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14715465 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RedTube | RedTube | RedTube is a pornographic video sharing site, which in September 2009 held an Alexa ranking within the world's top 100 sites. It is one of several pornographic websites owned by Mindgeek. In June 2010 it had fallen out of the top 100, but it made a return in mid-2012. As of mid September 2020 its Alexa ranking was 520. Its popularity has been ascribed to its non-sexual name, which is a reference to the non-pornographic video sharing website YouTube. The website is based in Houston, Texas and has servers in San Francisco, New Orleans and Montreal.
History
Wired reported that Redtube.com was one of the 5 fastest growing websites in December 2007.
The site's database was accessed and temporarily shut down by Turkish hackers in October 2008.
In 2009, it was one of twelve pornographic sites blocked by the Sri Lankan court because access to the site, which housed images of Sri Lankan women and children, "corrupted society".
In September 2013, one of the videos was blocked in Russia due to the Federal Law On Protection of Children from Information Harmful to Their Health and Development
Viewers
As of 2009, three of the largest porn sites "RedTube, YouPorn and Pornhub — collectively only make up 100 million unique visitors". MindGeek has since acquired all three sites.
Cease and desist case in Germany
In December 2013, the German law firm "Urmann und Collegen (U+C)" sent up to 30,000 cease and desist letters ("Abmahnungen" in German) giving legal warnings to German Internet users who allegedly viewed streams from RedTube containing certain copyrighted videos, demanding them to pay a fine of 250 EUR to the law firm of which 15.50 EUR would be distributed as compensation to the company claiming ownership of copyright for the videos, the Switzerland-based "The Archive AG". By December 13 more than 20,000 people had already received such letters. It is not clear how exactly the law firm was able to collect the IP addresses of RedTube's users.
In documents filed in court in order to obtain the personal data of the individuals involved, the plaintiff claims that he had charged a company called ITGuards, Inc. (allegedly of San Jose, California) who used a proprietary software by the name of "GLADII 1.1.3", allowing them not only to collect the IP addresses of users accessing certain URL's on redtube.com, but also to determine the exact time at which the user started playing or paused the videos embedded on each of those pages.
The BBC reports that the IP addresses were provided to the law firm by the court in Cologne, which began a retrospective review of its decision after receiving complaints. While sending out cease-and-desist letters to Internet users for copyright offenses related to filesharing had been common practice in Germany before, this marks the first time that legal measures are taken against people for merely watching streamed content from a website.
Acquisition
Manwin filed merger notification to acquire RedTube.com from Bright Imperial Ltd on July 31, 2013.
See also
Internet pornography
List of video hosting services
List of most popular websites
Porn 2.0
References
External links
redtube.com
MindGeek
Pornhub Network
Gratis pornography
Video hosting
Internet properties established in 2006
2000 establishments in Texas
English-language websites
Companies established in 2006
Companies based in Houston |
58425998 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deniss%20%C4%8Calovskis | Deniss Čalovskis | Deniss Čalovskis (born 1985 in Riga, Latvia) is a Latvian computer hacker. He is the creator of the Gozi virus. Calovskis is a certified Data Protection Officer (DPO).
Hacker
In February 2015, Deniss Čalovskis was extradited to the U.S. from Latvia to face 67 years in prison.
In September 2015, Čalovskis pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit computer intrusions. On January 5, 2016, he sentenced to time served after spending over 20 months in Latvian and American jails.
The Gozi virus was prevalent between 2005 and 2012, infecting between 17,000 and 40,000 computers including some at NASA. Financial losses from the virus stand "at a minimum, millions of dollars", according to the indictment.
In August 2014, Čalovskis began working at the Latvian Medical Association. Čalovskis started several social nonprofit projects for the local community in Latvia.
References
1985 births
Living people
People from Riga
Computer criminals
Hackers
Latvian criminals |
36667363 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M.O.P.%20Vaishnav%20College%20for%20Women | M.O.P. Vaishnav College for Women | M.O.P. Vaishnav College for Women (Autonomous) is an arts and science college located in Chennai, Tamil Nadu in southern India. It is affiliated with the University of Madras. The current principal is Dr. Lalitha Balakrishnan who is a member of Syndicate of University of Madras and also a member of General Council of National Accreditation and Assessment Council (NAAC). According to the survey on the Best Commerce Colleges All Over India by THE WEEK in association with Hansa Research, M.O.P Vaishnav College is in the 36th position. The college is re accredited by NAAC with a 3.56 GPA on a 4-point scale and an 'A++' grade.
History
Sri Vallabhacharya Vidya Sabha collaborated with Dewan Bahadur M. O. Parthasarathy Iyengar Charities and established M.O.P. Vaishnav College for Women in 1992. The M.O.P Charities donated the land for the campus while the infrastructure and administration is handled by Sri Vallabhacharya Vidya Sabha.
In 2002, the college was accredited with four stars by the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) and in the same year it was granted Permanent Affiliation by the University of Madras. It was granted autonomy by UGC and University of Madras in 2004.
Academics
The colleges offers 15 undergraduate and seven postgraduate courses. It also offers a PhD programme in commerce.
The courses offered are as follows
Undergraduate
School of Media
B.A. Journalism
BSc Visual Communication
BSc Electronic Media
School of Information Technology
BSc Computer Science
B.C.A.
BSc Mathematics with Computer Application
BSc Data Science
School of Business
B.B.A. (Shift I & II)
B.Com. (Information System Management)
B.Com. (Accounting and Finance) (Shift I & II)
B.Com. (Marketing Management) (Shift II)
B.Com. (Corporate Secretaryship) (Shift II)
B.Com. (HONS)
B.A. Economics (Shift II)
School of Food Sciences
BSc Food Science and Management
School of Social Science
B.A. Sociology
BSc Psychology
Postgraduate
School of Media
M.A. Communication
M.A. Media Management
School of Information Technology
MSc (IT)
School of Business
M.B.A
M. Com
M.A. Human Resource Management
School of Food Sciences
MSc Food Technology and Management
Extra Activities
MOP Vaishnav offers various extra curricular activities for their students. The college has many clubs, workshops, seminars, cultural activities, research and journal publications.
Clubs
There are as many as 16 club activities for each department that the college has. The main objective of the clubs is to bring out innate talents and contribute to the students' development in terms of teaching organizing, planning, evaluation, et cetera.
Journals
The college publishes a series of journals by the students with guidance form their department faculty. Following are some of journals published by the college:
M Power' – Business Administration
'Annual Thematic' – Accounting and Finance
'Publicit' – Marketing Management
'Signet' – Corporate Secretaryship
'Journal of Food Science' – Food Science
'Computer Almanac' – Information Technology
Sports and NCC
Apart from academics, the college also offers a platform for women who are into sports. 52 international players were successfully produced by the college. Sports like basketball, volleyball, chess, hockey, cricket, etc. are a part of the college. The college also provides scholarship for women who excelled at state, national and international level.
The college also has a National Cadet Corps division which has produced 52 cadets in army and 5 flight cadet. The college students have represented the college in Republic day camp(RDC) and Thal Sainik Camp(TSC).
Cultural Activities
M.O.P. Vaishnav College for Women conducts annual cultural extravaganzas that bring out the competitive spirit of the students. The main aim is to provide endeavours that facilitate the overall development of students. The 2 main events are:
Abhilasha Abhilasha is a three-day talent scout held for the freshers. Besides finding latent talents in the first year students, this event serves as an ice breaker making the new students feel at home immediately. The freshers are all set to impress their seniors and the bonding is created instantaneously. Every fresher is reassured that she is in the right place.
Jhankar Jhankar is a cultural extravaganza and is the most awaited event of the year for the students. Students from each department compete with the others on various platforms. It is an occasion for them to showcase their knowledge of the country's music, dance and various other art forms. It also provides them a platform to test their skills in event management. The students are excited and challenged by this opportunity.
Apart from these activities, MOP Vaishnav is well known for its presence in the cultural events of other colleges throughout the country.
ED Cell
The college also has an Entrepreneurship development cell which provides a platform for the students to experience entrepreneurship. the two main events offered by this cell are:
Entrepreneurship Awareness Program
Akriti
Seminars
The college strives to kindle the thirst for knowledge in students by conducting seminars and conferences. These seminars are designed to provide an opportunity for students to interact with the 'Best in the Business' so that they are abreast with the latest breakthroughs in their field of study. In the last five years the college has organized as many as 28 Seminars & Conferences:
Notable alumni
Aathmika, Indian Actress
Ahaana Krishna, Indian Actress
Sahithya Jagannathan, Sports presenter, VJ, anchor, columnist, model, actress
Rochelle Rao, Indian Actress, model, Actor, Anchor
Sumukhi Suresh, Indian Stand-up comedian, writer, director, actor
Sivaangi Krishnakumar, Indian Singer, Actress, Television Personality
References
External links
Official Website
Women's universities and colleges in Chennai
Arts and Science colleges in Chennai
Educational institutions established in 1992
1992 establishments in Tamil Nadu
Colleges affiliated to University of Madras |
4373 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffer%20overflow | Buffer overflow | In information security and programming, a buffer overflow, or buffer overrun, is an anomaly where a program, while writing data to a buffer, overruns the buffer's boundary and overwrites adjacent memory locations.
Buffers are areas of memory set aside to hold data, often while moving it from one section of a program to another, or between programs. Buffer overflows can often be triggered by malformed inputs; if one assumes all inputs will be smaller than a certain size and the buffer is created to be that size, then an anomalous transaction that produces more data could cause it to write past the end of the buffer. If this overwrites adjacent data or executable code, this may result in erratic program behavior, including memory access errors, incorrect results, and crashes.
Exploiting the behavior of a buffer overflow is a well-known security exploit. On many systems, the memory layout of a program, or the system as a whole, is well defined. By sending in data designed to cause a buffer overflow, it is possible to write into areas known to hold executable code and replace it with malicious code, or to selectively overwrite data pertaining to the program's state, therefore causing behavior that was not intended by the original programmer. Buffers are widespread in operating system (OS) code, so it is possible to make attacks that perform privilege escalation and gain unlimited access to the computer's resources. The famed Morris worm in 1988 used this as one of its attack techniques.
Programming languages commonly associated with buffer overflows include C and C++, which provide no built-in protection against accessing or overwriting data in any part of memory and do not automatically check that data written to an array (the built-in buffer type) is within the boundaries of that array. Bounds checking can prevent buffer overflows, but requires additional code and processing time. Modern operating systems use a variety of techniques to combat malicious buffer overflows, notably by randomizing the layout of memory, or deliberately leaving space between buffers and looking for actions that write into those areas ("canaries").
Technical description
A buffer overflow occurs when data written to a buffer also corrupts data values in memory addresses adjacent to the destination buffer due to insufficient bounds checking. This can occur when copying data from one buffer to another without first checking that the data fits within the destination buffer.
Example
In the following example expressed in C, a program has two variables which are adjacent in memory: an 8-byte-long string buffer, A, and a two-byte big-endian integer, B.
char A[8] = "";
unsigned short B = 1979;
Initially, A contains nothing but zero bytes, and B contains the number 1979.
Now, the program attempts to store the null-terminated string with ASCII encoding in the A buffer.
strcpy(A, "excessive");
is 9 characters long and encodes to 10 bytes including the null terminator, but A can take only 8 bytes. By failing to check the length of the string, it also overwrites the value of B:
B's value has now been inadvertently replaced by a number formed from part of the character string. In this example "e" followed by a zero byte would become 25856.
Writing data past the end of allocated memory can sometimes be detected by the operating system to generate a segmentation fault error that terminates the process.
To prevent the buffer overflow from happening in this example, the call to strcpy could be replaced with strlcpy, which takes the maximum capacity of A (including a null-termination character) as an additional parameter and ensures that no more than this amount of data is written to A:
strlcpy(A, "excessive", sizeof(A));
When available, the strlcpy library function is preferred over strncpy which does not null-terminate the destination buffer if the source string's length is greater than or equal to the size of the buffer (the third argument passed to the function), therefore A may not be null-terminated and cannot be treated as a valid C-style string.
Exploitation
The techniques to exploit a buffer overflow vulnerability vary by architecture, by operating system and by memory region. For example, exploitation on the heap (used for dynamically allocated memory), differs markedly from exploitation on the call stack.
Stack-based exploitation
A technically inclined user may exploit stack-based buffer overflows to manipulate the program to their advantage in one of several ways:
By overwriting a local variable that is located near the vulnerable buffer on the stack, in order to change the behavior of the program
By overwriting the return address in a stack frame to point to code selected by the attacker, usually called the shellcode. Once the function returns, execution will resume at the attacker's shellcode.
By overwriting a function pointer or exception handler to point to the shellcode, which is subsequently executed
By overwriting a local variable (or pointer) of a different stack frame, which will be used by the function which owns that frame later.
The attacker designs data to cause one of these exploits, then places this data in a buffer supplied to users by the vulnerable code. If the address of the user-supplied data used to affect the stack buffer overflow is unpredictable, exploiting a stack buffer overflow to cause remote code execution becomes much more difficult. One technique that can be used to exploit such a buffer overflow is called "trampolining". In that technique, an attacker will find a pointer to the vulnerable stack buffer, and compute the location of their shellcode relative to that pointer. Then, they will use the overwrite to jump to an instruction already in memory which will make a second jump, this time relative to the pointer; that second jump will branch execution into the shellcode. Suitable instructions are often present in large code. The Metasploit Project, for example, maintains a database of suitable opcodes, though it lists only those found in the Windows operating system.
Heap-based exploitation
A buffer overflow occurring in the heap data area is referred to as a heap overflow and is exploitable in a manner different from that of stack-based overflows. Memory on the heap is dynamically allocated by the application at run-time and typically contains program data. Exploitation is performed by corrupting this data in specific ways to cause the application to overwrite internal structures such as linked list pointers. The canonical heap overflow technique overwrites dynamic memory allocation linkage (such as malloc meta data) and uses the resulting pointer exchange to overwrite a program function pointer.
Microsoft's GDI+ vulnerability in handling JPEGs is an example of the danger a heap overflow can present.
Barriers to exploitation
Manipulation of the buffer, which occurs before it is read or executed, may lead to the failure of an exploitation attempt. These manipulations can mitigate the threat of exploitation, but may not make it impossible. Manipulations could include conversion to upper or lower case, removal of metacharacters and filtering out of non-alphanumeric strings. However, techniques exist to bypass these filters and manipulations; alphanumeric shellcode, polymorphic code, self-modifying code and return-to-libc attacks. The same methods can be used to avoid detection by intrusion detection systems. In some cases, including where code is converted into Unicode, the threat of the vulnerability has been misrepresented by the disclosers as only Denial of Service when in fact the remote execution of arbitrary code is possible.
Practicalities of exploitation
In real-world exploits there are a variety of challenges which need to be overcome for exploits to operate reliably. These factors include null bytes in addresses, variability in the location of shellcode, differences between environments and various counter-measures in operation.
NOP sled technique
A NOP-sled is the oldest and most widely known technique for exploiting stack buffer overflows. It solves the problem of finding the exact address of the buffer by effectively increasing the size of the target area. To do this, much larger sections of the stack are corrupted with the no-op machine instruction. At the end of the attacker-supplied data, after the no-op instructions, the attacker places an instruction to perform a relative jump to the top of the buffer where the shellcode is located. This collection of no-ops is referred to as the "NOP-sled" because if the return address is overwritten with any address within the no-op region of the buffer, the execution will "slide" down the no-ops until it is redirected to the actual malicious code by the jump at the end. This technique requires the attacker to guess where on the stack the NOP-sled is instead of the comparatively small shellcode.
Because of the popularity of this technique, many vendors of intrusion prevention systems will search for this pattern of no-op machine instructions in an attempt to detect shellcode in use. It is important to note that a NOP-sled does not necessarily contain only traditional no-op machine instructions; any instruction that does not corrupt the machine state to a point where the shellcode will not run can be used in place of the hardware assisted no-op. As a result, it has become common practice for exploit writers to compose the no-op sled with randomly chosen instructions which will have no real effect on the shellcode execution.
While this method greatly improves the chances that an attack will be successful, it is not without problems. Exploits using this technique still must rely on some amount of luck that they will guess offsets on the stack that are within the NOP-sled region. An incorrect guess will usually result in the target program crashing and could alert the system administrator to the attacker's activities. Another problem is that the NOP-sled requires a much larger amount of memory in which to hold a NOP-sled large enough to be of any use. This can be a problem when the allocated size of the affected buffer is too small and the current depth of the stack is shallow (i.e., there is not much space from the end of the current stack frame to the start of the stack). Despite its problems, the NOP-sled is often the only method that will work for a given platform, environment, or situation, and as such it is still an important technique.
The jump to address stored in a register technique
The "jump to register" technique allows for reliable exploitation of stack buffer overflows without the need for extra room for a NOP-sled and without having to guess stack offsets. The strategy is to overwrite the return pointer with something that will cause the program to jump to a known pointer stored within a register which points to the controlled buffer and thus the shellcode. For example, if register A contains a pointer to the start of a buffer then any jump or call taking that register as an operand can be used to gain control of the flow of execution.
In practice a program may not intentionally contain instructions to jump to a particular register. The traditional solution is to find an unintentional instance of a suitable opcode at a fixed location somewhere within the program memory. In figure E on the left is an example of such an unintentional instance of the i386 jmp esp instruction. The opcode for this instruction is FF E4. This two-byte sequence can be found at a one-byte offset from the start of the instruction call DbgPrint at address 0x7C941EED. If an attacker overwrites the program return address with this address the program will first jump to 0x7C941EED, interpret the opcode FF E4 as the jmp esp instruction, and will then jump to the top of the stack and execute the attacker's code.
When this technique is possible the severity of the vulnerability increases considerably. This is because exploitation will work reliably enough to automate an attack with a virtual guarantee of success when it is run. For this reason, this is the technique most commonly used in Internet worms that exploit stack buffer overflow vulnerabilities.
This method also allows shellcode to be placed after the overwritten return address on the Windows platform. Since executables are mostly based at address 0x00400000 and x86 is a Little Endian architecture, the last byte of the return address must be a null, which terminates the buffer copy and nothing is written beyond that. This limits the size of the shellcode to the size of the buffer, which may be overly restrictive. DLLs are located in high memory (above 0x01000000) and so have addresses containing no null bytes, so this method can remove null bytes (or other disallowed characters) from the overwritten return address. Used in this way, the method is often referred to as "DLL trampolining".
Protective countermeasures
Various techniques have been used to detect or prevent buffer overflows, with various tradeoffs. The most reliable way to avoid or prevent buffer overflows is to use automatic protection at the language level. This sort of protection, however, cannot be applied to legacy code, and often technical, business, or cultural constraints call for a vulnerable language. The following sections describe the choices and implementations available.
Choice of programming language
Assembly and C/C++ are popular programming languages that are vulnerable to buffer overflow, in part because they allow direct access to memory and are not strongly typed. C provides no built-in protection against accessing or overwriting data in any part of memory; more specifically, it does not check that data written to a buffer is within the boundaries of that buffer. The standard C++ libraries provide many ways of safely buffering data, and C++'s Standard Template Library (STL) provides containers that can optionally perform bounds checking if the programmer explicitly calls for checks while accessing data. For example, a vector's member function at() performs a bounds check and throws an out_of_range exception if the bounds check fails. However, C++ behaves just like C if the bounds check is not explicitly called. Techniques to avoid buffer overflows also exist for C.
Languages that are strongly typed and do not allow direct memory access, such as COBOL, Java, Python, and others, prevent buffer overflow from occurring in most cases. Many programming languages other than C/C++ provide runtime checking and in some cases even compile-time checking which might send a warning or raise an exception when C or C++ would overwrite data and continue to execute further instructions until erroneous results are obtained which might or might not cause the program to crash. Examples of such languages include Ada, Eiffel, Lisp, Modula-2, Smalltalk, OCaml and such C-derivatives as Cyclone, Rust and D. The Java and .NET Framework bytecode environments also require bounds checking on all arrays. Nearly every interpreted language will protect against buffer overflows, signaling a well-defined error condition. Often where a language provides enough type information to do bounds checking an option is provided to enable or disable it. Static code analysis can remove many dynamic bound and type checks, but poor implementations and awkward cases can significantly decrease performance. Software engineers must carefully consider the tradeoffs of safety versus performance costs when deciding which language and compiler setting to use.
Use of safe libraries
The problem of buffer overflows is common in the C and C++ languages because they expose low level representational details of buffers as containers for data types. Buffer overflows must thus be avoided by maintaining a high degree of correctness in code which performs buffer management. It has also long been recommended to avoid standard library functions which are not bounds checked, such as gets, scanf and strcpy. The Morris worm exploited a gets call in fingerd.
Well-written and tested abstract data type libraries which centralize and automatically perform buffer management, including bounds checking, can reduce the occurrence and impact of buffer overflows. The two main building-block data types in these languages in which buffer overflows commonly occur are strings and arrays; thus, libraries preventing buffer overflows in these data types can provide the vast majority of the necessary coverage. Still, failure to use these safe libraries correctly can result in buffer overflows and other vulnerabilities; and naturally, any bug in the library itself is a potential vulnerability. "Safe" library implementations include "The Better String Library", Vstr and Erwin. The OpenBSD operating system's C library provides the strlcpy and strlcat functions, but these are more limited than full safe library implementations.
In September 2007, Technical Report 24731, prepared by the C standards committee, was published; it specifies a set of functions which are based on the standard C library's string and I/O functions, with additional buffer-size parameters. However, the efficacy of these functions for the purpose of reducing buffer overflows is disputable; it requires programmer intervention on a per function call basis that is equivalent to intervention that could make the analogous older standard library functions buffer overflow safe.
Buffer overflow protection
Buffer overflow protection is used to detect the most common buffer overflows by checking that the stack has not been altered when a function returns. If it has been altered, the program exits with a segmentation fault. Three such systems are Libsafe, and the StackGuard and ProPolice gcc patches.
Microsoft's implementation of Data Execution Prevention (DEP) mode explicitly protects the pointer to the Structured Exception Handler (SEH) from being overwritten.
Stronger stack protection is possible by splitting the stack in two: one for data and one for function returns. This split is present in the Forth language, though it was not a security-based design decision. Regardless, this is not a complete solution to buffer overflows, as sensitive data other than the return address may still be overwritten.
Pointer protection
Buffer overflows work by manipulating pointers, including stored addresses. PointGuard was proposed as a compiler-extension to prevent attackers from being able to reliably manipulate pointers and addresses. The approach works by having the compiler add code to automatically XOR-encode pointers before and after they are used. Theoretically, because the attacker does not know what value will be used to encode/decode the pointer, he cannot predict what it will point to if he overwrites it with a new value. PointGuard was never released, but Microsoft implemented a similar approach beginning in Windows XP SP2 and Windows Server 2003 SP1. Rather than implement pointer protection as an automatic feature, Microsoft added an API routine that can be called. This allows for better performance (because it is not used all of the time), but places the burden on the programmer to know when it is necessary.
Because XOR is linear, an attacker may be able to manipulate an encoded pointer by overwriting only the lower bytes of an address. This can allow an attack to succeed if the attacker is able to attempt the exploit multiple times or is able to complete an attack by causing a pointer to point to one of several locations (such as any location within a NOP sled). Microsoft added a random rotation to their encoding scheme to address this weakness to partial overwrites.
Executable space protection
Executable space protection is an approach to buffer overflow protection which prevents execution of code on the stack or the heap. An attacker may use buffer overflows to insert arbitrary code into the memory of a program, but with executable space protection, any attempt to execute that code will cause an exception.
Some CPUs support a feature called NX ("No eXecute") or XD ("eXecute Disabled") bit, which in conjunction with software, can be used to mark pages of data (such as those containing the stack and the heap) as readable and writable but not executable.
Some Unix operating systems (e.g. OpenBSD, macOS) ship with executable space protection (e.g. W^X). Some optional packages include:
PaX
Exec Shield
Openwall
Newer variants of Microsoft Windows also support executable space protection, called Data Execution Prevention. Proprietary add-ons include:
BufferShield
StackDefender
Executable space protection does not generally protect against return-to-libc attacks, or any other attack which does not rely on the execution of the attackers code. However, on 64-bit systems using ASLR, as described below, executable space protection makes it far more difficult to execute such attacks.
Address space layout randomization
Address space layout randomization (ASLR) is a computer security feature which involves arranging the positions of key data areas, usually including the base of the executable and position of libraries, heap, and stack, randomly in a process' address space.
Randomization of the virtual memory addresses at which functions and variables can be found can make exploitation of a buffer overflow more difficult, but not impossible. It also forces the attacker to tailor the exploitation attempt to the individual system, which foils the attempts of internet worms. A similar but less effective method is to rebase processes and libraries in the virtual address space.
Deep packet inspection
The use of deep packet inspection (DPI) can detect, at the network perimeter, very basic remote attempts to exploit buffer overflows by use of attack signatures and heuristics. These are able to block packets which have the signature of a known attack, or if a long series of No-Operation instructions (known as a NOP-sled) is detected, these were once used when the location of the exploit's payload is slightly variable.
Packet scanning is not an effective method since it can only prevent known attacks and there are many ways that a NOP-sled can be encoded. Shellcode used by attackers can be made alphanumeric, metamorphic, or self-modifying to evade detection by heuristic packet scanners and intrusion detection systems.
Testing
Checking for buffer overflows and patching the bugs that cause them naturally helps prevent buffer overflows. One common automated technique for discovering them is fuzzing. Edge case testing can also uncover buffer overflows, as can static analysis. Once a potential buffer overflow is detected, it must be patched; this makes the testing approach useful for software that is in development, but less useful for legacy software that is no longer maintained or supported.
History
Buffer overflows were understood and partially publicly documented as early as 1972, when the Computer Security Technology Planning Study laid out the technique: "The code performing this function does not check the source and destination addresses properly, permitting portions of the monitor to be overlaid by the user. This can be used to inject code into the monitor that will permit the user to seize control of the machine." Today, the monitor would be referred to as the kernel.
The earliest documented hostile exploitation of a buffer overflow was in 1988. It was one of several exploits used by the Morris worm to propagate itself over the Internet. The program exploited was a service on Unix called finger. Later, in 1995, Thomas Lopatic independently rediscovered the buffer overflow and published his findings on the Bugtraq security mailing list. A year later, in 1996, Elias Levy (also known as Aleph One) published in Phrack magazine the paper "Smashing the Stack for Fun and Profit", a step-by-step introduction to exploiting stack-based buffer overflow vulnerabilities.
Since then, at least two major internet worms have exploited buffer overflows to compromise a large number of systems. In 2001, the Code Red worm exploited a buffer overflow in Microsoft's Internet Information Services (IIS) 5.0 and in 2003 the SQL Slammer worm compromised machines running Microsoft SQL Server 2000.
In 2003, buffer overflows present in licensed Xbox games have been exploited to allow unlicensed software, including homebrew games, to run on the console without the need for hardware modifications, known as modchips. The PS2 Independence Exploit also used a buffer overflow to achieve the same for the PlayStation 2. The Twilight hack accomplished the same with the Wii, using a buffer overflow in The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess.
See also
Billion laughs
Buffer over-read
Coding conventions
Computer security
End-of-file
Heap overflow
Ping of death
Port scanner
Return-to-libc attack
Safety-critical system
Security-focused operating system
Self-modifying code
Software quality
Shellcode
Stack buffer overflow
Uncontrolled format string
References
External links
"Discovering and exploiting a remote buffer overflow vulnerability in an FTP server" by Raykoid666
"Smashing the Stack for Fun and Profit" by Aleph One
CERT Secure Coding Standards
CERT Secure Coding Initiative
Secure Coding in C and C++
SANS: inside the buffer overflow attack
"Advances in adjacent memory overflows" by Nomenumbra
A Comparison of Buffer Overflow Prevention Implementations and Weaknesses
More Security Whitepapers about Buffer Overflows
Chapter 12: Writing Exploits III from Sockets, Shellcode, Porting & Coding: Reverse Engineering Exploits and Tool Coding for Security Professionals by James C. Foster (). Detailed explanation of how to use Metasploit to develop a buffer overflow exploit from scratch.
Computer Security Technology Planning Study, James P. Anderson, ESD-TR-73-51, ESD/AFSC, Hanscom AFB, Bedford, MA 01731 (October 1972) [NTIS AD-758 206]
"Buffer Overflows: Anatomy of an Exploit" by Nevermore
Secure Programming with GCC and GLibc (2008), by Marcel Holtmann
"Criação de Exploits com Buffer Overflor – Parte 0 – Um pouco de teoria " (2018), by Helvio Junior (M4v3r1ck)
Software bugs
Computer memory
Computer security exploits
Articles with example C code |
52663937 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RollerCoaster%20Tycoon%20Classic | RollerCoaster Tycoon Classic | RollerCoaster Tycoon Classic is a construction and management simulation video game developed by Origin8 Technologies and published by Atari. The game combines features that were first seen in RollerCoaster Tycoon and RollerCoaster Tycoon 2, which were both amusement park management simulators created by Chris Sawyer for the PC. The game was released worldwide for iOS and Android in December 2016, while a version for Microsoft Windows and macOS was released in September 2017.
Gameplay
Classic implements the same gameplay as the first two games in the RollerCoaster Tycoon series. Played from an isometric view, players are tasked with building or revitalizing an amusement park by adding rides, attractions, facilities, paths, landscaping, and staff to manage the park. In particular, the game allows players to plan out a wide array of custom roller coasters and other rides using tracks, such as log flumes and go-karts. The player also must manage the park's finances to make sure they bring in sufficient revenues from guests to cover the cost of running the park and installing new features.
Development
Chris Sawyer had developed the original RollerCoaster Tycoon and its sequel RollerCoaster Tycoon 2, which released respectively in 1999 and 2002. The games had come out of his work developing a sequel to Transport Tycoon, which he released in 1994. Sawyer allowed Frontier Developments to develop RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 while he worked on Locomotion, a 2004 spiritual successor to Transport Tycoon. Following this release, Sawyer had appeared to disappear from the games industry; according to Sawyer in a 2016 interview, he took this absence in part over the legal difficulties he had over securing unpaid royalties from Atari, whom had acquired the rights to publish the RollerCoaster Tycoon series through Infogrames' purchase of Hasbro Interactive. He also stated that he was disappointed with the state of video games during this period which focused too much on violence.
Sawyer re-emerged in 2010 with the opening of 31X Ltd. a holding company for his Transport Tycoon intellectual property. However, he saw there was interest in a mobile version of this game, and took 31X in a direction towards mobile development. In 2013, he announced the mobile version of Transport Tycoon, developed with Origin8. With Origin8's help, Sawyer was able to convert the original Transport Tycoon code from a form that relied heavily on assembly code to transfer it into a more portable form. The title was released in late 2013. He considered the mobile release of Transport Tycoon a success, and that Origin8 was willing to continue to help port RollerCoaster Tycoon into a similar mobile format. Sawyer also recognized that there was a demand for a game that used the more simple controls and graphics offered in the original Tycoon games, which worked well for mobile and touch-screen devices.
In March 2016, Sawyer affirmed he had started work on RollerCoaster Tycoon Classic with Origin8, to be released for mobile devices. As with the rework of Transport Tycoon, this required Sawyer and Origin8 to rework the assembly code from RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 into C. They were also able to add new elements to the game during this period.
The game was released for both Android and iOS devices on December 22, 2016. On that same day, Sawyer released a statement explaining his reason for developing the game: "It was my long term ambition to bring the classic game to modern touch screen devices as its visual style and tactile nature are so well suited to smartphones and tablets." Meanwhile, the CEO of Atari stated that the game should appeal to both long-time fans, as well as new players.
A Microsoft Windows and macOS port of the game was released on September 28, 2017.
Reception
Bob Fekete of iDigitalTimes praised the game for faithfully porting the original games on mobile devices for a low price tag, but criticized the game's "cramped" feel and occasionally low framerates. Kotaku Australia was critical of the release, citing the system specification requirements- which are considerably higher than that of the original games- and the lack of multiplayer support, which had been added to the original game via the community-driven OpenRCT2 project.
See also
OpenRCT2
References
External links
2016 video games
Amusement park simulation games
Android (operating system) games
iOS games
macOS games
Roller coaster games and simulations
Classic
Video game sequels
Video games developed in the United Kingdom
Video games with isometric graphics
Video games with expansion packs
Windows games |
21083200 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeviceKit | DeviceKit | DeviceKit is a modular hardware abstraction layer designed for use in Linux systems that is designed to simplify device management and replace the current monolithic Linux HAL. DeviceKit includes the ability to enumerate system devices and send notifications when hardware is added or removed from the computer system.
In May 2008, HAL developer David Zeuthen announced his intention to deprecate HAL, mainly because of its complexity and redundancy with other libraries in the Linux environment. The only missing part in those libraries would be a centralized service to enumerate existing devices, signal adding/removal of devices and merging and classifying available hardware information in one point. DeviceKit is the new library providing those services, while the hardware is supposed to be accessed through other libraries instead of HAL or DeviceKit.
The first distribution to include DeviceKit was Fedora 11. Ubuntu 9.10 replaced some of the old HAL features with DeviceKit and functionality from udev.
On 1 December 2009, it was announced that DeviceKit-disks was renamed to udisks and that a similar rename would happen for DeviceKit-power.
Future
According to DeviceKit devel mailing list, DeviceKit is getting merged with and the existing DeviceKit programs such as DeviceKit-disks and DeviceKit-power will be switched over to use .
See also
Haiku Device Kit
HAL
PackageKit
PolicyKit
References
External links
DeviceKit Home at freedesktop.org
Human–computer interaction
Free system software
User interfaces
Freedesktop.org
Applications using D-Bus |
722166 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discordian%20calendar | Discordian calendar | The Discordian or Erisian calendar is an alternative calendar used by some adherents of Discordianism. It is specified on page 00034 of the Principia Discordia.
The Discordian year 1 YOLD is 1166 BC. (Elsewhere in the Principia Discordia, it is mentioned that the Curse of Greyface occurred in 1166 BC. As a reference, AD is YOLD (Year of Our Lady of Discord). The abbreviation "YOLD" is not used in the Principia, though the phrase "Year of Our Lady of Discord" is mentioned once.
Composition
As described in the Principia Discordia, the Discordian calendar has five 73-day seasons: Chaos, Discord, Confusion, Bureaucracy, and The Aftermath. The Discordian year is aligned with the Gregorian calendar and begins on January 1, thus Chaos 1, YOLD is January 1, Gregorian.
The Erisian week consists of five days: Sweetmorn, Boomtime, Pungenday, Prickle-Prickle, and Setting Orange. The days of the week are named after the five basic Discordian elements: Sweet, Boom, Pungent, Prickle, and Orange. There are 73 of these weeks per year and every year begins with Sweetmorn.
Every fourth year in the Discordian calendar, starting in 2 YOLD, an extra day is inserted between Chaos 59 and Chaos 60 called St. Tib's Day. This is because 4 years + 1 day = 5, a holy number, but the Discordian leap year also coincides with the Gregorian one. The result of this is that any given day of the year in the Discordian calendar may be taken to correspond to the same day of the year in the Gregorian calendar, and vice versa, although some users of the calendar believe that it is tied to the Julian calendar and so will diverge from the Gregorian in 3266 YOLD (AD 2100). St. Tib's Day is considered outside the Discordian week.
There are Apostle Holydays on the 5th day of each season, named after the 5 Discordian apostles: Mungday, for Hung Mung; Mojoday, for Dr. Van Van Mojo; Syaday, for Sri Syadasti; Zaraday, for Zarathud; and Maladay, for Malaclypse the Elder. There are also Season Holydays on the 50th of each season: Chaoflux, Discoflux, Confuflux, Bureflux, and Afflux.
Only these eleven dates are named in the Principia Discordia; however, Discordians have felt free to invent other holidays which have become popular to varying degrees. Some of these include Discordians for Jesus/Love Your Neighbor Day (March 25/Discord 11); Jake Day (April 6/Discord 23 or occasionally May 23/Discord 70), a day to send tongue-in-cheek letters, emails or faxes to an official or bureaucracy; Saint Camping's Day (May 21/Discord 68), a day to make End of Days predictions and share them in social media; Eris Day (May 23/Discord 70), a day to gather and celebrate Goddess; Towel Day (May 25/Discord 72); Mid Year's Day (July 2/Confusion 37); X-Day (July 5/Confusion 40); and Multiversal Underwear Day (August 10/Bureaucracy 3).
Implementations
ddate is a program that prints the current date in the Discordian calendar. It was a part of the util-linux package containing basic system utilities. As such, it had been included at least since 1994 in nearly all Linux distributions. In August 2011 however, one of the maintainers of util-linux made ddate optional, and by default omitted.
In October 2012, ddate was completely removed from util-linux.
The ddate program now has an upstream source. There was some controversy, but in the end, anyone wishing to reintroduce ddate to a distribution will have to create a separate package based on the new upstream. This has been done for Debian, FreeBSD, Fedora Linux,
and Gentoo Linux for example.
There are many other programs with similar functionality, such as HodgePodge, an Android widget. Discordian-calendar is an implementation using Java 8's date and time classes.
References
External links
'ddate' Linux man page @ die.net
Discordian Calendar described in the Principia Discorda
Discordian Holydays in vCalendar/iCalendar format
Holydays from the Ek-sen-trik-kuh Discordia
Java sources for Discordian date calculation
Mac OS X Dashboard Widget to calculate current Discordian date
Online Gregorian-to-Erisian Date Converter
Online Thuddite-to-Discordian (and vice versa) calendar
Calendar eras
Calendar
Specific calendars
Discordian holidays |
12730214 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lguest | Lguest | Lguest is a Linux kernel x86 virtualization hypervisor introduced in kernel version 2.6.23 (released 9 October 2007) and removed in kernel version 4.14 (November 2017). The hypervisor is an operating-system-level virtualization system capable of running unmodified 32-bit x86 Linux kernels as guest machines. Installation is as easy as running modprobe lg followed by tools/lguest/lguest to create a new guest.
Lguest can still be installed on kernel 4.14 and later through out-of-tree patches.
Lguest was maintained by Rusty Russell.
See also
Comparison of platform virtualization software
Kernel-based Virtual Machine
References
External links
An introduction to lguest (LWN.net)
Linux kernel features
Free virtualization software
Virtualization-related software for Linux |
7807049 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robocall | Robocall | A robocall is a phone call that uses a computerized autodialer to deliver a pre-recorded message, as if from a robot. Robocalls are often associated with political and telemarketing phone campaigns, but can also be used for public-service or emergency announcements. Some robocalls use personalized audio messages to simulate an actual personal phone call.
History
First Description
Automated phone solicitation, i.e. robocalling, was one of the earliest applications proposed for the first microcomputers. The first documented mention of it was in the "Memo from the Publisher" by David Bunnell in Personal Computing magazine, May/June 1977. Under the heading "Personal Computing Abused", Bunnell described a presentation at the World Altair Computer Convention in March, 1976 of "an intriguing business application for personal computing". The computer would sequentially dial phone numbers, play a taped voice message, and then use speech recognition to respond with additional messages as appropriate. In his Memo from the Publisher, David Bunnell reported that "the proposal was not very well received" at the conference. It was criticized as "insensitive to the rights of personal privacy" and "could cause a public uproar".
North America
Canada
Robocalls can be and are legitimately used by mainstream political parties in Canada to reach voters. Controversy surrounded the use of robocalls during the 2011 Canadian federal election, leading Elections Canada and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to investigate claims that robocalls were used in an attempt to dissuade voters from casting their ballot by falsely telling them their poll stations had changed locations. Elections Canada traced the origin of the automated calls to a disposable cellphone registered to a fictional name "Pierre Poutine" at a phony address from 450 area code of Joliette, Quebec, and issued a subpoena to the cellphone provider that produced a list of outgoing calls from the same number. One of the calls was to the toll-free number used by customers of 2call.ca, a subsidiary of Edmonton-based Internet Service Provider RackNine, to phone in and record their outgoing messages. The burner cell phone belonging to "Pierre Poutine" was used to contact the owner of Racknine at his personal unlisted number and gave the name "Pierre Jones". This burner phone initiated a series of automated robocalls mostly in Guelph but with a few dozen in other ridings, that targeted mostly non-Conservative voters with false voting location changes. Some voters attended what they had been led to believe were their voting locations, and sometimes destroyed their voter registration cards in anger.
In November 2011, the investigator served RackNine with a production order for records and had the account holder associated with the bogus calls quickly identified. Investigators have also examined the Conservative Party's CIMS voter database and showed that "Pierre Poutine" used the Conservative voter database to select whom to call. Investigators have blank entries for one specific login, leading to speculation that evidence has been deleted. PayPal has also surrendered their records to investigators since "Pierre Poutine" has used a PayPal account to pay for the bill for the automated calls. The cost for these May 2, 2011, calls was $162.10, Elections Canada said in court filings. This expenditure was never reported to Elections Canada, as required for legitimate political spending.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party of Canada have denied any knowledge or involvement. A Conservative party staffer resigned soon after the scandal was reported but has since come forward stating that he was not involved. Elections Canada has made a statement and reported to Parliament, that the fraud was extensive, affecting 200 ridings in all ten provinces plus Yukon Territory. The Council of Canadians, a left of centre activist group, has asserted that the robocalls may have been enough to swing the result by 4%, enough to win a number of ridings in very close races. A court challenge has been initiated by this group to overturn the results of the election in seven ridings, and initiate by-elections for the respective seven House of Commons seats.
After reviewing the investigation of the "Pierre Poutine" scandal in 2013, Federal Court Judge Richard Mosley found that election fraud had taken place in six ridings across the country but found no evidence that the Conservative party or candidates were involved. He also did not find sufficient evidence to support charges in ridings other than Guelph. As well, he indicated that the "robocalls" had not affected the outcome of the 2011 election in any riding.
After a lengthy investigation of the circumstances of the scandal, Michael Sona, the former director of communications for the Conservative candidate in the Guelph (Ontario) riding was charged on June 2, 2014 with "wilfully preventing or endeavouring to prevent an elector from voting". Sona was found guilty on November 14, 2014 and was sentenced to nine months in jail plus twelve months of probation. Sona was released from jail on bail after serving twelve days, pending his appeal of the sentence. However, Sona did not appeal the conviction. During the trial, Justice Hearn agreed with the Crown allegation that Sona had likely not acted alone.
United States
The federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 (TCPA) regulates automated calls. Pre-recorded robocalls must identify who is initiating the call and include a telephone number or address whereby the initiator can be reached. In 2019, the United States Congress passed legislation expanding the regulation of robocalls.
Debt collection
In 2015, government debt collection was exempted from the 1991 robocall restrictions; however, the Supreme Court invalidated this exception on July 6, 2020 in Barr v. American Assn. of Political Consultants, Inc. (19-631). The court decided that it was a First Amendment violation to favor "debt-collection speech over political and other speech."
Political calls
Robocalls are made by many political parties in the United States, including but not limited to both the Republican and Democratic parties as well as unaffiliated campaigns, 527 organizations, unions, and individual citizens. Political robocalls are exempt from the United States National Do Not Call Registry. The Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 (TCPA) and Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations prohibit anyone (including charities, politicians and political parties) from making robocalls to cell phone numbers without the recipients' prior consent. The FCC permits non-commercial robocalls to most residential (non-cellular) telephone lines.
Some states (23 according to DMNews) have laws that regulate or prohibit political robocalls. Indiana and North Dakota prohibit automated political calls. In New Hampshire, political robocalls are allowed, except when the recipient is in the National Do Not Call Registry. Many states require the disclosure of who paid for the call, often requiring such notice be recorded in the candidate's own voice. The patch-work of state laws regulating political robocalls has created problems for national campaigns.
California
The first political robo calls were launched in January 1983 when business owner Tony Inocentes used his telemarketing machine from his collection agency business to announce his candidacy for the 57th Assembly District in California. He launched over 300,000 automated calls before losing the November 1983 General election to the incumbent Dave Elder. Inocentes founded the GOTV election company ePolitical USA in 1984.
In 2001 Inocentes invented political robo polling launching the first political robo poll on October 31, 2001 in the Lynwood, CA city council elections.
California prohibits any robocall unless there is an existing relationship. The California Public Utilities Code §§ 2871 et seq. holds political campaigns to the same rules as other organizations making calls with an automatic dialing–announcing device. The guidelines are:
A person must come on the line before the recording to identify the nature of the call and the organization behind it.
The recipient of the call must consent to the recording being played.
The call must be disconnected from the telephone line as soon as the message is over or the recipient hangs up, whichever comes first.
Indiana
Indiana requires introduction of any prerecorded message by a live operator; the message may only be played if the called party grants permission.
Missouri
In September 2008, then-Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon alerted political campaigns in Missouri that his office would aggressively enforce federal rules (Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991) requiring calls to include identifying and contact information.
North Carolina
Robocalls were made during the 2008 North Carolina Democratic primary, targeting African-American voters in the days leading up to the primary in late April 2008, which essentially told registered voters that they were not registered.
According to NPR and Facing South, these calls were made by the organization "Women's Voices Women Vote". Voters and watchdog groups complained that it was a turnout-suppression effort, and the state Attorney General Roy Cooper ordered them to stop making the calls. The group stopped the calls and no further legal action was taken.
South Carolina
South Carolina had a law prohibiting most types of unsolicited consumer and political robocalls, but in 2010, campaign consultant Robert Cahaly was arrested by the South Carolina State Law Enforcement Division, being charged for making illegal robocalls to six state house districts. The automated opinion polling system asked whether U.S. Speaker Nancy Pelosi should be invited to campaign with six Democratic candidates for the South Carolina Legislature. Cahaly was arrested despite having a written opinion from the state attorney general stating that he had acted within the law. The charges were subsequently dismissed in October 2012. After the charges were dropped, Cahaly filed a suit against state officials, claiming his constitutional right to free speech had been violated. U.S. district court judge, Michelle Childs ruled that South Carolina's anti-robocall statute was a content-based restriction on speech and therefore unconstitutional.
Proposed additional regulations
California Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) introduced the Federal Robocall Privacy Act in February 2008 at a Senate Committee on Rules and Administration hearing. The Act proposed to: 1) limit robocalls to no more than two a day by any one candidate, 2) mandate that candidates have accurate caller ID numbers displayed, 3) mandate that the disclosure of who is paying for the call occur at the start of the call, rather than at the end of the call, and 4) mandate that the time of the call occur not before 8a.m. or after 9p.m. The bill was read twice, and since it received no further action during the session, it did not become law. Similar bills have been submitted in subsequent years without success.
Shaun Dakin, CEO of Citizens for Civil Discourse, testified at the hearing and described how robocalls affect the lives of voters across the nation. He also wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post calling for a Voter Privacy Bill of Rights in which all voters would have the right to opt out of political robocalls if they did not wish to receive them.
Dakin, a former John Kerry campaign worker, set up a website called Stoppoliticalcalls.org and claimed to allow citizens to opt out of receiving robocalls. However, there is no guarantee that the registry will stop the calls and since there is no law that supports the database it is essentially an Internet petition. As mentioned above, the Robocall Privacy Act failed to become law and neither bill had provisions for a do-not-call registry for stopping robocalls.
Despite heavy media publicity of the database, only seven politicians in the United States voluntarily pledged to respect the list during the 2008 general election cycle. Of those seven, only three made it to the general election and only Virginia Foxx (R) was successfully reelected in November 2008.
On September 1, 2009, a new regulation of the Federal Trade Commission went into effect, banning most robocalls without written opt-in from the receiver. Political campaigns, surveys, charities, debt collectors, and health care providers are exempt, as are calls to businesses. Calls from banks, insurers, and phone companies are out of the jurisdiction of the FTC. In situations under federal jurisdiction, the federal law will supersede a slightly less restrictive law in the state of California.
Reverse robocalling
In June 2019 the telephony-based scambaiting community launched BobRTC, a telephone directory that tracks verified inbound telephone numbers that reach contact centers operated by known robocallers and telephone scams. The service also allows logged-in users to place calls directly to scammers using the service's own telephone numbers as the Caller ID which avoids the user placing a call with their own handset, which allows callers to scam bait robocallers.
Suppressing unwanted and illegal robocalls
Many robocalls are not wanted, and several methods have been developed to prevent unwanted robocalls. Many countries operate do not call lists, but the lists have been ineffective and legally problematic in some cases. Consequently, a market has developed for products that allow consumers to block robocalls. Most products use methods similar to those used to mitigate SPIT (spam over Internet telephony) and can be broadly categorised by the primary method used. However, due to the complexity of the problem, no single method is sufficiently reliable. A combination of methods can be used together to provide more effective results, provided care is taken to ensure that the combination of techniques would not degrade the user experience.
Solutions are available as both hardware and software products. Mobile apps are especially prevalent as they use techniques which do not require the modification of infrastructure. Many products are limited to use only on a single medium, such as traditional copper landlines, or mobile phone contracts from a specific mobile phone operator.
Blacklisting and whitelisting
In its simplest form, this method offers the ability to prevent further calls from phone numbers, once they are known to be a source of robocalls. Many mobile apps can prevent robocalls with a user generated blacklist.
For landlines there are standalone call blockers which connect to the telephone. Various models work on blacklisting and whitelisting principles. Call blockers received attention from publications including Which? and Consumer Reports in the United Kingdom and United States respectively.
In the UK BT operates a service for landlines called Choose to Refuse which allows customers to block up to 10 phone numbers of their choice for a monthly fee.
A number of physical products have been developed for use with landlines. These are typically installed in homes and employ a hard coded or irregularly updated blacklist. Some models also have the function to create a user-generated whitelist. Newer devices for landlines can use cloud based data to resolve the hard coded blacklist issues and allow you to create your own whitelist/blacklist.
Crowdsourcing
A more sophisticated model uses crowdsourcing to build a more comprehensive blacklist of robocall numbers. A notable example of this is the app Truecaller, which requires users to provide access to their personal whitelist of genuine contacts in exchange for access to the larger crowdsourced database. In 2013, hackers gained access to Truecaller's database of known genuine numbers, highlighting the danger of centralising this information.
CAPTCHA
Building on the crowdsourcing model, Primus Canada launched a patented product called Telemarketing Guard for landlines in 2007. It improves on previous models by including a CAPTCHA style challenge-response test.
Based on a database developed from customer feedback, it filters suspected telemarketing calls to a system which challenges callers to record their name after pressing a button. If a name is recorded, the customer's phone rings with the Caller ID of Telemarketing Guard. If they answer the phone, they are played the recording, at which point they can accept the call or decline and report it.
Realtime analysis
A major problem for the use of both blacklisting and whitelisting techniques is the practice of caller ID spoofing, which is prevalent as a result of the low barrier to entry in the VoIP services market.
In 2015 the Federal Communications Commission proposed a framework for the telecommunications industry in the United States, which included a validation system at network level for robocalls from SIP sources by 2017. The final authentication task in the framework is the signing of all VoIP calls, which would allow carriers to reliably identify robocalls.
Until these goals are achieved, a more advanced method for blocking robocalls uses real-time business intelligence techniques to address the constantly changing identities of robocalls. With access to a large enough data sample, it is possible to create algorithms which detect call patterns without requiring reporting by users.
In 2016, both Verizon and Sprint each launched their own service based on Enhanced Caller ID, which is developed by Cequint and incorporates whitelisting, blacklisting and crowdsourcing techniques. For improved accuracy, it is complemented by a technology called Call Guardian developed by TNS, which performs caller behavior analysis on the 25 billion public calls they handle every year in real time.
Call Authentication
To resolve the spoofing problem that made call blocking based on caller reputation problematic, starting in mid-2017, and with intended culmination in 2019, the FCC pushed forward Caller ID certification implemented via a methodology called SHAKEN/STIR. In June 2019, the FCC adopted a rule allowing (but not mandating) phone companies to block unwanted robocalls by default, without a consumer opt-in; a rule related to source authentication was still in a public comment period.
The TRACED Act, signed into law in December 2019, requires the FCC to implement Caller ID authentication, requires the FCC to report all criminal robocalls to the Justice Department, gives consumers access to robocall blocking at no charge, and increases penalties for violators.
Enforcement
In August 2016, a "Robocall Strike Force" of thirty companies said they would help crack down on the problem.
Enforcement and fines in the United States is not a deterrence to robocallers because the United States government rarely collects any of the fines imposed by the Federal Communications Commission ("FCC"). The FCC lacks authority to collect the fines and forfeitures, the robocallers do not voluntarily pay the fine, and the US Department of Justice does not take action to collect the fine.
2021 Federal Communications Commission Order
In 2021 the Federal Communications Commission ("FCC") released an order imposing strict limits on the number of non-telemarketing, prerecorded or artificial voice calls that can be made to residential phone lines without prior consent. The automated landline calls will also be required to include an opt-out mechanism, and callers must implement the FCC’s internal do-not-call list rules — which previously applied only to telemarketing calls.
The new order sets a limit of three calls during any consecutive 30-day period for all non-commercial calls, commercial calls that do not contain an advertisement and calls from charities. HIPAA-related residential robocalls are limited to one call per day up to three calls per week. In setting these new limits, the FCC interpreted the TRACED Act to require it to restrict the number of these types of calls to consumers, despite arguments that the TRACED Act’s language was discretionary.
2015 Federal Communications Commission Declaratory Rulings
After receiving more than 215,000 consumer complaints in 2014 alone, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) strengthened and clarified its regulations protecting consumers from unwanted robocalls and spam emails and texts. The Commission issued a package of declaratory rulings in June 2015 that clarified the provisions of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) that deal with prerecorded and artificial voice calls received by residential wireline phones as well as wireless numbers.
2009 Federal Trade Commission action against an illegal robocall provider
In May 2009, in response to numerous complaints, the Federal Trade Commission asked a federal court to shut down a telemarketing campaign that has been bombarding U.S. consumers with hundreds of millions of allegedly deceptive robocalls in an effort to sell them vehicle service contracts under the guise that they are extensions of original vehicle warranties. The FTC took action against both the promoter of the phony extended auto warranties, as well as the telemarketing company that it hired to carry out its illegal, deceptive campaign. The FTC contends that the companies are operating a massive telemarketing scheme that uses random, pre-recorded phone calls to deceive consumers into thinking that their vehicle's warranty is about to expire. Consumers who respond to the robocalls are pressured to purchase extended service contracts for their vehicles, which the telemarketers falsely portray as an extension of the manufacturer's original warranty. According to papers the FTC filed with the court, however, the robocalls have prompted tens of thousands of complaints from consumers who are either on the United States National Do Not Call Registry or asked not to be called. Five telephone numbers associated with the defendants have generated a total of 30,000 Do Not Call complaints. Consumers received the robocalls at home, work, and on their cell phones, sometimes several times in one day. Businesses, government offices and even 911 dispatchers have been subjected to the calls.
Those who answer the pre-recorded calls hear a message telling them that their vehicle warranty is about to expire and that they should "extend coverage before it is too late". They are told to "press one" to speak to a "warranty specialist". The "specialists" then mislead consumers into believing that their company is affiliated with the dealer or manufacturer of the consumer's vehicle. They try to sell consumers a service contract for between $2,000 and $3,000, which they falsely portray as an extension of the vehicle's original warranty. The seller of extended auto warranties sued by the FTC allegedly took in more than $10 million on the sale of these deceptively marketed service contracts. In their robocalls, the companies dialed every phone number within a particular area code and prefix sequentially, without knowing whether the consumers called were motorists or owned motor vehicles, or whether those consumers' numbers were on the Do Not Call Registry. Consumers who asked that the calls be stopped often were met with "abusive behavior" or were simply hung up on, according to the papers filed with the court. Some of the defendants used offshore shell corporations to try to avoid scrutiny, and a top officer in the telemarketing company bragged to prospective clients that he could operate outside the law without any chance of being caught by the FTC, the papers stated. This defendant also claimed that he makes 1.8 million dials per day and that he had done more than $40 million worth of dialing for extended warranty companies, including one billion dials on behalf of his largest client, according to the court papers filed by the FTC. In addition to the robocalls, the FTC charged that the company selling the warranties mails out deceptive postcards to consumers, warning them about the imminent expiration of their auto warranties. The postcards are designed to mislead consumers into believing that they are being contacted by their dealer or manufacturer, and the postcards offer consumers the chance to "renew" their original warranties. On May 15, 2009 U.S. District Judge John F. Grady issued the temporary restraining order against the defendants Transcontinental Warranty Inc. and Voice Touch Inc. Grady's orders also applied to Transcontinental CEO and President Christopher Cowart, Voice Touch executives James and Maureen Dunne, Voice Touch business partner Network Foundations LLC and Network Foundations executive Damian Kohlfeld. Besides ordering a halt to the automatic telephone sales calls, Grady's order froze the assets of the two companies. The FTC alleged in its complaints that the calls were part of a deceptive scheme and asked the court to assure the assets will not be lost in case they might be needed to repay consumers who have been victimized. The FTC isn't immediately seeking civil fines against the companies but may do so later, agency officials said. Attorneys general in Arkansas, Indiana and Missouri have taken similar actions over calls offering extended warranties on automobiles.
See also
Voice broadcasting
Ringless voicemail
Cold calling
Google Duplex
Truth in Caller ID Act of 2009
References
External links
National Do Not Call Registry Complaints
Federal Communications Commission Consumer Complaint Center
Phone Calls Reported to the U.S. Federal Commissions
Protecting Consumers and Businesses from Fraudulent Robocalls Congressional Research Service
Stopping Fraudulent Robocall Scams: Can More be Done?: Hearing before the Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Insurance of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, United States Senate, One Hundred Thirteenth Congress, First Session, July 10, 2013
Telemarketing
Neologisms |
925640 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command-line%20completion | Command-line completion | Command-line completion (also tab completion) is a common feature of command-line interpreters, in which the program automatically fills in partially typed commands.
Command line interpreters are programs that allow a user to interact with the underlying operating system by typing commands at a command prompt using a command line interface (CLI), in contrast to pointing and clicking a mouse in a Graphical User Interface (GUI). Command-line completion allows the user to type the first few characters of a command, program, or filename, and press a completion key (normally ) to fill in the rest of the item. The user then presses or to run the command or open the file.
Command-line completion is useful in several ways, as illustrated by the animation accompanying this article. Commonly accessed commands, especially ones with long names, require fewer keystrokes to reach. Commands with long or difficult to spell filenames can be entered by typing the first few characters and pressing a completion key, which completes the command or filename. In the case of multiple possible completions, some command-line interpreters, especially Unix shells, will list all possible completions beginning with those few characters. The user can type more characters and press again to see a new, narrowed-down list if the typed characters are still ambiguous, or else complete the command/filename with a trailing space. An alternate form of completion rotates through all matching results when the input is ambiguous.
Completable elements may include commands, arguments, file names and other entities, depending on the specific interpreter and its configuration. Command-line completion generally only works in interactive mode. That is, it cannot be invoked to complete partially typed commands in scripts or batch files, even if the completion is unambiguous. The name tab completion comes from the fact that command-line completion is often invoked by pressing the tab key.
History
Tab completion showed up early in computing history; one of the first examples appeared in the Berkeley Timesharing System for the SDS 940, where if a typed string were ambiguous, the interpreter would do nothing, but if the string was not ambiguous, it would automatically complete it without any command from the user. This feature did not work well with the all too frequent typos, and so was a mixed blessing. This feature was imitated by Tenex's developers who made an important change: Tenex used "escape recognition", in which the interpreter would not attempt to autocomplete unless the escape key was struck (thus the name) by the user. The domain was also expanded from only program names on the Berkeley system to both program names and files on Tenex. The Tenex descendant TOPS-20 moved command line completion from command interpreter to the operating system via the COMND JSYS system call, to make it available to other user applications. From there it was borrowed by Unix.
Example
To open the file with Firefox one would type:
firefox introduction-to-command-line-completion.html
This is a long command to type. Instead we can use command-line completion.
Prompting completion
The following example shows how command-line completion works in Bash. Other command line shells may perform slightly differently.
First we type the first three letters of our command:
fir
Then we press and because the only command in our system that starts with "fir" is "firefox", it will be completed to:
firefox
Then we start typing the file name:
firefox i
But this time is not the only file in the current directory that starts with "i". The directory also contains files and . The system can't decide which of these filenames we wanted to type, but it does know that the file must begin with "introduction-to-", so the command will be completed to:
firefox introduction-to-
Now we type "c":
firefox introduction-to-c
After pressing it will be completed to the whole filename:
firefox introduction-to-command-line-completion.html
In short we typed:
firic
This is just eight keystrokes, which is considerably less than 52 keystrokes we would have needed to type without using command-line completion.
Rotating completion
The following example shows how command-line completion works with rotating completion, such as Windows's CMD uses.
We follow the same procedure as for prompting completion until we have:
firefox i
We press once, with the result:
firefox introduction-to-bash.html
We press again, getting:
firefox introduction-to-command-line-completion.html
In short we typed:
firi
This is just seven keystrokes, comparable to prompting-style completion. This works best if we know what possibilities the interpreter will rotate through.
Completion in different command line interfaces
Unix shells, including Bash (the default shell in most Linux distributions) and ksh among many others, have a long-standing tradition of advanced and customizable completion capabilities.
Bash programmable completion, complete and compgen commands have been available since the beta version of 2.04 in 2000 and offers at least Pathname and filename completion.
For KornShell users, file name completion depends on the value of the EDITOR variable. If EDITOR is set to vi, you type part of the name, and then ,. If EDITOR is set to Emacs, you type part of the name, and then ,.
The Z shell (zsh) pioneered the support for fully programmable completion, allowing users to have the shell automatically complete the parameters of various commands unrelated to the shell itself, which is accomplished by priming the shell with definitions of all known switches as well as appropriate parameter types. This allows the user to e.g. type and have the shell complete only tarred gzip archives from the actual filesystem, skipping files which are incompatible with the input parameters. A modern zsh installation comes with completion definitions for over five hundred commands.
Tcsh offers default file, command, and variable name completion activated using . The 'complete' builtin command provides fully programmable completion. The source code comes with a 'complete.tcsh' file containing many examples of its completion syntax.
Windows PowerShell, the extensible command shell from Microsoft, which is based on object-oriented programming and the Microsoft .NET framework, provides powerful and customizable completion capabilities similar to those of traditional Unix shells.
The command processor of Windows NT-based systems supports basic completion. It is possible to use a separate key-binding for matching directory names only.
enables file and directory name completion characters (^F and ^D by default). Use for more information.
TweakUI can be used to configure the keys used for file name and directory name completion.
The MS-DOS command processor did not have command-line completion: pressing the tab key would just advance the cursor. However, various enhanced shells for MS-DOS, such as 4DOS, the FreeDOS version of , or the Enhanced DOSKEY.COM feature Unix-style tab completion.
Far Manager apart from its file management functions provides command history and line completion for Windows.
See also
Autocomplete
Command-line interface
Comparison of command shells
Shell
References
External links
Unix shells
A Bash completion overview - "Working more productively with bash 2.x/3.x" by Ian Macdonald
The zsh completion system, chapter from the Z Shell Manual
Completion and listing from the TCSH Manual
Windows command interpreters
(Be sure to check the "Applies to" section in each article)
Windows Server 2003:
Directory name completion
Filename completion
Windows XP
Windows 2000/NT 4
User interface techniques
Autocomplete |
2742297 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volume%20licensing | Volume licensing | In software licensing, a volume licensing is the practice of selling a license authorizing one computer program to be used on a large number of computers or by a large number of users. Customers of such licensing schemes are typically business, governmental or educational institutions, with prices for volume licensing varying depending on the type, quantity and applicable subscription-term. For example, Microsoft software available through volume-licensing programs includes Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office.
Traditionally, a volume licensing key (VLK), which could be supplied to all instances of the licensed computer program, was involved in volume licensing. With the popularity of the software as a service practices, volume licensing customers only supply their software with credentials belonging to an online user account instead, which is used for other aspects of services and provisioning.
Overview
Traditionally, a product key has been supplied with computer programs. It acts analogously to a password: The computer programs of old ask the user to prove their entitlement; in response, the user provides this key. This key, however, must only be used once, i.e. on one computer. A volume licensing key (VLK), however, can be used on several computers. Vendors can take additional steps to ensure that their products' key are only used in the intended number. These efforts are called product activation.
Volume licenses are not always transferable. For example, only some types of Microsoft volume license can be transferred, provided a formal transfer process is completed, which enables Microsoft to register the new owner. A very small number of software vendors specialize in brokering such transfers in order to allow the selling of volume licenses and keys. The most notable of these, Discount-Licensing, pioneered the sale of Microsoft volume licenses in this way.
Notable examples
Microsoft
Microsoft has been engaged in volume licensing since its inception, as the enterprise sector is its primary market. With the release of Windows XP in 2001, Microsoft introduced Microsoft Product Activation, a digital rights management (DRM) scheme to curb software piracy among consumers by verifying the user's entitlement to the product license. At the time, however, the volume-licensed versions of Windows XP were exempt from this measure. (See .) Starting with Windows Vista, Microsoft introduced two volume licensing methods for IT professionals in charge of installing Windows in organizations, both of which are covered by Microsoft Product Activation: The first is Multiple Activation Keys (MAK), which are the same as Windows XP's volume licensing keys but require product activation. The second is Key Management Server (KMS) and its corresponding keys. Hosts activated via a KMS have to report back to a software license server once every 180 days. Licenses using these schemes can be procured via the Microsoft Software Assurance program.
A large group of Microsoft customers are OEMs that assemble and sell computers, such as desktops, laptops, tablet computers and mobile device. In the devices sold by these OEMs, Windows license data is stored in the computer's BIOS in an area referred to as the "ACPI_SLIC", so that KMS can detect the use of previous Microsoft products even with the storage device removed or erased. For Windows Vista and Windows 7, the SLIC data are complementary; a volume licensing product key is still supplied with the device, which the user needs in the event of reinstalling Windows. Starting with Windows 8, however, everything needed to authorize the device is stored with SLIC data.
In 2010, Microsoft introduced the Office 365 licensing program. in which Microsoft Office, Microsoft Exchange Server and Skype for Business Server products are licensed based on the software as a service (SaaS) model: In exchange for a monthly subscription fee, software, its updates, support for them, provisioning, administration, licensing and additional services are all provided through an online web-based dashboard. In this scheme, licensed apps communicate recurrently with Microsoft over the Internet; as such, a product key needs not be issued to the user. Instead the administrator needs to sign up for Microsoft account, which holds details such as licensed apps, their number, and payment methods. This account is protected by credentials such as a username and a password.
Adobe
Introduced in 2011, Adobe Creative Cloud is a SaaS offering in which software produced by Adobe, their updates, support for them, provisioning, administration, licensing and additional services are all provided over the Internet, in exchange for a monthly subscription fee. As with the Office 365, a user account registered with Adobe is all that is required to authorize software and store payment information.
