basic and running on Windows 3.1x. In doing so, at this time a simulator with huge conceptual improvements arose by exploiting the novel functionality and utilisation of MS Windows’ GUI for supporting the composition of microcode and the traceability of its instructional influence. The enhancements of the e-learning tool under Windows has been supported and promoted by the Fachbereich Mathematik/Informatik of the University of Marburg by Heinz-Peter Gumm until end 1995. The Simulator has been awarded with the ‘’European Academic Software Award 1994’’ in the computer science category in Heidelberg (Germany) in November 1994. In March 1995 the simulator was presented at the computer exhibition CeBIT’95 in Hannover at the exhibit of the ‘’Hessischen Hochschulen’’. Between 1995 and 2000 the simulator was published as ‘’Mikrocodesimulator MikroSim 1.2’’ without any significant improvements. At this time the tool received an award of 1000 ECU from the European Union in conjunction with the ‘’European Year of Livelong Learning 1996’’. In 1997, the software was presented at the contest ‘’Multimedia Transfer’97’’ in connection to the exhibition ‘’LearnTec’97’’. In its penultimate revision, the simulator has been published under ‘’Mikrocodesimulator MikroSim2000’’, optimized for MS Windows 95’s 32-bit operation. Between 2008 and 2009, the simulator concept has been revised, reworked, and thoughtful extended. So it has received wide-ranging improvements and extensions without touching the successful conceptual aspects of the microcode simulation abilities in the core. For this purpose, advantage is taken of today’s computing system’s performance determined by operating system and underlying computational power to extend MikroSim’s simulation possibilities up to the stage of a virtual application board. MikroSim is compiled and optimized for sake of unrestricted compatibility and for widest distribution possible for MS Windows XP as a 32-bit version. The program runs on all 32- and 64-bit operating systems of MS Windows Vista and MS Windows 7. Thereby, no special XP compatibility mode is needed. Since January 2010, the simulator is distributed as ‘’Mikrocodesimulator MikroSim 2010’’ by 0/1-SimWare. Functionality The windows application allows for the gradual establishment of a virtual application that is predetermined and such unchangeable in its functionality. In exploration mode, the operating principle and control of newly added components influenced by one microcode instruction within a cycle can be evaluated. The width of MikroSim’s micro instructions is 49 bits. A single micro instruction is executed in three phases of a 3-phase clock. The partial phases are referred to as “GET”, “CALCULATE” and “PUT” phase, causing to fetch some register value, to execute a 32-bit calculation, and to store the calculation result into a CPU's internal register, finally. In simulation mode, seamlessly executed micro instructions control the central processing unit of the simulator in subsequent cycles. Therefore, the intrinsic ability of one micro instruction is utilized to address the next micro instruction in the control store. The control store holding the micro instruction set (commonly referred as "microcode") comprises 1024 micro instructions words each 49-bit wide. Using structuring opportunities of the control store for addressable scheduling of the microcode and the implementation of a cyclically operating machine code interpreter, that is programmed in microcode as well allows the implementation of individual micro-operation sequences, known as machine instructions. The microcode can be regarded as firmware for MikroSim, that can be modified, and stored in and reloaded from a microcode-ROM-file. Within a micro instruction execution cycle, the CPU as well as an input / output controller is connected to an external 16 kByte huge random access memory device (RAM). Via the input-output controller device, communication with virtual input and output devices is supported by Direct Memory Access mode (DMA), Inter-Integrated Circuit Connection (I2C), and Interrupt request functionality (IRQ). A output port, a display, a timer, an event trigger, a digital-analog converter, a keyboard and data input / output channel is provided as virtual IC device for explaining didactically the communication with external devices. The microcode simulator uses eight freely usable register each 32-bit wide connected with a 32-bit arithmetic logic unit (ALU). The register content can be regarded as signed or unsigned integer values, or as 32-bit floating point numbers. The register content can be easily viewed, interpreted, and modified bitwise an integrated system number editor. The 32-bit ALU is the key unit of the central processing unit. It supports 128 different basic arithmetic operations for integer operation, interrupt control, and for floating point arithmetic. The didactical approach to floating point calculations, which has been introduced in a comparable manner already in the early 1940s by Konrad Zuse, is introduced by using elemental sublevel operations for exponent and mantissa involved in the key operations of addition/subtraction and multiplication/division. A set of powerful 32-bit floating point arithmetic commands in mantissa and exponent for the basic operations and elementary analytical functions are provided, as they are realized in today's mathematical coprocessors. Here, in the simulation with MikroSim it is ideally assumed that the execution of each supported ALU arithmetic operation requires only a distinct computing duration independent of circuit complexity realistically needed in practice. The execution of micro instructions can be operated on various simulation levels with different temporal resolution: In the lowest simulation level, the simulator supports the phased wise execution of GET, CALCULATE, and PUT phase. The processing of the partial phases is possible with an adjustable delay for better traceability. In next upper level, the current micro instruction is executed in a complete three-phase clock without time delay. A continuous execution of several 3-phase clock cycles is supported within a so-called “Load Increment Execute” (LIE) cycle. The LIE cycle regarded as an interpreter written in microcode has the function to load machine instructions coded as byte value from the external RAM and to let branch the micro instruction sequence to the referenced microcode subroutine for execution given by the opcode and returning to the LIE back to retrieve the next machine instruction. One execution level higher, a sequence of several machine instructions are executable until a user-defined break point is reached, which is placed in the machine code sequence. It is possible to measure run times between break points. So it is possible to benchmark execution performance on machine and microcode level. In the top most simulation level the microcode simulator continuously executes micro instructions without interrupt. In this level, machine instruction by machine instruction is loaded. So, it is possible to focus on the interaction of the CPU with external devices. With various additional options, visual CPU activities can be suppressed for the benefit of increasing the processing speed when the control of the application by machine programming is put forward. The performance index monitor provided with the simulator enables the user to benchmark the processing performance of MikroSim and setting it into relation with computing power of the simulator's hardware, measurable in floating-point operations per second (FLOPS) and instructions per second (IPS). With the so-called ’’Basic Assembler Tool for MikroSim’’ MikroBAT, simple programs can be developed in assembler programming language. Here, all supported mnemonics of the assembler programming language are determined by the user's self-created machine's instruction set on micro instruction level. The add-on tool is able to translate the assembly language program into machine code and data and transferring the binary code into the external RAM for subsequent simulations. Together with MikroBAT the microcode simulator MikroSim supports the didactical introduction of teaching aspects in technical computer science from a switch-controlled calculating machine to an assembler programmable application. See also Computer architecture simulator Cycle Accurate Simulator Educational programming language Full system simulator Instruction set simulator Instrumentation (computer programming) von Neumann architecture Literature . References External links Educational abstract machines Simulation software

23080

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty%20Good%20Privacy

Pretty Good Privacy

Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) is an encryption program that provides cryptographic privacy and authentication for data communication. PGP is used for signing, encrypting, and decrypting texts, e-mails, files, directories, and whole disk partitions and to increase the security of e-mail communications. Phil Zimmermann developed PGP in 1991. PGP and similar software follow the OpenPGP, an open standard of PGP encryption software, standard (RFC 4880) for encrypting and decrypting data. Design PGP encryption uses a serial combination of hashing, data compression, symmetric-key cryptography, and finally public-key cryptography; each step uses one of several supported algorithms. Each public key is bound to a username or an e-mail address. The first version of this system was generally known as a web of trust to contrast with the X.509 system, which uses a hierarchical approach based on certificate authority and which was added to PGP implementations later. Current versions of PGP encryption include options through an automated key management server. PGP fingerprint A public key fingerprint is a shorter version of a public key. From a fingerprint, someone can validate the correct corresponding public key. A fingerprint like C3A6 5E46 7B54 77DF 3C4C 9790 4D22 B3CA 5B32 FF66 can be printed on a business card. Compatibility As PGP evolves, versions that support newer features and algorithms can create encrypted messages that older PGP systems cannot decrypt, even with a valid private key. Therefore, it is essential that partners in PGP communication understand each other's capabilities or at least agree on PGP settings. Confidentiality PGP can be used to send messages confidentially. For this, PGP uses a hybrid cryptosystem by combining symmetric-key encryption and public-key encryption. The message is encrypted using a symmetric encryption algorithm, which requires a symmetric key generated by the sender. The symmetric key is used only once and is also called a session key. The message and its session key are sent to the receiver. The session key must be sent to the receiver so they know how to decrypt the message, but to protect it during transmission it is encrypted with the receiver's public key. Only the private key belonging to the receiver can decrypt the session key, and use it to symmetrically decrypt the message. Digital signatures PGP supports message authentication and integrity checking. The latter is used to detect whether a message has been altered since it was completed (the message integrity property) and the former, to determine whether it was actually sent by the person or entity claimed to be the sender (a digital signature). Because the content is encrypted, any changes in the message will fail the decryption with the appropriate key. The sender uses PGP to create a digital signature for the message with either the RSA or DSA algorithms. To do so, PGP computes a hash (also called a message digest) from the plaintext and then creates the digital signature from that hash using the sender's private key. Web of trust Both when encrypting messages and when verifying signatures, it is critical that the public key used to send messages to someone or some entity actually does 'belong' to the intended recipient. Simply downloading a public key from somewhere is not a reliable assurance of that association; deliberate (or accidental) impersonation is possible. From its first version, PGP has always included provisions for distributing user's public keys in an 'identity certification', which is also constructed cryptographically so that any tampering (or accidental garble) is readily detectable. However, merely making a certificate that is impossible to modify without being detected is insufficient; this can prevent corruption only after the certificate has been created, not before. Users must also ensure by some means that the public key in a certificate actually does belong to the person or entity claiming it. A given public key (or more specifically, information binding a user name to a key) may be digitally signed by a third-party user to attest to the association between someone (actually a user name) and the key. There are several levels of confidence that can be included in such signatures. Although many programs read and write this information, few (if any) include this level of certification when calculating whether to trust a key. The web of trust protocol was first described by Phil Zimmermann in 1992, in the manual for PGP version 2.0: The web of trust mechanism has advantages over a centrally managed public key infrastructure scheme such as that used by S/MIME but has not been universally used. Users have to be willing to accept certificates and check their validity manually or have to simply accept them. No satisfactory solution has been found for the underlying problem. Certificates In the (more recent) OpenPGP specification, trust signatures can be used to support creation of certificate authorities. A trust signature indicates both that the key belongs to its claimed owner and that the owner of the key is trustworthy to sign other keys at one level below their own. A level 0 signature is comparable to a web of trust signature since only the validity of the key is certified. A level 1 signature is similar to the trust one has in a certificate authority because a key signed to level 1 is able to issue an unlimited number of level 0 signatures. A level 2 signature is highly analogous to the trust assumption users must rely on whenever they use the default certificate authority list (like those included in web browsers); it allows the owner of the key to make other keys certificate authorities. PGP versions have always included a way to cancel ('revoke') public key certificates. A lost or compromised private key will require this if communication security is to be retained by that user. This is, more or less, equivalent to the certificate revocation lists of centralised PKI schemes. Recent PGP versions have also supported certificate expiration dates. The problem of correctly identifying a public key as belonging to a particular user is not unique to PGP. All public key/private key cryptosystems have the same problem, even if in slightly different guises, and no fully satisfactory solution is known. PGP's original scheme at least leaves the decision as to whether or not to use its endorsement/vetting system to the user, while most other PKI schemes do not, requiring instead that every certificate attested to by a central certificate authority be accepted as correct. Security quality To the best of publicly available information, there is no known method which will allow a person or group to break PGP encryption by cryptographic, or computational means. Indeed, in 1995, cryptographer Bruce Schneier characterized an early version as being "the closest you're likely to get to military-grade encryption." Early versions of PGP have been found to have theoretical vulnerabilities and so current versions are recommended. In addition to protecting data in transit over a network, PGP encryption can also be used to protect data in long-term data storage such as disk files. These long-term storage options are also known as data at rest, i.e. data stored, not in transit. The cryptographic security of PGP encryption depends on the assumption that the algorithms used are unbreakable by direct cryptanalysis with current equipment and techniques. In the original version, the RSA algorithm was used to encrypt session keys. RSA's security depends upon the one-way function nature of mathematical integer factoring. Similarly, the symmetric key algorithm used in PGP version 2 was IDEA, which might at some point in the future be found to have previously undetected cryptanalytic flaws. Specific instances of current PGP or IDEA insecurities (if they exist) are not publicly known. As current versions of PGP have added additional encryption algorithms, their cryptographic vulnerability varies with the algorithm used. However, none of the algorithms in current use are publicly known to have cryptanalytic weaknesses. New versions of PGP are released periodically and vulnerabilities fixed by developers as they come to light. Any agency wanting to read PGP messages would probably use easier means than standard cryptanalysis, e.g. rubber-hose cryptanalysis or black-bag cryptanalysis (e.g. installing some form of trojan horse or keystroke logging software/hardware on the target computer to capture encrypted keyrings and their passwords). The FBI has already used this attack against PGP in its investigations. However, any such vulnerabilities apply not just to PGP but to any conventional encryption software. In 2003, an incident involving seized Psion PDAs belonging to members of the Red Brigade indicated that neither the Italian police nor the FBI were able to decrypt PGP-encrypted files stored on them. A second incident in December 2006, (see In re Boucher), involving US customs agents who seized a laptop PC that allegedly contained child pornography, indicates that US government agencies find it "nearly impossible" to access PGP-encrypted files. Additionally, a magistrate judge ruling on the case in November 2007 has stated that forcing the suspect to reveal his PGP passphrase would violate his Fifth Amendment rights i.e. a suspect's constitutional right not to incriminate himself. The Fifth Amendment issue was opened again as the government appealed the case, after which a federal district judge ordered the defendant to provide the key. Evidence suggests that , British police investigators are unable to break PGP, so instead have resorted to using RIPA legislation to demand the passwords/keys. In November 2009 a British citizen was convicted under RIPA legislation and jailed for nine months for refusing to provide police investigators with encryption keys to PGP-encrypted files. PGP as a cryptosystem has been criticized for complexity of the standard, implementation and very low usability of the user interface including by recognized figures in cryptography research. It uses an ineffective serialization format for storage of both keys and encrypted data, which resulted in signature-spamming attacks on public keys of prominent developers of GNU Privacy Guard. Backwards compatibility of the OpenPGP standard results in usage of relatively weak default choices of cryptographic primitives (CAST5 cipher, CFB mode, S2K password hashing). The standard has been also criticized for leaking metadata, usage of long-term keys and lack of forward secrecy. Popular end-user implementations have suffered from various signature-striping, cipher downgrade and metadata leakage vulnerabilities which have been attributed to the complexity of the standard. History Early history Phil Zimmermann created the first version of PGP encryption in 1991. The name, "Pretty Good Privacy" was inspired by the name of a grocery store, "Ralph's Pretty Good Grocery", featured in radio host Garrison Keillor's fictional town, Lake Wobegon. This first version included a symmetric-key algorithm that Zimmermann had designed himself, named BassOmatic after a Saturday Night Live sketch. Zimmermann had been a long-time anti-nuclear activist, and created PGP encryption so that similarly inclined people might securely use BBSs and securely store messages and files. No license fee was required for its non-commercial use, and the complete source code was included with all copies. In a posting of June 5, 2001, entitled "PGP Marks 10th Anniversary", Zimmermann describes the circumstances surrounding his release of PGP: PGP found its way onto the Internet and rapidly acquired a considerable following around the world. Users and supporters included dissidents in totalitarian countries (some affecting letters to Zimmermann have been published, some of which have been included in testimony before the US Congress), civil libertarians in other parts of the world (see Zimmermann's published testimony in various hearings), and the 'free communications' activists who called themselves cypherpunks (who provided both publicity and distribution); decades later, CryptoParty activists did much the same via Twitter. Criminal investigation Shortly after its release, PGP encryption found its way outside the United States, and in February 1993 Zimmermann became the formal target of a criminal investigation by the US Government for "munitions export without a license". At the time, cryptosystems using keys larger than 40 bits were considered munitions within the definition of the US export regulations; PGP has never used keys smaller than 128 bits, so it qualified at that time. Penalties for violation, if found guilty, were substantial. After several years, the investigation of Zimmermann was closed without filing criminal charges against him or anyone else. Zimmermann challenged these regulations in an imaginative way. He published the entire source code of PGP in a hardback book, via MIT Press, which was distributed and sold widely. Anybody wishing to build their own copy of PGP could cut off the covers, separate the pages, and scan them using an OCR program (or conceivably enter it as a type-in program if OCR software was not available), creating a set of source code text files. One could then build the application using the freely available GNU Compiler Collection. PGP would thus be available anywhere in the world. The claimed principle was simple: export of munitions—guns, bombs, planes, and software—was (and remains) restricted; but the export of books is protected by the First Amendment. The question was never tested in court with respect to PGP. In cases addressing other encryption software, however, two federal appeals courts have established the rule that cryptographic software source code is speech protected by the First Amendment (the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in the Bernstein case and the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in the Junger case). US export regulations regarding cryptography remain in force, but were liberalized substantially throughout the late 1990s. Since 2000, compliance with the regulations is also much easier. PGP encryption no longer meets the definition of a non-exportable weapon, and can be exported internationally except to seven specific countries and a list of named groups and individuals (with whom substantially all US trade is prohibited under various US export controls). PGP 3 and founding of PGP Inc. During this turmoil, Zimmermann's team worked on a new version of PGP encryption called PGP 3. This new version was to have considerable security improvements, including a new certificate structure that fixed small security flaws in the PGP 2.x certificates as well as permitting a certificate to include separate keys for signing and encryption. Furthermore, the experience with patent and export problems led them to eschew patents entirely. PGP 3 introduced the use of the CAST-128 (a.k.a. CAST5) symmetric key algorithm, and the DSA and ElGamal asymmetric key algorithms, all of which were unencumbered by patents. After the Federal criminal investigation ended in 1996, Zimmermann and his team started a company to produce new versions of PGP encryption. They merged with Viacrypt (to whom Zimmermann had sold commercial rights and who had licensed RSA directly from RSADSI), which then changed its name to PGP Incorporated. The newly combined Viacrypt/PGP team started work on new versions of PGP encryption based on the PGP 3 system. Unlike PGP 2, which was an exclusively command line program, PGP 3 was designed from the start as a software library allowing users to work from a command line or inside a GUI environment. The original agreement between Viacrypt and the Zimmermann team had been that Viacrypt would have even-numbered versions and Zimmermann odd-numbered versions. Viacrypt, thus, created a new version (based on PGP 2) that they called PGP 4. To remove confusion about how it could be that PGP 3 was the successor to PGP 4, PGP 3 was renamed and released as PGP 5 in May 1997. Network Associates acquisition In December 1997, PGP Inc. was acquired by Network Associates, Inc. ("NAI"). Zimmermann and the PGP team became NAI employees. NAI was the first company to have a legal export strategy by publishing source code. Under NAI, the PGP team added disk encryption, desktop firewalls, intrusion detection, and IPsec VPNs to the PGP family. After the export regulation liberalizations of 2000 which no longer required publishing of source, NAI stopped releasing source code. In early 2001, Zimmermann left NAI. He served as Chief Cryptographer for Hush Communications, who provide an OpenPGP-based e-mail service, Hushmail. He has also worked with Veridis and other companies. In October 2001, NAI announced that its PGP assets were for sale and that it was suspending further development of PGP encryption. The only remaining asset kept was the PGP E-Business Server (the original PGP Commandline version). In February 2002, NAI canceled all support for PGP products, with the exception of the renamed commandline product. NAI (formerly McAfee, then Intel Security, and now McAfee again) continued to sell and support the product under the name McAfee E-Business Server until 2013. PGP Corporation and Symantec In August 2002, several ex-PGP team members formed a new company, PGP Corporation, and bought the PGP assets (except for the command line version) from NAI. The new company was funded by Rob Theis of Doll Capital Management (DCM) and Terry Garnett of Venrock Associates. PGP Corporation supported existing PGP users and honored NAI's support contracts. Zimmermann served as a special advisor and consultant to PGP Corporation while continuing to run his own consulting company. In 2003, PGP Corporation created a new server-based product called PGP Universal. In mid-2004, PGP Corporation shipped its own command line version called PGP Command Line, which integrated with the other PGP Encryption Platform applications. In 2005, PGP Corporation made its first acquisition: the German software company Glück & Kanja Technology AG, which became PGP Deutschland AG. In 2010, PGP Corporation acquired Hamburg-based certificate authority TC TrustCenter and its parent company, ChosenSecurity, to form its PGP TrustCenter division. After the 2002 purchase of NAI's PGP assets, PGP Corporation offered worldwide PGP technical support from its offices in Draper, Utah; Offenbach, Germany; and Tokyo, Japan. On April 29, 2010, Symantec Corp. announced that it would acquire PGP for $300 million with the intent of integrating it into its Enterprise Security Group. This acquisition was finalized and announced to the public on June 7, 2010. The source code of PGP Desktop 10 is available for peer review. Also in 2010, Intel Corporation acquired McAfee. In 2013, the McAfee E-Business Server was transferred to Software Diversified Services, which now sells, supports, and develops it under the name SDS E-Business Server. For the enterprise, Townsend Security currently offers a commercial version of PGP for the IBM i and IBM z mainframe platforms. Townsend Security partnered with Network Associates in 2000 to create a compatible version of PGP for the IBM i platform. Townsend Security again ported PGP in 2008, this time to the IBM z mainframe. This version of PGP relies on a free z/OS encryption facility, which utilizes hardware acceleration. Software Diversified Services also offers a commercial version of PGP (SDS E-Business Server) for the IBM z mainframe. In May 2018, a bug named EFAIL was discovered in certain implementations of PGP which from 2003 could reveal the plaintext contents of emails encrypted with it. The chosen mitigation for this vulnerability in PGP Desktop is to mandate the use SEIP protected packets in the ciphertext, which can lead to old emails or other encrypted objects to be no longer decryptable after upgrading to the software version that has the mitigation. PGP Corporation encryption applications This section describes commercial programs available from PGP Corporation. For information on other programs compatible with the OpenPGP specification, see External links below. While originally used primarily for encrypting the contents of e-mail messages and attachments from a desktop client, PGP products have been diversified since 2002 into a set of encryption applications that can be managed by an optional central policy server. PGP encryption applications include e-mails and attachments, digital signatures, laptop full disk encryption, file and folder security, protection for IM sessions, batch file transfer encryption, and protection for files and folders stored on network servers and, more recently, encrypted or signed HTTP request/responses by means of a client-side (Enigform) and a server-side (mod openpgp) module. There is also a WordPress plugin available, called wp-enigform-authentication, that takes advantage of the session management features of Enigform with mod_openpgp. The PGP Desktop 9.x family includes PGP Desktop Email, PGP Whole Disk Encryption, and PGP NetShare. Additionally, a number of Desktop bundles are also available. Depending on the application, the products feature desktop e-mail, digital signatures, IM security, whole disk encryption, file, and folder security, encrypted self-extracting archives, and secure shredding of deleted files. Capabilities are licensed in different ways depending on the features required. The PGP Universal Server 2.x management console handles centralized deployment, security policy, policy enforcement, key management, and reporting. It is used for automated e-mail encryption in the gateway and manages PGP Desktop 9.x clients. In addition to its local keyserver, PGP Universal Server works with the PGP public keyserver—called the PGP Global Directory—to find recipient keys. It has the capability of delivering e-mail securely when no recipient key is found via a secure HTTPS browser session. With PGP Desktop 9.x managed by PGP Universal Server 2.x, first released in 2005, all PGP encryption applications are based on a new proxy-based architecture. These newer versions of PGP software eliminate the use of e-mail plug-ins and insulate the user from changes to other desktop applications. All desktop and server operations are now based on security policies and operate in an automated fashion. The PGP Universal server automates the creation, management, and expiration of keys, sharing these keys among all PGP encryption applications. The Symantec PGP platform has now undergone a rename. PGP Desktop is now known as Symantec Encryption Desktop (SED), and the PGP Universal Server is now known as Symantec Encryption Management Server (SEMS). The current shipping versions are Symantec Encryption Desktop 10.3.0 (Windows and macOS platforms) and Symantec Encryption Server 3.3.2. Also available are PGP Command-Line, which enables command line-based encryption and signing of information for storage, transfer, and backup, as well as the PGP Support Package for BlackBerry which enables RIM BlackBerry devices to enjoy sender-to-recipient messaging encryption. New versions of PGP applications use both OpenPGP and the S/MIME, allowing communications with any user of a NIST specified standard. OpenPGP Within PGP Inc., there was still concern surrounding patent issues. RSADSI was challenging the continuation of the Viacrypt RSA license to the newly merged firm. The company adopted an informal internal standard that they called "Unencumbered PGP" which would "use no algorithm with licensing difficulties". Because of PGP encryption's importance worldwide, many wanted to write their own software that would interoperate with PGP 5. Zimmermann became convinced that an open standard for PGP encryption was critical for them and for the cryptographic community as a whole. In July 1997, PGP Inc. proposed to the IETF that there be a standard called OpenPGP. They gave the IETF permission to use the name OpenPGP to describe this new standard as well as any program that supported the standard. The IETF accepted the proposal and started the OpenPGP Working Group. OpenPGP is on the Internet Standards Track and is under active development. Many e-mail clients provide OpenPGP-compliant email security as described in RFC 3156. The current specification is RFC 4880 (November 2007), the successor to RFC 2440. RFC 4880 specifies a suite of required algorithms consisting of ElGamal encryption, DSA, Triple DES and SHA-1. In addition to these algorithms, the standard recommends RSA as described in PKCS #1 v1.5 for encryption and signing, as well as AES-128, CAST-128 and IDEA. Beyond these, many other algorithms are supported. The standard was extended to support Camellia cipher by RFC 5581 in 2009, and signing and key exchange based on Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) (i.e. ECDSA and ECDH) by RFC 6637 in 2012. Support for ECC encryption was added by the proposed RFC 4880bis in 2014. The Free Software Foundation has developed its own OpenPGP-compliant software suite called GNU Privacy Guard, freely available together with all source code under the GNU General Public License and is maintained separately from several graphical user interfaces that interact with the GnuPG library for encryption, decryption, and signing functions (see KGPG, Seahorse, MacGPG). Several other vendors have also developed OpenPGP-compliant software. The development of an open source OpenPGP-compliant library, OpenPGP.js, written in JavaScript and supported by the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme of the European Union, has allowed web-based applications to use PGP encryption in the web browser. PGP PGP Message Exchange Formats (obsolete) OpenPGP OpenPGP Message Format (obsolete) OpenPGP Message Format The Camellia Cipher in OpenPGP Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) in OpenPGP draft-ietf-openpgp-crypto-refresh OpenPGP Message Format PGP/MIME MIME Security with Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) MIME Security with OpenPGP OpenPGP's encryption can ensure the secure delivery of files and messages, as well as provide verification of who created or sent the message using a process called digital signing. The open source office suite LibreOffice implemented document signing with OpenPGP as of version 5.4.0 on Linux. Using OpenPGP for communication requires participation by both the sender and recipient. OpenPGP can also be used to secure sensitive files when they're stored in vulnerable places like mobile devices or in the cloud. Limitations With the advancement of cryptography, parts of PGP have been criticized for being dated: The long length of PGP public keys Difficulty for the users to comprehend and poor usability Lack of ubiquity Lack of forward secrecy In October 2017, the ROCA vulnerability was announced, which affects RSA keys generated by buggy Infineon firmware used on Yubikey 4 tokens, often used with PGP. Many published PGP keys were found to be susceptible. Yubico offers free replacement of affected tokens. See also Bernstein v. United States Electronic envelope Email encryption Email privacy GNU Privacy Guard Gpg4win Key server (cryptographic) PGP word list PGPDisk Pretty Easy privacy Privacy Public-key cryptography S/MIME X.509 ZRTP References Further reading External links OpenPGP::SDK MIT Public Key Directory for Registration and Search List of public keyservers IETF OpenPGP working group OpenPGP Alliance 1991 software Cryptographic software History of cryptography Internet privacy software OpenPGP Privacy software Encryption debate

6587377

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software%20regression

Software regression

A software regression is a type of software bug where a feature that has worked before stops working. This may happen after changes are applied to the software's source code, including the addition of new features and bug fixes. They may also be introduced by changes to the environment in which the software is running, such as system upgrades, system patching or a change to daylight saving time. A software performance regression is a situation where the software still functions correctly, but performs more slowly or uses more memory or resources than before. Various types of software regressions have been identified in practice, including the following: Local – a change introduces a new bug in the changed module or component. Remote – a change in one part of the software breaks functionality in another module or component. Unmasked – a change unmasks an already existing bug that had no effect before the change. Regressions are often caused by encompassed bug fixes included in software patches. One approach to avoiding this kind of problem is regression testing. A properly designed test plan aims at preventing this possibility before releasing any software. Automated testing and well-written test cases can reduce the likelihood of a regression. Prevention and detection Techniques have been proposed that try to prevent regressions from being introduced into software at various stages of development, outlined below. Prior to release In order to avoid regressions being seen by the end-user after release, developers regularly run regression tests after changes are introduced to the software. These tests can include unit tests to catch local regressions as well as integration tests to catch remote regressions. Regression testing techniques often leverage existing test cases to minimize the effort involved in creating them. However, due to the volume of these existing tests, it is often necessary to select a representative subset, using techniques such as test-case prioritization. For detecting performance regressions, software performance tests are run on a regular basis, to monitor the response time and resource usage metrics of the software after subsequent changes. Unlike functional regression tests, the results of performance tests are subject to variance - that is, results can differ between tests due to variance in performance measurements; as a result, a decision must be made on whether a change in performance numbers constitutes a regression, based on experience and end-user demands. Approaches such as statistical significance testing and change point detection are sometimes used to aid in this decision. Prior to commit Since debugging and localizing the root cause of a software regression can be expensive, there also exists some methods that try to prevent regressions from being committed into the code repository in the first place. For example, Git Hooks enable developers to run test scripts before code changes are committed or pushed to the code repository. In addition, change impact analysis has been applied to software to predict the impact of a code change on various components of the program, and to supplement test case selection and prioritization. Software linters are also often added to commit hooks to ensure consistent coding style, thereby minimizing stylistic issues that can make the software prone to regressions. Localization Many of the techniques used to find the root cause of non-regression software bugs can also be used to debug software regressions, including breakpoint debugging, print debugging, and program slicing. The techniques described below are often used specifically to debug software regressions. Functional regressions A common technique used to localize functional regressions is bisection, which takes both a buggy commit and a previously working commit as input, and tries to find the root cause by doing a binary search on the commits in between. Version control systems such as Git and Mercurial provide built-in ways to perform bisection on a given pair of commits. Other options include directly associating the result of a regression test with code changes; setting divergence breakpoints; or using incremental data-flow analysis, which identifies test cases - including failing ones - that are relevant to a set of code changes, among others. Performance regressions Profiling measures the performance and resource usage of various components of a program, and is used to generate data useful in debugging performance issues. In the context of software performance regressions, developers often compare the call trees (also known as "timelines") generated by profilers for both the buggy version and the previously working version, and mechanisms exist to simplify this comparison. Web development tools typically provide developers the ability to record these performance profiles. Logging also helps with performance regression localization, and similar to call trees, developers can compare systematically-placed performance logs of multiple versions of the same software. A tradeoff exists when adding these performance logs, as adding many logs can help developers pinpoint which portions of the software are regressing at smaller granularities, while adding only a few logs will also reduce overhead when executing the program. Additional approaches include writing performance-aware unit tests to help with localization, and ranking subsystems based on performance counter deviations. Bisection can also be repurposed for performance regressions by considering commits that perform below (or above) a certain baseline value as buggy, and taking either the left or the right side of the commits based on the results of this comparison. See also Software rot References Software bugs

2263152

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft%20Data%20Access%20Components

Microsoft Data Access Components

Microsoft Data Access Components (MDAC; also known as Windows DAC) is a framework of interrelated Microsoft technologies that allows programmers a uniform and comprehensive way of developing applications that can access almost any data store. Its components include: ActiveX Data Objects (ADO), OLE DB, and Open Database Connectivity (ODBC). There have been several deprecated components as well, such as the Jet Database Engine, MSDASQL (the OLE DB provider for ODBC), and Remote Data Services (RDS). Some components have also become obsolete, such as the former Data Access Objects API and Remote Data Objects. The first version of MDAC was released in August 1996. At that time Microsoft stated MDAC was more a concept than a stand-alone program and had no widespread distribution method. Later Microsoft released upgrades to MDAC as web-based redistributable packages. Eventually, later versions were integrated with Microsoft Windows and Internet Explorer, and in MDAC 2.8 SP1 they ceased offering MDAC as a redistributable package. Throughout its history, MDAC has been the subject of several security flaws, which led to attacks such as an escalated privileges attack, although the vulnerabilities were generally fixed in later versions and fairly promptly. The current version is 2.8 service pack 1, but the product has had many different versions and many of its components have been deprecated and replaced by newer Microsoft technologies. MDAC is now known as Windows DAC in Windows Vista. Architecture The latest version of MDAC (2.8) consists of several interacting components, all of which are Windows specific except for ODBC (which is available on several platforms). MDAC architecture may be viewed as three layers: a programming interface layer, consisting of ADO and ADO.NET, a database access layer developed by database vendors such as Oracle and Microsoft (OLE DB, .NET managed providers and ODBC drivers), and the database itself. These component layers are all made available to applications through the MDAC API. The Microsoft SQL Server Network Library, a proprietary access method specific to Microsoft SQL Server, is also included in the MDAC. Developers of Windows applications are encouraged to use ADO or ADO.NET for data access, the benefit being that users of the application program are not constrained in their choice of database architecture except that it should be supported by MDAC. Naturally, developers still have the choice of writing applications which directly access OLE DB and ODBC. Microsoft SQL Server Network Library The Microsoft SQL Server Network Library (also known as Net-Lib) is used by the Microsoft SQL Server to read and write data using many different network protocols. Though Net-Lib is specific to the SQL Server, Microsoft includes it with MDAC. The SQL Server uses the Open Data Services (ODS) library to communicate with Net-Lib, which interfaces directly with the Windows NT operating system line's Win32 subsystem. The SQL Server Network Library is controlled through the use of a Client Network Utility, which is bundled with the SQL Server. Each Net-Lib supported network protocol has a separate driver (not to be confused with a device driver), and has support for a session layer in its protocol stack. There are two general types of Net-Lib: the primary and the secondary. The primary Net-Lib consists of a Super Socket Net-Lib and the Shared Memory Net-Lib, while there are numerous secondary Net-Libs, including TCP/IP and named pipes network libraries (named pipes are a method of communicating with other processes via a system-persistent pipeline that is given an identity). The Microsoft OLE DB Provider for SQL Server (SQLOLEDB) communicates via primary Net-Libs. The Super Socket Net-Lib deals with inter-computer communications and coordinates the secondary Net-Libs – though the TCP/IP secondary Net-Lib is an exception in that it calls on the Windows Sockets 2 API directly. The Banyan VINES, AppleTalk, ServerNet, IPX/SPX, Giganet, and RPC Net-Libs were dropped from MDAC 2.5 onwards. The Network Library router had the job of managing all these protocols, however now only the named pipes secondary Net-Lib is managed by the router. The Super Socket Net-Lib also handles data encryption via the use of the Windows SSL API. The Shared Memory Net-Lib, on the other hand, manages connections between multiple instances of SQL Server that exist on one computer. It uses a shared memory area to communicate between the processes. This is inherently secure; there is no need for data encryption between instances of SQL Server that exist on one computer as the operating system does not allow any other process access to the instances' area of shared memory. Net-Lib is also able to support the impersonation of a logged in user's security context for protocols that support authenticated connections (called trusted connections). This allows Net-Lib to provide an integrated logon authentication mechanism via the use of Windows Authentication. Windows Authentication is not supported on Windows 98 or Windows Me. OLE DB OLE DB (also called OLEDB or OLE-DB) allows MDAC applications access to different types of ([data]) stores in a uniform manner. Microsoft has used this technology to separate the application from data can store in the website the data store that it needs to access. This was done because different applications need access to different types and sources of data, and do not necessarily need to know how to access technology-specific functionality. The technology is conceptually divided into consumers and providers. The consumers are the applications that need access to the data, and the provider is the software component that exposes an OLE DB interface through the use of the Component Object Model (or COM). OLE DB is the database access interface technology used by MDAC. OLE DB providers can be created to access such simple data stores as a text file or spreadsheet, through to such complex databases as Oracle and SQL Server. However, because different data store technology can have different capabilities, OLE DB providers may not implement every possible interface available. The capabilities that are available are implemented through the use of COM objects an OLE DB provider will map the data store technology's functionality to a particular COM interface. Microsoft calls the availability of an interface to be "provider-specific" as it may not be applicable depending on the database technology involved. Additionally, however, providers may also augment the capabilities of a data store; these capabilities are known as services in Microsoft parlance. The Microsoft OLE DB Provider for SQL Server (SQLOLEDB) is the OLE DB provider that Microsoft provides for the Microsoft SQL Server from version 6.5 upwards. Universal data link Universal data link files (or '.udl files') provide a common user interface for specifying connection attributes. A user can use a Data Link Properties dialog box to save connection information in a .udl file as an alternative to directly specifying them by hand in a connection string. Consequently, these files provide a convenient level of indirection. Additionally, the dialog box specifies a number of alternate OLE DB data providers for a variety of target applications. ODBC Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) is a native interface that is accessed through a programming language (usually C) that can make calls into a native library. In MDAC this interface is defined as a DLL. A separate module or driver is needed for each database that must be accessed. The functions in the ODBC API are implemented by these DBMS-specific drivers. The driver that Microsoft provides in MDAC is called the SQL Server ODBC Driver (SQLODBC), and (as the name implies) is designed for Microsoft's SQL Server. It supports SQL Server v6.5 and upwards. ODBC allows programs to use SQL requests that will access databases without having to know the proprietary interfaces to the databases. It handles the SQL request and converts it into a request that the individual database system understands. According to Microsoft, "After SQL Server 2012, the ODBC driver will be updated for the most recent server features, including Microsoft Windows Azure SQL Database, and released as the Microsoft ODBC Driver for SQL Server." ADO ActiveX Data Objects (ADO) is a high-level programming interface to OLE DB. It uses a hierarchical object model to allow applications to programmatically create, retrieve, update and delete data from sources supported by OLE DB. ADO consists of a series of hierarchical COM-based objects and collections, an object that acts as a container of many other objects. A programmer can directly access ADO objects to manipulate data, or can send an SQL query to the database via several ADO mechanisms. ADO is made up of nine objects and four collections. The collections are: Fields: This collection contains a set of Field objects. The collection can be used in either a Recordset object or in a Record object. In a Recordset object, each of the Field objects that make up the Fields collection corresponds to a column in that Recordset object. In a Record object, a Field can be an absolute or relative URL that points into a tree-structured namespace (used for semi-structured data providers like the Microsoft OLE DB Provider for Internet Publishing) or as a reference to the default Stream object associated with that Record object. Properties: An object can have more than one Property object, which are contained in the object's Properties collection. Parameters: A Command object can have several Parameter commands to change its predefined behaviour, and each of the Parameter objects are contained in the Command object's Parameters collection Errors: All provider created errors are passed to a collection of Error objects, while the Errors collection itself is contained in a Connection object. When an ADO operation creates an error, the collection is cleared and a new group of Error objects are created in the collection. The objects are: Connection: The connection object is ADO's connection to a data store via OLE DB. The connection object stores information about the session and provides methods of connecting to the data store. As some data stores have different methods of establishing a connection, some methods may not be supported in the connection object for particular OLE DB providers. A connection object connects to the data store using its 'Open' method with a connection string which specifies the connection as a list of key value pairs (for example: "Provider='SQLOLEDB';Data Source='TheSqlServer'; Initial Catalog='Northwind';Integrated Security='SSPI';"). The start of which must identify the type of data store connection that the connection object requires. This must be either: an OLE DB provider (for example SQLOLEDB), using the syntax "provider=" a file name, using the syntax "file name=" a remote provider and server (see RDS), using the syntax "Remote provider=" and "Remote server=" an absolute URL, using the syntax "URL=" Command: After the connection object establishes a session to the data source, instructions are sent to the data provider via the command object. The command object can send SQL queries directly to the provider through the use of the CommandText property, send a parameterised query or stored procedure through the use of a Parameter object or Parameters collection or run a query and return the results to a dataset object via the Execute method. There are several other methods that can be used in the Command object relating to other objects, such as the Stream, RecordSet or Connection objects. Recordset: A recordset is a group of records, and can either come from a base table or as the result of a query to the table. The RecordSet object contains a Fields collection and a Properties collection. The Fields collection is a set of Field objects, which are the corresponding columns in the table. The Properties collection is a set of Property objects, which defines a particular functionality of an OLE DB provider. The RecordSet has numerous methods and properties for examining the data that exists within it. Records can be updated in the recordset by changing the values in the record and then calling on the Update or UpdateBatch method. Adding new records is performed through the AddNew function and then by calling on the Update or UpdateBatch method. Records are also deleted in the recordset with the Delete method and then by calling on the Update method. However, if for some reason the deletion cannot occur, such as because of violations in referential integrity, then the recordset will remain in edit mode after the call to the Update method. The programmer must explicitly call on the CancelUpdate function to cancel the update. Additionally, ADO can roll back transactions (if this is supported) and cancel batch updates. Recordsets can also be updated in one of three ways: via an immediate update, via a batch update, or through the use of transactions: Immediate: The recordset is locked using the adLockOptimistic or adLockPessimistic lock. The data are updated at the data source after the record is changed and the Update method is called. Batch: The recordset is locked using adLockBatchOptimistic and each time Update is called the data are updated in a temporary buffer. Finally, when UpdateBatch is called the data are completely updated back at the data source. This has the advantage of it all being done in memory, and if a problem occurs then UpdateCancel is called and the updates are not sent to the data source Transaction: If the OLE DB provider allows it, transactions can be used. To start the transaction, the programmer invokes the BeginTrans method and does the required updates. When they are all done, the programmer invokes the CommitTrans method. RollbackTrans can be invoked to cancel any changes made inside the transaction and roll back the database to the state before the transaction began Record: This object represents one record in the database, and contains a fields collection. A RecordSet consists of a collection of Record objects. Stream: A stream, mainly used in a RecordSet object, is a means of reading and writing a stream of bytes. It is mostly used to save a recordset in an XML format, to send commands to an OLE DB provider as an alternative to the CommandText object and to contain the contents of a binary or text file. Parameter: A parameter is a means of altering the behaviour of a common piece of functionality, for instance a stored procedure might have different parameters passed to it depending on what needs to be done; these are called parameterised commands. Field: Each Record object contains many fields, and a RecordSet object has a corresponding Field object also. The RecordSet object's Field object corresponds to a column in the database table that it references. Property: This object is specific to the OLE DB provider and defines an ability that the provider has implemented. A property object can be either a built-in property – it is a well defined property implemented by ADO already and thus cannot be altered – or a dynamic property – defined by the underlying data provider and can be changed Error: When an OLE DB provider error occurs during the use of ADO, an Error object will be created in the Errors collection. Other errors do not go into an Error object, however. For instance, any errors that occur when manipulating data in a RecordSet or Field object are stored in a Status property. ADO.NET ADO.NET is the latest version of ADO (after ADO 2.8, now often referred to as ADO Classic) and is part of the MDAC 2.8 stack alongside classic ADO. It is built around Microsoft .NET. Though sometimes seen as an evolutionary step up from ADO, some fundamental structural changes were made by Microsoft. ADO.NET runs through a .NET Managed Provider, a modified version of an OLE DB provider specifically designed for .NET. The object structure is no longer built around a Recordset object. Instead a Dataset object is used to contain data gathered from multiple sources. This is transparent to the programmer. Unlike the old ADO Recordset, the Dataset's design promotes the use of disconnected data. Conceptually, a Dataset object can be seen as a small in-memory relational database in its own right that allows for manipulation of data in any direction. In order to propagate changes back into the database, a DataAdapter object is used that transfers data from between the data source and the DataSet object. Cursors were also deprecated in ADO.NET, being replaced with a DataReader object, which is used to efficiently process a large list of results one record at a time without storing them. Deprecated and obsolete components MDAC is a continually evolving component framework. As such, there have been several components that were previously part of it but have since been deprecated or removed entirely from the framework. Jet Database Engine and JRO Jet stands for Joint Engine Technology and was a database engine used for Microsoft Access, Microsoft Exchange Server and Visual Basic. Jet was part of a Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) and offered a single interface that other software could use to access Microsoft databases. Jet also provided support for security, referential integrity, transaction processing, indexing, record and page locking, and data replication. In later versions of Jet, the engine was extended to run SQL queries, store character data in Unicode format, create views, and allowed bi-directional replication with the Microsoft SQL Server. It was superseded by MSDE which was superseded SQL Server Express. There were three modules to Jet. One was the Native Jet ISAM Driver, a Jet dynamic link library (DLL) that could directly manipulate Microsoft Access database files (MDB), which was a modified form of an Indexed Sequential Access Method (ISAM) database. Another one of the modules were the ISAM Drivers, DLLs that allowed access to ISAM databases, among them being Xbase, Paradox, Btrieve and FoxPro files. The final module was the Data Access Objects (DAO) DLL, DAO allowed programmers access to the Jet engine. It was basically an object-oriented data language used by Access Basic and Visual Basic application developers to access Jet. Similarly, the Microsoft Jet OLE DB Provider and Replication Objects (JRO) which allowed replication between Jet data sources was removed from MDAC 2.6 MSDASQL and Oracle ODBC The Microsoft OLE DB Provider for ODBC, or MSDASQL, was an OLE DB provider for allowing ActiveX Data Objects access to databases via any ODBC driver. Microsoft supplied several OLE-DB providers (for the Indexing Service, Active Directory, Jet, SQL Server, Oracle (MSDAORA) and Internet Publishing), however unless otherwise directed, ADO defaulted to using MSDASQL as the default provider. After MDAC 2.5 both the Oracle ODBC driver and MSDASQL supported Oracle 7 and partially supported Oracle 8i. Features that were not supported were: CLOB, BLOB, BFILE, NCHAR, NCLOB, and NVARCHAR2 Oracle datatypes Unicode support for Oracle 7.x and 8i multiple client instances of Oracle nested outer joins Microsoft initially deprecated the MSDASQL component for their 64-bit operating systems and the Microsoft Oracle ODBC driver was later superseded by a .NET Managed Oracle Provider, which supported Oracle 9i. However, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista SP1 ship with a 64-bit version of MSDASQL. Remote Data Services (RDS) Remote Data Services (RDS) allowed the retrieval of a set of data from the server, which the client then altered in some way and then sent back to the server for further processing. With the popular adoption of Transact-SQL, which extends SQL with such programming constructs as loops and conditional statements, this became less necessary and it was eventually deprecated in MDAC 2.7. Microsoft produced SOAP Toolkit 2.0, which allows clients to do this via an open XML-based standard. SQLXML SQLXML was designed for SQL Server 2000, but was deprecated with MDAC 2.6. It allowed Microsoft's relational database to be viewed by XPath and allowed data to viewable as an XML file. It has not actually been deprecated but has been removed from later versions of MDAC, though Microsoft does provide it as a downloadable component and will support it on their 64-bit operating systems. Obsolete components Several components have been completely removed from MDAC by Microsoft and are no longer supported. They are: ESQL/C: Embedded SQL (also known as E-SQL or ESQL/C) is a way of using SQL when programming in Visual C. Microsoft dropped support for this after SQL Server 6.5 was released, though they did license some of the ESQL/C run-time environment to a company called Micro Focus, who develops COBOL compilers and tools DAO: DAO, or Data Access Objects were an object oriented interface created by Microsoft which allowed early versions of Microsoft Access and Visual Basic to access the Jet Database Engine. Later (in version 3.5) it was able to bypass the Jet engine altogether and directly access ODBC data sources. RDO: Remote Data Objects, or RDO, was a Microsoft technology that allowed for the creation of interfaces that directly called on ODBC. RDO version 2.0 was the final version developed by Microsoft. DB-Library: a C-based API that allowed an application to interact with SQL Server. It will not be supported on any product after SQL Server 2000, and no features were added after SQL Server 6.5. History Microsoft has released several versions of MDAC over time. The distribution method has varied and the feature-set is different for each version. MDAC 1.0 MDAC 1.0 was first released in August 1996. According to Microsoft, "MDAC 1.0 existed more as concept than a coordinated, stand-alone setup program." The MDAC 1.0 stack consisted of ODBC 3.0, OLE DB 1.1, ADO 1.0, and the Advanced Data Connector (ADC) 1.0 – which according to Microsoft was the precursor to the Remote Data Service of MDAC 1.5. It also included ODBC drivers for Access/Jet, SQL Server and Oracle databases. MDAC 1.0 was released via several mechanisms: the Advanced Data Connector shipped with Internet Information Server (IIS) 3.0 and as a downloadable cab file; OLE DB 1.1 and ADO 1.0 shipped with the OLE DB 1.1 SDK, which came with Visual Studio 97 and was also downloadable. MDAC 1.0 came with Active Server Pages, that itself came in IIS 3.0, and also came with Visual InterDev 1.0. MDAC 1.5 MDAC 1.5 was released between September 1997 and March 1998, and involved a more centralised distribution mechanism than MDAC 1.0. It was released with Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0, the Internet Client SDK 4.0 and through a CD-ROM given out at the 1997 Professional Developers Conference (PDC). There were five versions of MDAC 1.5: MDAC 1.5 (initial release): included with Internet Explorer 4.0 and the Internet Client SDK. MDAC 1.5a: downloadable from Microsoft's website MDAC 1.5b: came with Windows NT 4.0 Option Pack & Office 97 MDAC 1.5c: fixed issues with ADO threading and ODBC Connection Pooling and was distributed via the Microsoft website. It only came with the ADO/MDAC runtime components. MDAC 1.5d: came included with Windows 98 and Internet Explorer 4.01 service pack 1. The different versions of MDAC 1.5 consisted of: ODBC 3.5 OLE DB 1.5 ADO 1.5 Remote Data Service 1.5, which superseded the Advanced Data Connector. This version of MDAC had a security flaw that made it vulnerable to an escalated privileges attack. The vulnerability caused systems that had both IIS and MDAC installed to give an unauthorized web user the ability to execute shell commands on the IIS system as a privileged user. This allowed the attacker to use MDAC to tunnel SQL and other ODBC data requests through the public connection to a private back-end network when on a multi-homed Internet-connected IIS system. It also allowed the user to gain unauthorized access to secured, non-published files on the IIS system MDAC 1.5 was the last data access component release supported under Windows NT 3.51 SP5. MDAC 2.0 MDAC 2.0 was distributed with the Data Access 2.0 SDK and included the contents of MDAC 1.5, the ODBC 3.5 SDK and the OLE DB 1.5 SDK, and the OLE DB for OLAP Specification. It also had included many updates to the core product, including a security feature added to the RDS which prevented it from being used maliciously an IIS server. This version came included in Windows NT 4.0 SP4, and also with Visual Studio 6.0, which came with the full Data Access SDK. MDAC 2.1 MDAC 2.1 was distributed with SQL Server 7.0 and SQL Server 6.5 SP5. MDAC 2.1 SP1 was distributed with Internet Explorer 5 and MDAC 2.1 SP1a (GA) was distributed with Microsoft Office 2000, BackOffice 4.5 and Visual Studio 98 SP3. However, none of these versions of MDAC were released to the general public via the world wide web. MDAC 2.1 SP2 was distributed from Microsoft's website. The components that were included with 2.1 were: ADO 2.1 RDS 2.1 OLE DB 2.1 the OLE DB Provider for ODBC, SQL Server and Oracle JRO 2.1 a Jet driver RDO. This version had security vulnerabilities whereby an unchecked buffer could allow an elevated privileges attack. This was found some time later and it affected MDAC 2.1, 2.5 and 2.6 and was addressed in a later patch MDAC 2.5 MDAC 2.5 was released on February 17, 2000 and distributed with Windows 2000, and the MDAC service packs were released in parallel with the Windows 2000 service packs. They were also distributed through Microsoft's website. Three service packs were released. The components included with 2.5 were: ADO 2.5 ADO MD 2.5 ADOX 2.5 RDS 2.5 OLE DB 2.5 many OLE DB Providers JRO 2.5 ODBC 3.51 many ODBC drivers many Jet drivers. Several issues were found in this version of MDAC. When using OLE DB Session Pooling, Microsoft COM+ would try to continuously load and unload OLE DB, and a conflict could arise that caused the OLE DB Session Pooling to run at 100% CPU usage. This was later fixed. Microsoft published a full list of bugs fixed in MDAC 2.5 Service Pack 2 and MDAC 2.5 Service Pack 3. A security vulnerability also existed (later fixed) whereby an unchecked buffer was found in the SQL Server Driver. This flaw was introduced in MDAC 2.5 SP2. MDAC 2.6 MDAC 2.6 was released in September 2000 and was distributed through the web and with Microsoft SQL Server 2000 MDAC 2.6 RTM, SP1 (released June 20, 2001), and SP2 (released June 11, 2002) were distributed in parallel with the Microsoft SQL Server 2000 service packs, and could also be downloaded from the Microsoft website. Beginning with this version of MDAC, Microsoft Jet, Microsoft Jet OLE DB Provider, and the ODBC Desktop Database Drivers were not included. Instead, these could be installed manually. Microsoft also released an alert warning that MDAC 2.6 should not be installed on an SQL Server 7.0 Cluster, because "if you install MDAC 2.6 or later on any node in the cluster, directly or through the installation of another program, it may cause a catastrophic failure of the SQL Server Agent or other SQL Server services." This issue affected Veritas Software's Backup Exec 9.0 for Windows Servers, because it installs Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Desktop Engine (MSDE 2000) as its database. Revision 4367 installed MDAC version 2.6 SP2 while revision 4454 installed MDAC version 2.7 SP1, which did not have the problem MDAC 2.7 MDAC 2.7 was released in October 2001 through Microsoft's website. A refresh release was issued in April 2002 through the release of Windows XP and through Microsoft's website. Version 2.7 was available in U.S. English, Chinese (Traditional and Simplified), German, Japanese, Korean, Brazilian Portuguese, Czech, Danish, Greek, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Finnish, French, Hungarian, Italian, Dutch, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Swedish, and Turkish. Hebrew and Arabic were only available through Windows XP. The main feature change was support for Microsoft's 64-bit operating system, however support for Banyan VINES was also dropped from this version of MDAC. There were several known issues: MDAC 2.7 continued causing connectivity problems on clustered servers running Microsoft SQL Server 6.5 or SQL Server 7.0, with no workaround provided by Microsoft. When creating or configuring ODBC data source names (DSNs) using the Microsoft SQL Server ODBC driver the network library protocol might unexpectedly switch to TCP/IP, even if the DSN was configured to use named pipes. This issue was found by InfoWorld reporter Randall C. Kennedy, who identified that the change was actually made in MDAC 2.6 but was never documented. It was discovered when testing client/server database workloads on a Windows XP computer; InfoWorld claims that although overall server CPU utilization rose by only 8 percent using TCP/IP, context switches per second dropped by more than 150 percent (which is of course impossible because you would then have a negative context switch rate - the drop is either 33% or 60% depending on which planet the author was on at the time of writing) for a 10-user workload. They were unimpressed that a fundamental functional change to the default behaviour of Net-Lib occurred without more than a passing mention in an unrelated document. Windows XP users also sometimes experienced problems connecting to SQL Server because SQL Server attempts to use certificates it finds on the local computer, however if there is more than one certificate available it did not know which one to use. When attempting to use Microsoft Analysis Services 2000 RTM, an error would sometimes appear when trying to browse cubes. Microsoft also discovered a problem in Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows Me's setup program which prevented the MDAC installation program from rolling back when it encountered an installation error. Several security issues were resolved by Microsoft for MDAC 2.7. David Litchfield of Next Generation Security Software Ltd reported a security vulnerability that results because one of the ODBC functions in MDAC that is used to connect to data sources contained an unchecked buffer. Another vulnerability that was fixed was one whereby an attacker could respond to an SQL Server discovery message broadcast by clients with a specially crafted packet that could cause a buffer overflow. Another flaw was found whereby code could be executed remotely when the attacker responded to the broadcast with another specially crafted packet. MDAC 2.8 MDAC 2.8 was released in August 2003 and distributed with Microsoft Windows Server 2003, as well as on Microsoft's Data Access Technologies website. It did not introduce any new features to the product but fixed a number of bugs and security issues – a reg file (automates changes to the registry) was removed that made the server run in an "unsafe" mode whereby the RDS could be exploited to gain unauthorized access to the system and a new restriction was imposed on the length of the Shape query string. There were also several ODBC Administrator changes. On May 23, 2005 Brad Rhodes (Lead Program Manager of Microsoft Data Access Technologies) announced that MDAC 2.8 SP1 was the last stand-alone redistributable of MDAC that Microsoft will ship. MDAC is now an official component of the Microsoft's operating system, though they will be providing ongoing bug and security fixes to previously released versions of the web-distributable version. However, Microsoft have created a new component called the SQL Native Client (SQLNCLI), which is a stand-alone data access API that has combined the OLE DB and ODBC libraries into one DLL. It was formed to be independent of MDAC, which is now reliant on the state the operating system is in – a developer now links to this library and avoids situations where an update of the operating system which updates MDAC breaks applications built to a different version of MDAC. Windows 7 SP1 has broken forward compatibility of MDAC 2.8. Software compiled on Windows 7 SP1 that relies on MDAC ADO will not work on Windows versions prior to Windows 7 SP1 (including Windows 7 RTM, Vista, XP). Microsoft has provided solutions to work around this issue for some applications but VBA applications remain affected. The fix for this issue has been release in February 2012. Windows DAC 6.0 Windows Vista will no longer use MDAC, but instead use Windows DAC, which consists of updated versions of ADO, OLE DB, and ODBC components. According to Microsoft, "Windows DAC includes some changes to work with Windows Vista, but is almost entirely functionally equivalent to MDAC 2.8." Version checking There are two ways of checking the version of MDAC that is installed on a computer. For Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, one way to check is via Microsoft's Component Checker program, which compares the value of each installed MDAC DLL to the MDAC file manifest. The second way is to check the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\DataAccess\FullInstallVer in the Windows registry. Microsoft notes that this information may be incorrect for versions of MDAC prior to 2.1 when compared with the versions of the MDAC files installed to the system References Further reading External links Microsoft MDAC Center MDAC Downloads MDAC History Data Access Components

13049227

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hello%20Friend

Hello Friend

Hello Friend, sometimes written as Hello, Friend, is a short comedy horror film directed by Graham Linehan and written by Linehan and Robert Popper. The film was Linehan's directorial debut. The film stars Martin Savage as a man, John Ward, but credited as the "Subject", who buys some new internet software for his computer, which begins to take over his life. The film was produced by The Film Council, Film4 Productions and Shine Limited. Plot The Subject (who is referred to as Mr Ward by the company and John by his wife - John Ward) one day receives an email advertising a product called "Praemus", described as "The cheaper, faster and better way of using the internet." After the Subject buys Praemus, he advises his friends to get it also. He also notices the mysterious connection unit, which helps the user to connect to his computer by sticking to it. The Subject then sends an email complaining about Praemus. He complains that the unit claims he was online for 200 hours in a week, and other various problems with his computer, such as his monitor vibrating, blasts of static electricity and his screen shutting down, meaning he has to send his email from an internet cafe. The Subject gets an email back saying that this is the first time the Praemus system has done this, and that he should try turning the computer off and on again. However, unknown to him, there is no one working in the Praemus office. The Subject responds by saying he does not know how to turn the system off. His friend, who normally helps him with his computer, is reluctant to get involved. Later, other problems begin to develop for the Subject, as his cat goes missing. Praemus send another complicated email explaining what to do. Whilst he reads the manual and email explaining it, his daughter begins to play with matches. The Subject then responds again saying that he tried to remove the unit, but he got badly burned when he touched the glowing Praemus logo. He continues to complain that the company keeps sending him bills, despite the fact they are not helping him. The Subject then begins to have nightmares about the unit. Praemus then send an email saying that if he damages the unit, it will result in legal action. The Subject says that they were the ones who told him to interfere with the unit. He then goes on to say that there was some sort of "drinking sound" coming from the unit. Later, the unit tries to connect with his head and sell him Praemus Life Insurance. The Subject then goes on to explain that the other units are harming the friends to whom he recommended the Praemus service. Their hands also get burned and their units also start moving. However, The Subject buys the Praemus Life Insurance. His wife leaves a note on the computer monitor in an envelope with "John" written on it. The note says that he can take the unit and shove it, that she is taking their daughter, and that he is not to try to find them. As his life deteriorates, he threatens in an email that he will begin "legal proceedings". However, as he types this, the computer refuses to display the characters onscreen. In frustration, he hits the keyboard with his head, which opens a new window on his computer. The window is a dialog box displaying the setup options for Praemus. The options are not related to the computer, but to himself and aspects of his life. Options displayed include, "Friends", "Spouse", "Children", "Sanity", "Pets" and "Acumen", all marked "Off". As soon as he tries to change one of the options, the computer turns itself off, and he has a heart attack. Praemus send an email to the Subject's wife saying they were sorry at hearing the news of the heart attack. The Subject's heartbeat then appears to stop, and the light on the unit fades away, but it turns out the heart monitor is not working. A doctor simply hits the machine and it begins to work ironically implying that's all the subject needed to do. The monitor is also made by Praemus. Finally, the Subject wakes up. Production The film was based on an idea by Jonathan Bloom and Robert Popper, who also co-wrote the film with Graham Linehan. The film was produced by Linehan, Peter La Terriere and Kenton Allen. Comic actors David Walliams, Richard Ayoade, Martin Savage and Amelia Bullmore also star, with voice-overs by Peter Serafinowicz and Julia Davis. No one is shown speaking in the film. Email text is presented as voice-over by Serafinowicz (as the original advertisement), Davis (as Praemus) and Savage (as the Subject) with Walliams as the one of the subject's friends. Ayoade plays a computer consultant, presumably Maurice Moss (due to the fact the character wears the same clothing as Moss, notably the short sleeve shirt and tie and the big glasses) from Linehan's show The IT Crowd. Linehan makes a director's cameo as the doctor in the final scene although his face is not seen. Release Hello Friend was released as an extra on the first series DVD of The IT Crowd, a television sitcom also directed and written by Linehan. Hello Friend has The IT Crowd's Richard Ayoade making a cameo as the Computer Man. The short has also been shown on Channel 4 several times. References External links British short films 2000s comedy horror films British films 2003 films 2000s short films 2003 directorial debut films 2003 comedy films

4130310

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows%20SideShow

Windows SideShow

Windows SideShow (codenamed Auxiliary Display) was a feature by Microsoft introduced in Windows Vista to supply information such as e-mail, instant messages, and RSS feeds from a personal computer to a local or remote peripheral device or display. SideShow was intended to enhance the Windows experience by enabling new mobility scenarios for the Windows platform and by providing power saving benefits as part of Microsoft's broader efforts regarding a mobile initiative. SideShow was unveiled in 2003 as a feature of Windows Vista ("Longhorn") to provide peripheral awareness of information. Preliminary documentation from Microsoft focused on using it to provide online information in an internal display of a mobile device such as a laptop while supporting desktop computer scenarios; information could also be cached for later use when offline or when in sleep mode. Microsoft planned to include a Control Panel applet and configurable battery, calendar, email, wireless network, and Windows Media Player modules for SideShow. SideShow was included with the release of Windows Vista in 2006, which included modules for Windows Mail and Windows Media Player, and would ultimately encompass other aspects of the Windows platform and Microsoft ecosystem. Microsoft Office supported SideShow with the release of Microsoft Office 2007. Microsoft introduced SideShow support for Windows CE, Windows Mobile 5.0, and Windows Mobile 6.0 in 2008 and released modules for applications such as Microsoft Office 2003, Microsoft PowerPoint, Windows Media Center, and Windows Sidebar. SideShow was supported with the release of Windows 7 in 2009. With the release of Windows 8.1 in 2013, SideShow was discontinued. History Windows Vista Auxiliary displays were listed by Microsoft among other forms of information indicators for personal computers during the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference of 2003. An auxiliary display feature was later presented by Microsoft during the WinHEC 2004 where it was scheduled to be included in Windows Vista, then known by its codename, "Longhorn." It was intended for tablet PCs and other mobile devices to provide users with up-to-date information at a glance and to increase the value of the Windows operating system in new mobile scenarios. Auxiliary display support was included among other mobile features scheduled for the operating system, including Windows Mobility Center, speech recognition, and Windows HotStart, and was listed as part of Microsoft's mobile PC strategy. A prototype auxiliary display device was demonstrated by Intel at the Intel Developer Forum conference in fall of 2004. In February 2005, Microsoft announced that the first beta version of Windows Vista, then codenamed "Longhorn," would include support for the feature; a preliminary software development kit would also be released concurrently with the operating system. At WinHEC 2005, Microsoft released details about the SideShow development platform and discussed new scenarios enabled by the technology. Prototypes were also produced by several original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and displayed at the conference. Microsoft would release details a year later at WinHEC 2006 where additional hardware was also displayed. Windows Vista was released to manufacturing on November 8, 2006 and includes two SideShow gadgets, one for Windows Mail and one for Windows Media Player. Microsoft Office 2007, released to manufacturing on the same day as Windows Vista, included an Outlook 2007 calendar gadget for SideShow. Windows 7 With Windows 7 Microsoft introduced multiple user support for gadgets, improved the reliability and resiliency of SideShow APIs for gadgets on multiple devices, improved asynchronous processing throughput, and updated the SideShow control panel experience with changes such as a more prominent link to settings and the introduction of tooltip descriptions for gadgets. Overview Windows SideShow displays can be embedded as part of a device itself or as a separate component. Examples include an electronic visual display integrated as part of a keyboard, or digital photo frames that can receive information wirelessly; wireless devices are connected to a personal computer through wireless network technologies, including Bluetooth and Wi-Fi; manufacturers may also produce detachable displays. Sideshow devices display various types of information, such as contacts, calendar appointments, e-mail, maps, RSS feeds, and can serve as indicators for system information such as battery life and wireless network strength. Microsoft has published documentation which suggests additional uses for SideShow devices, such as the ability to transmit information and notifications received from a computer across televisions and set-top boxes, and the ability to serve as a second screen for PC games and their content (e.g., character statistics or maps) and to enable new multitasking scenarios during gameplay. SideShow features integration with the Windows desktop gadget feature of Windows Vista and Windows 7, which enables a single gadget to operate simultaneously on a user's desktop while supplying data across devices. SideShow uses the Windows Portable Devices infrastructure to communicate with devices; when viewed as a portable device in File Explorer, users can also adjust and interact with the files included as part of auxiliary displays. Auxiliary displays appear in Device Manager and integrate with Windows Vista's Function Discovery technology. Development platform A gadget developed for SideShow is written by programming for the Windows SideShow Platform application programming interface—a native code COM-based API introduced in Windows Vista. A managed API for .NET Framework developers was also released by Microsoft, and includes development templates for Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2008. To aid in the development of gadgets, Microsoft released a SideShow simulator that emulates the functionality of a SideShow-compatible device, thereby allowing developers to test the appearance and functionality of gadgets without requiring physical hardware. Devices for Windows SideShow have different hardware traits than devices such as mobile phones or PDAs. The former have their own processor; they need not rely solely on a connection to a computer for processing tasks. There are online and offline abilities that allow the device to run larger components on the connected computer. The following list contains typical device display types and technologies. Hardware-specific, native applications that provide rich-media experiences like audio and video playback that can be accessed through the SideShow user interface require the SDK from the specific platform vendor. For example, Nvidia provides the Preface platform that includes abilities like MP3, AAC, MPEG-4 encode-decode and other digital media formats. Market acceptance Few OEMs accepted SideShow. In 2007, Asus announced the W5Fe, a laptop with a full-color, 2.8-inch SideShow display on the front cover. In 2006, after being featured at WinHEC, the 7-inch and 10-inch "Momento" digital photo frames were released by their developer, A Living Picture, and provided Sideshow functionality over WiFi. They were subsequently marketed by i-mate along with its Momento Live picture service, before being shut down in 2009. In October 2007, Dell released the XPS 420, which included a Sideshow device on the top front of the machine. It was not widely promoted, found little use and was quietly dropped when the XPS 430 came out a year later. Intoware (formerly Ikanos Consulting) provided AccuWeather, Facebook, Flickr, iTunes, Twitter, and Windows Live Messenger. On February 1, 2010, Ikanos Consulting announced Threemote, a suite of Windows SideShow-compatible products for embedded platforms including Windows Mobile, Google Android, and Kopin Golden-i. Threemote appears unsupported and had been unavailable from the Android Market for some time , nor was it available for Windows Mobile. In a blog posting in April 2010, the technical director of Ikanos consulting said that Sideshow was not dead and Threemote was "bubbling along". On February 7, 2012, Chris James released "MS Sideshow Device", an implementation of a Windows Sideshow device for Android. Microsoft discontinued the Sideshow gallery. A duplication of the sideshow gallery content is available at Windows Sidebar Gadget Gallery. With the introduction of Windows 8.1, Microsoft discontinued the technology and removed support for SideShow devices from the operating system. See also Smart Personal Objects Technology References External links Windows SideShow Managed API 1.0 SDK Download MSDN link for Windows SideShow Discontinued Windows components Microsoft initiatives SideShow

196223

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotor%20machine

Rotor machine

In cryptography, a rotor machine is an electro-mechanical stream cipher device used for encrypting and decrypting messages. Rotor machines were the cryptographic state-of-the-art for a prominent period of history; they were in widespread use in the 1920s–1970s. The most famous example is the German Enigma machine, the output of which was deciphered by the Allies during World War II, producing intelligence code-named Ultra. Description The primary component of a rotor machine is a set of rotors, also termed wheels or drums, which are rotating disks with an array of electrical contacts on either side. The wiring between the contacts implements a fixed substitution of letters, replacing them in some complex fashion. On its own, this would offer little security; however, before or after encrypting each letter, the rotors advance positions, changing the substitution. By this means, a rotor machine produces a complex polyalphabetic substitution cipher, which changes with every key press. Background In classical cryptography, one of the earliest encryption methods was the simple substitution cipher, where letters in a message were systematically replaced using some secret scheme. Monoalphabetic substitution ciphers used only a single replacement scheme — sometimes termed an "alphabet"; this could be easily broken, for example, by using frequency analysis. Somewhat more secure were schemes involving multiple alphabets, polyalphabetic ciphers. Because such schemes were implemented by hand, only a handful of different alphabets could be used; anything more complex would be impractical. However, using only a few alphabets left the ciphers vulnerable to attack. The invention of rotor machines mechanised polyalphabetic encryption, providing a practical way to use a much larger number of alphabets. The earliest cryptanalytic technique was frequency analysis, in which letter patterns unique to every language could be used to discover information about the substitution alphabet(s) in use in a mono-alphabetic substitution cipher. For instance, in English, the plaintext letters E, T, A, O, I, N and S, are usually easy to identify in ciphertext on the basis that since they are very frequent (see ETAOIN SHRDLU), their corresponding ciphertext letters will also be as frequent. In addition, bigram combinations like NG, ST and others are also very frequent, while others are rare indeed (Q followed by anything other than U for instance). The simplest frequency analysis relies on one ciphertext letter always being substituted for a plaintext letter in the cipher: if this is not the case, deciphering the message is more difficult. For many years, cryptographers attempted to hide the telltale frequencies by using several different substitutions for common letters, but this technique was unable to fully hide patterns in the substitutions for plaintext letters. Such schemes were being widely broken by the 16th century. In the mid-15th century, a new technique was invented by Alberti, now known generally as polyalphabetic ciphers, which recognised the virtue of using more than a single substitution alphabet; he also invented a simple technique for "creating" a multitude of substitution patterns for use in a message. Two parties exchanged a small amount of information (referred to as the key) and used it to create many substitution alphabets, and so many different substitutions for each plaintext letter over the course of a single plaintext. The idea is simple and effective, but proved more difficult to use than might have been expected. Many ciphers were only partial implementations of Alberti's, and so were easier to break than they might have been (e.g. the Vigenère cipher). Not until the 1840s (Babbage) was any technique known which could reliably break any of the polyalphabetic ciphers. His technique also looked for repeating patterns in the ciphertext, which provide clues about the length of the key. Once this is known, the message essentially becomes a series of messages, each as long as the length of the key, to which normal frequency analysis can be applied. Charles Babbage, Friedrich Kasiski, and William F. Friedman are among those who did most to develop these techniques. Cipher designers tried to get users to use a different substitution for every letter, but this usually meant a very long key, which was a problem in several ways. A long key takes longer to convey (securely) to the parties who need it, and so mistakes are more likely in key distribution. Also, many users do not have the patience to carry out lengthy, letter-perfect evolutions, and certainly not under time pressure or battlefield stress. The 'ultimate' cipher of this type would be one in which such a 'long' key could be generated from a simple pattern (ideally automatically), producing a cipher in which there are so many substitution alphabets that frequency counting and statistical attacks would be effectively impossible. Enigma, and the rotor machines generally, were just what was needed since they were seriously polyalphabetic, using a different substitution alphabet for each letter of plaintext, and automatic, requiring no extraordinary abilities from their users. Their messages were, generally, much harder to break than any previous ciphers. Mechanization It is straightforward to create a machine for performing simple substitution. In an electrical system with 26 switches attached to 26 light bulbs, any one of the switches will illuminate one of the bulbs. If each switch is operated by a key on a typewriter, and the bulbs are labelled with letters, then such a system can be used for encryption by choosing the wiring between the keys and the bulb: for example, typing the letter A would make the bulb labelled Q light up. However, the wiring is fixed, providing little security. Rotor machines change the interconnecting wiring with each key stroke. The wiring is placed inside a rotor, and then rotated with a gear every time a letter is pressed. So while pressing A the first time might generate a Q, the next time it might generate a J. Every letter pressed on the keyboard increments the rotor position and get a new substitution, implementing a polyalphabetic substitution cipher. Depending on the size of the rotor, this may, or may not, be more secure than hand ciphers. If the rotor has only 26 positions on it, one for each letter, then all messages will have a (repeating) key 26 letters long. Although the key itself (mostly hidden in the wiring of the rotor) might not be known, the methods for attacking these types of ciphers don't need that information. So while such a single rotor machine is certainly easy to use, it is no more secure than any other partial polyalphabetic cipher system. But this is easy to correct. Simply stack more rotors next to each other, and gear them together. After the first rotor spins "all the way", make the rotor beside it spin one position. Now you would have to type 26 × 26 = 676 letters (for the Latin alphabet) before the key repeats, and yet it still only requires you to communicate a key of two letters/numbers to set things up. If a key of 676 length is not long enough, another rotor can be added, resulting in a period 17,576 letters long. In order to be as easy to decipher as encipher, some rotor machines, most notably the Enigma machine, embodied a symmetric-key algorithm, i.e., encrypting twice with the same settings recovers the original message (see involution). History Invention The concept of a rotor machine occurred to a number of inventors independently at a similar time. In 2003, it emerged that the first inventors were two Dutch naval officers, Theo A. van Hengel (1875–1939) and R. P. C. Spengler (1875–1955) in 1915 (De Leeuw, 2003). Previously, the invention had been ascribed to four inventors working independently and at much the same time: Edward Hebern, Arvid Damm, Hugo Koch and Arthur Scherbius. In the United States Edward Hugh Hebern built a rotor machine using a single rotor in 1917. He became convinced he would get rich selling such a system to the military, the Hebern Rotor Machine, and produced a series of different machines with one to five rotors. His success was limited, however, and he went bankrupt in the 1920s. He sold a small number of machines to the US Navy in 1931. In Hebern's machines the rotors could be opened up and the wiring changed in a few minutes, so a single mass-produced system could be sold to a number of users who would then produce their own rotor keying. Decryption consisted of taking out the rotor(s) and turning them around to reverse the circuitry. Unknown to Hebern, William F. Friedman of the US Army's SIS promptly demonstrated a flaw in the system that allowed the ciphers from it, and from any machine with similar design features, to be cracked with enough work. Another early rotor machine inventor was Dutchman Hugo Koch, who filed a patent on a rotor machine in 1919. At about the same time in Sweden, Arvid Gerhard Damm invented and patented another rotor design. However, the rotor machine was ultimately made famous by Arthur Scherbius, who filed a rotor machine patent in 1918. Scherbius later went on to design and market the Enigma machine. The Enigma machine The most widely known rotor cipher device is the German Enigma machine used during World War II, of which there were a number of variants. The standard Enigma model, Enigma I, used three rotors. At the end of the stack of rotors was an additional, non-rotating disk, the "reflector," wired such that the input was connected electrically back out to another contact on the same side and thus was "reflected" back through the three-rotor stack to produce the ciphertext. When current was sent into most other rotor cipher machines, it would travel through the rotors and out the other side to the lamps. In the Enigma, however, it was "reflected" back through the disks before going to the lamps. The advantage of this was that there was nothing that had to be done to the setup in order to decipher a message; the machine was "symmetrical". The Enigma's reflector guaranteed that no letter could be enciphered as itself, so an A could never turn back into an A. This helped Polish and, later, British efforts to break the cipher. (See Cryptanalysis of the Enigma.) Scherbius joined forces with a mechanical engineer named Ritter and formed Chiffriermaschinen AG in Berlin before demonstrating Enigma to the public in Bern in 1923, and then in 1924 at the World Postal Congress in Stockholm. In 1927 Scherbius bought Koch's patents, and in 1928 they added a plugboard, essentially a non-rotating manually rewireable fourth rotor, on the front of the machine. After the death of Scherbius in 1929, Willi Korn was in charge of further technical development of Enigma. As with other early rotor machine efforts, Scherbius had limited commercial success. However, the German armed forces, responding in part to revelations that their codes had been broken during World War I, adopted the Enigma to secure their communications. The Reichsmarine adopted Enigma in 1926, and the German Army began to use a different variant around 1928. The Enigma (in several variants) was the rotor machine that Scherbius's company and its successor, Heimsoth & Reinke, supplied to the German military and to such agencies as the Nazi party security organization, the SD. The Poles broke the German Army Enigma beginning in December 1932, not long after it had been put into service. On July 25, 1939, just five weeks before Hitler's invasion of Poland, the Polish General Staff's Cipher Bureau shared its Enigma-decryption methods and equipment with the French and British as the Poles' contribution to the common defense against Nazi Germany. Dilly Knox had already broken Spanish Nationalist messages on a commercial Enigma machine in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War. A few months later, using the Polish techniques, the British began reading Enigma ciphers in collaboration with Polish Cipher Bureau cryptologists who had escaped Poland, overrun by the Germans, to reach Paris. The Poles continued breaking German Army Enigma—along with Luftwaffe Enigma traffic—until work at Station PC Bruno in France was shut down by the German invasion of May–June 1940. The British continued breaking Enigma and, assisted eventually by the United States, extended the work to German Naval Enigma traffic (which the Poles had been reading before the war), most especially to and from U-boats during the Battle of the Atlantic. Various machines During World War II (WWII), both the Germans and Allies developed additional rotor machines. The Germans used the Lorenz SZ 40/42 and Siemens and Halske T52 machines to encipher teleprinter traffic which used the Baudot code; this traffic was known as Fish to the Allies. The Allies developed the Typex (British) and the SIGABA (American). During the War the Swiss began development on an Enigma improvement which became the NEMA machine which was put into service after World War II. There was even a Japanese developed variant of the Enigma in which the rotors sat horizontally; it was apparently never put into service. The Japanese PURPLE machine was not a rotor machine, being built around electrical stepping switches, but was conceptually similar. Rotor machines continued to be used even in the computer age. The KL-7 (ADONIS), an encryption machine with 8 rotors, was widely used by the U.S. and its allies from the 1950s until the 1980s. The last Canadian message encrypted with a KL-7 was sent on June 30, 1983. The Soviet Union and its allies used a 10-rotor machine called Fialka well into the 1970s. A unique rotor machine called the Cryptograph was constructed in 2002 by Netherlands-based Tatjana van Vark. This unusual device is inspired by Enigma, but makes use of 40-point rotors, allowing letters, numbers and some punctuation; each rotor contains 509 parts. A software implementation of a rotor machine was used in the crypt command that was part of early UNIX operating systems. It was among the first software programs to run afoul of U.S. export regulations which classified cryptographic implementations as munitions. List of rotor machines BID/60 (Singlet) Combined Cipher Machine Enigma machine Fialka Hagelin's machines including C-36, C-52 CD-57 M-209 Hebern rotor machine HX-63 KL-7 Lacida Lorenz SZ 40/42 M-325 Mercury NEMA OMI cryptograph Portex RED Siemens and Halske T52 SIGABA SIGCUM Typex References Friedrich L. Bauer, "An error in the history of rotor encryption devices", Cryptologia 23(3), July 1999, page 206. Cipher A. Deavours, Louis Kruh, "Machine Cryptography and Modern Cryptanalysis", Artech House, 1985. . Karl de Leeuw, "The Dutch invention of the rotor machine, 1915 - 1923." Cryptologia 27(1), January 2003, pp73–94. External links Site with cipher machine images, many of rotor machines Rotor machine photographs Timeline of Cipher Machines

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ride%20with%20the%20Devil%20%28film%29

Ride with the Devil (film)

Ride with the Devil is a 1999 American Revisionist Western film directed by Ang Lee and starring Tobey Maguire, Skeet Ulrich, Jeffrey Wright, and Jewel in her feature film debut. Based on the novel Woe to Live On, by Daniel Woodrell, the film, set during the American Civil War, follows a group of men who join the First Missouri Irregulars, also known as the Bushwhackers—guerrilla units loyal to pro-Confederacy units of the state—and their attempt to disrupt and marginalize the political activities of Northern Jayhawkers allied with Union soldiers. Simon Baker, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Jonathan Brandis, Jim Caviezel, Mark Ruffalo, and Celia Weston are featured in supporting performances. The film was a co-production between Universal Studios and Good Machine. Principal photography began on March 25, 1998. Theatrically, it was commercially distributed by the USA Films division of Universal, and premiered in only six theaters nationwide in the United States on November 26, 1999, and for only three days, grossing a total of $635,096. Taking into account its $38 million budget costs, the film was considered a major box office bomb. Ride with the Devil has been noted for its thematic exploration of politics, violence and war. In 2010, The Criterion Collection released a restored high-definition digital transfer for the home media market, featuring an extended 148-minute director's cut of the film. Plot Jake Roedel and Jack Bull Chiles are friends in Missouri when the American Civil War breaks out; Roedel is a German American (born in Germany but raised by his immigrant father in Missouri) who suffers from sporadic anti-German suspicion from other Southerners, due to the German population in the state being largely sympathetic to the Union. During the mayhem, Chiles' father is murdered by Kansas pro-Union Jayhawkers. The two men join the First Missouri Irregulars (Bushwhackers) under Black John Ambrose, an informal unit loyal to pro-Confederacy units of Missouri in 1861. They later meet George Clyde and Daniel Holt, who most assume is Clyde's slave. But Clyde had "bought out" Holt from slavery after Holt, who Clyde had known since childhood, had joined the Bushwhackers along with Clyde after killing several Union soldiers who killed Clyde's father. Holt is considered a good scout and a good shot who is cool in combat and is known by the Confederates as "a good Yankee killer." The Bushwhackers battle Jayhawkers using guerrilla warfare tactics while trying to evade capture. During their travels, Jake is notified that his father, also a German immigrant, has been murdered by Alf Bowden, a Unionist whose life Jake spared. The men manage to hide out in a coarsely-built shelter on the property of a pro-Confederacy family, the Evanses. A young widow in the household, Sue Lee Shelley, becomes romantically involved with Chiles. With Clyde off to visit a woman friend at nearby farm and Chiles occupied with Sue Lee, a friendship begins between Roedel and Holt. Soon after, Chiles is severely wounded during a skirmish with Union soldiers and they take him back to their hideout. With Union soldiers in the area, Clyde abandons the others on the pretext of finding a doctor but actually rejoins the Bushwhackers. Jake, Daniel and Sue Lee amputate Chiles' arm, but he dies of gangrene. After Chiles' death, Roedel and Holt escort Shelley to a refuge dwelling where another pro-Confederate kindred, the Brown family, reside. Roedel and Holt then rejoin the Bushwhackers where they find Clyde, who appears embarrassed to see them although they bear him no ill will. Following the collapse and destruction of a makeshift prison holding the female relatives of guerrillas, a complementary clan of Bushwhackers led by William Quantrill plot a revenge attack against the Union and raid Lawrence, Kansas. After the Bushwhackers have overrun and killed the Union troops on the edge of town, they enter Lawrence, and commence to kill everyone they deem a Jayhawker, Federal, or supportive of them. Roedel and Holt do not engage in the killing of civilians, and enter an establishment to eat. Fellow Bushwhacker Pitt Mackeson –who has steadily grown to be jealous of Roedel due to him being viewed as intelligent by the commander of the group– also known as having predilection for vicious killing, enters the establishment and orders Roedel to bring out the family who owns the place so he can execute them in the street. Roedel refuses, and when Mackeson threatens Roedel with violence, Roedel draws his pistol and points it in Mackeson's face, daring him to carry out his threat, to which Mackeson backs down. Later, Union cavalry who were on the trail of Quantrill's band arrives to Lawrence and turn to attack. The Bushwackers first fall back and later draw the Union cavalry into a woodline and dismount to take cover and deliver volley fire into the Union cavalry, in subsequent lines, as they retreat. In an episode of more hostility, Mackeson purposely shoots Roedel in the leg during the action. Holt is also hit in the side in the battle. Clyde tries to pull Holt away from the danger, and then is himself hit in the throat, dying in Holt's arms. Roedel pulls Holt away to mount horses and escape the Union cavalry. Once clear of the Union cavalry, Roedel and Holt make their way to Brown farm to have their wounds treated. The Brown family takes the two in, and they recuperate for a time. With both Chiles and Clyde gone, friendship grows between Roedel and Holt and they reflect on their futures. Roedel is less sure he will return to fight for the Confederate Cause, starting to think the war is going against the South. Holt confides that although he was not Clyde's slave, he felt he belonged with him and now felt free for the first time in his life and begins to comprehend he faces a life of his own choices. He confides in Roedel that he knew his mother was a slave who had been sold and taken to Texas, and was now the only person left of family he had. Meanwhile, Shelley gives birth to Chiles's daughter. Holt and Roedel, both wounded, recover at the same residence that took in Shelley occupied by the Brown folk. The Browns, who mistakenly suppose Roedel is the child's father, pressure Roedel to marry her, which he is reluctant to do. However, after spending time with Shelley and the child, Roedel begins to have feelings for both of them. At the same time, Anderson and many other Bushwhackers have been killed, taken prisoner or otherwise rendered inactive. Pitt Mackeson has gathered some survivors into a gang which no longer fights the Yankees, but instead robs, murders and plunders Unionists and Southerners alike. Word comes from one of Roedel's compatriots that Mackeson and his gang are headed South and plan on visiting Roedel soon. One day Mr. Brown takes Holt to town and they return with a reverend, with the sole purpose of marrying Shelley and Roedel. After realizing he does love Shelley and she him, Roedel marries her in an almost-abrupt wedding. Roedel's feelings toward Shelley are further deepened by a tender wedding night together. Later, proclaiming himself finished with war, Roedel gives up being a Bushwhacker and takes his new family to California. On the way, and while making camp, they meet Mackeson and the last of his men, Turner, who is now ragged and injured, with both of them on their last legs and on the run. Mackeson reveals that Black John and Quantrill are both dead. During a tense standoff between Mackeson, Roedel, Turner and Holt, Mackeson boasts of his plan to ride into Newport despite the fact the town is full of Federal soldiers and certain death awaits him and Turner. Mackeson's almost unhinged manners makes Roedel and Holt to hold guns on him and Turner in self-defense, but the two bandits ride off without violence, with Mackeson implicitly agreeing with Roedel that the war is lost and their personal feud is now over too. Daniel Holt rides with Roedel and his family toward California, until their roads part. He bids Jake his farewell, while Shelley and the baby sleep. Holt leaves for Texas, now a truly free man, to find his long lost mother. Cast Analysis Film scholar Stephen Teo notes that the film approaches themes of "domesticity, the role of women, homosociality, and violence...  with great sensitivity." Many critics have noted that the film does little to orient or guide its audience through the historical landscape in which it is set, and instead presents events in a manner that is "unremarkable," "undemonstrative," and "somewhat ghostly." Writer Andrew Patrick Nelson considers Ride with the Devil as being part of the revisionist Western tradition, though he concedes that it "has little of the self-consciousness that generally marks the form." Nelson asserts that director Ang Lee often forgoes excessive attention to historical details, and instead attempts to immerse the audience in an experience that "is responsive to the daily realities and rhythms that surround the characters." It is because of this that Nelson claims the film has more in common with "metaphysical" works of filmmakers such as Terrence Malick." Production Casting and set design The leading actors were required to go through three weeks of boot camp to prepare them for their roles. During shooting, Maguire hesitated under the grueling heat and 16-hour workdays, but pressed on to complete the filming. The actors first trained shooting blank loads, and then live ammunition for action conflict scenes. More than 250 Civil War black-powder pistols were used during the production phase. Over 140 extras played Lawrence residents, and more than 200 Civil War re-enactors were brought in to relay their style of living to the filming sequences. Principal photography began on March 25, 1998. Filming took place primarily on location in Sibley, Missouri, Kansas City, Kansas, and Kansas City, Missouri. Pattonsburg, Missouri also stood in as a primary filming set locale. The set design production team removed telephone poles and utilized truckloads of dirt to cover existing asphalt and concrete. Production designer Mark Friedberg created numerous indoor and outdoor sets of the time period to ensure and maintain historical accuracy. Music and soundtrack The original motion picture music for Ride with the Devil, was released by the Atlantic Records music label on November 23, 1999. The score for the film was orchestrated by Mychael Danna and Nicholas Dodd. Musical artist Jewel contributed vocals to the score with her song "What's Simple Is True", from her 1998 album Spirit. Marketing Novel The basis for the film, Daniel Woodrell's novel Woe to Live On (originally published in 1987) was released as a movie tie-in edition, re-titled Ride With the Devil, by Pocket Books on November 1, 1999. The book dramatizes the events of the American Civil War during the 1860s, as depicted in the film. It expands on the inner-fighting between rebel Bushwhackers and Union Jayhawkers, with civilians caught in the crossfire. The story relates a coming of age experience for Roedel as he emotionally comprehends the losses of his best friend, father and comrades. On a separate front, Roedel expresses love for his best friend's widow, and learns about tolerance from his contact with a reserved black Irregular. Release Ride with the Devil received its world premiere at the 25th Deauville American Film Festival in France on September 9, 1999. The following day it had its North American premiere at the Toronto Film Festival in Canada. The film's UK premiere was at the opening night gala of the London Film Festival on November 3, 1999. Box office Ride with the Devil had an initial screening on November 24, 1999, in New York City, Kansas City, Missouri and Los Angeles. For most of its limited release, the film fluctuated between 11 and 60 theater screening counts. At its most competitive showing, the filmed ranked in 37th place for the December 17–19 weekend in 1999. The film premiered in cinemas on November 26, 1999, in limited release throughout the United States. During that weekend, the film opened in 50th place grossing $64,159 in business showing at 11 locations. The film Toy Story 2 opened in 1st place during that weekend with $57,388,839 in revenue. The film's revenue dropped by almost 20% in its second week of release, earning $51,600. For that particular weekend, the film fell to 53rd place although with an increased theater count showing at 15 theaters. Toy Story 2 remained unchallenged in 1st place with $18,249,880 in box office business. During its final week in release, Ride with the Devil opened in 57th place grossing $39,806. For that weekend period, Stuart Little starring Geena Davis opened in 1st place with $11,214,503 in revenue. Ride with the Devil went on to top out domestically at $635,096 in total ticket sales through a 6-week theatrical run. For 1999 as a whole, the film would cumulatively rank at a box office performance position of 219. Critical response Among mainstream critics in the U.S., the film received generally positive reviews. Rotten Tomatoes reported that 63% of 65 sampled critics gave the film a positive review, with an average score of 6.2 out of 10. At Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average out of 100 to critics' reviews, Ride with the Devil received a score of 69 based on 29 reviews. The film failed to garner any award nominations for its acting or production merits from accredited film organizations. Peter Stack, writing in the San Francisco Chronicle, said in outward positive sentiment, "Lee's approach mixes an unsettling grittiness with an appealing, often luminous elegance (thanks to Frederick Elmes' cinematography) in picturing a patch of America at war with itself." Left impressed, Stephen Hunter in The Washington Post, wrote that the film was "terrific" and that it contained the "most terrifying kind of close-in gunplay, with big, pulsing holes blown into human beings for a variety of reasons ranging from the political to the nonsensical." In a mixed to positive review, Stephen Holden of The New York Times, described the film's production aspects as being of "meditative quality and its attention to detail and the rough-hewn textures of 19th-century life are also what keep the story at a distance and make "Ride with the Devil" dramatically skimpy, even though the movie stirs together themes of love, sex, death and war." Wesley Morris of The San Francisco Examiner, commented that Ride with the Devil was "downright hot-blooded in the nameless violence going on west of marquee Civil War battles. Never has this war been filmed with such ragged glory. The boys grasping their rifles look like trigger-happy rock stars of the prairies, so much so that they threaten to transform the film into a great hair movie." In a slightly upbeat conviction, Andrew O'Hehir of Salon.com asserted that "for all its clumsy dialogue and loose plotting, this is historical filmmaking of a high order, both visually and thematically ambitious." Todd McCarthy of Variety, added to the exuberant tone by declaring, "Impressing once again with the diversity of his choices of subject matter and milieu, director Ang Lee has made a brutal but sensitively observed film about the fringes of the Civil War". The film was not without its detractors. Writing for the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert bluntly noted that the motion picture "does not have conventional rewards or payoffs, does not simplify a complex situation, doesn't punch up the action or the romance simply to entertain. But it is, sad to say, not a very entertaining movie; it's a long slog unless you're fascinated by the undercurrents." In a primarily negative review, Lisa Schwarzbaum writing for Entertainment Weekly, called the film "an oddly unengaging one, not because of any weak performances (even crooning poetess Jewel acquits herself pleasantly in her film debut), but because the waxy yellow buildup of earnest tastefulness (the curse of the Burns school of history) seals off every character from our access." Describing a favorable opinion, Russell Smith of The Austin Chronicle professed the film as exhibiting "unostentatious originality, psychological insight, and stark beauty". While following up, he stressed "There's an odd blend of stylization and extreme realism to this film. The dialogue is stilted, full of archaic $20-words and dime-novel flamboyance — all the more jarring when delivered by these teenaged bumpkin characters." James Berardinelli of ReelViews proclaimed Ride with the Devil "takes us away from the big battles of the East and to a place where things are less cleanly defined." He also stated that "As was true almost everywhere else, idealogical gulfs often divided families. This is the terrain into which Lee has ventured, and the resulting motion picture offers yet another effective and affecting portrait of the United States' most important and difficult conflict." David Sterritt writing for The Christian Science Monitor reasoned, "The movie is longer and slower than necessary, but it explores interesting questions of wartime violence, personal integrity, and what it means to come of age in a society ripping apart at the seams." Film critic Steve Simels of TV Guide was consumed with the nature of the subject matter exclaiming, "A nicely ambiguous ending and terrific acting by the mostly young cast mostly makes up for the longeurs, however, and for the record, Jewel acquits herself well in a not particularly demanding role." In 2013, the film was the subject of an essay in a collection of scholarly essays on Ang Lee's films, The Philosophy of Ang Lee. Home media Following its cinematic release in theaters, the Region 1 Code widescreen edition of the film was released on DVD in the United States on July 18, 2000. Special features for the DVD include; Jewel music video: "What's Simple Is True", the Theatrical Trailer, Production notes, Cast and filmmakers extra, and a Universal web link. The Criterion Collection released a restored special edition on DVD and Blu-ray on April 27, 2010. It includes a 148-minute extended cut of the film. Special features include; Two audio commentaries one featuring Lee and producer-screenwriter James Schamus and one featuring Elmes, sound designer Drew Kunin, and production designer Mark Friedberg; a new video interview with star Jeffrey Wright, and a booklet featuring essays by critic Godfrey Cheshire and Edward E. Leslie, author of The Devil Knows How to Ride: The True Story of William Clarke Quantrill and his Confederate Raiders. The film is also available in video on demand formats, as well. See also Quantrill's Raiders Lawrence Massacre References Sources Further reading External links Ride with the Devil: Apocalypse Then an essay by Godfrey Cheshire at the Criterion Collection 1999 films 1999 Western (genre) films African Americans in the American Civil War American Civil War films American Western (genre) films American epic films American films American war films 1990s English-language films Films about American slavery Films about race and ethnicity Films based on American novels Films based on Western (genre) novels Films based on military novels Films directed by Ang Lee Films produced by James Schamus Films scored by Mychael Danna Films set in Missouri Films set in the 1860s Films shot in Kansas Films shot in Missouri Films with screenplays by James Schamus Kansas in the American Civil War Missouri in the American Civil War Revisionist Western (genre) films War films based on actual events Guerrilla warfare in film

9347765

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PeaZip

PeaZip

PeaZip is a free and open-source file manager and file archiver for Microsoft Windows, ReactOS, Linux, MacOS and BSD made by Giorgio Tani. It supports its native PEA archive format (featuring compression, multi volume split and flexible authenticated encryption and integrity check schemes) and other mainstream formats, with special focus on handling open formats. It supports 211 file extensions (as of version 7.7.0). PeaZip is mainly written in Free Pascal, using Lazarus. PeaZip is released under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License. Features The program features an archive browser interface with search and history features for intuitive navigation in archive's content, and allows the application of fine-grained multiple exclusion and inclusion filter rules to the archive; a flat browsing mode is possible as alternative archive browsing method. PeaZip allows users to run extracting and archiving operations automatically using command-line generated exporting the job defined in the GUI front-end. It can also create, edit and restore an archive's layout for speeding up archiving or backup operation's definition. Other notable features of the program include archive conversion, file splitting and joining, secure file deletion, byte-to-byte file comparison, archive encryption, checksum/hash files, find duplicate files, batch renaming, system benchmarking, random passwords/keyfiles generation, view image thumbnails (multi-threaded on the fly thumbnails generation without saving image cache to the host machine), and integration in the Windows Explorer context menu. In addition, the program's user interface (including icons and color scheme) can be customized. Versions older than 2.6.1 were vulnerable to an improper input validation weakness, that has been patched in following versions. From version 6.9.2 and newer, PeaZip support editing files inside archives (E.g.: Open a text file, add text and save it without unzipping the file); from that version forward, it also supports adding files to subfolders in an already created archive, in addition to maintaining the ability to add files to archives to the root directory. PeaZip is available for IA-32 and x86-64 as natively standalone, portable application and as installable package for Microsoft Windows, Linux (DEB, RPM and TGZ, compiled both for GTK2 and Qt widgetset), and BSD (GTK2). It is available also as PortableApps package (.paf.exe) and for Microsoft's winget Windows Package Manager Along with more popular and general-purpose archive formats like 7z, Tar, Zip etc., PeaZip supports the ZPAQ, PAQ, and LPAQ formats. Although usually not recommended for general purpose use (due to high memory usage and low speed), those formats are included for the value as cutting edge compression technology, providing compression ratio among the best for most data structures. PeaZip supports encryption with AES 256-bit cipher in 7z, and ZIP archive formats. In PeaZip's native PEA format, and in FreeArc's ARC format, supported ciphers are AES 256-bit, Blowfish, Twofish 256 and Serpent 256 (in PEA format, all ciphers are used in EAX authenticated encryption mode). Native archive format PEA, an acronym for Pack Encrypt Authenticate, is an archive file format. It is a general purpose archiving format featuring compression and multiple volume output. The developers' goal is to offer a flexible security model through Authenticated Encryption, that provides both privacy and authentication of the data, and redundant integrity checks ranging from checksums to cryptographically strong hashes, defining three different levels of communication to control: streams, objects, and volumes. It was developed in conjunction with the PeaZip file archiver. PeaZip and Universal Extractor support the PEA archive format. Third-party technologies PeaZip acts as a graphical front-end for numerous third-party open source or royalty-free utilities, including: Igor Pavlov 7z executable and Myspace's p7zip, POSIX port of 7z under Linux Google Brotli Bulat Ziganshin FreeArc, not to be confused with SEA's ARC Matt Mahoney at al PAQ8, ZPAQ and LPAQ Ilia Muraviev QUAD, BALZ, and BCM compressors GNU strip and UPX Facebook Zstandard Separate plugin (optional) Marcel Lemke UNACEV2.DLL 2.6.0.0 and UNACE for Linux (royalty-free license from ACE Compression Software); being released under a non-OSI compliant license it is available as separate (free of charge) package on PeaZip Add-ons page, as PeaZip UNACE Plugin. Eugene Roshal unrar (royalty-free license from RarLab/Win.Rar GmbH, source available but subject to specific restriction in order to disallow creating a rar compressor); being released under a non-OSI compliant license it is available as separate (free of charge) package on PeaZip Add-ons page, as PeaZip UNRAR5 Plugin. This plugin is optional and only meant to provide an alternative unrar engine, as RAR and RAR5 formats are supported for extraction by PeaZip out of the box. Most of these utilities can run both in console mode or through a graphical wrapper that allows more user-friendly handling of output information. Supported formats Full archiving and extraction support 7z and 7z-SFX FreeArc's ARC/WRC Brotli: br bzip2: bz2, tar.bz2, tbz, tb2 gzip: gz, tar.gz, tgz PAQ8 (F/JD/L/O), LPAQ, ZPAQ PEA QUAD/BALZ/BCM tar WIM xz Zip Zstandard: zst, tzst Browse/test/extract support ACE (through optional separate plugin) ARJ appxbundle CAB CHM Compound File (e.g. MSI, DOC, PPT, XLS) CPIO deb EAR ISO image JAR LZMA LZH NSIS installers OpenOffice's OpenDocument PET/PUP (Puppy Linux installers) PAK/PK3/PK4 RAR including archives created with new RARv5 standard RPM SMZIP U3P WAR XPI Z (compress) ZIPX Repair FreeArc's ARC Adware Prior to release 5.3, PeaZip installers for Windows and Win64 were bundled with an OpenCandy advertising module, which during installation offered optional installation of recommended third-party software; the official download page provided alternative installers without this module, named 'plain'. From release 5.3 on (April 2014), PeaZip no longer has ad-supported bundle. PeaZip Portable and PeaZip for Linux packages never featured an ad-supported bundle. See also Comparison of file archivers Comparison of archive formats List of archive formats List of portable software References External links PEA archiving utility and file format specifications FAQ 2006 software File archivers Free data compression software Free file managers Free software programmed in Pascal Windows compression software Portable software Software using the LGPL license Cross-platform free software Pascal (programming language) software

2309148

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CompuAdd

CompuAdd

CompuAdd Corporation was a manufacturer of personal computers in Austin, Texas. It assembled its product from components manufactured by others. CompuAdd created generic PC clone computers, but unlike most clone makers, it had a large engineering staff. CompuAdd also created a Multimedia PC (MPC), the FunStation, and a Sun workstation clone, the SS-1. CompuAdd was the largest clone PC manufacturer in Austin until 1993 and outsold PC's Limited (now Dell Computer Corporation). CompuAdd sold PCs to corporate, educational and government entities. CompuAdd Computers 386 was on the US Army's Mobile Missile System in Gulf War 1 (1991) and it was rated and tested by the Army for that use. History Background Bill Hayden was born in San Antonio, Texas. He went to school at the University of Texas at Austin and graduated with a degree in electrical engineering in 1971. He was employed by Texas Instruments as a design engineer in a classified government reconnaissance project. In 1974, he switched to TI's Calculator Division and became a project engineer. It was there that Hayden claims he developed the entrepreneurial spirit that he later applied when he started CompuAdd. After several years in this position, which required a great deal of overtime, he decided that he needed more time to contemplate his future. He noticed that quality assurance was less demanding work with shorter hours and switched to that. As his 10-year anniversary with TI approached in 1981, Hayden turned in his resignation. CompuAdd was always 2nd fiddle to across town rival Dell Computer. Hayden's desire to have better name recognition and his own engineering staff stretched his company too far in debt. Retail stores, engineering development cost overruns, and creation of CompuLite instead of cutting costs in his core business, all led to the company's demise. Hayden tried several other business ventures that were unsuccessful. Products and retail stores CompuAdd was founded by Bill Hayden in the following year, 1982. CompuAdd using $100,000 earned by selling real estate part-time. Hayden sold computer peripherals and add-on devices such as disk drives. The name came from this computer add-on business plan. The company's marketing slogan was: Customer Driven, by Design, and it prided itself on its "no frills" corporate culture. CompuAdd operated a chain of retail computer stores in the United States. They also had a strong server line. At the height of CompuAdd's reign, it had over 100 sales people. In 1992, Hayden split the company into two parts: "one to handle 125 retail outlets and international markets" and the other for "large business and government accounts." Bankruptcy and acquisition In 1993 CompuAdd closed all of its 110 retail stores, to concentrate on direct sales, and sought Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection – but also launched a new line of Centura personal computers. When they emerged from bankruptcy in November 1993, 75 percent ownership of the company was transferred to unsecured creditors, with Hayden retaining 20 percent and the remainder held for employees. Hayden shortly afterwards resigned as CEO, a position taken over by Richard Krause, the company's president and chief operating officer. CompuAdd was subsequently bought by Dimeling, Schrieber & Park, a private Philadelphia investment company in September 1994. References External links CompuAdd corporate information and history at Fundinguniverse.com 1982 establishments in Texas 1994 disestablishments in Texas 1994 mergers and acquisitions American companies established in 1982 American companies disestablished in 1994 Companies that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1993 Computer companies established in 1982 Computer companies disestablished in 1994 Defunct computer companies of the United States Defunct computer hardware companies Manufacturing companies based in Austin, Texas Texas Instruments spinoffs

885350

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux%20Software%20Map

Linux Software Map

Linux Software Map (LSM) is a standard text file format for describing Linux software. It also refers to the database constructed from these files. LSM is one of the standard methods for announcing a new software release for Linux. File format If a Linux program is to be distributed widely, an LSM file may be created to describe the program, normally in a file called software_package_name.lsm. This file begins with and ends with . It has one field on each line. The field name is separated from the value by a colon (:). Mandatory fields are Title, Version, Entered-date, Description, Author and Primary-site. Example Here is a what a blank LSM template looks like, at time of writing: Begin4 Title: Version: Entered-date: Description: Keywords: Author: Maintained-by: Primary-site: Alternate-site: Original-site: Platforms: Copying-policy: End Database The collective database of LSM entries can be searched in order to locate software of a particular type. This database has passed through various owners. It was created by Jeff Kopmanis, Lars Wirzenius maintained it for a while, and now the current maintainer is Aaron Schrab (with help from volunteers). The database can be downloaded in its entirety, or one can perform limited queries using a web interface. External links LSM template version 4 on ibiblio.org Entire LSM Database Simple LSM Search on ibiblio.org Advanced LSM Search on ibiblio.org Instructions for New Entries Linux Computer file formats

1473490

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centre%20for%20Education%20in%20Mathematics%20and%20Computing

Centre for Education in Mathematics and Computing

The Centre for Education in Mathematics and Computing (CEMC) is Canada's largest and most recognized outreach organization for promoting and creating activities and materials in mathematics and computer science housed within the Faculty of Mathematics at the University of Waterloo. It was founded in 1995 with origins dating back to the 1960s. Its mission is to increase interest, enjoyment, confidence, and ability in mathematics and computer science among learners and educators in Canada and internationally. The CEMC administers the Canadian Mathematics Competitions (CMC), written annually by over 200,000 students from around the world, as well as contests in computer science. The contests are listed by grade below. Grade 7 - Gauss 7 Grade 8 - Gauss 8 Grade 9 - Pascal and Fryer Grade 10 - Cayley and Galois Grade 11 - Fermat and Hypatia Grade 12 - Euclid Grade 9 and 10 - Canadian Intermediate Mathematics Contest Grade 11 and 12 - Canadian Senior Mathematics Contest All grades - Canadian Computing Competition (CCC) Grade 7/8 - 10 - the Beaver (Bebras) Computing Challenge for Grade 7/8 - 10 students. More information can be found on the BCC contest page itself at https://cemc.uwaterloo.ca/contests/bcc.html (Beaver) The CEMC also holds other activities to enrich mathematics in high school communities, such as math circles and teacher education programs. Several publications include Problems Problems Problems (English and French), Is this going to be on the Math test?, Problems and How to Solve Them, Shaking Hands in Corner Brook (and other Math problems), Mathematics Resource Manual for High School Students and Undergraduate Studies, Invitations to Mathematics, and Problems from the Inv. Math Challenge with Hints and Solutions. See also University of Waterloo References Computer science departments in Canada University of Waterloo 1995 establishments in Ontario

28839939

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish%20identity%20card

Finnish identity card

The Finnish identity card ( / ) is one of two official identity documents in Finland, the other being the Finnish passport. Any citizen or resident can get an identification card. Finnish citizens will get indication of citizenship on the card. It is available as an electronic ID card (; ), which enables logging into certain services on the Internet, local computers or adding digital signatures into LibreOffice ODF documents or creating DigiDoc formatted containers that also allows encryption during content transfer. ID card is applied at a police station and it is issued by the police. Possession of an ID card or any ID document is non-compulsory in Finland, though interactions with officials and companies, like voting, picking up a parcel from Posti offices or buying alcohol when a salesperson suspects buyer to be under 18 or 30 years old, can be difficult or impossible without an ID card, a passport or a driving licence. Driving licences and Kela (social security) cards with a photo are also widely used for general identification purposes even though they are not officially recognised as such. However, Kela has ended the practice of issuing social security cards with the photograph of the bearer, while it has become possible to embed the social security information onto the national ID card. In domestic non-electronic identification the driving licence has remained in a leading position, since most of the population have to have a licence anyway, and a driving licence is valid for almost every situation where non-electronic personal identification is needed. In some cases, an emergency ID card, valid between 15 days to 3 months, is issued. Travel document The Finnish identity card for citizens may be used as a travel document all over Europe (except Belarus, Russia, Ukraine and United Kingdom) as well as French overseas territories, Georgia, Greenland and Montserrat (for max. 14 days). However, due to Finnish regulations, direct outbound travel from Finland to non-EU/EFTA countries requires a passport. From 2 August 2021, the European identity card is intended to replace and standardize the various identity card styles currently in use in the EU/EEA. For travel within the Nordic countries no identity documentation is legally required for Nordic citizens due to the Nordic Passport Union. Electronic ID Card The electronic card was introduced in 1999 and the current version, which is valid for 5 years, was introduced in 2003. All issued ID cards nowadays are electronic with the exception of card for minors and temporary cards. It was initially planned as a general network authentication device for both public and private sector strong authentication needs. In 2009, however, the card was viewed by a government committee as a failure. There has been less than 300 000 cards around by 2011 out of population of 5.3 million. The rationale to apply for a card has mostly been traveling abroad. Only few dozen government services have adopted it, and only one bank adopted it as login card to their netbank. All banks in Finland use a national standard called TUPAS, which uses one-time passwords. Banks also provide TUPAS authentication to other Internet-enabled businesses. Since TUPAS requires no dedicated hardware, cost of a card reader and card itself have been main causes in the failure of the eID card. Also the card itself is quite expensive, 51 € in 2011. Earlier cost for a passport of the same 5 year validity period was the same as the cost of an ID card. In 2011 passport is only 2 € more expensive. Thus pricing and validity period have also been too close to passport and have offered no benefits compared to passport with the exception of being easier to carry in a wallet or a handbag. As of 2015, the card costs 55 € compared to 48 € for a passport (for both documents, if applied for online there will be a 4 € discount). In 2009 a committee recommended discontinuation of eID card. The card and certification service development and maintenance costs were listed as being excessive compared to limited use the card had seen. However, as of 2011 no action has been taken regarding the card or the citizen certificate. Finnish eID card experience, which is based on voluntary adoption and users-pay-full-costs-of-the-cards model, has proven to be a very different experience when compared to for example neighboring Estonian ID card. See also National identity cards in the European Union Notes References Finland Government of Finland