Unauthorized use
Microsoft has blocked several volume license keys that have been abused in service packs, starting with Windows XP Service Pack 1. Microsoft even developed a new key verification engine for Windows XP Service Pack 2 that could detect illicit keys, even those that had never been used before. Several security consultants have condemned the move by Microsoft, saying that leaving a large install base unpatched from various security holes is irresponsible because this unpatched install base can be leveraged in large scale Internet attacks, such as Trojan horses used to send spam e-mail. Others have come to Microsoft's defense, arguing that Microsoft should not have to provide support for illegal users. After much public outcry, Microsoft elected to disable the new key verification engine. Service Pack 2 only checks for the same small list of commonly used keys as Service Pack 1. Users of existing installations of Windows XP can also change their product key by following instructions from Microsoft.
Leaked keys
A volume license key that was commonly used to bypass product activation in early versions of Microsoft's Windows XP operating system was FCKGW-RHQQ2-YXRKT-8TG6W-2B7Q8. This key was part of the first warez release of the final version of Windows XP by a group called devils0wn, 35 days before the official retail release on 28 August 2001. The key is now obsolete, as it has been blacklisted by Microsoft since August 2004, and affected computers will display a WGA notification. It was made famous partly because it featured in a popular image circulated on the Internet before the retail launch of Windows XP. In the image, the key is written on a CD-R containing the leaked operating system and held in front of a digital Microsoft sign counting down the days until the release of Windows XP.
Users using these keys will receive an error message when they install the latest service pack, and such users are told to obtain a legitimate license and change their product key.
Public KMS servers
Any client machine with the correct KMS client setup keys can authenticate against any KMS server. KMS client keys are well known and documented publicly by Microsoft. KMS servers require a minimum of 25 clients to properly activate, but also stop counting additional licenses beyond 50, and automatically accept any client key once reaching the 25 client threshold.
Businesses operating KMS servers are required to properly shield the KMS server behind firewalls so that it cannot be reached from the Internet, and be used to authorize illegal use of KMS client keys by the general public. Public exposure of a KMS server can result in Microsoft revoking the server key, thereby disabling all attaching clients.
External KMS server access is desirable for devices on long-term leave away from the corporate network, as KMS client activation will expire after six months of not being able to contact a KMS server. For this situation, a business can make it accessible through a virtual private network (VPN) known only to the devices outside the corporate network.
KMS server and client emulators
An unofficial KMS server emulator exists that will activate Windows or Office even if the software was not licensed or paid for, regardless of whether or not there are 25 or more computers on the network, and regardless of whether or not a previous version of Windows was installed. There is also a program that will send KMS requests to a legitimate KMS server, in order to fool the server into thinking that there are 25 or more computers on the network. Microsoft considers both of these exploits to be a violation of the Terms and Conditions.
References
Microsoft software
Software licenses
Windows Vista
Windows XP |
2428957 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TwoOStwo | TwoOStwo | twoOStwo was a commercial software product developed by Parallels Software Studio (prior to its acquisition by SWsoft). The workstation software consisted of a virtual machine suite for Intel x86-compatible computers which allowed the creation and execution of multiple x86 virtual computers simultaneously. Each virtual machine instance could execute its own guest operating system including Windows, Linux, OS/2 and BSD variants.
Description
The computer and operating system instance that executes the twoOStwo process is referred to as the host machine. Instances of operating systems running inside a virtual machine are referred to as guest virtual machines. Like an emulator, twoOStwo provides a completely virtualized set of hardware to the guest operating system; for example, irrespective of make and model of the physical network adapter, the guest machine will see a Novell/Eagle NE2000 or Realtek RTL8029(AS) network adapter. twoOStwo virtualizes all devices within the virtual environment, including the video adapter, network adapter, and hard disk adapters. It also provides pass-through drivers for serial and parallel devices.
Because all guest virtual machines use the same hardware drivers irrespective of the actual hardware on the host computer, virtual machine instances are highly portable between computers. For example, a running virtual machine can be stopped, copied to another physical computer, and started.
Implementation
Conventional emulators like Bochs emulate the microprocessor, executing each guest CPU instruction by calling a software subroutine on the host machine that simulates the function of that CPU instruction. This level of abstraction allows the guest machine to run on host machines with a different type of microprocessor, but is also very slow.
A more efficient approach consists in software debugger technique. Some parts of the code are executed natively on the real processor; on 'bad' instructions, there are software interrupts that break execution of the guest operating system code and that particular instruction is emulated.
twoOStwo, as well as VMware Workstation, Virtual PC for Windows and QEMU with the kqemu add-on, take an even more optimized approach and run code directly when this is possible. This is the case for user mode and virtual 8086 mode code on x86.
The drawback is that the guest OS has to be compatible with the host CPU. So unlike an emulator, one cannot use twoOStwo to run classic Mac OS/PowerPC software on an Intel x86 processor. Another drawback is that it is not normally possible to efficiently nest virtual machines. Finally, although twoOStwo virtual machines run in user mode, twoOStwo itself requires installing various device drivers in the host operating system.
Features
Besides bridging to network adapters, CD-ROM readers and hard disk drives, twoOStwo also provides the ability to simulate some hardware. For example, an ISO image can be mounted as a CDROM and .hdd files can be mounted as hard disks.
See also
Parallels Workstation
SVISTA
VMware
User Mode Linux
Xen
Comparison of platform virtualization software
Virtualization software |
61045826 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agiloft | Agiloft | Agiloft, Inc. is a technology company specializing in business process management software in Redwood City, California. It was originally founded in October 1990 as Integral Solutions Corporation by Colin Earl.
History
Agiloft started as Integral Solutions Corporation founded by Colin Earl in 1990. The company worked on development projects for other corporations until developing its own software in 1996 called SupportWizard. SupportWizard was designed as a help desk application and by 1999 officially supported MySQL. Integral Solutions continued to build on this application adding call center and CRM functionality. For a time the company was known by the name of the SupportWizard software.
In 2003, they announced a new revision of the software operating on J2EE framework called Enterprise Wizard.
By 2007 the company offered a platform version of the software, called SaaSWizard, on which users could automate business actions through their own customization. Development continued on the EnterpriseWizard application operating on top of the platform allowing users to customize the program through a web interface. Colin Earl changed both the business and software name to Agiloft in 2012.
In 2017, Earl spoke out against the proposed H1-B reforms and stated that one of his workers, "in all likelihood, not getting his visa renewed and will return to China."
Software
Agiloft is a low-code development platform that has prebuilt modules that focus on contract management and IT service management. The platform is configured via a web-browser with dropdown menus and drag and drop tools to configure functions or build new applications. The contract management portion of the software allows for the automation of creation, workflow, and renewal of contracts which has been used in the healthcare field. This software has won PC Magazine's Editor's Choice award for several years.
See also
Project management
Cloud computing
References
External links
Companies based in Redwood City, California
Cloud applications
Document management systems
Software companies established in 1990
Software companies based in California
Workflow technology
Software companies of the United States |
305184 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null%20device | Null device | In some operating systems, the null device is a device file that discards all data written to it but reports that the write operation succeeded. This device is called /dev/null on Unix and Unix-like systems, NUL: (see TOPS-20) or NUL on CP/M and DOS (internally \DEV\NUL), nul on OS/2 and newer Windows systems (internally \Device\Null on Windows NT), NIL: on Amiga operating systems, and NL: on OpenVMS. In Windows Powershell, the equivalent is $null. It provides no data to any process that reads from it, yielding EOF immediately. In IBM operating systems DOS/360 and successors and also in OS/360 and successors such files would be assigned in JCL to DD DUMMY.
In programmer jargon, especially Unix jargon, it may also be called the bit bucket or black hole.
History
According to the Berkeley UNIX man page, Version 4 Unix, which AT&T released in 1973, included a null device.
Usage
The null device is typically used for disposing of unwanted output streams of a process, or as a convenient empty file for input streams. This is usually done by redirection.
The /dev/null device is a special file, not a directory, so one cannot move a whole file or directory into it with the Unix mv command.
References in computer culture
This entity is a common inspiration for technical jargon expressions and metaphors by Unix programmers, e.g. "please send complaints to /dev/null", "my mail got archived in /dev/null", and "redirect to /dev/null"—being jocular ways of saying, respectively: "don't bother sending complaints", "my mail was deleted", and "go away". The iPhone Dev Team commonly uses the phrase "send donations to /dev/null", meaning they do not accept donations. The fictitious person name "Dave (or Devin) Null" is sometimes similarly used (e.g., "send complaints to Dave Null"). In 1996, Dev Null was an animated virtual reality character created by Leo Laporte for MSNBC's computer and technology TV series The Site. Dev/null is also the name of a vampire hacker in the computer game Vampire: The Masquerade – Redemption. A 2002 advertisement for the Titanium PowerBook G4 reads The Titanium Powerbook G4 Sends other UNIX boxes to /dev/null.
The null device is also a favorite subject of technical jokes, such as warning users that the system's /dev/null is already 98% full. The 1995 April Fool's issue of the German magazine c't reported on an enhanced /dev/null chip that would efficiently dispose of the incoming data by converting it to a flicker on an internal glowing LED.
See also
Filesystem Hierarchy Standard
Memory hole
rm (Unix)
Standard streams
Unix philosophy
Write-only memory
Notes
References
CP/M technology
Unix file system technology
Device file
Computer humor |
6051781 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halifax%20Trojan%20Aquatic%20Club | Halifax Trojan Aquatic Club | The Halifax Trojan Aquatic Club (HTAC) is a competitive swim team in Nova Scotia. HTAC is based out of Dalplex, the athletic facility for Dalhousie University, in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The Trojans also use Halifax's Centennial Pool as a secondary training facility.
HTAC is one of the oldest and largest swim teams in Atlantic Canada. The Trojans have over 300 members at various competitive levels, ranging from novice/introductory levels through to nationally ranked competitors.
The Trojans have won many Swim Nova Scotia Short Course and Long Course Provincial Championship titles as well as several Short and Long Course East Coast Championships titles over its history.
Famous swimmers
Nancy Garapick, double Bronze Medalist and World Record holder at the 1976 Summer Olympics
Susan Mason, National Team Member
Carwai Seto, represented Taiwan at the 1988 Summer Olympics
David Sharpe, represented Canada at the 2012 Summer Olympics
External links
Official team site
Swim Meet Results
Swim teams in Canada |
6323226 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SymbOS | SymbOS | SYmbiosis Multitasking Based Operating System (SymbOS) is a multitasking operating system for Zilog Z80-based 8-bit computer systems.
Contrary to early 8-bit operating systems it is based on a microkernel, which provides preemptive and priority-oriented multitasking and manages random-access memory (RAM) with a size of up to 1024 KB. SymbOS contains a Microsoft Windows like graphical user interface (GUI), supports hard disks with a capacity of up to 128 GB and can already be booted on an unexpanded Amstrad CPC-6128, a 128K-MSX2 and an Amstrad PCW.
As of August 30th 2017 it is available for the Amstrad CPC series of computers, all MSX models starting from the MSX2 standard, MSX with V9990 graphics chip, all Amstrad PCW models, CPC-TREX, C-ONE and the Enterprise 64/128 computers.
Motivation and rationale
SymbOS was originally started as an experiment to find out to what extent it is possible to implement a multitasking operating system with a windowed GUI on an 8-bit computer from 1985. GEOS contributed to the motivation, but the structure and features of SymbOS aren't similar to that system. The release in 2006 proved that such a "mini windows" system is possible on a then 20-year-old home computer with only quantitative limitations. SymbOS is one of the largest retro computing software projects of recent years. One of the goals of the project is to allow these old machines to be used like a modern PC, using hardware extensions.
Although only an 8-bit CPU, the Z80 can run a preemptive multitasking operating system. Features such as memory protection, which the Z80 lacks, are not essential in such an OS. For example, AmigaOS also lacks memory protection. The MP/M OS proved that multitasking on the Z80 CPU was possible. Yet, it was generally unavailable for home computers.
While the MOS Technology 6502 cannot move the stack pointer, the Z80 can freely relocate it to any position in memory, which makes it easier to implement preemptive multitasking. The existence of an alternative register set accelerates context switching between tasks dramatically. The restriction of Z80 system to a 64 KB address space can be solved with bank switching. In this way, computers like the Amstrad CPC and PCW, MSX, Enterprise or SAM Coupé can access hundreds or thousands of kilobytes of memory.
Design
SymbOS includes a microkernel, which can perform task management, memory management and inter-process communication.
Task management
For task management, a combination of preemptive and cooperative multitasking was chosen, which makes different task priorities possible. Preemptive means that tasks are interrupted after a certain amount of time by the operating system, in order to share the CPU time with other tasks. Cooperatively means that a task stops using CPU time by itself. It does that, if it's finished with its current job or waiting for a certain event. Because of this combination it is possible to assign priorities. Tasks with low priority get CPU time only if all tasks with higher priorities are not then working.
Memory and banking management
Memory management divides the entire RAM into small 256 byte blocks, which can be assigned dynamically. Applications are always running in a secondary 64 KB RAM bank, where no memory space is occupied by the operating system or the video memory. That makes it possible to reserve up to 63 KB in one piece.
Banking management ensures that the system can administer memory with a size of up to one megabyte, even though the Z80 CPU has only a 16-bit address bus. It makes transparent access to memory and functions placed in other 64 KB banks possible.
Interprocess communication
Communication between different tasks and the operating system usually does not take place via calls, but is done via messages. This is necessary inside a multitasking environment to avoid organization problems with the stack, global variables and shared system resources. The SymbOS kernel supports synchronous and asynchronous IPC.
File system management
SymbOS supports the file systems CP/M, AMSDOS, and File Allocation Table (FAT) 12-16-32, on all platforms. With the last one, SymbOS can address mass storage devices with a capacity of up to 128 GB. Also, the ability to administer files with a size of up to 2 GB is uncommon for an 8-bit system. Because of the FAT support data exchange with other computers is quite easy, as most 32 and 64 bit operating systems do support the three FAT file systems.
Interface
The graphical user interface (GUI) of SymbOS works in a fully object-oriented manner. The look and feel mimics that of Microsoft Windows. It contains the well-known task bar with the clock and the "start" menu and can open up to 32 windows that can be moved, resized and scrolled. The whole system is written in optimized assembly language, meaning that the GUI runs as fast as the host machine supports.
Content of a window is defined with "controls" that are primitive GUI elements such as sliders, check boxes, text lines, buttons or graphics. The background or invisible areas of a window don't need to be saved in a separate bitmap buffer. If an area needs to be restored on the display, its contents will be redrawn instead. This makes SymbOS GUI much more memory-friendly compared to most other 8-bit GUIs.
Applications
There are several standard applications available for SymbOS, which are designed to resemble similar software available on other operating systems. Examples include Notepad, SymCommander (similar to Norton Commander), SymShell (cmd.exe), SymZilla (Mozilla Firefox), SymPlay (QuickTime), SymAmp (Winamp) and Minesweeper.
Commands
The following list of commands is supported by SymShell.
ATTRIB
CD
CLS
COLOR
COPY
DATE
DEL
DIR
ECHO
EXIT
FULL
HELP
MD
MOVE
PAUSE
RD
REM
REN
SIZE
TIME
TYPE
VER
Development and release
SymbOS was originally developed for the Amstrad CPC. Its modular structure, with strict separation of general and hardware components, makes porting to other Z80-based systems comparatively easy.
The MSX computers starting with the MSX2 standard have been supported since summer 2006. The Amstrad PCW port has been available since August 2007. Versions for the Enterprise 128, the SAM Coupé and such clones of ZXSpectrum as ATM-turbo 2+ and ZX-Evolution/BaseConf are possible, too, as they fulfill the requirements for SymbOS.
By keeping a basic condition for an operating system, the strict separation of hardware and application software by an intermediate layer, SymbOS applications run platform-independently on each computer and doesn't need to be adapted for different systems, with the obvious exception of applications that directly access particular hardware.
See also
Contiki
MSX-DOS
OS-9
References
External links
SymbOS installation help file
SymbOS mailing list
Page at the CPCWiki
SymbOS demo video running on a real MSX turboR GT with MP3MSX cartridge
Amstrad CPC
MSX
Hobbyist operating systems |
54224652 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History%20of%20the%20Berkeley%20Software%20Distribution | History of the Berkeley Software Distribution | The History of the Berkeley Software Distribution begins in the 1970s.
1BSD (PDP-11)
The earliest distributions of Unix from Bell Labs in the 1970s included the source code to the operating system, allowing researchers at universities to modify and extend Unix. The operating system arrived at Berkeley in 1974, at the request of computer science professor Bob Fabry who had been on the program committee for the Symposium on Operating Systems Principles where Unix was first presented. A PDP-11/45 was bought to run the system, but for budgetary reasons, this machine was shared with the mathematics and statistics groups at Berkeley, who used RSTS, so that Unix only ran on the machine eight hours per day (sometimes during the day, sometimes during the night). A larger PDP-11/70 was installed at Berkeley the following year, using money from the Ingres database project.
Also in 1975, Ken Thompson took a sabbatical from Bell Labs and came to Berkeley as a visiting professor. He helped to install Version 6 Unix and started working on a Pascal implementation for the system. Graduate students Chuck Haley and Bill Joy improved Thompson's Pascal and implemented an improved text editor, ex. Other universities became interested in the software at Berkeley, and so in 1977 Joy started compiling the first Berkeley Software Distribution (1BSD), which was released on March 9, 1978. 1BSD was an add-on to Version 6 Unix rather than a complete operating system in its own right. Some thirty copies were sent out.
2BSD (PDP-11)
The Second Berkeley Software Distribution (2BSD), released in May 1979, included updated versions of the 1BSD software as well as two new programs by Joy that persist on Unix systems to this day: the vi text editor (a visual version of ex) and the C shell. Some 75 copies of 2BSD were sent out by Bill Joy. A further feature was a networking package called Berknet, developed by Eric Schmidt as part of his master's thesis work, that could connect up to twenty-six computers and provided email and file transfer.
After 3BSD (see below) had come out for the VAX line of computers, new releases of 2BSD for the PDP-11 were still issued and distributed through USENIX; for example, 1982's 2.8.1BSD included a collection of fixes for performance problems in Version 7 Unix, and later releases contained ports of changes from the VAX-based releases of BSD back to the PDP-11 architecture. 2.9BSD from 1983 included code from 4.1cBSD, and was the first release that was a full OS (a modified V7 Unix) rather than a set of applications and patches.
The most recent release, 2.11BSD, was first issued in 1991. In the 21st Century, maintenance updates from volunteers continued: patch #473 was released on January 25, 2022.
3BSD
A VAX computer was installed at Berkeley in 1978, but the port of Unix to the VAX architecture, UNIX/32V, did not take advantage of the VAX's virtual memory capabilities. The kernel of 32V was largely rewritten by Berkeley graduate student Ozalp Babaoglu to include a virtual memory implementation, and a complete operating system including the new kernel, ports of the 2BSD utilities to the VAX, and the utilities from 32V was released as 3BSD at the end of 1979. 3BSD was also alternatively called Virtual VAX/UNIX or VMUNIX (for Virtual Memory Unix), and BSD kernel images were normally called /vmunix until 4.4BSD.
The success of 3BSD was a major factor in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) decision to fund Berkeley's Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG), which would develop a standard Unix platform for future DARPA research in the VLSI Project.
4BSD
4BSD (November 1980) offered a number of enhancements over 3BSD, notably job control in the previously released csh, delivermail (the antecedent of sendmail), "reliable" signals, and the Curses programming library. In a 1985 review of BSD releases, John Quarterman et al., wrote:
4.1BSD
4.1BSD (June 1981) was a response to criticisms of BSD's performance relative to the dominant VAX operating system, VMS. The 4.1BSD kernel was systematically tuned up by Bill Joy until it could perform as well as VMS on several benchmarks. The release would have been called 5BSD, but after objections from AT&T the name was changed; AT&T feared confusion with AT&T's UNIX System V.
4.2BSD
4.2BSD (August 1983) would take over two years to implement and contained several major overhauls. Before its official release came three intermediate versions: 4.1a from April 1982 incorporated a modified version of BBN's preliminary TCP/IP implementation; 4.1b from June 1982 included the new Berkeley Fast File System, implemented by Marshall Kirk McKusick; and 4.1c in April 1983 was an interim release during the last few months of 4.2BSD's development. Back at Bell Labs, 4.1cBSD became the basis of the 8th Edition of Research Unix, and a commercially supported version was available from mtXinu.
To guide the design of 4.2BSD, Duane Adams of DARPA formed a "steering committee" consisting of Bob Fabry, Bill Joy and Sam Leffler from UCB, Alan Nemeth and Rob Gurwitz from BBN, Dennis Ritchie from Bell Labs, Keith Lantz from Stanford, Rick Rashid from Carnegie-Mellon, Bert Halstead from MIT, Dan Lynch from ISI, and Gerald J. Popek of UCLA. The committee met from April 1981 to June 1983.
Apart from the Fast File System, several features from outside contributors were accepted, including disk quotas and job control. Sun Microsystems provided testing on its Motorola 68000 machines prior to release, ensuring portability of the system.
The official 4.2BSD release came in August 1983. It was notable as the first version released after the 1982 departure of Bill Joy to co-found Sun Microsystems; Mike Karels and Marshall Kirk McKusick took on leadership roles within the project from that point forward. On a lighter note, it also marked the debut of BSD's daemon mascot in a drawing by John Lasseter that appeared on the cover of the printed manuals distributed by USENIX.
4.3BSD
4.3BSD was released in June 1986. Its main changes were to improve the performance of many of the new contributions of 4.2BSD that had not been as heavily tuned as the 4.1BSD code. Prior to the release, BSD's implementation of TCP/IP had diverged considerably from BBN's official implementation. After several months of testing, DARPA determined that the 4.2BSD version was superior and would remain in 4.3BSD. (See also History of the Internet.)
After 4.3BSD, it was determined that BSD would move away from the aging VAX platform. The Power 6/32 platform (codenamed "Tahoe") developed by Computer Consoles Inc. seemed promising at the time, but was abandoned by its developers shortly thereafter. Nonetheless, the 4.3BSD-Tahoe port (June 1988) proved valuable, as it led to a separation of machine-dependent and machine-independent code in BSD which would improve the system's future portability.
Apart from portability, the CSRG worked on an implementation of the OSI network protocol stack, improvements to the kernel virtual memory system and (with Van Jacobson of LBL) new TCP/IP algorithms to accommodate the growth of the Internet.
Until then, all versions of BSD incorporated proprietary AT&T Unix code and were, therefore, subject to an AT&T software license. Source code licenses had become very expensive and several outside parties had expressed interest in a separate release of the networking code, which had been developed entirely outside AT&T and would not be subject to the licensing requirement. This led to Networking Release 1 (Net/1), which was made available to non-licensees of AT&T code and was freely redistributable under the terms of the BSD license. It was released in June 1989.
4.3BSD-Reno came in early 1990. It was an interim release during the early development of 4.4BSD, and its use was considered a "gamble", hence the naming after the gambling center of Reno, Nevada. This release was explicitly moving towards POSIX compliance, and, according to some, away from the BSD philosophy (as POSIX is very much based on System V, and Reno was quite bloated compared to previous releases). Among the new features were an NFS implementation from the University of Guelph, a status key ("Ctrl-T") and support for the HP 9000 range of computers, originating in the University of Utah's "HPBSD" port.
In August 2006, InformationWeek magazine rated 4.3BSD as the "Greatest Software Ever Written". They commented: "BSD 4.3 represents the single biggest theoretical undergirder of the Internet."
Net/2 and legal troubles
After Net/1, BSD developer Keith Bostic proposed that more non-AT&T sections of the BSD system be released under the same license as Net/1. To this end, he started a project to reimplement most of the standard Unix utilities without using the AT&T code. For example, vi, which had been based on the original Unix version of ed, was rewritten as nvi (new vi). Within eighteen months, all of the AT&T utilities had been replaced, and it was determined that only a few AT&T files remained in the kernel. These files were removed, and the result was the June 1991 release of Networking Release 2 (Net/2), a nearly complete operating system that was freely distributable.
Net/2 was the basis for two separate ports of BSD to the Intel 80386 architecture: the free 386BSD by William Jolitz and the proprietary BSD/386 (later renamed BSD/OS) by Berkeley Software Design (BSDi). 386BSD itself was short-lived, but became the initial code base of the NetBSD and FreeBSD projects that were started shortly thereafter.
BSDi soon found itself in legal trouble with AT&T's Unix System Laboratories (USL) subsidiary, then the owners of the System V copyright and the Unix trademark. The USL v. BSDi lawsuit was filed in April 1992 and led to an injunction on the distribution of Net/2 until the validity of USL's copyright claims on the source could be determined.
The lawsuit slowed development of the free-software descendants of BSD for nearly two years while their legal status was in question, and as a result systems based on the Linux kernel, which did not have such legal ambiguity, gained greater support. Although not released until 1992, development of 386BSD predated that of Linux. Linus Torvalds has said that if 386BSD or the GNU kernel had been available at the time, he probably would not have created Linux.
4.4BSD and descendants
In June 1993, 4.4BSD-Encumbered was released only to USL licensees.
The lawsuit was settled in January 1994, largely in Berkeley's favor. Of the 18,000 files in the Berkeley distribution, only three had to be removed and 70 modified to show USL copyright notices. A further condition of the settlement was that USL would not file further lawsuits against users and distributors of the Berkeley-owned code in the upcoming 4.4BSD release. Marshall Kirk McKusick summarizes the lawsuit and its outcome:
In March 1994, 4.4BSD-Lite was released that no longer require a USL source license and also contained many other changes over the original 4.4BSD-Encumbered release.
The final release from Berkeley was 1995's 4.4BSD-Lite Release 2, after which the CSRG was dissolved and development of BSD at Berkeley ceased. Since then, several variants based directly or indirectly on 4.4BSD-Lite (such as FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD and DragonFly BSD) have been maintained.
In addition, the permissive nature of the BSD license has allowed many other operating systems, both free and proprietary, to incorporate BSD code. For example, Microsoft Windows has used BSD-derived code in its implementation of TCP/IP and bundles recompiled versions of BSD's command-line networking tools since Windows 2000. Also Darwin, the system on which Apple's macOS is built, is a derivative of 4.4BSD-Lite2 and FreeBSD. Various commercial Unix operating systems, such as Solaris, also contain varying amounts of BSD code.
Significant BSD descendants
BSD has been the base of a large number of operating systems. Most notable among these today are perhaps the major open source BSDs: FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD, which are all derived from 386BSD and 4.4BSD-Lite by various routes. Both NetBSD and FreeBSD started life in 1993, initially derived from 386BSD, but in 1994 migrating to a 4.4BSD-Lite code base. OpenBSD was forked in 1995 from NetBSD. A number of commercial operating systems are also partly or wholly based on BSD or its descendants, including Sun's SunOS and Apple Inc.'s macOS.
Most of the current BSD operating systems are open source and available for download, free of charge, under the BSD License, the most notable exception being macOS. They also generally use a monolithic kernel architecture, apart from macOS and DragonFly BSD which feature hybrid kernels. The various open source BSD projects generally develop the kernel and userland programs and libraries together, the source code being managed using a single central source repository.
In the past, BSD was also used as a basis for several proprietary versions of Unix, such as Sun's SunOS, Sequent's Dynix, NeXT's NeXTSTEP, DEC's Ultrix and OSF/1 AXP (now Tru64 UNIX). Parts of NeXT's software became the foundation for macOS, among the most commercially successful BSD variants in the general market.
A selection of significant Unix versions and Unix-like operating systems that descend from BSD includes:
FreeBSD, an open source general purpose operating system.
NeXT NEXTSTEP and OPENSTEP, based on the Mach kernel and 4BSD; the ancestor of macOS
Apple Inc.'s Darwin, the core of macOS and iOS; built on the XNU kernel (part Mach, part FreeBSD, part Apple-derived code) and a userland much of which comes from FreeBSD
Orbis OS, Sony's fork of FreeBSD 9 is the operating system for the PS4. CellOS for the PS3 system is believed to also be a FreeBSD fork, and is known to contain FreeBSD and NetBSD code
TrueOS, GhostBSD and DesktopBSD, distributions of FreeBSD with emphasis on ease of use and user friendly interfaces for the desktop/laptop PC user.
MidnightBSD, another fork of FreeBSD
DragonFly BSD, a fork of FreeBSD to follow an alternative design, particularly related to SMP.
NextBSD, new BSD distribution derived from FreeBSD 10.1 and various macOS components.
FreeNAS a free network-attached storage server based on a minimal version of FreeBSD.
NAS4Free fork of 0.7 FreeNAS version, Network attached storage server.
Nokia IPSO (IPSO SB variant), the FreeBSD-based OS used in Nokia Firewall Appliances.
The OS for the Netflix Open Connect Appliance.
Junos, the operating system for Juniper routers, a customized version of FreeBSD, and a variety of other embedded operating systems
Isilon Systems' OneFS, the operating system used on Isilon IQ-series clustered storage systems, is a heavily customized version of FreeBSD.
NetApp's Data ONTAP, the operating system for NetApp filers, is a customized version of FreeBSD with the ONTAP architecture built on top.
m0n0wall, a FreeBSD distribution tweaked for usage as a firewall.
pfSense free open source FreeBSD based firewall/router.
OPNsense, firewall, a fork of pfSense
Coyote Point Systems EQ/OS, a hardened high-performance runtime for server load balancing.
NetBSD, an open source BSD focused on clean design and portability.
OpenBSD, a 1995 fork of NetBSD, focused on security.
Force10 FTOS, the operating system for Force 10 and Dell datacenter network switches.
Dell DNOS version 9 and above, the successor to FTOS.
TrustedBSD
F5 Networks, F5 BIGIP Appliances used a BSD OS as the management OS until version 9.0 was released, which is built on top of Linux.
DEC's Ultrix, the official version of Unix for its PDP-11, VAX, and DECstation systems
Sony NEWS-OS, a BSD-based operating system for their network engineering workstations
OSF/1, a hybrid kernel based Unix developed by the Open Software Foundation, incorporating a modified Mach kernel and parts of 4BSD
Tru64 UNIX (formerly DEC OSF/1 AXP or Digital UNIX), the port of OSF/1 for DEC Alpha-based systems from DEC, Compaq and HP.
Pre-5.0 versions of Sun Microsystems SunOS, an enhanced version of 4BSD for the Sun Motorola 68k-based Sun-2 and Sun-3 systems, SPARC-based systems, and x86-based Sun386i systems (SunOS 5.0 and later versions are System V Release 4-based)
386BSD, the first open source BSD-based operating system and the ancestor of most current BSD systems
DEMOS, a Soviet BSD clone
BSD/OS, a (now defunct) proprietary BSD for PCs
RetroBSD, a fork of BSD 2.11 designed to run on microcontrollers such as the PIC32
LiteBSD, a variant of 4.4BSD Unix for PIC32MZ microcontrollers
See also
BSD Daemon
BSD licenses
Comparison of BSD operating systems
List of BSD operating systems
References
External links
A timeline of BSD and Research UNIX
Berkeley Software Distribution
History of free and open-source software
History of software |
1509500 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conexant | Conexant | Conexant Systems, Inc. was an American-based software developer and fabless semiconductor company that developed technology for voice and audio processing, imaging and modems. The company began as a division of Rockwell International, before being spun off as a public company. Conexant itself then spun off several business units, creating independent public companies which included Skyworks Solutions and Mindspeed Technologies.
The company was acquired by computing interface technology company Synaptics, Inc. in July 2017.
History
In 1996, Rockwell International Corporation incorporated its semiconductor division as Rockwell Semiconductor Systems, Inc. On January 4, 1999, Rockwell spun off Conexant Systems, Inc. as a public company. It was listed on the NASDAQ under symbol CNXT on January 4, 1999. At that time, Conexant became the world's largest, standalone communications-IC company. Dwight W. Decker was its first chief executive officer and chairman of its board of directors. The company was based in Newport Beach, California.
In the early 2000s, Conexant spun off several standalone technology businesses to create public companies.
In March 2002, Conexant entered into a joint venture agreement with The Carlyle Group to share ownership of its wafer fabrication plant, called Jazz Semiconductor.
In June 2002, Conexant spun off its wireless communications division, which merged immediately following the spinoff with Massachusetts-based chip manufacturer Alpha Industries Inc. to form publicly held Skyworks Solutions Inc. In June 2003, Conexant spun off its Internet infrastructure business to create the publicly held company Mindspeed Technologies Inc. Mindspeed would eventually be acquired by Lowell, MA-based M/A-COM Technology Solutions.
In 2004, Conexant merged with Red Bank, New Jersey semiconductor company GlobespanVirata, Inc., with Conexant as the surviving corporation. Subsequently, GlobespanVirata’s name was changed to Conexant, Inc.
In April 2008, Conexant announced the sale of its broadband media processing business, which provided products for satellite, cable and IPTV applications, to Dutch semiconductor manufacturer NXP Semiconductors NV.
In September 2008, Jazz was sold to Israel-based Tower Semiconductor Ltd and became known as TowerJazz.
In August 2009, Conexant sold its broadband access product line to Fremont, CA semiconductor company Ikanos Communications.
In February 2011, an agreement was announced for San Francisco investment firm Golden Gate Capital to acquire all of the outstanding shares of Conexant at a price of $2.40 per share, and take the company private.
In February 2013, citing the burden of servicing debt related to multiple corporate acquisitions in the late 1990s, as well as the loss of revenue from the bankruptcy of key customer Eastman Kodak, Conexant filed for Chapter 11 protection in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware. As part of the bankruptcy agreement, the company agreed on a restructuring plan with owners and its sole secured lender, QP SFM Capital Holdings Ltd. The reorganized company emerged from bankruptcy in July 2013. As part of the operational restructuring, the company moved its headquarters from Newport Beach to nearby Irvine, and focused on a narrower product portfolio, consisting of far-field voice input processing-based devices, video surveillance and printer systems on a chip (SoCs).
Since 2013, Conexant's silicon and software solutions for voice processing have been instrumental in the CE industry's proliferation of voice-enabled devices. The company's AudioSmart brand of voice input processors and embedded far-field processing software has become adopted by CE device manufacturers in numerous products ranging from Artificially Intelligent digital assistant devices and smart speakers to voice-enabled televisions and personal robots. In February 2016, it was announced that Korean electronics company LG Electronics was going to integrate Conexant's CX2092x far-field voice input processor system-on-chip (SoC) into two of its smart home products: a set top box and an IoT hub for controlling home electronic devices.
In March 2016, Conexant announced that their AudioSmart software was being integrated into Qualcomm's Hexagon digital signal processor family, a major component of Qualcomm's Snapdragon processor reportedly contained in over 1 billion smart devices.
In December 2016, Conexant and Amazon co-announced the AudioSmart 2-Mic Development Kit for Amazon AVS, a commercial-grade reference solution that streamlines the design and implementation of audio front end systems. Based on the Conexant AudioSmart™ CX20921 Voice Input Processor, the dual microphone board was designed to reduce time-to-market for new third-party voice-enabled Alexa devices.
On 11 May 2017 news appeared that security researchers discovered that Conexant's audio drivers were installing keylogger software, including many laptops sold by HP. The keylogger writes every single keystroke typed by a user (including passwords) and stores them in an unencrypted file on the user's computer.
On July 26, 2017, Synaptics completed its acquisition of Conexant Systems, LLC.
By November 2017, Conexant.com was no longer available. Synaptics provided no information about what it did with the website.
Product line
Conexant had two main product families: the AudioSmart brand of audio processors and the ImagingSmart brand of image processors and modems.
AudioSmart
AudioSmart was a line of analog-to-digital converters (AD Converter), codecs, USB digital signal processor (DSP) codecs, voice/speech processors, and software that improved how audio signals are processed for electronic audio equipment.
AD Converters - Conexant's analog to digital converters were used for far-field voice/speech capture applications. They converted analog signals to digital in order to enhance the signal before transmitting it to third party speech recognition products. The technology is used in voice-enabled consumer products. A low power version with a standby mode and a fast wake up mode is used for battery powered devices.
Codecs - Conexant's codecs encoded and decoded digital signals, to allow transmission, storage, encryption, and playback or editing. The codecs were used to improve audio signals in tablets and PCs, and for consumer audio applications such as conferencing, streaming media and editing.
USB & I2S DSP codecs - Conexant's DSP codecs had USB and integrated interchip sound (I2S) interfaces to connect to electronic devices such as headsets and docking stations.
VoiceSpeech processors - Conexant's VoiceSpeech line of system-on-chip (SoC) speech processors added voice command capabilities to smart TVs. Far-field voice pre-processing algorithms and 24-bit analog-to-digital conversion prevent a noisy television itself from interfering with a user's commands. The company's Smart Source Pickup technology maintained speech recognition in the presence of external noise. At CES 2016, Conexant introduced a new four microphone voice input processor for smart voice applications, which included the company's Smart Source Locator (SSL) software, which gave the chip 360-degree voice location and speech recognition within 15 meters.
AudioSmart software - Conexant developed AudioSmart software, audio and voice processing technologies for far-field voice communication and far-field speech control. Applications included speech recognition for smart home, smart phone, IoT, robotic and wearable devices, voice calls using social media apps, or Skype calling. Conexant's AudioSmart software was available on Windows, Android and Linux operating systems.
ImagingSmart
ImagingSmart was a line of silicon and software to improve performance of image dependent electronic equipment, such as document and photo imaging controllers, digital video, and devices with integrated fax or data modems, such as printers or point of sale terminals.
Document and photo imaging controllers - Conexant offered products for single-function and multi-function printers, photo printers, and other advanced printers. The chips integrate input/output features, including USB and serial, and embedded firmware allows printing to shared printers using tablets or smartphones. The technology was compatible using Wi-Fi with several cloud computing printing services.
Digital video - Conexant's digital video and image encoders and HD processors were designed to improve video communications. The company also offered analog video decoders which capture and convert analog, terrestrial, and digital broadcast video.
Fax modem chips and data modem chips - Conexant's fax modem chips with VoIP support added fax modem functionality to multi-function printers. The low-power chips supported v.34 packet connectivity over enterprise networks, per the ITU-T G.1050 Network model for evaluating multimedia transmission performance over Internet Protocol. Data modem chips are deployed in point of sale terminals.
Operations
Conexant's headquarters was in Irvine, California.
References
External links
PCBA manufacturer in China
Companies based in Irvine, California
Companies formerly listed on the Nasdaq
Electronics companies disestablished in 2017
Defunct semiconductor companies of the United States
Fabless semiconductor companies
Software companies established in 1999
Software companies disestablished in 2017
1999 establishments in California
2017 disestablishments in California
2017 mergers and acquisitions |
1707086 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tag%20%28metadata%29 | Tag (metadata) | In information systems, a tag is a keyword or term assigned to a piece of information (such as an Internet bookmark, multimedia, database record, or computer file). This kind of metadata helps describe an item and allows it to be found again by browsing or searching. Tags are generally chosen informally and personally by the item's creator or by its viewer, depending on the system, although they may also be chosen from a controlled vocabulary.
Tagging was popularized by websites associated with Web 2.0 and is an important feature of many Web 2.0 services. It is now also part of other database systems, desktop applications, and operating systems.
Overview
People use tags to aid classification, mark ownership, note boundaries, and indicate online identity. Tags may take the form of words, images, or other identifying marks. An analogous example of tags in the physical world is museum object tagging. People were using textual keywords to classify information and objects long before computers. Computer based search algorithms made the use of such keywords a rapid way of exploring records.
Tagging gained popularity due to the growth of social bookmarking, image sharing, and social networking websites. These sites allow users to create and manage labels (or "tags") that categorize content using simple keywords. Websites that include tags often display collections of tags as tag clouds, as do some desktop applications. On websites that aggregate the tags of all users, an individual user's tags can be useful both to them and to the larger community of the website's users.
Tagging systems have sometimes been classified into two kinds: top-down and bottom-up. Top-down taxonomies are created by an authorized group of designers (sometimes in the form of a controlled vocabulary), whereas bottom-up taxonomies (called folksonomies) are created by all users. This definition of "top down" and "bottom up" should not be confused with the distinction between a single hierarchical tree structure (in which there is one correct way to classify each item) versus multiple non-hierarchical sets (in which there are multiple ways to classify an item); the structure of both top-down and bottom-up taxonomies may be either hierarchical, non-hierarchical, or a combination of both. Some researchers and applications have experimented with combining hierarchical and non-hierarchical tagging to aid in information retrieval. Others are combining top-down and bottom-up tagging, including in some large library catalogs (OPACs) such as WorldCat.
When tags or other taxonomies have further properties (or semantics) such as relationships and attributes, they constitute an ontology.
Metadata tags as described in this article should not be confused with the use of the word "tag" in some software to refer to an automatically generated cross-reference; examples of the latter are tags tables in Emacs and smart tags in Microsoft Office.
History
The use of keywords as part of an identification and classification system long predates computers. Paper data storage devices, notably edge-notched cards, that permitted classification and sorting by multiple criteria were already in use prior to the twentieth century, and faceted classification has been used by libraries since the 1930s.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Unix text editor Emacs offered a companion software program called Tags that could automatically build a table of cross-references called a tags table that Emacs could use to jump between a function call and that function's definition. This use of the word "tag" did not refer to metadata tags, but was an early use of the word "tag" in software to refer to a word index.
Online databases and early websites deployed keyword tags as a way for publishers to help users find content. In the early days of the World Wide Web, the keywords meta element was used by web designers to tell web search engines what the web page was about, but these keywords were only visible in a web page's source code and were not modifiable by users.
In 1997, the collaborative portal "A Description of the Equator and Some ØtherLands" produced by documenta X, Germany, used the folksonomic term Tag for its co-authors and guest authors on its Upload page. In "The Equator" the term Tag for user-input was described as an abstract literal or keyword to aid the user. However, users defined singular Tags, and did not share Tags at that point.
In 2003, the social bookmarking website Delicious provided a way for its users to add "tags" to their bookmarks (as a way to help find them later); Delicious also provided browseable aggregated views of the bookmarks of all users featuring a particular tag. Within a couple of years, the photo sharing website Flickr allowed its users to add their own text tags to each of their pictures, constructing flexible and easy metadata that made the pictures highly searchable. The success of Flickr and the influence of Delicious popularized the concept, and other social software websites—such as YouTube, Technorati, and Last.fm—also implemented tagging. In 2005, the Atom web syndication standard provided a "category" element for inserting subject categories into web feeds, and in 2007 Tim Bray proposed a "tag" URN.
Examples
Within a blog
Many systems (and other web content management systems) allow authors to add free-form tags to a post, along with (or instead of) placing the post into a predetermined category. For example, a post may display that it has been tagged with baseball and tickets. Each of those tags is usually a web link leading to a index page listing all of the posts associated with that tag. The blog may have a sidebar listing all the tags in use on that blog, with each tag leading to an index page. To reclassify a post, an author edits its list of tags. All connections between posts are automatically tracked and updated by the blog software; there is no need to relocate the page within a complex hierarchy of categories.
Within application software
Some desktop applications and web applications feature their own tagging systems, such as email tagging in Gmail and Mozilla Thunderbird, bookmark tagging in Firefox, audio tagging in iTunes or Winamp, and photo tagging in various applications. Some of these applications display collections of tags as tag clouds.
Assigned to computer files
There are various systems for applying tags to the files in a computer's file system.
In Apple's Mac System 7, released in 1991, users could assign one of seven editable colored labels (with editable names such as "Essential", "Hot", and "In Progress") to each file and folder. In later iterations of the Mac operating system ever since OS X 10.9 was released in 2013, users could assign multiple arbitrary tags as extended file attributes to any file or folder, and before that time the open-source OpenMeta standard provided similar tagging functionality for Mac OS X.
Several semantic file systems that implement tags are available for the Linux kernel, including Tagsistant.
Microsoft Windows allows users to set tags only on Microsoft Office documents and some kinds of picture files.
Cross-platform file tagging standards include Extensible Metadata Platform (XMP), an ISO standard for embedding metadata into popular image, video and document file formats, such as JPEG and PDF, without breaking their readability by applications that do not support XMP. XMP largely supersedes the earlier IPTC Information Interchange Model. Exif is a standard that specifies the image and audio file formats used by digital cameras, including some metadata tags. TagSpaces is an open-source cross-platform application for tagging files; it inserts tags into the filename.
For an event
An official tag is a keyword adopted by events and conferences for participants to use in their web publications, such as blog entries, photos of the event, and presentation slides. Search engines can then index them to make relevant materials related to the event searchable in a uniform way. In this case, the tag is part of a controlled vocabulary.
In research
A researcher may work with a large collection of items (e.g. press quotes, a bibliography, images) in digital form. If he/she wishes to associate each with a small number of themes (e.g. to chapters of a book, or to sub-themes of the overall subject), then a group of tags for these themes can be attached to each of the items in the larger collection. In this way, freeform classification allows the author to manage what would otherwise be unwieldy amounts of information.
Special types
Triple tags
A triple tag or machine tag uses a special syntax to define extra semantic information about the tag, making it easier or more meaningful for interpretation by a computer program. Triple tags comprise three parts: a namespace, a predicate, and a value. For example, geo:long=50.123456 is a tag for the geographical longitude coordinate whose value is 50.123456. This triple structure is similar to the Resource Description Framework model for information.
The triple tag format was first devised for geolicious in November 2004, to map Delicious bookmarks, and gained wider acceptance after its adoption by Mappr and GeoBloggers to map Flickr photos. In January 2007, Aaron Straup Cope at Flickr introduced the term machine tag as an alternative name for the triple tag, adding some questions and answers on purpose, syntax, and use.
Specialized metadata for geographical identification is known as geotagging; machine tags are also used for other purposes, such as identifying photos taken at a specific event or naming species using binomial nomenclature.
Hashtags
A hashtag is a kind of metadata tag marked by the prefix #, sometimes known as a "hash" symbol. This form of tagging is used on microblogging and social networking services such as Twitter, Facebook, Google+, VK and Instagram. The hash is used to distinguish tag text, as distinct, from other text in the post.
Knowledge tags
A knowledge tag is a type of meta-information that describes or defines some aspect of a piece of information (such as a document, digital image, database table, or web page). Knowledge tags are more than traditional non-hierarchical keywords or terms; they are a type of metadata that captures knowledge in the form of descriptions, categorizations, classifications, semantics, comments, notes, annotations, hyperdata, hyperlinks, or references that are collected in tag profiles (a kind of ontology). These tag profiles reference an information resource that resides in a distributed, and often heterogeneous, storage repository.
Knowledge tags are part of a knowledge management discipline that leverages Enterprise 2.0 methodologies for users to capture insights, expertise, attributes, dependencies, or relationships associated with a data resource. Different kinds of knowledge can be captured in knowledge tags, including factual knowledge (that found in books and data), conceptual knowledge (found in perspectives and concepts), expectational knowledge (needed to make judgments and hypothesis), and methodological knowledge (derived from reasoning and strategies). These forms of knowledge often exist outside the data itself and are derived from personal experience, insight, or expertise. Knowledge tags are considered an expansion of the information itself that adds additional value, context, and meaning to the information. Knowledge tags are valuable for preserving organizational intelligence that is often lost due to turnover, for sharing knowledge stored in the minds of individuals that is typically isolated and unharnessed by the organization, and for connecting knowledge that is often lost or disconnected from an information resource.
Advantages and disadvantages
In a typical tagging system, there is no explicit information about the meaning or semantics of each tag, and a user can apply new tags to an item as easily as applying older tags. Hierarchical classification systems can be slow to change, and are rooted in the culture and era that created them; in contrast, the flexibility of tagging allows users to classify their collections of items in the ways that they find useful, but the personalized variety of terms can present challenges when searching and browsing.
When users can freely choose tags (creating a folksonomy, as opposed to selecting terms from a controlled vocabulary), the resulting metadata can include homonyms (the same tags used with different meanings) and synonyms (multiple tags for the same concept), which may lead to inappropriate connections between items and inefficient searches for information about a subject. For example, the tag "orange" may refer to the fruit or the color, and items related to a version of the Linux kernel may be tagged "Linux", "kernel", "Penguin", "software", or a variety of other terms. Users can also choose tags that are different inflections of words (such as singular and plural), which can contribute to navigation difficulties if the system does not include stemming of tags when searching or browsing. Larger-scale folksonomies address some of the problems of tagging, in that users of tagging systems tend to notice the current use of "tag terms" within these systems, and thus use existing tags in order to easily form connections to related items. In this way, folksonomies may collectively develop a partial set of tagging conventions.
Complex system dynamics
Despite the apparent lack of control, research has shown that a simple form of shared vocabulary emerges in social bookmarking systems. Collaborative tagging exhibits a form of complex systems dynamics (or self-organizing dynamics). Thus, even if no central controlled vocabulary constrains the actions of individual users, the distribution of tags converges over time to stable power law distributions. Once such stable distributions form, simple folksonomic vocabularies can be extracted by examining the correlations that form between different tags. In addition, research has suggested that it is easier for machine learning algorithms to learn tag semantics when users tag "verbosely"—when they annotate resources with a wealth of freely associated, descriptive keywords.
Spamming
Tagging systems open to the public are also open to tag spam, in which people apply an excessive number of tags or unrelated tags to an item (such as a YouTube video) in order to attract viewers. This abuse can be mitigated using human or statistical identification of spam items. The number of tags allowed may also be limited to reduce spam.
Syntax
Some tagging systems provide a single text box to enter tags, so to be able to tokenize the string, a separator must be used. Two popular separators are the space character and the comma. To enable the use of separators in the tags, a system may allow for higher-level separators (such as quotation marks) or escape characters. Systems can avoid the use of separators by allowing only one tag to be added to each input widget at a time, although this makes adding multiple tags more time-consuming.
A syntax for use within HTML is to use the rel-tag microformat which uses the rel attribute with value "tag" (i.e., rel="tag") to indicate that the linked-to page acts as a tag for the current context.
See also
Annotation
Collective intelligence
Concept map
Enterprise bookmarking
Enterprise social software
Expert system
Explicit knowledge
Human–computer interaction
Information ecology
Knowledge transfer
Knowledge worker
Management information system
Metaknowledge
Organisational memory
RRID
Semantics
Semantic web
Social network aggregation
Subject (documents)
Subject indexing
References
Collective intelligence
Computer jargon
Information retrieval techniques
Knowledge representation
Metadata
Reference
Web 2.0 |
84476 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corel%20Ventura | Corel Ventura | Ventura Publisher was the first popular desktop publishing package for IBM PC compatible computers running the GEM extension to the DOS operating system. The software was originally developed by Ventura Software, a small software company founded by John Meyer, Don Heiskell, and Lee Jay Lorenzen, all of whom met while working at Digital Research. It ran under an included run-time copy of Digital Research's GEM.
History
The first version of Ventura Publisher was released in 1986, and distributed worldwide exclusively by Xerox until Ventura Software sold the source code to the former company in 1990.
Ventura Publisher had some text editing and line drawing capabilities of its own, but it was designed to interface with a wide variety of word processing and graphics programs rather than to supplant them. To that end, text was stored in, loaded from, and saved back to word processor files in the native formats of a variety of word processors, including WordPerfect, Wordstar, and early versions of Microsoft Word, rather than being incorporated into the chapter files. This allowed users to continue using their favorite word processors for major text changes, spelling checks, and so forth. Paragraphs other than default body text were tagged with descriptive tagnames that were entirely user-defined, and characters and attributes that have no native equivalent in a given word processor were represented with standardized sequences of characters. When working with the files outside of Ventura Publisher, these paragraph tags and special character and attribute codes could be freely changed, the same as any other text. These tags looked very much like HTML tags.
Ventura Publisher was the first major typesetting program to incorporate the concept of an implicit "underlying page" frame, and one of the first to incorporate a strong "style sheet" concept. It produced documents with a high degree of internal consistency, unless specifically overridden by the user. Its concepts of free-flowing text, paragraph tagging, and codes for attributes and special characters anticipated similar concepts inherent in HTML and XML. Likewise, its concept of "publication" files that tie together "chapter" files gave it the ability to handle documents hundreds (or even thousands) of pages in length as easily as a four-page newsletter.
The major strengths of the original DOS/GEM edition of Ventura Publisher were:
Its ability to run, with reasonable response times, on a wide range of hardware (including 8086- and 80286-based computers)
Its ability to produce, by default, documents with a high degree of internal consistency
Its automatic re-exporting of text to native word processor formats
Its ability to print to a wide variety of devices, including PostScript, PCL, and InterPress laser printers and imagesetters, as well as certain popular dot-matrix printers.
The original Ventura Software ceased operations in February 1990, and a new Ventura Software Inc. was formed at that time, an affiliated company of Xerox. The developers from the original company worked with the new Xerox Ventura Software company to produce Version 3.0 Gold. This was released in late 1990. Besides DOS/GEM, it was also available for Win16, Mac, and OS/2.
The three founders of the original Ventura Software no longer worked on the product after November 1990.
Version 4.0 was released in 1991. The last version released by Ventura Software Inc. was 4.1.1 in 1993.
The application was acquired by Corel in 1993. It was repackaged and soon released as Corel Ventura 4.2 without any major change in the application, other than to drop all support for platforms other than Microsoft Windows.
The first real Corel version was 5.0 (released in 1994), which made fundamental changes to both user interface and document structure. Because of this, and because of escalating requirements of the various Corel versions, the original DOS/GEM edition still has a small number of die-hard users.
The application was rewritten for the Win32 platform and was released in 1996, labeled Corel Ventura 7 (instead of 6) so that it would match the version number of CorelDRAW. Corel Ventura 8 was released in 1998. The last published version was Corel Ventura 10 in 2002 (last updated in February 2003); it reportedly runs in Windows 10 under compatibility mode with some functional limitations after workarounds, and on Linux via Wine (verified in April 2020).
As an application with strengths in more structured documents, its main competitors were FrameMaker, InDesign and QuarkXPress.
Notes
Desktop Publishing Using Ventura™ on the IBM-PC. Don Busché, Saddleback College, with Bernice Glenn, Desktop Publishing and Design Consultant. 1989 Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey 07632. Paperback, 270 pages; includes monochromatic illustrations and 5 1/4" floppy data disk.
See also
QuarkXPress
Adobe FrameMaker
Adobe InDesign
Adobe PageMaker
Microsoft Publisher
Ready, Set, Go!
Scribus
Serif PagePlus
Quark CopyDesk
Quark Publishing System
Timeworks Publisher / Publish-It! / KeyPublisher, an inexpensive Ventura clone that ran under GEM on the PC or the Atari ST without requiring a hard drive
XTension
External links
Ventura Publisher brochure
1986 software
Corel software
Desktop publishing software
GEM software
DTP for Windows |
231877 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List%20of%20emulators | List of emulators | This article lists software emulators.
Central processing units
ARM
ARMulator
Aemulor
QEMU
MIPS
SPIM: The OVPsim 500 mips MIPS32 emulator, can be used to develop software using virtual platforms, emulators including MIPS processors running at up to 500 MIPS for MIPS32 processors running many OSes including Linux. OVP is used to build emulators of single MIPS processors or multiple - homogeneous MP or heterogenous MP.
x86 architecture
Bochs
DOSBox
FX!32
PCem
QEMU – an opensource emulator that emulates 7 architectures including ARM, x86, MIPS and others
box86
Rosetta 2: Apple's emulator for macOS allowing to run x86_64 applications on arm64 platform
Motorola 680x0
Mac 68K emulator: For PowerPC classic Mac OS
PowerPC
PearPC
Rosetta: Apple's emulator for PowerPC processors, built into Mac OS X
WarpUP: Amiga system for PowerPC expansion cards built into MorphOS and available for AmigaOS
SheepShaver: Emulates the PowerPC processor. Can run Mac OS 7 to Mac OS 9.
Computer system emulators
Full system simulators
Simics
CPU Sim: A Java application that allows the user to design and create a simple architecture and instruction set and then run programs of instructions from the set through simulation
GXemul: Framework for full-system computer architecture emulation
Mobile phones and PDAs
Palm OS Emulator
Adobe Device Central
BlueStacks
Blisk (browser)
Multi-system emulators
blueMSX: Emulates Z80 based computers and consoles
MAME: Emulates multiple arcade machines, video game consoles and computers
DAPHNE is an arcade emulator application that emulates a variety of laserdisc video games with the intent of preserving these games and making the play experience as faithful to the originals as possible. The developer calls DAPHNE the "First Ever Multiple Arcade Laserdisc Emulator" ("FEMALE"). It derives its name from Princess Daphne, the heroine of Dragon's Lair.
Network Emulator
NS-2
Cisco Packet Tracer
Router Sim
Operating system emulators
Unix
Cygwin: For Microsoft Windows, provides a POSIX environment and system libraries (contained in cygwin.dll). This does not allow one to run unaltered Linux/Unix binaries. However, it allows use of the gcc compiler collection to compile software written for these operating systems from source code.
In addition to the POSIX system, Cygwin includes a Package manager that connects to a repository with 9000+ software packages. Users can optionally use Cygwin ports repository which includes >2300 (86x64) to >2700 (86x32) additional software packages not included in the RedHat-hosted repository, including many GUI applications.
The repository contains a wide range of software, including BASH (command shell and scripting environment comparable to the Windows Powershell), the GNU compiler collection with the complete tool chain. In addition, the 'usual and customary' programming languages installed with a Linux distribution, including C, C++, Python, PHP, Perl, Tcl/Tk, and Lua are available, along with multiple development libraries.
In addition to BASH, the GNU Utilities (e.g. Find utilities, such as Locate, Find, Grep) are installed by default. Hundreds of other software packages are included, many with non-POSIX Windows implementation, such as database management systems (PostgreSQL, MySQL), web servers (e.g. Apache httpd), firewalls, text processing utilities and console mode applications. In addition, there is a (reasonably stable) X.org/X11 implementation with GTK and Qt libraries. Based on these, graphic desktop managers, including GNOME, LXDE, LXQt, KDE and others (e.g. x2go) with associated graphic user applications with variable stability and functionality.
Windows
WINE: Available for most POSIX compliant (Unix-like) operating systems, such as Linux, BSD, and macOS (Darling and Darwine projects). It provides a Win32 API and clean-room implementation of the associated functionality. In contrast to Cygwin, WINE enables the installation and use of unaltered Windows software. Considerable effort has been put into support for video games, including 3rd party extensions (e.g. Play on Linux) which provide custom Windows configurations known to work with a very large list of videogames. In addition, desktop productivity software, including MS Office, is supported. Because of the lack of dependence on the Windows registry, inclusion of statically linked libraries, and (at least in part) historic development from open source projects, portable applications, such as the PortableApps platform and the 300+ available software applications which can be downloaded with it, work with little or no issues.
Printer emulators
Ghostscript: Emulator for printers without PostScript
Terminal emulators
Video game console emulators
See also
List of free and open-source emulators for Android
Comparison of OS emulation or virtualization apps on Android
Comparison of platform virtualization software
Comparison of application virtual machines
List of video game console emulators
References
Emulators |
55217711 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face%20ID | Face ID | Face ID is a facial recognition system designed and developed by Apple Inc. for the iPhone and iPad Pro. The system allows biometric authentication for unlocking a device, making payments, accessing sensitive data, providing detailed facial expression tracking for Animoji, as well as six degrees of freedom (6DOF) head-tracking, eye-tracking, and other features. Initially released in November 2017 with the iPhone X, it has since been updated and introduced to several new iPhone models, and all iPad Pro models.
The Face ID hardware consists of a sensor with three modules; a dot projector that projects a grid of small infrared dots onto a user's face, a module called the flood illuminator that shines infrared light at the face, and an infrared camera which takes an infrared picture of the user, reads the resulting pattern and generates a 3D facial map. This map is compared with the registered face using a secure subsystem, and the user is authenticated if the two faces match sufficiently. The system can recognize faces with glasses, clothing, makeup, and facial hair, and adapts to changes in appearance over time.
Face ID has sparked a number of debates about security and privacy. Apple claims that Face ID is statistically more advanced than Touch ID. It exhibits significantly fewer false positives. Still, Face ID has shown issues at separating identical twins. Multiple security features largely limit the risk of the system being bypassed using photos or masks, and only one proof-of-concept attempt using detailed scans has succeeded. Debate continues over the lack of legal protections offered by biometric systems as compared to passcode authentication in the United States. Privacy advocates have also expressed concern about third-party app developers' access to "rough maps" of user facial data, despite rigid requirements by Apple of how developers handle facial data.
Face ID is unable to recognize users wearing face masks. Apple responded to criticism by offering faster fallback to passcode input, and the option for Apple Watch users to confirm whether they intended to unlock their iPhone.
History
Apple announced Face ID during the unveiling of the iPhone X on September 12, 2017. The system was presented as the successor to Touch ID, Apple's previous fingerprint-based authentication technology embedded in the home button of the iPhone 8 and earlier devices in addition to the second-generation iPhone SE. On September 12, 2018, Apple introduced the iPhone XS and XR with faster neural network processing speeds, providing a significant speed increase to Face ID. On October 30, 2018, Apple introduced the third generation iPad Pro, which brings Face ID to the iPad and allows face recognition in any orientation. iOS 13 included an upgraded version of Face ID which is up to 30% faster than Face ID on previous versions.
Technology
Face ID's technology is based on PrimeSense's previous work with low-cost infrared depth perception that was the basis of the Kinect motion sensor for the Xbox console line from Microsoft; Apple had acquired PrimeSense in 2013 after Microsoft started to wane on the use of Kinect.
Face ID is based on a facial recognition sensor that consists of two parts: a dot projector module that projects more than 30,000 infrared dots onto the user's face, and an infrared camera module that reads the pattern. The pattern is encrypted and sent to a local "Secure Enclave" in the device's CPU to confirm a match with the registered face. The stored facial data is a mathematical representation of key details of the face, and it is inaccessible to Apple or other parties. To avoid involuntary authentication, the system requires the user to open their eyes and look at the device to attempt a match, although this can be disabled through an accessibility setting. Face ID is temporarily disabled and the user's passcode is required after 5 unsuccessful scans, 48 hours of inactivity, restarting the device, or if two of the device's both side buttons are held briefly.
Apple claimed the probability of someone else unlocking a phone with Face ID is 1 in 1,000,000 as opposed to Touch ID at 1 in 50,000. During initial setup, the user's face is scanned twice from a number of angles to create a complete reference map. As the system is used, it learns about typical variations in a user's appearance, and will adjust its registered face data to match aging, facial hair growth, and other changes using the Neural Engine. The system will recognize a face wearing hats, scarves, glasses, most sunglasses, facial hair or makeup. It also works in the dark by invisibly illuminating the whole face with a dedicated infrared flash module.
Authentication with Face ID is used to enable a number of iOS features, including unlocking the phone automatically on wake, making payments with Apple Pay, and viewing saved passwords. Apps by Apple or third-party developers can protect sensitive data with a system framework; the device will verify the user's identity and return success or failure without sharing face data with the app. Additionally, Face ID can be used without authentication to track over 50 aspects of a user's facial expression and positioning, which can be used to create live effects such as Animoji or camera filters. In recent years, third party developers have developed more use cases for FaceID such as e.g. Eyeware Beam, an iOS app that provides a reliable and precise, multi-purpose head and eye-tracking tool. It is used to enable control of the camera angle through head motion in games and eye-tracking to share attention with audience in streams, but also augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) and biometric research.
Devices with Face ID
iPhone X
iPhone XR
iPhone XS
iPhone XS Max
iPhone 11
iPhone 11 Pro
iPhone 11 Pro Max
iPhone 12 Mini
iPhone 12
iPhone 12 Pro
iPhone 12 Pro Max
iPhone 13 Mini
iPhone 13
iPhone 13 Pro
iPhone 13 Pro Max
iPad Pro (3rd generation)
iPad Pro (4th generation)
iPad Pro (5th generation)
Safety
Face ID uses an infrared flood illuminator and dot projector, though Apple insists that the output is low enough that it will cause no harm to the eyes or skin, and meets 'international safety standards'. They do not, however, recommend the sensor be repaired by third parties, citing security concerns. There is also an inbuilt feature to deactivate Face ID should unauthorized components be found.
Issues
Twins and close relatives
Inconsistent results have been shown when testing Face ID on identical twins, with some tests showing the system managing to separate the two, while other tests have failed. The system has additionally been fooled by close relatives. Apple states that the probability of a false match is different for twins and siblings, as well as children under 13 years of age, as "their distinct facial features may not have fully developed".
Law enforcement access
Face ID has raised concerns regarding the possibility of law enforcement accessing an individual's phone by pointing the device at the user's face. United States Senator Al Franken asked Apple to provide more information on the security and privacy of Face ID a day after the announcement, with Apple responding by highlighting the recent publication of a security white paper and knowledge base detailing answers.
The Verge noted that courts in the United States have granted different Fifth Amendment rights in the United States Constitution to biometric unlocking systems as opposed to keycodes. Keycodes are considered "testimonial" evidence based on the contents of users' thoughts, whereas fingerprints are considered physical evidence, with some suspects having been ordered to unlock their phones via fingerprint.
Infiltration
Many people have attempted to fool Face ID with sophisticated masks, though most have failed. In November 2017, Vietnamese security firm Bkav announced in a blog post that it had created a $150 mask that successfully unlocked Face ID, but WIRED noted that Bkav's technique was more of a "proof-of-concept" rather than active exploitation risk, with the technique requiring a detailed measurement or digital scan of the iPhone owner's face, putting the real risk of danger only to targets of espionage and world leaders.
Third-party developers
If the user explicitly grants a third-party app permission to use the camera, the app can also access basic facial expression and positioning data from Face ID for features such as precise selfie filters such as those seen in Snapchat, or game characters mirroring real-world user facial expressions. The data accessible to third parties is not sufficient to unlock a device or even identify a user, and Apple prohibits developers from selling the data to others, creating profiles on users, or using the data for advertising. The American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Democracy and Technology raised privacy questions about Apple's enforcement of the privacy restrictions connected to third-party access, with Apple maintaining that its App Store review processes were effective safeguards. Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst with the ACLU, has stated that the overall idea of letting developers access sensitive facial information was still not satisfactorily handled, with Stanley telling Reuters that "the privacy issues around of the use of very sophisticated facial recognition technology for unlocking the phone have been overblown. The real privacy issues have to do with the access by third-party developers".
Use with face masks
During the COVID-19 pandemic, face masks were employed as a public and personal health control measure against the spread of SARS-CoV-2. The Face ID at the time was incompatible with face masks, with Apple stating "Face ID is designed to work with your eyes, nose and mouth visible." With the release of iOS 13.5, Apple added a feature that automatically brought up the passcode screen if it detected that the user was wearing a mask. Apple was criticized for not addressing these issues with the release of the iPhone 12, but was praised for the lack of inclusion of Face ID in favor of Touch ID integration into the power button on the fourth-generation iPad Air. In April 2021, Apple released iOS 14.5 and watchOS 7.4 with an option to allow Apple Watch to act as a backup if Face ID fails due to face masks.