322241

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SH

SH

SH, Sh, sH or sh may refer to: Businesses and organizations FlyMe (IATA airline designator), a defunct airline Sacred Heart Cathedral Preparatory, a school in San Francisco, California, USA Sonatrach, an Algerian oil company Geography Saint Helena Island ISO 3166 digram and FIPS PUB 10-4 territory code Canton of Schaffhausen, Switzerland Schleswig-Holstein, a state of Germany Shanghai, China (Guobiao abbreviation SH) Shortstown, England South Horizons State highway Language sh (digraph), a letter combination used in some languages Voiceless postalveolar fricative , the sound usually spelt sh in English sh (letter), a letter of the Albanian alphabet sh, deprecated ISO 639-1 code for the Serbo-Croatian language Science, technology, and mathematics Computing .sh, the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) of Saint Helena Lib Sh, a graphics metaprogramming library for C++ Unix shell, a general command-line shell for Unix Bourne shell, a command-line shell for Unix Thompson shell, a command-line shell for Unix Sharp Corporation's mobile phones in Japan SuperH, a Hitachi microcontroller An interface type in the IP Multimedia Subsystem Other uses in science, technology, and mathematics -SH, representing the thiol functional group in a chemical structure diagram Hyperbolic sine (sh), a mathematical function Siberian High, in meteorology Sherwood number, in engineering Suslin hypothesis, in mathematical set theory Other uses Sacrifice hit, in baseball scoring Self-harm Sheikh, an honorific title in the Arabic language Silent Hill, video game franchise of survival horror HS or SH Solar Hijri calendar, the modern Iranian calendar Kenya shilling

40365320

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SDI%20Presence

SDI Presence

SDI Presence LLC (commonly referred to as SDI) is an IT consultancy and managed services provider (MSP) that provides technology-based professional services. As of 2020, the firm has over 230 employees. SDI is a certified Minority Business Enterprise (MBE) with the City of Chicago, State of Illinois, National Minority Supplier Development Council (NMSDC) and the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC). SDI is ranked as a Top Workplace by Built In Chicago, the Chicago Tribune, and Crain's Chicago Business. History David A. Gupta founded the company as System Development Integration (SDI) in 1996 in Chicago as a spinout from his father's mechanical engineering company, Environmental Systems Design, Inc.; its business was systems integration. Over the next decades, the firm gained business in its IT systems work in government-run systems, like transportation and public safety, as well as utilities and commercial buildings. SDI was selected by the City of Chicago for its security technology systems at O'Hare and Midway airports, a paperless permit system in the buildings department, customer service and billing for the water management department, and the City payroll system. The firm's IT managed services practice added several clients, including large transportation and transit agencies in the Midwest. SDI also continued several community initiatives as it grew, including its First Chance Initiative, which provided hands-on technical internships for Chicago Public School and City Colleges of Chicago students. SDI took on private equity partners between 2008 and 2016, to further expand. The firm was selected to deploy additional mission-critical systems at airports in the U.S. In 2016, Gupta renamed the organization SDI Presence. The company had about 130 employees at that time. In 2017, the firm acquired NexLevel Information Technology Inc., an IT management consulting firm whose clients include over 200 West Coast government agencies and special districts. The NexLevel consulting team operates under the SDI Presence brand, and includes local California senior consultants of municipal/financial leadership in local government and utilities. The team has delivered over 100 IT Assessments/Strategic Plans throughout West Coast. It also has a long experience in municipal and utility IT systems selection and program management oversight, with a specialization in ERP systems. As of 2019, the firm further positioned itself as “IT Keepers of Chicago’s Aviation, Transit and Utility Industries” and recorded a 98% customer satisfaction score across its portfolio of clients. SDI also expanded its MBE partner network through Chicago United's Five Forward Initiative and spent $11M with its diverse minority/women/veteran-owned partner companies in 2019. The Chicago Tribune named SDI as one of its Top Workplaces in 2020 for the third consecutive year. As part of its focus on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DE&I), SDI projects spending $22M with its minority, women and veteran-owned business partners by the end of 2020. References Further reading "The governor's $25,000 club", Chicago Tribune, April 27, 2008 Jeffrey Meitrodt, Ray Long, John Chase. "Oak Park sues 2 firms", Chicago Tribune, September 19, 2003|By Art Barnum, Tribune staff reporter. Information technology companies of the United States International information technology consulting firms Systems engineering Companies based in Chicago Technology companies established in 1989 1989 establishments in Illinois

17464063

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agenor%20of%20Troy

Agenor of Troy

In Greek mythology, Agenor (; Ancient Greek: Ἀγήνωρ or Αγήνορι Agēnor; English translation: 'heroic, manly') was a Trojan hero. Family Agenor was the son of Antenor and Theano, daughter of King Cisseus of Thrace. His siblings were Crino, Acamas, Antheus, Archelochus, Coön, Demoleon, Eurymachus, Glaucus, Helicaon, Iphidamas, Laodamas, Laodocus, Medon, Polybus, and Thersilochus Mythology When Achilles was routing the entire Trojan army, Agenor was the first Trojan to collect his wits and stop fleeing from Achilles' rampage. Agenor felt ashamed that he was fleeing from a man who was supposedly just as mortal as anyone so he turned to face Achilles. As the Greek hero approached Agenor the latter threw his spear at him, but only hit Achilles' greaves. After that Achilles sprang at Agenor, but at that moment Apollo carried the Trojan away in a veil of mist to keep Achilles from pursuing him, while Apollo took the form of Agenor to lead Achilles away from the Trojans. This act allowed all the Trojans (except Hector) to take cover behind the walls of Troy. Agenor killed two people in the war. His son Echeclus was killed by Achilles. According to Pausanias, Agenor was killed by Achilles' son Neoptolemus when the Achaeans were storming Troy through the Trojan Horse ruse. Agenor's picture appears in the great painting in the Lesche of Delphi, by Polygnotus. Notes References 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. ISBN 0-674-99135-4. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library. Greek text available from the same website. Dictys Cretensis, from The Trojan War. The Chronicles of Dictys of Crete and Dares the Phrygian translated by Richard McIlwaine Frazer, Jr. (1931-). Indiana University Press. 1966. Online version at the Topos Text Project. Homer, The Iliad with an English Translation by A.T. Murray, Ph.D. in two volumes. Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1924. . Online version at the Perseus Digital Library. Homer, Homeri Opera in five volumes. Oxford, Oxford University Press. 1920. . Greek text available at the Perseus Digital Library. Hyginus, Fabulae from The Myths of Hyginus translated and edited by Mary Grant. University of Kansas Publications in Humanistic Studies. Online version at the Topos Text Project. Pausanias, Description of Greece with an English Translation by W.H.S. Jones, Litt.D., and H.A. Ormerod, M.A., in 4 Volumes. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1918. . Online version at the Perseus Digital Library Pausanias, Graeciae Descriptio. 3 vols. Leipzig, Teubner. 1903. Greek text available at the Perseus Digital Library. Publius Vergilius Maro, Aeneid. Theodore C. Williams. trans. Boston. Houghton Mifflin Co. 1910. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library. Publius Vergilius Maro, Bucolics, Aeneid, and Georgics. J. B. Greenough. Boston. Ginn & Co. 1900. Latin text available at the Perseus Digital Library. Tzetzes, John, Allegories of the Iliad translated by Goldwyn, Adam J. and Kokkini, Dimitra. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library, Harvard University Press, 2015. Trojans Characters in the Iliad People of the Trojan War Characters in Greek mythology

15950012

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline%20of%20binary%20prefixes

Timeline of binary prefixes

This timeline of binary prefixes lists events in the history of the evolution, development, and use of units of measure for information, the bit and the byte, which are germane to the definition of the binary prefixes by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) in 1998. Historically, computers have used many systems of internal data representation, methods of operating on data elements, and data addressing. Early decimal computers included the ENIAC, UNIVAC 1, IBM 702, IBM 705, IBM 650, IBM 1400 series, and IBM 1620. Early binary addressed computers included Zuse Z3, Colossus, Whirlwind, AN/FSQ-7, IBM 701, IBM 704, IBM 709, IBM 7030, IBM 7090, IBM 7040, IBM System/360 and DEC PDP series. Decimal systems typically had memory configured in whole decimal multiples, e.g., blocks of 100 and later 1,000. The unit abbreviation 'K' or 'k' if it was used, represented multiplication by 1,000. Binary memory had sizes of powers of two or small multiples thereof. In this context, 'K' or 'k' was sometimes used to denote multiples of 1,024 units or just the approximate size, e.g., either '64K' or '65K' for 65,536 (216). 1790s 1793 The French Commission temporaire de Poids & Mesures rêpublicaines, Décrets de la Convention Nationale, proposes the binary prefixes double and demi, denoting a factor of 2 (21) and (2−1), respectively, in 1793. 1795 The prefixes double and demi are part of the original metric system adopted by France (with kilo for 1000) in 1795. These were not retained when the decadic SI prefixes were internationally adopted by the 11th CGPM conference in 1960. 1930s Metric prefixes "kilo-" (established 1795) and (established 1873) are widely used as decimal multipliers 1,000 and 1,000,000 for units of frequency and impedance in the electronics industry. 1940s 1943–1944 J. W. Tukey coins the word "bit" as an abbreviation of "binary digit". 1947 "The Whirlwind I Computer is planned with a storage capacity of 2,048 numbers of 16 binary digits each." 1948 Tukey's "bit" is referenced in the work of information theorist Claude Shannon. 1950s In the 1950s, "1 kilobit" meant 1000 bits: "In the '50s, amazingly enough—and only total coincidence—I actually was given the job of writing the operational specifications [...] for what was called cross telling. They handed me this thing and said, 'You're going to define how the hand-over process works between direction centers', [...] and I had no idea what they were talking about. But we had [...] one-kilobit lines connecting the direction centers and I thought, 'Good God! 1,000 bits a second. Well, we'll surely be able to figure out something to do with that. — Saverah Warenstein, former programmer at Lincoln Laboratory, IBM 1952 The first magnetic core memory, from the IBM 405 Alphabetical Accounting Machine, is tested successfully in April 1952. (The image shows 10 × 12 cores; presumably one of 8) "Teaming up with a more experienced engineer, [Mike Haynes] built a core memory with just enough capacity to store all the information in an IBM punch card: 960 bits in an 80 × 12 array. In May 1952 it was successfully tested as a data buffer between a Type 405 alphabetical accounting machine and a Type 517 summary punch. This first functional test of a ferrite core memory was made in the same month that a four-times smaller 16 × 16-bit ferrite core array was successfully tested at MIT." The IBM 701, a binary-addressed computer containing 72 Williams tubes of 1024 bits each, is released in April. Principles of Operation Type 701 does not use prefixes with lengths of words or size of storage. For example, it specifies that memory tubes hold 2048 words each. The IBM 737 optional magnetic core storage stores 4,096 36-bit words. Each plane stored 64 × 64 = 4,096 bits. 1955 The IBM 704 (a binary machine) manual uses decimal arithmetic for powers of two, without prefixes "Magnetic core storage units are available with capacities of either 4,096 or 32,768 core storage registers; or two magnetic core storage units, each with a capacity of 4,096 core storage registers, may be used. Thus, magnetic core storage units are available to give the calculator a capacity of 4,096, 8,192, or 32,768 core storage registers." "Each drum has a storage capacity of 2048 words." 1956 The IBM 702 (a decimally addressed machine) Preliminary Manual of Information uses decimal arithmetic for powers of ten, without prefixes. "Electrostatic memory is the principal storage medium within the machine. It consists of cathode ray tubes which can store up to 10,000 characters of information in the form of electrostatic charges .... Additional storage, as required, may be provided through the use of magnetic drum storage units, each having a capacity of 60,000 characters." "A character may be a letter of the alphabet, a decimal number, or any of eleven different punctuation marks or symbols used in report printing." "Each one of the 10,000 positions of memory is numbered from 0000 to 9999 and each stored character must occupy one of these positions." (page 8) The word byte, meaning eight bits, is coined by Dr. Werner Buchholz in June 1956, during the early design phase for the IBM Stretch computer. IBM 650 RAMAC (a decimal addressed machine) announcement "The 650 RAMAC combines the IBM 650 Magnetic Drum Data Processing Machine with a series of disk memory units which are capable of storing a total of 24-million digits. The 305 RAMAC is an entirely new machine which contains its own input and output devices and processing unit as well as a built-in 5-million-digit disk memory." 1957 The IBM 705 (a decimal addressed machine) Operating manual uses decimal arithmetic for powers of ten, without prefixes. "A total of 40,000 characters can be stored within the main storage unit of the Type 705." "Each one of the 40,000 positions in memory is numbered from 0000 to 39,999." (page 17) "One or more magnetic drums are available as optional equipment with a capacity of 60,000 characters each." Lewis, W. D., Coordinated broadband mobile telephone system Earliest instance of "kilobit" in both IEEE explore and Google Scholar: "Central controls the mobile link with a rate of 20 kilobits per second, or less". 1958 "64 million (226) bytes" is used in a memo by Dr. Werner Buchholz 1959 The term 32k is used in print to refer to a memory size of 32768 (215). The author is with the Westinghouse Electric Corporation. 1960s 1960 The 11th Conférence Générale des Poids et Mesures (CGPM) announces the Système International d'Unités (SI) and adds the decimal metric prefixes giga, and tera, defined as 109 and 1012 Frequency Diversity Communications System is filed on May 13, 1960: "In actual construction, the delay line, which provides a total delay from one end to the other of one baud (10 microseconds for a 100 kilobit per second information rate), may be fabricated from lumped parameter elements, i.e., inductors and capacitors, in a well-known manner." "At a 100 kilobit per second information rate, both mark and space signals will generally be transmitted in any 0.0001 sec, interval, and therefore this requirement is easily met with conventional resistors and capacitors." The 8K core stores were getting fairly common in this country in 1954. The 32K store started mass production in 1956; it is the standard now for large machines and at least 200 machines of the size (or its equivalent in the character addressable machines) are in existence today (and at least 100 were in existence in mid-1959). 1955–1961 A search of the Computer History Museum's Stretch collection of 931 text documents dated from September 1955 through September 1961 shows no usage of k or K to describe main storage size. 1961 Quoted in OED as first instance of "kilobit", though "it is more usual" suggests it is already in common use (see timeline entry for 1957) Described device contains 512 words, 24 bits each (=12,288 bits) "It is no longer reasonable to spend as much time to transmit an 80 bit address as 12 kilobits of message information-a 1500 to 1 ratio.... We have theoretically and experimentally proved that speech can be compressed from the straightforward requirement for 48 kilobit PCM channel capability to 2400 bits by the application of the Dudley syllabic vocoder." The IBM 7090 Data Processing System (a binary machine), Additional Core Storage (65K means "approximately 65000") "The Additional Core Storage feature for the IBM 7090 Data Processing System provides a second IBM 7302 Core Storage, increasing the capacity of main storage by 32,768 words. The block of storage represented by both 7302 units is referred to as "main storage unit." "Additional core storage provides two methods of using main storage: (1) The 65K mode—the computer program is enabled to address both of the main storage units, and (2) the 32K mode—the computer program is able to address only one storage unit, so that main storage capacity available to that program is effectively 32,768 words." The IBM 1410 Data Processing System, which used modified decimal addressing, uses decimal arithmetic for powers of ten, without prefixes "Core storage units are available in 10,000-, 20,000- or 40,000-character position capacities." "The matrix switch makes it possible to address any one of the 100 X-drive lines (in a 10K core array)." "The 40K core array requires 40,000 valid five-position addresses from 0,000 to 39,999." "This operation check detects errors in programming that cause invalid addresses. Examples: 40,000-and-above on a 40K core array; 20,000-and-above on a 20K core array. On a 10K core array, invalid addresses are detected by the address-bus validity check." 1962 A reference to a "4k IBM 1401" meant 4,000 characters of storage (memory). 1963 Ludwig uses kilobit in the decimal sense DEC Serial Drum Type 24 "Drums are equipped to store either 64, 128, or 256 data blocks, providing a memory capability of 16384, 32768, or 65536 computer words" (no abbreviations) Honeywell 200 Summary Description "The main memory is a magnetic core ... The memory unit supplied as part of the basic central processor has a capacity of 2,048 characters, each of which is stored in a separate, addressable, memory location. This capacity may be expanded in modular increments by adding one 2,048-character module and additional 4,096-character modules." "Random access disc file and control (disc capacities of up to 100 million characters are available.)" "Up to eight drum storage units can be connected to the Model 270 Random Access Drum Control. Each drum provides storage for 2,621,441 characters, allowing a total capacity of approximately 21 million characters." 1964 Gene Amdahl's seminal April 1964 article on IBM System/360 used 1K to mean 1024. Leng, Gordon Bell, et al., use K in the binary sense: "The computer has two blocks of 4K, 18-bit words of memory, (1K=1024 words), attached to its central processor" Data Processing Division press release distributed on April 7, 1964. "System/360 core storage memory capacity ranges from 8,000 characters of information to more than 8,000,000." IBM 7090/7094 Support Package for IBM System/360 – November "An IBM 1401 Data Processing System with the following minimum configuration is also required: 1. 4K positions of core storage" – ADDRESS SELECTION CONTROL APPARATUS – Filed April 6, 1964 "To facilitate understanding of the invention, the main storage area has been illustrated as being of 8K capacity; however, it is to be understood that the main storage area may be of larger capacity (e.g., 16K, 32K or 64K) by storing address selection control data in bit positions '2', '1' and '0' of M register 197, respectively." 1965 "Each IBM 2315 disk cartridge can hold the equivalent of more than one million characters of information. "One method of designing a slave memory for instructions is as follows. Suppose that the main memory has 64K words (where K=1024) and, therefore, 16 address bits, and that the slave memory has 32 words and, therefore, 5 address bits." IBM 1620 CPU Model 1 (a decimal machine) System Reference Library, dated 19 July 1965, states: "A core storage module, which is 20,000 addressable positions of magnetic core storage, is located in the 1620. Two additional modules are available ... Each core storage module (20,000 positions) is made up of 12 core planes as shown in Figure 3. Each core plane contains all cores for a specific bit value." 1966 CONTIGUOUS BULK STORAGE ADDRESSING is filed on 3 January 1966 "Note that 'K' as used herein indicates 'thousands.' Each storage location in the present embodiment includes 64 data bits and 8 related parity bits, as described herein." "Thus, if only storage unit 1A were provided, it would contain addresses 0 through 32K; storage IB would include addresses between 32K and 64K, storage 2A would contain addresses between 64K and 96K, ..." 1968 A Univac 9400 disc based computer system ... "can have 2–8 8411 drives for 14.5–58 megabytes capacity. The 8411 has a transfer rate of 156K bytes per second." using megabytes in a decimal sense Donald Morrison proposes to use the Greek letter kappa ("κ") to denote 1024 bytes, to denote 1024×1024, and so on.<ref name="Morrison"></ref> (At the time, memory size was small, and only 'K' was in widespread use.) Wallace Givens responded with a proposal to use "bK" as an abbreviation for 1024 and "bK2" or for 1024×1024, though he noted that neither the Greek letter nor lowercase letter "b" would be easy to reproduce on computer printers of the day. Bruce Alan Martin of Brookhaven National Laboratory further proposed that the prefixes be abandoned altogether, and the letter B be used to indicate a base-2 exponent in binary scientific notation, similar to E in decimal scientific notation, to create shorthands like 3B20 for 3×220 = 3 MiB 1969 IBM 1401 (a decimal machine) Simulator for IBM OS/360 "1401 features supported are advanced programming, sense switches, tapes, multiply, divide, 16K core, and all standard instructions except Select Stacker." "1401 core is simulated by 16,000 bytes of S/360 core obtained dynamically." "Enough core must be available to allow at least 70K for a problem program area. If tape simulation is not required, this core requirement may be reduced to 50K with the removal of the tape Buffer area." HIGH DENSITY PERMANENT DATA STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL SYSTEM is filed on March 17, 1969, earliest Google Patent search containing "kilobyte") "The data word processor 606 handles the inflow and out-flow of byte-oriented input/output data and interleaved signals at a rate of, for example, 500 kilobytes per second. Instruction processing rates of four to eight per microsecond are required for such a data flow." Memory Control System is filed on October 29, 1969 "FIG. 2a shows a practical example of an operand address which consists of, for example 24 bits. It is assumed herein that each block includes 32 bytes, each sector includes 1 kilobyte, the buffer memory 116 includes 4 kilobytes, and read data is represented by one double word or 64 bits, as one word in this case consists of 32 bits." IBM System/360 Component Descriptions (IBM 2314 Direct Access Storage Facility) "Each module can store 29.17 million bytes or 58.35 million packed decimal digits ... total on-line storage capacity is 233.4 million bytes" "Each 11-disc pack (20 surfaces) has a storage capacity of 29 megabytes; maximum storage capacity with the largest version using a ninth drive as a spare) is 233,400,000 bytes." DEC PDP-11 (a binary-addressed machine) Handbook "PDP-11 addressing modes include . . . and direct addressing to 32K words" (Page 2) This appears to be the only use of 'K' in this manual, though; elsewhere sizes are spelled out in full. Contrast the 1973 PDP-11/40 Manual, which defines 'K' as 1024. (Below) "... each removable disc has a capacity of 2.3 million bytes or 3.07 million 6-bit characters. Up to four drives can be attached to a single controller, resulting in a total storage capacity of 9.2 megabytes." Usage of "million" and in decimal sense to describe HDD. 1970s 1970 "The following are excerpts from an IBM Data Processing Division press technical fact sheet distributed on 30 June 1970. Users of the Model 165 will have a choice of five main core storage sizes, ranging from 512,000 to over 3-million bytes. Seven main memory sizes are available for the Model 155, ranging from 256,000 to over 2-million bytes." "Each of the five system/360 model 75 computers (Fig. 2) has one megabyte of primary core storage plus four megabytes of large core storage (LCS, IBM 2361)." 1971 IBM System/360 Operating System: Storage Estimates, uses K in a binary sense approximately 450 times, such as ""System/360 Configuration: Model 40 with 64K bytes of storage and storage protection." Note the letter "K" is also sometimes used as a variable in this document (see page 23). 1972 Lin and Mattson introduce the term Mbyte. 1973 OCEANPORT, N.J., SEPT. 25, 1973 – A 16-bit minicomputer priced at under $2,000.00 in quantities and a 32-bit minicomputer priced at under $6,000.00 in quantities were introduced today by Interdata, Inc. The 16-bit mini, the Model 7/16, includes an 8KB memory unit in its basic configuration, and will be available for delivery in the first quarter of 1974. The single unit price of the 7/16 is $3,200.00. The 32-bit mini, the Model 7/32, includes a 32KB memory unit and will be available for delivery in the second quarter of 1974. The single unit price of the 7/32 is $9,950.00. DEC PDP-11/40 Manual "Direct addressing of 32K 16-bit words or 64K 8-bit bytes (K = 1024)" (Page 1-1) Contrast the 1969 PDP-11 Handbook, which avoids this usage almost everywhere. (Above) 1974 The seminal 1974 Winchester HDD article which makes extensive use of Mbytes with M being used in the conventional, 106 sense. Arguably all of today's HDD's derive from this technology. The October 1974 CDC Product Line Card unambiguously uses MB to characterize HDD capacity in millions of bytes. 1975 The 15th CGPM defines the SI prefixes peta, and exa as 1015 and 1018. Byte Magazine December 1975 article on IBM 5100 includes the following: "User memory starts at 16K bytes in the minimum configuration and can be expanded to 64K bytes (65,536)." Gordon Bell uses the term megabytes: 1976 DEC RK05/RK05J/RK05F disk drive maintenance manual "Bit Capacities (unformatted)" "25 million" | "50 million" (57,600 bits/ track * 406 | 812 tracks = 23,385,600 | 46,771,200 bits) The Memorex 1976 annual report has 10 instances of the use of megabyte to describe storage devices and media. Caleus Model 206-306 Maintenance Manual uses 3MB to characterize a drive having 3,060,000 bytes capacity. The first 5 inch floppy disk drive, the Shugart SA 400, is introduced in August 1976. The drive had 35 tracks and was single sided. The data sheet gives the unformatted capacity as 3125 bytes per track for a total of 109.4 Kbytes (3125 × 35 = 109,375). When formatted with 256 byte sectors and 10 sectors per track the capacity is 89.6 Kbytes (256 × 10 × 35 = 89,600). 1977 HP 7905A Disc Drive Operator's Manual "nearly 15 million bytes" with no other abbreviations 1977 Disk/Trend Report – Rigid Disk Drives, published June 1977 This first edition of the annual report on the hard disk drive industry makes extensive use of MB as 106 bytes. The industry, in 1977, is segmented into nine segments ranging from "Disk Cartridge Drives, up to 12 MB" to "Fixed Disk Drives, over 200 MB." While the categories changed during the next 22 years of publication, Disk/Trend, the principal marketing study of the hard disk drive industry always and consistently categorized the industry in segments using prefixes M and later G in the decimal sense. VAX-11/780 Architecture Handbook 1977–78. Copyright 1977 Digital Equipment Corporation. Page 2-1 "physical address space of 1 gigabyte (30 bits of address)" The initial hardware was limited to 2 M bytes of memory utilizing the 4K MOS RAM chips. The VAX11/780 handbooks use M byte and Mbyte in the same paragraph. 1978 DEC RM02/03 Adapter Technical Description Manual "The RM02 or RM03 Disk Drive (Figure 1-1) is an 80M byte (unformatted; 67M byte formatted) ... storage device ... in the 16-bit format, the maximum storage capacity is 33,710,080 data words per disk pack" (33,710,080 * 16/8 = 67,420,160 8-bit bytes) 1979 Fujitsu M228X Manual "Storage capacity (unformatted)" "67.4 MB", "84.2 MB", etc. "20,480 Bytes" per track, 4 tracks per cylinder, 808+15 cylinders = 67,420,160 bytes Sperry Univac Series V77 Microcomputer Systems Brochure, Circa 1978, Printed July 1979 Page 5: Table list memory options as 64KB, 128KB, and 256KB. Memory Expansion is up to 2048KB Page 9: "Memory for the V77-800 is available in 128K byte and 256K byte increments up to a maximum of 2 megabytes" Page 21: Moving Head Disks – units up to 232 million byte disk pack systems. Diskette – storage of 0.5 MB per drive. 1980s 1980 Shugart Associates Product Brochure, published June 1980 specifies the capacity of its two HDDs using megabytes and MB in a decimal sense, e.g. SA1000 formatted capacity is stated as "8.4 MB" and is actually 256×32×1024 = 8,388,608 bytes. Shugart Associates SA410/460 Data Sheet published October 1980 contains capacity specifications as follows: The same data sheet uses MByte in a decimal sense. 1981 8086 Object Module Formats "The 8086 MAS is 1 megabyte (1,048,576)" Quantum Q2000 8" Media Fixed Disk Drive Service Manual "four models ... the Q2010 having an unformatted 10.66 Mb capacity on one disk platter and two heads, the ... 21.33 Mb ... 32.00 Mb ... 42.66 Mb" (1024 tracks × "10.40Kb" per track = 10649 "Kb", which they write as "10.66Mb", so 1 "Mb" = 1000 "Kb") (256 Bytes per sector, 32 Sectors/tk = 8192 bytes, which they write as "8.20Kb" per track) "Storage capacity of 10, 20, 30, or 40 megabytes" 4.34M bits/second transfer rate" Apple Disk III data sheet "Formatted Data Capacity: 140K bytes" Apple uses K in a binary sense since the actual formatted capacity is 35 tracks * 16 Sectors * 256 bytes = 140 KiB = 143.360 kB 1982 Brochure for the IBM Personal Computer (PC) "User memory: 16KB to more than 512KB", "single-sided 160KB or double-sided 320KB diskette drives" IBM Technical Reference: Personal Computer Hardware Reference Library "The drives are soft sectored, single or double sided, with 40 tracks per side. They are Modified Frequency Modulation (MFM) coded in 512 byte sectors, giving a formatted capacity of 163,840 bytes per drive for single sided and 327,680 bytes per drive for double sided." Seagate ST 506/412 OEM Manual "Total formatted capacity [...] is 5/10 megabytes (32 sectors per track, 256 bytes per sector, 612/1224 tracks)" 1983 IBM S/360 S/370 Principles Of Operation GA22-7000 includes as statement: "In this publication, the letters K, M and G denote the multipliers 210, 220 and 230 respectively. Although the letters are borrowed from the decimal system and stand for kilo 103, mega 106 and giga 109 they do not have decimal meaning but instead present the power of 2 closest to the corresponding power of 10." IBM 341 4-inch Diskette Drive unformatted capacity "358,087 bytes" "Total unformatted capacity (in kilobytes): 358.0" Maxtor XT-1000 brochure "Capacity, unformatted" 9.57 MB per surface = 10,416 bytes per track × 918 tracks per surface = 9,561,888 byte (decimal MB) Shugart Associates SA300/350 Data Sheet published c. November 1983 (one of the first MIC standard 3.5" FDDs) contains capacity specifications as follows: Shugart Associates, one of the leading FD companies used k in a decimal sense. 1984 The Macintosh Operating System is the earliest known operating system using the prefix K in a binary sense to report memory size and HDD capacity. In the original 1984 Apple Macintosh ad, page 8, Apple characterized its 3 floppy disk as "400K," that is, 800×512 byte sectors or 409,600 bytes = 400 KiB. Similarly, the February 1984 Byte Magazine review describes the FD as "400K bytes". 1985 Exabyte Corp. founded September 1985. Apple introduced Macintosh Finder 5.0 with HFS (Hierarchical File System)along with the Mac's first hard drive, the Hard Disk 20. Finder 5.x displayed drive capacity in binary K units. The Hard Disk 20 Manual specified the HDD as having "Data capacity (formatted): 20,769,280 bytes Bytes per block: 532 (512 user data, 20 system data) Total disk blocks: 39,040 and has the following definition in its glossary:megabyteApproximately one million bytes (1,048,567) of information. A 20 megabyte hard disk holds 20 million bytes of information, or 20,000 kilobytes (20,000K) (Apple Hard Disk 20 Manual)The user data is 39,040 × 512 = 19,988,480 bytes here. 1986 Apple IIgs introduced September 1986 ProDos16 uses MB in a binary sense. Similar usage in "ProDOS Technical Reference Manual" (c) 1985, p. 5 & p. 163 Digital Large System Mass Storage Handbook (c) dated September 1986 "GByte: An abbreviation for one billion (one thousand million) bytes." p. 442 "M: An abbreviation for one million. Typically combined with a unit of measure, such as bytes (MBytes), or Hertz (MHz)." p. 444 1987 Seagate Universal Installation Handbook ST125 listed as 21 "Megabytes" formatted capacity, later document seems to confirm that this is decimal Disk/Trend Report – Rigid Disk Drives, October 1987 First use of GB in a decimal sense in this HDD marketing survey; Figure 1 states "FIXED DISK DRIVES more than 1 GB" market size as $10,786.6 million. Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary (1987) has binary definitions for kilobyte and megabyte. kilobyte n [from the fact that 1024 (210) is the power of 2 closest to 1000] (1970): 1024 bytes megabyte n (1970): 1,048,576 bytes 1988 Imprimis Wren VII 5 Inch Rigid Disk Drive Data Sheet, printed 11/88 "Capacity of 1.2 gigabyte (GB)" 1989 IBM Enterprise Systems Architecture/370, Reference Summary (GX20-0406-0), p. 50 (the last page), has a two table, one to recap the decimal value of power of 2 and 16 to 260, and one that read: Electronic News, 25 September 1989, "Market 1.5GB Drives" "Imprimis and Maxtor are the only two drive makers to offer the new generation of drives in the 1.5GB capacity range..." "IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Fujitsu, Toshiba, Hitachi and Micropolis are expected to enter the market for 1.5GB capacity..." 1990s 1990 GEOS ad "512K of memory" The enhanced DOS command line processor 4DOS 3.00 supports a number of additional conditions (DISKFREE, DOSMEM/DOSFREE, EMS, EXTENDED, FILESIZE and XMS) in IF commands, which allow to test for sizes in bytes, kilobytes (by appending a K) or megabytes (by appending an M), where 1K is defined as 1024 bytes and 1M is defined as 1024*1024 bytes.This is the first known instance of an operating system or utility using M in a binary sense. DEC RA90/RA92 Disk Drive Service Manual "Storage capacity, formatted" "1.216 gigabytes" 1991 The 19th CGPM defines the SI prefixes zetta, and yotta as 1021 and 1024. May 13: Apple releases Macintosh System 7 containing Finder 7.0 which uses M in a binary sense to describe HDD capacity. The HP 95LX uses "1MB" in a binary sense to describe its RAM capacity. Micropolis 1528 Rigid Disk Drive Product Description "1.53 GBytes" ... "Up to 1.53 gigabytes (unformatted) per drive" "MBytes/Unit: 1531.1" (2100×48,608×15 = 1,531,152,000) Similar to a feature in 4DOS 3.00, the enhanced command line processor 4DOS 4.00 adds support for a number of variable functions (like %@FILESIZE[...]%), taking special arguments to control the format of the returned values: The lowercase letters k and m are used as decimal prefixes, whereas the uppercase letters K and M are used in their binary meaning. 1993 While the HP 48G calculators are labelled 32K or 128K to describe their built-in SRAM capacity in a binary sense, the user manual variably uses the terms KB, KBytes and kilobytes in the same meaning. The enhanced command line processor 4DOS 5.00 introduces the concept of a general size range parameter /[smin,max] for file selection, recognizing lowercase letters k and m as decimal prefixes and uppercase letters K and M as binary prefixes. 1994 Feb: Microsoft Windows for Workgroup 3.11 File Manager uses MB in a binary sense to describe HDD capacity. Prior versions of Windows only used K in a binary sense to describe HDD capacity. Micropolis 4410 Disk Drive Information "1,052 MB Formatted Capacity" "Unformatted Per Drive 1,205 MB" (133.85 MB per surface, 9 read-write heads) The HP 200LX models use "1MB"/"2MB"/"4MB" in a binary sense to describe their RAM capacity. 1995 August: The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry's Interdivisional Committee on Nomenclature and Symbols proposed new prefixes kibi (symbol Ki), mebi (Mi), gibi (Gi) and tebi (Ti), etc for powers of 1024. 1996 FOLDOC defines the exabyte (1 EB) as 1024 petabytes (1024 PB), with petabyte used in the binary sense of 10245 B. Markus Kuhn proposes a system with di prefixes, like the "dikilobyte" (K2B) and "digigabyte" (G2B). It did not see significant adoption. 1997 January: Bruce Barrow endorses the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry's proposal for prefixes kibi, mebi, gibi, etc in "A Lesson in Megabytes" in IEEE Standards Bearer IEEE requires prefixes to take the standard SI meaning (e.g., mega always to mean 10002). Exceptions for binary meaning (mega to mean 10242) are permitted as an interim measure (where pointed out on a case by case basis) until a binary prefix could be standardised. FOLDOC defines the zettabyte (1 ZB) as 1024 exabytes (1024 EB) and the yottabyte (1 YB) as 1024 zettabytes (1024 ZB). 1998 December: IEC establishes unambiguous prefixes for binary multiples (KiB, MiB, GiB etc.), reserving kB, MB, GB and so on for their decimal sense. Formally published in January 1999. 1999 Donald Knuth, who uses decimal notation like 1 MB = 1000 kB, expresses "astonishment" that the proposal was adopted by the IEC, calling them "funny-sounding", and proposes that the powers of 1024 be designated as "large kilobytes" and "large megabytes" (abbreviated KKB and MMB, as "doubling the letter connotes both binary-ness and large-ness"). Double prefixes were formerly used in the metric system, however, with a multiplicative meaning ("MMB" would be equivalent to "TB"), and this proposed usage never gained any traction. In their November 1999 paper, Steven W. Schlosser, John Linwood Griffin, David F. Nagle and Gregory R. Ganger adopt the symbol GiB for gibibyte and quote data throughput in mebibytes per second "... Although these numbers appear to yield a capacity of 2.98 GiB per sled, the capacity decreases ... This yields an effective capacity of about 2.098 GiB per sled. ..." "maximum throughput (MiB/s)" The IEEE 802.11-1999 standard introduces the binary time unit TU defined as 1024 μs. 2000s 2001 IBM, z/Architecture, Reference Summary Page 59, list the power of 2 and 16, and their decimal value. There is a column name 'Symbol', which list K (kilo), M (mega), G (giga), T (tera), P (peta) and E (exa) for the power of 2 of, respectively, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60. Peuhkuri adopts IEC prefixes in his paper at the 2001 Internet Measurement Conference: "... allows maximum size of 224 that requires 1 GiB of RAM ... or acknowledgement numer [sic] is within 32 KiB range. ... on a PC with Celeron processor with 512 MiB of memory ..." The Linux kernel uses IEC prefixes. 2002 Marcus Kuhn introduces the term kibihertz to mean 1024 Hz. "Most embedded clocks (state of the art is still a calibrated 32 kibihertz crystal) have a frequency error of at least 10^-5 (10 ppm), and therefore drift away from the TAI rate faster than 1 second per week." Mackenzie et al 2002: use tebibyte (TiB), pebibyte (PiB), exbibyte (EiB) use the symbols ZiB, YiB, accompanied by notes explaining that these are "a GNU extension to IEC 60027-2" 2003 The World Wide Web Consortium publishes a Working Group Note describing how to incorporate IEC prefixes into mathematical markup. 2004 2004 revision of IEEE Standard Letter Symbols for Units of Measurement (SI Units, Customary Inch-Pound Units, and Certain Other Units), IEEE Std 260.1, incorporates IEC definitions for KiB, MiB etc, reserving the symbols kB, MB etc for their decimal counterparts. 2005 IEC extends binary prefixes to include zebi (Zi) and yobi (Yi) IEC prefixes are adopted by the IEEE after a two-year trial period. On March 19, 2005 the IEEE standard IEEE 1541-2002 (Prefixes for Binary Multiples) was elevated to a full-use standard by the IEEE Standards Association after a two-year trial period. 2006 In addition to the k and m decimal as well as the K and M binary prefixes, 4DOS 7.50.141 (2006-12-24) adds support for g and G as decimal respective binary prefixes in variable functions and size range parameters. 2007 Windows Vista still uses the binary conventions (e.g., 1 KB = 1024 bytes, 1 MB = 1048576 bytes) for file and drive sizes, and for data rates GParted uses IEC prefixes for partition sizes Advanced Packaging Tool and Synaptic Package Manager use standard SI prefixes for file sizes IBM uses "exabyte" to mean 10246 bytes. "Each address space, called a 64-bit address space, is 16 exabytes (EB) in size; an exabyte is slightly more than one billion gigabytes. The new address space has logically 264 addresses. It is 8 billion times the size of the former 2-gigabyte address space, or 18,446,744,073,709,600,000 bytes." 2008 The US National Institute of Standards and Technology guidelines require use of IEC prefixes KiB, MiB ... (and not kB, MB) for binary byte multiples p. 29, "The names and symbols for the prefixes corresponding to 210, 220, 230, 240, 250, and 260 are, respectively: kibi, Ki; mebi, Mi; gibi, Gi; tebi, Ti; pebi, Pi; and exbi, Ei. Thus, for example, one kibibyte is also written as 1 KiB = 2 10 B = 1024 B, where B denotes the unit byte. Although these prefixes are not part of the SI, they should be used in the field of information technology to avoid the non-standard usage of the SI prefixes." The binary prefixes are defined in IEC Standard IEC 80000-13, formally incorporating them into the ISO/IEC series of standards of quantities and units. IBM WebSphere describes data transfer using unambiguous IEC prefixes "The name of the file currently being transferred. The part of the individual file that has already been transferred is displayed in B, KiB, MiB. GiB, or TiB along with total size of the file in parentheses. The unit of measurement displayed depends on the size of the file. B is bytes per second. KiB/s is kibibytes per second, where 1 kibibyte equals 1024 bytes. MiB/s is mebibytes per second, where 1 mebibyte equals 1 048 576 bytes. GiB/s is gibibytes per second where 1 gibibyte equals 1 073 741 824 bytes. TiB/s is tebibytes per second where 1 tebibyte equals 1 099 511 627 776 bytes." "The rate the file is being transferred in KiB/s (kibibytes per second, where 1 kibibyte equals 1024 bytes.)" 2009 Apple Inc. uses the SI decimal definitions for capacity (e.g., 1 kilobyte = 1000 bytes) in the Mac OS X v10.6 operating system to conform with standards body recommendations and avoid conflict with hard drive manufacturers' specifications. Frank Löffler and co-workers report disk size and computer memory in tebibytes. "For the largest simulations using 2048 cores this sums up to about 650 GiB per complete checkpoint and about 6.4 TiB in total (for 10 checkpoints)." the SourceForge web site switched from metric (M, G ...) to binary (Mi, Gi ...) prefixes for reporting binary file sizes for "several months"; and then adopted metric prefixes for reporting decimal file sizes. The binary prefixes, as defined by IEC 80000-13, are incorporated into ISO 80000-1. In ISO 80000-1, the application of the binary prefixes is not limited to computer technology. For example, 1 KiHz = 1024 Hz. 2010s 2010 The Ubuntu operating system uses the SI prefixes for base-10 numbers and IEC prefixes for base-2 numbers as of the 10.10 release. Baba Arimilli and co-workers use the pebibyte (PiB) for computer memory and disk storage and exbibyte (EiB) for archival storage "Blue Waters will comprise more than 300.000 POWER7 cores, more than 1 PiB memory, more than 10 PiB disk storage, more than 0.5 EiB archival storage, and achieve around 10 PF/s peak performance." HP publishes a leaflet explaining use of SI and binary prefixes "To reduce confusion, vendors are pursuing one of two remedies: they are changing SI prefixes to the new binary prefixes, or they are recalculating the numbers as powers of ten." "For disk and file capacities, the latter remedy is more popular because it is much easier to recognize that 300 GB is the same as 300,000 MB than to recognize that 279.4 GiB is the same as 286,102 MiB." "For memory capacities, binary prefixes are more natural. For example, reporting a Smart Array controller cache size of 512 MiB is preferable to reporting it as 536.9 MB." "HP is considering modifying its storage utilities to report disk capacity with correct decimal and binary values side-by-side (for example, '300 GB (279.4 GiB)'), and report cache sizes with binary prefixes ('1 GiB')." 2011 The GNU operating system uses the SI prefixes for base-10 numbers and IEC prefixes for base-2 numbers as of the parted-2.4 release (May 2011). "specifying partition start or end values using MiB, GiB, etc. suffixes now makes parted do what I want, i.e., use that precise value, and not some other that is up to 500KiB or 500MiB away from what I specified. Before, to get that behavior, you would have had to use carefully chosen values with units of bytes ('B') or sectors ('s') to obtain the same result, and with sectors, your usage would not be portable between devices with varying sector sizes. This change does not affect how parted handles suffixes like KB, MB, GB, etc." "Note that as of parted-2.4, when you specify start and/or end values using IEC binary units like 'MiB', 'GiB', 'TiB', etc., parted treats those values as exact, and equivalent to the same number specified in bytes (i.e., with the 'B' suffix), in that it provides no 'helpful' range of sloppiness. Contrast that with a partition start request of '4GB', which may actually resolve to some sector up to 500MB before or after that point. Thus, when creating a partition, you should prefer to specify units of bytes ('B'), sectors ('s'), or IEC binary units like 'MiB', but not 'MB', 'GB', etc." On its Archive Project Request Form, the University of Oxford uses IEC prefixes: "The initial amount of data to be archived ( MiB GiB TiB )" The IBM Style Guide permits IEC prefixes or "SI prefixes" if used consistently and explained to the user "Whether you choose to use IEC prefixes for powers of 2 and SI prefixes for powers of 10, or use SI prefixes for a dual purpose ... be consistent in your usage and explain to the user your adopted system." 2012 June: Toshiba describes data transfer rates in units of MiB/s. In the same Press Release, SSD storage capacity is given in decimal gigabytes, accompanied by the footnote "One Gigabyte (GB) means 109 = 1,000,000,000 bytes using powers of 10. A computer operating system, however, reports storage capacity using powers of 2 for the definition of 1 GB = 1,073,741,824 bytes and therefore shows less storage capacity" July: Ola BRUSET and Tor Øyvind VEDAL are granted a patent citing the binary unit KiHz to mean 1024 hertz The Minnesota Supercomputing Institute of the University of Minnesota uses IEC prefixes to describe its supercomputing facilities "Itasca is an HP Linux cluster with 1,091 HP ProLiant BL280c G6 blade servers, each with two quad-core 2.8 GHz Intel Xeon X5560 'Nehalem EP' processors sharing 24 GiB of system memory, with a 40-gigabit QDR InfiniBand (IB) interconnect. In total, Itasca consists of 8,728 compute cores and 24 TiB of main memory." "Cascade consists of a Dell R710 head/login node, 48 GiB of memory; eight Dell compute nodes, each with dual X5675 six-core 3.06 GHz processors and 96 GiB of main memory; and 32 Nvidia M2070 GPGPUs. A compute node is connected to four GPGPUs, each of which has 448 3.13 GHz cores and 5 GiB of memory. Each GPU is capable of 1.2 single-precision TFLOPS and 0.5 double-precision TFLOPs." Phidgets Inc describes PhidgetSBC3 as a "Single board computer running Debian 7.0 with 128 MiB DDR2 SDRAM, 1 GiB Flash, integrated 1018 and 6 USB 2.0 High Speed 480Mbits/s ports". IBM's Customer Information Center uses IEC prefixes to disambiguate "To reduce the possibility of confusion, this information center represents data storage using both decimal and binary units. Data storage values are displayed using the following format:#### decimal unit (binary unit). By this example, the value 512 terabytes is displayed as: 512 TB (465.6 TiB)" 2013 February: Toshiba distinguishes unambiguously between decimal and binary prefixes by means of footnotes. Hybrid drives MQ01ABD100H and MQ01ABD075H are described as having a buffer size of 32 MiB. "1 MB (megabytes) = 1,000,000 bytes, 1 GB (gigabytes) = 1,000,000,000 bytes, 1 TB (terabytes) = 1,000,000,000,000 bytes" "KiB (kebibytes [sic]) = 1,024 (210 bytes), MiB (mebibytes) = 1,048,576 (220) bytes, GiB (gibibytes) = 1,073,741,824 (230) bytes". March: Kevin Klughart uses the zebibyte (ZiB) and yobibyte (YiB) as units for maximum volume size PRACE Best Practice Guide uses IEC prefixes for net capacity (300 TiB) and throughput (2 GiB/s). Nicla Andersson, of Sweden's National Supercomputer Centre, Sweden, refers to the NSC's Triolith as having "42.75 TiB memory" and "75 TiB/s aggregate memory BW" and to a 2018 DARPA target of "32–64 PiB memory" August: Mitsuo Yokokawa, of Kobe University, describes the Japanese K Computer as having "1.27 (1.34) PiB" of memory. The official file server of the University of Stuttgart reports file sizes in gibibytes (GiB) and tebibytes (TiB). In their book IBM Virtualization Engine TS7700 with R3.0, Coyne et al use IEC prefixes to distinguish them from decimal prefixes. Examples are "Larger, 1.1 GB (1 GiB) internal buffer on Model E06/EU6, 536.9 MB (512 MiB) for Model E05, 134.2 MB (128 MiB) for Model J1A" "Up to 160 Mibit/sec. native data rate for the Models E06 and EU6, four times faster than the model J1A at 40 Mibit/sec. (Up to 100 Mibit/sec. for the Model E05)" Maple 17 uses MiB and GiB as units of memory usage. November: The online computer dictionary FOLDOC defines the megabyte as one million (10002) bytes. 2014 February: Rahul Bali writes "the [Sequia (IBM)] contains in total 1,572,864 processor cores with 1.5 PiB memory" "The total CPU plus coprocessor memory [of the Tianhe-2 (NUDT)] is 1,375 TiB." CDBurnerXP states disc sizes in mebibytes (MiB) and gibibytes (GiB), clarifying that "in Windows, if you see GB or MB it usually refers to GiB or MiB respectively". September: HP 3PAR StoreServ Storage best practices guide uses binary prefixes for storage and decimal prefixes for speed. 2020s 2020 A Californian court finds that, as the NIST specifies that prefixes such as "G" are decimal rather than binary, and that California law specifies that the NIST definitions of measure "shall govern ... transactions in this state", and because the vendor of a 64 GB flash drive with 64 billion bytes indicated on the packaging of the drive that 1 GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes, they did not deceive consumers into believing that the drive had 64×1024×1024×1024 bytes. References B Units of information

11573396

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex%20Hauptmann

Alex Hauptmann

Alexander G. Hauptmann is a Research Professor in the Language Technologies Institute at the Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Science. He has been the leader of the Informedia Digital Library which has made seminal strides in multimedia information retrieval and won best paper awards at major conferences. He was also a founder of the international advisory committee for TRECVID. Biography Alex Hauptmann started at the Johns Hopkins University in 1978 and received a BA and an MA in Psychology in 1982. For two years he studied Computer Science at the Technische Universitaet Berlin. In 1991 he received a PhD in Computer Science from the Carnegie Mellon University. From 1984 he was researcher at the Carnegie Mellon University in the CMU speech group. The next two years he was a research associate at the School of Computer Science, since 1994 a System Scientist and since 1998 a Senior System Scientist. In 2003 he received the Allen Newell Award for Research Excellence, for the Informedia Digital Library, with H. Wactlar, M. Christel, T. Kanade and S. Stevens. Work His research interests are in multimedia analysis and indexing, speech recognition, speech synthesis, speech interfaces, interfaces to multimedia systems and language in general. According to Hauptmann (2008) "Over the years his research interests have led him to pursue and combine several different areas of research: man-machine communication, natural language processing and speech understanding". In the area of man-machine communication, According to Hauptmann (2008) "he is interested in the tradeoffs between different modalities, including gestures and speech, and in the intuitiveness of interaction protocols. In natural language processing, his desire is to break through the bottlenecks that are currently preventing larger scale natural language applications. The latter theme was also the focus of my thesis, which investigated the use of machine learning on large text samples to acquire the knowledge needed for semantic natural language understanding". References External links Home page Informedia Project American non-fiction writers Living people Year of birth missing (living people)

635568

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FastTracker%202

FastTracker 2

FastTracker 2 (also referred to as FastTracker II) is a music tracker created by Fredrik "Mr. H" Huss and Magnus "Vogue" Högdahl, two members of the demogroup Triton (who later founded Starbreeze Studios) which set about releasing their own tracker after breaking into the scene in 1992 and winning several demo competitions. The source code of FastTracker 2 is written in Pascal using Borland Pascal 7 and TASM. The program works natively under MS-DOS. History In 1993, Triton released FastTracker. This tracker was able to load and save standard four channel MOD files, as well as extended MOD files with six or eight channels (identical to standard MOD files, aside from the extra channel data and ID markers "6CHN" or "8CHN"). It was only compatible with Creative Labs' SoundBlaster series of sound cards, which were most popular on the PC at that time. The whole editor was a single 43 KiB DOS executable. Through 1994, the musicians in Triton released some songs in a new multichannel "XM" format, accompanied by a pre-release, standalone player. In November 1994, FastTracker 2 was released to the public, with support for the Gravis Ultrasound sound card. Discontinuation The last stable release of FastTracker 2 was version 2.08, released in August 1997. A newer version 2.09 was under test as closed beta and became available to the public by Andreas Viklund's website in 1999. This version had a few new usability additions, such as the possibility to exit previously "stuck" windows by only using the mouse but broke support for the Gravis Ultrasound card. While not an official release it was made later available also from Starbreeze's website. On May 23, 1999, Starbreeze productions announced on their website that "FT2 has been put on hold indefinitely. [...] If this was an ideal world, where there was infinite time and no need to make a living, there would definitely be a multiplatform Fasttracker3. Unfortunately this world is nothing like that," signed by Vogue. Legacy After the announcement that support and development for FT2 would be stopped, Ruben Ramos Salvador (BakTery) started working on a FastTracker 3 that is now known as Skale Tracker, available for both Windows, Linux and online. In later years many other trackers tried to follow up on the legacy of FT2, a notable example being MilkyTracker, with special playback modes available for improved Amiga ProTracker 2/3 compatibility. See also the Clone section below. After development of FT2 was abandoned, a project led by developer Olav Sørensen to accurately re-implement FT2 in C for modern platforms using SDL 2 was started. Sørensen stated that he based his clone partly on the original FT2 source code. On April 22, 2017, an alpha build of the FastTracker II clone was released on the author's homepage for Windows and macOS. In July 2018, he released the source code of his FT2 continuation, later under the 3-clause BSD license, along with compile instructions for Linux on his website. Shortly after the release, an official FreeBSD port was created. Architecture and features The FT2 interface is largely inspired by the looks of Amiga's ProTracker. The screen consists of a pattern editor in the lower half, while the upper half features an instrument selector on the right, and the general module settings and some oscilloscopes. The pattern editor can be switched to sample/instrument editors. The program also features a little Nibbles clone and in-software documentation for all the features. Patterns Patterns are essentially sheets of music where the musician is able to arrange the actual musical score. A pattern consists of several rows (64 by default, 1024 maximum) and is divided to columns ("tracks"). Each row can have one note in every track. A note can look like the following: C#4 02 20 R11 This means the note is a C#-note on the chromatic scale, played at the 4th octave (according to the scientific pitch notation), with instrument number 2. The next column is the volume setting on a 00H-40H hexadecimal scale, and the last column enables a variety of effects to be applied to the sound (in this case, retriggering). A song consists of a collection of different patterns which can be played in a user-defined order to create the final song structure. Samples Samples are raw PCM sound data to be played back at various frequencies, much the way normal musical samplers do. Samples can have a loop start and end point, either repeated continuously or a "ping-pong loop", which essentially means the sample plays in reverse as soon as it hits the loop start or end (this is also called a "bidirectional loop"). The musicians are able to either record samples or load existing ones, manipulate them by cutting and/or pasting parts, or just draw them by hand. There's also a feature to crossfade the sample, thus allowing the loop points to appear seamless. Instruments Instruments are essentially arrays of samples with additional convenience features. A musician can assign different samples to different pitches of the sound, thus eliminating the possibility of a sample sounding bad if played too high or too low. Instruments support various loopable envelopes to be set on either the sound volume or the stereo panning, as well as built-in vibrato. It is also possible to set the generic settings of the instrument here: fine-tuning, default volume, default panning and relative starting note to C-4. FT2 can get input from a normal PS/2 keyboard and make a live record with it (in the QWERTY keyboard layout, "q" would map to C, "2" would map to C#, "w" would map to D, etc.). FT2 was popular with many musicians who didn't have MIDI-compatible keyboards as they could experience live recording without any equipment other than a PC running DOS. Effects Each track has an "effects column" which allows the addition of effects such as arpeggio, portamento, vibrato and volume slides. Some control over the song structure can be handled in this column too, with commands for looping and breaking from and delaying patterns, or retriggering, cutting and delaying notes. In addition, a "volume column" allows additional control over volume slides, vibrato, panning and tone portamento. Full list of Effect types (.MOD/.XM) and compatibility with trackers: Files FastTracker 2 supports a variety of file formats, though often only two were used by musicians: XM (Extended Module) and XI (Extended Instrument). XM was and still is one of the most popular module formats nowadays, because of its compact and well compressible file structure. MOD format supported 4 channels maximum in a song, XM format, 32 channels maximum in a song, though there could be multiple instrument on one channel. ( from Channel n°0 to channel n°31 ) Some players — such as ModPlug Player — support the zip-compressed .XMZ and .MDZ formats, which are simple ZIP archives that contain a .XM or .MOD file respectively. The ADPCM-compressed XM extension is an XM subformat introduced in ModPlug tracker and player. It has the same XM file format structure, except that at least one of the samples is compressed in 4-bit ADPCM format. An ADPCM-compressed sample is almost two times smaller than its uncompressed equivalent. The drawback is the sound quality – significant distortion may arise when using ADPCM. Another known extension is OXM – Vorbis-compressed XM. It preserves the original XM file structure, except the samples, which are compressed using the Vorbis codec. The Stripped XM file format is another XM subformat. It was introduced in uFMOD in 2006. A Stripped XM file is smaller than a regular XM, because it uses a more compact set of headers. The audio content of the XM file is left untouched. Even more non-standard XM extensions exist. For example, some trackers introduce undocumented effect commands used as triggers for software events, Text2Speech (TTS) metadata, watermarks and so on. Compatibility FT2 ran with a custom made DOS 32-bit extender and it supports the Gravis Ultrasound, Sound Blaster, Covox, and the simple PC speaker. This rendered the software rather flaky to use nowadays, as the recent Windows versions generally do not allow DOS applications to access hardware directly, let alone the fact that most of those compatible cards are built for ISA slots, which are absent from recent motherboards. Due to this, hardcore musicians who still want to use FT2 often build "old school" PCs with the optimal (and nowadays rather cheap) hardware for the tracker, just to be able to track with it again. An alternative way of getting FT2 to run is by using DOSBox — this, however, as accurate as is, has speed and latency problems, and one needs quite a muscular PC to be able to use it as comfortably as on a native environment. The release of DOSBox 0.7 in March 2007 substantially improved speed/performance problems. Other methods of usage include GUSEMU or VDMSound. Reception and impact FT2 got broadly popular in the demoscene and among tracker musicians in the end 1990s. FT2's biggest "rivals" in the scene were Scream Tracker and, in later years, Impulse Tracker. "FT2 vs IT" is a common and still ongoing debate among musicians, usually involving IT users complaining about FT2's mouse interface while FT2 users praise it and pointing out that every mouse feature has a keyboard shortcut as well. Clones The FT2 inspired multiple later trackers in UX, design and technical capabilities and became therefore the starting point of a family of clones. Notably here, Ruben Ramos Salvador's clone FastTracker 3 (which later became Skale Tracker) and MilkyTracker. MilkyTracker is cross platform software and provides nearly all functionality available in the original FT2, with various other features. The GUI looks close, but intentionally different from the original. The shareware program Renoise also takes a portion of FT2's basic GUI and featureset-design, even though there are various major changes in its concept. Another early FastTracker 2-compatible tracker for windows was ModPlug Tracker (later OpenMPT), a tool which was also compatible with many other contemporary DOS trackers. SoundTracker (not to be confused with Ultimate Soundtracker) is a free (GPL-licensed) FT2-style tracker program for Unix-like operating systems. For many years, it was one of the very few mature Unix-based tracker programs. Recently, a modern clone named "FastTracker II clone" was released; it is written in C and uses SDL 2 to allow for easier porting. Though it runs on modern operating systems, it is otherwise nearly identical in functionality, with hotkeys and visuals accurate to the original. Professional usage Video game developer Nicklas Nygren used Fast Tracker 2 (e.g. Knytt Stories) to compose his early video game music. Demoscener and video game soundtrack composer Matthias Le Bidan used FT2 for the music of the free and open source video games Frozen Bubble and Pathological. The FT2-based soundtrack of Frozen Bubble won The Linux Game Tome's Best Sound/Music Award in 2003. Lee Jackson used FT2 to compose the MOD files used in the Apogee Software game, Stargunner. Several commercial computer games by Epic Games like Unreal and Unreal Tournament used the FastTracker 2 XM format (additionally to other mod formats) encapsulated in a "UMX" Container, supported by the used Galaxy Sound Engine. Also Ion Storms' Deus Ex used the XM format for its soundtrack, and by Jarkko Rotstén in 3D Realms's Ion Fury. FastTracker 2 has also been used in the "dance" music scene of the 1990s and early 2000s: Gabber, Speedcore and breakcore producers were using it, including Deadnoise, Noisekick, Neophyte. References External links Fasttracker 2 on Pouet Fasttracker 2 on Demozoo Audio trackers Demoscene software DOS software

2795942

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative%20cutting

Negative cutting

Negative cutting (also known as negative matching and negative conforming) is the process of cutting motion picture negative to match precisely the final edit as specified by the film editor. Original camera negative (OCN) is cut with scissors and joined using a film splicer and film cement. Negative cutting is part of the post-production process and occurs after editing and prior to striking internegatives and release prints. The process of negative cutting has changed little since the beginning of cinema in the early 20th century. In the early 1980s computer software was first used to aid the cutting process. Kodak introduced barcode on motion picture negative in the mid-1990s. This enabled negative cutters to more easily track shots and identify film sections based on keykode. Toward the late 1990s and early 2000s negative cutting changed due to the advent of digital cinema technologies such as digital intermediate (DI), digital projection and high-definition television. In some countries, due to the high cost of online suites, negative cutting is still used for commercials by reducing footage. Increasingly feature films are bypassing the negative cutting process altogether and are being scanned directly from the uncut rushes. The existence of digital intermediates (DI) has created a new demand for negative cutters to extract selected takes which are cut from the rushes and re-spliced into new rolls (in edit order) to reduce the volume of footage for scanning. Basic After a film shoot, the original camera negative (OCN) is sent to a film laboratory for processing. Two or three camera rolls are spliced together to create a lab roll approximately long. After developing the lab roll, it is put through a telecine to create a rushes transfer tape. This rushes transfer tape is of lower quality than film and is used for editing purposes only. The rushes tape is sent to the Editor who loads it into an offline edit suite. The lab rolls are sent to the negative cutter for logging and storage. After the Editor finishes the Edit it is exported to an offline EDL list and the EDL list is sent to the negative cutter. The negative cutter will translate the Timecode in the EDL list to edge numbers (keykode) using specially designed negative cutting software to find which shot is needed from the rushes negative. Traditionally a negative cutter would then fine cut the negative to match the Editor's final edit frame accurately. Negative would be spliced together to create rolls less than which would then be sent to the film laboratory to print release prints. Today most feature films are extracted full takes (as selected takes) and scanned digitally as a digital intermediate. Television series and commercials shot on film follow the same extraction process but are sent for telecine. Each required shot is extracted from the lab roll as a full take and respliced together to create a new selected roll of negative. This reduces the negative required by up to 1/10 of the footage shot, saving considerable time during scanning or telecine. The negative cutter will create a new Online EDL list replacing the rushes roll timecode with the new selected roll timecode. In the case of feature films the selected roll and Online EDL are sent to a post production facility for scanning as a digital intermediate. For television commercials or series the selected takes and EDL are sent to a post production facility for re-telecine and compiled in an Online Suite for final grading. Software There have been a number of dedicated software systems that have been developed for and by negative cutters to manage the process of cutting motion picture negative. A number of individual proprietary software systems have been developed starting in the early 1980s. Stan Sztaba developed a system for World Cinevision Services Inc (New York) in 1983 using Apple II DOS and then ProDOS, this system is still used today. Elliott Gamson of Immaculate Matching (New York) developed a system using MS-DOS. Computamatch was one of the first MS-DOS-based systems developed and is still in use today in several countries. The first commercially available software product was OSC/R (pronounced "Oscar"), a DOS-based application developed in Toronto, Canada by The Adelaide Works. OSC/R was very widely used and at the time was the only negative cutting software on the market until Adelaide Works ceased operation in 1993. OSC/R is still used today in some negative cutting facilities but has been mostly replaced by newer and more advanced systems. Excalibur was a later Windows 98 based product developed by FilmLab Engineering in Britain. Film Fusion is one of the most recent developments and is a Windows XP and Vista based system developed in Sydney, Australia by Popsoft IT. Hardware Negative cutters use various hardware tools such as film synchronizers, re-winders, film splicers, scissors, film cement and film keykode readers. DigiSync, a purpose built keykode reader is used by most negative cutters in conjunction with software for logging the keykode from film. DigiSync was developed by Research In Motion and in 1998 it won a Technical Achievement Academy Award for the design and development of the DigiSync Film Keykode Reader. Research In Motion later moved on to bigger things and invented the BlackBerry Wireless Email Phone and is now a publicly listed company. Other brands of barcode scanners are also in use. See also Film editor Digital intermediate Film splicer Film cement Synchronizer (film editing) Mo Henry References Film and video technology Cinematography

243964

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gtk-gnutella

Gtk-gnutella

gtk-gnutella is a peer-to-peer file sharing application which runs on the gnutella network. gtk-gnutella uses the GTK+ toolkit for its graphical user interface. Released under the GNU General Public License, gtk-gnutella is free software. History Initially gtk-gnutella was written to look like the original Nullsoft Gnutella client. The original author Yann Grossel stopped working on the client in early 2001. After a while Raphael Manfredi took over as the main software architect, and the client has been in active development ever since. Versions released after July 2002 do not look like the original Nullsoft client. Features gtk-gnutella is programmed in C with an emphasis on efficiency and portability without being minimalistic but rather head-on with most of the modern features of the gnutella network. Therefore, it requires fewer resources (such as CPU and/or RAM) than the major gnutella clients. It can also be used as headless gnutella client not requiring GTK+ at all. gtk-gnutella has a filtering engine that can reduce the amount of spam and other irrelevant results. gtk-gnutella supports a large range of the features of modern gnutella clients. gtk-gnutella was the first gnutella client to support IPv6 and encryption using TLS. It can handle and export magnet links. It has strong internationalization features, supporting English, German, Greek, French, Hungarian, Spanish, Japanese, Norwegian, Dutch and Chinese. gtk-gnutella also has support to prevent spamming and other hostile peer activity. Several software distributions provide pre-compiled packages, but they are usually outdated as many distributions version freeze old stable releases. The gnutella network benefits from running the latest version obtainable as peer and hostile IP address lists change rapidly, making building the latest SVN snapshot the best option. There are also pre-compiled packages for many Linux distributions available online. Persons concerned about security might wish to compile their own. The gtk-gnutella sources use dist as build and configuration system instead of Autoconf. Most users are only familiar with the configure scripts generated by the latter. Another hazard for novices is configuring NAT devices to enable full network connectivity for gtk-gnutella. gtk-gnutella, like any gnutella client, is still usable behind a firewall or a router, but with some reduced functionality, if it cannot receive incoming TCP connections or UDP packets. In an attempt to mitigate the issue for newcomers, gtk-gnutalla implements the UPnP and NAT-PMP client protocols. gtk-gnutella supports features for downloading larger files (videos, programs, and disk images). Version 0.96.4 supports Tiger tree hash serving and versions after 0.96.5 support tiger tree hashes for uploads and downloads. Tiger tree hashing and other gtk-gnutella features make file transfers as efficient as BitTorrent. Specifically, gtk-gnutella supports partial file sharing, remote queueing and files larger than 4 GiB. Overlap checking was the only mechanism to guard against bad data prior to versions 0.96.4. Overlap checking does not guard against malicious corruption like Tiger tree hashing does. Version 0.96.6 introduced preliminary support for a Kademlia DHT, which was completed in version 0.96.7. The DHT is replacing search by SHA-1, when locating alternate sources for a known file or looking for push-proxies. In version 0.96.7, the DHT is enabled by default. LimeWire first developed the DHT and named it Mojito DHT. Version 0.96.9 introduced full native support for UPnP and NAT-PMP, making the usage behind a compatible router much easier since there is no longer any need to manually forward ports on the firewall. In this version the code was also ported to Microsoft Windows however the Windows port is still considered beta due to lack of wide testing so far. Version 0.96.9 also introduced important DHT protection against Sybil attacks, using algorithms based on statistical properties. Version 0.97 was a major release, introducing client-side support for HTTP pipelining, "What's New?" queries, MIME type query filtering, GUESS support (Gnutella UDP Extension for Scalable Searches) and partial file querying. Although many Gnutella vendors already supported server-side GUESS, gtk-gnutella introduced the client-side as well, also enhancing the original specifications of the protocol to make it truly usable. Version 0.98.2 employs a minor patch to correct malloc memory allocations and multiple threads issues, mainly on Ubuntu 11.10 operating systems. This 2011 gtk-gnutella version was also dedicated to the memory of Dennis Ritchie, 1941-2011. Version 0.98.4 added RUDP (reliable UDP) and improved partial file transfers. Version 1.1 is a major release which added G2 support: gtk-gnutella will now connect to the G2 network in leaf mode. This allows searches from G2 nodes and lets local queries be propagated to the G2 network as well. File exchanges with G2 hosts are fully inter-operable and are permitted without restriction. Popularity gtk-gnutella does not rank as one of the most popular clients on GnutellaNet crawls. gtk-gnutella developers' proposals have been incorporated into many gnutella clients. In 2011, gtk-gnutella vendor extensions are the third most prolific on the GDF (Gnutella Developer Forum), following Limewire and Bearshare. Salon listed gtk-gnutella as one of the five most popular gnutella applications in 2002. XoloX and Toadnode, also in the list, are no longer actively developed. Notes References External links gtk-gnutella homepage Free file sharing software Gnutella clients File sharing software that uses GTK File sharing software for Linux Free software programmed in C Cross-platform software

37476362

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supervisor%20Mode%20Access%20Prevention

Supervisor Mode Access Prevention

Supervisor Mode Access Prevention (SMAP) is a feature of some CPU implementations such as the Intel Broadwell microarchitecture that allows supervisor mode programs to optionally set user-space memory mappings so that access to those mappings from supervisor mode will cause a trap. This makes it harder for malicious programs to "trick" the kernel into using instructions or data from a user-space program. History Supervisor Mode Access Prevention is designed to complement Supervisor Mode Execution Prevention (SMEP), which was introduced earlier. SMEP can be used to prevent supervisor mode from unintentionally executing user-space code. SMAP extends this protection to reads and writes. Benefits Without Supervisor Mode Access Prevention, supervisor code usually has full read and write access to user-space memory mappings (or has the ability to obtain full access). This has led to the development of several security exploits, including privilege escalation exploits, which operate by causing the kernel to access user-space memory when it did not intend to. Operating systems can block these exploits by using SMAP to force unintended user-space memory accesses to trigger page faults. Additionally, SMAP can expose flawed kernel code which does not follow the intended procedures for accessing user-space memory. However, the use of SMAP in an operating system may lead to a larger kernel size and slower user-space memory accesses from supervisor code, because SMAP must be temporarily disabled any time supervisor code intends to access user-space memory. Technical details Processors indicate support for Supervisor Mode Access Prevention through the Extended Features CPUID leaf. SMAP is enabled when memory paging is active and the SMAP bit in the CR4 control register is set. SMAP can be temporarily disabled for explicit memory accesses by setting the EFLAGS.AC (Alignment Check) flag. The stac (Set AC Flag) and clac (Clear AC Flag) instructions can be used to easily set or clear the flag. When the SMAP bit in CR4 is set, explicit memory reads and writes to user-mode pages performed by code running with a privilege level less than 3 will always result in a page fault if the EFLAGS.AC flag is not set. Implicit reads and writes (such as those made to descriptor tables) to user-mode pages will always trigger a page fault if SMAP is enabled, regardless of the value of EFLAGS.AC. Operating system support Linux kernel support for Supervisor Mode Access Prevention was implemented by H. Peter Anvin. It was merged into the mainline Linux 3.7 kernel and it is enabled by default for processors which support the feature. FreeBSD has supported Supervisor Mode Execution Prevention since 2012 and Supervisor Mode Access Prevention since 2018. OpenBSD has supported Supervisor Mode Access Prevention and the related Supervisor Mode Execution Prevention since 2012, with OpenBSD 5.3 being the first release with support for the feature enabled. NetBSD support for Supervisor Mode Execution Prevention (SMEP) was implemented by Maxime Villard in December 2015. Support for Supervisor Mode Access Prevention (SMAP) was also implemented by Maxime Villard, in August 2017. NetBSD 8.0 was the first release with both features supported and enabled. Haiku support for Supervisor Mode Execution Prevention (SMEP) was implemented by Jérôme Duval in January 2018. macOS has support for SMAP at least since macOS 10.13 released 2017. See also NX bit References X86 instructions X86 memory management Computer security Intel

26192952

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February%202010%20Australian%20cyberattacks

February 2010 Australian cyberattacks

The February 2010 Australian cyberattacks were a series of denial-of-service attacks conducted by the Anonymous online community against the Australian government in response to proposed web censorship regulations. Operation Titstorm was the name given to the cyber attacks by the perpetrators. They resulted in lapses of access to government websites on 10 and 11 February 2010. This was accompanied by emails, faxes, and phone calls harassing government offices. The actual size of the attack and number of perpetrators involved is unknown but it was estimated that the number of systems involved ranged from the hundreds to the thousands. The amount of traffic caused disruption on multiple government websites. Australian Telecommunications Minister Stephen Conroy proposed the regulations that would mainly filter sites with pornographic content. Various groups advocating uncensored access to the Internet, along with companies like Google and Yahoo!, object to the proposed filter. A spokesperson for Conroy said that the actions were not a legitimate form of protest and called it irresponsible. The attacks also drew criticism from other filter protest groups. The initial stage was followed by small in-person protests on 20 February that were called "Project Freeweb". Background The attack began as a protest responding to a plan by Australian Telecommunications Minister Stephen Conroy that would require internet service providers to block Australian users from accessing illegal and what the government deemed as "unwanted" content. Websites to be blocked feature pornography showing rape, bestiality, child sex abuse, small-breasted women (who may appear under the legal age), and female ejaculation. Drawn depictions of such acts are included in the proposal. The proposed filter also includes gambling sites along with others showing drug use. A leaked version of the proposed blacklist (also referred to as the "refused classification" or "RC" list) also showed sites that did not include adult content. The name "Operation Titstorm" was in reference to the material that would be censored. Google has questioned the proposal, saying the prohibitions would be too broad. It is strongly opposed by free speech groups. A poll conducted by McNair Ingenuity Research for the Hungry Beast television program found that 80% of their 1,000 respondents were in favour of the concept of the plan. The survey also found that 91% were concerned about the government's intent to keep the list of filtered websites a secret. The Department of Defence's Cyber Security Operations Centre discovered the attack was coming on 5 February. A statement released by Anonymous to the press two days before the attack said, "No government should have the right to refuse its citizens access to information solely because they perceive it to be 'unwanted'." It went on to read, "The Australian Government will learn that one does not mess with our porn. No one messes with our access to perfectly legal (or illegal) content for any reason". Anonymous had previously garnered media attention with protests against Church of Scientology (Project Chanology) and the Iranian government. In September 2009, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's website was hacked in a similar protest to proposed web censorship reforms. Attacks Flyers distributed to recruit participants said the attack was to begin at 8 pm AEST on 10 February. On that day, government websites were targeted by denial-of-service attacks. The Communications Department said the hackers had not infiltrated government security, but had instead swamped government computer servers. Sites were left unavailable for sporadic periods throughout the attack. At one point, the Australian Parliament's website was offline for about two days due to the high volume of requests. Rudd's government site was also inaccessible for some time. As a primary target, the Communications Department also received a large amount of traffic. Government offices were also flooded with e-mail spam, junk faxes, and prank phone calls. The Prime Minister's homepage was vandalized with pornographic images. The flyer released before the attack called for the faxes to focus on cartoon pornography, female ejaculation, and small-breasted pornography. Reports of the actual size of the attack have varied. One cyber security expert described the attacks as "the equivalent of parking a truck across the driveway of a shopping centre". A firm marketing security technology said that the peak of the attack was a relatively low 16.84 megabits per second. One writer described the 7.5 million requests per second that initially brought down the Parliament website as "massive". The site usually only receives a few hundred per second. It appears that botnets made up of compromised computers were not used. Estimates of the number of attacking systems involved have ranged from hundreds to thousands. Response A spokeswoman for Conroy said such attacks were not a legitimate political protest. According to her, they were "totally irresponsible and potentially deny services to the Australian public". The Systems Administrators Guild of Australia said that it "condemned DDoS attacks as the wrong way to express disagreement with the proposed law". Anti-censorship groups criticised the attacks, saying they hurt their cause. A purported spokesperson for the attackers recommended that the wider Australian public protest the filter by signing the petition of Electronic Frontiers Australia. Anonymous coordinated a second phase with small protests outside the Parliament House in Canberra and in major cities throughout Australia on 20 February. Additional demonstrations were held at some of the country's embassies overseas. The organizers called the follow-up protests "Project Freeweb" to differentiate them from the criticised cyber attacks. Several supporters of the attack later said on a messageboard that taking down websites was not enough to convince the government to back down on the web filtering policy and called for violence. Others disagreed with such actions and proposed launching an additional attack on a popular government site. A spokesman for Electronic Frontiers Australia said he believed there was no real intention or capacity to follow through with any of the violent threats. The attack also resulted in criticism of Australia's terrorism laws from The University of New South Wales Law Journal. One writer wrote that the provisions leave "no place for legitimate acts of online protest, or at least sets the penalty far too high for relatively minor cyber-vandalism". An Australian teenager was charged with four counts of inciting other hackers to impair electronic communications and two of unauthorised access to restricted data for his role in the attack. He was ordered to pay a bond instead of being convicted after pleading guilty and showing good behaviour. In July 2010, Conroy delayed implementing the plan pending a 12-month review into how refused classification content was rated. The proposal is not expected to go forward due to the opposition from The Coalition and the Greens. Internet service providers Telstra and Optus have both agreed to voluntarily block some content. See also Internet censorship in Australia Operation Payback References Further reading Censorship in Australia Internet in Australia Denial-of-service attacks Anonymous (hacker group) 2010 in Australia February 2010 events in Australia 2010s internet outages

5228701

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posthomerica

Posthomerica

The Posthomerica (, translit. tà meth᾿ Hómēron) is an epic poem in Greek hexameter verse by Quintus of Smyrna. Probably written in the latter half of the 4th century AD, it tells the story of the Trojan War, between the death of Hector and the fall of Ilium. The first four books, covering the same ground as the Coming of Memnon of Arctinus of Miletus, describe the doughty deeds and deaths of Penthesileia the Amazon, of Memnon, son of the Morning, and of Achilles; and the funeral games in honour of Achilles. Books five through twelve, covering the same ground as the Little Iliad of Lesches, span from the contest between Ajax and Odysseus for the arms of Achilles, the death of Ajax by suicide after his loss, the exploits of Neoptolemus, Eurypylus and Deiphobus, the deaths of Paris and Oenone, to the building of the wooden horse. The remaining books, covering the same ground as Arctinus' Destruction of Troy, relate the capture of Troy by means of the wooden horse, the sacrifice of Polyxena at the grave of Achilles, the departure of the Greeks, and their dispersal by the storm. Summary The plot of Posthomerica begins where Homer's Iliad ends, immediately after Hector's body was regained by the Trojans. Penthesileia, a daughter of Ares, arrives at Troy with a group of Amazon warriors. They arrive from the Thermodon River. She has come to share the hardships of war and to escape her people after accidentally killing her sister; she was aiming for a stag. Priam thinks she will save Troy and kill Achilles. Andromache doesn't think Penthesileia is capable. Priam prayed to Zeus to let Penthesileia return, but he sees an eagle holding a dove, a sign that she will die. Ajax and Achilles are in the city resting. Hippoclameia tries to convince the Trojan women to fight, but Theano convinces them it is a suicidal idea. Penthesileia kills Podarces in battle. Ajax convinces Achilles that it is time to fight: Achilles kills Penthesileia by impaling her and her horse, but Achilles notices her beauty and realizes that he should have made her his wife. Thersites tells Achilles not to worry about women, Achilles eventually kills him and upsets Diomedes. Thymoites tells Troy if they are to stay in the city, they will die, therefore everyone should leave. Priam and Paris say that fighting is the answer and Memnon, son of Dawn, and the Ethiopian army will be here soon. Polydamas says that Ethiopians will lose. Zeus thinks that tomorrow's battle will be ugly and full of death. Memnon kills Nestor’s son Antilochos in battle. Eventually, after a long and difficult struggle; Achilles kills Memnon. Dawn will not let the sun rise because she is so upset and retreats to Hades until Zeus convinces her to leave. After Achilles tells him to stop interfering in the battle, Apollo tries to shoot Achilles, wounding his ankle; this will later prove fatal. Zeus is furious with Apollo as he is not supposed to interfere in the mortal world. The Trojans are still scared to fight the injured Achilles. Achilles dies and Paris attempts to remove his corpse. Ajax defends the body, killing Glaucos, who falls on top of Achilles. Ajax also injures Aeneas. Odysseus helps Ajax defend Achilles’ body. Ajax stuns Paris by hitting him with a rock, forcing Paris to give up his attempt to take the corpse. The Greeks successfully drive the Trojans off and rescue Achilles’ body, bringing it back to the Greek camp. Ajax is the first to eulogize Achilles, then Phoinix, Agamemnon, Briseis, and Thetis, Achilles mother. Calliope tells Thetis that her son will always be remembered. The Greeks then compete in funeral games to commemorate the death of Achilles. There is a heated argument between Odysseus and Ajax over which one of them is most deserving of receiving Achilles armor. The Trojan prisoners are asked to decide which one of them was the better warrior during the defense of Achilles’ body. The hero that fought most bravely and valiantly will be awarded the armor. It is decided that Odysseus will receive the armor. Similar to Sophocles' play Ajax, this leads to Ajax's suicide, and Odysseus speaks his regret at the funeral. He is cremated at sea. At this point, the gods give Eurypylus to the Trojans. Eurypylus is able to kill many Argive soldiers and drives the Argives to despair. They draw near to the ships, but Neoptolemos arrives to fight the Trojans back. Ares demoralizes the Argives, but Neoptolemos holds his ground and slays Eurypylus. He continues to kill Trojans, such that the author expresses surprise at his body count. Deiphobos challenges him, but Apollo saves the Trojans from Neoptolemos. Apollo tries to kill Neoptolemos, but Zeus threatens to destroy Ilion if he does. The battle is halted by Calchas, who declares that the battle is not fated to end until Philoctetes joins the Argives. Philoctetes had been left on the island of Lemnos due to receiving a bite on the foot from a poisonous water snake that became infected and repulsive to the other Greeks. This scenario draws on source material from Sophocles' Philoctetes. Philoctetes is rescued from his cave. They tell him that his wound can be healed by the surgeon Podaleninos if he agrees to come with them to Troy. Although Philoctetes considers Odysseus at fault for leaving him on the island, he forgives Odysseus. Aeneas attempts to convince the Trojans to stay within the city walls, without success. Panic, Fear and Strife arrive at the day’s battle. Philoctetes shoots Paris with his poisoned arrows, grazing him on the hand and striking him in the groin. Paris, mortally wounded, tries to get help from his first wife, Oenone, who spurns him because of his affair with Helen. Paris passes away. Priam laments that he was his second best son, and Helen curses the position he put her in. Oenone, regrets her actions and commits suicide by jumping on Paris' funeral pyre. They are buried next to one another, their headstones facing opposite ways. The battle evens out for both sides. Apollo pushes Aeneas and Eurymachos to fight like madmen against the Greeks, pushing them back until they are rallied by Neoptolemos. The Greeks surge forwards and Aeneas manages to rally the Trojans and check the Greek advance. A dust storm settles over the battle. The next morning, the Argives hide under their shields to get to the gates of Troy, led by Odysseus. Ares gives Aeneas the strength to retaliate by throwing huge rocks. Aeneas exhorts the Trojans to leave the city, but the battle continues around the gates. Philoctetes shoots at Aeneas, but his shield protects him, allowing the arrow to hit Mimas instead. The seer Calchas sees an omen of a hawk and dove, suggests that the Greeks try a new strategy to take Troy. Odysseus comes up with a plan to create the Trojan Horse. He gets Epeios to construct the horse. Neoptolemos and Philoctetes do not like the plan, because they prefer a more direct battle. Epeios prays to Athena. The horse causes the gods to break out in a brief fight until Zeus ends it. Neoptolemos, Menelaos, Odysseus, Sthenalos, Diomedes and Philoctetes are among those that board the horse. Agamemnon and Nestor stay behind. The Argives leave the horse and Sinon at Troy and pretend to flee. Sinon is heavily disfigured and left as a messenger. He says that the horse is a tribute to Tritogeneia, but Laocoon sees through the deception. He tries to urge the Trojans to burn the horse, but he is struck with blindness by Athena. He and his children are killed by two serpents. The Trojans attempt to sacrifice to the gods, but the sacrifices refuse to catch fire. Statues begin to weep and temples are stained with blood, but the Trojans are not impressed by these negative omens. Cassandra also knows the truth about the horse, but is cursed so that nobody believes her. She attempts to burn the horse but is prevented from doing so. The Trojans celebrate their victory, but are left unprepared for the Argives as they exit the horse and kill the Trojans. Priam is killed by Neoptolemos. Menelaos kills Deiphobos, who has married Helen after Paris' death. Troy is burned to the ground. The women of Troy are given to the heroes of the Argives. Much of the events here are similar to the events in Euripides' Trojan Women. Ajax the Lesser rapes Cassandra in Athena's shrine, so he is killed by the gods. The major characters The Argives (Ἀργεĩοι). Agamemnon — King of Mycenae; leader of the Greeks. Achilles — Son of Thetis; champion of the Greeks. Odysseus — King of Ithaca. Ajax the Greater — son of Telamon, with Diomedes, he is second to Achilles in martial prowess. Menelaus — King of Sparta; husband of Helen and brother of Agamemnon. Diomedes — son of Tydeus, King of Argos. Nestor - King of Pylos. Ajax the Lesser — son of Oileus Calchas — Seer Neoptolemus — Son of Achilles Philoctetes — Wielder of Heracles' bow Trojans Aeneas — son of Anchises and Aphrodite. Alexander (Paris) — Helen's captor. Priam — King of Troy. Polydamas - Son of Priam; Strategist. Deiphobus - Brother of Hector Cassandra - Prophetess of Troy Hecuba - Wife of Priam; Queen of the Trojans. Andromache - Wife of Hector Warriors other than those that dwell in Troy are brought in to fight as well. Penthesileia - Amazonian queen Memnon - King of the Aithiopians Eurypylus - Commander of the Mysians Major gods: Zeus Hera Apollo Aphrodite Ares Athena Hermes Poseidon Hephaestus Minor gods: Eris Iris Thetis Themis Relationship to previous epics Its style has been criticized by many scholars as subpar to Homer, but it is valuable as the earliest surviving account of this period in the Trojan War. The Iliad ends with "Such was the funeral of Hector, tamer of horses"; later poets changed this to however it might fit their needs. Quintus used it as an opening line: "Such was the funeral of Hector. And now there came an Amazon..." The purpose of the story seems to be to complete the Iliad and give the characters a sense of closure. Many of the characters who had hated an ally in prior works, such as Philoctetes to Odysseus in Sophocles' play, now easily overcome the anger to create harmony. Critical editions A. Zimmermann, Quinti Smyrnaei Posthomericorum libri XIV, Leipzig 1891 (reprinted Stuttgart 1969). F. Vian, La suite d'Homère. Texte établi et traduit par Francis Vian, I-III, Paris 1963-9. G. Pompella, Quinti Smyrnaei Posthomerica. Olms-Weidmann, Hildesheim & New York 2002. Alan James, Quintus of Smyrna, The Trojan War: Posthomerica, English translation, Johns Hopkins 2004. References External links 4th-century poems Ancient Greek epic poems Trojan War literature Agamemnon

38020020

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TMG%20%28language%29

TMG (language)

In computing TMG (TransMoGrifier) is a recursive descent compiler-compiler developed by Robert M. McClure and presented in 1965. TMG ran on systems including OS/360 and early Unix. It was used to build EPL, an early version of PL/I. Douglas McIlroy ported TMG to an early version of Unix. According to Ken Thompson, McIlroy wrote TMG in TMG on a piece of paper and "decided to give his piece of paper his piece of paper," hand-compiling assembly language that he entered and assembled on Thompson's Unix system running on PDP-7. Thompson used TMG in 1970 as a tool to offer Fortran, but due to memory limitations of PDP-7 ended up creating the B programming language which was much influenced by BCPL. The recursive descent algorithm of TMG was studied formally by Alexander Birman and Jeffrey Ullman. The formal description of the algorithms was named TMG recognition scheme (or simply TS). See also Top-down parsing language Yacc References External links Compiling tools Parser generators Low-level programming languages

64647382

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020%E2%80%9321%20Nintendo%20data%20leak

2020–21 Nintendo data leak

The 2020–2021 Nintendo data leak, also known as the Nintendo Gigaleak, is a series of leaks of data from the Japanese video game company Nintendo on the anonymous imageboard website 4chan. The leak started in March 2018, but became most prominent in 2020. Ten main sets of data leaked on 4chan, ranging from game and console source code to internal documentation and development tools. The name "Gigaleak" mainly refers to the second leak on July 24, 2020, which was 3 gigabytes in size. The leaks are believed to have come from companies contracted by Nintendo in the design of these consoles, and/or from individuals previously convicted of intrusion into Nintendo systems. An earlier, much smaller leak had also occurred in 2018 which had the Nintendo Space World 1997 demos for Pokémon Gold and Silver leaked. The leaks are infamous for the sheer size and the amount of internal material leaked; video game journalists have described the magnitude of the leaks as unprecedented, and suggested that they might have significant effects for emulation and to preservationists, in addition to the legal questions posed by the leak. To date, Nintendo has not made any official response. Background Nintendo is a Japanese video game developer and publisher that produces both software and hardware. Its hardware products include the handheld Game Boy and Nintendo DS families and home consoles such as the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), Super NES, Nintendo 64 (N64), GameCube, and Wii. Software Nintendo produces includes popular franchises such as Mario, The Legend of Zelda, and Pokémon. Ethan Gach of Kotaku described Nintendo as "notoriously secretive" about development. Nintendo is aggressive in ensuring its intellectual property in both hardware and software is protected. In a notable case, Nintendo, with the assistance of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, sought enforcement action against Ryan Hernandez, a hacker who infiltrated Nintendo's internal database to leak plans of what games and hardware Nintendo planned to announce for upcoming shows like the Electronic Entertainment Expo. In January 2020, Hernandez pled guilty to stealing the information from Nintendo. Leaks Beginning in March 2018, information began to spread about a trove of stolen data from Nintendo's servers being leaked by hackers via the anonymous imageboard website 4chan. The leaks began with smaller releases, such as iQue Player ROMs and early Pokémon designs. The leaks began to gain significant traction in early May 2020, when source code for Nintendo's consoles appeared online. Because the leaked material included specifications related to the Wii, the company BroadOn, which Nintendo had contracted to help design the console, was identified as one potential source of the leaks. Another possible source was Zammis Clark, a Malwarebytes employee and hacker who in 2019 pleaded guilty to and was sentenced to 15 months in prison for infiltrating Microsoft and Nintendo's servers between March and May 2018. According to reporting by journalist Jeremy Kirk of Bank Info Security, Clark sent the data he stole to several of his acquaintances, who subsequently began leaking the information on 4chan. According to Kirk, Nintendo likely knew the material would eventually be leaked. Further evidence to support the source being Clark can be found in the file modification dates of some released files, dated to March and May 2018, the same timeframe Clark allegedly had access. In late July 2020, a second set of leaked data several gigabytes in size was released. Journalists and Nintendo fans dubbed this leak the "Gigaleak". The leak comprised information about the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and Nintendo 64 consoles and their games, including prototypes and data related to Star Fox and Star Fox 2, whose veracity was confirmed by Nintendo programmer Dylan Cuthbert. The leak also contained personal files of the developers, leading to concerns about privacy depending on how the information was shared. Tillie Kottmann was incorrectly credited with the leak by Bleeping Computer, but told Tom's Guide that it did not originate with her. In the first week of September 2020, a third, smaller set of information was leaked on 4chan. The leaks consisted of documents for two unreleased GameCube models. The first model appeared to be a hybrid console version of the GameCube similar to the Nintendo Switch, fitted with a built-in display and able to connect to a TV via a docking station. The second model, codenamed Tako, was discovered in a leaked PowerPoint presentation from ATI. This model would natively render games at HD video resolutions similar to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, include slots for both SD and memory cards, and be released around Christmas 2005. This data set also contained a disc image of the previously lost Wii Startup Disc, a disc shipped with early Wii units to install the firmware. A fourth set of information was leaked in 4chan on the second week of September 2020 (dubbed as "Gigaleak 3" according to Nintendo fans and journalists due to its size being on par with the second set of leaked data). This set contains the internal documents for Wii Sports and Wii Sports Resort, source code to the Nintendo DSi boot ROM and some DSi apps, and a Game Boy and Game Boy Color ROM lot which contains released and unreleased games for the Game Boy and Game Boy Color along with their prototype and unreleased localized versions. One such game is the cancelled Pokémon Picross for Game Boy Color which, prior to the leak, was only previously seen in Japanese gaming magazines in 1999. A fifth set of information was leaked in 4chan on September 30th, 2020. This set contains the debug and demo ROMs for Pokémon Ranger, Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Blue Rescue Team and Red Rescue Team and Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen, internal tools for the Nintendo 3DS, and a Famicom Disk System ROM lot containing released and unreleased games. One of which was a unreleased port of Balloon Fight for the Famicom Disk System which had never been officially announced by Nintendo during the Famicom Disk System's lifespan. Multiple sets were leaked in October 2020. The sixth set of information was leaked on October 17, 2020 containing the Git repository for Pokémon Sun and Moon and its updated rereleases, as well as an early version of the Wii's home menu. The seventh set of information was leaked on October 21, 2020, containing two password-protected zip files later found to contain two debug builds of Pokémon Sword dated March 2018 and December 2017, respectively. The builds appear to have been based on Pokémon: Let's Go, Pikachu! and Let's Go, Eevee!, with related assets found within the builds. The eighth set of information was leaked on October 22, 2020 containing another two split password-protected zip files which they were later found to be a May 2018 debug build of Pokémon Sword. A ninth set of data was leaked in December 2020, which was primarily focused on early prototype designs of the Nintendo Switch and a prerelease SDK for the unit. Although the Nintendo Switch name had been finalized by 2014, this early design was closer in power to the 3DS, had a circular display, and connected to televisions through a wireless connection as opposed to a docking station. The leak also contained information on Nintendo's surveillance of and attempts to hire one Belgian hacker who was active in the 3DS homebrew scene. Alongside this, the source code for the Switch boot ROM was leaked, including both hardware revisions. A tenth set of data was leaked in July 2021, containing source code for the Wii Service program, debug and prototype builds of Pokémon X and Y, Pokémon Emerald, Pokémon Diamond and Pearl, Pokémon: Let's Go Eevee!, the full development repository for the cancelled iQue Box (a GameCube-based successor to the iQue and related GameCube files), and internal emails and documents for systems like the Wii and the Nintendo Switch's Game Card reader, including early designs of the Wii Remote. Early images featuring enemies, bosses, NPCs, power-ups, and objects in New Super Mario Bros. were also leaked. These early screenshots include an early Bob-omb that is looking at Mario, and a Balloon Boo with a different mouth. Data The leaked data is estimated to be over two terabytes, though only three gigabytes had been released as of May 4, 2020. The oldest material dates to the late 1980s. The leaks include: Source code related to the N64, GameCube, and Wii consoles. Development repositories for the Game Boy Color Boot ROM and Game Boy Advance BIOS. N64 tech demos that test the system's hardware. A development repository for the canceled NetCard peripheral for the Game Boy Advance. Debugging material, prototypes, source code, and early designs for the Pokémon video games, dating back to the Game Boy installments. A concept for an online MMO Pokémon game, proposed by iQue and based on FireRed and LeafGreen. An official Game Boy emulator. A development repository for the "Ensata" Nintendo DS emulator. Raw graphics to many SNES and Game Boy games. Unreleased games for the NES, Famicom Disk System, Game Boy, and Game Boy Color. Games with source code or assets leaked Super NES BS Zelda no DensetsuF-ZeroThe Legend of Zelda: A Link to the PastPilotwingsSimCity Star Fox Star Fox 2 Super Mario All-Stars Super Mario Kart Super Mario World Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island Stunt Race FX Yoshi's Cookie Yoshi's Safari Nintendo 64 1080° Snowboarding Animal Crossing Dr. Mario 64 F-Zero X NBA Courtside 2: Featuring Kobe Bryant The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask Mario Kart 64 Star Fox 64 Super Mario 64 Wave Race 64 Yoshi's Story Game Boy and Game Boy Color Pokémon Red and Blue Pokémon Yellow Pokémon Gold and Silver Pokémon Crystal The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX Game Boy Advance F-Zero: Maximum Velocity Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire Pokémon Emerald Super Mario Advance Wario Land 4 Nintendo DS New Super Mario Bros. Pokémon Diamond and Pearl Pokémon Platinum Nintendo 3DS Pokémon Sun and Moon Pokémon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon Pokémon X and Y System firmware Nintendo 64 Game Boy Color GameCube iQue Box (cancelled) Game Boy Advance iQue Player iQue NetCard (cancelled) Nintendo DS Wii Nintendo DSi Nintendo 3DS Wii U Nintendo Switch Prototypes and development materials In addition to source code, the July 2020 leak included a number of video game prototypes, as well as cut content. A prototype of Yoshi's Island that does not feature Yoshi as the protagonist was uncovered; its title, Super Donkey, suggests it may have been considered as a new Donkey Kong game before being repurposed for Yoshi. Early sprites from various games, including Pilotwings when it was known as Dragonfly, were also discovered. Among the most notable revelations was the discovery of an official 3D model of Luigi for Super Mario 64, corroborating developer interviewers at the time of the game's release that they had intended to include Luigi as a second co-operative character but had to cut this feature. Another major discovery was level maps intended for an unreleased 64DD expansion pack for The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. These various Zelda assets were assembled by fans to recreate a dungeon that was originally only viewable in pre-release screenshots. The leaks included the software that was necessary to run the Workboy, a canceled Game Boy accessory that would have added personal digital assistant features to the handheld. Only two prototypes of the Workboy were known to exist, and the software from the leak was used to verify the operation of one of the Workboys. In 2021, fans used the Super Mario Advance source code to track down the samples used to compose Super Mario World soundtrack and recreated the music as it would have sounded before being compressed to fit the SNES's limitations. Commentary Video game journalists noted the magnitude of the leaks and labeled them significant and unprecedented. Journalist Alex Donaldson described the leak as "of biblical, rarely heard of proportions", while Lucas White of Siliconera wrote that the leak "could be one of the biggest leaks in the medium's history." Because the source code of various Nintendo consoles was leaked, journalists have noted the various after-effects the leak might have. Gach wrote that the leaked information "would be of great interest to emulation enthusiasts, data miners, and anyone curious about" Nintendo's history. The information could be used to enhance the accuracy of Nintendo console emulators or create clone systems that function identically to the original hardware. Such actions, however, would be illegal, and developers who commit them could face prosecution from Nintendo. For instance, the developers of Dolphin, a GameCube and Wii emulator, stated that using any of the leaked source code would lead to the Dolphin project's immediate shutdown. Nonetheless, the financial effects of the leak on Nintendo are expected to be minimal, as the leaked material is over a decade old. White and Sam Chandler of Shacknews suggested that the leaks would be important for video game preservation efforts. Some preservationists that have looked at the data commented on the meticulous nature that Nintendo used to save its past work, an effort that they wished other video game companies used similar methods as it would greatly assist preservation efforts. However, these preservationists raised moral and ethical questions if they could use the data from the 2020 leaks in a legal manner without knowing their source and legitimacy. Andrew Webster of The Verge found this situation similar to the 2014 Sony Pictures hack, in which "all kinds of salacious internal details" about Sony Pictures were illegally released. See also List of commercial video games with available source code Pokémon Gold and Silver Windows XP source code leak References 2020 in video gaming April 2020 events May 2020 events July 2020 events September 2020 events October 2020 events Data breaches Hacking in the 2020s Nintendo 4chan Internet leaks

16489799

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO/IEC%2018000

ISO/IEC 18000

ISO/IEC 18000 is an international standard that describes a series of diverse RFID technologies, each using a unique frequency range. ISO/IEC 18000 consists of the following parts, under the general title Information technology — Radio frequency identification for item management: Part 1: Reference architecture and definition of parameters to be standardized Part 2: Parameters for air interface communications below 135 kHz Part 3: Parameters for air interface communications at 13,56 MHz Part 4: Parameters for air interface communications at 2,45 GHz Part 6: Parameters for air interface communications at 860 MHz to 960 MHz Part 7: Parameters for active air interface communications at 433 MHz The ISO/IEC 18000-6 is a large document. In 2012 it was split into 5 parts for publication: Part 6: Parameters for air interface communications at 860 MHz to 960 MHz General Part 61: Parameters for air interface communications at 860 MHz to 960 MHz Type A Part 62: Parameters for air interface communications at 860 MHz to 960 MHz Type B Part 63: Parameters for air interface communications at 860 MHz to 960 MHz Type C Part 64: Parameters for air interface communications at 860 MHz to 960 MHz Type D The various parts of ISO/IEC 18000 describe air interface communication at different frequencies in order to be able to utilize the different physical behaviors. The various parts of ISO/IEC 18000 are developed by ISO/IEC JTC1 SC31, "Automatic Data Capture Techniques". Conformance test methods for the various parts of ISO/IEC 18000 are defined in the corresponding parts of ISO/IEC 18047. (See RFID testing) Performance test methods are defined in ISO/IEC 18046. (See RFID testing) Notes References ISO/IEC 18000-1:2008 Information technology -- Radio frequency identification for item management -- Part 1: Reference architecture and definition of parameters to be standardized ISO/IEC 18000-2:2009 Information technology --item management -- Part 2: Parameters for air interface communications below 135 kHz ISO/IEC 18000-3:2010 Information technology -- Radio frequency identification for item management -- Part 3: Parameters for air interface communications at 13,56 MHz ISO/IEC 18000-4:2015 Information technology -- Radio frequency identification for item management -- Part 4: Parameters for air interface communications at 2,45 GHz ISO/IEC 18000-6:2013 Information technology -- Radio frequency identification for item management -- Part 6: Parameters for air interface communications at 860 MHz to 960 MHz General ISO/IEC 18000-61:2012 Information technology -- Radio frequency identification for item management -- Part 61: Parameters for air interface communications at 860 MHz to 960 MHz Type A ISO/IEC 18000-62:2012 Information technology -- Radio frequency identification for item management -- Part 62: Parameters for air interface communications at 860 MHz to 960 MHz Type B ISO/IEC 18000-63:2015 Information technology -- Radio frequency identification for item management -- Part 63: Parameters for air interface communications at 860 MHz to 960 MHz Type C ISO/IEC 18000-64:2012 Information technology -- Radio frequency identification for item management -- Part 61: Parameters for air interface communications at 860 MHz to 960 MHz Type D ISO/IEC 18000-7:2014 Information technology -- Radio frequency identification for item management -- Part 7: Parameters for active air interface communications at 433 MHz ISO/IEC 18046-1:2011 Information technology -- Radio frequency identification device performance test methods -- Part 1: Test methods for system performance ISO/IEC 18046-3:2012 Information technology -- Radio frequency identification device performance test methods -- Part 3: Test methods for tag performance ISO/IEC 18047-2:2012 Information technology -- Radio frequency identification device conformance test methods -- Part 2: Test methods for air interface communications below 135 kHz ISO/IEC TR 18047-3:2011 Information technology -- Radio frequency identification device conformance test methods -- Part 3: Test methods for air interface communications at 13,56 MHz ISO/IEC TR 18047-4:2004 Information technology -- Radio frequency identification device conformance test methods -- Part 4: Test methods for air interface communications at 2,45 GHz ISO/IEC TR 18047-6:2012 Information technology -- Radio frequency identification device conformance test methods -- Part 6: Test methods for air interface communications at 860 MHz to 960 MHz ISO/IEC TR 18047-7:2010 Information technology -- Radio frequency identification device conformance test methods -- Part 7: Test methods for active air interface communications at 433 MHz Radio-frequency identification 18000

11522393

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OCS%20Inventory

OCS Inventory

Open Computer and Software Inventory Next Generation (OCS inventory NG) is free software that enables users to inventory IT assets. OCS-NG collects information about the hardware and software of networked machines running the OCS client program ("OCS Inventory Agent"). OCS can visualize the inventory through a web interface. Furthermore, OCS includes the capability of deploying applications on computers according to search criteria. Agent-side IpDiscover makes it possible to discover the entirety of networked computers and devices. History The open-source OCS Inventory NG project started in late 2005 and produced its first release version of OCS Inventory in early 2007. Since version 1.0rc3, most of OCS Inventory functionality can be adapted or extended via a module system. Operation The dialogue between OCS client machines and the server depends on the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). The software formats data in XML. The management server uses Apache, MySQL and Perl. OCS runs on multiple platforms: under Unixes and under Microsoft Windows (95 or later). A web-interface written in PHP offers consultation of the inventory, user-rights management, and technical support features. Agents In order to collect detailed information, one can install agents on the client machines in the inventory. Developers have made client agents available for: Microsoft Windows Linux Mac OS X Sun Solaris IBM AIX FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD HP-UX Android Relation to other software OCS Inventory can be used to feed the manager of GLPI and thus offers part of an ITAM solution. Samanage is a cloud-based, commercial ITAM, that has used modified OCS-NG agent as a data source. License OCS Inventory consists of free software published under GNU GPL v2. The developers own the copyright. References External links The official site of OCS Inventory GLPI Project OCS and BPM Free software programmed in Perl

62753494

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia%20C1

Nokia C1

The Nokia C1 is an Android Go budget smartphone with 3G network speed, announced on December 11, 2019 by Nokia brand licensee HMD Global. Specifications Two cameras and two flashes The smartphone has two, front and rear, 5 megapixel (MP) cameras. Nokia C1 has also two, front and rear, flashes. Display The smartphone has 5.4" (5.4 inches) display. Battery, radio and storage The smartphone has 2,500 milliampere hour (mAh) removable battery, 3.5 mm audio jack, FM radio, 16 Gigabit (GB) of storage, and a microSD memory card slot. Operating system Nokia C1 has Android 9 Pie (Go Edition) operating system with random-access memory (RAM) 1 GB and Quad Core 1.3 Gigahertz (GHz) processor as CPU. Advertisement Advertisement slogan for the Nokia C1 was "Level Up", as Nokia explaining, the smartphone was brilliant for getting selfies with the second front camera, as well as getting video calls, and watching YouTube with bigger, 5.4" display. As HMD Global spokesman Juho Sarvikas said, "Millions of consumers across markets in Africa, Middle East and APAC will upgrade from a feature phone to their first smartphone. Nokia C1 is a smartphone they can trust — bringing quality experiences at an affordable price with 3G connectivity." Successor Nokia has launched the successor to the Nokia C1 smartphone with the name Nokia C1 Plus in 2020 which comes with Android 10 Go Edition and has other upgraded specifications including a 5.45-inch HD+ 18:9 in-cell display (1520 x 720 pixels), a 1.4 GHz quad-core processor, 1GB of LPDDR3 RAM, 16GB storage, McroSD card expandable storage up to 128GB, single / Dual SIM variants, a 5-megapixel rear camera with LED flash, a 5-megapixel front camera with LED flash, a 2500mAh removable battery and supports 4G VoLTE, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.2, GPS, micro USB and 3.5mm headphone jack connectivity options. It measures 149.1 × 71.2 × 8.75mm and weighs 146 grams. References Nokia Android smartphones Android (operating system) devices Mobile phones introduced in 2019 Nokia phones by series Mobile phones with user-replaceable battery

54083259

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft%20Dynamics%20365%20Finance

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance is a Microsoft enterprise resource planning (ERP) system for medium to large organisations. The software, part of the Dynamics 365 product line, was first on general release in November 2016, initially branded as Dynamics 365 for Operations. In July, 2017, it was rebranded to Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations. At the same time, Microsoft rebranded their business software suite for small businesses (Business Edition, Financials) to Finance and Operations, Business Edition, however, the two applications are based on completely different platforms. History 1998 - Axapta, a collaboration between IBM and Danish Damgaard Data, released in the Danish and U.S. markets. 2000 - Damgaard Data merged with Navision Software A/S to form NavisionDamgaard, later named Navision A/S. Released Axapta 2.5. 2002 - Microsoft acquires Navision A/S. Released Axapta 3.0. 2006 - Released Microsoft Dynamics AX 4.0. 2008 - Released Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009. 2011 - Released Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012. 2016 - Released Microsoft Dynamics AX 7. Later rebranded to Dynamics 365 for Operations. 2017 - Rebranded to Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations, Enterprise Edition (not to be mistaken with Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations Business Edition, which is based on former Microsoft Dynamics NAV). 2018 - Rebranded to Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations 2018 - The Human Resources Module became Dynamics 365 for Talent, now Dynamics 365 Human Resources. 2020 - Rebranded and split into two products: Dynamics 365 Finance Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management References External links Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations official webpage Business software Cloud applications ERP software Microsoft cloud services Microsoft Dynamics Microsoft software