See also
Touch ID
Structured-light 3D scanner
References
External links
Official website
Computer-related introductions in 2017
Facial recognition software
IOS
Authentication methods |
27657626 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernd%20Fix | Bernd Fix | Bernd Fix (born 19 March 1962 in Wittingen, Lower Saxony) is a German hacker and computer security expert.
Biography
After final secondary-school examination from Gymnasium Hankensbüttel in 1981, Bernd Fix studied Astrophysics and Philosophy at the universities of Göttingen and Heidelberg. He received his diplom for a work in the field of theoretical astrophysics in 1989.
From 1987 to 1989 Fix was one of the spokespersons for the Chaos Computer Club and author for the "Hacker Bible 2".
After the death of his friend Wau Holland (co-founder of the Chaos Computer Club) in 2001 Fix helped to establish the Wau Holland Foundation and serves as a founding member of the Board of Directors ever since.
From 1998 Fix was living and working in Switzerland; he moved to Berlin in 2014.
According to an interview from 2011, he got fired from his job at SIX Financial Information because of the foundation's support for WikiLeaks.
Work
In 1986 Fix joined the Chaos Computer Club (CCC) in Hamburg and started to work on computer security issues, focussing on computer virus research. He published a first demo virus (Rushhour) in autumn 1986 in the Datenschleuder #17, the hacker magazine edited by the CCC. He also contributed results of his research to the book "Computer Viruses" by Ralf Burger.
In 1987 he devised a method to neutralize the Vienna Virus; this event marks the first documented antivirus software ever written.
Fix is also the author of several research viruses; among them the VP370 virus for IBM mainframe computers. The VP370 source code was allegedly stolen by the Bundesnachrichtendienst (Federal Intelligence Service in Germany) in 1988 to be used in attacks against East Block and NATO mainframe computer systems in the so-called "Project Rahab".
References
External links
Wau Holland Foundation
Chaos Computer Club
Datenspuren 2011
Das-Internet-darf-kein-Rechtsfreier-Raum-sein.pdf
1962 births
Living people
People from Wittingen
German computer scientists
Hackers
Members of Chaos Computer Club |
6684 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications%20in%20Afghanistan | Communications in Afghanistan | Communications in Afghanistan is under the control of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT). It has rapidly expanded after the Karzai administration took over in late 2001, and has embarked on wireless companies, internet, radio stations and television channels.
The Afghan government signed a $64.5 million agreement in 2006 with China's ZTE on the establishment of a countrywide optical fiber cable network. The project began to improve telephone, internet, television and radio broadcast services throughout Afghanistan. About 90% of the country's population had access to communication services in 2014.
Afghanistan uses its own space satellite called Afghansat 1. There are about 18 million mobile phone users in the country. Telecom companies include Afghan Telecom, Afghan Wireless, Etisalat, MTN, Roshan, Salaam. 20% of the population have access to the internet.
Telephone
There are about 32 million GSM mobile phone subscribers in Afghanistan as of 2016, with over 114,192 fixed-telephone-lines and over 264,000 CDMA subscribers. Mobile communications have improved because of the introduction of wireless carriers into this developing country. The first was Afghan Wireless, which is US based that was founded by Ehsan Bayat. The second was Roshan, which began providing services to all major cities within Afghanistan. There are also a number of VSAT stations in major cities such as Kabul, Kandahar, Herat, Mazari Sharif, and Jalalabad, providing international and domestic voice/data connectivity. The international calling code for Afghanistan is +93. The following is a partial list of mobile phone companies in the country:
Afghan Wireless, provides 4G services
Etisalat, provides 4G services
MTN Group, provides 4G services
Roshan
Salaam Network
All the companies providing communication services are obligated to deliver 2.5% of their income to the communication development fund annually. According to the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology there are 4760 active towers throughout the country which covers 85% of the population. The Ministry of Communication and Information Technology plans to expand its services in remote parts of the country where the remaining 15% of the population will be covered with the installation of 700 new towers.
Phone calls in Afghanistan have been monitored by the National Security Agency according to WikiLeaks.
MTN-Afghanistan
MTN 21 According to a three-year duopoly agreement between the MCIT and mobile operators AWCC and Roshan, no mobile operator could enter the Afghan telecom market until July 2006. The third GSM license was awarded to Areeba in September 2005 for a period of 15 years, and a total license fee of $40.1 million. Areeba was a subsidiary of the Lebanon-based firm Investcom in consortium with Alokozai-FZE. After commencing services in July 2006, Areeba had an estimated subscribership of 200,000 by the end of that year. Areeba was later acquired by the South African-based Mobile Telephone Network (MTN) in mid-2007 as part of a $5.53 billion global merger between the two companies. MTN-Afghanistan is a subsidiary of the South African-based MTN Group, a multinational telecommunications company operating across the Middle East and Africa. MTN is the majority (90%) shareholder, while International Finance Corporation (IFC) at 9% is also a debt and equity shareholder of MTN-Afghanistan. MTN operates at 900–1800 MHz GSM band, and as of 2012 has 4.5 million subscribers and service coverage in most major cities, 464 districts, and all 34 provincial capitals. With over $400 million in total investment, MTN offers mobile voice, SMS, MMS, SRS, GPRS, fax, voicemail and PCO services through prepaid, postpaid and corporate tariffs.
MTN has interconnection agreements with all national telecom operators and provides international voice and SMS roaming in 121 countries and across 227 operators through prepaid and postpaid roaming tariffs. MTN also has a national ISP license which the company received in November 2008. MTN was the first company to introduce the popular per-second billing system in the country (also known as "pay as you talk") allowing its subscribers to transparently track their talk-time and receive billing summaries via SMS. The scheme was so popular that other GSM companies quickly adopted this method.
Internet
Afghanistan was given legal control of the ".af" domain in 2003, and the Afghanistan Network Information Center (AFGNIC) was established to administer domain names. As of 2016, there are at least 55 internet service providers (ISPs) in the country. Internet in Afghanistan is also at the peak with over 5 million users as of 2016.
According to the Ministry of Communications, the following are some of the different ISPs operating in Afghanistan:
TiiTACS Internet Services
AfSat
Afghan Telecom
Neda
CeReTechs
Insta Telecom
Global Services (P) Limited
Rana Technologies
Global Entourage Services
LiwalNet
Vizocom
Movj Technology
Television
There are over 106 television operators in Afghanistan and 320 television transmitters, many of which are based Kabul, while others are broadcast from other provinces. Selected foreign channels are also shown to the public in Afghanistan, but with the use of the internet, over 3,500 international TV channels may be accessed in Afghanistan.
Radio
There are an estimated 150 FM radio operators throughout the country. Broadcasts are in Dari, Pashto, English, Uzbeki and a number of other languages.
Radio listeners are generally decreasing and are being slowly outnumbered by television. Of Afghanistan's 6 main cities, Kandahar and Khost have the maximum number of radio listeners. Kabul and Jalalabad have moderate number of listeners. However, Mazar-e-Sharif and especially Herat have very few radio listeners.
Postal service
In 1870, a central post office was established at Bala Hissar in Kabul and a post office in the capital of each province. The service was slowly being expanded over the years as more postal offices were established in each large city by 1918. Afghanistan became a member of the Universal Postal Union in 1928, and the postal administration elevated to the Ministry of Communication in 1934. Civil war caused a disruption in issuing official stamps during the 1980s–90s war but in 1999 postal service was operating again. Postal services to/from Kabul worked remarkably well all throughout the war years. Postal services to/from Herat resumed in 1997. The Afghan government has reported to the UPU several times about illegal stamps being issued and sold in 2003 and 2007.
Afghanistan Post has been reorganizing the postal service in 2000s with assistance from Pakistan Post. The Afghanistan Postal commission was formed to prepare a written policy for the development of the postal sector, which will form the basis of a new postal services law governing licensing of postal services providers. The project was expected to finish by 2008.
Satellite
In January 2014 the Afghan Ministry of Communications and Information Technology signed an agreement with Eutelsat for the use of satellite resources to enhance deployment of Afghanistan's national broadcasting and telecommunications infrastructure as well as its international connectivity. Afghansat 1 was officially launched in May 2014, with expected service for at least seven years in Afghanistan. The Afghan government plans to launch Afghansat 2 after the lease of Afghansat 1 ends.
References
External links
Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (archived)
pt:Economia do Afeganistão#Comunicações |
1505382 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid%20computer | Hybrid computer | Hybrid computers are computers that exhibit features of analog computers and digital computers. The digital component normally serves as the controller and provides logical and numerical operations, while the analog component often serves as a solver of differential equations and other mathematically complex equations. The first desktop hybrid computing system was the Hycomp 250, released by Packard Bell in 1961. Another early example was the HYDAC 2400, an integrated hybrid computer released by EAI in 1963. In the 1980s, Marconi Space and Defense Systems Limited (under Peggy Hodges) developed their "Starglow Hybrid Computer", which consisted of three EAI 8812 analog computers linked to an EAI 8100 digital computer, the latter also being linked to an SEL 3200 digital computer. Late in the 20th century, hybrids dwindled with the increasing capabilities of digital computers including digital signal processors.
In general, analog computers are extraordinarily fast, since they are able to solve most mathematically complex equations at the rate at which a signal traverses the circuit, which is generally an appreciable fraction of the speed of light. On the other hand, the precision of analog computers is not good; they are limited to three, or at most, four digits of precision.
Digital computers can be built to take the solution of equations to almost unlimited precision, but quite slowly compared to analog computers. Generally, complex mathematical equations are approximated using iterative methods which take huge numbers of iterations, depending on how good the initial "guess" at the final value is and how much precision is desired. (This initial guess is known as the numerical "seed".) For many real-time operations in the 20th century, such digital calculations were too slow to be of much use (e.g., for very high frequency phased array radars or for weather calculations), but the precision of an analog computer is insufficient.
Hybrid computers can be used to obtain a very good but relatively imprecise 'seed' value, using an analog computer front-end, which is then fed into a digital computer iterative process to achieve the final desired degree of precision. With a three or four digit, highly accurate numerical seed, the total digital computation time to reach the desired precision is dramatically reduced, since many fewer iterations are required. One of the main technical problems to be overcome in hybrid computers is minimizing digital-computer noise in analog computing elements and grounding systems.
Consider that the nervous system in animals is a form of hybrid computer. Signals pass across the synapses from one nerve cell to the next as discrete (digital) packets of chemicals, which are then summed within the nerve cell in an analog fashion by building an electro-chemical potential until its threshold is reached, whereupon it discharges and sends out a series of digital packets to the next nerve cell. The advantages are at least threefold: noise within the system is minimized (and tends not to be additive), no common grounding system is required, and there is minimal degradation of the signal even if there are substantial differences in activity of the cells along a path (only the signal delays tend to vary). The individual nerve cells are analogous to analog computers; the synapses are analogous to digital computers.
Hybrid computers are distinct from hybrid systems. The latter may be no more than a digital computer equipped with an analog-to-digital converter at the input and/or a digital-to-analog converter at the output, to convert analog signals for ordinary digital signal processing, and conversely, e.g., for driving physical control systems, such as servomechanisms.
VLSI hybrid computer chip
In 2015, researchers at Columbia University published a paper on a small scale hybrid computer in 65 nm CMOS technology. This 4th-order VLSI hybrid computer contains 4 integrator blocks, 8 multiplier/gain-setting blocks, 8 fanout blocks for distributing current-mode signals, 2 ADCs, 2 DACs and 2 SRAMs blocks. Digital controllers are also implemented on the chip for executing the external instructions. A robot experiment in the paper demonstrates the use of the hybrid computing chip in today's emerging low-power embedded applications.
References
External links
A New Tool For Science By Daniel Greco and Ken Kuehl, The Wisconsin Engineer, Nov 1972, reprinted Feb 2001
Computing terminology
Classes of computers |
40218635 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classification%20Tree%20Method | Classification Tree Method | The Classification Tree Method is a method for test design, as it is used in different areas of software development.
It was developed by Grimm and Grochtmann in 1993.
Classification Trees in terms of the Classification Tree Method must not be confused with decision trees.
The classification tree method consists of two major steps:
Identification of test relevant aspects (so called classifications) and their corresponding values (called classes) as well as
Combination of different classes from all classifications into test cases.
The identification of test relevant aspects usually follows the (functional) specification (e.g. requirements, use cases …) of the system under test.
These aspects form the input and output data space of the test object.
The second step of test design then follows the principles of combinatorial test design.
While the method can be applied using a pen and a paper, the usual way involves the usage of the Classification Tree Editor, a software tool implementing the classification tree method.
Application
Prerequisites for applying the classification tree method (CTM) is the selection (or definition) of a system under test.
The CTM is a black-box testing method and supports any type of system under test. This includes (but is not limited to) hardware systems, integrated hardware-software systems, plain software systems, including embedded software, user interfaces, operating systems, parsers, and others (or subsystems of mentioned systems).
With a selected system under test, the first step of the classification tree method is the identification of test relevant aspects.
Any system under test can be described by a set of classifications, holding both input and output parameters.
(Input parameters can also include environments states, pre-conditions and other, rather uncommon parameters).
Each classification can have any number of disjoint classes, describing the occurrence of the parameter.
The selection of classes typically follows the principle of equivalence partitioning for abstract test cases and boundary-value analysis for concrete test cases.
Together, all classifications form the classification tree.
For semantic purpose, classifications can be grouped into compositions.
The maximum number of test cases is the Cartesian product of all classes of all classifications in the tree, quickly resulting in large numbers for realistic test problems.
The minimum number of test cases is the number of classes in the classification with the most containing classes.
In the second step, test cases are composed by selecting exactly one class from every classification of the classification tree.
The selection of test cases originally was a manual task to be performed by the test engineer.
Example
For a database system, test design has to be performed.
Applying the classification tree method, the identification of test relevant aspects gives the classifications: User Privilege, Operation and Access Method.
For the User Privileges, two classes can be identified: Regular User and Administrator User.
There are three Operations: Add, Edit and Delete.
For the Access Method, again three classes are identified: Native Tool, Web Browser, API.
The Web Browser class is further refined with the test aspect Brand, three possible classes are included here: Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, and Apple Safari.
The first step of the classification tree method now is complete. Of course, there are further possible test aspects to include, e.g. access speed of the connection, number of database records present in the database, etc. Using the graphical representation in terms of a tree, the selected aspects and their corresponding values can quickly be reviewed.
For the statistics, there are 30 possible test cases in total (2 privileges * 3 operations * 5 access methods). For minimum coverage, 5 test cases are sufficient, as there are 5 access methods (and access method is the classification with the highest number of disjoint classes).
In the second step, three test cases have been manually selected:
A regular user adds a new data set to the database using the native tool.
An administrator user edits an existing data set using the Firefox browser.
A regular user deletes a data set from the database using the API.
Enhancements
Background
The CTM introduced the following advantages over the Category Partition Method (CPM) by Ostrand and Balcer:
Notation: CPM only had a textual notation, whereas CTM uses a graphical, tree-shaped representation.
Refinements Selecting one representative might have an influence on the occurrence of other representatives.
CPM only offers restrictions to handle this scenario.
CTM allows modeling of hierarchical refinements in the classification tree, also called implicit dependencies.
Tool support: The tool presented by Ostrand and Balcer only supported test case generation, but not the partitioning itself.
Grochtmann and Wegener presented their tool, the Classification Tree Editor (CTE) which supports both partitioning as well as test case generation.
Classification Tree Method for Embedded Systems
The classification tree method first was intended for the design and specification of abstract test cases. With the classification tree method for embedded systems, test implementation can also be performed. Several additional features are integrated with the method:
In addition to atomic test cases, test sequences containing several test steps can be specified.
A concrete timing (e.g. in Seconds, Minutes ...) can be specified for each test step.
Signal transitions (e.g. linear, spline, sine ...) between selected classes of different test steps can be specified.
A distinction between event and state can be modelled, represented by different visual marks in a test.
The module and unit testing tool Tessy relies on this extension.
Dependency Rules and Automated Test Case Generation
One way of modelling constraints is using the refinement mechanism in the classification tree method. This, however, does not allow for modelling constraints between classes of different classifications. Lehmann and Wegener introduced Dependency Rules based on Boolean expressions with their incarnation of the CTE. Further features include the automated generation of test suites using combinatorial test design (e.g. all-pairs testing).
Prioritized Test Case Generation
Recent enhancements to the classification tree method include the prioritized test case generation: It is possible to assign weights to the elements of the classification tree in terms of occurrence and error probability or risk. These weights are then used during test case generation to prioritize test cases. Statistical testing is also available (e.g. for wear and fatigue tests) by interpreting the element weights as a discrete probability distribution.
Test Sequence Generation
With the addition of valid transitions between individual classes of a classification, classifications can be interpreted as a state machine, and therefore the whole classification tree as a Statechart. This defines an allowed order of class usages in test steps and allows to automatically create test sequences. Different coverage levels are available, such as state coverage, transitions coverage and coverage of state pairs and transition pairs.
Numerical Constraints
In addition to Boolean dependency rules referring to classes of the classification tree, Numerical Constraints allow to specify formulas with classifications as variables, which will evaluate to the selected class in a test case.
Classification Tree Editor
The Classification Tree Editor (CTE) is a software tool for test design that implements the classification tree method.
Over the time, several editions of the CTE tool have appeared, written in several (by that time popular) programming languages and developed by several companies.
CTE 1
The original version of CTE was developed at Daimler-Benz Industrial Research facilities in Berlin.
It appeared in 1993 and was written in Pascal. It was only available on Unix systems.
CTE 2
In 1997 a major re-implementation was performed, leading to CTE 2. Development again was at Daimler-Benz Industrial Research. It was written in C and available for win32 systems.
The CTE 2 was licensed to Razorcat in 1997 and is part of the TESSY unit test tool.
The classification tree editor for embedded systems also based upon this edition.
Razorcat has been developing the CTE since 2001 and has CTE registered a brand name in 2003.
The last version CTE 3.2 was published with the tool TESSY 4.0 in 2016. Note the Versions table below.
CTE 4
The CTE 4 was implemented in TESSY 4.1.7 as an Eclipse plug-in in 2018. The latest CTE 4 version is still being developed as part of TESSY 4.3 in 2021.
CTE XL
In 2000, Lehmann and Wegener introduced Dependency Rules with their incarnation of the CTE, the CTE XL (eXtended Logics). Further features include the automated generation of test suites using combinatorial test design (e.g. all-pairs testing).
Development was performed by DaimlerChrysler. CTE XL was written in Java and was supported on win32 systems.
CTE XL was available for download free of charge.
In 2008, Berner&Mattner acquired all rights on CTE XL and continued development till CTE XL 1.9.4.
CTE XL Professional
Starting in 2010, CTE XL Professional was developed by Berner&Mattner. A complete re-implementation was done, again using Java but this time Eclipse-based. CTE XL Professional was available on win32 and win64 systems.
New developments included:
Prioritized test case generation: It is possible to assign weights to the elements of the classification tree in terms of occurrence and error probability or risk. These weights are then used during test case generation to prioritize test cases. Risk-based and statistical testing is also available.
Test Sequence Generation using Multi-Agent Systems
Numerical Constraints
TESTONA
In 2014, Berner&Mattner started releasing its classification tree editor under the brand name TESTONA.
A free edition of TESTONA is still available for download free of charge, however, with reduced functionality.
Versions
Advantages
Graphical representation of test relevant aspects
Method for both identification of relevant test aspects and their combination into test cases
Limitations
When test design with the classification tree method is performed without proper test decomposition, classification trees can get large and cumbersome.
New users tend to include too many (esp. irrelevant) test aspects resulting in too many test cases.
There is no algorithm or strict guidance for selection of test relevant aspects.
References
External links
Systematic Testing
Software development process
Software testing |
1626105 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commit%20charge | Commit charge | In computing, commit charge is a term used in Microsoft Windows operating systems to describe the total amount of virtual memory of all processes that must be backed by either physical memory or the page file. Through the process of paging, the contents of this virtual memory may move between physical memory and the page file, but it cannot exceed the sum of sizes of those two. As a percentage, commit charge is the utilization of this limit.
Virtual memory not related to commit charge includes virtual memory backed by files and all-zero pages backed by nothing.
Overview
The Windows Task Manager utility for Windows XP and Server 2003, in its Performance tab, shows three counters related to commit charge:
Total is the amount of pagefile-backed virtual address space in use, i.e., the current commit charge. This is composed of main memory (RAM) and disk (pagefiles). The corresponding performance counter is called "Committed Bytes".
Limit is the maximum possible value for Total; it is the sum of the current pagefile size plus the physical memory available for pageable contents (this excludes RAM that is assigned to non-pageable areas). The corresponding performance counter is called "Commit Limit".
Peak is the highest amount that the total commit charge has reached since the operating system was last started.
The program Process Explorer reports the same set of values, labeling the Total as Current, and additionally providing percentages of Peak and Current towards the Limit value.
The commit charge increases when any program is opened and used, and goes down when a program is closed. It will also change when already-running programs allocate or free private virtual memory; for example, with the VirtualAlloc and VirtualFree APIs.
In the Task Manager utility under Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, the graphical displays labeled as "PF usage" and "Page File Usage History," despite their labels, reflect not the pagefile contents but the total (or current) commit charge. The height of the graph area corresponds to the commit limit. These do not show how much has actually been written to the pagefile, but only the maximum potential pagefile usage: The amount of pagefile that would be used if all current contents of RAM had to be removed. In Windows 2000 and Windows NT 4.0, these same displays are labeled "Mem usage" but again actually show the commit charge and commit limit. Similar displays in the Task Manager of Windows Vista and later have been changed to reflect usage of physical memory.
In Task Manager's "Processes" display, each process's contribution to the "total commit charge" is shown in the "VM size" column in Windows XP and Server 2003. The same value is labeled "Commit size" in Windows Vista and later. The total commit charge will always be larger than the sum of these values, as the total includes system-wide allocations such as the paged pool.
In the same display, the "Mem Usage" column in Windows XP and Server 2003, or the "Working Set (Memory)" column in Windows Vista and later, shows each process's current working set. This is a count of physical memory (RAM) rather than virtual address space. It represents the subset of the process's virtual address space that is valid, meaning that it can be referenced without incurring a page fault.
The commit charge for each process does not include other major contributions to the process's virtual address space, such as mapped files. For this reason, the process's working set (the portion of its address space that can be referenced without incurring a page fault) may be larger than its contribution to total commit charge, and the total commit charge is not inclusive of the total memory (physical or virtual) actually in use.
The commit limit may be increased by either creating additional pagefiles or, if pagefile expansion is enabled, by expanding an existing one. The operating system will expand the pagefile automatically, if possible, when the total commit charge approaches the limit. In such an event a popup window will be displayed stating that "The system is running low on virtual memory."
If the system ever runs completely out of commit charge (that is, if the total reaches the limit), a popup window will be displayed stating that "The system is out of virtual memory," and it may become extremely sluggish or even nonresponsive. Closing programs (if the user is still able to do so at this point) decreases the total commit charge and may thereby free up the system.
See also
Memory management
Paging
Virtual memory
References
Cited references
Other references
Windows administration
Memory management |
384058 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madhu%20Sudan | Madhu Sudan | Madhu Sudan (born 12 September 1966) is an Indian-American computer scientist. He has been a Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences since 2015.
Career
He received his bachelor's degree in computer science from IIT Delhi in 1987 and his doctoral degree in computer science at the University of California, Berkeley in 1992. He was a research staff member at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York from 1992 to 1997 and moved to MIT after that. From 2009 to 2015 he was a permanent researcher at Microsoft Research New England before joining Harvard University in 2015.
Research contribution and awards
He was awarded the Rolf Nevanlinna Prize at the 24th International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) in 2002. The prize recognizes outstanding work in the mathematical aspects of computer science. Sudan was honored for his work in advancing the theory of probabilistically checkable proofs—a way to recast a mathematical proof in computer language for additional checks on its validity—and developing error-correcting codes. For the same work, he received the ACM's Distinguished Doctoral Dissertation Award in 1993 and the Gödel Prize in 2001 and was an Invited Speaker of the ICM in 1998. He is a Fellow of the ACM (2008). In 2012 he became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society. In 2014 he won the Infosys Prize in the mathematical sciences.
In 2017 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.
In 2021 he was awarded the IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal for 2021.
Sudan has made important contributions to several areas of theoretical computer science, including probabilistically checkable proofs, non-approximability of optimization problems, list decoding, and error-correcting codes.
References
External links
DBLP: Madhu Sudan
Madhu Sudan's Home Page
Bio from the Microsoft Research New England page
1966 births
Living people
Indian computer scientists
Indian emigrants to the United States
American computer scientists
Theoretical computer scientists
20th-century Indian mathematicians
University of California, Berkeley alumni
Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty
Gödel Prize laureates
Nevanlinna Prize laureates
American people of Indian Tamil descent
Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery
Fellows of the American Mathematical Society
IIT Delhi alumni
Scientists from Chennai
American academics of Indian descent
Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences
John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences faculty
Simons Investigator |
3650453 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memotech%20MTX | Memotech MTX | The Memotech MTX500, MTX512 and RS128 are a series of Zilog Z80A processor-based home computers released by Memotech in 1983 and 1984.
The MTX500 had 32 KB of RAM, the MTX512 had 64KB, and the RS128 had 128KB. Although the Z80A could only address a maximum of 64KB at a time, the MTX and RS128's extra memory, up to a maximum of 768KB, was accessible through the technique of page switching. All models had 24KB of ROM accessible in the first 16KB of address space. The extra 8KB of ROM was available through page switching. The ROM could be switched out entirely, allowing the full 16-bit address space to be used for RAM.
The computers featured an all-aluminum case and full-size keyboard with real keys (unlike the chiclet keyboard used on the Sinclair ZX Spectrum). In addition to the standard (for the time) BASIC language interpreter (with rudimentary windowing support and LOGO commands support), it included some other software: an assembler, the Panel disassembler/debugger and the Noddy graphic language aimed at children)
This series also featured support for plug-in ROM cartridges (a little like the BBC Micro). The most popular of these was the ISO Pascal language from HiSoft which was much faster than interpreted BASIC. A considerable addition to any Memotech system was the hugely expensive FDX system which added 5.25" floppy disk drives, Winchester hard disks and CP/M 2.2 operating system. A Memotech-badged CGA monitor was also made available around the time of the FDX launch.
History
In 1984, the Norwegian company Norbit Elektronikk Norge A/S run by A. S. Fiko developed a complete Input/Output (I/O) control system with 4× 16-bits by using the blue Memotech 8-bit Dual in-line package DIL socket for I/O controls. The socket was located on the computer motherboard. Norbit Elektronikk used their Super ToolBox system and was able to use 16-bits by adding two data blocks of 8 bits at the same time. Digital I/O ports, Analog-to-digital converter and Digital-to-analog converter with all kind of sensor systems for robotics and controls were developed. The control system was designed for the same aluminum casing as the main MTX512 unit.
In 1984/85 Memotech was working on a huge project to deliver the CP/M-based MTX512 together with the FDX and the control unit from Norbit Elektronikk to 64,000 schools in the USSR with the potentials to sell about 200,000 units. The USSR was at that time under embargo by the United States, and companies were not allowed to deliver the new IBM Personal Computer with MS-DOS to USSR. CP/M computers were not included in the Soviet embargo blockage and Memotech's MTX512 was therefore a good option.
Memotech went into receivership in 1985. A contributing factor, beyond the poor commercial success of the MTX, was the substantial investment Memotech made in preparing the MTX512 for the Soviet deal. This required a red brushed aluminum case instead of the black (made at a factory in the Netherlands), Russian BASIC, Russian character encoding, Russian keyboard and Russian documentation. Memotech worked with a professor at University of Oxford for the internationalization.
The Soviet government was also evaluating computer systems from other home computer manufacturers. Memotech was relying on the British government for funding the project, but ultimately, they only received about £1m and did not receive the full funding required. As a result, Memotech required cash payments from the USSR prior to supplying the 64,000 computers. The Soviets decided against this cash deal and instead agreed to acquire MSX computers from Yamaha (another later big deal was with Daewoo) with bartering mainly in steel and oil. Only a few thousand MSX computers were supplied to USSR schools and other educational institutions before the deal went dead. The main reason was the USSR thought that MSX was the new Microsoft Operating system.
Since Memotech lost the deal to the USSR, and they had invested all their money in the project, money that was borrowed from the banks, plus the £1m funding from the UK government, Memotech went bankrupt. Some of the Memotech inventions still lived on, as several employees took some of Memotech's new video editing systems for televisions back to the USA. As a result of Memotech's bankruptcy, the UK government stopped funding to all computer manufacturers in the UK at that time, including Sinclair, Acorn and Apricot.
Control systems from Norbit Elektronikk are in 2019 still sold under the registered brand name of MISOLIMA.
Specifications
CPU: Zilog Z80 A @ 4MHz
Video: TM9918 or 9928 (256 x 192 resolution, 16 colors)
Sound: SN76489A (3 voices + pink noise, 6 octaves)
RAM: 32 KB (MTX-500) / 64 to 512 KB (MTX-512)
OS: CP/M
In popular culture
The MTX512 made a minor cinematic appearance in the film Weird Science as the computer the two lead male characters use to hack into the Pentagon mainframe.
References
External links
MTX fan page
MTX information and reviews - some text , content mostly
MTX family at old-computers.com
Review of MTX512 originally from Creative Computing
Andys Memotech Emulator
Memotech MTX 512 - The Russian Schools Bid
Early microcomputers
Z80-based home computers
Home computers
Computers designed in the United Kingdom |
45700753 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu%20MATE | Ubuntu MATE | Ubuntu MATE (pronounced '') is a free and open-source Linux distribution and an official derivative of Ubuntu. Its main differentiation from Ubuntu is that it uses the MATE desktop environment as its default user interface (based on GNOME 2), instead of the GNOME 3 desktop environment that is the default user interface for Ubuntu.
History
The Ubuntu MATE project was founded by Martin Wimpress and Alan Pope and began as an unofficial derivative of Ubuntu, using an Ubuntu 14.10 base for its first release; a 14.04 LTS release followed shortly. As of February 2015, Ubuntu MATE gained the official Ubuntu flavour status from Canonical Ltd. as per the release of 15.04 Beta 1. In addition to IA-32 and x86-64 which were the initial supported platforms, Ubuntu MATE also supports PowerPC and ARMv7 (on the Raspberry Pi 2 and 3 as well as the ODROID XU4).
In April 2015, Ubuntu MATE announced a partnership with British computer reseller Entroware, enabling Entroware customers to purchase desktop and laptop computers with Ubuntu MATE preinstalled with full support. Several other hardware deals were announced later.
In Ubuntu MATE 18.10, 32-bit support was dropped.
Releases
Reception
In a May 2016 review Jesse Smith of DistroWatch concluded, "despite my initial problems getting Ubuntu MATE installed and running smoothly, I came away with a positive view of the distribution. The project is providing a very friendly desktop experience that requires few hardware resources by modern standards. I also want to tip my hat to the default theme used on Ubuntu MATE."
Dedoimedo reviewed Ubuntu MATE in July 2018, and wrote that "[Ubuntu MATE offers] a wealth of visual and functional changes ... You really have the ability to implement anything and everything, and all of it natively, from within the system's interface.".
See also
Comparison of Linux distributions
GTK+
Linux Mint
MATE
Ubuntu GNOME
Ubuntu Unity
Xubuntu
References
External links
IA-32 Linux distributions
Operating system distributions bootable from read-only media
Ubuntu derivatives
X86-64 Linux distributions
Linux distributions |
7944160 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lund%20v.%20Commonwealth | Lund v. Commonwealth | Lund v. Commonwealth (Va. 1977) 232 S.E.2d 745 is a Supreme Court of Virginia case involving theft of services.
Facts
Charles Walter Lund was a statistics graduate student at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. While working on his Ph.D. research in the 1970s, Lund utilized the resources of Virginia Tech's computer lab.
The workings of the lab were complex. The computers were leased from IBM computers and the cost was distributed through various departments that used the computer facilities. Student who wished to use the computers were required to obtain the approval of the department head. Access keys were required to gain access to the lab, and a key was required to use PO boxes used to receive materials printed out on the computers. The student would ask for an item to be printed. The department would print the item and it would be placed in the PO box for retrieval. If the printed projects were too large to fit in the PO box a note would be placed there instead so the student could pick it up at the computer center main window.
Lund was put under surveillance on October 12, 1974, because departments were noticing unauthorized charges being made to their accounts. When asked about his activities on the computers, Lund initially denied any use of the computers. Later he admitted that he had been using it and turned over seven PO box keys to the investigator. Mr. Lund claimed that other students had given him those keys. Upon searching Lund's apartment, a large number of computer cards and print-outs were taken, the estimated value by the university being as much as $26,384.16.
Lund was charged in an indictment with the theft of keys, computer cards, computer printouts and using "without authority computer operation time and services of Computer Center Personnel... with intent to defraud, such property and services having a value of one hundred dollars or more." Lund waived his right to a jury trial and was convicted of grand larceny and sentenced to two years in the state penitentiary. His sentence was suspended and he was placed on probation for five years.
Holding
The Supreme Court of Virginia held that labor and services and the unauthorized use of the University's computer cannot be construed to be subject of larceny. The Court reasoned that labor or services cannot be the subject of the crime of larceny because neither time nor services may be taken or carried away, and that the unauthorized use of the computer could not be the subject of larceny, because "Nowhere in Code §§ 18.1-100[…] do we find the word 'use'."
On the subject of the "stolen" items, the Commonwealth argued that the printouts and the computer cards had as much market value as scrap paper: "The cost of producing the print-outs is not the proper criterion of value for the purpose here. Where there is no market value of an article that has been stolen, the better rule is that its actual value should be proved..."
The judgment and indictment of the trial court was reversed based on lack of evidence to convict the defendant of grand larceny under Code §18.1-100 or § 18.1-118.
References
1977 in United States case law
U.S. state criminal case law
Virginia state case law
Virginia Tech
1977 in Virginia
Law articles needing an infobox
Computer case law |
36436585 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.%20H.%20The%20Rajah%27s%20College%2C%20Pudukkottai | H. H. The Rajah's College, Pudukkottai | His Highness The Rajah's College is an autonomous educational institution in the town of Pudukkottai in Tamil Nadu, India. Founded by Ramachandra Tondaiman, the Raja of Pudukkottai State in 1857, it is the foremost arts and science college in the town. It is affiliated with Bharathidasan University.
History
H.H. The Rajah's College, which was first established in the year 1857, as Maha Rajah's free English medium school, has now attained the supreme state of being an esteemed institution with real potential and the state of eminence and excellence.
The Maharaja Free English school
The Maharaja Free English school produced its first batch of matriculation students in 1880 and started its first intermediate courses in 1891. The Free English Medium School started functioning in the year 1879 in a spare building at Vadakku (North) Raja Street in Pudukkottai. The first batch of the final year students of this school were sent for the terminal exam. to the Madras University in the year 1880. Because of this 1880 is being considered as the beginning year of this college. In the year 1891, the high school classes and the college classes were transferred to this present building. The Head Master of the Maharajah Free English Medium School Mr. S. Narayanaswamy Ayyar was appointed as the first principal of this college.
PUC College
During the tenure of Mr. S. T. Ramachandra Sasthiri, as the Principal (1912 – 1920) courses like history, chemistry, mathematics, accountancy, Tamil and Sanskrit were taught to the students. In the year 1920, after the introduction of the science subjects in the Madras University at PUC Level, this college attained the state of self sufficiency to some extent. In the year 1921, a boy's hostel was built at the southern side of the college play ground. In order to provide vocational training (technical skills) to the students, motor rewinding course was offered in 1928. Later, this course was changed into two years technical course for producing the engineering graduates.
Madras University affiliation
In the Year 1946, the Welfare Committee of the Madras University granted permission to this college to start the UG Courses. Then the subjects like Economics, History, and Mathematics were taught at the UG Level. The college started functioning as the first UG Degree College, affiliated to Madras University, in the year June 1946. Pudukkottai Samasthanam (The Kingdom of Pudukkottai) was annexed with the Trichy District in Madras Presidency in the year 1948. Since then the college, under the control of the Director of People's Education, Madras Presidency was declared as the Government College. B.Com. Degree Course was started in 1949.
In 1959, Chemistry was introduced as an elective subject in the UG Science Degree Courses. In addition to it, separate buildings with One Lakh, were built for the Physics and Chemistry Laboratories. B.Sc. Physics and B.Sc. Botany Degree Courses were started in the year 1961 and 1968 respectively. In the year 1968, M.Com. Degree Course was started in the college. And so the college was promoted as the First-Grade PG College of Pudukkottai. B.A. English was first started in the year 1980. Subsequently, M.A. History and M.Sc. Mathematics were introduced in 1981 and 1982 then in 1984, B.Com. degree course was offered in the Evening College Stream
Bharathidasan University affiliation
H.H. The Rajah's College was affiliated to the Bharathidasan University Trichirappalli in 1982. A sum of Rupees Two Lakhs was spent for building the compound wall around the college playground. From the academic year 1989–1990, M.Phil. Course was offered in Both M.Com. and M.A. (History) Degree Courses. Because of this the college attained another glorious mile stone in its pursuit of growth and development. M.A. Economics and B.Sc. Physical Education courses were started between 1990 and 1991. Ph.D. Full Time course was introduced in the department of History between 1992 and 1993. B.Sc. Computer Science was offered in 1996.
Autonomous accreditation
H.H.The Rajah's College was declared as an Autonomous College by the University Grants Commission in the academic year 1999–2000. The college which was awarded the 3 Star Status by the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) between 1999 and 2000, was then declared as the "B" Grade College by NAAC between 2005 and 2006. Later in 2011, University Grants Commission was given the extension offer of Autonomy to this campus.
Departments
This college offers more than 20 degrees in different concentrations. Every faculties were working as research faculty in this campus. Each departments were governed by respective head of the departments.
The various departments of specialization are:
Botany
Business Administration
Chemistry
Commerce
Computer Science
Economics
English
Hindi
History
Mathematics
Physical Education
Physics
Tamil
Zoology.
Courses
H.H. The Rajah's College awarding more than 30 graduation degree's in various concentrations as follows,
Bachelor of Arts (Tamil)
Master of Arts (Tamil)
Master of Philosophy (Tamil)
Bachelor of Arts (English)
Master of Arts (English)
Master of Philosophy (English)
Bachelor of Arts (Economics)
Master of Arts (Economics)
Master of Philosophy (Economics)
Bachelor of Arts (Hindi)
Master of Arts (Hindi)
Bachelor of Arts (History)
Master of Arts (History)
Master of Philosophy (History)
Bachelor of Commerce
Master of Commerce
Bachelor of Business Administration
Bachelor of Computer Applications
Bachelor of Science (Computer Science)
Master of Science (Computer Science)
Master of Philosophy (Computer Science)
Bachelor of Science (Maths)
Master of Science (Maths)
Master of Philosophy (Maths)
Bachelor of Science (Physics)
Master of Science (Physics)
Master of Philosophy (Physics)
Bachelor of Science (Chemistry)
Master of Science (Chemistry)
Master of Philosophy (Chemistry)
Bachelor of Science (Botany)
Master of Science (Botany)
Master of Philosophy (Botany)
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S. Satyamurti was an Indian independence activist and politician. He was acclaimed for his rhetoric and was one of the leading politicians of the Indian National Congress from the Madras Presidency.
Muthulakshmi Reddy was an Indian medical practitioner, social reformer and Padma Bhushan award receiver. Muttulakshmi Reddy was appointed to the Madras Legislative Council in 1927.
Gemini Ganesan better known by his stage name Gemini Ganesan, was an Indian film actor who worked mainly in Tamil cinema. He was sports_nicknamed "Kadhal Mannan" (King of Romance) for the romantic roles he played in Tamil films.
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219731 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myst | Myst | Myst is a graphic adventure puzzle video game designed by the Miller brothers, Robyn and Rand. It was developed by Cyan, Inc., published by Broderbund, and initially released for the Macintosh personal computer platform in 1993. In the game, players travel via a special book to the island of Myst. There, players solve puzzles, and by doing so, travel to four other worlds, known as Ages, which reveal the backstory of the game's characters.
The Miller brothers got their start in video game development by creating titles for children. They conceived Myst as their first game for adults, receiving funding from publisher Sunsoft. Development began in 1991 and was Cyan's biggest undertaking to date. Technical constraints of the time influenced the design of the game and the production of its graphics, which were state-of-the-art but static. Robyn Miller composed 40 minutes of synthesized music that became the soundtrack to Myst.
Myst was a surprise hit. Critics lauded the ability of the game to immerse players in its fictional world. Selling more than six million copies, Myst became the best-selling PC game until The Sims exceeded its sales in 2002. Myst helped drive adoption of the new CD-ROM format, spawned a multimedia franchise, and inspired clones, parodies, and new genres of video games. Multiple remakes and ports of the game to other platforms have been released, as well as spin-off novels and other media.
Gameplay
Mysts gameplay consists of a first-person journey through an interactive world. Players can interact with specific objects on some screens by clicking or dragging them. The player moves by clicking on locations shown on the screen; the scene then crossfades into another frame, and the player can explore the new area. Myst has an optional "Zip" feature to assist in rapidly crossing areas already explored; when a lightning bolt cursor appears, players can click and skip several frames to another location. While this provides a rapid method of travel, it can also cause players to miss important items and clues. Some items can be carried by the player and read, including journal pages which provide backstory. Players can only carry a single page at a time, and pages return to their original locations when dropped.
To complete the game, the player must fully explore the island of Myst. There, the player discovers and follows clues to be transported via "linking books" to several "Ages", each of which is a self-contained mini-world. Each of the Ages—named Selenitic, Stoneship, Mechanical, and Channelwood—requires the user to solve a series of logical, interrelated puzzles to complete its exploration. Objects and information discovered in one Age may be required to solve puzzles in another Age, or to complete the game's primary puzzle on Myst. For example, in order to activate a switch, players must first discover a combination to a safe, open it, and use the matches found within to start a boiler.
Apart from its predominantly nonverbal storytelling, Mysts gameplay is unusual among adventuring computer games in several ways. The player is provided with very little backstory at the beginning of the game, and no obvious goals or objectives are laid out. This means that players must simply begin to explore. There are no obvious enemies, no physical violence, no time limit to complete the game, and no threat of dying at any point. The game unfolds at its own pace and is solved through a combination of patience, observation, and logical thinking.
Plot
Players assume the role of an unnamed person who stumbles across an unusual book titled "Myst". The player reads the book and discovers a detailed description of an island world called Myst. Placing their hand on the last page, the player is whisked away to the world described and is left with no choice but to explore the island. Myst contains a library where two additional books can be found, colored red and blue. These books are traps that hold Sirrus and Achenar, the sons of Atrus, who once lived on Myst island with his wife Catherine. Atrus writes special "linking books" that transport people to the worlds, or "Ages", that the books describe. From the panels of their books, Sirrus and Achenar tell the player that Atrus is dead; each brother blames the other for the death of their father, as well as the destruction of much of Atrus' library. Both plead for help to escape. The books are missing several pages, rendering the sons' messages unclear and riddled with static.
As the player continues to explore the island, books linking to more Ages are discovered hidden behind complex mechanisms and puzzles. The player must visit each Age, find the red and blue pages hidden there, and return to Myst Island. These pages can then be placed in the corresponding books. As the player adds more pages to these books, the brothers can be seen and heard more clearly. After collecting four pages, the brothers can talk clearly enough to tell the player where the fifth and final missing page for their book is hidden; if the player can complete either book, that brother will be set free. The clearer dialog also allows the player to more accurately judge each brother's personality. The player is left with a choice to help Sirrus, Achenar, or neither.
Sirrus and Achenar beg the player not to touch the green book that is stored in the same location as their final pages, claiming it to be another trap book like their own. In truth, it leads to D'ni, where Atrus is imprisoned. When the book is opened, Atrus asks the player to bring him a final page that is hidden on Myst Island; without it, he cannot bring his sons to justice. The game has several endings, depending on the player's actions. Giving either Sirrus or Achenar the final page of their book causes the player to switch places with the son, leaving the player trapped inside the Prison book. Linking to D'ni without the page Atrus asks for leaves the player and Atrus trapped on D'ni. Linking to D'ni with the page allows Atrus to complete his Myst book and return to the island. Upon returning to the library, the player finds the red and blue books gone, and burn marks on the shelves where they used to be.
Development
Background
In 1988, brothers Rand and Robyn Miller were living apart in the United States. Robyn was taking a year off from university, writing and trying to establish state residency. Rand was a computer programmer for a bank. Rand approached his brother with the idea of making an interactive storybook using HyperCard. The brothers were not big video game players themselves, although they were familiar with Dungeons & Dragons, and had played Zork. In his parents' basement—Robyn did not own a computer himself—Robyn began drawing pictures and creating a nonlinear story that would eventually become their first game, The Manhole. The Manhole and the games that followed—Cosmic Osmo and Spelunx—were specifically aimed at children and shared the same aesthetics: black-and-white graphics, point-and-click gameplay, a first-person point of view, and explorable worlds. Robyn recalled that the games were more about exploration than narrative: "In the projects we did for children, we didn't really tell stories ... They were just these worlds that you would explore."
Around 1990, the brothers decided to create a game that would appeal to adults. Among their goals were believable characters, a non-linear story, and for the player as protagonist to make ethical choices. The Millers pitched the game to Activision under the title The Gray Summons; Robyn recalled that Activision told them to stick to children's games. At the time of the rejection, they were not doing well financially—"we were eating rice and beans and government cheese and that [was] our diet." Facing the end of their game-producing career, Japanese developer Sunsoft approached the Millers to create an adult-oriented game. Like with The Gray Summons, the Millers wanted their game to have a non-linear story with believable characters and an ethical choice. They also wanted to produce a game with far more impressive graphics than their previous efforts—at one point they considered making the game entirely hand-drawn. Finally, they knew their story would be a mystery.
Development of Myst began in 1991. The game's creative team consisted of brothers Rand and Robyn, with help from sound designer Chris Brandkamp, 3D artist and animator Chuck Carter, Richard Watson, Bonnie McDowall, and Ryan Miller, who together made up Cyan, Inc. Myst was the largest and most time-consuming collaboration Cyan had attempted at that point. Cyan took inspiration from games like Zork, Star Wars mythic universe, portals to other worlds like in C. S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia, and the mysterious islands of old literature like the works of Jules Verne. The game's name, as well as the overall solitary and mysterious atmosphere of the island, was inspired by the book The Mysterious Island by Verne.
Sunsoft was not interested in the PC market and was focused on the video game console market instead. At the time, consoles had no hard drives and small memory buffers, meaning the game had to be designed around these technical constraints. To solve this issue, they compartmentalized parts of the game's environments into the different Ages. The Millers decided that most people did not like puzzles. Thus, a good puzzle would feel familiar and part of the world—not like a puzzle, but something for players to figure out like a circuit breaker in their house, using observation and common sense. Cyan did not have fans to please, and did not know exactly who the game would appeal to; Robyn felt like they did not have to second-guess their choices and could "explore the world as we were designing" and build a game for themselves. In a 2016 interview, Rand Miller stated that they strived to design the puzzles in Myst and their subsequent games by trying to balance three aspects: the puzzles themselves, the environment, and the story. Rand also stated they wanted to make sure that clues to the solutions to puzzles were apparent and presented to the player in a manner for these connections to be made: "once the player finds the solution, if they blame us, then we haven't done a good job. But if they blame themselves, then we have."
The Millers prepared a seven-page game proposal for Sunsoft from their ideas, mostly consisting of maps of the islands they had envisioned. Cyan proposed Myst to Sunsoft for $265,000—more than double what they thought it would cost to develop the game, but ultimately less than the game's final cost. Sunsoft had asked the brothers if their game would be as good as the upcoming The 7th Guest, another CD-ROM video game that had been shown in public preview demonstrations; the Millers assured them it would. After getting the go-ahead, Cyan playtested the entire game in a role-played Dungeons and Dragons form to identify any large issues before entering full production.
Production
Myst was not only the largest collaboration Cyan had attempted at the time but also took the longest to develop. According to Rand Miller, the brothers spent months solely designing the look and puzzles of the Ages, which were influenced by earlier whimsical "worlds" made for children. Much of the early development time was spent devising puzzles and the Ages, and the story was secondary. "We were place designers ... and the maps kind of fueled the story," Rand said. The plot evolved in tandem with the changing environment, developing new story details with each new building in the world. The climactic ending with Atrus was a later development in the game's story after Cyan realized they wanted to create a more complicated ending. In retrospect, Robyn felt that Myst did not quite provoke the emotional reaction and ethical quandary they set out to create.
The game was created on Macintosh computers, principally the Macintosh Quadra 700, using the HyperCard software. One of the first major discoveries Cyan had was how effective 3D rendering software was compared to hand-drawn figures that they had used on their previous titles, making it easy to create the worlds of Myst. Additionally, 3D rendering allowed them to use color, something lacking from their previous titles. Robyn generally focused on rendering out the environment using StrataVision 3D, with some additional modeling in Macromedia MacroModel, while Rand would place those images into HyperCard to link them up and test the puzzle aspects. Overall, Myst contains 2,500 frames, one for each possible area the player can explore. Final images for the game were then edited and enhanced using Photoshop 1.0.
In addition to the indoor settings, Myst featured exterior environments for each Age. At first, the developers had no idea how they would actually create the physical terrain for the Ages. Eventually, they created grayscale heightmaps, extruding them to create changes in elevation. From this basic terrain, textures were painted onto a colormap which was wrapped around the landscapes. Objects such as trees were added to complete the design. Rand noted that attention to detail allowed Myst to deal with the limitations of CD-ROM drives and graphics, stating "A lot can be done with texture ... Like finding an interesting texture you can map into the tapestry on the wall, spending a little extra time to actually put the bumps on the tapestry, putting screws in things. These are the things you don't necessarily notice, but if they weren't there, would flag to your subconscious that this is fake."
When Cyan began development, developing believable characters was a major hurdle. The brothers were limited to one-way communication with the player, and at any point, a player could choose to walk away and "break the spell" of the game. Displaying video in the game was initially infeasible. Designing around the limits, the designers created the trap books, which were location-specific, one-way communication devices. The release of QuickTime halfway through development of the game solved the video issue.
The original HyperCard Macintosh version of Myst had each Age as a unique HyperCard stack. Navigation was handled by the internal button system and HyperTalk scripts, with image and QuickTime movie display passed off to various plugins; essentially, Myst functions as a series of separate multimedia slides linked together by commands. The main technical constraint that impacted Myst was slow CD-ROM drive read speeds—few consumers had anything faster than single-speed drives, limiting the speed of streaming data off the disc. Cyan had to go to great lengths to make sure all the game elements loaded as quickly as possible. Images were stored as 8-bit PICT resources with custom color palettes and QuickTime still image compression. Animated elements such as movies and object animations were encoded as QuickTime movies with Cinepak compression; in total, there were more than 66 minutes of Quicktime animation. This careful processing made the finished graphics look like truecolor images despite their low bit depth; the stills were reduced in size from 500 KB to around 80 KB. The Millers tried to allocate files on the physical location of the spiral track on the CD in a manner as to reduce the seek time for images and movies that were closely related as to reduce any apparent in-game delay as the player transitions from scene to scene.
Cyan playtested the game with two people sitting in front of the game, finding that they would converse with each other and vocalize their likes and dislikes compared to one person silently playing. Rand and Robyn sat behind the testers taking notes, and could make on-the-fly changes and fixes. Cyan wanted the interface of the game to be invisible, and to craft a game that a wide audience would enjoy. Early on they had decided that there would be no inventory, enemies, or ways to die; eventually, they included a save system as a concession to the fact that it would take most players months to complete the game. Among the problems testers discovered with the story was that Myst initially had no inciting incident. In response, Cyan added a note from Atrus to Catherine that clued players in to the existence of a chamber by the dock that played a message from Atrus and explained the game's objectives.
Audio
Chris Brandkamp produced most of the ambient and incidental sounds in the game. To make sure the sounds fit, Brandkamp had to wait until the game's visuals were placed in context. Sound effects were drawn from unlikely sources; the noise of a fire in a boiler was created by driving slowly over stones in a driveway because recordings of actual fire did not sound like fire burning. The chimes of a large clock tower were simulated using a wrench, then transposed to a lower pitch. For the bubbles, which he recalled as "the most hateful sound", was created from the bubbles in the toilet using various tubes blown.
At first, Myst had no music, because the Millers did not want music to interfere with the gameplay. After a few tests, they realized that the background music did not adversely affect the game, alluding to Super Mario Bros. In fact, "seemed to really help the mood of certain places that you were at in the game." Robyn Miller ended up composing 40 minutes of synthesized music that was used in the game and later published as Myst: The Soundtrack. Mixing and effects were done on an E-mu Proteus MPS synthesizer. The soundtrack was recorded over the course of two weeks' evenings. Initially, Cyan released the soundtrack via a mail-order service, but before the release of Mysts sequel, Riven, Virgin Records acquired the rights to release the soundtrack, and the CD was re-released on April 21, 1998.
Sales
Myst was an immense commercial success. Along with The 7th Guest, it was widely regarded as a killer application that accelerated the sales of CD-ROM drives. Rand Miller recalled thinking before the game's release that selling 100,000 copies would be "mind-blowing". Broderbund sold 200,000 copies of the Macintosh version in six months after its September 1993 debut; such sales would have been enough to make it a best-selling PC game, and were extraordinary in the much smaller Macintosh market. Although requiring a CD drive further reduced the potential market, the difficulty of software piracy for CD-ROM software before CD burners became popular also helped sales. The game sold 500,000 copies in its first year.
Broderbund began porting Myst to Windows immediately after the Macintosh version's debut, with a larger team than the Miller brothers' group. It appeared in March 1994 on Windows and was even more successful. The game sold more than 500,000 copies in 1994. More than one million copies of the game were sold by spring 1995; even a strategy guide written in three weeks sold 300,000 copies. Unusual for a video game, sales continued to increase; 850,000 copies in the United States in 1996, and 870,000 in 1997. US sales decreased to 540,000 copies in 1998, but the growing popularity in Europe of multimedia PCs increased sales there. Myst did not depend on poor quality full motion video unlike other early CD-ROM products, so its graphics remained appealing long after release. By April 1998, Myst had sold 3.82 million units and earned $141.7 million in revenue in the United States. This led PC Data to declare it the country's best-selling computer game for the period between January 1993 and April 1998. Myst sold more than 6.3 million units worldwide by 2000, including more than 4.3 million in the United States; the figures exclude bundled software sales with multimedia upgrade kits.
Myst was the bestselling PC game throughout the 1990s until The Sims exceeded its sales in 2002, and was the top-selling game in the US for a total of 52 months between March 1993 and April 1999.
Reception
Myst was generally praised by critics. Computer Gaming World assured its readers that the game was not like other CD-ROM games that were "high on glitz and low on substance ... Myst is everything it's touted to be and is, quite simply, the best [Macintosh] CD-ROM game". It praised the game's open-world nature, lack of death, and "straightforward and simple" storyline. The magazine stated that the "mesmerizing" and "stunning" graphics and sound were "not the star of the show ... the substance of the game is every bit as good as its packaging", and concluded that Myst "is bound to set a new standard". In April 1994, the magazine called it an "artistic masterwork". Jeff Koke reviewed Myst in Pyramid #8 (July/August 1994), and stated that "It is the first adventure game in which I left feeling as though I had visited a real place."
Wired and The New York Times were among the publications that pointed to Myst as evidence that video games could, in fact, evolve into an art form. Entertainment Weekly reported that some players considered Mysts "virtual morality" a religious experience. Aarhus University professor Søren Pold pointed to Myst as an excellent example of how stories can be told using objects rather than people. Laura Evenson, writing for the San Francisco Chronicle, pointed to adult-oriented games like Myst as evidence the video game industry was emerging from its "adolescent" phase.
GameSpot's Jeff Sengstack wrote that "Myst is an immersive experience that draws you in and won't let you go." Writing about Mysts reception, Greg M. Smith noted that Myst had become a hit and was regarded as incredibly immersive despite most closely resembling "the hoary technology of the slideshow (with accompanying music and effects)". Smith concluded that "Mysts primary brilliance lies in the way it provides narrative justification for the very things that are most annoying" about the technological constraints imposed on the game; for instance, Macworld praised Mysts designers for overcoming the occasionally debilitating slowness of CD drives to deliver a consistent experience throughout the game. The publication went on to declare Myst the best game of 1994, stating that Myst removed the "most annoying parts of adventure games—vocabularies that [you] don't understand, people you can't talk to, wrong moves that get you killed and make you start over. You try to unravel the enigma of the island by exploring the island, but there's no time pressure to distract you, no arbitrary punishments put in your way".
Some aspects of the game still received criticism. Several publications did not agree with the positive reception of the story. Jeremy Parish of 1UP.com noted that while its lack of interaction and continual plot suited the game, Mysts helped end the adventure game genre. Edge stated the main flaw with the game was that the game engine was nowhere near as sophisticated as the graphics. Heidi Fournier of Adventure Gamers noted a few critics complained about the difficulty and lack of context of the puzzles, while others believed these elements added to the gameplay. (The game is so difficult that Broderbund included a blank pad of paper for taking notes. The Miller brothers estimate that half or less of players left the starting island.) Similarly, critics were split on whether the lack of a plot the player could actually change was a good or bad element. In 1996 Next Generation called Myst "gaming's bleakest hour", saying the static graphics and purely trial-and-error puzzles epitomized poor game design. The magazine said its commercial success, which they owed chiefly to its popularity among non-gamers as a CD-ROM showcase, had led to many other games emulating its negative aspects. In a 2000 retrospective review, IGN declared that Myst had not aged well and that playing it "was like watching hit TV shows from the 70s. 'People watched that?,' you wonder in horror."
Myst was named Best Adventure/Fantasy Role-Playing Game at the 1994 Codie awards, and received an honorable mention in Electronic Entertainments 1993 "Breakthrough Game" category, which ultimately went to The 7th Guest. That magazine's editors wrote, "One of the best-looking, best-sounding games ever, the Macintosh version of Myst sets new standards for the effective use of CD-ROM." Myst was also a runner-up for Computer Gaming Worlds 1993 "Adventure Game of the Year" award, but lost to Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers and Day of the Tentacle (tie). In 1996, the magazine ranked Myst 11th on its list of the most innovative computer games.
Reviews for the game's console ports generally reflected each critic's attitude towards the original game, as critics agreed that the ports for 3DO, Saturn, and PlayStation are virtually identical to the PC original. For example, Sushi-X of Electronic Gaming Monthly gave the 3DO version a 5 out of 10, remarking "The graphics and sounds are decent but the game never really appealed to me on the PC", while his co-reviewer Danyon Carpenter gave it a 7 out of 10 and assessed that "This game was all the rage when it debuted on the PC, and that excitement should follow through on the 3DO." In one of the more enthusiastic reviews for Myst, GamePro gave the 3DO version a perfect 5 out of 5 in all four categories (graphics, sound, control, and funfactor), concluding, "Beautiful and enchanting, Myst will thrill you and make you think at the same time." The Jaguar CD version was largely ignored by reviewers, but GamePro commented that apart from the Jaguar CD's lack of a mouse peripheral and occasionally longer load times, this version too is identical to the PC original.
However, the 3DS version received negative reviews even from critics who felt that Mysts popularity was merited, citing graphics and audio well below the 3DS's capabilities and the use of awkward circle pad controls in lieu of the 3DS's touchscreen.
Legacy
Mysts achievements led to a number of games which sought to copy its success, referred to as "Myst clones". Its success baffled some, who wondered how a game that was seen as "little more than 'an interactive slide show'" turned out to be a hit. As early as December 1994, Newsweek compared Myst to "an art film, destined to gather critical acclaim and then dust on the shelves".
Some developers of adventure games concurrent to Mysts release were critical of its success, due to the number of subsequent video games that copied Mysts style compared to traditional adventure games. These games diluted the market with poorly-received clones and were perceived as contributing to the decline of the genre. Others criticized Myst as the "ultimate anti-arcade game", as it was much more relaxed and casual than anything that was released since 1972, as "there were no lives, no dying, no score, and no time limit. No physical agility or reflexes were required. The only pressure was that which you imposed upon yourself to solve the puzzles and complete the storyline." However, Myst, along with other published works using the CD-ROM format, had created a new way of thinking about presentation in video games due to the nature of the CD-ROM: whereas most games before could be viewed as "games of emergence", in which game elements combined in novel and surprising ways to the player, Myst demonstrated one of the first "games of progression" where the player is guided through predefined sets of encounters. This helped to provide alternative experiences atypical of usual video games, and subsequently helped to validate the arthouse approach used in many indie video games developed in the 2000s.
Mysts success led to several sequels. Riven was released in 1997 and continues Mysts storyline, with Atrus asking the player to help him rescue his wife Catherine. Presto Studios and Ubisoft developed and published Myst III: Exile in 2001, Myst IV: Revelation was developed and published entirely by Ubisoft and released in 2004. The latest game in the franchise is Myst V: End of Ages, developed by Cyan Worlds and released in 2005. In addition to the main games, Cyan developed Uru: Ages Beyond Myst. The multiplayer component of Uru was initially canceled, but GameTap eventually revived it as Myst Online: Uru Live. After Uru Live was cancelled, the game was released as an open source title. The Miller brothers collaborated with David Wingrove to produce several novels based on the Myst universe, which were published by Hyperion. The novels, entitled Myst: The Book of Atrus, Myst: The Book of Ti'ana, and Myst: The Book of D'ni, fill in the games' backstory and were packaged together as The Myst Reader. By 2003, the Myst franchise had sold over twelve million copies worldwide, with Myst representing more than six million copies in the figure.
Myst became a cultural touchstone of the day; the game was so popular the Miller brothers appeared in advertisements for The Gap. Actor Matt Damon wanted The Bourne Conspiracy video game to be a puzzle game like Myst, refusing to lend his voice talent to the game when it was turned into a shooter instead. Myst has also been used for educational and scientific purposes; Becta recognized a primary school teacher, Tim Rylands, who had made literacy gains using Myst as a teaching tool, and researchers have used the game for studies examining the effect of video games on aggression. A parody computer game, Pyst, was released in 1996; the game is a satirical free roam of Myst island which had been apparently vandalized by frustrated visitors. Starring John Goodman, the parody cost far more to develop than the original. Myst was added to the collection of video games of the Museum of Modern Art in 2013, where it is displayed as a video presentation.
In retrospective, Myst is considered to be a precursor to casual games that gained popularity with browser platforms and mobile devices which typically do not require players to act quickly, as well as a preliminary example of a walking simulator that allow players to explore and discover the game's narrative at their own pace. Cyan's sequels to Myst also indirectly served to popularize escape the room games, which provide similar puzzle-solving experiences but in a much more confined space.
Disney approached Cyan Worlds about constructing a theme park inspired by Myst, which included scouting an island area within Disney's Florida properties that Rand Miller felt was perfect for the Myst setting. The television streaming service Hulu had obtained the rights to create a television series around Myst in May 2015. The series would explore the origin of the main island featured in Myst. The Hulu series was to be produced by Legendary Television, which had acquired the television rights from Cyan for the series in late 2014. The show was to have been produced by Matt Tolmach and written by Evan Daugherty. Rand Miller stated in a September 2016 interview that with the show, "we're farther along now than we've been in a long time", but timelines remain uncertain.
In June 2019, Village Roadshow Pictures announced they had acquired the rights to make Myst films, television programs, and other programming, leaving the fate of the Legendary Television vehicle in doubt. Ashley Edward Miller was announced as the showrunner and writer for the show's pilot.
Re-releases and ports
Mysts success led to the game being ported to multiple platforms, including the Saturn, PlayStation, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Portable, Android, iPhone, Nintendo DS, Nintendo 3DS, Jaguar CD, AmigaOS, CD-i, and 3DO consoles. There was also a version developed and even previewed for the Sega CD, but it was never released by Sunsoft.
PC remakes
Myst: Masterpiece Edition was an updated version of the original Myst, released in May 2000. It featured several improvements over the original game's multimedia: the images were re-rendered in 24-bit truecolor instead of the original Mysts 256 colors (8-bit); the score was re-mastered, and sound effects were enhanced.
realMyst: Interactive 3D Edition was a remake of Myst released in November 2000 for Windows PCs, and in January 2002 for Mac. Unlike Myst and the Masterpiece Edition, the gameplay of realMyst featured free-roaming, real-time 3D graphics instead of point-and-click pre-rendered stills. Weather effects like thunderstorms, sunsets, and sunrises were added to the Ages, and minor additions were made to keep the game in sync with the story of the Myst novels and sequels. The game also added a new sixth Age called Rime, which is featured in an extended ending, as well as the addition of Ti'ana's grave on Myst island. realMyst was developed by Cyan, Inc. and Sunsoft, and published by Ubisoft. While the new interactivity of the game was praised, realMyst ran poorly on most computers of the time. Robyn Miller expressed frustration with realMyst, saying: "I only saw realMyst after it was released. As a remake, it was a lapse of reason and directionless; overt merchandising of the original Myst. It definitely wasn't how we originally envisioned Myst, as was promoted."
Carla Harker reviewed the PC version of the game for Next Generation, rating it one star out of five, and stated that "With only graphics to stand on, realMYST is beautiful, but there's no real substance here."
realMyst: Masterpiece Edition, a visually enhanced revision running on the Unity engine that also includes the graphics of the original Myst game, was released on Windows and macOS on February 7, 2014. The remake was updated to version 2.0 on January 28, 2015, receiving a significant graphical overhaul in which several bugs were fixed and the detail of many models and textures was upgraded.
Console and handhelds
On May 18, 2012, the PlayStation Network released a port for Myst in the form of a PSone classic for the PlayStation 3 and PSP.
In November 2005, Midway Games announced that they would be developing a remake of Myst for the PlayStation Portable. The remake would include additional content that was not featured in the original Myst, including the Rime age that was earlier seen in realMyst. The game was released in Japan and Europe in 2006, and the US version was released in 2008.
A version of Myst for the Nintendo DS was also released in December 2007. The version features re-mastered video and audio, using source code specifically re-written for the Nintendo DS. The remake features Rime as a playable Age, with an all-new graphics set. This version of the game was released in Europe on December 7, 2007, courtesy of Midway. It was released in North America on May 13, 2008, originally published by Navarre and later reissued by Storm City Games. The version was heavily panned by the gaming press, with an aggregate score of 43/100 on Metacritic. This version was again later re-released for Nintendo 3DS, published by Funbox Media in Europe, and Maximum Family Games in North America and Australia. The game later appeared in digital format via the Nintendo eShop in North America on November 15, 2012, and in Europe on September 5, 2013.
In February 2005, Cyan and Mean Hamster Software released Myst for the Microsoft Windows Mobile platform; Riven was ported shortly after. In August 2008, Cyan announced that the company was developing a version of Myst for Apple's iOS. The game was made available to download from the iTunes App Store on May 2, 2009. The original download size was 727 MB, which was considered very large by iPhone standards. An updated version of realMyst was released for iPad 2 and above, with improved graphics over the original PC release, on June 14, 2012. A version for Android devices based on the realMyst version was released on January 26, 2017, produced and published by Noodlecake, and a similar port for Riven was released on April 26, 2017.
realMyst: Masterpiece Edition was released for the Nintendo Switch on May 21, 2020.
3D remake for virtual reality and other platforms
Cyan announced a new remake of Myst for high-definition screens and virtual reality, with the game's worlds fully created in free-roam 3D environments, using Unreal Engine 4, along with features like puzzle randomization, in September 2020. Myst for the Oculus Quest and Oculus Quest 2 was released on December 10, 2020.
The VR version but adapted for "flatscreen" monitors was released on August 26, 2021, for Windows, macOS, Xbox Series X/S and Xbox One.
References
External links
1993 video games
3DO Interactive Multiplayer games
Acclaim Entertainment games
Amiga games
Amiga 1200 games
Android (operating system) games
Atari Jaguar CD games
Broderbund games
Cancelled Sega CD games
CD-i games
Cyan Worlds games
First-person adventure games
IOS games
Classic Mac OS games
Myst
Nintendo 3DS games
Nintendo 3DS eShop games
Nintendo DS games
Nintendo Switch games
PlayStation (console) games
PlayStation Network games
PlayStation Portable games
Psygnosis games
Puzzle video games
ScummVM-supported games
Sega Saturn games
Single-player video games
Sunsoft games
Unreal Engine games
Video games developed in the United States
Video games scored by Robyn Miller
Video games set on uninhabited islands
Video games with alternate endings
Video games set on fictional islands
Windows games |
9364702 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gupta%20Technologies | Gupta Technologies | Gupta Technologies, LLC was a software development company based in Roseville, Placer County, California. It was acquired by Unify Corporation in 2006.
Its principal products are the SQL relational database management system SQLBase, a mobile HTML5 enterprise development system called TD Mobile and a rapid application development system called Team Developer (also known as SQLWindows). The company is considered as the provider of the first client/server relational database software that would run on personal computers (PC), rather than mini computers.
Company history
The company was founded in 1984 by Umang Gupta, a former vice president at Oracle Corporation. Gupta's first product was SQLBase, followed by SQLWindows, which combined SQLBase with a graphical user interface and programming language for creating business applications. SQLWindows was one of the first GUI development tools for Microsoft Windows. The company went public in 1993 (NASDAQ: GPTA).
The name of the company was changed to Centura Software in the late 1990s. In February 2001 Centura was taken over by the Platinum Equity investment company. Centura Software filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy in August 2001, and the United States Securities and Exchange Commission revoked the registration of Centura's common stock in December 2004. After the bankruptcy, some assets were kept by a reborn Gupta Technologies LLC. In January 2005 Gupta Technologies, LLC was bought by another investor, Warp Technology Holdings, Inc. In May 2005 the company changed its name to Halo Technology Holdings, Inc. In September 2006 the company was acquired by Unify Corporation. In June 2010 Unify announced its merger with Daegis, a US company that provides software for electronic discovery in litigation matters.
In November 2012 the Unify database and development tools division was renamed back to Gupta Technologies. Gupta's headquarters are in Roseville, California.
Markets
In the middle of the 1990s Gupta achieved a worldwide business volume about 60 million US Dollar with 500 employees. Since then company development has regressed. Unify employs only about 70 people, who run, apart from Gupta, a number of other lines of product and service. The overall revenue from software licenses was 4.4 million US Dollar in 2007.
Most clients use the Team Developer 4GL development environment with other relational databases. In the workgroup segment and in mobile applications Gupta’s own database SQLBase is used quite often. SQLBase is targeted towards small PC applications and handheld devices such as handheld PCs. Since Unify took over Gupta Technologies, many new product versions of SQLBase and Team Developer have been released.
TD Mobile
TD Mobile is a development system for mobile enterprise apps utilizing HTML5 and JavaScript technologies. TD Mobile apps do run on all mobile devices that support HTML5. Those include Android based smartphones and tablets, iOS based smartphones and tablets, Windows phone and Blackberry as well.
Apps are designed in a visual page editor, the fronted side requires no coding in HTML or JavaScript. TD Mobile offers a unique approach in that it allows to develop the client app and the backend code in one single development system.
SQLBaseAD
SQLBase 11.0, new locking and multi-user features to improve user concurrency; support for Windows Vista and Linux
SQLBase 11.5, features a new multiprocessing cache manager and a new graphical DBA tool SQLBase Command Center
SQLBase 11.6, support for up to 1,000 columns per table, wider char (900 characters) and nchar fields (450 characters), roles implementation, SQLBase Command Center provides new performance and database issue analysis features
SQLBase 11.7, new Windows 64-bit server. New client drivers, network authentication and improved security features.
Team Developer
Team Developer 5.1, introduces new GUI themes for applications look & feel like Office 2007, new controls like date picker and datetime picker
Team Developer 5.2, new controls like a new grid with many new cell types, new tab control, new rich text control, report watermarks
Team Developer 6.0, released in fall 2010, introduces a new .NET compiler, allowing for .NET WPF Desktop and WPF Browser applications
Team Developer 6.1, released in spring 2012, introduced .NET Web Services providing, and an updated IDE that includes color-coded source code
Team Developer 6.2, released in spring 2013, delivered 64-bit .NET applications, a programmable ribbon bar and other GUI features
Team Developer 6.3, released in spring 2015, new GUI features
Team Developer 7.0, released in fall 2016, delivered 64-bit Win32 applications, REST API, new language features like function overloading, protected functions/variables and several GUI enhancements
Team Developer 7.1, released in spring 2018, multi-threading, Win32 support for WPF Controls, UI Skinning
References
External links
Unify renamed to Gupta Technologies press release
Umang Gupta as Keynote Speaker at Velocity a Web Conference
OpenText Gupta Technologies Website (including links to product documentation)
Order suspending trade in Gupta stock
Large collection of Team Developer samples
Dedicated WIKI on Team Developer and related products
Community forum for Q & A on Team Developer and related products
Software companies based in California
Companies based in Roseville, California
Software companies established in 1984
1984 establishments in California
American companies established in 1984
Software companies of the United States |
1661475 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green%20computing | Green computing | Green computing, green IT, or ICT sustainability, is the study and practice of environmentally sustainable computing or IT.
The goals of green computing are similar to green chemistry: reduce the use of hazardous materials, maximize energy efficiency during the product's lifetime, the recyclability or biodegradability of defunct products and factory waste. Green computing is important for all classes of systems, ranging from handheld systems to large-scale data centers.
Many corporate IT departments have green computing initiatives to reduce the environmental effect of their IT operations.
Origins
In 1992, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency launched Energy Star, a voluntary labeling program that is designed to promote and recognize the energy efficiency in monitors, climate control equipment, and other technologies. This resulted in the widespread adoption of sleep mode among consumer electronics. Concurrently, the Swedish organization TCO Development launched the TCO Certified program to promote low magnetic and electrical emissions from CRT-based computer displays; this program was later expanded to include criteria on energy consumption, ergonomics, and the use of hazardous materials in construction.
Regulations and industry initiatives
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has published a survey of over 90 government and industry initiatives on "Green ICTs", i.e. information and communication technologies, the environment and climate change. The report concludes that initiatives tend to concentrate on the greening ICTs themselves rather than on their actual implementation to tackle global warming and environmental degradation. In general, only 20% of initiatives have measurable targets, with government programs tending to include targets more frequently than business associations.
Government
Many governmental agencies have continued to implement standards and regulations that encourage green computing. The Energy Star program was revised in October 2006 to
efficiency requirements for computer equipment, along with a tiered ranking system for approved products.
By 2008, 26 US states established statewide recycling programs for obsolete computers and consumer electronics equipment. The statutes either impose an "advance recovery fee" for each unit sold at retail or require the manufacturers to reclaim the equipment at disposal.
In 2010, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) was signed into legislation by President Obama. The bill allocated over $90 billion to be invested in green initiatives (renewable energy, smart grids, energy efficiency, etc.) In January 2010, the U.S. Energy Department granted $47 million of the ARRA money towards projects that aim to improve the energy efficiency of data centers. The projects provided research to optimize data center hardware and software, improve power supply chain, and data center cooling technologies.
Industry
Climate Savers Computing Initiative (CSCI) is an effort to reduce the electric power consumption of PCs in active and inactive states. The CSCI provides a catalog of green products from its member organizations, and information for reducing PC power consumption. It was started on June 12, 2007. The name stems from the World Wildlife Fund's Climate Savers program, which was launched in 1999. The WWF is also a member of the Computing Initiative.
The Green Electronics Council offers the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT) to assist in the purchase of "greener" computing systems. The Council evaluates computing equipment on 51 criteria - 23 required and 28 optional - that measure a product's efficiency and sustainability attributes. Products are rated Gold, Silver, or Bronze, depending on how many optional criteria they meet. On January 24, 2007, President George W. Bush issued Executive Order 13423, which requires all United States Federal agencies to use EPEAT when purchasing computer systems.
The Green Grid is a global consortium dedicated to advancing energy efficiency in data centers and business computing ecosystems. It was founded in February 2007 by several key companies in the industry – AMD, APC, Dell, HP, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Rackable Systems, SprayCool (purchased in 2010 by Parker), Sun Microsystems and VMware. The Green Grid has since grown to hundreds of members, including end-users and government organizations, all focused on improving data center infrastructure efficiency (DCIE).
The Green500 list rates supercomputers by energy efficiency (megaflops/watt), encouraging a focus on efficiency rather than absolute performance.
Green Comm Challenge is an organization that promotes the development of energy conservation technology and practices in the field of Information and Communications Technology (ICT).
The Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC) Energy specification augments existing TPC benchmarks by allowing optional publications of energy metrics alongside performance results.
SPECpower is the first industry standard benchmark that measures power consumption in relation to performance for server-class computers. Other benchmarks which measure energy efficiency include SPECweb, SPECvirt, and VMmark.
Approaches
Modern IT systems rely upon a complicated mix of people, networks, and hardware; as such, a green computing initiative must cover all of these areas as well. A solution may also need to address end user satisfaction, management restructuring, regulatory compliance, and return on investment (ROI). There are also considerable fiscal motivations for companies to take control of their own power consumption; "of the power management tools available, one of the most powerful may still be simple, plain, common sense."
Product longevity
Gartner maintains that the PC manufacturing process accounts for 70% of the natural resources used in the life cycle of a PC. More recently, Fujitsu released a life-cycle assessment (LCA) of a desktop that show that manufacturing and end of life accounts for the majority of this desktop's ecological footprint. Therefore, the biggest contribution to green computing usually is to prolong the equipment's lifetime. Another report from Gartner recommends to "Look for product longevity, including upgradability and modularity." For instance, manufacturing a new PC makes a far bigger ecological footprint than manufacturing a new RAM module to upgrade an existing one.
Data center design
Data center facilities are heavy consumers of energy, accounting for between 1.1% and 1.5% of the world's total energy use in 2010 [1]. The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that data center facilities consume up to 100 to 200 times more energy than standard office buildings.
Energy efficient data center design should address all of the energy use aspects included in a data center: from the IT equipment to the HVAC(Heating, ventilation and air conditioning) equipment to the actual location, configuration and construction of the building.
The U.S. Department of Energy specifies five primary areas on which to focus energy efficient data center design best practices:
Information technology (IT) systems
Environmental conditions
Air management
Cooling systems
Electrical systems
Additional energy efficient design opportunities specified by the U.S. Department of Energy include on-site electrical generation and recycling of waste heat.
Energy efficient data center design should help to better utilize a data center's space, and increase performance and efficiency.
In 2018, three new US Patents make use of facilities design to simultaneously cool and produce electrical power by use of internal and external waste heat. The three patents use silo design for stimulating use internal waste heat, while the recirculation of the air cooling the silo's computing racks. US Patent 9,510,486, uses the recirculating air for power generation, while sister patent, US Patent 9,907,213, forces the recirculation of the same air, and sister patent, US Patent 10,020,436, uses thermal differences in temperature resulting in negative power usage effectiveness. Negative power usage effectiveness, makes use of extreme differences between temperatures at times running the computing facilities, that they would run only from external sources other than the power use for computing.
Software and deployment optimization
Algorithmic efficiency
The efficiency of algorithms affects the amount of computer resources required for any given computing function and there are many efficiency trade-offs in writing programs. Algorithm changes, such as switching from a slow (e.g. linear) search algorithm to a fast (e.g. hashed or indexed) search algorithm can reduce resource usage for a given task from substantial to close to zero. In 2009, a study by a physicist at Harvard estimated that the average Google search released 7 grams of carbon dioxide (CO₂). However, Google disputed this figure, arguing instead that a typical search produced only 0.2 grams of CO₂.
Resource allocation
Algorithms can also be used to route data to data centers where electricity is less expensive. Researchers from MIT, Carnegie Mellon University, and Akamai have tested an energy allocation algorithm that successfully routes traffic to the location with the cheapest energy costs. The researchers project up to a 40 percent savings on energy costs if their proposed algorithm were to be deployed. However, this approach does not actually reduce the amount of energy being used; it reduces only the cost to the company using it. Nonetheless, a similar strategy could be used to direct traffic to rely on energy that is produced in a more environmentally friendly or efficient way. A similar approach has also been used to cut energy usage by routing traffic away from data centers experiencing warm weather; this allows computers to be shut down to avoid using air conditioning.
Larger server centers are sometimes located where energy and land are inexpensive and readily available. Local availability of renewable energy, climate that allows outside air to be used for cooling, or locating them where the heat they produce may be used for other purposes could be factors in green siting decisions.
Approaches to actually reduce the energy consumption of network devices by proper network/device management techniques are surveyed in. The authors grouped the approaches into 4 main strategies, namely (i) Adaptive Link Rate (ALR), (ii) Interface Proxying, (iii) Energy Aware Infrastructure, and (iv) Max Energy Aware Applications.
Virtualizing
Computer virtualization refers to the abstraction of computer resources, such as the process of running two or more logical computer systems on one set of physical hardware. The concept originated with the IBM mainframe operating systems of the 1960s, but was commercialized for x86-compatible computers only in the 1990s. With virtualization, a system administrator could combine several physical systems into virtual machines on one single, powerful system, thereby conserving resources by removing need for the original hardware and reducing power and cooling consumption. Virtualization can assist in distributing work so that servers are either busy or put in a low-power sleep state. Several commercial companies and open-source projects now offer software packages to enable a transition to virtual computing. Intel Corporation and AMD have also built proprietary virtualization enhancements to the x86 instruction set into each of their CPU product lines, in order to facilitate virtual computing.
New virtual technologies, such as operating-system-level virtualization can also be used to reduce energy consumption. These technologies make a more efficient use of resources, thus reducing energy consumption by design. Also, the consolidation of virtualized technologies is more efficient than the one done in virtual machines, so more services can be deployed in the same physical machine, reducing the amount of hardware needed.
Terminal servers
Terminal servers have also been used in green computing. When using the system, users at a terminal connect to a central server; all of the actual computing is done on the server, but the end user experiences the operating system on the terminal. These can be combined with thin clients, which use up to 1/8 the amount of energy of a normal workstation, resulting in a decrease of energy costs and consumption. There has been an increase in using terminal services with thin clients to create virtual labs. Examples of terminal server software include Terminal Services for Windows and the Linux Terminal Server Project (LTSP) for the Linux operating system. Software-based remote desktop clients such as Windows Remote Desktop and RealVNC can provide similar thin-client functions when run on low power, commodity hardware that connects to a server.
Power management
The Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI), an open industry standard, allows an operating system to directly control the power-saving aspects of its underlying hardware. This allows a system to automatically turn off components such as monitors and hard drives after set periods of inactivity. In addition, a system may hibernate, when most components (including the CPU and the system RAM) are turned off. ACPI is a successor to an earlier Intel-Microsoft standard called Advanced Power Management, which allows a computer's BIOS to control power management functions.
Some programs allow the user to manually adjust the voltages supplied to the CPU, which reduces both the amount of heat produced and electricity consumed. This process is called undervolting. Some CPUs can automatically undervolt the processor, depending on the workload; this technology is called "SpeedStep" on Intel processors, "PowerNow!"/"Cool'n'Quiet" on AMD chips, LongHaul on VIA CPUs, and LongRun with Transmeta processors.
Data center power
Data centers, which have been criticized for their extraordinarily high energy demand, are a primary focus for proponents of green computing. According to a Greenpeace study, data centers represent 21% of the electricity consumed by the IT sector, which is about 382 billion kWh a year.
Data centers can potentially improve their energy and space efficiency through techniques such as storage consolidation and virtualization. Many organizations are aiming to eliminate underutilized servers, which results in lower energy usage. The U.S. federal government has set a minimum 10% reduction target for data center energy usage by 2011. With the aid of a self-styled ultraefficient evaporative cooling technology, Google Inc. has been able to reduce its energy consumption to 50% of that of the industry average.
Operating system support
Microsoft Windows has included limited PC power management features since Windows 95. These initially provided for stand-by (suspend-to-RAM) and a monitor low power state. Further iterations of Windows added hibernate (suspend-to-disk) and support for the ACPI standard. Windows 2000 was the first NT-based operating system to include power management. This required major changes to the underlying operating system architecture and a new hardware driver model. Windows 2000 also introduced Group Policy, a technology that allowed administrators to centrally configure most Windows features. However, power management was not one of those features. This is probably because the power management settings design relied upon a connected set of per-user and per-machine binary registry values, effectively leaving it up to each user to configure their own power management settings.
This approach, which is not compatible with Windows Group Policy, was repeated in Windows XP. The reasons for this design decision by Microsoft are not known, and it has resulted in heavy criticism. Microsoft significantly improved this in Windows Vista by redesigning the power management system to allow basic configuration by Group Policy. The support offered is limited to a single per-computer policy. The most recent release, Windows 7 retains these limitations but does include refinements for timer coalescing, processor power management, and display panel brightness. The most significant change in Windows 7 is in the user experience. The prominence of the default High Performance power plan has been reduced with the aim of encouraging users to save power.
There is a significant market in third-party PC power management software offering features beyond those present in the Windows operating system. available. Most products offer Active Directory integration and per-user/per-machine settings with the more advanced offering multiple power plans, scheduled power plans, anti-insomnia features and enterprise power usage reporting. Notable vendors include 1E NightWatchman, Data Synergy PowerMAN (Software), Faronics Power Save, Verdiem SURVEYOR and EnviProt Auto Shutdown Manager
Linux systems started to provide laptop-optimized power-management in 2005, with power-management options being mainstream since 2009.
Power supply
Desktop computer power supplies are in general 70–75% efficient, dissipating the remaining energy as heat. A certification program called 80 Plus certifies PSUs that are at least 80% efficient; typically these models are drop-in replacements for older, less efficient PSUs of the same form factor. As of July 20, 2007, all new Energy Star 4.0-certified desktop PSUs must be at least 80% efficient.
Storage
Smaller form factor (e.g., 2.5 inch) hard disk drives often consume less power per gigabyte than physically larger drives. Unlike hard disk drives, solid-state drives store data in flash memory or DRAM. With no moving parts, power consumption may be reduced somewhat for low-capacity flash-based devices.
As hard drive prices have fallen, storage farms have tended to increase in capacity to make more data available online. This includes archival and backup data that would formerly have been saved on tape or other offline storage. The increase in online storage has increased power consumption. Reducing the power consumed by large storage arrays, while still providing the benefits of online storage, is a subject of ongoing research.
Video card
A fast GPU may be the largest power consumer in a computer.
Energy-efficient display options include:
No video card - use a shared terminal, shared thin client, or desktop sharing software if display required.
Use motherboard video output - typically low 3D performance and low power.
Select a GPU based on low idle power, average wattage, or performance per watt.
Display
Unlike other display technologies, electronic paper does not use any power while displaying an image. CRT monitors typically use more power than LCD monitors. They also contain significant amounts of lead. LCD monitors typically use a cold-cathode fluorescent bulb to provide light for the display. Some newer displays use an array of light-emitting diodes (LEDs) in place of the fluorescent bulb, which reduces the amount of electricity used by the display. Fluorescent back-lights also contain mercury, whereas LED back-lights do not.
A light-on-dark color scheme, also called dark mode, is a color scheme that requires less energy to display on new display technologies, such as OLED. This positively impacts battery life and energy consumption. While an OLED will consume around 40% of the power of an LCD displaying an image that is primarily black, it can use more than three times as much power to display an image with a white background, such as a document or web site. This can lead to reduced battery life and energy usage, unless a light-on-dark color scheme is used. A 2018 article in Popular Science suggests that "Dark mode is easier on the eyes and battery" and displaying white on full brightness uses roughly six times as much power as pure black on a Google Pixel, which has an OLED display. In 2019, Apple announced that a light-on dark mode will be available across all native applications in iOS 13 and iPadOS. It will also be possible for third-party developers to implement their own dark themes. Google has announced an official dark mode is coming to Android with the release of Android 10.
Materials recycling
Recycling computing equipment can keep harmful materials such as lead, mercury, and hexavalent chromium out of landfills, and can also replace equipment that otherwise would need to be manufactured, saving further energy and emissions. Computer systems that have outlived their particular function can be re-purposed, or donated to various charities and non-profit organizations. However, many charities have recently imposed minimum system requirements for donated equipment. Additionally, parts from outdated systems may be salvaged and recycled through certain retail outlets and municipal or private recycling centers. Computing supplies, such as printer cartridges, paper, and batteries may be recycled as well.
A drawback to many of these schemes is that computers gathered through recycling drives are often shipped to developing countries where environmental standards are less strict than in North America and Europe. The Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition estimates that 80% of the post-consumer e-waste collected for recycling is shipped abroad to countries such as China and Pakistan.
In 2011, the collection rate of e-waste is still very low, even in the most ecology-responsible countries like France. In this country, e-waste collection is still at a 14% annual rate between electronic equipment sold and e-waste collected for 2006 to 2009.
The recycling of old computers raises an important privacy issue. The old storage devices still hold private information, such as emails, passwords, and credit card numbers, which can be recovered simply by someone's using software available freely on the Internet. Deletion of a file does not actually remove the file from the hard drive. Before recycling a computer, users should remove the hard drive, or hard drives if there is more than one, and physically destroy it or store it somewhere safe. There are some authorized hardware recycling companies to whom the computer may be given for recycling, and they typically sign a non-disclosure agreement.
Cloud computing
Cloud computing addresses two major ICT challenges related to Green computing – energy usage and resource consumption. Virtualization, dynamic provisioning environment, multi-tenancy, green data center approaches are enabling cloud computing to lower carbon emissions and energy usage up to a great extent. Large enterprises and small businesses can reduce their direct energy consumption and carbon emissions by up to 30% and 90% respectively by moving certain on-premises applications into the cloud. One common example includes online shopping that helps people purchase products and services over the Internet without requiring them to drive and waste fuel to reach out to the physical shop, which, in turn, reduces greenhouse gas emission related to travel.
Edge Computing
New technologies such as edge and fog computing are a solution to reducing energy consumption. These technologies allow redistributing computation near the use, thus reducing energy costs in the network. Furthermore, having smaller data centers, the energy used in operations such as refrigerating and maintenance gets largely reduced.
Telecommuting
Teleconferencing and telepresence technologies are often implemented in green computing initiatives. The advantages are many; increased worker satisfaction, reduction of greenhouse gas emissions related to travel, and increased profit margins as a result of lower overhead costs for office space, heat, lighting, etc. The savings are significant; the average annual energy consumption for U.S. office buildings is over 23 kilowatt hours per square foot, with heat, air conditioning and lighting accounting for 70% of all energy consumed. Other related initiatives, such as Hoteling, reduce the square footage per employee as workers reserve space only when they need it. Many types of jobs, such as sales, consulting, and field service, integrate well with this technique.
Voice over IP (VoIP) reduces the telephony wiring infrastructure by sharing the existing Ethernet copper. VoIP and phone extension mobility also made hot desking more practical. Wi-Fi consume 4 to 10 times less energy than 4G.
Telecommunication network devices energy indices
The information and communication technologies (ICTs) energy consumption, in the US and worldwide, has been estimated respectively at 9.4% and 5.3% of the total electricity produced. The energy consumption of ICTs is today significant even when compared with other industries. Some study tried to identify the key energy indices that allow a relevant comparison between different devices (network elements). This analysis was focused on how to optimise device and network consumption for carrier telecommunication by itself. The target was to allow an immediate perception of the relationship between the network technology and the environmental effect. These studies are at the start and the gap to fill in this sector is still huge and further research will be necessary.
Supercomputers
The inaugural Green500 list was announced on November 15, 2007, at SC|07. As a complement to the TOP500, the unveiling of the Green500 ushered in a new era where supercomputers can be compared by performance-per-watt. As of 2019, two Japanese supercomputers topped the Green500 energy efficiency ranking with performance exceeding 16 GFLOPS/watt, and two IBM AC922 systems followed with performance exceeding 15 GFLOPS/watt.
Education and certification
Green computing programs
Degree and postgraduate programs that provide training in a range of information technology concentrations along with sustainable strategies in an effort to educate students how to build and maintain systems while reducing its harm to the environment. The Australian National University (ANU) offers "ICT Sustainability" as part of its information technology and engineering masters programs. Athabasca University offer a similar course "Green ICT Strategies", adapted from the ANU course notes by Tom Worthington. In the UK, Leeds Beckett University offers an MSc Sustainable Computing program in both full and part-time access modes.
Green computing certifications
Some certifications demonstrate that an individual has specific green computing knowledge, including:
Green Computing Initiative - GCI offers the Certified Green Computing User Specialist (CGCUS), Certified Green Computing Architect (CGCA) and Certified Green Computing Professional (CGCP) certifications.
CompTIA Strata Green IT is designed for IT managers to show that they have good knowledge of green IT practices and methods and why it is important to incorporate them into an organization.
Information Systems Examination Board (ISEB) Foundation Certificate in Green IT is appropriate for showing an overall understanding and awareness of green computing and where its implementation can be beneficial.
Singapore Infocomm Technology Federation (SiTF) Singapore Certified Green IT Professional is an industry endorsed professional level certification offered with SiTF authorized training partners. Certification requires completion of a four-day instructor-led core course, plus a one-day elective from an authorized vendor.
Australian Computer Society (ACS) The ACS offers a certificate for "Green Technology Strategies" as part of the Computer Professional Education Program (CPEP). Award of a certificate requires completion of a 12-week e-learning course designed by Tom Worthington, with written assignments.
Blogs and Web 2.0 resources
There are a lot of blogs and other user created references that can be used to gain more insights on green computing strategies, technologies and business benefits. A lot of students in Management and Engineering courses have helped in raising higher awareness about green computing.
Ratings
Since 2010, Greenpeace has maintained a list of ratings of prominent technology companies in several countries based on how clean the energy used by that company is, ranging from A (the best) to F (the worst).
ICT and energy demand
Digitalization has brought additional energy consumption; energy-increasing effects have been greater than the energy-reducing effects. Four energy consumption increasing effects are:
Direct effect - Strong increases of (technical) energy efficiency in ICT are countered by the growth of the sector.
Efficiency and rebound effects - Rebound effects are significantly high for ICT and increased productivity often leads to new behaviors that are more energy intensive.
Economic growth - Positive effect of digitalization on economic growth.
Sectoral change - Growth of ICT services tends not to replace, but come in top of existing services.
See also
Computational sustainability
Energy Star
Camara (charity) (Ireland)
Challenging the Chip, a book about labor rights and environmental justice in the global electronics industry
Desktop virtualization
Data migration
Digger gold
e-cycling
eDay, an electronic waste collection day in New Zealand
California Electronic Waste Recycling Act
Energy Efficient Ethernet
Energy consumption of computers in the USA
IEEE 1680
Interconnect bottleneck
IT energy management
Minimalism (computing)
Light-on-dark color scheme (Dark Mode)
Optical communication
Optical fiber cable
Parallel optical interface
Plug computer
Power factor
Power usage effectiveness (PUE)
Rebound effect (paradoxical negative effect)
Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive (RoHS)
Standby power
Sustainable Electronics Initiative (SEI)
Time-sharing
Virtual application
References
Further reading
Green IT Factsheet by the University of Michigan's Center for Sustainable Systems
Sustainable technologies
Bright green environmentalism
Computers and the environment |
7686145 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional%20services%20automation | Professional services automation | Professional services automation (PSA) is software designed to assist professionals, such as lawyers, auditors, and IT consultants, with project management and resource management for client projects and utilization rate management for billable staff. This is accomplished by developing metrics to quantify and qualify basic business processes that can then be used to streamline and improve those processes.
Typical PSA functions include project management and documentation, time recording, billing, reporting, and labor utilization. These features are often integrated with accounting, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems, and payroll systems in order to improve efficiency of overall operations. As a result, in addition to better managing client projects, independent contractors can prevent lost revenue and slow billing cycles.
Ultimately PSA software suites allow users to integrate industry-appropriate metrics in order to better understand operations and, in turn, improve efficiency and profitability. As businesses grow, the size and complexity of their projects tend to increase as well. PSA software is used to provide visibility into mid-project profitability.
Software types
In its simplest form, PSA software may offer only timesheet systems (including expense reporting and project management). However, in their most robust incarnation they can also include customer relationship management (CRM), resource management, opportunity and knowledge management.
Benefits
PSA software is designed to improve the performance and profitability of professional services firms. A recent end-user survey conducted by SPI Research showed significant improvement in key performance indicators such as:
Faster staffing and invoicing workflows
Lower project cancellation rates
Improved on-time, under-budget project delivery rates
Lower revenue leakage
Higher resource utilization rates
Improved project margins
The study concluded with a return on investment (ROI) model for an average 172-person professional services firm. According to the research, over a five-year horizon, the firm could expect to invest just under $200,000 in implementation and software license costs. The return, however, was estimated at nearly $23 million in increased revenue and reduced costs.
Software awards
As in most software categories, the Software and Information Industry Association rates this category of software.
References
Further reading
Business software
Services marketing |
6983918 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heartland%20Payment%20Systems | Heartland Payment Systems | Heartland Payment Systems, Inc. is a U.S.-based payment processing and technology provider. Founded in 1997, Heartland Payment Systems' last headquarters were in Princeton, New Jersey. An acquisition by Global Payments, expected to be worth $3.8 billion or $4.3 billion. was finalized on April 25, 2016.
Heartland Payment Systems provides payment processing for more than 275,000 business locations in the United States and processes more than 11 million transactions a day and more than $80 billion in transactions a year, as of 2014. In 2014, the Nilson Report ranked Heartland the 6th largest payment processor in the country by transaction count, and the 8th largest by processed dollar volume.
Associated businesses
In addition to payment processing, Heartland has developed or acquired businesses in payroll processing, gift card and campus card, point of sale systems, school payments and nutrition, network management, mobile payments and ordering, eCommerce, billing, and lending services.
History
Heartland processed its first card transaction on July 15, 1997. In 2001 the company received a $40 million private equity investment from Greenhill Capital Partners, L.P. (New York, NY), LLR Partners, Inc. (Philadelphia, PA), and their affiliated investment funds. The company went public on the New York Stock Exchange on August 11, 2005. On May 17, 2010, Heartland announced its debut on the list of America’s largest companies at #954.
Security breach
On January 20, 2009 Heartland announced that it had been "the victim of a security breach within its processing system in 2008". The data stolen included the digital information encoded onto the magnetic stripe built into the backs of credit and debit cards; with that data, thieves can fashion counterfeit credit cards by imprinting the same stolen information onto fabricated cards. One estimate claimed 100 million cards and more than 650 financial services companies were compromised; at the time, it was characterized as the largest ever criminal breach of card data.
An American computer hacker, Albert Gonzalez, was sentenced in March 2010 to 20 years in prison for his role in the hacking ring that broke into the Heartland computer systems. In February 2018, two Russian hackers were sentenced for a string of hacking including the Heartland breach.
On May 1, 2009, Visa and Heartland issued a statement that Heartland successfully validated its compliance with PCI DSS and was returned to Visa's list of PCI DSS Validated Service Providers.
End-to-end encryption
On May 24, 2009, Heartland commercially launched their E3, an end-to-end encryption technology designed to safeguard credit and debit card account information from the moment of card swipe and through the Heartland network. Gartner Analyst Avivah Litan stated that Heartland "is basically leading the way for the rest of the industry." She also characterized its plan for end-to-end encryption as the first effort of its kind in the US.
Other processors including Worldpay US and several First Data ISO's announced end-to-end encryption initiatives soon after Heartland announced theirs.
Open letter to the electronic payments industry
Following a keynote address to the Strategic Leadership Forum of the Electronic Transactions Association in October 2013, Heartland CEO Bob Carr published an open letter to the electronic payment processing industry urging an end to unethical, dishonest and illegal pricing practices, referencing the practice of deliberately falsifying interchange rates, deliberately falsifying merchant category codes (MCC), and the use of confusing small print to extort large fines from merchants.
Litigation against Mercury Payment Systems
In January 2014, Heartland filed a lawsuit against the company Mercury Payment Systems, an electronic payment provider, for alleged false advertising and "other deceptive trade practices". The lawsuit concerns interchange fees charged by credit card networks and alleges violations of the Lanham Act and state laws.
Heartland Secure
In May 2014, Heartland Secure is launched. Backed by a breach warranty, Heartland Secure combines three technologies to provide merchants with security and guard against monetization of stolen card data.
Merger with Global Payments
In April 2016, Heartland and Global Payments completed their merger agreement. The combined company, Global Payments Inc., is publicly traded (NYSE: GPN), and has more than 8,500 employees worldwide.
Acquisitions
May 30, 2008 – Heartland completed acquisition of Alliance Data Systems, a provider of payment processing, serving a variety of industries such as petroleum, convenience store, parking and retail.
November 18, 2008 – Heartland acquired Chockstone, a privately held provider of gift card programs and loyalty Heartland Payment Systems.
January 1, 2011 – Heartland School Solutions acquired School Food Service Software Suite LunchBox from Data Futures, INC., a privately held provider of comprehensive K-12 school nutrition and point-of-sale (POS).
October 11, 2011 – Heartland School Solutions acquired School-Link Technologies, Inc., a privately held provider of comprehensive K-12 school nutrition and point-of-sale (POS) solutions.
July 9, 2012 – Heartland acquired LunchByte Systems, Inc., a school foodservice back office management and point-of-sale (POS) company led by its NUTRIKIDS menu management, inventory management and POS for K-12 administrators, staff, parents and students.
December 17, 2012 – Heartland expanded its Campus Solutions division by acquiring Educational Computer Systems, Inc. (ECSI), a provider of customized payment processing for the higher education industry.
January 7, 2013 – Heartland expanded its Payroll Services business by acquiring Ovation Payroll, a U.S. payroll outsourcing company that offers payroll tax preparation and administration, internet payroll reporting, direct deposit, and other services.
February 15, 2014, Heartland acquired Merchant Software Corp. (Liquor POS), a provider of POS systems to the liquor retail vertical.
April 10, 2014 – Heartland acquired MCS Software, a provider of school foodservice point-of-sale (POS), back office and online payment for more than 4,000 K-12 schools nationwide.
August 14, 2014 – Heartland announced the acquisition of Leaf, creator of a mobile Point-of-Sale (POS) tablet designed for commerce.
September 4, 2014 – Heartland acquired TouchNet Information Systems, Inc., an integrated commerce provider to higher-education institutions.
November 1, 2014 – Heartland announced it acquired XPIENT Solutions, an enterprise-level restaurant POS software service.
February 13, 2015 – Heartland acquired Dinerware and PC America, both point of sale systems specializing in the restaurant and retail space.
March 1, 2015 – Heartland acquired Payroll 1, a provider of payroll and tax filing products and services for employers in diverse industries throughout the United States
October 30, 2015 – Heartland acquired Digital Dining, a point of sale system specializing in the restaurant space .
References
External links
Companies formerly listed on the New York Stock Exchange
American companies established in 1997
Online payments
Companies based in Princeton, New Jersey
2005 initial public offerings
2016 mergers and acquisitions
Payment service providers |
24751 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punjab%2C%20Pakistan | Punjab, Pakistan | Punjab (Urdu & (), ) is one of the four provinces of Pakistan, with a population of about as of 2021. Forming the bulk of the transnational Punjab region of Pakistan and India, it is bordered by the Pakistani provinces of Sindh, Balochistan, and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the enclave of Islamabad, and Pakistan administered Azad Kashmir. It also shares borders with the Indian states of Punjab, Rajasthan, and Jammu and Kashmir union territory. The capital is Lahore, a cultural, historical, economic and cosmopolitan centre of Pakistan where the country's cinema industry, and much of its fashion industry, are based. The largest cities of Punjab are Lahore and Faisalabad respectively. Faisalabad is the largest industrial city of Punjab. Punjab is also the world's fifth-most populous subnational entity, and the most populous outside China or India.
Punjab has been inhabited since ancient times. The Indus Valley Civilization, dating to 2600 BCE, was first discovered at Harappa. Punjab features heavily in the Hindu epic poem, the Mahabharata, and is home to Taxila, site of what is considered by many to be the oldest university in the world. In 326 BCE, Alexander the Great defeated King Porus at the Battle of the Hydaspes near Mong, Punjab. Subsequently, it formed part of the Mauryan, Kushan and Gupta empires. The Umayyad empire conquered Punjab in the 8th century CE. In the subsequent centuries, Punjab was invaded and conquered by the Hindu Shahis, Ghaznavids, Ghurids, Delhi Sultanate, Mughals, Durranis and the Sikhs. Punjab reached the height of its splendour during the reign of the Mughal Empire, which for a time ruled from Lahore. During the 18th century, Nader Shah's invasion of the Mughal Empire caused Mughal authority in the Punjab to fall apart and it thus fell into chaos. The Durrani Afghans under Ahmad Shah Durrani wrested control of Punjab but lost it to the Sikhs after a successful rebellion which allowed Sikh armies to claim Lahore in 1759. The Sikh Empire was established in 1799 under the rule of Ranjit Singh with his capital based in Lahore, until its defeat by the British. Punjab was central to the independence movements of both India and Pakistan, with Lahore being the site of both the Declaration of Indian Independence, and the resolution calling for the establishment of Pakistan. The province was formed when the Punjab province of British India was divided along religious boundaries in 1947 by the Radcliffe Line after Partition.
Punjab is Pakistan's most industrialised province, with the industrial sector making up 24% of the province's gross domestic product. Punjab is known in Pakistan for its relative prosperity, and has the lowest rate of poverty amongst all Pakistani provinces. A clear divide is present between the northern and southern portions of the province; with poverty rates in prosperous northern Punjab amongst the lowest in Pakistan, while some in south Punjab are amongst the most impoverished. Punjab is also one of South Asia's most urbanised regions with approximately 40% of people living in urban areas. Its human development index rankings are high relative to the rest of Pakistan.
The province has been strongly influenced by Sufism, with numerous Sufi shrines spread across Punjab, which attract millions of devotees annually. The founder of the Sikh faith, Guru Nanak, was born in the Punjab town of Nankana Sahib near Lahore. Punjab is also the site of the Katasraj Temple, which features prominently in Hindu mythology. Several UNESCO World Heritage Sites are located in Punjab, including the Shalimar Gardens, the Lahore Fort, the archaeological excavations at Taxila, and the Rohtas Fort.
Etymology
History
Ancient history
The oldest evidence of human life in Pakistan has been found in Soan River valley. It was here that some of the earliest signs of humans have been discovered during the excavations of prehistoric mounds. Tools up to two million years old have been recovered in the Potohar plateau. In the Soan River, many fossil bearing rocks are exposed on the surface.
Punjab was part of the Indus Valley Civilization, more than 5000 years old. The main site in Punjab was the city of Harrapa. The Indus Valley Civilization spanned much of what is today Pakistan and eventually evolved into the Indo-Aryan civilization. The arrival of the Indo-Aryans led to the flourishing of the Vedic civilization along the length of the Indus River. Punjab during the Mahabharata times was known as Panchanada. This civilization shaped subsequent cultures in South Asia. The Vedic civilization also flourished in the ancient city of Taxila in Gandhara.According to historians, this region was ruled by many small kingdoms and tribes around 4th and 5th BCE. The earliest known notable local king of this region was known as King Porus, who fought the famous Battle of the Hydaspes against Alexander the Great in 326 BCE near the river Jhelum. His kingdom, known as Pauravas, was situated between the river Hydaspes (modern Jhelum) and Acesines (modern day Chenab).
Punjab was also part of other empires including the Achaemenids, Macedonians, Mauryans, the Indo-Scythians, Guptas, Kushans, and Hindu Shahis.
Due to its location, the Punjab region came under constant attack and influence from the west and witnessed centuries of foreign invasions by the Greeks, Kushans, Scythians, Turks, Arabs and Mughals.
The city of Taxila, founded around 1000 BCE, was reputed to house one of the earliest universities in the world, the Takshashila University. One of its instructors was the Vedic statesman and philosopher Chanakya. Taxila was a major centre of political control, intellectual discourse and trade between the Hellenistic kingdoms and the Maurya Empire. Taxila is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, valued for its archaeological and religious history.
Gandhara civilisation (750 BC to 518 BC)
Gandhāra was an ancient kingdom situated in the northwestern region of Pakistan, in the Peshawar valley and Potohar plateau with its capital at Taxila in modern northwestern Pakistan. Gandhara's existence is attested since the time of the Rigveda (), as well as the Zoroastrian Avesta, which mentions it as Vaēkərəta, the sixth most beautiful place on earth created by Ahura Mazda. Gandhara was conquered by the Persian Achaemenid Empire in the 6th century BCE, Alexander the Great in 327 BCE, and later became part of the Maurya Empire before being a centre of the Indo-Greek Kingdom. The region was a major centre for Greco-Buddhism under the Indo-Greeks and Gandharan Buddhism under later dynasties. Gandhara also a central location for the spread of Buddhism to Central Asia and East Asia. The primary cities of Gandhara were Puruṣapura (Peshawar), Takṣaśilā (Taxila), and Pushkalavati (Charsadda). Gandhara's language was a Prakrit or "Middle Indo-Aryan" dialect, usually called Gāndhārī. The language used the Kharosthi script, which died out about the 4th century.
Achaemenid Persian and Macedonian Greek Empires
The Achaemenid Persian empire included Gandhara and western Punjab, administered through the satrapies of Gandāra, Hindush and Sattagydia.
Having conquered Drangiana, Arachosia, Gedrosia and Seistan in ten days, Alexander the Great (known in Urdu as 'Sikander-e-Azam') crossed the Hindu Kush and was thus fully informed of the magnificence of the country and its riches in gold, gems and pearls. However, Alexander had to encounter and reduce the tribes on the border of Punjab before entering the luxuriant plains. Having taken a northeasterly direction, he marched against the Aspii (mountaineers), who offered vigorous resistance, but were subdued. Alexander then marched through Ghazni, blockaded Magassa, and then marched to Ora and Bazira. Turning to the northeast, Alexander marched to Pucela, the capital of the district now known as Pakhli. He entered Western Punjab, where the ancient city of Nysa (at the site of modern-day Mong) was situated. A coalition was formed against Alexander by the Cathians, the people of Multan, who were very skilful in war. Alexander invested many troops, eventually killing 17,000 Cathians in this battle, and the city of Sagala (present-day Sialkot) was razed to the ground. The Battle of the Hydaspes was fought astride the Jhelum River in western Punjab against the regional chieftain Porus, and the Siege of the Malli Tribe which occurred at the confluence of the Indus and Hydaspes Rivers near modern Multan (during which Alexander suffered a near-fatal arrow wound). Alexander left Punjab in 326 B.C. and continued to campaign down the course of the Indus River in modern-day Sindh and Baluchistan.
Indo-Greek Kingdom (180 BC to 10 AD)
The Indo-Greek Kingdom or Graeco-Indian Kingdom was a Hellenistic kingdom covering most of the Punjab. The Indo-Greek kingdom founded by Demetrius (180-165 BC) included Gandhara and Punjab and reached its greatest extent under Menander (165-150 BC), with its capital in Sagala (present-day Sialkot), thriving the greco-buddhist culture in the region. Agriculture flourished and trading cities (such as Multan and Lahore) grew in wealth.
Indo-Scythian Kingdom (150 BC to 400 AD)
The Indo-Scythian king Maues invaded Indo-Greek territories in Punjab and established an Indo-Scythian empire. Maues first conquered Gandhara and Taxila around 80 BCE, but his kingdom disintegrated after his death. The Indo-Scythians ultimately established a kingdom in the northwest south Asia, based near Taxila, with two great Satraps, one in Mathura in the east, and one in Surastrene (Gujarat) in the southwest. The Indo-Scythians seem to have been followers of Buddhism, and many of their practices apparently continued those of the Indo-Greeks.
Indo-Parthian Kingdom (19 AD to 226 AD)
The Indo-Parthian Kingdom was ruled by the Gondopharid dynasty with its capital at Taxila, Punjab. Gondophares, founder of the Indo-Parthian kingdom, was a ruler of Seistan in what is today eastern Iran, probably a vassal or relative of the Apracarajas. Around 20–10 BCE, he made conquests in the former Indo-Scythian kingdom, perhaps after the death of the important ruler Azes. Gondophares became the ruler of areas comprising Arachosia, Seistan, Sindh, Punjab, and the Kabul valley. The temple of Jandial, Taxila is usually interpreted as a Zoroastrian fire temple from the period of the Indo-Parthians.
Kushan Empire (30 AD to 375 AD)
The Kushan Empire was a syncretic empire, formed by the Yuezhi, in the Bactrian territories in the early 1st century. Around 75 CE under the leadership of Kujula Kadphises they gained control of Gandhara and other parts of what is now Pakistan. The Kushan period is considered the Golden Period of Gandhara. Gandhara's culture peaked during the reign of the Kushan ruler Kanishka the Great (128–151). The cities of Taxila (Takṣaśilā) at Sirsukh and Peshawar were built. Kanishka was a great patron of the Buddhist faith; Buddhism spread to Central Asia and the Far East across Bactria and Sogdia, where his empire met the Han Empire of China.
Hephthalite Empire
The Hephthalite Huns captured Gandhara around 451, and did not adopt Buddhism, but in fact "perpetrated frightful massacres." Mihirakula became a "terrible persecutor" of the Buddhist religion. During their rule, Hinduism revived itself and the Buddhist civilisation in Gandhara declined.
Arrival of Islam
Before the arrival of Islam, the Punjab region was home to a diverse plethora of faiths, mainly Hinduism, Buddhism or Greco-Buddhism.
The Arab Umayyad army brought Islam to the region led by Muhammad bin Qasim who conquered Sindh and Southern Punjab in 712, by defeating Raja Dahir. The Umayyad Caliphate was the second Islamic caliphate established after the death of Muhammad. It was ruled by the Umayyad dynasty, whose name derives from Umayya ibn Abd Shams, the great-grandfather of the first Umayyad caliph.
Islam was introduced into Northern Punjab during the reign of Mahmud of Ghazni in the 11th century and the region subsequently became part of various Turko-Persian and Turko-Mongol Muslim empires.
The Ghaznavids, a Persianate Muslim dynasty of Turkic mamluk origin, had earlier conquered and converted many Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms of Afghanistan. The province of Punjab was made part of the Ghaznavid Empire with Lahore as its second capital. The region became predominantly Muslim due to missionary Sufi saints whose dargahs dot the landscape of the Punjab region. The famous Sufi mystic Ali Hujwiri arrived from Ghazni and settled in Lahore during the reign of Ghaznavids in 11th century.
Over the next millennium Islam flourished in Punjab as it became part of different Muslim empires including the Ghurids, Delhi Sultanate and Mughals. In cooperation with local Punjabi tribes and others, a millennium long Islamic dominance was achieved across South Asia and with its peak during the Mughal Empire.
Mughal Empire
The Punjab region rose to significance in the Mughal Empire when Lahore became the capital for the royal family in 1585, the legacy of which is seen today in its rich display of Mughal architecture all over modern day Punjab, Pakistan.
The Mughals left an indelible mark on the landscape of Punjab from 1556 to 1739 by commissioning the construction of great gardens, forts, tombs, baths and mosques such as the Shalimar Gardens, Lahore Fort, Tomb of Jahangir, Tomb of Nur Jahan, Shahi Hammam, Akbari Sarai, Wazir Khan Mosque, and the Badshahi Mosque, all situated in Lahore, as well as Hiran Minar and others elsewhere in Punjab. Akbar established two of his original twelve subahs (imperial top-level provinces) in Punjab:
(northern) Lahore Subah, bordering Kabul (Afghanistan), (later) split-off Kashmir, (Old) Delhi and Multan subahs
(southern) Multan Subah, bordering Kabul, Lahore, (Old) Delhi, Ajmer, Thatta (Sindh) subahs, the Persian Safavid empire and shortly Qandahar subah.
Later Mughals
After the death of the last great Mughal emperor Aurangzeb, in 1707, Mughal authority significantly weakened but didn't totally vanish despite Nadir Shah's invasion in 1739. The centralised authority that had existed during Aurangzeb's rule and the rule of his predecessors was now largely in the hands of governors and Nawabs (semi autonomous rulers) who gave their nominal allegiance to the Mughal emperor at Delhi.
This would change, however, in 1752, when Nader Shah's general Ahmad Shah Durrani who founded the Durrani Empire, defeated Mir Mannu, the last Mughal governor of Punjab. The Mughal emperor ceded control of the subahs that constituted Punjab namely the Lahore and Multan subahs over to Ahmad Shah Durrani.
Durranis and Marathas
In 1758 Raghunath Rao, a general of the Hindu Maratha Empire, conquered Lahore and Attock. Timur Shah Durrani, the son and viceroy of Ahmad Shah Durrani, was driven out of Punjab. Lahore, Multan and Kashmir provinces were under Maratha rule for the most part. In Punjab and Kashmir, the Marathas were now major players.
The Third Battle of Panipat took place in 1761, Ahmad Shah Abdali defeated the Marathas and reversed their gains in the regions of Punjab and Kashmir by re-consolidating control over them. Battles with Powerful Maratha empire weakened the Afghan dominance over the region and created partial power vaccum in the region
Sikh Empire
In the mid-fifteenth century, the religion of Sikhism was born. During the Mughal empire, many Hindus increasingly adopted Sikhism. The Sikhs became a formidable military force after the death of Aurangzeb in 1707 and challenged the Mughals and later the Durrani Afghans for power in Punjab. After fighting Ahmad Shah Durrani in the later eighteenth century, the Sikh Misls took control of Punjab and its capital Lahore was captured by the Bhangi Misl. In 1799 Ranjit Singh, ruler of the Sukerchakia Misl, defeated the Bhangi Misl and captured Lahore thereby proclaiming himself as the "Maharaja of Punjab" at the age of 21. Ranjit Singh made Lahore his capital and formed a sophisticated Sikh Empire which lasted from 1799 to 1849. Ranjit Singh modernized his Sikh Khalsa army by using Franco-British principles and by employing veterans of the Napoleonic Wars to train the infantry in European style. Ranjit Singh expanded his empire so that by his death in 1839 his empire included most of Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Kashmir.
Ranjit Singh was not without opponents who challenged his authority in the regions he had conquered. He faced huge opposition from Nawab Muzaffar Khan, Azim Khan, Syed Ahmad Barelvi and Mir Painda Khan. In 1818 Nawab Muzaffar Khan was killed by the Sikhs at the Battle of Multan after putting up stout resistance for many years. Azim Khan was the governor of Kashmir from 1812 until 1819 when Ranjit Singh captured it for himself. In 1823 Azim Khan took control of Peshawar and with support from Pashtun tribesmen faced off against the encroaching Khalsa army in the Battle of Nowshera. He abandoned his troops whilst they regrouped to continue fighting until they were defeated. Azim Khan retreated to Kabul where he died shortly thereafter due to grief. Syed Ahmad Barelvi was an Indian Muslim who declared Jihad against the Sikhs by garnering support from local Pashtun tribesmen and attempted to create an Islamic state with strict enforcement of Sharia. In 1821 Syed Ahmad Barelvi spent two years organizing popular and material support for his Punjab campaign. In December 1826 Sayyid Ahmad Barelvi and his followers clashed with Sikh troops at Akora Khattak, with no decisive result. Barelvi's movement weakened after there was infighting with his Pashtun followers and in a major battle near the town of Balakot in 1831, Syed Ahmad Barelvi and Shah Ismail Shaheed with volunteer Muslims were defeated and killed by the Sikh Army. Only Mir Painda Khan was able to maintain his independence at Tanawal in Hazara from the Sikh Empire. From about 1813 he began a series of rebellions against the Sikhs which continued throughout his lifetime inflicting defeats on the Sikhs whilst also losing territory to them before being poisoned in 1844. James Abbott, British officer and deputy commissioner at Hazara in 1851, described Mir Painda Khan as "a chief renowned on the border, a wild and energetic man who was never subjugated by the Sikhs".
British Empire
Maharaja Ranjit Singh's death in the summer of 1839 brought political chaos and the subsequent battles of succession and the bloody infighting between the factions at court weakened the state. Relationships with neighbouring British territories then broke down, starting the First Anglo-Sikh War; this led to a British official being resident in Lahore and the annexation in 1849 of territory south of the Satluj to British India. After the Second Anglo-Sikh War in 1849, the Sikh Empire became the last territory to be merged into British India. In Jhelum 35 British soldiers of the HM XXIV regiment were killed by the local resistance during the Indian Rebellion of 1857.
Pakistani Independence
In 1947 the Punjab province of British India was divided along religious lines into West Punjab and East Punjab. Western Punjab was assimilated into the new country of Pakistan, while East Punjab became a part of modern-day India. This led to massive rioting as both sides committed atrocities against fleeing refugees.
The part of the Punjab now in Pakistan once formed a major region of British Punjab, and was home to a large minority population of Punjabi Hindus and Sikhs up to 1947 apart from the Muslim majority.
Migration between Eastern and Western Punjab was continuous before independence. By the 1900s Western Punjab was predominantly Muslim and supported the Muslim League and Pakistan Movement. After independence, the minority Hindus and Sikhs fled massacres and violence and migrated to India while Muslim refugees from India settled in the Western Punjab and across Pakistan, having fled pogroms that almost entirely depopulated Eastern Punjab of its Muslim population, while Western Punjab was left with virtually no Hindus and Sikhs.
Recent history
Since the 1950s, Punjab industrialised rapidly. New factories were established in Lahore, Sargodha, Multan, Gujrat, Gujranwala, Sialkot, Wah and Rawalpindi.
Agriculture continues to be the largest sector of Punjab's economy. The province is the breadbasket of the country as well as home to the largest ethnic group in Pakistan, the Punjabis. Unlike neighbouring India, there was no large-scale redistribution of agricultural land. As a result, most rural areas are dominated by a small set of feudalistic land-owning families.
In the 1950s there was tension between the eastern and western halves of Pakistan. To address the situation, a new formula resulted in the abolition of the province status for Punjab in 1955. It was merged into a single province West Pakistan. In 1972, after East Pakistan seceded and became Bangladesh, Punjab again became a province.
Punjab witnessed major battles between the armies of India and Pakistan in the wars of 1965 and 1971. Since the 1990s Punjab hosted several key sites of Pakistan's nuclear program such as Kahuta. It also hosts major military bases such as at Sargodha and Rawalpindi. The peace process between India and Pakistan, which began in earnest in 2004, has helped pacify the situation. Trade and people-to-people contacts through the Wagah border are now starting to become common. Indian Sikh pilgrims visit holy sites such as Nankana Sahib.
Geography
Punjab is Pakistan's second largest province by area after Balochistan with an area of . It occupies 25.8% of the total landmass of Pakistan. Punjab province is bordered by Sindh to the south, the province of Balochistan to the southwest, the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to the west, and the Islamabad Capital Territory and Azad Kashmir in the north. Punjab borders Jammu and Kashmir in the north, and the Indian states of Punjab and Rajasthan to the east.
The capital and largest city is Lahore which was the historical capital of the wider Punjab region. Other important cities include Faisalabad, Rawalpindi, Gujranwala, Sargodha, Multan, Sialkot, Bahawalpur, Gujrat, Sheikhupura, Jhelum and Sahiwal. The undivided Punjab region was home to six rivers, of which five flow through Pakistan's Punjab province. From west to east, the rivers are: the Indus, Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi and Sutlej. It is the nation's only province that touches every other province; it also surrounds the federal enclave of the national capital city at Islamabad. In the acronym P-A-K-I-S-T-A-N, the P is for Punjab.
Topography
Punjab's landscape consists mostly consists of fertile alluvial plains of the Indus River and its four major tributaries in Pakistan, the Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, and Sutlej rivers which traverse Punjab north to south – the fifth of the "five waters" of Punjab, the Beas River, lies exclusively in the Indian state of Punjab. The landscape is amongst the most heavily irrigated on earth and canals can be found throughout the province. Punjab also includes several mountainous regions, including the Sulaiman Mountains in the southwest part of the province, the Margalla Hills in the north near Islamabad, and the Salt Range which divides the most northerly portion of Punjab, the Pothohar Plateau, from the rest of the province. Sparse deserts can be found in southern Punjab near the border with Rajasthan and near the Sulaiman Range. Punjab also contains part of the Thal and Cholistan deserts. In the South, Punjab's elevation reaches near the hill station of Fort Munro in Dera Ghazi Khan.
Climate
Most areas in Punjab experience extreme weather with foggy winters, often accompanied by rain. By mid-February the temperature begins to rise; springtime weather continues until mid-April, when the summer heat sets in.
The onset of the southwest monsoon is anticipated to reach Punjab by May, but since the early 1970s, the weather pattern has been irregular. The spring monsoon has either skipped over the area or has caused it to rain so hard that floods have resulted. June and July are oppressively hot. Although official estimates rarely place the temperature above 46 °C, newspaper sources claim that it reaches 51 °C and regularly carry reports about people who have succumbed to the heat. Heat records were broken in Multan in June 1993, when the mercury was reported to have risen to 54 °C. In August the oppressive heat is punctuated by the rainy season, referred to as barsat, which brings relief in its wake. The hardest part of the summer is then over, but cooler weather does not come until late October.
Recently the province experienced one of the coldest winters in the last 70 years.
Punjab's region temperature ranges from −2° to 45 °C, but can reach 50 °C (122 °F) in summer and can touch down to −10 °C in winter.
Climatically, Punjab has three major seasons:
Hot weather (April to June) when temperature rises as high as .
Rainy season (July to September). Average rainfall annual ranges between 96 cm sub-mountain region and 46 cm in the plains.
Cold / Foggy / mild weather (October to March). Temperature goes down as low as .
Weather extremes are notable from the hot and barren south to the cool hills of the north. The foothills of the Himalayas are found in the extreme north as well, and feature a much cooler and wetter climate, with snowfall common at higher altitudes.
Population and society
Demographics
The province is home to over half the population of Pakistan, and is the world's fifth-most populous subnational entity, and the most populous outside China or India. Punjabis are a heterogeneous group comprising different tribes, clans () or communities. In Pakistani Punjab, non-tribal social distinctions are primarily based on traditional occupations such as blacksmiths or artisans, as opposed to rigid social stratifications.
Punjab has the lowest poverty rates in Pakistan, although a divide is present between the northern and southern parts of the province. Sialkot District in the prosperous northern part of the province has a poverty rate of 5.63%, while Rajanpur District in the poorer south has a poverty rate of 60.05%.
Languages
The major native language spoken in the Punjab is Punjabi, representing the largest ethnic group in the country. Punjabi is recognized as the provincial language of Punjab but is not given any official recognition in the Constitution of Pakistan at the national level.
Saraiki is mostly spoken in south Punjab, and Pashto, spoken in some parts of north west Punjab, especially in Attock District and Mianwali District near Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
The use of Urdu and English as the near exclusive languages of broadcasting, the public sector, and formal education have led some to fear that Punjabi in Pakistan is being relegated to a low-status language and that it is being denied an environment where it can flourish. Several prominent educational leaders, researchers, and social commentators have echoed the opinion that the intentional promotion of Urdu and the continued denial of any official sanction or recognition of the Punjabi language amounts to a process of "Urdu-isation" that is detrimental to the health of the Punjabi language In August 2015, the Pakistan Academy of Letters, International Writer's Council (IWC) and World Punjabi Congress (WPC) organised the Khawaja Farid Conference and demanded that a Punjabi-language university should be established in Lahore and that Punjabi language should be declared as the medium of instruction at the primary level. In September 2015, a case was filed in Supreme Court of Pakistan against Government of Punjab, Pakistan as it did not take any step to implement the Punjabi language in the province. Additionally, several thousand Punjabis gather in Lahore every year on International Mother Language Day.
Hafiz Saeed, chief of Jama'at-ud-Da'wah (JuD) has questioned Pakistan's decision to adopt Urdu as its national language in a country where majority of people speak Punjabi language, citing his interpretation of Islamic doctrine as encouraging education in the mother-tongue. The list of thinktanks, political organisations, cultural projects, and individuals that demand authorities at the national and provincial level to promote the use of the language in the public and official spheres includes:
Cultural and research institutes: Punjabi Adabi Board, the Khoj Garh Research Centre, Punjabi Prachar, Institute for Peace and Secular Studies, Adbi Sangat, Khaaksaar Tehreek, Saanjh, Maan Boli Research Centre, Punjabi Sangat Pakistan, Punjabi Markaz, Sver International
Trade unions and youth groups: Punjabi Writers Forum, National Students Federation, Punjabi Union-Pakistan, Punjabi National Conference, National Youth Forum, Punjabi Writers Forum, National Students Federation, Punjabi Union, Pakistan, and the Punjabi National Conference.
Notable activists include Tariq Jatala, Farhad Iqbal, Diep Saeeda, Khalil Ojla, Afzal Sahir, Jamil Ahmad Paul, Mazhar Tirmazi, Mushtaq Sufi, Biya Je, Tohid Ahmad Chattha and Bilal Shaker Kahaloon, Nazeer Kahut
Religions
The Punjabi people first practiced Hinduism, the oldest recorded religion in the Punjab region. An ancient Indian law book called the Manusmriti, developed by Brahmin Hindu priests, shaped Punjabi religious life from 200 BC onward. The spread of Buddhsim and Jainism in India saw many Hindu Punjabis adopting the Buddhist and Jain faith though the decline of Buddhism in the Indian subcontinent resulted in Punjab becoming a Hindu society again, though Jainism continued as a minority religion. The arrival of Islam in medieval India resulted in the conversion of some Hindu Punjabis to Islam, and the rise of Sikhism in the 1700s saw some Punjabis, both Hindu and Muslim, accepting the new Sikh faith. A number of Punjabis during the colonial period of India became Christians, with all of these religions characterizing the religious diversity now found in the Punjab region.
The population of Punjab (Pakistan) is estimated to be 110,012,442, of which as per as 2017 census, 107,559,164 i.e. (97.4%) Muslim with a Sunni Hanafi majority and a Shia Ithna 'ashariyah minority. The largest non-Muslim minority is Christians and make up 2,068,233 i.e. (1.88%) of the population. Hindus form about 220,024 I.e (0.2%) of the population. The other minorities include Sikhs, Parsis and Baháʼís.
Provincial government
The Government of Punjab is a provincial government in the federal structure of Pakistan, is based in Lahore, the capital of the Punjab Province. The Chief Minister of Punjab (CM) is elected by the Provincial Assembly of the Punjab to serve as the head of the provincial government in Punjab, Pakistan. The current Chief Minister is Sardar Usman Buzdar He got elected as a result of 25 July 2018 elections. The Provincial Assembly of the Punjab is a unicameral legislature of elected representatives of the province of Punjab, which is located in Lahore in eastern Pakistan. The Assembly was established under Article 106 of the Constitution of Pakistan as having a total of 371 seats, with 66 seats reserved for women and eight reserved for non-Muslims.
There are 48 departments in Punjab government. Each Department is headed by a Provincial Minister (Politician) and a Provincial Secretary (A civil servant of usually BPS-20 or BPS-21). All Ministers report to the Chief Minister, who is the Chief Executive. All Secretaries report to the Chief Secretary of Punjab, who is usually a BPS-22 Civil Servant. The Chief Secretary in turn, reports to the Chief Minister. In addition to these departments, there are several Autonomous Bodies and Attached Departments that report directly to either the Secretaries or the Chief Secretary.
Divisions
When the divisions were restored as a tier of government in 2008, a tenth division – Sheikhupura Division – was created from part of Lahore Division.
Districts
Major cities
Economy
Punjab has the largest economy in Pakistan, contributing most to the national GDP. The province's economy has quadrupled since 1972. Its share of Pakistan's GDP was 54.7% in 2000 and 59% as of 2010. It is especially dominant in the service and agriculture sectors of Pakistan's economy. With its contribution ranging from 52.1% to 64.5% in the Service Sector and 56.1% to 61.5% in the agriculture sector. It is also a major manpower contributor because it has the largest pool of professionals and highly skilled (technically trained) manpower in Pakistan. It is also dominant in the manufacturing sector, though the dominance is not as huge, with historical contributions ranging from a low of 44% to a high of 52.6%. In 2007, Punjab achieved a growth rate of 7.8% and during the period 2002–03 to 2007–08, its economy grew at a rate of between 7% to 8% per year. and during 2008–09 grew at 6% against the total GDP growth of Pakistan at 4%.
Despite the lack of a coastline, Punjab is the most industrialised province of Pakistan; its manufacturing industries produce textiles, sports goods, heavy machinery, electrical appliances, surgical instruments, vehicles, auto parts, metals, sugar mill plants, aircraft, cement, agricultural machinery, bicycles and rickshaws, floor coverings, and processed foods. In 2003, the province manufactured 90% of the paper and paper boards, 71% of the fertilizers, 69% of the sugar and 40% of the cement of Pakistan.
Despite its tropical wet and dry climate, extensive irrigation makes it a rich agricultural region. Its canal-irrigation system established by the British is the largest in the world. Wheat and cotton are the largest crops. Other crops include rice, sugarcane, millet, corn, oilseeds, pulses, vegetables, and fruits such as kinoo. Livestock and poultry production are also important. Despite past animosities, the rural masses in Punjab's farms continue to use the Hindu calendar for planting and harvesting.
Punjab contributes about 76% to annual food grain production in the country. Cotton and rice are important crops. They are the cash crops that contribute substantially to the national exchequer. Attaining self-sufficiency in agriculture has shifted the focus of the strategies towards small and medium farming, stress on barani areas, farms-to-market roads, electrification for tube-wells and control of water logging and salinity.