35224

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NS32000

NS32000

The NS32000, sometimes known as the 32k, is a series of microprocessors produced by National Semiconductor. The first member of the family came to market in 1982, briefly known as the 16032 before becoming the 32016. It was the first 32-bit general-purpose microprocessor on the market. However, the 32016 contained a large number of bugs and often could not be run at its rated speed. These problems, and the presence of the similar Motorola 68000 which had been available for some time, led to little use in the market. Several improved versions followed, including 1985's 32032 which was essentially a bug-fixed 32016 with an external 32-bit data bus. While it offered about 50% better speed than the 32016, it was outperformed by the 32-bit Motorola 68020, released a year prior. The 32532, released in 1987, outperformed the contemporary Motorola 68030 by almost two times, but by this time most interest in microprocessors had turned to RISC platforms and this otherwise excellent design saw almost no use as well. National was working on further improvements in the 32732, but eventually gave up attempting to compete in the central processing unit (CPU) space. Instead, the basic 32000 architecture was combined with several support systems and relaunched as the Swordfish microcontroller. This had some success in the market before it was replaced by the CompactRISC architecture in mid-1990s. Design concept The NS32000 series traces its history to an effort by National Semiconductor to produce a single-chip implementation of the VAX-11 architecture. The VAX is well known for its highly "orthogonal" instruction set architecture (ISA), in which any instruction can be applied to any data. For instance, an ADD instruction might add the contents of two processor registers, or one register against a value in memory, two values in memory, or use the register as an offset against an address. This flexibility was considered the paragon of design in the era of complex instruction set computers (CISC). National took DEC to court in California to ensure the legality of the design, but when DEC had the lawsuit moved to Massachusetts, DEC's home state, the lawsuit was dropped and the Series 32000 architecture was developed instead. Although the new instruction set architecture was not VAX-11 compatible, it did retain its highly "orthogonal" design philosophy. That is, every instruction could be used with any type of data. Articles of the time also referred to this as "symmetrical". The original processor family consisted of the NS16032 CPU and a NS16C032 low-power variant, both having a 16-bit data path and so requiring two machine cycles to load a single 32-bit word. Both could be used with the NS16082 memory management unit, which provided 24-bit virtual memory support for up to 16 MB physical memory. The NS16008 was a cut-down version with an 8-bit external data path and no virtual memory support, which had a reduced pin count and was thus somewhat easier to implement. At the same time, National also announced two future versions, the NS32032 and NS32132. The former was essentially a version of the NS16032 with a 32-bit external data bus, allowing it to read data at twice the rate. This was project to be released in 1984. The NS32132 was a version with a 29-bit internal addresses and 32-bit external, allowing it to address a complete 4 GB of memory. It was to be released in 1985. All of these could also be used with the NS16081 floating point unit. Architecture The processors have 8 general-purpose 32-bit registers, plus a series of special-purpose registers: Frame pointer Stack pointer (one each for user and supervisor modes) Static base register, for referencing global variables Link base register for dynamically linked modules (object orientation) Program counter A typical processor status register, with a low-order user byte and a high-order system byte. (Additional system registers not listed). The instruction set is very much in the CISC model, with 2-operand instructions, memory-to-memory operations, flexible addressing modes, and variable-length byte-aligned instruction encoding. Addressing modes can involve up to two displacements and two memory indirections per operand as well as scaled indexing, making the longest conceivable instruction 23 bytes. The actual number of instructions is much lower than that of contemporary RISC processors. Unlike some other processors, autoincrement of the base register is not provided; the only exception is a "top of stack" addressing modes that pop sources and push destinations. Uniquely, the size of the displacement is encoded in its most significant bits: 0, 10 and 11 preceded 7-, 14- and 30-bit signed displacements. (Although the processors are otherwise consistently little-endian, displacements in the instruction stream are stored in big-endian order). General-purpose operands are specified using a 5-bit field. To this can be added an index byte (specifying the index register and 5-bit base address), and up to 2 variable-length displacements per operand. 32016 The first chip in the series was originally referred to as the 16032, but later renamed 32016 to emphasize its 32-bit internals. This contrasts it with its primary competitor in this space, 1979's Motorola 68000 (68k). The 68k used 32-bit instructions and registers, but its arithmetic logic unit (ALU), which controls much of the overall processing task, was only 16-bit. This meant it had to cycle 32-bit data through the ALU twice to complete an operation. In contrast, the NS32000 has a 32-bit ALU, so that 16-bit and 32-bit instructions take the same time to complete. The 32016 first shipped in 1982 in a 46-pin DIP package. It may have been the first 32-bit chip to reach mass production and sale (at least according to National's marketing). In a report in a June 1983 publication, however, it was remarked that National was "promising production quantities this summer" of 16032 parts, having been "shipping sample quantities for several months", with the floating point co-processor sampling "this month". Although a 1982 introduction post-dates the 68k by about two years, the 68k was not yet being widely used in the market and the 32016 generated significant interest. Unfortunately, the early versions were filled with bugs and could rarely be run at its rated speed. By 1984, after two years, the errata list still contained items specifying uncontrollable conditions that would result in the processor coming to a halt, forcing a reset. The original product roadmap envisaged 6 MHz and 10 MHz parts during 1983 and 12 MHz and 14 MHz parts during 1984. However, press reports in 1984 indicated difficulties in keeping to this roadmap, with it reportedly having taken five months to increase the frequency of the parts from 6 MHz to 8 MHz, and with representatives estimating a further "two, three or five months" to increase the frequency to 10 MHz. Two unspecified chips of the five in the chipset were reported to be the cause of these problems. An early 1985 article about the 32016-based Whitechapel MG-1 workstation noted that the 32081 memory management unit was "suffering from bugs" and had been situated on its own board providing hardware fixes. In 1986, Texas Instruments announced a "fully qualified 10 MHz TI32000 32-bit microprocessor chip set" consisting of the TI32016 CPU and TI32082 memory management unit as 48-pin devices, the TI32201 timing control unit and TI32081 floating-point unit as 24-pin devices, and the TI32202 interrupt control unit as a 40-pin device, with the five-device chipset "priced at $289 in 100-unit quantities". National changed its design methodology to make it possible to get the part into production and a design system based on the language "Z" was co-developed with the University of Tel-Aviv, close to the "NSC" design centre in Herzliya, Israel. The "Z" language is similar to today's Verilog and VHDL, but has a Pascal-like syntax and is optimized for two-phase clock designs. However, by the times the fruit of these efforts were being felt in the design, numerous 68k machines were already on the market, notably the Apple Macintosh, and the 32016 never saw widespread use. The 32016 has a 16-bit external data bus, a 24-bit external address bus, and a full 32-bit instruction set. It also includes a coprocessor interface, allowing coprocessors such as FPUs and MMUs to be attached as peers to the main processor. The MMU is based on demand paging Virtual Memory, which is the most unusual feature compared to the segmented memory approach used by the competition, and has become the standard for how microprocessors are designed today. The architecture supports an instruction restart mechanism on a page fault, which is much cleaner than the Motorola approach to dump the internal status on a page fault, which has to be read back, before the instruction is continued. While often compared to the 68k's instruction set, this was rejected by NSC employees; one of the key marketing phrases of the time was "Elegance is Everything", comparing the highly orthogonal Series 32000 to the "kludge". One key difference is Motorola's use of address registers and data registers, with instructions only working on either address or data registers. The Series 32000 has general-purpose registers, described as "address-data" registers in technical documentation. 32032 The 32032 was introduced in 1984. It is almost completely compatible with the 32016, but features a 32-bit data bus (although keeping the 24-bit address bus) for somewhat faster performance. There was also a 32008, a 32016 with a data bus cut down to 8-bits wide for low-cost applications. It is philosophically similar to the MC68008, and equally unpopular. National also produced a series of related support chips like the NS32081 Floating Point Unit (FPU), NS32082 Memory Management Units (MMUs), NS32203 Direct Memory Access (DMA) and NS32202 Interrupt Controllers. With the full set plus memory chips and peripherals, it was feasible to build a 32-bit computer system capable of supporting modern multi-tasking operating systems, something that had previously been possible only on expensive minicomputers and mainframes. 32332, 32532 In 1985, National Semi introduced the NS32332, a much-improved version of the 32032. From the datasheet, the enhancements include "the addition of new dedicated addressing hardware (consisting of a high speed ALU, a barrel shifter and an address register), a very efficient increased (20 bytes) instruction prefetch queue, a new system/memory bus interface/protocol, increased efficiency slave processor protocol and finally enhancements of microcode." There was also a new NS32382 MMU, NS32381 FPU and the (very rare) NS32310 interface to a Weitek FPA. The aggregate performance boost of the NS32332 from these enhancements only made it 50 percent faster than the original NS32032, and therefore less than that of the main competitor, the MC68020. National Semi introduced the NS32532 in early 1987. Running at 20-, 25- & 30-MHz, it was a complete redesign of the internal implementation with a five-stage pipeline, an integrated Cache/MMU and improved memory performance, making it about twice as performant as the competing MC68030 and i80386. At this stage RISC architectures were starting to make inroads, and the main competitors became the now equally dead AM29000 and MC88000, which was considered faster than the NS32532. For floating-point, the NS32532 used the existing NS32381 or the NS32580 interface to a Weitek FPA. The NS32532 was the basis of the PC532, a "public domain" hardware project, and one of the few to produce a useful machine running a real operating system (in this case, Minix or NetBSD). The semi-mythical NS32732 (sometimes called NS32764), originally envisioned as the high-performance successor to the NS32532. This program never came to the market. Swordfish A derivative of the NS32732 called Swordfish was aimed at embedded systems and arrived in about 1990. Swordfish has an integrated floating point unit, timers, DMA controllers and other peripherals not normally available in microprocessors. It has a 64-bit data bus and is internally overclocked from 25 to 50 MHz. The chief architect of the Swordfish is Donald Alpert, who went on to manage the architectural team designing the Pentium. The Pentium internal microarchitecture is similar to the preceding Swordfish. The focus of Swordfish was high-end Postscript laser printers, and performance was exceptional at the time. Competing solutions could render about one new page per minute, but the Swordfish demo unit would print out sixteen pages per minute, limited only by the laser-engine mechanics. On each page it would print out how much time it was idling, waiting for the engine to complete. The Swordfish die is huge, and it was eventually decided to drop the project altogether, and the product never went into production. The lessons from the Swordfish were used for the CompactRISC designs. In the beginning, there were both a CompactRISC-32 and a CompactRISC-16, designed using "Z". National never brought a chip to the market with the CompactRISC-32 core. National's Research department worked with the University of Michigan to develop the first synthesizable Verilog Model, and Verilog was used from the CR16C and onwards. Others Versions of the older NS32000 line for low-cost products such as the NS32CG16, NS32CG160, NS32FV16, NS32FX161, NS32FX164 and the NS32AM160/1/3, all based on the NS302CG16 were introduced from 1987 and onwards. These processors had some success in the laser printer and fax market, despite intense competition from AMD and Intel RISC chips. Especially the NS32CG16 should be noted. The key difference between this and the NS32C016 is the integration of the expensive TCU (Timing Control Unit) which generates the needed two-phase clock from a crystal, and the removal of the floating point coprocessor support, which freed up microcode space for the useful BitBLT instruction set, which significantly improves the performance in laser printer operations, making this 60,000 transistor chip faster than the 200,000 transistor MC68020. The NS32CG160 is the CG16 with timers and DMA peripherals, while the NS32FV/FX16x chips have extra DSP functionality on top of the CG16 BitBLT core for the Fax/Answering Machine market. They are complemented by the NS32532 based NS32GX32 later. Unlike the previous chips, there was no extra hardware. The NS32GX32 is the NS32532 without the MMU sold at an attractive price for embedded system. In the beginning, this was just a remarked chip. It is unclear if the chip was redesigned for lower-cost production. Datasheets exist for an NS32132, apparently designed for multiprocessor systems. This is the NS32032 extended with an arbiter. The bus usage of the NS32032 is about 50 percent, owing to its very compact instruction set, or its very slow pipeline as competitors would phrase it. Indeed, one suggested application of the NS32032 was as part of a "fault-tolerant transaction system" employing "two 32032s in parallel and comparing results on alternate memory cycles to detect soft errors". The NS32132 chip allows a pair of CPUs to be connected to the same memory system, without much change of the PCB. Prototype systems were built by Diab Data AB in Sweden, but did not perform as well as the single-CPU MC68020 system designed by the same company. Machines using the NS32000 series Acorn Cambridge Workstation – NS32016 (with 6502 host) BBC Micro – NS32016 Second Processor Canon LBP-8 Mark III Laser Printer – NS32CG16 Compupro 32016 – NS32016 S-100 Card Encore Multimax – NS32032, NS32332 and NS32532 Multiprocessor E-mu Systems Emax – NS32008 E-mu Systems Emulator III – NS32016 ETH Zürich Ceres workstation – NS32032 ETH Zürich Ceres-2 workstation – NS32532 ETH Zürich Ceres-3 workstation – NS32GX32 General Robotics Corp. Python – NS32032 & N32016 Q-Bus card Heurikon VME532 – NS32532 VME Card (with cache) IBM RT PC – Some early models used the NS32081 FPU as a coprocessor for the IBM ROMP microprocessor Intermec (previously A-Tech and then UBI) Label Printer – NS32CG16 Labtam Unix System NS32032 and NS32332 CPUs Lauterbach Incircuit Emulator ICE (System Controller 32-bit, first version in 1996, max 16 MB ZIP20-RAM, Z180 to serve Ethernet) National Semiconductor ICM-3216 – NS32016 National Semiconductor ICM-332-1 – NS32332 w/ NS32016 I/O processor National Semiconductor SYS32/20 – NS32016 PC add-on board w/ Unix Opus – NS16032 PC Add-On Board PC532 – NS32532 Sequent Balance – NS32016, NS32032 and NS32332 multiprocessor Siemens PC-MX2 – NS32016 Siemens MX300-05/-10/-15/-30 – NS32332 (−05/-10) or NS32532 (−15/-30) under SINIX (MX300-55 and later use i486) Siemens MX500-75/-85 – NS32532 (2-8x CPUs; Sequent Boards / MX500-90 uses 2-12x i486) Symmetric Computer Systems S/375 – NS32016, used to cross-develop 386BSD Syte Information Technology – Unix graphics workstation Tektronix 6130 & 6250 Workstation – NS32016 and NS32032 Tolerant Systems Eternity Series – NS32032 w/ NS32016 I/O processor Trinity College Workstation – NS32332 Teklogix 9020 network controller – NS32332 Teklogix 9200 network controller – NS32CG160 Whitechapel MG-1 – NS32016 Whitechapel MG200 – NS32332 Legacy In June 2015, Udo Möller released a complete Verilog implementation of an NS32000 processor on OpenCores. Fully software-compatible with an NS32532 CPU with N32381 FPU, it is significantly faster when implemented on an FPGA, both operating at a higher clock rate and using fewer cycles per instruction. References Trevor G. Marshall, George Scolaro and David L. Rand: The Definicon DSI-32 Coprocessor. Micro Cornucopia, Aug/September 1985, Trevor G. Marshall, George Scolaro and David L. Rand: The DSI-32 Coprocessor Board. Part 1, BYTE, August 1985, pp 120–136; Part 2, BYTE, September 1985, p 116. External links Datasheets Data book NS32000 family (1986) NS32532 NS32C032 NS32381 National Semiconductor's Series 32000 Family, an excellent "fan site" and home of the M32632 FPGA clone. Instruction set architectures NS320xx 32-bit microprocessors

47382502

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takashi%20Nishiyama

Takashi Nishiyama

Takashi Nishiyama (Japanese: 西山隆志), sometimes credited as Piston Takashi, Nishiyama or T. Nishiyama, is a Japanese video game designer, director and producer, who worked for Irem, Capcom and SNK, before founding his own company Dimps. He is best known for his work on martial arts action games, designing the early 1984 beat 'em up Kung-Fu Master before he went on to create several fighting game franchises including Street Fighter, Fatal Fury and The King of Fighters during the late 1980s to early 1990s. He started his career at Irem, where he developed arcade games such as the 1982 side-scrolling action game Moon Patrol and the 1984 beat 'em up Kung-Fu Master. At Capcom, he designed the 1986 beat 'em ups Trojan and Avengers, before creating the original Street Fighter in 1987. He then worked at SNK, where he helped develop the Neo Geo system, created the Fatal Fury and The King of Fighters series of fighting games, and worked on Art of Fighting and the run-and-gun shooter series Metal Slug. He is considered the true grandfather of the fighting and beat 'em up genres. Career Takashi Nishiyama started his career at Irem. He worked on the game design of the 1982 scrolling shooter Moon Patrol, one of the first games with parallax scrolling. He was also the designer of Kung-Fu Master (1984), called Spartan X in Japan. It is based on two Hong Kong martial arts films: the Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung film Wheels on Meals (1984), called Spartan X in Japan, and especially the Bruce Lee film Game of Death (1972). Kung-Fu Master is considered the first beat 'em up game, becoming the prototype for most subsequent martial arts games in the late 1980s. The NES port, Kung Fu, was programmed by a Nintendo team under the direction of Shigeru Miyamoto, later influencing his work on Super Mario Bros. (1985). During the development of Kung-Fu Master, Nishiyama was invited to join Capcom by its founder Kenzo Tsujimoto, after he had left Irem. He eventually decided to leave Irem and join Capcom before the game was complete. Following its release, Nishiyama was hired by Capcom. He designed an arcade successor for Capcom, Trojan (1986), which evolved the basic gameplay concepts of Kung-Fu Master. The NES port included a one-on-one fighting mode, for the first time in a Capcom game. He then came up with the concept for a game centered entirely around the boss fights in Kung-Fu Master. This led to his creation of the Street Fighter fighting game franchise. Along with Hiroshi Matsumoto, he directed the original Street Fighter (1987). He created the special moves for Ryu called "Hadouken", which he says was inspired by an energy missile attack from the 1970s anime series Space Battleship Yamato. He then left Capcom and did not return to work on the sequel Street Fighter II: The World Warrior. Nishiyama then joined SNK, after they had invited him to join the company. His first project there was the Neo Geo system, which he helped develop; he proposed the initial concept of an arcade system that uses ROM cartridges like a game console, and also proposed a home console version of the system. His reasons for these proposals was to make the system cheaper for markets such as China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Southeast Asia, Central America, and South America, where it was difficult to sell dedicated arcade games due to piracy. Nishiyama then created the Fatal Fury fighting game franchise, as a spiritual successor to the original Street Fighter. He also worked on the fighting game franchises Art of Fighting and The King of Fighters, as well as the run-and-gun shooter series Metal Slug. He then left SNK and founded his own game development company, Dimps. He is currently the president of Dimps. Games Moon Patrol (1982) (game designer) Kung-Fu Master (1984) (game designer) Section Z (1985) (game designer) Trojan (1986) (game designer) Legendary Wings (1986) (director) Mega Man (1987) (producer) Avengers (1987) (director) Street Fighter (1987) (director) Last Duel: Inter Planet War 2012 (1988) (director) Mad Gear / LED Storm (1989) (game planner) Ghost Pilots (1991) (executive producer) Fatal Fury: King of Fighters (1991) (director) Mutation Nation (1992) (special thanks) Fatal Fury: Legend of the Hungry Wolf (1992) (producer, TV special) The King of Fighters '94 (1994) (producer) Fatal Fury 3: Road to the Final Victory (1995) (producer) Real Bout Fatal Fury (1995) (producer) Real Bout Fatal Fury Special (1997) (producer) The King of Fighters '97 (1997) (producer) Metal Slug 2 (1998) (producer) The King of Fighters '98: The Slugfest (1998)(producer) Samurai Shodown: Warriors Rage (1999) (executive producer) The King of Fighters '99 (1999) (producer) Metal Slug X (1999) (producer) Metal Slug 3 (2000) (producer) Star Ocean: Till the End of Time (2003) (item designer) Street Fighter IV (2008) (executive producer) References External links Dimps Digital Innovator Art of Fighting Capcom people Fatal Fury Irem Japanese video game designers Japanese video game directors Japanese video game producers Metal Slug The King of Fighters SNK Street Fighter

24791081

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pronto%20Software

Pronto Software

Pronto Software is an Australian Enterprise Resource Planning software vendor. Originally trading under the name “Prometheus Software”, the company was sold to Sausage Software in 1999. The name was then changed to 'Pronto Software' following a management buyout in 2002. Pronto Xi is Pronto Software's main product. It has modules for financials, retail, CRM, supply chain management, warehouse management, manufacturing and facilities management. Pronto Software's 1500 customers include RSEA, Anvil Mining, Hobart Canada, Parksite, Retail Prodigy Group (Nike) and Herschend Family Entertainment. Pronto Xi 750 is the current product release. History 1976 Pronto founded as Prometheus Software Development in Sydney, Australia 1984 Launches suite of PRONTO Enterprise Management tools. Expands operations in Melbourne and Brisbane 1987 Installed first site 1999 Acquisition by Sausage Software 2002 Establishes Pronto Software after a management buyout 2005 Launches PRONTO-Xi Phase 4 2006 Pronto Software named The Age/D&B Victorian Business of the Year. Launches PRONTO-Xi Phase 5 2007 Awarded IBM’s Reseller of the Year 2008 Won the D&B/The Age Business Awards (IT) and AIIA iAwards for Alert Intelligence 2009 Won the Australian Business Awards for Enterprise. Surpassed $50 million in turn over. Launches PRONTO-Xi Phase 6. 2011 Won the 2011 IBM Choice Award for Midmarket Leadership. Launches Pronto Xi Dimensions. 2015 Awarded 2015 ABA100 Winner in The Australian Business Awards for Best Software Product. 2016 ABA100 Winner for Cloud Innovation in The Australian Business Awards. 2016 Pronto launches digital consultancy Technology Pronto Xi runs on Linux (RedHat), UNIX (AIX or Solaris), or Microsoft Windows Server 2008. In Unix/Linux deployments, users access the application through a proprietary thin client application which connects to the server using SSH, Telnet, or SSL encrypted Telnet. Recent years have seen the introduction of a web client that is the basis of future development. Supported databases are Informix Dynamic Server, Oracle, or SQL Server. Technology partners Pronto Software is partnered with IBM, Microsoft and Motorola. References Australian brands ERP software companies Software companies of Australia

38553402

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great%20Lakes%20University%20of%20Kisumu

Great Lakes University of Kisumu

Great Lakes University of Kisumu (or GLUK) is a Kenyan private chartered university. The idea of establishing the Great Lakes University of Kisumu originated in the Tropical Institute of Community Health and Development (TICH) in Africa, which spearheaded the application for authority to operate as a university. The establishment of TICH in 1998 was inspired by a number of sources expressing the need for a formal course in Community Based Health Care leading to a recognized academic qualification. Academics GLUK runs on a tri-semester academic calendar with admissions in January, May and September. Holiday classes are conducted during April, August, and December – on a ministry-based learning program. School of Nursing and Midwifery Department of Nursing Bachelor of Science in Nursing (Full-time) - 12 trimesters Bachelor of Science in Nursing (Upgrading) - 9 trimesters Department of Midwifery Masters of Science in Nursing (Part-time) - 6 trimesters School of Clinical Medicine and Allied Sciences Department of Clinical Medicine Diploma in Clinical Medicine, Surgery and Community Health - 12 trimesters Bachelor of Clinical Medicine and Community Health - 12 trimesters Bachelor of Clinical Medicine and Community Health (Upgrading) - 9 trimesters School of Public Health Masters: Masters in Community Health and Development: Full-time: 5 semesters Masters in Community Health and Development: Part-time (Saturday-Sunday): 8 semesters Masters in Community Health and Development: Distance Learning: 7 semesters Higher Diploma: Higher Diploma in Community Health Development: Full-time: 2 Semesters Higher Diploma in Community Health and Development: Part-time (Saturday-Sunday): 4 Semesters Higher Diploma in Community Health and Development: Distance Learning: 3 Semesters Bachelors: Bachelors in Community Health and Development: Full-time (Direct Entry): 8 Semesters Bachelors in Community Health and Development: Full-time (Upgraders): 5 Semesters Bachelors in Community Health and Development: Distance Learning (Upgraders): 6 Semesters Bachelors in Community Health and Development: Part-time (Upgraders) (Saturday-Sunday) : 6 Semesters Bachelor of Science in Community Nutrition: Full-time (Direct Entry): 8 Semesters Bachelor of Science in Community Nutrition: Part-time (Upgraders) (Saturday-Sunday) : 6 Semesters Bachelor of Science in Community Nutrition: Distance Learning (Upgraders): 5 Semesters Diplomas: Diploma in Community Health and Development: Full Time (Direct Entry): 6 Semesters Diploma in Community Health and Development: Part-time (Post Basic) (Saturday-Sunday) : 3 Semesters Diploma in Community Health and Development: Evening classes - 1730-2030 hrs - (Post Basic): 3 semesters Diploma in Community Nutrition: Full-time (Direct Entry): 4 semesters Certificates: Certificate in Community Nutrition: Full-time (Direct Entry): 4 Semester Certificate in Community Health and Development: 4 Semesters Short courses: International Health Health care in complex, chronic emergency situations Health economics, financing and poverty reduction Health, ethics and human rights Reproductive and child health Health policy analysis and development. Communication and Technology Advanced Research Methods School of Education School of Business Administration Faculty of Arts and Science The Faculty of Arts and Science departments are: Department of Agribusiness Management Department of Theology and CRE Department of Information Technology Department of Hospitality and Tourism Department of Business Administration Department of Education Department of Agribusiness Management The department focuses on improving agribusiness innovations based on existing technologies. Agriculture is the major source of livelihood to 80% of the Kenyan population. It contributes 25% of GDP and 70% of Kenyan's employment. Agribusiness encompasses the supply of agricultural inputs, the production and transformation of agricultural products, and the distribution of goods to consumers. Department of Pastoral Theology Great Lakes University of Kisumu (GLUK) is an interdenominational evangelical Christian institution. It is a product of the Tropical Institute of Community Health and Development. The Department of Theology draws students mainly from Christian evangelical churches in Africa and beyond. Courses Certificate in Theology (2 Semesters-Minimum units 12): KCSE with a mean grade of C- or its equivalent Diploma in Theology (4 Semesters-Minimum units 24): KCSE with a mean grade of C or its equivalent Bachelor of Theology (8 Semesters-Minimum Units 48): KCSE with a mean grade of C+ or Diploma in Theology with distinction or credit from a recognized theological college. Bachelor of Theology - Christian Counseling Option Bachelor of Theology - Chaplaincy Studies Option Bachelor of Arts – Christian leadership option Masters in Theology (6 Semesters) (offered in collaboration with the Great Lakes University of Goma-DRC) Areas of teaching include: Practical Ministry - Systematic Theology Church History - Biblical Studies (OT emphasis or NT emphasis) Masters of Arts in Christian Ministry - with the following options: Practical Ministry - Leadership Christian Counseling Department of Community Nutrition The department is concerned with planning foods and supplements for maintenance of individual and community health (infancy, childhood, adulthood and old age), and during different illnesses. It also deals with the assessment of nutritional status of individuals and communities. Graduates of community nutrition program are employed in hospitals, hotels, universities, schools and other catering facilities. They are also self-employed as consultants. Department of Information Technology The department addresses the need for Africa to harness IT for increased productivity and effectiveness in all sectors of the economy. Tropical Institute of Community Health and Development (TICH) The institute focuses on the health and development of disadvantaged communities. Programs Masters: Masters in Community Health and Development : Full-time: 5 semesters Masters in Community Health and Development: Part-time (Saturday-Sunday) : 8 semesters Masters in Community Health and Development : Distance Learning: 7 semesters Higher Diploma': Higher Diploma in Community Health Development : Full-time: 2 Semesters Higher Diploma in Community Health and Development: Part-time (Saturday-Sunday): 4 Semesters Higher Diploma in Community Health and Development : Distance Learning: 3 Semesters Bachelors: Bachelors in Community Health and Development: Full-time (Direct Entry): 8 Semesters Bachelors in Community Health and Development: Full-time (Upgraders): 5 Semesters Bachelors in Community Health and Development: Distance Learning (Upgraders): 6 Semesters Bachelors in Community Health and Development: Part-time (Upgraders) (Saturday-Sunday) : 6 Semesters Bachelor of Science in Community Nutrition: Full-time (Direct Entry): 8 Semesters Bachelor of Science in Community Nutrition: Part-time (Upgraders) (Saturday-Sunday) : 6 Semesters Bachelor of Science in Community Nutrition: Distance Learning (Upgraders): 5 Semesters Diplomas: Diploma in Community Health and Development: Full Time (Direct Entry): 6 Semesters Diploma in Community Health and Development: Part-time (Post Basic) (Saturday-Sunday) : 3 Semesters Diploma in Community Health and Development: Evening classes - 1730-2030Hrs- (Post Basic): 3 semesters Diploma in Community Nutrition: Full-time (Direct Entry): 4 semesters Certificates: Certificate in Community Nutrition: Full-time (Direct Entry): 4 Semester Certificate in Community Health and Development: 4 Semesters Short courses: International Health Health care in complex, chronic emergency situations Health economics, financing and poverty reduction Health, ethics and human rights Reproductive and child health Health policy analysis and development. Communication and Technology Advanced Research Methods Research The Tropical Institute of Community Health and Development (TICH) engages in research in- and outside the region. In improving the performance of district health systems in Kenya, the institute was involved in spearheading the development of the community strategy for Kenya which was tested in six pilot districts in Nyanza Province, Kenya before it was scaled up in the whole country as a policy. Through its partnership program and using its Essential Elements of Dignified Livelihood (EEDL) model, the institute undertakes and implements, in collaboration with communities and institutions, community and institution-based health and development programs that contribute to poverty alleviation and combating ill health. Current research projects University research projects include: 'Scaling up of community strategy for accelerated maternal and neonatal and child health in Siaya and Homabay counties' aims to scale up and accelerate maternal and neonatal and child health indicators in Homabay and Siaya counties in Kenya. It is hoped that this will reduce the burden of disease, and contribute to the achievement of MDGs. It is a UNICEF supported project. The 'Strengthening The Health System Through Collaborative Research' project aims to strengthen the uptake and functionality of the Community Health Strategy by building the capacity of the community to establish Community Units for health and development. It produces evidence on uptake of the Community Health Services elements; cost-effectiveness of CHS; and task shifting to level one. It is being implemented in Kisumu, Butere and Garissa. It is a Consortium National Health Research (CNHR). The 'Linking Community Based Health Information System And Institutional Health System For Effective Decision Making' project aims to strengthen the effectiveness of CBIS-HIS linkage and the effect to service uptake. It is being implemented in Kisumu, Butere and Garissa. It is an IDRC funded project 'Budget monitoring and advocacy for improved efficiency in health resource utilization' is a project that trains community health committee members on health budget monitoring and on improved efficiency in health resource utilization. It is running in five districts in Nyanza and Western Provinces. It is a WEMOS funded project. 'Liberating vulnerable communities from abject poverty through training for livelihood and cash transfer support' is a project that aims to liberate communities from abject poverty through training for livelihood and cash transfer support. It targets the Peri-urban area of Nyalenda. It is a concern-funded project. Revitalizing the halt in fertility decline is a project to support sensitization of the community on family planning. The project will produce a model for community based family planning system. It covers four districts across Western and Nyanza Provinces. It is an APHRC funded project. 'Scaling up Community Health Services' project aims to scale up Community Health Services in 25 districts across the country. It is a SIMAVI funded project. 'Promoting the uptake of PMTCT services among pregnant mothers' project promotes the uptake of PMTCT services among pregnant mothers in Greater Nyamira. It is a CDC funded project 'Building the capacity of CBOs in partnering communities through training' project aims to build the capacity of CBOs in partnering communities through trainings on governance, management and resource mobilization for health and development activities. The project objective is to build the capacity of Community Units to become sustainable. So far 15 Community Units drawn from seven districts in Nyanza and Western are beneficiaries. It is a SIMAVI funded project. 'Improving the nutrition status for the under fives in the Peri-urban slum' project aims to improve the nutrition status for the under fives in the Peri-urban slum of Nyalenda. It is a concern funded project. Collaboration and networking The training and education at the institute has collaborative programs with universities. External collaborations are with: Cheng’ Kung University of Taiwan Stellenbosch University of South Africa University of Amsterdam University of Ottawa l’Université Libre des Pays Grands Lacs (ULPGL) in Goma (DRC) The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine Emory University References External links Official website Official Twitter page Official Facebook page Online student application Department of Information Technology Library Services TICH - Tropical Institute of Community Health and Development in Africa Universities in Kenya Educational institutions established in 2006 2006 establishments in Kenya

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gennady%20Korotkevich

Gennady Korotkevich

Gennady Korotkevich (, Hienadź Karatkievič, ; born 25 September 1994) is a Belarusian competitive programmer who has won major international competitions since the age of 11, as well as numerous national competitions. His top accomplishments include six consecutive gold medals in the International Olympiad in Informatics as well as the world championship in the 2013 and 2015 International Collegiate Programming Contest World Finals. As of December 2021, Gennady is the highest-rated programmer on Codeforces, CodeChef, Topcoder, and HackerRank. In January 2022, he achieved an historic rating of 3979 on Codeforces, becoming the first to break the 3900 barrier. Biography Korotkevich was born in Gomel (Homiel), southeastern Belarus. His parents, Vladimir and Lyudmila Korotkevich, are programmers in the mathematics department at Francysk Skaryna Homiel State University. At age 6, he became interested in his parents' work. When he was 8, his father designed a children's game he could use to learn programming. His mother consulted departmental colleague Mikhail Dolinsky, who gave Korotkevich a small book to read. Dolinsky, one of the top computer science teachers in Belarus, recalled, "A month went by, and then another one... No news from Gena. Then suddenly Lyudmila comes by and brings me a programming notebook: when summer and football were over, her son sat at the computer. As a second-grader at a national competition, he took second place, which gained him an automatic entry into a technical university without taking any entrance exams. Somehow he solved the problem of a body immersed in water. At that time, Gena didn't even know about Archimedes' principle of buoyancy." Korotkevich first gained global attention when he qualified for the 2006 International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) at the age of 11, a world record by a large margin. He took the silver medal at his first IOI event and received gold medals from 2007 to 2012. To date, he is the most successful competitor in IOI's history. At the 2009 IOI in Plovdiv, the then 14-year-old Korotkevich said of his success, "I try various [strategies], and one of them is the right one. I am no genius. I am simply good at it." He said he spent no more than three to four hours each day at the computer, and his preferred hobbies are football and table tennis. In the fall of 2012, he moved to Russia to attend ITMO University. In the summer of 2013, he helped ITMO defeat Shanghai Jiao Tong University and the University of Tokyo to win the 37th International Collegiate Programming Contest World Finals, held in St. Petersburg. He also won the annual Google Code Jam from 2014 to 2020. In a 2014 interview, Korotkevich said he was unsure of his career plans after graduation, saying he'd focus on his education and possibly go into science. In a 2017 interview, Korotkevich said he had received job offers from Google and Yandex, but that he had turned them down and would instead continue with his degree in computer science at ITMO. In 2019, Korotkevich was a PhD student at ITMO. Career achievements Facebook Hacker Cup: 2014, 2015, 2019, 2020 winner Topcoder Open: 2018, 2019 Marathon Match Champion, 2014, 2019, 2020, 2021 Algorithm Champion Google Hash Code: champion 2019, 2020 and 2021 2nd place - Team name- Past Glory Google Code Jam: 2014 champion, 2015 champion, 2016 champion, 2017 champion, 2018 champion, 2019 champion, 2020 champion and 2021 6th place In Round 1B of the 2012 Google Code Jam, he achieved a perfect score in just 54 minutes, 41 seconds from the start of the contest. Yandex.Algorithm: 2010, 2013, 2014, 2015 winner, 2017 winner and 2018 winner Yandex Cup: 2020 winner Russian Code Cup (by Mail.Ru Group): 2016 winner, 2015 runner-up, 2014 winner, 2013 runner-up ACM-ICPC World Finals: 2013 winner (team) and 2015 winner (team) Kotlin Challenge: 2014 winner International Olympiad in Informatics: He won absolute first place in 2009, 2010, 2011; a gold medal in 2007 (20th place), 2008 (7th place) and 2012 (2nd place); a silver medal in 2006 (26th place). Currently he holds the record for quantity of gold medals (six) and absolute first places (three). All-Russian Team Olympiad in Informatics: 2007, 2009, 2010 and 2011 winner and 2008 runner-up Topcoder High School Competition: 2010 winner, 2009 runner-up Snarknews Winter Series: 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015 winner Snarknews Summer Series: 2008, 2010, 2011 runner-up and 2012, 2013, 2014 winner Vekua Cup: 2013 winner (team) CROC Championship: 2013 and 2016 winner Internet Problem Solving Contest: 2011 winner (team), 2013 winner (team) and 2017 winner (team) Challenge24: 2013 and 2014 runner-up (team) Marathon24: 2015 3rd place (team) Deadline24: 2016 3rd place (team), 2017 winner (team) and 2018 winner (team) In 2015, he participated at IMC and was awarded a gold medal, ranking 47 as individual, and 10th position as a member of ITMO University team. Code Festival Grand Final: Code Festival Final 2016 2nd place (individual), Code Festival Final winner 2017 (individual) Bioinformatics Contest: 2017 and 2019 winner, 2018 3rd place. ICFP Programming Contest: 2021 winner (team) Codechef Snackdown : Codechef Snackdown 2016 Winner (team) Codechef Snackdown 2019 winner (team) Codeforces powered tournaments Rockethon — 2014, 2015 winner ZeptoCodeRush - 2014 third place, 2015 winner Looksery Cup — 2015 winner VK Cup: 2012 3rd place (individual), 2015 winner (team), 2016 1st place (team). See also Central European Olympiad in Informatics Online judge Petr Mitrichev Makoto Soejima Benjamin Qi References External links Online coding profiles Topcoder: tourist Codeforces: tourist CodeChef: gennady.korotkevich Google Code Jam: (2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009) SPOJ: tourist HackerEarth: @gennady Hackerrank: @Gennady AtCoder: tourist 1994 births ITMO University alumni Living people People from Gomel Belarusian computer programmers Competitive programmers

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acer%20Iconia

Acer Iconia

The Acer Iconia is a range of tablet computers from Acer Inc. of Taiwan. Acer presented its first tablet during a global press conference in New York on 23 November 2010. The family includes a big screen smartphone called Iconia Smart. The Iconia series displays utilize Gorilla Glass. Iconia series Iconia Smart – smartphone/tablet Iconia Tab A100 – Android tablet Iconia Tab A110 – Android tablet Iconia Tab A200 – Android tablet Iconia Tab A210 – 10.1in Android tablet Iconia Tab A500 – 10.1in Android tablet Iconia Tab A510 – 10.1in Android tablet Iconia Tab A700 – 10.1in Android tablet Iconia Tab W500 – 10.1in Windows tablet Iconia Tab W510 – Windows tablet Iconia Tab W700 – Windows tablet Iconia A3 – 10.1in Android tablet Iconia W3 – 8.1in Windows 8.1 slate PC Iconia W4 – 8in Windows tablet Iconia B1 – Android tablet (Jelly Bean 4.1.2) Iconia One 7, 8 and 10 – ranges of Android tablets with screen sizes 7, 8 and 10 inches Iconia Smart This is a tablet with the size of a smartphone: widescreen with a 21:9 aspect ratio and 1024×480 screen resolution. It runs Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich operating system and it is equipped with a 16 MP camera with LED flash plus a 5 MP front camera for video calls. Iconia Tab A100 The Iconia Tab A100 tablet is the smallest tablet in the series. It runs Android 3.2 Honeycomb operating system and it has a capacitive touchscreen display with 1024 x 600 pixel of resolution. Iconia supports multiple connectivity options, including Wi-Fi (in the a 101 version) 3G band and GPS. Iconia tab has gyro-sensor, accelerometer and compass. The A100 features a Nvidia Tegra 2 T20 SoC and a primary 5 MP camera with a secondary 2 MP camera. Acer has released an update for the A100 to Android 4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich. Iconia Tab A110 Released in October 2012, the A110 includes 8 GB of internal flash storage, 1 GB of RAM and a 7-inch 1024×600 TFT multitouch display. Also includes in a front-facing 2 MP camera. Ships with Android 4.0 but can be upgraded to Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean). Iconia Tab A200 Similarly equipped as the A500, the A200 is a budget minded tablet that lacks a rear camera and an HDMI port. Two models offer 8 or 16 GB internal flash storage and 1 GB of DDR2 system memory. It is equipped with a dual-core Nvidia Tegra 2 SoC and features a 1280×800 screen resolution. The A200 features a USB and mini-USB input ports, as well as a MicroSD slot. The device shipped with the Android 3.2 (Honeycomb) operating system. In February 2012, an update to Android 4.0.3 (Ice Cream Sandwich) was made available via over-the-air update, less than a month after the tablet's release. It comes with Wi-Fi and blue tooth connectivity as well as the standard USB cable connection through the slave USB port which is extra on top of the full sized USB port, allowing direct connection to a PC and a printer or other USB device. Iconia Tab A210 Released in November 2012, its two models offer 8 or 16 GB and 1 GB of DDR3 system memory. Each features a 10.1 inch 1280×800 TFT display and Nvidia Tegra 3 SoC including a quad core 1.2 GHz CPU. And Graphics Coprocessor ULP High Performance 12-Core NVIDIA GeForce GPU. Also includes in a front-facing 2 MP camera. It ships with Android 4.0, but it can be upgraded to Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean). Average battery Life (in hours) 8 hours, number of USB 2.0 Ports 1- USB 2.0 Port 1- Micro USB 2.0 Port MicroSD memory card up to 32 GB, item dimensions L x W x H 10.20 x 6.90 x 0.48 inches, item weight 1.5 pounds, Wireless Type 802.11bgn Bluetooth® 2.1+EDR Sensors:G-Sensor, Gyroscope Iconia Tab A500 The Iconia Tab A500 tablet runs Android 3.0 Honeycomb operating system. As of 28 April 2012 the tablet has been updated to Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich). It is equipped with Nvidia's Tegra 2 processor and is 13.3 mm thick with a 1280×800 screen resolution and 1080p HDMI capacity. It supports Wi-Fi connectivity (The Iconia Tab A501 supports 3G + Wi-Fi connectivity). Iconia Tab A500 tablet also features a 5 MP rear-facing camera plus an HD front-facing camera, for video chat. Specs: TFT LCD display LED backlight 1,280×800 resolution Nvidia Tegra 250 1 GHz dual core 1 GB DDR2 memory & SSD 8–32 GB storage, 64 GB storage available in some countries Android 3.0 Honeycomb, upgradable to Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0.3 since April 2012. Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n and Bluetooth enabled HDMI and 1× USB 2.0 ports Li-ion 3-cell battery lasts 8–10 Hours. Standby 12–15 days. Iconia Tab A501 Similar to the A500, but with 3G. Iconia Tab A510 The Iconia Tab A510 was shown for the first time at CES 2012. This tablet has been released for pre-order on 22 March 2012. Specs: inch touch screen (max. 10 finger input) Nvidia Tegra 3 1.3 GHz quad core 1 GB DDR2 memory 32 GB storage 5 megapixel rear-facing camera 1 megapixel front-facing camera Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR HDMI and 1× USB 2.0 port Capable of HD games Iconia Tab A511 Similar to the A510, but with 3G. Iconia Tab A700 A Nvidia Tegra 3 T30 tablet with a WUXGA (1920×1200) resolution. Iconia Tab A701 A700 with 3G broadband modem. Iconia Tab 8 The Acer Iconia Tab 8 was announced by Acer on 31 May 2014, as an 8-inch Android tablet featuring an Intel Atom Z3745 processor, 1920x1200 resolution, and 2 GB RAM. Iconia Tab 7 Acer Iconia Tab 7 is a 7-inch 3G tablet with Android that have regular phone functionality as well as data transfer. It was announced on 29 April 2014, in New York. The launch begins in May 2014. Iconia A1-810 In April 2013, Acer announced the first generation Acer A1, which is a 7.9-inch Android tablet with a 1.2 GHz Mediatek quad-core processor and was released in May that same year. Iconia A1-830 In January 2014, Acer announced the second generation Acer A1, which is a 7.9-inch Android tablet that will be released in February 2014, for $149 in the US. Iconia A3 Acer Iconia A3 is a 10.1" Android 4.2 Jelly Bean tablet powered by a quad-core Mediatek processor to be released in November 2013 for $249. Iconia W3 The Acer Iconia W3 was handed out to attendees at the Microsoft Build Conference in June 2013. It was billed as the "world's first 8.1" tablet with Windows 8." It sold for list $379.99 (US) for the 32GB version and $429.99 (US) for the 64 GB version. It has since been superseded by the W4. It has an Intel Atom processor Z2760, and runs Windows 8.1. Iconia W4 An 8-inch Windows 8.1 tablet unveiled in October 2013 as a followup to the W3. Powered by a 1.8 GHz Intel Bay Trail processor. 32 GB and 64 GB model options. Also has a 5 megapixel rear camera and a 2 megapixel front camera. is available with HDMI port as well as with micro USB socket. Other competitors are the Dell Venue and Lenovo IdeaTab Miix. Iconia Tab W500 The Iconia Tab W500 runs the Windows operating system. The tablet is complemented by a full-size chiclet docking keyboard and powered by the AMD Fusion – Brazos chip and features two 1.3 MP cameras. Starting point of the Iconia Tab W500 touch experience is the Acer Ring. It allows to access all features and touch applications pre-loaded. With clear.fi, Acer media sharing system, Iconia Tab W500 can be connected to the home network and can share multimedia contents with other clear.fi enabled devices. Specs: TFT LCD Display LED Backlight 1,280×800 Resolution AMD Fusion C-50 1 GHz dual core CPU 2 GB DDR3 memory and SSD 32 GB storage Windows 7 Home Premium 32-bit OS Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n & Bluetooth enabled HDMI, USB 2.0 port AMD Radeon HD 6250 Graphics Li-ion 3-cell battery lasts up to 6 hours Integrated bottom US keyboard Dock Iconia W510 The Iconia W510 is a convertible laptop running the Windows 8 operating system. Using Intel Atom processor Z2760, Acer CineCrystal LED-backlit TFT LCD, Bluetooth, Front and Rear-facing Camera, Audio, Video, 64GB storage, Wi-Fi, Touchscreen, Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 3650, Genuine Windows 8 32-bit. Iconia W700 Iconia W700 is a convertible laptop running the Windows 8 operating system. Bluetooth, Front and Rear-facing Camera, Audio, Video. Specs: Acer CineCrystal LED-backlit TFT LCD Intel Core i3-2375M 2 GB DDR3 memory and SSD 64 GB storage Windows 8 Home Premium Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n & Bluetooth enabled HDMI, USB 2.0 port Intel HD Graphics 3000 Li-ion 3-cell battery Integrated bottom US keyboard Dock Iconia Tab B1 (1st gen.) Acer unveiled the first Iconia B1 in April 2013. It claims that it's a tablet with great specifications for a budget buy; it does keep its word for a decent specification for the price of Rs. 7 999, £99 or US$154. Acer made its first announcement at CES 2013 where it gave a glimpse of its new release of tablets, the Iconia B1 being one of them. Hardware and design The tablet features 1.2 GHz dual core Mediatek processors with a 512 MB RAM and has a 7-inch TFT LCD screen with 1024×600 pixel resolution with a pixel density of approximately 170 ppi. The tablet weighs 320 grams, and has a plastic back cover with a big black bezel. The top of the tablet sports the Acer branding and a VGA camera at the front and there is no rear-facing camera. There is a blue-coloured frame contouring the sides of the tablet. Also at the back of the tablet, there is an Acer brand mark and speaker grills. There's Micro-USB port located at the bottom, slot for a micro-SD card, and a 3.5 mm headset jack that is at the top. The volume rocker and the power or sleep button is also made up of plastic and is located at the right side of the tablet. Software and interface The operating system on the Iconia B1 is the Google Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean. It doesn't include a custom skin by Acer though they have tweaked the Notification bar. There are 3 onscreen capacitive buttons – for Home, recent apps and back button. In the quick settings area there are options for GPS, brightness, screen timeout, Screen rotation, Bluetooth, Aeroplane mode, Wi-Fi and shortcut to Settings app which are all located at the top of the notification tray. Users can add up to five customisable home screens with various app shortcuts and widgets that are available along with the stock Jelly Bean and the ones from the Google Play store. The app-launcher allows users to add six apps at a time. The downside is that even with Jelly Bean 4.1.2 and a dual core processor there is a noticeable lag while navigating through the home screens or even switching between the apps, the possible reason could be the RAM which is low with 512 MB, the other could be the type of processor and the materials used to design and fabricate it. There is also that rough touch while swiping through the screens could be the type of glass used and the sensitivity of touch while making the touch screen. Specifications Android Jelly Bean operating system Mediatek dual-core 1.2 GHz processor (MTK 8317T) 7-inch diagonal WSVGA capacitive multitouch screen with 1,024×600 resolution display 512 MB RAM 8 GB of internal storage Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n Bluetooth® wireless technology 4.0 GPS 3.5-mm headset/headphone/microphone jack Internal speaker MicroSD™ expansion slot with up to 32 GB support Front-facing 0.3-megapixel webcam Rechargeable 2,710 mAh battery Micro-USB (charging and PC connect) with USB 2.0 Dimensions: 197.4 mm × 128.5 mm × 11.3 mm Weight: 320 g Iconia Tab B1-720 (3rd gen.) On 3 January 2014, Acer launched a new Acer Iconia B1-720 that would be released in the middle of February 2014. It features a new 1.3 GHz processor, and an upgrade to 10-point touch screen. The release price is $129 in the United States. Iconia One 7 The Acer Iconia One 7 was launched in June 2014 as an Android 4.4 tablet with an Intel Atom processor, a 7-inch screen and HD display. The 2015 version retailed for £99 in the UK, with 1GB RAM and 16GB storage. The resolution of the IPS LCD screen was 1200x800, lower than competing tablets such as the Tesco Hudl 2. In early 2018, the Iconia One 7 was available in two models, designated B1–780 and B1–790. Both have a 1.3GHz MediaTek Cortex-A53 processor, a 1280x720 display, 1GB RAM and 16GB storage. Iconia One 8 The Acer Iconia One 8 was released in 2015. It was an Android 5.1 tablet with an 8-inch screen, 1GB RAM and 16GB storage. It had a 5megapixel rear camera and 0.3megapixel front camera. In early 2018, the Iconia One 8 was available under designation B1–850. This has the same Cortex-A53 processor as the One 7, a 1280x800 display, a 5megapixel rear camera and 2megapixel front camera. Iconia One 10 Released in 2017, the Acer Iconia One 10 has a 10.1-inch screen and an initial retail price of £180 in the UK. It offers Android 6.0, front-firing speakers and 5 GHz Wi-Fi. In early 2018, the Iconia One 10 was available in two base models designated B3–A30 and B3–A40. Both have a 1280x800 screen, 16GB storage and similar cameras to the One 8. The A30 model has the same Cortex-A53 processor as the One 8 and 1GB RAM, while the A40 has a Cortex-A35 processor and 2GB RAM. A "Full HD" variant designated B3–A40 FHD improves the screen resolution to 1920x1200, runs the Cortex-A35 at 1.5GHz instead of 1.3, and has 32GB storage. Iconia Tab 10 A3-A50 Acer Iconia Tab 10 has a 10.1-inch screen. It runs Android 7.0. It's being the last Acer Iconia device ever released, unveiled back in May 2017. Reviews Initial reactions saw the devices as an attempt to challenge Apple's iPad. Former Acer Chairman Gianfranco Lanci claimed, in an article in Stuffmideast magazine, that Acer's foray into the world of touchscreen tablets would overtake the Apple tablet within the next 2–3 years. See also Comparison of tablet computers References Android (operating system) devices Convertible laptops Tablet computers

421058

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XQuartz

XQuartz

XQuartz is an open-source version of the X.Org X server, a component of the X Window System (X11, or shortened to simply X, and sometimes informally X-Windows) that runs on macOS. It formally replaced Apple's internal X11 app. The name "XQuartz" derives from Quartz, part of the macOS Core Graphics framework, to which XQuartz connects these applications. XQuartz allows cross-platform applications using X11 for the GUI to run on macOS, many of which are not specifically designed for macOS. This includes numerous scientific and academic software projects. History X11.app was initially available as a downloadable public beta for Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar and later included as a standard package for Mac OS X 10.3 Panther. In Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger X11.app was an optional install included on the install DVD. Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, and Mac OS X 10.7 Lion installed X11.app by default, but from OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion on Apple dropped dedicated support for X11.app, with users being directed to the open source XQuartz project (to which Apple contributes) instead. In Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, Apple's X11 implemented X11 protocol release 6.6 (X11R6.6). This implementation includes an XFree86 4.4 based X11 window server, Quartz rootless window manager, libraries, and basic utilities such as xterm. "Rootless" means that X window applications show up on the Quartz desktop, appearing like any other windowed Quartz application (that is, not in a virtual desktop contained within another window). In Mac OS X Leopard, X11 was updated to use X.Org Server (X11R7.2) rather than XFree86. The source code for X11 is available from Apple. Some source code is available under the Apple Public Source License while the bulk is licensed under the MIT License. Current version The current version of XQuartz is a DDX (Device Dependent X) included in the X.Org Server and implements support for hardware-accelerated 2D graphics (in versions prior to 2.1), hardware OpenGL acceleration and integration with Aqua, the macOS graphical user interface (GUI). As of version 2.8.0, XQuartz does not provide support for high-resolution Retina displays to X11 apps, which run in pixel-doubled mode on high-resolution displays. List of versions (since 2010) See also MacX, X11 support on Classic Mac OS XWayland, to support X application under Wayland XDarwin, an implementation of X for macOS that preceded XQuartz, and supports versions of macOS before 10.3 unlike XQuartz References External links MacOS-only software made by Apple Inc. Software using the Apple Public Source License X servers

33921476

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whisper%20Systems

Whisper Systems

Whisper Systems was an American enterprise mobile security company that was co-founded by security researcher Moxie Marlinspike and roboticist Stuart Anderson in 2010. The company was acquired by Twitter in November 2011. Some of the company's software products were released under open-source licenses after the acquisition. An independent group called Open Whisper Systems later picked up the development of this open-source software, which led to the creation of the Signal Technology Foundation. History Security researcher Moxie Marlinspike and roboticist Stuart Anderson co-founded Whisper Systems in 2010. The company produced proprietary enterprise mobile security software. Among these were an encrypted texting program called TextSecure and an encrypted voice calling app called RedPhone. They also developed a firewall and tools for encrypting other forms of data. On November 28, 2011, Whisper Systems announced that it had been acquired by Twitter. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed by either company. The acquisition was done "primarily so that Mr. Marlinspike could help the then-startup improve its security". Shortly after the acquisition, Whisper Systems' RedPhone service was made unavailable. Some criticized the removal, arguing that the software was "specifically targeted [to help] people under repressive regimes" and that it left people like the Egyptians in "a dangerous position" during the events of the 2011 Egyptian revolution. Twitter released TextSecure as free and open-source software under the GPLv3 license in December 2011. RedPhone was also released under the same license in July 2012. Marlinspike later left Twitter and founded Open Whisper Systems as a collaborative Open Source project for the continued development of TextSecure and RedPhone. Open Whisper Systems consisted of a large community of volunteer Open Source contributors, as well as a small team of dedicated grant-funded developers. In November 2015, Open Whisper Systems merged TextSecure with RedPhone and renamed it as Signal. In 2018, Signal Messenger was incorporated as an LLC by Moxie Marlinspike and Brian Acton and then rolled under the independent non-profit Signal Technology Foundation. Today, the Signal app is developed by Signal Messenger LLC, which is funded by the Signal Foundation. The foundation has stated publicly that they are not tied to any major technology companies and "can never be acquired by one either." Products Whisper Systems' products were all made for Android and included: TextSecure: An app that allowed the user to exchange end-to-end encrypted SMS messages with other TextSecure users. RedPhone: An app that allowed the user to make end-to-end encrypted VoIP calls to other RedPhone users. Flashback: An app that allowed the user to store encrypted backups of their device in the cloud. WhisperCore: An app that integrated with the underlying Android OS to protect everything the user kept on their phone. The initial beta featured full disk encryption, network security tools, encrypted backup, selective permissions, and basic platform management tools for Nexus S and Nexus One phones. WhisperMonitor: An app that worked with WhisperCore to provide a software firewall capable of dynamic egress filtering and real-time connection monitoring, giving the user control over where their data was going and what their apps were doing. See also List of mergers and acquisitions by Twitter References External links Android (operating system) software Cryptographic software Mobile software Secure communication Twitter acquisitions 2011 mergers and acquisitions

4646870

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spartan%20%28chemistry%20software%29

Spartan (chemistry software)

Spartan is a molecular modelling and computational chemistry application from Wavefunction. It contains code for molecular mechanics, semi-empirical methods, ab initio models, density functional models, post-Hartree–Fock models, and thermochemical recipes including G3(MP2) and T1. Quantum chemistry calculations in Spartan are powered by Q-Chem. Primary functions are to supply information about structures, relative stabilities and other properties of isolated molecules. Molecular mechanics calculations on complex molecules are common in the chemical community. Quantum chemical calculations, including Hartree–Fock method molecular orbital calculations, but especially calculations that include electronic correlation, are more time-consuming in comparison. Quantum chemical calculations are also called upon to furnish information about mechanisms and product distributions of chemical reactions, either directly by calculations on transition states, or based on Hammond's postulate, by modeling the steric and electronic demands of the reactants. Quantitative calculations, leading directly to information about the geometries of transition states, and about reaction mechanisms in general, are increasingly common, while qualitative models are still needed for systems that are too large to be subjected to more rigorous treatments. Quantum chemical calculations can supply information to complement existing experimental data or replace it altogether, for example, atomic charges for quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) analyses, and intermolecular potentials for molecular mechanics and molecular dynamics calculations. Spartan applies computational chemistry methods (theoretical models) to many standard tasks that provide calculated data applicable to the determination of molecular shape conformation, structure (equilibrium and transition state geometry), NMR, IR, Raman, and UV-visible spectra, molecular (and atomic) properties, reactivity, and selectivity. Computational abilities This software provides the molecular mechanics, Merck Molecular Force Field (MMFF), (for validation test suite), MMFF with extensions, and SYBYL, force fields calculation, Semi-empirical calculations, MNDO/MNDO(D), Austin Model 1 (AM1), PM3, Recife Model 1 (RM1) PM6. Hartree–Fock, self-consistent field (SCF) methods, available with implicit solvent (SM8). Restricted, unrestricted, and restricted open-shell Hartree–Fock Density functional theory (DFT) methods, available with implicit solvent (SM8). Standard functionals: BP, BLYP, B3LYP, EDF1, EDF2, M06, ωB97X-D Exchange functionals: HF, Slater-Dirac, Becke88, Gill96, GG99, B(EDF1), PW91 Correlation functionals: VWN, LYP, PW91, P86, PZ81, PBE. Combination or hybrid functionals: B3PW91, B3LYP, B3LYP5, EDF1, EDF2, BMK Truhlar group functionals: M05, M05-2X, M06, M06-L M06-2X, M06-HF Head-Gordon group functionals: ωB97, ωB97X, ωB97X-D Coupled cluster methods. CCSD, CCSD(T), CCSD(2), OD, OD(T), OD(2), QCCD, VOD, VOD(2), VQCCD Møller–Plesset methods. MP2, MP3, MP4, RI-MP2 Excited state methods. Time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT)Configuration interaction: CIS, CIS(D), QCIS(D), quadratic configuration interaction (QCISD(T)), RI-CIS(D)Quantum chemistry composite methods, thermochemical recipes. T1, G2, G3, G3(MP2) Tasks performed Available computational models provide molecular, thermodynamic, QSAR, atomic, graphical, and spectral properties. A calculation dialogue provides access to the following computational tasks: Energy - For a given geometry, provides energy and associated properties of a molecule or system. If quantum chemical models are employed, the wave function is calculated. Equilibrium molecular geometry - Locates the nearest local minimum and provides energy and associated properties. Transition state geometry - Locates the nearest first-order saddle point (a maximum in a single dimension and minima in all others) and provides energy and associated properties. Equilibrium conformer - Locates lowest-energy conformation. Often performed before calculating structure using a quantum chemical model. Conformer distribution - Obtains a selection of low-energy conformers. Commonly used to identify the shapes a specific molecule is likely to adopt and to determine a Boltzmann distribution for calculating average molecular properties. Conformer library - Locates lowest-energy conformer and associates this with a set of conformers spanning all shapes accessible to the molecule without regard to energy. Used to build libraries for similarity analysis. Energy profile - Steps a molecule or system through a user defined coordinate set, providing equilibrium geometries for each step (subject to user-specified constraints). Similarity analysis - quantifies the likeness of molecules (and optionally their conformers) based on either structure or chemical function (Hydrogen bond acceptors–donors, positive–negative ionizables, hydrophobes, aromatics). Quantifies likeness of a molecule (and optionally its conformers) to a pharmacophore. Graphical user interface The software contains an integrated graphical user interface. Touch screen operations are supported for Windows 7 and 8 devices. Construction of molecules in 3D is facilitated with molecule builders (included are organic, inorganic, peptide, nucleotide, and substituent builders). 2D construction is supported for organic molecules with a 2D sketch palette. The Windows version interface can access ChemDraw; which versions 9.0 or later may also be used for molecule building in 2D. A calculations dialogue is used for specification of task and computational method. Data from calculations are displayed in dialogues, or as text output. Additional data analysis, including linear regression, is possible from an internal spreadsheet. Graphical models Graphical models, especially molecular orbitals, electron density, and electrostatic potential maps, are a routine means of molecular visualization in chemistry education.Surfaces: Molecular orbitals (highest occupied, lowest unoccupied, and others) Electron density - The density, ρ(r), is a function of the coordinates r, defined such that ρ(r)dr is the number of electrons inside a small volume dr. This is what is measured in an X-ray diffraction experiment. The density may be portrayed in terms of an isosurface (isodensity surface) with the size and shape of the surface being given by the value (or percentage of enclosure) of the electron density. Spin density - The density, ρspin(r), is defined as the difference in electron density formed by electrons of α spin, ρα(r), and the electron density formed by electrons of β spin, ρβ(r). For closed-shell molecules (in which all electrons are paired), the spin density is zero everywhere. For open-shell molecules (in which one or more electrons are unpaired), the spin density indicates the distribution of unpaired electrons. Spin density is an indicator of reactivity of radicals. Van der Waals radius (surface) Solvent accessible surface area Electrostatic potential - The potential, εp, is defined as the energy of interaction of a positive point charge located at p with the nuclei and electrons of a molecule. A surface for which the electrostatic potential is negative (a negative potential surface) delineates regions in a molecule which are subject to electrophilic attack.Composite surfaces (maps): Electrostatic potential map (electrophilic indicator) - The most commonly employed property map is the electrostatic potential map. This gives the potential at locations on a particular surface, most commonly a surface of electron density corresponding to overall molecular size. Local ionization potential map - Is defined as the sum over orbital electron densities, ρi(r) times absolute orbital energies, ∈i, and divided by the total electron density, ρ(r). The local ionization potential reflects the relative ease of electron removal ("ionization") at any location around a molecule. For example, a surface of "low" local ionization potential for sulfur tetrafluoride demarks the areas which are most easily ionized. LUMO map (nucleophilic indicator) - Maps of molecular orbitals may also lead to graphical indicators. For example, the LUMO map, wherein the (absolute value) of the lowest-unoccupied molecular orbital (the LUMO) is mapped onto a size surface (again, most commonly the electron density), providing an indication of nucleophilic reactivity. Spectral calculations Available spectra data and plots for:Infrared spectroscopy (IR) spectraFourier transform spectroscopy (FT-IR) Raman spectroscopy (IR)Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectra1H chemical shifts and coupling constants (empirical) 13C chemical shifts, Boltzmann averaged shifts, and 13C DEPT spectra 2D H vs H Spectra COSY plots 2D C vs H Spectra Heteronuclear single-quantum correlation spectroscopy (HSQC) spectra HMBC spectraUV/vis SpectraQCI> Experimental spectra may be imported for comparison with calculated spectra: IR and UV/vis spectra in Joint Committee on Atomic and Molecular Physical Data (JCAMP) (.dx) format and NMR spectra in Chemical Markup Language (.cml) format. Access to public domain spectral databases is available for IR, NMR, and UV/vis spectra. Databases Spartan accesses several external databases.Quantum chemical calculations databases:Spartan Spectra & Properties Database (SSPD) - a set of about 252,000 molecules, with structures, energies, NMR and IR spectra, and wave functions calculated using the EDF2 density functional theory with the 6-31G* basis set. Spartan Molecular Database (SMD) - a set of about 100,000 molecules calculated from following models: Hartree–Fock with 3-21G, 6-31G*, and 6-311+G** basis sets B3LYP density functional with 6-31G* and 6-311+G** basis sets EDF1 density functional with 6-31G* basis set MP2 with 6-31G* and 6-311+G** basis sets G3(MP2) T1Experimental databases:'' NMRShiftDB - an open-source database of experimental 1H and 13C chemical shifts. Cambridge Structural Database (CSD) - a large repository of small molecule organic and inorganic experimental crystal structures of about 600,000 entries. NIST database of experimental IR and UV/vis spectra. Major release history 1991 Spartan version 1 Unix 1993 Spartan version 2 Unix 1994 Mac Spartan Macintosh 1995 Spartan version 3 Unix 1995 PC Spartan Windows 1996 Mac Spartan Plus Macintosh 1997 Spartan version 4 Unix 1997 PC Spartan Plus Windows 1999 Spartan version 5 Unix 1999 PC Spartan Pro Windows 2000 Mac Spartan Pro Macintosh 2002 Spartan'02 Unix, Linux, Windows, Mac Windows, Macintosh, Linux versions 2004 Spartan'04 2006 Spartan'06 2008 Spartan'08 2010 Spartan'10 2013 Spartan'14 2016 Spartan'16 2018 Spartan'18 See also Q-Chem quantum chemistry software Molecular design software Molecule editor Comparison of software for molecular mechanics modeling List of software for Monte Carlo molecular modeling Quantum chemistry composite methods List of quantum chemistry and solid state physics software References External links , Wavefunction, Inc. Molecular modelling software Computational chemistry software Electronic structure methods Monte Carlo molecular modelling software

876093

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMSQ/E

SMSQ/E

SMSQ/E is a computer operating system originally developed in France by Tony Tebby, the designer of the original QDOS operating system for the Sinclair QL personal computer. It began life as SMSQ, a QDOS-compatible version of SMS2 intended for the Miracle Systems QXL emulator card for PCs. This was later developed into an extended version, SMSQ/E, for the Atari ST. It consists of a QDOS compatible SMS kernel, a rewritten SuperBASIC interpreter called SBasic, a complete set of SuperBASIC procedures and functions and a set of extended device drivers originally written for the QL emulator for the Atari ST. It also integrates many extensions previously only available separately for the QL, like Toolkit II (quite essential SuperBASIC add-on), the Pointer Environment (the QL's mouse and windowing system) and the Hotkey System 2. While SMSQ/E does not run on any unmodified QL, it runs on all of the more advanced QL compatible platforms, from the Miracle Systems (Super)GoldCard CPU plug-in cards to the Q60 motherboard. In late 1995 a German author, Marcel Kilgus, acquired the SMSQ/E sources for adaptation to his QL emulator QPC, which from then on did not emulate any specific QL hardware anymore but employed specially adapted device drivers to achieve a tighter integration and faster emulation. In 2000, version 2.94 was the first QL operating system that broke free of the bounds of the QL 8 colour screen, introducing GD2 (Graphic Device Interface Version 2), a QL compatible 16-bit high colour graphics sub-system. Up to version 2.99 the system was exclusively developed by Tony Tebby and Marcel Kilgus. In 2002, Mr Tebby released all of his source code (which doesn't include most QPC specific parts), albeit under a license which is not Open Source under the Open Source Definition. With this step Tony Tebby finally left the QL scene, but development by volunteers continues to this day. In early 2013 the current source code was re-released under the BSD license. Currently SMSQ/E consists of approximately 2000 68k assembler source files containing about 222,000 lines of code. External links A Brief History of SMSQ/E The official SMSQ/E site Source Code, binaries and documentation QPC: a software emulator for DOS/Windows that employs SMSQ/E Q40/Q60: a 68040/68060 based motherboard for SMSQ/E SMSQmulator - Java based virtual QL machine running SMSQ/E QL/E The QL runtime Environment with SMSQ/E The Distribution, 4.7 GB of QL related documents, software (incl. all SMSQ/E editions) and pictures References Discontinued operating systems Atari operating systems Atari ST software Software using the BSD license

639540

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indoctrination

Indoctrination

Indoctrination is the process of inculcating a person with ideas, attitudes, cognitive strategies or professional methodologies (see doctrine). Humans are a social animal species inescapably shaped by cultural context, and thus some degree of indoctrination is implicit in the parent–child relationship, and has an essential function in forming stable communities of shared values. The precise boundary between education and indoctrination often lies in the eye of the beholder. Some distinguish indoctrination from education on the basis that the indoctrinated person is expected not to question or critically examine the doctrine they have learned. As such the term may be used pejoratively or as a buzz word, often in the context of political opinions, theology, religious dogma or anti-religious convictions. The word itself came about in its first form in the 1620s as endoctrinate, meaning to teach or to instruct, and was modeled from French or Latin. The word only gained the meaning of imbuing with an idea or opinion in the 1830s. The term is closely linked to socialization; however, in common discourse, indoctrination is often associated with negative connotations, while socialization functions as a generic descriptor conveying no specific value or connotation (some choosing to hear socialization as an inherently positive and necessary contribution to social order, others choosing to hear socialization as primarily an instrument of social oppression). Matters of doctrine (and indoctrination) have been contentious and divisive in human society dating back to antiquity. The expression attributed to Titus Lucretius Carus in the first century BCE quod ali cibus est aliis fuat acre venenum (what is food to one, is to others bitter poison) remains pertinent. Political context In the political context, indoctrination is often analyzed as a tool of class warfare, where institutions of the state are identified as "conspiring" to maintain the status quo. Specifically the public educational system, the police, and mental health establishment are a commonly cited modus operandi of public pacification. In the extreme, an entire state can be implicated. George Orwell's book Nineteen Eighty-Four famously singled out explicit, state-mandated propaganda initiatives of totalitarian regimes. Opinions differ on whether other forms of government are less doctrinaire, or merely achieve the same ends through less obvious methods. Religious context Religious indoctrination, the original sense of indoctrination, refers to a process of imparting doctrine in an authoritative way, as in catechism. Most religious groups among the revealed religions instruct new members in the principles of the religion; this is now not usually referred to as indoctrination by the religions themselves, in part because of the negative connotations the word has acquired. Mystery religions require a period of indoctrination before granting access to esoteric knowledge. (cf. Information security) As a pejorative term, indoctrination implies forcibly or coercively causing people to act and think on the basis of a certain ideology. Some secular critics believe that all religions indoctrinate their adherents, as children, and the accusation is made in the case of religious extremism. Sects such as Scientology use personality tests and peer pressures to indoctrinate new members. Some religions have commitment ceremonies for children 13 years and younger, such as Bar Mitzvah, Confirmation, and Shichi-Go-San. In Buddhism, temple boys are encouraged to follow the faith while young. Some critics of religion, such as Richard Dawkins, maintain that the children of religious parents are often unfairly indoctrinated. However, indoctrination can occur, and often does occur with great frequency, in non-religious or anti-religious contexts. For example, in the 20th century, the former People's Socialist Republic of Albania and the former USSR instituted programs of government-sponsored atheistic indoctrination in order to promote state atheism, specifically Marxist–Leninist atheism, within their citizenry. Sabrina P. Ramet, a professor of political science, documented that "from kindergarten onward children [were] indoctrinated with an aggressive form of atheism" and "to denounce parents who follow religious practices at home." However, after the death of Albania's leader, Enver Hoxha in 1985, his successor, Ramiz Alia, adopted a relatively tolerant stance toward religious practice, referring to it as "a personal and family matter." Émigré clergymen were permitted to reenter the country in 1988 and officiate at religious services. Mother Teresa, an ethnic Albanian, visited Tirana in 1989, where she was received by the foreign minister and by Hoxha's widow. In December 1990, the ban on religious observance was officially lifted, in time to allow thousands of Christians to attend Christmas services (see Freedom of religion in Albania). Similarly, in the former Soviet Union, "science education [in] Soviet schools [was] used as a vehicle for atheistic indoctrination", with teachers being instructed to prepare their course "so as to conduct anti-religious educations at all times," in order to comport with state-sanctioned Marxist–Leninist values. However, in 1997, several years after the fall of the Soviet Union, the Russian government passed a law recognizing religion as being important to Russian history with Orthodox Christianity (Russian: Православие Pravoslaviye), Russia's traditional and largest religion, declared a part of Russia's "historical heritage." Military The initial psychological preparation of soldiers during training is referred to (non-pejoratively) as indoctrination. Information security In the field of information security, indoctrination is the initial briefing and instructions given before a person is granted access to secret information. See also Acculturation Behavior modification Brainwashing Pensée unique Recruitment Groupthink References External links Habermas and the Problem of Indoctrination Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Education Propaganda techniques Influence (social and political)

45159612

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icewind%20Dale%3A%20Enhanced%20Edition

Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition

Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition is a remake of the Black Isle Studios 2000 role-playing video game Icewind Dale and its expansions Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter and Trials of the Luremaster. Enhanced Edition was developed by Overhaul Games, a division of Beamdog, and published by Atari for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, iOS, and Android. Gameplay The game allows for an updated multiplayer feature, including cross platform, letting players play together regardless of the platform they played on. Much like Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition, Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition features a revamped user interface and a new renderer. To enhance gameplay several different viewing modes are available, as well as touch commands for mobile editions. The enhancements include 60 new items and 30 class/kit combinations and the playable blackguard class, a feature first presented in Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition. Development An enhanced edition of Icewind Dale was announced at the end of August 2014. It was to feature new content, widescreen compatibility, and continue to use 2nd Edition D&D rules. Due to its similarity in programming with the original Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale was pitched by Beamdog's Overhaul Games to Wizards of the Coast to receive an enhanced edition. With the intent of announcing the game only a month prior to release, this was later changed, forcing the team to reveal it at the Penny Arcade Expo. The game was developed through use of an updated Infinity Engine, referred to as either the Infinity Enhanced Engine, Infinity Plus Engine, or the Infinity Bless Engine. Although most of the assets of the original Icewind Dale were retrieved, the original programming done by Black Isle Studios was dumped. Instead, coding used in Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition was utilized. New code was then created by Overhaul to replace lost programming from the expansion Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter. While most of the code for Heart of Winter was rewritten, the majority of the original game's assets remained. Release The game was released on October 30, 2014 for Windows, OS X and Linux computers through GOG.com, Steam and Beamdog's official website. The game was also released for Android on the same day of PC release. The iOS devices release was delayed to November 11 as Apple did not originally approve of placing it in the iOS App Store, citing partial nudity in the game's CGI intro. Skybound Games, a division of Skybound Entertainment, released Beamdog's remastered version to Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One on October 15, 2019. Reception Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition received mostly positive reviews from critics. The PC version has a score of 80/100 on Metacritic for the PC version based on 13 reviews while the iOS version has a score of 83/100 based on 4 reviews. Gameplanet gave it a review score of 9/10 praising it for graphic upgrade over the original, bug fixes, rule tweaks and adding in all the additional content of the game while critisicing it for its dated graphics and the unnecessary inclusion of the "Story Mode" difficulty level. Gamezebo gave the mobile version a review score of 3.5/5 praising it for its new features, being free of lags and glitches and having a customisable UI. At the same time it criticised it for being difficult towards newcomers and being hard to play on a touchscreen. PC Gamer gave it a review score of 74/100 calling it "a cool must-play for RPG fans who’ve not tried it before, and a warming flashback for those who have". Softpedia gave it a review score of 8/10 praising it for its replay value, vast world, adding new UI and other features and for adding all its additional content and never-before-seen content. At the same time it also criticised it for not showing much graphic improvement over the original, being too difficult for new players and having no Dungeons & Dragons ruleset system tutorial. Josh Sawyer, one of the designers of the original game, commented on the Enhanced Edition in an interview: "As one of the main designers on Icewind Dale, seeing the BG2 [Baldur's Gate II] kits in there destroy all the balance kind of made me a little sad. The BG2 kits are really powerful and Icewind Dale was kind of balanced around one thing. But it was still really cool to see it with all the tech upgrades". References External links 2014 video games Android (operating system) games Cooperative video games Fantasy video games Forgotten Realms video games Infinity Engine games IOS games Linux games MacOS games Nintendo Switch games PlayStation 4 games Video games developed in Canada Video games featuring protagonists of selectable gender Video games with isometric graphics Video game remakes Windows games Xbox One games

41854632

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitro

Mitro

Mitro was a password manager for individuals and teams that securely saved users' logins, and allowed users to log in and share access. On October 6, 2015, the Mitro service shut down. The successor to Mitro is named Passopolis; this is a password manager built upon the Mitro source code. History Mitro was founded in 2012 by Vijay Pandurangan, Evan Jones, and Adam Hilss. On July 31, 2014, the Mitro team announced that they would join Twitter, and at the same time, they released the source code for Mitro on GitHub as free software under GPL. The Mitro team announced the shuttering of the Mitro service with the following timeline: July 11, 2015: Initial announcement that Mitro would be shut down July 18, 2015: Creating new accounts was disabled August 4, 2015: Final email warning about imminent shutdown was sent September 24, 2015: Mitro become read-only October 6, 2015: Mitro service was turned off October 31, 2015: All Mitro user data permanently destroyed The Mitro team explained the reason for shutting down the service was that the cost and administrative burden to maintain the service in their spare time with their own money had become too much. Given that they could not properly manage a service that people rely on for their security, they needed to stop running it. Former customers were encouraged to move to Passopolis, and independent project that uses the open source Mitro code, or use alternatives such as 1Password, Dashlane, or LastPass. On October 5, 2015, Mitro was officially terminated by Twitter. Investors Seed Funding Mitro was backed by $1.2 million in seed funding from Google Ventures and Matrix Partners. Features Password generator Password sharing One-click login Two factor authentication Cross-platform and cross-browser compatibility Browser extensions: Chrome, Firefox, Safari Mobile solutions for Android and iOS Security Mitro uses Google's Keyczar on the server and Keyczar JS implementation on the browser. Master key is a 128-bit AES key derived using PBKDF2 (SHA-1; 50000 iterations; 16 salt bytes) RSA with 2048-bit keys using OAEP-SHA1 (separate signing and encryption keys) AES with 128-bit keys in CBC mode with PKCS5 padding All encrypted data includes a MAC (HMAC-SHA1) See also Comparison of password managers List of password managers Password manager Cryptography Notes References External links Source code American companies established in 2012 Computer security software companies Cryptographic software Free password managers Free software programmed in C Software companies based in New York (state) Twitter acquisitions 2014 mergers and acquisitions 2012 establishments in New York (state) Software companies established in 2012

8011876

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MODELLER

MODELLER

Modeller, often stylized as MODELLER, is a computer program used for homology modeling to produce models of protein tertiary structures and quaternary structures (rarer). It implements a method inspired by nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy of proteins (protein NMR), termed satisfaction of spatial restraints, by which a set of geometrical criteria are used to create a probability density function for the location of each atom in the protein. The method relies on an input sequence alignment between the target amino acid sequence to be modeled and a template protein which structure has been solved. The program also incorporates limited functions for ab initio structure prediction of loop regions of proteins, which are often highly variable even among homologous proteins and thus difficult to predict by homology modeling. Modeller was originally written and is currently maintained by Andrej Sali at the University of California, San Francisco. It runs on the operating systems Unix, Linux, macOS, and Windows. It is freeware for academic use. Graphical user interfaces (GUIs) and commercial versions are distributed by Accelrys. The ModWeb comparative protein structure modeling webserver is based on Modeller and other tools for automatic protein structure modeling, with an option to deposit the resulting models into ModBase. Due to Modeller's popularity, several third party GUIs for MODELLER are available: EasyModeller is freeware and is one of the earliest third party GUIs for Modeller. Recent version (EasyModeller 4.0) supports Linux and Windows operating system. UCSF Chimera has a simple interface to Modeller. PyMod is a free and open-source plugin for PyMOL and has a comprehensive interface for Modeller. It supports Linux, Windows and macOS. MaxMod is a standalone GUI for MODELLER on Windows. See also List of protein structure prediction software References External links ModWeb EasyModeller - A GUI for Modeller. UCSF Chimera interface to Modeller PyMod - A PyMOL plugin for Modeller MINT - A GUI for Modeller MaxMod - A standalone GUI for Modeller on Windows. Molecular modelling software Computational biology

16256675

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unica%20Corporation

Unica Corporation

Unica is a brand within HCL software, a part of HCL Technologies comprising multiple Enterprise Marketing Management components. It was formerly a brand within IBM. HCL acquired Unica as a part of $1.8 billion purchase of select IBM products When purchased by IBM, Unica was managed by Yuchun Lee and had around 500 employees. History Unica was founded in 1992 by Yuchun Lee, Ruby Kennedy and David Cheung. The company is headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts, with additional offices in the US, Australia, France, Germany, India, Netherlands, Singapore, Spain, and the UK. They primarily serve the financial services, insurance and healthcare, business-to-business services, retail, automotive, technology, telecommunications, travel and hospitality, media and publishing, energy, and pharmaceuticals markets. In August 2010, IBM announced the intent to acquire Unica for $480M. In Oct 2010 the IBM acquisition of Unica was completed. Post acquisition, the Unica portfolio was focused to Unica Campaign, Unica Campaign Optimization, Unica Marketing Operations, and Unica Interact. The Unica suite also retain Detect and Distributed Marketing for legacy customers. In December 2018, HCL Technologies announced the intent to acquire Unica including other IBM products such as, Appscan for secure application development, BigFix for secure device management, Portal for digital experience, Notes & Domino for email and low-code rapid application development, Commerce for omni-channel eCommerce, and Connections for workstream collaboration. HCL Technologies had been engaged with IBM in an intellectual property partnership where HCL provided services, support, and development previously for some of these. In July 2019, HCL Technologies completed the acquisition of Unica and other noted products and subsequently formed a completely new division named HCL Software to manage the new software portfolio. As of July 2019 the Unica module names were streamlined and renamed to: Unica Campaign - Precision customer targeting at scale Unica Plan - Enterprise grade marketing management Unica Interact - Real time personalization in milli seconds Unica Optimize - Contact optimization for offers and channels HCL Software has invested heavily in the Unica platform since 2019 with one major release and several minor releases per year. To date, HCL Software has released a V11.0, V11.1, V12.0 and upcoming V12.1. In the first year, Unica added over 2000 enhancements. With the July 2020 release, Unica will add three new products; Deliver, Journey, and Link which will be the largest expansion of the Unica platform in over 20 years. In addition, Unica will now be licensed as a wholistic platform instead of the individual product modules. As of July 2020 the Unica marketing platform includes the below modules: Unica Campaign - Precision customer targeting at scale Unica Plan - Enterprise grade marketing management Unica Interact - Real time personalization in milli seconds Unica Optimize - Contact optimization for offers and channels Unica Journey – Goal Based customer Journeys Unica Deliver - Reliable & scalable messaging Unica Link - Fast & flexible integration platform References https://www.hcltech.com/press-releases/press-releases-business/hcl-releases-unica-v120-announcing-new-cloud-native-unica CRM software companies IBM acquisitions 1992 establishments in Massachusetts Companies based in Waltham, Massachusetts

60360839

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship%20and%20media%20control%20during%20the%20Venezuelan%20presidential%20crisis

Censorship and media control during the Venezuelan presidential crisis

There has been censorship and media control during Venezuelan presidential crisis between 2019 and 2020. A crisis concerning who is the legitimate President of Venezuela began on 10 January 2019, when the opposition-majority National Assembly declared that incumbent Nicolás Maduro's 2018 reelection was invalid and the body declared its president, Juan Guaidó, to be acting president of the nation. The process and results of the May 2018 Venezuelan presidential election were widely disputed. The National Assembly declared Maduro illegitimate on the day of his second inauguration, citing the 1999 Constitution of Venezuela enacted under Hugo Chávez, Maduro's predecessor; in response, the pro-Maduro Supreme Tribunal of Justice said the National Assembly's declaration was unconstitutional. Maduro's government states that the crisis is a "coup d'état led by the United States to topple him and control the country's oil reserves". Guaidó denies the coup allegations, saying peaceful volunteers back his movement. Since the beginning of the presidential crisis, Venezuela has been exposed to frequent "information blackouts", periods without access to internet or other news services during important political events. Since January, the National Assembly and Guaido's speeches are regularly disrupted, television channels and radio programs have been censored and many journalists have been illegally detained. The Venezuelan press workers union reported that in 2019, 40 journalists had been illegally detained as of 12 March. As of June 2019, journalists have been denied access to seven sessions of the National Assembly by the National Guard. Most Venezuelan television channels are controlled by the state, and information unfavorable to the government is not covered completely. Newspapers and magazines are scarce, as most are unable to afford paper to print. The underfunded web infrastructure has led to slow Internet connection speeds. The information blackouts have promoted the creation of underground news coverage that is usually broadcast through social media and instant message services like WhatsApp. The dependence of Venezuelans on social media has also promoted the spread of disinformation and pro-Maduro propaganda. Venezuela got the rank 148 of 180 in the World Press Freedom Index of Reporters Without Borders in 2019. The country went down five places since 2018. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) has made a call to Maduro administration to reestablish TV and radio channels that have been closed, cease on the restrictions to Internet access, and to protect the rights of journalists. Internet, television, and radio 2019 Several sources reported that starting 12 January 2019 until 18 January, internet access to Wikipedia (in all languages) was blocked in Venezuela after Guaidó's page on the Spanish Wikipedia was edited to show him as president. The block mainly affected the users of the state-run CANTV, the national telecommunications company and largest provider of the country. Several media outlets have suggested that Wikipedia directly or indirectly was taking sides with either group. Later on 21 January, the day of a National Guard mutiny in Cotiza, internet access to some social media like Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube was reported blocked for CANTV users. The Venezuelan government denied it had engaged in blocking. During the 23 January protests, widespread internet outages for CANTV users were reported, with Wikipedia, Google Search, Facebook, Instagram, and many other social media platforms affected. The widespread regional internet blackouts occurred again on 26 to 27 January. Canal 24 Horas, a news channel owned by Chile's public broadcaster, TVN, was removed from Venezuela's cable and satellite television operators by the state-run National Commission of Telecommunications (Conatel) on 24 January. Conatel removed 24 Horas once again during the 23 February conflicts in the Venezuelan frontier, no reason was given. Since 22 January, Conatel has repeatedly advised against the promotion of violence and the disavowing of institutional authorities, according to the Law on Social Responsibility on Radio and Television imposed in 2004. Some radio programs have been ordered off air, including Cesar Miguel Rondón's radio program, one of the most listened-to programs in the country. Other programs have been temporarily canceled or received censorship warnings, including a threat to close private television and radio stations if they recognize Guaidó as acting president or interim president of Venezuela. During the Venezuela Aid Live concert on 22 February, NatGeo and Antena 3 Internacional were removed from cable and satellite TV for broadcasting the concert. Access to YouTube was also blocked for CANTV users during the concert. Without clear reason, Twitter was blocked for CANTV users on 27 February, and again on 4 March, with Guaido's return from his regional trip. The access to SoundCloud was also restricted all along between both dates. NetBlocks suspects that the first censorship on the 27th was related either to a SoundCloud recording published by Guaidó on Twitter or to a viral video showing several delegates leaving the UN Human Rights Council meeting during Jorge Arreaza speech. Soundcloud access was restricted during the following 3 months. Without any official statement from Conatel, the German state owned TV channel, Deutsche Welle (DW) in Spanish, was blocked from Venezuelan cable networks from 14 to 15 April. Conatel had already censored the DW signal once before in 2018 during the broadcast of a documentary titled "Venezuela—Escape from a Failed State". During the 2019 Venezuelan uprising of 30 April, Juan Guaidó led a group of civilian and military forces in an uprising against Nicolás Maduro. Shortly after the announcement, NetBlocks reported that multiple social media and news websites were censored by the state-run CANTV internet provider. Internet service was restored 20 minutes before a live speech of Nicolás Maduro. During the clashes, the signal of BBC World News and CNN was pulled off air from all cable providers ordered by Conatel. According to CNN, it was blocked one minute after its live feed showed government VN-4s running over protesters. Venezuela's oldest private local radio station Radio Caracas Radio (RCR) was also ordered off air. Broadcast issues and internet disruptions followed during the protests of 1 May. The IACHR communication expressed that "freedom of expression applies to the Internet in the same way as it does to all communication media" and consider Internet restrictions as an "extreme measure-analogous to the prohibition of a newspaper or a radio or television station". The report emphasizes that "such blockades or restrictions cannot be justified, not even for reasons of public order or national security". The IACHR rapporteur also explained that the "adjudication, revocation, and renewal of licenses must be established by law and guided by objective, clear, impartial, and public criteria compatible with a democratic society; the process must be transparent; the decision that grants or denies the request must be duly motivated; and be subject to adequate judicial control". Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) South coordinator, Natalie Southwick, has criticized the recent situation in Venezuela: "We are alarmed by the increasingly brazen censorship in Venezuela, including the repeated and selective restriction of internet access, a popular tool of authoritarian regimes. Venezuelan authorities should ensure that all internet platforms and news outlets—digital, radio, and television—are available to citizens seeking to access and share information". Edgar Zambrano vice-minister of the National Assembly and ally of Guaidó was detained by the Bolivarian Intelligence Service (SEBIN) on 8 May. During the three hours after his detention, NetBlocks reported disruption of YouTube and Google services for CANTV users. In June, the Venezuelan news website La Patilla was charged with "moral charges" and a fine of 30 billion bolivars (about $5m dollars) after publishing an ABC News article about drug traffic in Venezuela, that implicated the president of the pro-Maduro 2017 Constituent National Assembly, Diosdado Cabello. The website director Alberto Federico Ravell, supporter of Juan Guaidó, wrote that Cabello was engaging in "judicial terrorism". Cabello also added that he will take control of the website if it was unable to pay. Cabello had previously tried to raise judicial processes against ABC and The Wall Street Journal for accusations of drug trafficking, but the cases were rejected. Nathalie Southwick (CPJ) considers that the measure against La Patilla is an "attempt to bankrupt and shut down a critical outlet" and provides an "example of how the Venezuelan judicial system is being used to retaliate against critical media". Without any previous judiciary order, the access to online newspapers El Pitazo and Efecto Cocuyo, through national and private internet providers, was blocked during the visit of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) chief Michelle Bachelet to Venezuela in June. 2020 During the COVID-19 pandemic in Venezuela, the National Assembly created a webpage to provide information on the coronavirus disease to the public. The access to the site was restricted for CANTV users. The censorship was denounced by Guaidó. On 1 April, the website AlbertoNews was indefinitely restricted after a coverage of (Operation Knock-Knock), a search and seizure operation by the Maduro administration. Live speeches disrupted Live streams of the National Assembly sessions and Guaidó's speeches and appearances have been regularly disrupted for CANTV users since the end of January, mainly affecting access to streaming platforms like Periscope, Bing, Twitter video, and YouTube, along with some other Google services. DNS blocking is employed to generate the disruptions. The longest block of YouTube to date started during an Assembly session on 6 March, lasting 20 hours. After the events of 23 February to ship of humanitarian aid to Venezuela, Guaidó and Colombian President Iván Duque's evening speech in Las Tienditas Bridge was similarly blocked for CANTV users in Venezuela. More disruptions recurred during the Lima Group session on the 24th and during the US Vice President Mike Pence's speech on 25 February. Another disruption on 15 April, affecting only CANTV users, occurred during the live stream of the press conference about Venezuela's crisis of US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Duque in Cúcuta. Venezuelan politician Leopoldo López, detained during the 2014 protests and under house arrest by Maduro administration was released by pro-Guaidó military during the 30 April uprising. López and his family sought refuge in the Spanish embassy in Caracas. On 2 May, the disruption of internet services resumed during a press-conference where López spoke about his discussions with mid-military officers to oppose Maduro administration. Phishing The website "Voluntarios X Venezuela" was promoted by Guaidó and the National Assembly to gather volunteers for humanitarian aid; as of 16 February, Guaidó said 600,000 people had signed up. Between 12 and 13 February, CANTV users that tried to access were redirected to a mirror site with a different URL address. The mirror site asked for personal information: names, ID, address and telephone numbers. The fake site also hosted other phishing websites with the aim of obtaining email addresses, usernames and passwords. All the phishing websites used the .ve domain controlled by Conatel. This manipulation was denounced as a technique to identify dissidents to the government. Following the phishing incident, the official site was completely blocked for CANTV users on 16 February. Aggression, arrests and releases of press personnel The Venezuelan press workers union denounced that in 2019, 40 journalists had been illegally detained as of 12 March; the National Assembly Parliamentary Commission for Media declared that there had been 173 aggressions against press workers as of 13 March. The commission planned to report these aggressions to the International Criminal Court. A delegation led by Michelle Bachelet, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights visited Venezuela on March. In a preliminary oral report, Bachelet denounced the escalating freedom of speech and press restrictions in Venezuela. According to Efecto Cocuyo director, Luz Mely Reyes, "journalism is becoming 'very complicated' in Venezuela where power outages, patchy internet and threats of violence have made reporting increasingly difficult". Reyes told Agence France-Presse (AFP) in April that she is unsure that independent outlets like Efecto Cocuyo may "survive" in this economic and political situation. January 2019 Two journalists—Beatriz Adrián of Caracol Televisión and Osmary Hernández of CNN—were detained while on-air and covering the 13 January detention of Guaidó. Between 29 and 30 January, at least eleven press personnel were arrested. On the evening of 29 January, four journalists were arrested by the Maduro government while reporting near the Miraflores presidential palace—Venezuelan journalists Ana Rodríguez of VPI TV and Maiker Yriarte of TV Venezuela, and Chilean journalists Rodrigo Pérez and Gonzalo Barahona of TVN Chile. The two Venezuelan journalists were released; the Chilean journalists were deported. Two French journalists from French TV show, Quotidien, and their Venezuelan producer were detained for two days at El Helicoide on 30 January. Three press workers of EFE were also arrested by SEBIN and DGCIM—a Colombian photographer, a Colombian companion, and a Spanish companion. Jorge Arreaza, Venezuelan Minister for Foreign Affairs, defended the detentions, stating that press workers were part "of the media operation against the country" that wanted "to create a media scandal" by not "complying with the minimum prerequisites required by Venezuelan law". Press organizations stated that they complied with the migration laws of Venezuela. Maduro denied that journalists were detained by authorities. February 2019 During the 23 February clashes, there were numerous reports of Venezuelan authorities and paramilitaries attacking press workers, including workers of the Associated Press, Ecos del Torbes, La Prensa de Lara, Telemundo, TVVenezuela, VIVOplay, VPItv and others. Swedish reporter Annika Hernroth-Rothstein reported to the National Assembly that she was violently threatened, ransacked and beaten by pro-Maduro paramilitary groups known as colectivos on 23 February. Rothstein returned to Venezuela on 18 April, but she was briefly detained at the airport by the Venezuelan National Guard (GNB) and was subsequently deported. Jorge Ramos, who The Guardian described as "arguably the best-known journalist in the Spanish-speaking world", was detained along with his Univisión crew members during an interview with Maduro on 25 February. Univisión equipment and materials were confiscated by Venezuelan authorities. During the interview, Maduro denied that a humanitarian crisis existed in Venezuela, which prompted Ramos to show Maduro images of Venezuelan children eating from a garbage truck and asking again if a crisis existed. After being released, Ramos stated that he and his group were held because this question bothered Maduro. The Univisión team was informed they would be deported, Maduro's Minister of Information Jorge Rodríguez described the incident as a "cheap show". Telemundo journalist Daniel Garrido was detained for eight hours by SEBIN on 26 February and was later irregularly released on a side street in Caracas. The journalist and dissident Chavist Alí Domínguez was kidnapped on 28 February; he was found comatose on the roadside of a major highway on the morning of the next day, though this was not released even to his family until several days later, shortly before he died as a result of injuries of beating and suspected torture. March blackouts US freelance journalist Cody Weddle and his Venezuelan coworker Carlos Camacho were detained for half a day on 7 March after Weddle house was raided and his equipment confiscated by military counterintelligence forces. US diplomats demanded Venezuelan authorities for Weddle's release. Weddle was deported afterwards. During the 2019 Venezuelan blackouts, Venezuelan–Spanish journalist was at his house when he was arrested by SEBIN forces, and taken along with his electronic equipment to El Helicoide. He said he had been physically attacked and that the intelligence agents had taken money from his house without reporting it. A group accompanied by his wife, journalist Naky Soto, protested in front of the prosecutor office. Michelle Bachelet, head of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, was in Caracas at that time and tweeted concern about the detention. The Spanish embassy in Caracas also contacted the government for information. Díaz was accused as an accomplice in a plot to cause the electricity outage, he was charged with instigation of a crime and is not allowed to leave Venezuela. He is also forbidden to participate in protests or to give statements to the media, and he must appear before court every eight days. Gazeta Wyborcza Polish journalist, Tomasz Surdel, was briefly detained, threatened, and beaten, by police Special Actions Force (FAES) during the blackout, according to the Venezuelan press workers union. The newspaper's website said it had received complaints about his reporting on Maduro from the Venezuelan Embassy in Warsaw, and that he was not arrested but was viciously beaten and left by the side of the road. German journalist Billy Six, who was detained in El Helicoide since 17 November 2018 charged of espionage, rebellion and security violations, was allowed to leave Venezuela on 16 March. He must report to court every 15 days and he cannot speak to the media about his detention. Reporters Without Borders had previously considered the allegations unproven and called for his release. Venemundo Web reporter Dayana Krays was threatened with a gun by colectivos on 31 March. During the second wave of blackouts, Venezuelan journalist Danilo Alberto Gil was detained in Zulia on 30 March while covering the protests in Ciudad Ojeda. At the time of the arrest, he was recording a video of the police repression against protesters and an attempt of detention of National Assembly members. Gil was released on 1 April judged with charges of resistance to authority and he is barred from leaving the country. May 2019 A National Assembly session was held on 7 May to discuss a proposal for Venezuela's return to Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (TIAR). News outlets were prevented to cover the session by police forces and some journalists were harassed by Maduro supporters. NetBlocks also reported internet outages during the session live-stream. On the same day, Spanish journalist Joan Guirado covering the crisis in Venezuela for Okdiario was arrested and held for hours by SEBIN, and later expelled from Venezuela. Under the alleged threat of the presence of an explosive, the entry to the parliament was blocked by the GNB and SEBIN on 14 May. The National Assembly session of that day, concerning the detention of their vicepresident Edgar Zambrano, had to be rescheduled for the next day. Jorge Millan, a National Assembly member, said that the report of "bombs" was false. Internet disruptions occurred during Guaido's public speech on the blockade. Guaidó tweeted "they're trying to hold the legislative power hostage while the dictator entrenches himself alone in a palace where he shouldn't be". The next day, media outlets were prevented from covering the parliamentary session. The security forces threatened reporters with detention if they did not clear out the vicinity of the parliament. The access to media outlets to congress was blocked again on 21 and on 28 May. Iván Simonovis—a former police commissioner arrested in November 2004 and accused by the Hugo Chávez government of the violence that took place in Caracas during the 2002 Llaguno Overpass events—left house arrest in May. Guaidó said that security forces loyal to him released Simonovis. Press workers from Caracol Televisión, TV Venezuela and Venevisión, were outside Simonovis house when his whereabouts were unknown. Five of the journalists were arbitrarily detained for three hours. On 21 May, The Human Rights Watch and the CPJ called for the "immediate release" of the photojournalist Jesús Medina Ezaine held in Ramo Verde Prison. Medina was first detained in October 2017 alongside journalist Roberto di Matteo of Italy and Filippo Rossi of Switzerland while reporting at Tocorón penitentiary. After the detention, Medina went missing, according to the security forces, he was not held at their headquarters. Medina later appeared in November, left in a highway, he reported how he was tortured and threatened to death by his abductors. A team of journalists was working in an investigative project at Caracas hospital in August 2018 when Medina was arrested again. He was charged with inciting hate, illegal enrichment, and criminal association. On 2 May 2019, his preliminary hearing—that has to take place 45 days at most after a detention—was delayed for an eighth time. "Venezuelan authorities should immediately drop the absurd charges against Jesús Medina and stop finding pretexts to prolong his pretrial detention", said CPJ coordinator Nathalie Southwick. Medina was finally released in January 2020; he suffered from dental and vision problems while in detention. June–August 2019 News outlets were able to cover the National Assembly session on 4 June with the help of the members of the parliament. The media workers had to force their way through the blockade created by National Guardsmen. Journalists had to force their way into parliament again on 18 June. Power outages and internet disruptions followed during the parliamentary session. Braulio Jatar, Chilean-Venezuelan journalist and lawyer jailed in 2016 after accusing and protesting against Maduro for money laundering, was given conditional release on 5 July, the same day as the release of Maria Lourdes Afiuni and 20 students, according to Bachelet. The releases happened after the publication of a United Nations report on government-backed death squads and the petition from Bachelet to Maduro administration to release government dissidents. Afiuni's brother and Jatar said that they had not received official notices from Venezuela's judiciary. Jatar was officially released on 8 July but he has to present himself before a court every 15 days and he cannot leave Nueva Esparta state. In July, La Verdad Venezuelan journalist Wilmer Quintana García was detained on charges of "incitement or promotion hate" under the Venezuelan Law against Hatred. Quintana García used his personal Facebook and Twitter accounts to report on corruption allegations carried out by Guárico governor José Manuel Vasquez and president of Alimentos Guárico Emilio Ávila. The allegations included the mismanagement of funds to resupply gas services and the resale of CLAP boxes at a higher price. The CPJ denounced the arrest indicating that "allegations of corruption against public officials are not hate speech". In August, Quintana García was taken to a hospital due to a possible cardiac arrest. The Venezuelan Press Workers Union (SNTP) denounced and condemned attacks committed by members of Juan Guaidó's team against at least seven press workers during an activity in Maracay, Aragua state, on 31 August, stating that they were verbally and physically attacked. The Association of Venezuelan Journalists Abroad (APEVEX) denounced the attacks, declaring that "Venezuelan journalists already had enough of the attacks by the regime to now also be victims of the interim government". Guaidó apologized for the incident, assuring that he would take the necessary actions to prevent it from happening again. November–December 2019 Security forces from the Venezuelan military counterintelligence (DGCIM) entered Entorno Digital, a press office, on 19 November afternoon and detained its employees. The office director stated that he was not made aware of the justification for the detentions. Between the detainees there were members of news websites Caraota Digital and VPITv. The press workers were released some hours later during the night. For 10 hours, SEBIN agents raided the offices of , a media owned by Telecaribe. Afterwards, the media was shutdown indefinitely by the authorities without warrants nor government authorization for the raids, according to Venepress lawyers. Venepress news editor, Israel Barbuzano, suspects that the closures are part of an offensive against Telecaribe president who has supported Juan Guaidó in opinion columns. January 2020 Parliament vote disrupted During the 2020 Venezuelan National Assembly Delegated Committee election, to choose the president of the National Assembly, independent journalists were also impeded from covering the event. Maduro's Ministry of Information, which has no relationship to the National Assembly, allowed reporters from state-run media to enter the legislative palace. Other reporters were not allowed in and told to watch it on a live feed from outside. State communications service CANTV reportedly blocked access to social media sites Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube on the day of the election. Block tracking website NetBlocks reported that the block began as the National Assembly session did, criticizing this. In a follow-up on 15 January, the entry to the parliament was blocked by police forces. Colectivos, pro-Maduro paramilitary groups, joined the scene and threatened lawmakers and journalists. Parallel to it, in Bolívar Square, colectivos attacked a teachers strike. Some journalists were attacked with human waste. 2020 Punto de Corte report Punto de Corte journalists Johan Álvarez and Alexandra Villán did an undercover report about CANTV, a major state owned telecommunication company, where they were able to infiltrate the main headquarters in Caracas with help of workers and showed several problems, including malfunctioning equipment and, as well as the lack of required air conditioning, which causes many problems experienced by users. After the report was published, the journalists were threatened and Punto de Corte was blocked in Venezuela. The day after the report was published, on 1 February, Álvarez and Villán were hit by a car in Baralt Avenue of Caracas while Álvarez was riding a motorcycle. Álvarez had a skull fracture and internal bleeding, while Villán received tibia and fibula fractures. Airport incident in February 2020 During Juan Guaidó return to Venezuela in February 2020, after his second international tour, a group of supporters and pro-Maduro agitators received him in the airport. Despite the travel ban imposed on Guaidó, he was allowed to enter the country. During Guaidó's arrival, various media workers were insulted, harassed, robbed and physically aggressed by the agitators. According to the Venezuelan Press Working Union (SNTP), Venezuelan security forces were present and witnessed the attacks, but did not intervene. Between the reported incidents there were two reporters that were punched and kicked in the face and a female journalist that was bitten by an agitator. Videos and photos of the events circulated over social media. A SNTP worker reported that some agitators carried knives and razors and threatened journalists. Two days later, when journalists were going to file the complaint to the authorities, security forces impeded their access to the prosecutor office. During COVID-19 pandemic In April 2020, the National Journalists College reported that there had been 62 attacks against the Venezuelan press that year, 28 of which happened between 1 and 15 April. On fuel shortages The house of journalist Eduardo Galindo in Apure by Venezuelan anti-extortion and kidnapping unit from the Venezuelan National Guard (GNB) on 15 April afternoon. Galindo was brought to police headquarters and was interrogated for his publications in Senderos de Apure, a news website. Hours later Galindo's wife and brother were taken into custody too. Galindo's recent post related to fuel shortages in the region. According to the National Journalist Union, the authorities have not provided any additional information about Galindo's arrest, which had been conducted without a warrant, or filed any charges against him. The local prosecutor denied a document by the union demanding Galindo's release. Foreign censorship on the crisis The authorities of China, supporters of the Maduro government, have censored information about the presidential crisis according to Radio Free Asia. Reports from China state that Chinese citizens who criticize Maduro on social media are punished or fined, with economist He Jiangbing saying that the Chinese government is "trying to prevent another color revolution... because Venezuela and China are very similar". After the news website Runrun.es published a report on extrajudicial killings by the Bolivarian National Police, on 25 May, the Venezuelan Press and Society Institute (IPYS – ) pointed out that the website was out of service due to an "uncached request attack", denouncing that it originated from Russia. References External links Venezuela 2019 in politics 2019 in Venezuela Crisis in Venezuela January 2019 events in Venezuela Political history of Venezuela Venezuelan presidential crisis

917201

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert%20Murray

Gilbert Murray

George Gilbert Aimé Murray (2 January 1866 – 20 May 1957) was an Australian-born British classical scholar and public intellectual, with connections in many spheres. He was an outstanding scholar of the language and culture of Ancient Greece, perhaps the leading authority in the first half of the twentieth century. He is the basis for the character of Adolphus Cusins in his friend George Bernard Shaw's play Major Barbara, and also appears as the chorus figure in Tony Harrison's play Fram. He served as President of the Ethical Union (now Humanists UK) from 1929–1930 and was a delegate at the inaugural World Humanist Congress in 1952 which established Humanists International. He was a leader of the League of Nations Society and the League of Nations Union, which promoted the League of Nations in Britain. Early life Murray was born in Sydney, Australia. His father, Sir Terence Aubrey Murray, who died in 1873, had been a Member of the New South Wales Parliament; Gilbert's mother, Agnes Ann Murray (née Edwards), ran a girls' school in Sydney for a few years. Then, in 1877, Agnes emigrated with Gilbert to the UK, where she died in 1891. Murray was educated at Merchant Taylors' School and St John's College, Oxford. He distinguished himself in writing in Greek and Latin: he won all the prizes awarded by Oxford. Classicist Academic career From 1889–1899, Murray was Professor of Greek at the University of Glasgow. There was a break in his academic career from 1899 to 1905, when he returned to Oxford; he interested himself in dramatic and political writing. After 1908 he was Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Oxford. In the same year he invited Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff to Oxford, where the Prussian philologist delivered two lectures: Greek Historical Writing and Apollo (later, he would replicate them in Cambridge). From 1925–1926 Murray was the Charles Eliot Norton Lecturer at Harvard University. Greek drama Murray is perhaps now best known for his verse translations of Greek drama, which were popular and prominent in their time. As a poet he was generally taken to be a follower of Swinburne and had little sympathy from the modernist poets of the rising generation. The staging of Athenian drama in English did have its own cultural impact. He had earlier experimented with his own prose dramas, without much success. Over time he worked through almost the entire canon of Athenian dramas (Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides in tragedy; Aristophanes in comedy). From Euripides, the Hippolytus and The Bacchae (together with The Frogs of Aristophanes; first edition, 1902); the Medea, Trojan Women, and Electra (1905–1907); Iphigenia in Tauris (1910); The Rhesus (1913) were presented at the Court Theatre, in London. In the United States Granville Barker and his wife Lillah McCarthy gave outdoor performances of The Trojan Women and Iphigenia in Tauris at various colleges (1915). The translation of Œdipus Rex was a commission from W. B. Yeats. Until 1912 this could not have been staged for a British audience. Murray was drawn into the public debate on censorship that came to a head in 1907 and was pushed by William Archer, whom he knew well from Glasgow, George Bernard Shaw, and others such as John Galsworthy, J. M. Barrie and Edward Garnett. A petition was taken to Herbert Gladstone, then Home Secretary, early in 1908. The Ritualists He was one of the scholars associated with Jane Harrison in the myth-ritual school of mythography. They met first in 1900. He wrote an appendix on the Orphic tablets for her 1903 book Prolegomena; he later contributed to her Themis (1912). Francis Fergusson wrote In public life Liberal Party politics He was a lifelong supporter of the Liberal Party, lining up on the Irish Home Rule and non-imperialist sides of the splits in the party of the late nineteenth century. He supported temperance, and married into a prominent Liberal, aristocratic and temperance family, the Carlisles. He made a number of moves that might have taken him into parliamentary politics, initially by tentative thoughts about standing in elections during the 1890s. In 1901-2 he was in close contact with the Independent Labour Party. But the overall effect of the Second Boer War was to drive him back into the academic career he had put on hold in 1898, resigning his Glasgow chair (effective from April 1899). He stood five times unsuccessfully for the University of Oxford constituency between 1919 and 1929. He continued support for the Asquith faction of Liberals, after the party was split again by Lloyd George. During the 1930s the Liberals as a party were crushed electorally, but Liberal thinkers continued to write; Murray was one of the signatory Next Five Years Group formed around Clifford Allen. Activist As Regius Professor and literary figure, he had a platform to promote his views, which were many-sided but Whig-liberal. In 1912 he wrote an introduction to The Great Analysis: A Plea for a Rational World-Order, by his friend William Archer. During World War I he became a pamphleteer, putting a reasoned war case. He also defended C. K. Ogden against criticism, and took a public interest in conscientious objection. Murray never took a pacifist line himself, broke an old friendship with Bertrand Russell early in the war, and supported British intervention in the Suez Crisis. He was also involved as an internationalist in the League of Nations. He was a Vice-President of the League of Nations Society from 1916, and in 1917 wrote influential articles in The Daily News. At the invitation of Jan Smuts he acted in 1921/2 as a League delegate for South Africa. He was an influential member of the International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation of the League from 1922 to 1939, being its president from 1928 to 1939. Later he was a major influence in the setting-up of Oxfam and of the Students' International Union (later the Institute of World Affairs). Involvement with Wells For a brief period Murray became closely involved with the novelist H. G. Wells. Initially this was in 1917 and connection with groups supporting a future League: Wells promoted a League of Free Nations Association (LFNA), an idea not in fact exclusive to him, since it had been 'up in the air' since Woodrow Wilson had started considering post-war settlements. Wells applied through the British propaganda office with which Murray had been connected since 1914. The two men corresponded from 1917 about League matters. Wells was bullish about pushing ahead with a British LFNA, Murray was involved already in the League of Nations Society (LNS), though not active. The political position was delicate, as Murray understood and Wells may not have: the LNS overlapped with the Union of Democratic Control, which was too far towards the pacifist end of the spectrum of opinion to be effective in that time and context. Eventually in 1918 the LFNA was set up around Welsh Liberal MP David Davies, and then shortly the LFNA and LNS merged as the League of Nations Union. Two years later, Wells called on Murray, and Murray's New College colleague Ernest Barker, to lend their names as advisers on his The Outline of History. Their names duly appeared on the title page. Murray had to give evidence in the plagiarism case Deeks v. Wells that arose in 1925. Psychical research Murray held a deep interest in psychical research. Between 1916 and 1924, he conducted 236 experiments into telepathy and reported 36% as successful, although it was suggested that the results could be explained by hyperaesthesia as he could hear what was being said by the sender. Murray was the President of the Society for Psychical Research in 1915–1916 and 1952. Humanism Murray identified as a humanist, and even served as a President of the British Ethical Union. He joined the Rationalist Press Association, and in 1952 was a delegate to the inaugural World Humanist Congress which founded Humanists International. He wrote and broadcast extensively on religion (Greek, Stoic and Christian); and wrote several books dealing with his version of humanism, which he espoused as a naturalistic philosophy, contrasted with Christianity and revealed religion in general. He was President of the British Ethical Union (now Humanists UK) from 1929–1930. A phrase from his 1910 lectures Four Stages of Greek Religion enjoyed public prominence: the "failure of nerve" of the Hellenistic world, of which a turn to irrationalism was symptomatic. Murray was baptised as a Roman Catholic; his father was a Catholic, his mother a Protestant. His daughter Rosalind (later Rosalind Toynbee), a Catholic convert, attacked his atheism in her book of apologetics, The Good Pagan's Failure (1939). About a month before he died, when he was bedridden, his daughter Rosalind called the local Catholic priest to see him. In an article in The Times following his death, however, his son Stephen made clear that Rosalind and Catholic friends did 'not want it thought that they claim he died a Roman Catholic'. Stephen said that his sister 'would not dream of making a public claim that he would re-enter the Church.' Awards and honours He refused a knighthood in 1912, though he was appointed to the Order of Merit in 1941. He received honorary degrees from Glasgow, Birmingham, and Oxford. He gave the 1914 Shakespeare Lecture of the British Academy. He gave the 1941 Andrew Lang lecture. Minor planet 941 Murray is named after him, for his support of Austria after World War I. Family Murray's father was Sir Terence Aubrey Murray and his brother Sir Hubert Murray. Murray's mother, Agnes Ann Murray (née Edwards), was a cousin of the dramatist W. S. Gilbert. Murray married Lady Mary Henrietta Howard (1865–1956), daughter of George Howard, 9th Earl of Carlisle. When her mother Rosalind Howard, Countess of Carlisle died in 1921, Castle Howard was left to Lady Mary. However, she passed it on to her surviving brother Geoffrey, retaining an estate in Cumberland with an income of c£5,000pa. Gilbert and Lady Mary had five children, two daughters (Rosalind, 1890–1967 and Agnes Elizabeth 1894–1922) and three sons (Denis, Basil, and Stephen) including: Basil Murray, 1903–1937, who was a well-known and rather louche figure, and friend of Evelyn Waugh. His wife was a daughter of the artist Algernon Newton RA, and a sister of Robert Newton. The writer Venetia Murray (3 January 1932 – 26 September 2004) was Basil's daughter, as was Ann Paludan (1928–2014), writer on Chinese history. Mark Jones, former director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, is Ann's son. Agnes Elizabeth Murray (1894–1922). Attended Somerville College, Oxford, but gave up her studies to spend two years nursing before serving as an RAF dispatch rider and as an ambulance driver for the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry Corps. She died of peritonitis in France. Rosalind Murray (1890–1967), writer, married Arnold J. Toynbee, and was the mother of Philip Toynbee, critic, father of Polly Toynbee, journalist. Stephen (February 1908 – July 1994), radical lawyer, married the architect Margaret Gillet. Stephen gave up law and became a farmer and lived at "Greenside" farm, Hallbankgate, Cumbria. He was chairman of Border Rural District Council (1962–66), of Cumberland County Council, of the Lake District Special Planning Board (1977–81) and of Cumbria County Council (1985–87). They were parents of Gilbert, killed in climbing accident in Fox's Glacier New Zealand in the 1950s Alexander (Sandy), academic medievalist historian at Oxford University Robin, academic, economist, chair of Twin Trading Hubert, architect, now practising in Boston, MA, USA The four children were evacuated during the Second World War from London to the Sands House Hotel, Brampton, Cumberland, which was converted to temperance status by Lady Rosalind, and run by Mrs and Mrs James Warwick, formerly in her service, with their daughter Charlotte Elizabeth. She became an enduring friend of the boys and an unfinished letter to her was found on Gilbert's body after the accident. Works Translations Andromache (1900) A text edition of Euripides, Fabulae, in three volumes (1901, 1904, 1910) Euripides, Hippolytus; The Bacchae (1902) Aristophanes, The Frogs (1902) Euripides, The Trojan Women (1905) Euripides, Electra (1905) Euripides Medea (1910) Iphigenia in Tauris (1911) Oedipus King of Thebes (1911) The Story of Nefrekepta: From a Demotic Papyrus (1911) Euripides, Rhesus (1913) Andromache (1913) Alcestis (1915) Agamemnon (1920) Choephoroe (1923) Eumenides of Aeschylus (1926) The Oresteia (1928) The Suppliant Women (1930) Prometheus Bound, Translated into English Rhyming Verse (London: Allen & Unwin, 1931) Seven Against Thebes (1935) A text edition of Aeschylus, Septem quae supersunt Tragoediae (OCT. 1937. 1955) The Persians (1939) Antigone (1941) The Rape of the Locks: The Perikeiromene of Menander (1942) Fifteen Greek Plays (1943) with others The Arbitration: the Epitrepontes of Menander (1945) Oedipus at Colonus (1948) The Birds (1950) Euripides, Ion (1954) Collected Plays of Euripides (1954) The Knights (1956) Classical studies The Place of Greek in Education (1889) Inaugural Lecture A History of Ancient Greek Literature (1897) The Rise of the Greek Epic (1907) third edition (1924) Harvard University lectures Greek Historical Writing, and Apollo: Two Lectures (1908) with Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff The Interpretation of Ancient Greek Literature (1909) Inaugural Lecture Ancient Greek Literature (1911) English Literature and the Classics (1912) section on Tragedy, editor George Stuart Gordon Four Stages of Greek Religion (1913) (1913) in the Home University Library Hamlet and Orestes: A Study in Traditional Types (1914) Annual Shakespeare Lecture 1914 The Stoic Philosophy (1915) Conway Lecture Aristophanes and the War Party, A Study in the Contemporary Criticism of the Peloponnesian War (1919) Creighton Lecture 1918, as Our Great War and The Great War of the Ancient Greeks (US, 1920) Essays and Addresses (London: Allen & Unwin, 1921). Greek Historical Thought: from Homer to the Age of Heraclius (1924) with Arnold J. Toynbee Five Stages of Greek Religion (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925); (London: Watts, 1935 edition) The Classical Tradition in Poetry (London: Milford, 1927) Charles Eliot Norton Lectures Aristophanes: A Study (1933) Aeschylus: The Creator of Tragedy (1940) The Wife of Heracles (1947) Greek Studies (Oxford: University Press, 1946) Hellenism and the Modern World (1953) radio talks Festschrift Greek Poetry and Life, Essays presented to Gilbert Murray on his Seventieth Birthday, 2 January 1936 (1936) Other Gobi or Shamo novel (1889); 1890 3rd edition Carlyon Sahib, a drama in Four Acts (1899) Liberalism and the Empire: Three Essays with Francis W. Hirst and John L. Hammond (1900) Annual Shakespeare Lecture of the British Academy (1914) Thoughts on the War pamphlet (1914) The Foreign Policy of Sir Edward Grey, 1906–1915 online text (1915) Ethical Problems of the War an address (1915) Herd Instinct and the War A Lecture reprinted in The International Crisis in Its Ethical and Psychological Aspects (1915) How can war ever be right? Oxford Pamphlets No 18/Ist Krieg je berechtigt?/La guerre. Peut-elle jamais se justifier? (1915) Impressions of Scandinavia in War Time (1916) pamphlet, reprint from the Westminster Gazette The United States and the War pamphlet (1916) The Way Forward: Three Articles on Liberal Policy pamphlet (1917) Great Britain's Sea Policy – A Reply to an American Critic pamphlet, reprinted from The Atlantic Monthly (1917) Faith, War and Policy (1917) The League of Nations and the Democratic Idea (1918) Religio Grammatici: The Religion Of A Man Of Letters Presidential Address to the Classical Association 8 January 1918 (1918) Foreword to My Mission to London 1912–1914 by Prince Lichnowsky, the German ambassador in London who had warned Berlin that Britain would fight in August 1914. Cassel & Co. London. (1918) Wells, Herbert George, Lionel Curtis, William Archer, Henry Wickham Steed, Alfred Zimmern, John Alfred Spender, James Bryce Bryce, and Gilbert Murray. The Idea of a League of Nations (Boston, The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1919). Satanism and the World Order Adamson Lecture (1920) The League of Nations and its Guarantees League of Nations Union pamphlet (1920) Essays and Addresses (1921) The Problem of Foreign Policy: A Consideration of Present Dangers and the Best Methods for Meeting Them (1921) Tradition and Progress (1922) The Ordeal of This Generation: The War, the League and the Future Halley Stewart Lectures 1928 (1930) Augustan Book of Poetry volume 41 (1931) The Intelligent Man's Way To Prevent War with others (1933) Problems of Peace (Eighth Series) with others (1933) Then and Now (1935) Liberality and Civilisation 1937 Hibbert Lectures (1938) Stoic, Christian and Humanist (1940) The Deeper Causes of the War and its Issues with others (1940) World Order Papers, No. 2 (1940) pamphlet, The Royal Institute of International Affairs Anchor of Civilisation Philip Maurice Deneke Lecture (1942) A Conversation with Bryce James Bryce Memorial Lecture (1943) Myths and Ethics, or Humanism and the World's Need Conway Hall lecture (1944) Humanism: Three BBC talks with Julian Huxley and Joseph Houldsworth Oldham (1944) Victory and After (1945) From the League to the U.N. (1948) Spires of Libertywith others (1948) Andrew Lang: The Poet Andrew Lang Lecture 1947 (1948) The Meaning of Freedom essays, with others (1956) Humanist Essays taken from Essays and Addresses, Stoic, Christian and Humanist (1964) See also League of Nations Union Liberalism in the United Kingdom Notes Further reading and references Gahan, Peter. "Bernard Shaw's Dionysian Trilogy: Reworkings of Gilbert Murray's Translation of Euripides's Bacchae in Major Barbara, Misalliance, and Heartbreak House." Shaw 37.1 (2017): 28-74. Stray, Christopher, ed. Gilbert Murray Reassessed: Hellenism, Theatre, and International Politics (Oxford UP, 2007) DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199208791.003.0013 Arnold J. Toynbee and Jean Smith (editors) (1960), An Unfinished Autobiography West, Francis. Gilbert Murray: A Life (1984) Duncan Wilson (1987), Gilbert Murray OM Wilson, Peter. "Gilbert Murray and International Relations: Hellenism, liberalism, and international intellectual cooperation as a path to peace." Review of International Studies 37.2 (2011): 881-909. online Wrigley, Amanda. "Greek drama in the first six decades of the twentieth century: tradition, identity, migration." Comparative drama (2010): 371-384. online External links 1866 births 1957 deaths English classical scholars English essayists English translators English dramatists and playwrights Scholars of ancient Greek literature Fellows of Christ Church, Oxford Harvard University faculty Parapsychologists People educated at Merchant Taylors' School, Northwood Pamphleteers People from Sydney Australian members of the Order of Merit Recipients of the Pour le Mérite (civil class) Alumni of St John's College, Oxford Regius Professors of Greek (University of Oxford) Telepaths People associated with Conway Hall Ethical Society Classical scholars of the University of Glasgow British male essayists English male dramatists and playwrights Translators of Ancient Greek texts Fellows of the British Academy Liberal Party (UK) parliamentary candidates Australian emigrants to England Australian people of Irish descent Australian people of English descent English people of Irish descent English male non-fiction writers