Punjab has also more than 68 thousand industrial units. There are 39,033 small and cottage industrial units. The number of textile units is 14,820. The ginning industries are 6,778. There are 7,355 units for processing of agricultural raw materials including food and feed industries.
Lahore and Gujranwala Divisions have the largest concentration of small light engineering units. The district of Sialkot excels in sports goods, surgical instruments and cutlery goods. Industrial estates are being developed by Punjab government to boost industrialization in province, Quaid e Azam Business Park Sheikhupura is one of the industrial area which is being developed near Sheikhupura on Lahore-Islamabad motorway.
Punjab is also a mineral-rich province with extensive mineral deposits of coal, iron, gas, petrol, rock salt (with the second largest salt mine in the world), dolomite, gypsum, and silica-sand. The Punjab Mineral Development Corporation is running over a hundred economically viable projects. Manufacturing includes machine products, cement, plastics, and various other goods.
The incidence of poverty differs between the different regions of Punjab. With Northern and Central Punjab facing much lower levels of poverty than Western and Southern Punjab. Those living in Southern and Western Punjab are also a lot more dependent on agriculture due to lower levels of industrialisation in those regions.
Education
The literacy rate has increased greatly over the last 40 years (see the table below). Punjab has the highest Human Development Index out of all of Pakistan's provinces at 0.564.
Sources:
This is a chart of the education market of Punjab estimated by the government in 1998.
Public universities
Allama Iqbal Medical College, Lahore
Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan
COMSATS Institute of Information Technology, Lahore
COMSATS Institute of Information Technology, Sahiwal
Fatima Jinnah Women University, Rawalpindi
Ghazi University D.G.Khan, D.G.Khan
Government College University, Lahore
Government College University, Faisalabad
Gujranwala Medical College, Gujranwala
The Islamia University of Bahawalpur, Bahawalpur
King Edward Medical College, Lahore
Kinnaird College for Women, Lahore
Lahore College for Women University, Lahore
National College of Arts, Lahore
National Textile University, Faisalabad
Sargodha Medical College, Sargodha
University of Agriculture, Faisalabad
University of Arid Agriculture, Rawalpindi
University College of Agriculture, Sargodha
University of Education, Lahore
University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore
University of Engineering and Technology, Taxila
University of Gujrat, Gujrat
University of Health Sciences, Lahore
University of the Punjab, Lahore
University of Veterinary and Animal Sciences, Lahore
University of Sargodha, Sargodha
Virtual University of Pakistan, Lahore
Muhammad Nawaz Sharif University of Agriculture, Multan
NFC Institute of Engineering and Technology, Multan
Muhammad Nawaz Sharif University of Engineering & Technology, Multan
Women University Multan, Multan
Nishtar Medical College, Multan
Khawaja Fareed University of Engineering and Information Technology, Rahim Yar Khan
UNIVERSITY OF SAHIWAL
'SAHIWAL
Private universities
Beaconhouse National University, Lahore
Forman Christian College, Lahore
GIFT University, Gujranwala
Hajvery University, Lahore
Imperial College of Business Studies, Lahore
Institute of Management Sciences, Lahore, Pak-AIMS, Lahore
Lahore School of Economics, Lahore
Lahore University of Management Sciences, Lahore
Minhaj International University, Lahore
National University of Computer & Emerging Sciences, Lahore
Pakistan Institute of Fashion and Design, Lahore
Sargodha Institute of Technology, Sargodha
University of Central Punjab, Lahore
University of Faisalabad, Faisalabad
University of Health Sciences, Lahore
University of Lahore, Lahore
University of Management and Technology, Lahore
University of South Asia, Lahore
University College Lahore, Lahore
University of Wah, Wah Cantonment
HITEC University, Taxila Cantonment
Institute of Southern Punjab, Multan
Pakistan Institute of Engineering and Technology, Multan
Multan Medical and Dental College, Multan
Lahore Garrison University, Lahore
Culture
Punjab has been the cradle of civilisation since time immemorial. The ruins of Harappa show an advanced urban culture that flourished over 8000 years ago. Ancient Taxila, another historic landmark also stands out as a proof of the achievements of the area in learning, arts and crafts. The ancient Hindu Katasraj temple and the Salt Range temples are regaining attention and are in need of repair.
Mosques abound all over Punjab and vary in architectural style. Calligraphic inscriptions from the Quran decorate mosques and mausoleums in Punjab. The inscriptions on bricks and tiles of the mausoleum of Shah Rukn-e-Alam (1320 AD) at Multan are outstanding specimens of architectural calligraphy. The earliest existing building in South Asia with enamelled tile-work is the tomb of Shah Yusuf Gardezi (1150 AD) at Multan. A specimen of the sixteenth century tile-work at Lahore is the tomb of Sheikh Musa Ahangar, with its brilliant blue dome. The tile-work of Emperor Shah Jahan is of a richer and more elaborate nature. The pictured wall of Lahore Fort is the last line in the tile-work in the entire world.
Fairs and festivals
The culture of Punjab derives its basis from the institution of Sufi saints, who spread Islam and preached and lived the Muslim way of life. People have festivities to commemorate these traditions. The fairs and festivals of Punjab reflect the entire gamut of its folk life and cultural traditions. These mainly fall in the following categories:
Religious and seasonal fairs and festivals
Religious fairs are held on special days of Islamic significance like Eid ul-Adha, Eid-ul-Fitr, Eid-e-Milad-un-Nabi, Shahb-e-Barat, Ashura, Laylat al-Qadr and Jumu'ah-tul-Wida. The main activities on these special occasions are confined to congregational prayers and rituals. Melas are also held to mark these occasions.
Devotional fairs (Urs)
The fairs held at the shrines of Sufi saints are called urs. They generally mark the death anniversary of the saint. On these occasions, devotees assemble in large numbers and pay homage to the memory of the saint. Soul inspiring music is played and devotees dance in ecstasy. The music on these occasions is essentially folk and appealing. It forms a part of the folk music through mystic messages. The most important urs are: urs of Data Ganj Buksh at Lahore, urs of Sultan Bahu at Jhang, urs of Shah Jewna at Jhang, urs of Mian Mir at Lahore, urs of Baba Farid Ganj Shakar at Pakpattan, urs of Bahaudin Zakria at Multan, urs of Sakhi Sarwar Sultan at Dera Ghazi Khan, urs of Shah Hussain at Lahore, urs of Bulleh Shah at Kasur, urs of Imam Bari (Bari Shah Latif) at Rawalpindi-Islamabad and urs of Shah Inayat Qadri (the murrshad of Bulleh Shah) in Lahore.
A big fair/mela is organised at Jandiala Sher Khan in district Sheikhupura on the mausoleum of Syed Waris Shah who is the most loved Sufi poet of Punjab due to his classic work, Heer Ranjha. The shrine of Heer Ranjha in Jhang is one of the most visited shrines in Punjab.
Industrial and commercial fairs
Exhibitions and annual horse shows in all districts and a national horse and cattle show at Lahore are held with the official patronage. The national horse and cattle show at Lahore is the biggest festival where sports, exhibitions, and livestock competitions are held. It not only encourages and patronises agricultural products and livestock through the exhibitions of agricultural products and cattle but is also a colourful documentary on the rich cultural heritage of the province with its strong rural roots.
Other festivals
Vaisakhi, also called Besakhi, is a harvest festival to celebrate harvesting the wheat crop. Colourful festivals are held at the time of Besakhi when farmers are free to enjoy their leisure time. Various literary festivals and fairs are organised in many places.
Basant is a seasonal festival and is celebrated as a spring festival of kites. The day is marked by wearing yellow, eating food with yellow colouring such as potatoes with turmeric and saffron rice, and holding parties.
Arts and crafts
The crafts in the Punjab are of two types: the crafts produced in the rural areas and the royal crafts.
Multan is one of the oldest regions in Pakistan where artisans create or decorate objects traditionally. Camel skin is used to produce camel-lamps, whereas camel bone is used to produce jewellery and decorative pieces. Wood crafts and blue pottery are commonly used by the artisans. "Multani Khussa", a type of shoes is created by crafting leather. Hyderabad, Sindh is particularly producing wooden furniture, sports goods and embroidery items.
The artisans of Sillanwali town of Punjab, Pakistan produce several types of jars which are created from wooden candy and other traditional containers. Unlike other cities of Pakistan, it is known for woodwork handicrafts.
Matki earthen pot is one of the handicrafts of Pakistan, especially in Rawalpindi and Islamabad are the main regions in country where people use and craft "matki" pots.
Tourism
The province is home to several historical sites, including the Shalimar Gardens, the Lahore Fort, the Badshahi Mosque, the Rohtas Fort and the ruins of the ancient city of Harrapa. The Anarkali Market and Jahangir's Tomb are prominent in the city of Lahore as is the Lahore Museum, while the ancient city of Taxila in the northwest was once a major centre of Buddhist and Hindu influence. Several important Sikh shrines are in the province, including the birthplace of the first Guru, Guru Nanak. (born at Nankana Sahib). There are a few famous hill stations, including Murree, Bhurban, Patriata and Fort Munro.
Katasraj Mandir is a Hindu temple complex situated in Katas village near Choa Saidanshah in the Chakwal District. Dedicated to Shiva, the temple has, according to Hindu legend, existed since the days of Mahābhārata and the Pandava brothers spent a substantial part of their exile at the site and later Krishna himself laid the foundation of this temple.
The Khewra Salt Mine is a tourist attraction. Tours are accompanied by guides as the mine itself is very large and the complex interconnected passages are like a maze. There is a small mosque inside the mine made from salt stone. A clinical ward with 20 beds was established in 2007 for the treatment of asthma and other respiratory diseases using salt therapy.
Music and dance
Classical music forms, such as Pakistani classical music, are an important part of the cultural wealth of the Punjab. The Muslim musicians have contributed a large number of ragas to the repository of classical music. The most common instruments used are the tabla and harmonium.
Amongst the Punjabi poets, the names of Baba Farid, Shah Hussain, Sultan Bahu, Bulleh Shah, Waris Shah and Mian Muhammad Baksh are well known. Amongst folk singers the likes of Inayat Hussain Bhatti, Tufail Niazi, Alam Lohar, Sain Marna, Mansoor Malangi, Allah Ditta Lonawala, Talib Hussain Dard, Attaullah Khan Essa Khailwi, Gamoo Tahliwala, Mamzoo Gha-lla, Akbar Jat, Arif Lohar, Ahmad Nawaz Cheena and Hamid Ali Bela are well-known. In the composition of classical ragas, there are such masters as Malika-i-Mauseequi (Queen of Music) Roshan Ara Begum, Ustad Amanat Ali Khan, Salamat Ali Khan and Ustad Fateh Ali Khan. Alam Lohar has made significant contributions to folklore and Punjabi literature, by being a very influential Punjabi folk singer from 1930 until 1979.
For the popular taste however, light music, particularly Ghazals and folk songs, which have an appeal of their own, the names of Mehdi Hassan, Ghulam Ali, Nur Jehan, Malika Pukhraj, Farida Khanum, Roshen Ara Begum, and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan are well-known. Folk songs and dances of the Punjab reflect a wide range of moods: the rains, sowing and harvesting seasons. Luddi, Bhangra and Sammi depict the joy of living. Love legends of Heer Ranjha, Mirza Sahiban, Sohni Mahenwal and Saiful Mulk are sung in different styles.
For the most popular music from the region, Bhangra, the names of Abrar-Ul-Haq, Arif Lohar, Attaullah Khan Essa Khailwi, Jawad Ahmed, Sajjad Ali, Legacy, and Malkoo are renowned.
Folklore
Folklore songs, ballads, epics and romances are generally written and sung in the various Punjabi dialects
There are a number of folk tales that are popular in different parts of the Punjab. These are the folk tales of Mirza Sahiban, Sayful Muluk, Yusuf Zulekha, Heer Ranjha, Sohni Mahiwal, Dulla Bhatti, and Sassi Punnun.
The mystic folk songs include the Kafees of Khwaja Farid in Saraiki, Punjabi and the Shalooks by Baba Farid. They also include Baits, Dohas, Lohris, Sehra, and Jugni.
The most famous of the romantic love songs are Mayhiah, Dhola and Boliyan. Punjabi romantic dances include Bhangra, Giddha, Jhumar, Dhola, and Sammi.
Social issues
One social/educational issue is the status of Punjabi language. According to Manzur Ejaz, "In Central Punjab, Punjabi is neither an official language of the province nor it is used as medium of education at any level. There are only two daily newspapers published in Punjabi in the Central areas of Punjab. Only a few monthly literary magazines constitute Punjabi press in Pakistan".
Notable people
List of people from Punjab, Pakistan, also includes people born in what is today Indian Punjab but moved to Pakistan after partition
List of Punjabi people, also includes people of Punjabi ethnicity from India and elsewhere
Gallery
See also
Punjab
List of people from Punjab, Pakistan
Notes
References
Bibliography
External links
Guide to Punjab, Pakistan
Provinces of Pakistan
States and territories established in 1970
Punjabi-speaking countries and territories |
17306295 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echo%20%28computing%29 | Echo (computing) | In telecommunications, echo is the local display of data, either initially as it is locally sourced and sent, or finally as a copy of it is received back from a remote destination. Local echo is where the local sending equipment displays the outgoing sent data. Remote echo is where the display is a return copy of data as received remotely. Both are used together in a computed form of error detection to ensure that data received at the remote destination of a telecommunication are the same as data sent from the local source (a/k/a echoplex, echo check, or loop check). When (two) modems communicate in echoplex mode the remote modem echoes whatever it receives from the local modem.
Terminological confusion: echo is not duplex
A displayed 'echo' is independent of 'duplex' (or any) telecommunications transmission protocol. Probably from technical ignorance, "half-duplex" and "full-duplex" are used as slang for 'local echo' (a/k/a echo on) and 'remote echo', respectively, as typically they accompany one another. Strictly incorrect, this causes confusion (see duplex). Typically 'local echo' accompanies half-duplex transmission, which effectively doubles channel bandwidth by not repeating (echoing) data back from its destination (remote), as is reserved-for with 'full duplex' (which has only half of the bandwidth of 'half duplex'). Half-duplex can be set to 'echo off' for no echo at all.
One example of 'local echo' used together with 'remote echo' (requires full-duplex) is for error checking pairs of data characters or chunks (echoplex) ensuring their duplicity (or else its just an extraneous annoyance).
Similarly, for another example, in the case of the TELNET communications protocol a local echo protocol operates on top of a full-duplex underlying protocol. The TCP connection over which the TELNET protocol is layered provides a full-duplex connection, with no echo, across which data may be sent in either direction simultaneously. Whereas the Network Virtual Terminal that the TELNET protocol itself incorporates is a half-duplex device with (by default) local echo.
The devices that echo locally
Terminals are one of the things that may perform echoing for a connection. Others include modems, some form of intervening communications processor, or even the host system itself. For several common computer operating systems, it is the host system itself that performs the echoing, if appropriate (which it isn't for, say, entry of a user password when a terminal first connects and a user is prompted to log in). On OpenVMS, for example, echoing is performed as necessary by the host system. Similarly, on Unix-like systems, local echo is performed by the operating system kernel's terminal device driver, according to the state of a device control flag, maintained in software and alterable by applications programs via an ioctl() system call. The actual terminals and modems connected to such systems should have their local echo facilities switched off (so that they operate in no echo mode), lest passwords be locally echoed at password prompts, and all other input appear echoed twice. This is as true for terminal emulator programs, such as C-Kermit, running on a computer as it is for real terminals.
Controlling local echo
Terminal emulators
Most terminal emulator programs have the ability to perform echo locally (which sometimes they misname "half-duplex"):
In the C-Kermit terminal emulator program, local echo is controlled by the SET TERMINAL ECHO command, which can be either SET TERMINAL ECHO LOCAL (which enables local echoing within the terminal emulator program itself) or SET TERMINAL ECHO REMOTE (where disables local echoing, leaving that up to another device in the communications channel—be that the modem or the remote host system—to perform as appropriate).
In ProComm it is the combination, which is a hot key that may be used at any time to toggle local echo on and off.
In the Terminal program that came with Microsoft Windows 3.1, local echo is controlled by a checkbox in the "Terminal Preferences" dialogue box accessed from the menu of the terminal program's window.
Modems
The Hayes commands that control local echo (in command mode) are for off and for on. For local echo (in data mode), the commands are and respectively. Note the reversal of the suffixed digits. Unlike the "" commands, the "" commands are not part of the EIA/TIA-602 standard.
Host systems
Some host systems perform local echo themselves, in their device drivers and so forth.
In Unix and POSIX-compatible systems, local echo is a flag in the POSIX terminal interface, settable programmatically with the tcsetattr() function. The echoing is performed by the operating system's terminal device (in some way that is not specified by the POSIX standard). The standard utility program that alters this flag programmatically is the stty command, using which the flag may be altered from shell scripts or an interactive shell. The command to turn local echo (by the host system) on is stty echo and the command to turn it off is stty -echo.
On OpenVMS systems, the operating system's terminal driver normally performs echoing. The terminal characteristic that controls whether it does this is the ECHO characteristic, settable with the DCL command SET TERMINAL /ECHO and unsettable with SET TERMINAL /NOECHO.
Footnotes
References
What supports what
Sources used
Error detection and correction
Modems
Data transmission |
1877442 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographic%20information%20system%20software | Geographic information system software | A GIS software program is a computer program to support the use of a geographic information system, providing the ability to create, store, manage, query, analyze, and visualize geographic data, that is, data representing phenomena for which location is important. The GIS software industry encompasses a broad range of commercial and open-source products that provide some or all of these capabilities within various information technology architectures.
History
The earliest geographic information systems, such as the Canadian Geographic Information System started in 1963, were bespoke programs developed specifically for a single installation (usually a government agency), based on custom-designed data models. During the 1950s and 1960s, academic researchers during the quantitative revolution of geography began writing computer programs to perform spatial analysis, especially at the University of Washington and the University of Michigan, but these were also custom programs that were rarely available to other potential users.
Perhaps the first general-purpose software that provided a range of GIS functionality was the Synagraphic Mapping Package (SYMAP), developed by Howard T. Fisher and others at the nascent Harvard Laboratory for Computer Graphics and Spatial Analysis starting in 1965. While not a true full-range GIS program, it included some basic mapping and analysis functions, and was freely available to other users. Through the 1970s, the Harvard Lab continued to develop and publish other packages focused on automating specific operations, such as SYMVU (3-D surface visualization), CALFORM (choropleth maps), POLYVRT ( topological vector data management), WHIRLPOOL (vector overlay), GRID and IMGRID ( raster data management), and others. During the late 1970s, several of these modules were brought together into Odyssey, one of the first commercial complete GIS programs, released in 1980.
During the late 1970s and early 1980s, GIS was emerging in many large government agencies that were responsible for managing land and facilities. Particularly, federal agencies of the United States government developed software that was by definition in the public domain because of the Freedom of Information Act, and was thus released to the public. Notable examples included the Map Overlay and Statistical System (MOSS) developed by the Fish & Wildlife Service and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) starting in 1976; the PROJ library developed at the United States Geological Survey (USGS), one of the first programming libraries available; and GRASS GIS originally developed by the Army Corps of Engineers starting in 1982. These formed the foundation of the open source GIS software community.
The 1980s also saw the beginnings of most commercial GIS software, including Esri ARC/INFO in 1982; Intergraph IGDS in 1985, and the Mapping Display and Analysis System (MIDAS), the first GIS product for MS-DOS personal computers, which later became MapInfo. These would proliferate in the 1990s with the advent of more powerful personal computers, Microsoft Windows, and the 1990 U.S. Census, which raised awareness of the usefulness of geographic data to businesses and other new users.
Several trends emerged in the late 1990s that have significantly changed the GIS software ecosystem leading to the present, by moving in directions beyond the traditional full-featured desktop GIS application. The emergence of object-oriented programming languages facilitated the release of component libraries and application programming interfaces, both commercial and open-source, which encapsulated specific GIS functions, allowing programmers to build spatial capabilities into their own programs. Second, the development of spatial extensions to object-relational database management systems (also both open-source and commercial) created new opportunities for data storage for traditional GIS, but also enabled spatial capabilities to be integrated into enterprise information systems, including business processes such as human resources. Third, as the World Wide Web emerged, web mapping quickly became one of its most popular applications; this led to the development of Server-based GIS software that could perform the same functions as a traditional GIS, but at a location remote from a client who only needed a web browser installed. All of these have combined to enable emerging trends in GIS software, such as the use of cloud computing, software as a service (SAAS), and smartphones to broaden the availability of spatial data, processing, and visualization.
Types of software
The software component of a traditional geographic information system is expected to provide a wide range of functions for handling spatial data:
Data management, including the creation, editing, and storage of geographic data, as well as transformations such as changing coordinate systems and converting between raster and vector models.
Spatial analysis, including a range of processing tools from basic queries to advanced algorithms such as network analysis and vector overlay
Output, especially cartographic design.
The modern GIS software ecosystem includes a variety of products that may include more or less of these capabilities, collect them in a single program, or distribute them over the Internet. These products can be grouped into the following broad classes:
Desktop GIS application
The traditional form of GIS software, first developed for mainframes and minicomputers, then Unix workstations, and now personal computers. A desktop GIS program provides a full suite of capabilities, although some programs are modularized with extensions that can be purchased separately.
Server GIS application
A program which runs on a remote server (usually in concert with an HTTP server), handling many or all of the above functions, taking in requests and delivering results via the World Wide Web. Thus, the client typically accesses server capabilities using a normal web browser. Early server software was focused specifically on web mapping, only including the output phase, but current server GIS provides the full suite of functions. This server software is at the core of modern cloud-based platforms such as ArcGIS Online.
Geospatial library
A software component that provides a focused set of documented functions, which software developers can incorporate into their own programs. In modern object-oriented programming languages such as C#, JavaScript and Python, these are typically encapsulated as classes with a documented application programming interface (API).
Spatial database
An extension to an existing database software program (most commonly, an object-relational database management system) that creates a geometry datatype, enabling spatial data to be stored in a column in a table, but also provides new functions to query languages such as SQL that include many of the management and analysis functions of GIS. This enables database managers and programmers to perform GIS functions without traditional GIS software.
The current software industry consists of many competing products of each of these types, in both open-source and commercial forms. Many of these are listed below; for a direct comparison of the characteristics of some of them, see Comparison of geographic information systems software.
Open source software
The development of open source GIS software has—in terms of software history—a long tradition with the appearance of a first system in 1978. Numerous systems are available which cover all sectors of geospatial data handling.
Desktop GIS
The following open-source desktop GIS projects are reviewed in Steiniger and Bocher (2008/9):
GRASS GIS – Geospatial data management, vector and raster manipulation - developed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
gvSIG – Mapping and geoprocessing with a 3D rendering plugin
ILWIS (Integrated Land and Water Information System) – Integrates image, vector and thematic data.
JUMP GIS / OpenJUMP ((Open) Java Unified Mapping Platform) – The desktop GISs OpenJUMP, SkyJUMP, deeJUMP and Kosmo all emerged from JUMP.
MapWindow GIS – Free desktop application with plugins and a programmer library
QGIS (previously known as Quantum GIS) – Powerful cartographic and geospatial data processing tools with extensive plug-in support
SAGA GIS (System for Automated Geoscientific Analysis) – Tools for environmental modeling, terrain analysis, and 3D mapping
uDig – API and source code (Java) available.
Besides these, there are other open source GIS tools:
Capaware – A C++ 3D GIS Framework with a multiple plugin architecture for geographic graphical analysis and visualization.
Generic Mapping Tools – A collection of command-line tools for manipulating geographic and Cartesian data sets and producing PostScript illustrations.
FalconView – A mapping system created by the Georgia Tech Research Institute for the Windows family of operating systems. A free, open source version is available.
Kalypso – Uses Java and GML3. Focuses mainly on numerical simulations in water management.
TerraView – Handles vector and raster data stored in a relational or geo-relational database, i.e. a frontend for TerraLib.
Whitebox GAT – Cross-platform, free and open-source GIS software.
Other geospatial tools
Apart from desktop GIS, many other types of GIS software exist.
Web map servers
GeoServer – Written in Java and relies on GeoTools. Allows users to share and edit geospatial data.
MapGuide Open Source – Runs on Linux or Windows, supports Apache and IIS web servers, and has APIs (PHP, .NET, Java, and JavaScript) for application development.
Mapnik – C++/Python library for rendering - used by OpenStreetMap.
MapServer – Written in C. Developed by the University of Minnesota.
Spatial database management systems
PostGIS – Spatial extensions for the open source PostgreSQL database, allowing geospatial queries.
ArangoDB – Builtin features available for Spatial data management, allowing geospatial queries.
SpatiaLite – Spatial extensions for the open source SQLite database, allowing geospatial queries.
TerraLib – Provides advanced functions for GIS analysis.
OrientDB – Builtin features available for Spatial data management, allowing geospatial queries.
Software development frameworks and libraries (for web applications)
GeoBase (Telogis GIS software) – Geospatial mapping software available as a software development kit.
OpenLayers – Open source AJAX library for accessing geographic data layers of all kinds, originally developed and sponsored by MetaCarta.
Leafletjs – Open source JavaScript Library for Mobile-Friendly Interactive Maps
Software development frameworks and libraries (non-web)
GeoTools – Open source GIS toolkit written in Java, using Open Geospatial Consortium specifications.
GDAL / OGR
Orfeo toolbox
Cataloging application for spatially referenced resources
GeoNetwork opensource – A catalog application to manage spatially referenced resources
pycsw – pycsw is an OGC CSW server implementation written in Python
Other tools
Chameleon – Environments for building applications with MapServer.
Notable commercial or proprietary GIS software
Desktop GIS
Note: Almost all of the companies below offer Desktop GIS and WebMap Server products. Some such as Manifold Systems and Esri offer Spatial DBMS products as well.
Companies with high market share
Autodesk – Products that interface with its AutoCAD software package include Map 3D, Topobase, and MapGuide.
Bentley Systems – Products that interface with its MicroStation software package include Bentley Map and Bentley Map View.
ENVI – Utilized for image analysis, exploitation, and hyperspectral analysis.
ERDAS IMAGINE – Products include Leica Photogrammetry Suite, ERDAS ER Mapper, ERDAS ECW/JP2 SDK (ECW (file format)) and ERDAS APOLLO.
Esri – Products include ArcMap, ArcGIS, ArcSDE, ArcIMS, ArcWeb services and ArcGIS Server.
Intergraph – Products include G/Technology, GeoMedia, GeoMedia Professional, GeoMedia WebMap, and add-on products for industry sectors, as well as photogrammetry.
MapInfo – Desktop GIS MapInfo Professional.
Smallworld
Companies with minor but notable market share
Cadcorp – Products include Cadcorp SIS, GeognoSIS, mSIS and developer kits.
Caliper – Products include Maptitude, TransModeler and TransCAD.
Conform by GameSim – Software for fusing and visualizing elevation, imagery, vectors, and LiDAR. The fused environment can be exported into 3D formats for gaming, simulation, and urban planning.
Dragon/ips – Remote sensing software with GIS capabilities.
Geosoft – GIS and data processing software used in natural resource exploration.
GeoTime – software for 3D visual analysis and reporting of location data over time; an ArcGIS extension is also available.
Global Mapper – GIS software package currently developed by Blue Marble Geographics; originally based on USGS dlgv32 source code.
Golden Software – GIS and scientific software. Products include Surfer for gridding and contouring, MapViewer for thematic mapping and spatial analysis, Strater for well or borehole logging and cross sections, Voxler for true 3D well and component mapping, Didger for digitizing and coordinate conversion, and Grapher for 2D and 3D graphing.
Kongsberg Gallium Ltd. – Products include InterMAPhics and InterView.
MapDotNet – Framework written in C#/.NET for building WPF, Silverlight, and HTML5 applications.
Manifold System – GIS software package.
RegioGraph by GfK GeoMarketing – GIS software for business planning and analyses; company also provides compatible maps and market data.
RemoteView
SuperMap Inc. – a GIS software provider that offers Desktop, Component, Web, and Mobile GIS.
TerrSet (formerly IDRISI) – GIS and Image Processing product developed by Clark Labs at Clark University.
TNTmips by MicroImages – a system integrating desktop GIS, advanced image processing, 2D-3D-stereo visualization, desktop cartography, geospatial database management, and webmap publishing.
twiGIS – a web based GIS/FM software, developed by Arkance Systems.
GIS as a service
Many suppliers are now starting to offer Internet based services as well as or instead of downloadable software and/or data. These can be free, funded by advertising or paid for on subscription; they split into three areas:
SaaS – Software as a Service: Software available as a service on the Internet
ArcGIS Online – Esri's cloud based version of ArcGIS
CartoDB – Online mapping platform that offers an open source, cloud based SaaS model
Mapbox – Provider of custom online maps for websites
PaaS – Platform as a Service: geocoding or analysis/processing services
ArcGIS Online
Google Maps JavaScript API version 3
Here Maps JavaScript API version
Microsoft Bing Geocode Dataflow API
US Census Geocoder
DaaS – Data as a Service: data or content services
ArcGIS Online
Apple Maps
Google Maps
Here Maps
OpenStreetMap
Microsoft Bing Maps
Spatial DBMS
Boeing's Spatial Query Server – Spatially enables Sybase ASE.
DB2 – Allows spatial querying and storing of most spatial data types.
Informix – Allows spatial querying and storing of most spatial data types.
MySQL – Allows spatial querying and storing of most spatial data types.
Microsoft SQL Server (2008 and later) – GIS products such as MapInfo and Cadcorp SIS can read and edit this data while Esri and others are expected to be able to read and edit this data at some point in the future.
Oracle Spatial – Product allows users to perform geographic operations and store spatial data types in an Oracle environment. Most commercial GIS packages can read and edit spatial data stored in this way.
SAP HANA – Allows users to store common spatial data types, load spatial data files with well-known text (WKT) and well-known binary (WKB) formats and perform spatial processing using SQL. Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) certification allows third party GIS software providers to store and process spatial data. GIS products such as ArcGIS from Esri work with HANA.
Teradata – Teradata geospatial allows storage and spatial analysis on location-based data which is stored using native geospatial data-types within the Teradata database.
VMDS – Version managed data store from Smallworld.
Crunchy Certified PostGIS - Open Geospatial Consortium certified open source distribution of PostgreSQL with PostGIS from Crunchy Data.
Geospatial Internet of Things
SensorUp – SensorUp provides the Cloud hosting and SDKs, based on the Open Geospatial Consortium SensorThings API standard.
See also
Comparison of geographic information systems software
GIS Live DVD
Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo)
References
Lists of software |
30428572 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1962%20USC%20Trojans%20football%20team | 1962 USC Trojans football team | The 1962 USC Trojans football team represented the University of Southern California (USC) in the 1962 NCAA University Division football season. In their third year under head coach John McKay, the Trojans compiled an 11–0 record (4–0 against conference opponents), won the Athletic Association of Western Universities (AAWU or Big 6) championship, defeated Wisconsin in the 1963 Rose Bowl, outscored their opponents by a combined total of 261 to 92, and finished the season ranked #1 in both the AP Poll and UPI Coaches Poll.
Pete Beathard was the team's quarterback, completing 54 of 107 passes for 989 yards with ten touchdown passes and only one interception. (Bill Nelsen also completed 36 of 80 passes for 682 yards and eight touchdown passes with two interceptions.) Willie Brown was the team's leading rusher with 574 rushing yards (and 291 receiving yards). Hal Bedsole was the team's leading receiver with 33 catches for 827 yards and 11 touchdowns. Bedsole was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2012.
Two USC players were selected by the Associated Press (AP) as first-team players on the 1962 All-Pacific Coast football team. They were end Hal Bedsole and linebacker Damon Bame. Bedsole was also a consensus first-team All-American in 1962, while Bame received first-team All-America honors from the AP.
Schedule
Game summaries
Duke
SMU
Statistics
Receiving: Hal Bedsole 4 receptions, 112 yards, 2 TD
California
Statistics
Receiving: Hal Bedsole 6 receptions, 201 yards, 2 TD
Players
The following players were members of the 1962 USC football team.
Damon Bame, linebacker
Pete Beathard, quarterback
Hal Bedsole, end
Willie Brown, halfback
John Brownwood, end
Ron Butcher
Mac Byrd
Jay Clark
Ken Del Conte, halfback
Craig Fertig, quarterback
Bill Fisk
Mike Gale
Stan Gonta
Ron Heller
Fred Hill
Gary Hill
Phil Hoover
Hudson Houck
Loran Hunt
Tom Johnson
Ernie Jones
Randy Jones
Gary Kirner, tackle
Pete Lubisich, guard
Tom Lupo
Marv Marinovich, guard
Rich McMahon
Bill Nelsen, quarterback
Gary Potter
Ernie Pye
John Ratliff, guard
Lynn Reade
Larry Sagouspe
Armando Sanchez
Denny Schmidt
Ron Smedley
Bob Svihus, tackle
Toby Thurlow
Gary Winslow
Ben Wilson, fullback
Coaching staff and administration
Head coach: John McKay
Assistant coaches: Mel Hein, Mike Giddings, Raymond George, Dave Levy, Charlie Hall, Marv Goux, and Joe Margucci
Athletic director: Jess Hill
Senior manager: Mike Leddel
References
Further reading
"Trojans 1962: John McKay's First National Championship", by Bill Block, iUniverse, 2012
USC
USC Trojans football seasons
College football national champions
Pac-12 Conference football champion seasons
Rose Bowl champion seasons
College football undefeated seasons
USC Trojans football |
43389159 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University%20of%20Maryland%2C%20Baltimore%20County%20Centers%20and%20Institutes | University of Maryland, Baltimore County Centers and Institutes | The University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) features a variety of research centers and institutes both based on the campus and affiliated with other academic institutions. These centers and institutes listed below seek out to expand their research, educate, and promote partnerships between the university and the Baltimore-Washington Metropolitan Area and beyond.
Research centers
Alex. Brown Center for Entrepreneurship
The Alex. Brown Center for Entrepreneurship was established in Spring 2000 through a donation of $1 million from The Alex. Brown Foundation. The Brown Center hosts two major events at UMBC: : The Cangialosi Business Innovation Competition in the spring, and UMBC's Idea Competition in the fall. The center administers an Entrepreneurship Minor as well as other academic services.
Center for Advanced Sensor Technology
The Center for Advanced Sensor Technology derived from faculty of the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute. CAST focuses on the development of sensing technologies: the chemistries, methods, systems and devices used in measuring various substances of interest to biotechnology, medicine, the environment, and homeland security.
Center for Advanced Studies in Photonics Research
The Center for Advanced Studies in Photonics Research (CASPR) fosters advanced photonics research and technology development in the areas of optical communications, optical sensing and devices, nanophotonics, biophotonics, and quantum optics in order to benefit government, industry and scientific progress.
Center for Art, Design & Visual Culture
The Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture (CADVC) was established in 1989 as the Fine Art Gallery at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. The center is the university's prime exhibition location where students, professors, staff and the public can experience visual culture along with cultural and aesthetic issues.
Center for Space Science and Technology
The Center for Space Sciences and Technology (CSST) is the administrative unit for the university's participation in the CRESST (Center for Research and Exploration in Space Science & Technology) consortium with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. The University of Maryland College Park (UMCP) and the Universities Space Research Association (USRA) are partners in the center's consortium.
Center for Urban Environmental Research & Education
The Center for Urban Environmental Research and Education (CUERE) was created in 2001 with support from the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The facility is located in the Technology Research Center on the campus of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County in Baltimore, Maryland, allowing for opportunities for UMBC students and faculty. The center's focus is primarily on the relationship between natural and socioeconomic processes that occur in urban environments. CUERE's location allows for ample research opportunities in the Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area.
Center for Women in Technology
The Center for Women In Technology (CWIT) was established at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County in July 1998 to provide leadership in achieving women's full participation in all aspects of information technology. The center's original name was the "Center for Women and Information Technology", and it was founded to encourage women as both developers of information technology and to women's experiences as users of IT. The original CWIT site included a large number of resources and links and served as a clearinghouse about women and information technology. This work included focusing on K-12 education as well as supporting university students, and work force advancement and retention.
Dresher Center for the Humanities
The James T. and Virginia M. Dresher Center for the Humanities promotes interdisciplinary research and scholarship in the humanities among faculty, students and visiting scholars at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Founded in 1996, the Dresher Foundation has expanded its research mission in order to bring national attention to UMBC's impressive achievements in the humanities.http://dreshercenter.umbc.edu/about-us/
Goddard Earth Sciences and Technology Center
The Goddard Earth Sciences and Technology Center (GEST) was created in 2000 when NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) awarded a Cooperative Agreement to the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, to create a center of excellence in the Earth sciences. The center works with a variety of partners such as Hampton University, Howard University, Caelum Research Corporation, and Northrop Grumman Corporation in order to develop collaborative research programs in all areas of the Earth sciences.
Imaging Research Center
Founded in 1989, the Imaging Research Center (IRC) uses an entrepreneurial approach to leveraging new technologies and emerging media platforms to create connections between knowledge and people. IRC activities include research in 3D visualization, immersive technologies, interactive installations, feature-length films, social media, and mobile device applications.
Joint Center for Earth Systems Technology
The Joint Center for Earth Systems Technology (JCET) operates under a cooperative agreement between the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). The center partners with Goddard to develop new technology for environmental remote sensing.
Eunice Kennedy and Sargent Shriver Center
The Shriver Center was created in December 1993 in honor of the life‚ work of Eunice Kennedy Shriver and Sargent Shriver in order to focus in an integrated way, the resources of the colleges and universities of Greater Baltimore on pressing urban issues of the region. The center works alongside the Career Services Center as a hub for student career development related to internships, co-ops, and research opportunities. Other features include the Shriver Peaceworkers Fellow Program, service learning, scholar programs, scholarships, and career counseling.
UMBC Center for Cybersecurity
The UMBC Center for Cybersecurity is an interdisciplinary university center that unifies the university's cybersecurity capabilities. The center provides both Maryland and the nation with academic and research leadership, collaboration, innovation, and outreach in this critical discipline by streamlining academic, research, workforce development, and technology incubation activities.
The Center for Cybersecurity offers a concentration in Information Assurance Concentration for undergraduate students pursuing a degree in Information Systems. In addition, the center offers a M.P.S. in Cybersecurity and a certificate in Cybersecurity Strategy and Policy.
Institutes
Goddard Planetary Heliophysics Institute
Founded in May 2011, the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) awarded a Cooperative Agreement to the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, to create a science center for collaborative research in Solar-Planetary Sciences at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. UMBC partners with the University of Maryland College Park and American University in an effort to develop collaborative research programs in all areas of the Heliophysics sciences.
The Hilltop Institute
The Hilltop Institute at UMBC is a nonpartisan research organization dedicated to improving the health and wellbeing of people and communities. Hilltop conducts cutting-edge data analytics and translational research on behalf of government agencies, foundations, and nonprofit organizations to inform public policy at the national, state, and local levels.
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
The Howard Hughes Medical Institute at University of Maryland, Baltimore County is engaged in the research on application of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) to studies of the structure and function of proteins and macromolecular interactions.
Institute of Fluorescence
The Institute of Fluorescence was founded in 2001 by Dr. Chris D. Geddes of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Approaches and concepts both developed and discovered by the group, such as Metal-Enhanced Fluorescence (MEF), Metal-Enhanced Chemiluminescence (MEC), Surface-Plasmon Coupled Phenomenon and the glucose-sensing contact lens, are both well-recognized, highly cited and currently used in laboratories around the world today.
Maryland Institute for Policy Analysis & Research
The Maryland Institute for Policy Analysis and Research (MIPAR) is the main center for social science and public policy research at UMBC. The center links the analytical resources of the university with policymakers in Maryland and the Baltimore region, conducting opinion research, policy analyses, and program evaluations on a variety of topics. MIPAR also administers the Center for Aging Studies at UMBC.
See also
University of Maryland, Baltimore County Scholars
References
External links
Research and Scholarship Homepage
Directory
Center
Baltimore County Centers and Institutes |
48440127 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Applied%20Biomathematics | Applied Biomathematics | Applied Biomathematics is a private research and software firm in
East Setauket, New York, that conducts scientific research and
develops scientific and statistical software for research and education.
The corporate offices are located in a historical district on Long Island, in the oldest settlement in Brookhaven Town, about
one mile from Stony Brook University.
Applied Biomathematics translates theoretical concepts from biology and the
physical sciences into mathematical
and statistical methods to quantitatively solve practical environmental, health,
and engineering problems. The company disseminates its methodological developments via its RAMAS software products for use in
conservation biology, resource management, healthcare,
ecology, and various engineering disciplines such as risk analysis,
uncertainty quantification, reliability assessments,
viability analysis, and
survival analysis.
The methods and RAMAS brand software products
developed by AB are used by hundreds of academic institutions around
the world, government agencies, and industrial and private
labs.
Applied Biomathematics is funded primarily by research grants and contracts from the U.S. government and private industry associations.
The company has received several grants from the Small Business Innovation Research
program, including awards from the National Institutes of Health, United States Department of Agriculture, NASA, National Science Foundation, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Other project funding has come from the Electric Power Research Institute and individual utility companies, healthcare, pharmaceutical and seed companies such as Pfizer, DuPont and Dow. The company has provided risk analysis specifics to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
About 10% of its revenues come from software sales and licensing.
Applied Biomathematics conducts research in four main areas: environment, engineering, human health, and data science. Research pertaining to environmental issues includes assessments in conservation biology, ecology, pest management, and ecotoxicology. In engineering, research focuses on risk analysis, probability bounds analysis, and uncertainty projection. Research in human health addresses analytical needs in human health research and risk analysis, including statistical methods for detecting disease clusters and the anonymization of patient data. The company's data science unit, Dubito Analytics, provides high quality analysis of large, complex datasets. Methods developed through Applied Biomathematics' research are packaged in RAMAS software tools, tailored to meet the needs of scientists, engineers, educators, and students.
Applied Biomathematics is a registered service mark and RAMAS is a registered trademark of Applied Biomathematics, Inc.
References
External links
Official website
Applied Biomathematics research activities
Applied Biomathematics Uncertainty blog
Companies based in Suffolk County, New York
Science and technology think tanks
Population research organizations
Think tanks based in the United States |
52023575 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Episerver | Episerver | Episerver is a software company offering web content management (WCM) (or CMS), digital commerce, and digital marketing, through the Episerver Digital Experience Platform Cloud Service. In January 2021, Episerver announced that they were rebranding as Optimizely, a company they acquired in October, 2020.
History
Episerver was founded in 1994 in Stockholm, Sweden, by Mikael Runhem. Then known as Elektropost Stockholm AB, the company focused on internet-based electronic mail. Elektropost Stockholm AB expanded to provide technology for building websites and introduced the first version of the EPiServer CMS platform in 1997.
In 2002, the first version of EPiServer CMS that was based on Microsoft’s .NET Framework, EPiServer CMS 4.0, was launched. In 2006, Mikael Runhem changed the company’s name to EPiServer AB. In 2007, the second .NET-based version of EPiServer CMS was launched, version 5.
In 2010, the company was owned by a group of investors, including Amadeus Capital, Martin Bjäringer, Monterro Holdings, Northzone Ventures, Mikael Runhem and family and employees. In November 2010, this group sold the company to IK Investment Partners.
In December 2014, IK Investment Partners sold Episerver to Accel-KKR, a technology-focused private equity investment firm. Accel-KKR had also recently purchased Ektron, a Nashua, New Hampshire-based CMS company.
In January 2015, Episerver and Ektron merged. Two former executives from KANA Software, CEO Mark Duffell and CMO James Norwood, were appointed President and CEO and Executive Vice President Strategy and CMO of Episerver, respectively. Martin Henricson, CEO of the former Episerver business assumed the role of Executive Chairman for the merged entity.
The company combined its software into the Episerver Digital Experience Cloud, and in June 2015, Episerver launched the first major release of its platform following the Ektron merger.
In November 2015, the company rebranded itself, changing EPiServer to Episerver, and including the shortened name “Epi”.
In August 2016, Episerver acquired Peerius, a London UK-based commerce personalization company. The brand now is fully integrated as EpiPersonalization into the Episerver Platform. Former Peerius CEO Roger Brown left the company.
In December 2019, Alexander Atzberger, former President of Customer Experience at SAP, joined Episerver as the company's new CEO.
In October 2020, Episerver acquired Optimizely, a digital experimentation company.
In January 2021, Episerver announced that they were rebranding as Optimizely.
Mergers and acquisitions
March 1, 2012: Episerver acquired Mediachase, an e-commerce and collaboration software solutions provider.
May 8, 2012: Episerver acquired 200OK AB, a Swedish enterprise search solutions provider.
May 6, 2013: Episerver acquired Swedish search provider, Euroling.
January 27, 2015: Episerver merged with Ektron, a New Hampshire-based CMS company.
August 31, 2016: Episerver acquired London-based Peerius, an omnichannel commerce personalization engine.
October 1st, 2016 Episerver acquired Berlin-based Optivo, an email-marketing automation service provider.
September, 2018 Episerver was acquired by Insight Venture Partners in a transaction valuing Episerver at $1.16 billion.
November 18th, 2019 Episerver acquired idio.io, a content intelligence software provider.
December 16th, 2019 Episerver acquired Insite Software, a B2B Ecommerce provider.
September 3rd, 2020 Episerver acquired Optimizely, a B2B A/B testing solution.
References
External links
Official Site
Developer Community
Content management systems
Software companies of Sweden |
59045761 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitwarden | Bitwarden | Bitwarden is a free and open-source password management service that stores sensitive information such as website credentials in an encrypted vault. The Bitwarden platform offers a variety of client applications including a web interface, desktop applications, browser extensions, mobile apps, and a command-line interface. Bitwarden offers a cloud-hosted service as well as the ability to deploy the solution on-premises.
History
Bitwarden debuted in August 2016 with an initial release of mobile applications for iOS and Android, browser extensions for Chrome and Opera, and a web vault. The browser extension for Firefox was later launched in February 2017. In February 2017, the Brave web browser began including the Bitwarden extension as an optional replacement password manager. In January 2018, the Bitwarden browser extension was adapted to and released for Apple's Safari browser through the Safari Extensions Gallery.
In February 2018, Bitwarden debuted as a stand-alone desktop application for macOS, Linux, and Windows. It was built as a web app variant of the browser extension and delivered on top of Electron. The Windows app was released alongside the Bitwarden extension for Microsoft Edge in the Microsoft Store a month later.
In March 2018, Bitwarden's web vault was criticized for embedding unconstrained third-party JavaScript from BootstrapCDN, Braintree, Google, and Stripe. These embedded scripts could pose as an attack vector to gain unauthorized access to Bitwarden users' passwords. These third-party scripts were removed as part of the Bitwarden 2.0 Web Vault update, released in July 2018.
In May 2018, Bitwarden released a command-line application enabling users to write scripted applications using data from their Bitwarden vaults. In June 2018, Cliqz performed a privacy and security review of the Bitwarden for Firefox browser extension and concluded that it would not negatively impact their users. Following the review, Bitwarden was made available as an optional password manager in the Cliqz web browser.
In October 2018, Bitwarden completed a security assessment, code audit, and cryptographic analysis from third-party security auditing firm Cure53.
In June 2020, Bitwarden completed another security audit from security firm Insight Risk Consulting to evaluate the security of the Bitwarden network perimeter as well as penetration testing and vulnerability assessments against Bitwarden web services and applications. In August 2020, Bitwarden achieved SOC 2 Type 2 and SOC 3 certification.
In December 2020, Bitwarden announced that it was HIPAA and Privacy Shield compliant.
Reception
In January 2021, in its first password-protection program comparison, U.S. News & World Report selected Bitwarden as "Best Password Manager". In February, with competitor LastPass about to drop a feature in its free version, CNET recommended Bitwarden as best free app for password synchronization across multiple devices, while Lifehacker recommended it as "the best password manager for most people."
Critics have praised the features offered in the software's free version, and the low price of the premium tier compared to other managers. The product was named the best "budget pick" in a Wirecutter password manager comparison. Bitwarden's secure open source implementation was also praised by reviewers. However, the software was criticized for its lack of additional features, and some reviewers noted its basic and less intuitive interface compared to other password managers.
Features
Open-source codebase
Biometric Unlock
Cloud-synchronization
Items types such as Logins, Secure Notes, Credit Cards, and Identities
End-to-end encryption of the Stored Vault Data
Password history, so you can see your previous passwords on Logins
Secure sharing of vault items with other Bitwarden users
Autofill login information into websites and other applications
Password generator
Password Strength Testing Tool
Two-factor authentication via authenticator apps, email, Duo, YubiKey, and FIDO U2F
File attachments
TOTP key storage and code generator
Data breach reports and password exposure checks through Have I Been Pwned?
Cross-platform client applications
Self-host the Bitwarden server on-premises
Login with Single Sign-On
See also
List of password managers
Password manager
Cryptography
References
External links
Bitwarden Password Manager Add-ons for Firefox
Bitwarden - Chrome Web Store
Bitwarden - Microsoft Edge Addons
Bitwarden extension - Opera add-ons
Installing Bitwarden on Raspberry Pi using Docker
Password managers
Cryptographic software
Nonfree Firefox WebExtensions
Internet Explorer add-ons
Google Chrome extensions
Microsoft Edge extensions
Windows software
MacOS software
Linux software
IOS software
Android (operating system) software
2016 software |
4970346 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K9%20Web%20Protection | K9 Web Protection | K9 Web Protection is discontinued content-control software developed by Blue Coat Systems. In 2016, K9 Web Protection was acquired by Symantec as part of the company's purchase of Blue Coat Systems.
In April 2019, Symantec announced that K9 Web Protection would be discontinued and would no longer be made available for download or purchase. Technical support for the software ended on June 30, 2019.
Use
The software operates without downloading a database to the computer and instead looks to an Internet-based database. This means that the computer only needs a very small piece of code and the user can take advantage of the database being updated constantly. On the other hand, if the computer can not connect to this database for any reason (such as a firewall blocking the connection), all web access will be disabled.
K9 Web Protection is proprietary software which is free for home use. It is possible to have multiple licenses, and every computer needs a separate license. Its primary purpose is for parental control, but it is possible to use it for protection of their computer against computer viruses or malware, or for self-blocking of pornography (with an accountability partner).
Strengths
The software is very difficult to disable or remove without an administrator password. The uninstaller requires the administrator password to run, and if the service or process is stopped all web access is disabled. Similarly, attempts to modify the program from the windows registry or file system will also lead to all web access being disabled.
Reception
Ken Cooper from Family WebWatch praised its ease of use and clean interface. Cooper also praised K9 for not bogging down system performance because it uses an Internet-based database.
On the other hand, Neil J. Rubenking, lead analyst for security for PC Magazine criticized the filter's inability to create custom filtering for individual family members, while praising the fact that he could not find a way for children to disable the filter without also disabling access to the internet.
Cnet gave it a 4 (out of 5) star rating, and ranks it #8 in Parental Control. Cnet criticizes "the lack of a chatware filter" which "leaves some holes for predation".
See also
List of parental control software
References
External links
Content-control software |
821197 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive%20tutor | Cognitive tutor | A cognitive tutor is a particular kind of intelligent tutoring system that utilizes a cognitive model to provide feedback to students as they are working through problems. This feedback will immediately inform students of the correctness, or incorrectness, of their actions in the tutor interface; however, cognitive tutors also have the ability to provide context-sensitive hints and instruction to guide students towards reasonable next steps.
Introduction
The name of Cognitive Tutor® now usually refers to a particular type of intelligent tutoring system produced by Carnegie Learning for high school mathematics based on John Anderson's ACT-R theory of human cognition. However, cognitive tutors were originally developed to test ACT-R theory for research purposes since the early 1980s and they are developed also for other areas and subjects such as computer programming and science. Cognitive Tutors can be implemented into classrooms as a part of blended learning that combines textbook and software activities.
The Cognitive Tutor programs utilize cognitive model and are based on model tracing and knowledge tracing. Model tracing means that the cognitive tutor checks every action performed by students such as entering a value or clicking a button, while knowledge tracing is used to calculate the required skills students learned by measuring them on a bar chart called Skillometer. Model tracing and knowledge tracing are essentially used to monitor students' learning progress, guide students to correct path to problem solving, and provide feedback.
The Institute of Education Sciences published several reports regarding the effectiveness of Carnegie Cognitive Tutor®. A 2013 report concluded that Carnegie Learning Curricula and Cognitive Tutor® was found to have mixed effects on mathematics achievement for high school students. The report identified 27 studies that investigate the effectiveness of Cognitive Tutor ®, and the conclusion is based on 6 studies that meet What Works Clearinghouse standards. Among the 6 studies included, 5 of them show intermediate to significant positive effect, while 1 study shows statistically significant negative effect. Another report published by Institute of Education Sciences in 2009 found that Cognitive Tutor® Algebra I to have potentially positive effects on math achievement based on only 1 study out of 14 studies that meets What Works Clearinghouse standards.it should be understood that What Works Clearinghouse standards call for relatively large numbers of participants, true random assignments to groups, and for a control group receiving either no treatment or a different treatment. Such experimental conditions are difficult to meet in schools, and thus only a small percentage of studies in education meet the standards of this clearinghouse, even though they may still be of value.
Theoretical foundations
Four-component architecture
Intelligent tutoring systems (ITS) have a four-component architecture: a domain model, a student model, a tutoring model and an interface component.
The domain model contains the rules, concepts, and knowledge related to the domain to be learned. It helps to evaluate students' performance and detect students' errors by setting a standard of domain expertise.
The student model, the central component of an ITS, is expected to contain knowledge about the students: their cognitive and affective states, and their progress as they learn. The function of the student model is threefold: to gather data from and about the learner, to represent the learner's knowledge and learning process, and to perform diagnostics of a student's knowledge and select optimal pedagogical strategies.
The tutoring model uses the data gained from the domain model and student model to make decisions about tutoring strategies such as whether or not to intervene, or when and how to intervene. Functions of the tutoring model include instruction delivery and content planning.
The interface component reflects the decisions made by the tutoring model in different forms such as Socratic dialogs, feedback and hints. Students interact with the tutor through the learning interface, also known as communication. The interface provides domain knowledge elements.
Cognitive model
A cognitive model tries to model the domain knowledge in the same way knowledge is represented in the human mind. Cognitive model enables intelligent tutoring systems to respond to problem-solving situations as the learner would. A tutoring system adopting a cognitive model is called a cognitive tutor.
Cognitive model is an expert system which hosts a multitude of solutions to the problems presented to students. The cognitive model is used to trace each student's solution through complex problems, enabling the tutor to provide step-by-step feedback and advice, and to maintain a targeted model of the student's knowledge based on student performance.
Cognitive Tutors
Cognitive Tutors provide step-by-step guidance as a learner develops a complex problem-solving skill through practice. Typically, cognitive tutors provide such forms of support as: (a) a problem-solving environment that is designed rich and "thinking visible"; (b) step-by-step feedback on student performance; (c) feedback messages specific to errors; (d) context-specific next-step hints at student's request, and (e) individualized problem selection.
Cognitive Tutors accomplish two of the principal tasks characteristic of human tutoring: (1) monitors the student's performance and providing context-specific individual instruction, and (2) monitors the student's learning and selects appropriate problem-solving activities.
Both cognitive model and two underlying algorithms, model tracing and knowledge tracing, are used to monitor the student's learning. In model tracing, the cognitive tutor uses the cognitive model in complex problems to follow the student's individual path and provide prompt accuracy feedback and context-specific advice. In knowledge tracing, the cognitive tutor uses a simple Bayesian method of evaluating the student's knowledge and uses this student model to select appropriate problems for individual student.
Cognitive architecture
Cognitive tutor development is guided by ACT-R cognitive architecture, which specifies the underlying framework developing the cognitive model or expert component of a cognitive tutor.
ACT-R, a member of the ACT family, is the most recent cognitive architecture, devoted primarily to modelling human behavior. ACT-R includes a declarative memory of factual knowledge and a procedural memory of production rules. The architecture functions by matching productions on perceptions and facts, mediated by the real-valued activation levels of objects, and executing them to affect the environment or alter declarative memory. ACT-R has been used to model psychological aspects such as memory, attention, reasoning, problem solving, and language processing.
Application and utilization
The first real world applications of cognitive tutors were a geometry proof tutor used by high school students and a mini course in Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University using the LISP tutor with college students.
Since then, cognitive tutors have been used in a variety of scenarios, with a few organizations developing their own cognitive tutor programs. These programs have been used with students spanning elementary school through university level, though primarily in the subject areas of Computer Programming, Mathematics, and Science.
One of the first organizations to develop a system for use within the school system was the PACT Center at Carnegie Mellon University. Their aim was to "...develop systems that provide individualized assistance to students as they work on challenging real-world problems in complex domains such as computer programming, algebra and geometry". PACT's most successful product was the Cognitive Tutor Algebra course. Originally created in the early 1990s, this course was in use in 75 schools through the U.S. by 1999, and then its spin-off company, Carnegie Learning, now offers tutors to over 1400 schools in the U.S.
The Carnegie Mellon Cognitive Tutor has been shown to raise students' math test scores in high school and middle-school classrooms, and their Algebra course was designated one of five exemplary curricula for K-12 mathematics educated by the US Department of Education.
There were several research projects conducted by the PACT Center to utilize Cognitive tutor for courses in Excel and to develop an intelligent tutoring system for algebra expression writing, called Ms. Lindquist. Further, in 2005, Carnegie Learning released Bridge to Algebra, a product intended for middle schools that was piloted in over 100 schools.
Cognitive tutoring software is continuing to be used. According to a Business Insider Report article, Ken Koedinger, a professor of human-computer interaction and psychology at Carnegie Mellon University, describes how teachers can integrate cognitive tutoring software into the classroom. He suggests that teachers use it in a computer lab environment or during classes. Cognitive tutors can understand the many ways that a student might answer a problem, and then assist the student at the exact time that the help is required. Further, the cognitive tutor can customize exercises specific to the student's needs.
Limitations
At this time it is unclear whether Cognitive Tutor® is effective at improving student performance. Cognitive Tutor® has had some commercial success however, there may be limitations inherently linked to its design and the nature of intelligent tutoring systems. The following section discusses limitations of Cognitive Tutor® which may also apply to other intelligent tutoring systems.
Curriculum
At this time, creating a Cognitive Tutor® for all subject areas is not practical or economical. Cognitive Tutor® has been used successfully but is still limited to tutoring algebra, computer programming and geometry because these subject areas have an optimal balance of production rules, complexity and maximum benefit to the learner.
The focus of Cognitive Tutor® development has been the design of the software to teach specific production rules and not on the development of curricular content. Despite many years of trials, improvements, and a potential to advance learning objectives, the creators continue to rely primarily on outside sources for curricular direction.
Design
The complexity of Cognitive Tutor® software requires designers to spend hundreds of hours per instructional hour to create the program. Despite the time invested, the challenges associated with meeting the needs of the learner within the constraints of the design often result in compromises in flexibility and cognitive fidelity.
Practicality dictates that designers must choose from a discrete set of methods to teach and support learners. Limited choices of methods, prompts and hints may be effective in supporting some learners but may conflict with the methods already in use by others. In addition, it is possible that learners will use the system of prompts and hints to access the answers prematurely thereby advancing through the exercises which may result in them not meeting the learning objectives.
Model
The cognitive model, which inspired Cognitive Tutor® is based on assumptions about how learning occurs which dictates the chosen instructional methods such as hints, directions and timing of the tutoring prompts. Given these assumptions and the limited methods of presentation, Cognitive Tutor® may not account for the flexible, complex and diverse ways humans create knowledge. Human tutors outperform Cognitive Tutor® by providing a higher level of responsiveness to student errors. They are capable of providing more effective feedback and scaffolding to learners than Cognitive Tutor®, indicating the cognitive model may still be incomplete.
See also
Educational psychology
References
External links
Pittsburgh Advanced Cognitive Tutor Center, of Carnegie Mellon University, which researches cognitive tutors
Product page for Cognitive Tutor at Carnegie Learning
Evaluation of Cognitive Tutor Algebra I Program in Miami-Dade County Public Schools
Overview of evaluations of Cognitive Tutor
Cognitive Tutors: The End of Boredom and Confusion?, Survey article (2018)
Artificial intelligence
Educational software
Educational psychology |
63664774 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leszek%20A.%20G%C4%85sieniec | Leszek A. Gąsieniec | Leszek A Gasieniec is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Liverpool, specialising in Algorithms, Distributed Computing and Communication, Networks and Search Problems. He has been with the University of Liverpool since 1997, becoming a full Professor in 2003.
He is the Head of the Networks and Distributed Computing Group (part of the Algorithms Section) at the University of Liverpool's Department of Computer Science.
He completed his PhD and MSc in Computer Science from the University of Warsaw and held Postdoctoral positions at the Max Planck Institute for Informatics and the Université du Québec. He serves as an Editor for Theoretical Computer Science (journal).
References
Year of birth missing (living people)
Living people
British computer scientists |
67784851 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf%20Friedrich%20von%20Olthof | Adolf Friedrich von Olthof | Adolf Friedrich von Olthof (7 September 1718, Strelitz-Alt - 30 June 1793, Stralsund) was a Swedish Pomeranian councilor, and patron of the arts.
Biography
He was the son of the Court Archivist, Lucas Anton Olthoff (d. 1752), who was raised to the nobility the year of his death. From 1728 to 1734, he attended the . Later, he studied at the University of Halle and the University of Greifswald. In 1738, he became his father's assistant and, in 1742, a "Secretary of the Knighthood" for Pomerania. Two years later, he succeeded his father in his position of Syndic. From 1747 to 1756, he worked in Stockholm, on behalf of the Knighthood, and gained a knowledge of Swedish law.
In 1857, together with the merchant and banker, , he leased the newly established Stralsund Mint; resigning his various offices. Later that same year, Sweden entered the Seven Years' War, and he was named to the War Commission. In October 1759, he was taken prisoner in Demmin, and was held for a year. Upon his release, he acquired several estates along the North Sea. He also profited from efforts to ward off the effects of the devaluation of Prussian currency.
He was commissioned by King Adolf Friedrich to help negotiate peace with Prussia. In 1762, he concluded the Treaty of Hamburg with the Prussian Ambassador, . He was also appointed a Councilor but, the following year, once again resigned all his positions to devote himself to his business activities.
Some of his wealth went into patronage. His estate near Parchtitz became a gathering place for friends and relatives who were interested in supporting the arts. Shortly after signing the Treaty, he invited the painters, Georg David Matthieu and Jakob Philipp Hackert, and the writer Johann Caspar Lavater, to come there as his guests. The artists provided decorations for his townhouse, and six large scale landscapes were provided for the ballroom. Later, Hackert would accompany him and Giese on a trip to Sweden. Balthasar Anton Dunker, Olthof's nephew, became Hackert's student, and went to Paris with him to complete his training.
Their contract with the mint expired in 1763. Three years later, after checking their claims, the Swedish government paid them less than half the expenses he and Giese were claiming. This was not enough to cover their debts, due to their lavish lifestyles. When Olthof was reappointed as a Councilor in 1773, half his annual salary was seized by creditors. A settlement was reached in 1775. The terms gave him and Giese licenses to run a lottery and a pawn shop, secured with bonds. Despite this, the in Greifswald opened bankruptcy proceedings against him in 1777. Only half of his debt was covered, and he resigned from the government.
In 1787, he was named Vice Chancellor at his alma mater, the University of Greifswald, and received a professorship. He sold the pawn shop concession in 1792, to help Giese's widow and provide himself with a small pension. He died impoverished and childless, having never married, and was interred at St. Jürgen's Cemetery in Stralsund.
References
Further reading
Jakob Wallenius: Gedächtnissrede auf den Regierungs-Rath Adolph Friedrich von Olthof bei der feierlichen Einweihung des ihm von den Freimaurern in Schwedisch-Pommern errichteten Denkmals auf dem Kniper Kirchhofe vor Stralsund am 14 October 1795. Stralsund 1795
Sabine Bock, Thomas Helms: Boldevitz. Geschichte und Architektur eines rügenschen Gutes. Thomas Helms Verlag Schwerin 2007,
Richard Marsson: Aus der Schwedenzeit von Stralsund – von Olthof und Giese. Stralsund 1928
External links
1718 births
1793 deaths
Swedish Pomerania
Swedish businesspeople
Seven Years' War
People from Neustrelitz |
7553725 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NCR%20Century%20100 | NCR Century 100 | The NCR Century 100 was NCR's first all integrated circuit computer built in 1968. All logic gates were created by wire-wrapping NAND gates together to form flip-flops and other complex circuits. The console of the system had only 18 lights and switches and allowed entry of a boot routine, or changes to loaded programs or data in memory. A typewriter console was also available.
Peripherals
The 615-100 Series integrated a complete data processing system had 16KB or 32KB of short rod memory, 80-column punched card reader or paper tape reader, two 5MB removable disc drives, 600-line per minute line printer. The system could be provided with a punched paper tape reader, or an external card reader/punch, and also allowed for the attachment of multiple 9 track 1/2 inch reel to reel magnetic tape drives. Two more disk drives could be attached to the system. The Century series used an instruction set with two instruction lengths: 4 bytes (32 bits) and 8 bytes (64 bits).
Rod memory
The memory of the Century Series computers used machine made, short, iron-oxide coated ceramic rods— long and approximately the diameter of a human hair— as their random access memories, instead of the hand-labor-intensive core memories that were used by other computers of the time. The economy of machine assembly was augmented by selling rod memory without paying patent royalties on core memory to NCR's competitor, IBM.
Disk drives
The Model 655 disk drive used a removable disk pack. It was the first by NCR to employ floating or flying heads with 12 read/write heads per surface. This reduced track-to-track movement and thus access times. However, this meant that there were 12 times more heads per drive, increasing the likelihood of head crashes. These flying heads were moved using a 16 position magnetic actuator. The actuator used four different magnets to create the 16 positions. The magnetic actuators were later replaced with hydraulic actuators, and later yet the hydraulic actuators were replaced with voice coil actuators. In 1972 NCR sold its disk drive business to Magnetics Peripherals, Inc., a joint venture with CDC and thereafter used disk drives from the joint venture.
Programming languages
The NCR Century 100 supported several programming languages: NEAT/3 (National's Easy Auto-coding Technique, a later version of the NEAT/1 language that ran on the NCR 315 computer system), COBOL, FORTRAN, and BASIC.
Hardware
The system had 39 hardware instructions. Early versions of the hardware did not have hardware multiply or divide instructions; they were instead emulated using software. . The machine used ASCII 8 bit code. It also supported packed decimal fields with or without a "sign". Without a sign a (positive) number such as 1234 could be stored in just two bytes, with each of the 8 bits of the character holding 2 digits, such as 0001 0010 0011 0100 (for 1234).
A typical hardware configuration consisted of a panel with toggle switches and lights to enter the boot loader, and a Teletype writer to input operating system commands, a punched card reader that gravity feed the cards (they dropped into the read station, and were ejected and turned 180 degrees and then placed in the exit hopper), 2 655 disc drives, and a printer that printed about 600 lines per minutes. The boot loader and peripherals were usually on punched cards, which notified the operating system which devices to use via a PAL (Peripheral Availability List) entry cards. The "go" command to the operating system was infamous: "EE" control-G (bell).
The Century 100 lacked hardware sense switches, which the Century 200 had. Programs that attempted to access sense switches on the Century 100 would simply halt with the humorous message: "You find the switches, and I'll test them!" displayed on the console typewriter.
A unique feature of the Century's hardware/software design allowed the normal 4K executive to be reduced to a mere 512 bytes, freeing up precious storage.
The Century 50 was slower than the Century 100 and only had 16K of the thin film rod memory.
References
External links
NCR Century 100 Processor —NCR reference manual (1970)
The Core Memory:NCR Century Series
Mainframe computers
NCR Corporation products |
2404057 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permissive%20software%20license | Permissive software license | A permissive software license, sometimes also called BSD-like or BSD-style license, is a free-software license which instead of copyleft protections, carries only minimal restrictions on how the software can be used, modified, and redistributed, usually including a warranty disclaimer. Examples include the GNU All-permissive License, MIT License, BSD licenses, Apple Public Source License and Apache license. the most popular free-software license is the permissive MIT license.
Example
The following is the full text of the simple GNU All-permissive License:
Definitions
The Open Source Initiative defines a permissive software license as a "non-copyleft license that guarantees the freedoms to use, modify and redistribute". GitHub's choosealicense website describes the permissive MIT license as "[letting] people do anything they want with your code as long as they provide attribution back to you and don’t hold you liable." California Western School of Law's newmediarights.com defined them as follows: "The ‘BSD-like’ licenses such as the BSD, MIT and Apache licenses are extremely permissive, requiring little more than attributing the original portions of the licensed code to the original developers in your own code and/or documentation."
Comparison to copyleft
Copyleft licenses generally require the reciprocal publication of the source code of any modified versions under the original work's copyleft license. Permissive licenses, in contrast, do not try to guarantee that modified versions of the software will remain free and publicly available, generally requiring only that the original copyright notice be retained. As a result, derivative works, or future versions, of permissively-licensed software can be released as proprietary software.
Defining how much liberal a license is, however, is not something easily quantifiable, and often depends on the goals of the final users. If the latter are developers, for some it might be valuable to have the right to modify and exploit source code written by others and possibly incorporate it into proprietary code and make money with it (and therefore these see permissive licenses as offering them a "right"), while for other developers it might be more valuable to know that nobody will ever capitalize what has mostly been their work (and therefore these see copyleft licenses as offering them a "right"). Furthermore, the final users might not be developers at all, and in this case copyleft licenses offer them the everlasting right to access a software as free software, ensuring that it will never become closed source – while permissive licenses offer no rights at all to non-developer final users, and software released with a permissive license could theoretically become from one day to another a closed source malware without the user even knowing it.
Permissive licenses offer more extensive license compatibility than copyleft licenses, which cannot generally be freely combined and mixed, because their reciprocity requirements conflict with each other.
Comparison to public domain
Computer Associates Int'l v. Altai used the term "public domain" to refer to works that have become widely shared and distributed under permission, rather than work that was deliberately put into the public domain. However, permissive licenses are not actually equivalent to releasing a work into the public domain.
Permissive licenses often do stipulate some limited requirements, such as that the original authors must be credited (attribution). If a work is truly in the public domain, this is usually not legally required, but a United States copyright registration requires disclosing material that has been previously published, and attribution may still be considered an ethical requirement in academia.
Advocates of permissive licenses often recommend against attempting to release software to the public domain, on the grounds that this can be legally problematic in some jurisdictions. Public-domain-equivalent licenses are an attempt to solve this problem, providing a fallback permissive license for cases where renunciation of copyright is not legally possible, and sometimes also including a disclaimer of warranties similar to most permissive licenses.
License compatibility
In general permissive licenses have good license compatibility with most other software licenses in most situations.<ref name="compatible">{{cite web |url=https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/software/page/licence_compatibility_and_interoperability |title=Licence Compatibility |work=European Union Public Licence |publisher=joinup.ec.europa.eu |quote=The licenses for distributing free or open source software (FOSS) are divided in two families: permissive and copyleft. Permissive licenses (BSD, MIT, X11, Apache, Zope) are generally compatible and interoperable with most other licenses, tolerating to merge, combine or improve the covered code and to re-distribute it under many licenses (including non-free or “proprietary”). |access-date=2015-05-30 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150617130550/https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/software/page/licence_compatibility_and_interoperability |archive-date=2015-06-17 }}</ref>
Due to their non-restrictiveness, most permissive software licenses are even compatible with copyleft licenses, which are incompatible with most other licenses. Some older permissive licenses, such as the 4-clause BSD license, the PHP License, and the OpenSSL License, have clauses requiring advertising materials to credit the copyright holder, which made them incompatible with copyleft licenses. Popular modern permissive licenses, however, such as the MIT License, the 3-clause BSD license and the zlib license, don't include advertising clauses and are generally compatible with copyleft licenses.
Some licenses do not allow derived works to add a restriction that says a redistributor cannot add more restrictions. Examples include the CDDL and MsPL. However such restrictions also make the license incompatible with permissive free-software licenses.
Reception and adoption
While they have been in use since the mid-1980s, several authors noted an increase in the popularity of permissive licenses during the 2010s.Does your code need a license? Posted 02 May 2013 by Jason Hibbets "Q: Are there software-development companies favoring a certain open-source license over another? What is the trend in the community? A: We're definitely seeing some trends away from copyleft licenses—mostly towards permissive licenses"
the MIT License, a permissive license, is the most popular free software license, followed by GPLv2.
Other terms
CopycenterCopycenter'' is a term originally used to explain the modified BSD license, a permissive free-software license. The term was presented by computer scientist and Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) contributor Marshall Kirk McKusick at a BSD conference in 1999. It is a word play on copyright, copyleft and copy center.
Pushover license
In the Free Software Foundation's guide to license compatibility and relicensing, Richard Stallman defines permissive licenses as "pushover licenses", comparing them to those people who "can't say no", because they are seen as granting a right to "deny freedom to others." The Foundation recommends pushover licenses only for small programs, below 300 lines of code, where "the benefits provided by copyleft are usually too small to justify the inconvenience of making sure a copy of the license always accompanies the software".
See also
License-free software
Public domain equivalent license
Free-software license
Comparison of free and open-source software licenses
Free Software Foundation
References
External links
Free and open-source software licenses |
5592135 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan%20M.%20Davis | Alan M. Davis | Alan Mark Davis is president and CEO of Offtoa, Inc. in Westminster, Colorado. He is a retired Professor of Business Strategy and Entrepreneurship in the College of Business at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs and in the Executive MBA program at the University of Colorado at Denver. Davis earned his master's degree in Computer Science under Donald B. Gillies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1973 and Ph.D. in Computer Science under Thomas R. Wilcox at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1975. He has held academic positions at George Mason University and the University of Tennessee. He has been a visiting faculty member at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the University of the Western Cape (South Africa), the University of Technology, Sydney (Australia), and the Technical University of Madrid (Spain). He was a Fulbright Specialist at the University of Jos (Nigeria) and Atma Jaya University, Yogyakarta (Indonesia). He has held industry positions at GTE (a Director of R&D at GTE Communication Systems in Phoenix, Arizona; and Director of the Software Technology Center at GTE Laboratories in Waltham, Massachusetts), BTG (Vice President in Vienna, Virginia), and Omni-Vista (President in Colorado Springs, Colorado). He was Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Software from 1994 to 1998 and was an editor for the Journal of Systems and Software (1987-2010) and Communications of the ACM (1981-1991) and on the editorial board of the Requirements Engineering Journal (2005-2011). He was a Fulbright Senior Specialist from 2003 through 2007. He has been an IEEE Fellow since 1994 and an IEEE Life Fellow since 2015..
Books
Davis has written the following books. In 2006, his 201 Principles of Software Development was voted by ACM members as one of the 20 classic computer science books:
Software Requirements: Analysis and Specification (Prentice Hall 1990), .
Software Requirements: Objects, Functions and States (Prentice Hall, 1993), .
201 Principles of Software Development (McGraw Hill, 1995), .
Great Software Debates (Wiley and IEEE Computer Society Press, 2004), .
Just Enough Requirements Management (Dorset House, 2004), .
Will Your New Start Up Make Money (Scrub Oak Press, 2014), .
Unusual Africa: Traveling on the Edge (Scrub Oak Press, 2016), .
Unusual Asia: Traveling on the Edge (Scrub Oak Press, 2017), .
Unusual Latin America (and Antarctica): Traveling on the Edge (Scrub Oak Press, 2017), .
External links
Al Davis's web page
1949 births
Living people
American computer scientists
Fellow Members of the IEEE
Stuyvesant High School alumni
Grainger College of Engineering alumni
University at Albany, SUNY alumni
University of Colorado faculty
George Mason University faculty
University of Tennessee faculty
University of Jos faculty
University of Illinois faculty
American expatriates in Nigeria
University of Technology Sydney faculty
American expatriates in Australia
American expatriates in South Africa
American expatriates in Indonesia
Technical University of Madrid faculty
American expatriates in Spain
Scientists from New York (state) |
761117 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim%20Gettys | Jim Gettys | Jim Gettys (born 15 October 1953) is an American computer programmer. He was involved in multiple computer related projects.
Activity
Gettys worked at DEC's Cambridge Research Laboratory.
Until January 2009, he was the Vice President of Software at the One Laptop per Child project, working on the software for the OLPC XO-1.
From 2009 through 2014, he worked at Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs.
Gettys was the co-founder of the group investigating Bufferbloat and the effect it has on the performance of the Internet., and was a core member of the group from 2010-2017, concluding with his publication of "The Blind Man and the Elephant", calling for the wide adoption of Fair Queuing and AQM techniques across the Internet, particularly RFC8290
.
Since 2017 he has been investigating the potential for reproducible builds and blockchain technology to make possible a more securely updatable and maintainable IoT infrastructure.
He is one of the original developers of the X Window System at MIT and worked on it again with X.Org, where he served on the board of directors.
He served on the GNOME foundation board of directors.
He worked at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and was the editor of the HTTP/1.1 specification in the Internet Engineering Task Force through draft standard.
Gettys helped establish the handhelds.org community, from which the development of Linux on handheld devices can be traced.
One of his main goals at OLPC was to review and overhaul much of standard Linux software, in order to make it run faster and consume less memory and power. In this context, he has pointed out a common fallacy among programmers today: that storing computed values in memory is preferable to recomputing those values later. This, he claims, is often false on current hardware, given fast CPUs and the long time it takes to recover from a potential cache miss.
He holds a BSc degree from MIT in Earth and Planetary Sciences (course 12 — EAPS).
Awards
He won the 1997 Internet Plumber of the Year award on behalf of the group who worked on HTTP/1.1.
Gettys is one of the keepers of the Flame (USENIX's 1999 Lifetime Achievement Award) on behalf of The X Window System Community at Large.
References
External links
Jim Gettys' home page at Handhelds.org
jg's ramblings (Gettys' blog where bufferbloat was first exposed)
bufferbloat.net where work on bufferbloat is taking place
The X Window System, Version 11 (November, 1990)
The (Re)Architecture of the X Window System (July, 2004)
Network Performance Effects of HTTP/1.1, CSS1, and PNG (June 1997)
Living people
Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Science alumni
Free software programmers
X Window System people
American computer programmers
Hewlett-Packard people
Linux people
1953 births |
11026 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List%20of%20programmers | List of programmers | This is a list of programmers notable for their contributions to software, either as original author or architect, or for later additions. All entries must already have associated articles.
A
Michael Abrash – program optimization and x86 assembly language
Scott Adams – one of earliest developers of CP/M and DOS games
Tarn Adams – created Dwarf Fortress
Leonard Adleman – cocreated RSA algorithm (being the A in that name), coined the term computer virus
Alfred Aho – cocreated AWK (being the A in that name), and main author of famous Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools (Dragon book)
Andrei Alexandrescu – author, expert on languages C++, D
Paul Allen – Altair BASIC, Applesoft BASIC, cofounded Microsoft
Eric Allman – sendmail, syslog
Marc Andreessen – cocreated Mosaic, cofounded Netscape
Jeremy Ashkenas – created CoffeeScript programming language and Backbone.js
Bill Atkinson – QuickDraw, HyperCard
B
Roland Carl Backhouse – computer program construction, algorithmic problem solving, ALGOL
John Backus – Fortran, BNF
Lars Bak – virtual machine specialist
Richard Bartle – MUD, with Roy Trubshaw, created MUDs
Friedrich L. Bauer – Stack (data structure), Sequential Formula Translation, ALGOL, software engineering, Bauer–Fike theorem
Kent Beck – created Extreme programming, cocreated JUnit
Donald Becker – Linux Ethernet drivers, Beowulf clustering
Brian Behlendorf – Apache HTTP Server
Doug Bell – Dungeon Master series of video games
Fabrice Bellard – created FFmpeg open codec library, QEMU virtualization tools
Tim Berners-Lee – invented World Wide Web
Daniel J. Bernstein – djbdns, qmail
Eric Bina – cocreated Mosaic web browser
Marc Blank – cocreated Zork
Joshua Bloch – core Java language designer, lead the Java collections framework project
Jonathan Blow – video game designer and programmed Braid and The Witness
Susan G. Bond – cocreated ALGOL 68-R
Grady Booch – cocreated Unified Modeling Language
Bert Bos – authored Argo web browser, co-authored Cascading Style Sheets
Stephen R. Bourne – cocreated ALGOL 68C, created Bourne shell
David Bradley – coder on the IBM PC project team who wrote the Control-Alt-Delete keyboard handler, embedded in all PC-compatible BIOSes
Andrew Braybrook – video games Paradroid and Uridium
Larry Breed – implementation of Iverson Notation (APL), co-developed APL\360, Scientific Time Sharing Corporation cofounder
Jack Elton Bresenham – created Bresenham's line algorithm
Dan Bricklin – cocreated VisiCalc, the first personal spreadsheet program
Walter Bright – Digital Mars, First C++ compiler, authored D (programming language)
Sergey Brin – cofounded Google Inc.
Per Brinch Hansen (surname "Brinch Hansen") – RC 4000 multiprogramming system, operating system kernels, microkernels, monitors, concurrent programming, Concurrent Pascal, distributed computing & processes, parallel computing
Richard Brodie – Microsoft Word
Andries Brouwer – Hack, former maintainer of man pager, Linux kernel hacker
Danielle Bunten Berry (Dani Bunten) – M.U.L.E., multiplayer video game and other noted video games
Dries Buytaert – created Drupal
C
Steve Capps – cocreated Macintosh and Newton
John Carmack – first-person shooters Doom, Quake
Vint Cerf – TCP/IP, NCP
Ward Christensen – wrote the first BBS (Bulletin Board System) system CBBS
Edgar F. Codd – principal architect of relational model
Bram Cohen – BitTorrent protocol design and implementation
Alain Colmerauer – Prolog
Alan Cooper – Visual Basic
Mike Cowlishaw – REXX and NetRexx, LEXX editor, image processing, decimal arithmetic packages
Alan Cox – co-developed Linux kernel
Brad Cox – Objective-C
Mark Crispin – created IMAP, authored UW-IMAP, one of reference implementations of IMAP4
William Crowther – Colossal Cave Adventure
Ward Cunningham – created Wiki concept
Dave Cutler – architected RSX-11M, OpenVMS, VAXELN, DEC MICA, Windows NT
D
Ole-Johan Dahl – cocreated Simula, object-oriented programming
Ryan Dahl – created Node.js
James Duncan Davidson – created Tomcat, now part of Jakarta Project
Terry A. Davis – developer of TempleOS
Jeff Dean – Spanner, Bigtable, MapReduce
L. Peter Deutsch – Ghostscript, Assembler for PDP-1, XDS-940 timesharing system, QED original co-author
Robert Dewar – IFIP WG 2.1 member, chairperson, ALGOL 68; AdaCore cofounder, president, CEO
Edsger W. Dijkstra – contributions to ALGOL, Dijkstra's algorithm, Go To Statement Considered Harmful, IFIP WG 2.1 member
Matt Dillon – programmed various software including DICE and DragonflyBSD
Jack Dorsey – created Twitter
Martin Dougiamas – creator and lead developed Moodle
Adam Dunkels – authored Contiki operating system, the lwIP and uIP embedded TCP/IP stacks, invented protothreads
E
Les Earnest – authored finger program
Alan Edelman – Edelman's Law, stochastic operator, Interactive Supercomputing, Julia (programming language) cocreator, high performance computing, numerical computing
Brendan Eich – created JavaScript
Larry Ellison – cocreated Oracle Database, cofounded Oracle Corporation
Andrey Ershov – languages ALPHA, Rapira; first Soviet time-sharing system AIST-0, electronic publishing system RUBIN, multiprocessing workstation MRAMOR, IFIP WG 2.1 member, Aesthetics and the Human Factor in Programming
Marc Ewing – created Red Hat Linux
F
Scott Fahlman – created smiley face emoticon :-)
Dan Farmer – created COPS and Security Administrator Tool for Analyzing Networks (SATAN) Security Scanners
Steve Fawkner – created Warlords and Puzzle Quest
Stuart Feldman – created make, authored Fortran 77 compiler, part of original group that created Unix
David Filo – cocreated Yahoo!
Brad Fitzpatrick – created memcached, Livejournal and OpenID
Andrew Fluegelman – author PC-Talk communications software; considered a cocreated shareware
Martin Fowler – created Dependency Injection pattern of software engineering, a form of Inversion of control
Brian Fox – created Bash, Readline, GNU Finger
G
Elon Gasper – cofounded Bright Star Technology, patented realistic facial movements for in-game speech; HyperAnimator, Alphabet Blocks, etc.
Bill Gates – Altair BASIC, cofounded Microsoft
Nick Gerakines – author, contributor to open-source Erlang projects
Jim Gettys – X Window System, HTTP/1.1, One Laptop per Child, Bufferbloat
Steve Gibson – created SpinRite
John Gilmore – GNU Debugger (GDB)
Adele Goldberg – cocreated Smalltalk
Ryan C. Gordon (a.k.a. Icculus) – Lokigames, ioquake3
James Gosling – Java, Gosling Emacs, NeWS
Bill Gosper – Macsyma, Lisp machine, hashlife, helped Donald Knuth on Vol.2 of The Art of Computer Programming (Semi-numerical algorithms)
Paul Graham – Yahoo! Store, On Lisp, ANSI Common Lisp
John Graham-Cumming – authored POPFile, a Bayesian filter-based e-mail classifier
Ralph Griswold – cocreated SNOBOL, created Icon (programming language)
Richard Greenblatt – Lisp machine, Incompatible Timesharing System, MacHack
Neil J. Gunther – authored Pretty Damn Quick (PDQ) performance modeling program
Scott Guthrie (a.k.a. ScottGu) – ASP.NET creator
Jürg Gutknecht – with Niklaus Wirth: Lilith computer; Modula-2, Oberon, Zonnon programming languages; Oberon operating system
Andi Gutmans – cocreated PHP programming language
Michael Guy – Phoenix, work on number theory, computer algebra, higher dimension polyhedra theory, ALGOL 68C; work with John Horton Conway
H
Daniel Ha – cofounder and CEO of blog comment platform Disqus
Nico Habermann – work on operating systems, software engineering, inter-process communication, process synchronization, deadlock avoidance, software verification, programming languages: ALGOL 60, BLISS, Pascal, Ada
Jim Hall – started the FreeDOS project
Margaret Hamilton – Director of Software Engineering Division of MIT Instrumentation Laboratory, which developed on-board flight software for the space Apollo program
Eric Hehner – predicative programming, formal methods, quote notation, ALGOL
David Heinemeier Hansson – created the Ruby on Rails framework for developing web applications
Rebecca Heineman – authored Bard's Tale III: Thief of Fate and Dragon Wars
Gernot Heiser – operating system teaching, research, commercialising, Open Kernel Labs, OKL4, Wombat
Anders Hejlsberg – Turbo Pascal, Borland Delphi, C#, TypeScript
Ted Henter – founded Henter-Joyce (now part of Freedom Scientific) created JAWS screen reader software for blind people
Andy Hertzfeld – cocreated Macintosh, cofounded General Magic, cofounded Eazel
D. Richard Hipp – created SQLite
C. A. R. Hoare – first implementation of quicksort, ALGOL 60 compiler, Communicating sequential processes
Louis Hodes – Lisp, pattern recognition, logic programming, cancer research
Grace Hopper – Harvard Mark I computer, FLOW-MATIC, COBOL
David A. Huffman – created the Huffman Code compression algorithm
Roger Hui – created J
Dave Hyatt – co-authored Mozilla Firefox
P. J. Hyett – cofounded GitHub
I
Miguel de Icaza – GNOME project leader, initiated Mono project
Roberto Ierusalimschy – Lua leading architect
Dan Ingalls – cocreated Smalltalk and Bitblt
Geir Ivarsøy – cocreated Opera web browser
Ken Iverson – APL, J
Toru Iwatani – created Pac-Man
J
Bo Jangeborg – Sinclair ZX Spectrum games
Paul Jardetzky – authored server program for the first webcam
Stephen C. Johnson – yacc
Lynne Jolitz – 386BSD
William Jolitz – 386BSD
Bill Joy – BSD, csh, vi, cofounded Sun Microsystems
Robert K. Jung – created ARJ
K
Poul-Henning Kamp – MD5 password hash algorithm, FreeBSD GEOM and GBDE, part of UFS2, FreeBSD Jails, malloc and the Beerware license
Mitch Kapor – Lotus 1-2-3, founded Lotus Development Corporation
Phil Katz – created Zip (file format), authored PKZIP
Ted Kaehler – contributions to Smalltalk, Squeak, HyperCard
Alan Kay – Smalltalk, Dynabook, Object-oriented programming, Squeak
Mel Kaye – LGP-30 and RPC-4000 machine code programmer at Royal McBee in the 1950s, famed as "Real Programmer" in the Story of Mel
Stan Kelly-Bootle – Manchester Mark 1, The Devil's DP Dictionary
John Kemeny – cocreated BASIC
Brian Kernighan – cocreated AWK (being the K in that name), authored ditroff text-formatting tool
Gary Kildall – CP/M, MP/M, BIOS, PL/M, also known for work on data-flow analysis, binary recompilers, multitasking operating systems, graphical user interfaces, disk caching, CD-ROM file system and data structures, early multi-media technologies, founded Digital Research (DRI)
Tom Knight – Incompatible Timesharing System
Jim Knopf – a.k.a. Jim Button, author PC-File flatfile database; cocreated shareware
Donald E. Knuth – TeX, CWEB, Metafont, The Art of Computer Programming, Concrete Mathematics
Andrew R. Koenig – co-authored books on C and C++ and former Project Editor of ISO/ANSI standards committee for C++
Cornelis H. A. Koster – Report on the Algorithmic Language ALGOL 68, ALGOL 68 transput
L
Andre LaMothe – created XGameStation, one of world's first video game console development kits
Leslie Lamport – LaTeX
Butler Lampson – QED original co-author
Peter Landin – ISWIM, J operator, SECD machine, off-side rule, syntactic sugar, ALGOL, IFIP WG 2.1 member
Tom Lane – main author of libjpeg, major developer of PostgreSQL
Sam Lantinga – created Simple DirectMedia Layer (SDL)
Dick Lathwell – codeveloped APL\360
Chris Lattner – main author of LLVM project
Samuel J Leffler – BSD, FlexFAX, libtiff, FreeBSD Wireless Device Drivers
Rasmus Lerdorf – original created PHP
Michael Lesk – Lex
Gordon Letwin – architected OS/2, authored High Performance File System (HPFS)
Jochen Liedtke – microkernel operating systems Eumel, L3, L4
Charles H. Lindsey – IFIP WG 2.1 member, Revised Report on ALGOL 68
Håkon Wium Lie – co-authored Cascading Style Sheets
Yanhong Annie Liu – programming languages, algorithms, program design, program optimization, software systems, optimizing, analysis, and transformations, intelligent systems, distributed computing, computer security, IFIP WG 2.1 member
Robert Love – Linux kernel developer
Ada Lovelace – first programmer (of Charles Babbages' Analytical Engine)
Al Lowe – created Leisure Suit Larry series
David Luckham – Lisp, Automated theorem proving, Stanford Pascal Verifier, Complex event processing, Rational Software cofounder (Ada compiler)
Hans Peter Luhn – hash-coding, linked list, searching and sorting binary tree
M
Khaled Mardam-Bey – created mIRC (Internet Relay Chat Client)
Robert C. Martin – authored Clean Code, The Clean Coder, leader of Clean Code movement, signatory on the Agile Manifesto
John Mashey – authored PWB shell, also called Mashey shell
Yukihiro Matsumoto – Ruby
John McCarthy – Lisp, ALGOL, IFIP WG 2.1 member, artificial intelligence
Craig McClanahan – original author Jakarta Struts, architect of Tomcat Catalina servlet container
Daniel D. McCracken – professor at City College and authored Guide to Algol Programming, Guide to Cobol Programming, Guide to Fortran Programming (1957)
Scott A. McGregor – architect and development team lead of Microsoft Windows 1.0, co-authored X Window System version 11, and developed Cedar Viewers Windows System at Xerox PARC
Douglas McIlroy – macros, pipes and filters, concept of software componentry, Unix tools (spell, diff, sort, join, graph, speak, tr, etc.)
Marshall Kirk McKusick – Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), work on FFS, implemented soft updates
Sid Meier – author, Civilization and Railroad Tycoon, cofounded Microprose
Bertrand Meyer – Eiffel, Object-oriented Software Construction, design by contract
Bob Miner – cocreated Oracle Database, cofounded Oracle Corporation
Jeff Minter – psychedelic, and often llama-related video games
James G. Mitchell – WATFOR compiler, Mesa (programming language), Spring (operating system), ARM architecture
Arvind Mithal – formal verification of large digital systems, developing dynamic dataflow architectures, parallel computing programming languages (Id, pH), compiling on parallel machines
Petr Mitrichev – competitive programmer
Cleve Moler – co-authored LINPACK, EISPACK, and MATLAB
Lou Montulli – created Lynx browser, cookies, the blink tag, server push and client pull, HTTP proxying, HTTP over SSL, browser integration with animated GIFs, founding member of HTML working group at W3C
Bram Moolenaar – authored text-editor Vim
David A. Moon – Maclisp, ZetaLisp
Charles H. Moore – created Forth language
Roger Moore – co-developed APL\360, created IPSANET, cofounded I. P. Sharp Associates
Matt Mullenweg – authored WordPress
Boyd Munro – Australian developed GRASP, owns SDI, one of earliest software development companies
Mike Muuss – authored ping, network tool to detect hosts
N
Patrick Naughton – early Java designer, HotJava
Peter Naur (1928–2016) – Backus–Naur form (BNF), ALGOL 60, IFIP WG 2.1 member
Fredrik Neij – cocreated The Pirate Bay
Graham Nelson – created Inform authoring system for interactive fiction
Greg Nelson (1953–2015) – satisfiability modulo theories, extended static checking, program verification, Modula-3 committee, Simplify theorem prover in ESC/Java
Klára Dán von Neumann (1911–1963) – principal programmer for the MANIAC I
Maurice Nivat (1937–2017) – theoretical computer science, Theoretical Computer Science journal, ALGOL, IFIP WG 2.1 member
Phiwa Nkambule – cofounded Riovic, founded Cybatar
Peter Norton – programmed Norton Utilities
Kristen Nygaard (1926–2002) – Simula, object-oriented programming
O
Ed Oates – cocreated Oracle Database, cofounded Oracle Corporation
Martin Odersky – Scala
Peter O'Hearn – separation logic, bunched logic, Infer Static Analyzer
Jarkko Oikarinen – created Internet Relay Chat (IRC)
Andrew and Philip Oliver, the Oliver Twins – many Sinclair ZX Spectrum games including Dizzy
John Ousterhout – created Tcl/Tk
P
Keith Packard – X Window System
Larry Page – cofounded Google, Inc.
Alexey Pajitnov – created game Tetris on Electronica 60
Seymour Papert – Logo (programming language)
David Park (1935–1990) – first Lisp implementation, expert in fairness, program schemas, bisimulation in concurrent computing
Mike Paterson – algorithms, analysis of algorithms (complexity)
Tim Paterson – authored 86-DOS (QDOS)
Markus Persson – created Minecraft
Jeffrey Peterson – key free and open-source software architect, created Quepasa
Charles Petzold – authored many Microsoft Windows programming books
Rob Pike – wrote first bitmapped window system for Unix, cocreated UTF-8 character encoding, authored text editor sam and programming environment acme, main author of Plan 9 and Inferno operating systems, and co-authored Go programming language
Kent Pitman – technical contributor to the ANSI Common Lisp standard
Tom Preston-Werner – cofounded GitHub
Q
R
Theo de Raadt – founding member of NetBSD, founded OpenBSD and OpenSSH
Brian Randell – ALGOL 60, software fault tolerance, dependability, pre-1950 history of computing hardware
Jef Raskin – started the Macintosh project in Apple Computer, designed Canon Cat computer, developed Archy (The Humane Environment) program
Eric S. Raymond – Open Source movement, authored fetchmail
Hans Reiser – created ReiserFS file system
John Resig – creator and lead developed jQuery JavaScript library
Craig Reynolds – created boids computer graphics simulation
John C. Reynolds – continuations, definitional interpreters, defunctionalization, Forsythe, Gedanken language, intersection types, polymorphic lambda calculus, relational parametricity, separation logic, ALGOL
Reinder van de Riet – Editor: Europe of Data and Knowledge Engineering, COLOR-X event modeling language
Dennis Ritchie – C, Unix, Plan 9 from Bell Labs, Inferno
Ron Rivest – cocreated RSA algorithm (being the R in that name). created RC4 and MD5
John Romero – first-person shooters Doom, Quake
Blake Ross – co-authored Mozilla Firefox
Douglas T. Ross – Automatically Programmed Tools (APT), Computer-aided design, structured analysis and design technique, ALGOL X
Guido van Rossum – Python
Jeff Rulifson – lead programmer on the NLS project
Rusty Russell – created iptables for linux
Steve Russell – first Lisp interpreter; original Spacewar! graphic video game
Mark Russinovich – Sysinternals.com, Filemon, Regmon, Process Explorer, TCPView and RootkitRevealer
S
Bob Sabiston – Rotoshop, interpolating rotoscope animation software
Muni Sakya – Nepalese software
Carl Sassenrath – Amiga, REBOL
Chris Sawyer – developed RollerCoaster Tycoon and the Transport Tycoon series
Cher Scarlett – Apple, Webflow, Blizzard Entertainment, World Wide Technology, and USA Today
Bob Scheifler – X Window System, Jini
Isai Scheinberg – IBM engineer, founded PokerStars
Bill Schelter – GNU Maxima, GNU Common Lisp
John Scholes – Direct functions
Randal L. Schwartz – Just another Perl hacker
Adi Shamir – cocreated RSA algorithm (being the S in that name)
Mike Shaver – founding member of Mozilla Organization
Cliff Shaw – Information Processing Language (IPL), the first AI language
Zed Shaw – wrote the Mongrel Web Server, for Ruby web applications
Emily Short – prolific writer of Interactive fiction and co-developed Inform version 7
Jacek Sieka – developed DC++ an open-source, peer-to-peer file-sharing client
Daniel Siewiorek – electronic design automation, reliability computing, context aware mobile computing, wearable computing, computer-aided design, rapid prototyping, fault tolerance
Ken Silverman – created Duke Nukem 3Ds graphics engine
Charles Simonyi – Hungarian notation, Bravo (the first WYSIWYG text editor), Microsoft Word
Colin Simpson – developed CircuitLogix simulation software
Rich Skrenta – cofounded DMOZ
Matthew Smith – Sinclair ZX Spectrum games, including Manic Miner and Jet Set WillyHenry Spencer – C News, Regex
Joel Spolsky – cofounded Fog Creek Software and Stack Overflow
Quentin Stafford-Fraser – authored original VNC viewer, first Windows VNC server, client program for the first webcam
Richard Stallman – Emacs, GNU Compiler Collection (GCC), GDB, founder and pioneer of GNU Project, terminal-independent I/O pioneer on Incompatible Timesharing System (ITS), Lisp machine manual
Guy L. Steele Jr. – Common Lisp, Scheme, Java
Alexander Stepanov – created Standard Template Library
Christopher Strachey – draughts playing program
Ludvig Strigeus – created uTorrent, OpenTTD, ScummVM and the technology behind Spotify
Bjarne Stroustrup – created C++
Zeev Suraski – cocreated PHP language
Gerald Jay Sussman – Scheme
Herb Sutter – chair of ISO C++ standards committee and C++ expert
Gottfrid Svartholm – cocreated The Pirate Bay
Aaron Swartz – software developer, writer, Internet activist
Tim Sweeney – The Unreal engine, UnrealScript, ZZT
T
Amir Taaki – leading developer for Bitcoin project
Andrew Tanenbaum – Minix
Audrey "Autrijus" Tang – designed Pugs
Simon Tatham – Netwide Assembler (NASM), PuTTY
Larry Tesler – the Smalltalk code browser, debugger and object inspector, and (with Tim Mott) the Gypsy word processor
Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner – cocreated Opera web browser
Avie Tevanian – authored Mach kernel
Ken Thompson – mainly designed and authored Unix, Plan 9 and Inferno operating systems, B and Bon languages (precursors of C), created UTF-8 character encoding, introduced regular expressions in QED and co-authored Go language
Michael Tiemann – G++, GNU Compiler Collection (GCC)
Linus Torvalds – original author and current maintainer of Linux kernel and created Git, a source code management system
Andrew Tridgell – Samba, Rsync
Roy Trubshaw – MUD – together with Richard Bartle, created MUDs
Bob Truel – cofounded DMOZ
Alan Turing – mathematician, computer scientist and cryptanalyst
David Turner – SASL, Kent Recursive Calculator, Miranda, IFIP WG 2.1 member
U
V
Wietse Venema – Postfix, Security Administrator Tool for Analyzing Networks (SATAN), TCP Wrapper
Pat Villani – original author FreeDOS/DOS-C kernel, maintainer of a defunct Linux for Windows 9x distribution
Paul Vixie – BIND, Cron
Patrick Volkerding – original author and current maintainer of Slackware Linux Distribution
W
Eiiti Wada – ALGOL N, IFIP WG 2.1 member, Japanese Industrial Standards (JIS) X 0208, 0212, Happy Hacking Keyboard
John Walker – cofounded Autodesk
Larry Wall – Warp (1980s space-war game), rn, patch, Perl
Bob Wallace – author PC-Write word processor; considered shareware cocreator
Chris Wanstrath – cofounded GitHub
John Warnock – created PostScript
Robert Watson – FreeBSD network stack parallelism, TrustedBSD project and OpenBSM
Joseph Henry Wegstein – ALGOL 58, ALGOL 60, IFIP WG 2.1 member, data processing technical standards, fingerprint analysis
Pei-Yuan Wei – authored ViolaWWW, one of earliest graphical browsers
Peter J. Weinberger – cocreated AWK (being the W in that name)
Jim Weirich – created Rake, Builder, and RubyGems for Ruby; popular teacher and conference speaker
Joseph Weizenbaum – created ELIZA
David Wheeler – cocreated subroutine; designed WAKE; co-designed Tiny Encryption Algorithm, XTEA, Burrows–Wheeler transform
Arthur Whitney – A+, K
why the lucky stiff – created libraries and writing for Ruby, including quirky, popular Why's (poignant) Guide to Ruby to teach programming
Adriaan van Wijngaarden – Dutch pioneer; ARRA, ALGOL, IFIP WG 2.1 member
Bruce Wilcox – created Computer Go, programmed NEMESIS Go Master
Evan Williams – created and cofounded language Logo
Roberta and Ken Williams – Sierra Entertainment, King's Quest, graphic adventure game
Sophie Wilson – designed instruction set for Acorn RISC Machine, authored BBC BASIC
Dave Winer – developed XML-RPC, Frontier scripting language
Niklaus Wirth – ALGOL W, IFIP WG 2.1 member, Pascal, Modula-2, Oberon
Stephen Wolfram – created Mathematica
Don Woods – INTERCAL, Colossal Cave Adventure
Philip Woodward – ambiguity function, sinc function, comb operator, rep operator, ALGOL 68-R
Steve Wozniak – Breakout'', Apple Integer BASIC, cofounded Apple Inc.
Will Wright – created the Sim City series, cofounded Maxis
William Wulf – BLISS system programming language + optimizing compiler, Hydra operating system, Tartan Laboratories
Y
Jerry Yang – cocreated Yahoo!
Victor Yngve – authored first string processing language, COMIT
Nobuo Yoneda – Yoneda lemma, Yoneda product, ALGOL, IFIP WG 2.1 member
Z
Matei Zaharia – created Apache Spark
Jamie Zawinski – Lucid Emacs, Netscape Navigator, Mozilla, XScreenSaver
Phil Zimmermann – created encryption software PGP, the ZRTP protocol, and Zfone
Mark Zuckerberg – created Facebook
See also
List of computer scientists
List of computing people
List of important publications in computer science
List of members of the National Academy of Sciences (computer and information sciences)
List of pioneers in computer science
List of programming language researchers
List of Russian programmers
List of video game industry people (programming)
!
Programmers
Computer Programmers |
20006540 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wish%20list | Wish list | A wish list, wishlist or want list is an itemization of goods or services that a person or organization desires. The author may distribute copies of their list to family, friends, and other stakeholders who are likely to purchase gifts for the would-be recipient or to offer some of the listed items for sale. The goal of a wish list is to facilitate communication between the gift receiver and the gift giver. Wish lists often contain items that a gift purchaser can obtain from a variety of retailers. Some wish lists are specialized for particular purposes or concentrated at individual retailers, such as gift registries (e.g., bridal registries).
Occasions
In some cultures, people often exchange wish lists before major holidays that include gift-giving, such as Christmas and birthdays. Other common occasions for issuing wish lists include baby showers, housewarmings, weddings, and charity drives.
Types
A gift registry is a type of wish list that contains only items that can be purchased at the store which manages the registry.
An online wish list is a type of wish list that is hosted on the Internet. Online wish lists can be associated with a retailer or universal.
A product wish list is similar to a list of functional requirements. The difference is mainly the importance of the requested functionality. Items that might be on the wish list at one time may be expected to be requirements later.
A software user wishlist is a type of wish list that is created by the software manufacturer (such as the software development company or the website owner) or by user groups.
A bucket list is a type of personal wish list consisting of things a person wishes to do before they die (e.g. "kick the bucket") or before they reach a life stage milestone (e.g., the end of childhood; the end of High School, etc.)
Online
An online wish list typically allows a registered user to create a wish list, add wishes to it, and then spread a link to the wish list via email or social media like Facebook and Twitter. Visitors to the published wish list can in most cases comment wishes and reserve them. This adds a collaborative perspective among the viewers that would be much harder to achieve for analog wish lists. Online wish lists on retailer websites allow you to save items you prefer from that retailer's site for future reference. Universal online wish lists allow you to add items from multiple retailers and even non-retail ideas.
Software users
Software user wish lists are a compilation of user suggestions for requested features. Many enterprise websites and software packages offer users the option to add a "wish" - a suggestion for improvement or change - and to vote on the importance of suggestions supplied by the publisher or author of the website or software, and they attempt to give a quick response to the suggestions. For example, Microsoft Visual Studio has a "community" menu, and Facebook has a "suggestions" section.
In many cases, when a company fails to supply such a framework, users create their own lists, in Internet forums or in blogs. When such a list becomes popular, the company must respond to common requests.
Having software user wish lists has become popular since 2007 when a football gaming community FIFPlay started collecting fans wishlist for Electronic Arts for pre-development of FIFA (video game series) and it has collected over 10,000 ideas and suggestions for FIFA 08.
See also
100 Things to Do Before High School – television series
References
External links
Giving
World Wide Web
Software features
Philatelic terminology |
471309 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aqua%20%28user%20interface%29 | Aqua (user interface) | Aqua is the graphical user interface, design language and visual theme of Apple's macOS operating system. It was originally based on the theme of water, with droplet-like components and a liberal use of reflection effects and translucency. Its goal is to "incorporate color, depth, translucence, and complex textures into a visually appealing interface" in macOS applications. At its introduction, Steve Jobs noted that "... it's liquid, one of the design goals was when you saw it you wanted to lick it".
Aqua was first introduced at the 2000 Macworld Conference & Expo in San Francisco. Its first appearance in a commercial product was in the July 2000 release of iMovie 2, followed by Mac OS X 10.0 the year after. Aqua is the successor to Platinum, which was used in Mac OS 8, Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X Server 1.2. The appearance of Aqua has changed frequently over the years, most recently and drastically with the release of macOS Big Sur in 2020 which Apple calls the "biggest design upgrade since the introduction of Mac OS X."
History
Mac OS X
Mac OS X 10.2, Panther and Tiger
Mac OS X 10.2 "Jaguar" brought flatter interface elements, such as new buttons and drop-down menus, as well as reducing the transparency to tone down the pinstripes in windows and menus. These trends continued in subsequent Mac OS X releases.
In Mac OS X Panther, brushed metal was brought to the Finder. New buttons were made to appear sunken into their surroundings, following a general trend of more flattened interface elements in the operating system. The traditional pinstripes were replaced with a much subtler theme, most notably in the menu bar, and the use of transparency was again reduced (for example in the title bars of inactive windows). Tabs also changed; they were made flatter and the whole tab area was sunken rather than raised. Tab buttons were centered on the top border of the tab area. New icons appeared across the system, including a new flatter, glossier Finder icon and a new System Preferences icon.
Mac OS X Tiger brought more subtle changes, including the unified titlebar scheme. Pinstripes were removed from the menu bar entirely and replaced with a glossy, white look. Tabs were altered to appear as normal segmented buttons. The Apple menu icon was toned down to a more matte appearance and the new Spotlight search utility was permanently bound to the very right of the menu bar in the same color and gradient of the Apple menu.
Mac OS X Leopard and Snow Leopard
Mac OS X Leopard brought wide-ranging changes to Aqua. Aqua windows and "brushed metal" windows obtained the same metal-like, gray look, pin-striped backgrounds were removed entirely, toolbars and titlebars were fused into a whole, differences between active and inactive windows became more distinct through thicker drop shadows and a monochrome appearance of inactive windows, the color of the menubar was changed into gray with an optional semi-transparency look on capable Macs and the Dock obtained a 3D look with a reflective glass-like 'floor'. The Dock's design, when placed on the left or right side, changed to a black translucent background with a white border and rounded corners. Context menus had slightly-rounded corners and numerous icons were redesigned, including folder icons and System Preferences icons.
Mac OS X Snow Leopard made almost no changes to Aqua. Most notably, the context menu of Dock items changed from a solid white to a translucent black.
Mac OS X Lion, OS X Mountain Lion and Mavericks
Mac OS X Lion introduced many changes inspired by iOS that persisted in OS X Mavericks as well as OS X Yosemite, although the latter changed the overall aesthetic. Scrollbars were removed and scrollbar handles turned into thin, semi-transparent bars that disappear when not used. The corner radii of push buttons were reduced, giving an appearance similar to Mac OS 8 and 9. The gel-like appearance of most components was replaced with a slightly glossy and flatter look. Window backgrounds became slightly brighter and window corners were rounded. Lion also added more animations.
OS X Mountain Lion brought only minor changes and changed the Dock's appearance into a frosted-glass style, with rounded corners, rectangular indicator lights, a new diagonal separator and a new Trash icon.
OS X Mavericks dispensed with several rich and ornamental designs, reflecting the design overhaul in . The applications Calendar, Contacts and Notes respectively lost their leather, book and notepad appearance (all introduced in Lion). Linen textures in Notification Center and Launchpad were removed as well and replaced with simple gray backgrounds.
OS X Yosemite and El Capitan
In OS X Yosemite, many of the Aqua elements and icons were simplified and flattened, following a similar design change in . Apple incorporated the same saturated frosted-glass effect, called "Vibrancy", across the system. Examples include the Dock, the menubar, sidebars, Notification Center and Mission Control. A similar effect was applied to toolbars, but they maintained their gray appearance. Toolbar buttons became white and Apple introduced a more compact type of toolbar that removed the window title, but retained the toolbar buttons (for example, in Safari). Certain controls, such as checkboxes and radio buttons, gained animations, whereas animations in other places were removed, such as the "poof" animation when removing an icon from the Dock and the "cube" animation when fast-switching to another user account. Apple changed the system typeface to Helvetica Neue. Yosemite also added a 'dark theme' you can turn on in the settings which makes the dock and menu bar black.
OS X El Capitan made only minor changes to Aqua. The white toolbar buttons regained a slightly glossy look, the spinning pinwheel was redesigned and the Vibrancy effect was reduced in certain areas, such as Mission Control. The system typeface was changed once more, to Apple's own San Francisco typeface, concurrent with and following the typeface's release in watchOS in April 2015.
macOS Big Sur
Starting with macOS Big Sur, icons now have the same shape as in iOS and more 3D compared to OS X Yosemite through macOS Catalina.
Microsoft Windows
Aqua has also been embedded in Apple's applications for Microsoft Windows, such as iTunes, QuickTime and Safari (although not in Safari 4). iTunes for Windows has generally adopted the same developments as the concurrent macOS version, with the exception of the use of native Windows user interface controls and Windows-style title bar buttons at the upper right of the player window. The Windows version of Safari, in version 3, included a functional Aqua look and feel that was very similar to macOS. As of version 4, a more Windows-like theme was employed using the standard Windows user interface controls and window border. QuickTime for Windows uses the same theme as seen in older versions of QuickTime for , with brushed-metal windows and Aqua buttons on top.
Design elements
Gray, white and blue are the three principal colors which define the Aqua style. Window toolbars, window backgrounds, buttons, menus and other interface elements are all found in either of these colors. For instance, toolbars and sidebars are often grey or metal-colored, window backgrounds and popup menus are white and buttons (in older systems also scrollbar handles) are accented with a bright blue. In versions of prior to OS X Yosemite, most controls have a "glass" or "gel" effect applied to them. David Pogue described this effect as "lickable globs of Crest Berrylicious Toothpaste Gel".
macOS has few native customization options to change the overall look of the system. Users can choose a graphite appearance instead of the default blue one. When using the graphite appearance, controls have a slate-like, grey-blue or grey color, including the primary window controls which are red, yellow and green with the default appearance. The appearance option was added at the behest of developers and users who found the blue appearance garish or unprofessional. Yosemite added a dark mode that darkens the predominantly white menubar and Dock. Users can also freely choose a highlight color for text and file selection.
Interface elements
Windows
Historically, Aqua had two window designs: the default Aqua windows and "brushed metal" windows. Aqua windows typically have a metal-like or gray titlebar with three buttons on the left side (for closing, minimizing and zooming or entering fullscreen mode). Visually, these buttons used to be placed on top, but later appeared 'sunken' into the window. Aqua windows have almost no frame or outside border, instead drop shadows are used to separate and distinguish active from inactive windows. The aesthetic of the window backgrounds changed from pin-striped to white backgrounds. Brushed-metal windows had a thick frame with a metallic texture or dark-gray background and sunken buttons and inner frames. They had the additional property of being draggable at every point of the frame instead of just the titlebar and toolbar. Apple recommended brushed-metal windows for applications that mimic real-world devices (such as iTunes) or are used to interface with such devices (such as iSync), but was criticised by designers for not following its own guidelines or applying it inconsistently (it was also used in Safari or Finder). Brushed-metal windows have been largely phased out since Leopard and become visually indistinctive from Aqua windows.
In addition to titlebars, windows can also have toolbars with separate buttons. Up to Leopard, toolbars were visually separated from the titlebar and had the same background as the window frame or were pin-striped. Leopard introduced a unified style that extended the metal-like background of the titlebar to the toolbar, making it appear as one whole. Optionally, a separator could be placed between the titlebar and the toolbar to mimic the previous style. OS X Yosemite brought a compacter version of the toolbar that fused the titlebar and toolbar together, made it shorter and removed the window title (for example, in Safari 8 and later).
Drawers are accessory sidebar views that can slide out from any edge of a window except the top edge. They can be resized perpendicular to their window edge but follow the window's size in the other direction. Drawers were once frequently used to display controls and information that did not need to be always visible, but Apple now recommends against their use.
Sheets are dialog boxes that are modal to a specific window. When opened, they are thrust towards the user like a sheet of paper, hence the name. They are partially transparent and focus attention on the content of the sheet. The parent window's controls are disabled until the sheet is dismissed, but the user is able to continue work in other windows (including those in the same application) while the sheet is open.
Menus
Menus are backed with a slightly translucent solid gray, and when menu items are highlighted they appear blue. In application menus, which run in a single bar across the top of the screen, keyboard shortcuts appear to the right-hand side of the menu whilst the actual menu item is on the left. In Yosemite, the menus are much more translucent and have a blur effect.
Drop down menus for use in windows themselves are also available in several varieties. The standard "pop up" menu is white with a blue end cap with opposing arrows, whilst 'pull down' menus only have one downward facing arrow in the end cap. 'Pull down' menus are available in four different Aqua varieties, most of which have fallen into disuse in later macOS releases.
Text boxes and fields
Text boxes are black on white text with a sunken effect border. In addition to regular square text boxes, rounded search text boxes are available . For more extensive text requirements, there is also a multi-line text field. A combined text box and pull down menu is available, which allows the user to type in a value in addition to choosing from a menu. There is also a combination textbox and picker control, which allows the user to type in a date and time or edit it with directional buttons. Mac OS X 10.4 introduced a new interface element that allows the user to drag non-editable 'tokens' to a text box, between which text can be typed. Whitespace before and after the tokens is trimmed.
Push buttons
Standard push buttons with rounded corners are available in two varieties: white and blue. A blue button is the default action, and in OS releases prior to Yosemite, would appear to pulse to prompt the user to carry out that action. The action of a blue button can usually also be invoked with the return key. White buttons are usually associated with all other actions.
Also available are rounded bevel buttons, designed to hold an icon; standard square buttons; glass square buttons and round buttons. In addition, circular, purple online help buttons are available which display help relative to the current task when clicked. Disclosure triangles, although technically buttons, allow views of controls to be shown and hidden to preserve space.
Checkboxes and radio buttons
In macOS, empty check boxes are small, white rounded rectangles. When they are checked, they turn blue and a checkmark is present. They are essentially buttons which can be toggled on or off. Radio buttons are similar in appearance and behaviour except they are circular and contain a dot instead of a check. Radio button are classed into groups of which only one can be activated at a time.
In Yosemite, a short animation was added to show the checkbox or radio button filling in.
Tables and lists
Tables and lists can be broadly categorised in three ways: A standard multi-columnar table with space to enter values or place other interface elements such as buttons; An outline view that can contain disclosure triangles to show and hide sets of data; and a Miller columns view akin to the column view in the Finder. All table views can use alternating blue and white row backgrounds.
Progress indicators
Two main types of loading/saving progress indicator are available: a progress bar or a monochromatic spinning wheel (not the spinning pinwheel). The progress bar itself is available in two varieties: indeterminate, which simply shows diagonal blue and white stripes in animation with no measure of progress; or determinate, which shows a blue pulsing bar against a white background proportional to the percentage of a task completed. The spinning wheel indicator, also found in the Mac OS X startup screen since version 10.2, is simply a series of 12 increasingly darker grey lines arranged circularly, like the side view of a spoked wheel rotating clockwise. Many other interfaces have adopted this device, including the Firefox and Camino web browsers and many Web 2.0-influenced web sites.
In Yosemite, the progress bar was changed to a thin, light gray. The "indeterminate" variation kept the pulses, but slower and spaced out. A progress indicator now appears during boot, replacing the spinning wheel indicator found in earlier versions.
Miscellaneous
Sliders are available in three types: one with tick marks and a triangular scrubber, one with a round scrubber and no tick marks and a circular slider which can be rotated. All are available horizontally or vertically. The circular slider is simply a gray dot on a white circle which can be rotated to set values.
macOS has a standard control for picking colors which appears as a regular square button with a color sample in the middle. When clicked, it shows the standard macOS color palette.
Tabs in macOS are nearly identical to push buttons, with the unselected tab(s) being white and the selected tab being blue. Image "wells" are also available: a small, sunken container into which image files can be dropped. When the well contains an image, it can display a thumbnail representation of the file's contents.
Typefaces
Apple used Lucida Grande as the system typeface from the first release Cheetah to Mavericks. Occasionally, Apple also used Helvetica and Helvetica Neue, such as in applications like Mail and iPhoto. The system typeface was changed to Helvetica Neue in Yosemite and changed again in El Capitan into Apple's own San Francisco typeface. macOS makes use of system-wide typeface anti-aliasing to make edges appear smoother and preserve the distinct shapes of typefaces, sometimes at the cost of sharpness and clarity.
Animations
Aqua makes heavy use of animation. Examples include:
Dock icons bounce up and down as their corresponding applications are launched.
Dock icons also bounce up and down, in a different rhythm, when a background application requires the user's attention.
Dock icons can increase in size when approached by the cursor. This feature (called "magnification") is optional.
When minimized, windows are "sucked" into the Dock using the "Genie effect" or "Scale effect." Both of the effects are customizable by the user. The former makes a window turn into a curvy shape so it looks like reverse animation of a genie exiting a lamp, and the latter scales down the window until it is small enough to be in the Dock. By pressing the shift key, both effects can be seen in slow motion. These keystrokes can also be applied to other Aqua effects such as Dashboard, Mission Control (macOS), formerly Exposé, and Front Row. Holding Control as well as Shift makes the minimize effect take twice as long as just holding Shift. Holding just Control also slows down the animation slightly. There is another undocumented dock effect called "Suck" which can be enabled by hand editing a configuration file or using a Terminal command; this appears to be the same effect that accompanies the removal of widgets from the Dashboard.
When a folder on the desktop is opened or closed, the corresponding Finder window appears to come from, or disappears into, the folder icon rather than just appearing from nowhere. This effect was present in the Classic Mac OS Finder as ZoomRects, but had disappeared from early Mac OS X developer releases.
Sheets are "posted" out of window title bars. Sheets appear to be pieces of paper being thrust toward the user, or slide out like paper from a tray.
Dashboard widgets appear to fly onto the screen. Dashboard widgets appear with a "ripple" effect, as if being dropped onto the surface of a pond. When removed, widgets are sucked into the close button as if being drawn into a vacuum. This effect can be applied on windows being minimized to the Dock. Starting from Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, the default Dashboard configuration differs from that of previous versions (it takes its own space in Mission Control), causing the rippling effect to be removed. However, the user can re-invoke the original Dashboard (along with the ripple effect) in System Preferences.
The contents of a stack will appear to spring out from behind the icon when clicked.
In the Public Beta of Mac OS X, docked items dragged on to the desktop simply disappeared, apparently 'dropping' onto the desktop. This behaviour was changed with Mac OS X 10.0; from this release onward, items dragged off the dock would 'disappear' in a cartoon-like puff of smoke, an effect which Apple later used in various places, such as Safari's Bookmarks Bar and iPhoto's tag removal). A similar effect was used in Apple's Newton OS. In OS X 10.10 Yosemite, this effect is no longer present; the item simply disappears, however can still be seen on the boot picker of Intel-based Mac computers when a boot device (such as a external hard-drive) is disconnected from the computer.
Starting from Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, windows which contain a document or website open with an animation similar to Windows Aero. A similar zoom effect can be seen when opening files from the desktop, or within a Finder window. This also applies to the entire desktop when a user logs in.
When fast user switching is used, Apple's "Cube" effect is used to transfer between desktops and/or the login window.
Many of these effects can be turned off by the user or are only available on supported hardware.
Underlying technology
Aqua is powered by the display server Quartz Compositor.
Criticism
Much of Aqua's original design resembled the translucent two-tone look of Apple's contemporary hardware. In 2003 and 2004, Apple moved to the use of brushed aluminium in their industrial design (such as with the aluminium Apple Cinema Displays). The design of Aqua changed accordingly. This somewhat inconsistent mix of interface styles has been controversial among the Mac community.
Litigation
In the past, Apple has threatened legal action against those who make themes similar to their look and feel. The Mac skinning community took exception to Apple's heavy-handed actions against all Aqua lookalikes. Stardock's Brad Wardell contrasted the company's litigious approach with Microsoft's approach to incorporating third-party skins into Windows XP.
See also
Compiz
KWin
Metro (design language)
Windows Aero
GNOME
References
External links
Design language
Graphical user interfaces
MacOS user interface
Widget toolkits |
50969 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List%20of%20computing%20and%20IT%20abbreviations | List of computing and IT abbreviations | This is a list of computing and IT acronyms, initialisms and abbreviations.