2870519

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dump%20%28program%29

Dump (program)

The dump command is a program on Unix and Unix-like operating systems used to back up file systems. It operates on blocks, below filesystem abstractions such as files and directories. Dump can back up a file system to a tape or another disk. It is often used across a network by piping its output through bzip2 then SSH. A dump utility first appeared in Version 6 AT&T UNIX. A dump command is also part of ASCII's MSX-DOS2 Tools for MSX-DOS version 2. Usage dump [-0123456789acLnSu] [-B records] [-b blocksize] [-C cachesize] [-D dumpdates] [-d density] [-f file | -P pipecommand] [-h level] [-s feet] [-T date] filesystem $ dump -W | -w See also restore (program) tar (file format) cpio rsync References External links Home page of the Linux Ext2 filesystem dump/restore utilities Free backup software Unix archivers and compression-related utilities

11458685

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSQ%20Software

DSQ Software

DSQ Software Ltd, established in 1992 and headquartered in Chennai formerly Madras, India was a publicly listed IT and Software services consulting company mainly operated overseas using its base in India. DSQ was in the league of IT companies established and operating from India during the tech-boom of 1990s, that mainly catered demands from western markets. Company was known as Square D Software Ltd when it was incepted in 1992 and later on changed its name to DSQ Software in the year 1997. The Company offered service offerings in Mainframe and Midrange computing, Telecommunications, CAD, and various other IT service areas. DSQ had clients in US, Europe and Asia Pacific and employed around 2000 people in the year 2000 and reported revenues in the region of $150m for the same year. Hewitt Associates, a leading US based Human Resources consultancy firm valued the human resources capital of DSQ at $1bn. DSQ had an impressive list of international clients and it posted year-on-year increasing revenues till year 2000. Dinesh Dalmia, Company's promoter and Managing director got entangled in a series of share market controversies in relation to various dubious acquisitions and partisan allotments made by DSQ in the year 2000 & 2001. From the year 2002, DSQ's market presence diminished when its lucrative operations and client service contract agreements were sold to a privately held company. Year 2003 saw DSQ's collapse and there was very minimal business activities as the promoter was rumored to have disappeared from the scene in order to avoid legal proceedings. Dalmia got arrested at Delhi, India in 2006 for various fraud charges. It is believed that Dalmia was in the United States from 2003 to 2006 trying to establish presence in the BPO market by setting up businesses using proxy names and deals. He was constantly seen in the New Brunswick area of New Jersey driving luxury cars and often eating at Udipi Cafe. He has been indicted in 2006 by the FBI in the United States on multiple charges of fraud. However, in the year 2011 he has been released on bail in all cases in India. There are rumors that he has also entered into a settlement in the United States. DSQ Software is operationally dormant as per the trading information submitted for the year 2005. As per BSE data, the public holding in DSQ Software is over 70% and equity capital of over Rupees 300 million. During Oct 2013, SEBI barred Dinesh Dalmia and DSQ Software for a period of 7 years. References External links Sucheta Dalal :DSQ Software Saga Software companies of India Companies based in Chennai Software companies established in 1992 Indian companies established in 1992 1992 establishments in Tamil Nadu Companies listed on the National Stock Exchange of India Companies listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange

7089707

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason%20Cong

Jason Cong

Jingsheng Jason Cong (; born 1963 in Beijing) is a Chinese-born American computer scientist, educator, and serial entrepreneur. He received his B.S. degree in computer science from Peking University in 1985, his M.S. and Ph. D. degrees in computer science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1987 and 1990, respectively. He has been on the faculty in the Computer Science Department at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) since 1990. Currently, he is a Distinguished Chancellor’s Professor and the director of Center for Domain-Specific Computing (CDSC). Research contributions and commercial impact Cong made fundamental contributions to the FPGA synthesis technology. His result in the early 1990s on depth-optimal mapping (FlowMap) for lookup-table based FPGAs is a cornerstone of all FPGA logic synthesis tools used today. This, together with the subsequent works on the cut-enumeration and Boolean matching based methods for FPGA mapping, led to a successful startup company Aplus Design Technologies (1998-2003) founded by Cong. Aplus developed the first commercially available FPGA architecture evaluation tool and physical synthesis tool, which were OEMed by most FPGA companies and distributed to tens of thousands of FPGA designers worldwide. Aplus was acquired by Magma Design Automation in 2003, which is now part of Synopsys. Cong’s research also made significant impact on high-level synthesis (HLS) for integrated circuits. The decade-long research in 2000s by his group led to another UCLA spin-off, AutoESL Design Automation (2006-2011), co-founded by Cong. AutoESL developed most widely used HLS tool for FPGAs and was acquired by Xilinx in 2011. The HLS tool from AutoESL (renamed as Vivado HLS after Xilinx acquisition) allows FPGA designers to use C/C++ software programming languages instead of hardware description languages for FPGA design and implementation. In 2009, Cong led a group of twelve faculty members from UCLA, Rice, Ohio-State, and UC Santa Barbara and won a highly competitive NSF Expeditions in Computing Award on Customizable Domain-Specific Computing (CDSC). Cong’s research on interconnect-centric design for integrated circuits plays a significant role in overcoming the timing closure challenge in deep submicron designs in 1990s. His work on VLSI interconnect planning, synthesis, and layout optimization as well as highly scalable multi-level analytical circuit placement are embedded in the core of all physical synthesis tools developed by the EDA industry. The best-known industry adoption example was Magma Design Automation, which was founded in 1997 aiming at achieving timing closure through physical synthesis. Cong served on its Technical Advisory Board since its inception until its IPO, and later as its Chief Technology Advisor from 2003 to 2008. Magma was acquired by Synopsys in 2012. Selected awards Cong's work on FlowMap received the 2011 ACM/IEEE A. Richard Newton Technical Impact Award in Electric Design Automation "for pioneering work on technology mapping for FPGA that has made significant impact to the FPGA research community and industry", and was the first inducted to the FPGA and Reconfigurable Computing Hall of Fame by ACM TCFPGA. Cong was elected to IEEE Fellow in 2000 "for seminal contributions in computer-aided design of integrated circuits, especially in physical design automation, interconnect optimization, and synthesis of FPGAs", and ACM Fellow in 2008 "for contributions to electronic design automation". He received the 2010 IEEE Circuits and System (CAS) Society Technical Achievement Award "For seminal contributions to electronic design automation, especially in FPGA synthesis, VLSI interconnect optimization, and physical design automation", and also the 2016 IEEE Computer Society Technical Achievement Award "For setting the algorithmic foundations for high-level synthesis of field programmable gate arrays". He is the only one who received a Technical Achievement Award from both the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society and the Computer Society. In February 2017, Cong was elected as a member in National Academy of Engineering. He was elected a foreign member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering in 2019. References External links 1963 births Living people University of California, Los Angeles faculty Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery Fellow Members of the IEEE Peking University alumni Grainger College of Engineering alumni Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering Scientists from Beijing Chinese computer scientists American computer scientists Businesspeople from Beijing Chinese computer businesspeople American computer businesspeople Chinese emigrants to the United States Foreign members of the Chinese Academy of Engineering

40393020

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homography%20%28computer%20vision%29

Homography (computer vision)

In the field of computer vision, any two images of the same planar surface in space are related by a homography (assuming a pinhole camera model). This has many practical applications, such as image rectification, image registration, or camera motion—rotation and translation—between two images. Once camera resectioning has been done from an estimated homography matrix, this information may be used for navigation, or to insert models of 3D objects into an image or video, so that they are rendered with the correct perspective and appear to have been part of the original scene (see Augmented reality). 3D plane to plane equation We have two cameras a and b, looking at points in a plane. Passing from the projection of in b to the projection of in a: where and are the z coordinates of P in each camera frame and where the homography matrix is given by . is the rotation matrix by which b is rotated in relation to a; t is the translation vector from a to b; n and d are the normal vector of the plane and the distance from origin to the plane respectively. Ka and Kb are the cameras' intrinsic parameter matrices. The figure shows camera b looking at the plane at distance d. Note: From above figure, assuming as plane model, is the projection of vector along , and equal to . So . And we have where . This formula is only valid if camera b has no rotation and no translation. In the general case where and are the respective rotations and translations of camera a and b, and the homography matrix becomes where d is the distance of the camera b to the plane. The homography matrix can only be computed between images taken from the same camera shot at different angles. It doesn't matter what is present in the images. The matrix contains a warped form of the images. Affine homography When the image region in which the homography is computed is small or the image has been acquired with a large focal length, an affine homography is a more appropriate model of image displacements. An affine homography is a special type of a general homography whose last row is fixed to See also Direct linear transformation Epipolar geometry Feature (computer vision) Fundamental matrix (computer vision) Pose (computer vision) Photogrammetry References Toolboxes homest is a GPL C/C++ library for robust, non-linear (based on the Levenberg–Marquardt algorithm) homography estimation from matched point pairs (Manolis Lourakis). OpenCV is a complete (open and free) computer vision software library that has many routines related to homography estimation (cvFindHomography) and re-projection (cvPerspectiveTransform). External links Serge Belongie & David Kriegman (2007) Explanation of Homography Estimation from Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of California, San Diego. A. Criminisi, I. Reid & A. Zisserman (1997) "A Plane Measuring Device", §3 Computing the Plane to Plane Homography, from Visual Geometry Group, Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford. Elan Dubrofsky (2009) Homography Estimation, Master's thesis, from Department of Computer Science, University of British Columbia. Richard Hartley & Andrew Zisserman (2004) Multiple View Geometry from Visual Geometry Group, Oxford. Includes Matlab Functions for calculating a homography and the fundamental matrix (computer vision). GIMP Tutorial – using the Perspective Tool by Billy Kerr on YouTube. Shows how to do a perspective transform using GIMP. Allan Jepson (2010) Planar Homographies from Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto. Includes 2D homography from four pairs of corresponding points, mosaics in image processing, removing perspective distortion in computer vision, rendering textures in computer graphics, and computing planar shadows. Plane transfer homography Course notes from CSE576 at University of Washington in Seattle. Etienne Vincent & Robert Laganiere (2000) Detecting Planar Homographies in an Image Pair from School of Information Technology and Engineering, University of Ottawa. Describes an algorithm for detecting planes in images, uses random sample consensus (RANSAC) method, describes heuristics and iteration. Geometry in computer vision Functions and mappings

18950530

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BT%20%28musician%29

BT (musician)

Brian Wayne Transeau (born October 4, 1971), known by his initials as BT, is an American musician, DJ, singer, songwriter, composer and audio engineer. An artist in the electronica music genre, he is credited as a pioneer of the trance and intelligent dance music styles that paved the way for EDM, and for "stretching electronic music to its technical breaking point." In 2010, he was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Electronic/Dance Album for These Hopeful Machines. He creates music within a myriad of styles, such as classical, film composition, and bass music. BT holds multiple patents for pioneering the technique he calls stutter editing. This production technique consists of taking a small fragment of sound and repeating it rhythmically, often at audio rate values while processing the resultant stream using advanced digital processing techniques. BT was entered into the Guinness Book of World Records for his song "Somnambulist (Simply Being Loved)", recognized as using the largest number of vocal edits in a song (6,178 edits). BT's work with stutter edit techniques led to the formation of software development company Sonik Architects, developer of the sound-processing software plug-ins Stutter Edit and BreakTweaker, and Phobos with Spitfire Audio. BT has produced, collaborated, and written with a variety of artists, including Death Cab for Cutie, Howard Jones, Peter Gabriel, David Bowie, Madonna, Armin van Buuren, Sting, Depeche Mode, Tori Amos, NSYNC, Blake Lewis, The Roots, Guru, Britney Spears, Paul van Dyk, and Tiësto. He has composed original scores for films such as Go, The Fast and the Furious, and Monster, and his scores and compositions have appeared on television series such as Smallville, Six Feet Under, and Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams. He was commissioned to compose a four-hour, 256 channel installation composition for the Tomorrowland-themed area at Shanghai Disneyland, which opened in 2016. Early life and education BT was born in Rockville, Maryland on October 4, 1971, to Romanian parents. His father was an FBI and DEA agent, and his mother a psychiatrist. BT started listening to classical music at the age of 4 and started playing classical piano at an early age, utilizing the Suzuki method. By the age of eight he was studying composition and theory at the Washington Conservatory of Music. He was introduced to electronic music through the breakdancing culture and the Vangelis score for the film Blade Runner, which led him to discover influential electronic music artists such as Afrika Bambaataa, Kraftwerk, New Order and Depeche Mode. In high school, he played drums in one band, bass in a ska band and guitar in a punk group. At 15, he was accepted to the Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, where he studied jazz and enjoyed experimenting, such as running keyboards through old guitar pedals. Career BT is a multi-instrumentalist, playing piano, guitar, bass, keyboards, synths, sequencers, the glockenspiel, drum machines and instruments he has modified himself. His process for creating songs typically starts with composition on basic instruments, like the piano or an acoustic guitar. 1989–1994: Early career In 1989, after dropping out of Berklee, BT moved to Los Angeles, where he tried, unsuccessfully, to get signed as a singer-songwriter. Realizing he should focus on the electronic music he was more passionate about, he moved back to Maryland in 1990 and began collaborating with friends Ali "Dubfire" Shirazinia and Sharam Tayebi of Deep Dish. Together they started Deep Dish Records. Early in his career, BT worked under a variety of musical aliases, including Prana, Elastic Chakra, Elastic Reality, Libra, Dharma, Kaistar and GTB. 1995–1996: Ima In the early years of BT's career, he became a pioneering artist in the trance genre, this despite the fact that he does not consider himself a DJ, since he infrequently spins records and comes from an eclectic music background. When he started out, such common elements as a build, breakdown and drop were unclassified. BT's was a unique interpretation of what electronic music could be. His first recordings, "A Moment of Truth" and "Relativity", became hits in dance clubs in the UK. His productions were not yet popular in the US, and he was initially unaware that he had become popular across the Atlantic, where UK DJs like Sasha were regularly spinning his music for crowds. Sasha bought BT a ticket to London, where BT witnessed his own success in the clubs, with several thousand clubbers responding dramatically when Sasha played BT's song. He also met Paul Oakenfold, playing him tracks that would make up his first album. He was quickly signed to Oakenfold's record label, a subsidiary of Warner Brothers. BT's 1995 debut album Ima, released on Oakenfold's label, was a progressive house effort. The opening track, "Nocturnal Transmission", was featured in The Fast and the Furious. The album also featured a song with Vincent Covello. Blending house beats with sweeping New Age sounds, Ima helped to create the trance sound. "Ima (今)" is the Japanese word for "now". BT has stated that it also means many other things and that the intention of the album is to have a different effect for everyone. Following the release of Ima, BT began traveling to England regularly. It was during this time that he met Tori Amos. They would collaborate on his song "Blue Skies", which reached the number one spot on Billboard magazine's Dance Club Songs chart in January 1997. This track helped expand BT's notability beyond Europe, into North America. He soon began to remix songs for well-known artists such as Sting, Madonna, Seal, Sarah McLachlan, NSYNC, Britney Spears, Diana Ross and Mike Oldfield. 1997–1998: ESCM BT's second album, ESCM (acronym for Electric Sky Church Music), released in 1997, features more complex melodies and traditional harmonies along with a heavier use of vocals. The tone of the album is darker and less whimsical than Ima. The album, as a whole, is much more diverse than BT's debut, expanding into drum and bass, breakbeat, hip-hop, rock and vocally-based tracks. The biggest hit from ESCM was "Flaming June," a modern trance collaboration with German DJ Paul van Dyk. Van Dyk and BT would go on to collaborate on a number of works, including "Namistai" (found on the later album Movement in Still Life), as well as van Dyk's remix of BT's "Blue Skies" and "Remember". "Remember" featured Jan Johnston on vocals, and reached #1 on the Billboard Dance Club Songs chart. BT and Van Dyk also remixed the van Dyk classic "Forbidden Fruit" as well as Dina Carroll's "Run to You", and BT collaborated with Simon Hale on "Firewater" and "Remember." 1999–2002: Movement in Still Life In 1999, BT released his third album, Movement in Still Life, and continued his previous experimentation outside of the trance genre. The album features a strong element of nu skool breaks, a genre he helped define with "Hip-Hop Phenomenon" in collaboration with Tsunami One aka Adam Freeland and Kevin Beber. Along with trance collaborations with Paul van Dyk and DJ Rap, Movement includes pop ("Never Gonna Come Back Down" with M. Doughty on vocals), progressive house ("Dreaming" with Kirsty Hawkshaw on vocals) and hip hop-influenced tracks ("Madskill – Mic Chekka", which samples Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five's "The Message", and "Smartbomb", a mix of funky, heavy riffs from both synthesizers and guitars woven over a hip-hop break). "Shame" and "Satellite" lean toward an alt-rock sound, while "Godspeed" and "Dreaming" fall into classic trance ranks. "Running Down the Way Up", a collaboration with fellow electronic act Hybrid, features sultry vocals and acoustic guitars heavily edited into a progressive breakbeat track. "Dreaming" and "Godspeed" reached number 5 and number 10 on the Billboard Dance Club Songs chart, respectively, "Never Gonna Come Back Down" reached #9 the Billboard Dance Club Songs chart and number 16 on Billboards Alternative Songs chart, and the album reached number 166 on the Billboard 200 album charts. Long interested in branching out into film scoring, BT got the opportunity when director Doug Liman asked him to score Go, a 1999 film about dance music culture. Shortly after creating the score, BT moved to Los Angeles in order to further pursue film scoring. He also began writing music for string quartets to prove his capabilities beyond electronic music. He was then hired to score the film Under Suspicion with a 60-piece string section. For The Fast and the Furious, BT's score featured a 70-piece ensemble, along with polyrhythmic tribal sounds produced by orchestral percussionists banging on car chassis. In 1999, BT collaborated with Peter Gabriel on the album OVO, the soundtrack to the Millennium Dome Show in London. In 2001, he produced NSYNC's hit single "Pop", which won a 2001 Teen Choice Award for Choice Single, won four MTV Video Music Awards, and reached number 19 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number 9 on the UK Singles chart. In 2002, BT released the compilation album 10 Years in the Life, a two-disc collection of rarities and remixes, including "The Moment of Truth", the first track he ever recorded. 2003–2005: Emotional Technology BT's fourth studio album, released on August 5, 2003, featured more vocal tracks than his previous fare, including six with vocals by BT himself. Emotional Technology was his most experimental album to date, exploring a range of genres; many consider it the "poppiest" of all his work. Emotional Technology spent 25 weeks on the Billboard Dance/Electronic Albums chart, reaching the top spot, and it reached number 138 on the Billboard 200 charts. The biggest single from the album, "Somnambulist (Simply Being Loved)", draws heavily from the breakbeats and new wave dance of New Order and Depeche Mode, whom BT has cited as major influences. "Somnambulist" holds the Guinness World Record for the largest number of vocal edits in a single track, with 6,178. It reached number 5 on the Billboard Dance Club Songs chart and number 98 on the Billboard Hot 100. BT ventured into television production for Tommy Lee Goes to College for NBC in 2005. It starred Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee. He executive-produced the reality television series, the idea for which he developed and sold to NBC. BT worked with Sting on his album Sacred Love, co-producing the track "Never Coming Home". 2006–2009: This Binary Universe BT's fifth studio album, This Binary Universe, released on August 29, 2006, is his second album released in 5.1 surround sound,David Murphy and Dave Powers, "Digital Music Innovators," PC Magazine, August 2, 2006. the first being the soundtrack to the 2003 film Monster. The double album highlights a mix of genres, including jazz, breakbeats and classical. Three songs feature a full 110-piece orchestra. Unlike his previous two albums, which featured vocals on almost every track, this album is entirely instrumental. The tracks change genres constantly. For example, "The Antikythera Mechanism" starts off almost lullaby-like, complete with a piano, acoustic guitars and reversed beats; halfway through the track, it explodes with a 110-piece orchestra, followed by a section of breakbeats and ending with the de-construction of the orchestra. Animated videos created by visual effects artist Scott Pagano to accompany each song were included in a DVD packaged along with the CD. This Binary Universe reached number 4 on the Billboard Dance/Electronic Albums chart. BT's company, Sonik Architects, built the drum machine (the first in surround sound) used on the album. Keyboard magazine said of the album, "In a hundred years, it could well be studied as the first major electronic work of the new millennium." Wired called it an "innovative masterpiece." In November and December 2006, BT toured the album with Thomas Dolby opening. The concert featured a live slideshow of images from DeviantArt as a backdrop. All the shows were done in 5.1 surround sound, with BT playing piano, bass and other instruments live, and also singing on a cover of "Mad World" by Tears for Fears. Earlier in 2006, BT performed with an orchestra and conductor and visuals for an audience of 11,000 at the Video Games Live concert at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. 2010–2011: These Hopeful Machines BT's sixth studio album, These Hopeful Machines, was released on February 2, 2010. The double album features dance-pop, trance, house, breaks, soundscapes, orchestral interludes, acoustic guitar and stutter edits. With BT spending several years perfecting the album, mathematically placing edits and loops to create "an album of ultimate depth and movement," each of the songs went through a lengthy recording process. BT has estimated that each song on the album took over 100 sessions to record, adding that "Every Other Way" took 2 months to write and record, working 14 to 20 hours a day, 7 days a week. These Hopeful Machines was nominated for a 2011 Grammy Award for Best Electronic/Dance Album. The album features guest appearances from and collaborations with Stewart Copeland of The Police, Kirsty Hawkshaw ("A Million Stars"), JES ("Every Other Way" and "The Light in Things"), Rob Dickinson ("Always" and "The Unbreakable"), Christian Burns ("Suddenly", "Emergency" and "Forget Me") and Andrew Bayer ("The Emergency"). It contains the most singles released from any BT album, with 8 of the 12 tracks released as singles. Official remixes were made by Armin van Buuren and Chicane. It reached number 6 on the Billboard Dance/Electronic Albums chart and number 154 on the Billboard 200 album charts. The singles "Emergency" and "Rose of Jericho" reached numbers 3 and 5 on the Billboard Dance Club Songs chart, respectively. A remix album, titled These Re-Imagined Machines was released in 2011. These Humble Machines, an un-mixed album featuring shorter "radio edit" versions of the tracks (similar to the US version of Movement in Still Life) was also released in 2011. 2012: If the Stars Are Eternal So Are You and I and Morceau Subrosa On June 19, 2012, BT released If the Stars Are Eternal So Are You and I, along with Morceau Subrosa, his seventh and eighth studio albums. If the Stars Are Eternal So Are You and I was an about-face from BT's previous album These Hopeful Machines, utilizing minimal beats, ambient soundscapes, and glitch music, as opposed to the electronic music style of These Hopeful Machines. Morceau Subrosa is very different in style compared to most of BT's previous works, favoring ambient soundscapes and minimal beats. 2013–2014: A Song Across Wires and radio shows BT's ninth studio album, A Song Across Wires, was released worldwide on August 16, 2013. Blending elements of trance, progressive house and electro, the club music-oriented album reached number 5 on the Billboard Dance/Electronic Albums chart, and features four Beatport No. 1 trance singles: "Tomahawk" (with Adam K), "Must Be the Love" (with Arty and Nadia Ali), "Skylarking" and "Surrounded" (with Au5 and Aqualung). On the album, BT also collaborates with Senadee, Andrew Bayer, Tania Zygar, Emma Hewitt, JES, Fractal, tyDi and K-pop singer Bada. In 2012, he released the mix collection Laptop Symphony, based on his laptop performances on his Sirius XM radio show, which range from dubstep to drumstep to progressive to trance. In 2013, he started a new Sirius XM radio program, Skylarking, on the Electric Area channel. 2015–2019: Electronic Opus, All Hail the Silence, _ and ‡ On November 10, 2014, BT announced a Kickstarter project with Tommy Tallarico to produce Electronic Opus, an electronic symphonic album with re-imagined, orchestral versions of BT's songs. The project reached its crowd-funding goal of $200,000. A live orchestra played during Video Games Live on March 29, 2015, while the album was released on October 12, 2015. On March 7, 2012, it was announced that BT and Christian Burns had formed a band called All Hail the Silence, with encouragement from Vince Clarke. They released their first unofficial single, "Looking Glass", online in 2012. On July 21, 2014, Transeau and Burns announced that their band would be touring with Erasure in the fall of 2014 for the album The Violet Flame. On August 24, 2016, the band announced that they would release a limited edition colored 12" vinyl collectible extended play entitled AHTS-001 with Shopify on September 19, 2016. On September 28, 2018, the band released their first official single, "Diamonds in the Snow", along with its accompanying music video. They released the music video for "Temptation" in December 2018. The band's first album, Daggers (stylized as ‡), was released on January 18, 2019. On December 14, 2015, BT disclosed news to DJ Mag about a new album to come by early 2016. Similar to This Binary Universe, BT explained that "the entire record is recorded in a way [I've] never recorded anything before," and that it has a "modular, ambient aesthetic". The album, _, was released digitally on October 14, 2016, and physically on December 2, 2016, via Black Hole Recordings, along with an accompanying film. Due to the restrictions of most music sites, which forbid blank album titles, BT chose to name the album the underscore character "_". BT has admitted that this title has resulted in complaints from fans about difficulties in finding the album on popular services due to the inability of most search engines to handle the "_" character. On January 17, 2017, BT released _+, an extended version of _. On October 10, 2019, BT announced on Instagram that two new albums were slated for release in the Fall of 2019: Between Here and You, an ambient album consisting of ten tracks, and Everything You're Searching for Is on the Other Side of Fear, a 17-track album with sounds akin to those from This Binary Universe and _. Between Here and You was released on October 18, 2019 and reached the number 1 spot on the Electronic Albums Chart on iTunes. Everything You're Searching for Is on the Other Side of Fear was released on December 13, 2019. 2020–present: The Lost Art of Longing, Genesis.json and Metaversal On June 19, 2020, BT released the single "1AM in Paris / The War", which featured singer Iraina Mancini and DJ Matt Fax. On July 17, 2020, another single, "No Warning Lights" was released, featuring Emma Hewitt on vocals. It was later announced that The Lost Art of Longing would be his thirteenth album, released on August 14, 2020. In May 2021, Transeau entered into the world of NFTs by composing music for a digital artwork piece entitled "DUNESCAPE XXI", and soon afterwards auctioning off a digital artwork piece entitled "Genesis.json", which includes 24 hours worth of original music that contains an Indian raga and 15,000 hand-sequenced audio and visual moments. The artwork is programmed to give a special message on the owner's birthday and is the "only work of art that puts itself to sleep" on a certain time. In September 2021, BT announced his 14th album Metaversal, which was created and programmed entirely on a blockchain for release on September 29. The album was released publicly on November 19. Film, TV and video game scores BT began scoring films in 1999 with Go. Since then he has scored over a dozen films, including The Fast and the Furious, Monster, Gone in 60 Seconds, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and Catch and Release. His soundtrack for Stealth featured the song "She Can Do That", with lead vocals from David Bowie. BT produced the score for the 2001 film Zoolander, but had his name removed from the project. His tracks for the film were finished by composer David Arnold. BT also composed music for the Pixar animated short film Partysaurus Rex, released in 2012 alongside the 3D release of Finding Nemo. He has scored the video games Die Hard Trilogy 2: Viva Las Vegas (2000), Wreckless: The Yakuza Missions (2002), FIFA Football 2002 (2002), Need for Speed: Underground (2003) and Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2005 (2004). He made the official second-long alert tone for the Circa News app. In 2013, he scored Betrayal, a 13-episode drama on ABC. In 2014, BT was selected by Walt Disney Company executives to score the music for the Tomorrowland-themed area at Shanghai Disneyland, which opened in 2016. He spent more than two years on the project, writing more than four hours of music that are played out of more than 200 speakers spread throughout Tomorrowland. BT called the undertaking "one of the most thrilling experiences of my life." Software Sonik Architects During the production of This Binary Universe, Transeau wanted to program drums in surround sound, and found that software tools to accomplish this weren't readily available. He decided to develop his own, forming his own software company, Sonik Architects, to create a line of sound design tools for the studio and another line of tools and plug-ins designed for live performance. The company's first release was the drum machine surround sound sequencer BreakTweaker, a PC plug-in. In 2009, Sonik Architects released Sonifi, a product for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch that enables musicians to replicate BT's stutter edit effect live.Mark Milian, "Sonifi iPhone app lets your fingers remix music," Los Angeles Times, November 17, 2009. BT himself has used it during live shows. In December 2010, Sonik Architects was acquired by software and music production company iZotope, and at the Winter NAMM Show in January 2011, the Stutter Edit plug-in, based on BT's patented technique of real-time manipulation of digital audio, was released by iZotope and BT. In 2020, Transeau released an upgraded version of his Stutter Edit plug-in with iZotope, called Stutter Edit 2. This version includes more sound effects, more presets, and new features such as Auto Mode and the Curve editor. Other software Transeau is a user of digital audio workstation FL Studio and he was included in the Power Users section on Image-Line's site in 2013. In 2014, BT collaborated with Boulanger Labs in creating the Leap Motion app Muse, a device that allows users to compose their own ambient sounds using gestural control. He also developed a standalone plugin synthesizer called BT Phobos for the music software company Spitfire Audio, which was released on April 6, 2017. BT created presets for the synth plugin Parallels, released by Softube in 2019. He also created analog synth tone patches for the synthesized Omnisphere 2, created by ILIO. Personal life BT lives with his daughter in Maryland. In 2008, he was involved in dispute about his daughter's custody with the child's mother, Ashley Duffy. He is an avid scuba diver, and supports the preservation of sharks. In February 2014, BT partnered with EDM lifestyle brand Electric Family to produce a collaboration bracelet for which 100% of the proceeds are donated to the Shark Trust. On October 19, 2014, BT was married to Lacy Transeau (née Bean). Awards and nominations Grammy Awards International Dance Music Awards |- | style="text-align:center;" | 2012 | "Must Be the Love" | IDMA Award for Best Trance Track | |- | rowspan=2 style="text-align:center;"|2013 | "Skylarking" | IDMA Award for Best Trance Track | |- | BT | IDMA Award for Best North American DJ | |- Beatport Music Awards |- | style="text-align:center;"|2014 | A Song Across Wires | Beatport Award for Album of the Year | |- Computer Music Awards |- | rowspan=2 style="text-align:center;"|2014 | rowspan=2" style="text-align:center;"| BT | Computer Music magazine Innovative Award | |- | Computer Music magazine Performance Award | |- DiscographyStudio albums Ima (1995) ESCM (1997) Movement in Still Life (1999) Emotional Technology (2003) This Binary Universe (2006) These Hopeful Machines (2010) If the Stars Are Eternal So Are You and I (2012) Morceau Subrosa (2012) A Song Across Wires (2013) _ (2016) Between Here and You (2019) Everything You're Searching for Is on the Other Side of Fear (2019) The Lost Art of Longing (2020) Metaversal (2021)With All Hail the Silence''' Daggers'' (2019) See also List of Number 1 Dance Hits (United States) List of artists who reached number one on the U.S. Dance chart Granular synthesis Stutter edit References External links 1971 births 20th-century American composers 20th-century American singers 20th-century American male singers 21st-century American composers 21st-century American singers 21st-century American male singers American electro musicians American electronic musicians American film score composers American male film score composers American people of Romanian descent American television composers American trance musicians Berklee College of Music alumni Black Hole Recordings artists Living people Male television composers Musicians from Rockville, Maryland Nettwerk Music Group artists Progressive house musicians Record producers from Maryland Singers from Maryland Technicians Trance singers Video game composers Electronic dance music DJs

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LLP%20Group

LLP Group

LLP Group is an international software services company founded in the Czech Republic specializing in business software consulting, software development, ERP implementations. It provides consulting and software services to local and international companies throughout Europe, North America and Mexico. LLP Group works in over 70 countries worldwide. History LLP was founded in 1992 in Prague. Other branches followed in Central Europe: Slovakia (est. 1995), Hungary (est. 1996), Romania (est. 1997), Bulgaria (est. 2000), Russia (est. 2008). LLP expanded through implementing Infor SunSystems for international companies (such as Kraft Foods, Unilever, Johnson & Johnson, Shell, BP, PricewaterhouseCoopers, KPMG, the Parliament of the United Kingdom, etc.) in multiple locations throughout the Central European region. It later expanded westward in Luxembourg (est. 2008), Mexico (est. 2009) and the United States (est. 2012). LLP group was also associated with Central European Business Weekly, a weekly Business magazine. In 2010 the group was divided into three divisions: LLP Group, LLP Dynamics and systems@work. The LLP Dynamics division was sold at the end of 2013 to Xapt Hungary. In August 2014, LLP became Microsoft Gold Partner. LLP is the Microsoft Awards winner for CRM projects in 2018, 2016 and 2015 in the Czech Republic. In January 2016, LLP's customer relationship management division turned into a separate company, LLP CRM. In February 2020, LLP Group established its latest division, LLP Technology, to offer technical and development services using Infor OS, a cloud operating platform. LLP Technology also develops custom software and integrations to other ERP systems in addition to providing consulting on hardware and software. Products LLP's core business is the implementation of SunSystems from Systems Union, now Infor. In the late 1990s and in the 2000s, as markets developed, LLP expanded its portfolio of products to include other ERP products, such as Microsoft Dynamics, NAV and AX, customer relationship management products such as Pivotal and Dynamics 365, asset management and business intelligence products such as Infor BI. The company also set out to develop a professional services automation product, time@work, from which a web-based expense management tool, expense@work, and forms management tool, forms@work, were later derived. Systems@work was eventually split off into a separate company, systems@work. References 1992 establishments in Czechoslovakia Software companies of the Czech Republic Companies based in Prague

6002126

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice%20phishing

Voice phishing

Voice phishing, or vishing, is the use of telephony (often Voice over IP telephony) to conduct phishing attacks. Landline telephone services have traditionally been trustworthy; terminated in physical locations known to the telephone company, and associated with a bill-payer. Now however, vishing fraudsters often use modern Voice over IP (VoIP) features such as caller ID spoofing and automated systems (IVR) to impede detection by law enforcement agencies. Voice phishing is typically used to steal credit card numbers or other information used in identity theft schemes from individuals. Usually, voice phishing attacks are conducted using automated text-to-speech systems that direct a victim to call a number controlled by the attacker, however some use live callers. Posing as an employee of a legitimate body such as the bank, police, telephone or internet provider, the fraudster attempts to obtain personal details and financial information regarding credit card, bank accounts (e.g. the PIN), as well as personal information of the victim. With the received information, the fraudster might be able to access and empty the account or commit identity fraud. Some fraudsters may also try to persuade the victim to transfer money to another bank account or withdraw cash to be given to them directly. Callers also often pose as law enforcement or as an Internal Revenue Service employee. Scammers often target immigrants and the elderly, who are coerced to wire hundreds to thousands of dollars in response to threats of arrest or deportation. Bank account data is not the only sensitive information being targeted. Fraudsters sometimes also try to obtain security credentials from consumers who use Microsoft or Apple products by spoofing the caller ID of Microsoft or Apple Inc. Audio deepfakes have been used to commit fraud, by fooling people into thinking they are receiving instructions from a trusted individual. Terminology Social engineering - The usage of psychological manipulation, as opposed to conventional hacking methods, to gain access to confidential information. Caller ID spoofing - A method by which callers are able to modify their caller IDs so that the name or number displayed to the call recipient is different than that of the caller. Phishers will often modify their numbers so that they appear familiar or trustworthy to the call recipient. Common methods include spoofing a number in the call recipient’s area code or spoofing a government number so that the call appears more trustworthy or familiar and the potential victim is more likely to answer the call. Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) - Also known as IP telephony, VoIP is a technology that allows voice calls to be made over the internet. VoIP is frequently used in vishing attacks because it allows callers to spoof their caller ID. Motives Common motives include financial reward, anonymity, and fame. Confidential banking information can be utilized to access the victims’ assets. Individual credentials can be sold to individuals who would like to hide their identity to conduct certain activities, such as acquiring weapons. This anonymity is perilous and may be difficult to track by law enforcement. Another rationale is that phishers may seek fame among the cyber attack community. Operation Voice phishing comes in various forms. There are various methods and various operation structures for the different types of phishing. Usually, scammers will employ social engineering to convince victims of a role they are playing and to create a sense of urgency to leverage against the victims. Voice phishing has unique attributes that separate the attack method from similar alternatives such as email phishing. With the increased reach of mobile phones, vishing allows for the targeting of individuals without working knowledge of email but who possess a phone, such as the elderly. The historical prevalence of call centers that ask for personal and confidential information additionally allows for easier extraction of sensitive information from victims due to the trust many users have while speaking to someone on the phone. Through voice communication, vishing attacks can be personable and therefore more impactful than similar alternatives such as email. The faster response time to an attack attempt due to the increased accessibility to a phone is another unique aspect, in comparison to an email where the victim may take longer time to respond. A phone number is difficult to block and scammers can often simply change phone numbers if a specific number is blocked and often find ways around rules and regulations. Phone companies and governments are constantly seeking new ways to curb false scam calls. Initiation mechanisms A voice phishing attack may be initiated through different delivery mechanisms.  A scammer may directly call a victim and pretend to be a trustworthy person by spoofing their caller ID, appearing on the phone as an official or someone nearby. Scammers may also deliver pre-recorded, threatening messages to victims’ voicemail inboxes to coerce victims into taking action. Victims may also receive a text message which requests them to call a specified number and be charged for calling the specific number. Additionally, the victim may receive an email impersonating a bank; The victim then may be coerced into providing private information, such as a PIN, account number, or other authentication credentials in the phone call. Common methods and scams Voice phishing attackers will often employ social engineering to convince victims to give them money and/or access to personal data. Generally, scammers will attempt to create a sense of urgency and/or a fear of authority to use as a leverage against the victims. Imposter scammers pose as an important person or agency relative to the victim and use the victim's relationship with the important person or agency to leverage and scam money. IRS scam: The scammer poses as an IRS official or immigration officer. The scammer then threatens deportation or arrest if the victim does not pay off their debts, even if the victim does not actually have any debt. Romance scam: The scammer poses as a potential love interest through dating apps or simply through phone calls to reconnect with the victim as a lover from the past who needs emergency money for some reason, such as for travel or to pay off debts. Social engineering is used to convince victims that the scammer is a love interest. In extreme cases, the scammer might meet up with the victim and take photos of sexual activities to use as leverage against the victim. Tech support scam: The scammer poses as a tech support and claims that there is an urgent virus, or a severe technical issue on the victim’s computer. The scammer may then use the sense of urgency to obtain remote control of the victim’s computer by having the victim download a special software to diagnose the supposed problem. Once the scammer gains remote control of the computer, they can access files or personal information stored on the computer or install malware. Another possibility is that the scammer may ask the victim for a payment to resolve the supposed technical issue. Debt relief and credit repair scams Scammer poses as a company and claims an ability to relieve debt or repair credit. The scammer requests a company fee for the service. Usually, performing this action will actually reduce credit score. Business and investment scams Scammers pose as financial experts to convince victims to offer money for investments. Charity scams Scammers pose as charity members to convince the victim to donate to their cause. These fake organizations do not actually do any charity work and instead, any money donated goes directly to the scammers. Auto warranty scams Scammers make fake calls regarding the victim’s car warranty and offer the option to renew the warranty. The caller may have information about the victim’s car, making their offer appear more legitimate. Callers may use auto warranty scams to gather personal information about their victims, or to collect money if victims decide to purchase the proposed warranty. Parcel scams Targeting immigration populations, scammers claim that the victim has a parcel that needs to be picked up. The scammer initially poses as a courier company. The nonexistent parcel is connected to a financial criminal case. The scammer, posing as a delivery company, transfers the victim to another scammer posing as a police of a foreign country. The scammer posing as police will claim the victim is suspected and needs to be investigated in a fake money laundering investigation. This is done by convincing the victim that their identity was stolen. The scammer then convinces the victim to send money to the “police” to conduct an investigation on the money in their bank. Throughout the process the scammer may take extra steps to claim they are not scammers by reiterating that the police will not ask for personal credentials or bank account information. Kidnapping scams Scammers will call and claim that they have kidnapped a close relative or loved one. This is done by either doing research beforehand or using social engineering tactics and assumptions to glean information of the relative off of the victim. For example, since elderly are more vulnerable to scams compared to the average population, the scammers can assume that the elderly probably have children or grandchildren. The scammer will threaten to harm the relative if the victim hangs up. In certain cases the scammer will even let victims talk to the “abducted relative'' but due to fear, confusion, and the effect of the phone on a person's voice, the victim may fail to notice that the fake abducted relative is not actually the relative. Detection and prevention Voice phishing attacks can be difficult for victims to identify because legitimate institutions such as banks sometimes ask for sensitive personal information over the phone. Phishing schemes may employ pre-recorded messages of notable, regional banks to make them indistinguishable from legitimate calls. Additionally, victims, particularly the elderly, may forget or not know about scammers’ ability to modify their caller ID, making them more vulnerable to voice phishing attacks. The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) suggests several ways for the average consumer to detect phone scams. The FTC warns against making payments using cash, gift cards, and prepaid cards, and asserts that government agencies do not call citizens to discuss personal information such as Social Security numbers. Additionally, potential victims can pay attention to characteristics of the phone call, such as the tone or accent of the caller or the urgency of the phone call to determine whether or not the call is legitimate. The primary strategy recommended by the FTC to avoid falling victim to voice phishing is to not answer calls from unknown numbers. However, when a scammer utilizes VoIP to spoof their caller ID, or in circumstances where victims do answer calls, other strategies include not pressing buttons when prompted, and not answering any questions asked by a suspicious caller. On March 31, 2020, in an effort to reduce vishing attacks that utilize caller ID spoofing, the US Federal Communications Commission adopted a set of mandates known as STIR/SHAKEN, a framework intended to be used by phone companies to authenticate caller ID information. All U.S. phone service providers had until June 30, 2021 to comply with the order and integrate STIR/SHAKEN into their infrastructure to lessen the impact of caller ID spoofing. In some countries, social media is used to call and communicate with the public. On certain social media platforms, government and bank profiles are verified and unverified government and bank profiles would be fake profiles. Solutions The most direct and effective mitigation strategy is training the general public to understand common traits of a voice phishing attack to detect phishing messages. A more technical approach would be the use of software detection methods. Generally, such mechanisms are able to differentiate between phishing calls and honest messages and can be more cheaply implemented than public training. Detection of phishing A straightforward method of phishing detection is the usage of blacklists. Recent research has attempted to make accurate distinctions between legitimate calls and phishing attacks using artificial intelligence and data analysis. By analyzing and converting phone calls to texts, artificial intelligence mechanisms such as natural language processing can be used to identify if the phone call is a phishing attack. Offensive approaches Specialized systems, such as phone apps, can submit fake data to phishing calls. Additionally, various law enforcement agencies are continually making efforts to discourage scammers from conducting phishing calls by imposing harsher penalties upon attackers. Notable examples IRS Phone Scam Between 2012-2016, a voice phishing scam ring posed as Internal Revenue Service and immigration employees to more than 50,000 individuals, stealing hundreds of millions of dollars as well as victims’ personal information. Alleged co-conspirators from the United States and India threatened vulnerable respondents with “arrest, imprisonment, fines, or deportation.” In 2018, twenty-four defendants were sentenced, with the longest term of imprisonment being twenty years. COVID-19 Scams In March 28, 2021, the Federal Communications Commission issued a statement warning Americans of the rising number of phone scams regarding fraudulent COVID-19 products. Voice phishing schemes attempting to sell products which putatively “prevent, treat, mitigate, diagnose or cure” COVID-19 have been monitored by the Food and Drug Administration as well. Hollywood Con Queen Scam Beginning in 2015, a phishing scammer impersonated Hollywood make-up artists and powerful female executives in order to coerce victims to travel to Indonesia and pay sums of money under the premise that they’ll be reimbursed. Using social engineering, the scammer researched the lives of their victims extensively in order to mine details in order to make the impersonation more believable. The scammer called victims directly, often multiple times a day and for hours at a time, in order to pressure victims. Thamar Reservoir Cyberattack The 2015 cyber attack campaign against the Israeli academic Dr. Thamar Eilam Gindin illustrates the use of a vishing attack as a precursor to escalating future attacks with the new information coerced from a victim. After the Iran-expert academic mentioned connections within Iran on Israeli Army Radio, Thamar received a phone call to request an interview with the professor for the Persian BBC. To view the questions ahead of the proposed interview, Thamar was instructed to access a Google Drive document that requested her password for access. By entering her password in to access the malicious document, the attacker can use the credentials for further elevated attacks. Mobile Bank ID Scam In Sweden, Mobile Bank ID is a phone app (launched 2011) that is used to identify a user in internet banking. The user logs in to the bank on a computer, the bank activates the phone app, the user enters a password in the phone and is logged in. In this scam, malicious actors called people, claimed to be a bank officer, claimed there was a security problem and asked the victim to use their Mobile Bank ID app. Fraudsters were then able to log in to the victim’s account without the victim ever giving away their password. The fraudster was then able to transfer money from the victim’s account. If the victim was a customer of the Swedish bank Nordea, scammers were also able to use the victim’s account directly from their phone. In 2018, the app was changed to require users to photograph a QR code on their computer screen. This ensures that the phone and the computer are physically located in the same room, which has mostly eliminated this type of fraud. See also Phone fraud SMiShing Voice cloning VoIP spam References External links https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-34425717 Legal career "hit by vishing scam" https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-34153962 Caught on tape: How phone scammers tricked a victim out of £12,000 By Joe Lynam & Ben Carter BBC News vnunet.com story: Cyber-criminals switch to VoIP "vishing" BBC News story: Criminals exploit net phone calls The Paper PC: Messaging Security 2006: Vishing: The Next Big Cyber Headache? The Register: FBI warns over "alarming" rise in American "vishing" Vice Media: How a Hacker Can Take Over Your Life by Hijacking Your Phone Number An assessment of how call centre staff handle a vishing call. Fraud Computer security exploits Telephony Voice over IP Social engineering (computer security)

47823342

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth%20Eddy

Elizabeth Eddy

Elizabeth Hunt Eddy (born September 13, 1991) is an American soccer player who plays as a midfielder for Newcastle Jets in the A-League Women on loan from NJ/NY Gotham FC in the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL). Early life She was born in Costa Mesa, California. She attended University of Southern California. At USC Eddy played for the USC lacrosse and soccer teams. She was named Female Trojan of the Year for the 2013–2014 school year. Club career After being drafted by Sky Blue FC, she eventually signed with Western New York Flash on May 21, 2015. In June 2019, she was traded by the North Carolina Courage, the successor to the Flash following relocation, to Sky Blue FC. In December 2021, Eddy joined Australian club Newcastle Jets on loan for the 2021–22 A-League Women season. International career She was part of the United States U17 and United States U20 national team. Honors Club Orange County Blues FC Winner W-League (2): 2013, 2014 Runner-up W-League: 2012 International United States U20 Winner CONCACAF Women's U-20 Championship: 2010 United States U17 Runner-up FIFA U-17 Women's World Cup: 2008 References External links Western New York Flash player profile 1991 births Women's association football midfielders Western New York Flash players Living people National Women's Soccer League players Soccer players from California American women's soccer players Pali Blues players USC Trojans women's soccer players USC Trojans women's lacrosse players NJ/NY Gotham FC draft picks North Carolina Courage players NJ/NY Gotham FC players Newcastle Jets FC (A-League Women) players United States women's under-20 international soccer players

2382275

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadowrun%20%281993%20video%20game%29

Shadowrun (1993 video game)

Shadowrun is a cyberpunk-fantasy action role-playing video game for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, adapted from the tabletop role-playing game Shadowrun by FASA. The video game was developed by Australian company Beam Software and first released in 1993 by Data East. The game is loosely based on the novel Never Deal with a Dragon by Shadowrun co-creator Robert N. Charrette and set in the year 2050. The player takes on the role of Jake Armitage, a man suffering from amnesia after having been critically wounded by assassins. The plot then follows Jake as he attempts to uncover his own identity and the identity of the mysterious figure who wants him dead, and eventually complete his mission. Harebrained Schemes' 2013 Shadowrun Returns links the stories of this game and of Shadowrun for the Sega Genesis. A project to adapt Shadowrun for the Super NES had a turbulent history between 1989 and 1993, including having been halted in mid-development before being resumed in late 1992 under a tight deadline. Its eventual lead designer was Paul Kidd, creator of Beam Software's 1992 Nightshade, elements and a feel of which he then carried on to Shadowrun. The game was a critical success, winning a number of industry awards, but was a commercial failure nevertheless. It was retrospectively acclaimed by several publications as an "ahead of its time" milestone in the history of the role-playing genre for the consoles and credited for having pioneered film noir style in video games. Gameplay Shadowrun is an action role-playing game (RPG) that combines the statistical factor of the original tabletop game (with minor changes) with real-time gameplay. The player is given direct control over the protagonist Jake and moves him around using the directional pad within the game's isometrically displayed world. A cursor system allows the player to scroll a pointer across the screen and perform various actions that include opening doors and passageways, examining and picking up objects, engaging in conversation with non-player characters (NPCs), and utilizing firearms and magic commands while in combat. In interacting with other characters, Shadowrun allows the player to gain information using a bank of terms. Whenever Jake hears a new and unusual term, this word is highlighted and is then added to the bank that he can use; from that point on, when speaking with NPCs, Jake is able to ask them about this new word; only in this manner can a player progress with the game. As the title of the game implies, Jake is described as a "shadowrunner", a mercenary type of character common within the Shadowrun world. The player is given the option to hire other shadowrunners as henchmen with "nuyen", the game's currency that can also be used to purchase guns and certain key items scattered throughout various locations. Combat within Shadowrun often requires sharp reflexes, as practically every screen contains hidden assassins who, from random locations, open fire on Jake; the player may retreat or must otherwise immediately find the source of the attack and respond. Enemies typically drop nuyen, while at the same time, Jake builds up "karma". If the player retires to a bed to restore health and save one's progress, karma can be allocated into different attributes, skills, and magical powers. At certain points in the game, Shadowrun allows the player to enter cyberspace. Using an item called a "cyberdeck", Jake is able to hack into computers to retrieve information, as well as gain more nuyen. During such scenes, the gameplay switches to a top-down perspective while an icon of Jake moves through cyberspace, fights intrusion programs, and retrieves data. If Jake dies in cyberspace, he dies in the outside world as well. While the setting and a lot of gameplay elements are taken from the original pen and paper variant, certain gameplay elements have been modified. One example is that the "Condition Monitor" has been replaced with a more traditional hit points system, and the removal of the "Essence" mechanic, which decreases when cyberware is installed. This would reduce a character's ability to use magic as the installation of cyberware is making one less alive, thus less in tune with magic. Plot Shadowrun is an adaptation of the FASA tabletop role-playing game of the same name. The storyline of the video game is loosely based on the first Shadowrun novel, Never Deal with a Dragon, written by Robert N. Charrette. The narrative opens in Seattle, Washington in the year 2050, where the protagonist Jake Armitage is shown being gunned down in the street. A shapeshifting vulpine figure rushes to his side and is seen casting a spell over Jake before leaving hastily as the medics arrive on the scene. Jake awakens in a morgue with complete memory loss. Soon, he is approached by the "Dog", a shamanistic totem who gives him a warning before vanishing. The rest of the story is spent investigating the events leading to Jake's shooting, learning the identity of the shapeshifter who saved him, as well the person who ordered his assassination, a mysterious crime lord named "Drake". Most of the information is found by piecing together snippets of data found by hacking various protected computer systems. Along the way, he has encounters with gangs, criminals, and magically awakened creatures while under constant threat of attack from contract killers. Jake also discovers and develops his own latent magical abilities. Apart from his totem spirit, his only allies are the hired services of shadowrunners. It is eventually revealed that Jake is a data courier who was carrying a program in a computer built inside his brain. The program was designed to destroy a malevolent artificial intelligence, which the Aneki Corporation is trying to protect. The company is being aided by Drake, who turns out to be a dragon and the mastermind behind the plot. Development The work to develop an adaptation of Shadowrun for the Super NES by the Australian developer Beam Software began when Adam Lanceman, part of the company's management team, acquired the license for FASA's 1989 tabletop RPG. The project was initially headed by Gregg Barnett until he abruptly left Beam midway through the game's development to start Perfect Entertainment in the United Kingdom. The game's production was halted by Beam, but eventually resumed before its set deadline. Having been hired by Beam's parent company Melbourne House, fantasy and sci-fi writer Paul Kidd quickly took Barnett's place as lead designer. According to Kidd, the given timeframe for finishing Shadowrun for publisher Data East was very short, forcing the team to complete production in a tumultuous five and a half to six months. An avid role-player, Kidd was already familiar with the Shadowrun license, but had to utilize the storyline that his predecessor had already gotten approved. Aspects of Beam's earlier action-adventure game Nightshade, of which Kidd was the writer, director and lead designer, were used as a basis for Shadowrun; specific film noir components such as "dark cityscapes, dialogue-heavy exchanges, and touches of humor" were adapted directly from the former to the latter. To coincide with the last of these qualities, Kidd and programmer Jeff Kamenek altered the original "serious" tone of Shadowrun by replacing portions of the script and artwork with more comedic elements. According to Kidd, "we made improvements and changes, but the basic concepts were pretty much the same [as in Nightshade]." The ROM image of the first version of Shadowrun contains a much more crude script, with more sexual suggestive and violent phrases. For example, one line is changed from "morgue guys" to "chop shop guys". The game's distributor favored the less serious version for retail release, sparking indignation and conflict among Kidd and other members of Beam's staff. Kidd recalled: "Beam Software was a madhouse, a cesspit of bad karma and evil vibes. The war was reaching shooting level; old school creators who just wanted to make good games were being crushed down by a wave of managerial bull. It was no longer a 'creative partnership' in any way; it was 'us' and 'them'. People were feeling creatively and emotionally divorced from their projects." Shadowrun was ultimately completed by its deadline. Kidd credits this to the staffers abstaining from company meetings and workshops, and continually keeping management away from the designers. Shadowrun was released in North America and Japan by Data East. In PAL regions, it was self-published by Beam Software as Laser Beam Entertainment. The 1994 Japanese version has a significantly longer introduction sequence than the English version of the game and also has a vertically uncompressed Shadowrun logo on the title screen. Other than that, it uses the same script as the North American and PAL editions, just with Japanese subtitles. Reception The game was met with a positive critical reception and good reviews. Shadowrun was given a number of awards from various publications, including the title of the Best RPG of the Year by VideoGames, Electronic Games, and Game Informer, and was a runner-up for it in GamePro (behind Secret of Mana). The game was given the second place Nintendo Power Award in the category "Most Innovative (Super NES)" (it was also nominated in the category "For Challenge"), Nintendo Power describing it as "one of the best sci-fi games ever". However, the game sold poorly, partly because of low shipping numbers. Shadowrun has been positively recounted in many retrospective lists and articles. It was listed it as the 34th best Super NES game by Super Play in 1996, as well as the 48th best game on any Nintendo platform by Nintendo Power in 1997. Ranking it as the 77th top Super NES game in 2011, IGN commented that while Shadowrun "didn't quite get away from all the common RPG stereotypes" it was still "a milestone for the introduction of film noir style into the gaming industry, though, so we can forgive the game for only being 90% groundbreaking." The game was also cited as an important milestone in the use of film noir style in video games by Game Informer, according to which "Shadowruns moody music and dark streets set the somber tone for this RPG's prying conversations and self-reflective narrative." Game Informer also ranked Shadowrun as 125th place on their list of best video games of all time in 2009. IGN Australia listed Shadowrun among their favourite Australian video games in 2010, writing it was "without question, one of the best underexposed classics of the SNES era" because it presented players with "a mature narrative, strong characters and a dystopian backdrop" blended with traditional RPG elements in an "irresistible" way. That same year, 1UP.com included Shadowrun on their list of 15 games "ahead of their time" for its use of a keyword dialogue system, common to PC games but foreign to console games of the time. In 2002, GameSpot included it on the list of video games that should be remade and compared this "groundbreaking RPG" that was "truly ahead of its time" to the more recent Planescape: Torment. A remake of the game was also requested by Sam Bandah of X360, who called it "rather excellent", a "little-known classic" and "a cyberpunk RPG classic begging to return", and stated: "Shadowrun would be a perfect game to remake as a Mass Effect-style RPG – perhaps with the conversation system of the sadly much-maligned Alpha Protocol." In 2012, GamesRadar ranked this "one incredibly unique, noir-style story" as the third top "cult-classic franchise" that should be rebooted similar to how X-COM was. Retro Sanctuary listed Shadowrun #36 on its "Top 100 Best SNES Games" Legacy Two co-licensed role-playing video games of the same name were released around the same time by different developers and publishers: the 1994 North America-exclusive Sega Genesis title by BlueSky Software and Sega, and the 1995 Japan-exclusive Sega Mega-CD title by Group SNE and Compile. The storyline and gameplay of the Super NES Shadowrun are completely different from these two games. In 2007, FASA Studio and Microsoft Studios released a multiplayer first-person shooter adaptation of the franchise for the Xbox 360 and Microsoft Windows. The 1998 PC RPG Alien Earth was declared a spiritual sequel to Shadowrun by Beam Software (which developed both games), with producer David Giles saying he hoped to "Keep the original's gameplay RPG/combat/adventure elements that people liked, but up the graphic side of it." In 2012, Harebrained Schemes announced that it would be producing a new Shadowrun role-playing video game, Shadowrun Returns, to be funded through Kickstarter. As a result of the Kickstarter appeal reaching a 1.5 million dollar target, Shadowrun original creator and FASA Corporation's founder Jordan Weisman announced that the game would now feature an additional storyline tying in the new game with both the Super NES and Sega Genesis versions. This extra content was initially made available only to backers, becoming generally available some time after release. The protagonist of the Super NES game, Jake Armitage, is featured in Shadowrun Returns as both part of the game's main plotline and as an NPC that the player can hire to accompany them on various missions. References External links 1993 video games Action role-playing video games Video games about dragons Shadowrun video games Single-player video games Super Nintendo Entertainment System games Super Nintendo Entertainment System-only games Video games based on novels Video games developed in Australia Video games set in Seattle Video games set in the 2050s Video games with isometric graphics Cyberpunk video games

1438563

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound%20module

Sound module

A sound module is an electronic musical instrument without a human-playable interface such as a piano-style musical keyboard. Sound modules have to be operated using an externally connected device, which is often a MIDI controller, of which the most common type is the musical keyboard. Another common way of controlling a sound module is through a sequencer, which is computer hardware or software designed to record and playback control information for sound-generating hardware. Connections between sound modules, controllers, and sequencers are generally made with MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface), which is a standardized interface designed for this purpose. Sound modules are often rack-mountable, but are also produced in table-top form factor, particularly when the intended user is a DJ or record producer. The height of a sound module is often described in rack units. Small sound modules are mostly 1U in height, the larger models a multiplication e.g. 2U or 3U. Despite their name, most sound modules do not produce any audible sound until their output is plugged into a keyboard amplifier or a PA system. There are a wide variety of sound modules, ranging from more generalist modules that can be used for a number of controllers or instruments (e.g., a rack mount synthesizer with hundreds of commonly used presets of instrument sounds, from piano and organ to synth brass and string pads) to specialized modules designed for use with wind controllers, electronic drum pads, digital accordions, or to produce clonewheel organ sounds. Hardware sound modules have largely been replaced by software synthesizers, due to the increased speed and processing power of computers and their decrease in price. Nevertheless, some DJs, EDM musicians and record producers continue to use vintage 1980s sound modules like the Yamaha TX16W (1988) for their unique, retro sound. Terminology A sound module may also be referred to as tone module, synth module, or rack module. With electronic drums, the sound module is sometimes colloquially called the brain. Technologies and types Sound modules may use any number of technologies to produce their sounds. A sound module may be an analog or digital synthesizer, a sampler, or a rompler. Electronic drum modules are sound modules which specialize in drumkit and percussion sounds. Drum modules may be triggered by external trigger pads or pickups attached to an acoustic drum as well as through MIDI controller pads. Drum modules are distinguished from drum machines through their lack of dedicated onboard triggers and lack of an integrated sequencer. Clonewheel organ modules are usually tabletop-style devices that enable keyboardists to recreate the sound of a tonewheel-based Hammond organ using any MIDI keyboard or MIDI-equipped stage piano. Organ modules may have drawbars and controls for a simulated Leslie speaker (a rotating horn and low-end baffle) effect. Some sound modules focus on piano sounds, typically providing grand piano, electric piano, and a few other keyboard sounds, such as clavinet. Wind controller modules are specialized synth modules that are designed to work with wind controllers. They typically support legato wind-style playing and can respond to the unique controller inputs, which sense breath, biting on the mouthpiece, and pressing keys. Wind controller players may use a specialized wind controller module such as the Yamaha VL70-m module or its predecessors, the VL-1 or VL-7. As well, wind controller players may use general-purpose rack synths such as the Yamaha Motif XS Rack, Roland Fantom X, or the Roland Integra-7 rackmount MIDI sound module; however, these general use synths require extra wind sounds or "patches" to work well with wind controllers. An accordion module, which is designed for use with a MIDI-equipped digital accordion, focuses on providing synthesized and/or sampled accordion sounds (and sounds for related bellows-pumped instruments, such as bandoneon and concertina). Like other specialized sound modules, accordion modules also have other sounds (piano, string orchestra, flute, etc). More so than for other sound modules, accordion modules are likely to also have music sequencer, drum machine, and backing track features, to enable a performer to do a one man band show. Accordion modules are manufactured by firms such as Ketron and Soltron. Synth modules often have onboard effects units, such as reverb and chorus effect, or, for organ modules, vibrato and overdrive. Because most electronic instruments are designed in a modularized way, manufacturers often release a sound module version of their fully integrated instruments. For example, the 1980s-era DX-7 synthesizer/keyboard was also sold as a standalone "sound module", the TX-7. A sound module may have all the other features of the controller-equipped version, but it often has a smaller display or limited programming controls. In this case, instrument and other sounds can be loaded through MIDI or external media. In some cases, sound modules have expanded capacity for sounds in comparison to the controller-equipped version. User interface The front of a rackmount sound module, or the top for tabletop units, typically contains a small screen or panel to provide information to the user (e.g., an electric piano sound may be called EP 1). This may be an LCD panel (which may or may not be backlit) or an LED alphanumeric display. This may be supplemented with LED indicators to show the status of various features. In some models, LED indicators are embedded within a translucent button, so pressing the button shows its status on the button. There is usually a volume control, some types of buttons or knobs for selecting sounds and changing settings, and a power button. The smallest, simplest piano modules may have only a volume knob and a knob to scroll through several piano sounds. The most complex synth modules may have a large number of knobs, buttons, and faders to control oscillators, filters, and amplitude settings. The rear panel usually contains 1/4 inch left and right audio outputs and one or more 5-pin MIDI inputs. Some units may have MIDI thru connections, which can be used to chain synth devices. In the 2010s and 2020s, some synth modules have one or two USB connections. Some synth modules may have left and right XLR outputs and one or more pedal inputs (for a sustain pedal and expression pedal). The front panel may also have a headphone jack, USB port, or another port for making connections. Some synth modules may have an XLR input for a vocal mic, for routing through a vocoder. Some 2010s and 2020s-era synth modules can be connected to a computer (laptop, tablet, etc), to allow the user to use editing software to make advanced changes to settings or sounds. Many synth modules can have new sounds loaded. In 1980s-era modules, external tape players, cartridges, or floppy disks were used. In the 2000s (decade) and 2010s, USB connections were increasingly used to load new sounds. Some 2020s-era sound modules have a WiFi antenna connection to allow wireless loading of updates and new sounds. Advantages A sound module has the same advantages over a fully integrated instrument as does any system with a modularized design: Cost — a sound module is cheaper than a comparable instrument equipped with a controller. Space and weight — a sound module takes up less room and weighs less than an instrument equipped with a controller, facilitating transportation and touring. Portability - a performer going on tour can bring only her/his sound modules, so long as a MIDI controller is provided as "backline" gear (e.g., a MIDI keyboard). Many professional studios have a MIDI stage piano on hand. Expandability — many sound modules can be expanded with sounds and memory. Troubleshooting – if a sound module in a rack case develops problems, just this one unit can be removed for repair or replacement, leaving the rest of a keyboard player's rig the same (e.g., other rack-mounted sound modules, power amps, etc.). Obsolescence cycles — when it becomes obsolete, a sound module can be replaced without changing a favorite controller, or vice versa. Notable examples Roland MKS20: Piano sound module used by many bands in the 1980s to early 1990s. Based on the synth "engine" from RD1000 digital piano (the full version with a keyboard). Yamaha TX16W (1988): sound module with an ability to boot its operating system (OS) from diskette; known particularly well for having a third-party OS codenamed Typhoon 2000 by NuEdge Development, a group of hackers who were dissatisfied with the original OS. Roland Sound Canvas series (1991): first sound module to implement General MIDI standard with Roland GS extensions. Difference from audio interfaces Audio interfaces are often erroneously called sound modules. The audio interface connects a computer to other devices; and software in the computer actually generates sound using samples or synthesis. The functionality of the computer and I/O device plus the software is a superset of a traditional sound module. See also Modular synthesizer Software synthesizer Sound card Synthesizer References Synthesizers

8713

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave%20Winer

Dave Winer

Dave Winer (born May 2, 1955, in Queens, New York City) is an American software developer, entrepreneur, and writer who resides in New York City. Winer is noted for his contributions to outliners, scripting, content management, and web services, as well as blogging and podcasting. He is the founder of the software companies Living Videotext, Userland Software and Small Picture Inc., a former contributing editor for the Web magazine HotWired, the author of the Scripting News weblog, a former research fellow at Harvard Law School, and current visiting scholar at New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. Early life and education Winer was born on May 2, 1955, in Queens, New York City, the son of Eve Winer, PhD, a school psychologist, and Leon Winer, PhD, a former professor of the Columbia University Graduate School of Business. Winer is also the grandnephew of German novelist Arno Schmidt and a relative of Hedy Lamarr. He graduated from the Bronx High School of Science in 1972. Winer received a BA in Mathematics from Tulane University in New Orleans in 1976. In 1978 he received an MS in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Career Early work in outliners In 1979 Dave Winer became an employee of Personal Software, where he worked on his own product idea named VisiText, which was his first attempt to build a commercial product around an "expand and collapse" outline display and which ultimately established outliners as a software product. In 1981 he left the company and founded Living Videotext to develop this still-unfinished product. The company was based in Mountain View, CA, and grew to more than 50 employees. ThinkTank, which was based on VisiText, was released in 1983 for Apple II and was promoted as an "idea processor." It became the "first popular outline processor, the one that made the term generic." A ThinkTank release for the IBM PC followed in 1984, as well as releases for the Macintosh 128K and 512K. Ready, a RAM resident outliner for the IBM PC released in 1985, was commercially successful but soon succumbed to the competing Sidekick product by Borland. MORE, released for Apple's Macintosh in 1986, combined an outliner and a presentation program. It became "uncontested in the marketplace" and won the MacUser's Editor's Choice Award for "Best Product" in 1986. In 1987, at the height of the company's success, Winer sold Living Videotext to Symantec for an undisclosed but substantial transfer of stock that "made his fortune." Winer continued to work at Symantec's Living Videotext division, but after six months he left the company in pursuit of other challenges. Years at UserLand Winer founded UserLand Software in 1988 and served as the company's CEO until 2002. UserLand's original flagship product, Frontier, was a system-level scripting environment for the Mac. Winer's pioneering weblog, Scripting News, takes its name from this early interest. Frontier was an outliner-based scripting language, echoing Winer's longstanding interest in outliners and anticipating code-folding editors of the late 1990s. Winer became interested in web publishing while helping automate the production process of the strikers' online newspaper during San Francisco's newspaper strike of November 1994, According to Newsweek, through this experience, he "revolutionized Net publishing." Winer subsequently shifted the company's focus to online publishing products, enthusiastically promoting and experimenting with these products while building his websites and developing new features. One of these products was Frontier's NewsPage Suite of 1997, which supported the publication of Winer's Scripting News and was adopted by a handful of users who "began playing around with their own sites in the Scripting News vein." These users included notably Chris Gulker and Jorn Barger, who envisaged blogging as a networked practice among users of the software. Winer was named a Seybold Fellow in 1997, to assist the executives and editors that comprised the Seybold Institute in ensuring "the highest quality and topicality" in their educational program, the Seybold Seminars; the honor was bestowed for his "pioneering work in web-based publishing systems." Keen to enter the "competitive arena of high-end Web development," Winer then came to collaborate with Microsoft and jointly developed the XML-RPC protocol. This led to the creation of SOAP, which he co-authored with Microsoft's Don Box, Bob Atkinson, and Mohsen Al-Ghosein. In December 1997, acting on the desire to "offer much more timely information," Winer designed and implemented an XML syndication format for use on his Scripting News weblog, thus making an early contribution to the history of web syndication technology. By December 2000, competing dialects of RSS included several varieties of Netscape's RSS, Winer's RSS 0.92, and an RDF-based RSS 1.0. Winer continued to develop the branch of the RSS fork originating from RSS 0.92, releasing in 2002 a version called RSS 2.0. Winer's advocacy of web syndication in general and RSS 2.0 in particular convinced many news organizations to syndicate their news content in that format. For example, in early 2002 The New York Times entered an agreement with UserLand to syndicate many of their articles in RSS 2.0 format. Winer resisted calls by technologists to have the shortcomings of RSS 2.0 improved. Instead, he froze the format and turned its ownership over to Harvard University. With products and services based on UserLand's Frontier system, Winer became a leader in blogging tools from 1999 onwards, as well as a "leading evangelist of weblogs." In 2000 Winer developed the Outline Processor Markup Language OPML, an XML format for outlines, which originally served as the native file format for Radio UserLand's outliner application and has since been adopted for other uses, the most common being to exchange lists of web feeds between web feed aggregators. UserLand was the first to add an "enclosure" tag in its RSS, modifying its blog software and its aggregator so that bloggers could easily link to an audio file (see podcasting and history of podcasting). In February 2002 Winer was named one of the "Top Ten Technology Innovators" by InfoWorld. In June 2002 Winer underwent life-saving bypass surgery to prevent a heart attack and as a consequence stepped down as CEO of UserLand shortly after. He remained the firm's majority shareholder, however, and claimed personal ownership of Weblogs.com. Writer As "one of the most prolific content generators in Web history," Winer has enjoyed a long career as a writer and has come to be counted among Silicon Valley's "most influential web voices." Winer started DaveNet, "a stream-of-consciousness newsletter distributed by e-mail" in November 1994 and maintained Web archives of the "goofy and informative" 800-word essays since January 1995, which earned him a Cool Site of the Day award in March 1995. From the start, the "Internet newsletter" DaveNet was widely read among industry leaders and analysts, who experienced it as a "real community." Dissatisfied with the quality of the coverage that the Mac and, especially, his own Frontier software received in the trade press, Winer saw DaveNet as an opportunity to "bypass" the conventional news channels of the software business. Satisfied with his success, he "reveled in the new direct email line he had established with his colleagues and peers, and in his ability to circumvent the media." In the early years, Winer often used DaveNet to vent his grievances against Apple's management, and as a consequence of his strident criticism came to be seen as "the most notorious of the disgruntled Apple developers." Redacted DaveNet columns were published weekly by the web magazine HotWired between June 1995 and May 1996. DaveNet was discontinued in 2004. Winer's Scripting News, described as "one of the [web's] oldest blogs," launched in February 1997 and earned him titles such as "protoblogger" and "forefather of blogging." Scripting News started as "a home for links, offhand observations, and ephemera" and allowed Winer to mix "his roles as a widely read pundit and an ambitious entrepreneur." Offering an "as-it-happened portrait of the work of writing software for the Web in the 1990s," the site became an "established must-read for industry insiders." Scripting News continues to be updated regularly. Visiting scholar positions Winer spent one year as a resident fellow at the Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet & Society, where he worked on using weblogs in education. While there, he launched Weblogs at Harvard Law School using UserLand software, and held the first BloggerCon conferences. Winer's fellowship ended in June 2004. In 2010 Winer was appointed Visiting Scholar at New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. Return to Outliners On December 19, 2012, Winer co-founded Small Picture, Inc. with Kyle Shank; Small Picture is a corporation that builds two outlining products, Little Outliner and Fargo. Little Outliner, an entry-level outliner designed to teach new users about outliners, which launched on March 25, 2013. Fargo, the company's "primary product", launched less than a month later, on April 17, 2013. Fargo is a free browser-based outliner which syncs with a user's Dropbox account. Small Picture has stated that in future it may offer paid-for services to Fargo users. Fargo was retired at the end of September 2017. Projects and activities 24 Hours of Democracy In February 1996, while working as a columnist for HotWired, Winer organized 24 Hours of Democracy, an online protest against the recently passed Communications Decency Act. As part of the protest, over 1,000 people, among them Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, posted essays to the Web on the subject of democracy, civil liberty and freedom of speech. Edit This Page In December 1999, Winer became the "proprietor of a growing free blog service" at EditThisPage.com, hosting "approximately 20,000 sites" in February 2001. The service closed in December 2005. Podcasting Winer has been given "credit for the invention of the podcasting model." Having received user requests for audioblogging features since October 2000, especially from Adam Curry, Winer decided to include new functionality in RSS 0.92 by defining a new element called "enclosure," which would pass the address of a media file to the RSS aggregator. He demonstrated the RSS enclosure feature on January 11, 2001, by enclosing a Grateful Dead song in his Scripting News weblog. Winer's weblogging product, Radio Userland, the program favored by Curry, had a built-in aggregator and thus provided both the "send" and "receive" components of what was then called audioblogging.<ref>Gilchrist, Harold October 27, 2002 Audioblog/Mobileblogging News this morning I'm experimenting with producing an audioblogging show... </ref> In July 2003 Winer challenged other aggregator developers to provide support for enclosures. In October 2003, Kevin Marks demonstrated a script to download RSS enclosures and pass them to iTunes for transfer to an iPod. Curry then offered an RSS-to-iPod script that moved MP3 files from Radio UserLand to iTunes. The term "podcasting" was suggested by Ben Hammersley in February 2004. Winer also has an occasional podcast, Morning Coffee Notes, which has featured guests such as Doc Searls, Mike Kowalchik, Jason Calacanis, Steve Gillmor, Peter Rojas, Cecile Andrews, Adam Curry, Betsy Devine and others. BloggerCon BloggerCon is a user-focused conference for the blogger community. BloggerCon I (October 2003) and II (April 2004), were organized by Dave Winer and friends at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for the Internet and Society in Cambridge, Mass. BloggerCon III met at Stanford Law School on November 6, 2004. Weblogs.com Weblogs.com provided a free ping-server used by many blogging applications, as well as free hosting to many bloggers. After leaving Userland, Winer claimed personal ownership of the site, and in mid-June 2004 he shut down its free blog-hosting service, citing lack of resources and personal problems. A swift and orderly migration off Winer's server was facilitated by Rogers Cadenhead, whom Winer then hired to port the server to a more stable platform. In October 2005, VeriSign bought the Weblogs.com ping-server from Winer and promised that its free services would remain free. The podcasting-related web site audio.weblogs.com was also included in the $2.3 million deal. Share your OPML Winer opened his self-described "commons for sharing outlines, feeds, and taxonomy" in May 2006. The site allowed users to publish and syndicate blogrolls and aggregator subscriptions using OPML. Winer suspended its service in January 2008. Rebooting the News Since 2009, Winer has collaborated with New York University's associate professor of journalism Jay Rosen on Rebooting the News'', a weekly podcast on technology and innovation in journalism. It was announced on July 1, 2011, that the show would be on break, as NYU itself was, from June to September. However, no new episodes have been released since, making show #94 released on May 23, 2011, the last. References Further reading External links Scripting News Dave Winer's weblog The Computer Chronicles - The New Macs (1987) Dave Winer / Living Videotext Interview about the Apple Macintosh II 1955 births Living people American bloggers American computer businesspeople Berkman Fellows University of Wisconsin–Madison College of Letters and Science alumni American computer programmers Writers from Brooklyn Technology evangelists Wired (magazine) people American technology writers Businesspeople from New York City American men podcasters American podcasters 21st-century American non-fiction writers The Bronx High School of Science alumni Scientists from Queens, New York

40757180

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test%20and%20Training%20Enabling%20Architecture

Test and Training Enabling Architecture

Test and Training Enabling Architecture (TENA) is an architecture designed to bring interoperability to United States Department of Defense test and training systems. TENA is designed to promote integrated testing and simulation-based acquisition through the use of a large-scale, distributed, real-time synthetic environment, which integrates testing, training, simulation, and high-performance computing technologies, distributed across many facilities, using a common architecture. The purpose of TENA is to provide the architecture and the software implementation necessary to Enable Interoperability among Range systems, Facilities, Simulations, C4ISR systems in a quick, cost-efficient manner, Foster Reuse for Range asset utilization and for future developments Provide Composability to rapidly assemble, initialize, test, and execute a system from a pool of reusable, interoperable elements Overview TENA recognizes five basic categories of software: TENA Applications (Range Resource Applications and TENA Tools) – Range Resource Applications are range instrumentation or processing systems (software applications) built to be compliant with TENA and are the heart of any TENA execution. TENA Tools are generally reusable TENA applications, stored in the repository and made available to the community, that help facilitate the management of a logical range through the entire range event lifecycle. Non-TENA Applications – range instrumentation/processing systems, systems-under-test, simulations, and C4ISR systems not built in accordance with TENA but needed for a test or training event. The TENA Common Infrastructure – those software subsystems that provide the foundation for achieving TENA’s goals and driving requirements. These include the TENA Repository, as a means for storing applications, object models, and other information between logical ranges; the TENA Middleware, for real-time information exchange; and the Event Data Management System, for storing scenario data, data collected during an event, and summary information. The TENA Object Models – the common language used for communication between all range resources and tools. The set of objects used in a logical range is called the “logical range object model (LROM)” and may contain TENA standard object definitions as well as non-standard (user-defined) object definitions. TENA Utilities – applications specifically designed to address issues related to usability or management of the TENA logical range. JDAT displays TENA data on Joint Windows based Warfare Assessment Mode (JWinWAM). License The TENA software was developed for use by the United States Government with unlimited rights. The software is provided freely for the purpose of promoting interoperability among United States Department of Defense systems. There are no International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) or export restrictions in using the TENA middleware and related TENA products at an international site, although any restrictions for user provided object models, software, or documents are the responsibility of the author(s) of those products. Use of the TENA software (source code and binary code) by individuals is permitted only upon acceptance of license. See also TENA official website References Military technology Military terminology Modeling and simulation

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MySQL

MySQL

MySQL () is an open-source relational database management system (RDBMS). Its name is a combination of "My", the name of co-founder Michael Widenius's daughter, and "SQL", the abbreviation for Structured Query Language. A relational database organizes data into one or more data tables in which data types may be related to each other; these relations help structure the data. SQL is a language programmers use to create, modify and extract data from the relational database, as well as control user access to the database. In addition to relational databases and SQL, an RDBMS like MySQL works with an operating system to implement a relational database in a computer's storage system, manages users, allows for network access and facilitates testing database integrity and creation of backups. MySQL is free and open-source software under the terms of the GNU General Public License, and is also available under a variety of proprietary licenses. MySQL was owned and sponsored by the Swedish company MySQL AB, which was bought by Sun Microsystems (now Oracle Corporation). In 2010, when Oracle acquired Sun, Widenius forked the open-source MySQL project to create MariaDB. MySQL has stand-alone clients that allow users to interact directly with a MySQL database using SQL, but more often, MySQL is used with other programs to implement applications that need relational database capability. MySQL is a component of the LAMP web application software stack (and others), which is an acronym for Linux, Apache, MySQL, Perl/PHP/Python. MySQL is used by many database-driven web applications, including Drupal, Joomla, phpBB, and WordPress. MySQL is also used by many popular websites, including Facebook, Flickr, MediaWiki, Twitter, and YouTube. Overview MySQL is written in C and C++. Its SQL parser is written in yacc, but it uses a home-brewed lexical analyzer. MySQL works on many system platforms, including AIX, BSDi, FreeBSD, HP-UX, ArcaOS, eComStation, IBM i, IRIX, Linux, macOS, Microsoft Windows, NetBSD, Novell NetWare, OpenBSD, OpenSolaris, OS/2 Warp, QNX, Oracle Solaris, Symbian, SunOS, SCO OpenServer, SCO UnixWare, Sanos and Tru64. A port of MySQL to OpenVMS also exists. The MySQL server software itself and the client libraries use dual-licensing distribution. They are offered under GPL version 2, or a proprietary license. Support can be obtained from the official manual. Free support additionally is available in different IRC channels and forums. Oracle offers paid support via its MySQL Enterprise products. They differ in the scope of services and in price. Additionally, a number of third party organisations exist to provide support and services. MySQL has received positive reviews, and reviewers noticed it "performs extremely well in the average case" and that the "developer interfaces are there, and the documentation (not to mention feedback in the real world via Web sites and the like) is very, very good". It has also been tested to be a "fast, stable and true multi-user, multi-threaded SQL database server". History MySQL was created by a Swedish company, MySQL AB, founded by Swedes David Axmark, Allan Larsson and Finland Swede Michael "Monty" Widenius. Original development of MySQL by Widenius and Axmark began in 1994. The first version of MySQL appeared on 23 May 1995. It was initially created for personal usage from mSQL based on the low-level language ISAM, which the creators considered too slow and inflexible. They created a new SQL interface, while keeping the same API as mSQL. By keeping the API consistent with the mSQL system, many developers were able to use MySQL instead of the (proprietarily licensed) mSQL antecedent. Milestones Additional milestones in MySQL development included: First internal release on 23 May 1995 Version 3.19: End of 1996, from www.tcx.se Version 3.20: January 1997 Windows version was released on 8 January 1998 for Windows 95 and NT Version 3.21: production release 1998, from www.mysql.com Version 3.22: alpha, beta from 1998 Version 3.23: beta from June 2000, production release 22 January 2001 Version 4.0: beta from August 2002, production release March 2003 (unions). Version 4.1: beta from June 2004, production release October 2004 (R-trees and B-trees, subqueries, prepared statements). Version 5.0: beta from March 2005, production release October 2005 (cursors, stored procedures, triggers, views, XA transactions). The developer of the Federated Storage Engine states that "The Federated Storage Engine is a proof-of-concept storage engine", but the main distributions of MySQL version 5.0 included it and turned it on by default. Documentation of some of the short-comings appears in "MySQL Federated Tables: The Missing Manual". Sun Microsystems acquired MySQL AB in 2008. Version 5.1: production release 27 November 2008 (event scheduler, partitioning, plugin API, row-based replication, server log tables) Version 5.1 contained 20 known crashing and wrong result bugs in addition to the 35 present in version 5.0 (almost all fixed as of release 5.1.51). MySQL 5.1 and 6.0-alpha showed poor performance when used for data warehousing partly due to its inability to utilize multiple CPU cores for processing a single query. Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems on 27 January 2010. The day Oracle announced the purchase of Sun, Michael "Monty" Widenius forked MySQL, launching MariaDB, and took a swath of MySQL developers with him. MySQL Server 5.5 was generally available (). Enhancements and features include: The default storage engine is InnoDB, which supports transactions and referential integrity constraints. Improved InnoDB I/O subsystem Improved SMP support Semisynchronous replication. SIGNAL and RESIGNAL statement in compliance with the SQL standard. Support for supplementary Unicode character sets utf16, utf32, and utf8mb4. New options for user-defined partitioning. MySQL Server 6.0.11-alpha was announced on 22 May 2009 as the last release of the 6.0 line. Future MySQL Server development uses a New Release Model. Features developed for 6.0 are being incorporated into future releases. The general availability of MySQL 5.6 was announced in February 2013. New features included performance improvements to the query optimizer, higher transactional throughput in InnoDB, new NoSQL-style memcached APIs, improvements to partitioning for querying and managing very large tables, column type that correctly stores milliseconds, improvements to replication, and better performance monitoring by expanding the data available through the . The InnoDB storage engine also included support for full-text search and improved group commit performance. The general availability of MySQL 5.7 was announced in October 2015. As of MySQL 5.7.8, August 2015, MySQL supports a native JSON data type defined by RFC 7159. MySQL Server 8.0 was announced in April 2018, including NoSQL Document Store, atomic and crash safe DDL sentences and JSON Extended syntax, new functions, such as JSON table functions, improved sorting, and partial updates. Previous MySQL Server 8.0.0-dmr (Milestone Release) was announced 12 September 2016. MySQL was declared DBMS of the year 2019 from the DB-Engines ranking Release history Work on version 6 stopped after the Sun Microsystems acquisition. The MySQL Cluster product uses version 7. The decision was made to jump to version 8 as the next major version number. Legal disputes and acquisitions On 15 June 2001, NuSphere sued MySQL AB, TcX DataKonsult AB and its original authors Michael ("Monty") Widenius and David Axmark in U.S District Court in Boston for "breach of contract, tortious interference with third party contracts and relationships and unfair competition". In 2002, MySQL AB sued Progress NuSphere for copyright and trademark infringement in United States district court. NuSphere had allegedly violated MySQL AB's copyright by linking MySQL's GPL'ed code with NuSphere Gemini table without being in compliance with the license. After a preliminary hearing before Judge Patti Saris on 27 February 2002, the parties entered settlement talks and eventually settled. After the hearing, FSF commented that "Judge Saris made clear that she sees the GNU GPL to be an enforceable and binding license." In October 2005, Oracle Corporation acquired Innobase OY, the Finnish company that developed the third-party InnoDB storage engine that allows MySQL to provide such functionality as transactions and foreign keys. After the acquisition, an Oracle press release mentioned that the contracts that make the company's software available to MySQL AB would be due for renewal (and presumably renegotiation) some time in 2006. During the MySQL Users Conference in April 2006, MySQL AB issued a press release that confirmed that MySQL AB and Innobase OY agreed to a "multi-year" extension of their licensing agreement. In February 2006, Oracle Corporation acquired Sleepycat Software, makers of the Berkeley DB, a database engine providing the basis for another MySQL storage engine. This had little effect, as Berkeley DB was not widely used, and was dropped (due to lack of use) in MySQL 5.1.12, a pre-GA release of MySQL 5.1 released in October 2006. In January 2008, Sun Microsystems bought MySQL AB for $1 billion. In April 2009, Oracle Corporation entered into an agreement to purchase Sun Microsystems, then owners of MySQL copyright and trademark. Sun's board of directors unanimously approved the deal. It was also approved by Sun's shareholders, and by the U.S. government on 20 August 2009. On 14 December 2009, Oracle pledged to continue to enhance MySQL as it had done for the previous four years. A movement against Oracle's acquisition of MySQL AB, to "Save MySQL" from Oracle was started by one of the MySQL AB founders, Monty Widenius. The petition of 50,000+ developers and users called upon the European Commission to block approval of the acquisition. At the same time, some Free Software opinion leaders (including Pamela Jones of Groklaw, Jan Wildeboer and Carlo Piana, who also acted as co-counsel in the merger regulation procedure) advocated for the unconditional approval of the merger. As part of the negotiations with the European Commission, Oracle committed that MySQL server will continue until at least 2015 to use the dual-licensing strategy long used by MySQL AB, with proprietary and GPL versions available. The antitrust of the EU had been "pressuring it to divest MySQL as a condition for approval of the merger". But, as revealed by WikiLeaks, the US Department of Justice, at the request of Oracle, pressured the EU to approve the merger unconditionally. The European Commission eventually unconditionally approved Oracle's acquisition of MySQL AB on 21 January 2010. In January 2010, before Oracle's acquisition of MySQL AB, Monty Widenius started a GPL-only fork, MariaDB. MariaDB is based on the same code base as MySQL server 5.5 and aims to maintain compatibility with Oracle-provided versions. Features MySQL is offered under two different editions: the open source MySQL Community Server and the proprietary Enterprise Server. MySQL Enterprise Server is differentiated by a series of proprietary extensions which install as server plugins, but otherwise shares the version numbering system and is built from the same code base. Major features as available in MySQL 5.6: A broad subset of ANSI SQL 99, as well as extensions Cross-platform support Stored procedures, using a procedural language that closely adheres to SQL/PSM Triggers Cursors Updatable views Online Data Definition Language (DDL) when using the InnoDB Storage Engine. Information schema Performance Schema that collects and aggregates statistics about server execution and query performance for monitoring purposes. A set of SQL Mode options to control runtime behavior, including a strict mode to better adhere to SQL standards. X/Open XA distributed transaction processing (DTP) support; two phase commit as part of this, using the default InnoDB storage engine Transactions with savepoints when using the default InnoDB Storage Engine. The NDB Cluster Storage Engine also supports transactions. ACID compliance when using InnoDB and NDB Cluster Storage Engines SSL support Query caching Sub-SELECTs (i.e. nested SELECTs) Built-in replication support Asynchronous replication: master-slave from one master to many slaves or many masters to one slave Semi synchronous replication: Master to slave replication where the master waits on replication Synchronous replication: Multi-master replication is provided in MySQL Cluster. Virtual Synchronous: Self managed groups of MySQL servers with multi master support can be done using: Galera Cluster or the built in Group Replication plugin Full-text indexing and searching Embedded database library Unicode support Partitioned tables with pruning of partitions in optimizer Shared-nothing clustering through MySQL Cluster Multiple storage engines, allowing one to choose the one that is most effective for each table in the application. Native storage engines InnoDB, MyISAM, Merge, Memory (heap), Federated, Archive, CSV, Blackhole, NDB Cluster. Commit grouping, gathering multiple transactions from multiple connections together to increase the number of commits per second. The developers release minor updates of the MySQL Server approximately every two months. The sources can be obtained from MySQL's website or from MySQL's GitHub repository, both under the GPL license. Limitations When using some storage engines other than the default of InnoDB, MySQL does not comply with the full SQL standard for some of the implemented functionality, including foreign key references. Check constraints are parsed but ignored by all storage engines before MySQL version 8.0.15. Up until MySQL 5.7, triggers are limited to one per action / timing, meaning that at most one trigger can be defined to be executed after an operation, and one before on the same table. No triggers can be defined on views. MySQL database's inbuilt functions like will return after 03:14:07 UTC on 19 January 2038. Recently, there had been an attempt to solve the problem which had been assigned to the internal queue. Deployment MySQL can be built and installed manually from source code, but it is more commonly installed from a binary package unless special customizations are required. On most Linux distributions, the package management system can download and install MySQL with minimal effort, though further configuration is often required to adjust security and optimization settings. Though MySQL began as a low-end alternative to more powerful proprietary databases, it has gradually evolved to support higher-scale needs as well. It is still most commonly used in small to medium scale single-server deployments, either as a component in a LAMP-based web application or as a standalone database server. Much of MySQL's appeal originates in its relative simplicity and ease of use, which is enabled by an ecosystem of open source tools such as phpMyAdmin. In the medium range, MySQL can be scaled by deploying it on more powerful hardware, such as a multi-processor server with gigabytes of memory. There are, however, limits to how far performance can scale on a single server ('scaling up'), so on larger scales, multi-server MySQL ('scaling out') deployments are required to provide improved performance and reliability. A typical high-end configuration can include a powerful master database which handles data write operations and is replicated to multiple slaves that handle all read operations. The master server continually pushes binlog events to connected slaves so in the event of failure a slave can be promoted to become the new master, minimizing downtime. Further improvements in performance can be achieved by caching the results from database queries in memory using memcached, or breaking down a database into smaller chunks called shards which can be spread across a number of distributed server clusters. High availability software Oracle MySQL offers a high availability solution with a mix of tools including the MySQL router and the MySQL shell. They are based on Group Replication, open source tools. MariaDB offers a similar offer in terms of products. Cloud deployment MySQL can also be run on cloud computing platforms such as Microsoft Azure, Amazon EC2, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. Some common deployment models for MySQL on the cloud are: Virtual machine image In this implementation, cloud users can upload a machine image of their own with MySQL installed, or use a ready-made machine image with an optimized installation of MySQL on it, such as the one provided by Amazon EC2. MySQL as a service Some cloud platforms offer MySQL "as a service". In this configuration, application owners do not have to install and maintain the MySQL database on their own. Instead, the database service provider takes responsibility for installing and maintaining the database, and application owners pay according to their usage. Notable cloud-based MySQL services are the Amazon Relational Database Service; Oracle MySQL Cloud Service, Azure Database for MySQL, Rackspace; HP Converged Cloud; Heroku and Jelastic. In this model the database service provider takes responsibility for maintaining the host and database. User interfaces Graphical user interfaces A graphical user interface (GUI) is a type of interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices or programs through graphical icons and visual indicators such as secondary notation, as opposed to text-based interfaces, typed command labels or text navigation. Third-party proprietary and free graphical administration applications (or "front ends") are available that integrate with MySQL and enable users to work with database structure and data visually. MySQL Workbench MySQL Workbench is the integrated environment for MySQL. It was developed by MySQL AB, and enables users to graphically administer MySQL databases and visually design database structures. MySQL Workbench is available in three editions, the regular free and open source Community Edition which may be downloaded from the MySQL website, and the proprietary Standard Edition which extends and improves the feature set of the Community Edition, and the MySQL Cluster CGE. Other GUI tools Adminer Database Workbench DBeaver DBEdit HeidiSQL LibreOffice Base Navicat OpenOffice.org Base phpMyAdmin SQLBuddy SQLyog Toad for MySQL Webmin Command-line interfaces A command-line interface is a means of interacting with a computer program where the user issues commands to the program by typing in successive lines of text (command lines). MySQL ships with many command line tools, from which the main interface is the client. MySQL Utilities is a set of utilities designed to perform common maintenance and administrative tasks. Originally included as part of the MySQL Workbench, the utilities are a stand-alone download available from Oracle. Percona Toolkit is a cross-platform toolkit for MySQL, developed in Perl. Percona Toolkit can be used to prove replication is working correctly, fix corrupted data, automate repetitive tasks, and speed up servers. Percona Toolkit is included with several Linux distributions such as CentOS and Debian, and packages are available for Fedora and Ubuntu as well. Percona Toolkit was originally developed as Maatkit, but as of late 2011, Maatkit is no longer developed. MySQL shell is a tool for interactive use and administration of the MySQL database. It supports JavaScript, Python or SQL modes and it can be used for administration and access purposes. Application programming interfaces Many programming languages with language-specific APIs include libraries for accessing MySQL databases. These include MySQL Connector/Net for .NET/CLI Languages, and the JDBC driver for Java. In addition, an ODBC interface called MySQL Connector/ODBC allows additional programming languages that support the ODBC interface to communicate with a MySQL database, such as ASP or ColdFusion. The HTSQL URL-based query method also ships with a MySQL adapter, allowing direct interaction between a MySQL database and any web client via structured URLs. Other drivers exists for languages like Python or Node.js. Project forks A variety of MySQL forks exist, including the following. Current MariaDB MariaDB is a community-developed fork of the MySQL relational database management system intended to remain free under the GNU GPL. The fork has been led by the original developers of MySQL, who forked it due to concerns over its acquisition by Oracle. Percona Server for MySQL Percona Server for MySQL, forked by Percona, aims to retain close compatibility to the official MySQL releases. Also included in Percona Server for MySQL is XtraDB, Percona's fork of the InnoDB Storage Engine. Abandoned Drizzle Drizzle was a free software/open source relational database management system (DBMS) that was forked from the now-defunct 6.0 development branch of the MySQL DBMS. Like MySQL, Drizzle had a client/server architecture and uses SQL as its primary command language. Drizzle was distributed under version 2 and 3 of the GNU General Public License (GPL) with portions, including the protocol drivers and replication messaging under the BSD license. WebScaleSQL WebScaleSQL was a software branch of MySQL 5.6, and was announced on 27 March 2014 by Facebook, Google, LinkedIn and Twitter as a joint effort to provide a centralized development structure for extending MySQL with new features specific to its large-scale deployments, such as building large replicated databases running on server farms. Thus, WebScaleSQL opened a path toward deduplicating the efforts each company had been putting into maintaining its own branch of MySQL, and toward bringing together more developers. By combining the efforts of these companies and incorporating various changes and new features into MySQL, WebScaleSQL aimed at supporting the deployment of MySQL in large-scale environments. The project's source code is licensed under version 2 of the GNU General Public License, and is hosted on GitHub. OurDelta The OurDelta distribution, created by the Australian company Open Query (later acquired by Catalyst IT Australia), had two versions: 5.0, which was based on MySQL, and 5.1, which was based on MariaDB. It included patches developed by Open Query and by other notable members of the MySQL community including Jeremy Cole and Google. Once the patches were incorporated into the MariaDB mainline, OurDelta's objectives were achieved and OurDelta passed on its build and packaging toolchain to Monty Program (now MariaDB Corp). See also Comparison of database tools Comparison of MySQL database engines Comparison of relational database management systems SQL compliance Notes References External links MySQL at Oracle 1995 software Client-server database management systems Cross-platform software Free database management systems Oracle software RDBMS software for Linux Relational database management systems Sun Microsystems software Software using the GPL license Drupal WordPress

34338387

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vishal%20Sikka

Vishal Sikka

Vishal Sikka (born May, 1967) is the Founder and CEO of Vianai, former CTO of SAP AG, and former CEO of Infosys. He currently also serves on Oracle's board of directors, the supervisory board of the BMW Group and as an advisor to the Stanford Institute of Human-Centered AI. His current endeavor, Vianai, is a startup based in the San Francisco Bay Area that provides advanced technological software and services in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to large companies around the world. Prior, Sikka served as Executive Vice Chairman, CEO, and MD of Infosys. On 18 August 2017 he stepped down as managing director of Infosys. He left his role as Executive Vice Chairman of Infosys on 24 August 2017 when Nandan Nilekani was appointed as the new Non Executive Chairman of the Board. Prior to joining Infosys, Sikka was a member of the Executive Board and the Global Managing Board of SAP AG, leading all SAP products and innovation globally. In his 12 years at SAP, Sikka led SAP's product portfolio including the breakthrough in-memory platform, SAP HANA, and all their applications, cloud and technology solutions. He is credited with accelerating SAP's development processes, transforming its innovation culture and leading several successful product co-creation initiatives with clients. He is also the creator of the concept of ‘timeless software’, which represents the renewal of products without disruption to customer environments. Sikka left the SAP board in May 2014, and was announced as CEO and MD of Infosys on 12 June 2014. After three years at Infosys, Sikka left on 18 August 2017. India Today magazine ranked him #32nd in India's 50 Most powerful people of 2017 list. Early life and career Sikka was born in Shajapur, Madhya Pradesh, India to Punjabi parents - an officer in the Indian Railways and a teacher. His family moved to Vadodara in Gujarat when he was six. He did his schooling in Kendriya Vidyalaya, Rajkot and thereafter at a Christian school named Rosary High School (Vadodara). Sikka joined the bachelors in Computer Engineering course at Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, which he discontinued to go to Syracuse University in New York where he earned a B.S. in Computer Science. He completed his Ph.D. in 1996 from Stanford University. His dissertation was titled Integrating Specialized Procedures into Proof Systems and his thesis advisor was Michael Genesereth. Marvin Minsky, one of the fathers of AI, wrote a recommendation letter for Sikka for his admission to Stanford. John McCarthy, also known as a father of AI, was one of Sikka's teachers. After a brief stint at Xerox's research labs, Sikka founded iBrain which competed at the time with Business Objects. iBrain was acquired by PatternRX, Inc. His second startup, Bodha.com, focused on developing technology for non-invasive, service-based integration of enterprise applications and information. Sikka joined Peregrine Systems as their area Vice-President for Platform Technologies, responsible for application development and integration technologies and architecture, following their acquisition of Bodha.com. SAP Sikka joined SAP in 2002 to head up the advanced technology group responsible for strategic innovative projects. Later he was promoted to Senior Vice President of Architecture and Chief Software Architect, responsible for the road map and the direction for the architecture of SAP products and infrastructure. In April 2007, Sikka was named SAP's first-ever CTO, reporting to then CEO Henning Kagermann. At the time, SAP spokesman Frank Hartmann stated that SAP felt it needed a CTO to oversee some broad changes that were under way at the company, including its renewed focus on the mid-market, the introduction of new on-demand products, and the continued roll out of NetWeaver and its SOA strategy. In the wake of Léo Apotheker's resignation from the executive board in 2010 to become CEO of HP, Sikka was named to a newly reconstituted board, along with new co-CEOs Bill McDermott and Jim Hagemann Snabe. On 4 May 2014, Sikka announced his departure from SAP for personal reasons before being named leader of Infosys. Infosys On 12 June 2014, Infosys Ltd, India's second-largest IT services exporter, named Sikka as its Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director. Sikka took over from then-CEO S.D. Shibulal, one of Infosys' founders, on 1 August. He was inducted as a whole-time director of the Board and CEO & MD (Designate) of Infosys on 14 June. His annual compensation was set at $13 million and stock options worth $9million. Vishal Sikka resigned from Infosys as MD and CEO on 18 August 2017. He was replaced by Pravin Rao on 24 August 2017. Vianai In 2019, Sikka founded Vianai, an AI company, with $50 million in initial funding and advisors that included Indra Nooyi, John Etchemendy, Divesh Makan, Sebastian Thrun, and Alan Kay. In a demo of the platform on Sept. 17, 2019, at Oracle Open World, Sikka revealed the company had created its own programming language to enable more developers and companies to utilize AI and Machine Learning techniques. Oracle Oracle this week announced (December 2019) that Dr. Vishal Sikka, has been named to Oracle's Board of Directors. Before starting Vianai, Vishal was a top executive at SAP and the CEO of Infosys. As a part of the board, he would be providing strategic vision and expert advice on Oracle Cloud and its services. Additional background In 2008, Sikka joined the executive board of the CTO Forum, an influential industry non-profit community. The same year, he articulated his vision of 'Timeless Software' – software that does not cause disruption to the user as technology landscapes evolve – and proposed that this be a key pillar of SAP's future development efforts. He has expressed his admiration for industry visionary Alan Kay and contributed a chapter to Points of View, a tribute on Kay's 70th birthday. Sikka served as a member of the advisory board for Coghead from 2006 to 2009 along with industry influencers Steve Bourne, Guy Kawasaki and John Seely Brown. Coghead was acquired by SAP in 2009. Sikka has been an influential advocate for HANA, SAP's new in-memory database technology. He spearheaded the development of HANA since his appointment as CTO with support from Hasso Plattner. Since assuming his seat on the executive board, he has spoken on multiple occasions about the potential of HANA as a breakthrough in the enterprise software space. References External links Bloomberg Profile Living people 1967 births American technology chief executives SAP SE people Stanford University alumni Syracuse University College of Engineering and Computer Science alumni Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda alumni American chief technology officers Infosys people

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump%E2%80%93Ukraine%20scandal

Trump–Ukraine scandal

Efforts by U.S. President Donald Trump to coerce Ukraine and other countries into providing damaging narratives about 2020 Democratic Party presidential candidate Joe Biden as well as misinformation relating to Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections caused a political scandal in the United States. Trump enlisted surrogates within and outside his official administration, including his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and Attorney General William Barr, to pressure Ukraine and other foreign governments to cooperate in supporting conspiracy theories concerning American politics. Trump blocked payment of a congressionally mandated $400 million military aid package to allegedly obtain quid pro quo cooperation from Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump released the aid after becoming aware of a whistleblower complaint about his activities relating to Ukraine, before the complaint was known by Congress or the public. A number of contacts were established between the White House and the government of Ukraine, culminating in a phone call between Trump and Zelenskyy on July 25, 2019. The scandal reached public attention in mid-September 2019 due to a whistleblower complaint made in August 2019. The complaint raised concerns about Trump using presidential powers to solicit foreign electoral intervention in the 2020 U.S. presidential election. The White House has corroborated several allegations raised by the whistleblower. A non-verbatim transcript of the Trump–Zelenskyy call confirmed that Trump requested investigations into Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden, as well as a conspiracy theory involving a Democratic National Committee server, while repeatedly urging Zelenskyy to work with Giuliani and Barr on these matters. The White House also confirmed that a record of the call had been stored in a highly restricted system. Former acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said one reason why Trump withheld military aid to Ukraine was Ukrainian "corruption related to the DNC server", referring to a debunked theory that Ukrainians framed Russia for hacking into the DNC computer system. Trump has also publicly urged Ukraine and China to investigate the Bidens. The Trump administration's top diplomat to Ukraine, Bill Taylor, testified that he was told U.S. military aid to Ukraine and a Trump–Zelenskyy White House meeting were conditioned on Zelenskyy publicly announcing investigations into the Bidens and alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections. U.S. ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland testified that he worked with Giuliani at Trump's "express direction" to arrange a quid pro quo with the Ukraine government. On September 24, 2019, the House of Representatives began a formal impeachment inquiry into Trump, led by six House committees. On October 31, 2019, the House of Representatives voted to approve guidelines for the next phase of the impeachment inquiry. Trump was impeached on charges of abusing the power of his office and obstructing Congress, but was acquitted by the Senate. On December 3, 2019, as part of the impeachment inquiry, the House Intelligence Committee published a 300-page report detailing that "the impeachment inquiry has found that President Trump, personally and acting through agents within and outside of the U.S. government, solicited the interference of a foreign government, Ukraine, to benefit his reelection. In furtherance of this scheme, President Trump conditioned official acts on a public announcement by the new Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, of politically-motivated investigations, including one into Joe Biden, one of Trump's domestic political opponents. In pressuring President Zelenskyy to carry out his demand, President Trump withheld a White House meeting desperately sought by the Ukrainian President, and critical U.S. military assistance to fight Russian aggression in eastern Ukraine." In January 2020, the Government Accountability Office, a non-partisan watchdog, concluded that the White House broke federal law by withholding Congress-approved military aid to Ukraine. Background The scandal came to light when a whistleblower report revealed that President Trump had asked Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy in July 2019 to investigate Joe Biden, Trump's political opponent in the 2020 presidential election, his son Hunter Biden, and company CrowdStrike, to discuss these matters with Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and Attorney General William Barr. The allegations were confirmed by a non-verbatim summary of the conversation released by the White House. Trump acknowledged he had told Zelenskyy "we don't want our people like Vice President Biden and his son [contributing] to the corruption already in the Ukraine." According to the whistleblower, the call was part of a wider campaign by Trump, his administration, and Giuliani to pressure Ukraine into investigating the Bidens, which may have included Trump's cancelling a scheduled trip to Ukraine by Vice President Mike Pence, and Trump withholding $400million in military aid from Ukraine. Immediately after the Trump–Zelenskyy call ended, White House national security aides discussed their deep concerns, with at least one National Security Council (NSC) official alerting White House national security lawyers. A text message between a State Department envoy to Ukraine and a Ukrainian official showed the envoy understood from the White House that a Zelenskyy visit with Trump was contingent upon Ukraine's investigating a conspiracy theory about alleged Ukrainian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Records of the Trump–Zelenskyy call were moved from the system where presidential call transcripts are typically stored to a system reserved for the government's most sensitive secrets. The Trump administration had also similarly restricted access to records of Trump's conversations with the leaders of China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Australia. It was subsequently revealed that this placement was made for political rather than for national security reasons. The first whistleblower complaint was filed on August 12, 2019, reportedly by a CIA officer detailed to the White House. It was based both on "direct knowledge of certain alleged conduct" and on the accounts of more than "half a dozen U.S. officials". The complaint was eventually released to congressional intelligence committees on September 25, 2019, and a redacted version of the complaint was made public the next day. On October 6, 2019, attorney Mark Zaid announced the existence of a second official whistleblower, an intelligence official with firsthand knowledge who had spoken with the inspector general of the Intelligence Community but had not yet contacted the congressional committees involved in the investigation. The whistleblower's complaint prompted a referral to the Department of Justice Criminal Division. On September 25, a Department of Justice spokeswoman, Kerri Kupec, announced that the division had "concluded the matter" and determined that the call did not constitute a campaign finance violation. On October 3, after Trump publicly called for China and Ukraine to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden, Federal Election Commission (FEC) chair Ellen Weintraub reiterated that "it is illegal for any person to solicit, accept, or receive anything of value from a foreign national in connection with a U.S. election." Trump has denied all wrongdoing. He confirmed that he had withheld aid from Ukraine, while offering contradicting reasons for doing so. Trump first claimed it was withheld because of corruption in Ukraine, but later said it was because other nations, including those in Europe, were not contributing enough aid to Ukraine. European Union institutions provided more than twice the amount of aid to Ukraine than did the United States during 2016-17, and Trump's budget proposal sought to cut billions of dollars from U.S. initiatives to fight corruption and encourage reform in Ukraine and elsewhere. Trump has repeatedly attacked the whistleblower and sought information about the whistleblower. In October 2019, after mentioning that the U.S. has "tremendous power" in the trade war with China "if they don't do what we want", Trump publicly urged Ukraine and China to investigate the Bidens. As of October 2019, there has been no evidence produced of any alleged wrongdoing by the Bidens. Trump, his supporters, and right-wing media have spread multiple conspiracy theories regarding Ukraine, the Bidens, the whistleblower, and the foreign interference in the 2016 election. The scope of the scandal expanded on October 9, when arrests were made by the FBI of two of Giuliani's clients involved in political and business affairs in the U.S. and Ukraine, as well as news two days later that Giuliani himself was under federal investigation. President Donald Trump Before this scandal came to light, U.S. president Donald Trump indicated he would accept foreign intelligence on his political rivals. In June 2019, Trump was interviewed by George Stephanopoulos, who asked: "If foreigners, if Russia, if China, if someone else offers you information on an opponent, should they accept it or should they call the FBI?" Trump responded: "I think maybe you do both. I think you might want to listen. I don't. There's nothing wrong with listening. If somebody called from a country—Norway—we have information on your opponent. Oh. I think I'd want to hear it." After Trump said this, the chair of the Federal Election Commission, Ellen Weintraub, reminded Americans that according to federal law: "It is illegal for any person to solicit, accept, or receive anything of value from a foreign national in connection with a U.S. election." Previously in July 2016, while Trump was still a candidate in the 2016 United States presidential election, he made a request: "Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing" from 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's email server. Ukraine and the Bidens In 2014, the Obama administration was trying to provide diplomatic support to the post-2014 Ukrainian revolution Yatsenyuk government in Ukraine, and then-vice president Joe Biden was "at the forefront" of those efforts. Biden's son Hunter Biden joined the board of directors of Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian energy company, on April 18, 2014. Hunter, then an attorney with Boies Schiller Flexner, was hired to help Burisma with corporate governance best practices, and a consulting firm in which Hunter is a partner was also retained by Burisma. In a December 2015 interview, Joe Biden said he had never discussed Hunter's work at Burisma. Joe Biden traveled to Ukrainian capital Kyiv on April 21, 2014, and urged the Ukrainian government "to reduce its dependence on Russia for supplies of natural gas". He discussed how the United States could help provide technical expertise for expanding domestic production of natural gas. Since 2012, the Ukrainian prosecutor general had been investigating Burisma's owner, oligarch Mykola Zlochevsky, over allegations of money laundering, tax evasion, and corruption. In 2015, Viktor Shokin became the prosecutor general, inheriting the investigation. The Obama administration, other governments, and non-governmental organizations soon became concerned that Shokin was not adequately pursuing corruption in Ukraine, was protecting the political elite, and was regarded as "an obstacle to anti-corruption efforts". Among other issues, he was slow-walking the investigation into Zlochevsky and Burisma, to the extent that Obama administration officials were considering launching their own criminal investigation into the company for possible money laundering. Shokin has said he believes he was fired because of his Burisma investigation, where Hunter Biden was allegedly a subject. However, that investigation was dormant at the time Shokin was fired. In December 2015, then-vice president Biden visited Kyiv and informed the Ukrainian government that $1billion in loan guarantees would be withheld unless anti-corruption reforms were implemented, including the removal of Shokin. Ukraine's parliament voted to dismiss Shokin in March 2016. The loan guarantees were finally approved on June 3, after additional reforms were made. At the time, corruption in Ukraine was a matter of bipartisan concern in the U.S., with Republican Senators Rob Portman, Mark Kirk, and Ron Johnson co-signing a Senate Ukraine Caucus letter in February 2016 urging then-President Poroshenko to implement reforms, including "to press ahead with urgent reforms to the Prosecutor General's office". Biden was not alone in targeting Shokin for anti-corruption reasons; he was joined by other European and U.S. officials. Former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt and the assistant secretary of state Victoria Nuland both said in 2015 that Shokin's office was failing to root out corruption. In March 2016, testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, former ambassador to Ukraine John E. Herbst stated, "By late fall of 2015, the EU and the United States joined the chorus of those seeking Mr. Shokin's removal" and that Joe Biden "spoke publicly about this before and during his December visit to Kyiv." During the same hearing, Nuland stated, "we have pegged our next $1 billion loan guarantee, first and foremost, to having a rebooting of the reform coalition so that we know who we are working with, but secondarily, to ensuring that the prosecutor general's office gets cleaned up." Meanwhile, protests within Ukraine were calling for Shokin's removal, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) also threatened to delay $40 billion of aid in light of corruption in Ukraine. Anders Åslund, a resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, said that "Everyone in the Western community wanted Shokin sacked... The whole G-7, the IMF, the EBRD [European Bank for Reconstruction and Development], everybody was united that Shokin must go, and the spokesman for this was Joe Biden." The European Union eventually praised Shokin's dismissal due to a "lack of tangible results" of his office's investigations, and also because people in Shokin's office were themselves being investigated. As of May 16, 2019, when the prosecutor general's office cleared Biden and his son of alleged corruption, there is no evidence that Biden acted to protect his son's involvement with Burisma, although Trump, Giuliani, and their allies have fueled speculation. Shokin's successor, Yuriy Lutsenko, initially took a hard line against Burisma, but within a year, Lutsenko announced that all legal proceedings and pending criminal allegations against Zlochevsky had been "fully closed". In a related 2014 investigation by the United Kingdom, British authorities froze U.K. bank accounts tied to Zlochevsky; however, the investigation was later closed due to a lack of evidence. Lutsenko said in May 2019 that there was no evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens, but he was planning to provide information to Attorney General William Barr about Burisma board payments so American authorities could verify whether Hunter Biden had paid U.S. taxes. In November 2019, Senator Rand Paul asserted that the whistleblower "is a material witness to the possible corruption of Hunter Biden and Joe Biden," adding, "[the whistleblower] might have traveled with Joe Biden to Ukraine for all we know," calling for investigators to subpoena the whistleblower. Asked for evidence to support his allegations, Paul replied, "we don't know unless we ask." Senator Lindsey Graham, the Senate Judiciary Committee chair, responded by saying "What basis does he have to say that? He needs to tell us ... You can't ask members [of Congress], 'Do you want to subpoena this guy?' He might be this, he might be that." Rudy Giuliani Since at least May 2019, Giuliani has been pushing for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the newly elected president of Ukraine, to investigate Burisma, as well as to check if there were any irregularities in the Ukrainian investigation of Paul Manafort. On May 7, Zelenskyy and a group of his advisors had a three-hour meeting to discuss how to respond to Trump and Giuliani's pressure and how to avoid becoming involved in domestic American politics. Giuliani said the investigations he sought would be beneficial to President Trump, his client, and that his efforts had Trump's full support. Giuliani's efforts began as an attempt to provide cover for Trump to pardon Manafort, who had been convicted of eight felony counts in August 2018. On May 10, Giuliani canceled a scheduled trip to Ukraine where he had intended to urge president-elect Zelenskyy to pursue inquiries into Hunter Biden, as well as whether Democrats colluded with Ukrainians to release information about Manafort. Giuliani claimed he has sworn statements from five Ukrainians stating they were brought into the Obama White House in January 2016 and told to "go dig up dirt on Trump and Manafort", although he has not produced evidence for the claim. Giuliani asserted he cancelled the trip because he had been "set up" by Ukrainians who objected to his efforts, and blamed Democrats for trying to "spin" the trip. Giuliani met with Ukrainian officials to press for an investigation in June 2019 and August 2019. As early as May 2019, as State Department officials planned to meet with Zelenskyy, Trump told them to circumvent official channels for planning this meeting and instead to work with Giuliani. In July 2019, days before Trump made his phone call to Zelenskyy, Giuliani participated in a 40-minute phone call with U.S. diplomat Kurt Volker and Andriy Yermak, a senior adviser to Zelenskyy. On this call, Giuliani said that if Zelenskyy were to publicly announce an investigation into Biden, it would help Zelenskyy have "a much better relationship" with Trump. Responding to a motion by the liberal watchdog group American Oversight, on October 23 a federal judge gave the State Department 30 days to release Ukraine-related records, including communications between Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Rudy Giuliani. On November 22, the State Department released internal emails and documents that bolstered Gordon Sondland's congressional testimony that Pompeo participated in Giuliani's activities relating to Ukraine. The documents also showed the State Department had deliberately deceived Congress about the rationale for Yovanovitch's removal as ambassador. During his call with Zelenskyy, Trump said, "I will ask [Giuliani] to call you along with the attorney general. Rudy very much knows what's happening and he is a very capable guy. If you could speak to him that would be great." In November, Trump denied directing Giuliani to go to Ukraine, but days after his impeachment acquittal acknowledged that he had. Giuliani had asserted in September that "everything I did was to defend my client." Naftogaz Since March 2019, while Giuliani was pressing the Ukrainian administration to investigate the Bidens, a group of businessmen and Republican donors used their ties to Trump and Giuliani to try to replace the leadership of Ukrainian state-owned oil and gas company Naftogaz. The group sought to have Naftogaz contracts granted to businesses owned by allies of Trump, but this effort hit a setback when Volodymyr Zelenskyy won the 2019 Ukrainian Presidential Election. During a state visit for President Zelenskyy's inauguration in May, former Secretary of Energy Rick Perry reportedly pressured President Zelenskyy to fire members of the Naftogaz supervisory board, but Perry denied this, stating in a press conference on October 7: "That was a totally dreamed-up story". On October 10, Perry was issued a subpoena by the House Intelligence Committee, the House Oversight Committee, and the House Foreign Affairs Committee, partially concerning his interactions with Naftogaz. The Wall Street Journal reported that Perry planned to have Amos Hochstein, a former Obama administration official, replaced as a member of the board at Naftogaz with someone aligned with Republican interests. Perry denied the reports. Dmytry Firtash Dmytry Firtash is a Ukrainian oligarch who is prominent in the natural gas sector. In 2017, the Justice Department characterized him as being an "upper echelon (associate) of Russian organized crime". Living in Vienna, Austria, for five years he has been fighting extradition to the U.S. on bribery and racketeering charges, and has been seeking to have the charges dropped. Firtash's attorneys obtained a September statement from Viktor Shokin, the former Ukrainian prosecutor general who was forced out under pressure from multiple countries and non-governmental organizations, as conveyed to Ukraine by Joe Biden. Shokin asserted in the statement that Biden actually had him fired because he refused to stop his investigation into Burisma. Giuliani, who asserts he has "nothing to do with" and has "never met or talked to" Firtash, has promoted the statement in television appearances as purported evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens. Giuliani told CNN he met with a Firtash attorney for two hours in New York City at the time he was seeking information about the Bidens. Firtash is represented by Trump and Giuliani associates Joseph diGenova and his wife Victoria Toensing, having hired them on Parnas's recommendation. The New York Times reported in November that Giuliani had directed Parnas to approach Firtash with the recommendation, with the proposition that Firtash could help to provide compromising information on Biden, which Parnas's attorney described was "part of any potential resolution to [Firtash's] extradition matter". Shokin's statement notes that it was prepared "at the request of lawyers acting for Dmitry Firtash". Bloomberg News reported on October 18 that during the summer of 2019 Firtash associates began attempting to dig up dirt on the Bidens in an effort to solicit Giuliani's assistance with Firtash's legal matters, as well as hiring diGenova and Toensing in July. Bloomberg News also reported that its sources told them Giuliani's high-profile publicity of the Shokin statement had greatly reduced the chances of the Justice Department dropping the charges against Firtash, as it would appear to be a political quid pro quo. Later that day, The New York Times reported that weeks earlier, before his associates Parnas and Fruman were indicted, Giuliani met with officials with the criminal and fraud divisions of the Justice Department regarding what Giuliani characterized as a "very, very sensitive" foreign bribery case involving a client of his. Barr also attended the meeting. The Times did not name whom the case involved, but shortly after publication of the story Giuliani told a reporter it was not Firtash. Two days later, the Justice Department stated its officials would not have met with Giuliani had they known his associates were under investigation by the SDNY. diGenova has said he has known attorney general Bill Barr for thirty years, as they both worked in the Reagan Justice Department. The Washington Post reported on October 22 that after they began representing Firtash, Toensing and diGenova secured a rare face-to-face meeting with Barr to argue the Firtash charges should be dropped. Prior to that mid-August meeting, Barr had been briefed in detail on the initial whistleblower complaint within the CIA that had been forwarded to the Justice Department, as well as on Giuliani's activities in Ukraine. Barr declined to intervene in the Firtash case. Firtash made his fortune brokering Ukrainian imports of natural gas from the Russian firm Gazprom. As vice president, Joe Biden had urged the Ukrainian government to eliminate middlemen such as Firtash from the country's natural gas industry, and to reduce the country's reliance on imports of Russian natural gas. Firtash denied involvement in collecting or financing damaging information on the Bidens. Kashyap Patel Kashyap Patel was a national security aide for the House Intelligence Committee, under Congressman Nunes (R, CA.) during the first years of the Trump administration. He was the key author of a controversial memo which was central to the Republican narrative that FBI and DOJ officials inappropriately obtained FISA warrants for several of Trump campaign staffers, including Carter Page. Weeks later, the memo was deemed biased, consisting of "cherry picked facts". After the leadership changeover in of the House of Representatives, Patel was hired as a staffer for President Trump's National Security Council. Within months it was suspected that he had assumed the role of an additional independent back channel for the President, which was seen as potentially detrimental to American policy in Ukraine. It was noticed that during NSC meetings Patel took few notes and was underqualified for his portfolio, the United Nations. Politico reports this position was actually created specifically for Patel. Red flags were raised when President Trump referred to Patel as "one of his top Ukraine policy specialists" and as such wished "to discuss related documents with him". Patel's actual assignment has been counter-terrorism issues, rather than Ukraine. He was thought to have operated independently of Giuliani's irregular, informal channel. Impeachment inquiry witnesses have been asked what they know about Patel. Fiona Hill told investigators that it seems "Patel was improperly becoming involved in Ukraine policy and was sending information to Mr. Trump." Sondland and Kent testified they did not come across Patel in the course of their work. On December 3, 2019, the House Intelligence Committee's report included phone records, acquired via subpoenas to AT&T and/or Verizon Wireless, including a 25-minute phone call between Patel and Giuliani on May 10, 2019. The call occurred after Giuliani and Patel attempted to call each other for several hours, and less than an hour after a call between Giuliani and Kurt Volker. Five minutes after the 25-minute call between Giuliani and Patel, an unidentified "-1" phone number called Giuliani for over 17 minutes, after which Giuliani called his now-indicted associate Lev Parnas for approximately 12 minutes. In a statement to CBS News on December 4, Patel denied being part of Giuliani's Ukraine back-channel, saying he was "never a back channel to President Trump on Ukraine matters, at all, ever", and that his call with Giuliani was "personal". After Richard Grenell was named acting director of national intelligence in February 2020, Patel was added as a senior adviser on February 20. Following the termination of Secretary Mark Esper in November 2020, Patel became the chief of staff for acting Defense Secretary Christopher C. Miller. Campaign against Marie Yovanovitch As early as April 2018, Rudolph W. Giuliani and his associates Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman had apparently decided to assist President Trump's re-election efforts and they identified the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch as being a difficulty. Yovanovitch had spent her thirty-year career working as a diplomat and was announced as the nominee for U.S. ambassador to Ukraine on May 18, 2016, to replace Geoff Pyatt. Yovanovitch was respected within the national security community for her efforts to encourage Ukraine to tackle corruption, and during her tenure had sought to strengthen the Ukrainian National Anti-Corruption Bureau, which had been created to bolster efforts to fight corruption in Ukraine. As U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Yovanovitch became the target of a conspiracy-driven smear campaign. Allegations against her were then made by Trump's personal attorney Giuliani, as well as conservative commentator John Solomon of The Hill and Ukraine's then-top prosecutor, Yuri Lutsenko, who accused her of being part of a conspiracy involving anti-corruption probes in Ukraine and efforts by the Trump administration to investigate ties between Ukrainian officials and the Hillary Clinton 2016 presidential campaign. Lutsenko, who has been accused by Ukrainian civil society organizations of corruption, claimed that Yovanovitch, an Obama administration appointee, had interfered in Ukraine politics, had given him a "do-not-prosecute" list and was interfering in his ability to combat corruption in Ukraine. The U.S. State Department said that Lutsenko's allegations against Yovanovitch were "an outright fabrication" and indicated that they were a "classic disinformation campaign." Lutsenko subsequently recanted his claims of a "do-not-prosecute" list. Solomon's stories were nonetheless amplified by President Trump, his son Donald Trump Jr., Giuliani, Solomon, and conservative media outlets. Ukrainians who opposed Yovanovitch were also sources for Giuliani, who "was on a months-long search for political dirt in Ukraine to help President Trump." Giuliani confirmed in a November 2019 interview that he believed he "needed Yovanovitch out of the way" because she was going to make his investigations difficult. On April 24, 2019, after complaints from Giuliani and other Trump allies that Yovanovitch was undermining and obstructing Trump's efforts to persuade Ukraine to investigate former vice president and 2020 presidential election candidate Joe Biden, Trump ordered Yovanovitch's recall. She returned to Washington, D.C., on April 25, with her recall becoming public knowledge on May 7, and her mission as ambassador being terminated on May 20, 2019. In a July 25, 2019 phone call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy (the contents of which became public on September 25, 2019), Trump pressured the Ukrainian government to investigate Biden and disparaged Yovanovitch to his foreign counterpart, calling her "bad news". Documents to the House Intelligence Committee provided by Lev Parnas outlined text exchanges in which Lutsenko pushed for the ouster of Yovanovitch and in return offered to provide damaging information on Joe Biden. In Russian-language messages, Lutsenko told Parnas that Yovanovitch—referred to as "madam"—should be ousted before he would make helpful public statements; for example, in a March 22, 2019 WhatsApp message to Parnas, Lutsenko wrote, "It's just that if you don't make a decision about Madam—you are calling into question all my declarations. Including about B." It is thought that Lutsenko targeted Yovanovitch due to her anti-corruption efforts in Ukraine. One week before an April 1, 2019 conference on anti-corruption, Parnas exchanged encrypted WhatsApp text messages with Robert F. Hyde that indicated the ambassador was under surveillance and that her security was at risk. Hyde claimed he had merely forwarded messages received from a Belgium citizen named Anthony de Caluwe. After the House Intelligence Committee released the text messages, de Caluwe initially denied any involvement, but then reversed himself, saying that he had in fact sent the messages to Hyde but that the messages were a joke and "just a part of a ridiculous banter." An audio tape from April 2018, recorded at a private dinner between Trump and top donors and made public by ABC News in January 2020, captures Trump demanding Yovanovitch's removal, saying: "Get rid of her! Get her out tomorrow. I don't care. Get her out tomorrow. Take her out. Okay? Do it." The recording appeared to corroborate Parnas's account that he had told Trump that night that Yovanovitch was working against him. Yovanovitch's abrupt ouster shocked and outraged career State Department diplomats. Acting Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Philip Reeker, the chief diplomat for U.S. policy for Europe, testified that he had urged top State Department officials David Hale and T. Ulrich Brechbuhl, to issue a statement expressing strong support for Yovanovitch, but that top State Department leadership rejected this proposal. Former senior U.S. diplomats Philip Gordon and Daniel Fried, who served as assistant secretaries of state for European and Eurasian Affairs and as National Security Council staffers under presidents of both parties, praised Yovanovitch and condemned Trump's "egregious mistreatment of one of the country's most distinguished ambassadors," writing that this had demoralized the U.S. diplomatic corps and undermined U.S. foreign policy. The American Foreign Service Association and American Academy of Diplomacy, representing members of the U.S. diplomatic corps, expressed alarm at Trump's disparagement of Yovanovitch in his call with Zelenskyy. Michael McKinley, a career foreign service officer who served as ambassador to four countries and had been chief adviser to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, resigned in October 2019 in protest of Trump's attacks against Yovanovitch and "the State Department's unwillingness to protect career diplomats from politically motivated pressure." Yovanovitch's ouster became one of the issues explored in the House of Representatives impeachment inquiry against Trump; her recall was termed "a political hit job" by Democratic members of Congress. Trump subsequently said she was "no angel" and falsely claimed that Yovanovitch had refused to hang his portrait. Communications with Ukrainian officials On September 20, 2019, The Washington Post reported that Trump had in a July 25 phone conversation repeatedly pressed Ukrainian president Zelenskyy to investigate matters relating to Hunter Biden. The New York Times reported that Trump told Zelenskyy to speak to Giuliani, and according to The Wall Street Journal, he urged Zelenskyy "about eight times" to work with Giuliani and investigate Biden's son. On September 22, Trump acknowledged he had discussed Joe Biden during the call with Zelenskyy, and that he had said: "We don't want our people like Vice President Biden and his son creating to the corruption already in the Ukraine." As of October 2019, there has been no evidence produced of any of the alleged wrongdoing by the Bidens. The Wall Street Journal reported on September 30 that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also listened in on the call. Two days later, The Washington Post reported that Vice President Mike Pence's national security advisor Keith Kellogg had listened in on the call as well, and that "Pence should have had access to the transcript within hours." Others on the line included Tim Morrison, the National Security Council's senior director for Europe and Russia; Robert Blair, an aide to Mick Mulvaney; and Alexander Vindman, a Ukraine expert for the NSC. Days before Trump's July 25 call with Zelenskyy, Giuliani spoke on the phone with Zelenskyy aide Andriy Yermak about a Biden investigation, as well as a prospective White House meeting between Zelenskyy and Trump that was sought by Ukrainian officials. According to Zelenskyy's advisor Serhiy Leshchenko, Trump was willing to have a phone conversation with Zelenskyy only on the precondition that they discuss the possibility of investigating the Biden family. Leshchenko later sought to backtrack his comments, saying he did not know if officials had viewed discussing Biden as a precondition for a meeting. Text messages given to Congress by special envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker in October suggest that Zelenskyy's aide Yermak was told that Zelenskyy would be invited for a White House visit only if he promised to carry out the requested investigations. On July 25, just before Trump's phone call, Volker texted to Yermak: "heard from White House—assuming PresidentZ convinces trump he will investigate / 'get to the bottom of what happened' in 2016, we will nail down date for visit to Washington." On September 25, the administration released the White House's five-page, declassified memorandum of the July 25 phone call between Trump and Zelenskyy. In the call, Trump pressed for an investigation into the Bidens and CrowdStrike, saying: "I would like to have the [U.S.] attorney general call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it." Trump falsely told Zelenskyy "Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution" of his son, Hunter; Biden did not stop any prosecution, did not brag about doing so, and there is no evidence his son was ever under investigation. Trump also presented Giuliani as a key U.S. contact for Ukraine, although Giuliani holds no official U.S. government position. Trump said three times that he would ask both Attorney General Barr and Giuliani to call Zelenskyy, and added: "So whatever you can do with the attorney general would be great." In response, Zelenskyy said his candidate for Ukraine's chief prosecutor "will look into the situation, specifically to the company that you mentioned in this issue". After Zelenskyy said this, Trump offered to meet with Zelenskyy at the White House. On the same call with Zelenskyy, Trump espoused the conspiracy theory that Hillary Clinton's email server was in Ukraine; criticized the U.S.'s European allies (in particular Germany), and disparaged the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, a career U.S. diplomat whom the Trump administration had abruptly recalled two months earlier. Trump told Zelenskyy that Yovanovitch was "going to go through some things". During the conversation, Zelenskyy mentioned that on his last visit to the U.S., he had stayed in Trump Tower. Ethics advocacy groups described this comment as an attempt to curry favor. Shortly after the conversation, White House aides began asking one another whether they should alert other senior officials who had not participated. The first whistleblower described one White House official as being "visibly shaken by what had transpired". In a July 26 memo, the whistleblower reported, "The official stated that there was already a conversation underway with White House lawyers about how to handle the discussion because, in the official's view, the president had clearly committed a criminal act by urging a foreign power to investigate a U.S. person for the purposes of advancing his own re-election bid in 2020." During the period prior to and immediately after the July 25 call, at least four national security officials warned National Security Council legal adviser John Eisenberg that the Trump administration was attempting to pressure Ukraine for political purposes. Days after the Trump call, Giuliani met with Yermak in Madrid. Giuliani said on September 23 that the State Department had asked him to "go on a mission for them" to speak with Yermak. The State Department had said on August 22 that its Ukraine envoy Volker had connected the men, but that Giuliani was acting as a private citizen and Trump attorney, although he briefed the State Department after the trip. Giuliani said he told Yermak, "Your country owes it to us and to your country to find out what really happened." Yermak said he was not clear if Giuliani was representing Trump, but Giuliani said he was not, and the White House referred questions about Giuliani's role to the State Department, which did not respond. Appearing on television on September 19, Giuliani first denied he had asked Ukrainian officials to investigate Joe Biden, but moments later said, "Of course I did." Former prosecutor Yuri Lutsenko told the Los Angeles Times Giuliani had repeatedly demanded that the Ukrainians investigate the Biden family. "I told him I could not start an investigation just for the interests of an American official," Lutsenko informed the Times. In August, Volker and American ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland drafted a statement they wanted Zelenskyy to read publicly that would commit Ukraine to investigate Burisma and the conspiracy theory that Ukraine interfered with the 2016 election to benefit Hillary Clinton. However, Zelenskyy never made the statement. Volker also provided to congressional investigators a September text message exchange between Sondland, a major Trump donor and political appointee, and Bill Taylor, a career diplomat who was the senior official at the Ukrainian embassy after the recall of Ambassador Yovanovitch. In the messages, Taylor wrote: "I think it's crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign." Four hours later, after speaking with Trump, Sondland responded: "Bill, I believe you are incorrect about President Trump's intentions. The president has been crystal clear: no quid pro quos of any kind." He then suggested they continue discussing the matter by phone rather than text. The Washington Post reported on October 12 that Sondland would tell congressional investigators the following week that he had relayed Trump's assertion of no quid pro quo, but he did not know if it was actually true. NBC News reported the night before Sondland's testimony that he told Ukrainian officials visiting the White House that a Trump–Zelenskyy meeting was conditioned on Ukraine opening an investigation, and discussed Burisma with them. The Wall Street Journal reported in November 2019 that prior to the Trump–Zelenskyy call, Sondland had kept several administration officials apprised via email of his efforts to persuade Ukraine to open investigations. American embassy officials in Kyiv repeatedly expressed concerns about Giuliani's meetings, and during closed-door congressional testimony on October 4, Volker reportedly said he had warned Giuliani that Ukrainian political figures were giving him untrustworthy information about the Bidens. He also testified that Joe Biden was a "man of integrity", saying: "I have known former vice president Biden for 24 years, and the suggestion that he would be influenced in his duties as vice president by money for his son simply has no credibility to me. I know him as a man of integrity and dedication to our country." Memorandum record of the July 25 phone call The first whistleblower's report said that "senior White House officials had intervened to 'lock down' all records of the phone call", an act that indicated those officials "understood the gravity of what had transpired". They performed the "lock down" by placing the record of the call on a top-secret server intended for the most highly classified material, under the direction of John Eisenberg. It was later confirmed that on orders from National Security Council attorneys, the call with Ukraine was moved from TNet, the regular NSC computer system, to the top-secret codeword NICE system, reserved for closely guarded secrets. On September 27, it was reported that records of calls with the leaders of Saudi Arabia and Russia had also been stored on NICE. On September 27, the White House acknowledged that a record of the call between Trump and Zelenskyy was sealed in a highly classified system, as per the advice of National Security Council lawyers. On the same day, it was reported that the records of Trump's Oval Office meeting with Russian officials in May 2017 had been unusually closely held, with distribution limited to a few officials. White House advisor Kellyanne Conway said the procedure for handling records of Trump's calls with world leaders had been tightened early in 2017 because of leaks to the press about his conversations with the president of Mexico and the prime minister of Australia. It was subsequently revealed that this placement on the top-secret server was made for political rather than for national security reasons, which are the only valid reasons to use such a server, and that it happened after the White House's top Ukraine adviser, Alexander Vindman, told White House lawyer John Eisenberg that "what the president did was wrong". This conversation occurred immediately after Trump's phone call with Zelenskyy, and, according to people familiar with Vindman's account, it was Eisenberg who proposed this placement and restriction of access to the "Memorandum of Telephone Conversation" (i.e., the "rough transcript" of the phone call). On October 2, Trump falsely asserted that the publicly released memorandum was "an exact word-for-word transcript of the conversation". Analysts noted that its use of ellipses to denote omitted material was uncommon for government transcripts, and that it was surprisingly brief for a thirty-minute conversation, even allowing for the time delays due to the use of an interpreter. During his October 29 testimony, European Affairs Lt. Col Alexander Vindman said the memorandum of the call released by the White House omitted crucial words and phrases, including Trump asserting that recordings exist of Joe Biden discussing Ukraine corruption, which Trump stated in the third set of ellipses in the released memorandum. Vindman said he tried but failed to restore the omitted text. A senior White House official had asserted when the Memorandum was released that the ellipses "do not indicate missing words or phrases", but rather "a trailing off of a voice or pause". The New York Times states that "There is no [audio] recording of the July 25 call by the American side." Both attorney general Bill Barr and White House counsel Pat Cipollone had recommended Trump publicly release the memorandum, asserting it showed the president did nothing wrong. During ensuing days, Trump and his allies strongly encouraged the public to read the "transcript", even as the consensus view of legal analysts was that the memorandum implicated rather than exonerated the president. Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney advised Trump that releasing the memorandum had been a mistake, causing the president to become irked by the advice Barr had given him. Withholding of Ukrainian military aid The U.S. Congress had mandated increased military aid to Ukraine over the period of Trump's presidency. Congress appropriated $400million in military aid to Ukraine for fiscal year 2019, to be used to spend on weapons and other equipment as well as programs to assist the Ukrainian military in combating threats from Putin's Russia and Russian-backed separatists of the self-proclaimed separatist entities in eastern Ukraine. The administration notified Congress in February 2019 and May 2019 that it intended to release this aid to Ukraine, with the Defense Department certifying that Ukraine had made sufficient progress in fighting corruption. Despite the notifications to Congress, in June 2019, the Trump administration placed military aid to Ukraine on hold. The date of the hold was originally reported as mid-July. The Washington Post reported on September 23 that at least a week before his July 25 call with Zelenskyy, Trump directed his acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney to $400 million in military aid to Ukraine. This directive was conveyed by the Office of Management and Budget to the State Department and Pentagon, stating Trump had concerns about whether the money should be spent, with instructions to tell lawmakers the funds were being delayed due to an "interagency process". The New York Times reported that "high-level Ukrainian officials" were aware that the Trump administration had purposely frozen the military aid by the first week of August 2019, and they were told to contact Mick Mulvaney to resolve the matter. During an October 17 press conference, White House acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said he "was involved with the process" of the freezing of military aid. Mulvaney gave his account of why Trump decided to hold back military aid to Ukraine. One, Trump felt the other European countries were not doing enough. Two, Trump felt Ukraine was a "corrupt place" which included having "corruption related to the DNC server" with regard to "what happened in 2016". As a result, reporter Jonathan Karl told Mulvaney "what you just described is a quid pro quo. It is: 'Funding will not flow unless the investigation into the Democratic server happens as well.'" Mulvaney replied to Karl: "We do that all the time with foreign policy... Get over it. There's going to be political influence in foreign policy." Later in the press conference, Mulvaney quoted a third reason on why military aid was frozen—they had yet to cooperate with a U.S. Justice Department investigation into alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. After media reports of Mulvaney's comments circulated, Republicans joined Trump's aides and legal counsel in distancing themselves from his remarks. A senior official in the Justice Department stated: "If the White House was withholding aid from Ukraine with regard to any investigation by the Justice Department, that's news to us." Hours later on the same day where he had issued the press conference, Mulvaney criticized the media for their coverage of his comments and denied his earlier remarks, saying that there was "no quid pro quo" regarding the withholding of aid and requests to investigate the Democrats' behavior during the 2016 election. In the July 25 call with Trump, Zelenskyy thanked Trump for the U.S.'s "great support in the area of defense", an apparent reference to military aid, and expressed an interest in acquiring more missiles. Trump replied, "I would like you to do us a favor though," suggesting an investigation into CrowdStrike, an American cybersecurity firm that investigated the cyberattacks against the Democratic National Committee in 2015 and 2016. CrowdStrike was one of three firms whose analysis assisted the U.S. intelligence community in determining that Russian intelligence was responsible for the DNC hack. Trump also asked Zelenskyy to investigate Joe Biden and his son. Ukraine relies on extensive American military aid to fight Russian-backed separatists in the Donbass, and the Trump administration's suspension of the congressionally-mandated aid was reportedly a shock to Ukrainian government officials who found out about it only "much later, and then through nonofficial channels". Trump's addition of the word "though" has been interpreted as a condition made by Trump that his decisions would be based on Ukraine's compliance with his requests. On September 9, on hearing about the whistleblower complaint, three Democratic-controlled House committees—the Committee on Foreign Affairs, the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and the Committee on Oversight and Reform—announced they would investigate whether Trump and Giuliani attempted to coerce Ukraine into investigating the Bidens by withholding the military aid. On September 11, the Trump administration released the aid. In a September 20 tweet, Giuliani appeared to confirm suspicion that there was a connection between the withholding of military assistance funds and the investigation he and Trump wanted Ukraine to undertake. He said: "The reality is that the President of the United States, whoever he is, has every right to tell the president of another country you better straighten out the corruption in your country if you want me to give you a lot of money. If you're so damn corrupt that you can't investigate allegations—our money is going to get squandered." Trump himself appeared to make a similar connection on September 23, telling reporters: "We want to make sure that country is honest. It's very important to talk about corruption. If you don't talk about corruption, why would you give money to a country that you think is corrupt?" Trump later denied pressuring Ukraine. While the aid was restored in time to prevent any military setbacks, Trump's withholding of military aid took a heavy psychological toll on the Ukraine soldiers. Trump has offered inconsistent justifications for withholding the aid. He originally said that the aid was withheld due to "corruption" in the country and that the topic of conversation with Volodymyr Zelenskyy was about "the fact that we don't want our people, like vice-president Biden and his son, [adding] to the corruption already in the Ukraine". He later disputed his original statement and said the aid was initially held back due to a lack of similar contribution from other European nations. Republican senator Ron Johnson told The Wall Street Journal in October that American ambassador Gordon Sondland told him in August that military aid to Ukraine was linked to the desire of Trump and his allies for the Ukrainian government to investigate matters related to the 2016 American elections. Sondland told a State department diplomat in September via text message that there was no quid pro quo. On October 12, however, The Washington Post reported that, according to a person familiar with Sondland's testimony, Sondland plans to testify to Congress that the content of that text message "was relayed to him directly by President Trump in a phone call" and that he did not know if the claim denying quid pro quo was actually true. The Wall Street Journal reported on October 10 that career civil servants at the Office of Management and Budget were concerned about the legality of freezing the aid funds, and that the White House granted a political appointee, Michael Duffey, the authority to keep the aid on hold. Partially redacted OMB emails released to the Center for Public Integrity on December 20 showed that Duffey initiated action to freeze the Ukrainian aid about 90 minutes after the July 25 Trump–Zelenskyy call, writing to OMB and Pentagon officials, "given the sensitive nature of the request, I appreciate your keeping that information closely held to those who need to know to execute direction." Unredacted versions of the emails subsequently acquired by Just Security showed that the Pentagon repeatedly pushed back against the hold, citing legal concerns, but Duffey stated, "clear direction from POTUS to continue to hold". Just Security reported that the original redactions had been made by the Justice Department. Another series of heavily redacted emails released on January 21, 2020 showed that the OMB was laying the groundwork to freeze the Ukraine aid on the night of July 24, prior to the July 25 Trump–Zelenskyy call. An enclosed "Ukraine Prep Memo" was redacted in its entirety. On January 16, 2020, the Government Accountability Office (GAO), a non-partisan watchdog agency, concluded that the White House broke federal law by withholding of Congress-approved military aid to Ukraine. The agency concluded that the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 had been violated because Congress' legislated policy had been supplanted by President Trump's own policy. The agency also concluded that the withholding "was not a programmatic delay", in spite of the Trump administration's claim that it was so. As the second week of the Trump impeachment trial was set to begin in January 2020, The New York Times reported that Bolton wrote in his forthcoming book that the president had told him in August 2019 that he wanted to continue freezing the Ukraine aid until officials there pursued investigations into Democrats, including the Bidens. Withholding of White House visit In a May 2019 letter congratulating Zelenskyy on his election, Trump raised the possibility of a White House visit. However, during the next few months as Giuliani and some State Department officials pressed Zelenskyy to investigate Burisma and the 2016 election, a White House visit became one of the inducements offered or withheld depending on Zelenskyy's cooperation. Bill Taylor, the United States' senior diplomatic official in Ukraine, testified in a congressional hearing that he learned in mid-July 2019 that a potential White House meeting between Trump and Zelenskyy "was conditioned on the investigations of Burisma and alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections". Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union who became Trump's primary connection to Ukraine, testified that Trump had told him he was "skeptical that Ukraine was serious about reforms and anti-corruption" and directed him to speak to Giuliani about his concerns. Sondland began working with Giuliani and conveyed the message about investigations to the Ukrainians. In August, Sondland texted that the White House visit would be scheduled just as soon as Zelenskyy confirmed that he would issue a public statement about investigations into the Bidens and the 2016 election. In his November 20 testimony before the impeachment hearings, Sondland testified that the White House visit was conditioned on a public Ukrainian announcement of investigation into Burisma and the 2016 election, which he described as a quid pro quo. In testimony before congressional committees, the National Security Council's head of European Affairs, Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, testified that Sondland had told Ukrainian officials in his presence that they would have to launch investigations into the Bidens in order to get a meeting with Trump. He said Sondland indicated that "everything"—including the military aid and the White House visit—was on the table pending Zelenskyy's public announcement of such an investigation. Whistleblower complaints First whistleblower complaint Submission of complaint and withholding from Congress On August 12, 2019, an unnamed CIA officer filed a whistleblower complaint with Michael Atkinson, the inspector general of the Intelligence Community (ICIG), under the provisions of the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act (ICWPA). Atkinson looked into the complaint and interviewed several government officials whom the whistleblower identified as having information to substantiate his claims. On August 26, having found the complaint to be both "credible" and "of urgent concern" (as defined by the ICWPA), and noting the "subject matter expertise" of the whistleblower, Atkinson transmitted the complaint to Joseph Maguire, the acting director of national intelligence (DNI). Prior to the whistleblower filing the formal ICIG complaint, the individual notified the CIA of his/her concerns, which were then relayed to the White House and Justice Department. The New York Times reported in November that Trump was told of the whistleblower complaint in late August, before it was known by Congress and before the Ukraine aid was released. Maguire withheld the complaint from congressional intelligence committees, citing the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel's rationale that the whistleblower complaint did not relate to an "intelligence activity within the responsibility and authority" of the acting DNI. Maguire also testified that the whistleblower "followed the law every step of the way". In an October 2019 letter, about 70 inspectors general from the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency sharply criticized the Justice Department's decision to withhold the complaint from Congress, recommending the OLC memo be withdrawn or amended because it "effectively overruled the determination by the ICIG regarding an 'urgent concern' complaint" that the ICIG concluded was "credible and therefore needed to be transmitted to Congress". Under ICWPA, the DNI "shall" within seven days of receipt forward the complaint to the Senate and House Intelligence Committees. Maguire did not do so, and the deadline passed on September 2. On September9 Atkinson wrote to several lawmakers, telling them about the existence of the whistleblower report, which Maguire had not forwarded to Congress. On September 10, House Intelligence Committee (HPSCI) chairman Adam Schiff wrote to Maguire, asking why he had not provided it. According to Schiff, Maguire said he had been told to withhold it on direction from a "higher authority" because it involved an "issue of privileged communications". Schiff said he was also told "the complaint concerns conduct by someone outside of the Intelligence Community." The Trump administration withheld the complaint on the basis of the Justice Department's assertion that the complaint was not within the purview of the ICWPA. On September 13, Schiff subpoenaed Maguire to appear before the HPSCI, and Maguire agreed to testify on September 26. The Washington Post reported that Maguire threatened to resign if the White House sought to constrain his testimony, although Maguire later denied he had contemplated resigning. On September 18, The Washington Post broke the story of the whistleblower report, saying the complaint concerned a "promise" Trump had made during communication with an unnamed foreign leader. White House records showed Trump had made communications or interactions with five foreign leaders during the five weeks before the whistleblower complaint was filed. During a previously scheduled closed-door hearing before the HPSCI on September 19, Atkinson told lawmakers the complaint referred to a series of events, and that he disagreed with the position that the complaint lay outside the scope of the ICWPA, but declined to provide details. On September 19, The Washington Post reported that the complaint related to Ukraine. After the ICIG found that the call was a possible violation of federal campaign finance laws, which prohibits the solicitation of foreign contributions, the ICIG referred the matter to the FBI, and the DNI referred the matter to the U.S. Department of Justice for a possible criminal investigation of Trump's actions. Courtney Simmons Elwood, general counsel for the CIA, became aware of the whistleblower's complaint through a colleague and, on August 14, made what she considered a criminal referral of the matter during a conference call with the top national security lawyer at the White House and the chief of the Justice Department's National Security Division. A Justice Department official said the ICIG suspected the call could have broken federal law if Trump's request to the Ukrainian government to investigate a political opponent constituted the solicitation of campaign contribution from a foreign government. According to a Justice Department spokeswoman, the department's criminal division reviewed "the official record of the call" and determined there was no campaign finance violation. The Justice Department's determination to not launch an investigation took only weeks; the department did not conduct interviews or take steps beyond reviewing the call record. A senior Justice Department official told The Washington Post the Justice Department had determined Trump's conduct did not constitute the solicitation of a quantifiable "thing of value" subject to the campaign finance laws. The Justice Department's review looked into whether there was evidence of a campaign violation law, and did not look into possible violations of federal corruption statutes. Some legal experts said there seemed to be evidence warranting an investigation into both; for example, Richard L. Hasen, an election-law scholar, believes the provision of opposition research, e.g. valuable information about a political rival, could be considered a contribution in kind under campaign finance law. Release and substance of the complaint On September 24, the top Democrats of the House and Senate intelligence committees said an attorney for the whistleblower had contacted the committees about providing testimony. Members and staff of congressional intelligence committees were allowed to examine the whistleblower complaint on September 25. After the release of the whistleblower complaint to congressional committees, Republican senators Ben Sasse and Mitt Romney called the complaint contents "really troubling" and "troubling in the extreme", respectively. That same day, the complaint itself was declassified with "minimal redactions". The House Intelligence Committee released the declassified, redacted version of the complaint on September 26. In the complaint, the whistleblower said Trump abused the powers of his office for personal gain and put national security in danger, and that White House officials engaged in a cover-up. The whistleblower wrote: In the course of my official duties, I have received information from multiple U.S. government officials that the President of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election. This interference includes, among other things, pressuring a foreign country to investigate one of the President's main domestic political rivals. In addition to the July 25 phone call between Trump and the Ukrainian president Zelenskyy, the whistleblower alleged that Giuliani, Trump's personal attorney, had engaged in a campaign to pressure Ukrainian authorities to pursue Joe Biden, including in an August2 meeting in Madrid between Giuliani and Zelenskyy aide as "a direct followup" to the July 25 call and contact with a number of other officials in Zelenskyy's government. These officials included Zelenskyy's Chief of Staff, Andriy Bohdan, and the then-acting head of the Security Service of Ukraine, Ivan Bakanov. The whistleblower further alleged in the complaint that White House officials had tried to limit access to the record of Trump's telephone conversation with Zelenskyy, writing: In the days following the phone call, I learned from multiple U.S. officials that senior White House officials had intervened to "lock down" all records of the phone call, especially the word-for-word transcript of the call that was produced—as is customary—by the White House Situation Room. This set of actions underscored to me that White House officials understood the gravity of what had transpired in the call. Confirmation By the end of October the bulk of the whistleblower complaint had been confirmed by other sources, including the memorandum record of the July 25 call which the White House released, testimony before congressional committees, and independent reporting. According to a The New York Times editorial titled "Thanks, Whistle-Blower, Your Work Is Done", only one minor item reported in the whistleblower complaint has not yet been confirmed: that T. Ulrich Brechbuhl, the Counselor for the State Department, also listened to the call. Identity Trump has repeatedly called for the identity of the whistleblower to be revealed, as have some Republican congress members, particularly Senator Rand Paul, who blocked a Senate resolution reaffirming protection for whistleblowers, and has demanded that the media print the person's name. Around November 1, an alleged identity began to circulate on right-wing publications and social media. Major news outlets have refused to publish the rumored identity of the whistleblower, and Facebook and YouTube announced plans to delete all mentions of the name. Twitter is allowing posts containing the alleged whistleblower's name, and Donald Trump Jr. was criticized for publishing such posts on his account on November 6. Publicly identifying the whistleblower's name may contravene provisions of the Inspector General Act of 1978, the Intelligence Authorization Act, the ICWPA, the Whistleblower Protection Act, and a Presidential Policy Directive dated 2012. Senator Rand Paul and Trump Jr. both argued that naming the whistleblower is not a crime, and Robert S. Litt, former general counsel for the National Intelligence Office, said that members of Congress would be "absolutely immune" from prosecution under the Speech and Debate Clause, although they could be subject to congressional sanctions. Due to threats against him, the whistleblower spent several months guarded by the CIA's Security Protective Service, living in hotels and traveling with armed officers in an unmarked vehicle. The CIA observed that "violent messages surged each time the analyst was targeted in tweets or public remarks by the president," according to a Washington Post report. Second whistleblower complaint A second whistleblower, also an intelligence official, came forward on October 5, 2019, with "first-hand knowledge of allegations" associated with the phone call between Trump and Zelenskyy, according to Mark Zaid, a lawyer on the team representing both whistleblowers. Zaid stated that the second whistleblower had been interviewed by the ICIG but had not at that time filed a written complaint. Nor, as of October 6, had the second whistleblower communicated with any committee in the House of Representatives. As of October 6, it is not known whether this intelligence official is the same individual mentioned in a New York Times report from October4 about an intelligence official who was then weighing the possibility of filing an ICIG complaint and testifying before Congress. Impeachment inquiry proceedings Subsequent developments Involvement of Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman are associates of Rudy Giuliani who aided him in his politically-motivated investigation into Joe Biden. They had previously worked for Dmytry Firtash, a Ukrainian oligarch being indicted by the Justice Department and believed to be involved at high levels of Russian organized crime. Their attorney John Dowd, who previously represented Trump during the Mueller investigation, told Congress in October 2019 the men were assisting Giuliani in his work on behalf of Trump. Both are Soviet-born Florida real estate businessmen and naturalized American citizens. The two were arrested on the evening of October 9, 2019, and charged with planning to direct funds from a foreign government "to U.S. politicians while trying to influence U.S.-Ukraine relations". They were arrested at Dulles International while trying to leave the U.S. en route to Vienna, Austria. Rudy Giuliani was also scheduled to fly to Vienna the following night. Their arrest, the first in the Trump–Ukraine scandal, was described as a "complex web of financial and political interactions linking diplomacy to alleged violations of campaign finance law". The head of the New York's FBI office described the investigation as "about corrupt behavior, deliberate lawbreaking". Parnas and Freeman both pleaded not guilty. Parnas's attorney said some evidence against his client could be subject to presidential executive privilege, as Giuliani had represented both Trump and Parnas. The charges have also directly connected Parnas and Fruman to the campaign to oust the United States ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, from her post and have her recalled. This occurred over many months. In 2018, the operation included Parnas and Fruman donating funds and pledging later additional money to an unnamed Congressman, who was recruited for the "campaign to oust her". Some of the funds violated campaign limits. Parnas and Fruman were also charged with unlawful campaign contributions. Former congressional representative Pete Sessions (R-Texas) correlates with campaign finance filings, identifying him as the unnamed congressman. At the time, as the chairman of the influential House Rules Committee, he wrote a May 9, 2018, letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo "saying that Ms. Yovanovitch should be fired for privately expressing 'disdain' for the current administration". Earlier that day, Parnas and his business partner David Correia visited Sessions in his Capitol Hill office. Correia was arrested by the FBI at JFK International on October 16 on charges of using foreign money for political influence to advance a marijuana scheme. In 2018, Parnas and Fruman were sent by Giuliani to Ukraine to extract damaging information on Trump's U.S. political rivals. "Their mission was to find people and information that could be used to undermine the Special Counsel's investigation, and also to damage former vice president Joseph R. Biden." Both were also at the center of the pro-Trump forces' push to remove the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine because her loyalty to President Trump was deemed deficient "as he pursued his agenda there". Also, over the course of a year beginning in 2018, the two brought Giuliani to Ukrainians who were amenable to promoting "a largely unsubstantiated narrative about the Bidens". These willing Ukrainians included Yuriy Lutsenko, a former prosecutor general of Ukraine, who was essential to aiding Giuliani's efforts to produce damaging information. In an interview published in December 2019, Giuliani stated, "I believed that I needed Yovanovitch out of the way. She was going to make the investigations difficult for everybody." Giuliani's relationship with Parnas and Fruman is the subject of a criminal investigation by the FBI's New York field office and SDNY prosecutors. His business activities in Ukraine and potential violation of lobbying laws are under federal investigation, by FBI counterintelligence. SDNY prosecutors have examined Giuliani's bank statements. They are also investigating his finances, as well as meetings with and work for a Ukrainian city mayor. SDNY investigators have been questioning witnesses about Giuliani since August 2019, gathering information about his relationship to Parnas and Fruman. Bloomberg News reported in November 2019 that the Giuliani investigation could include charges of bribing foreign officials or conspiracy. Referring to Parnas and Fruman, on October 10 Trump said, "I don't know those gentlemen," although that day The Wall Street Journal reported Trump had dinner with the men in the White House in early May 2018. BuzzFeed News featured photos of Lev Parnas posing with President Trump and both Parnas and Fruman posing with other Republicans in Washington, DC. Trump was photographed with Parnas as early as April 2014. On October 15, 2019, it was reported that a New York grand jury had subpoenaed former congressman Pete Sessions (R-Texas) for documents and other information about his intercommunications and cooperation with Giuliani, Parnas, and Freeman. The subpoena demonstrated that the investigation into Giuliani's relationship to Parnas and Freeman remained active, as prosecutors determine whether Giuliani engaged in any illegal behavior. Giuliani seems to be the focal point of the subpoena. Sought after documents pertain to Giuliani's business affairs in Ukraine and his connection to the ouster of the former U.S. ambassador. The unsealed indictment against Parnas says he sought the help of the congressman to dismiss the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine while sourcing the money to the congressman on behalf of "one or more Ukrainian government officials". Sessions followed up with a letter to the secretary of state requesting the ouster of the ambassador. On November 4, 2019, Parnas's new attorney Joseph Bondy said his client would cooperate with congressional investigators in their Trump impeachment inquiry. Bondy later told The New York Times that shortly before Zelenskyy's May 20 inauguration, Parnas traveled to Kyiv to tell the incoming government that American military aid was contingent upon Ukraine's announcing an investigation of Joe Biden. On January 14, 2020, the House Intelligence Committee released documents provided by Parnas, including text messages between Parnas and Robert Hyde, a Republican congressional candidate, in which Hyde described surveillance of Yovanovitch in Kyiv before she was recalled, including Hyde stating that she was under heavy security and "we have a person inside," adding, "they are willing to help if we/you would like a price" and "guess you can do anything in Ukraine with money." Two days later, Ukraine announced it was opening an investigation into the matter, while the State Department remained silent as the FBI visited Hyde's home and office. The documents also outlined text exchanges with then Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko in which he pushed for the ouster of Yovanovitch and offered information related to former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden in return. On January 15, 2020, Parnas stated in an interview that "President Trump knew exactly what was going on. He was aware of all my movements. I wouldn't do anything without the consent of Rudy Giuliani or the president" about the effort to push Ukraine to investigate the Bidens. The next day, Trump again asserted that he knew nothing about Parnas. In an audio recording reportedly made by Fruman during a small dinner in April 2018, after Parnas and Fruman tell Trump that Yovanovitch was bad-mouthing him, Trump is apparently heard to say "Get rid of her! Get her out tomorrow. I don't care. Get her out tomorrow. Take her out. Okay? Do it." Communications with other governments Australia On October 1, 2019, it was reported that the transcript of a call with Australian prime minister Scott Morrison had been placed on the same top-secret server as the other transcripts. Trump was reported to have requested Morrison's aid in William Barr's investigation of the Mueller inquiry. Trump's request focused on the origins of the Mueller inquiry as a conversation between Australia's former foreign minister Alexander Downer and Trump campaign team member George Papadopoulos led to the investigation. The Australian government confirmed the call had taken place and that Morrison had articulated to the President that "the Australian Government has always been ready to assist and cooperate with efforts that help shed further light on the matters under investigation," but did not elaborate on what, if any, assistance had been offered. In a letter to William Barr dated May 28, Joe Hockey, Australia's ambassador to the U.S., pledged that the Australian government would "use its best endeavours" to support Barr's investigation. Hockey later rejected claims that Downer had been part of a conspiracy among intelligence agencies around the world to prevent Trump's election and undermine his eventual presidency. The White House responded by dismissing the reports, claiming it was part of a routine request to grant Australian authorities access to Department of Justice resources to facilitate an investigation that had been open for several months. When questioned by a journalist, Morrison rejected Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese's accusation that he had jeopardized Australia's national security for the sake of a personal relationship with the president and instead insisted that cooperating with Barr's investigation was in the national interest. Morrison claimed that no specific request had been made of his government, but refused to go into detail as to what support had been provided, citing national security concerns. Italy On September 30, it was reported that Attorney General William Barr had travelled to Rome to enlist the support of Italian authorities in his investigation. Barr sought information related to a conspiracy theory that Joseph Mifsud was a Western intelligence operative who allegedly entrapped Trump campaign advisor George Papadopoulos in order to establish a false predicate for the FBI to open an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. Contrary to the conspiracy theory, that investigation was actually initiated after the Australian government notified American authorities that its diplomat Alexander Downer had a chance encounter with Papadopoulos, who boasted about possible access to Hillary Clinton emails held by the Russian government. Mifsud was last known to be in Rome in 2017, but had since disappeared. The Washington Post reported on November 22, 2019, that the Justice Department inspector general had aggressively investigated the allegation that Mifsud had been directed to entrap Papadopoulos, but found it was without merit. China On October 3, Trump publicly called upon China to investigate Hunter Biden's business activities there while his father was vice president. In 2013, Biden, Devon Archer, and Chinese businessman Jonathan Li founded BHR Partners, a business focused on investing Chinese capital in companies based outside of China. In September, Trump falsely claimed Biden "walk[ed] out of China with $1.5 billion in a fund" and earned "millions" of dollars from the BHR deal. Trump discussed the political prospects of Biden, as well as former candidate Elizabeth Warren, another political rival, during a June 18 phone call with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. The record of the call was stored on the same highly restricted computer system used for the Trump–Zelenskyy call record. According to two people familiar with the discussion, Trump told Xi on the same call that "he would remain quiet on Hong Kong protests as trade talks progressed." The day after Trump's call for China to investigate Hunter Biden, Senator Mitt Romney said: "it strains credulity to suggest that [the request] is anything other than politically motivated." The Chinese foreign ministry said that the Chinese government had "no intention of intervening in the domestic affairs of the United States". Michael Pillsbury, a China scholar at the Hudson Institute and a Trump advisor on trade negotiations with China, was quoted by the Financial Times on October 10: "I got quite a bit of background on Hunter Biden from the Chinese." Pillsbury denied the quote on C-SPAN hours later, asserting: "I haven't spoken to the Financial Times for a month." The Financial Times released an email showing Pillsbury made the statement on October 9. Pillsbury later told The Washington Post, "most everything I learned was already public or well-known" and that the Chinese "really, really didn't want to talk about it". Release of John Bolton's manuscript On January 26, The New York Times reported that former national security advisor John Bolton had written in a draft of his forthcoming book, The Room Where It Happened, that the president told him in August 2019 that he wanted to continue freezing $391 million in aid to Ukraine until officials there pursued investigations into Democrats, including the Bidens. Trump denied Bolton's claim. The manuscript was released after the first week of the impeachment trial, prompting House impeachment managers to call for the Senate to call Bolton as a witness. Bolton also claimed to have discussed the suspension of aid with Attorney General William Barr, and that the two had shared concerns over Trump offering personal favours to the leaders of autocratic regimes around the world, including Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey and Xi Jinping in China. The Times later reported that Bolton's manuscript described a May 2019 Oval Office meeting during which Trump directed Bolton to call Zelenskyy to ask him to meet with Giuliani about getting damaging information on the Bidens. Bolton reportedly wrote that Giuliani, Mulvaney and White House counsel Pat Cipollone—who, at the time of the report, was representing Trump in the impeachment trial—attended the meeting. Trump denied telling Bolton this, and Giuliani denied Mulvaney or Cipollone attended meetings related to Ukraine. Cipollone previously stated he never attended Ukraine-related meetings, and Mulvaney said he avoided Trump–Giuliani meetings so as to not jeopardize their attorney-client privilege. Other federal investigations In a January 2020 memo to all United States attorneys, department component heads and law enforcement agency heads, deputy attorney general Jeffrey Rosen stated there "currently are several distinct open investigations being handled by different U.S. attorney's offices and/or department components that in some way potentially relate to Ukraine." Rosen advised the addressees that Richard Donoghue, the U.S. attorney for Eastern District of New York (EDNY), had been assigned to coordinate these cases and "any and all new matters relating to Ukraine shall be directed exclusively to EDNY for investigation and proper handling." The memo stated that existing investigations would continue to be managed by the original investigators, but that any widening or expansion of those investigations required approval by Rosen and Donoghue. Federal prosecutors had indicated in December 2019 that it was likely new charges would be brought against Parnas, Fruman and two others, as the SDNY continued to investigate Giuliani into February and the Justice Department created an "intake process" to accept and scrutinize information from him about Joe Biden. That intake process was being managed by the Pittsburgh U.S. attorney's office, headed by Scott Brady. The New York Times reported in May 2021 that federal investigators in Brooklyn began a criminal investigation late in the Trump administration into possible efforts by several current and former Ukrainian officials to spread unsubstantiated allegations about corruption by Joe Biden. Investigators were examining whether the Ukrainians used Giuliani as a channel for the allegations, though he was not a specific subject of the investigation, in contrast to a long-running investigation of Giuliani by the US attorney's office in Manhattan. Reactions Congress On September 22, House speaker Nancy Pelosi said if the administration continued to withhold the whistleblower complaint from Congress, "they will be entering a grave new chapter of lawlessness which will take us into a whole new stage of investigation." House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff, stating he had previously been "very reluctant" to initiate impeachment proceedings against Trump, said, "we may very well have crossed the Rubicon here." The vast majority of Republicans did not comment on the matter, with notable exceptions of senators Lindsey Graham and Mitt Romney, both of whom suggested Trump should release information to resolve the situation. On September 24, the Senate adopted by unanimous consent a sense of the Senate resolution calling for the whistleblower complaint to be immediately transmitted to the Senate Intelligence Committee. Following the release of the memorandum of the conversation between Trump and Zelenskyy, Senator Romney called the memorandum "deeply troubling" and asked for more information to be made public. Pelosi said the memorandum "confirms that the President engaged in behavior that undermines the integrity of our elections, the dignity of the office he holds and our national security". Some Republican senators dismissed the credibility of the whistleblower complaint as hearsay, but legal analysts subsequently found that assertions the whistleblower made in the complaint were verified by the memorandum record of Trump's telephone call. On September 26, during a House hearing, Representative Adam Schiff gave a summary of the "essence" and the "character" of the Trump–Zelenskyy call. One part of Schiff's retelling was not represented in the non-verbatim memorandum of the call provided by the White House, when Schiff stated: "And I'm going to say this only seven times so you better listen good. I want you to make up dirt on my political opponent, understand. Lots of it. On this and on that." After Representative Mike Turner accused Schiff of "just making it up", Schiff responded that his summary "was meant to be at least part in parody" and acknowledged that "the president never said if you don't understand me, I'm going to say it seven more times." However, Schiff argued: "That's the message that the Ukraine president was receiving in not so many words." Trump supporters on television, radio, and the Internet have pressured Republicans to continue supporting Trump. Republicans who have spoken out against Trump, expressed concern, or defended the whistleblower, such as senators Mitt Romney, Charles Grassley, Ben Sasse and Representative Adam Kinzinger, have come under criticism online by right-wing websites, with Romney becoming the target of baseless conspiracy theories and virally spread disinformation. An October 21 political fact sheet release by Nancy Pelosi divided the scandal into three categories, according to the evidence, that "show Trump violated his oath of office": "The Shakedown", "The Pressure Campaign", and "The Cover-Up". Despite President Trump and his allies insisting there had been no quid pro quo, mounting evidence from witness testimony indicated there had been, leading a growing number of Senate Republicans to accept there was a quid pro quo, while maintaining it was not illegal and did not justify impeachment. The Washington Post reported that House Republicans were considering portraying Giuliani, Sondland and Mulvaney as freelancers who had acted in their own self-interests without Trump's involvement. President Trump and the White House In his initial comments to reporters on September 20, Trump characterized the whistleblower as "partisan", but added, "I do not know the identity of the whistleblower" and called the story "just another political hack job". Trump also said: "Somebody ought to look into Joe Biden's statement because it was disgraceful where he talked about billions of dollars that he's not giving to a certain country unless a certain prosecutor is taken off the case. So somebody ought to look into that," suggesting the press was not reporting it. The press has reported on the Joe Biden matter for months but found no evidence of wrongdoing. On September 23, Trump asserted: "If a Republican ever did what Joe Biden did, if a Republican ever said what Joe Biden said, they'd be getting the electric chair right now." Before the White House released a rough transcript, Trump claimed that his call with Zelenskyy was "largely congratulatory" and "largely [discussed] corruption". However, the White House's rough transcript showed only a short congratulatory comment and no mentions of corruption. On September 25, during a meeting with Ukrainian president Zelenskyy, Trump said: "I want [Zelenskyy] to do whatever he can. Biden's son walks out of Ukraine with millions and millions of dollars. I think it's a horrible thing." Trump also denied explicitly tying U.S. military aid to Ukraine's corruption investigation involving Burisma Holdings. Within six hours of the impeachment inquiry being announced on September 24, Trump and his campaign team started a fundraising drive for an "Impeachment Defense Team". Forty-eight hours later, they had raised in excess of $13 million and signed up 50,000 new donors. On September 27, Trump characterized the person who provided the whistleblower with information on the call as "close to a spy", adding: "you know what we used to do in the old days when we were smart? Right? With spies and treason, right? We used to handle them a little differently than we do now." On September 29, Trump requested to meet the whistleblower, saying that he and the American people "deserved" to meet them. He later said the White House was trying to learn the identity of the whistleblower. He also demanded that Adam Schiff be arrested and questioned "at the highest level" for fraud and treason. A letter from the whistleblower's lawyers, addressed to the director of national intelligence, said that the whistleblower was afraid for their safety. On November7 the whistleblower's lawyer sent a letter to the White House warning Trump to "cease and desist" calling for the public disclosure of the whistleblower's identity and "engaging in rhetoric and activity that places [the whistleblower] and their family in physical danger". The lawyer said the president would be legally and morally liable if anyone were to be "physically harmed as a result of his, or his surrogates', behavior". On October 1, Trump claimed that any attempt to remove him from office would result in a "Civil War-like fracture". He also called for Schiff to be arrested for treason, and later claimed that Nancy Pelosi was "every bit as guilty as Liddle' Adam Schiff for High Crimes and Misdemeanours, and even Treason" before calling for both Schiff and Pelosi to be impeached themselves as they had "evilly 'Colluded. On October 3, after stating that the U.S. has "tremendous power" and "many options" in the trade war with China "if they don't do what we want", Trump was asked by a reporter on what he hoped Zelenskyy would do after his phone call. Trump responded by publicly urging both Ukraine and China to investigate the Bidens. Later in the day, Vice President Mike Pence voiced his support of Trump's comments, saying: "I think the American people have a right to know if the vice president of the United States or his family profited from his position." Pence said the activities of the Biden family were "worth looking into". Trump later claimed that when he called upon China to investigate the Bidens, his only interest was in thwarting corruption. Mitt Romney was critical of this, saying: "When the only American citizen President Trump singles out for China's investigation is his political opponent in the midst of the Democratic nomination process, it strains credulity to suggest that this is anything other than politically motivated." On October 4, Trump told congressional Republican leaders the only reason he had called Zelenskyy was at the urging of Energy Secretary Rick Perry, saying Perry wanted him to discuss a liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant and that Trump had not even wanted to make the call. However, there is no mention of LNG in the publicly released summary of the conversation, and text messages exchanged among aides who were setting up the phone call made no mention of Perry, instead suggesting that Giuliani was the primary mover. Perry had been the administration's official representative at Zelenskyy's inauguration in May. During that trip; he pressured Zelenskyy to fire board members of Naftogaz, the national oil and gas company of Ukraine, and informed government and industry officials that the Trump administration wanted the entirety of Naftogaz's supervisory board replaced. Perry denied pressing for change at Naftogaz in a press conference on October 7, describing that as "a totally dreamed up story". On October 10, however, Perry was issued a subpoena by the House Intelligence Committee, the House Oversight Committee, and the House Foreign Affairs Committee, partially concerning his interactions with Naftogaz. Trump's 2020 reelection campaign developed a campaign ad that repeated unsubstantiated claims about Biden, asserting that "when President Trump asks Ukraine to investigate corruption, the Democrats want to impeach him and their media lapdogs fall in line." CNN refused to broadcast the ads because Trump's claims had already been debunked and for disparaging its journalists. Ukraine On September 20, Roman Truba, head of the Ukraine State Bureau of Investigations, told The Daily Beast that his agency had not investigated the Biden–Burisma connection and there were no signs of illegality there. Anton Herashchenko, a senior advisor to the Ukraine interior minister, told The Daily Beast that Ukraine will open such an investigation if there is an official request, along with details of why an investigation is needed and what to look for. Trump's requests have come through unofficial representatives such as Giuliani. However, according to interviews and documents obtained by The New York Times, senior Ukrainian officials were aware that military aid was being withheld by the first week in August, and after initially having difficulty ascertaining what was holding up the aid, by September Trump's envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker was in negotiations with Zelenskyy's senior aide Andriy Yermak over the wording of the proposed public statement. Volker pressed for wording explicitly confirming investigations into Joe Biden's alleged pressure campaign for the removal of the Ukrainian prosecutor who was allegedly investigating Burisma, and into accusations that Ukraine had been involved in interference with the 2016 U.S. presidential election in favor of Hillary Clinton, while Yermak attempted to negotiate less explicit language. George Kent, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, testified to the congressional impeachment inquiry that "Zelenskyy needed to go to a microphone and basically there needed to be three words in the message": investigations, Biden, 2016 (or synonymously, Hillary Clinton). Diplomat Bill Taylor testified that Trump insisted that the public declaration be made on CNN, and Times reporting found that Zelenskyy's staff finally capitulated to this demand, and arranged for him to appear on Fareed Zakaria's CNN program on September 13 to make the statement. The appearance was canceled after the Ukraine aid was released on September 11. Ukrainian foreign minister Vadym Prystaiko told a Ukrainian news outlet on September 21: "I know what the [phone] conversation was about and I think there was no pressure. This conversation was long, friendly, and it touched on many questions, sometimes requiring serious answers." Prystaiko was also quoted as saying: "I want to say that we are an independent state, we have our secrets." On September 22, Senator Chris Murphy said Zelenskyy told him he had no intention to get involved with an American election. In an interview released on September 24, Ukrainian diplomat and politician Valentyn Nalyvaichenko told The Daily Beast that Ukrainian authorities would be reopening corruption investigations into multiple individuals and organizations including, potentially, Burisma, Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, TV host Larry King, and former prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko. King was suspected of receiving slush fund payments recorded in the "black ledger" that also named Manafort. Nalyvaichenko accused Lutsenko of having been in communication with associates of Trump "for vindictive purposes". During the joint press conference on September 25 with Trump for reporters gathered at the United Nations General Assembly, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told reporters: "We had I think good phone call. It was normal. We spoke about many things. So, I think, and you read it, that nobody pushed me." The next day, Zelenskyy said President Trump had not pressured anyone nor made any promises, and that the prosecutor general Ruslan Riaboshapka would investigate all domestic cases without prejudice. On September 30, Zelenskyy made it clear that he was not going to interfere with the intra-American party confrontation. Subsequently, at an all-day press conference on October 10, Zelenskyy said he only learned about the blockage of the military aid after the July 25 phone call. "We didn't speak about this. There was no blackmail." European Union During the conversation, Zelenskyy and Trump criticized German chancellor Angela Merkel and European Union for a lack of support toward Ukraine. Elmar Brok, special adviser on Ukraine for President Jean-Claude Juncker, refuted the criticism, pointing to the economic boost provided by the European Union through a free trade agreement. In addition, he claimed the U.S. has not signed a similar agreement with Ukraine. The conversation prompted Europeans to calculate the amount of aid given to Ukraine since 2014, and by approximate estimates, the EU and European financial institutions have provided assistance to more than $16 billion in grants and loans. In the overall ranking in 2016–2017, the European Union is the leader in terms of aid, the U.S. the second, and Germany is the third. However, Ukrainian media analyzed the data and found that from 2014, Germany provided aid of €1.4 billion: €500 million is a loan that will be repaid, €200 million is a share of Germany from European Union assistance, and the rest is really full-fledged assistance. Germany has stated that its attitude towards Ukraine has not changed. Russia Former Ukrainian prime minister Mykola Azarov expressed support for an investigation into Hunter Biden. Azarov fled to Russia in 2014 following the Euromaidan protests; he is currently in exile in Moscow, has called for a pro-Russian 'regime change' in Ukraine, is wanted for prosecution in Ukraine for abuse of power and embezzlement, and has set up a government in exile that is widely seen as a pro-Russian puppet. President Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, "You have to admit, the publication of a full transcript of a conversation—be it by phone or face-to-face—is uncommon in interstate diplomatic practice. At least, uncommon until now." Speaking at an energy conference in Moscow, Putin said: "I didn't see during the telephone conversation that Trump demanded some compromising information from Zelenskyy at all costs, and threatened that he would [otherwise] not provide assistance to Ukraine." Former U.S. officials More than 300 former U.S. foreign policy and national security officials who had served under both Democratic and Republican administrations signed an open letter on September 27, supporting a congressional impeachment inquiry into Trump's conduct relating to Ukraine. The officials, who formerly served in the U.S. Intelligence Community, National Security Council, and departments of Defense, Justice, and Homeland Security, wrote that Trump's actions raised "a profound national security concern" and that "President Trump appears to have leveraged the authority and resources of the highest office in the land to invite additional foreign interference into our democratic processes. If we fail to speak up—and act—now our foreign policy and national security will officially be on offer to those who can most effectively fulfill the President's personal prerogatives." The American Foreign Service Association and American Academy of Diplomacy, representing members of the U.S. diplomatic corps, expressed alarm at Trump's disparagement of the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine in his call with Zelenskyy. Ten former White House chiefs of staff, who served under both Republican and Democratic presidents described it as unprecedented for an incumbent president to "personally apply pressure to foreign powers to damage political opponents". When the ten were interviewed, "none recalled any circumstance under which the White House had solicited or accepted political help from other countries, and all said they would have considered the very idea out of bounds." In an op-ed in The Washington Post, 17 former members of the Watergate scandal special prosecutor force wrote that "there exists compelling prima facie evidence that President Trump has committed impeachable offenses," specifically serious and persistent abuses of power, and the Congress "should not allow any refusal by the president to cooperate in its process to frustrate the performance of its constitutional duties." American editorials and commentary The Washington Post and New York Times editorial boards supported the impeachment inquiry against Trump arising from the scandal. The Post editorial board criticized the administration and its allies for defying congressional subpoenas and stonewalling the investigation, and called upon congressional Republicans to "have the moral courage" to recognize the Trump administration's Ukraine pressure campaign as corrupt and a quid pro quo. Another Washington Post editorial criticized the Trump administration for attacking William B. Taylor Jr., the acting U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, and other career civil servants who have testified before Congress, writing that it was "vile" to attack "honest and courageous public servants" in an attempt to discredit them. Some newspaper editorial boards called upon Trump to resign from office over the Ukraine scandal, including the editorial board of Hearst Connecticut Media, which owns eight daily newspapers in Connecticut. A St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorial urged congressional Republicans to call for Trump's resignation. Pro-Trump media outlets and commentators, such as Jeanine Pirro, Mark Levin, and Rush Limbaugh, responded by defending Trump and promoting an alternative narrative of the Ukraine affair that omitted significant facts. Echoing Trump's own rhetoric, the president's defenders in the media often attacked the whistleblower, and characterized the investigation as not only a political attack against Trump, but also "a culture war" against his supporters. Fox News anchor Chris Wallace characterized the spin by Trump allies in the aftermath of the whistleblower complaint becoming public as "astonishing" and "deeply misleading". Public opinion In the days after the scandal arose, multiple polls showed a surge in support for an impeachment inquiry, or impeachment itself. Resignations The American special envoy to Ukraine, Kurt Volker, resigned one day after the complaint was released. The whistleblower complaint alleges Volker "sought to 'contain the damage' from Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani's outreach to Ukraine's government about the Biden family". On October 10, Michael McKinley, a senior advisor to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, resigned over disappointment in Pompeo's lack of public support for those named in the scandal. Internet communities After the whistleblower complaint was publicized, users on pro-Trump Internet forums tried to identify its author. These attempts at "doxing" were marked by disorganized speculation, racism and misogyny. In October 2019, pro-Trump writer Paul Sperry published on the web what he asserted was the identity of the whistleblower. During ensuing days, Trump and his allies asserted major news outlets were covering for the whistleblower because they had declined to repeat the whistleblower's alleged identity in their reporting. However, the generally pro-Trump Fox News—including close Trump confidant Sean Hannity—also declined to repeat the alleged identity, on instructions from Fox News management. Trump supporters paid for Facebook advertisements to spread the purported name of the whistleblower. These ads were viewed by potentially "hundreds of thousands of users" before Facebook removed them. Aftermath Impeachment and senate trial President Trump was impeached by Congress on charges of abuse of power and obstructing Congress. The articles of impeachment were referred to the Senate, which held a trial over twenty days from January 16 to February 5, 2020. Trump was acquitted on both charges by the Republican-controlled Senate, with the vote split along party lines. Maine senator Susan Collins, who emerged as a key figure during the impeachment trial owing to her perceived willingness to break with her party, defended the acquittal as she believed Trump had learned from the trial and would not attempt to solicit foreign interference in future. Resignations and firings of witnesses Marie Yovanovitch and Bill Taylor resigned from their positions in the State Department. Jennifer Williams left her position to take up a new post. Alexander Vindman was dismissed from his position in the White House following Trump's acquittal by the Senate. Vindman's twin brother Yevgeny—who was not involved in the case—was also dismissed. Both Vindman brothers were reported to have been physically escorted from the White House. Gordon Sondland was also recalled from his position as ambassador. The White House claimed that the dismissals were necessary, but Trump was criticized for seeking revenge against those who had testified against him. Trump was also reported to have labelled Williams and Alexander Vindman as "Never Trumpers". Trump suggested that the Pentagon should seek disciplinary action against Vindman, but the Army declined to investigate. John Rood, the top Pentagon policy advisor who, on July 25, 2019, warned Defense Secretary Mark Esper against withholding military aid to Ukraine, was forced to resign on February 19, 2020. In May 2019 he had certified to Congress that Ukraine was eligible for the aid. Subsequently, during a panel discussion held on February 11, 2020 at the Atlantic Council, the president's national security advisor, Robert C. O'Brien said that it was his decision to transfer both Vindman brothers back to the Army for re-assignment and denied that the move was ordered by Trump in retaliation for Vindman's testimony. "I can absolutely tell you that they were not retaliated against", O'Brien told the panel. O'Brien also disputed the move as being characterized as "fired" since both brothers remain on active duty. O'Brien noted that their transfer was part of a larger NSA staff reduction. It was later reported that the firings and dismissals were part of a wider purge of the Trump administration that targeted people who were perceived as not being loyal enough to Trump and his agenda, including intelligence officials who might be part of Trump's claims of a "deep state" conspiracy against him. Michael Atkinson was fired from his position as Inspector General of the Intelligence Community in April 2020. The White House issued a statement that Trump had lost confidence in Atkinson's ability to perform his duties. The decision to fire Atkinson was criticized because his role as Inspector General was supposed to be independent and because Trump chose to fire him during the coronavirus pandemic, which led to claims that Trump had tried to use the pandemic to distract from Atkinson's firing. Giuliani's activities in Ukraine As the impeachment hearings and trial unfolded, Rudy Giuliani returned to Ukraine to conduct his own investigation into Joe and Hunter Biden. This was widely criticized as a further attempt to undermine Biden's election campaign, for promoting widely debunked conspiracy theories about the Bidens, for Giuliani being a likely target for misinformation spread by Russian intelligence services, and because Giuliani is himself under investigation by American authorities. Giuliani went on to claim that he had found evidence that Barack Obama and Joe Biden had previously contacted Ukrainian officials looking to open an investigation into Paul Manafort, the chair of Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, who had lobbied to American lawmakers on behalf of former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych. In February 2020, Attorney General William Barr announced that the Justice Department would receive any information gathered by Giuliani. Barr had previously announced that all investigations into foreign donations and interference into the 2020 presidential elections would require his personal approval. During the impeachment process, Trump denied having sent Giuliani to Ukraine, but in an interview that aired on February 13, 2020, he reversed his prior denials and openly admitted sending Giuliani to Ukraine, praising him as a "crime fighter" and "the best prosecutor." Place in the Russia investigation counter-narrative In February 2020, United States attorney John Durham was appointed to lead an investigation into the origins of the Mueller inquiry. It was reported that the investigation was focusing on former CIA director and Trump critic John Brennan and whether he had mishandled evidence during the early stages of the inquiry into Russian meddling in the 2016 elections. Mick Mulvaney linked Durham's investigation to the Ukraine scandal, stating that Durham had sought help from Ukraine and interviewed Ukrainian citizens. The Durham inquiry has been described as an "inquiry into its own Russia investigation". and "investigating the investigators" of the Russian interference. Impact on Ukraine-Russia relations Alexander Vindman, the former Director for European Affairs who supported the whistleblower's testimony, claimed Trump's intervention weakened Ukrainian efforts to counteract Russian aggression in a number of ways in an interview with VICE News, saying "It’s because of Trump’s corruption that we have a less capable, less prepared Ukraine". Conspiracy theories Trump and his allies had since 2017 promoted a conspiracy theory that Ukraine, rather than Russia, had interfered with the 2016 election, which American intelligence believes has been promoted by Russia in order to frame Ukraine. Some speculate Maria Zakharova at Russia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs was the source of this campaign. The conspiracy theory included allegations that Democrats, CrowdStrike and the FBI had conspired to frame Russia in the 2016 hacking of a Democratic National Committee server. Trump has repeatedly insisted without evidence that an unnamed Ukrainian oligarch was behind the conspiracy to frame Russia and that Ukraine is in possession of the DNC server. Shortly before Trump took office, top American intelligence officials briefed him on their evidence—including from their hacking of Russian intelligence networks and information provided by a high-level Kremlin mole—that Russia was behind the hacking and other election interference, on the personal orders and orchestration of Vladimir Putin. In December 2019, the Trump-appointed FBI director Christopher Wray stated, "we have no information that indicates that Ukraine interfered with the 2016 presidential election," adding, "there's all kinds of people saying all kinds of things out there. I think it's important for the American people to be thoughtful consumers of information and to think about the sources of it and to think about the support and predication for what they hear." CrowdStrike During the July 25, 2019, phone call between Trump and Zelenskyy, Trump referred to a far-right conspiracy theory pushed by internet trolls, right-wing blogs, and right-wing news websites. This conspiracy theory concerns CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity and internet security firm that first investigated the 2015–2016 hacking of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) network and determined that Russian military intelligence (GRU) was behind these cyber attacks. Tom Bossert, Trump's former homeland security advisor, said in an interview with ABC News' George Stephanopoulos that Trump was repeatedly warned by his staff that the CrowdStrike conspiracy theory was "completely debunked". Bossert blamed Giuliani for Trump's fixation upon the conspiracy theory. The overarching theme of the CrowdStrike conspiracy theory is that the DNC fabricated evidence to implicate Russia in the cyber attacks. CrowdStrike's co-founder, Dmitri Alperovitch, is a naturalized American citizen born in the Soviet Union. According to the hoax, Alperovitch is a Ukrainian who was ordered by the DNC to discredit Russia for the election interference, and he was personally motivated to get even with Vladimir Putin. Also, according to the theory, CrowdStrike is owned by a rich Ukrainian, and the actual server involved in the cyber attack is in Ukraine. CrowdStrike is actually a publicly traded company headquartered in California that the National Republican Congressional Committee has also hired for cyber security services. "The server" is actually 140 servers, decommissioned and located in the United States. The theory additionally says FBI agents were not allowed to examine the server because such action would expose the DNC plot, although in fact—and as documented in the Mueller Report—system images and traffic logs of the DNC servers were provided to the FBI. This conspiracy theory originated from a "GRU persona, 'Guccifer 2.0', created to cast doubt on Russia's culpability in the DNC [intrusion]". Actions of first whistleblower Various right-wing commentators speculated the whistleblower had help from others, perhaps constituting a coordinated conspiracy. Speculation centered around Adam Schiff, the press, Fusion GPS, Media Matters, a team of lawyers or a research firm, and the intelligence community in general. After the whistleblower had informed the CIA's general counsel of his concerns, he grew troubled by "how that initial avenue for airing his allegations through the CIA was unfolding", according to The New York Times. He then contacted an aide for the House Intelligence Committee and provided a vague statement. The aide then followed standard procedure and advised the whistleblower to find a lawyer and file a complaint with the Intelligence Community inspector Ggeneral (IC IG). Neither Rep. Schiff nor the other members of the Committee saw the complaint until the night before they released it publicly, and the Committee was not involved in writing the complaint. Schiff and the Committee had no role in helping the whistleblower select an attorney. According to Mark S. Zaid, a member of the whistleblower's pro bono legal team: "The whistleblower took the advice to find an attorney and did what most people do, they asked around to trusted friends as to who they should contact. Andrew [Bakaj]'s name was provided and he was retained. Exactly how it happens every day." Andrew P. Bakaj is the Lead Attorney representing the whistleblower. During a news conference on October 2, Trump claimed that The New York Times article proved Schiff had helped write the whistleblower complaint, prompting one of the reporters who wrote the story to reply on Twitter that their story said no such thing and that Schiff had not even known the whistleblower's identity. Whistleblower rules and hearsay In late September, Trump tweeted a conspiracy theory that whistleblower rules were changed before the whistleblower complaint was submitted. Senator Lindsey Graham, and Trump's lawyers Jay Sekulow and Rudy Giuliani made similar claims. Trump's claim was based on an article from The Federalist which incorrectly stated that the IC IG "secretly eliminated a requirement that whistleblowers provide direct, first-hand knowledge of alleged wrongdoings", by revising their complaint form sometime between May 2018 and August 2019, removing a section from the old form containing the sentence: "If you think wrongdoing took place, but can provide nothing more than secondhand or unsubstantiated assertions, IC IG will not be able to process the complaint or information for submission as an ICWPA." The Federalist article failed to mention that the old form had checkboxes where the whistleblower could indicate that their information was "direct" or from either "other employees" or other indirect sources. The IC IG responded the whistleblower's complaint was submitted with the old form (before the forms changed), and that the whistleblower's complaint was based on both "direct knowledge of certain alleged conduct" and knowledge from other employees. The IC IG also said the old form had been under review, and that "in response to recent press inquiries regarding the instant whistleblower complaint", the form was changed because "certain language in those forms and, more specifically, the informational materials accompanying the forms, could be read—incorrectly—as suggesting that whistleblowers must possess first-hand information in order to file an urgent concern complaint". The IC IG also said that by law a complainant is not required to have "first-hand information" themselves, and that their office "cannot add conditions to the filing of an urgent concern that do not exist in law". The "rules" for whistleblowing arise from Intelligence Community Directive 120, last updated in 2016. The directive states that the requirement for a complaint is to be one which the whistleblower "reasonably believes evidences a violation of any law, rule or regulation". The burden of obtaining and evaluating first-hand knowledge for credibility is placed on the IC IG, who has 14 days to conduct an investigation to do so. In this case, the preliminary review done by the IC IG did find more information to support the allegations as credible. Tom Devine of the Government Accountability Project, a non-profit watchdog organization, said only around 10% of all credible whistleblower complaints have firsthand information. Republican senator Chuck Grassley, a prominent author and advocate of whistleblower laws, spoke out against the conspiracy theory, saying the whistleblower appeared to have acted in accordance with the law and deserved to be heard. George Soros In late-September television appearances, Giuliani asserted without offering any evidence that George Soros, a frequent subject of conservative conspiracy theories, was running an anti-Trump scheme in Ukraine while Biden was protecting Soros from prosecution there. Lawyers Joseph diGenova and Victoria Toensing appeared as guests on The Sean Hannity Show to promote the conspiracy theory that Soros funded the whistleblower. They cited the whistleblower's footnote references to the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, an organization that has received grants from Soros' Open Society Foundations among multiple other funding sources. Soros was also invoked, again without evidence, by the media organization Breitbart News. Discredited allegations against Soros were also part of a "packet of propaganda and disinformation" that had been circulating within the State Department since May 2019, until being revealed to Congress on October 2. See also Corruption in the United States Foreign interference in the 2020 United States elections List of federal political scandals in the United States List of impeachments of heads of state List of "-gate" scandals United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York Michael Atkinson (Inspector General) Notes References External links Declassified whistleblower complaint of August 12, 2019 (released in redacted form on September 26, 2019) Declassified letter from Intelligence Community Inspector General to acting Director of National Intelligence (August 26, 2019), regarding the whistleblower complaint Memorandum of the July 25, 2019, telephone conversation between U.S. President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy Text messages between Kurt Volker, Gordon Sondland, Bill Taylor and Andrey Yermak HuffPost: Everyone You Need To Know In The Trump-Ukraine Investigation Axios: Trump-Ukraine scandal: The key players, dates and documents The Guardian: Trump-Ukraine impeachment scandal: timeline of key events JustSecurity: A Who's Who of Ukraine Witnesses includes prepared opening statements, deposition transcripts Just Security: Public Document Clearinghouse: Ukraine Impeachment Trial Resources on Ukraine Scandal, The Moscow Project Articles containing video clips Trump administration controversies Whistleblowing in the United States

58864621

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christine%20O%27Keefe

Christine O'Keefe

Christine Margaret O'Keefe is an Australian mathematician and computer scientist whose research has included work in finite geometry, information security, and data privacy. She is a researcher at CSIRO, and was the lead author of a 2017 report from the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner on best practices for de-identification of personally identifying data. Education and career O'Keefe has a bachelor's degree from the University of Adelaide, initially intending to study medicine but earning first-class honours in mathematics there in 1982. She returned to Adelaide for doctoral study in 1985, and completed her Ph.D. in 1988. Her dissertation, Concerning -spreads of , was supervised by Rey Casse. She was a lecturer and research fellow at the University of Western Australia from 1999 to 2001, when she returned to the University of Adelaide. At Adelaide, she worked as a lecturer, senior lecturer, Queen Elizabeth II Fellow, and senior research fellow. Her research interests shifted from finite geometry to information security and to effect that shift she moved in 2000 from Adelaide to CSIRO. At CSIRO, she founded the Information Security and Privacy Group in 2002, became head of the Health Informatics Group in 2004, became Theme Leader for Health Data and Information in 2006, and Strategic Operations Director for Preventative Health National Research in 2008. While doing this, she studied for an MBA at Australian National University, finishing in 2008. She became Director of the Population Health Research Network Centre and Professor of Health Sciences at Curtin University from 2009 to 2010 before returning to CSIRO as Science Leader for Privacy and Confidentiality in the CSIRO Department of Mathematics, Informatics and Statistics. Recognition O'Keefe has been a Fellow of the Institute of Combinatorics and its Applications since 1991. In 1996, O'Keefe won the Hall Medal of the Institute of Combinatorics and its Applications for her work in finite geometry. She won the Australian Mathematical Society Medal in 2000, the first woman to win the medal, and in the same year became a Fellow of the Australian Mathematical Society. Although the Medal citation primarily discussed O'Keefe's work in finite geometry, such as the discovery of new hyperovals, it included a paragraph on her research using geometry in secret sharing, a precursor to her later work on information security. References Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Australian mathematicians Australian computer scientists Women mathematicians Australian women computer scientists Computer security specialists University of Adelaide alumni Australian National University alumni University of Western Australia faculty University of Adelaide faculty Curtin University faculty CSIRO people

64038918

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CovidSim

CovidSim

CovidSim is an epidemiological model for COVID-19 developed by Imperial College COVID-19 Response Team, led by Neil Ferguson. The Imperial College study addresses the question: If complete suppression is not feasible, what is the best strategy combining incomplete suppression and control that is feasible and leads to acceptable outcomes? History CovidSim is an agent-based model and was based on an earlier influenza model. The codebase for the model was initially constructed 2005. Informing policy decisions For UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, it was, according to David Adam writing in The Atlantic, "a critical factor in jolting the UK government into changing its policy on the pandemic" and order a nationwide lockdown to limit the spread of the Coronavirus. Software In May 2020, a C++ derivative of the code was released to GitHub. The last and current release tag is v0.15.0 Additionally, an Anaconda package exists with release v0.8.0 The software should be distinguished from the ICL's COVID-19 Scenario Analysis Tool (currently Version 4), which is hosted under the domain name https://www.covidsim.org, but according to the research documentation is relying on the model combined with a squire model, which is the underlying transmission model in the absence of vaccination. Further details are available under ICL's Report 33. Code reviews and expert opinions Note that the mentioned model ships with and is marked with a list of warnings and user information, e.g. no support, stochastic nature/kernel, criticality of input parameters etc. Soundness American programmer John Carmack said in April 2020 that he worked on the code before it was released to the public, when it was a single 15,000-line C programming language file and "some of the functions looked like they were machine translated from Fortran", but that "it fared a lot better going through the gauntlet of code analysis tools I hit it with than a lot of more modern code". Shortcomings New Scientist reported in March 2020 that one group from the New England Complex Systems Institute reviewing the model suggested that it contained "systematic errors". British newspaper The Telegraph reported that some software engineers who reviewed the new code called it "totally unreliable" and a "buggy mess". In the opinion of University of Oxford computer scientist Michael Wooldridge, the code was "developed without the ceremony and rigor" of professional products, which is not untypical for research software and often intended to be not understood by third parties, or to be reused; and "while the extensive criticism about relaxed software engineering practices is perhaps justified, it was not fundamentally flawed". Model characteristics Reproducibility An independent review by Codecheck led by Dr Stephen Eglen of the University of Cambridge confirmed that they were able to reproduce the key findings from the response team's report by using the software. A June 2020 editorial in Nature declared the original CovidSim codebase met the requirements of scientific reproducibility. Uncertainty Further research exists to identify the following three sources of uncertainty in the simulation: parametric uncertainty, model structure uncertainty and scenario uncertainty: The simulation output depends critically on the inputs and can change up to 300% based on 940 parameters, of which 19 are considered most sensitive. Model structure and scenario uncertainty must therefore be understood. The results obtained by Imperial using the model are consistent with other models that make similar assumptions. Extensibility Calibration of the model has been hampered by the lack of testing, especially the poor understanding of the prevalence of asymptomatic infection, however the Imperial College team makes reasonable assumptions. The model's reliance on a simplified picture of social interactions limits its extensibility to counterfactuals. The general nature of conclusions based on such a model can be expected to be similar to those of a simple compartmental model. Other applications, related or follow-up research Additional research is based on the model, e.g. for simulation of effect of school closures on mortality. Wouter Edeling et al. contributed a FabSim3 plug-in called FabCovidSim, which is based on EasyVVUQ, a Python 3 library to facilitate verification, validation and uncertainty quantification (VVUQ) for a wide variety of simulations. In a recent publication on MedRxiv, which was now accepted by BMJ Open by Laydon et al., the authors utilize the model to "Measure the effects of the Tier system on the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK between the first and second national lockdowns, before the emergence of the B.1.1.7 variant of concern" and conclude that "...interventions at least as stringent as Tier 3 are required to suppress transmission, especially considering more transmissible variants, at least until effective vaccination is widespread or much greater population immunity has amassed." See also List of COVID-19 simulation models MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis References Further reading External links CodeCheckers covid-report9 on GitHub COVID-19 models

158125

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knoppix

Knoppix

KNOPPIX ( ) is an operating system based on Debian designed to be run directly from a CD / DVD (Live CD) or a USB flash drive (Live USB), one of the first of its kind for any operating system. Knoppix was developed by, and named after, Linux consultant Klaus Knopper. When starting a program, it is loaded from the removable medium and decompressed into a RAM drive. The decompression is transparent and on-the-fly. Although KNOPPIX is primarily designed to be used as a Live CD, it can also be installed on a hard disk like a typical operating system. Computers that support booting from USB devices can load KNOPPIX from a live USB flash drive or memory card. There are two main editions: the traditional compact-disc (700 megabytes) edition and the DVD (4.7 gigabytes) "Maxi" edition. The CD edition had not been updated since June 2013 until recently. As of version 9.1, CD images are being released once again. Each main edition has two language-specific editions: English and German. KNOPPIX mostly consists of free and open source software, but also includes some proprietary software, as long as it fulfills certain conditions. Knoppix can be used to copy files easily from hard drives with inaccessible operating systems. To quickly and more safely use Linux software, the Live CD can be used instead of installing another OS. Contents More than 1000 software packages are included on the CD edition, and more than 2600 packages are included on the DVD edition. Up to nine gigabytes can be stored on the DVD in compressed form. These packages include: LXDE, a lightweight X11 desktop environment; default since Knoppix 6.0 and later MPlayer, with MP3 audio, and Ogg Vorbis audio playback support Internet access software, including the KPPP dialer and ISDN utilities The Iceweasel web browser (based on Mozilla Firefox) The Icedove e-mail client (based on Mozilla Thunderbird) GIMP, an image manipulation program Tools for data rescue and system repair Network analysis and administration tools LibreOffice, a comprehensive office suite Terminal server Hardware requirements Minimum hardware requirements for Knoppix: Intel/AMD-compatible processor (i486 or later) Minimum RAM memory requirements: 32 MB for text mode; Live environment with no swap: 512 MB for graphics mode with just LXDE 1 GB to use the web browser and productivity software 2 GB recommended Bootable optical drive: DVD-ROM for current versions; CD-ROM for version 7.2 and older, or a boot floppy and standard CD-ROM (IDE/ATAPI or SCSI) Standard SVGA-compatible graphics card Serial or PS/2 standard mouse, or an IMPS/2-compatible USB-mouse. Saving changes in the environment Prior to Knoppix 3.8.2, any documents or settings a user created would disappear upon reboot. This lack of persistence then made it necessary to save documents directly to a hard drive partition, over the network, or to some removable media, such as a USB flash drive. It was also possible to set up a "persistent home directory", where any documents or settings written to the user's home directory would automatically be redirected to a hard drive or removable media, which could be automatically mounted on bootup. A single file, knoppix.img, was cached on the rewritable media and used to simulate a file system into which files were written for later use. This allowed the user to transparently write to their home directory. Union mount support was added in version 3.8.1 through UnionFS. This was later replaced by Aufs in 5.1.0 to improve stability. The union mount allowed virtual updates to the data on the read-only CD/DVD media by storing changes on separate writable media and then representing the combination of the two as single storage device. The writable media could be memory (ramdisk), a hard disk, USB flash drive, etc. This means that the user could modify the software installed on the Knoppix system, such as by using APT to install or update software. The storage device containing the changes needed to be present whenever Knoppix is started, else only the original data from the disc would be used. While Knoppix would scan available storage devices for a persistent home directory by default, a user could dictate a specific location with a boot option (see below) such as: home=/dev/hda1/knoppix.img By carrying a Knoppix CD and a USB flash drive, a user could have the same environment, programs, settings, and data available on any computer that could run Knoppix. This functionality was only available through Knoppix 5.1.1 (CD release) or 5.3.1 (DVD release). Subsequently, the Live CD paradigm has transformed into portable operating systems that run on external storage. Boot options When using Knoppix as a Live CD, one can use boot options, also known as 'cheatcodes', to override a default setting or automatic hardware detection when it fails. For example, the user may wish to boot into a plain console, or proceed without SCSI support. For this, Knoppix allows the user to enter one or more cheat codes at the prompt before booting. If the user does not enter a cheat code, or does not press any key before the timeout, Knoppix will boot with its default options. For example, to set the language to French rather than the default, one would type: knoppix lang=fr Knoppix is a 32-bit Debian Linux based distro, but recent releases (including the latest version 7.6) have also been equipped with a 64-bit kernel on the DVD edition, where it will automatically boot up for 64-bit computers, or by using the boot option knoppix64 manually in the command-line prompt, while knoppix will boot up the 32-bit kernel. Neither PAE nor 64-bit applications are supported by Knoppix, and system memory with more than 4 GB can only be used with a 64-bit kernel. The DVD edition of Knoppix can also be loaded onto a USB flash drive, with flash-knoppix under the Knoppix system, such that "the KNOPPIX Live System starts and runs about factor 5 faster from USB flash disk than from CD or DVD!". Besides that, the experimental UEFI support is provided for USB flash drive rather than DVD media. 32-bit UEFI firmware can only boot up the 32-bit kernel, while 64-bit UEFI firmware can only boot up the 64-bit kernel. The text interface for UEFI is similar with it for BIOS, one can also press key F2 and F3 to access information on boot options. Popularity Knoppix was one of the first Live CD Linux distributions to gain popularity. There are several factors that contribute to the popularity of Knoppix: Knoppix was one of the first Live CDs available, and is known as the "original" Debian-based Live CD Its extensive hardware detection allows most systems to start Knoppix without any configuration Its ability to automatically connect to most kinds of networks Its utilities for system repair and troubleshooting Knoppix works on a fairly large number of PCs or laptops, but not all. The automatic hardware detection cannot cope with all hardware, and sometimes the drivers used will not be optimal. Knoppix has difficulty recognizing some cards made before 1998, or motherboards with a BIOS made before 2002. (In some cases, manual configuration with codes entered at boot time can overcome problems with automatic detection.) If a PC does not have enough RAM to run KDE and other included programs, the legacy Knoppix (earlier than 6.0) boots up a very limited twm session instead. The only window running in the twm session by default is xterm. Versions The table (to the right) shows the version history of major releases. Knoppix 4.x–5.x As of April 2008, from version 4 up until 5.1.1, Knoppix has been split into a DVD "maxi" edition (with over 9 GB of software), and a CD "light" edition; both were developed in parallel. Up until Knoppix 5.1.1, the CD editions contained a selection of graphical environments, including the TWM window manager, and KDE 3 — a feature-complete desktop environment default in Knoppix 5.3.1 and earlier. No further development is being done on the traditional 5.x versions. Knoppix 6.x KNOPPIX 6.0.1 / ADRIANE 1.1 is a CD-edition again, and a complete rebuild from scratch. LXDE was made the default desktop environment, and the edition contains a substantially reduced software collection in order to easily fit on a CD. The KNOPPIX 6.2.1 release has both CD and DVD editions, and ADRIANE 1.2 only has a CD-edition. Knoppix 6.7.1 has the last CD version with stable touchpad drivers. Knoppix 7.x From June 2013 on until March 2019, Knoppix 7.2 was the most recent release with a CD edition. By 2018, its software had become very outdated, as the libc6 2.17 library no longer suffices for installation of several modern packages. The 7.x version range is known for instabilities with touchpads. Version 7.2 still remains the most recent CD version of Knoppix in wide distribution. Knoppix 8.x The KNOPPIX 8.0.0 edition was released at CeBIT 2017. KNOPPIX 8.1.0 was released in September 2017 as the first public release in the 8.x series. The version 8.0.0 has the dual boot, and a choice between three different desktops:LXDE as default option, KDE or GNOME. Versions 8.2.0 and newer (8.2.x, not 8.5.x) are available on Knoppix mirrors. Knoppix 8.5 was a DVD version that was not available for download, but was published as an exclusive version only bundled with a physical edition of Linux-Magazin or LinuxUser. Version 8.5 no longer includes Systemd, which was replaced by elogind. Spectre and Meltdown kernel vulnerabilities have been mitigated. Knoppix 8.6 (and newer) is a DVD version available for download on Knoppix mirrors. Derivatives Adriane Knoppix Adriane Knoppix is a variation that is intended for blind and visually impaired people, which can be used entirely without vision oriented output devices. It was released in the third quarter of 2007 as a Live CD. Adriane Knoppix is named after Adriane Knopper, the wife of Klaus Knopper, the developer of Knoppix. Adriane has a visual impairment, and has been assisting Klaus with the development of the software. The name Adriane is also a backronym for "Audio Desktop Reference Implementation And Networking Environment". Adriane Knoppix is intended not only for the blind but also for beginners who don’t know much about computers. It uses the SUSE Blinux screen reader with a phoneme generator and speech engine for normal output. Other variations Kali Linux, a live CD/USB distribution now based on Debian. It is a rewrite of BackTrack, which was based on Knoppix. Like its predecessors, Kali is designed for digital forensics and penetration testing. BackTrack itself merged the Auditor Security Collection and WHAX distros. Kanotix, a live distribution now based on Debian. KnoppMyth, a distro that attempts to make the Linux and MythTV installation as trivial as possible. Musix GNU+Linux, specifically for musicians. Poseidon Linux, a widely acclaimed distribution specifically geared for the scientific community. KnoppiXMAME, designed for playing MAME videogames PelicanHPC for clustering TechUSB, an automated computer distro produced by RepairTech, Inc. Unmaintained projects Sorted chronologically, in ascending order. See also Comparison of Linux distributions Debian Live Notes Books News article Distrowatch.com interview with Klaus Knopper (2002) References External links Debian-based distributions Live CD Live USB LiveDistro Operating system distributions bootable from read-only media Linux distributions without systemd Linux distributions

44691102

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janice%20Lourie

Janice Lourie

Janice Richmond "Jan" Lourie (born July 9, 1930) is an American computer scientist and graphic artist. In the late 1960s she was a pioneer in CAD/CAM (computer-aided design/computer-aided manufacture) for the textile industry. She is best known for inventing a set of software tools that facilitate the textile production stream from artist to manufacturer. For the Graphical Design Of Textiles process she was granted IBM's first software patent. Other projects, in differing disciplines, share the focus on graphic representation. She returns throughout an ongoing career to the stacked two-dimensional tabular arrays of textiles and computer graphics, and the topological structures of interrelated data. Education Lourie studied music theory and history at the Longy School of Music in Cambridge Massachusetts. Rosario Mazzeo was her clarinet teacher. She performed in chamber music concerts in the tapestry gallery series at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and with amateur orchestras and chamber music groups in the Boston area. In 1954 she became a founding member of the Camerata of the Museum of Fine Arts. Her instruments were the tenor shawm and psaltery from the museum collection, and contemporary Dolmetsch recorders. When she received her AB degree in philosophy from Tufts University she was employed as a technical editor at Parke Mathematical Laboratories in Concord, Mass. Her interest in the material she edited led to work at the MIT Whirlwind computer which she combined with basic mathematics courses. She returned to school and received a master's degree in mathematics from Boston University. IBM In 1957 Lourie began working at IBM. At that time IBM was recruiting musicians to train as programmers. Her first assignment was to assist Dr. John (Giampiero) Rossoni who was in charge of the IBM part of the Operation Moonwatch Project then being conducted at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. Operations research Lourie's next assignment was in operations research, also known as management science. Her first major project was to implement the stepping stone algorithm of Abraham Charnes to solve the machine loading problem, a generalization of the classic linear transportation problem. In 1958 a software solution to the transportation problem was a staple operations research tool. The solution determines the pattern of delivery of one type of goods from multiple sources to multiple destinations satisfying all requirements at a minimum cost. The generalized problem, expressed as machine loading, states that all the products may be different and may be produced on different machines. The variability of sources and destinations in this model has a drastic effect on the topological structure underlying the solution. The topology of each stage of an iterative solution in the transportation problem is a tree structure. In the generalized transportation problem the topological structure of the evolving iterative solution is a set of disconnected loops each with attached branched sidechains (trees). Since each iteration of the generalized solution proceeding toward a minimum cost objective has a new assignment of products to machines, the topological structure of loops and chains at the beginning of an iteration is broken, and a new such structure is produced. Lourie analyzed the possible structures that could be created during iterations into 38 independent cases. The significance of the topological analysis is that it provided a verification method. The resulting paper, "Topology and computation of the generalized transportation problem," graphically represents the case analysis. The impact of this paper comes from the graphic representations of the original transportation problem in the stepping stone and simplex method formulations. The corresponding IBM program, released in 1959, used efficient list processing (tree tracing) techniques combined with a book-keeping system for managing the loops. (At the time LISP was being developed at MIT by John McCarthy). Textile graphics/ Computer-aided In 1959 IBM began working with General Motors on an early industrial computer-aided design (CAD) system, the DAC-1. The system used a light pen to draw on the screen of a visual display unit. The project was kept secret until the 1964 Fall Joint Computer Conference. At the same time IBM was working on commercial graphics products. Lourie worked on the programming for the prototype graphics terminal. The 2250 Graphical Display Unit was released in 1964 with the new System/360 computer. Lourie had begun weaving at age seven and was an experienced weaver. In 1964 she proposed that IBM produce a CAD system for the textile industry. Lourie made a proposal to IBM management, which was accepted, to develop a working system to translate artists’ designs into loom control information, and to develop the hardware and software to control the loom. Her first article, "The textile designer of the future," explained how working with a computer would give increased freedom to textile designers. "On-line textile designing" reviewed past attempts at automating the designing process and set forth reasons why the advent of interactive tools now made aspects of this goal feasible. Lourie spent a year in three diverse textile manufacturing facilities, working alongside artists and designers, to learn the aesthetic judgments and technical skills needed to transform artwork to point paper – the preliminary representation of production control. When her software design was complete IBM filed a software patent in 1966. It was granted in 1970. It was IBM's first software patent. Related patents and later a book, Textile Graphics/Computer Aided. The Textile Graphics project then undertook the natural extensions to printed and knitted fabrics, and woven fabrics produced on a dobby loom. The algebraic formulation of the designs produced on a dobby loom is described in an ACM paper. Textile Graphics, known as GRITS (graphic interactive textile system) internally, was a precursor of today's tools that allow a personal computer user to "paint" closed areas of a design with color or patterns. The 1969 paper, "Computation of connected regions in interactive graphics", addresses the problem of automatically identifying and labeling the connected regions formed by sets of closed curves – a general problem encountered in interactive computer graphics. The first patent subsumes this capability. The subsequent patent related to connected regions, enlarged the scope of the procedure to arbitrarily large designs. When preparation was underway for the 1968 San Antonio HemisFair, IBM chose the Textile Graphics system for its Durango pavilion. Visitors were able to draw the design on the screen and receive a swatch of woven fabric within three minutes. The complete system is described in an IFIPS paper. The visibility of both the process and the product made a clear statement of CAD/CAM. In his book, Computer History from Pascal to von Neumann, Herman Goldstine comments on the significance of this application. Interactive computer tools – display screens, digital drawing tablets, lightpens and function keyboards – drew interest in creative applications. Museums and art organizations saw potential applications early. The Metropolitan Museum held a conference on the potential applications of computers in Museums in 1968. Notes References External links 1930 births Living people American computer scientists American women computer scientists Tufts University alumni Boston University College of Arts and Sciences alumni 21st-century American women

22166052

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List%20of%20video%20telecommunication%20services%20and%20product%20brands