0–9
#!—Shebang
/.—Slashdot
.com—Dot commercial
1GL—First-Generation Programming Language
1NF—First Normal Form
10B2—10BASE-2
10B5—10BASE-5
10B-F—10BASE-F
10B-FB—10BASE-FB
10B-FL—10BASE-FL
10B-FP—10BASE-FP
10B-T—10BASE-T
100B-FX—100BASE-FX
100B-TX—100BASE-TX
100BVG—100BASE-VG
286—Intel 80286 processor
2B1Q—2 Binary 1 Quaternary
2FA—Two-factor authentication
2GL—Second-Generation Programming Language
2NF—Second Normal Form
3GL—Third-Generation Programming Language
3GPP—3rd Generation Partnership Project-'3G comms
3GPP2—3rd Generation Partnership Project 2
3NF—Third Normal Form
386—Intel 80386 processor
486—Intel 80486 processor
4B5BLF—4 Byte 5 Byte Local Fiber
4GL—Fourth-Generation Programming Language
4NF—Fourth Normal Form
5GL—Fifth-Generation Programming Language
5NF—Fifth Normal Form
6NF—Sixth Normal Form
8B10BLF—8 Byte 10 Byte Local Fiber
802.11—Wireless LAN
A
AAA—Authentication Authorization, Accounting
AABB—Axis Aligned Bounding Box
AAC—Advanced Audio Coding
AAL—ATM Adaptation Layer
AALC—ATM Adaptation Layer Connection
AARP—AppleTalk Address Resolution Protocol
ABAC—Attribute-Based Access Control
ABCL—Actor-Based Concurrent Language
ABI—Application Binary Interface
ABM—Asynchronous Balanced Mode
ABR—Area Border Router
ABR—Auto Baud-Rate detection
ABR—Available Bitrate
ABR—Average Bitrate
AC—Acoustic Coupler
AC—Alternating Current
ACD—Automatic Call Distributor
ACE—Advanced Computing Environment
ACID—Atomicity Consistency Isolation Durability
ACK—ACKnowledgement
ACK—Amsterdam Compiler Kit
ACL—Access Control List
ACL—Active Current Loop
ACM—Association for Computing Machinery
ACME—Automated Classification of Medical Entities
ACP—Airline Control Program
ACPI—Advanced Configuration and Power Interface
ACR—Allowed Cell Rate
ACR—Attenuation to Crosstalk Ratio
AD—Active Directory
AD—Administrative Domain
ADC—Analog-to-Digital Converter
ADC—Apple Display Connector
ADB—Apple Desktop Bus
ADCCP—Advanced Data Communications Control Procedures
ADO—ActiveX Data Objects
ADSL—Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line
ADT—Abstract Data Type
AE—Adaptive Equalizer
AES—Advanced Encryption Standard
AF—Anisotropic Filtering
AFP—Apple Filing Protocol
AGP—Accelerated Graphics Port
AH—Active Hub
AI—Artificial Intelligence
AIX—Advanced Interactive eXecutive
Ajax—Asynchronous JavaScript and XML
AL—Active Link
AL—Access List
ALAC—Apple Lossless Audio Codec
ALGOL—Algorithmic Language
ALSA—Advanced Linux Sound Architecture
ALU—Arithmetic and Logical Unit
AM—Access Method
AM—Active Matrix
AMOLED—Active-Matrix Organic Light-Emitting Diode
AM—Active Monitor
AM—Allied Mastercomputer
AM—Amplitude Modulation
AMD—Advanced Micro Devices
AMQP—Advanced Message Queuing Protocol
AMR—Audio Modem Riser
ANN—Artificial Neural Network
ANSI—American National Standards Institute
ANT—Another Neat Tool
AoE—ATA over Ethernet
AOP—Aspect-Oriented Programming
APCI—Application-Layer Protocol Control Information
API—Application Programming Interface
APIC—Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller
APIPA—Automatic Private IP Addressing
APL—A Programming Language
APR—Apache Portable Runtime
ARC—Adaptive Replacement Cache
ARC—Advanced RISC Computing
ARIN—American Registry for Internet Numbers
ARM—Advanced RISC Machines
AROS—AROS Research Operating System
ARP—Address Resolution Protocol
ARPA—Address and Routing Parameter Area
ARPA—Advanced Research Projects Agency
ARPANET—Advanced Research Projects Agency Network
AS—Access Server
ASCII—American Standard Code for Information Interchange
AuthIP—Authenticated Internet Protocol
ASG—Abstract Semantic Graph
ASIC—Application-Specific Integrated Circuit
ASIMO—Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility
ASLR—Address Space Layout Randomization
ASM—Algorithmic State Machine
ASMP—Asymmetric Multiprocessing
ASN.1—Abstract Syntax Notation 1
ASP—Active Server Pages
ASP—Application Service Provider
ASR—Asynchronous Signal Routine
AST—Abstract Syntax Tree
AT—Advanced Technology
AT—Access Time
AT—Active Terminator
ATA—Advanced Technology Attachment
ATAG—Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines
ATAPI—Advanced Technology Attachment Packet Interface
ATM—Asynchronous Transfer Mode
AuthN—Authentication
AuthZ—Authorization
AV—Antivirus
AVC—Advanced Video Coding
AVI—Audio Video Interleaved
AWK—Aho Weinberger Kernighan
AWS—Amazon Web Services
AWT—Abstract Window Toolkit
B
B2B—Business-to-Business
B2C—Business-to-Consumer
B2E—Business-to-Employee
BAL—Basic Assembly Language
BAM—Block Availability Map
Bash—Bourne-again shell
BASIC—Beginner's All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code
BBP—Baseband Processor
BBS—Bulletin Board System
BC—Business Continuity
BCC—Blind Carbon Copy
BCD—Binary Coded Decimal
BCD—Boot Configuration Data
BCNF—Boyce–Codd normal form
BCP—Business Continuity Planning
BEEP—Blocks Extensible Exchange Protocol
BER—Bit Error Rate
BFD—Bidirectional Forwarding Detection
BFD—Binary File Descriptor
BFS—Breadth-First Search
BFT—Byzantine Fault Tolerant
BGP—Border Gateway Protocol
BI—Business Intelligence
BiDi—Bi-Directional
bin—binary
BINAC—Binary Automatic Computer
BIND—Berkeley Internet Name Domain
BIOS—Basic Input Output System
BJT—Bipolar Junction Transistor
bit—binary digit
Blob—Binary large object
Blog—Web Log
BMP—Basic Multilingual Plane
BNC—Baby Neill Constant
BOINC—Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing
BOM—Byte Order Mark
BOOTP—Bootstrap Protocol
BPDU—Bridge Protocol Data Unit
BPEL—Business Process Execution Language
BPL—Broadband over Power Lines
BPM—Business Process Management
BPM—Business Process Modeling
bps—bits per second
BRM—Business Reference Model
BRMS—Business Rule Management System
BRR—Business Readiness Rating
BRS—Broadband Radio Service
BSA—Business Software Alliance
BSB—Backside Bus
BSD—Berkeley Software Distribution
BSoD—Blue Screen of Death
BSS—Block Started by Symbol
BT—BitTorrent
BT—Bluetooth
B TAM—Basic Telecommunications Access Method
BW—Bandwidth
BYOD—Bring Your Own Device
Byte—By eight (group of 8 bits)
C
CA—Computer Accountancy
CAD—Computer-Aided Design
CAE—Computer-Aided Engineering
CAID—Computer-Aided Industrial Design
CAI—Computer-Aided Instruction
CAM—Computer-Aided Manufacturing
CAP—Consistency Availability Partition tolerance (theorem)
CAPTCHA—Completely Automated Public Turing Test to tell Computers and Humans Apart
CAT—Computer-Aided Translation
CAQ—Computer-Aided Quality Assurance
CASE—Computer-Aided Software Engineering
cc—C Compiler
CC—Carbon Copy
CD—Compact Disc
CDE—Common Desktop Environment
CDFS—Compact Disk File System
CDMA—Code-Division Multiple Access
CDN—Content Delivery Network
CDP—Cisco Discovery Protocol
CDP—Continuous Data Protection
CD-R—CD-Recordable
CD-ROM—CD Read-Only Memory
CD-RW—CD-Rewritable
CDSA—Common Data Security Architecture
CERT—Computer Emergency Response Team
CES—Consumer Electronics Show
CF—Compact Flash
CFD—Computational Fluid Dynamics
CFG—Context-Free Grammar
CFG—Control-Flow Graph
CG—Computer Graphics
CGA—Color Graphics Array
CGI—Common Gateway Interface
CGI—Computer-Generated Imagery
CGT—Computational Graph Theory
CHAP—Challenge-Handshake Authentication Protocol
CHS—Cylinder-Head-Sector
CIDR—Classless Inter-Domain Routing
CIFS—Common Internet Filesystem
CIM—Common Information Model
CIM—Computationally Independent Model
CIO—Chief Information Officer
CIR—Committed information rate
CISC—Complex Instruction Set Computer
CJK—Chinese, Japanese, and Korean
CJKV—Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese
CLI—Command Line Interface
CLR—Common Language Runtime
CM—Configuration Management
CM—Content Management
CMDB—Configuration Management Database
CMMI—Capability Maturity Model Integration
CMOS—Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor
CMO—Current Mode of Operation
CMS—Content Management System
CN—Canonical Name
CN—Common Name
CNC—Computer Numerical Control
CNG—Cryptographic Next Generation
CNG—Cryptography Next Generation
CNR—Communications and Networking Riser
COBOL—Common Business-Oriented Language
COM—Component Object Model or communication
CORBA—Common Object Request Broker Architecture
CORS—Cross-Origin Resource Sharing
COTS—Commercial Off-The-Shelf
CPA—Cell Processor Architecture
CPAN—Comprehensive Perl Archive Network
CP/M—Control Program/Monitor
CPRI—Common Public Radio Interface
CPS—characters per second
CPU—Central Processing Unit
CQS—Command–query separation
CQRS—Command Query Responsibility Segregation
CR—Carriage Return
CRAN—Comprehensive R Archive Network
CRC—Cyclic Redundancy Check
CRLF—Carriage Return Line Feeds
CRM—Customer Relationship Management
CRS—Computer Reservations System
CRT—Cathode Ray Tube
CRUD—Create, Read, Update and Delete
CS—Cable Select
CS—Computer Science
CSE—Computer Science and Engineering
CSI—Common System Interface
CSM—Compatibility Support Module
CSMA/CD—Carrier-sense multiple access with collision detection
CSP—Cloud Service Provider
CSP—Communicating Sequential Processes
CSRF—Cross-Site Request Forgery
CSS—Cascading Style Sheets
CSS—Content-Scrambling System
CSS—Closed Source Software
CSS—Cross-Site Scripting
CSV—Comma-Separated Values
CT—Computerized Tomography
CTAN—Comprehensive TeX Archive Network
CTCP—Client-To-Client Protocol
CTI—Computer Telephony Integration
CTFE—Compile-time function execution
CTL—Computational Tree Logic
CTM—Close To Metal
CTS—Clear To Send
CTSS—Compatible Time-Sharing System
CUA—Common User Access
CVE—Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures
CVS—Concurrent Versioning System
CX—Customer Experience
D
DAC—Digital-To-Analog Converter
DAC—Discretionary Access Control
DAL—Database Abstraction Layer
DAO—Data Access Object
DAO—Data Access Objects
DAO—Disk-At-Once
DAP—Directory Access Protocol
DARPA—Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
DAS—Direct Attached Storage
DAT—Digital Audio Tape
DB—Database
DSKT—Desktop
DBA—Database Administrator
DBCS—Double Byte Character Set
DBMS—Database Management System
DCC—Direct Client-to-Client
DCCP—Datagram Congestion Control Protocol
DCCA—Debian Common Core Alliance
DCL—Data Control Language
DCS—Distributed Control System
DCMI—Dublin Core Metadata Initiative
DCOM—Distributed Component Object Model
DD—Double Density
DDE—Dynamic Data Exchange
DDI—DNS DHCP & IP Address management
DDL—Data Definition Language
DDoS—Distributed Denial of Service
DDR—Double Data Rate
DEC—Digital Equipment Corporation
DES—Data Encryption Standard
dev—development
DFA—Deterministic Finite Automaton
DFD—Data Flow Diagram
DFS—Depth-First Search
DFS—Distributed File System
DGD—Dworkin's Game Driver
DHCP—Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol
DHTML—Dynamic Hypertext Markup Language
DIF—Data Integrity Field
DIMM—Dual Inline Memory Module
DIN—Deutsches Institut für Normung
DIP—Dual In-line Package
DISM—Deployment Image and Service Management Tool
DIVX—Digital Video Express
DKIM—Domain Keys Identified Mail
DL—Download
DLL—Dynamic Link Library
DLNA—Digital Living Network Alliance
DMA—Direct Memory Access
DMCA—Digital Millennium Copyright Act
DMI—Direct Media Interface
DML—Data Manipulation Language
DML—Definitive Media Library
DMR—Dennis M. Ritchie
DMZ—Demilitarized Zone
DN—Distinguished Name
DND—Drag-and-Drop
DNS—Domain Name System
DOA—Dead on Arrival
DOCSIS—Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification
DOM—Document Object Model
DoS—Denial of Service
DOS—Disk Operating System
DP—Dot Pitch
DPC—Deferred Procedure Call
DPI—Deep Packet Inspection
DPI—Dots Per Inch
DPMI—DOS Protected Mode Interface
DPMS—Display Power Management Signaling
DR—Disaster Recovery
DRAM—Dynamic Random-Access Memory
DR-DOS—Digital Research - Disk Operating System
DRI—Direct Rendering Infrastructure
DRM—Digital Rights Management
DRM—Direct Rendering Manager
DSA—Digital Signature Algorithm
DSDL—Document Schema Definition Languages
DSDM—Dynamic Systems Development Method
DSL—Digital Subscriber Line
DSL—Domain-Specific Language
DSLAM—Digital Subscriber Line Access Multiplexer
DSN—Database Source Name
DSN—Data Set Name
DSP—Digital Signal Processor
DSSSL—Document Style Semantics and Specification Language
DTD—Document Type Definition
DTE—Data Terminal Equipment or data transfer rate
DTO—Data Transfer Object
DTP—Desktop Publishing
DTR—Data Terminal Ready or Data transfer rate
DVD—Digital Versatile Disc or Digital Video Disc
DVD-R—DVD-Recordable
DVD-ROM—DVD-Read Only Memory
DVD-RW—DVD-Rewritable
DVI—Digital Visual Interface
DVR—Digital Video Recorder
DW—Data Warehouse
E
EAI—Enterprise Application Integration
EAP—Extensible Authentication Protocol
EAS—Exchange ActiveSync
EBCDIC—Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code
EBML—Extensible Binary Meta Language
ECC—Elliptic Curve Cryptography
ECMA—European Computer Manufacturers Association
ECN—Explicit Congestion Notification
ECOS—Embedded Configurable Operating System
ECRS—Expense and Cost Recovery System
EDA—Electronic Design Automation
EDGE—Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution
EDI—Electronic Data Interchange
EDO—Extended Data Out
EDSAC—Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator
EDVAC—Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer
EEPROM—Electronically Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory
EFF—Electronic Frontier Foundation
EFI—Extensible Firmware Interface
EFM—Eight-to-Fourteen Modulation
EFM—Ethernet in the First Mile
EFS—Encrypting File System
EGA—Enhanced Graphics Array
E-mail—Electronic mail
EGP—Exterior Gateway Protocol
eID—electronic ID card
EIDE—Enhanced IDE
EIGRP—Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol
EISA—Extended Industry Standard Architecture
ELF—Extremely Low Frequency
ELF—Executable and Linkable Format
ELM—ELectronic Mail
EMACS—Editor MACroS
EMS—Expanded Memory Specification
ENIAC—Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer
EOD—End of Day
EOF—End of File
EOL—End of Line
EOM—End of Message
EOS—End of Support
EPIC—Explicitly Parallel Instruction Computing
EPROM—Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory
ERD—Entity-Relationship Diagram
ERM—Entity-Relationship Model
ERP—Enterprise Resource Planning
eSATA—external SATA
ESB—Enterprise service bus
ESCON—Enterprise Systems Connection
ESD—Electrostatic Discharge
ESI—Electronically Stored Information
ESR—Eric Steven Raymond
ETL—Extract, Transform, Load
ETW—Event Tracing for Windows
EUC—Extended Unix Code
EULA—End User License Agreement
EWM—Enterprise Work Management
EWMH—Extended Window Manager Hints
EXT—EXTended file system
ETA—Estimated Time of Arrival
F
FAP—FORTRAN Assembly Program
FASM—Flat ASseMbler
FAT—File Allocation Table
FAQ—Frequently Asked Questions
FBDIMM—Fully Buffered Dual Inline Memory Module
FC-AL—Fibre Channel Arbitrated Loop
FCB—File Control Block
FCS—Frame Check Sequence
FDC—Floppy-Disk Controller
FDS—Fedora Directory Server
FDD—Frequency-Division Duplexing
FDD—Floppy Disk Drive
FDDI—Fiber Distributed Data Interface
FDM—Frequency-Division Multiplexing
FDMA—Frequency-Division Multiple Access
FEC—Forward Error Correction
FEMB—Front-End Motherboard
FET—Field Effect Transistor
FHS—Filesystem Hierarchy Standard
FICON—FIber CONnectivity
FIFO—First In First Out
FIPS—Federal Information Processing Standards
FL—Function Level
FLAC—Free Lossless Audio Codec
FLOPS—FLoating-Point Operations Per Second
FLOSS—Free/Libre/Open-Source Software
FMC—Fixed Mobile Convergence "Mobile UC or Unified Communications over Wireless"
FMO—Future Mode of Operation
FOLDOC—Free On-line Dictionary of Computing
FORTRAN—Formula Translation
FOSDEM—Free and Open-source Software Developers' European Meeting
FOSI—Formatted Output Specification Instance
FOSS—Free and Open-Source Software
FP—Function Programming
FPGA—Field Programmable Gate Array
FPS—Floating Point Systems
FPU—Floating-Point Unit
FRU—Field-Replaceable Unit
FS—File System
FSB—Front-Side Bus
fsck—File System Check
FSF—Free Software Foundation
FSM—Finite State Machine
FTTA—Fiber To The Antenna
FTTC—Fiber To The Curb
FTTH—Fiber To The Home
FTTP—Fiber To The Premises
FTP—File Transfer Protocol
FQDN—Fully Qualified Domain Name
FUD—Fear Uncertainty Doubt
FWS—Folding White Space
FXP—File eXchange Protocol
FYI—For Your Information
FVEK—Full Volume Encryption Key
G
G11N—Globalization
Gas—GNU Assembler
Gb—Gigabit
GB—Gigabyte
GCC—GNU Compiler Collection
GCJ—GNU Compiler for Java
GCP—Google Cloud Platform
GCR—Group Coded Recording
GDB—GNU Debugger
GDI—Graphics Device Interface
GFDL—GNU Free Documentation License
GIF—Graphics Interchange Format
GIGO—Garbage In, Garbage Out
GIMP—GNU Image Manipulation Program
GIMPS—Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search
GIS—Geographic Information System
GLUT—OpenGL Utility Toolkit
GML—Geography Markup Language
GNOME—GNU Network Object Model Environment
GNU—GNU's Not Unix
GOMS—Goals, Operators, Methods, and Selection rules
GPASM—GNU PIC ASseMbler
GPFS—General Parallel File System
GPG—GNU Privacy Guard
GPGPU—General-Purpose Computing on Graphics Processing Units
GPIB—General-Purpose Instrumentation Bus
GPL—General Public License
GPL—General-Purpose Language
GPRS—General Packet Radio Service
GPT—GUID Partition Table
GPU—Graphics Processing Unit
GRUB—Grand Unified Boot-Loader
GERAN—GSM EDGE Radio Access Network
GSM—Global System for Mobile Communications
GTK+—GIMP Toolkit
GUI—Graphical User Interface
GUID—Globally Unique IDentifier
GWT—Google Web Toolkit
GYR—IT Networking
H
HA—High availability
HAL—Hardware Abstraction Layer
HARD—HTML Application Rapid Development
HASP—Houston Automatic Spooling Priority
HBA—Host Bus Adapter
HCI—Human—Computer Interaction
HD—High Density
HDD—Hard Disk Drive
HCL—Hardware Compatibility List
HD DVD—High Definition DVD
HDL—Hardware Description Language
HDMI—High-Definition Multimedia Interface
HECI—Host Embedded Controller Interface
HF—High Frequency
HFS—Hierarchical File System
HHD—Hybrid Hard Drive
HID—Human Interface Device
HIG—Human Interface Guidelines
HIRD—Hurd of Interfaces Representing Depth
HLASM—High Level ASseMbler
HLS—HTTP Live Streaming
HMA—High Memory Area
HP—Hewlett-Packard
HPC—High-Performance Computing
HPFS—High Performance File System
HSDPA—High-Speed Downlink Packet Access
HTC—High-Throughput Computing
HSM—Hierarchical Storage Management
HT—Hyper Threading
HTM—Hierarchical Temporal Memory
HTML—Hypertext Markup Language
HTTP—Hypertext Transfer Protocol
HTTPd—Hypertext Transport Protocol Daemon
HTTPS—HTTP Secure
HTX—HyperTransport eXpansion
HURD—Hird of Unix-Replacing Daemons
HVD—Holographic Versatile Disc
Hz—Hertz
I
I²C—Inter-Integrated Circuit
I²S—Integrated Interchip Sound
I18N—Internationalization
IANA—Internet Assigned Numbers Authority
IaaS—Infrastructure as a Service
IaC—Infrastructure as Code
iBCS—Intel Binary Compatibility Standard
IBM—International Business Machines
IC—Integrated Circuit
ICANN—Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
ICE—In-Circuit Emulator
ICE—Intrusion Countermeasure Electronics
ICH—I/O Controller Hub
ICMP—Internet Control Message Protocol
ICP—Internet Cache Protocol
ICS—Internet Connection Sharing
ICT—Information and Communication Technology
IDE—Integrated Development Environment
IDE—Integrated Drive Electronics
IDF—Intermediate Distribution Frame
IDF—Intermediate Data Format
IDL—Interactive Data Language
IDL—Interface Definition Language
IDS—Intrusion Detection System
IE—Internet Explorer
IEC—International Electrotechnical Commission
IEEE—Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
IETF—Internet Engineering Task Force
IFL—Integrated Facility for Linux
IGMP—Internet Group Management Protocol
IGRP—Interior Gateway Routing Protocol
IHV—Independent Hardware Vendor
IIOP—Internet Inter-Orb Protocol
IIS—Internet Information Services
IKE—Internet Key Exchange
IL—Intermediate Language
IM—Instant Message or Instant Messaging
IMAP—Internet Message Access Protocol
IME—Input Method Editor
IMR—Internet Monthly Report
INFOSEC—Information Systems Security
I/O—Input/output
IoT—Internet of Things
IP—Intellectual Property
IP—Internet Protocol
IPAM—IP Address Management
IPC—Inter-Process Communication
IPL—Initial Program Load
IPMI—Intelligent Platform Management Interface
IPO—Inter Procedural Optimization
IPP—Internet Printing Protocol
IPS—In-Plane Switching
IPS—Instructions Per Second
IPS—Intrusion Prevention System
IPsec—Internet Protocol security
IPTV—Internet Protocol Television
IPv4—Internet Protocol version 4
IPv6—Internet Protocol version 6
IPX—Internetwork Packet Exchange
IR—Intermediate Representation
IRC—Internet Relay Chat
IrDA—Infrared Data Association
IRI—Internationalized Resource Identifier
IRP—I/O Request Packet
IRQ—Interrupt Request
IS—Information Systems
IS-IS—Intermediate System to Intermediate System
ISA—Industry Standard Architecture
ISA—Instruction Set Architecture
ISAM—Indexed Sequential Access Method
ISATAP—Intra-Site Automatic Tunnel Addressing Protocol
ISC—Internet Storm Center
iSCSI—Internet Small Computer System Interface
ISDN—Integrated Services Digital Network
ISO—International Organization for Standardization
iSNS—Internet Storage Name Service
ISP—Internet Service Provider
ISPF—Interactive System Productivity Facility
ISR—Interrupt Service Routine
ISV—Independent Software Vendor
IT—Information Technology
ITIL—Information Technology Infrastructure Library
ITL—Interval Temporal Logic
ITU—International Telecommunication Union
IVRS—Interactive Voice Response System
IVCR—Interactive Virtual Classroom
ISDN—Integrated service digital network
J
J2EE—Java 2 Enterprise Edition
J2ME—Java 2 Micro Edition
J2SE—Java 2 Standard Edition
JAXB—Java Architecture for XML Binding
JAX-RPC—Java XML for Remote Procedure Calls
JAXP—Java API for XML Processing
JBOD—Just a Bunch of Disks
JCE Java Cryptography Extension
JCL—Job Control Language
JCP—Java Community Process
JDBC—Java Database Connectivity
JDK—Java Development Kit
JEE—Java Enterprise Edition
JES—Job Entry Subsystem
JDS—Java Desktop System
JFC—Java Foundation Classes
JFET—Junction Field-Effect Transistor
JFS—IBM Journaling File System
JINI—Jini Is Not Initials
JIT—Just-In-Time
JME—Java Micro Edition
JMX—Java Management Extensions
JMS—Java Message Service
JNDI—Java Naming and Directory Interface
JNI—Java Native Interface
JNZ—Jump non-zero
JPEG—Joint Photographic Experts Group
JRE—Java Runtime Environment
JS—JavaScript
JSE—Java Standard Edition
JSON—JavaScript Object Notation
JSP—Jackson Structured Programming
JSP—JavaServer Pages
JTAG—Joint Test Action Group
JVM—Java Virtual Machine
K
K&R—Kernighan and Ritchie
KB—Keyboard
Kb—Kilobit
Kbps—Kilobit Per Second
KB—Kilobyte
KB—Knowledge Base
KiB—Kibibyte
KDE—K Desktop Environment
kHz—Kilohertz
KM—Knowledge Machine
KRL—Knowledge Representation Language
KVM—Keyboard, Video, Mouse
L
L10N—Localization
L2TP—Layer two Tunneling Protocol
LACP—Link Aggregation Control Protocol
LAMP—Linux Apache MySQL Perl
LAMP—Linux Apache MySQL PHP
LAMP—Linux Apache MySQL Python
LAN—Local Area Network
LBA—Logical Block Addressing
LB—Load Balancer
LCD—Liquid Crystal Display
LCR—Least Cost Routing
LCOS—Liquid Crystal On Silicon
LDAP—Lightweight Directory Access Protocol
LE—Logical Extents
LED—Light-Emitting Diode
LF—Line Feed
LF—Low Frequency
LFS—Linux From Scratch
LGPL—Lesser General Public License
LIB—LIBrary
LIF—Low Insertion Force
LIFO—Last In First Out
LILO—Linux Loader
LIP—Loop Initialization Primitive
LISP—LISt Processing
LKML—Linux Kernel Mailing List
LM—Lan Manager
LOC—Lines of Code
LPC—Lars Pensjö C
LPI—Lines Per Inch
LPI—Linux Professional Institute
LPT Line Print Terminal
LRU—Least Recently Used
LSB—Least Significant Bit
LSB—Linux Standard Base
LSI—Large-Scale Integration
LTE—Long Term Evolution
LTL—Linear Temporal Logic
LTR—Left-to-Right
LUG—Linux User Group
LUN—Logical Unit Number
LV—Logical Volume
LVD—Low Voltage Differential
LVM—Logical Volume Management
LZW—Lempel-Ziv-Welch
LGA—Land Grid Array
M
MAC—Mandatory Access
MAC—Media Access Control
MANET—Mobile Ad-Hoc Network
MAN—Metropolitan Area Network
MAPI—Messaging Application Programming Interface
MBCS—Multi Byte Character Set
MBD—Model-Based Design
MBR—Master Boot Record
Mb—Megabit
MB—Megabyte
MCAD—Microsoft Certified Application Developer
MCAS—Microsoft Certified Application Specialist
MCA—Micro Channel Architecture
MCA—Microsoft Certified Architect
MCDBA—Microsoft Certified DataBase Administrator
MCDST—Microsoft Certified Desktop Support Technician
MCITP—Microsoft Certified Information Technology Professional
MCM—Microsoft Certified Master
MCPC—Multiple Channels Per Carrier
MCPD—Microsoft Certified Professional Developer
MCP—Microsoft Certified Professional
MCSA—Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator
MCSD—Microsoft Certified Solution Developer
MCSE—Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer
MCTS—Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist
MCT—Microsoft Certified Trainer
MDA—Monochrome Display Adapter
MDA—Mail Delivery Agent
MDA—Model-Driven Architecture
MDD/MDSD—Model-Driven (Software) Development
MDF—Main Distribution Frame
MDI—Multiple-Document Interface
MDM—Master Data Management
ME—Microsoft Edge
ME—[Windows] Millennium Edition
MFA—Multi-factor authentication
MFC—Microsoft Foundation Classes
MFM—Modified Frequency Modulation
MF—Medium Frequency
MGCP—Media Gateway Control Protocol
MHz—Megahertz
MIB—Management Information Base
MICR—Magnetic Ink Character Recognition or Magnetic Ink Character Reader
MIDI—Musical Instrument Digital Interface
MIMD—Multiple Instruction, Multiple Data
MIME—Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions
MIMO—Multiple-Input Multiple-Output
MINIX—MIni-uNIX
MIPS—Microprocessor without Interlocked Pipeline Stages
MIPS—Million Instructions Per Second
MISD—Multiple Instruction, Single Data
MIS—Management Information Systems
MIT—Massachusetts Institute of Technology
ML—Machine Learning
MMC—Microsoft Management Console
MMDS—Mortality Medical Data System
MMDS—Multichannel Multipoint Distribution Service
MMF—Multi-Mode (optical) Fiber
MMIO—Memory-Mapped I/O
MMI—Man Machine Interface.
MMORPG—Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game
MMS—Multimedia Message Service
MMU—Memory Management Unit
MMX—Multi-Media Extensions
MNG—Multiple-image Network Graphics
MoBo—Motherboard
MOM—Message-Oriented Middleware
MOO—MUD Object Oriented
MOP—Meta-Object Protocol
MOSFET—Metal-Oxide Semiconductor Field Effect Transistor
MOS—Microsoft Office Specialist
MOTD—Message Of The Day
MOUS—Microsoft Office User Specialist
MOV—Apple QuickTime Multimedia File
MPAA—Motion Picture Association of America
MPEG—Motion Pictures Experts Group
MPLS—Multiprotocol Label Switching
MPL—Mozilla Public License
MPU—Microprocessor Unit
MS-DOS—Microsoft DOS
MSA—Mail Submission Agent
MSB—Most Significant Bit
MSDN—Microsoft Developer Network
MSI—Medium-Scale Integration
MSI—Message Signaled Interrupt
MSI—Microsoft Installer
MSN—Microsoft Network
MS—Microsoft
MS—Memory Stick
MTA—Mail Transfer Agent
MTA—Microsoft Technology Associate
MTBF—Mean Time Between Failures
MTU—Maximum Transmission Unit
MT—Machine Translation
MUA—Mail User Agent
MUD—Multi-User Dungeon
MU—Memory Unit
MVC—Model-View-Controller
MVP—Most Valuable Professional
MVS—Multiple Virtual Storage
MWC—Mobile World Congress
MXF—Material Exchange Format
MX—Mail exchange
N
NAC—Network Access Control
NACK—Negative ACKnowledgement
NAK—Negative AcKnowledge Character
NaN—Not a Number
NAP—Network Access Protection
NAS—Network-Attached Storage
NASM—Netwide ASseMbler
NAT—Network Address Translation
NCP—NetWare Core Protocol
NCQ—Native Command Queuing
NCSA—National Center for Supercomputing Applications
NDIS—Network Driver Interface Specification
NDPS—Novell Distributed Print Services
NDS—Novell Directory Services
NEP—Network Equipment Provider
NetBIOS—Network Basic Input/Output System
NetBT—NetBIOS over TCP/IP
NEXT—Near-End CrossTalk
NFA—Nondeterministic Finite Automaton
NFC—Near field communication
NFS—Network File System
NGL—aNGeL
NGSCB—Next-Generation Secure Computing Base
NI—National Instruments
NIC—Network Interface Controller or Network Interface Card
NIM—No Internal Message
NIO—Non-blocking I/O
NIST—National Institute of Standards and Technology
NLE—Non-Linear Editing system
NLP—Natural Language Processing
NLS—Native Language Support
NMI—Non-Maskable Interrupt
NNTP—Network News Transfer Protocol
NOC—Network Operations Center
NOP—No OPeration
NOS—Network Operating System
NP—Nondeterministic Polynomial time
NPL—Netscape Public License
NPTL—Native POSIX Thread Library
NPU—Network Processing Unit
NS—Netscape
NSA—Network Security Appliance
NSI—Network Service Interface
NSPR—Netscape Portable Runtime
NSS—Novell Storage Service
NSS—Network Security Services
NSS—Name Service Switch
NT—New Technology
NTFS—NT Filesystem
NTLM—NT Lan Manager
NTP—Network Time Protocol
NUMA—Non-Uniform Memory Access
NURBS—Non-Uniform Rational B-Spline
NVR—Network Video Recorder
NVRAM—Non-Volatile Random Access Memory
O
OASIS—Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards
OAT—Operational Acceptance Testing
OBSAI—Open Base Station Architecture Initiative
ODBC—Open Database Connectivity
OEM—Original Equipment Manufacturer
OES—Open Enterprise Server
OFDM—Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing
OFTC—Open and Free Technology Community
OID—Object Identifier
OLAP—Online Analytical Processing
OLE—Object Linking and Embedding
OLED—Organic Light Emitting Diode
OLPC—One Laptop per Child
OLTP—Online Transaction Processing
OMF—Object Module Format
OMG—Object Management Group
OMR—Optical Mark Reader
OO—Object-Oriented
OO—OpenOffice
OOE—Out-of-Order Execution
OOM—Out Of Memory
OOo—OpenOffice.org
OoOE—Out-of-Order Execution
OOP—Object-Oriented Programming
OOTB—Out of the box
OPML—Outline Processor Markup Language
ORB—Object Request Broker
ORM—Object-Relational Mapping
OS—Open Source
OS—Operating System
OSCON—O'Reilly Open Source CONvention
OSDN—Open Source Development Network
OSI—Open Source Initiative
OSI—Open Systems Interconnection
OSPF—Open Shortest Path First
OSS—Open Sound System
OSS—Open-Source Software
OSS—Operations Support System
OSTG—Open Source Technology Group
OTP—One-time password
OUI—Organisationally Unique Identifier
P
P2P—Peer-To-Peer
PaaS—Platform as a Service
PAM—Privileged Access Management
PAN—Personal Area Network
PAP—Password Authentication Protocol
PARC—Palo Alto Research Center
PATA—Parallel ATA
PBS—Portable Batch System
PC—Personal Computer
PCB—Printed Circuit Board
PCB—Process Control Block
PC DOS—Personal Computer Disc Operating System
PCI—Peripheral Component Interconnect
PCIe—PCI Express
PCI-X—PCI Extended
PCL—Printer Command Language
PCMCIA—Personal Computer Memory Card International Association
PCM—Pulse-Code Modulation
PCRE—Perl Compatible Regular Expressions
PD—Public Domain
PDA—Personal Digital Assistant
PDF—Portable Document Format
PDH—Plesiochronous Digital Hierarchy
PDP—Programmed Data Processor
PE—Physical Extents
PERL—Practical Extraction and Reporting Language
PFA—Please Find Attachment
PG—Peripheral Gateway
PGA—Pin Grid Array
PGA—Programmable Gate Array
PGO—Profile-Guided Optimization
PGP—Pretty Good Privacy
PHP—Hypertext Preprocessor
PIC—Peripheral Interface Controller
PIC—Programmable Interrupt Controller
PID—Proportional-Integral-Derivative
PID—Process ID
PIM—Personal Information Manager
PINE—Program for Internet News and Email
PIM—Platform Independent Model
PING—Packet Internet Gopher
PIO—Programmed Input/Output
PKCS—Public Key Cryptography Standards
PKI—Public Key Infrastructure
PLC—Power Line Communication
PLC—Programmable Logic Controller
PLD—Programmable Logic Device
PL/I—Programming Language One
PL/M—Programming Language for Microcomputers
PL/P—Programming Language for Prime
PLT—Power Line Telecommunications
PMM—POST Memory Manager
PNG—Portable Network Graphics
PnP—Plug-and-Play
PNRP—Peer Name Resolution Protocol
PoE—Power over Ethernet
PoS—Point of Sale
POCO—Plain Old Class Object
POID—Persistent Object Identifier
POJO—Plain Old Java Object
POP—Point of Presence
POP3—Post Office Protocol v3
POSIX—Portable Operating System Interface, formerly IEEE-IX
POST—Power-On Self Test
PPC—PowerPC
PPI—Pixels Per Inch
PPM—Pages Per Minute
PPP—Point-to-Point Protocol
PPPoA—PPP over ATM
PPPoE—PPP over Ethernet
PPTP—Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol
PR—Pull Request
PROM—Programmable Read-Only Memory
PS—PostScript
PS/2—Personal System/2
PSA—Professional Services Automation
PSM—Platform Specific Model
PSTN—Public Switched Telephone Network
PSU—Power Supply Unit
PSVI—Post-Schema-Validation Infoset
PTS-DOS—PhysTechSoft – Disk Operating System
PV—Physical Volume
PVG—Physical Volume Group
PVR—Personal Video Recorder
PXE—Preboot Execution Environment
PXI—PCI eXtensions for Instrumentation
PRC—Procedure Remote Call
Q
QDR—Quad Data Rate
QA—Quality Assurance
QFP—Quad Flat Package
QoS—Quality of Service
QOTD—Quote of the Day
Qt—Quasar Toolkit
QTAM—Queued Teleprocessing Access Method
QSOP—Quarter Small Outline Package
qWave—Quality Windows Audio/Video Experience
R
RACF—Resource Access Control Facility
RAD—Rapid Application Development
RADIUS—Remote Authentication Dial In User Service
RAID—Redundant Array of Independent Disks
RAII—Resource Acquisition Is Initialization
RAIT—Redundant Array of Inexpensive Tapes
RAM—Random-Access Memory
RARP—Reverse Address Resolution Protocol
RAS—Reliability, Availability and Serviceability
RAS—Remote access service
RC—Region Code
RC—Release Candidate
RC—Run Commands
RCA—Root Cause Analysis
RCS—Revision Control System
RD—Remote Desktop
rd—remove directory
RDBMS—Relational Database Management System
RDC—Remote Desktop Connection
RDF—Resource Description Framework
RDM—Relational Data Model
RDOS—Real-time Disk Operating System
RDP—Remote Desktop Protocol
RDS—Remote Data Services
REFAL—Recursive Functions Algorithmic Language
REP—RAID Error Propagation
REST—Representational State Transfer
RESV—Reservation Message
regex—Regular Expression
regexp—Regular Expression
RF—Radio Frequency
RFC—Request For Comments
RFI—Radio Frequency Interference
RFID—Radio Frequency Identification
RGB—Red, Green, Blue
RGBA—Red, Green, Blue, Alpha
RHL—Red Hat Linux
RHEL—Red Hat Enterprise Linux
RIA—Rich Internet Application
RIAA—Recording Industry Association of America
RIP—Raster Image Processor
RIP—Routing Information Protocol
RIR—Regional Internet registry
RISC—Reduced Instruction Set Computer
RISC OS—Reduced Instruction Set Computer Operating System
RJE—Remote Job Entry
RLE—Run-Length Encoding
RLL—Run-Length Limited
rmdir—remove directory
RMI—Remote Method Invocation
RMS—Richard Matthew Stallman
ROM—Read-Only Memory
ROMB—Read-Out Motherboard
ROM-DOS—Read-Only Memory - Disk Operating System
RPA—Robotic Process Automation
RPC—Remote Procedure Call
RPG—Report Program Generator
RPM—RPM Package Manager
RRAS—Routing and Remote Access Service
RSA—Rivest Shamir Adleman
RSI—Repetitive Strain Injury
RSS—Radio Service Software
RSS—Rich Site Summary, RDF Site Summary, or Really Simple Syndication
RSVP—Resource Reservation Protocol
RTAI—Real-Time Application Interface
RTC—Real-Time Clock
RTE—Real-Time Enterprise
RTEMS—Real-Time Executive for Multiprocessor Systems
RTF—Rich Text Format
RTL—Right-to-Left
RTMP—Real Time Messaging Protocol
RTOS—Real-Time Operating System
RTP—Real-time Transport Protocol
RTS—Ready To Send
RTSP—Real Time Streaming Protocol
RTTI—Run-time Type Information
RWD—Responsive Web Design
S
SaaS—Software as a Service
SASS—Syntatically Awesome Style Sheets
SAM—Security Account Manager
SAN—Storage Area Network
SAS—Serial attached SCSI
SATA—Serial ATA
SAX—Simple API for XML
SBOD—Spinning Beachball of Death
SBP-2—Serial Bus Protocol 2
sbin—superuser binary
sbs—Small Business Server
SBU—Standard Build Unit
SCADA—Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition
SCID—Source Code in Database
SCM—Software Configuration Management
SCM—Source Code Management
SCP—Secure Copy
SCPC—Single Channel Per Carrier
SCPI—Standard Commands for Programmable Instrumentation
SCSA—Secure Content Storage Association
SCSI—Small Computer System Interface
SCTP—Stream Control Transmission Protocol
SD—Secure Digital
SDDL—Security Descriptor Definition Language
SDH—Synchronous Digital Hierarchy
SDI—Single-Document Interface
SEC—Single Edge Contact
SDIO—Secure Digital Input Output
SDK—Software Development Kit
SDL—Simple DirectMedia Layer
SDN—Service Delivery Network
SDP—Session Description Protocol
SDR—Software-Defined Radio
SDRAM—Synchronous Dynamic Random Access Memory
SDSL—Symmetric DSL
SE—Single Ended
SEI—Software Engineering Institute
SEO—Search Engine Optimization
SFTP—Secure FTP
SFTP—Simple File Transfer Protocol
SFTP—SSH File Transfer Protocol
SGI—Silicon Graphics, Incorporated
SGML—Standard Generalized Markup Language
SGR—Select Graphic Rendition
SHA—Secure Hash Algorithm
SHDSL—Single-pair High-speed Digital Subscriber Line
SIEM—Security information and event management
SIGCAT—Special Interest Group on CD-ROM Applications and Technology
SIGGRAPH—Special Interest Group on Graphics
SIMD—Single Instruction, Multiple Data
SIM—Subscriber Identification Module
SIMM—Single Inline Memory Module
SIP—Session Initiation Protocol
SIP—Supplementary Ideographic Plane
SISD—Single Instruction, Single Data
SISO—Single-Input and Single-Output
SLA—Service Level Agreement
SLED—SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop
SLES—SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
SLI—Scalable Link Interface
SLIP—Serial Line Internet Protocol
SLM—Service Level Management
SLOC—Source Lines of Code
SME—Subject Matter Expert
SMF—Single-Mode (optical) Fiber
SPM—Software project management
SPMD—Single Program, Multiple Data
SPOF—Single point of failure
SMA—SubMiniature version A
SMB—Server Message Block
SMBIOS—System Management BIOS
SMIL—Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language
S/MIME—Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions
SMP—Supplementary Multilingual Plane
SMP—Symmetric Multi-Processing
SMPS—Switch Mode Power Supply
SMS—Short Message Service
SMS—System Management Server
SMT—Simultaneous Multithreading
SMTP—Simple Mail Transfer Protocol
SNA—Systems Network Architecture
SNMP—Simple Network Management Protocol
SNTP—Simple Network Time Protocol
SOA—Service-Oriented Architecture
SOAP—Simple Object Access Protocol
SOAP—Symbolic Optimal Assembly Program
SOPA—Stop Online Piracy Act
SoC—System-on-a-Chip
SO-DIMM—Small Outline DIMM
SOE—Standard Operating Environment
SOHO—Small Office/Home Office
SOI—Silicon On Insulator
SP—Service Pack
SPA—Single Page Application
SPF—Sender Policy Framework
SPI—Serial Peripheral Interface
SPI—Stateful Packet Inspection
SPARC—Scalable Processor Architecture
SQL—Structured Query Language
SRAM—Static Random Access Memory
SSA—Static Single Assignment
SSD—Software Specification Document
SSD—Solid-State Drive
SSDP—Simple Service Discovery Protocol
SSE—Streaming SIMD Extensions
SSH—Secure Shell
SSI—Server Side Includes
SSI—Single-System Image
SSI—Small-Scale Integration
SSID—Service Set Identifier
SSL—Secure Socket Layer
SSO—Single Sign On
SSP—Supplementary Special-purpose Plane
SSSE—Supplementary Streaming SIMD Extensions
SSSP—Single Source Shortest Path
SSTP—Secure Socket Tunneling Protocol
su—superuser
SUS—Single UNIX Specification
SUSE—Software und System-Entwicklung
SVC—Scalable Video Coding
SVG—Scalable Vector Graphics
SVGA—Super Video Graphics Array
SVD—Structured VLSI Design
SWF—Shock Wave Flash
SWT—Standard Widget Toolkit
Sysop—System operator
SOLID—Single-responsibility Principle, Open-closed Principle, Liskov substitution principle, Interface segregation principle, Dependency Inversion principle
T
TAO—Track-At-Once
TAPI—Telephony Application Programming Interface
TASM—Turbo ASseMbler
TB—TeraByte
Tcl—Tool Command Language
TCP—Transmission Control Protocol
TCP/IP—Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol
TCU—Telecommunication Control Unit
TDMA—Time-Division Multiple Access
TFT—Thin-Film Transistor
TFTP—Trivial File Transfer Protocol
TI—Texas Instruments
TIFF—Tagged Image File Format
TLA—Three-Letter Acronym
TLD—Top-Level Domain
TLS—Thread-Local Storage
TLS—Transport Layer Security
TLV—Type—length—value
tmp—temporary
TNC—Terminal Node Controller
TNC—Threaded Neill-Concelman connector
TPF—Transaction Processing Facility
TPM—Trusted Platform Module
TROFF—Trace Off
TRON—Trace On
TRON—The Real-time Operating system Nucleus
TRSDOS—Tandy Radio Shack - Disk Operating System
TSO—Time Sharing Option
TSP—Traveling Salesman Problem
TSR—Terminate and Stay Resident
TTA—True Tap Audio
TTF—TrueType Font
TTL—Transistor—Transistor Logic
TTL—Time To Live
TTS—Text-to-Speech
TTY—Teletype
TUCOWS—The Ultimate Collection of Winsock Software
TUG—TeX Users Group
TWAIN—Technology Without An Interesting Name
U
UAAG—User Agent Accessibility Guidelines
UAC—User Account Control
UART—Universal Asynchronous Receiver/Transmitter
UAT—User Acceptance Testing
UB—Undefined Behavior
UCS—Universal Character Set
UDDI—Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration
UDMA—Ultra DMA
UDP—User Datagram Protocol
UEFI—Unified Extensible Firmware Interface
UHF—Ultra High Frequency
UI—User Interface
UL—Upload
ULA—Uncommitted Logic Array
ULSI—Ultra Large Scale Integration
UMA—Upper Memory Area
UMB—Upper Memory Block
UML—Unified Modeling Language
UML—User-Mode Linux
UMPC—Ultra-Mobile Personal Computer
UMTS—Universal Mobile Telecommunications System
UNC—Universal Naming Convention
UNIVAC—Universal Automatic Computer (By MKS)
UPS—Uninterruptible Power Supply or Uninterrupted Power Supply
URI—Uniform Resource Identifier
URL—Uniform Resource Locator
URN—Uniform Resource Name
USB—Universal Serial Bus
usr—User System Resources
USR—U.S. Robotics
UTC—Coordinated Universal Time
UTF—Unicode Transformation Format
UTP—Unshielded Twisted Pair
UTRAN—Universal Terrestrial Radio Access Network
UUCP—Unix to Unix Copy
UUID—Universally Unique Identifier
UUN—Universal User Name
UVC—Universal Virtual Computer
UWP—Universal Windows Platform
UX—User Experience
V
var—variable
VoLTE—Voice Over Long Term Evolution
VAX—Virtual Address eXtension
VCPI—Virtual Control Program Interface
VB—Visual Basic
VBA—Visual Basic for Applications
VBS—Visual Basic Script
VDI—Virtual Desktop Infrastructure
VDU—Visual Display Unit
VDM—Virtual DOS machine
VDSL—Very High Bitrate Digital Subscriber Line
VESA—Video Electronics Standards Association
VFAT—Virtual FAT
VHD—Virtual Hard Disk
VFS—Virtual File System
VG—Volume Group
VGA—Video Graphics Array
VHF—Very High Frequency
VIRUS—Vital Information Resource Under Seize
VLAN—Virtual Local Area Network
VLSM—Variable Length Subnet Mask
VLB—Vesa Local Bus
VLF—Very Low Frequency
VLIW—Very Long Instruction Word
VLSI—Very-Large-Scale Integration
VM—Virtual Machine
VM—Virtual Memory
VMM—Virtual Machine Monitor
VNC—Virtual Network Computing
VOD—Video On Demand
VoIP—Voice over Internet Protocol
VPN—Virtual Private Network
VPS—Virtual Private Server
VPU—Visual Processing Unit
VR—Virtual Reality
VRML—Virtual Reality Modeling Language
VSAM—Virtual Storage Access Method
VSAT—Very Small Aperture Terminal
VT—Video Terminal
VTL—Virtual Tape Library
VTAM—Virtual Telecommunications Access Method
VRAM—Video Random Access Memory
W
W3C—World Wide Web Consortium
WWDC—Apple World Wide Developer Conference
WAFS—Wide Area File Services
WAI—Web Accessibility Initiative
WAIS—Wide Area Information Server
WAN—Wide Area Network
WAP—Wireless Access Point
WAP—Wireless Application Protocol
WASM—Watcom ASseMbler
WBEM—Web-Based Enterprise Management
WCAG—Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
WCF—Windows Communication Foundation
WDM—Wavelength-Division Multiplexing
WebDAV—WWW Distributed Authoring and Versioning
WEP—Wired Equivalent Privacy
WFI—Wait For Interrupt
Wi-Fi—Wireless Fidelity
WiMAX—Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access
WinFS—Windows Future Storage
WinRT—Windows RunTime
WINS—Windows Internet Name Service
WLAN—Wireless Local Area Network
WMA—Windows Media Audio
WMI—Windows Management Instrumentation
WMV—Windows Media Video
WNS—Windows Push Notification Service
WOL—Wake-on-LAN
WOR—Wake-on-Ring
WORA—Write once, run anywhere
WORE—Write once, run everywhere
WORM—Write Once Read Many
WPA—Wi-Fi Protected Access
WPAD—Web Proxy Autodiscovery Protocol
WPAN—Wireless Personal Area Network
WPF—Windows Presentation Foundation
WS-D—Web Services-Discovery
WSDL—Web Services Description Language
WSFL—Web Services Flow Language
WUSB—Wireless Universal Serial Bus
WWAN—Wireless Wide Area Network
WWID—World Wide Identifier
WWN—World Wide Name
WWW—World Wide Web
WYSIWYG—What You See Is What You Get
WZC—Wireless Zero Configuration
X
XAG—XML Accessibility Guidelines
XAML—eXtensible Application Markup Language
XDM—X Window Display Manager
XDMCP—X Display Manager Control Protocol
XCBL—XML Common Business Library
XHTML—eXtensible Hypertext Markup Language
XILP—X Interactive ListProc
XML—eXtensible Markup Language
XMMS—X Multimedia System
XMPP—eXtensible Messaging and Presence Protocol
XMS—Extended Memory Specification
XNS—Xerox Network Systems
XP—Cross-Platform
XP—Extreme Programming
XPCOM—Cross Platform Component Object Model
XPI—XPInstall
XPIDL—Cross-Platform IDL
XPS—XML Paper Specification
XSD—XML Schema Definition
XSL—eXtensible Stylesheet Language
XSL-FO—eXtensible Stylesheet Language Formatting Objects
XSLT—eXtensible Stylesheet Language Transformations
XSS—Cross-Site Scripting
XTF—eXtensible Tag Framework
XTF—eXtended Triton Format
XUL—XML User Interface Language
XVGA—Extended Video Graphics Adapter
Y
Y2K—Year Two Thousand
YAAF—Yet Another Application Framework
YACC—Yet Another Compiler Compiler
YAGNI—You Aren't Gonna Need It
YAML—YAML Ain't Markup Language
YARN—Yet Another Resource Negotiator
YaST—Yet another Setup Tool
Z
ZCAV—Zone Constant Angular Velocity
ZCS—Zero Code Suppression
ZIF—Zero Insertion Force
ZIFS—Zero Insertion Force Socket
ZIP—ZIP file archive
ZISC—Zero Instruction Set Computer
ZOI—Zero One Infinity
ZOPE—Z Object Publishing Environment
ZMA—Zone Multicast Address
ZPL—Z-level Programming Language
See also
Acronym
Internet slang
List of file formats
List of information technology initialisms
Professional certification
References
External links
The UNIX Acronym List
Lists of abbreviations
Lists of computer terms
Computer jargon |
16429575 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4007%20Euryalos | 4007 Euryalos | 4007 Euryalos is a larger Jupiter trojan from the Greek camp, approximately in diameter. It was discovered on 19 September 1973, by Dutch astronomers Ingrid and Cornelis van Houten at Leiden, and Tom Gehrels at Palomar Observatory in California. The likely spherical Jovian asteroid is the principal body of the proposed Euryalos family and has a rotation period of 6.4 hours. It was named after the warrior Euryalus from Greek mythology.
Orbit and classification
Euryalos is a dark Jovian asteroid in a 1:1 orbital resonance with Jupiter. It is located in the leading Greek camp at the Gas Giant's Lagrangian point, 60° ahead on its orbit . It orbits the Sun at a distance of 4.9–5.5 AU once every 11 years and 9 months (4,301 days; semi-major axis of 5.18 AU). Its orbit has an eccentricity of 0.06 and an inclination of 11° with respect to the ecliptic. The body's observation arc begins with its official discovery observation at Palomar in September 1976.
Euryalos family
Fernando Roig and Ricardo Gil-Hutton identified Euryalos as the principal body of a small Jovian asteroid family, using the hierarchical clustering method (HCM), which looks for groupings of neighboring asteroids based on the smallest distances between them in the proper orbital element space. According to the astronomers, the Euryalos family belongs to the larger Menelaus clan, an aggregation of Jupiter trojans which is composed of several families, similar to the Flora family in the inner asteroid belt.
However this family is not included in David Nesvorný HCM-analysis from 2014. Instead, Euryalos is listed as a non-family asteroid of the Jovian background population on the Asteroids Dynamic Site (AstDyS) which based on another analysis by Milani and Knežević.
Palomar–Leiden Trojan survey
Despite being discovered during the second Palomar–Leiden Trojan survey in 1973, Euryalos has not received a provisional survey designation prefixed with "T-2". The survey was a fruitful collaboration between the Palomar and Leiden observatories during the 1960s and 1970s. Gehrels used Palomar's Samuel Oschin telescope (also known as the 48-inch Schmidt Telescope), and shipped the photographic plates to Ingrid and Cornelis van Houten at Leiden Observatory where astrometry was carried out. The trio are credited with the discovery of several thousand asteroids.
Naming
This minor planet was named from Greek mythology after the warrior Euryalos, the leader of the Greek contingent from Argos during the Trojan War. The official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on 11 March 1990 ().
Physical characteristics
Euryalos is an assumed C-type asteroid, while the majority of larger Jupiter trojans are D-type asteroids.
Rotation period
In August 1995, a rotational lightcurve of Euryalos was obtained from photometric observations over four nights by Italian astronomer Stefano Mottola using the Bochum 0.61-metre Telescope at ESO's La Silla Observatory in Chile. Lightcurve analysis gave a well-defined rotation period of hours with a low brightness amplitude of 0.07 magnitude (), indicative of a spherical rather than elongated shape.
Diameter and albedo
According to the surveys carried out by the NEOWISE mission of NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer and the Japanese Akari satellite, Euryalos measures 45.52 and 53.89 kilometers in diameter and its surface has an albedo of 0.065 and 0.061, respectively. The Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link assumes a standard albedo for a carbonaceous asteroid of 0.057 and calculates a diameter of 48.48 kilometers based on an absolute magnitude of 10.3.
References
External links
Asteroid Lightcurve Database (LCDB), query form (info )
Dictionary of Minor Planet Names, Google books
Discovery Circumstances: Numbered Minor Planets (1)-(5000) – Minor Planet Center
Asteroid 4007 Euryalos at the Small Bodies Data Ferret
004007
Discoveries by Cornelis Johannes van Houten
Discoveries by Ingrid van Houten-Groeneveld
Discoveries by Tom Gehrels
Minor planets named from Greek mythology
Named minor planets
19730919 |
579495 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair%20QDOS | Sinclair QDOS | QDOS is the multitasking operating system found on the Sinclair QL personal computer and its clones. It was designed by Tony Tebby whilst working at Sinclair Research, as an in-house alternative to 68K/OS, which was later cancelled by Sinclair, but released by original authors GST Computer Systems. Its name is not regarded as an acronym and sometimes written as Qdos in official literature (see also the identically-pronounced word kudos).
QDOS was implemented in Motorola 68000 assembly language, and on the QL, resided in 48 KB of ROM, consisting of either three 16 KB EPROM chips or one 32 KB and one 16 KB ROM chip. These ROMs also held the SuperBASIC interpreter, an advanced variant of BASIC programming language with structured programming additions. This also acted as the QDOS command-line interpreter.
Facilities provided by QDOS included management of processes (or "jobs" in QDOS terminology), memory allocation, and an extensible "redirectable I/O system", providing a generic framework for filesystems and device drivers. Very basic screen window functionality was also provided. This, and several other features, were never fully implemented in the released versions of QDOS, but were improved in later extensions to the operating system produced by Tebby's own company, QJUMP.
Rewritten, enhanced versions of QDOS were also developed, including Laurence Reeves' Minerva and Tebby's SMS2 and SMSQ/E. The last is the most modern variant and is still being improved.
Versions
QDOS versions were identified by numerical version numbers. However, the QL firmware ROMs as a whole (including SuperBASIC) were given two- or three-letter alphabetic identifiers (returned by the SuperBASIC function VER$).
The following version of QDOS were released (dates are estimated first customer shipments):
0.08: the last pre-production version.
1.00: corresponded to the FB version QL ROMs, released in April 1984.
1.01: corresponded to the PM version ROMs. This was faster and had improved Microdrive support.
1.02: corresponded to the AH ROM version released in June 1984. This fixed many bugs and was the first ROM version to be produced in quantity.
1.03: included in ROM versions JM and TB; a minor bug-fix release issued in late 1984.
1.10: corresponded to the JS and JSU (US export version) ROMs, released in early 1985. This was the last version used in QLs manufactured for the UK market.
1.13: corresponding to the MGx series of ROM versions for European export markets. Included a significant number of bug fixes. The following localised versions of the MG firmware are known to exist:
MGE: Spanish
MGF: French
MGG: German
MGI: Italian
MGS: Swedish
The localised versions of QDOS were identified by the "." in the version number being replaced by the ROM version suffix letter used to identify the territory, e.g. the MGE ROMs contained QDOS version 1E13. All MG firmware versions shared the same bottom 32 KB ROM chip. Qdos 1.13 was also reported to be included in a Greek localised ROM version, known as ΣFP (marked on the ROMs as EFP).
Notes
References
Andrew Pennell (1985). The Sinclair QDOS Companion: a guide to the QL operating system. London: Sunshine Books.
Simon Goodwin. "Bugging the ROM", Sinclair QL World, August 1987
QL History FAQ: Firmware
External links
The official SMSQ/E site Source Code, binaries and documentation
QDOS Internals Dokuwiki established by Norman Dunbar
QL ROM versions list by Dilwyn Jones
QL/E The QL runtime Environment
Amiga implementation
Discontinued operating systems
Sinclair Research
Assembly language software
68k architecture
1984 software |
4426943 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/55th%20Operations%20Group | 55th Operations Group | The 55th Operations Group (55 OG) is a component of the 55th Wing, assigned to the United States Air Force Air Combat Command. The group is stationed at Offut Air Force Base, Nebraska.
During World War II the group was an Eighth Air Force fighter unit stationed in England. It claimed 316.5 air and 216.5 ground aircraft destroyed. It flew its last mission on 21 April 1945.
Overview
The 55th Operations Group, the U.S. Air Force's largest operations group, located at Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska, has operational control over 12 squadrons and two detachments worldwide. The group consists of approximately 3,200 personnel.
The group's mission is to provide worldwide reconnaissance, real-time intelligence, command and control, information warfare and combat support to U.S. leaders and commanders.
It employs 46 aircraft, including 13 models of seven different types. Mission responsibility includes the Air Force's most diverse flying operations supporting worldwide reconnaissance, command and control, Presidential support, and nuclear treaty verification.
Assigned Units
The 55th Operations Group uses the tail code OF for its aircraft
38th Reconnaissance Squadron (RC-135, TC-135)
45th Reconnaissance Squadron (OC-135, RC-135, TC-135, WC-135)
55th Intelligence Support Squadron
55th Operations Support Squadron
82d Reconnaissance Squadron (RC-135)
Operates from Kadena AB, Japan
95th Reconnaissance Squadron (RC-135)
Operates from: RAF Mildenhall, England
Operates from: Souda Bay, Crete
97th Intelligence Squadron
338th Combat Training Squadron
343d Reconnaissance Squadron (RC-135, TC-135)
390th Intelligence Squadron
488th Intelligence Squadron
History
For additional history and lineage, see 55th Wing
The 55th Operations Group traces its lineage to the 55th Pursuit (Interceptor) Group during World War II. During the war, the 55th Pursuit Group garnered two Distinguished Unit Citations. The group fostered 16 aces who were credited with 90 air-to-air victories.
After the war, Strategic Air Command activated and redesignated the 55th Fighter Group as the 55th Reconnaissance group at MacDill Field, Florida, operating the RB-17. The newly activated group's mission consisted of aerial photography, mapping, charting, and photo reconnaissance missions, some of which flew around the globe.
Activated after the end of the Cold War, the 55th Operations Group has maintained an unmatched operational tempo, supporting every US contingency worldwide.
World War II
The history of the Fightin' Fifty-Fifth began in January 1941, when the 55th Pursuit Group was activated at Hamilton Field, California. Training along the west coast, the group move to England, August- September 1943 and was assigned to VIII Fighter Command.
The 55th FG began operations with Lockheed P-38H Lightnings on 15 October 1943, and was the first to use these aircraft on long-range escort missions from the UK. The P-38H differed from earlier versions in being powered by 1425 hp Allison V-1710-89/91 engines.
The Lightnings' engines were troubled by the addition of alcohol used as an anti-knock compound in their fuel supply; a British war economy solution which caused problems with water condensation on the ground and fuel line icing at altitude. Another British attempt to correct fuel composition caused lead metal deposits to coat cylinders and foul plugs throughout the squadron. The -H series Lightnings did not have adequate cooling for extended high-power usage, as their engine development had outstripped the cooling capacity of the integral intercooler which ran through the wing's leading edge. Pilots were instructed to restrict their periods of highest engine power to defined time limits, but many did not. As a result of these various influences, the Group's Lightnings suffered a high rate of attrition. Nevertheless, 55FG P-38H pilots provided cover for missions against aircraft plants during Big Week in February 1944. Lt. Col. Jack Jenkins led the group on 3 March 1944, when they became the first Allied fighters to reach Berlin on an escort mission.
On 16 April 1944 the group moved to RAF Wormingford to accommodate the arrival of the 398th Bomb Group. The 55FG converted to North American P-51D Mustangs in July 1944, continuing their primary task of escorting B-17 and B-24 bombers that attacked such targets as industries and marshalling yards in Germany, and airfields and V-weapon sites in France. In July the group attacked gun emplacements during the Saint-Lô breakthrough in July 1944, and transportation facilities during the Battle of the Bulge, December 1944 – January 1945. The group also patrolled the air over the English Channel and bombed bridges in the Tours area during the invasion of the Continent in June 1944. The unit patrolled the Arnhem sector to support the airborne invasion of the Netherlands in September 1944 along with strafing trucks, locomotives, and oil depots near Wesel when the Allies crossed the Rhine in March 1945.
The unit received a Distinguished Unit Citation for eight missions to Germany between 3 and 13 September 1944 when the group not only destroyed enemy fighters in the air to protect the bombers it was escorting, but also descended to low levels, in spite of intense anti-aircraft fire, to strafe airfields and to destroy enemy aircraft on the ground. Received second DUC for operations on 19 February 1945 when the organization flew a sweep over Germany to hit railway tracks, locomotives, oil cars, goods wagons, troop cars, buildings, and military vehicles. The 55th Flew last combat mission on 21 April 1945.
The 55th Fighter Group moved to AAF Station Kaufbeuren Germany on 22 July 1945 as part of the occupation forces. It was assigned to United States Air Forces in Europe. While on occupation duty, the group was one of the units to receive the first U.S. operational jet fighter, the Lockheed P-80B Shooting Star in July 1946. However, the Group continued to fly P-51s and according to. one source, A-26s. On 29 April, the unit moved to AAF Station Giebelstadt, Germany, and on 20 August 1946, the unit was inactivated, the resources being transferred to the 31st Fighter Group.
With more than 600 combat missions, the group destroyed over 400 enemy aircraft while damaging more than 100. The 55th, inactivated in August 1946, had 16 aces credited with 90 victories.
Postwar era
On 24 February 1947, Strategic Air Command activated and redesignated the 55th Fighter Group as the 55th Reconnaissance group at MacDill Field, Florida, operating the RB-17. The newly activated group's mission consisted of aerial photography, mapping, charting, and photo reconnaissance missions, some of which flew around the globe. RB-17s were specifically used by the 55th RG to probe the borders of the Soviet Union, who had by then begun to emerge as a potential threat to the Western Powers. Little was known about the air defence capability of the Soviet Union at this time and the most effective way of determining their capability was to probe the borders and see whether they would respond. Gradually the RB-17s and other aircraft mapped the perimeter of the Soviet Air Defences from the Baltic to the Sea of Okhotsk, north of Japan.
The group then converted to RB-29s and transferred to Topeka (later Forbes) AFB, Kansas, in 1948, but was again inactivated in October 1949. On 1 November 1950, the 55th Strategic reconnaissance group was activated as a "paper organization" with the tactical squadrons attached directly to the 55th Strategic Reconnaissance wing. The wing was bestowed with the awards and honors of the 55th Reconnaissance Group and moved to Ramey AFB, Puerto Rico. In 1952 the group was again inactivated on 16 June 1952 as the Air Force reorganized its wings into the tri-deputate system.
Modern era
The group was reactivated in on 29 August 1991 as the 55th Operations Group and assigned to the 55th Wing. It was activated on 1 September 1991. The 55th OG was the operational component of the wing under the new "Objective Wing" concept adapted by the Air Force, and was bestowed the history and honors of the 55th 55 Strategic Reconnaissance Group. The 55th Operations Group activated with one of the largest and most diverse missions in the USAF.
The 24th Reconnaissance Squadron at Eareckson AFB, Shemya, Alaska, joined the group with its Cobra Eye and Cobra Ball missions.
On 1 April 1993, the 55th OG Wing took operational control of the 11th Airlift Flight. The 11 ALF flew operational airlift missions in support of the commander of the United States Strategic Command and transported high-ranking military, Department of Defense officials, and members of Congress. This unit has since inactivated and the mission has reverted to Air Mobility Command.
The 2 ACCS also inactivated in 1994 with its mission transferring to the 7th Airborne Command and Control Squadron. Likewise, the 24 RS inactivated in 1994 and its mission transferred to the newly activated 45th Reconnaissance Squadron. Also in 1994, the 1 ACCS National Emergency Airborne Command Post was renamed the National Airborne Operations Center to reflect the addition of a support role to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
In October 1998, the 55th OG transferred control of the Boeing EC-135 Looking Glass mission to the United States Navy's E-6B Mercury TACAMO aircraft and the 7th Airborne Command and Control Squadron, which flew the Looking Glass aircraft, inactivated. In September 1999, the 338th Combat Training Squadron was activated and assigned to the 55th Operations Group.
Additionally, in March 2000, the group received its 16 RIVET JOINT aircraft. The group conducts operations from Offutt AFB, Nebraska; Kadena AB, Japan; RAF Mildenhall, United Kingdom; Souda Bay Naval Support Activity, Crete; and other locations around the world. The 55th OG is the largest Operations Group in Air Combat Command and the second largest in the Air Force.
Since the end of the Cold War, the 55th Operations Group has maintained an unmatched operational tempo, supporting every US contingency worldwide. These missions have included but were not limited to reconnaissance, command and control, and airlift missions supporting Operations SOUTHERN WATCH, PROVIDE COMFORT, VIGILANT WARRIOR (Southwest Asia), PROVIDE PROMISE, DENY FLIGHT (Bosnia-Herzegovina), SUPPORT DEMOCRACY, UPHOLD DEMOCRACY (Haiti), and TIGER RESCUE (Yemen). Additionally, its squadrons have been called upon to support Distinguished Visitor airlift for the National Command Authorities, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and numerous exercises.
Beginning in January 2011, the unit has hosted training for flight and maintenance crews from No. 51 Squadron RAF in preparation for the delivery of the squadron's RC-135W Airseeker fleet.
On 7 October 2016, the E-4Bs under the 55th Wing moved to the USAF 8th Air Force.
Lineage
Established as 55th Pursuit Group (Interceptor) on 20 November 1940
Activated on 15 January 1941
Redesignated: 55th Pursuit Group (Interceptor) (Twin Engine) on 31 January 1942
Redesignated: 55th Fighter Group (Twin Engine) on 15 May 1942
Redesignated: 55th Fighter Group, Twin Engine, on 1 March 1944
Redesignated: 55th Fighter Group, c. 19 July 1944
Inactivated on 20 August 1946, aircraft, personnel and equipment being redesignated as 31st Fighter Group.
Redesignated 55th Reconnaissance Group (Very Long Range) (Mapping) on 5 February 1947
Activated on 24 February 1947
Redesignated 55th Strategic Reconnaissance Group on 29 June 1948
Inactivated on 14 October 1949
Redesignated 55th Strategic Reconnaissance Group, Medium, on 27 October 1950
Activated on 1 November 1950
Inactivated on 16 June 1952
Redesignated 55th Operations Group on 29 August 1991
Activated on 1 September 1991.
Assignments
Northwest Air District (later, 2 Air Force), 15 January 1941
II Interceptor Command, 2 October 1941
4 Air Force, 5 January 1942
4 Interceptor (later, IV Interceptor; IV Fighter) Command, 26 January 1942
Attached to Seattle Air Defense Wing, 28 October 1942 – 11 April 1943
Seattle Air Defense Wing, 12 April 1943
Eighth Air Force, c. 14 September 1943
VIII Fighter Command, 15 September 1943
66th Fighter Wing, 5 October 1943
Attached to: 3d Bombardment (later Air) Division, 15 September 1944 – 20 July 1945
XXIX Tactical Air Command, 20 July 1945
70th Fighter Wing, 6 August 1945 – 20 August 1946
311th Reconnaissance Wing (later, 311 Air Division, Reconnaissance), 24 February 1947
55th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing, 19 July 1948 – 14 October 1949
55th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing, 1 November 1950 – 16 June 1952
55th Wing, 1 September 1991 – present
Components
1st Airborne Command and Control Squadron: 1 September 1991 – 1 October 2016
2d Airborne Command and Control Squadron: 1 September 1991 – 19 July 1994
7th Airborne Command and Control Squadron: 19 July 1994 – 28 October 1998
24th Reconnaissance Squadron: 7 July 1992 – 30 June 1994
37th Pursuit (later, 37th Fighter): 15 January 1941 – 1 March 1943
38th Pursuit (later, 38th Fighter; 38th Reconnaissance; 38 Strategic Reconnaissance; 38 Reconnaissance): 15 January 1941 – 20 August 1946; 1 June – 14 October 1949; 1 November 1950 – 16 June 1952 (detached 1 November 1950 – 6 January 1951); 1 September 1991 – present
41st Electronic Combat Squadron: 1 October 2002 – 3 February 2003
43d Electronic Combat Squadron: 1 October 2002 – 3 February 2003
45th Reconnaissance Squadron: 1 July 1994 – present
54th Pursuit (later, 54th Fighter): 15 January 1941 – 11 September 1942 (Detached 31 May – 11 September 1941)
55th Intelligence Support Squadron: 22 July 2010 – present
82d Reconnaissance Squadron: 1 July 1992 – present
95th Reconnaissance Squadron: 1 July 1994 – present
338th Fighter (later, 338th Reconnaissance; 338th Strategic Reconnaissance; 338th Combat Training): 12 September 1942 – 20 August 1946; 1 June – 14 October 1949; 1 November 1950 – 16 June 1952 (detached 1 November – 1 December 1950); 20 September 1999 – present
343d Fighter (later, 343d Reconnaissance; 343d Strategic Reconnaissance; 343d Reconnaissance): 1 February 1943 – 20 August 1946; 24 February 1947 – 14 October 1949; 1 November 1950 – 16 June 1952 (detached 1 November 1950 – 3 January 1951); 1 September 1991 – present
922d Reconnaissance Squadron: 31 March – 1 June 1992; 1 July 1992 – 30 June 1994.
Stations
Hamilton Field, California, 15 January 1941
Portland Army Air Base, Oregon, 21 May 1941
Paine Field, Washington, 10 February 1942
McChord Field, Washington, 22 July 1942
Camp Kilmer, New Jersey, 28 August – 4 September 1943
RAF Nuthampstead (AAF-131), England, 14 September 1943
RAF Wormingford (AAF-159), England, 16 April 1944
AAF Station Kaufbeuren, Germany, 22 July 1945
AAF Station Giebelstadt, Germany, 29 April – 20 August 1946
MacDill Field (later, MacDill AFB), Florida, 24 February 1947
Topeka (later, Forbes) AFB, Kansas, 30 June 1948 – 14 October 1949
Ramey AFB, Puerto Rico, 1 November 1950 – 16 June 1952
Offutt AFB, Nebraska, 1 September 1991 – present
Aircraft
P-36 Hawk, 1941–1942
P-38 Lightning, 1941–1944
P-40 Warhawk, 1941–1942
P-43 Lancer, 1941–1942
P-51 Mustang, 1944–1946
P-80 Shooting Star, 1946
F-2 Expeditor, 1947–1949
F-9 Flying Fortress, 1947–1948
RC-54 Skymaster, 1948
B/RB-17 Flying Fortress, 1947–1949
B/RB-29 Superfortress, 1948–1949; 1950–1951
RB-50 Superfortress, 1950–1952
Boeing E-4, 1991–present
C-135 Stratolifter, 1991–1994
EC-135, 1991–1998
KC-135 Stratotanker, 1991–present
C-135, 1991–1994
RC-135, 1991–present
TC-135, 1991–present
WC-135, 1992–present
T-38 Talon, 1992–1995
C-21, 1993–1997
OC-135, 1994–present
EC-130, 2002–2003
Notes
References
Air Force Historical Research Agency
Maurer, Maurer, Air Force Combat Units of World War II, Office of Air Force history (1961).
Maurer, Maurer, Combat Squadrons of the Air Force, World War II, Office of Air Force history (1982).
usaaf.com 55th Fighter Group
littlefriends.co.uk 55th Fighter Group
USAF Aircraft Serial Number Search
External links
055
Military units and formations in Nebraska |
35987911 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The%20Song%20of%20Achilles | The Song of Achilles | The Song of Achilles is a 2011 novel by American writer Madeline Miller. Set during the Greek Heroic Age, it is an adaptation of Homer's Iliad as told from the perspective of Patroclus. The novel follows Patroclus' relationship with Achilles, from their initial meeting to their exploits during the Trojan War, with particular focus on their romantic relationship. The Song of Achilles was awarded the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2012.
Plot
The book is narrated by Patroclus, the son of King Menoetius. He is presented as a potential suitor to Helen. He is then obliged to take a blood oath in defense of her marriage to Menelaus. After Patroclus accidentally kills the son of one of his father's nobles, he is exiled to Phthia where he meets Achilles, the son of Phthia's king Peleus and the sea nymph Thetis. They become close friends and Patroclus develops feelings for Achilles. Convinced that a mortal of low status is an unsuitable companion for her son, Thetis attempts to separate the pair by sending Achilles to train under Chiron for two years, though Patroclus ultimately joins Achilles in his training. As their relationship grows, the Mycenaean king Agamemnon calls on the various Achaeans to join his military campaign against Troy, whose prince Paris has kidnapped his brother Menelaus' wife Helen. As a prophecy foretells that Achilles will die in Troy after he kills the Trojan prince Hector, Thetis hides Achilles on Skyros in the guise of a woman in the court of King Lycomedes; she forces him to marry Lycomedes' daughter Deidamia, who later bears Achilles' son Neoptolemus.