List of video telecommunication services and product brands

This list of video telecommunication services and product brands is for groupings of notable video telecommunication services, brands of videophones, webcams and video conferencing hardware and systems, all related to videotelephony for two-way communications with live video and audio. The first section includes video telecommunication devices such as videophones, videoconferencing and telepresence systems, webcams and related products such as codecs and videoconferencing software clients; the second section is a listing of video telecommunication services such as Video Relay Services (for deaf, hard-of-hearing and speech-impaired individuals), telemedicine, Public Access Videoconferencing facilities, etc. the last section at the bottom of this page lists defunct brands and services for historical research purposes. The products below are listed by their normal and intended purpose, even though their names or descriptions may differ from the categories shown here (refer to terminology within general article pages). Hardware, software and related product brands Videophone hardware brands for person-to-person (point-to-point) use Stand-alone videophones are point-to-point units not employing Multipoint Control Units (centralized distribution and call management systems). Earlier models make video calls utilizing older analogue POTS telephone lines, while later models use newer, higher quality, ADSL, ISDN or cable broadband technologies. Some videophones also employ Internet calling (IP) capabilities which can dispense with the need for telephone service. ACN: IRIS (United States) Avaya: Scopia videoconferencing systems AVer Information: HVC130 (Taiwan) D-Link: DVC series (Taiwan) Ericsson-LG: LVP series PSTN, ISDN and IP videophones (South Korea) Huawei: TEx0 series, VP9000 series Leadtek: IP broadband videophone (Taiwan) LifeSize: LifeSize Passport Connect, LifeSize Passport & LifeSize Express (United States) Polycom: VVX1500, VVX600 and VVX500 Business media phones (United States) Videoconferencing and telepresence hardware systems meant for multiple participants Video conferencing systems allow multiple participants by use of a Multipoint Control Unit (a centralized distribution and call management system) or via a similar non-centralized multipoint capability technology embedded in each unit. Some multiple party systems utilize Web-based bridging service providers, which can incur slight time delays. Avaya: (Radvision) Scopia systems (United States) AVer Information: EVC, SVC (Taiwan) Cisco Systems: Cisco TelePresence inc. Cisco SX, MX and Spark Room systems (United States) Highfive: Highfive & Dolby Voice (United States) Huawei: TP Telepresence series Ericsson-LG: LVP series PSTN, ISDN and IP videophones (South Korea) Facebook Portal Librestream: Onsight (Canada) LifeSize: LifeSize Icon, Lifesize Team, Lifesize Express, LifeSize Room & LifeSize Conference (United States) Panasonic: VC500 (Japan) Polycom: RealPresence Immersive Studio, OTX, HDX, RealPresence Group series (United States) Polycom: VVX (United States) Sony: PCS systems (Japan) StarLeaf: Huddle, GT Mini 3330 and GT 3351 (UK) TrueConf MCU and TrueConf Room (Russia) Vidyo: VidyoRoom & VidyoDesktop (United States) Zoom: Zoom Rooms and Zoom Conference Room Connectors (United States) Hopin Some cameras have a 360-degree video image, so that all participants on one location can be recorded with one camera. Videoconferencing hardware systems meant for the deaf, hard-of-hearing, telemedical and other institutional services Librestream: Onsight (Canada) Mirial s.u.r.l.: PSE Video Contact Center, comprehensive solution for remote audio and video contact services Polycom: Practitioner Cart, HDX Immersive Telemedicine Education systems Videoconference bridging service providers ACT Conferencing: (APAC, EMEA, NA) BT Conferencing: (NA, APAC, EMEA) CoroWare Inc.: CoroCall HD Video Conferencing Service (United States) Webcam hardware brands for use on personal computers Apple: iSight series/components (United States) Creative: Live! Cam series (Singapore) FaceVsion: TouchCam (Taiwan) Hama CM Series, plus other various models (Germany) Hercules: Dualpix (France) Labtec: Labtec WebCam Series (United States) Lenovo: Webcam (People's Republic of China) Logitech: QuickCam series (Switzerland) Linksys by Cisco (United States) Microsoft: LifeCam Series (United States) Philips: SPC Webcam Series (Netherlands) Samsung (South Korea) Sony: PlayStation EYE webcamera (Japan) Trust: WB Series, plus various other models (Netherlands) Software clients With video and VoIP BlackBerry: BBM Meetings Blue Jeans Network: cloud-based videoconferencing service Cisco: WebEx Cisco: Jabber XCP Conference XP FaceTime Google Duo GoToMeeting: HD Faces Highfive InterCall Librestream: Onsight Expert Collaboration Software LifeSize: Desktop LoopUp Microsoft: NetMeeting Microsoft: Office Live Meeting Microsoft Teams Mirial s.u.r.l.: Mirial Softphone Nefsis: Nefsis Professional Polycom: RealPresence Desktop (for Windows and Mac), RealPresence Mobile (for smartphones and tablets) & CloudAXIS Suite (web browser plug-in) Pristine: Mobile video collaboration and support Radvision: MTF, VTA & IMS Applications SightSpeed Scopia StarLeaf Stickam TeamTalk TeamViewer Thinking Phone Networks Tokbox TrueConf: for Windows, Linux, OS X, Android, iOS and WebRTC. Vidyo VSee vzRoom Zarafa (software) WebApp (via WebRTC) Zoom: Zoom Cloud Meetings With video, VoIP and instant messaging Adobe Connect Alfaview Camfrog CU-SeeMe Discord Ekiga Google Hangouts iChat Jami Jitsi Pidgin MeBeam Microsoft: Windows Live Messenger Microsoft: Windows Live Video Messages Microsoft Teams Movim ooVoo Paltalk (now PaltalkScene) SightSpeed Signal Skype StarLeaf Stickam Tinychat Tox (Protocol implemented in various clients) TrueConf Wire Yahoo! Messenger Browser based – does not require software downloads BigBlueButton Discord Google Duo Google Hangouts Google Meet JioMeet Jitsi Livestorm Microsoft Teams Movim Skype UberConference Vidyo Software clients for deaf and hard-of-hearing VRS/VRI facilities Mirial s.u.r.l.: Mirial Softphone Server software GNU Gatekeeper Mirial s.u.r.l.: ClearSea TrueConf: TrueConf Server Free Video telecommunication services Video telecommunication services for the deaf and hard-of-hearing National Association for the Deaf: Video Relay Service (VRS) Medical organizations employing video telecommunications American Telemedicine Association Ontario Telemedicine Network Public videoconferencing facilities FedEx Office: formerly FedEx Kinko's. Conference rooms with video conferencing. Marriott Hotels: conference rooms with video conferencing. Defunct brands and services Brands, manufacturers and other services listed here are no longer in production or no longer exist, and are listed for historical or research purposes. Defunct videophone hardware brands Tandberg: E20 of Norway, acquired by Cisco in 2009 Picturephone, world's first commercialized videophone for individual and business use, developed by AT&T and Bell Labs Cisco Umi, a home consumer version of their enterprise offerings (see above), briefly marketed in 2010-2011 Defunct videoconferencing system hardware brands HP: Halo Telepresence Solutions (United States), acquired by Polycom in 2011 IBM Person to Person, a software-only collaborative conferencing system interoperable between OS/2, Windows and AIX developed and marketed between 1991 and 1995. Tandberg: T3 Telepresence of Norway, acquired by Cisco in 2009 Defunct software brands Tandberg: Movi, acquired by Cisco in 2009 AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) ooVoo: ooVoo (only for Windows or Mac) Videotelephony descriptive names and terminology The name [videophone]is not as standardized as its earlier counterpart, the telephone, resulting in a variety of names and terms being used worldwide, and even within the same region or country. Videophones are also known as videotelephones (or video telephones) and often by an early trademarked name "Picturephone", which was the world's first commercial videophone produced in volume. The compound name "videophone" slowly entered into general use after 1950, although "video telephone" likely entered the lexicon earlier after "video" was coined in 1935. Videophone calls (also: videocalls and video chat), differ from videoconferencing in that they expect to serve individuals, not groups. However that distinction has become increasingly blurred with technology improvements such as increased bandwidth and sophisticated software clients that can allow for multiple parties on a call. In general everyday usage the term videoconferencing is now frequently used instead of videocall for point-to-point calls between two units. Both videophone calls and videoconferencing are also now commonly referred to as a video link. Webcams are popular, relatively low cost devices which can provide live video and audio streams via personal computers, and can be used with many software clients for both video calls and videoconferencing. A videoconference system is generally higher cost than a videophone and deploys greater capabilities. A videoconference (also known as a videoteleconference) allows two or more locations to communicate via live, simultaneous two-way video and audio transmissions. This is often accomplished by the use of a multipoint control unit (a centralized distribution and call management system) or by a similar non-centralized multipoint capability embedded in each videoconferencing unit. Again, technology improvements have circumvented traditional definitions by allowing multiple party videoconferencing via web-based applications. A separate webpage article is devoted to videoconferencing. A telepresence system is a high-end videoconferencing system and service usually employed by enterprise-level corporate offices. Telepresence conference rooms use state-of-the art room designs, video cameras, displays, sound-systems and processors, coupled with high-to-very-high capacity bandwidth transmissions. Typical use of the various technologies described above include calling or conferencing on a one-on-one, one-to-many or many-to-many basis for personal, business, educational, deaf Video Relay Service and tele-medical, diagnostic and rehabilitative use or services. New services utilizing videocalling and videoconferencing, such as teachers and psychologists conducting online sessions, personal videocalls to inmates incarcerated in penitentiaries, and videoconferencing to resolve airline engineering issues at maintenance facilities, are being created or evolving on an ongoing basis. See also eMedicine List of Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) software Mobile collaboration Telepresence Unified communications, the integration of non real-time communication services such as unified messaging (integrated voicemail, e-mail, SMS and fax) with real-time communication services such as instant messaging, etc. Videoconferencing Videophone Videotelephony -parent article Web conferencing, used to conduct live meetings or presentations via the Internet Webcam (Internet web cameras) Webcast, “broadcasting” over the Internet References Further reading Bajaj, Vikas. Transparent Government, Via Webcams in India, The New York Times, July 18, 2011, pg.B3. Published online: July 17, 2011. Davis, Andrew W.; Weinstein, Ira M. The Business Case for Videoconferencing, Wainhouse Research, March 2005. Hoffman, Jan. When Your Therapist Is Only a Click Away, The New York Times, September 25, 2011, pg. ST1. Also published September 23, 2011 online at www.nytimes.com. Saint Louis, Catherine. With Enough Bandwidth, Many Join The Band, The New York Times, January 10, 2012 (online), January 11, 2012 (in print, New York Edition, pg. A1). Retrieved online January 11, 2012. Synopsis: a look at the pros and cons of videotelephony used for private, individual, music lessons. External links Telecommunications lists Services And Product Brands Lists of brands

891895

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuance%20Communications

Nuance Communications

Nuance is an American multinational computer software technology corporation, headquartered in Burlington, Massachusetts, that markets speech recognition and artificial intelligence software. Nuance merged with its competitor in the commercial large-scale speech application business, ScanSoft, in October 2005. ScanSoft was a Xerox spin-off that was bought in 1999 by Visioneer, a hardware and software scanner company, which adopted ScanSoft as the new merged company name. The original ScanSoft had its roots in Kurzweil Computer Products. In April 2021, Microsoft announced it would buy Nuance Communications. The deal is an all-cash transaction of $19.7 billion, including company's debt, or $56 a share. History The company that would become Nuance was incorporated in 1992 as Visioneer. In 1999, Visioneer acquired ScanSoft, Inc. (SSFT), and the combined company became known as ScanSoft. In September 2005, ScanSoft Inc. acquired and merged with Nuance Communications, a natural language spinoff from SRI International. The resulting company adopted the Nuance name. During the prior decade, the two companies competed in the commercial large-scale speech application business. ScanSoft origins In 1974, Raymond Kurzweil founded Kurzweil Computer Products, Inc. to develop the first omni-font optical character-recognition systema computer program capable of recognizing text written in any normal font. In 1980, Kurzweil sold his company to Xerox. The company became known as Xerox Imaging Systems (XIS), and later ScanSoft. In March 1992, a new company called Visioneer, Inc. was founded to develop scanner hardware and software products, such as a sheetfed scanner called PaperMax and the document management software PaperPort. Visioneer eventually sold its hardware division to Primax Electronics, Ltd. in January 1999. Two months later, in March, Visioneer acquired ScanSoft from Xerox to form a new public company with ScanSoft as the new company-wide name. Prior to 2001, ScanSoft focused primarily on desktop imaging software such as TextBridge, PaperPort and OmniPage. Beginning with the December 2001 acquisition of Lernout & Hauspie assets, the company moved into the speech recognition business and began to compete with Nuance. Lernout & Hauspie had acquired speech recognition company Dragon Systems in June 2001, shortly before becoming bankrupt in October. Partnership with Siri and Apple Inc. Siri is an application that combines speech recognition with advanced natural-language processing. Artificial intelligence, which required both advances in the underlying algorithms and leaps in processing power both on mobile devices and the servers that share the workload, allows software to understand words and their intentions. Acquisitions Prior to the 2005 merger, ScanSoft acquired other companies to expand its business. Unlike ScanSoft, Nuance did not actively acquire companies prior to their merger other than the acquisition of Rhetorical Systems in November 2004 for $6.7 million. After the merger, the company continued to grow through acquisition. ScanSoft merges with Nuance; changes company-wide name to Nuance Communications, Inc. September 15, 2005 — ScanSoft acquired and merged with Nuance Communications, of Menlo Park, California for $221 million. October 18, 2005 — the company changed its name to Nuance Communications, Inc. Nuance acquisitions after merger March 31, 2006 — Dictaphone Corporation, of Stratford, Connecticut $357 million. December 29, 2006 — Mobile Voice Control, Inc. of Mason, Ohio. March 2007 — Focus Informatics, Inc. Woburn, Massachusetts. March 26, 2007 — Bluestar Resources Ltd. April 24, 2007 — BeVocal, Inc. of Mountain View, California $140 million. August 24, 2007 — VoiceSignal Technologies, Inc. of Woburn, Massachusetts. August 24, 2007 — Tegic Communications, Inc. of Seattle, Washington for $265 million. Tegic developed and was the patent owner of T9 technology. September 28, 2007 — Commissure, Inc. of New York City, New York for 217,975 shares of common stock. November 2, 2007 — Vocada, Inc. of Dallas, Texas. November 26, 2007 — Viecore, Inc. of Mahwah, New Jersey. November 26, 2007 — Viecore, FSD. of Eatontown, New Jersey. It was sold to EOIR in 2013. May 20, 2008 — eScription, Inc. of Needham, Massachusetts for $340 million plus 1,294,844 shares of common stock. July 31, 2008 — MultiVision Communications Inc. of Markham, Ontario. September 26, 2008 — Philips Speech Recognition SystemsGMBH (PSRS), a business unit of Royal Philips Electronics of Vienna, Austria for about €66 million, or US$96.1 million. The acquisition of Philips Speech Recognition Systems sparked an antitrust investigation by the US Department of Justice. This investigation was focused upon medical transcription services and was closed in December, 2009. October 1, 2008 — SNAPin Software, Inc. of Bellevue, Washington — $180 million in shares of common stock. January 15, 2009 — Nuance Acquires IBM's patents Speech Technology rights. April 10, 2009 — Zi Corporation of Calgary, Alberta, Canada for approximately $35 million in cash and common stock. May 2009 — the speech technology department of Harman International Industries. July 14, 2009 — Jott Networks Inc. of Seattle, Washington. September 18, 2009 — nCore Ltd. of Oulu, Finland. October 5, 2009 — Ecopy of Nashua, New Hampshire. Under the terms of the agreement, net consideration was approximately $54 million in Nuance common stock. December 30, 2009 — Spinvox of Marlow, UK for $102.5m comprising $66m in cash and $36.5m in stock. February 16, 2010 — Nuance announced they acquired MacSpeech for an undisclosed amount. February 2010 — Nuance acquired Language and Computing, Inc., a provider of natural language processing and natural language understanding technology solutions, from Gimv NV, a Belgium-based private equity firm. July 2010 — Nuance acquired iTa P/L, an Australian IVR and speech services company. November 2010 — Nuance acquired PerSay, a voice biometrics-based authentication company for $12.6 million. February 2011 — Nuance acquired Noterize, an Australian company producing software for the Apple iPad. June 2011 — Nuance acquired Equitrac, a print management and cost recovery software company. June 2011 — Nuance acquired SVOX, a speech technology company specializing in the automotive, mobile, and consumer electronics markets. July 2011 — Nuance acquired Webmedx, a provider of medical transcription and editing services. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. August 2011 — Loquendo announced Nuance acquired it. Loquendo provided a range of speech technologies for telephony, mobile, automotive, embedded and desktop solutions including text-to-speech (TTS), automatic speech recognition (ASR) and voice biometrics solutions. Nuance paid 53 million euros. October 2011 — Nuance acquired Swype, a company that produces input software for touchscreen displays, for more than $100 million. December 2011 — Nuance acquired Vlingo, after repeatedly suing Vlingo over patent infringement. Vlingo was trying to make voice enabling applications easier, by using their own speech-to-text J2ME/Brew application API. April 2012 — Nuance acquired Transcend Services. Transcend utilizes a combination of its proprietary Internet-based voice and data distribution technology, customer based technology, and home-based medical language specialists to convert physicians' voice recordings into electronic documents. It also provides outsourcing transcription and editing services on the customer's platform. June 2012 — Nuance acquired SafeCom, a provider of print management and cost recovery software noted for their integration with Hewlett-Packard printing devices. September 2012 — Nuance acquired Ditech Networks for $22.5 million. September 2012 — Nuance acquired Quantim, QuadraMed's HIM Business, a provider of information technology solutions for the healthcare industry. October 2012 — Nuance acquired J.A. Thomas and Associates (JATA), a provider of physician-oriented, clinical documentation improvement (CDI) programs for the healthcare industry. November 2012 — Nuance acquired Accentus. January 2013 — Nuance acquired VirtuOz. April 2013 — Nuance acquired Copitrak. May 2013 — Nuance acquired Tweddle Connect business for $80 million from Tweddle Group. July 2013 — Nuance acquired Cognition Technologies Inc. October 2013 — Nuance acquired Varolii (formally Par3 Communications). January 15, 2014 — Nuance acquired Emdat. July 2014 — Nuance acquired Accelarad (FKA Neurostar Solutions), makers of SeeMyRadiology, a cloud-based medical images and reports exchange network. Accelarad was based in Atlanta Georgia with a Sales Operations office in Birmingham Alabama. June 2016 — Nuance acquired TouchCommerce, a leader in digital customer service and intelligent engagement solutions with a specialization in live chat. August 2016 — Nuance acquired Montage Healthcare Solutions. February 2017 — Nuance acquired mCarbon for $36M, a mobile value added services provider. January 2018 — Nuance acquired iScribes, a medical documentation solutions provider. May 2018 — Nuance acquired voicebox for $82M, an early leader in speech recognition and natural language technologies. Feb 8, 2021 — Nuance acquired Saykara. Acquisition of Nuance Document Imaging by Kofax Inc. On February 1, 2019, Kofax Inc. announced the closing of its acquisition of Nuance Communications' Document Imaging Division. By means of this acquisition, Kofax gained Nuance's Power PDF, PaperPort document management, and OmniPage optical character recognition software applications. Kofax also acquired Copitrak in the closing. Spinoff of Automotive Business to Cerence Inc. On October 1, 2019, Nuance Communications completed a spinoff of its automotive division to a separate publicly traded company, Cerence Inc., which included all transportation market segments. Nuance retained its core vertical and healthcare businesses, and the two companies formed an intellectual property agreement. Acquisition by Microsoft On April 12, 2021, Microsoft announced that it will buy Nuance Communications for $19.7 billion, or $56 a share, a 22% increase over the previous closing price. Nuance's CEO, Mark Benjamin, will stay with the company. This will be Microsoft's second-biggest deal ever, after its purchase of LinkedIn for $24 billion in 2016. Shortly after the deal, the Competition and Markets Authority, a UK regulatory body, stated it was looking into the deal on the basis of antitrust concerns. In December 2021, it was reported that the deal would be approved by the European Union. Lawsuits In January 2022, Andrew Grosso & Associates, a District of Columbia law firm, announced that a lawsuit brought by Marc Stolowitz against Nuance Communications. The lawsuit accuses Nuance of fraud, malicious prosecution, and defamation. The case is Marc Stolowitz v. Nuance Communications, Inc., Case No. 2021-026329-CA-0, filed in Circuit Court of the 11th Judicial Circuit in and for Miami-Dade County, Florida. Lawyers at Bradley Arant Boult Cummings on Thursday removed a defamation lawsuit against Nuance Communications Inc. to Florida Southern District Court. The complaint accuses Nuance of retaliating against a whistleblower who identified and disclosed a cybersecurity breach in Nuance's computer systems, resulting in the public availability and disclosure of protected health information of more than 45,000 patients. The suit was filed by Andrew Grosso & Associates and Stephen J. Bagge PA on behalf of Marc Stolowitz. The case is 1:22-cv-20234, Stolowitz v. Nuance Communications, Inc. References External links Software companies based in Massachusetts Companies listed on the Nasdaq American companies established in 1992 Software companies established in 1992 1992 establishments in Massachusetts Companies based in Burlington, Massachusetts Speaker recognition 2000 initial public offerings Software companies of the United States Announced information technology acquisitions

8440827

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KMLDonkey

KMLDonkey

KMLDonkey is a graphical frontend for MLDonkey, a powerful P2P file sharing tool, designed for the KDE desktop. Some of its key features are: Can access mldonkey from local or remote host Can send .torrent files also to remote mldonkey Can store multiple mldonkey core access information and switch on the fly between them Runs wherever KDE software runs Can handle multiple threads simultaneously Can handle bandwidth used by mldonkey Can handle several security options KMLDonkey 2.0.7 is released together with KDE Software Compilation 4 within the extragear-tarball. See also eDonkey network Kad network eMule AMule Comparison of eDonkey software References External links The KMLDonkey homepage EDonkey Clients for Linux Extragear File sharing software that uses Qt Free file sharing software KDE Applications MacOS file sharing software Unix Internet software Windows file sharing software it:MLDonkey#KMLDonkey

54456757

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katana%20Zero

Katana Zero

Katana Zero is a 2019 platform game created by indie developer Justin Stander. Set in the dystopian neo-noir metropolis of New Mecca, it follows Subject Zero, a katana-wielding assassin with amnesia who can slow down time and predict the future; Zero must unravel his past while completing assassination contracts. Katana Zero features side-scrolling hack-and-slash gameplay in which the player attempts to kill all enemies in a level without being hit. The player uses Zero's abilities to manipulate time, dodge attacks, and take advantage of environmental hazards. Outside the main gameplay, the player converses with non-player characters through dialogue trees. Stander began working on Katana Zero in 2013 and developed it using the GameMaker Studio 2 game engine. He had previously developed freeware games, such as Tower of Heaven (2009), and conceived Katana Zero as his first commercial game. He sought to make a story-driven game that did not force the player to wait through dialogue and cutscenes, and looked to Korean cinema and films like Sin City (2005) and John Wick (2014) for inspiration. The development was prolonged and Stander worked mostly alone, although he recruited artists to design the visuals and musicians Bill Kiley and Thijs "LudoWic" Lodewijk to compose the synthwave soundtrack. Katana Zero was published by Devolver Digital for macOS, Nintendo Switch, and Windows on April 18, 2019; a port for Xbox One was released on October 14, 2020. It sold 500,000 copies in less than a year and received positive reviews. Critics praised the gameplay—which they favorably compared to Devolver's Hotline Miami (2012)—and the visuals, writing, and music; the unresolved ending and short length were criticized. Several critics cited Katana Zero as one of the best games of 2019, and it was nominated for numerous year-end accolades. Free downloadable content is in development, and Stander plans to continue Katana Zero fictional universe in future games. Gameplay Katana Zero is a 2D platform and hack-and-slash game presented from a side-scrolling perspective. Controlling the player character, the katana-wielding assassin Subject Zero, the single player completes assassination contracts given to Zero by his psychiatrist. Zero can run, jump, wall kick, pick up and throw items, attack using his katana, and dodge. He can also slow down time and predict the future; using these abilities activates a slow motion effect that allows players to predict movement easier, although use is limited by a meter that gradually refills. The game features eleven levels, which use Zero's precognition as a framing device; the player's attempts to complete each level are presented as the possible scenarios that Zero has foreseen. Levels are split into several rooms; to proceed, the player must kill every enemy in a room within a time limit using their sword, throwable objects like lamps and pots, or environmental hazards like lasers. Aside from occasional bosses, each enemy dies in a single hit. Certain levels feature unique game mechanics, such as a stealth mission in a nightclub, a motorcycle chase mission, and a mission featuring an alternate player character. There is no health; being hit results in instant death, and the player must restart from the last checkpoint. The gameplay has been frequently compared to Hotline Miami (2012), as both games feature levels filled with enemies, one-hit kills, and require players to determine their chosen route strategically. In between the main levels, the player converses with non-player characters (NPCs), such as the psychiatrist and a young girl who Zero befriends. The game features a real-time dialogue tree system in which the player chooses responses in their conversations, and they can interrupt an NPC's dialogue at any time. Although they do not change the overall plot, the player's dialogue choices can affect events that occur later in the game, and one boss fight can only be activated by making specific decisions. A May 2019 update added two additional game modes. Hard mode features more difficult levels with new enemy varieties, reworked bosses, and additional challenges. Speedrun mode challenges the player to complete every level in the fastest time possible, with the options to modify enemy behavior and skip cutscenes. Plot Katana Zero is set in New Mecca, a dystopic neo-noir metropolis, seven years after an armed conflict, the Cromag War. Subject Zero, an amnesiac Cromag War veteran who can predict the future, assassinates drug dealers for his psychiatrist. News media ascribes Zero's killings to a serial killer known as the Dragon. Zero experiences recurring nightmares of a child—who he believes is himself—in a primitive hut; a scientist runs into the hut and warns the child to hide moments before a soldier shoots him. The psychiatrist supplies him with a drug as treatment, but their relationship becomes strained as Zero deviates from assigned objectives and learns the psychiatrist is lying about the reasoning behind the assassinations. After Zero befriends a young girl living next door to his apartment, the psychiatrist assigns Zero to kill Fa Yuan, a prison inmate, only for Zero to find the prison massacred. At his apartment, the girl gives Zero a videotape that contains a recording of V, a Russian mobster, torturing and killing Zero's neighbors. The next morning, V picks up Zero in his limousine. V seeks to recreate Chronos, a drug the New Mecca government gave to soldiers during the Cromag War, and offers to partner with Zero, who refuses. Zero tracks V to an abandoned film studio but is interrupted by the swordswoman Snow, who threatens Zero and leaves with V. Zero experiences a hallucination in which he is visited by Comedy and Tragedy, two men wearing theater masks who taunt him about impending disaster in his future. Zero is assigned to kill Al-Qasim, a wealthy industrialist, but is captured when he encounters V and his men storming Al-Qasim's mansion. When Zero uses precognition to mock V, he shoots Al-Qasim. Zero pursues V, but before he can kill him, V is dismembered and abducted by the Dragon, a swordsman who possesses precognitive abilities similar to Zero's. Zero hallucinates the dismembered V, who claims that his hallucinations are the result of Chronos withdrawal. The psychiatrist sends Zero to a Chinatown casino to hunt the Dragon. Zero encounters another precognitive, Headhunter, who Zero duels while the Dragon flees. Zero acquires a tape containing the prison's security footage from the night of Yuan's murder; it shows the Dragon storming the facility and interrogating Yuan, who tells him about Chronos creator Leon von Alvensleben. A caller directs Zero to a training facility for NULLs, New Mecca's Chronos-enhanced soldiers. Alvensleben speaks through monitors throughout the facility; he reveals that Zero was a NULL and that the project was a failure, as Chronos had devastating side effects resulting in death from withdrawl. Zero discovers Alvensleben in cryostasis and kills him. Zero confronts the psychiatrist, who confirms his targets are all related to Chronos, that Chronos is Zero's "treatment", and what allows him to predict the future. The psychiatrist explains the government seeks to eradicate Chronos and sends Zero to destroy the contents of Al-Qasim's safe room in an underground bunker. Zero encounters Headhunter, who reveals she was also a NULL and that Al-Qasim employed her in exchange for a Chronos supply. Zero kills her and enters the safe room, where he finds a woman and children; he is unable to bring himself to kill them. Zero discovers his psychiatrist preparing to flee the city, beats him to death, and injects himself with a massive dose of Chronos. He returns to his apartment, finding it burglarized and the girl missing. The landlady tells investigating police that no children lived in the building. When questioned, Zero runs and the police give chase. A flashback reveals Zero's nightmare is a memory from the Cromag War and that he is the soldier who shoots the scientist, not the child who hides. Zero exits the hut and stands with his comrade, the Dragon. In the present, Snow informs her superior of V's death, the Dragon contemplates a board of evidence, and Comedy and Tragedy taunt the girl as she cowers in fear. Development Concept Katana Zero was created by indie game developer Justin Stander under the studio name Askiisoft. It was Stander's first commercial game; his previous projects had been smaller freeware games like Tower of Heaven (2009). After seeing the success of Terry Cavanagh's VVVVVV (2010), Stander concluded that audiences only pay attention to independent games if they are being sold. Cavanagh, like Stander, had started off making freeware games, but none were as successful as VVVVVV. Stander said Katana Zero grew from his desire to create a larger project that could be sold commercially. Development began in 2013 and lasted six years. Stander used the GameMaker Studio 2 game engine and began working on it as a hobby during his sophomore year at McGill University; he spent the first two years building simple prototypes. He used the game as a means of expression outside schoolwork, and spent most of his time at college working on it. His coursework did prove useful, as he felt that it helped "grow my overall sense of how to program correctly and keep things elegant". After Stander graduated in 2015, he began to work on Katana Zero full time and finished it in February 2019. He worked on multiple projects alongside Katana Zero to "hedge my bets... [so] I didn't spend the last five years of my life only working on one game that flopped." The total development cost was 60,000, which Stander called "an extremely shoestring budget" and "practically nothing" for a game of Katana Zero scope. He stated: "Most of it was just not paying myself at all and cutting down costs in my own life to do nothing but work on the game." He worked largely on his own, although he recruited help for the art and music. The game was primarily developed for macOS and Windows, but Stander decided to develop a Nintendo Switch version immediately after the system was unveiled because he saw it as a "big indie-centric console". GameMaker made it easy to port Katana Zero, and the long development meant it was already well optimized. Design One of Stander's goals was to make killing feel exciting and satisfying. He felt many modern games were too forgiving, with enemies that are less powerful than the player character. Stander noted that it was difficult to die in games such as Payday: The Heist (2011) and decided that, in Katana Zero, "If you try to die, then it should be easy." Stander wanted Katana Zero to be difficult but fair; similar to his previous games, he wanted the player to recognize and take responsibility for their mistakes. Production value was important, as Stander felt making the engine "flawless" was crucial to create a game worth playing. He said this meant "no bugs. Everything needs to feel like an extension of the player. When you play it, you should always feel like this is exactly what I wanted to do and that is what the character did." Stander continued his style of design from Tower of Heaven and Pause Ahead (2013), designing short levels filled with instant-death scenarios. Drawing influence from Eastern culture, he wanted Katana Zero to feel cinematic and sought to subvert expectations: "As soon as you think you understand how this game is going to play out, then I just try to completely shift it on you... as soon as [you're] comfortable in [something], I try to shift things up. And I do that several times throughout the game. I really mess with the player." To maintain variety, he incorporated many enemy types, environmental traps, alternate level pathways, and set pieces. A minecart pathway inspired by Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) took over a month to create. Katana Zero shares one-hit-kill gameplay with another Devolver Digital-published game, Hotline Miami, but Stander said he only played it once before starting Katana Zero. He described Katana Zero as more of a pastiche of the films he enjoyed. He was inspired by Korean cinema, as he sought to feature a vulnerable yet lethal protagonist similar to those from Korean revenge thrillers. Films he cited as inspiration included Oldboy (2003), Sin City (2005), The Man from Nowhere (2010), Drive (2011), and John Wick (2014) for their "invincible-yet-human protagonist[s], and stylistic violence set over a dark, grimy, neon coated setting". He also cited Seven Samurai (1954) and the films of Quentin Tarantino. Stander's video game influences included indie games that feature "tight, fast-paced, instant death combat", such as Trilby: The Art of Theft (2009) and Gunpoint (2013). A critical influence was Samurai Gunn (2013), which he felt "really nailed making killing feel good, and a lot of that was about the one-hit kills". The art was inspired by the neon aesthetic of the poster for Drive. Recruiting artists proved challenging; Stander called himself "a terrible artist", and for two years no artists worked on the game. He found artists through the online independent developer community TIGSource, but said that it was "extremely difficult" to recruit high-quality pixel artists who would commit to the project, as "a lot of them would stick around for like a week or two weeks, and some that would only do like a day and then they quit, either because they have other projects, or they feel like the style isn't their match, or just all sorts of other reasons". Stander used a "big neon lighting effect" to blend the different styles of the artists, which he felt "pretty much covered every single blemish". Stander focused on attention to detail, and said that adding a single mechanic, such as a gun turret, "would mean tinkering with 20 different systems, like lighting and replay, to make it all cohesive". When developing small freeware games, he could "really obsess over the little details", which would result in him spending a year "just to make a short game that can be completed in 20-30 minutes". Adapting this mentality to a full-length commercial game contributed to the prolonged development; Stander originally expected development to last a year or two. His focus on particulars demoralized him, to the point that there he made little progress for a year. He credited the artists with motivating him to finish the game. Writing Stander had long desired to make films and "wanted to make something more narratively-driven, that paid homage to all my favorite storytelling tropes and expanded on them in my own way... That was definitely a big part of [Katana Zero]: I had a story I wanted to tell." The script is credited to Stander and Eric Shumaker, with additional writing by Sterling Nathaniel Brown and Ian Goldsmith Rooney. As Stander developed Katana Zero focusing on one element at a time, he only had a basic plot summary by the time he finished outlining all the levels. Stander knew that the protagonist would be "sort of trapped in their situation, because those always make for good main characters in action games", and that players would dislike the disagreeable psychiatrist. According to Stander, the script was rewritten around 30 times. Stander allowed the player to interrupt any line of spoken dialogue because many of the action games he grew up playing "would grind to a halt as the protagonist and the second banana argued about politics, or when the villain deigned to deliver a winding monologue." He considered this one of the biggest problems with cutscenes, as they make players "feel [they] have no agency." Additionally, Stander felt that an assassin like Zero would not wait to listen to a villain justify their nefarious schemes. He was conscious that speedrunners would skip all the dialogue, and included in-game consequences for interrupting constantly to create a sense of realism. He adopted a show, don't tell approach to convey as much of the story, themes, and characters as possible through just visuals; for example, the level in which the player controls the Dragon was intended to show the character's lethality without words. Structurally, the story was inspired by Hotline Miami, in which the player character is directed to kill by mysterious phone calls, and its themes include drug addiction and mental health. Stander hesitated to deal with such topics as they had never affected him, but after some research, felt he could treat them respectfully. Stander conceived the dialogue tree system for a role-playing video game (RPG) he was considering developing that centered on "the concept of having no limits", in which the player could interact with any object and fight any NPC. He wanted every action to have repercussions, which he likened to the Grand Theft Auto games. Although he never developed the RPG, Stander reincorporated the dialogue system in Katana Zero to keep the pacing consistent. Difficulty arose from finding the right timing between the "interrupt and respond phases"; Stander noted that playtesters would choose the wrong response if they interrupted too late, or unintentionally interrupt by taking too much time to respond. Stander resolved the problem using "coyote time", a trick in game development in which developers provide the player a brief interval to make their decision even if the on-screen window of opportunity has passed. The stakes for each dialogue choice are minimal, as Stander wanted to reduce tension and make choosing a response feel natural. Stander noted that "even the ones that seem big will peter out or resolve themselves", such as an instance in which a decision will cause the player to temporarily lose their sword; he compared Katana Zero in this regard to Telltale Games' The Walking Dead series. However, he said that "the way the story is told is entirely dependent on [the player's] choices", noting worldbuilding and character relationships can change depending on the dialogue options. For example, Zero's relationship with the psychiatrist suffers if the player chooses to ignore his orders, which can lead to alternate story paths in which Zero learns information he was not supposed to. Stander said the game features hundreds of different choices and that each one has small effects on the overarching narrative. Stander used various graphical effects to emphasize major decisions, such as moving or different-colored text and character animations. He accomplished this by programming the script to affect other areas of the game when it reached certain points. He originally intended to use these effects merely to add polish, but began to "[get] playful" and used his programming to add elements like distortion effects and screen-shaking. Music Katana Zero synthwave score, which blends Chicago house, electronic music, and synth-pop, was composed by Bill Kiley and Thijs "LudoWic" Lodewijk, with additional music by Stander. Kiley had collaborated with Stander in the past, and Stander recruited him to work on Katana Zero at the beginning of development. Lodewijk, who had never composed a video game, became involved in 2015, after Stander found his YouTube channel and recruited him to write a single track. Stander then asked if he could use music from Lodewijk's "jams" (improvised recording sessions Lodewijk had uploaded to his channel); the jam that caused Stander to notice Lodewijk, "Jam #12", was used as the boss theme. Lodewijk composed a few tracks specifically for Stander after joining the project, but Stander told him to "just do what you normally do". Kiley and Lodewijk looked to 1980s electronic music for inspiration since the game's themes—including drug use and the ramifications that war has on a nation's spirit—were relevant in the 1980s in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. They originally worked separately; Stander wanted Kiley to write music for "the quieter, story-driven scenes" and Lodewijk to write "high-energy" music for the main levels. According to Kiley, "As the project progressed we gleefully broke this rule and ended up writing music for levels and story scenes all over the place." Kiley drew influence from the work of Gary Numan, Yellow Music Orchestra, and Vangelis, and sought to evoke the feelings of 1980s action films. Kiley and Lodewijk attempted to reflect Zero's changing psyche and moods in their music, such as when Zero experiences Chronos withdrawal and snorts cocaine in a limousine. For each level, Stander sent Kiley and Lodewijk screenshots, concept art, and notes describing the atmosphere he was aiming for, occasionally alongside an existing piece of music for reference. Lodewijk explained that they would send their initial composition to Stander, leading to a series of exchanges that resulted in the final track. Some tracks ended up in different levels than they were intended, and for certain levels and dream sequences, Lodewijk wrote two tracks for Stander to blend together in-game. Lodewijk composed most tracks in a single take, "[letting the music] go and sort of adjust[ing] it as it [went] along." He drew inspiration from Nine Inch Nails, as he and Stander were fans of their "more industrial, dark vibe." Lodewijk did not set out to make dark music, but noted that his tracks were often somber, even when he attempted to compose "happy" music. Kiley composed his music using the same monitors that Disasterpeace used to compose Fez (2012), while Lodewijk used vintage synthesizers and drum machines like the Akai MPC. While he did edit some tracks using his computer, Lodewijk described his process as "old-fashioned" and estimated that 95% of his music was composed using vintage synths. Stander attempted to synchronize the music with the gameplay; examples include having Zero turn on a Walkman at the beginning of each level, changing the music when Zero takes his earbuds out to talk to an NPC, and slowing down the music when the player uses Chronos. Release Katana Zero made its first public appearance at PAX West in Seattle in September 2015. Adult Swim Games obtained the publication rights, and a teaser trailer was released in December 2015. The game was delayed several times; it was originally scheduled for a late 2016 release, but was pushed to 2017, 2018, and eventually March 2019. Stander announced that he had "amicably parted ways" with Adult Swim in December 2018, and revealed that Devolver Digital had acquired the publication rights the following month. Devolver helped Stander localize the game, translating it to ten languages. Stander was impressed by Devolver's software testing process for catching several bugs he did not notice. Katana Zero was released on April 18, 2019, as a downloadable game on GOG.com, Humble Bundle, Nintendo eShop, and Steam. The Switch version was temporarily banned for sale in Australia after it received a Refused Classification from the International Age Rating Coalition in April 2019. Devolver Digital resubmitted the game to the Australian Classification Board, which cleared it for release in May 2019 with an R18+ rating. An Xbox One version was released on October 14, 2020, and was offered for free for Xbox Game Pass subscribers. Reception Katana Zero was well received in previews. In 2016, Nick Robinson of Polygon called it "one of the most impressive games we saw at PAX Prime last year". Brenna Hiller of VG247 called it "far too stylish" and complimented the fact that the game's screen shake could be turned down. Mike Williams of USgamer called the game "stylish as hell" and "one of [his] favorite upcoming games". According to the review aggregator website Metacritic, Katana Zero received "generally favorable reviews". The game was Devolver's most-preordered Switch game, sold over 100,000 copies sold within a week of release, and became Devolver's second-fastest-selling Switch game behind Enter the Gungeon (2017). It sold 500,000 copies in less than a year and generated 5 million in revenue; in contrast, the average indie game generates around 16,000. Awards Downloadable content On April 25, 2019, a week after Katana Zero release, Stander announced that he was working on free downloadable content (DLC). He wanted the DLC's quality to be on par with the main game's, and its size expanded considerably during development; it was three times its originally-planned size by February 2020, and six times by March 2021. However, the expansions did not change Stander's plans to release the DLC for free. The DLC will be slightly more than half the size of the base game and will introduce new game mechanics, enemies, and story elements; Stander described it as "more like Katana 1.5" than DLC. He said the DLC is "going to wrap up a few of the smaller things, answer a few of the bigger fan questions, [and] give a little bit more insight into the world," but will not complete the story. Future In May 2020, Stander said that he had plans to continue the Katana Zero story beyond the DLC, and that some of his future games would connect to its fictional universe: "The story's going to be wrapped up in something else later on... it's all been planned out since the beginning; it's not a making-it-up-as-I-go-along sort of thing like Lost or something." References External links 2019 video games Action video games Cyberpunk video games Devolver Digital games Platform games Indie video games MacOS games Organized crime video games Video games about ninja Nintendo Switch games Video games developed in the United States Windows games Neo-noir video games GameMaker Studio games Xbox One games

7163239

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAP%20Group

CAP Group

CAP Group was a British software house. Computer Analysts and Programmers Ltd (CAP) was founded in May 1962 and grew to be one of the foremost IT companies in the UK before merging with French company Sema-Metra in 1988 to form Sema Group. History of CAP Group Computer Analysts and Programmers Ltd (CAP) was founded by Alex d’Agapeyeff, Barney Gibbens, and Harry Baecker in May 1962 and chaired by d’Agapeyeff for the following 20 years. CAP initially worked on compilers and system software. Its first job was the creation of a version of ALGOL for the English Electric KDF6 computer, and later the Elliott 503. During the 1960s it produced CORAL compilers and a real time operating system for the Royal Navy. d'Agapeyeff coined the term 'middleware' to describe the interface between application and system software at a presentation to a NATO conference in 1968. By 1974, CAP operated three divisions – commercial, financial, and industrial – which covered mainframe and minicomputer systems and industrial control systems. It had offices in London, Reading, and Alderley Edge (Cheshire). In 1975, CAP UK split from CAP Europe, a partnership formed in 1966 with CAP France, which was a separately-founded company. The name 'CAP' in Europe remained with CAP Gemini Sogeti. CAP UK formed CAP International, which operated outside Europe and had several branches in the Middle East. In the mid 1970s, d'Agapeyeff recognised the potential of microprocessors and the newly developed microcomputers. He created BOS (Business Operating System), a portable environment to run commercial software on the emerging microcomputers. In 1976, CAP Microsoft was formed to market services based on BOS and MicroCobol. In 1978, CPP (Computer Program Products) was formed to sell IBM mainframe products and subsequently CAP was renamed CAP-CPP to distinguish itself from the European CAP, but later it changed to CAP Group. CAP Scientific, which did defence-related work, was formed in 1979. By the late 1980s, CAP Group PLC consisted of the following: CAP Financial Services Ltd, with offices in London and Watford. CAP Industry Ltd, with offices in Reading, London, Wilmslow, Manchester and the Netherlands. CAP Scientific Ltd, with offices in London and Dorchester. YARD Ltd, with offices in Charing Cross Tower in Glasgow, Chippenham, Aberdeen, Bristol, and Bath. YARD Ltd and YARD International Ltd became part of CAP Group when CAP merged with Yarrow PLC in mid-1986. YARD International Ltd, with offices in London, Canada and the USA. CORDA Ltd was a business unit jointly owned by CAP Scientific and YARD. Data Networks Ltd, with offices in Tipton and London. Baddeley Associates Ltd, with offices in Cambridge. In the late 1980s, 84% of CAP's turnover was in the UK, and 16% overseas. The turnover by market was: Science and engineering 37.7% Industry 31.2% Financial services 17.7% Information services 13.4% In 1988, CAP merged with Sema-Metra, a French company and the merged group was called Sema Group. The name 'CAP' was dropped because it could not be used in Europe. References British companies established in 1962 Software companies established in 1962 1962 establishments in England Software companies of the United Kingdom Defunct companies of the United Kingdom

45578566

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulkan

Vulkan

Vulkan is a low-overhead, cross-platform API, open standard for 3D graphics and computing. Vulkan targets high-performance real-time 3D graphics applications, such as video games and interactive media. In contrast to the older OpenGL and Direct3D 11 APIs, Vulkan is intended to offer higher performance and more balanced CPU and GPU usage. It provides a considerably lower-level API and parallel tasking for the application, comparable to Metal and Direct3D 12. In addition to its lower CPU usage, Vulkan is designed to allow developers to better distribute work among multiple CPU cores. Vulkan was first announced by the non-profit Khronos Group at GDC 2015. The Vulkan API was initially referred to as the "next generation OpenGL initiative", or "OpenGL next" by Khronos, but use of those names was discontinued when Vulkan was announced. Vulkan is derived from and built upon components of AMD's Mantle API, which was donated by AMD to Khronos with the intent of giving Khronos a foundation on which to begin developing a low-level API that they could standardize across the industry. Vulkan is not backwards compatible with OpenGL. Features Vulkan is intended to provide a variety of advantages over other APIs as well as its predecessor, OpenGL. Vulkan offers lower overhead, more direct control over the GPU, and lower CPU usage. The overall concept and feature set of Vulkan is similar to Mantle later adopted by Microsoft with Direct3D 12 and Apple with Metal. Intended advantages of Vulkan over previous-generation APIs include the following. Unified API A single API for both desktop and mobile graphics devices, whereas previously these were split between OpenGL and OpenGL ES respectively. Cross platform Availability on multiple modern operating systems in contrast to Direct3D 12; like OpenGL, the Vulkan API is not locked to a single OS or device form factor. As of release, Vulkan runs on Android, Linux, BSD Unix, QNX, Nintendo Switch, Raspberry Pi, Stadia, Fuchsia, Tizen, Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 10 (MoltenVK provides freely-licensed third-party support for iOS and macOS based on Metal) Lower CPU usage Reduced driver overhead, reducing CPU workloads. Reduced load on CPUs through the use of batching, leaving the CPU free to do more computation or rendering than otherwise. Multithread-friendly Better scaling on multi-core CPUs. Direct3D 11 and OpenGL 4 were initially designed for use with single-core CPUs and only received augmentation to be executed on multi-cores. Even when application developers use the augmentations, the API regularly does not scale well on multi-cores. Precompiled shaders OpenGL uses the high-level language GLSL for writing shaders, which forces each OpenGL driver to implement its own compiler for GLSL. This then executes at application runtime to translate the program's shaders into the GPU's machine code. Contrasted to Vulkan drivers are supposed to ingest shaders already translated into an intermediate binary format called SPIR-V (Standard Portable Intermediate Representation), analogous to the binary format that HLSL shaders are compiled into in Direct3D. By allowing shader pre-compilation, application initialization speed is improved and a larger variety of shaders can be used per scene. A Vulkan driver only needs to do GPU specific optimization and code generation, resulting in easier driver maintenance, and eventually smaller driver packages (currently GPU vendors still have to include OpenGL/CL). The developers of applications now can hide proprietary shader code. Others Unified management of compute kernels and graphical shaders, eliminating the need to use a separate compute API in conjunction with a graphics API. Ray tracing through the VK_KHR_ray_tracing extension OpenGL vs. Vulkan NVIDIA notes that "OpenGL is still a great option for a lot of use cases, as it comes at a much lower complexity and maintenance burden than Vulkan, while in many cases still providing great overall performance." AMD claims that: "Vulkan supports close-to-metal control, enabling faster performance and better image quality across Windows 7, Windows 8.1, Windows 10, and Linux. No other graphics API offers the same powerful combination of OS compatibility, rendering features, and hardware efficiency." Versions Vulkan 1.1 At SIGGRAPH 2016, Khronos announced that Vulkan would be getting support for automatic multi-GPU features, similar to what is offered by Direct3D 12. Multi-GPU support included in-API removes the need for SLI or Crossfire which requires graphics cards to be of the same model. API multi-GPU instead allows the API to intelligently split the workload among two or more completely different GPUs. For example, integrated GPUs included on the CPU can be used in conjunction with a high-end dedicated GPU for a slight performance boost. On March 7, 2018, Vulkan 1.1 was released by the Khronos Group. This first major update to the API standardized several extensions, such as multi-view, device groups, cross-process and cross-API sharing, advanced compute functionality, HLSL support, and YCbCr support. At the same time, it also brought better compatibility with DirectX 12, explicit multi-GPU support, ray tracing support, and laid the groundwork for the next generation of GPUs. Alongside Vulkan 1.1, SPIR-V was updated to version 1.3. Vulkan 1.2 On January 15, 2020, Vulkan 1.2 was released by the Khronos Group. This second major update to the API integrates 23 additional commonly-used proven Vulkan extensions into the base Vulkan standard. Some of the most important features are "timeline semaphores for easily managed synchronization", "a formal memory model to precisely define the semantics of synchronization and memory operations in different threads", and "descriptor indexing to enable reuse of descriptor layouts by multiple shaders". The additional features of Vulkan 1.2 improve its flexibility when it comes to implementing other graphics APIs on top of Vulkan, including "uniform buffer standard layout", "scalar block layout", and "separate stencil usage". Vulkan 1.3 On January 25, 2022, Vulkan 1.3 was released by the Khronos Group. This third major update to the API integrates 23 additional commonly-used proven Vulkan extensions into the base Vulkan standard. Vulkan 1.3 focuses on reducing fragmentation by making the new features not optional in order for a device to be considered Vulkan 1.3 capable. The new features in Vulkan 1.3 include dynamic rendering, additional dynamic state, improved synchronization API, and device profiles. Planned features When releasing OpenCL 2.2, the Khronos Group announced that OpenCL would converge where possible with Vulkan to enable OpenCL software deployment flexibility over both APIs. This has been now demonstrated by Adobe's Premiere Rush using the clspv open source compiler to compile significant amounts of OpenCL C kernel code to run on a Vulkan runtime for deployment on Android. History The Khronos Group began a project to create a next generation graphics API in July 2014 with a kickoff meeting at Valve. At SIGGRAPH 2014, the project was publicly announced with a call for participants. According to the US Patent and Trademark Office, the trademark for Vulkan was filed on February 19, 2015. Vulkan was formally named and announced at Game Developers Conference 2015, although speculation and rumors centered around a new API existed beforehand and referred to it as "glNext". 2015 In early 2015, LunarG (funded by Valve) developed and showcased a Linux driver for Intel which enabled Vulkan compatibility on the HD 4000 series integrated graphics, despite the open-source Mesa drivers not being fully compatible with OpenGL 4.0 until later that year. There is still the possibility of Sandy Bridge support, since it supports compute through Direct3D11. On August 10, 2015, Google announced that future versions of Android would support Vulkan. Android 7.x "Nougat" launched support for Vulkan on August 22, 2016. Android 8.0 "Oreo" has full support. On December 18, 2015, the Khronos Group announced that the 1.0 version of the Vulkan specification was nearly complete and would be released when conforming drivers were available. 2016 The specification and the open-source Vulkan SDK were released on February 16, 2016. 2018 On February 26, 2018, Khronos Group announced that the Vulkan API became available to all on macOS and iOS through the MoltenVK library, which enables Vulkan to run on top of Metal. Other new developments were shown at SIGGRAPH 2018. Previously MoltenVK was a proprietary and commercially licensed solution, but Valve made an arrangement with developer Brenwill Workshop Ltd to open-source MoltenVK under the Apache 2.0 license and as a result the library is now available on GitHub. Valve also announced that Dota 2 can as of 26 February 2018 run on macOS using the Vulkan API, which is based on MoltenVK. 2019 On February 25, 2019, the Vulkan Safety Critical (SC) Working Group was announced to bring Vulkan GPU acceleration to safety critical industries. Google's Stadia streaming cloud gaming service uses Vulkan on Linux based servers with AMD GPUs. 2020 On January 15, 2020, Vulkan 1.2 was released. Alongside the Vulkan 1.2 release, the Khronos Group posted a blog post which considered that HLSL support in Vulkan had reached "production ready" status, given the improvements in Microsoft's DXC compiler and Khronos's glslang compiler, and new features in Vulkan 1.2 which enhance HLSL support. On February 3, 2020, the Raspberry Pi Foundation announced that it was working on an open source Vulkan driver for their Raspberry Pi, a popular single board computer. On June 20, 2020, a graphics engineer revealed that he had created one after two years of work that was capable of running VkQuake3 at over 100FPS on the small computer. On March 17, 2020, Khronos Group released the Ray Tracing extensions, based on Nvidia's proprietary extension, with some major extensions and many minor changes, which in turn was based on Nvidia's OptiX API. On November 23, 2020, these Ray Tracing extensions were finalized. On November 24, 2020, Raspberry Pi Foundation announced that their driver for the Raspberry Pi 4 is Vulkan 1.0 conformant. 2021 2022 On January 25, 2022, Vulkan 1.3 was released. Support across vendors Initial specifications stated that Vulkan will work on hardware that currently supports OpenGL ES 3.1 or OpenGL 4.x and up. As Vulkan support requires new graphics drivers, this does not necessarily imply that every existing device that supports OpenGL ES 3.1 or OpenGL 4.x will have Vulkan drivers available. Intel, Nvidia and AMD All three major PC vendors provide free of charge the Vulkan API implementations in the form of drivers for the Linux and Windows systems. Vulkan 1.1 is supported by the newer lines of hardware like Intel Skylake and higher, AMD GCN 2nd and higher, and Nvidia Kepler and higher. AMD, Arm, Imagination Technologies, Intel, Nvidia and Qualcomm support actual hardware since the second half of 2018 with Vulkan 1.1 drivers. Mesa 18.1 supports with RADV and ANVIL driver AMD and Intel hardware. Actual state in Mesa 3D of RADV and ANVIL see Mesamatrix. Google Android Many Android devices' hardware support OpenGL ES specification. Examples Android 7.0 Nougat (Vulkan 1.0). Android 9.0 Pie and Android 10 for Vulkan 1.1. Apple As of June 3, 2021, there is no native support for Vulkan API provided by Apple devices. Support for iOS and macOS has not been announced by Apple. There is an attempt to work around this problem with an open-source library MoltenVK which provides Vulkan implementation on top of Metal graphics API on iOS and macOS devices, though it has some limitations. Qualcomm Adreno 5xx (2018) and 6xx series for mobile Qualcomm Snapdragon platforms (Snapdragon 820 etc.) GPUs support Vulkan 1.1 via its Adreno GPU SDK. The SDK is based on Android Studio IDE and Android NDK is needed to utilize all its features. See also List of 3D graphics libraries Notes References Further reading Vulkan Programming Guide: The Official Guide to Learning Vulkan (OpenGL), Nov 10, 2016, by Graham Sellers and John Kessenich Learning Vulkan, Dec 2016, by Parminder Singh Introduction to Computer Graphics and the Vulkan API, Jul 1, 2017, by Kenwright Vulkan Cookbook, Apr 28, 2017, by Pawel Lapinski External links 2015 software 3D graphics APIs Cross-platform software Graphics libraries Graphics standards Software using the Apache license Video game development Virtual reality

38309

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation%20of%20Investigatory%20Powers%20Act%202000

Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000

The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (c.23) (RIP or RIPA) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, regulating the powers of public bodies to carry out surveillance and investigation, and covering the interception of communications. It was introduced by the Tony Blair Labour government ostensibly to take account of technological change such as the growth of the Internet and strong encryption. The Regulation of Investigatory Powers (RIP) Bill was introduced in the House of Commons on 9 February 2000 and completed its Parliamentary passage on 26 July. Following a public consultation and Parliamentary debate, Parliament approved new additions in December 2003, April 2005, July 2006 and February 2010. A draft bill was put before Parliament during 4 November 2015. Summary RIPA regulates the manner in which certain public bodies may conduct surveillance and access a person's electronic communications. The Act: enables certain public bodies to demand that an ISP provide access to a customer's communications in secret; enables mass surveillance of communications in transit; enables certain public bodies to demand ISPs fit equipment to facilitate surveillance; enables certain public bodies to demand that someone hand over keys to protected information; allows certain public bodies to monitor people's Internet activities; prevents the existence of interception warrants and any data collected with them from being revealed in court. Powers Agencies with investigative powers Communications data The type of communications data that can be accessed varies with the reason for its use, and cannot be adequately explained here. Refer to the legislation for more specific information. Charity Commission Criminal Cases Review Commission Common Services Agency for the Scottish Health Service a county council or district council in England, a London borough council, the Common Council of the City of London in its capacity as a local authority, the Council of the Isles of Scilly, and any county council or county borough council in Wales Department for Transport, for the purposes of: Marine Accident Investigation Branch Rail Accident Investigation Branch Air Accidents Investigation Branch Maritime and Coastguard Agency a district council within the meaning of the Local Government Act (Northern Ireland) 1972 Department of Agriculture and Rural Development for Northern Ireland Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment for Northern Ireland (for the purposes of Trading Standards) Department of Health (for the purposes of the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency) Department of Trade and Industry Environment Agency Financial Conduct Authority a fire and rescue authority Fire Authority for Northern Ireland Food Standards Agency Gambling Commission Gangmasters Licensing Authority Government Communications Headquarters Health and Safety Executive HM Revenue and Customs Home Office (for the purposes of the UK Border Agency) Independent Police Complaints Commission Information Commissioner a Joint Board where it is a fire authority Office of Communications Office of Fair Trading The Pensions Regulator Office of the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland Port of Dover Police Port of Liverpool Police Post Office Investigation Branch Postal Services Commission NHS ambulance service Trust NHS Counter Fraud and Security Management Service Northern Ireland Ambulance Service Health and Social Services Trust Northern Ireland Health and Social Services Central Services Agency Royal Navy Regulating Branch Royal Military Police Royal Air Force Police Scottish Ambulance Service Board a Scottish council where it is a fire authority Scottish Environment Protection Agency Secret Intelligence Service Security Service Serious Fraud Office the special police forces (including the Scottish Drug Enforcement Agency) the territorial police forces Welsh Ambulance Services NHS Trust Directed surveillance and covert human intelligence sources The reasons for which the use of directed surveillance & covert human intelligence sources is permitted vary with each authority. Refer to the legislation for more specific information. the armed forces Charity Commission Commission for Healthcare Audit and Inspection a county council or district council in England, a London borough council, the Common Council of the City of London in its capacity as a local authority, the Council of the Isles of Scilly, and any county council or county borough council in Wales Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (for the purposes of the Marine Fisheries Agency) Department of Health (for the purposes of the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency) Department of Trade and Industry Department for Transport (for the purposes of transport security, Vehicle and Operator Services Agency, Driving Standards Agency and Maritime and Coastguard Agency) Department for Work and Pensions Environment Agency Financial Conduct Authority a fire authority Food Standards Agency Gambling Commission Gangmasters Licensing Authority Government Communications Headquarters Commissioners of Revenue and Customs Home Office (for the purposes of HM Prison Service and the UK Border Agency) Ministry of Defence Northern Ireland Office (for the purposes of the Northern Ireland Prison Service) Ofcom Office of Fair Trading Office of the Deputy Prime Minister Office of the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland Postal Services Commission Port of Dover Police Port of Liverpool Police Royal Mail Secret Intelligence Service Security Service Serious Fraud Office Welsh Government (for the purposes of the NHS Directorate, NHS Finance Division, Common Agricultural Policy Management Division and Care Standards Inspectorate for Wales) a territorial police force or special police force Directed surveillance The reasons for which the use of directed surveillance is permitted vary with each authority. Refer to the legislation for more specific information. Health & Safety Executive Information Commissioner Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Schools in England (for the purposes of the Complaints, Investigation and Enforcement Team) General Pharmaceutical Council Controversy Critics claim that the spectres of terrorism, internet crime and paedophilia were used to push the act through and that there was little substantive debate in the House of Commons. The act has numerous critics, many of whom regard the RIPA regulations as excessive and a threat to civil liberties in the UK. Campaign group Big Brother Watch published a report in 2010 investigating the improper use of RIPA by local councils. Critics such as Keith Vaz, the chairman of the House of Commons home affairs committee, have expressed concern that the act is being abused for "petty and vindictive" cases. Similarly, Brian Binley, Member of Parliament (MP) for Northampton South has urged councils to stop using the law, accusing them of acting like comic strip detective Dick Tracy. The Trading Standards Institute has been very critical of these views, stating that the use of surveillance is critical to their success (see TSI press release). The "deniable encryption" features in free software such as FreeOTFE, TrueCrypt and BestCrypt could be said to make the task of investigations featuring RIPA much more difficult. Another concern is that the Act requires sufficiently large UK Internet Service Providers to install technical systems to assist law enforcement agencies with interception activity. Although this equipment must be installed at the ISPs' expense, RIPA does provide that Parliament will examine appropriate funding for ISPs if the cost burden became unfairly high. Accusations of oppressive use In April 2008, it became known that council officials in Poole put three children and their parents under surveillance, at home and in their daily movements, to check whether they lived in a particular school catchment area. Council officials carried out directed surveillance on the family a total of 21 times. Tim Martin, the council's head of legal services, had authorised the surveillance and tried to argue that it was justified under RIPA, but in a subsequent ruling by the Investigatory Powers Tribunal – its first ever ruling – the surveillance was deemed to be unlawful. The same council put fishermen under covert surveillance to check for the illegal harvesting of cockles and clams in ways that are regulated by RIPA. David Smith, deputy commissioner at the ICO (Information Commissioner's Office) stated that he was concerned about the surveillance which took place in Poole. Other councils in the UK have conducted undercover operations regulated by RIPA against dog fouling and fly-tipping. In April 2016, 12 councils said that they use unmanned aerial vehicles for "covert operations", and that such flights are covered by the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000. Despite claims in the press that local councils are conducting over a thousand RIPA-based covert surveillance operations every month for petty offences such as under-age smoking and breaches of planning regulations, the Office of Surveillance Commissioners' last report shows that public bodies granted 8,477 requests for Directed Surveillance, down over 1,400 on the previous year. Less than half of those were granted by Local Authorities, and the commissioner reported that, "Generally speaking, local authorities use their powers sparingly with over half of them granting five or fewer authorisations for directed surveillance. Some sixteen per cent granted none at all." In June 2008, the chairman of the Local Government Association, Sir Simon Milton, sent out a letter to the leaders of every council in England, urging local governments not to use the new powers granted by RIPA "for trivial matters", and suggested "reviewing these powers annually by an appropriate scrutiny committee". Especially contentious was Part III of the Act, which requires persons to (allegedly) self-incriminate by disclosing a password to government representatives. Failure to do so is a criminal offence, with a penalty of two years in jail or five years in cases involving national security or child indecency. Using the mechanism of secondary legislation, some parts of the Act required activation by a ministerial order before attaining legal force. Such orders have been made in respect of the relevant sections of Part I and Part II of the RIP Act and Part III. The latter became active in October 2007. The first case where the powers were used was against animal rights activists in November 2007. Identification of journalists' sources In October 2014, it was revealed that RIPA had been used by UK police forces to obtain information about journalists' sources in at least two cases. These related to the so-called Plebgate inquiry and the prosecution of Chris Huhne for perversion of the course of justice. In both cases, journalists' telephone records were obtained using the powers of the act in order to identify their sources, bypassing the usual court proceedings needed to obtain such information. The UK newspaper The Sun made an official written complaint to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal to seek a public review of the London Metropolitan Police's use of anti-terror laws to obtain the phone records of Tom Newton Dunn, its political editor, in relation to its inquiry into the "Plebgate" affair. The Sun’s complaint coincided with confirmation that the phone records of the news editor of the Mail on Sunday and one of its freelance journalists had also been obtained by Kent police force when they investigated Chris Huhne's speeding fraud. Journalists' sources are usually agreed to be privileged and protected from disclosure under European laws with which the UK complies. However, by using RIPA an investigating office just needs approval from a senior officer rather than the formal approval of a court hearing. Media lawyers and press freedom groups are concerned by the use of RIPA because it happens in secret and the press have no way of knowing whether their sources have been compromised. Responding to The Sun's complaint Sir Paul Kennedy, the interception of communications commissioner, launched a full inquiry and urged Home Office ministers to accelerate the introduction of promised protections for journalists, lawyers and others who handle privileged information, including confidential helplines, from such police surveillance operations. He said: "I fully understand and share the concerns raised by the protection of journalistic sources so as to enable a free press. Today I have written to all chief constables and directed them under section 58 (1) of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa) to provide me with full details of all investigations that have used Ripa powers to acquire communications data to identify journalistic sources. My office will undertake a full inquiry into these matters and report our findings to the prime minister". On 12 October 2014, the justice minister, Simon Hughes, confirmed on Sky News's Murnaghan programme that the UK government will reform RIPA to prevent the police using surveillance powers to discover journalists' sources. He said that the police's use of RIPA's powers had been "entirely inappropriate" and in future the authorisation of a judge would be needed for police forces to be given approval to access journalists' phone records in pursuit of a criminal investigation. The presumption would be that if a journalist was acting in the public interest, they would be protected, he added. Hughes further said that if the police made an application to a court he would assume a journalist would be informed that the authorities were seeking to access his phone records. More than 100,000 RIPA requests are made every year for access to communications data against targets including private citizens. It is not known how many have involved journalists' phones. Prosecutions under RIPA A number of offences have been prosecuted involving the abuse of investigatory powers. Widely reported cases include the Stanford/Liddell case, the Goodman/Mulcaire Royal voicemail interception, and Operation Barbatus. Cliff Stanford, and George Nelson Liddell pleaded guilty to offences under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act in 2005. They were found to have intercepted emails at the company Redbus Interhouse. Stanford was sentenced to six months' imprisonment suspended for two years, and fined £20,000. It was alleged Stanford had intercepted emails between Dame Shirley Porter and John Porter (Chairman of Redbus Interhouse). In 2007, News of the World royal editor Clive Goodman was sentenced to four months in jail for intercepting the voicemail of members of the Royal Family. His associate Glenn Mulcaire received a six-month sentence. In 2007, Operation Barbatus exposed a sophisticated criminal surveillance business organised by corrupt police officers. A former Metropolitan Police officer, Jeremy Young, was jailed for 27 months for various offences including six counts of conspiracy to intercept communications unlawfully. A second former policeman, Scott Gelsthorpe, was sentenced to 24 months for offences including conspiracy to intercept communications unlawfully. 3 other former police officers and a private detective were also jailed for their part in running a private detective agency called Active Investigation Services. In 2008, four people were cautioned for 'Unlawful intercepting of a postal, public or private telecommunications scheme', under S.1(1), (2) & (7). The circumstances of the offences are not known at the time of writing. Three people were tried for 'Failure to disclose key to protected information' under S.53 (of which 2 were tried). One person was tried for 'Disclosing details of Section 49 Notice' under S.54. In August 2009 it was announced that two people had been prosecuted and convicted for refusing to provide British authorities with their encryption keys, under Part III of the Act. The first of these was sentenced to a term of 9 months' imprisonment. In a 2010 case, Oliver Drage, a 19-year-old takeaway worker being investigated as part of a police investigation into a child exploitation network, was sentenced, at Preston Crown Court, to four months imprisonment. Mr Drage was arrested in May 2009, after investigating officers searched his home near Blackpool. He had been required, under this act, to provide his 50-character encryption key but had not complied. In a further case in 2010 Poole Borough Council was accused of spying unfairly on a family. Although the Council invoked powers under RIPA to establish whether a family fell into a certain school catchment area, when taken before the Investigatory Powers Tribunal it was found guilty of improper use of surveillance powers. Amendments In October 2020 the Government introduced the Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Bill which would permit, in certain circumstances, to authorise security, intelligence and police agencies to participate in criminal conduct during their operations. This Bill would amend the RIPA where required. Investigatory Powers Tribunal The 2000 Act established the Investigatory Powers Tribunal to hear complaints about surveillance by public bodies. The Tribunal replaced the Interception of Communications Tribunal, the Security Service Tribunal, and the Intelligence Services Tribunal with effect from 2 October 2000. Between 2000 and 2009 the tribunal upheld only 4 out of 956 complaints. See also Human Rights Act 1998 Investigatory Powers Act 2016 Mass surveillance in the United Kingdom Phone hacking Rubber-hose cryptanalysis Plausible deniability Interception Modernisation Programme United States v. Boucher, a case in the US courts which determined that a criminal defendant cannot be forced to reveal his encryption passphrase but can be forced to provide a plaintext (decrypted) copy of their encrypted data, if the defendant had previously willingly shown the authorities the drive's contents (i.e., having previously incriminated himself with those contents) References External links Regulation of Investigatory Powers Information Centre (against RIP) Parliament "didn't understand RIP Act" Articles on aspects of RIPA and Surveillance Law BBC News Website (April 2008) – RIPA Spy law 'used in dog fouling war' Computing legislation Cryptography law History of telecommunications in the United Kingdom Mass surveillance United Kingdom Acts of Parliament 2000 Law enforcement in the United Kingdom Home Office (United Kingdom)

523508

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortune%20%28Unix%29

Fortune (Unix)

fortune is a program that displays a pseudorandom message from a database of quotations that first appeared in Version 7 Unix. The most common version on modern systems is the BSD fortune, originally written by Ken Arnold. Distributions of fortune are usually bundled with a collection of themed files, containing sayings like those found on fortune cookies (hence the name), quotations from famous people, jokes, or poetry. As of November 2017, the quotations (with the exception of tips relevant to system operation) have been removed from FreeBSD entirely after user complaints regarding quotations from Adolf Hitler being contained in some of the files. fortune is predominantly found on Unix-like systems, but clients for other platforms also exist. Often, users on text-mode Unix terminals will place this command into either their .profile or .logout files to display them at logon and logout, respectively. It is also used to generate text input for certain XScreenSaver modes. It is possible to pipe fortune into the cowsay command, to add more humor to the dialog. Content Most Unix systems use fortunes which are slanted heavily toward the user base of Unix, and thus contain many obscure jokes about computer science and computer programming. Other favoured sources include quotations from science fiction (Star Trek, The Cyberiad, Doctor Who, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, etc.), Zippy the Pinhead, and the writings of Ambrose Bierce and Dave Barry. Most fortune collections also include a wide variety of more conventionally sourced quotations, jokes, and other short passages. A few distributions include "offensive" dicta, which require the -a or -o options to be passed for viewing. These fortunes often include rude humor and profanity, personal attacks, and controversial comments about religion. Sometimes they are provided by another package, however as of FreeBSD 10.0 the offensive dicta have been removed completely. The exact fortunes vary between each type of Unix, however there seems to be a strong overlap between the FreeBSD and OpenBSD fortune files. The Plan 9 fortune files seem to be much shorter, with many just on 1 line, and the 'offensive' dicta is much stronger. Most Linux distributions, such as Debian (and its derivatives), choose the FreeBSD fortunes to put in their fortune packages, that can be installed through the package manager. Purpose One of the included fortunes, from the "goedel" collection of fortunes about fortune itself, sums up the purpose of the program: Has anyone realized that the purpose of the fortune cookie program is to defuse project tensions? When did you ever see a cheerful cookie, a non-cynical, or even an informative cookie? Perhaps inadvertently, we have a channel for our aggressions. This still begs the question of whether[sic] the cookie releases the pressure or only serves to blunt the warning signs. Long live the revolution! Have a nice day. The original fortune program could be used for the more general task of picking up a random line from a plain-text file. The example of such use is given in the rc documentation. However, in most modern Unix systems fortune cannot be used this way, since they use an ad hoc file format for fortune files to allow multiline aphorisms. Fortune files Conventional versions of fortune use two files for each quotation list: a text file with quotations, each separated by the character "%" on its own line, and a random-access data file generated by the strfile(1) program. Alternative implementations, including those made for display on Web pages, typically use only the text file. Common options Several common options exist that change the way command-line versions of fortune behave: See also QOTD References External links A PHP version of the fortune program The manual page for the original Unix fortune(6) command. Maintenance version of fortune-mod's source code - on GitHub with new releases ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/games/amusements/fortune/ – source code for fortune-mod program A wiki containing all of the original non offensive fortunes A modern, color-terminal oriented fortune database A fortune-mod add on for math-related fortunes A portable and full implementation in Python, distributed with all the classical and historical cookie files 1979 software Unix software Novelty software Free and open-source Android software Plan 9 commands

31485432

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud%20Foundry

Cloud Foundry

Cloud Foundry is an open source, multi-cloud application platform as a service (PaaS) governed by the Cloud Foundry Foundation, a 501(c)(6) organization. The software was originally developed by VMware, transferred to Pivotal Software (a joint venture by EMC, VMware and General Electric), who then transferred the software to the Cloud Foundry Foundation upon its inception in 2015. History Originally conceived in 2009, Cloud Foundry was designed and developed by a small team at VMware led by Derek Collison and was originally called Project B29. At the time, a different PaaS project written in Java for Amazon EC2 used the name Cloud Foundry. It was founded by Chris Richardson in 2008 and acquired by SpringSource in 2009, the same year VMware acquired SpringSource. The current project is unrelated to the project under SpringSource, but the name was adopted when the original SpringSource project ended. The announcement of Cloud Foundry took place in April 2011. A year later, in April 2012, BOSH, an open source tool chain for release engineering, deployment, and life-cycle management of large scale distributed services, was publicly launched. In April 2013, Pivotal was created from EMC and VMware, to market assets including Cloud Foundry, RabbitMQ and Spring. By February 2014, it was announced that there would be an open governance foundation established with seven Platinum members and two Gold members. In May 2014, there was an announcement of expanded membership with the addition of eight new companies. By December 2014, the membership had increased to 40. Cloud Foundry Foundation In January 2015, the Cloud Foundry Foundation was created as an independent not-for-profit 501(c)(6) Linux Foundation Collaborative Project. Following the creation of the Cloud Foundry Foundation, the Cloud Foundry software (source code and all associated trademarks) was transferred to be held by the open source software foundation. It is primarily written in Ruby, Go and Java. As of February 2019, the Foundation had 65 members. The foundation serves as a neutral party holding all Cloud Foundry intellectual property. Once intellectual property is contributed to Cloud Foundry, it becomes property of the Foundation and these assets cannot be transferred to for-profit entities, as per the laws governing 501(c)(6) organizations. The Foundation holds two contributed types of intellectual property: trademarks and a copyright on the collective work of the community. It also has a license to use and re-license all code contributions, but does not own copyright on those contributions. Usage Cloud Foundry is promoted for continuous delivery as it supports the full application development lifecycle, from initial development through all testing stages to deployment. Cloud Foundry’s container-based architecture runs apps in any programming language over a variety of cloud service providers. This multi-cloud environment allows developers to use the cloud platform that suits specific application workloads and move those workloads as necessary within minutes with no changes to the application. Services Applications deployed to Cloud Foundry access external resources via an Open Service Broker API, which was launched in December 2016. In a platform, all external dependencies such as databases, messaging systems, file systems and so on are considered services. Cloud Foundry allows administrators to create a marketplace of services, from which users can provision these services on-demand. When an application is pushed to Cloud Foundry the services it needs may also be specified. This process puts the credentials in an environment variable. Software The development of Cloud Foundry is supported by the Cloud Foundry Foundation, through the governance process agreed to by its members. The source code is under an Apache License 2.0. and contributions are made based on the Cloud Foundry contributors' licenses for individuals and corporations. Born on a container-based architecture, Cloud Foundry is able to support innovation in containers through collaboration with other projects and standards such as Open Container Initiative (OCI) and Container Network Interface (CNI). Languages and frameworks that can be deployed using the buildpack lifecycle include: In addition to the buildpack lifecycle, applications packaged as Docker images can be deployed using the Docker lifecycle. Cloud Foundry Application Runtime can be deployed to many different infrastructure providers, including VMware’s vSphere, OpenStack, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, IBM Cloud, Google Cloud Platform, SAP Cloud Platform, Alibaba Cloud and others using the Cloud Provider Interface (CPI) capability of the Cloud Foundry BOSH project. It is also possible to install Cloud Foundry using a BOSH-Lite Vagrant virtual machine. Platform The Cloud Foundry platform is available from either the Cloud Foundry Foundation as open-source software or from a variety of commercial providers as either a software product or delivered as a service. Cloud Foundry is open-source software, and hence, it is available to anyone. Deploying Cloud Foundry involves interfacing with the underlying infrastructure using the Cloud Foundry BOSH deployment system, another open-source tool governed by the Cloud Foundry Foundation. In December 2015, the Cloud Foundry Foundation announced the “Cloud Foundry PaaS Certification program” which delineated criteria to be considered a Cloud Foundry Certified Provider. See also Cloud-computing comparison References External links Cloud computing Cloud computing providers Cloud infrastructure Cloud platforms Cloud storage File hosting Free software for cloud computing Free software programmed in Ruby Linux Foundation projects Network file systems Open-source cloud hosting services Web hosting Web services Pivotal Software

28357499

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG%20Optimus%20series

LG Optimus series

The LG Optimus series is a series of smartphones and tablet computers manufactured by LG Electronics. Optimus-branded devices have been produced running both the Android and Windows Phone 7 operating systems. Android LG Optimus, alternatively titled LG Optimus GT540, LG Loop, or LG Swift LG Optimus Q, alternatively titled LG LU2300 LG Optimus Pad, a tablet released in May 2011 LG Optimus Pad LTE, an LTE-capable successor tablet released in January 2012 in South Korea LG Optimus 2X, the first dual-core smartphone in the series, released in February 2011 LG Optimus 4X HD, a quad-core successor launched in October 2012 LG Optimus 3D, released in July 2011 LG Optimus 3D Max, successor announced in Mobile World Congress 2012 LG Optimus M LG Optimus Me LG Optimus Zip, released by Verizon Wireless on September 22, 2011 LG Optimus Slider, released by Virgin Mobile USA on October 17, 2011. LG Optimus LTE (alternatively LG Optimus True HD LTE), released in December 2011 LG Optimus LTE 2 was announced in May 2012, to feature 2 GB of RAM LG Optimus Vu, announced in February and released in March 2012 LG Optimus G, LG's 2012 flagship phone, released in November 2012 LG Optimus G Pro, a larger variation on the Optimus G, featuring a 1080p display; released in March 2013 in Japan and South Korea and May 2013 in the United States Optimus One The LG Optimus One, released in October 2010, is LG's second phone in the Optimus series. Due to network differences between carriers, LG created a sub-series with carrier-specific variants based on the Optimus One. Over two million of the Optimus One and its carrier variants combined have been sold. Additionally, some hardware variants add minor new features: LG Optimus Black, released in May 2011 LG Optimus Chat, featuring a smaller screen and a slide-out QWERTY keyboard LG Optimus Chic, with different hardware design plus improved digital camera and modem LG Optimus Net, with an improved 800 MHz single-core processor LG Optimus Sol, with an improved 1 GHz single-core processor Optimus L LG Optimus L is an Android sub-series launched in 2012. It consists of the following: First Series LG Optimus L2, released in July 2012 LG Optimus L3, released in February 2012 LG Optimus L5, released in June 2012 LG Optimus L7, released in July 2012 LG Optimus L9(P769), released in October 2012 LG Optimus L9(MS769), released in July 2013 Second Series LG Optimus L1 II, released in April 2013 LG Optimus L2 II, released in March 2014 LG Optimus L3 II, released in April 2013 LG Optimus L4 II, released in July 2013 LG Optimus L5 II, released in April 2013 LG Optimus L5 II Dual SIM LG Optimus L7 II, released in March 2013 LG Optimus L9 II, released in October 2013 Third Series LG Optimus L20 LG Optimus L30 Sporty LG Optimus L35 LG Optimus L40 LG Optimus L50 Sporty LG Optimus L60 LG Optimus L65 LG Optimus L70 LG Optimus L80 LG Optimus L90 And until fourth series, LG has started a new L product line. LG L Fino, released in September 2014 LG L Bello, released in September 2014 Optimus F LG Optimus F is an Android sub-series announced on February 21, 2013. It uses the same naming conventions as its predecessor, the Optimus L lineup. It includes the following: LG Optimus F3, released in June 2013 LG Optimus F3Q, released in February 2014 LG Optimus F5, released in May 2013 LG Optimus F6, model numbers D500 and MS500, released in September 2013 LG Optimus F7, released in June 2013 LG F60, released in 2014 LG F70, latest model in F series, released in 2014 Optimus G The Optimus G sub-series was introduced for LG's high-end devices in 2012. In 2013, after releasing two devices carrying the Optimus G branding, future products (such as the LG G2) dropped the Optimus brand entirely as part of a new separate G line. LG Optimus G LG Optimus G Pro LG G Pro 2 LG G2 LG G Flex LG G Pad 8.3 LG G3 LG G Flex 2 LG G4 LG G5 LG G6 LG G7 ThinQ Optimus Vu The Optimus Vu sub-series was introduced for LG's stylus-enabled devices in 2012. LG Optimus Vu LG Optimus Vu II LG Optimus Vu III Windows Phone LG only released two LG Optimus phones with the Windows Phone operating system, compared to 20 unique Android smartphones. The first of these was the LG Optimus 7, released in November 2010. It was followed by the LG Quantum, alternatively Optimus 7Q or Optimus Quantum, a variant with a physical keyboard. References LG Electronics mobile phones Android (operating system) devices

39601333

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM%20%28surveillance%20program%29

PRISM (surveillance program)

PRISM is a code name for a program under which the United States National Security Agency (NSA) collects internet communications from various U.S. internet companies. The program is also known by the SIGAD . PRISM collects stored internet communications based on demands made to internet companies such as Google LLC under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 to turn over any data that match court-approved search terms. Among other things, the NSA can use these PRISM requests to target communications that were encrypted when they traveled across the internet backbone, to focus on stored data that telecommunication filtering systems discarded earlier, and to get data that is easier to handle. PRISM began in 2007 in the wake of the passage of the Protect America Act under the Bush Administration. The program is operated under the supervision of the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA Court, or FISC) pursuant to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Its existence was leaked six years later by NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who warned that the extent of mass data collection was far greater than the public knew and included what he characterized as "dangerous" and "criminal" activities. The disclosures were published by The Guardian and The Washington Post on June 6, 2013. Subsequent documents have demonstrated a financial arrangement between the NSA's Special Source Operations (SSO) division and PRISM partners in the millions of dollars. Documents indicate that PRISM is "the number one source of raw intelligence used for NSA analytic reports", and it accounts for 91% of the NSA's internet traffic acquired under FISA section 702 authority." The leaked information came after the revelation that the FISA Court had been ordering a subsidiary of telecommunications company Verizon Communications to turn over logs tracking all of its customers' telephone calls to the NSA. U.S. government officials have disputed criticisms of PRISM in the Guardian and Washington Post articles and have defended the program, asserting that it cannot be used on domestic targets without a warrant. Additionally claiming the program has helped to prevent acts of terrorism, and that it receives independent oversight from the federal government's executive, judicial and legislative branches. On June 19, 2013, U.S. President Barack Obama, during a visit to Germany, stated that the NSA's data gathering practices constitute "a circumscribed, narrow system directed at us being able to protect our people." Media disclosure of PRISM PRISM was publicly revealed when classified documents about the program were leaked to journalists of The Washington Post and The Guardian by Edward Snowden at the time an NSA contractor during a visit to Hong Kong. The leaked documents included 41 PowerPoint slides, four of which were published in news articles. The documents identified several technology companies as participants in the PRISM program, including Microsoft in 2007, Yahoo! in 2008, Google in 2009, Facebook in 2009, Paltalk in 2009, YouTube in 2010, AOL in 2011, Skype in 2011 and Apple in 2012. The speaker's notes in the briefing document reviewed by The Washington Post indicated that "98 percent of PRISM production is based on Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft". The slide presentation stated that much of the world's electronic communications pass through the U.S., because electronic communications data tend to follow the least expensive route rather than the most physically direct route, and the bulk of the world's internet infrastructure is based in the United States. The presentation noted that these facts provide United States intelligence analysts with opportunities for intercepting the communications of foreign targets as their electronic data pass into or through the United States. Snowden's subsequent disclosures included statements that government agencies such as the United Kingdom's GCHQ also undertook mass interception and tracking of internet and communications data described by Germany as "nightmarish" if true allegations that the NSA engaged in "dangerous" and "criminal" activity by "hacking" civilian infrastructure networks in other countries such as "universities, hospitals, and private businesses", and alleged that compliance offered only very limited restrictive effect on mass data collection practices (including of Americans) since restrictions "are policy-based, not technically based, and can change at any time", adding that "Additionally, audits are cursory, incomplete, and easily fooled by fake justifications", with numerous self-granted exceptions, and that NSA policies encourage staff to assume the benefit of the doubt in cases of uncertainty. The slides Below are a number of slides released by Edward Snowden showing the operation and processes behind the PRISM program. The "FAA" referred to is Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act ("FAA"), and not the Federal Aviation Administration, which is more widely known by the same FAA initialism. The French newspaper Le Monde disclosed new PRISM slides (see pages 4, 7 and 8) coming from the "PRISM/US-984XN Overview" presentation on October 21, 2013. The British newspaper The Guardian disclosed new PRISM slides (see pages 3 and 6) in November 2013 which on the one hand compares PRISM with the Upstream program, and on the other hand deals with collaboration between the NSA's Threat Operations Center and the FBI. The program PRISM is a program from the Special Source Operations (SSO) division of the NSA, which in the tradition of NSA's intelligence alliances, cooperates with as many as 100 trusted U.S. companies since the 1970s. A prior program, the Terrorist Surveillance Program, was implemented in the wake of the September 11 attacks under the George W. Bush Administration but was widely criticized and challenged as illegal, because it did not include warrants obtained from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. PRISM was authorized by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. PRISM was enabled under President Bush by the Protect America Act of 2007 and by the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which immunizes private companies from legal action when they cooperate with U.S. government agencies in intelligence collection. In 2012 the act was renewed by Congress under President Obama for an additional five years, through December 2017. According to The Register, the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 "specifically authorizes intelligence agencies to monitor the phone, email, and other communications of U.S. citizens for up to a week without obtaining a warrant" when one of the parties is outside the U.S. The most detailed description of the PRISM program can be found in a report about NSA's collection efforts under Section 702 FAA, that was released by the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) on July 2, 2014. According to this report, PRISM is only used to collect internet communications, not telephone conversations. These internet communications are not collected in bulk, but in a targeted way: only communications that are to or from specific selectors, like e-mail addresses, can be gathered. Under PRISM, there's no collection based upon keywords or names. The actual collection process is done by the Data Intercept Technology Unit (DITU) of the FBI, which on behalf of the NSA sends the selectors to the U.S. internet service providers, which were previously served with a Section 702 Directive. Under this directive, the provider is legally obliged to hand over (to DITU) all communications to or from the selectors provided by the government. DITU then sends these communications to NSA, where they are stored in various databases, depending on their type. Data, both content and metadata, that already have been collected under the PRISM program, may be searched for both US and non-US person identifiers. These kinds of queries became known as "back-door searches" and are conducted by NSA, FBI and CIA. Each of these agencies has slightly different protocols and safeguards to protect searches with a US person identifier. Extent of the program Internal NSA presentation slides included in the various media disclosures show that the NSA could unilaterally access data and perform "extensive, in-depth surveillance on live communications and stored information" with examples including email, video and voice chat, videos, photos, voice-over-IP chats (such as Skype), file transfers, and social networking details. Snowden summarized that "in general, the reality is this: if an NSA, FBI, CIA, DIA, etc. analyst has access to query raw SIGINT [signals intelligence] databases, they can enter and get results for anything they want." According to The Washington Post, the intelligence analysts search PRISM data using terms intended to identify suspicious communications of targets whom the analysts suspect with at least 51 percent confidence to not be U.S. citizens, but in the process, communication data of some U.S. citizens are also collected unintentionally. Training materials for analysts tell them that while they should periodically report such accidental collection of non-foreign U.S. data, "it's nothing to worry about." According to The Guardian, NSA had access to chats and emails on Hotmail.com and Skype because Microsoft had "developed a surveillance capability to deal" with the interception of chats, and "for Prism collection against Microsoft email services will be unaffected because Prism collects this data prior to encryption." Also according to The Guardian's Glenn Greenwald even low-level NSA analysts are allowed to search and listen to the communications of Americans and other people without court approval and supervision. Greenwald said low level Analysts can, via systems like PRISM, "listen to whatever emails they want, whatever telephone calls, browsing histories, Microsoft Word documents. And it's all done with no need to go to a court, with no need to even get supervisor approval on the part of the analyst." He added that the NSA databank, with its years of collected communications, allows analysts to search that database and listen "to the calls or read the emails of everything that the NSA has stored, or look at the browsing histories or Google search terms that you've entered, and it also alerts them to any further activity that people connected to that email address or that IP address do in the future." Greenwald was referring in the context of the foregoing quotes to the NSA program X-Keyscore. PRISM overview Responses to disclosures United States government Executive branch Shortly after publication of the reports by The Guardian and The Washington Post, the United States Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, on June 7, 2013, released a statement confirming that for nearly six years the government of the United States had been using large internet services companies such as Facebook to collect information on foreigners outside the United States as a defense against national security threats. The statement read in part, "The Guardian and The Washington Post articles refer to collection of communications pursuant to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. They contain numerous inaccuracies." He went on to say, "Section 702 is a provision of FISA that is designed to facilitate the acquisition of foreign intelligence information concerning non-U.S. persons located outside the United States. It cannot be used to intentionally target any U.S. citizen, any other U.S. person, or anyone located within the United States." Clapper concluded his statement by stating, "The unauthorized disclosure of information about this important and entirely legal program is reprehensible and risks important protections for the security of Americans." On March 12, 2013, Clapper had told the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that the NSA does "not wittingly" collect any type of data on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans. Clapper later admitted the statement he made on March 12, 2013, was a lie, or in his words "I responded in what I thought was the most truthful, or least untruthful manner by saying no." On June 7, 2013, U.S. President Barack Obama, referring to the PRISM program and the NSA's telephone calls logging program, said, "What you've got is two programs that were originally authorized by Congress, have been repeatedly authorized by Congress. Bipartisan majorities have approved them. Congress is continually briefed on how these are conducted. There are a whole range of safeguards involved. And federal judges are overseeing the entire program throughout." He also said, "You can't have 100 percent security and then also have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience. You know, we're going to have to make some choices as a society." In separate statements, senior Obama administration officials (not mentioned by name in source) said that Congress had been briefed 13 times on the programs since 2009. On June 8, 2013, Director of National Intelligence Clapper made an additional public statement about PRISM and released a fact sheet providing further information about the program, which he described as "an internal government computer system used to facilitate the government's statutorily authorized collection of foreign intelligence information from electronic communication service providers under court supervision, as authorized by Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) (50 U.S.C. § 1881a)." The fact sheet stated that "the surveillance activities published in The Guardian and the Washington Post are lawful and conducted under authorities widely known and discussed, and fully debated and authorized by Congress." The fact sheet also stated that "the United States Government does not unilaterally obtain information from the servers of U.S. electronic communication service providers. All such information is obtained with FISA Court approval and with the knowledge of the provider based upon a written directive from the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence." It said that the attorney general provides FISA Court rulings and semi-annual reports about PRISM activities to Congress, "provid[ing] an unprecedented degree of accountability and transparency." Democratic senators Udall and Wyden, who serve on the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, subsequently criticized the fact sheet as being inaccurate. NSA Director General Keith Alexander acknowledged the errors, stating that the fact sheet "could have more precisely described" the requirements governing the collection of e-mail and other internet content from US companies. The fact sheet was withdrawn from the NSA's website around June 26. In a closed-doors Senate hearing around June 11, FBI Director Robert Mueller said that Snowden's leaks had caused "significant harm to our nation and to our safety." In the same Senate NSA Director Alexander defended the program. Alexander's defense was immediately criticized by Senators Udall and Wyden, who said they saw no evidence that the NSA programs had produced "uniquely valuable intelligence." In a joint statement, they wrote, "Gen Alexander's testimony yesterday suggested that the NSA's bulk phone records collection program helped thwart 'dozens' of terrorist attacks, but all of the plots that he mentioned appear to have been identified using other collection methods." On June 18, NSA Director Alexander said in an open hearing before the House Intelligence Committee of Congress that communications surveillance had helped prevent more than 50 potential terrorist attacks worldwide (at least 10 of them involving terrorism suspects or targets in the United States) between 2001 and 2013, and that the PRISM web traffic surveillance program contributed in over 90 percent of those cases. According to court records, one example Alexander gave regarding a thwarted attack by al Qaeda on the New York Stock Exchange was not in fact foiled by surveillance. Several senators wrote Director of National Intelligence Clapper asking him to provide other examples. U.S. intelligence officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, told various news outlets that by June 24 they were already seeing what they said was evidence that suspected terrorists had begun changing their communication practices in order to evade detection by the surveillance tools disclosed by Snowden. Legislative branch In contrast to their swift and forceful reactions the previous day to allegations that the government had been conducting surveillance of United States citizens' telephone records, Congressional leaders initially had little to say about the PRISM program the day after leaked information about the program was published. Several lawmakers declined to discuss PRISM, citing its top-secret classification, and others said that they had not been aware of the program. After statements had been released by the president and the Director of National Intelligence, some lawmakers began to comment: Senator John McCain (R-AZ) June 9, 2013, "We passed the Patriot Act. We passed specific provisions of the act that allowed for this program to take place, to be enacted in operation." Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee June 9 "These programs are within the law," "part of our obligation is keeping Americans safe," "Human intelligence isn't going to do it." June 9 "Here's the rub: the instances where this has produced good—has disrupted plots, prevented terrorist attacks, is all classified, that's what's so hard about this." June 11 "It went fine. ... We asked him (Keith Alexander) to declassify things because it would be helpful (for people and lawmakers to better understand the intelligence programs). ... I've just got to see if the information gets declassified. I'm sure people will find it very interesting." Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) June 9 "I'm going to be seeing if I can challenge this at the Supreme Court level. I'm going to be asking the internet providers and all of the phone companies: ask your customers to join me in a class-action lawsuit." Senator Susan Collins (R-ME), member of Senate Intelligence Committee and past member of Homeland Security Committee June 11 "I had, along with Joe Lieberman, a monthly threat briefing, but I did not have access to this highly compartmentalized information" and "How can you ask when you don't know the program exists?" Representative Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI), principal sponsor of the Patriot Act June 9, "This is well beyond what the Patriot Act allows." "President Obama's claim that 'this is the most transparent administration in history' has once again proven false. In fact, it appears that no administration has ever peered more closely or intimately into the lives of innocent Americans." Representative Mike Rogers (R-MI), a chairman of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. June 9 "One of the things that we're charged with is keeping America safe and keeping our civil liberties and privacy intact. I think we have done both in this particular case." June 9 "Within the last few years this program was used to stop a program, excuse me, to stop a terrorist attack in the United States, we know that. It's, it's, it's important, it fills in a little seam that we have and it's used to make sure that there is not an international nexus to any terrorism event that they may believe is ongoing in the United States. So in that regard it is a very valuable thing." Senator Mark Udall (D-CO) June 9 "I don't think the American public knows the extent or knew the extent to which they were being surveilled and their data was being collected. ... I think we ought to reopen the Patriot Act and put some limits on the amount of data that the National Security (Agency) is collecting. ... It ought to remain sacred, and there's got to be a balance here. That is what I'm aiming for. Let's have the debate, let's be transparent, let's open this up." Representative Todd Rokita (R-IN) June 10 "We have no idea when they [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court] meet, we have no idea what their judgments are." Representative Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) June 9 "We will be receiving secret briefings and we will be asking, I know I'm going to be asking to get more information. I want to make sure that what they're doing is harvesting information that is necessary to keep us safe and not simply going into everybody's private telephone conversations and Facebook and communications. I mean one of the, you know, the terrorists win when you debilitate freedom of expression and privacy." Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) July 11 "I have a feeling that the administration is getting concerned about the bulk phone records collection, and that they are thinking about whether to move administratively to stop it. I think we are making a comeback". Following these statements some lawmakers from both parties warned national security officials during a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee that they must change their use of sweeping National Security Agency surveillance programs or face losing the provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that have allowed for the agency's mass collection of telephone metadata. "Section 215 expires at the end of 2015, and unless you realize you've got a problem, that is not going to be renewed," Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., author of the USA Patriot Act, threatened during the hearing. "It's got to be changed, and you've got to change how you operate section 215. Otherwise, in two and a half years, you're not going to have it anymore." Judicial branch Leaks of classified documents pointed to the role of a special court in enabling the government's secret surveillance programs, but members of the court maintained they were not collaborating with the executive branch. The New York Times, however, reported in July 2013 that in "more than a dozen classified rulings, the nation's surveillance court has created a secret body of law giving the National Security Agency the power to amass vast collections of data on Americans while pursuing not only terrorism suspects, but also people possibly involved in nuclear proliferation, espionage and cyberattacks." After Members of the U.S. Congress pressed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to release declassified versions of its secret ruling, the court dismissed those requests arguing that the decisions can't be declassified because they contain classified information. Reggie Walton, the current FISA presiding judge, said in a statement: "The perception that the court is a rubber stamp is absolutely false. There is a rigorous review process of applications submitted by the executive branch, spearheaded initially by five judicial branch lawyers who are national security experts, and then by the judges, to ensure that the court's authorizations comport with what the applicable statutes authorize." The accusation of being a "rubber stamp" was further rejected by Walton who wrote in a letter to Senator Patrick J. Leahy: "The annual statistics provided to Congress by the Attorney General ...—frequently cited to in press reports as a suggestion that the Court's approval rate of application is over 99%—reflect only the number of final applications submitted to and acted on by the Court. These statistics do not reflect the fact that many applications are altered to prior or final submission or even withheld from final submission entirely, often after an indication that a judge would not approve them." The U.S. military The U.S. military has acknowledged blocking access to parts of The Guardian website for thousands of defense personnel across the country, and blocking the entire Guardian website for personnel stationed throughout Afghanistan, the Middle East, and South Asia. A spokesman said the military was filtering out reports and content relating to government surveillance programs to preserve "network hygiene" and prevent any classified material from appearing on unclassified parts of its computer systems. Access to the Washington Post, which also published information on classified NSA surveillance programs disclosed by Edward Snowden, had not been blocked at the time the blocking of access to The Guardian was reported. Responses and involvement of other countries Austria The former head of the Austrian Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and Counterterrorism, Gert-René Polli, stated he knew the PRISM program under a different name and stated that surveillance activities had occurred in Austria as well. Polli had publicly stated in 2009 that he had received requests from US intelligence agencies to do things that would be in violation of Austrian law, which Polli refused to allow. Australia The Australian government has said it will investigate the impact of the PRISM program and the use of the Pine Gap surveillance facility on the privacy of Australian citizens. Australia's former foreign minister Bob Carr said that Australians should not be concerned about PRISM but that cybersecurity is high on the government's list of concerns. The Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop stated that the acts of Edward Snowden were treachery and offered a staunch defence of her nation's intelligence co-operation with the United States. Brazil Brazil's president at the time, Dilma Rousseff, responded to Snowden's reports that the NSA spied on her phone calls and emails by cancelling a planned October 2013 state visit to the United States, demanding an official apology, which by October 20, 2013, hadn't come. Also, Rousseff classified the spying as unacceptable between more harsh words in a speech before the UN General Assembly on September 24, 2013. As a result, Boeing lost out on a US$4.5 billion contract for fighter jets to Sweden's Saab Group. Canada Canada's national cryptologic agency, the Communications Security Establishment (CSE), said that commenting on PRISM "would undermine CSE's ability to carry out its mandate." Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart lamented Canada's standards when it comes to protecting personal online privacy stating "We have fallen too far behind" in her report. "While other nations' data protection authorities have the legal power to make binding orders, levy hefty fines and take meaningful action in the event of serious data breaches, we are restricted to a 'soft' approach: persuasion, encouragement and, at the most, the potential to publish the names of transgressors in the public interest." And, "when push comes to shove," Stoddart wrote, "short of a costly and time-consuming court battle, we have no power to enforce our recommendations." European Union On 20 October 2013 a committee at the European Parliament backed a measure that, if it is enacted, would require American companies to seek clearance from European officials before complying with United States warrants seeking private data. The legislation has been under consideration for two years. The vote is part of efforts in Europe to shield citizens from online surveillance in the wake of revelations about a far-reaching spying program by the U.S. National Security Agency. Germany and France have also had ongoing mutual talks about how they can keep European email traffic from going across American servers. France On October 21, 2013, the French Foreign Minister, Laurent Fabius, summoned the U.S. Ambassador, Charles Rivkin, to the Quai d'Orsay in Paris to protest large-scale spying on French citizens by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA). Paris prosecutors had opened preliminary inquiries into the NSA program in July, but Fabius said, "... obviously we need to go further" and "we must quickly assure that these practices aren't repeated." Germany Germany did not receive any raw PRISM data, according to a Reuters report. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that "the internet is new to all of us" to explain the nature of the program; Matthew Schofield of McClatchy Washington Bureau said, "She was roundly mocked for that statement." Gert-René Polli, a former Austrian counter-terrorism official, said in 2013 that it is "absurd and unnatural" for the German authorities to pretend not to have known anything. The German Army was using PRISM to support its operations in Afghanistan as early as 2011. In October 2013, it was reported that the NSA monitored Merkel's cell phone. The United States denied the report, but following the allegations, Merkel called President Obama and told him that spying on friends was "never acceptable, no matter in what situation." Israel Israeli newspaper Calcalist discussed the Business Insider article about the possible involvement of technologies from two secretive Israeli companies in the PRISM program—Verint Systems and Narus. Mexico After finding out about the PRISM program, the Mexican Government has started constructing its own spying program to spy on its own citizens. According to Jenaro Villamil, a writer from Proceso, CISEN, Mexico's intelligence agency has started to work with IBM and Hewlett Packard to develop its own data gathering software. "Facebook, Twitter, Emails and other social network sites are going to be priority." New Zealand In New Zealand, University of Otago information science Associate Professor Hank Wolfe said that "under what was unofficially known as the Five Eyes Alliance, New Zealand and other governments, including the United States, Australia, Canada, and Britain, dealt with internal spying by saying they didn't do it. But they have all the partners doing it for them and then they share all the information." Edward Snowden, in a live streamed Google Hangout to Kim Dotcom and Julian Assange, alleged that he had received intelligence from New Zealand, and the NSA has listening posts in New Zealand. Spain At a meeting of European Union leaders held the week of 21 October 2013, Mariano Rajoy, Spain's prime minister, said that "spying activities aren't proper among partner countries and allies". On 28 October 2013 the Spanish government summoned the American ambassador, James Costos, to address allegations that the U.S. had collected data on 60 million telephone calls in Spain. Separately, Íñigo Méndez de Vigo, a Spanish secretary of state, referred to the need to maintain "a necessary balance" between security and privacy concerns, but said that the recent allegations of spying, "if proven to be true, are improper and unacceptable between partners and friendly countries". United Kingdom In the United Kingdom, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), which also has its own surveillance program, Tempora, had access to the PRISM program on or before June 2010 and wrote 197 reports with it in 2012 alone. The Intelligence and Security Committee of the UK Parliament reviewed the reports GCHQ produced on the basis of intelligence sought from the US. They found in each case a warrant for interception was in place in accordance with the legal safeguards contained in UK law. In August 2013, The Guardian newspaper's offices were visited by agents from GCHQ, who ordered and supervised the destruction of the hard drives containing information acquired from Snowden. Companies The original Washington Post and Guardian articles reporting on PRISM noted that one of the leaked briefing documents said PRISM involves collection of data "directly from the servers" of several major internet services providers. Initial public statements Corporate executives of several companies identified in the leaked documents told The Guardian that they had no knowledge of the PRISM program in particular and also denied making information available to the government on the scale alleged by news reports. Statements of several of the companies named in the leaked documents were reported by TechCrunch and The Washington Post as follows: Microsoft: "We provide customer data only when we receive a legally binding order or subpoena to do so, and never on a voluntary basis. In addition we only ever comply with orders for requests about specific accounts or identifiers. If the government has a broader voluntary national security program to gather customer data, we don't participate in it." Yahoo!: "Yahoo! takes users’ privacy very seriously. We do not provide the government with direct access to our servers, systems, or network." "Of the hundreds of millions of users we serve, an infinitesimal percentage will ever be the subject of a government data collection directive." Facebook: "We do not provide any government organization with direct access to Facebook servers. When Facebook is asked for data or information about specific individuals, we carefully scrutinize any such request for compliance with all applicable laws, and provide information only to the extent required by law." Google: "Google cares deeply about the security of our users' data. We disclose user data to government in accordance with the law, and we review all such requests carefully. From time to time, people allege that we have created a government 'back door' into our systems, but Google does not have a backdoor for the government to access private user data." "[A]ny suggestion that Google is disclosing information about our users' internet activity on such a scale is completely false." Apple: "We have never heard of PRISM" "We do not provide any government agency with direct access to our servers, and any government agency requesting customer data must get a court order." Dropbox: "We’ve seen reports that Dropbox might be asked to participate in a government program called PRISM. We are not part of any such program and remain committed to protecting our users’ privacy." In response to the technology companies' confirmation of the NSA being able to directly access the companies' servers, The New York Times reported that sources had stated the NSA was gathering the surveillance data from the companies using other technical means in response to court orders for specific sets of data. The Washington Post suggested, "It is possible that the conflict between the PRISM slides and the company spokesmen is the result of imprecision on the part of the NSA author. In another classified report obtained by The Post, the arrangement is described as allowing 'collection managers [to send] content tasking instructions directly to equipment installed at company-controlled locations,' rather than directly to company servers." "[I]n context, 'direct' is more likely to mean that the NSA is receiving data sent to them deliberately by the tech companies, as opposed to intercepting communications as they're transmitted to some other destination. "If these companies received an order under the FISA amendments act, they are forbidden by law from disclosing having received the order and disclosing any information about the order at all," Mark Rumold, staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told ABC News. On May 28, 2013, Google was ordered by United States District Court Judge Susan Illston to comply with a National Security Letter issued by the FBI to provide user data without a warrant. Kurt Opsahl, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, in an interview with VentureBeat said, "I certainly appreciate that Google put out a transparency report, but it appears that the transparency didn't include this. I wouldn't be surprised if they were subject to a gag order." The New York Times reported on June 7, 2013, that "Twitter declined to make it easier for the government. But other companies were more compliant, according to people briefed on the negotiations." The other companies held discussions with national security personnel on how to make data available more efficiently and securely. In some cases, these companies made modifications to their systems in support of the intelligence collection effort. The dialogues have continued in recent months, as General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has met with executives including those at Facebook, Microsoft, Google and Intel. These details on the discussions provide insight into the disparity between initial descriptions of the government program including a training slide which states, "Collection directly from the servers" and the companies' denials. While providing data in response to a legitimate FISA request approved by the FISA Court is a legal requirement, modifying systems to make it easier for the government to collect the data is not. This is why Twitter could legally decline to provide an enhanced mechanism for data transmission. Other than Twitter, the companies were effectively asked to construct a locked mailbox and provide the key to the government, people briefed on the negotiations said. Facebook, for instance, built such a system for requesting and sharing the information. Google does not provide a lockbox system, but instead transmits required data by hand delivery or ssh. Post-PRISM transparency reports In response to the publicity surrounding media reports of data-sharing, several companies requested permission to reveal more public information about the nature and scope of information provided in response to National Security requests. On June 14, 2013, Facebook reported that the U.S. government had authorized the communication of "about these numbers in aggregate, and as a range." In a press release posted to its web site, the company reported, "For the six months ending December 31, 2012, the total number of user-data requests Facebook received from any and all government entities in the U.S. (including local, state, and federal, and including criminal and national security-related requests) – was between 9,000 and 10,000." The company further reported that the requests impacted "between 18,000 and 19,000" user accounts, a "tiny fraction of one percent" of more than 1.1 billion active user accounts. That same day, Microsoft reported that for the same period, it received "between 6,000 and 7,000 criminal and national security warrants, subpoenas and orders affecting between 31,000 and 32,000 consumer accounts from U.S. governmental entities (including local, state and federal)" which impacted "a tiny fraction of Microsoft's global customer base." Google issued a statement criticizing the requirement that data be reported in aggregated form, stating that lumping national security requests with criminal request data would be "a step backwards" from its previous, more detailed practices on its website's transparency report. The company said that it would continue to seek government permission to publish the number and extent of FISA requests. Cisco Systems saw a huge drop in export sales because of fears that the National Security Agency could be using backdoors in its products. On September 12, 2014, Yahoo! reported the U.S. Government threatened the imposition of $250,000 in fines per day if Yahoo didn't hand over user data as part of the NSA's PRISM program. It is not known if other companies were threatened or fined for not providing data in response to a legitimate FISA requests. Public and media response Domestic The New York Times editorial board charged that the Obama administration "has now lost all credibility on this issue," and lamented that "for years, members of Congress ignored evidence that domestic intelligence-gathering had grown beyond their control, and, even now, few seem disturbed to learn that every detail about the public's calling and texting habits now reside in a N.S.A. database." It wrote with respect to the FISA-Court in context of PRISM that it is "a perversion of the American justice system" when "judicial secrecy is coupled with a one-sided presentation of the issues." According to the New York Times, "the result is a court whose reach is expanding far beyond its original mandate and without any substantive check." James Robertson, a former federal district judge based in Washington who served on the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court for three years between 2002 and 2005 and who ruled against the Bush administration in the landmark Hamdan v. Rumsfeld case, said FISA court is independent but flawed because only the government's side is represented effectively in its deliberations. "Anyone who has been a judge will tell you a judge needs to hear both sides of a case," said James Robertson. Without this judges do not benefit from adversarial debate. He suggested creating an advocate with security clearance who would argue against government filings. Robertson questioned whether the secret FISA court should provide overall legal approval for the surveillance programs, saying the court "has turned into something like an administrative agency." Under the changes brought by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 Amendments Act of 2008, which expanded the US government's authority by forcing the court to approve entire surveillance systems and not just surveillance warrants as it previously handled, "the court is now approving programmatic surveillance. I don't think that is a judicial function." Robertson also said he was "frankly stunned" by the New York Times report that FISA court rulings had created a new body of law broadening the ability of the NSA to use its surveillance programs to target not only terrorists but suspects in cases involving espionage, cyberattacks and weapons of mass destruction. Former CIA analyst Valerie Plame Wilson and former U.S. diplomat Joseph Wilson, writing in an op-ed article published in The Guardian, said that "Prism and other NSA data-mining programs might indeed be very effective in hunting and capturing actual terrorists, but we don't have enough information as a society to make that decision." The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), an international non-profit digital-rights group based in the U.S., is hosting a tool, by which an American resident can write to their government representatives regarding their opposition to mass spying. The Obama administration's argument that NSA surveillance programs such as PRISM and Boundless Informant had been necessary to prevent acts of terrorism was challenged by several parties. Ed Pilkington and Nicholas Watt of The Guardian said of the case of Najibullah Zazi, who had planned to bomb the New York City Subway, that interviews with involved parties and U.S. and British court documents indicated that the investigation into the case had actually been initiated in response to "conventional" surveillance methods such as "old-fashioned tip-offs" of the British intelligence services, rather than to leads produced by NSA surveillance. Michael Daly of The Daily Beast stated that even though Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who conducted the Boston Marathon bombing with his brother Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, had visited the Al Qaeda-affiliated Inspire magazine website, and even though Russian intelligence officials had raised concerns with U.S. intelligence officials about Tamerlan Tsarnaev, PRISM did not prevent him from carrying out the Boston attacks. Daly observed that, "The problem is not just what the National Security Agency is gathering at the risk of our privacy but what it is apparently unable to monitor at the risk of our safety." Ron Paul, a former Republican member of Congress and prominent libertarian, thanked Snowden and Greenwald and denounced the mass surveillance as unhelpful and damaging, urging instead more transparency in U.S. government actions. He called Congress "derelict in giving that much power to the government," and said that had he been elected president, he would have ordered searches only when there was probable cause of a crime having been committed, which he said was not how the PRISM program was being operated. New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman defended limited government surveillance programs intended to protect the American people from terrorist acts: Yes, I worry about potential government abuse of privacy from a program designed to prevent another 9/11—abuse that, so far, does not appear to have happened. But I worry even more about another 9/11. ... If there were another 9/11, I fear that 99 percent of Americans would tell their members of Congress: "Do whatever you need to do to, privacy be damned, just make sure this does not happen again." That is what I fear most. That is why I'll reluctantly, very reluctantly, trade off the government using data mining to look for suspicious patterns in phone numbers called and e-mail addresses—and then have to go to a judge to get a warrant to actually look at the content under guidelines set by Congress—to prevent a day where, out of fear, we give government a license to look at anyone, any e-mail, any phone call, anywhere, anytime. Political commentator David Brooks similarly cautioned that government data surveillance programs are a necessary evil: "if you don't have mass data sweeps, well, then these agencies are going to want to go back to the old-fashioned eavesdropping, which is a lot more intrusive." Conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer worried less about the legality of PRISM and other NSA surveillance tools than about the potential for their abuse without more stringent oversight. "The problem here is not constitutionality. ... We need a toughening of both congressional oversight and judicial review, perhaps even some independent outside scrutiny. Plus periodic legislative revision—say, reauthorization every couple of years—in light of the efficacy of the safeguards and the nature of the external threat. The object is not to abolish these vital programs. It's to fix them." In a blog post, David Simon, the creator of The Wire, compared the NSA's programs, including PRISM, to a 1980s effort by the City of Baltimore to add dialed number recorders to all pay phones to know which individuals were being called by the callers; the city believed that drug traffickers were using pay phones and pagers, and a municipal judge allowed the city to place the recorders. The placement of the dialers formed the basis of the show's first season. Simon argued that the media attention regarding the NSA programs is a "faux scandal." Simon had stated that many classes of people in American society had already faced constant government surveillance. Political activist, and frequent critic of U.S. government policies, Noam Chomsky argued, "Governments should not have this capacity. But governments will use whatever technology is available to them to combat their primary enemy – which is their own population." A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll conducted June 11 through 13 found that 66% of Americans generally supported the program. However, a Quinnipiac University poll conducted June 28 through July 8 found that 45% of registered voters think the surveillance programs have gone too far, with 40% saying they do not go far enough, compared to 25% saying they had gone too far and 63% saying not far enough in 2010. Other polls have shown similar shifts in public opinion as revelations about the programs were leaked. In terms of economic impact, a study released in August by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation found that the disclosure of PRISM could cost the U.S. economy between $21.5 and $35 billion in lost cloud computing business over three years. International Sentiment around the world was that of general displeasure upon learning the extent of world communication data mining. Some national leaders spoke against the NSA and some spoke against their own national surveillance. One national minister had scathing comments on the National Security Agency's data-mining program, citing Benjamin Franklin: "The more a society monitors, controls, and observes its citizens, the less free it is." Some question if the costs of hunting terrorists now overshadows the loss of citizen privacy. Nick Xenophon, an Australian independent senator, asked Bob Carr, the Australian Minister of Foreign Affairs, if e-mail addresses of Australian parliamentarians were exempt from PRISM, Mainway, Marina, and/or Nucleon. After Carr replied that there was a legal framework to protect Australians but that the government would not comment on intelligence matters, Xenophon argued that this was not a specific answer to his question. Taliban spokesperson Zabiullah Mujahid said, "We knew about their past efforts to trace our system. We have used our technical resources to foil their efforts and have been able to stop them from succeeding so far." However CNN has reported that terrorist groups have changed their "communications behaviors" in response to the leaks. In 2013 the Cloud Security Alliance surveyed cloud computing stakeholders about their reactions to the US PRISM spying scandal. About 10% of non-US residents indicated that they had cancelled a project with a US-based cloud computing provider, in the wake of PRISM; 56% said that they would be less likely to use a US-based cloud computing service. The Alliance predicted that US cloud computing providers might lose as much as €26 billion and 20% of its share of cloud services in foreign markets because of the PRISM spying scandal. China Reactions of internet users in China were mixed between viewing a loss of freedom worldwide and seeing state surveillance coming out of secrecy. The story broke just before U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping met in California. When asked about NSA hacking China, the spokeswoman of Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China said, "China strongly advocates cybersecurity." The party-owned newspaper Liberation Daily described this surveillance like Nineteen Eighty-Four-style. Hong Kong legislators Gary Fan and Claudia Mo wrote a letter to Obama stating, "the revelations of blanket surveillance of global communications by the world's leading democracy have damaged the image of the U.S. among freedom-loving peoples around the world." Ai Weiwei, a Chinese dissident, said, "Even though we know governments do all kinds of things I was shocked by the information about the US surveillance operation, Prism. To me, it's abusively using government powers to interfere in individuals' privacy. This is an important moment for international society to reconsider and protect individual rights." Europe Sophie in 't Veld, a Dutch Member of the European Parliament, called PRISM "a violation of EU laws." The German Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information, Peter Schaar, condemned the program as "monstrous." He further added that White House claims do "not reassure me at all" and that "given the large number of German users of Google, Facebook, Apple or Microsoft services, I expect the German government ... is committed to clarification and limitation of surveillance." Steffen Seibert, press secretary of the Chancellor's office, announced that Angela Merkel will put these issues on the agenda of the talks with Barack Obama during his pending visit in Berlin. Wolfgang Schmidt, a former lieutenant colonel with the Stasi, said that the Stasi would have seen such a program as a "dream come true" since the Stasi lacked the technology that made PRISM possible. Schmidt expressed opposition, saying, "It is the height of naivete to think that once collected this information won't be used. This is the nature of secret government organizations. The only way to protect the people's privacy is not to allow the government to collect their information in the first place." Many Germans organized protests, including one at Checkpoint Charlie, when Obama went to Berlin to speak. Matthew Schofield of the McClatchy Washington Bureau said, "Germans are dismayed at Obama's role in allowing the collection of so much information." The Italian president of the Guarantor for the protection of personal data, Antonello Soro, said that the surveillance dragnet "would not be legal in Italy" and would be "contrary to the principles of our legislation and would represent a very serious violation." CNIL (French data protection watchdog) ordered Google to change its privacy policies within three months or risk fines up to 150,000 euros. Spanish Agency of data protection (AEPD) planned to fine Google between 40,000 and 300,000 euros if it failed to clear stored data on the Spanish users. William Hague, the foreign secretary of the United Kingdom, dismissed accusations that British security agencies had been circumventing British law by using information gathered on British citizens by PRISM saying, "Any data obtained by us from the United States involving UK nationals is subject to proper UK statutory controls and safeguards." David Cameron said Britain's spy agencies that received data collected from PRISM acted within the law: "I'm satisfied that we have intelligence agencies that do a fantastically important job for this country to keep us safe, and they operate within the law." Malcolm Rifkind, the chairman of parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee, said that if the British intelligence agencies were seeking to know the content of emails about people living in the UK, then they actually have to get lawful authority. The UK's Information Commissioner's Office was more cautious, saying it would investigate PRISM alongside other European data agencies: "There are real issues about the extent to which U.S. law agencies can access personal data of UK and other European citizens. Aspects of U.S. law under which companies can be compelled to provide information to U.S. agencies potentially conflict with European data protection law, including the UK's own Data Protection Act. The ICO has raised this with its European counterparts, and the issue is being considered by the European Commission, who are in discussions with the U.S. Government." Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, accused western governments of practicing hypocrisy, as they conducted spying on the internet while they criticized other countries for spying on the internet. He stated that internet spying can make people feel reluctant to access intimate and private information that is important to them. In a statement given to Financial Times following the Snowden revelations, Berners-Lee stated "Unwarranted government surveillance is an intrusion on basic human rights that threatens the very foundations of a democratic society." India Minister of External Affairs Salman Khurshid defended the PRISM program saying, "This is not scrutiny and access to actual messages. It is only computer analysis of patterns of calls and emails that are being sent. It is not actually snooping specifically on content of anybody's message or conversation. Some of the information they got out of their scrutiny, they were able to use it to prevent serious terrorist attacks in several countries." His comments contradicted his Foreign Ministry's characterization of violations of privacy as "unacceptable." When the then Minister of Communications and Information Technology Kapil Sibal was asked about Khurshid's comments, he refused to comment on them directly, but said, "We do not know the nature of data or information sought [as part of PRISM]. Even the external ministry does not have any idea." The media felt that Khurshid's defence of PRISM was because the India government was rolling out the Central Monitoring System (CMS), which is similar to the PRISM program. Khurshid's comments were criticized by the Indian media, as well as opposition party CPI(M) who stated, "The UPA government should have strongly protested against such surveillance and bugging. Instead, it is shocking that Khurshid has sought to justify it. This shameful remark has come at a time when even the close allies of the US like Germany and France have protested against the snooping on their countries." Rajya Sabha MP P. Rajeev told The Times of India that "The act of the USA is a clear violation of Vienna convention on diplomatic relations. But Khurshid is trying to justify it. And the speed of the government of India to reject the asylum application of Edward Snowden is shameful." Legal aspects Applicable law and practice On June 8, 2013, the Director of National Intelligence issued a fact sheet stating that PRISM "is not an undisclosed collection or data mining program," but rather "an internal government computer system" used to facilitate the collection of foreign intelligence information "under court supervision, as authorized by Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) (50 U.S.C. § 1881a)." Section 702 provides that "the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence may authorize jointly, for a period of up to 1 year from the effective date of the authorization, the targeting of persons reasonably believed to be located outside the United States to acquire foreign intelligence information." In order to authorize the targeting, the attorney general and Director of National Intelligence need to obtain an order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA Court) pursuant to Section 702 or certify that "intelligence important to the national security of the United States may be lost or not timely acquired and time does not permit the issuance of an order." When requesting an order, the attorney general and Director of National Intelligence must certify to the FISA Court that "a significant purpose of the acquisition is to obtain foreign intelligence information." They do not need to specify which facilities or property will be targeted. After receiving a FISA Court order or determining that there are emergency circumstances, the attorney general and Director of National Intelligence can direct an electronic communication service provider to give them access to information or facilities to carry out the targeting and keep the targeting secret. The provider then has the option to: (1) comply with the directive; (2) reject it; or (3) challenge it with the FISA Court. If the provider complies with the directive, it is released from liability to its users for providing the information and is reimbursed for the cost of providing it, while if the provider rejects the directive, the attorney general may request an order from the FISA Court to enforce it. A provider that fails to comply with the FISA Court's order can be punished with contempt of court. Finally, a provider can petition the FISA Court to reject the directive. In case the FISA Court denies the petition and orders the provider to comply with the directive, the provider risks contempt of court if it refuses to comply with the FISA Court's order. The provider can appeal the FISA Court's denial to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review and then appeal the Court of Review's decision to the Supreme Court by a writ of certiorari for review under seal. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the FISA Courts had been put in place to oversee intelligence operations in the period after the death of J. Edgar Hoover. Beverly Gage of Slate said, "When they were created, these new mechanisms were supposed to stop the kinds of abuses that men like Hoover had engineered. Instead, it now looks as if they have come to function as rubber stamps for the expansive ambitions of the intelligence community. J. Edgar Hoover no longer rules Washington, but it turns out we didn't need him anyway." Litigation Analysis of legal issues Laura Donohue, a law professor at the Georgetown University Law Center and its Center on National Security and the Law, has called PRISM and other NSA mass surveillance programs unconstitutional. Woodrow Hartzog, an affiliate at Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society commented that "[The ACLU will] likely have to demonstrate legitimate First Amendment harms (such as chilling effects) or Fourth Amendment harms (perhaps a violation of a reasonable expectation of privacy) ... Is it a harm to merely know with certainty that you are being monitored by the government? There's certainly an argument that it is. People under surveillance act differently, experience a loss of autonomy, are less likely to engage in self exploration and reflection, and are less willing to engage in core expressive political activities such as dissenting speech and government criticism. Such interests are what First and Fourth Amendment seek to protect." Legality of the FISA Amendments Act The FISA Amendments Act (FAA) Section 702 is referenced in PRISM documents detailing the electronic interception, capture and analysis of metadata. Many reports and letters of concern written by members of Congress suggest that this section of FAA in particular is legally and constitutionally problematic, such as by targeting U.S. persons, insofar as "Collections occur in U.S." as published documents indicate. The ACLU has asserted the following regarding the FAA: "Regardless of abuses, the problem with the FAA is more fundamental: the statute itself is unconstitutional." Senator Rand Paul is introducing new legislation called the Fourth Amendment Restoration Act of 2013 to stop the NSA or other agencies of the United States government from violating the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution using technology and big data information systems like PRISM and Boundless Informant. Programs sharing the name PRISM Besides the information collection program started in 2007, there are two other programs sharing the name PRISM: The Planning tool for Resource Integration, Synchronization and Management (PRISM), a web tool used by US military intelligence to send tasks and instructions to data collection platforms deployed to military operations. The Portal for Real-time Information Sharing and Management (PRISM), whose existence was revealed by the NSA in July 2013. This is an internal NSA program for real-time sharing of information which is apparently located in the NSA's Information Assurance Directorate. The NSA's Information Assurance Directorate (IAD) is a very secretive division which is responsible for safeguarding U.S. government and military secrets by implementing sophisticated encryption techniques. Related NSA programs Parallel programs, known collectively as SIGADs gather data and metadata from other sources, each SIGAD has a set of defined sources, targets, types of data collected, legal authorities, and software associated with it. Some SIGADs have the same name as the umbrella under which they sit, BLARNEY's (the SIGAD) summary, set down in the slides alongside a cartoon insignia of a shamrock and a leprechaun hat, describes it as "an ongoing collection program that leverages IC [intelligence community] and commercial partnerships to gain access and exploit foreign intelligence obtained from global networks." Some SIGADs, like PRISM, collect data at the ISP level, but others take it from the top-level infrastructure. This type of collection is known as "upstream". Upstream collection includes programs known by the blanket terms BLARNEY, FAIRVIEW, OAKSTAR and STORMBREW, under each of these are individual SIGADs. Data that is integrated into a SIGAD can be gathered in other ways besides upstream, and from the service providers, for instance it can be collected from passive sensors around embassies, or even stolen from an individual computer network in a hacking attack. Not all SIGADs involve upstream collection, for instance, data could be taken directly from a service provider, either by agreement (as is the case with PRISM), by means of hacking, or other ways. According to the Washington Post, the much less known MUSCULAR program, which directly taps the unencrypted data inside the Google and Yahoo private clouds, collects more than twice as many data points compared to PRISM. Because the Google and Yahoo clouds span the globe, and because the tap was done outside of the United States, unlike PRISM, the MUSCULAR program requires no (FISA or other type of) warrants. See also Central Monitoring System Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), a U.S. wiretapping law passed in 1994 DRDO NETRA ECHELON, a signals intelligence collection and analysis network operated on behalf of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States Economic espionage Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution INDECT, European Union automatic threat detection research project Information Awareness Office, a defunct DARPA project Law Enforcement Information Exchange Lawful interception Mass surveillance Muscular (surveillance program) NSA call database, contains call detail information for hundreds of billions of telephone calls made through the largest U.S. telephone carriers Signals intelligence SORM, Russian telephone and internet surveillance project Surveillance Targeted surveillance Tempora, the data-gathering project run by the British GCHQ TURBINE (US government project) Utah Data Center, a data storage facility supporting the U.S. Intelligence Community Notes References External links Annotated presentation how the NSA PRISM program works. Timeline and details about the events. Detailed how-to enabling average citizens to take steps to defend their privacy Video explaining the recent history of domestic spying at NSA. A detailed explanation of all known slides about the PRISM program and its inner workings. Source of PRISM logo. 2013 scandals Counter-terrorism in the United States Law enforcement in the United States Espionage Human rights in the United States Mass surveillance National Security Agency Obama administration controversies Privacy in the United States Privacy of telecommunications Secret government programs Surveillance scandals United States national security policy War on terror Computer surveillance American secret government programs GCHQ operations National Security Agency operations Intelligence agency programmes revealed by Edward Snowden George W. Bush administration controversies

53996804

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hovhannes%20Avoyan

Hovhannes Avoyan

Hovha'nnes Avoyan (Hovhannes Avoyan, ), born 1965, is a serial entrepreneur, investor and scholar. He is the co-founder and CEO of Picsart, a suite of online photo and video editing applications. He also served as President of the Union of Information Technology Enterprises of Armenia (UITE) from its inception in 2000 until 2015. Hovhannes Avoyan is a member of the American University of Armenia Corporation Board of Trustees. Early life and education Hovhannes Avoyan was born in 1965 in Yerevan, Armenia. He graduated from the State Engineering University of Armenia with a B.S. degree in Computer Science in 1987 and received an Masters in Political Science and International Affairs (M PSIA) from the American University of Armenia in 1995. He is also a 2005 graduate of Harvard Business School's Bertelsmann Senior Executive's program. Career In 1996, Avoyan founded CEDIT, a software development services company, which was acquired by mobile communications software developer Brience in 2000. In 2005, Avoyan founded and served as CEO of Sourcio, a software development and system integration service provider acquired by software developer HelpSystems in 2016. In 2007, Avoyan founded and served as General Manager of Monitis Inc., which was acquired by TeamViewer/GFI Software) in 2011. In 2011, with his friend Artavazd Mehrabyan, Avoayan founded Picsart, a social photo and video editing platform, and became the company's CEO. Picsart's software reportedly has more than 150 million monthly active users, and has been downloaded 1 billion times as of September 2020. Accolades In 2016, Avoyan received the Distinguished Alumni Award from the American University of Armenia. In 2019, The Armenian Trade Network named Avoyan as the recipient of its Global Achievement Award. Philanthropy Avoyan supports AI development in Armenia by establishing schools and best practices in the country to help its data scientists compete globally. Artificial intelligence Hovhannes is an author and speaker on artificial intelligence and advocates the establishment of machine learning and data science schools in Armenia. References 1965 births Living people Computer programmers Harvard Business School Businesspeople from Yerevan Armenian inventors 21st-century inventors

218447

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymorphic%20code

Polymorphic code

In computing, polymorphic code is code that uses a polymorphic engine to mutate while keeping the original algorithm intact - that is, the code changes itself every time it runs, but the function of the code (its semantics) will not change at all. For example, the simple math equations 3+1 and 6-2 both achieve the same result, yet run with different machine code in a CPU. This technique is sometimes used by computer viruses, shellcodes and computer worms to hide their presence. Encryption is the most common method to hide code. With encryption, the main body of the code (also called its payload) is encrypted and will appear meaningless. For the code to function as before, a decryption function is added to the code. When the code is executed this function reads the payload and decrypts it before executing it in turn. Encryption alone is not polymorphism. To gain polymorphic behavior, the encryptor/decryptor pair is mutated with each copy of the code. This allows different versions of some code which all function the same. Malicious code Most anti-virus software and intrusion detection systems (IDS) attempt to locate malicious code by searching through computer files and data packets sent over a computer network. If the security software finds patterns that correspond to known computer viruses or worms, it takes appropriate steps to neutralize the threat. Polymorphic algorithms make it difficult for such software to recognize the offending code because it constantly mutates. Malicious programmers have sought to protect their encrypted code from this virus-scanning strategy by rewriting the unencrypted decryption engine (and the resulting encrypted payload) each time the virus or worm is propagated. Anti-virus software uses sophisticated pattern analysis to find underlying patterns within the different mutations of the decryption engine, in hopes of reliably detecting such malware. Emulation may be used to defeat polymorphic obfuscation by letting the malware demangle itself in a virtual environment before utilizing other methods, such as traditional signature scanning. Such a virtual environment is sometimes called a sandbox. Polymorphism does not protect the virus against such emulation if the decrypted payload remains the same regardless of variation in the decryption algorithm. Metamorphic code techniques may be used to complicate detection further, as the virus may execute without ever having identifiable code blocks in memory that remains constant from infection to infection. The first known polymorphic virus was written by Mark Washburn. The virus, called 1260, was written in 1990. A better-known polymorphic virus was created in 1992 by the hacker Dark Avenger as a means of avoiding pattern recognition from antivirus software. A common and very virulent polymorphic virus is the file infecter Virut. Example This example is not really a polymorphic code but will serve as an introduction to the world of encryption via the XOR operator. For example, in an algorithm using the variables A and B but not the variable C, there could be a large amount of code that changes C, and it would have no effect on the algorithm itself, allowing it to be changed endlessly and without heed as to what the final product will be. Start: GOTO Decryption_Code Encrypted: ...lots of encrypted code... Decryption_Code: C = C + 1 A = Encrypted Loop: B = *A C = 3214 * A B = B XOR CryptoKey *A = B C = 1 C = A + B A = A + 1 GOTO Loop IF NOT A = Decryption_Code C = C^2 GOTO Encrypted CryptoKey: some_random_number The encrypted code is the payload. To make different versions of the code, in each copy the garbage lines which manipulate C will change. The code inside "Encrypted" ("lots of encrypted code") can search the code between Decryption_Code and CryptoKey and each algorithm for new code that does the same thing. Usually, the coder uses a zero key (for example; A xor 0 = A) for the first generation of the virus, making it easier for the coder because with this key the code is not encrypted. The coder then implements an incremental key algorithm or a random one. Polymorphic encryption Polymorphic code can be also used to generate encryption algorithm. This code was generated by the online service StringEncrypt. It takes the string or a file content and encrypts it with random encryption commands and generates polymorphic decryption code in one of the many supported programming languages: // encrypted with https://www.stringencrypt.com (v1.1.0) [C/C++] // szLabel = "Wikipedia" wchar_t szLabel[10] = { 0xB1A8, 0xB12E, 0xB0B4, 0xB03C, 0x33B9, 0xB30C, 0x3295, 0xB260, 0xB5E5, 0x35A2 }; for (unsigned tUTuj = 0, KRspk = 0; tUTuj < 10; tUTuj++) { KRspk = szLabel[tUTuj]; KRspk ^= 0x2622; KRspk = ~KRspk; KRspk --; KRspk += tUTuj; KRspk = (((KRspk & 0xFFFF) >> 3) | (KRspk << 13)) & 0xFFFF; KRspk += tUTuj; KRspk --; KRspk = ((KRspk << 8) | ( (KRspk & 0xFFFF) >> 8)) & 0xFFFF; KRspk ^= 0xE702; KRspk = ((KRspk << 4) | ( (KRspk & 0xFFFF) >> 12)) & 0xFFFF; KRspk ^= tUTuj; KRspk ++; KRspk = (((KRspk & 0xFFFF) >> 8) | (KRspk << 8)) & 0xFFFF; KRspk = ~KRspk; szLabel[tUTuj] = KRspk; } wprintf(szLabel); As you can see in this C++ example, the string was encrypted and each character was stored in encrypted form using UNICODE widechar format. Different encryption commands were used like bitwise XOR, NOT, addition, subtraction, bit rotations. Everything is randomized, encryption keys, bit rotation counters and encryption commands order as well. Output code can be generated in C/C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, Python, Ruby, Haskell, MASM, FASM and AutoIt. Thanks to the randomization the generated algorithm is different every time. It's not possible to write generic decryption tools and the compiled code with polymorphic encryption code has to be analyzed each time it's re-encrypted. See also Timeline of notable computer viruses and worms Metamorphic code Self-modifying code Alphanumeric shellcode Shellcode Software cracking Security cracking Obfuscated code Oligomorphic code References Types of malware

103770

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus%20Software

Lotus Software

Lotus Software (called Lotus Development Corporation before its acquisition by IBM) was an American software company based in Massachusetts; it was "offloaded" to India's HCL Technologies in 2018. Lotus is most commonly known for the Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet application, the first feature-heavy, user-friendly, reliable and WYSIWYG-enabled product to become widely available in the early days of the IBM PC, when there was no graphical user interface. Much later, in conjunction with Ray Ozzie's Iris Associates, Lotus also released a groupware and email system, Lotus Notes. IBM purchased the company in 1995 for US$3.5 billion, primarily to acquire Lotus Notes and to establish a presence in the increasingly important client–server computing segment, which was rapidly making host-based products such as IBM's OfficeVision obsolete. On December 6, 2018, IBM announced the sale of Lotus Software/Domino to HCL for $1.8 billion. History Lotus was founded in 1982 by partners Mitch Kapor and Jonathan Sachs with backing from Ben Rosen. Lotus's first product was presentation software for the Apple II known as Lotus Executive Briefing System. Kapor founded Lotus after leaving his post as head of development at VisiCorp, the distributors of the VisiCalc spreadsheet, and selling all his rights to Visi-Plot and Visi-Trend to Visi-Corp. Shortly after Kapor left Visi-Corp, he and Sachs produced an integrated spreadsheet and graphics program. Even though IBM and VisiCorp had a collaboration agreement whereby Visi-Calc was being shipped simultaneously with the PC, Lotus had a clearly superior product. Lotus released Lotus 1-2-3 on January 26, 1983. The name referred to the three ways the product could be used, as a spreadsheet, graphics package, and database manager. In practice the latter two functions were less often used, but 1-2-3 was the most powerful spreadsheet program available. Lotus was almost immediately successful, becoming the world's third largest microcomputer software company in 1983 with $53 million in sales in its first year, compared to its business plan forecast of $1 million in sales. In 1982 Jim Manzi — a graduate of Colgate University and The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy — came to Lotus as a management consultant with McKinsey & Company, and became an employee four months later. In October 1984 he was named president, and in April 1986 he was appointed CEO, succeeding Kapor. In July of that same year he also became Chairman of the Board. Manzi remained at the head of Lotus until 1995. Dominance As the popularity of the personal computer grew, Lotus quickly came to dominate the spreadsheet market. Lotus introduced other office products such as Ray Ozzie's Symphony in 1984 and the Jazz office suite for the Apple Macintosh computer in 1985. Jazz did very poorly in the market (in Guy Kawasaki's book The Macintosh Way, Lotus Jazz was described as being so bad, "even the people who pirated it returned it"). Also in 1985, Lotus bought Software Arts and discontinued its VisiCalc program. In the late 1980s Lotus developed Lotus Magellan, a file management and indexing utility. In this period Manuscript, a word processor, Lotus Agenda, an innovative personal information manager (PIM) which flopped, and Improv, a ground-breaking modeling package (and spreadsheet) for the NeXT platform, were released. Improv also flopped, and none of these products made a significant impact on the market. "Look and feel" lawsuits Lotus was involved in a number of lawsuits, of which the most significant were the "look and feel" cases which started in 1987. Lotus sued Paperback Software and Mosaic for copyright infringement, false and misleading advertising, and unfair competition over their low-cost clones of 1-2-3, VP Planner and Twin, and sued Borland over its Quattro spreadsheet. This led Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation, to found the League for Programming Freedom (LPF) and hold protests outside Lotus Development offices. Paperback and Mosaic lost and went out of business; Borland won and survived. The LPF filed an amicus curiae brief in the Borland case. Diversification and acquisition by IBM In the 1990s, to compete with Microsoft's Windows applications, Lotus had to buy in products such as Ami Pro (word processor), Approach (database), and Threadz, which became Lotus Organizer. Several applications (1-2-3, Freelance Graphics, Ami Pro, Approach, and Lotus Organizer) were bundled together under the name Lotus SmartSuite. Although SmartSuite was bundled cheaply with many PCs and may initially have been more popular than Microsoft Office, Lotus quickly lost its dominance in the desktop applications market with the transition from 16- to 32-bit applications running on Windows 95. In large part due to its focusing much of its development resources on a suite of applications for IBM's new (and eventually commercially unsuccessful) OS/2 operating system, Lotus was late in delivering its suite of 32-bit products and failed to capitalize on the transition to the new version of Windows. The last significant new release was the SmartSuite Millennium Edition released in 1999. All new development of the suite was ended in 2000, with ongoing maintenance being moved overseas. The last update release was 2014. Lotus began its diversification from the desktop software business with its 1984 strategic founding investment in Ray Ozzie's Iris Associates, the creator of its Lotus Notes groupware platform. As a result of this early speculative move, Lotus had gained significant experience in network-based communications years before other competitors in the PC world had even started thinking about networked computing or the Internet. Lotus initially brought Lotus Notes to market in 1989, and later reinforced its market presence with the acquisition of cc:Mail in 1991. In 1994, Lotus acquired Iris Associates. Lotus's dominant groupware position attracted IBM, which needed to make a strategic move away from host-based messaging products and to establish a stronger presence in client–server computing, but it also soon attracted stiff competition from Microsoft Exchange Server. In the second quarter of 1995 IBM launched a hostile bid for Lotus with a $60-per-share tender offer, when Lotus' stock was only trading at $32. Jim Manzi looked for potential white knights, and forced IBM to increase its bid to $64.50 per share, for a $3.5 billion buyout of Lotus in July 1995. On October 11, 1995 Manzi announced his resignation from what had become the Lotus Development division of IBM; he left with stock worth $78 million. Assimilation of name, web site, and branding While IBM allowed Lotus to develop, market and sell its products under its own brand name, a restructuring in January 2001 brought it more in line with its parent company, IBM. Also, IBM moved key marketing and management functions from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to IBM's New York office. Gradually, the Lotus.com web site changed the "About us" section of its web site to eliminate references to "Lotus Development Corporation". The Lotus.com web page in 2001 clearly showed the company as "Lotus Development Corporation" with "a word from its CEO" by 2002 the "About us" section was removed from its site menu, and the Lotus logo was replaced with the IBM logo. By 2003 an "About Lotus" link returned to the Lotus.com page on its sidebar, but this time identifying the company as "Lotus software from IBM" and showing in its contact information "Lotus Software, IBM Software Group". By 2008 the Lotus.com domain name stopped showing a standalone site, instead redirecting to www.ibm.com/software/lotus, and in 2012 the site discontinued all reference to Lotus Software in favor of IBM Collaboration Solutions. IBM discontinued development of IBM Lotus Symphony in 2012 with the final release of version 3.0.1, moving future development effort to Apache OpenOffice, and donating the source code to the Apache Software Foundation. Later that year, IBM announced it was discontinuing the Lotus brand and on March 13, 2013, IBM announced the availability of IBM Notes and Domino 9.0 Social Edition, replacing prior versions of IBM Lotus Notes and IBM Lotus Domino and marking the end of Lotus as an active brand. On December 6, 2018, IBM announced the selling of Lotus Software/Domino to HCL for $1.8 billion. Corporate culture Lotus's first employee was Janet Axelrod who created the Human Resources organization and was the central figure in creating the Lotus culture. As she continued to build her organization and play a central role with senior management, she eventually hired Freada Klein as the first Director of Employee Relations. Lotus was the first major company to support an AIDS walk, in 1986. In 1990 Lotus opened a daycare center for the children of its employees. In 1992 Lotus was the first major company to offer full benefits to same-sex partners. In 1998 Lotus was named one of the top 10 companies for working mothers to work for by Working Mother magazine. In 1995 Lotus had over 4,000 employees worldwide; IBM's acquisition of Lotus was greeted with apprehension by many Lotus employees, who feared that the corporate culture of "Big Blue" would smother their creativity. To the surprise of many employees and journalists, IBM initially adopted a very hands-off, laissez-faire attitude towards its new acquisition. However, by 2000 the assimilation of Lotus was well underway. While the mass employee defections that IBM feared did not materialize, many long-time Lotus employees did complain about the transition to IBM's culture—IBM's employee benefits programs, in particular, were singled out as inferior to Lotus's very progressive programs. Lotus's headquarters in Cambridge were originally divided into two buildings, the Lotus Development Building (LDB) on the banks of the Charles River, and the Rogers Street building, adjacent to the CambridgeSide Galleria. However, in 2001, then President and General Manager, Al Zollar decided not to renew the lease of LDB. The subsequent migration of employees across the street (and into home offices) generally coincided with what was probably the final exodus of employees from the company. Later, IBM's offices at 1 Rogers St supported mobile employees, the Watson Research Center on User interface, and IBM DataPower. The integration of Lotus into IBM continued and eventually the Lotus brand was discontinued, but many former Lotus employees still identified with Lotus and saw themselves as part of the Lotus community for a considerable period after the takeover. Products IBM sponsors the "Lotus Greenhouse", a community web site featuring software from IBM and its business partners. Current products Lotus Connections Lotus Domino Lotus Domino Web Access Lotus Expeditor Lotus Forms Lotus Foundations LotusLive Lotus Mashups Lotus Notes Lotus Notes Traveler IBM Lotus Quickr, which replaces Lotus QuickPlace Lotus Sametime IBM Lotus Web Content Management Discontinued products Lotus SmartSuite including Lotus 1-2-3, Lotus Word Pro, Lotus Freelance Graphics, Lotus Approach, Lotus Organizer (discontinued on 30-Sep-2014) Lotus Domino Document Manager (discontinued on 30-Sep-2012) Lotus Agenda Lotus cc:Mail Lotus HAL Lotus Impress Lotus Improv Lotus Jazz Lotus Magellan Lotus Manuscript Lotus Marketplace Lotus Symphony (DOS version) IBM Lotus Symphony LotusWorks (formerly AlphaWorks, bought from Alpha Software in May 1990) References External links Official website Lotus.com Official website (Archive) Oral history interview with Jonathan Sachs discusses the development of Lotus 1-2-3, Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota Software companies established in 1982 American companies established in 1982 Lotus Software software IBM acquisitions Companies based in Cambridge, Massachusetts Software companies based in Massachusetts 1982 establishments in Massachusetts 1995 mergers and acquisitions Software companies of the United States

1091669

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forschungszentrum%20J%C3%BClich

Forschungszentrum Jülich

Forschungszentrum Jülich ("Jülich Research Centre") is a member of the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres and is one of the largest interdisciplinary research centres in Europe. It was founded on 11 December 1956 by the state of North Rhine-Westphalia as a registered association, before it became "Kernforschungsanlage Jülich GmbH" or Nuclear Research Centre Jülich in 1967. In 1990, the name of the association was changed to "Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH". It has close collaborations with RWTH Aachen in the form of Jülich-Aachen Research Alliance (JARA). Location Forschungszentrum Jülich is situated in the middle of the Stetternich Forest in Jülich (Kreis Düren, Rheinland) and covers an area of 2.2 square kilometres. Financing The annual budget of Forschungszentrum Jülich is approximately € 530 million (in 2009). Public funds are split between the German Federal Government (90%) and the Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia (10%). Staff/size Forschungszentrum Jülich employs more than 5,700 members of staff (2015) and works within the framework of the disciplines physics, chemistry, biology, medicine and engineering on the basic principles and applications in the areas of health, information, environment and energy. Amongst the members of staff, there are approx. 1,500 scientists including 400 PhD students and 130 diploma students. Around 600 people work in the administration and service areas, 500 work for project management agencies, and there are 1,600 technical staff members, while around 330 trainees are completing their training in more than 20 professions. More than 800 visiting scientists come to Forschungszentrum Jülich every year from about 50 countries. Training and apprenticeships In 2003, 367 people were trained in 20 professions at Forschungszentrum Jülich. The proportion of trainees lies around 9% and is more than twice as high as the German national average (for companies with more than 500 employees). In cooperation with RWTH Aachen University and Aachen University of Applied Sciences, Forschungszentrum Jülich also offers combined practical and academic courses. After they have successfully completed their exams, graduates are offered six months employment in their chosen profession. Between 1959 and 2007 around 3,800 trainees completed their training in more than 25 professions. No lectures are held at Forschungszentrum Jülich itself, but in line with the so-called "Jülich model", the directors of the institutes are appointed professors at nearby universities in a joint procedure with the Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia (usually Aachen, Bonn, Cologne, Düsseldorf, but also universities farther away such as Duisburg-Essen or Münster). By holding a lectureship there, they can fulfil their teaching duties. Many other scientists at Forschungszentrum Jülich who have achieved habilitation also undertake lectureships in the nearby universities. In cooperation with the universities, what are known as "research schools" (e.g. "German Research School for Simulation Science" with RWTH Aachen University or "International Helmholtz Research School of Biophysics and Soft Matter" with the universities of Cologne and Düsseldorf) are founded in an effort to support the scientific training of students. An exception to this is the training of mathematical-technical software developers. In cooperation with Aachen University of Applied Sciences (Campus Jülich), the lectures required for the B.Sc. in "Applied Mathematics and Computer Science" are largely held in the Central Institute for Applied Mathematics (ZAM) by university professors and ZAM instructors. For the subsequent M.Sc. in "Technomathematics", the same model applies and some of the lectures are held by ZAM staff. Every year, Forschungszentrum Jülich hosts a two-week IFF Summer School, which addresses current issues in solid-state physics. Structure Organisation Forschungszentrum Jülich is organised into 8 institutes, 4 central divisions, 2 programme groups, 2 projects and 2 project management organizations Project Management Jülich Project Management Organization "Energy, Technology, Sustainability" (ETN) Bodies The bodies of Forschungszentrum Jülich are: the Partners' Meeting the Supervisory Board the Board of Directors, which is made up of Prof. Dr.-Ing. Wolfgang Marquardt (Chairman) Karsten Beneke (Deputy Chairman) Prof. Dr. Sebastian M. Schmidt (Scientific Division I) Prof. Dr. Dr. Hans-Harald Bolt (Scientific Division II) Committees Committees of Forschungszentrum Jülich are: the Scientific Advisory Council (WB) the Scientific and Technical Council (WTR) Research at Forschungszentrum Jülich Research at Jülich is divided into four research areas: health, information, environment, and energy. The key competencies of physics and scientific computing provide the basis for world-class research in these areas. Institutes: Institute for Advanced Simulation (IAS) Institute of Bio- and Geosciences (IBG) Institute of Biological Information (IBI) Institute of Energy and Climate Research (IEK) Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM) Jülich Centre for Neutron Science (JCNS) Nuclear Physics Institute (IKP) Peter Grünberg Institute (PGI) Large-scale facilities at Forschungszentrum Jülich Cooler Synchrotron COSY COSY (Cooler Synchrotron) is a particle accelerator (synchrotron) and storage ring (circumference: 184 m) for accelerating protons (to 2700 MeV) and deuterons (to 2100 MeV) operated by the Institute of Nuclear Physics (IKP) at Forschungszentrum Jülich. COSY is characterised by what is known as beam cooling, which reduces the deviation of particles from their predetermined path (can also be understood as the thermal motion of particles) using electron or stochastic cooling. At COSY there are a number of experimental facilities for studies in the field of hadron physics. These include the ANKE magnetic spectrometer, the TOF flight spectrometer and the WASA universal detector, which was moved to COSY from the CELSIUS storage ring of The Svedberg Laboratoriet (TSL) in Uppsala, Sweden in 2005. COSY is one of the only accelerators in the medium energy range with both electron cooling and stochastic cooling. The synchrotron is used by scientists from German and international research institutions at internal and external target stations. It is one of the research facilities used for collaborative research supported by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Germany). Research reactor FRJ-2 FRJ-2 was a reactor of the same class as DIDO and was used for neutron scattering experiments. It has been operated by the Central Research Reactors Division (ZFR). FRJ-2 was the strongest neutron source in the Helmholtz Association and it was primarily used to conduct scattering and spectroscopic experiments on condensed matter. On May 2, 2006, FRJ-2 was shut down after almost 44 years or 18,875 days of operation. The experiments at FRJ-2 were dismantled bit by bit and transferred to Jülich's outstation at the FRM II research reactor in Garching near Munich. In May 2006, the Jülich Centre for Neutron Science JCNS was founded as response to the shut down of FRJ-2. JCNS operates instruments at the national and international leading sources FRM II, Institut Laue-Langevin in Grenoble, France, and Spallation Neutron Source SNS in OakRidge, USA, under a common scientific objective and provides external users with access to world class instruments under standardized conditions. The breadth of JCNS is comparable to a facility based around a medium flux research reactor, though it offers the quality of high flux sources. JCNS also provides a frame for the method and instrument development program of FZJ and for its in-house research in the condensed matter and key technology programmes. Supercomputers The following supercomputers are all operated in Jülich by the Central Institute for Applied Mathematics (ZAM) within the framework of the John von Neumann Institute for Computing (NIC). JUGENE - Petascale BlueGene/P system From autumn 2007 the JUGENE, an IBM Blue Gene/P computer is running and was officially started in February 2008. Its 65,000 processors reached 220 TFLOPS. It started out as the fastest computer in Europe and the second fastest in the world. On May 26, 2009, the newly upgraded JUGENE was unveiled. It includes 294 912 processor cores, 144 terabyte memory, 6 petabyte storage in 72 racks. With a peak performance of about one PetaFLOPS, it was the third fastest computer and fastest computer in Europe and it currently (November 2010) is the ninth fastest supercomputer in the world. JUROPA JuRoPA (Jülich Research on Petascale Architecture) is an Intel Xeon X5570 based Cluster supercomputer with a peak performance of 308 TFLOPS and 79 terabyte main memory; in June 2009 it was the 10th fastest computer of the world and the second fastest (after JUGENE) in Europe. It currently (November 2010) is the 23rd fastest supercomputer worldwide. JUBL JUBL (Jülich BlueGene/L) was a massively parallel supercomputer, based on IBMs Blue Gene/L architecture, with 16,384 processors (8192 nodes each with two processors) and an internal memory of 4.1 terabytes (512 megabytes per node). It was capable of a peak performance (Rpeak) of 45.87 TFLOPS. The LINPACK performance (Rmax) is 37.33 TFLOPS. At the time when it officially went into operation, JUBL was the 6th most powerful computer in the world. JUICE Since spring 2007, JUICE (Juelich Initiative Cell Cluster) has been in operation. It is a cluster based on IBMs Cell microprocessor. Twelve QS20 blades with 24 Cell CPUs and 12GB RAM provide a peak LINPACK performance of 4.8 TFLOP/s. The cluster uses Mellanox 4x Infiniband cards and a 24-port Voltaire switch for highspeed communication. IBM p690 Cluster Jump The massively parallel supercomputer IBM p690 Cluster Jump has been in operation since the beginning of 2004. With 1312 processors (41 nodes each with 32 processors) and an internal memory of 5 terabytes (128 gigabytes per node), the computer can achieve a maximum performance of 5.6 TFLOPS, which placed it at number 21 in the list of the most powerful computers in the world at the time of its inauguration. The nodes are linked to each other through a high performance switch (HPS). Through a globally parallel data system, applications have access to more than 60 terabytes of storage space and an integrated cassette storage with a capacity of one petabyte. The IBM p690 Cluster Jump is run on the AIX 5.1 operating system. A new building (1,000 m²) was built especially for the IBM p690 Cluster Jump beside the Central Institute for Applied Mathematics. CRAY SV1ex No longer in operation The vector computer CRAY SV1ex was the successor of CRAY J90, which was in operation between 1996 and 2002. It represented the next stage in the computer series of the parallel vector computers with a shared memory, CRAY X-MP, Y-MP and C90. With 16 CPUs and an internal memory of 32 gigabytes, the CRAY SV1ex had a performance of 32 GFLOPS. It was run on the UNICOS 10.0 operating system. This computer was decommissioned on June 30, 2005. CRAY J90 No longer in operation The vector computer CRAY J90 was used as a file server. It had 12 processors, an internal memory of 2 gigabytes and boasted a performance of 3 GFLOPS. CRAY J90 was also run on UNICOS 10.0 and it too was decommissioned on June 30, 2005. TEXTOR tokamak TEXTOR (Tokamak EXperiment for Technology Oriented Research) was a tokamak in the field of plasma-wall interaction operated by the Institute of Energy Research - Plasma Physics (IEK-4) at Forschungszentrum Jülich. Until it was decommissioned in December 2013, TEXTOR was used for research into nuclear fusion. In experiments, hydrogen was heated to a temperature of up to 50 megakelvins so that it took the form of a plasma. Studies of the interaction of this plasma with the surrounding wall constituted a major part of the research performed. The knowledge gained is mainly being applied to a new experimental reactor, ITER, which is currently under construction in Cadarache (South France) with the help of Forschungszentrum Jülich among others. Magnetic resonance tomography The Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-4) houses several magnetic resonance scanners, the largest of which is a 9.4 tesla combined PET-MRI machine for scanning humans, which is one of the highest field devices in Europe. The institute also houses a 3T combined PET-MR system, a 3T and a 7T MR system, all for human use, and a 9.4T small-animal scanner. SAPHIR Atmosphere Simulation Chamber In the 20-meter long SAPHIR chamber (Simulation of Atmospheric PHotochemistry In a large Reaction Chamber), a group in the Institute of Chemistry and Dynamics of the Geosphere - Troposphere (ICG-II) investigates photochemical reactions in the atmosphere. PhyTec experimental facility for cultivating plants Since 2003, a greenhouse with cutting-edge technology has been available at Forschungszentrum Jülich. The maximum transparency of the panels (over 95%) is achieved in the spectral range important for photosynthesis thanks to a special type of glass and an anti-reflective coating. Moreover, UV-B rays can pass through the glass panels. The CO2 concentration can be increased and decreased in two chambers, the humidity can be varied, and the temperatures can be kept at 25 °C, even in summer when the sun is constantly shining. Scientists at the Institute of Chemistry and Dynamics of the Geosphere - Phytosphere (ICG-III) simulate different climate scenarios here and investigate their influence on the key processes in plants, such as growth, transport, exchange processes with the atmosphere and soil, and biotic interactions. Beamlines at synchrotrons The Peter Grünberg Institute (PGI) supports a number of beamlines for research with synchrotron radiation at various synchrotrons: BL5 U-250-PGM at DELTA (Dortmund) UE56/1-SGM at BESSY (Berlin) MuCAT at APS (Argonne, USA) JUSIFA at HASYLAB (Hamburg) NanoESCA beamline Elettra (Trieste, Italy) Further research projects at Forschungszentrum Jülich CLaMS: Atmosphere Model for Climate Research Understanding the chemical processes in the atmosphere is the basis of many climate models. Environmental researchers at Forschungszentrum Jülich investigate the chemistry of the atmosphere with airplanes, balloons and satellites. They use their findings to generate chemical models such as CLaMS, which are then used in simulations on supercomputers. MEM-BRAIN: carbon dioxide separation Together with its research partners, Forschungszentrum Jülich is developing ceramic membranes. These membranes could be put to use as filters in power plants, which would separate process gases and effectively retain carbon dioxide. UNICORE: easy access to computing resources Today, computing and storage resources are often split between a number of computer systems, computer centres or even between different countries. Science and industry therefore need tools that will allow easy and secure access to these resources. UNICORE from Jülich is one such grid-based software package. Infrastructure As well as research institutions and large-scale facilities, Forschungszentrum Jülich has a variety of infrastructure units and central institutions that it needs for its day-to-day operations, including: Finance and Controlling Division (F) Personnel Division (P) Legal and Patent Division (R) Operation Management Division (B) Safety and Radiation Protection Division (S) Purchasing and Materials Division (M) Organization and Planning Division (O) Corporate Communications (UK) Central Institute for Applied Mathematics (ZAM) Central Technology Division (ZAT) Central Division of Analytical Chemistry (ZCH) Central Research Reactors Division (ZFR) Central Institute for Electronics (ZEL) Central Library (ZB) See also AVR reactor In 2007, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Peter Grünberg and Albert Fert for the independent discovery of Giant Magnetoresistance. Grünberg was a leading researcher at Forschungszentrum Jülich. References External links Forschungszentrum Jülich Events organised by Forschungszentrum Jülich for its 50th anniversary Research areas at Forschungszentrum Jülich Radiation protection glossary of Forschungszentrum Jülich "The SSB pages" at Forschungszentrum Jülich for radiation protection officers and persons occupationally exposed to radiation E-Journals instead of Print Journals – a Research Library Makes the Changeover Düren (district) Multidisciplinary research institutes Nuclear research institutes Plasma physics facilities Radiation protection organizations Research institutes in Germany Supercomputer sites Neuroscience research centers in Germany

599647

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROM%20image

ROM image

A ROM image, or ROM file, is a computer file which contains a copy of the data from a read-only memory chip, often from a video game cartridge, or used to contain a computer's firmware, or from an arcade game's main board. The term is frequently used in the context of emulation, whereby older games or firmware are copied to ROM files on modern computers and can, using a piece of software known as an emulator, be run on a different device than which they were designed for. ROM burners are used to copy ROM images to hardware, such as ROM cartridges, or ROM chips, for debugging and QA testing. Creation ROMs can be copied from the read-only memory chips found in cartridge-based games and many arcade machines using a dedicated device in a process known as dumping. For most common home video game systems, these devices are widely available, examples being the Doctor V64, or the Retrode. Dumping ROMs from arcade machines, which are highly customized PCBs, often requires individual setups for each machine along with a large amount of expertise. Copy protection mechanisms While ROM images are often used as a means of preserving the history of computer games, they are also often used to facilitate the unauthorized copying and redistribution of modern games. Viewing this as potentially reducing sales of their products, many game companies have incorporated so-called features into newer games which are designed to prevent copying, while still allowing the original game to be played. For instance, the Nintendo GameCube used non-standard 8 cm DVD-like optical media, which for a long time prevented games stored on those discs from being copied. It was not until a security hole was found in Phantasy Star Online Episode I & II that GameCube games could be successfully copied, using the GameCube itself to read the discs. SNK also employed a method of copy prevention on their Neo Geo games, starting with The King of Fighters in 1999, which used an encryption algorithm on the graphics ROMs to prevent them from being played in an emulator. Many thought that this would mark the end of Neo Geo emulation. However, as early as 2000, hackers found a way to decrypt and dump the ROMs successfully, making them playable once again in a Neo Geo emulator. Another company which used to employ methods of copy prevention on their arcade games was Capcom, which is known for its CPS-2 arcade board. This contained a heavy copy protection algorithm which was not broken until 7 years after the system's release in 1993. The original crack by the CPS2Shock Team was not a true emulation of the protection because it used XOR tables to bypass the original encryption and allow the game to play in an emulator. Their stated intent was to wait until CPS-2 games were no longer profitable to release the decryption method (three years after the last game release). The full decryption algorithm was cracked in 2007 by Nicola Salmoria, Andreas Naive and Charles MacDonald of the MAME development team. Another copy prevention technique used in cartridge-games was to have the game attempt to write to ROM. On an authentic cartridge this would do nothing; however, emulators would often allow the write to succeed. Pirate cartridges also often used writable chips instead of ROM. By reading the value back to see whether the write succeeded, the game could tell whether it was running from an authentic cartridge. Alternatively, the game may simply attempt to overwrite critical program instructions, which if successful renders it unplayable. Some games, such as Game Boy games, also had other hardware such as memory bank controllers connected to the cartridge bus. The game would send data to this hardware by attempting to write it to specific areas of ROM; thus, if the ROM were writable, this process would corrupt data. Capcom's latest arcade board is the CPS-3. This was resistant to emulation attempts until June 2007, when the encryption method was reverse-engineered by Andreas Naive. It is currently implemented by MAME and a variant of the CPS-2 emulator Nebula. Uses Emulation Video game console emulators typically take ROM images as input files. Software ROM ROM images are used when developing for embedded computers. Software which is being developed for embedded computers is often written to ROM files for testing on a standard computer before it is written to a ROM chip for use in the embedded systems. Digital preservation The lifespan of digital media is rarely great. While black-and-white photographs may survive for a century or more, many digital media can become unreadable after only 10 years. This is beginning to become a problem as early computer systems may be presently fifty or sixty years old while early home video consoles may be almost thirty years old. Due to this aging, there is a significant worry that many early computer and video games may not survive without being transferred to new media. So, those with an interest in preservation are actively seeking older arcade and video games and attempting to dump them to ROM images. When stored on standardized media such as CD-ROMs and DVD-ROMs, they can be copied to future media with significantly reduced effort. The trend towards mass digital distribution of ROM image files, while potentially damaging to copyright holders, may also have a positive effect on preservation. While over time many original ROM copies of older games may deteriorate, be broken or thrown away, a copy in file form may be distributed throughout the world, allowing games which would otherwise have been lost a greater chance of survival. Hacks and fan translations Once games have been made available in ROM format, it is possible for users to make modifications. This may take the form of altering graphics, changing game levels, tweaking difficulty factor, or even translation into a language for which a game was not originally made available. Hacks can often take humorous forms, as is the case with a hack of the NES version of Mario Bros., titled Afro Mario Brothers, which features the famous brothers wearing Afro haircuts. The Metroid Redesign mod is a hack of Super Metroid that revamps the game and adds new objectives. A large scene has developed to translate games into other languages. Many games receive a release in one part of the world, but not in another. For example, many role-playing video games released in Japan go unreleased in the West and East outside Japan. A group of fan translators will often translate the game themselves to meet demand for titles. For example, the 1995 game Tales of Phantasia was only officially released in Japan; DeJap Translations translated the game's on-screen text into English in 2001. Further to this, a project called Vocals of Phantasia was begun to translate the actual speech from the game. An official English version was not released until March 2006, some five years after the text translation was released. Another example was that of Mother 3, a Japan-only sequel to the cult-favorite Earthbound. In spite of massive fan response and several petitions for an English translation, the only response from Nintendo was that Mother 3 would be translated and released in Europe, which it never was. Instead, the fan website Starmen.net undertook a massive translation project and released the translated version of Mother 3 in October, 2008. The translation was praised by fans and even employees from Nintendo, Square Enix, and other industry professionals. The Japanese N64 game Dōbutsu no Mori (Animal Forest) has also been translated into English. The game was originally only released on N64 in Japan, but it was ported to GameCube and renamed Animal Crossing. Hacks may range from simple tweaks such as graphic fixes and cheats, to full-blown redesigns of the game, in effect creating an entirely new game using the original as a base. Similar image types Image files derived from computer tape are known as tape images, while those derived from floppy disks and CD-ROMs (and other disk formats) are known as disk images. Images copied from optical media are also called ISO images, after one of the standard file systems for optical media, ISO 9660. Creating images from other media is often considerably easier and can often be performed with off-the-shelf hardware. For example, the creation of tape images from games stored on magnetic tapes (from, for example, the Sinclair ZX80 computer) generally involves simply playing the magnetic tape using a standard audio tape player connected to the line-in of a PC sound card. This is then recorded to an audio file and transformed into a tape image file using another program. Likewise, many CD and DVD games may be copied using a standard PC CD/DVD drive. References External links Nintendo's Intellectual Property FAQ GameFAQs Help : Game Piracy: ROMs and Warez Information EmuFAQ Addendum - The Question of ROMs Computer memory Firmware Video game emulation

3795227

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy%20of%20Kerala

Economy of Kerala

The economy of Kerala is the 9th largest in India, with an annual gross state product (GSP) of in 2020–2021. Per-capita GSP of Kerala during the same period is , the sixth largest in India. In 2019–20, the tertiary sector contributed around 63% of the state's GSVA, compared to 28% by secondary sector, and 8% by primary sector. Kerala's high GDP and productivity figures with higher development figures is often dubbed the "Kerala Phenomenon" or the "Kerala Model" of development by economists, political scientists, and sociologists. This phenomenon arises mainly from Kerala's land reforms, social upliftment of entire communities initiated from the first democratic government of Kerala led by E. M. S. Namboodiripad and subsequently implemented by various governments ruled the state. Kerala's economy is primarily based on the concept of "democratic socialist welfare state". Some, such as Financial Express, use the term "Money Order Economy". Kerala is the second-most urbanised major state in the country with 47.7% urban population according to the 2011 Census of India, and has tried to maintain a pan-state economy rather than concentrating in some selected cities to develop. Kerala is the second-least impoverished state in India according to the Annual Report of Reserve Bank of India published in 2013, only after to Goa. Kerala, which accounts for 2.8% of India's population and 1.2% of its land area, contributes more than 4% to the GDP of India. Thus, the southern state's per capita income is 60% higher than India's average. This has fuelled internal migration to Kerala for low-end jobs, even as Keralites have emigrated—mostly to the Gulf countries—in search of better-paying jobs. Around 3,000,000 Keralites are working abroad, mainly in Persian Gulf; to where migration started with the Gulf Boom. The Kerala Economy is therefore largely dependent on trade in services and resulted remittances. In 2012, the state was the highest receiver of overall remittances to India which stood at Rs. 49,965 Crore (31.2% of the State's GDP), followed by Tamil Nadu, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh. The Migrant labourers in Kerala are a significant workforce in industrial and agricultural sectors of state. Kerala's economy was gradually shifting from an agrarian economy into a service-based one during the period between 1960 and 2020. With 12.5% of the labour force unemployed in 2016, Kerala sank from being the 11th in unemployment in India in the year before to being 3rd in the country. The 'Report on Fifth Annual Employment - Unemployment Survey for 2015-16' prepared by the Labour Bureau of the Union ministry of Labour and Employment indicates that Tripura had the highest unemployment rate of 19.7% in India, followed by Sikkim (18.1%) and Kerala (12.5%). In 2020 with unemployment rate around 5% , Kerala has managed to turn its fate around despite the corona virus pandemic affecting all sectors of the economy. The state's poverty rate is exceptionally lowest in the country at 0.71%; and it houses the Kottayam district which is the only one in the country with zero poor residents. Macro-economic trend This is a chart of trend of gross state domestic product of Kerala at market prices estimated by Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation with figures in millions of Indian Rupees. Kerala had recorded a growth rate of 6.49 per cent in 2013, which was above the national average (4.04) and the second highest among South Indian States. The state's growth rate was above that of Karnataka (5.79 per cent) and Andhra Pradesh (5.97 per cent). During the period between 1960 and 2020, Kerala's economy was gradually shifting from an agrarian economy into a service-based economy as shown below: Sources: Economic Review, Kerala (2016 and 2020) In 2009, Kerala was the 8th greatest debt burden in India. In 2013, the state's debt was estimated at 35.53 per cent of GSP. State's debt liability recorded an increase of 14.4 per cent and rose from in 2013–14 to in 2014–15. This liability as a percentage of GSDP was 31.4 per cent, which is higher than the target of 29.8 per cent fixed in the Kerala Fiscal Responsibility Act. The GDP growth rate that continuously stood above the national average, began to show a declining trend from 2012 to 2013, and it further slid to 8.59% in 2015–16, when the national average stood at 9.94%. The tax growth rate, which was 23.24% in 2010–11, fell to 10.68% in 2015–16. Sectors The state's service sector which accounts for around 65% of its revenue is mainly based upon its Hospitality industry, Tourism, Ayurveda&Medical Services, Pilgrimage, Information technology, Transportation, Financial sector, and Education. Major initiatives under the industrial sector include Cochin Shipyard, Oil refinery, Shipbuilding, Software Industry, Coastal mineral industries, food processing, marine products processing, and Rubber based products. The primary sector of the state is mainly based upon Cash crops. Kerala produces a significant amount of national output of the cash crops such as Coconut, Tea, Coffee, pepper, Natural rubber, Cardamom, and Cashew in India. The cultivation of food crops began to reduce since 1950's. The Migrant labourers in Kerala are a significant workforce in its industrial and agricultural sectors. Being home to only 1.18% of the total land area of India and 2.75% of its population, Kerala contributes more than 4% to the Gross Domestic Product of India. Information Technology Kerala has focused more attention towards growth of Information Technology sector with formation of Technopark, Thiruvananthapuram which is one of the largest IT employer in Kerala. It was the first technology park in India and with the inauguration of the Thejaswini complex on 22 February 2007, Technopark became the largest IT Park in India. Software giants like Infosys, Oracle, Tata Consultancy Services, Capgemini, HCL, UST Global, NeST and Suntec have offices in the state. The state has a second major IT hub, the Infopark centred in Kochi with "spokes"(it acts as the "hub") in Thrissur and Cherthala, Alappuzha. , Infopark generates one-third of total IT Revenues of the state with key offices of IT majors like Tata Consultancy Services, Cognizant, Wipro, UST Global, IBS Software Services etc. and Multinational corporations like KPMG, Ernst & Young, EXL Service, Etisalat DB Telecom, Nielsen Audio, Xerox ACS, Tata ELXSI etc. Kochi also has another major project SmartCity under construction, built in partnership with Dubai Government. A third major IT Hub is under construction centred around Kozhikode known as Cyberpark. Kerala is the first Indian state to make Internet access a basic right. As on 2019, Kerala's Internet penetration rate is the second-highest in India only after to Delhi. Tourism Kerala is an established tourist destination for both Indians and non-Indians alike. Tourism contributes to nearly 10% of the state's GDP. Tourists mostly visit the hill stations of Munnar, Nelliampathi, Wayanad and Ponmudi Beaches at Varkala, Kovalam, Cherai, Kozhikode Historical centers at Fort Kochi, Kappad and national parks and wildlife sanctuaries such as Periyar and Eravikulam National Park. The "backwaters" region – an extensive network of interlocking rivers, lakes, and canals that center on Ashtamudi, Alleppey, Kumarakom, Veli, Vembanad and Punnamada – also see heavy tourist traffic. Examples of Keralite architecture, such as the Padmanabhapuram Palace, Malik Deenar Mosque Kasaragod, Paradesi Synagogue are also visited. cities like Kozhikode (Land of Zamorins) and Alappuzha(called the "Venice of the East") are also popular destinations. Tourism plays an important role in the state's economy. Kerala is also a preferred destination for night dwellers and the nightlife districts in Trivandrum, Kovalam, Kochi, Kozhikode and Varkala are the major centres. Along with tourism there is also a new trend of domestic pilgrimage tourism visible in Kerala in recent years during the annual Sabarimala pilgrimage season and round the year to temples such as Guruvayur Temple Thrissur, Padmanabhaswamy Temple Thiruvananthapuram, Vadakkunatha Temple, Parasseni kadavu temple in Kannur etc. Education Around 18% of the total employees in the organised sector of state, both public and private, are employed in the Educational sector as in March 2020. Kerala is also one of the Indian states which spend a larger proportion of its revenue for human resource development including educational and healthcare uplifting. According to the first economic census, conducted in 1977, 99.7% of the villages in Kerala had a primary school within , 98.6% had a middle school within and 96.7% had a high school or higher secondary school within . In 1991, Kerala became the first state in India to be recognised as completely literate, although the effective literacy rate at that time was only 90%. In 2006–2007, the state topped the Education Development Index (EDI) of the 21 major states in India. , enrolment in elementary education was almost 100%; and, unlike other states in India, educational opportunity was almost equally distributed among sexes, social groups, and regions. According to the 2011 census, Kerala has a 93.9% literacy, compared to the national literacy rate of 74.0%. In January 2016, Kerala became the first Indian state to achieve 100% primary education through its Athulyam literacy programme. Though the cost of education is generally considered low in Kerala, according to the 61st round of the National Sample Survey (2004–2005), per capita spending on education by the rural households was reported to be for Kerala, more than twice the national average. The survey also revealed that the rural-urban difference in household expenditure on education was much less in Kerala than in the rest of India. The KITE Kerala is a state owned special purpose company under education department of the Government of Kerala. It was developed to support ICT enabled education for schools in the state. The erstwhile IT@School Project was transformed into KITE for extending its scope of operations in August 2017. Kerala is the first Indian state to have ICT-enabled education with hi-tech classrooms in all public schools. Kerala topped in the School Education Quality Index published by NITI Aayog in 2019. Ship building The Cochin Shipyard in Kochi is the biggest ship building facility in Kerala. Cochin Shipyard was incorporated in the year 1972 as a fully owned Government of India company. In the last three decades the company has emerged as a forerunner in the Indian shipbuilding & Shiprepair industry. This yard can build and repair the largest vessels in India. It can build ships up to 1,100,000 tonnes deadweight (DWT) and repair ships up to 1,250,000 DWT. The yard has delivered two of India's largest double hull Aframax tankers each of 95,000 DWT. CSL has secured shipbuilding orders from internationally renowned companies from Europe & Middle East and is nominated to build the country's first indigenously built Air Defence Ship. The Cochin Shipyard also builds ships for the Indian Navy. Shipyard commenced ship repair operations in the year 1982 and has undertaken repairs of all types of ships including upgradation of ships of oil exploration industry as well as periodical lay up repairs and life extension of ships of Navy, UTL, Coast Guard, Fisheries and Port Trust besides merchant ships of SCI & ONGC. The yard has, over the years, developed adequate capabilities to handle complex and sophisticated repair jobs. Recently Cochin Shipyard won a major repair orders from ONGC. The order for major repairs of three rigs viz Mobile Offshore Drilling Unit (MODU) Sagar Vijay, Mobile Offshore Drilling Unit (MODU) Sagar Bhushan and Jack Up Rig (JUR) Sagar Kiran was secured by CSL against very stiff international competition. Infrastructure Kerala has of roads, which accounts for 5.6% of India's total. This translates to about of road per thousand people, compared to an average of in the country. Roads in Kerala include of national highway; 1.6% of the nation's total, of state highway; 2.5% of the nation's total, of district roads; 4.7% of the nation's total, of urban (municipal) roads; 6.3% of the nation's total, and of rural roads; 3.8% of the nation's total. Most of Kerala's west coast is accessible through the NH 66 (previously NH 17 and 47); and the eastern side is accessible through state highways. New projects for hill and coastal highways were recently announced under KIIFB. Virtually all of Kerala's villages are connected by road. Traffic in Kerala has been growing at a rate of 10–11% every year, resulting in high traffic and pressure on the roads. Total road length in Kerala increased by 5% between 2003 and 2004. The road density in Kerala is nearly four times the national average, and is a reflection of Kerala's unique settlement patterns. India's national highway network includes a Kerala-wide total of 1,524 km, which is only 2.6% of the national total. There are eight designated national highways in the state. Upgrading and maintenance of 1,600 km of state highways and major district roads have been taken up under the Kerala State Transport Project (KSTP), which includes the GIS-based Road Information and Management Project (RIMS). The Kerala Infrastructure Investment Fund Board is a government owned financial institution in the state to mobilize funds for infrastructure development from outside the state revenue, aiming at overall infrastructure development of the state. Energy Renewable energy sources constitute the bulk of electricity generated in Kerala. KSEB Ltd has 31 hydro-electric projects, 11 solar projects, 2 diesel power plants & 7 wind farms.Power generation is also undertaken by Captive Mode Projects, Independent Power Mode Projects & Co-generation mode projects other than KSEBL. Oil refining and petrochemicals The Kochi Refinery is a public crude oil refinery in the city of Kochi. It is the largest state owned refinery in India with a production capacity of 15.5 million tons per annum. Formerly known as Cochin Refineries Limited and later renamed as Kochi Refineries Limited, it was acquired by Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited in the year 2006. Today Kochi Refinery is a frontline entity as the unit of the Fortune 500 company, BPCL. With a turnover of around US$2500 million, the refinery aims to strengthen its presence in refining and marketing of petroleum products and further grow into the energy and petrochemical sectors. Kochi Refinery is engaged in Refining and marketing of petroleum products. Beginning with a capacity of 50,000 barrels per day, today the Refinery has a refining capacity of 310,000 bbl/d. The Company entered the petrochemical sector with benzene and toluene in 1989. Solar power India's largest floating solar power plant set up on the Banasura Sagar reservoir in Wayanad, Kerala. It is the 500 kWp (kilowatt peak) solar plant of the Kerala state electricity board (KSEB) floats on 1.25 acres of water surface of the reservoir. India's first solar ferry used for public transport, ADITYA, operates in Kerala. The Cochin International Airport the first airport in India that runs entirely on solar power, is in Kerala. The Kochi Metro is planning 78 solar-electric ferry boats for the city, which will be the largest integrated water transport system in the world. Finance As of March 2002, Kerala's banking sector comprised 3341 local branches: each branch served 10,000 people, lower than the national average of 16,000; the state has the third-highest bank penetration among Indian states. On 1 October 2011, Kerala became the first state in the country to have at least one banking facility in every village. Around 8% of the total employees in the organised sector of state are employed in Financial and Insurance activities as in March 2020. Traditional Industries Traditional industries manufacturing items; coir, handlooms, and handicrafts employ around one million people. Kerala supplies 60% of the total global produce of white coir fibre. India's first coir factory was set up in Alleppey in 1859–60. The Central Coir Research Institute was established there in 1959. As per the 2006–2007 census by SIDBI, there are 1,468,104 micro, small and medium enterprises in Kerala employing 3,031,272 people. The KSIDC has promoted more than 650 medium and large manufacturing firms in Kerala, creating employment for 72,500 people. A mining sector of 0.3% of GSDP involves extraction of ilmenite, kaolin, bauxite, silica, quartz, rutile, zircon, and sillimanite. Agriculture and livestock Agricultural sector contributes only 7% to the GSDP of Kerala. Kerala produces 97% of national output of pepper, and accounts for 85% of the area under natural rubber in the country. Coconut, tea, coffee, cashew, and spices — including cardamom, vanilla, cinnamon, and nutmeg — comprise a critical agricultural sector. Around 90% of the total Cardamom produced in India is from Kerala. India is the second-largest producer of Cardamom in world. A key agricultural staple is rice, with some six hundred varieties grown in Kerala's extensive paddy fields. Nevertheless, home gardens comprise a significant portion of the agricultural sector. Related animal husbandry is also important, and is touted by proponents as a means of alleviating rural poverty and unemployment among women, the marginalised, and the landless. Feeding, milking, breeding, management, health care, and concomitant micro-enterprises all provide work for around 3.2 million of Kerala's 5.5 million households. The state government seeks to promote such activity via educational campaigns and the development of new cattle breeds such as Sunandini. About 20% of the total Coffee produced in India are from Kerala. Given below is a table of 2015 national output share of select agricultural crops and allied segments in Kerala based on 2011 prices The most essential or the staple crop is the rice or paddy. About 600 varieties of rice are grown in the sprawling paddy fields of Kerala. In fact the Kuttanad region of the district of Kerala is known as the 'rice bowl of the state' and enjoys a significant status in the production of rice. Next to rice is Tapioca and is cultivated mainly in the drier regions. Tapioca is a major food of the Keralites. Besides production of the main crop, Kerala is also a major producer of spices that form the cash crops of the state. The important spices are cardamom, cinnamon, clove, turmeric, nutmeg and vanilla. Other cash crops that constitute the agricultural sector include tea, coffee cashew, pulses, areca nut, ginger and coconut. In fact coconut provides the principal source of income in Kerala- from coir industry to coconut shell artifacts. Cashew is also an essential cash crop. Kottayam district has extensive areas producing and processing rubber. Apart from rubber, other plantation crop likes plantains or bananas are also grown in plenty. In 1960–61, Kerala contributed to nearly 70% of the country's coconut production. In 2011–12, it was at 42%. It dropped further by 2.3% points the next year. According to the State Planning Board (2011) data, the state is producing only about 12% of its total requirement for rice. In 1960-61 Kerala produced more than 10 lakh tons of rice. By 2012-13 rice production was down to 5.08 lakh tons. By 2012–13, in just a single year, area under rice cultivation had declined by 5.2%, and the production itself dropped by 10.2%. Fisheries With of coastal belt, 400,000 hectares of inland water resources and approximately 220,000 active fishermen, Kerala is one of the leading producers of fish in India. According to 2003–04 reports, about 1.1 million people earn their livelihood from fishing and allied activities such as drying, processing, packaging, exporting and transporting fisheries. The annual yield of the sector was estimated as 608,000 tons in 2003–04. This contributes to about 3% of the total economy of the state. In 2006, around 22% of the total Indian marine fishery yield was from Kerala. During the southwest monsoon, a suspended mud bank develops along the shore, which in turn leads to calm ocean water, peaking the output of the fishing industry. This phenomenon is locally called chakara. The waters provide a large variety of fish: pelagic species; 59%, demersal species; 23%, crustaceans, molluscs and others for 18%. Around 1.050 million fishermen haul an annual catch of 668,000 tonnes as of a 1999–2000 estimate; 222 fishing villages are strung along the coast. Another 113 fishing villages dot the hinterland. Background radiation levels Minerals including Ilmenite, Monazite, Thorium, and Titanium, are found in the coastal belt of Kerala. Kerala's coastal belt of Karunagappally is known for high background radiation from thorium-containing monazite sand. In some coastal panchayats, median outdoor radiation levels are more than 4 mGy/yr and, in certain locations on the coast, it is as high as 70 mGy/yr. Alcohol The government enforces state monopoly over liquor sale in the state, after the state banned foreign liquor shops, through the government owned Kerala State Beverages Corporation (KSBC). Every year, liquor sales have been rising and the total sales of liquor and beer during 2010-11 fiscal year was expected to be about Rs. 67 billion. The government applies the highest state tax on liquor (around 247%). Rum and brandy are the preferred drinks in Kerala in a country where whisky outsells every other liquor. Taxes on alcohol was a major source of revenue for the state government, but of late, it has been showing a declining trend. Only 4.2% of revenues for its annual budget come from liquor sales. Revenues from alcohol to the state's exchequer have registered a 100% rise over the past four years. Liquor sales stood at 201 lakh cases worth Rs. 11,577 crore during 2015–16, down from 220 lakh cases worth Rs. 10,013 crore during the previous year. Gross sales during the first three months of 2016 were around Rs. 4,000 crore. Numbers from the Kerala State Beverages Corporation analyzed by the Alcohol and Drug Information Center (AIDIC), show that alcohol consumption dropped by 20.27 per cent since April 2014, this in a market that registered an annual growth of 12 per cent to 67 per cent for the last 30 years. In 2018–19, the turnover from the sale of liquor in Kerala stood at over Rs 14,500 crore and the revenue earned by way of tax was in excess of Rs 12,400 crore. Foreign remittances 1.6 million Keralites work overseas out of a population of 32 million. As of 2008, the Keralites in the Gulf countries send home a sum of USD 9.25 billion annually, which is about 10% of Remittance to India. Large numbers work in construction. High literacy allows Keralites to secure administrative employment & white-collar jobs. Migrants' families are three times as likely as those of nonmigrants to live in superior housing, and about twice as likely to have telephones, refrigerators, and cars. Malappuram district has the largest proportion of emigrant households in state. Pathanamthitta and Thrissur districts have on an average one member from each household a non-resident Indian. Of the $71 billion in remittances sent to India in 2012, Kerala still received the highest among the states: $11.3 billion, which is nearly 10%. The foreign remittances in 2014 were estimated to be , which dropped to in 2016. The annual remittance received by the state in 2017 was estimated as , which constituted 35% of the state's total income in the year. In 2018, there were 2.1 million emigrants from the state who made a remittance of . There was a decline of about 3 lakh emigrants from the state during 2013–18. However, the overall remittances showed an increase compared to those of the previous years. There is also another interesting observation made by Kerala Migration Survey in its previous studies, which is, there is a steady rise in migration of highly qualified women professionals from Kerala from the 1990s to 2004. These women migrants were more educated and skilled and are earning more compared to unskilled migrants. There was a diversification of source and destinations among female migrants their migration isn't entirely Middle East oriented and they are predominantly hailing from Central Kerala compared to male migrants who are overwhelmingly from Malabar region and migrate to GCC. There is also more permanent nature of employment for female migrants compared to male migrants. This diversification provided a cushioning from both increasing naturalisation of West Asian countries and tightened immigration laws of Western countries in 2010s this helped to sustain remittance inflow. The women migrants are mainly trained in Nursing. According to a study commissioned by the Kerala State Planning Board, the state should look for other reliable sources instead of relying on remittances to finance its expenditure. Other Kerala is the single largest originator of education loans for the country as a whole. Total disbursal of education loans amount to Rs. 60 billion. Aluva is the largest industrial belt in Kerala. There are more than 247 industries viz. Fertilisers and Chemicals Travancore (FACT), Travancore Cochin Chemicals, Indian Rare Earths Limited, Hindustan Insecticides Limited and many others manufacturing a range of products like chemical and petrochemical products, pesticides, rare-earth elements, rubber processing chemicals, fertilizers, zinc/chromium compounds and leather products. Publicly-listed companies from Kerala The following companies headquartered in or primarily operating from Kerala are listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange: Muthoot Capital Services Limited Geojit Financial Services V-Guard Industries Ltd Federal Bank Dhanlaxmi Bank South Indian Bank Cochin Minerals and Rutile Limited Manappuram Finance Limited Muthoot Finance Harrisons Malayalam Accel Transmatic Limited GTN Textiles Limited Kitex Garments Nitta Gelatin India Ltd Eastern Treads Limited Rubfila International LTD Kerala Ayurveda Ltd Vertex Securities Ltd Sree Sakthi Paper Mills AVT Natural Products Victory Paper and Boards (India) Limited Cochin Shipyard Limited Aster DM Healthcare Limited Wonderla Holidays Ltd (See Wonderla) Catholic Syrian bank TCM Ltd (Formerly Travancore Chemical & Manufacturing Company Ltd) Unemployment rate The Unemployment rate of Kerala is higher than the national average of India. The structure of unemployment and job seekers in the southwestern state of Kerala varies significantly from the rest of India. K. P. Kannan, a development economist in Kerala, calls it as Educated Unemployment, in which a person can't find desired job according to his educational qualification. Other varying factor of Kerala with respect to rest of India is the higher number of female job seekers with respect to its male counterpart. More than 60% of the total job seekers in Kerala are women, with most of them are well-educated. It is also seen that the unemployment rate among the women job seekers is much higher than that among the male job seekers. Around 25% of the Postgraduates are unemployed while nearly 17% of each of those who have attained either a technical degree or vocational training are unemployed. The labour force utilised for the primary and secondary sectors of the state are mainly the Migrant labourers in Kerala, who come from other states of India, for higher wages. A portion of the male workforce of the state have emigrated—mostly to the Gulf countries—in search of better-paying jobs, known as Kerala Gulf diaspora. However the female work force doesn't do so resulting in higher unemployment rate among the women, who are more than 60% of the total job seekers in Kerala. See also Kerala Infrastructure Investment Fund Board Kerala Startup Mission Kerala Model Public sector undertakings in Kerala Unemployment in Kerala Migrant labourers in Kerala Kerala Gulf diaspora Emerging Kerala Demographics of Kerala Notes References . . . . . Further reading Economic Review 2020 by State Planning Board, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala External links Conundrum of Kerala's struggling economy BBC News Kerala Economic Association's Official Website

1029949

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printed%20circuit%20board%20milling

Printed circuit board milling

Printed circuit board milling (also: isolation milling) is the process of removing areas of copper from a sheet of printed circuit board material to recreate the pads, signal traces and structures according to patterns from a digital circuit board plan known as a layout file. Similar to the more common and well known chemical PCB etch process, the PCB milling process is subtractive: material is removed to create the electrical isolation and ground planes required. However, unlike the chemical etch process, PCB milling is typically a non-chemical process and as such it can be completed in a typical office or lab environment without exposure to hazardous chemicals. High quality circuit boards can be produced using either process. In the case of PCB milling, the quality of a circuit board is chiefly determined by the system's true, or weighted, milling accuracy and control as well as the condition (sharpness, temper) of the milling bits and their respective feed/rotational speeds. By contrast, in the chemical etch process, the quality of a circuit board depends on the accuracy and/or quality of the mask used to protect the copper from the chemicals and the state of the etching chemicals. Advantages PCB milling has advantages for both prototyping and some special PCB designs. The biggest benefit is that one does not have to use chemicals to produce PCBs. When creating a prototype, outsourcing a board takes time. Alternative is to make a PCB in-house. Using the wet process, in-house production presents problems with chemicals and disposing thereof. High-resolution boards using the wet process are hard to achieve and still, when done, one still has to drill and eventually cut out the PCB from the base material. CNC machine prototyping can provide a fast-turnaround board production process without the need for wet processing. If a CNC machine is already used for drilling, this single machine could carry out both parts of the process, drilling and milling. A CNC machine is used to process drilling, milling and cutting. Many boards that are simple for milling would be very difficult to process by wet etching and manual drilling afterward in a laboratory environment without using top-of-the-line systems that usually cost multiple times more than CNC milling machines. In mass production, milling is unlikely to replace etching although the use of CNC is already standard practice for drilling the boards. Hardware A PCB milling system is a single machine that can perform all of the required actions to create a prototype board, with the exception of inserting vias and through hole plating. Most of these machines require only a standard AC mains outlet and a shop-type vacuum cleaner for operation. Software Software for milling PCBs is usually delivered by the CNC machine manufacturer. Most of the packages can be split in two main categories – raster and vector. Software that produces tool paths using raster calculation method tends to have lower resolution of processing than the vector based software since it relies on the raster information it receives. Mechanical system The mechanics behind a PCB milling machine are fairly straightforward and have their roots in CNC milling technology. A PCB milling system is similar to a miniature and highly accurate NC milling table. For machine control, positioning information and machine control commands are sent from the controlling software via a serial port or parallel port connection to the milling machine's on-board controller. The controller is then responsible for driving and monitoring the various positioning components which move the milling head and gantry and control the spindle speed. Spindle speeds can range from 30,000 RPM to 100,000 RPM depending on the milling system, with higher spindle speeds equating to better accuracy, in a nutshell the smaller the tool diameter the higher RPM you need. Typically this drive system comprises non-monitored stepper motors for the X/Y axis, an on-off non-monitored solenoid, pneumatic piston or lead screw for the Z-axis, and a DC motor control circuit for spindle speed, none of which provide positional feedback. More advanced systems provide a monitored stepper motor Z-axis drive for greater control during milling and drilling as well as more advanced RF spindle motor control circuits that provide better control over a wider range of speeds. X and Y-axis control For the X and Y-axis drive systems most PCB milling machines use stepper motors that drive a precision lead screw. The lead screw is in turn linked to the gantry or milling head by a special precision machined connection assembly. To maintain correct alignment during milling, the gantry or milling head's direction of travel is guided along using linear or dovetailed bearing(s). Most X/Y drive systems provide user control, via software, of the milling speed, which determines how fast the stepper motors drive their respective axes. Z-axis control Z-axis drive and control are handled in several ways. The first and most common is a simple solenoid that pushes against a spring. When the solenoid is energized it pushes the milling head down against a spring stop that limits the downward travel. The rate of descent as well as the amount of force exerted on the spring stop must be manually set by mechanically adjusting the position of the solenoid's plunger. The second type of Z-axis control is through the use of a pneumatic cylinder and a software-driven gate valve. Due to the small cylinder size and the amount of air pressure used to drive it there is little range of control between the up and down stops. Both the solenoid and pneumatic system cannot position the head anywhere other than the endpoints, and are therefore useful for only simple 'up/down' milling tasks. The final type of Z-axis control uses a stepper motor that allows the milling head to be moved in small accurate steps up or down. Further, the speed of these steps can be adjusted to allow tool bits to be eased into the board material rather than hammered into it. The depth (number of steps required) as well as the downward/upward speed is under user control via the controlling software. One of the major challenges with milling PCBs is handling variations in flatness. Since conventional etching techniques rely on optical masks that sit right on the copper layer they can conform to any slight bends in the material so all features are replicated faithfully. When milling PCBs however, any minute height variations encountered when milling will cause conical bits to either sink deeper (creating a wider cut) or rise off the surface, leaving an uncut section. Before cutting some systems perform height mapping probes across the board to measure height variations and adjust the Z values in the G-code beforehand. Tooling PCBs may be machined with conventional endmills, conical d-bit cutters, and spade mills. D-bits and spade mills are cheap and as they have a small point allow the traces to be close together. Taylor's equation, Vc Tn = C, can predict tool life for a given surface speed. Alternatives A method with similar advantages to mechanical milling is laser etching and laser drilling. Etching PCBs with lasers offers the same advantages as mechanical milling in regards to quick turnaround times, but the nature of the laser etching process is preferable to both milling and chemical etching when it comes to physical variations exerted on the object. Whereas mechanical milling and chemical etching exact physical stress on the board, laser etching offers non-contact surface removal, making it a superior option for PCBs where precision and geometric accuracy are at a premium, such as RF and microwave designs. Laser drilling is more precise, has extremely low power consumption compared with other techniques, requires less maintenance, does not use lubricants or drill bits, low rates of wear, does not use abrasive materials, does not ruin the boards, is more eco friendly, and in the most high-powered machines, the drilling is instant, but is expensive. An additional emerging alternative to milling and laser etching is an additive approach based upon printing the conductive trace. Such PCB printers come at a range of price points and with differing features but also offer rapid in-house circuit manufacture, with very little to no waste. An example of such a technology that produces simpler, low layer count PCBs is Voltera. A system at the higher layer-count end of the additive manufacturing approach is Nano Dimension's DragonFly technology which prints complex high layer count circuits as well as electro-mechanical parts. References External links Software review and how-to's on RepRap wiki Printed circuit board manufacturing

42369054

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OnePlus%20One

OnePlus One

The OnePlus One (colloquially abbreviated to OPO and also known as OnePlus 1) is an Android smartphone manufactured by OnePlus. Unveiled in April 2014, it is the first product by OnePlus. The OnePlus One was designed to compare favorably – in performance, quality, and price – to flagship devices by leading smartphone manufacturers. It was also intended to be developer friendly, and has since received a wide variety of ROMs and custom kernels from the community. The OnePlus One shipped to most markets with the Cyanogen OS operating system pre-installed, a commercial variant of CyanogenMod. The phone was first made available for sale on 25 April 2014, exclusively from the OnePlus website, but initially required prospective customers to obtain an invitation before they could purchase it. These invitations were primarily distributed by the company through contests, some of which attracted attention for their unconventional or controversial nature. On 6 June 2014, the device was available for general sale. As of 20 April 2015, the device no longer required an invite to purchase. Development The OnePlus company was founded on 16 December 2013 by former Oppo vice-president Pete Lau. The company's main goal was to design his "dream" smartphone; one that would balance the quality of high-end devices from its major competitors with a lower price than other phones in its class. He argued that, despite their lower cost, users would "never settle" for the lower-quality devices produced by other Chinese companies, and similar startups such as Blu and Yota. Lau compared the ideals of OnePlus with those of the Japanese company Muji, with a focus on high quality products with simplistic designs. The company's primary cost-cutting measure was a decision to exclusively sell the device online, rather than at retail or through wireless carriers, citing the success of a similar online sales model for Nexus devices. Continuing Lau's association with the platform from the Oppo N1, OnePlus entered into a non-exclusive licensing agreement with Cyanogen Inc. to base its product's Android software upon Cyanogen OS, a commercial variant of the popular custom ROM CyanogenMod, and use its trademarks outside China. The OnePlus One was officially unveiled on 23 April 2014 for a limited release on 25 April: described as a "flagship killer", its prices were set at US$299 and US$349 for the 16 GB and 64 GB models respectively—which one critic estimated was roughly half the price of the then recently unveiled Samsung Galaxy S5. Release and distribution The device was sold online exclusively through the OnePlus website. Stock of the device was previously limited through an invite system; the company had made the device available for purchase without an invitation during special promotions, however, such as on Black Friday, and in December 2014 for the holiday shopping season. On 9 February 2015, OnePlus announced that it would begin to hold such open sales every Tuesday. In an announcement on 20 April 2015 marking the one-year anniversary of its release, OnePlus announced that the One would be available without an invite "forever", but hinted that the requirement may return for its successor. Co-founder Carl Pei explained that "by rigorously testing and improving our logistical structure over the last one year, we are far more confident that our processes have matured enough for us to handle the increased production and after-sales support that comes along with opening up sales. It's what we've been working towards, and now we're ready." Invites were first given out through a promotion known as "Smash the Past", in which 100 users would be selected to win an opportunity to purchase a 16 GB OnePlus One for only $1, along with three invites they can give to friends, if they record a video of themselves breaking their previous phone. Some users misinterpreted the promotion, however, and prematurely posted videos on YouTube of them breaking their phones. Users were later not required to destroy their phones, and could instead donate them to the charity Medic Mobile. OnePlus launched a second contest, "Ladies First", on 12 August 2014, inviting women to take photos of themselves holding the OnePlus logo or having drawn it on their bodies, with the winners decided by a vote receiving an invite to buy the One, and a OnePlus T-shirt. The promotion was met with controversy, as others felt that the contest promoted the objectification of women: some users posted entries that consisted of existing photos of women with OnePlus logos edited onto them, while another posted a picture of herself performing middle finger gestures, accompanied by a comment denouncing the contest as sexist. In response to the criticism, the contest was pulled only hours after it was announced: the company stated that "we want to encourage even more women to get involved with and excited about the amazing things happening in tech right now. The 'Ladies First' contest was a very misguided effort by a few isolated employees to do just that, however there is no question the post not only failed to better include our female community but actually perpetuated a stereotype that OnePlus in no way supports or condones." On 25 August 2014, OnePlus began a summer-themed photography coverage as a replacement, giving away 10,000 invites. In December 2014, the One was released in India exclusively through Amazon; invites were still necessary to purchase the device outside special promotions, which have been held occasionally since its launch. OnePlus also announced plans to establish a presence in the country, with plans to open 25 official walk-in service centres across India. In August 2015, nearly 18 months after its release, the One was officially released in the United Arab Emirates exclusively through a local online retailer souq.com. Customers can purchase the phone without the need of an invite. Micromax conflict Sales of the OnePlus One in India were temporarily halted following a temporary injunction granted to Micromax Mobile, alleging that the sale of the device in India violated its exclusive rights to distribute Cyanogen-branded products in South Asia—an agreement announced in November 2014 as part of a new joint venture, YU, and that its agreement superseded the agreement Cyanogen Inc. had established with OnePlus. The company disputed the arguments, noting that its Cyanogen-based software was different from that of Micromax's, and argued that the exclusivity agreement only meant that Cyanogen could not partner with any other company based in India, and did not inhibit the ability for OnePlus to market its products in the country with its trademarks. In response to the partnership, OnePlus had already begun the development of a new, in-house Android distribution, known as "OxygenOS", which it planned to replace CyanogenMod with for the device that the company planned via software updates to models distributed in India, along with a version for Chinese models known as "H2OS". On 25 December 2014, the court reversed the sales ban, noting that YU and OnePlus were within different market segments—low-end and high-end devices respectively. Specifications Hardware The device's internal hardware includes a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 system-on-chip clocked at 2.5 GHz, 3 GB of RAM, and a 5.5-inch, JDI 1080p IPS LCD display. It includes either 16 or 64 GB of non-expandable storage. Its rear-facing camera features a 13 megapixel, Sony-manufactured Exmor IMX214 sensor, alongside a 5-megapixel front-facing camera. The OnePlus One supports LTE networks using bands 1, 3, 4, 7, 17, 38, and 40. Due to the company's startup stature, only one model of the device was released worldwide, without any additional regional SKUs like other smartphones. Exterior The chassis of the OnePlus One is constructed from magnesium, and is accompanied by a curved, textured rear cover in either black or white. Special denim, Kevlar, and bamboo wood covers were also unveiled as accessories, but the bamboo covers were temporarily cancelled due to quality issues. The device features capacitive navigation keys, but they can be disabled in favor of customizable navigation keys rendered on-screen. Anandtech characterized its design as being a "close cousin" to the Oppo Find 7A , although with a non-user-replaceable battery. Software Outside China, the OnePlus One shipped with CyanogenMod 11S, based on Android 4.4.4 "KitKat". The latest version of CyanogenMod 11S is 11.0-XNPH05Q. In China, OnePlus One ships with Oppo's ColorOS distribution, based on Android 4.3 "Jelly Bean". Alongside additional features added to the Android platform through Cyanogen (including wider customization options, an audio equalizer, encrypted messaging, and application privacy controls), the 11S software adds persistent voice commands, and gestures that can be performed while the phone is in standby to perform various functions, such as double-tapping the screen to turn it on, drawing a circle to go to the camera, and drawing a "V" to activate flashlight mode. An upgrade to Cyanogen OS 12.0, based on Android 5.0.2 "Lollipop" was released for all OnePlus One devices outside China on 14 April 2015. The latest version of Cyanogen OS for this phone is 13.1.2-ZNH2KAS3P0-bacon based on Android Marshmallow 6.0.1(AOSP), released in August 2016. This brings latest September Security Patches for Android and improves the deep integration of "Cortana"-Microsoft's Digital Assistant into Cyanogen OS due to strategic partnership between Microsoft and Cyanogen; Microsoft also being an important investor in the company. Two in-house Lollipop-based distributions, OxygenOS and HydrogenOS, were released earlier, on 4 April 2015, outside and inside China respectively. On 9 April 2016, OnePlus One devices running Cyanogen OS started receiving Cyanogen OS 13.0.1 based on Android Marshmallow 6.0.1. Team Cyanogen started rolling out Cyanogen OS 13.1 on 10 June 2016. CyanogenOS 13.1 for OnePlus One includes mods for Skype, OneNote, Microsoft Hyperlapse and an updated Cortana mod. Android 9.0 "Pie" is available for the device through the successor of CyanogenMod, LineageOS. The same applied for Android 10 and Android 11. Reception The OnePlus One has received a positive reception, not withstanding occasional technical issues and lack of support. The design was unique compared to other smartphones, with the rear panel's "[white] crisp smooth plastic or the [black] sandpaper-like texture [that] feels good regardless of your preference", while "the front panel is also beautiful because of its minimalist style and lack of visible hardware buttons". There was much praise for the One's hardware, shared with contemporary devices that often cost up to twice as much. Tests found that the One usually performed as well as or even better despite being half the price of its rivals, not only due to its specs but also attributed to its largely bloatware-free CyanogenMod OS. In addition, its CyanogenMod operating system offers more customization options than stock Android albeit being less stable. The OnePlus One was one of the fastest phones upon its release and its specifications have aged well after a couple of years. The OnePlus One was generally considered superior to its closest competition. The similarly-priced Nexus 5 was more widely available and had more guaranteed updates from Google, however it suffered from some design compromises including mediocre battery life and camera quality to keep the price low, plus its internal hardware was aging. In terms of specifications and size, the OnePlus One could be compared to the much pricier 5.5-inch LG G3 whose screen was higher resolution but inferior quality. Similar to the Google Nexus line of devices, the One has expanded the trend of high spec but mid-priced Android devices; by 2015 when the succeeding OnePlus 2 was released there was competition from numerous affordable flagships including the Moto X Pure and Asus ZenFone 2. The OnePlus One's original distribution via an invite-only order system made the device difficult to acquire, so some reviewers decided against recommending it. The OnePlus One, in retrospect, has been considered one of the best-supported community developer phones, with a wide variety of ROMs and custom kernels. The succeeding OnePlus 2 and subsequent OnePlus phones have not amassed such third-party support, furthermore their pricing has risen to mainstream. Sales As of the end of 2014, the OnePlus One has sold over one million units, despite only planning to sell up to 50,000 units. The East Asian market accounted for 39% of the company's shipments in 2014, followed by Europe with 33%, 22% in North America, and 7% in India. In total, the device generated a total revenue of $300 million through December 2014. Gallery See also ZUK Z1 - another CyanogenMod-powered smartphone References OnePlus mobile phones Android (operating system) devices Ubuntu Touch devices Mobile phones introduced in 2014 Discontinued smartphones Mobile phones with 4K video recording

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian%20Intelligence%20Community

Australian Intelligence Community

The Australian Intelligence Community (AIC) and the National Intelligence Community (NIC) or National Security Community of the Australian Government are the collectives of statutory intelligence agencies, policy departments, and other government agencies concerned with protecting and advancing the national security and national interests of the Commonwealth of Australia. The intelligence and security agencies of the Australian Government have evolved since the Second World War and the Cold War and saw transformation and expansion during the Global War on Terrorism with military deployments in Afghanistan, Iraq and against ISIS in Syria. Key international and national security issues for the Australian Intelligence Community include terrorism and violent extremism, cybersecurity, transnational crime, the rise of China, and Pacific regional security. The National Security Committee of Cabinet (NSC) is a Cabinet committee and the peak Australian Government decision-making body for national security, intelligence, foreign policy, and defence matters. It is chaired by the Prime Minister and is composed of the Deputy Prime Minister, Attorney-General, Treasurer, Minister for Foreign Affairs, Minister for Defence, and Minister for Home Affairs. History During World War I, in January 1916 the UK Government established an Australian branch of the Imperial Counter Espionage Bureau, known as the Australian Special Intelligence Bureau (SIB). In 1919, the Commonwealth Police Force and the Special Intelligence Bureau merged to form the Investigation Branch (IB). During World War II, Commonwealth Security Service was established. In 1946, Commonwealth Investigation Service (CIS) took over security intelligence functions. In 1949, Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) was established. In the late 1940s, the Australian Government established a foreign intelligence organisation in the Department of Defence. In 1952, it became the Australian Secret Service. In 1947, a permanent signals intelligence agency in the Department of Defence was established, called the Defence Signals Bureau. It changed its name to the Defence Signals Branch in 1949, the Defence Signals Division in 1964, the Defence Signals Directorate in 1978, and the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) in 2013. In 1947 the Department of Defence established the Joint Intelligence Bureau (JIB) which was renamed the Joint Intelligence Organisation (JIO) in 1969 and then the Defence Intelligence Organisation (DIO) in 1989. In 1977, an additional intelligence analysis agency, the Office of National Assessments (ONA), was created in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. It was renamed the Office of National Intelligence (ONI) in 2018. Overview The Australian government's National Security Strategy includes six core intelligence agencies in the Australian Intelligence Community (AIC), and defines the National Intelligence Community (NIC) as comprising policy departments and other government agencies. The Office of National Intelligence further classifies the six AIC agencies as collection or assessment agencies, and plays a unique all-source intelligence assessment and intergovernmental co-ordination role. Australian Intelligence Community National Intelligence Community Roles and threats The Australian Government 2008 National Security Strategy defined the Australian Intelligence Community (AIC) as the six core intelligence agencies (Office of National Assessments (ONA), Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS), Defence Intelligence Organisation (DIO), Australian Signals Directorate (ASD), Australian Geospatial-Intelligence Organisation (AGO)) and the National Intelligence Community (NIC) as policy departments and other government agencies such as the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and the Australian Federal Police. The Office of National Assessments further classifies the six agencies of the Australian Intelligence Community as collection (ASIO, ASIS, ASD, AGO) or assessment agencies (ONA, DIO). The Office of National Assessments itself plays a unique all-source intelligence assessment and intergovernmental co-ordination role. As a middle power and G20 economy in the international community and a regional power in the Asia-Pacific and Indo-Pacific, Australia has played a major role in international security. The Australian Government is a member of the Five Eyes intelligence community, the Australia, New Zealand, United States Security Treaty, the Five Power Defence Arrangements, and the Commonwealth of Nations. The foreign policy of Australia is guided by its commitment to multilateralism and the United Nations and regionalism with the Pacific Islands Forum and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations alongside strong bilateral relations particularly in Oceania, Southeast Asia, the alliance with the United States, and Australia–China relations. The Australian Defence Force has also deployed around the world for United Nations peacekeeping, regional peacekeeping operations including with the Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands and the International Force for East Timor, humanitarian relief, counterterrorism and special operations, border security in Operation Resolute, airborne surveillance operations and maritime monitoring operations in the South China Sea and South West Pacific, counterinsurgency and security assistance such as with the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan with Operation Slipper and Operation Highroad, and the fight against Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant with Operation Okra. Domestically, the rise of violent extremism and threats of both Islamic and right-wing terrorism are key concerns of the Australian Government. Crime in Australia, including cybercrime and transnational crime such as human trafficking, arms trafficking, and the illegal drug trade, are ongoing risks to the security and safety of Australia. Governance and Coordination National Security Committee of Cabinet The National Security Committee of Cabinet (NSC) is a Cabinet committee and the peak ministerial decision-making body on national security, intelligence and defence matters. Decisions of the Committee do not require the endorsement of the Cabinet. It is chaired by the Prime Minister and the membership includes the Deputy Prime Minister, Attorney-General, Treasurer, Minister for Foreign Affairs, Minister for Defence, Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, and the ministerial Cabinet Secretary. Attendance also includes the Secretaries for each respective public service department, as well as the Chief of the Defence Force, the Director-General of Security and the Directors-General of the Office of National Assessments and the Australian Secret Intelligence Service. Secretaries Committee on National Security The Secretaries Committee on National Security (SCNS) (formerly the Secretaries Committee on Intelligence and Security) is the peak interdepartmental officials-level committee considering national security matters in support of the National Security Committee. It considers all major matters to be put before the NSC and has a strong role in ensuring that Australia maintains a coordinated policy approach on all national security issues. Membership of the SCNS includes the Secretaries of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, the Attorney-General's Department, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the Department of Defence, the Department of the Treasury, the Chief of the Australian Defence Force, and the Director-General of the Office of National Assessments. Other senior officials including the Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police, the Commissioner of the Australian Border Force, and the chief executive officerof the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission, the Director-General of Security (Australian Security Intelligence Organisation), the Director-General of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, and the Directors of the Defence Intelligence Organisation, the Australian Geospatial-Intelligence Organisation, and the Australian Signals Directorate. National Intelligence Coordination Committee The National Intelligence Coordination Committee (NICC) was formed in 2008 to provide strategic co-ordination for the effectiveness and integration of the national intelligence efforts. It is chaired by the Deputy Secretary of National Security and International Policy of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. The National Intelligence Coordination Committee comprises the chiefs of the ONA, ASIS, ASIO, DIO, ASD, AGO, AFP, ACIC, ABF, as well as the Deputy Secretary for Strategic Policy and Intelligence of the Department of Defence, the Deputy Secretary for National Security and Emergency Management of the Attorney-General's Department, and the Deputy Secretary responsible for international security of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. The National Intelligence Collection Management Committee (NICMC) is a subcommittee of the National Intelligence Coordination Committee and is responsible for setting specific requirements and evaluating collection effort against each of the National Intelligence Priorities (NIPs). It is chaired by the Director General of the Office of National Assessments. The National Intelligence Open Source Committee (NIOSC) is a subcommittee of the National Intelligence Coordination Committee and is responsible for enhancing the co-ordination and capabilities of the national intelligence community's open source efforts. It is chaired by the Director General of the Office of National Assessments. Australia-New Zealand Counter-Terrorism Committee The Australia-New Zealand Counter-Terrorism Committee (ANZCTC) is a bilateral and intergovernmental high level body to co-ordinate counterterrorism capabilities, crisis management, command and control, intelligence and investigation functions composed of representatives from the Australian Government, Australian state and territory governments and the New Zealand Government. Formerly the National Counter-Terrorism Committee (NCTC), in October 2012, the New Zealand Government became members to encourage closer dialogue on matters of bilateral interest relevant to counter-terrorism. It was established by the Inter-Governmental Agreement in October 2002 to contribute to the security of the Australian community through co-ordination of a nationwide cooperative framework, known as the National Counter-Terrorism Plan. The Commonwealth Counter-Terrorism Coordinator is the Co-Chair of the Australia-New Zealand Counter-Terrorism Committee. Australian Counter-Terrorism Centre The Australian Counter-Terrorism Centre (ACTC) is an intergovernmental multi-agency body that coordinates counterterrorism in Australia, overseen by the Joint Counter Terrorism Board (JCTB) consisting of senior government officials. The ACTC provides strategic direction to set strategic counter-terrorism priorities, co-ordinate counter-terrorism policy, inform operational counter-terrorism priorities, evaluate performance on priorities, and identify and fix impediments to effective co-ordination of counterterrorism. Membership of the ACTC includes senior officials from the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, the Australian Federal Police, the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, the Australian Signals Directorate, the Australian Border Force, the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre. The Commonwealth Counter-Terrorism Coordinator is the Co-Chair of the Joint Counter Terrorism Board. Australian Government Crisis Committee The Australian Government Crisis Committee (AGCC) is the national co-ordination body composed of Ministers and senior officials from Australian Government agencies convened by the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and supported by the Crisis Coordination Centre of Emergency Management Australia. AGCC may convene in response to any crisis, including a terrorist act, where the scope and resourcing of Commonwealth Government support to States and Territories requires senior officials' level co-ordination. The purpose of the AGCC is to ensure effective co-ordination of information, intelligence and response options to support the NSC. The AGCC does not extend to managing the deployment of resources or other activities of operational agencies. The National Crisis Committee (NCC) is a national intergovernmental body for crisis co-ordination composed of senior officials from Commonwealth, State and Territory governments. It would be convened in the event of a terrorist act to co-ordinate information exchange regarding response and recovery within the Commonwealth Government and with the States and Territories. It is chaired by the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and supported by the Crisis Coordination Centre of Emergency Management Australia. Cyber Security Operations Board The Cyber Security Operations Board (CSOB) is a secretary and agency head-level body responsible for strategic oversight of the government's operational cyber security capabilities and co-ordination of cyber security measures. It specifically oversees the work of the Australian Cyber Security Centre, the intergovernmental and interagency cybersecurity hub hosted by the Australian Signals Directorate. The Board is chaired by the Secretary of the Attorney-General's Department. Policy Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet The National Security and International Policy Group of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, led by the Deputy Secretary for National Security and International Policy, provides advice on Australia's foreign, trade and treaty matters, defence, intelligence, non-proliferation, counter-terrorism, law enforcement, border security and emergency management matters, coordinates security-related science and technology research matters, and plays a co-ordinating leadership role in the development of integrated, whole-of-government national security policy. The National Security and International Policy Group comprises three divisions each led by a First Assistant Secretary as well as the Office of the Counter-Terrorism Coordinator with the rank of Deputy Secretary. The International Division provides advice, co-ordination and leadership on Australia's foreign, trade, aid and treaty matters and priorities, including bilateral relations, relationships with regional and international organisations, free trade negotiations and whole-of-government priorities for the overseas aid program. It also includes the South, South-East Asia, Americas and the Middle East Branch and the North Asia, Europe, Pacific, Africa and Trade Branch. The National Security Division provides advice, co-ordination and leadership on integrated, whole-of-government policy matters, priorities and strategy in the areas of military operations, defence strategy, domestic security and critical infrastructure protection. This Division is divided into the Defence Branch and the Domestic Security Unit. Department of Home Affairs The Department of Home Affairs was established on the 20 December 2017 through Administrative Arrangements Order bringing together the national security, law enforcement and emergency management functions of the Attorney-General's Department portfolio (including the AFP, and the ACIC), the entire Department of Immigration and Border Protection portfolio and the Australian Border Force, the transport security functions of the Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development, the counter-terrorism and cybersecurity functions of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, and the multicultural affairs functions of the Department of Social Services. ASIO will be transfer to Home Affairs once enabling legislations is pass by Parliament. The Department of Home Affairs includes the following departmental units with responsibilities for national security and intelligence policy and coordination: Intelligence Division National Security and Law Enforcement Policy Division Transnational Serious and Organised Crime Division Countering Violent Extremism Centre Commonwealth Counter-Terrorism Coordinator The Commonwealth Counter-Terrorism Coordinator and the Centre for Counter-Terrorism Coordination within the Department of Home Affairs (formerly within the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet) provides strategic advice and support to the Minister for Home Affairs and the Prime Minister on all aspects of counterterrorism and countering violent extremism policy and co-ordination across government. The Office was created after recommendations from the Review of Australia's Counter-Terrorism Machinery in 2015 in response to the 2014 Sydney hostage crisis. The Commonwealth Counter-Terrorism Coordinator also serves as the Co-Chair and or Chair of the Australian and New Zealand Counter-Terrorism Committee and the Joint Counter-Terrorism Board, with the Centre for Counter-Terrorism Coordination providing secretariat support to the Australian Counter-Terrorism Centre and the Australian and New Zealand Counter-Terrorism Committee. Along with the Deputy Counter-Terrorism Coordinator, the Centre for Counter-Terrorism Coordination is also composed of the Counter-Terrorism Strategic Coordination Branch, the Domestic Operations and Engagement Branch, the Counter-Terrorism Capability Branch, and the Home Affairs Counter-Terrorism Policy Branch. National Cyber Coordinator The National Cyber Coordinator and the Cyber Security Policy Division within the Department of Home Affairs (formerly within the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet) is responsible for cyber security policy and the implementation of the Australian Government Cyber Security Strategy. The National Cyber Coordinator also ensures effective partnerships between Commonwealth, state and territory governments, the private sector, non-governmental organisations, the research community and the international partners. The National Cyber Coordinator also works closely with the Australian Cyber Security Centre and the Australian Ambassador for Cyber Issues. CERT Australia is the national computer emergency response team responsible for cybersecurity responses and providing cyber security advice and support to critical infrastructure and other systems of national interest. CERT Australia works closely with other Australian Government agencies, international CERTs, and the private sector. It is also a key element in the Australian Cyber Security Centre, sharing information and working closely with ASIO, the Australian Federal Police, the Australian Signals Directorate, the Defence Intelligence Organisation and the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission. Critical Infrastructure Centre The Australian Government Critical Infrastructure Centre (CIC) is responsible for whole-of-government co-ordination of critical infrastructure protection and national security risk assessments and advice. It was established on 23 January 2017 and brings together expertise and capability from across the Australian Government and functions in close consultation states and territory governments, regulators, and the private sector. The Centre also supports the Foreign Investment Review Board. Crisis Coordination Centre The Australian Government Crisis Coordination Centre (CCC) is an all-hazards co-ordination facility, which operates on a 24/7 basis, and supports the Australian Government Crisis Committee (AGCC) and the National Crisis Committee (NCC). The CCC provides whole-of-government all-hazards monitoring and situational awareness for domestic and international events and coordinates Australian Government responses to major domestic incidents. The Crisis Coordination Centre is managed by the Crisis Coordination Branch of Emergency Management Australia. Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade The International Security Division is the international security and foreign intelligence policy and governance co-ordination entity of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. It is divided into three branches each led by an Assistant Secretary: The Counter-Terrorism Branch coordinates international counter-terrorism policy and activities. The branch also supports the Australian Ambassador for Counter-Terrorism. The Australian Ambassador for Cyber Affairs with the rank of Assistant Secretary is responsible for leading the Australian Government's international efforts in cybersecurity and cybercrime, supporting cyber capacity building in the Asia-Pacific region, and advocating for internet freedoms. The Ambassador will work with the Special Adviser to the Prime Minister on Cyber Security to implement the Cyber Security Strategy and will encourage collaboration between Australian Government, business, academia and communities to improve cyber security. The Arms Control and Counter-Proliferation Branch coordinates international arms control, disarmament, and non-proliferation policy. The Strategic Issues and Intelligence Branch provides analysis, research and advice on strategic issues, foreign intelligence and other international security affairs. The Branch includes the Intelligence Policy and Liaison Section. Department of Defence The Defence Strategic Policy and Intelligence Group was established on 8 February 2016 as a key recommendation of the First Principles Review of the Australian Defence Organisation. The Group integrates the policy, strategy and intelligence functions of the Australian Defence Organisation to deliver high-quality advice to the Australian Government, the Secretary of the Department of Defence and the Chief of the Defence Force. The Group is led by a Deputy Secretary and comprises four divisions and three intelligence agencies. The Strategic Policy Division develops policy, military strategy and strategic planning and advice for the Australian Government, senior Defence leaders and other government agencies on the strategic implications of defence and national security matters. The Division comprises the Military Strategy Branch, the Strategic Policy Branch, the Arms Control Branch, and the Intelligence Policy Integration Branch. The International Policy Division provides strategic-level policy advice to the Australian Government on the central issues of Australia's defence policy, including international defence relations and ADF operations. The Division comprises the South East Asia Branch, the Global Interests Branch, the Major Powers Branch, the Pacific and Timor-Leste Branch, and numerous overseas military attaché postings. The Contestability Division provides arms-length internal contestability functions across the capability life-cycles as to ensure the capability needs and requirements of the Australian Defence Organisation are aligned with strategy and resources. The Defence Industry Policy Division has responsibility for the implementation of defence industry policy, engagement and innovation as well as Australian export controls. Attorney-General's Department The Attorney-General's Department is the chief law office of Australia. On the 20 December 2017 by Administrative Arrangements Order, law enforcement and emergency management functions of the department moved to the newly established Department of Home Affairs. ASIO will remain part of the Attorney-General's Department until legislations is pass for transition to Home Affairs. However, the Attorney-General's Department will have responsibilities for the oversight and integrity of the Australian Intelligence Community through the transfer of the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor, and the Commonwealth Ombudsman from the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. The Attorney-General of Australia also retains the responsibility for the authorisation of ASIO operations, the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions, and various other criminal law policy matters. The Attorney-General's Department includes the Security and Criminal Law Division which is responsible for providing policy and legislative advice with regards to intelligence, criminal, electronic surveillance and counter-terrorism law, anti-corruption, fraud, and protective security policy. The Division is also responsible for international arrangements for anti-corruption, intelligence management within the department, and whole-of-government advice for criminal offences. The Division includes the National Security Coordination Unit, the Communications Security and Intelligence Branch. Primary Entities Australian Security Intelligence Organisation The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) is Australia's national security service with the main role is to gather information and produce intelligence that will enable it to warn the government about activities or situations that might endanger Australia's national security. The ASIO Act defines "security" as the protection of Australia's territorial and border integrity from serious threats, and the protection of Australia and its people from espionage, sabotage, politically motivated violence, the promotion of communal violence, attacks on Australia's defence system, and acts of foreign interference. ASIO also includes the Counter-Terrorism Control Centre which is responsible for setting and managing counter-terrorism priorities, identifying intelligence requirements, and ensuring the processes of collecting and distributing counter terrorism information are fully harmonised and effective. The National Threat Assessment Centre is also part of ASIO and is responsible for analysis of terrorist threats to Australian interests overseas and terrorist threats and threats from violent protests in Australia. The Business Liaison Unit (BLU) of ASIO provides a conduit between the private sector and the Australian Intelligence Community. It seeks to provide industry security and risk managers with credible, intelligence-backed reporting that enables them to brief executive management and staff authoritatively, and to use this knowledge for their risk management and continuity planning. National Threat Assessment Centre The National Threat Assessment Centre (NTAC) of ASIO prepares assessments of the likelihood and probable nature of terrorism and protest violence, including against Australia, Australians and Australian interests here and abroad, special events and international interests in Australia. Threat Assessments support jurisdictions and agencies to make risk management decisions to determine how best to respond to the threat and mitigate risk. Counter Terrorism Control Centre The Counter Terrorism Control Centre (CTCC) is a multi-agency located within ASIO which sets and manages counter-terrorism priorities, identifies intelligence requirements, and ensures that the processes of collecting and distributing counter-terrorism information are fully harmonised and effective across the spectrum of Australia's counter-terrorism activity. The CTCC has senior level representation from ASIS, AFP, ASD, and AGO. National Interception Technical Assistance Centre The National Interception Technical Assistance Centre (NiTAC) of ASIO is an inter-agency central point of reference for technical assistance, advice, and support particularly regarding telecommunications interception and signals intelligence. Australian Secret Intelligence Service The Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) is Australia's overseas secret HUMINT collection agency with the mission to protect and promote Australia's vital interests through the provision of unique foreign intelligence services as directed by Government. ASIS's primary goal is to obtain and distribute secret intelligence about the capabilities, intentions and activities of individuals or organisations outside Australia, which may impact on Australia's interests and the well-being of its citizens. Australian Geospatial-Intelligence Organisation The Australian Geospatial-Intelligence Organisation (AGO) was established by amalgamating the Australian Imagery Organisation, the Directorate of Strategic Military Geographic Information, and the Defence Topographic Agency to provide geospatial intelligence, from imagery and other sources, in support of the Australian Defence Force and national security interests. Geospatial Analysis Centre The AGO hosts the Geospatial Analysis Centre (GAC) outside of Bendigo, Victoria which provides geospatial intelligence support to the Australian Defence Organisation and the Australian Intelligence Community across geospatial information and mapping services including targeting foundation data, and three-dimensional modelling and visualisation products. Australian Signals Directorate The Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) is responsible for collection, analysis and distribution of foreign signals intelligence and is the national authority on communications, information, cyber and computer security. The ASD also includes the Cyber Security Operations Centre which coordinates and assists with operational responses to cyber events of national importance and provides government with a consolidated understanding of the cyber threat through its intrusion detection, analytic and threat assessment capabilities. Joint Defence Facility Pine Gap The Joint Defence Facility Pine Gap is a joint Australia-United States military signals intelligence and satellite ground station outside of Alice Springs, Northern Territory. The Chief of the Facility is a senior official of the United States Intelligence Community (usually the Central Intelligence Agency) and the Deputy Chief serves concurrently as the Assistant Secretary for Technical Intelligence of the Australian Signals Directorate. Personnel from the Australian Geospatial-Intelligence Organisation, the Defence Science and Technology Group, the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency, its National Security Agency, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, National Reconnaissance Office, the United States Naval Network Warfare Command, the United States Air Force Twenty-Fifth Air Force (including the 566th Intelligence Squadron of the 544th Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Group), the United States Army Intelligence and Security Command, and the Marine Cryptologic Support Battalion are also present. Australian Cyber Security Centre The Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) works across cybersecurity including analysing, investigating and reporting cyber threats and co-ordinating national security capabilities and operations for incidents of cybercrime, cyberterrorism, and cyberwarfare. The ACSC is joint responsibility of the Minister for Defence and the Attorney-General. The Deputy Director of the Australian Signals Directorate serves as the Coordinator of the Australian Cyber Security Centre which integrates the national security cyber capabilities across Defence Intelligence Organisation strategic intelligence analysts, the Computer Emergency Response Team of the Attorney-General's Department, Australian Security Intelligence Organisation cyber investigations and telecommunication security specialists, Australian Federal Police cyber crime investigators, and Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission cyber crime threat intelligence specialists. Defence Intelligence Organisation The Defence Intelligence Organisation (DIO) is the national military intelligence and intelligence assessment agency that provides services and advice at the national security level with the mandate to support the Australian Defence Force, Department of Defence and the Australian Government and national security decision-making and to assist with the planning and conduct of Australian Defence Force operations. Office of National Intelligence The Office of National Intelligence (ONI) produces all-source assessments on international political, strategic and economic developments as an independent body directly accountable to the Prime Minister and provides advice and assessments to other Senior Ministers in the National Security Committee of Cabinet, and Senior Officials of Government Departments. ONI operates under its own legislation and has responsibility for co-ordinating/analysing and verifying/evaluating Australia's foreign intelligence priorities & activities. It draws its information from other intelligence agencies, as well as diplomatic reporting, information and reporting from other government agencies, and open source material. Open Source Centre The Open Source Centre (OSC) of ONI collects, researches, and analyses open source information in support of Australia's national security. In line with ONI's mandate under the ONI Act, the OSC focuses on international developments that affect Australia's national interests. Its principal consumers are the departments and agencies that make up Australia's national intelligence community. Secondary Entities Australian Federal Police The Australian Federal Police (AFP) is the federal law enforcement agency under the Department of Home Affairs. It provides criminal intelligence and other intelligence capabilities across all operational functions and crime types. Divided into operational intelligence teams, the division collects, collates, analyses and disseminates intelligence on nationally significant criminal issues of interest to the AFP. Areas of intelligence operations extend to crime related to people smuggling, illicit drugs, human trafficking and sexual servitude, financial crime, counter-terrorism, high-tech crime, and child sex tourism. The Intelligence Division is the criminal intelligence and national security intelligence division of the AFP. The Intelligence Division is project-driven and multi-jurisdictional in its functions, using capabilities from the AFP National Headquarters and the relevant field offices. Joint Counter Terrorism Teams The Joint Counter Terrorism Teams (JCTT) of the Australian Federal Police operate in each state and territory jurisdiction consisting of AFP, state and territory police, and ASIO officers. JCTTs conduct investigations to prevent, respond to and investigate terrorist threats and attacks in Australia. Australian Bomb Data Centre The Australian Bomb Data Centre (ABDC) of the AFP is Australia's primary source of information and intelligence relating to the unlawful use of explosives. The ABDC officially began operations on 1 July 1978, and it is therefore one of the oldest bomb data centres in the world. The ABDC provides statistical reporting on all explosive incidents reported to the Centre by Australian policing and military agencies. This includes any minor incidents or acts of vandalism reported by the relevant agency. The ABDC is concerned both with criminals who use explosives for their own benefit and with those who use explosives and bombs for terrorism. It maintains records of all bomb-related incidents reported to it, regardless of design, target or motive. The ABDC is staffed by members of the AFP as well as members of the Australian Defence Force. Australian High Tech Crime Centre The Australian High Tech Crime Centre (AHTCC) is a national cybercrime and cybersecurity initiative located within the AFP with staff also from the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation and Australian Signals Directorate. The primary role of the AHTCC is to co-ordinate the efforts of Australian law enforcement in combating serious, complex and multi-jurisdictional high tech crimes, especially those beyond the capability of single policing jurisdictions in Australia. Secondary roles include protecting the information infrastructure of Australia, and providing information to other law enforcement to help combat online crime. Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission The Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (ACIC) is Australia's national criminal intelligence agency with investigative, research and information delivery functions under the Attorney-General's Department. It has a range of statutory functions centred on intelligence collection, dissemination and investigations regarding nationally significant, complex, serious and or major crimes. The ACIC recommends national criminal intelligence priorities (NCIPs), works collaboratively with international partners and federal, state and territory agencies, and maintains ongoing powers similar to a Royal Commission. The ACIC shapes the national agenda on fighting serious crime, provides solutions for national serious crime priorities and maintains a leading capability in national criminal intelligence. The ACIC is responsible for delivering national policing information services, developing and maintaining national information-sharing services between state, territory and federal law enforcement agencies, consolidating criminal intelligence, and providing national criminal history record checks for accredited agencies. The ACIC maintains and provides the National Automated Fingerprint Identification System (NAFIS), the National Criminal Investigation DNA Database (NCIDD), the National Child Offender System (NCOS), the Child Exploitation Tracking System (CETS), the National Police Reference System (NPRS), the National Firearms Licensing and Registration System (NFLRS), the National Vehicles of Interest Register, the National Police Checking Service, National Missing Persons and Victim System (NMPVS) and is developing the National DNA Investigative Capability (NDIC). Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre The Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC) is the national financial intelligence agency under the Department of Home Affairs. It is responsible for gathering intelligence on and regulating money laundering, terrorism financing and major financial crimes. Australian Border Force The Australian Border Force (ABF) of the Department of Home Affairs manages the security and integrity of Australia's borders. It works closely with other government and international agencies to detect and deter unlawful movement of goods and people across the border. The Counter Terrorism Unit (CTU) of the ABF are teams of officers based at major international airports who provide a front-line response capability to act when persons of national security interest attempt to cross the border. The CTU randomly assesses individuals and also relies upon intelligence to target individuals. The Intelligence Division of the ABF is responsible for the assessment of new and emerging threats to the border and customs and the provision of intelligence and targeting that informs and underpins risk mitigation. The division consists of the Intelligence Analysis and Assessments Branch and the Operational Intelligence Branch. The National Border Targeting Centre (NBTC) of the ABF is a border security intelligence organisation established to target high-risk international passengers and cargo, particularly illicit substances and potential terrorists. The NBTC includes staff from the AFP, ASIO, ACC, DFAT, Department of Agriculture, and the Office of Transport Security. The Strategic Border Command (SBC) of the ABF is the formal command and control entity for border security, distinct from the Border Protection Command. The SBC comprises the Investigations, Compliance and Enforcement Branch and the Special Investigations and Programmes Branch along with regional commands in NSW/ACT, VIC/TAS, QLD, WA, and Central. The Maritime Border Command is a Royal Australian Navy and Australian Border Force joint command which provides security for Australia's offshore maritime areas. Combining the resources and expertise of the ABF and the RAN, and working with the Australian Fisheries Management Authority and other government agencies, it delivers a coordinated national approach to Australia's offshore maritime security. Oversight Executive Oversight The Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security (IGIS) is the independent statutory office in the Commonwealth of Australia responsible for reviewing the activities of the six intelligence agencies which collectively comprise the Australian Intelligence Community (AIC). With own motion powers in addition to considering complaints or requests from ministers, IGIS is a key element of the accountability regime for Australia's intelligence and security agencies. The Independent National Security Legislation Monitor (INSLM) is the independent review body of the Australian Government responsible for reviewing the operation, effectiveness and implications of Australia's counter‑terrorism and national security legislation on an ongoing basis. The INSLM also considers whether legislation contains appropriate safeguards for protecting the rights of individuals, remains proportionate to any threat of terrorism or threat to national security or both, and remains necessary. Australian security and intelligence agencies provide the INSLM with information (both classified and unclassified), relevant to the above functions. This is under compulsion in some circumstances. The INSLM makes recommendations on these matters in reports, which are then tabled in Parliament. The Independent Reviewer of Adverse Security Assessments is an independent official of the Attorney-General's Department with the responsibilities to review Australian Security Intelligence Organisation adverse security assessments given to the Department of Immigration and Border Protection in relation to people who remain in immigration detention and have been found to engage Australia's protection obligations under international law, and not be eligible for a permanent protection visa, or who have had their permanent protection visa cancelled. The Independent Reviewer of Adverse Security Assessments examines all material relied upon by ASIO in making the security assessment, as well as other relevant material, and forms an opinion on whether the assessment is an appropriate outcome. The applicant may also submit material for the Independent Reviewer's consideration. The Independent Reviewer provides their recommendations to the Director-General of Security. The Director-General must respond to the reviewer and may determine whether to take action if he agrees with the reviewer's opinion. The applicant will be told the outcome of the review, including the Director-General's response. The Attorney-General of Australia, Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, and the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security are also provided with copies of the Independent Reviewer's recommendations. The Australian Human Rights Commission is the Australian national human rights institution and the independent statutory body with the responsibility for investigating alleged infringements under Australia's anti-discrimination legislation in relation to Commonwealth agencies. The Commonwealth Ombudsman is the national ombudsman of Australian which has responsibilities to investigate complaints about the actions and decisions of Australian Government agencies and services delivered by most private contractors for the Australian Government, to and oversee complaint investigations conducted by the Australian Federal Police. The Ombudsman can also investigate complaints about delays in processing Freedom of Information requests (FOI) and complaints about FOI charges. The Commonwealth Ombudsman is also the Australian Defence Force Ombudsman, Immigration Ombudsman, Postal Industry Ombudsman, Taxation Ombudsman, and Law Enforcement Ombudsman. In addition, the Ombudsman has a number of statutory oversight functions in relation to law enforcement agency use of special powers, including those under the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979, Surveillance Devices Act 2004 and Part 1AB of the Crimes Act 1914. The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner is an independent Australian Government agency, functioning as the national data protection authority for Australia, and reports to the Parliament of Australia. The Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) is the national auditor for the Parliament of Australia and Government of Australia. The ANAO supports the Auditor-General of Australia with the main functions and powers under the including auditing financial statements of Commonwealth agencies and authorities in accordance with the and conducting performance audits which are tabled in Parliament. The Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity (ACLEI) is an Australian government statutory agency, created under the Law Enforcement Integrity Commissioner Act 2006. Its role is to support the Law Enforcement Integrity Commissioner, detecting and preventing corruption in the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission, Australian Border Force, the Australian Federal Police, and Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre. Priority is given to investigations of serious and systemic political corruption. ACLEI supports the Integrity Commissioner by collecting intelligence regarding corruption. The Integrity Commissioner is required to make recommendation to the federal government regarding improvements to legislation that will prevent corrupt practices or their early detection. The Inspector of Transport Security is the national oversight entity for transport security and the Office of Transport Security. Under the Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development, the Inspector of Transport Security inquires into major transport or offshore security incidents or a pattern or series of incidents that point to a systemic failure or possible weakness of aviation or maritime transport security regulatory systems. Parliamentary Oversight The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS) is the parliamentary body responsible for oversight for the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, the Australian Signals Directorate, the Defence Intelligence Organisation, the Australian Geospatial-Intelligence Organisation, and the Office of National Intelligence. The PJCIS's main function is the administrative and expenditure review and oversight of the primary agencies of the Australian Intelligence Community. The Committee does not review intelligence gathering or operational procedures or priorities, nor does it conduct inquiries into individual complaints about the activities of the intelligence agencies. The Committee comprises eleven members: five from the Senate and six from the House of Representatives. Six members are from the Government and five from the Opposition. Serving ministers are not allowed to be members. The Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee is a standing committee of the Australian Senate with the responsibilities for the parliamentary oversight of the portfolios of the Department of Defence (Australia) and its agencies (including the Defence Intelligence Organisation, the Australian Signals Directorate, and the Australian Geospatial-Intelligence Organisation) and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and its agencies (including the Australian Secret Intelligence Service). The Committee's purpose is to deal with legislative bills referred by the Senate and to oversee the budget estimates process and performance reporting of the portfolio entities. The Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee is a standing committee of the Australian Senate with the responsibilities for the parliamentary oversight of the portfolios of the Attorney-General's Department and its agencies (including the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre, and the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission) and the Department of Home Affairs and its agencies (including the Australian Federal Police and Australian Border Force). The Committee's purpose is to deal with legislative bills referred by the Senate and to oversee the budget estimates process and performance reporting of the portfolio entities. The Senate Finance and Public Administration Committee is a standing committee of the Australian Senate with the responsibilities for the parliamentary oversight of the portfolios of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and its agencies (including the Office of National Assessments and the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security) and the Department of Finance and its agencies. The Committee's purpose is to deal with legislative bills referred by the Senate and to oversee the budget estimates process and performance reporting of the portfolio entities. The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Law Enforcement is the parliamentary body responsible for oversight for the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission and the Australian Federal Police. It is tasked with monitoring, reviewing and reporting on the performance of the ACIC and AFP and to examine trends and changes in criminal activities in Australia. The Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade is a joint parliamentary committee, administered through the House of Representatives, with responsibilities to consider and report on such matters relating to the portfolios of the Australian Defence Organisation and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade as may be referred to it by either the Parliament or a Minister. The Committee may also inquire into matters raised in annual reports of the portfolio departments and agencies or in reports of the Australian National Audit Office. Judicial Review The Federal Court of Australia is an Australian superior court of record which has jurisdiction to deal with most civil disputes governed by federal law (with the exception of family law matters), along with some summary (less serious) criminal matters. Cases are heard at first instance by single Judges. The Court includes an appeal division referred to as the Full Court comprising three Judges, the only avenue of appeal from which lies to the High Court of Australia. In the Australian court hierarchy, the Federal Court occupies a position equivalent to the Supreme Courts of each of the states and territories. In relation to the other Courts in the federal stream, it is equal to the Family Court of Australia, and superior to the Federal Circuit Court. It was established in 1976 by the Federal Court of Australia Act. The Administrative Appeals Tribunal includes the Security Division, for appeals of applications regarding national security assessments under the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Act 1979. Related Entities The Defence Science and Technology Group (DST Group) of the Department of Defence provides science and technology support for Australia's defence and national security needs. It is Australia's second largest government-funded science organisation after the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation. The DST Group provides scientific and technical support to current defence operations, investigates future technologies for defence and national security applications, advises on the purchase and use of defence equipment, develops new defence capabilities, and enhances existing systems by improving performance and safety and reducing the cost of owning defence assets. The DST Group National Security and Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Division undertakes advanced scientific research and development into technologies across national security, military, and intelligence capabilities of the Australian Government. Research areas include cybersecurity, border security, forensic science, geospatial intelligence, measurement and signature intelligence, human intelligence analytics, and surveillance and reconnaissance systems. The Office of Transport Security (OTS) is the protective security regulator for the aviation and maritime sectors and the principal transport security advisory entity of Australia. An entity of the Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development, the OTS works with the states and territories, other government agencies, international bodies, and the aviation and maritime industry to improve security and prevent transport security incidents. The OTS develops and provides transport security intelligence, transport security policy and planning, and transport security regulation and compliance. The Australian Safeguards and Non-proliferation Office (ASNO) of Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is responsible for safeguarding and ensuring the non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. ASNO consists of the Australian Safeguards Office (ASO), the Chemical Weapons Convention Office (CWCO), and the Australian Comprehensive Test Ban Office (ACTBO). ASNO ensures that Australia's international obligations are met under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Australia's NPT safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material (CPPNM) and Australia's various bilateral safeguards agreements. ASNO has four main areas of responsibility in the nuclear area which are application of safeguards in Australia, the physical protection and security of nuclear items in Australia, the operation of Australia's bilateral safeguards agreements, and the contribution to the operation and development of IAEA safeguards and the strengthening of the international nuclear non-proliferation regime. ASNO also ensures that Australia's international obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) and Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) are met whilst promoting their international implementation particularly in the Asia-Pacific. ASNO also contributes to the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) and the CTBTO Preparatory Commission. The Australian Army Intelligence Corps (AUSTINT) is a corps of the Australian Army for strategic, operational and tactical military intelligence. The Corps also provides staff to the Defence Intelligence Organisation, Australian Signals Directorate and Australian Geospatial-Intelligence Organisation as well as major Australian Defence Force command headquarters. The Australian Special Operations Command is a command within the Australian Defence Force uniting all Australian Army special forces including the Special Air Service Regiment and the Special Operations Engineer Regiment. The Defence Security and Vetting Service (DSVS) (formerly the Defence Security Authority) supports the Department of Defence and the Australian Defence Force with protective security matters. The DSVS has responsibilities for developing and promulgating security policy that complies with Australian Government protective security policy, monitoring and reporting on security compliance, performance and risks, investigating serious and complex security incidents, granting security clearances for Defence and Defence Industry Security Program members, and conducting clearance revalidations and re-evaluations, assisting Groups and the Services with security policy implementation, and managing the Defence Industry Security Program. The DSVS also oversees the Australian Government Security Vetting Agency. The Australian Defence Force Investigative Service (ADFIS) is the agency responsible for complex and major investigations involving the Australian Defence Force. Legislation Intelligence Services Act 2001 Intelligence Services Amendment Act 2004 Independent National Security Legislation Monitor Act 2010 Charter of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Act 1979 International Partnerships UKUSA Agreement ANZUS Combined Communications Electronics Board Former Entities The National Security Advisor (NSA) was a position that existed under the Rudd Government and Gillard Government from 2007 to 2013 which was the chief advisor for national security and international security policy and co-ordination, with the rank of Associate Secretary of the National Security and International Policy Group of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. The National Security Advisor served as the Chair and or Co-Chair of the Australian and New Zealand Counter-Terrorism Committee and the Joint Counter-Terrorism Board. The Heads of Intelligence Agencies Meeting (HIAM) and Foreign Intelligence Coordination Committee (FCIC) were senior deliberative and co-ordination bodies of the Australian Intelligence Community for the consideration of issues relating specifically to Australia's foreign intelligence activities. It was chaired by the Director General of the Office of National Assessments. The Defence Intelligence Board (DIB) is a former governance entity with responsibility for the oversight and strategic co-ordination of military intelligence and the Defence Intelligence and Security Group. Chaired by the Deputy Secretary for Intelligence and Security, the DIB included representation from ONA, the Defence Science and Technology Organisation, and Australian Army, the Royal Australian Navy, and the Royal Australian Air Force. The Joint Intelligence Organisation is the predecessor to the Defence Intelligence Organisation and the Office of National Assessments with former responsibilities for the analysis of defence and foreign intelligence. The Allied Intelligence Bureau was a joint United States-Australian-Dutch-British human intelligence and covert action agency in the Pacific Ocean theatre of World War II. The Central Bureau was a joint Allied military intelligence signals intelligence organisation attached to the South West Pacific Command. Central Bureau's role was to research and decrypt intercepted Imperial Japanese Army land and air traffic and work in close co-operation with other signals intelligence units in the US, United Kingdom and India. The Fleet Radio Unit was a joint Royal Australian Navy-United States Navy signals intelligence unit in Melbourne (FRUMEL), attached to the United States Seventh Fleet. The Combined Field Intelligence Service also known as the Coastwatchers was an Allied military intelligence initiative. The Australian Commonwealth Naval Board first established the coastwatching organisation, operated through the Naval Intelligence Division, in 1922. Originally confined to Australia, it expanded after the outbreak of war in 1939 to New Guinea and to the Solomon Islands. Coastwatchers were stationed on remote Pacific islands during the Pacific Ocean theatre of World War II to observe enemy movements and rescue stranded Allied personnel particularly in the South West Pacific theatre and as an early warning network during the Guadalcanal campaign. The Services Reconnaissance Department also known as Special Operations Australia (SOA) and the Inter-Allied Services Department was an Australian Defence Force military intelligence and special reconnaissance unit during World War II. It was modelled initially on the British Special Operations Executive (SOE). The Allied Intelligence Bureau acted as its controlling body from 1942, with the Services Reconnaissance Department becoming Section A within the Allied Intelligence Bureau. The Services Reconnaissance Department oversaw intelligence-gathering, reconnaissance and raiding missions in Japanese-occupied areas of New Guinea, the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia), Portuguese Timor (East Timor), the Malayan Peninsula, British Borneo and Singapore. See also List of intelligence agencies Intelligence cycle List of intelligence gathering disciplines Australia Australian Defence Force Australian Special Forces Australian Police Tactical Groups Australian Law Enforcement Five Eyes ECHELON and Five Eyes United States Intelligence Community United Kingdom Intelligence Community New Zealand Intelligence Community Canadian Intelligence Community Overseas Russian Intelligence Community Chinese National Security Indonesian National Police and Indonesian National Armed Forces References External links IGIS – Australian Intelligence Community Overview ONA – Australian Intelligence Community Agencies, Functions, Accountability and Oversight (2006) Security Challenges Vol. 3 No. 4 (11/2007) The Australian Intelligence Community in 2020 ONA History of the Australian Intelligence Community DPMC 2004 Report of the Inquiry into Australian Intelligence Agencies Australian Human Rights Commission Independent Review of the Intelligence Community April 2011 Office of National Assessments Timeline of the Australian Intelligence Community Intelligence communities Australian intelligence agencies Special forces of Australia Lists of Australian government agencies Military of Australia Australian Defence Force Foreign relations of Australia National security councils Government of Australia Law enforcement in Australia Australian criminal law Crime in Australia Public policy in Australia Federal law enforcement agencies of Australia Terrorism in Australia

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital%20divide%20in%20the%20United%20States

Digital divide in the United States

The digital divide in the United States refers to inequalities between individuals, households, and other groups of different demographic and socioeconomic levels in access to information and communication technologies ("ICTs") and in the knowledge and skills needed to effectively use the information gained from connecting. In 1995, The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) conducted the first survey to assess Internet usage among different demographic groups (what the study deemed the "haves" and the "have-nots" of American society). After U.S. President Bill Clinton adopted the phrase "the digital divide" in his 2000 State of the Union address, researchers began to track trends in ICT access and usage across these different groups. NTIA defined the digital divide as "one of America's leading economic and civil rights issues" in their 1999 report "Falling Through the Net: Defining the Digital Divide" (1999). The effort by the United States' government to close the digital divide has included private and public sector participation, and has developed policies to address information infrastructure and digital literacy that promotes a digital society in the United States. According to Census data, 18% of households used the internet in 1997 and this usage increased to 62% in 2007 and 73% in 2015. Digital access has risen steadily over the past decade, increasing by 11 percent since 2009, though the digital divide exists between varying demographics based on region, age, race, disability, etc. Demographic breakdown Global context: Digital divide and the Digital divide by continent, area and country. As of June 2020, NTIA reports that 4 out of 5 Americans have internet access. While internet access has increased in the past couple decades, there are disparities between demographic factors such as geography (urban versus rural), gender, age, race, class, and disability. In 2021, the Pew Research Center reported that 7% of Americans, approximately 23 million people, do not use the Internet and 23% do not have access to a broadband connection at home. Gender By 2001, women had surpassed men as the majority of the online United States population. When controlling for income, levels of education, and employment, it turns out that women are clearly more enthusiastic ICT users than men. The 2009 Census data suggests that potential disparities in gendered connectivity have become nearly non-existent; 73% of female citizens three years and older compared to 74% of males could access the Internet from their home. Women in the United States are taking advantage of the freelance employment opportunities the Internet offers. For example, a report in 2018 stated that women make up the majority of online shop owners on Etsy, and the majority of hosts on Airbnb. Although more women in the United States use the Internet than men, there still remains significant gender gaps in content creation and website development. For example, a 2013 survey found that about 27% of Wikipedia editors from the U.S. were female. In 2009, a Wikimedia Foundation survey revealed that 6% of editors who made more than 500 edits were female, with the average male editor having twice as many edits. Age Older generations of Americans have consistently reported the lowest level of access to the Internet per age cohorts. In 2019, 59% of Americans age 65 and older had access to broadband at home compared to about 80% of other age groups (77% of Americans age 18–29, 77% of Americans age 30–49, and 79% of Americans age 50–64). Although older generations still hold the lowest amount of Internet usage age-wise, the United States has seen a dramatic increase in Internet users at the age of 65 and older over time. From 2000 to 2015, the number of senior citizens connected to the Internet increased by 44%. Device ownership has drastically increased for Americans age 65 and older over the years but still remains consistently lower than that of all American adults. Data from Pew Research Center shows that smartphone ownership increased from 11% in 2011 to 24% in 2016 (compared to the American average of 35% and 77%, respectively) and tablet ownership increased from 1% in 2010 to 32% in 2016 (compared to 3% and 51%, respectively). In terms of device usage, seniors tended to describe their smartphones as "freeing" and "connecting" and are more likely to use tablets and e-readers. Race and ethnicity Generally, racial minorities have demonstrated lower levels of access and knowledge ICTs and of owning infrastructure to utilize the connection. In 2000, 50% of Whites had access to the Internet compared to 43% of Hispanics and 34% of African Americans. Between 2000 and 2010, the racial population of Internet users became increasingly similar to the racial makeup of the United States population, demonstrating a closing racial divide. In 2019, 79% of Whites had access to broadband compared to 61% of Hispanics and 66% of African Americans. English-speaking Hispanics have been the fastest rising ethnic cohort in terms of Internet usage. In 2010, 81% of English-dominant Latinos, 74% bilingual Latinos, and 47% Spanish-dominant Latinos used the Internet. Even though the rate of dominant Spanish-speaking Latinos was lower at the time, it rose significantly from 36% in 2009. The racial gap for African Americans is most evident within the senior population: in 2003, 11% of African Americans age 65 and older reported using the Internet, compared to 22% of senior Whites. Also in 2003, 68% of 18- to 24-year-old African Americans and 83% of 18- to 24-year-old Whites had Internet access. A similar gap is noted in the 55- to 64-year-old range with 58% of Whites and 22% of African Americans accessing the Internet. The digital divide can be displayed when individuals must use smartphones in the absence of access to other devices. 41% of African Americans and 47% of English-speaking Hispanics send and receive email on cell phones, as compared to 30% of Whites. Significant differences between the racial groups include sending and receiving instant messages, using social networking sites, watching videos, and posting photos or videos online. In 2019, the ownership to smartphones by race/ethnicity was 82% of Whites, 79% of Hispanics, and 80% of African Americans. A 2013 study found that "African Americans are more likely than other segments of the population to use the Internet to seek and apply for employment, and are more likely to consider the Internet very important to the success of their job search." States and Regions Internet connectivity varies widely state by state in the U.S. both in terms of broadband coverage and Internet speed. For example, in 2019, New Jersey ranked the highest in Internet connectivity with the fastest average Internet speed (52.0 Mbit/s) and highest percentage of broadband coverage (99%), and Montana ranked the lowest with the slowest average Internet speed (20.3 Mbit/s) and lowest percentage of broadband coverage (69%). Internet connectivity also varies by region. In 2016, U.S. Census data showed that nonmetropolitan areas in the South have the lowest percentages of households with computers or Internet connection and Metropolitan areas in the West have the highest percentages. Southern states tend to have higher poverty levels that correlate with low levels of Internet connectivity. For example, in 2016, Arkansas and Mississippi reported the lowest levels of broadband use (71% of households) and both states have low median incomes compared to the rest of the country. Overall, in 2015, over 75% of urban Americans used the internet in comparison to 67% of rural Americans. The geographic disparities intertwine with racial disparities. In those rural areas, Native Americans have a 67% broadband internet subscription rate as opposed to 82% for non-Native American individuals. Moreover, Native Americans living on Native American land had 53%. Income In 2016, roughly half of all households with an income less than $25,000 owned a desktop or laptop computer. Over 90% of all households with an income over $100,000 owned a desktop or laptop computer. The same relationship can be seen for households owning smartphones, tablets, and Internet/broadband subscriptions. In 2019, Pew Research Center came out with a report that stated while Internet usage has increased in lower-income households (with annual incomes of less than $30,000), tIn terms of income disparities, the Pew Research Center reported that 44% of adults in households with incomes below $30,000 do not have broadband access. These households are more likely to be smartphone-only Internet users. This can leave them at a disadvantage when applying for jobs or doing other tasks traditionally formatted for a larger screen. As for its effects on school-age children, in 2015, over a quarter of lower-income students did not have access to broadband Internet at home, leaving them to rely on either smartphones or public library access to complete online homework. In a 2020 report by Common Sense Media, it was reported that 30% of American children in grades K-12 lacked access to broadband Internet and several key types of devices (computers, laptops, tablets), and this was exacerbated for children from lower-income homes. This lack of access can leave them at a disadvantage for accessing educational resources, particularly when distance and remote learning has become popular due to the COVID-19 pandemic. A reverse divide is also apparent in the choices that parents make for their children and teenagers. Kids in poor families spend more time using digital devices for entertainment and less time interacting with people face-to-face compared to children and teenagers in well-off families. Wealthy families choose child care options and schools that limit or ban screen time. This has led to concerns that wealthy families are buying face-to-face human interaction for their children, with all the benefits that brings to them, while other children will be left with the poor substitute of an artificial game. Educational attainment In 2018, data showed that households where the house owner has a bachelor's degree or higher, desktop/laptop computer ownership exceeds 93%. However, in households where the house owner did not graduate high school, that figure sharply drops to 45%. The reverse divide is related to education. According to a New York Times article in 2018, the more educated parents are, and especially the more parents know about how computers work, the more likely they are to ban or sharply limit the use of computers, tablets, smartphones, and other digital devices for their children. Reasons given for trends and gaps Shaw and Hargittai (2018) explain that inequities in participatory activity on the Internet (such as on Wikipedia) can be represented as a pipeline model. The steps in their model include: (1) being aware of the site, (2) visiting the site, (3) understanding that it is possible to edit, contribute, or participate on the site, and (4) actually contributing on the site. Thus, gaps in digital knowledge and skills produce gaps in online participatory activity. In 2018, Jen Schradie examined how different factors drive the digital divide in online participation or digital engagement between lower and higher socio-economic groups. She discusses what she calls ASET resources: access, skills, empowerment, and tools. She asserts that lower-class individuals and organizations have less ASETs, and because of this, have less resources to participate online (such as building a robust online presence or navigating an online space). For example, her research describes that having consistent internet access was a challenge for people who can barely make ends meet. The lack of resources creates feelings of disempowerment. Schradie explains that middle to upper-class individuals not only tended to have more ASETs, but often feel more entitlement and confident in their ability to use digital media. Data suggest that race, income, and education are intertwined, especially when it comes to the digital divide. Using the ASETs model above, those who are White, higher-income, and more highly educated typically have more ASETs. As a result, these groups tend to have higher digital connectivity. Other research suggests that a part of the digital divide has been driven by language differences, with those with lower English ability have traditionally had less Internet connectivity and usage. Means of connectivity Infrastructure The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) distinguishes between broadband or high-speed Internet access and dial-up Internet access. Broadband access includes using DSL, cable modems, fiber, wireless, satellite, or BPL. As of 2019, approximately 27% of U.S. adults did not have access to broadband Internet at home. Additionally, people use different physical mediums that can connect to the Internet such as desktop computers, laptops, cell phones, iPods or other MP3 players, Xboxes or PlayStations, electronic book readers, and tablets such as iPads. Since 2013, Pew Research Center has been tracking the percentage of the American population who they call "smartphone-only Internet users" who do not have home broadband but own a smartphone. This percentage has grown from 8% in 2013 to 18% in 2019. Smartphone-only Internet users are more likely to be adults who are younger (22% of Americans ages 18–29), Hispanic (25%) and Black (23%), from households with annual incomes of less than $30,000 (26%), and with less than a high school degree (32%). According to a 2019 survey by the Pew Research Center in 2019, smartphone ownership in the United States varies greatly among generations: Millennials (born in 1981–1996): 93% Generation X (born 1965–1980): 90% Baby Boomers (born 1946–1964): 68% Silent Generation (born 1945 and earlier): 40% Location If Internet is inaccessible from the home, one can often find Wi-Fi connections at restaurants and coffee shops, schools, and libraries. A survey by Pew Research in 2016 found that 23% of Americans 16-years-old and older used wi-fi at a public library. According to the American Library Association (ALA), 98% of public libraries in the United States in 2015 offered free wi-fi. In a 2011 ALA survey, it was shown that the quality of that Internet access can vary, with connections to the community's poverty level and community type. Rural libraries were much less likely to report having fiber optic Internet connections, while a majority of urban libraries reported having it. Rural libraries were also less likely to have connectivity speeds higher than 6.0 Mbit/s. In 2010, nine out of every ten libraries surveyed by the ALA reported that providing services to job seekers was one of the most important services free Internet services provided. Other important services included providing government information such as tax forms, and educational information to school-aged children. Over the past few years, some public libraries in the United States have started to lend out hotspots to patrons. Purpose of connectivity As new applications and software are developed, the Internet has increasingly become utilized to complete a variety of both professional work and personal tasks. To the right of this section are two tables describing the most recent data on the types of activities U.S. citizens utilize the Internet for compiled by the U.S. Census Bureau and presented in its final Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2012. See also in Education section: digital divide The digital divide also impacts children's ability to learn and grow in low-income school districts. Without Internet access, students are unable to cultivate necessary tech skills in order to understand today's dynamic economy. The need for the internet starts while children are in school – necessary for matters such as school portal access, homework submission, and assignment research. Federal Communication Commission's Broadband Task Force created a report showing that about 70% of teachers give students homework that demand access to broadband. Even more, approximately 65% of young scholars use the Internet at home to complete assignments as well as connect with teachers and other students via discussion boards and shared files. A recent study indicates that practically 50% of students say that they are unable to finish their homework due to an inability to either connect to the Internet or in some cases, find a computer. This has led to a new revelation: 42% of students say they received a lower grade because of this disadvantage. Finally, according to research conducted by the Center for American Progress, "if the United States were able to close the educational achievement gaps between native-born white children and black and Hispanic children, the U.S. economy would be 5.8 percent—or nearly $2.3 trillion—larger in 2050". In the COVID-19 pandemic, the digital divide has been exacerbated since workplaces, schools, telehealth, and more have transitioned online. A pulse survey in November 2020 reported that for almost 80 percent of 2000 respondents aged 18+ in the US and UK internet has become more important in their lives as a result of the pandemic. Lack of connectivity Physical, financial, psychological, and skill-based barriers exist in terms of Internet access and Internet skills for different demographics: 25% of American adults live with a disability that interferes with daily living activities. 54% of adults living with a disability still connect to the Internet. 2% of adults say they have a disability or illness that makes it more difficult or impossible for them to effectively and efficiently use the Internet. Aversion to the Internet influences an individual's psychological barriers to Internet usage, affecting which involving which individuals connect and for what purpose. Comfort displayed toward technology can be described as comfort performing a task concerning the medium and infrastructure by which to connect. Technological infrastructure sometimes causes privacy and security concerns leading to a lack of connectivity. Individuals who exhibit computer anxiety demonstrate fear towards the initial experience of computer usage or the process of using a computer. From this, many researchers conclude that increased computer experience could lead to lower anxiety levels. Others suggest that individuals demonstrate anxiety toward specific computer tasks, such as using the Internet, rather than anxiety toward computers in general. Communication apprehension influences propensity to use only Internet applications that promote engagement in communication with other people such as Skype or iChat. Bach et. al in “Poverty, Literacy, and Social Transformation” state that technological exclusion is inherently tied to sociology exclusion and that addressing educational equity initiatives must relate to solving the larger poverty systems. In the political lens where digital access is a right, participatory citizenship in the digital era involves the right to participate in higher education, not just access. Overcoming the digital divide in the United States Information infrastructure Congress passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act on February 13, 2009 which was signed it into law four days later by President Barack Obama. A portion of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act designated approximately $7.2 billion in investments to expand broadband access nationwide, improve high-speed connectivity in rural areas and public computer centers, and increase Internet capacity in schools, libraries, public safety offices, and other public buildings. According to a joint report from The Alliance for the Public Technology and the Communications Workers of America released in July 2008, states developed initiatives before there had been any national-wide action aimed to actively develop an information infrastructure and start to catch up to other countries in respect to the number of households with broadband internet. Broadband initiatives by the states can be broadly classified into seven different types: Broadband Commissions, Task Force, or Authority established through legislation or executive order that directs public and private stakeholders to assess the state of high-speed Internet deployment and adoption in the state and recommend policy solutions. Public-Private Partnerships convened through executive order or statute to broadband availability, identify unserved and underserved areas, assess supply and demand-side barriers, create local technology teams to implement programs to increase computer ownership, digital literacy, aggregate demand, and accelerate broadband build-out. Direct Funding Programs to support the build-out of advanced networks in unserved and underserved areas by leveraging private sector funds to make network investment – and thus Internet service – more affordable State Networks operated by public agencies or the private sector connecting schools, universities, libraries and state and local government agencies to reduce costs by aggregating demand. In some cases, public agencies serve as anchor tenants to make middle-mile broadband build-out to underserved communities more economic. At least 30 states have established state networks Telehealth networks linking rural clinics with specialists in hospitals and academic institutions. At least 25 states support state telehealth networks. Tax Policy with targeted tax incentives for investment in broadband equipment. Demand-Side Programs to promote computer ownership, digital literacy, and development of community-based applications and services." Public-Private partnerships Private-public partnerships often present as income-targeted programs, like with Comcast Internet Essentials and cities like Philadelphia. Internet Essentials is a price plan offered to every low-income family with school-age children who qualify for free school lunch as well as low-income seniors and low-income veterans. To expand internet affordability, cities will work with private partners, although there is debate over this approach due to concerns for private sector dominance and monopolies. Internet Essentials is a popular program by Comcast that champions affordability for low-income residents, but the large Internet Service Provider (ISP) has sued cities for attempting to start their own city-owned broadband network. A 2020 article reported that 22 states had substantive legal roadblocks to establishing municipal or government-owned broadband networks. This can be connected to the national dispute over net neutrality, the principle that ISPs should enable access to all content and applications regardless of the source, and without favoring or blocking particular products or websites. State Networks In 2013, 2,000 cities had public electric utilities, 400 had any kind of public broadband network, and only 150 had fiber optic networks. While, it is not as common to find fully municipally-owned power or broadband, there are cities like the City of Chattanooga, Tennessee, with the first high-speed fiber-optic broadband network. The City started its own fiber-optic network in 2013, leveraging the existing capacity of its City energy company, the Electric Power Board, for deployment. Some propose that broadband can be treated like a public good, a non-rival and nonexclusive resource in which everyone can access it. Municipally-owned broadband networks still have the possibility for public-private partnerships. For example, municipalities could lease publicly-owned fiber networks to private ISPs and provide individual strands of fiber and ask ISPs to pay upfront costs for fiber construction with a small operating cost. Similarly, the City can serve as a middle-mile/last-mile provider, where they lease space on the fiber network to other vendors who then offer commercial broadband services directly to the customer. This theory of this can be exemplified in city-provided public Wi-Fi, implemented in Cities like San Leandro. The City of San Leandro has a fiber network from a License Agreement with San Leandro Dark Fiber that is approximately 14 miles of conduit and fiber strands throughout the city. In exchange, the City has ownership of 10 percent of the fiber installed by San Leandro Dark Fiber. In addition to this, San Leandro partners with over 100 ISPs to provide competitive leasing. Notable Initiatives In 1993, the U.S. Advisory Council on the National Information Infrastructure was established and administered a report called A Nation of Opportunity that planned access to ICTs for all member of the population and emphasized the government's role in protecting their existence. Founded in 1996, the Boston Digital Bridge Foundation attempts to enhance children's and their parents' computer knowledge, program application usage, and ability to easily navigate the Internet. In 2010, the City of Boston received a 4.3 million dollar grant from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. The grant will attempt to provide Internet access and training to underserved populations including parents, children, youth, and the elderly. Starting in 1997, Cisco Systems Inc. began Cisco Networking Academy which donated equipment and provided training programs to high schools and community centers that fell in U.S. Empowerment Zones. Since 1999, a non-profit organization called Computers for Youth has provided cheaper Internet access, computers, and training to minority homes and schools in New York City. Currently, the agency serves more than 1,200 families and teachers per year. The Tomorrow's Teachers to Use Technology established by the Department of Education was given almost $400 million between 1999 and 2003 to train teachers in elementary and secondary schools to use ICTs in the classroom. In 2000, Berkeley, California established a program that facilitated digital democracy in allowing residents to contribute opinions to general city plans via the Internet. The National Science Foundation gave EDUCAUSE (a non-profit that attempts to enhance education with ICTs) $6 million to focus on providing ICTs to Hispanic-Serving Institutions, Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and Tribal Colleges and Universities. In 2000, President Clinton allocated $2.34 billion to provide low-income families at-home access to computers and the Internet, to install broadband networks in underserved communities, and to encourage private donation of computers, businesses or individuals to sponsor community technology centers, and technology training. An additional $45 million was added to emphasize provision of ICTs to underserved areas. In 2003, the Gates Foundation contributed $250 million to install more than 47,000 computers and train librarians in almost 11,000 libraries in all 50 states. In 2004 in Houston, Texas, a non-profit organization called Technology for All (TFA) established a free broadband Wi-Fi network in an underserved community, Pecan Park. An additional grant in 2010 assisted TFA, in collaboration with Rice University, in upgrading their Wi-Fi network to a new long-range version, a "Super Wi-Fi" in order to enhance network speed and computer quality. In June 2004, Hon. Gale Brewer (D-Manhattan), Chair of the Select Committee on Technology in Government (now the Committee on Technology) in conjunction with a graduate student Digital Opportunities Team at CUNY Hunter College, supervised by Professor Lisa Tolliver in the Departments of Urban Affairs and Planning), published a study and recommendations titled Expanding Digital Opportunity in New York City Public Schools: Profiles of Innovators and Leaders Who Make a Difference. The report was one of numerous initiatives and events implemented by the Select Committee, which includes roundtables, conferences, hearings, and collaborative partnerships. In 2007, projects called One Laptop per Child, Raspberry Pi and 50x15 were implemented in attempting to reduce the digital divide by providing cheaper infrastructure necessary to connect. In 2007, the use of "hotspot" zones (where people can access free Wi-Fi) was introduced to help bridge access to the Internet. Due to a majority percentage of American adults (55) connecting wirelessly, this policy can assist in providing more comprehensive network coverage, but also ignores an underprivileged population of people who do not own infrastructure, so still lack access to the Internet and ICTs. The Broadband Access ($76 billion) and Community Connect ($57.7 million in grants) programs administered by the US Department of Agriculture (2007) and the e-Rate program administered by the Federal Communications Commission are the pillars of national policies intended to promote the diffusion of broadband Internet service in rural America. Since 2008, organizations such as Geekcorps and Inveneo have been working to reduce the digital divide by emphasizing ICTs within a classroom context. Technology used often includes laptops, handhelds (e.g. Simputer, E-slate), and tablet PCs. In 2011, Congresswoman Doris Matsui introduced the Broadband Affordability Act, which calls for the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to subsidize broadband Internet service for low-income citizens, assisting in closing the gap between high-income and low-income households. The Act would expand the program to offer discounted internet service to lower-income consumers living in both urban and rural areas. The bill was introduced on June 14, 2011, but was not enacted and died in the 112th Congress. In 2014, Congressmen Bill Foster introduced the ‘‘Closing the Digital 5 Divide for Students Act of 2014’’, which amends the United States Housing Act of 1937 and is aimed at providing affordable internet for residents in low-income housing. It was last referred to the House Committee on Financial Services in 2015. In 2020, federal fiscal commitments include the Consolidated Appropriations Act passed on December 27, 2020, which is a $7 billion fund for broadband initiatives under the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act. Additionally, in March 2020, the Federal Communications Commission created the Keep Americans Connected Pledge for broadband and telephone service providers to ensure that Americans do not lose their broadband or telephone connectivity due to COVID-19 circumstances. Social capital The majority of research on civic engagement and social capital shows that the Internet enhances social capital in the United States, but others report that after controlling for background variables, civic engagement between users and non-users is not significantly different. Of those who do believe that the Internet promotes social capital, a longitudinal study in Pittsburgh found that Internet usage increased rates of individual participation in community activities as well as levels of trust. Additionally, these increased levels of involvement were greater for participants who had previously been the least involved. Of those who use the Internet in the United States, studies have found that these individuals tend to be members of community social networks, participate in community activities, and exhibit higher levels of political participation. Economic gains The United States is the world leader in Internet supply ecosystem, holding over 30% of global Internet revenues and more than 40% of global Internet net income. Its lead primarily stems from the economic importance of and dependence the United States places on the Internet, since the Internet makes the United States' economic activity faster, cheaper, and more efficient. The Internet provides a large contribution to wealth: 61% of businesses who use the Internet in the United States saved $155.2 billion as a result of ICTs as more efficient means toward productivity. In 2009, the Internet generated $64 billion in consumer surplus in the United States. In the United States, the Internet promotes private consumption primarily through online shopping. In 2009, online purchases of goods and services totaled about $250 billion, with average consumption per buyer equaling about $1,773 over the year. That same year, the Internet contributed to 60% of the United States' private consumption, 24% of private investment, 20% of public expenditure, and 3.8% of the GDP. Between 1995 and 2009, the Internet has contributed to 8% of the GDP's growth in the United States. Most recently, the Internet has contributed to 15% of the GDP's growth from 2004 to 2009. The American government can also communicate more quickly and easily with citizens who are Internet consumers: e-government supports interactions with American individuals and businesses. Additionally, widespread use of the Internet by businesses and corporations drives down energy costs. Besides the fact that Internet usage does not consume large amounts of energy, businesses who utilize connections no longer have to ship, stock, heat, cool, and light unsellable items whose lack of consumption not only yields less profit for the company but also wastes more energy. Online shopping contributes to less fuel use: a 10-pound package via airmail uses 40% less fuel than a trip to buy that same package at a local mall, or shipping via railroad. Researchers in 2000 predicted a continuing decline in energy due to Internet consumption to save 2.7 million tons of paper per year, yielding a decrease by 10 million tons of carbon dioxide global warming pollution per year. See also Achievement gap Center for Digital Inclusion Civic opportunity gap Digital divide Digital divide by country Digital Opportunity Index Digital rights Information society International communication Internet geography Internet governance List of countries by Internet connection speeds Knowledge divide Mercedes divide National broadband plans from around the world NetDay Net neutrality Rural Internet References United States United States

26962257

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daou%20Technology%20Inc.

Daou Technology Inc.

Daou Technology Inc. (, ), Republic of Korea, is a public multinational company that specializes in marketing communication and commerce products and services, applications for enterprise, and IDC including IT consulting service. Daou Technology was founded in 1986 by Ik Rae, Kim while he played a leading role in advancement of database management system and web technology by localizing Informix RDBMS software and Netscape web browser for the first time in 1995. An initial public offering (IPO) took place in Korea Stock Exchange on August 27, 1997, and Daou Technology announced plans to expand its business into the finance industry. In January 2000, the company set up an online stock brokerage service, Kiwoom securities(, Kiwoom Securities Co., Ltd., ), company's the most notable effort to being the Nation's first online brokerage provider. Daou Technology has been a parent company since Kiwoom securities’ establishment, and possesses 47.7 percent of stake in the ownership of Kiwoom securities as of the end of FY2017. Entering into 2000, the company focus on software and IT consulting services business for the improvement of profitability as profit margins of hardware business fallen. It has been established the partnerships with global software companies such as IBM, VMware, Citrix, and RedHat providing technical supports which factor in cloud computing, virtualization, open source, and SaaS (software as a service). The company have been merged with Unitel Network which was affiliated company to secured Web Services and supplied services such as PPurio, enFax, Minisum, DaouPay, Unicro, DonutBook, SmartPush and DCSms. In 2010, it was developed SmartProcess which is the company's own CRM service and Team Office, designed for cooperation and communication. It moved to the company's headquarters in Jukjeon, Yongin, named the Digital Valley in 2010. The company's rapid growth has triggered a chain of own products, acquisitions, and partnerships. It offers marketing communication products and services (ppurio, biz ppurio, donutbook, enFax, Callmix, Biz mailer), commerce services (SNS Form, Unicro), and enterprise mail product (Terrace Mail). It released IT infrastructure and related outsourcing services (Daou IDC, Daou Cloud) in 2013. It launched Daou Office designed for work and productivity in April 2014. Youn Duck, Kim was appointed CEO of the company in January 2016. In 2018, it launched online commerce inventory management service (Sabangnet), merging with Korea ASP. It holds 45 percent of market share by sales revenues in domestic multi-channel management market. History • 2018.08 Merged with Sabangnet, multi-channel product and order management service • 2016.04 Launched TERRACE MAIL Security / Merger with delphinet • 2016.03 Launched SNS Form • 2016.01 Spin-off KIDARI ENT • 2015.11 Acquired Text Messaging service business • 2015.10 Acquired a portion of Delitoon • 2015.09 Launched DaouOffice 2.0 • 2015.08 Launched Telpass • 2014.11 Atlantis Computing Distributor • 2014.09 CommVault Distributor • 2014.07 Nimble Storage Distributor • 2014.03 Launched DaouOffice (Groupware) • 2012.01 Riverbed Distributor • 2011.09 Quantum Distributor • 2011.09 Launched Officetalk (Enterprise SNS) • 2010.09 Launched Smart Process • 2008.06 Acquired Terrace Technologies • 2008.10 EnterpriseDB Distributor • 2008.03 Established Internet Platform Research Institute • 2008.03 Established Messaging Research Institute • 2007.09 BakBone Software Distributor • 2006.11 RedHat Distributor • 2006.02 Citrix Distributor • 2005.12 Digital Knowledge Management Award • 2005.09 VMware Distributor • 2005.03 Chairman of Korea Software Association • 2004.03 IBM S/W Distributor • 2001.05 Developed Winipmail • 2000.07 Developed Webstore 5.0 • 1999.09 Developed integrated messaging system-Qrio • 1998.04 Order of Industrial Service Merit • 1997.08 Listed on KSE • 1995.10 Netscape Distributor • 1994.05 Registered in off board market Multi-media Tech Award • 1991.01 Developed Korea VGA Board • 1987.12 First domestic Korean RDBMS • 1986.01 Established Daou Tech. Subsidiaries and Affiliates (As of FY2018 Q2) IT : Daou Data(Payment service and IT), KICA(Korean Information Certificate Authority Inc., Public certification authority), Mirae Technology(OTP) Finance : Kiwoom Securities(Online brokerage service provider), Kiwoom Asset Management(Equities, fixed income, infrastructure and real estate), Kioom Savings Bank, Kiwoom Yes Saving Bank, Kiwoom Investment(Venture capital), Kiwoom Asset Planner(GA/Financial planning), Kiwoom Private Equity. Contents & Service : Saramin(Online job portal), Saramin HS(Manpower outsourcing), Kidari Studio(Webtoon and web novel platform), KidariEnt(Visual content distribution), Imazins(Stock photo agency), eMoney(Financial content service), Wisebirds(SNS advertising agency), Kiwoom Estate&Service(Real estate development & management) Global : Daou Japan, Daou Dalian, Daou Hong Kong, Kiwoom Securities Indonesia, Kiwoom Investment Management Indonesia Information technology companies of South Korea Software companies established in 1986 Recipients of the Order of Industrial Service Merit South Korean companies established in 1986

40256054

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaime%20Andrade%20Jr.

Jaime Andrade Jr.

Jaime M. Andrade, Jr. is the State Representative for Illinois' 40th District. He has served as a member of the Illinois House of Representatives since 2013. During his tenure, he has prioritized legislation that keeps pace with technology, protects the environment, and improves community safety. He won his first election in 2014, and was re-elected as a Democrat in 2016, 2018, and 2020. He acts in leadership as Assistant House Majority Leader. District Andrade's current district is located on the northwest side of Chicago and includes Avondale, Irving Park, and Albany Park. The legislative remap following the 2020 Census will incorporate parts of North Center, Roscoe Village, and West Lakeview into Andrade's district. Biography A long-time community leader and resident of the Irving Park neighborhood, Andrade has been praised for his community clean up efforts, making headlines when local pigeons took issue with his push for funds to clean up the local Blue Line (CTA) station. From 1998 until his appointment to the General Assembly he was an assistant to former Chicago alderman Richard Mell; he was also a Legislative Assistant and Assistant Sergeant-At-Arms for the Chicago City Council. As creator and former chair of the Cybersecurity, Data Analytics & IT Committee, Andrade wrote the first-of-its-kind legislation regulating the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Illinois. The Artificial Intelligence Video Interview Act regulates Illinois employers’ use of AI in the interview and hiring process. Tenure Committee assignments Andrade is the founder and former Chairperson of the Cybersecurity, Data Analytics & IT Committee for the IL House of Representatives and is presently a member of the following committees and subcommittees: Appropriations-General Services Cybersecurity, Data Analytics & IT Committee Executive Financial Institutions Human Services Labor & Commerce. Public Benefits Subcommittee Small Business, Technology, and Innovation Wage Policy & Study Subcommittee Legislation Andrade has focused on crafting pro-active legislation that keeps Illinois up-to-date with the latest technological advances, protects the environment, and bolsters Illinois' fiscal health. He passed the first of its kind law banning the manufacture and sale of personal care products containing harmful plastic microbeads, a version of which was later signed into federal law by President Barack Obama.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/1321</ref> In 2021, he carried the Automatic Renewal Contract Act <ref>{{Cite web|url=https://ilga.gov/legislation/BillStatus.asp?DocTypeID=HB&DocNum=3955&GAID=16&SessionID=110&LegID=133043</ref> to make cancelling subscriptions easier for online consumers, which later became law. That same year, he also carried the Illinois Sick Leave Act for Aviation Workers in the House.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.twu.org/press-release-illinois-sick-leave-act-of-2017-extended-to-aviation-workers/</ref> Taking effect in 2022, this allows more than 30,000 aviation workers in Illinois to use employer-provided sick leave to care for ill or injured loved ones. Political positions Andrade supports affordable child care, community safety initiatives, elected school boards, environmental protections, immigrant reform, a socially and fiscally responsible state budget, small business relief, and a $15 minimum wage. He has a 100% voting record with the Illinois Environmental Council. Electoral history For the 2020 primary election, Andrade has been endorsed by: US Congressman Jesús "Chuy" García US Congressman Mike Quigley Planned Parenthood The Chicago Teachers Union Illinois Federation of Teachers Personal PAC Illinois AFL-CIO The Sierra Club Chicago Sun-Times Illinois Nurses Association International Union of Operating Engineers Local 150 Equality IL PAC Citizen Action Illinois Stand for Children PAC IL National Organization for Women Gun Violence Prevention PAC Illinois SEIU State Council Northside Democracy for America Alderman Carlos Ramirez Rosa Alderman Scott Waguespack State Senator Ram Villivalam State Representative Will Guzzardi For the 2016 primary election, Andrade was endorsed by: The Chicago Teacher's Union Illinois Federation of Teachers Equality Illinois Planned Parenthood Illinois Action Committee Citizen Action Illinois SEIU State Council Associated Firefighters of Illinois Alderman Carlos Ramirez Rosa Alderman Nick Sposato 45th Ward Independent Democrats and 45th Ward Democratic Committeeman and Alderman John Arena References External links Representative Jaime M. Andrade, Jr. - (D) IL 40th District - 101th General Assembly Representative Jaime M. Andrade, Jr. - (D) IL 40th District - 100th General Assembly at the Illinois General Assembly Biography at Ballotpedia Jaime Andrade State Website Jaime Andrade Political Website https://www.facebook.com/IL40thDistrictJaimeAndrade/ verified State Facebook Page https://www.facebook.com/RepJaimeAndrade/ verified Political Facebook Page Living people Members of the Illinois House of Representatives Year of birth missing (living people) 21st-century American politicians Hispanic and Latino American state legislators in Illinois Illinois Democrats Politicians from Chicago DePaul University alumni

55598471

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PerfectDisk

PerfectDisk

PerfectDisk is a defragmentation software product for Windows developed by Raxco. The application keeps track of file usage to lessen defragmentation time and offers two modes of basic defragging: "quick" and "SmartPlacement". History During the 1980s, a software package titled "Disk-Optimizer" was marketed as part of the collective name "RAXCO Rabbit Software." PerfectDisk was released in 1990 for the VMS operating system. A version for Windows NT followed later in 1997. PerfectDisk contains scheduler supporting also client PCs in the network. Competition The standard Windows "Disk Defragmenter" is based on a subset of a competing product named Diskeeper. For those seeking additional features, PerfectDisk and the full-feature Diskeeper are among their options; these are intended for high-end users, and feature optimizing the placement of "system files and free space." See also File system fragmentation Defragmentation Disk Defragmenter (Windows) List of defragmentation software Comparison of defragmentation software References External links Microsoft: Troubleshooting Disk Defragmenter Official web site Defragmentation software Proprietary software Computer system optimization software Utilities for Windows Disk usage analysis software

18212

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux%20distribution

Linux distribution

A Linux distribution (often abbreviated as distro) is an operating system made from a software collection that includes the Linux kernel and, often, a package management system. Linux users usually obtain their operating system by downloading one of the Linux distributions, which are available for a wide variety of systems ranging from embedded devices (for example, OpenWrt) and personal computers (for example, Linux Mint) to powerful supercomputers (for example, Rocks Cluster Distribution). A typical Linux distribution comprises a Linux kernel, GNU tools and libraries, additional software, documentation, a window system (the most common being the X Window System, or, more recently, Wayland), a window manager, and a desktop environment. Most of the included software is free and open-source software made available both as compiled binaries and in source code form, allowing modifications to the original software. Usually, Linux distributions optionally include some proprietary software that may not be available in source code form, such as binary blobs required for some device drivers. A Linux distribution may also be described as a particular assortment of application and utility software (various GNU tools and libraries, for example), packaged together with the Linux kernel in such a way that its capabilities meet the needs of many users. The software is usually adapted to the distribution and then packaged into software packages by the distribution's maintainers. The software packages are available online in repositories, which are storage locations usually distributed around the world. Beside glue components, such as the distribution installers (for example, Debian-Installer and Anaconda) or the package management systems, there are only very few packages that are originally written from the ground up by the maintainers of a Linux distribution. Almost one thousand Linux distributions exist. Because of the huge availability of software, distributions have taken a wide variety of forms, including those suitable for use on desktops, servers, laptops, netbooks, mobile phones and tablets, as well as minimal environments typically for use in embedded systems. There are commercially backed distributions, such as Fedora Linux (Red Hat), openSUSE (SUSE) and Ubuntu (Canonical Ltd.), and entirely community-driven distributions, such as Debian, Slackware, Gentoo and Arch Linux. Most distributions come ready to use and pre-compiled for a specific instruction set, while some distributions (such as Gentoo) are distributed mostly in source code form and compiled locally during installation. History Linus Torvalds developed the Linux kernel and distributed its first version, 0.01, in 1991. Linux was initially distributed as source code only, and later as a pair of downloadable floppy disk images one bootable and containing the Linux kernel itself, and the other with a set of GNU utilities and tools for setting up a file system. Since the installation procedure was complicated, especially in the face of growing amounts of available software, distributions sprang up to simplify this. Early distributions included the following: H. J. Lu's "Boot-root", the aforementioned disk image pair with the kernel and the absolute minimal tools to get started, in late 1991 MCC Interim Linux, which was made available to the public for download in February 1992 Softlanding Linux System (SLS), released in 1992, was the most comprehensive distribution for a short time, including the X Window System Yggdrasil Linux/GNU/X, a commercial distribution first released in December 1992 The two oldest and still active distribution projects started in 1993. The SLS distribution was not well maintained, so in July 1993 a new distribution, called Slackware and based on SLS, was released by Patrick Volkerding. Also dissatisfied with SLS, Ian Murdock set to create a free distribution by founding Debian, which had its first release in December 1993. Users were attracted to Linux distributions as alternatives to the DOS and Microsoft Windows operating systems on IBM PC compatible computers, Mac OS on the Apple Macintosh, and proprietary versions of Unix. Most early adopters were familiar with Unix from work or school. They embraced Linux distributions for their low (if any) cost, and availability of the source code for most or all of the software included. As of 2017, Linux has become more popular in server and embedded devices markets than in the desktop market. For example, Linux is used on over 50% of web servers, whereas its desktop market share is about 3.7%. Components Many Linux distributions provide an installation system akin to that provided with other modern operating systems. On the other hand, some distributions, including Gentoo Linux, provide only the binaries of a basic kernel, compilation tools, and an installer; the installer compiles all the requested software for the specific architecture of the user's computer, using these tools and the provided source code. Package management Distributions are normally segmented into packages. Each package contains a specific application or service. Examples of packages are a library for handling the PNG image format, a collection of fonts or a web browser. The package is typically provided as compiled code, with installation and removal of packages handled by a package management system (PMS) rather than a simple file archiver. Each package intended for such a PMS contains meta-information such as a package description, version, and "dependencies". The package management system can evaluate this meta-information to allow package searches, to perform an automatic upgrade to a newer version, to check that all dependencies of a package are fulfilled, and/or to fulfill them automatically. Although Linux distributions typically contain much more software than proprietary operating systems, it is normal for local administrators to also install software not included in the distribution. An example would be a newer version of a software application than that supplied with a distribution, or an alternative to that chosen by the distribution (for example, KDE Plasma Workspaces rather than GNOME or vice versa for the user interface layer). If the additional software is distributed in source-only form, this approach requires local compilation. However, if additional software is locally added, the "state" of the local system may fall out of synchronization with the state of the package manager's database. If so, the local administrator will be required to take additional measures to ensure the entire system is kept up to date. The package manager may no longer be able to do so automatically. Most distributions install packages, including the kernel and other core operating system components, in a predetermined configuration. Few now require or even permit configuration adjustments at first install time. This makes installation less daunting, particularly for new users, but is not always acceptable. For specific requirements, much software must be carefully configured to be useful, to work correctly with other software, or to be secure, and local administrators are often obliged to spend time reviewing and reconfiguring assorted software. Some distributions go to considerable lengths to specifically adjust and customize most or all of the software included in the distribution. Not all do so. Some distributions provide configuration tools to assist in this process. By replacing everything provided in a distribution, an administrator may reach a "distribution-less" state: everything was retrieved, compiled, configured, and installed locally. It is possible to build such a system from scratch, avoiding a distribution altogether. One needs a way to generate the first binaries until the system is self-hosting. This can be done via compilation on another system capable of building binaries for the intended target (possibly by cross-compilation). For example, see Linux From Scratch. Types and trends In broad terms, Linux distributions may be: Commercial or non-commercial Designed for enterprise users, power users, or for home users Supported on multiple types of hardware, or platform-specific, even to the extent of certification by the platform vendor Designed for servers, desktops, or embedded devices General purpose or highly specialized toward specific machine functionalities (e.g. firewalls, network routers, and computer clusters) Targeted at specific user groups, for example through language internationalization and localization, or through inclusion of many music production or scientific computing packages Built primarily for security, usability, portability, or comprehensiveness Standard release or rolling release, see below. The diversity of Linux distributions is due to technical, organizational, and philosophical variation among vendors and users. The permissive licensing of free software means that users with sufficient knowledge and interest can customize any existing distribution, or design one to suit their own needs. Rolling distributions Rolling Linux distributions are kept updated using small and frequent updates. The terms partially rolling and partly rolling (along with synonyms semi-rolling and half-rolling), fully rolling, truly rolling and optionally rolling are sometimes used by software developers and users. Repositories of rolling distributions usually contain very recent software releases – often the latest stable software releases available. They have pseudo-releases and installation media that are simply a snapshot of the software distribution at the time of the release of the installation image. Typically, a rolling release operating system installed from an older installation medium can be fully updated post-installation to a current state. Depending on the use case, there can be pros and cons to both standard release and rolling release software development methodologies. In terms of the software development process, standard releases require significant development effort being spent on keeping old versions up to date due to propagating bug fixes back to the newest branch, versus focusing more on the newest development branch. Also, unlike rolling releases, standard releases require more than one code branch to be developed and maintained, which increases the software development and software maintenance workload of the software developers and software maintainers. On the other hand, software features and technology planning are easier in standard releases due to a better understanding of upcoming features in the next version(s). Software release cycles can also be synchronized with those of major upstream software projects, such as desktop environments. As far as the user experience, standard releases are often viewed as more stable and bug-free since software conflicts can be more easily addressed and the software stack more thoroughly tested and evaluated, during the software development cycle. For this reason, they tend to be the preferred choice in enterprise environments and mission-critical tasks. However, rolling releases offer more current software which can also provide increased stability and fewer software bugs along with the additional benefits of new features, greater functionality, faster running speeds, and improved system and application security. Regarding software security, the rolling release model can have advantages in timely security updates, fixing system or application security bugs and vulnerabilities, that standard releases may have to wait till the next release for or patch in various versions. In a rolling release distribution, where the user has chosen to run it as a highly dynamic system, the constant flux of software packages can introduce new unintended vulnerabilities. Installation-free distributions (live CD/USB) A "live" distribution is a Linux distribution that can be booted from removable storage media such as optical discs or USB flash drives, instead of being installed on and booted from a hard disk drive. The portability of installation-free distributions makes them advantageous for applications such as demonstrations, borrowing someone else's computer, rescue operations, or as installation media for a standard distribution. When the operating system is booted from a read-only medium such as a CD or DVD, any user data that needs to be retained between sessions cannot be stored on the boot device but must be written to another storage device, such as a USB flash drive or a hard disk drive. Many Linux distributions provide a "live" form in addition to their conventional form, which is a network-based or removable-media image intended to be used only for installation; such distributions include SUSE, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, MEPIS and Fedora Linux. Some distributions, including Knoppix, Puppy Linux, Devil-Linux, SuperGamer, SliTaz GNU/Linux and dyne:bolic, are designed primarily for live use. Additionally, some minimal distributions can be run directly from as little space as one floppy disk without the need to change the contents of the system's hard disk drive. Examples The website DistroWatch lists many Linux distributions, and displays some of the ones that have the most web traffic on the site. The Wikimedia Foundation released an analysis of the browser User Agents of visitors to WMF websites until 2015, which includes details of the most popular Operating System identifiers, including some Linux distributions. Many of the popular distributions are listed below. Widely used GNU-based or GNU-compatible distributions Debian, a non-commercial distribution and one of the earliest, maintained by a volunteer developer community with a strong commitment to free software principles and democratic project management. Knoppix, the first Live CD distribution to run completely from removable media without installation to a hard disk, derived from Debian. Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) uses Debian packages directly (rather than Ubuntu's) Ubuntu, a desktop and server distribution derived from Debian, maintained by British company Canonical Ltd. There are several distributions based on Ubuntu that mainly replace the GNOME stock desktop environment, like: Kubuntu based on KDE, Lubuntu based on LXQT, Xubuntu based on XFCE, Ubuntu MATE based on MATE, Ubuntu Budgie based on Budgie. Other official forks have specific uses like: Ubuntu Kylin for Chinese-speaking users, or Ubuntu Studio for media content creators. Linux Mint, a distribution based on and compatible with Ubuntu. Supports multiple desktop environments, among others GNOME Shell fork Cinnamon and GNOME 2 fork MATE. Fedora Linux, a community distribution sponsored by American company Red Hat and the successor to the company's previous offering, Red Hat Linux. It aims to be a technology testbed for Red Hat's commercial Linux offering, where new open-source software is prototyped, developed, and tested in a communal setting before maturing into Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), a derivative of Fedora Linux, maintained and commercially supported by Red Hat. It seeks to provide tested, secure, and stable Linux server and workstation support to businesses. CentOS, a distribution derived from the same sources used by Red Hat, maintained by a dedicated volunteer community of developers with both 100% Red Hat-compatible versions and an upgraded version that is not always 100% upstream compatible. Oracle Linux, which is a derivative of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, maintained and commercially supported by Oracle Mandriva Linux was a Red Hat Linux derivative popular in several European countries and Brazil, backed by the French company of the same name. After the company went bankrupt, it was superseded by OpenMandriva Lx, although a number of derivatives now have a larger user base. Mageia, a community fork of Mandriva Linux created in 2010 PCLinuxOS, a derivative of Mandriva, which grew from a group of packages into a community-spawned desktop distribution openSUSE, a community distribution mainly sponsored by German company SUSE. SUSE Linux Enterprise, derived from openSUSE, maintained and commercially supported by SUSE Arch Linux, a rolling release distribution targeted at experienced Linux users and maintained by a volunteer community, offers official binary packages and a wide range of unofficial user-submitted source packages. Packages are usually defined by a single PKGBUILD text file. Manjaro Linux, a derivative of Arch Linux that includes a graphical installer and other ease-of-use features for less experienced Linux users. Gentoo, a distribution targeted at power users, known for its FreeBSD Ports-like automated system for compiling applications from source code Slackware, created in 1993, one of the first Linux distributions and among the earliest still maintained, committed to remain highly Unix-like and easily modifiable by end users Linux kernel based operating systems Android, Google's commercial operating system based on Android OSP that runs on many devices such as smart phones, smart TVs, set-top boxes. Chrome OS, Google's commercial operating system based on Chromium OS that only runs on Chromebooks, Chromeboxes and tablet computers. Like Android, it has the Google Play Store and other Google apps. Support for applications that require GNU compatibility is available through a virtual machine called Crostini and referred to by Google as Linux support, see Chromebook#Integration with Linux. Whether the above operating systems count as a "Linux distribution" is a controversial topic. They use the Linux kernel, so the Linux Foundation and Chris DiBona, Google's open-source chief, agree that Android is a Linux distribution; others, such as Google engineer Patrick Brady, disagree by noting the lack of support for many GNU tools in Android, including glibc. Other Linux kernel based operating systems include Cyanogenmod, its fork LineageOS, Android-x86 and recently Tizen, Mer/Sailfish OS and KaiOS. Lightweight distributions Lightweight Linux distributions are those that have been designed with support for older hardware in mind, allowing older hardware to still be used productively, or, for maximum possible speed in newer hardware by leaving more resources available for use by applications. Examples include Tiny Core Linux, Puppy Linux and Slitaz. Niche distributions Other distributions target specific niches, such as: Routers for example, targeted by the tiny embedded router distribution OpenWrt Internet of things for example, targeted by Ubuntu Core Home theater PCs for example, targeted by KnoppMyth, Kodi (former XBMC) and Mythbuntu Specific platforms for example, Raspberry Pi OS targets the Raspberry Pi platform Education examples are Edubuntu and Karoshi, server systems based on PCLinuxOS Scientific computer servers and workstations for example, targeted by Scientific Linux Digital audio workstations for music production for example, targeted by Ubuntu Studio Computer Security, digital forensics and penetration testing examples are Kali Linux and Parrot Security OS Privacy and anonymity for example, targeted by Tails, Whonix, Qubes, or FreedomBox Offline use for example, Endless OS Microsoft's Azure Sphere Interdistribution issues The Free Standards Group is an organization formed by major software and hardware vendors that aims to improve interoperability between different distributions. Among their proposed standards are the Linux Standard Base, which defines a common ABI and packaging system for Linux, and the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard which recommends a standard filenaming chart, notably the basic directory names found on the root of the tree of any Linux filesystem. Those standards, however, see limited use, even among the distributions developed by members of the organization. The diversity of Linux distributions means that not all software runs on all distributions, depending on what libraries and other system attributes are required. Packaged software and software repositories are usually specific to a particular distribution, though cross-installation is sometimes possible on closely related distributions. Tools for choosing a distribution The process of constantly switching between distributions is often referred to as "distro hopping". Virtual machines such as VirtualBox and VMware Workstation virtualize hardware allowing users to test live media on a virtual machine. Some websites like DistroWatch offer lists of distributions, and link to screenshots of operating systems as a way to get a first impression of various distributions. There are tools available to help people select an appropriate distribution, such as several versions of the Linux Distribution Chooser, and the universal package search tool whohas. There are easy ways to try out several Linux distributions before deciding on one: Multi Distro is a Live CD that contains nine space-saving distributions. Installation There are several ways to install a Linux distribution. The most common method of installing Linux is by booting from a live USB memory stick, which can be created by using a USB image writer application and the ISO image, which can be downloaded from the various Linux distribution websites. DVD disks, CD disks, network installations and even other hard drives can also be used as "installation media". In the 1990s Linux distributions were installed using sets of floppies but this has been abandoned by all major distributions. By the 2000s many distributions offered CD and DVD sets with the vital packages on the first disc and less important packages on later ones. Some distributions, such as Debian also enabled installation over a network after booting from either a set of floppies or a CD with only a small amount of data on it. New users tend to begin by partitioning a hard drive in order to keep their previously installed operating system. The Linux distribution can then be installed on its own separate partition without affecting previously saved data. In a Live CD setup, the computer boots the entire operating system from CD without first installing it on the computer's hard disk. Many distributions have a Live CD installer, where the computer boots the operating system from the disk, and it can then be installed on the computer's hard disk, providing a seamless transition from the OS running from the CD to the OS running from the hard disk. Both servers and personal computers that come with Linux already installed are available from vendors including Hewlett-Packard, Dell and System76. On embedded devices, Linux is typically held in the device's firmware and may or may not be consumer-accessible. Anaconda, one of the more popular installers, is used by Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Fedora (which uses the Fedora Media Writer) and other distributions to simplify the installation process. Debian, Ubuntu and many others use Debian-Installer. Installation via an existing operating system Some distributions let the user install Linux on top of their current system, such as WinLinux or coLinux. Linux is installed to the Windows hard disk partition, and can be started from inside Windows itself. Virtual machines (such as VirtualBox or VMware) also make it possible for Linux to be run inside another OS. The VM software simulates a separate computer onto which the Linux system is installed. After installation, the virtual machine can be booted as if it were an independent computer. Various tools are also available to perform full dual-boot installations from existing platforms without a CD, most notably: The (now deprecated) Wubi installer, which allows Windows users to download and install Ubuntu or its derivatives into a FAT32 or an NTFS partition without an installation CD, allowing users to easily dual boot between either operating system on the same hard drive without losing data. Replaced by Ubiquity. Win32-loader, which is in the process of being integrated in official Debian CDs/DVDs, and allows Windows users to install Debian without a CD, though it performs a network installation and thereby requires repartitioning UNetbootin, which allows Windows and Linux users to perform similar no-CD network installations for a wide variety of Linux distributions and additionally provides live USB creation support Proprietary software Some specific proprietary software products are not available in any form for Linux. As of September 2015, the Steam gaming service has 1,500 games available on Linux, compared to 2,323 games for Mac and 6,500 Windows games. Emulation and API-translation projects like Wine and CrossOver make it possible to run non-Linux-based software on Linux systems, either by emulating a proprietary operating system or by translating proprietary API calls (e.g., calls to Microsoft's Win32 or DirectX APIs) into native Linux API calls. A virtual machine can also be used to run a proprietary OS (like Microsoft Windows) on top of Linux. OEM contracts Computer hardware is usually sold with an operating system other than Linux already installed by the original equipment manufacturer (OEM). In the case of IBM PC compatibles the OS is usually Microsoft Windows; in the case of Apple Macintosh computers it has always been a version of Apple's OS, currently macOS; Sun Microsystems sold SPARC hardware with the Solaris installed; video game consoles such as the Xbox, PlayStation, and Wii each have their own proprietary OS. This limits Linux's market share: consumers are unaware that an alternative exists, they must make a conscious effort to use a different operating system, and they must either perform the actual installation themselves, or depend on support from a friend, relative, or computer professional. However, it is possible to buy hardware with Linux already installed. Lenovo, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Affordy, Purism, Pine64 and System76 all sell general-purpose Linux laptops. Custom-order PC manufacturers will also build Linux systems, but possibly with the Windows key on the keyboard. Fixstars Solutions (formerly Terra Soft) sells Macintosh computers and PlayStation 3 consoles with Yellow Dog Linux installed. It is more common to find embedded devices sold with Linux as the default manufacturer-supported OS, including the Linksys NSLU2 NAS device, TiVo's line of personal video recorders, and Linux-based cellphones (including Android smartphones), PDAs, and portable music players. The current Microsoft Windows license lets the manufacturer determine the refund policy. With previous versions of Windows, it was possible to obtain a refund if the manufacturer failed to provide the refund by litigation in the small claims courts. On February 15, 1999, a group of Linux users in Orange County, California held a "Windows Refund Day" protest in an attempt to pressure Microsoft into issuing them refunds. In France, the Linuxfrench and AFUL (French speaking Libre Software Users' Association) organizations along with free software activist Roberto Di Cosmo started a "Windows Detax" movement, which led to a 2006 petition against "racketiciels" (translation: Racketware) with 39,415 signatories and the DGCCRF branch of the French government filing several complaints against bundled software. On March 24, 2014, a new international petition was launched by AFUL on the Avaaz platform, translated into several languages and supported by many organizations around the world. Statistics There are no official figures on popularity, adoption, downloads or installed base of Linux distributions. There are also no official figures for the total number of Linux systems, partly due to the difficulty of quantifying the number of PCs running Linux (see Desktop Linux adoption), since many users download Linux distributions. Hence, the sales figures for Linux systems and commercial Linux distributions indicate a much lower number of Linux systems and level of Linux adoption than is the case; this is mainly due to Linux being free and open-source software that can be downloaded free of charge. A Linux Counter Project had kept track of a running guesstimate of the number of Linux systems, but did not distinguish between rolling release and standard release distributions. It ceased operation in August 2018, though a few related blog posts were created through October 2018. Desktop usage statistical reports for particular Linux distributions have been collected and published since July 2014 by the Linux Hardware Project. See also Comparison of Linux distributions Light-weight Linux distribution List of Linux distributions References External links The LWN.net Linux Distribution List – a categorized list with information about each entry List of GNU/Linux distributions considered free by the Free Software Foundation Google's approach to a large-scale live upgrading between two widely different Linux distributions: presentation and text version, LinuxCon 2013, by Marc Merlin Rolling release vs. fixed release Linux, ZDNet, February 3, 2015, by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols DistroTest - test any Linux Distro without installing Linus Torvalds

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibledit

Bibledit

Bibledit is series of related open source software projects for editing and translating the Bible. Bibledit is a free software. History Bibledit development started in 2003. The word "Bibledit" is a portmanteau of the words "Bible" and "edit". Bibledit was first hosted on SourceForge. First generation Bibledit-Gtk was the first generation of the software. It runs on the desktop. Like all Bibledit programs, its source code is public, and it can be freely downloaded. Second generation The second generation of Bibledit focused on the web. Bibledit-Web is a Bible editor that runs on the web, allowing users to edit the Bible from a web browser. The source code is public, and freely downloadable. Several version of the software have been built to work with other Bible software. Bibledit-Xiphos and Bibledit-BibleTime work with different versions of The SWORD Project. Versions also exist for BibleWorks, Paratext, and OnlineBible. Third generation The third generation of Bibledit focuses on cloud computing and multiple computing devices. It is actively being developed and maintained. The source code is public. Similar to Bibledit-Web, Bibledit Cloud on the web, allowing users to edit the Bible from a web browser. Offline versions are available for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Android, and iOS. Users can edit the Bible from a web browser or app while off-line, and then synchronize the changes with Bibledit Cloud. The Android version is installed via Google Play. iOS installation is through the App Store. Usage The Bibledit translation software is known to and used by people involved in Bible translation and production. SIL International includes Bibledit in their list of software and fonts. The Adapt It translation software can exchange files with Bibledit. The Bible society of Baptist Mid-Missions has made a Bibledit Windows port for their translators. Pioneer Bible Translators wrote in-depth reviews of Bibledit. References External links Bibledit on YouTube Bibledit on Vimeo Bibledit for Windows on Codeplex Bibledit summary on GNU Savannah Bibledit for Android on Google Code Electronic Bibles Free software Software that uses GTK

207983

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerOpen%20Environment

PowerOpen Environment

The PowerOpen Environment (POE), created in 1991 from the AIM alliance, is an open standard for running a Unix-based operating system on the PowerPC computer architecture. History The AIM alliance was announced on October 2, 1991, yielding the historic first technology partnership between Apple and IBM. One of its many lofty goals was to somehow eventually merge Apple's user-friendly graphical interface and desktop applications market with IBM's highly scalable Unix server market, allowing the two companies to enter what Apple believed to be an emerging "general desktop open systems market". This was touched upon by Apple's November 1991 announcement of A/UX 3.0. The upcoming A/UX 4.0 (never actually released) would target the PowerOpen Environment ABI, merge features of IBM's AIX variant of Unix into A/UX, and use the OSF/1 kernel from the Open Software Foundation. A/UX 3.0 would serve as an "important migration path" to this new system, making Unix and System 7 applications compliant with PowerOpen. A/UX 4.0 and AIX were intended to run on a variety of IBM's POWER and PowerPC hardware, and on Apple's PowerPC based hardware. The need for the POE lessened due to the increasing availability of Unix and Linux distributions for the PowerPC, including AIX. The PowerOpen Association, an organization formed to promote the POE and test for conformance with it, disbanded in 1995. Overview The POE contains API and ABI specifications. The presence of the ABI specification in the POE distinguishes it from other open systems such as POSIX and XPG4, since it allows platform-independent binary compatibility, which is otherwise typically limited to particular hardware. Derived from AIX, the POE conforms to industry open standards including POSIX, XPG4, and Motif. The POE is hardware bus independent. System implementations can range from laptop computers to supercomputers. It requires a multi-user, multitasking operating system. It provides networking support, an X Window System extension, a Macintosh Application Services extension, and Motif. See also AIM alliance PowerPC Reference Platform References PowerOpen ABI specification This article was originally based on material from the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing and is used under the GFDL. IBM software

35081565

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivaylo%20Moskovski

Ivaylo Moskovski

Ivaylo Moskovski () (born 19 July 1972 in Pleven) is a Bulgarian politician and former Minister of Transport, Information Technology and Communications in Bulgaria. Ivaylo Moskovski was born on 19 July 1972 in Pleven, Bulgaria. He graduated Public Finances in UNWE and Financial Management in D.A.Tsenov Academy of Economics, Svishtov. Ivaylo Moskovski was Deputy Minister of Transports, Information Technology and Communications and after Aleksadar Tsvetkov resigned was appointed Minister of Transport, Information Technology and Communications. Moskovski's 4-year-old son, Kristian, was killed in a skidoo accident in the Bulgarian winter sports resort of Borovets in February 2018. Moskovski offered his resignation as Transport Minister on 30 October 2018 following controversies relating to a deadly bus crash near Svoge, Bulgaria in which 20 people died. On 17 December 2018 Moskovski was appointed Vice President Operations by the Black Sea Trade and Development Bank based in Thessaloniki. References 1972 births Living people People from Pleven University of National and World Economy alumni Government ministers of Bulgaria GERB politicians

12214168

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Btrfs

Btrfs

Btrfs (pronounced as "better F S", "butter F S", "b-tree F S", or simply by spelling it out) is a computer storage format that combines a file system based on the copy-on-write (COW) principle with a logical volume manager (not to be confused with Linux's LVM), developed together. It was initially designed at Oracle Corporation in 2007 for use in Linux, and since November 2013, the file system's on-disk format has been declared stable in the Linux kernel. According to Oracle, Btrfs "is not a true acronym". Btrfs is intended to address the lack of pooling, snapshots, checksums, and integral multi-device spanning in Linux file systems. Chris Mason, the principal Btrfs author, stated that its goal was "to let [Linux] scale for the storage that will be available. Scaling is not just about addressing the storage but also means being able to administer and to manage it with a clean interface that lets people see what's being used and makes it more reliable". History The core data structure of Btrfsthe copy-on-write B-treewas originally proposed by IBM researcher Ohad Rodeh at a presentation at USENIX 2007. Chris Mason, an engineer working on ReiserFS for SUSE at the time, joined Oracle later that year and began work on a new file system based on these B-trees. In 2008, the principal developer of the ext3 and ext4 file systems, Theodore Ts'o, stated that although ext4 has improved features, it is not a major advance; it uses old technology and is a stop-gap. Ts'o said that Btrfs is the better direction because "it offers improvements in scalability, reliability, and ease of management". Btrfs also has "a number of the same design ideas that reiser3/4 had". Btrfs 1.0, with finalized on-disk format, was originally slated for a late-2008 release, and was finally accepted into the Linux kernel mainline in 2009. Several Linux distributions began offering Btrfs as an experimental choice of root file system during installation. In July 2011, Btrfs automatic defragmentation and scrubbing features were merged into version 3.0 of the Linux kernel mainline. Besides Mason at Oracle, Miao Xie at Fujitsu contributed performance improvements. In June 2012, Chris Mason left Oracle for Fusion-io, which he left a year later with Josef Bacik to join Facebook. While at both companies, Mason continued his work on Btrfs. In 2012, two Linux distributions moved Btrfs from experimental to production or supported status: Oracle Linux in March, followed by SUSE Linux Enterprise in August. In 2015, Btrfs was adopted as the default filesystem for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12. In August 2017, Red Hat announced in the release notes for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7.4 that it no longer planned to move Btrfs, which had been included as a "technology preview" since RHEL 6 beta, to a fully supported feature, noting that it would remain available in the RHEL 7 release series. Btrfs was removed from RHEL 8 in May 2019. RHEL moved from ext4 in RHEL 6 to XFS in RHEL 7. In 2020, Btrfs was selected as the default file system for Fedora 33 for desktop variants. Features Implemented As of version 5.0 of the Linux kernel, Btrfs implements the following features: Mostly self-healing in some configurations due to the nature of copy-on-write Online defragmentation and an autodefrag mount option Online volume growth and shrinking Online block device addition and removal Online balancing (movement of objects between block devices to balance load) Offline filesystem check Online data scrubbing for finding errors and automatically fixing them for files with redundant copies RAID 0, RAID 1, and RAID 10 Subvolumes (one or more separately mountable filesystem roots within each disk partition) Transparent compression via zlib, LZO and (since 4.14) ZSTD, configurable per file or volume Atomic writable (via copy-on-write) or read-only Snapshots of subvolumes File cloning (reflink, copy-on-write) via cp --reflink <source file> <destination file> Checksums on data and metadata (CRC-32C). New hash functions are implemented since 5.5: xxHash, SHA256, BLAKE2B. In-place conversion from ext3/4 to Btrfs (with rollback). This feature regressed around btrfs-progs version 4.0, rewritten from scratch in 4.6. Union mounting of read-only storage, known as file system seeding (read-only storage used as a copy-on-write backing for a writable Btrfs) Block discard (reclaims space on some virtualized setups and improves wear leveling on SSDs with TRIM) Send/receive (saving diffs between snapshots to a binary stream) Incremental backup Out-of-band data deduplication (requires userspace tools) Ability to handle swap files and swap partitions Implemented but not recommended for production use Hierarchical per-subvolume quotas RAID 5, RAID 6 Planned but not yet implemented In-band data deduplication Online filesystem check RAID with up to six parity devices, surpassing the reliability of RAID 5 and RAID 6 Object-level RAID 0, RAID 1, and RAID 10 Encryption Persistent read and write cache (L2ARC + ZIL, lvmcache, etc.) In 2009, Btrfs was expected to offer a feature set comparable to ZFS, developed by Sun Microsystems. After Oracle's acquisition of Sun in 2009, Mason and Oracle decided to continue with Btrfs development. Cloning Btrfs provides a clone operation that atomically creates a copy-on-write snapshot of a file. Such cloned files are sometimes referred to as reflinks, in light of the proposed associated Linux kernel system call. By cloning, the file system does not create a new link pointing to an existing inode; instead, it creates a new inode that initially shares the same disk blocks with the original file. As a result, cloning works only within the boundaries of the same Btrfs file system, but since version 3.6 of the Linux kernel it may cross the boundaries of subvolumes under certain circumstances. The actual data blocks are not duplicated; at the same time, due to the copy-on-write (CoW) nature of Btrfs, modifications to any of the cloned files are not visible in the original file and vice versa. Cloning should not be confused with hard links, which are directory entries that associate multiple file names with actual files on a file system. While hard links can be taken as different names for the same file, cloning in Btrfs provides independent files that initially share all their disk blocks. Support for this Btrfs feature was added in version 7.5 of the GNU coreutils, via the --reflink option to the cp command. In addition to data cloning (), Btrfs also supports for out-of-band deduplication via . This functionality allows two files with (even partially) identical data to share storage. Subvolumes and snapshots A Btrfs subvolume can be thought of as a separate POSIX file namespace, mountable separately by passing subvol or subvolid options to the utility. It can also be accessed by mounting the top-level subvolume, in which case subvolumes are visible and accessible as its subdirectories. Subvolumes can be created at any place within the file system hierarchy, and they can also be nested. Nested subvolumes appear as subdirectories within their parent subvolumes, similarly to the way a top-level subvolume presents its subvolumes as subdirectories. Deleting a subvolume is not possible until all subvolumes below it in the nesting hierarchy are deleted; as a result, top-level subvolumes cannot be deleted. Any Btrfs file system always has a default subvolume, which is initially set to be the top-level subvolume, and is mounted by default if no subvolume selection option is passed to mount. The default subvolume can be changed as required. A Btrfs snapshot is a subvolume that shares its data (and metadata) with some other subvolume, using Btrfs' copy-on-write capabilities, and modifications to a snapshot are not visible in the original subvolume. Once a writable snapshot is made, it can be treated as an alternate version of the original file system. For example, to roll back to a snapshot, a modified original subvolume needs to be unmounted and the snapshot needs to be mounted in its place. At that point, the original subvolume may also be deleted. The copy-on-write (CoW) nature of Btrfs means that snapshots are quickly created, while initially consuming very little disk space. Since a snapshot is a subvolume, creating nested snapshots is also possible. Taking snapshots of a subvolume is not a recursive process; thus, if a snapshot of a subvolume is created, every subvolume or snapshot that the subvolume already contains is mapped to an empty directory of the same name inside the snapshot. Taking snapshots of a directory is not possible, as only subvolumes can have snapshots. However, there is a workaround that involves reflinks spread across subvolumes: a new subvolume is created, containing cross-subvolume reflinks to the content of the targeted directory. Having that available, a snapshot of this new volume can be created. A subvolume in Btrfs is quite different from a traditional Logical Volume Manager (LVM) logical volume. With LVM, a logical volume is a separate block device, while a Btrfs subvolume is not and it cannot be treated or used that way. Making dd or LVM snapshots of btrfs leads to dataloss if either the original or the copy is mounted while both are on the same computer. Send–receive Given any pair of subvolumes (or snapshots), Btrfs can generate a binary diff between them (by using the btrfs send command) that can be replayed later (by using btrfs receive), possibly on a different Btrfs file system. The send–receive feature effectively creates (and applies) a set of data modifications required for converting one subvolume into another. The send/receive feature can be used with regularly scheduled snapshots for implementing a simple form of file system replication, or for the purpose of performing incremental backups. Quota groups A quota group (or qgroup) imposes an upper limit to the space a subvolume or snapshot may consume. A new snapshot initially consumes no quota because its data is shared with its parent, but thereafter incurs a charge for new files and copy-on-write operations on existing files. When quotas are active, a quota group is automatically created with each new subvolume or snapshot. These initial quota groups are building blocks which can be grouped (with the btrfs qgroup command) into hierarchies to implement quota pools. Quota groups only apply to subvolumes and snapshots, while having quotas enforced on individual subdirectories, users, or user groups is not possible. However, workarounds are possible by using different subvolumes for all users or user groups that require a quota to be enforced. In-place conversion from ext2/3/4 and ReiserFS As the result of having very little metadata anchored in fixed locations, Btrfs can warp to fit unusual spatial layouts of the backend storage devices. The btrfs-convert tool exploits this ability to do an in-place conversion of an ext2/3/4 or ReiserFS file system, by nesting the equivalent Btrfs metadata in its unallocated space—while preserving an unmodified copy of the original file system. The conversion involves creating a copy of the whole ext2/3/4 metadata, while the Btrfs files simply point to the same blocks used by the ext2/3/4 files. This makes the bulk of the blocks shared between the two filesystems before the conversion becomes permanent. Thanks to the copy-on-write nature of Btrfs, the original versions of the file data blocks are preserved during all file modifications. Until the conversion becomes permanent, only the blocks that were marked as free in ext2/3/4 are used to hold new Btrfs modifications, meaning that the conversion can be undone at any time (although doing so will erase any changes made after the conversion to Btrfs). All converted files are available and writable in the default subvolume of the Btrfs. A sparse file holding all of the references to the original ext2/3/4 filesystem is created in a separate subvolume, which is mountable on its own as a read-only disk image, allowing both original and converted file systems to be accessed at the same time. Deleting this sparse file frees up the space and makes the conversion permanent. In 4.x versions of the mainline Linux kernel, the in-place ext3/4 conversion was considered untested and rarely used. However, the feature was rewritten from scratch in 2016 for btrfs-progs 4.6. and has been considered stable since then. In-place conversion from ReiserFS was introduced in September 2017 with kernel 4.13. Union mounting / seed devices When creating a new Btrfs, an existing Btrfs can be used as a read-only "seed" file system. The new file system will then act as a copy-on-write overlay on the seed, as a form of union mounting. The seed can be later detached from the Btrfs, at which point the rebalancer will simply copy over any seed data still referenced by the new file system before detaching. Mason has suggested this may be useful for a Live CD installer, which might boot from a read-only Btrfs seed on an optical disc, rebalance itself to the target partition on the install disk in the background while the user continues to work, then eject the disc to complete the installation without rebooting. Encryption In his 2009 interview, Chris Mason stated that support for encryption was planned for Btrfs. In the meantime, a workaround for combining encryption with Btrfs is to use a full-disk encryption mechanism such as dm-crypt / LUKS on the underlying devices and to create the Btrfs filesystem on top of that layer. the developers were working to add keyed hash like HMAC (SHA256). Checking and recovery Unix systems traditionally rely on "fsck" programs to check and repair filesystems. This functionality is implemented via the btrfs check program. Since version 4.0 this functionality is deemed relatively stable. However, as of August 2017, the btrfs documentation suggests that it be used only after having tried other recovery methods. There is another tool, named btrfs-restore, that can be used to recover files from an unmountable filesystem, without modifying the broken filesystem itself (i.e., non-destructively). In normal use, Btrfs is mostly self-healing and can recover from broken root trees at mount time, thanks to making periodic data flushes to permanent storage, by default every 30 seconds. Thus, isolated errors will cause a maximum of 30 seconds of filesystem changes to be lost at the next mount. This period can be changed by specifying a desired value (in seconds) for the commit mount option. Design Ohad Rodeh's original proposal at USENIX 2007 noted that B+ trees, which are widely used as on-disk data structures for databases, could not efficiently allow copy-on-write-based snapshots because its leaf nodes were linked together: if a leaf was copy-on-written, its siblings and parents would have to be as well, as would their siblings and parents and so on until the entire tree was copied. He suggested instead a modified B-tree (which has no leaf linkage), with a refcount associated to each tree node but stored in an ad hoc free map structure and certain relaxations to the tree's balancing algorithms to make them copy-on-write friendly. The result would be a data structure suitable for a high-performance object store that could perform copy-on-write snapshots, while maintaining good concurrency. At Oracle later that year, Chris Mason began work on a snapshot-capable file system that would use this data structure almost exclusively—not just for metadata and file data, but also recursively to track space allocation of the trees themselves. This allowed all traversal and modifications to be funneled through a single code path, against which features such as copy-on-write, checksumming and mirroring needed to be implemented only once to benefit the entire file system. Btrfs is structured as several layers of such trees, all using the same B-tree implementation. The trees store generic items sorted by a 136-bit key. The most significant 64 bits of the key are a unique object id. The middle eight bits are an item type field: its use is hardwired into code as an item filter in tree lookups. Objects can have multiple items of multiple types. The remaining (least significant) 64 bits are used in type-specific ways. Therefore, items for the same object end up adjacent to each other in the tree, grouped by type. By choosing certain key values, objects can further put items of the same type in a particular order. Interior tree nodes are simply flat lists of key-pointer pairs, where the pointer is the logical block number of a child node. Leaf nodes contain item keys packed into the front of the node and item data packed into the end, with the two growing toward each other as the leaf fills up. File system tree Within each directory, directory entries appear as directory items, whose least significant bits of key values are a CRC32C hash of their filename. Their data is a location key, or the key of the inode item it points to. Directory items together can thus act as an index for path-to-inode lookups, but are not used for iteration because they are sorted by their hash, effectively randomly permuting them. This means user applications iterating over and opening files in a large directory would thus generate many more disk seeks between non-adjacent files—a notable performance drain in other file systems with hash-ordered directories such as ReiserFS, ext3 (with Htree-indexes enabled) and ext4, all of which have TEA-hashed filenames. To avoid this, each directory entry has a directory index item, whose key value of the item is set to a per-directory counter that increments with each new directory entry. Iteration over these index items thus returns entries in roughly the same order as stored on disk. Files with hard links in multiple directories have multiple reference items, one for each parent directory. Files with multiple hard links in the same directory pack all of the links' filenames into the same reference item. This was a design flaw that limited the number of same-directory hard links to however many could fit in a single tree block. (On the default block size of 4 KiB, an average filename length of 8 bytes and a per-filename header of 4 bytes, this would be less than 350.) Applications which made heavy use of multiple same-directory hard links, such as git, GNUS, GMame and BackupPC were observed to fail at this limit. The limit was eventually removed (and as of October 2012 has been merged pending release in Linux 3.7) by introducing spillover extended reference items to hold hard link filenames which do not otherwise fit. Extents File data is kept outside the tree in extents, which are contiguous runs of disk data blocks. Extent blocks default to 4 KiB in size, do not have headers and contain only (possibly compressed) file data. In compressed extents, individual blocks are not compressed separately; rather, the compression stream spans the entire extent. Files have extent data items to track the extents which hold their contents. The item's key value is the starting byte offset of the extent. This makes for efficient seeks in large files with many extents, because the correct extent for any given file offset can be computed with just one tree lookup. Snapshots and cloned files share extents. When a small part of a large such extent is overwritten, the resulting copy-on-write may create three new extents: a small one containing the overwritten data, and two large ones with unmodified data on either side of the overwrite. To avoid having to re-write unmodified data, the copy-on-write may instead create bookend extents, or extents which are simply slices of existing extents. Extent data items allow for this by including an offset into the extent they are tracking: items for bookends are those with non-zero offsets. Extent allocation tree The extent allocation tree acts as an allocation map for the file system. Unlike other trees, items in this tree do not have object ids. They represent regions of space: their key values hold the starting offsets and lengths of the regions they represent. The file system divides its allocated space into block groups which are variable-sized allocation regions that alternate between preferring metadata extents (tree nodes) and data extents (file contents). The default ratio of data to metadata block groups is 1:2. They are intended to use concepts of the Orlov block allocator to allocate related files together and resisting fragmentation by leaving free space between groups. (Ext3 block groups, however, have fixed locations computed from the size of the file system, whereas those in Btrfs are dynamic and created as needed.) Each block group is associated with a block group item. Inode items in the file system tree include a reference to their current block group. Extent items contain a back-reference to the tree node or file occupying that extent. There may be multiple back-references if the extent is shared between snapshots. If there are too many back-references to fit in the item, they spill out into individual extent data reference items. Tree nodes, in turn, have back-references to their containing trees. This makes it possible to find which extents or tree nodes are in any region of space by doing a B-tree range lookup on a pair of offsets bracketing that region, then following the back-references. For relocating data, this allows an efficient upwards traversal from the relocated blocks to quickly find and fix all downwards references to those blocks, without having to scan the entire file system. This, in turn, allows the file system to efficiently shrink, migrate, and defragment its storage online. The extent allocation tree, as with all other trees in the file system, is copy-on-write. Writes to the file system may thus cause a cascade whereby changed tree nodes and file data result in new extents being allocated, causing the extent tree to itself change. To avoid creating a feedback loop, extent tree nodes which are still in memory but not yet committed to disk may be updated in-place to reflect new copy-on-written extents. In theory, the extent allocation tree makes a conventional free-space bitmap unnecessary because the extent allocation tree acts as a B-tree version of a BSP tree. In practice, however, an in-memory red-black tree of page-sized bitmaps is used to speed up allocations. These bitmaps are persisted to disk (starting in Linux 2.6.37, via the space_cache mount option) as special extents that are exempt from checksumming and copy-on-write. Checksum tree and scrubbing CRC-32C checksums are computed for both data and metadata and stored as checksum items in a checksum tree. There is room for 256 bits of metadata checksums and up to a full node (roughly 4 KB or more) for data checksums. Btrfs has provisions for additional checksum algorithms to be added in future versions of the file system. There is one checksum item per contiguous run of allocated blocks, with per-block checksums packed end-to-end into the item data. If there are more checksums than can fit, they spill into another checksum item in a new leaf. If the file system detects a checksum mismatch while reading a block, it first tries to obtain (or create) a good copy of this block from another device if internal mirroring or RAID techniques are in use. Btrfs can initiate an online check of the entire file system by triggering a file system scrub job that is performed in the background. The scrub job scans the entire file system for integrity and automatically attempts to report and repair any bad blocks it finds along the way. Log tree An fsync request commits modified data immediately to stable storage. fsync-heavy workloads (like a database or a virtual machine whose running OS fsyncs frequently) could potentially generate a great deal of redundant write I/O by forcing the file system to repeatedly copy-on-write and flush frequently modified parts of trees to storage. To avoid this, a temporary per-subvolume log tree is created to journal fsync-triggered copy-on-writes. Log trees are self-contained, tracking their own extents and keeping their own checksum items. Their items are replayed and deleted at the next full tree commit or (if there was a system crash) at the next remount. Chunk and device trees Block devices are divided into physical chunks of 1 GiB for data and 256 MiB for metadata. Physical chunks across multiple devices can be mirrored or striped together into a single logical chunk. These logical chunks are combined into a single logical address space that the rest of the filesystem uses. The chunk tree tracks this by storing each device therein as a device item and logical chunks as chunk map items, which provide a forward mapping from logical to physical addresses by storing their offsets in the least significant 64 bits of their key. Chunk map items can be one of several different types: single 1 logical to 1 physical chunk dup 1 logical chunk to 2 physical chunks on 1 block device raid0 N logical chunks to N≥2 physical chunks across N≥2 block devices raid1 1 logical chunk to 2 physical chunks across 2 out of N≥2 block devices, in contrast to conventional RAID 1 which has N physical chunks raid1c3 1 logical chunk to 3 physical chunks out of N≥3 block devices raid1c4 1 logical chunk to 4 physical chunks out of N≥4 block devices raid5 N (for N≥2) logical chunks to N+1 physical chunks across N+1 block devices, with 1 physical chunk used as parity raid6 N (for N≥2) logical chunks to N+2 physical chunks across N+2 block devices, with 2 physical chunks used as parity N is the number of block devices still having free space when the chunk is allocated. If N is not large enough for the chosen mirroring/mapping, then the filesystem is effectively out of space. Relocation trees Defragmentation, shrinking, and rebalancing operations require extents to be relocated. However, doing a simple copy-on-write of the relocating extent will break sharing between snapshots and consume disk space. To preserve sharing, an update-and-swap algorithm is used, with a special relocation tree serving as scratch space for affected metadata. The extent to be relocated is first copied to its destination. Then, by following backreferences upward through the affected subvolume's file system tree, metadata pointing to the old extent is progressively updated to point at the new one; any newly updated items are stored in the relocation tree. Once the update is complete, items in the relocation tree are swapped with their counterparts in the affected subvolume, and the relocation tree is discarded. Superblock All the file system's trees—including the chunk tree itself—are stored in chunks, creating a potential bootstrapping problem when mounting the file system. To bootstrap into a mount, a list of physical addresses of chunks belonging to the chunk and root trees are stored in the superblock. Superblock mirrors are kept at fixed locations: 64 KiB into every block device, with additional copies at 64 MiB, 256 GiB and 1 PiB. When a superblock mirror is updated, its generation number is incremented. At mount time, the copy with the highest generation number is used. All superblock mirrors are updated in tandem, except in SSD mode which alternates updates among mirrors to provide some wear levelling. Commercial support Supported Default filesystem of Fedora Workstation from version 33 (released 2020-10-27) Oracle Linux from version 7 SUSE Linux Enterprise Server from version 12 Synology DiskStation Manager (DSM) from version 6.0 ReactOS from version 0.4.10 No longer supported Btrfs was included as a "technology preview" in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 and 7; it was removed in RHEL 8 in 2018. See also APFS – a copy-on-write file system for macOS, iPadOS, iOS, tvOS and watchOS Bcachefs Comparison of file systems HAMMER – DragonFly BSD's file system that uses B-trees, paired with checksums as a countermeasure for data corruption List of file systems ReFS – a copy-on-write file system for Windows Server 2012 ZFS Notes References External links a conference presentation by Avi Miller, an Oracle engineer Btrfs: Working with multiple devices LWN.net, December 2013, by Jonathan Corbet Marc's Linux Btrfs posts detailed insights into various Btrfs features Btrfs overview, LinuxCon 2014, by Marc Merlin File System Evangelist and Thought Leader: An Interview with Valerie Aurora, Linux Magazine, 14 July 2009, by Jeffrey B. Layton Compression file systems File systems supported by the Linux kernel Linux file system-related software

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Processor%20Technology

Processor Technology

Processor Technology Corporation was a personal computer company founded in April 1975 by Gary Ingram and Bob Marsh in Berkeley, California. Their first product was a 4K byte RAM board that was compatible with the MITS Altair 8800 computer but more reliable than the MITS board. This was followed by a series of memory and I/O boards including a video display module. Popular Electronics magazine wanted a feature article on an intelligent computer terminal and Technical Editor Les Solomon asked Marsh and Lee Felsenstein to design one. It was featured on the July 1976 cover and became the Sol-20 Personal Computer. The first units were shipped in December 1976 and the Sol-20 was a very successful product. The company failed to develop next generation products and ceased operations in May 1979. History Bob Marsh, Lee Felsenstein and Gordon French started designing the Sol-20 between April and July 1975. The Sol-20 utilized the Intel 8080 8-bit microprocessor chip, running at 2 MHz. A major difference between the Sol-20 and most other machines of the era was its built-in video driver, which allowed it to be attached to a composite monitor for display. The Sol-20 consisted of a main motherboard (PCB) mounted at the bottom of the case, and a five slot S-100 bus card cage. The main PCB consisted of the CPU, memory, video display, I/O circuits. Inside the case included power supply, fan, and keyboard. The case was painted 'IBM blue' and the sides of the case were made of solid oiled walnut originally salvaged from a gun stock manufacturer. Processor Technology manufactured approximately 10,000 Sol-20 personal computers between 1977 and 1979. All Processor Technology products were available either fully assembled, or as electronic kits. Processor Technology also sold software on Compact Cassette. One side of the tape was recorded in CUTS format, and the other side was Kansas City standard format. Gary Ingram and Steven Dompier wrote the original software utilities. Lee Felsenstein wrote the original user manuals as a contractor. Standards Processor Technology also designed several S-100 bus boards. The boards were meant to be compatible with the circuits of Sol-20. The Video Display Module 1 (VDM-1) was the original video display interface for S-100 bus systems. The board generates sixteen 64-character lines of upper and lower case typeface on any standard composite video monitor or a modified TV set. Utilizing a 1,024 byte (1K) segment of system memory, the VDM-1 provided memory-mapped I/O for high performance, and also included hardware support for scrolling. The VDM-1 Video Board was a great improvement over using a teletype machine or a serial attached terminals, and was popular for owners of other S-100 bus systems such as the IMSAI 8080. Another popular product was the CUTS Tape I/O Interface S-100 board. The CUTS board offered standard interface for saving and reading data from cassette tape, supporting both the Kansas City standard format, as well as their own custom CUTS format. Lee Felsenstein was key participant of the development of Kansas City standard format, the first cross-system data transfer standard for microcomputers. Products Computers Sol-PC — Single circuit board only without case or power supply; available as fully assembled or as kit form Sol-10 Terminal Computer — Stripped-down model without 5 slot S-100 backplane; available as fully assembled or as kit form Sol-20 Terminal Computer — Includes 5-slot S-100 backplane; available as fully assembled or as kit form Sol-20 price 1976 approximately $5000 CND with extra 16K card S-100 bus boards VDM-1 — Video Display Module Board 3P+S — Input/Output Module 3 Parallel plus 1 Serial Board 4KRA — 4K Static Memory Board 8KRA — 8K Static Memory Board 16KRA — 16K DRAM memory board 32KRA-1 — 32K DRAM memory board CUTS — Tape I/O Interface Board, CUTS format and Kansas City standard format 2KRO — EPROM memory board Helios II Disk Memory System GPM — General Purpose Memory, ROM board held CUTER Monitor Program Software SOLOS — Operating System CUTER — Monitor program and cassette tape loader. ASSM — 8080 Assembler BASIC/5 — 5K BASIC programming language Extended Cassette Basic (8K) — BASIC Interpreter FOCAL programming language ALS-8 PTDOS — operating system for use with the Helios II Disk Drive EDIT — 8080 Editor 8080 Chess — Chess Game TREK-80 — Star Trek Themed Game GamePack 1 — Collection of Games - Volume 1 GamePack 2 — Collection of Games - Volume 2 Works cited References External links Archive of Sol-20 information Collection of old analog and digital computers at www.oldcomputermuseum.com the SOL-20 at old-computers.com Processor Technology SOL - PC History by Stan Veit Processor Technology SOL-PC – An early Sol-20 minus the 20 1975 establishments in California 1979 disestablishments in California American companies established in 1975 American companies disestablished in 1979 Computer companies established in 1975 Computer companies disestablished in 1979 Defunct companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area Defunct computer companies of the United States Defunct computer hardware companies Technology companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area

11654783

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadowrun%20%28disambiguation%29

Shadowrun (disambiguation)

Shadowrun is a pen and paper role-playing game, first released in 1989. Shadowrun may also refer to: Video games based on the role-playing game: Shadowrun (1993 video game), a 1993 video game for the Super NES Shadowrun (1994 video game), a 1994 video game for the Sega Genesis Shadowrun (1996 video game), a 1996 video game for the Sega Mega-CD Shadowrun (2007 video game), a 2007 game for the Xbox 360 and Windows Vista Shadowrun Returns, a 2013 game for Windows, OS X and Linux, iOS and Android Shadowrun: Dragonfall, a 2014 game for Windows, OS X, Linux, iOS and Android Shadowrun Chronicles: Boston Lockdown, a 2015 game for Linux, Windows, OS X, Android, iOS and Ouya Shadowrun: Hong Kong, a 2015 game for Windows, OS X, Linux Shadowrun: The Trading Card Game, a 1997 collectible card game Shadowrun Duels, a 2003 collectible miniatures game Other uses: Shadow Run (film), a 1998 crime film based on the novel The Shadow Run