Patroclus follows Achilles to Skyros, where they live until they are discovered by Odysseus and Diomedes. Patroclus is obligated to join the war in Troy as a result of his blood oath, while Achilles joins after vowing that he will never fight Hector in order to avoid his prophesied death. Upon joining the Achaean forces, tensions escalate between Achilles and Agamemnon: first when Agamemnon sacrifices his daughter Iphigenia in order to appease Artemis, and later when Achilles takes the Trojan woman Briseis as a war prize to save her from Agamemnon. After nine years, Chryseis is claimed by Agamemnon. Soon after her father Chryses tries to pay for her release which Agamemnon refuses. Chryses appeals to Apollo, who unleashes a plague that decimates the Achaeans; when Agamemnon refuses Achilles' demand to return Chryseis, he doubles down by blaming Achilles for the war's length, by his unwillingness to face and kill Hector. As punishment, he orders that Briseis be taken from Achilles and brought to him, which offends Achilles, who vows to remove himself and his army from the fight until this slight at his honor is repaired.
To precipitate the Greeks need for Achilles, Thetis convinces Zeus to tip the war in favor of the Trojans so that the Achaeans will regret having antagonized Achilles, and the Achaeans suffer significant losses. Tensions flare between Achilles and Patroclus when Achilles refuses to accept a private arrangement where Briseis is returned to him, along with valuable gifts. He stubbornly demands a public apology, refusing to come to the aid of the Greeks who are on the verge of defeat.
Patroclus, who has grown close to the soldiers as a field nurse and sympathizes with their losses, attempts and fails to convince Achilles to rejoin the battle. Instead, Patroclus impersonates Achilles by donning his armor and leads his men into battle; the offensive forces a Trojan retreat. During the battle, Apollo causes Patroclus to reveal himself. Patroclus is killed by Hector and his body is brought to Achilles.
Achilles grieves along with Briseis and demands Patroclus' ashes be mixed with his own when he dies. Having lost his will to live, Achilles returns to battle and kills Hector to avenge Patroclus. After he is in turn killed by Paris, his ashes are mixed with Patroclus', per his request, and are buried. Neoptolemus comes to take Achilles' place and has Briseis killed when she refuses his advances and reveals Achilles and Patroclus' relationship. The Achaeans erect a tomb for Achilles and Patroclus, but do not inscribe Patroclus' name at the behest of Neoptolemus. Patroclus' shade is thus unable to pass into the underworld and is bound to the tomb. After the war, Thetis returns and grieves for Achilles. She and Patroclus share memories, and Thetis relents, writing Patroclus' name upon the tomb. Patroclus is now able to pass into the afterlife where he and Achilles reunite.
Production and release
Miller developed an interest in the legend of Achilles after her mother read the Iliad to her as a child. She found that she was particularly intrigued by Patroclus, a minor character who ultimately has a significant impact on the outcome of the Trojan War. Drawing from this source material, Miller sought to write a story about who Patroclus was, and what he meant to Achilles. In addition to the Iliad, Miller drew inspiration from the writings of Ovid, Virgil, Sophocles, Apollodorus, Euripides, and Aeschylus, as well as accounts of Achilles' childhood friendship with Patroclus and his martial training. On her decision to depict Achilles and Patroclus as lovers, Miller explained:
The Song of Achilles took Miller ten years to write; after discarding a completed manuscript five years into her writing, she started again from scratch, struggling to perfect the voice of her narrator. The Song of Achilles was published as Miller's debut novel on September 20, 2011, by Ecco Press, an imprint of HarperCollins.
Critical reception
Reviewing The Song of Achilles for The Guardian, Natalie Haynes commended the novel as "more poetic than almost any translation of Homer" and "a deeply affecting version of the Achilles story." Mary Doria Russell similarly praises the novel in her review for The Washington Post, favorably citing its "prose as clean and spare as the driving poetry of Homer." In his review for The New York Times, Daniel Mendelsohn criticized the book's structure, and in particular, its tone. He compares the book unfavorably to young adult literature, describing The Song of Achilles as "a book that has the head of a young adult novel, the body of the Iliad and the hindquarters of Barbara Cartland." He also compared the novel's prose to SparkNotes and softcore pornography.
In 2012, The Song of Achilles was awarded the 17th annual Orange Prize for Fiction. Carolyn Kellogg of the Los Angeles Times wrote that it was a surprise win, with Miller being "the dark horse in this year's race". Joanna Trollope, chair of the judges, commented, "This is a more than worthy winner—original, passionate, inventive and uplifting. Homer would be proud of her." The novel was also shortlisted for the 2013 Stonewall Book Award and the 2013 Chautauqua Prize.
In 2021, the book's sales received a massive boost after it was featured in a TikTok video, cited by The New York Times as an example of how viral social media videos increasingly drive sales of literature.
References
2011 American novels
2011 fantasy novels
2010s LGBT novels
Novels set during the Trojan War
Novels set in ancient Greece
Novels based on the Iliad
Cultural depictions of Achilles
American LGBT novels
American romance novels
American fantasy novels
Ecco Press books
Gay male romance novels
Romantic fantasy novels
LGBT speculative fiction novels
2011 debut novels
Debut fantasy novels
Agamemnon |
3991670 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beehive%20Forum | Beehive Forum | Beehive Forum is a free and open-source forum system using the PHP scripting language and MySQL database software.
The main difference between Beehive and most other forum software is its frame-based interface which lists discussion titles on the left and displays their contents on the right.
Features
Other features which differentiate Beehive from most forums include:
Targeted replies to specific users and/or posts.
Safe HTML posting (malicious code is stripped out), rather than BBCode, via WYSIWYG editor, helper toolbar, or manual typing.
A relationship system, allowing users to ignore users and/or signatures that they dislike.
Powerful forum-wide and per-user word filtering, including a regular expression option.
A flexible polling system, allowing public or private ballot, grouped answers, and different result modes.
A built-in "light mode" that allows basic forum access from PDAs and web-enabled mobilephones.
Beehive is used by the popular UK technology website The Inquirer on the Hermits Cave Message Board.
Security and vulnerabilities
In May 2007, Beehive Forum was selected as one of the most secure forums from a selection of 10 open-source software tested by Dragos Lungu Dot Com.
On 28 November 2007, Nick Bennet and Robert Brown of Symantec Corporation discovered a security flaw related to Beehive's database input handling. The vulnerability could "allow a remote user to execute SQL injection attacks". The flaw affected all versions of the software up to 0.7.1. The Beehive Forum team responded very rapidly with a fix released, in the form of version 0.8 of the software, later that day.
Reviews
Review of Beehive 0.5 by ExtremeTech
Review of Beehive 0.6.3 by Forum Software Reviews
See also
Comparison of Internet forum software
References
External links
Beehive Forum Help Wiki by ManicGeek Tech Portal
Beehive feature list on ForumMatrix.org comparison website
Free Internet forum software
Free software programmed in PHP
Free groupware |
22591 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle%20Corporation | Oracle Corporation | Oracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology corporation headquartered in Austin, Texas. In 2020, Oracle was the second-largest software company in the world by revenue and market capitalization. The company sells database software and technology (particularly its own brands), cloud engineered systems, and enterprise software products, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, human capital management (HCM) software, customer relationship management (CRM) software (also known as customer experience), enterprise performance management (EPM) software, and supply chain management (SCM) software.
History
Larry Ellison co-founded Oracle Corporation in 1977 with Bob Miner and Ed Oates under the name Software Development Laboratories (SDL). Ellison took inspiration from the 1970 paper written by Edgar F. Codd on relational database management systems (RDBMS) named "A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks." He heard about the IBM System R database from an article in the IBM Research Journal provided by Oates. Ellison wanted to make Oracle's product compatible with System R, but failed to do so as IBM kept the error codes for their DBMS a secret. SDL changed its name to Relational Software, Inc (RSI) in 1979, then again to Oracle Systems Corporation in 1983, to align itself more closely with its flagship product Oracle Database. The name also drew from the 1977 CIA project codename, which was also Oracle's first customer. At this stage Bob Miner served as the company's senior programmer. On March 12, 1986, the company had its initial public offering.
In 1995, Oracle Systems Corporation changed its name to Oracle Corporation, officially named Oracle, but is sometimes referred to as Oracle Corporation, the name of the holding company. Part of Oracle Corporation's early success arose from using the C programming language to implement its products. This eased porting to different operating systems most of which support C.
In 2005 Oracle acquired PeopleSoft, an ERP company, and in 2006 Siebel, a CRM company. In 2008 Oracle acquired BEA Systems an enterprise infrastructure software company and in 2010 Sun Microsystems, an Information Technology company.
On December 20, 2021, Oracle announced the acquisition of Cerner, a health information technology company. The next day, on December 21, Oracle made public the acquisition of Federos, an AI and automation tools company for network performance.
Finances
Oracle ranked No. 82 in the 2018 Fortune 500 list of the largest United States corporations by total revenue. According to Bloomberg, Oracle's CEO-to-employee pay ratio is 1,205:1. The CEO's compensation in 2017 was $108,295,023. Oracle is one of the approved employers of ACCA and the median employee compensation rate was $89,887.
Carbon footprint
Oracle reported total carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) emissions (direct + indirect) for the twelve months ending December 31, 2020 at 428 kilotonnes (+63/+17% year over year) and plans to reduce emissions 26% by 2025 from a 2015 base year.
Products and services
Oracle designs, manufactures, and sells both software and hardware products and offers services that complement them (such as financing, training, consulting, and hosting services). Many of the products have been added to Oracle's portfolio through acquisitions.
Software
Oracle's E-delivery service (Oracle Software Delivery Cloud) provides generic downloadable Oracle software and documentation.
Databases
Oracle Database
Release 10: In 2004, Oracle Corporation shipped release 10g (g standing for "grid") as the then latest version of Oracle Database. (Oracle Application Server 10g using Java EE integrated with the server part of that version of the database, making it possible to deploy web-technology applications. The application server was the first middle-tier software designed for grid computing. The interrelationship between Oracle 10g and Java allowed developers to set up stored procedures written in the Java language, as well as, those written in the traditional Oracle database programming language, PL/SQL.)
Release 11: Release 11g became available in 2007. Oracle Corporation released Oracle Database 11g Release 2 in September 2009. This version was available in four commercial editions—Enterprise Edition, Standard Edition, Standard Edition One, and Personal Edition—and in one free edition—the Express Edition. The licensing of these editions shows various restrictions and obligations that were called complex by licensing expert Freirich Florea. The Enterprise Edition (DB EE), the most expensive of the Database Editions, has the fewest restrictions—but nevertheless has complex licensing. Oracle Corporation constrains the Standard Edition (DB SE) and Standard Edition One (SE1) with more licensing restrictions, in accordance with their lower price.
Release 12: Release 12c (c standing for "cloud") became available on July 1, 2013.
Oracle Corporation has acquired and developed the following additional database technologies:
Berkeley DB, which offers embedded database processing
Oracle Rdb, a relational database system running on OpenVMS platforms. Oracle acquired Rdb in 1994 from Digital Equipment Corporation. Oracle has since made many enhancements to this product and development continues .
TimesTen, which features in-memory database operations
Oracle Essbase, which continues the Hyperion Essbase tradition of multi-dimensional database management
MySQL, a relational database management system licensed under the GNU General Public License, initially developed by MySQL AB
Oracle NoSQL Database, a scalable, distributed key-value NoSQL database
Middleware
Oracle Fusion Middleware is a family of middleware software products, including (for instance) application server, system integration, business process management (BPM), user interaction, content management, identity management and business intelligence (BI) products.
Oracle Secure Enterprise Search
Oracle Secure Enterprise Search (SES), Oracle's enterprise-search offering, gives users the ability to search for content across multiple locations, including websites, XML files, file servers, content management systems, enterprise resource planning systems, customer relationship management systems, business intelligence systems, and databases.
Oracle Beehive
Released in 2008, the Oracle Beehive collaboration software provides team workspaces (including wikis, team calendaring and file sharing), email, calendar, instant messaging, and conferencing on a single platform. Customers can use Beehive as licensed software or as software as a service ("SaaS").
Applications
Following a number of acquisitions beginning in 2003, especially in the area of applications, Oracle Corporation maintains a number of product lines:
Oracle E-Business Suite
PeopleSoft Enterprise
Siebel
JD Edwards
JD Edwards EnterpriseOne
JD Edwards World
Merchandise Operations Management (Formerly Retek)
Planning & Optimisation
Store Operations (Formerly 360Commerce)
Development of applications commonly takes place in Java (using Oracle JDeveloper) or through PL/SQL (using, for example, Oracle Forms and Oracle Reports/BIPublisher). Oracle Corporation has started a drive toward "wizard"-driven environments with a view to enabling non-programmers to produce simple data-driven applications.
Third-party applications
Oracle Corporation works with "Oracle Certified Partners" to enhance its overall product marketing. The variety of applications from third-party vendors includes database applications for archiving, splitting and control, ERP and CRM systems, as well as more niche and focused products providing a range of commercial functions in areas like human resources, financial control and governance, risk management, and compliance (GRC). Vendors include Hewlett-Packard, Creoal Consulting, UC4 Software, Motus, and Knoa Software.
Enterprise management
Oracle Enterprise Manager (OEM) provides web-based monitoring and management tools for Oracle products (and for some third-party software), including database management, middleware management, application management, hardware and virtualization management and cloud management.
The Primavera products of Oracle's Construction & Engineering Global Business Unit (CEGBU) consist of project-management software.
Development software
Oracle Corporation's tools for developing applications include (among others):
Oracle Designer – a CASE tool which integrates with Oracle Developer Suite
Oracle Developer – which consists of Oracle Forms, Oracle Discoverer and Oracle Reports
Oracle JDeveloper, a freeware IDE
NetBeans, a Java-based software-development platform
Oracle Application Express – also known as APEX; for web-oriented development
Oracle SQL Developer, an integrated development environment for working with SQL-based databases
Oracle SQL*Plus Worksheet, a component of Oracle Enterprise Manager (OEM)
OEPE, Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse
Open Java Development Kit
Oracle Developer Studio – a software generation system for the development of C, C++, Fortran, and Java software
Many external and third-party tools make the Oracle database administrator's tasks easier.
File systems
ZFS combines file-system and logical volume management functionality.
BtrFS "B-tree File-System" is meant to be an improvement over the existing Linux ext4 filesystem, and offer features approaching those of ZFS.
Operating systems
Oracle Corporation develops and supports two operating systems: Oracle Solaris and Oracle Linux.
Hardware
The Sun hardware range acquired by Oracle Corporation's purchase of Sun Microsystems
Oracle SPARC T-series servers and M-series mainframes developed and released after Sun acquisition
Engineered systems: pre-engineered and pre-assembled hardware/software bundles for enterprise use
Exadata Database Machine – hardware/software integrated storage
Exalogic Elastic Cloud – hardware/software integrated application server
Exalytics In-Memory Machine – hardware/software integrated in-memory analytics server
Oracle Database Appliance
Big Data Appliance – integrated map-reduce/big data solution
SPARC SuperCluster T4-4 – a general purpose engineered system
Services
Oracle Cloud
Oracle Cloud is a cloud computing service offered by Oracle Corporation providing servers, storage, network, applications and services through a global network of Oracle Corporation managed data centers. The company allows these services to be provisioned on demand over the Internet.
Oracle Cloud provides Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), Software as a Service (SaaS) and Data as a Service (DaaS). These services are used to build, deploy, integrate and extend applications in the cloud. This platform supports open standards (SQL, HTML5, REST, etc.) open-source solutions (Kubernetes, Hadoop, Kafka, etc.) and a variety of programming languages, databases, tools and frameworks including Oracle-specific, free and third-party software and systems.
Software as a Service (SaaS)
Enterprise applications: SCM, EPM, HCM, ERP and CX SaaS offerings
Oracle sells a SaaS suite of Oracle Fusion Applications business applications.
NetSuite, acquired by Oracle in 2016, provides cloud ERP, CRM, supply chain and e-commerce software to small and medium-sized businesses. It is regarded as the first fully cloud company in the world and is an industry leader in its own right
Platform as a Service (PaaS)
Oracle has branded its Platform as a Service as Oracle Cloud Platform. Oracle Cloud Platform include Data Management, Application Development, Integration, Content and Experience, Business Analytics, Management and Security.
Platform services on which to build and deploy applications or extend SaaS applications: database, Java application server, mobile, business analytics, integration, process, big data, Internet of Things, Node.js etc.
Data as a Service (DaaS)
Oracle Data Cloud is composed of several acquisitions including AddThis, BlueKai, Crosswise, Datalogix, Grapeshot, and Moat.
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
Oracle has branded its Infrastructure as a Service as Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). Oracle Cloud Infrastructure offerings include the following services.
Compute Service
Storage Service
Network Service
On July 28, 2016, Oracle bought NetSuite, the first cloud company, for $9.3 billion. On May 16, 2018, Oracle announced that it had acquired DataScience.com, a privately held cloud workspace platform for data science projects and workloads.
Other services
Oracle Consulting – technical and business expert services
Oracle Financing
Oracle Marketing & Support
Product support: Oracle Corporation identifies its customers and their support entitlements using CSI (Customer Support Identifier) codes. Registered customers can submit Service Requests (SRs)—usually via the web-accessible My Oracle Support (MOS), a re-incarnation of Oracle Metalink with web access administered by a site Customer User Administrator (CUA).
Critical Patch Updates: since 2005 Oracle Corporation has grouped collections of patches and security fixes for its products each quarter into a "Critical Patch Update" (CPU), released each January, April, July and October.
Oracle Configuration Manager (OCM, previously Customer Configuration repository or CCR) gathers and uploads details of the configuration of Oracle software.
Oracle Auto Service Request (ASR) automatically creates Service Requests for specific hardware faults on qualified Oracle server, storage, Oracle Exadata, and Oracle Exalogic products.
My Oracle Support Community (MOSC)
Oracle University (training in Oracle products)
Oracle Certification Program
NetSuite Social Impact program assists nonprofits with moving operations to the cloud. In October 2018, Oracle announced the expansion of the program to include product donation, pro bono expansion and online community building.
As of September 13, 2020, Oracle acquired a trade deal with the ByteDance owned social video platform TikTok. This was the result of an executive order issued by U.S. president Donald Trump stating that TikTok must be sold to a U.S. company by September 15, 2020. The exact nature of the agreement is still unknown, but it implies that Oracle will become TikTok's technology partner and assume responsibility for the company's U.S. user data. The agreement is still pending approval from regulatory government bodies.
Marketing
Sales practices
In 1990, Oracle laid off 10% (about 400 people) of its work force because of accounting errors. This crisis came about because of Oracle's "up-front" marketing strategy, in which sales people urged potential customers to buy the largest possible amount of software all at once. The sales people then booked the value of future license sales in the current quarter, thereby increasing their bonuses. This became a problem when the future sales subsequently failed to materialize. Oracle eventually had to restate its earnings twice, and also settled (out of court) class-action lawsuits arising from its having overstated its earnings. Ellison stated in 1992 that Oracle had made "an incredible business mistake".
Competition
In 1994, Informix overtook Sybase and became Oracle's most important rival. The intense war between Informix CEO Phil White and Ellison made front-page news in Silicon Valley for three years. Informix claimed that Oracle had hired away Informix engineers to disclose important trade secrets about an upcoming product. Informix finally dropped its lawsuit against Oracle in 1997. In November 2005, a book detailing the war between Oracle and Informix was published, titled The Real Story of Informix Software and Phil White. It gave a detailed chronology of the battle of Informix against Oracle, and how Informix Software's CEO Phil White landed in jail because of his obsession with overtaking Ellison.
Once it had overcome Informix and Sybase, Oracle Corporation enjoyed years of dominance in the database market until use of Microsoft SQL Server became widespread in the late 1990s and IBM acquired Informix Software in 2001 (to complement its DB2 database). Oracle competes for new database licenses on UNIX, GNU, and Windows operating systems primarily against IBM's DB2 and Microsoft SQL Server. IBM's DB2 dominates the mainframe database market.
In 2004, Oracle's sales grew at a rate of 14.5% to $6.2 billion, giving it 41.3% and the top share of the relational-database market (InformationWeek – March 2005), with market share estimated at up to 44.6% in 2005 by some sources.
Oracle Corporation's main competitors in the database arena remain IBM DB2 and Microsoft SQL Server, and to a lesser extent Sybase and Teradata, with free databases such as PostgreSQL and MySQL also having a significant share of the market. EnterpriseDB, based on PostgreSQL, has made inroads by proclaiming that its product delivers Oracle compatibility features at a much lower price-point.
In the software-applications market, Oracle Corporation primarily competes against SAP. On March 22, 2007, Oracle sued SAP, accusing them of fraud and unfair competition.
In the market for business intelligence software, many other software companies—small and large—have successfully competed in quality with Oracle and SAP products. Business intelligence vendors can be categorized into the "big four" consolidated BI firms such as Oracle, who has entered BI market through a recent trend of acquisitions (including Hyperion Solutions), and the independent "pure play" vendors such as MicroStrategy, Actuate, and SAS.
Oracle Financials was ranked in the Top 20 Most Popular Accounting Software Infographic by Capterra in 2014, beating out SAP and a number of their other competitors.
Oracle and SAP
From 1988, Oracle Corporation and the German company SAP AG had a decade-long history of cooperation, beginning with the integration of SAP's R/3 enterprise application suite with Oracle's relational database products. Despite the SAP partnership with Microsoft, and the increasing integration of SAP applications with Microsoft products (such as Microsoft SQL Server, a competitor to Oracle Database), Oracle and SAP continue their cooperation. According to Oracle Corporation, the majority of SAP's customers use Oracle databases.
In 2004, Oracle began to increase its interest in the enterprise-applications market (in 1989, Oracle had already released Oracle Financials). A series of acquisitions by Oracle Corporation began, most notably with those of PeopleSoft, Siebel Systems and Hyperion.
SAP recognized that Oracle had started to become a competitor in a markets where SAP had the leadership, and saw an opportunity to lure in customers from those companies that Oracle Corporation had acquired. SAP would offer those customers special discounts on the licenses for its enterprise applications.
Oracle Corporation would resort to a similar strategy, by advising SAP customers to get "OFF SAP" (a play on the words of the acronym for its middleware platform "Oracle Fusion for SAP"),
and also by providing special discounts on licenses and services to SAP customers who chose Oracle Corporation products.
Oracle and SAP (the latter through its recently acquired subsidiary TomorrowNow) compete in the third-party enterprise software maintenance and support market. On March 22, 2007, Oracle filed a lawsuit against SAP. In Oracle Corporation v. SAP AG Oracle alleged that TomorrowNow, which provides discount support for legacy Oracle product lines, used the accounts of former Oracle customers to systematically download patches and support documents from Oracle's website and to appropriate them for SAP's use.
Some analysts have suggested the suit could form part of a strategy by Oracle Corporation to decrease competition with SAP in the market for third-party enterprise software maintenance and support.
On July 3, 2007, SAP admitted that TomorrowNow employees had made "inappropriate downloads" from the Oracle support website. However, it claims that SAP personnel and SAP customers had no access to Oracle intellectual property via TomorrowNow. SAP's CEO Henning Kagermann stated that "Even a single inappropriate download is unacceptable from my perspective. We regret very much that this occurred." Additionally, SAP announced that it had "instituted changes" in TomorrowNow's operational oversight.
On November 23, 2010, a U.S. district court jury in Oakland, California found that SAP AG must pay Oracle Corp $1.3 billion for copyright infringement, awarding damages that could be the largest-ever for copyright infringement. While admitting liability, SAP estimated the damages at no more than $40 million, while Oracle claimed that they are at least $1.65 billion. The awarded amount is one of the 10 or 20 largest jury verdicts in U.S. legal history. SAP said they were disappointed by the verdict and might appeal. On September 1, 2011, a federal judge overturned the judgment and offered a reduced amount or a new trial, calling Oracle's original award "grossly" excessive. Oracle chose a new trial.
On August 3, 2012, SAP and Oracle agreed on a judgment for $306 million in damages, pending approval from the U.S. district court judge, “to save time and expense of [a] new trial". After the accord has been approved, Oracle can ask a federal appeals court to reinstate the earlier jury verdict. In addition to the damages payment, SAP has already paid Oracle $120 million for its legal fees.
Slogans
"Information driven"
For the Oracle Database: "Can't break it, can't break in" and "Unbreakable"
Enabling the Information Age
Enabling the Information Age Through Network Computing"
: "The Information Company"
As of 2010: "Software. Hardware. Complete."
As of late 2010: "Hardware and Software, Engineered to Work Together"
As of mid 2015: "Integrated Cloud Applications and Platform Services"
Media
Oracle Corporation produces and distributes the "Oracle ClearView" series of videos as part of its marketing mix.
Controversies
Trashgate
In 2000, Oracle attracted attention from the computer industry and the press after hiring private investigators to dig through the trash of organizations involved in an antitrust trial involving Microsoft. The Chairman of Oracle Corporation, Larry Ellison, staunchly defended his company's hiring of an East Coast detective agency to investigate groups that supported rival Microsoft Corporation during its antitrust trial, calling the snooping a "public service". The investigation reportedly included a $1,200 offer to janitors at the Association for Competitive Technology to look through Microsoft's trash. When asked how he would feel if others were looking into Oracle's business activities, Ellison said: "We will ship our garbage to Redmond, and they can go through it. We believe in full disclosure."
"Can't break it, can't break in"
In 2002, Oracle Corporation marketed many of its products using the slogan "Can't break it, can't break in", or "Unbreakable". This signified a demand on information security. Oracle Corporation also stressed the reliability of networked databases and network access to databases as major selling points.
However, two weeks after its introduction, David Litchfield, Alexander Kornbrust, Cesar Cerrudo and others demonstrated a whole suite of successful attacks against Oracle products. Oracle Corporation's chief security officer Mary Ann Davidson said that, rather than representing a literal claim of Oracle's products' impregnability, she saw the campaign in the context of fourteen independent security evaluations that Oracle Corporation's database server had passed.
Relationship with John Ashcroft
In 2004, then-United States Attorney General John Ashcroft sued Oracle Corporation to prevent it from acquiring a multibillion-dollar intelligence contract. After Ashcroft's resignation from government, he founded a lobbying firm, The Ashcroft Group, which Oracle hired in 2005. With the group's help, Oracle went on to acquire the contract.
Expeditionary Combat Support System
Computer Sciences Corporation, as the prime contractor, reportedly spent a billion dollars developing the Expeditionary Combat Support System for the United States Air Force. It yielded no significant capability, because, according to an Air Force source, the prime contractor "was simply not up to the task of adapting" the Oracle software, on which the system was based, to meet the specialized performance criteria.
Cover Oregon Healthcare Exchange
Oracle Corporation was awarded a contract by the State of Oregon's Oregon Health Authority (OHA) to develop Cover Oregon, the state's healthcare exchange website, as part of the U.S. Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. When the site tried to go live on October 1, 2013, it failed, and registrations had to be taken using paper applications until the site could be fixed.
On April 25, 2014, the State of Oregon voted to discontinue Cover Oregon and instead use the federal exchange to enroll Oregon residents. The cost of switching to the federal portal was estimated at $5 million, whereas fixing Cover Oregon would have required another $78 million.
Oracle president Safra Catz responded to Cover Oregon and the OHA in a letter claiming that the site's problems were due to OHA mismanagement, specifically that a third-party systems integrator was not hired to manage the complex project.
In August 2014, Oracle Corporation sued Cover Oregon for breach of contract, and then later that month the state of Oregon sued Oracle Corporation, in a civil complaint for breach of contract, fraud, filing false claims and "racketeering". In September 2016, the two sides reached a settlement valued at over $100 million to the state, and a six-year agreement for Oracle to continue modernizing state software and IT.
Events
Acquisition of Sun Microsystems
In January 2010, Oracle completed its acquisition of Sun Microsystems—valued at more than $7 billion—a move that transformed Oracle from solely a software company to a manufacturer of both software and hardware. The acquisition was delayed for several months by the European Commission because of concerns about MySQL, but was unconditionally approved in the end. In September 2011, U.S. State Department Embassy cables were leaked to WikiLeaks. One cable revealed that the U.S. pressured the E.U. to allow Oracle to acquire Sun.
The Sun acquisition was closely watched by free software users and some companies, due to the fear that Oracle might end Sun's traditional support of free projects. Since the acquisition, Oracle has discontinued OpenSolaris and StarOffice, and sued Google over the Java patents Oracle acquired from Sun.
Justice Department lawsuit
On July 29, 2010, the United States Department of Justice (DoJ) filed suit against Oracle Corporation alleging fraud. The lawsuit argues that the government received deals inferior to those Oracle gave to its commercial clients. The DoJ added its heft to an already existing whistleblower lawsuit filed by Paul Frascella, who was once senior director of contract services at Oracle. It was settled in 2011.
Lawsuit against Google
Background
Oracle, the plaintiff, acquired ownership of the Java computer programing language when it acquired Sun Microsystems in January 2010. The Java software includes sets of pre-developed software code to allow programs and apps to accomplish common tasks in a consistent manner. The pre-developed code is organized into separate "packages" which each contain a set of "classes". Each class contains numerous methods, which instruct a program or app to do a certain task. Software developers "became accustomed to using Java’s designations at the package, class, and method level".
Oracle and Google (the defendant) tried to negotiate an agreement for Oracle to license Java to Google, which would have allowed Google to use Java in developing programs for mobile devices using the Android operating system. However, the two companies never reached an agreement. After negotiations failed, Google created its own programming platform, which was based on Java, and contained 37 copied Java packages as well as new packages developed by Google.
First trial
In 2010, Oracle sued Google for copyright infringement for the use of the 37 Java packages. The case was handled in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California and assigned to Judge William Alsup (who taught himself how to code computers). In the lawsuit, Oracle sought between $1.4 billion and $6.1 billion. In June 2011 the judge had to force Google through a judicial order to make public the details about Oracle's claim for damages.
By the end of the first jury trial (the legal dispute would eventually go on to another trial) the arguments made by Oracle's attorneys focused on a Java function called "rangeCheck"."The argument centered on a function called rangeCheck. Of all the lines of code that Oracle had tested—15 million in total—these were the only ones that were 'literally' copied. Every keystroke, a perfect duplicate." – The Verge, 10/19/17Although Google admitted to copying the packages, Judge Alsup found that none of the Java packages were covered under copyright protection, and therefore Google did not infringe.
First appeal
After the case was over, Oracle appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (750 F.3d 1339 (2014)). On May 9, 2014, the appeals court partially reversed Judge Alsup's decision, finding that Java APIs are copyrightable. API stands for "application programming interface" and are how different computer programs or apps communicate with each other. However, the appeals court also left open the possibility that Google might have a "fair use" defense.
Supreme Court petition
On October 6, 2014, Google filed a petition to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, but the Supreme Court denied the petition.
Second trial
The case was then returned to the U.S. District Court for another trial about Google's fair use defense. Oracle sought $9 billion in damages. In May 2016, the trial jury found that Google's use of Java's APIs was considered fair use.
Second appeal
In February 2017, Oracle filed another appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. This time it was asking for a new trial because the District Court "repeatedly undermined Oracle's case", which Oracle argued led the jury to make the wrong decision. According to ZDNet, "For example, it [Oracle] says the court wrongly bought Google's claim that Android was limited to smartphones while Java was for PCs, whereas Oracle contends that Java and Android both compete as platforms for smart TVs, cars, and wearables."
Discontinuation of OpenSolaris
On August 13, 2010, an internal Oracle memo leaked to the Internet cited plans for ending the OpenSolaris operating system project and community. With Oracle planning to develop Solaris only in a closed source fashion, OpenSolaris developers moved to the Illumos and OpenIndiana project, among others.
Discontinuation of OpenSSO
As Oracle completed their acquisition of Sun Microsystems in February 2010, they announced that OpenSSO would no longer be their strategic product. Shortly after, OpenSSO was forked to OpenAM. and will continue to be developed and supported by ForgeRock.
Mark Hurd as president
On September 6, 2010, Oracle announced that former Hewlett-Packard CEO Mark Hurd was to replace Charles Phillips, who resigned as Oracle co-president. In an official statement made by Larry Ellison, Phillips had previously expressed his desire to transition out of the company. Ellison had asked Phillips to stay on through the integration of Sun Microsystems Inc. In a separate statement regarding the transition, Ellison said "Mark did a brilliant job at HP and I expect he'll do even better at Oracle. There is no executive in the IT world with more relevant experience than Mark."
On September 7, 2010, HP announced a civil lawsuit against Mark Hurd "to protect HP's trade secrets", in response to Oracle hiring Hurd. On September 20, Oracle and HP published a joint press release announcing the resolution of the lawsuit on confidential terms and reaffirming commitment to long-term strategic partnership between the companies.
OpenOffice.org issue
A number of OpenOffice.org developers formed The Document Foundation and received backing by Google, Novell, Red Hat, and Canonical, as well as some others, but were unable to get Oracle to donate the brand OpenOffice.org, causing a fork in the development of OpenOffice.org with the foundation now developing and promoting LibreOffice. Oracle expressed no interest in sponsoring the new project and asked the OpenOffice.org developers that started the project to resign from the company due to "conflicts of interest". On November 1, 2010, 33 of the OpenOffice.org developers gave their letters of resignation. On June 1, 2011, Oracle donated OpenOffice.org to the Apache Software Foundation.
HP and Oracle lawsuit
On June 15, 2011, HP filed a lawsuit in California Superior Court in Santa Clara, claiming that Oracle had breached an agreement to support the Itanium microprocessor used in HP's high-end enterprise servers. Oracle called the lawsuit "an abuse of the judicial process" and said that had it known SAP's Léo Apotheker was about to be hired as HP's new CEO, any support for HP's Itanium servers would not have been implied.
On August 1, 2012, a California judge said in a tentative ruling that Oracle must continue porting its software at no cost until HP discontinues its sales of Itanium-based servers. HP was awarded $3 billion in damages against Oracle in 2016. HP argued Oracle's canceling support damaged HP's Itanium server brand. Oracle has announced it will appeal both the decision and damages.
Foreign corrupt practices
On August 31, 2011, The Wall Street Journal reported that Oracle was being investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation for paying bribes to government officials in order to win business in Africa, in contravention of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA).
GSA business bidding ban
On April 20, 2012, the US General Services Administration banned Oracle from the most popular portal for bidding on GSA contracts for undisclosed reasons. Oracle has previously used this portal for around four hundred million dollars a year in revenue. Oracle previously settled a lawsuit filed under the False Claims Act, which accused the company of overbilling the US government between 1998 and 2006. The 2011 settlement forced Oracle to pay $199.5 million to the General Services Administration.
U.S. TikTok's Operations
On September 13, 2020, Bloomberg News reported that Oracle won a bidding war with other U.S.-based companies to take over social media company TikTok's operations in the United States following the company's pressure to forcibly be shut down by the Trump Administration. Oracle was described as a “trusted tech partner” by TikTok, suggesting the deal may not be as structured as an outright sale. On September 19, 2020, the Trump Administration approved of the sale of TikTok's US operations to Oracle "[delaying] — by one week — restrictions that were originally to take effect" on September 20 as indicated by the United States Department of Commerce.
On February 10, 2021, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing a source familiar with the matter, the Biden Administration would be shelving the sale of TikTok indefinitely, as the administration began an extensive review of national security threats from Chinese technology companies as a whole.
People
Larry Ellison: executive chairman and CTO (since September 2014), co-founder of the company, previously CEO (1977–2014), previously chairman (1990–2004). He owns 36% of the company.
Safra Catz: CEO (since September 2014), previously co-president (since 2004) and CFO. In 2016, she was ranked 10th on Fortune's Most Powerful Women list.
Jeff Henley: vice chairman (since September 2014), previously chairman (2004–2014) and CFO (1991–2004).
Mark Hurd: former CEO (2014–2019), previously co-president (2010–2014). In 2007, Mark Hurd was ranked on Fortunes list of the 25 Most Powerful People in Business. He died in 2019.
Charles Phillips: former co-president and director (2003–2010); replaced by Mark Hurd.
Bob Miner: co-founder of the company and co-architect of Oracle Database. Led product design and development for Oracle Database (1977–1992). Spun off a technology group within Oracle in 1992. Oracle board member until 1993. He died in 1994.
Ed Oates: co-founder of the company. Retired from Oracle in 1996.
Umang Gupta: former vice president and general manager (1981–1984). Wrote the first business plan for the company.
Bruce Scott: The first hired employee (after the co-founders; employee number 4) at Oracle (then Software Development Laboratories). Scott served as the co-author and co-architect of the Oracle database up to Version 3. He left Oracle in 1982.
Offices
Oracle Corporation has its overall headquarters in Austin, Texas. Oracle has plans to build its largest office hub, with 8500 jobs, in Nashville within the next few decades.
Oracle has a large office complex located on the San Francisco Peninsula in the Redwood Shores area of Redwood City, adjacent to Belmont and near San Carlos Airport (IATA airport code: SQL). This complex is located on the former site of Marine World/Africa USA, which moved from Redwood Shores to Vallejo in 1986. Oracle Corporation originally leased two buildings on the Oracle Parkway site, moving its finance and administration departments from the corporation's former headquarters on Davis Drive, Belmont, California. Eventually, Oracle purchased the complex and constructed a further four main buildings.
The distinctive Oracle Parkway buildings, nicknamed the Emerald City, served as sets for the futuristic headquarters of the fictional company "NorthAm Robotics" in the Robin Williams film Bicentennial Man (1999). The campus also represented the headquarters of Cyberdyne Systems in the movie Terminator Genisys (2015).
Corporate structures
Oracle Corporation operates in multiple markets and has acquired several companies which formerly functioned autonomously. In some cases these provided the starting points for global business units (GBUs) targeting particular vertical markets. Oracle Corporation GBUs include:
Communications
Construction and engineering - formerly the Primavera GBU
Financial services
Food and Beverages
Health sciences
Hospitality
Retail
Utilities
Sponsorships
On October 20, 2006, the Golden State Warriors and the Oracle Corporation announced a 10-year agreement in which the Oakland Arena would become known as the Oracle Arena. The agreement ended after the 2018-2019 NBA season when the Warriors relocated to the Chase Center in San Francisco.
Larry Ellison's sailing team competes as Oracle Team USA. The team has won the America's Cup twice, in 2010 (as BMW Oracle Racing) and in 2013, despite being penalized for cheating.
Sean Tucker's "Challenger II" stunt biplane is sponsored by Oracle and performs frequently at air shows around the US.
In January 2019, the San Francisco Giants entered into a 20-year agreement to rename their stadium Oracle Park.
From the 2022 Formula One season, Oracle signed a 5-year deal worth $500m to become title sponsors of Red Bull Racing. In 1994 and 1995, Oracle sponsored Benetton.
See also
List of acquisitions by Oracle
Oracle Applications
Oracle Certification Program
Oracle Clinical
Oracle Database
Oracle OpenWorld
Oracle Linux
Oracle User Group
Cover Oregon
References
Further reading
External links
1977 establishments in California
1980s initial public offerings
American companies established in 1977
Business software companies
Cloud computing providers
Companies based in Austin, Texas
Companies formerly listed on the Nasdaq
Companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange
Computer companies established in 1977
Software companies established in 1977
Computer companies of the United States
Computer storage companies
CRM software companies
Data companies
Development software companies
ERP software companies
Linux companies
Multinational companies headquartered in the United States
Software companies based in Texas
Supply chain software companies
Software companies of the United States |
30306193 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1952%20USC%20Trojans%20football%20team | 1952 USC Trojans football team | The 1952 USC Trojans football team represented the University of Southern California (USC) in the 1952 college football season. In their second year under head coach Jess Hill, the Trojans compiled a 10–1 record (6–0 against conference opponents), won the Pacific Coast Conference championship, and outscored their opponents by a combined total of 254 to 47.
The Trojans finished the season ranked #4 in the final United Press Coaches Poll and #5 in the final AP Poll. They faced five ranked opponents during the 1952 season and won four of those games: a 10–0 victory over #4 California on October 25; a 33–0 victory over #17 Washington on November 15; a 14–12 victory over #3 UCLA on November 22; a 9–0 loss to Notre Dame on November 29; and a 7–0 victory over Wisconsin in the 1953 Rose Bowl. USC's victory in the Rose Bowl was the first for the Pacific Coast Conference after seven consecutive losses to the representatives of the Big Ten Conference.
Jim Sears led the team in passing with 51 of 105 passes completed for 739 yards, eight touchdowns and eight interceptions. Leon Sellers led the team in rushing with 103 carries for 386 yards and two touchdowns. Leon Clarke was the leading receiver with 25 catches for 372 yards and three touchdowns.
Eight Trojans received honors from the Associated Press (AP), United Press (UP), or International News Service (INS) on the 1952 All-Pacific Coast Conference football team: back Jim Sears (AP-1 [safety]; INS-1; UP-1 [halfback]); back Lindon Crow (AP-1 [defensive back]); defensive end Bob Hooks, USC (AP-1); tackle Robert Van Doren, USC (AP-1 [defensive tackle]; INS-1; UP-1); guard Elmer Willhoite, USC (AP-1 [defensive guard]; INS-1; UP-1); guard Marv Goux, USC (INS-1); center Lou Welsh, USC (AP-1); and linebacker George Timberlake, USC (AP-1).
Sears and Wilhoite were also consensus All-Americans.
Schedule
Players
The following players were members of the 1952 USC Trojans football team.
Charley Ane, 6'2", 254 pounds, right guard (offense and defense), #60, Honolulu, Hawaii (All-PCC UP-2)
Al Barry, 6'2", 221 pounds, right tackle (offense and defense), #79, Los Angeles (Honorable-mention All-PCC AP)
George Bozanic, 6'2", 207 pounds, quarterback (offense) and linebacker (defense), #38, Lander, Wyoming
Rudy Bukich, 6'1", 186 pounds, left halfback (offense), #18, St. Louis, Missouri (Outstanding Player, 1953 Rose Bowl)
Al Carmichael, 6'0", 185 pounds, right halfback (offense), #21, Hawthorne, California (All-PCC UP-2)
Bob Cox, 5'8", 183 pounds, right guard (offense), #62, Pasadena, California
Lindon Crow, 6'1", 191 pounds, right halfback (offense and defense), #36, Corcoran, California
Aramis Dandoy, 5'11", 182 pounds, right halfback (offense), #27, Torrance, California
Ed Fouch, 6'3", 229 pounds, tackle (offense and defense), #49, Santa Ana, California
Marvin Goux, 5'10", 181 pounds, linebacker (defense), #20, Santa Barbara, California (All-PCC UP-3
Harold Han, 5'9", 189 pounds, fullback and safety, #46, Honolulu, Hawaii
Bill Hattig, 5'9", 164 pounds, left end (offense and defense), #86, Los Angeles
Addison Hawthorne, 5'10", 194 pounds, fullback and safety, #23, Los Angeles
Bob Hooks, 6'3", 206 pounds, right end (defense), #58, Los Angeles (AP All-Coast Defensive Team)
Des Koch, 6'1", 207 pounds, tailback (offense), #43, Shelton, Washington (nation's leading punter with 43.4 yard average)
Ron Miller, 6'4", 204 pounds, left end (offense), #88, Los Angeles
Tom Nickoloff, 6'3", 218 pounds, right end (offense), #80, Los Angeles
Dick Nunis, 6'0", 182 pounds, right halfback (defense), #26, Los Angeles
Dick Petty, 6'0", 190 pounds, center (offense) and end (defense), #54, Los Angeles
Bob Peviani, 6'1", 212 pounds, left guard (defense), #66, Los Angeles (John Dye Memorial Award as the "outstanding lineman")
Jim Psaltis, 6'1", 186 pounds, left halfback, safety (defense), #37, Oakland, California (AP All-Coast Defensive team; led nation with nine interceptions)
Ed Pucci, 6'0", 209 pounds, left guard (offense), #64, Canton, Ohio
Bill Riddle, 6'0", 190 pounds, quarterback (offense), linebacker (defense), #52, El Centro, California
Jim Sears, 5'9", 165 pounds, halfback (offense) and safety (defense), #32 (won W. J. Voit Memorial Trophy; nation's leading punt returner with 15.9 yard average; led the Trojans in total yardage and passes completed; first-team All-American selection by AP, INS, NEA, and Look magazine)
Leon Sellers, 6'0", 194 pounds, fullback (offense), #44, Upland, California
Don Stillwell, 6'0", 183 pounds, left end (offense), #84, San Francisco
Sam "The Toe" Tsagalakis
George Timberlake, 6'0", 207 pounds, linebacker (defense), #56, Long Beach, California (AP All-Coast Defensive Team)
Bob Van Doren, 6'3-1/2", 203 pounds, right tackle (defense) and defensive captain, #75, San Diego (UP All-PCC first team; UP All-American third team)
Chuck Weeks, 6'2", 219 pounds, right tackle (offense), #72, Columbus, Ohio
Harry Welsh, 5'10", 168 pounds, halfback (defense), #25, Akron, Ohio
Lou Welsh, 6'1", 193 pounds, center (offense), #50, Ontario, California(selected as USC's "most inspirational" player)
Elmer Wilhoite, left guard (offense and defense), 6'1", 217 pounds, #73 (first-team All-American pick by UP, INS, NEA, Look magazine, and Collier's Weekly
Coaching staff and other personnel
Head coach: Jess Hill
Assistant coaches: Mel Hein (line); Joe Muha (backfield); Don Clark (line); Bill Fisk (ends); Walter Hargesheimer (backs); Jess Mortensen (freshman coach)
Senior manager: John Broadbent
Yell Kings: Al Gallion, Bob Arnett, Jim Strode, Larry Stone, and Dick Chapman
References
USC
USC Trojans football seasons
Pac-12 Conference football champion seasons
Rose Bowl champion seasons
USC Trojans football |
558277 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard%20Classics | Harvard Classics | The Harvard Classics, originally marketed as Dr. Eliot's Five-Foot Shelf of Books, is a 50-volume series of classic works of world literature, important speeches, and historical documents compiled and edited by Harvard University President Charles W. Eliot. Eliot believed that a careful reading of the series and following the eleven reading plans included in Volume 50 would offer a reader, in the comfort of the home, the benefits of a liberal education, entertainment and counsel of history's greatest creative minds. The initial success of The Harvard Classics was due, in part, to the branding offered by Eliot and Harvard University. Buyers of these sets were apparently attracted to Eliot's claims. The General Index contains upwards of 76,000 subject references.
The first 25 volumes were published in 1909 followed by the next 25 volumes in 1910. The collection was enhanced when the Lectures on The Harvard Classics was added in 1914 and Fifteen Minutes a Day - The Reading Guide in 1916. The Lectures on The Harvard Classics was edited by Willam A. Neilson, who had assisted Eliot in the selection and design of the works in Volumes 1–49. Neilson also wrote the introductions and notes for the selections in Volumes 1–49. The Harvard Classics is often described as a "51 volume" set, however, P.F. Collier & Son consistently marketed the Harvard Classics as 50 volumes plus Lectures and a Daily Reading Guide. Both The Harvard Classics and The Five-Foot Shelf of Books are registered trademarks of P.F. Collier & Son for a series of books used since 1909.
Collier advertised The Harvard Classics in U.S. magazines including Collier's and McClure's, offering to send a pamphlet to prospective buyers (and to generate leads for its salesmen). The pamphlet, entitled Fifteen Minutes a Day - A Reading Plan, is a 64-page booklet that describes the benefits of reading, gives the background on the book series, and includes many statements by Eliot about why he undertook the project. In the pamphlet, Eliot states:
Dr. Eliot's Five-Foot Shelf of Books
The idea of the Harvard Classics was presented in speeches by then President Charles W. Eliot of Harvard University. Several years prior to 1909, Eliot gave a speech in which he remarked that a three-foot shelf would be sufficient to hold enough books to give a liberal education to anyone who would read them with devotion. He was inundated with requests for the list of those book titles that would fill the three-foot shelf. After many attempts to support his initial claim, he decided that the shelf would need to be lengthened to five feet - but a definitive list of works was not declared. A well-known publisher Peter Fenelon Collier and his son, Robert J. Collier, saw a financial opportunity and asked that Eliot make good on his statement by selecting 50 volumes (400 to 500 pages each). Collier representatives proposed the name for the series as either "The Harvard Library" or "The Harvard Classics" pending approval by Harvard University. The proposal, presented to the President and Fellows of Harvard College, was unanimously approved as a useful undertaking from an educational point of view.
In February 1909 with his approaching retirement as President of Harvard University, Eliot accepted the proposal of P.F. Collier & Son. The agreement allowed Eliot to engage an assistant. He chose William A. Neilson, Professor of English at Harvard University. The English Bible was excluded because Eliot and Neilson felt that most every household would already possess at least one copy. The contributions of living authors (other than scientific contributions) were excluded because Eliot and Neilson considered the "verdict of the educated world" was not yet final. Works of modern fiction were felt to be readily accessible and thus excluded. English and American literature as well as documents related to American social and political ideas were more likely to be selected because the Harvard Classics were intended primarily for American readers.
Eliot retired as President of Harvard University in May 1909 and devoted much of the next year to organizing the 50 volumes and selecting the list of included works. The first half of the included works was provided to P.F. Collier & Son in 1909. However, Eliot and Neilson did not make the remaining selections, write the introductions for each selection, or finish the general index until 1910. Consequently, P.F. Collier & Son printed volumes 1 to 25 in 1909 and volumes 26 to 50 in 1910. An advertisement for The Harvard Classics appeared in Collier's on April 30, 1909, stating the "Complete Official Contents Now Ready." With the help of more than 50 Harvard professors and instructors and the general library of Harvard University and its department libraries, Eliot and Neilson believed that the title "The Harvard Classics" was well deserved.
Release and marketing
In a June 1909 issue of Collier's Weekly, P.F. Collier & Son announced it would publish a series of books selected by Eliot, without disclosing the list of included works, that would be approximately five feet in length and would supply the readers a liberal education. A few days after the announced intent to publish Dr. Eliot's Five-Foot Shelf of Books, several newspapers published an incomplete list of selected works to be included. Eliot felt the publications were unauthorized and asked Collier's Weekly publishers to publish his letter to the editors explaining the initial list and selection process in the July 24, 1909, edition of Collier's. Eliot describes his goal in helping publish The Harvard Classics as motivated by an educational purpose and he explains why the English Bible was not selected. In January 1910, P.F. Collier & Son announced in a "Publishers' Statement" that the 50 volumes were almost complete and offered a "Statement from the Editor" (Eliot) describing the origins of process resulting in the first sets of The Harvard Classics. The first editions printed by P.F. Collier & Son in three separate styles of bindings were first offered for sale on October 13, 1909.
The collection was marketed so as to advertise in all the principal magazines published in the United States resulting in a combined circulation of almost 3,000,000 for the initial marketing effort. The sales were initiated using 3,000 agents who were supplied a prospectus or "Announcement of The Harvard Classics" so that leads could be followed up by the agents. Most advertisements encouraged an interest notice be mailed back to the publisher offering a targeted and highly successful marketing campaign for the series. The intent by the publisher was to offer The Harvard Classics as a subscription with only some of the volumes being sent initially and the remaining to follow in subsequent shipment. This was strategic since the complete 50 volumes had not yet been supplied by Eliot and Neilson to the publisher and would not be supplied until late in 1910.
Printing history
Volumes 1-49 of The Harvard Classics include reprints of hundreds of authors' works that may have been in the public domain (e.g., because of expired copyrights) or covered by existing copyright holders such as other publishing companies. In either case, Collier filed copyrights for the 49 volumes and for The Harvard Classics complete series in 1909 and 1910 and obtained, when necessary, permission to reprint selected works included in one of the 49 volumes. Collier's copyrighted Volume 50 was in 1910, the Lectures on The Harvard Classics in 1914, and Fifteen Minutes a Day - The Reading Guide in 1916.
P.F. Collier & Son asserts in many early adverstisements of The Harvard Classics that 20,000 sets of The Harvard Classics were first printed to offer a "tremendous savings" to buyers and that these first printings include the word "Eliot" as a watermark on every page. To help the chronological obsession about the print runs of The Harvard Classics, clues regarding how many of first edition printings are offered in a trademark dispute case between P.F. Collier and E. Milton Jones in 1909 that was later ruled on in appeal in 1910 (in favor of P.F. Collier & Son). In testimony, Robert J. Collier states that the first sets of The Harvard Classics printed and sold were "bound in full morocco...one set, bound in three-quarters morocco...and the remaining set, bound in buckram...". Advertisements in 1910 also state Collier prepared editions for those who demand luxurious limited editions as well as for the readers who want less expensive sets.
The first editions of The Harvard Classics were known as "De Luxe" sets. Most were limited-quantity print runs and some "autographed" editions (only Volume 1 is authographed) include signatures by Eliot and in some cases Robert J. Collier. The first print runs in 1909 were for volumes 1 to 25. Another print run was needed in 1910 for volumes 26 to 50 because those volumes were not selected and edited by Eliot until the middle of 1910. The first editions include Japanese vellum paper with "Eliot" watermarks (made by S.D. Warren & Co. of Boston), deckled pages, silk moire endpapers, sewn in bookmarks, and top edged gilt pages. Each was appealing to buyers for the elaborate illustrations, frontispieces, plates, portraits, facsimiles, and crimson silk page markers (features unlikely to be found in later printings). The colophon found on the ultimate page of content of first editions notes these sets were "planned and designed by William Patten" (the Book Manager at P.F. Collier & Son).
The exact numbers of each of the three bindings making up the 20,000 first sets are unclear. Four different sets in full morocco leather were printed with raised bands, Harvard University insignia, and volume names in gilt lettering on the spines. The four variations in full leather include: (1) the "Alumni Autograph Edition" limited to 200 numbered sets (Volume 1 is autographed by Eliot), (2) the "Eliot Edition" limited to 1,000 numbered sets (Volume 1 is autographed by Eliot), (3) the "Alumni Edition De Luxe" (unsigned) limited to 1,000 numbered sets, and (4) the "Edition De Luxe" sets that are numbered and stated as being limited editions (but the number printed is not shown). The full morocco sets sold for at least $345. The Edition De Luxe sets in full morocco leather were sold many years (after the limited-quantity runs were sold out) as some include the "Lecture" volume added in 1914.
The second binding type of the first editions of The Harvard Classics were printed in three-quarters morocco leather binding over cloth boards. The first edition three-quarters morocco leather sets have similar variations as the full morocco leather sets including a (1) set limited to 1,000 numbered and autographed "Cambridge Editions" signed by Eliot and, interestingly, the publisher Robert J. Collier also signed the sets numbered from 412 to 973) over mottled cream boards, (2) set limited to 1,000 numbered and autographed "Eliot Edition" books over green cloth boards, and (3) a set limited to 1,000 (unsigned) called the "Alumni Edition" on the spine bound over crimson boards, and (4) a set of unknown number called the "Library Edition" (stated as limited edition, but number of printings is not shown) over crimson boards. The "Library Editions" do not paper with "Eliot" watermarks, but appear to have the same high-quality Japanese vellum paper. Each of these limited-quantity three-quarter morocco sets sold for $195.
The third type of binding of the first editions of The Harvard Classics were printed in fine buckram (green and crimson). The green buckram set of "Alumni Edition" printings is a numbered set limited to 1,000 numbered copies. The green buckram has gilt lettering with crimson and gold Harvard insignia on both the spine and front board. The first editions show "Alumni Edition De Luxe" are numbered and limited to 1,000 sets and include embossed bands on the spine. The remaining first edition set of The Harvard Classics, printed in fine crimson buckram cloth, is another version called the "Eliot Edition" - a limited quantity printing of 1,000. The crimson buckram "Eliot Edition" with Eliot's signature on the front board is printed with raised bands on the spine, "Eliot" watermarked pages, and include illustrations, frontispieces, plates, portraits, and facsimiles. This set does not include page markers. Both buckram first edition sets sold for $100. Another set almost identical to the limited-quantity green buckram sets, is also in green buckram and has "Alumni Edition" on the spine. This set was sold for many years and was limited to 10,000 printings. These second print runs of this set are almost identical to the first editions except the pastedown papers have much more faint printings, the limited edition page shows the editions as "Edition De Luxe," and watermarked "Eliot" pages are not included.
In 1910, Collier began printing The Harvard Classics in a limited quantity set called the Renaissance edition. This beautifully bound set includes 10 different bindings consisting of reproductions of the artistic bindings of Royal Monarchs of Europe from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries. Collier also began printing the National (1910) and Popular (1912) editions with lower price points in an effort, claimed by Collier in many advertisements, to honor the wishes of Eliot that The Harvard Classics are priced within everybody's reach. An extremely popular crimson-colored silk cloth set similar to the look of the De Luxe Morocco edition began printing in 1914 and was called the Cambridge edition. Variations of the Cambridge edition were printed for over a decade in cloth over hardboards and later (after 1919) in an imitation leather binding material called fabrikoid.
In 1919 Collier announced a new binding material for The Harvard Classic sets with the printing of a new set called the Southwark edition (in flexible dark green fabrikoid or imitation leather). The first set of the Southwark edition was printed in July 1919 and given to the Du Pont company. The set carries an inscription "This is the first set of Harvard Classics published by P.F. Collier & Son Company to be bound in DuPont Fabrikoid...". The set was named after the birthplace of one of the founders of Harvard College, John Harvard, who was born in London Borough of Southwark. The set is often referred to as the "Veritas" edition; however, the "Veritas" edition is bound in a dark crimson color promoted by DuPont. The new binding material, called fabrikoid, offered less weight, flexible boards, and bindings that were more durable than the cloth or leather bindings of the early editions. Fabrikoid bindings were used in editions published from the 1920s to 1950's such as the varicolored Gemston edition which has five different colors of bindings and for larger editions with increased font sizes called the (home) Library editions that were marketed as being easier to read.
The "Eliot Foundation of Adult Education" set, which appears to have been first printed around 1932 (based on included educational materials dated 1932 and later), is a rare numbered set bound in dark blue pebbled cloth. This set has gold gilt lettering with a profile of Eliot on the spine. The set was the focus of a set of materials for adult education with syllabi, instructions for study, and classroom discussions points. The set has an embossed symbol used in many of the education materials developed by the Eliot Foundation on the front board with Versitas Scientia Humanitas (trans. trust, knowledge, and culture). The number of printings of this rare set is unknown. Later editions (with names such as Gemstone, Deluxe Registered, Veritas, Home Library, and Great Literature editions) were not quite as unique as price points were further lowered to make the Harvard Classics more affordable. These later editions were printed in various sizes and binding materials such as cloth, fabrikoid, bonded leather, and even later in various types of imitation and genuine leather often printed to imitate earlier editions.
P.F. Collier & Son printed the 50th edition (that is, different set) of The Harvard Classics in 1956. Owners and prospective buyers of The Harvard Classics editions are often interested in the printing year of a particular edition. As mentioned before, not even the first editions were fully printed in 1909. First editions were printed in 1909 and 1910, and all subsequent editions were printed in 1910 or later. A printer's key could be used to describe the print run, but these were not used in the U.S. until the middle of the twentieth century. Copyright dates for book reprints are unlikely to identify the year of printing excepts for first four editions. For The Harvard Classics series, copyright pages of The Harvard Classics have no information about the printing year (or run) until 1956 when the publisher began including information about the year of the print run.
Collier's renewed the copyrights for The Harvard Classics 28 years after filing the first copyrights for The Harvard Classics (as was customary at the time, as it offered some legal advantages) in 1936 and 1937. Coliier's again renewed the copyrights in 1956 and 1959, and several times in the sixties as editions were printed in different page sizes and fonts (resulting is different pagination than described in initial copyright filings) and because some editions were printed and sold with fewer than 50 volumes. In sum, copyright dates of The Harvard Classics editions offer misleading information about the printing date or printing year after the first editions were printed in 1909 and 1910. For example print runs following the publications of the first editions and until 1937 include copyrights dates of 1909 or 1910 although the printing year could be over 20 years later (or more).
Some clues about the printing history can help identify the print run year. For example, the inclusion of the "Lectures" began in 1914. Additionally, the "Editor's Introduction" in volume 50 includes a second "Editor's Introduction" that is dated in 1917. Fabrikoid was first used as binding for The Harvard Classics in 1919. Lastly, the publishing company marketed a larger size of books with the Home Library edition. This set of The Harvard Classics and subsequent editions are 15 percent larger than previous editions. None of these clues allow for an exact printing year, but each can be used to establish that the printing could not have occurred before a certain year, and of course, the printing cannot have occurred before the most recent copyright date.
The last edition of The Harvard Classics printed by P.F. Collier & Son (then a subsidiary of Crowell Collier & Macmillan, Inc.) was the 63rd printing in 1970 of a 22-volume called the "Great Literature Edition" in green fibrated (essentially bonded) leather with 22K decor that sold for $3.78 per volume ($1 each for the first three volumes). The Federal Trade Commission filed a complaint in 1972 against Crowell Collier for deceptive selling practices of The Harvard Classics. In a statement responding to the complaint, Crowell Collier stated that it no longer sells The Harvard Classics. On March 24, 1973, the FTC provisionally accepted a consent order from Crowell Collier (now called Crowell, Collier and MacMillan, Inc.) that the publisher would stop trying to sell The Harvard Classics in one bulk shipment. The publisher ended the subscription plan used since 1909 and stated that it had no plans to sell The Harvard Classics one book at a time.
Enduring success
As Adam Kirsch, writing for Harvard magazine in 2001, notes, "It is surprisingly easy, even today, to find a complete set of the Harvard Classics in good condition. At least one is usually for sale on eBay, the Internet auction site, for $300 or so, a bargain at $6 a book. The supply, from attics or private libraries around the country, seems endless — a tribute to the success of the publisher, P.F. Collier, who sold some 350,000 sets within 20 years of the series' initial publication".
Eliot and Neilson concluded that the 50 volumes were "so far as possible, entire works or complete segments of the world's written legacies" for English speaking readers.
Similar compendia
The concept of education through systematic reading of seminal works themselves (rather than textbooks) was carried on by John Erskine at Columbia University, and in the 1930s Mortimer Adler and Robert Hutchins at the University of Chicago carried this idea further with the concepts of education through study of the "great books" and "great ideas" of Western civilization. This led to the publication in 1952 of Great Books of the Western World, which is still in print and actively marketed. In 1937, under Stringfellow Barr, St. John's College introduced a curriculum based on the direct study of "great books". These sets are popular today with those interested in homeschooling.
Gateway to the Great Books was designed as an introduction to the Great Books of the Western World, published by the same organization and editors in 1952.
Palgrave's The Golden Treasury is a popular anthology of English poetry, originally selected for publication by Francis Turner Palgrave in 1861.
The Oxford Book of English Verse is an anthology of English poetry that had a very substantial influence on popular taste and perception of poetry for at least a generation.
The Loeb Classical Library is a series of books, today published by Harvard University Press, which presents important works of ancient Greek and Latin literature in a way designed to make the text accessible to the broadest possible audience.
Sacred Books of the East is a 50-volume set of English translations of Asian religious writings published by the Oxford University Press between 1879 and 1910. It incorporates the essential sacred texts of Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, Zoroastrianism, Jainism, and Islam.
The Delphian Society created the 10 Volume Delphian Course of Reading—with the Harvard Classics editor Eliot in mind—for young and developing minds.
The Everyman's Library is a series of reprints of classic literature, primarily from the Western canon.
The Thinker's Library is a selection of essays, literature, and extracts from greater works by various classical and contemporary humanists and rationalists, continuing in the tradition of the Renaissance that were published between 1929 and 1951 for the Rationalist Press Association by Watts & Co., London, a company founded by Charles Albert Watts.
Contents
Vol. 1–10
Vol. 1: Benjamin Franklin, John Woolman, William Penn
His Autobiography, by Benjamin Franklin
The Journal of John Woolman, by John Woolman (1774 and subsequent editions)
Fruits of Solitude, by William Penn
Vol. 2. Plato, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius
The Apology, Crito, and Phaedo, by Plato
The Golden Sayings, by Epictetus
The Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius
Vol. 3. Bacon, Milton's Prose, Thomas Browne
Essays, Civil and Moral, and New Atlantis, by Francis Bacon
Areopagitica and Tractate of Education, by John Milton
Religio Medici, by Sir Thomas Browne
Vol. 4. Complete Poems in English, Milton
Complete poems written in English, by John Milton
Vol. 5. Essays and English Traits, Emerson
Essays and English Traits, by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Vol. 6. Poems and Songs, Burns
Poems and songs, by Robert Burns
Vol. 7. The Confessions of St. Augustine, The Imitation of Christ
The Confessions, by Saint Augustine The Imitation of Christ, by Thomas á Kempis
Vol. 8. Nine Greek Dramas
Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Furies, and Prometheus Bound, by Aeschylus
Oedipus the King and Antigone, by Sophocles
Hippolytus and The Bacchae, by Euripides
The Frogs, by Aristophanes
Vol. 9. Letters and Treatises of Cicero and Pliny
On Friendship, On Old Age, and Letters, by Cicero
Letters, by Pliny the Younger
Vol. 10. Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith
The Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith
Vol. 11–20
Vol. 11. Origin of Species, Darwin
The Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin
Vol. 12. Plutarch's Lives
Lives, by Plutarch
Vol. 13. Aeneid, Virgil
Aeneid, by Virgil
Vol. 14. Don Quixote, Part 1, Cervantes
Don Quixote, part 1, by Miguel de Cervantes
Vol. 15. Bunyan & Walton
The Pilgrim's Progress, by John Bunyan
The Lives of Donne and Herbert, by Izaak Walton
Vol. 16. The Thousand and One Nights
Stories from the Thousand and One Nights, translated by Edward William Lane, revised by Stanley Lane-Poole
Vol. 17. Folk-Lore and Fable, Aesop, Grimm, Andersen
Fables, by Aesop
Children's and Household Tales, by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
Tales, by Hans Christian Andersen
Vol. 18. Modern English Drama
All for Love, by John Dryden
The School for Scandal, by Richard Brinsley Sheridan
She Stoops to Conquer, by Oliver Goldsmith
The Cenci, by Percy Bysshe Shelley
A Blot in the 'Scutcheon, by Robert Browning
Manfred, by Lord Byron
Vol. 19. Faust, Egmont, etc., Goethe, Doctor Faustus, Marlowe
Faust, part 1, Egmont, and Hermann and Dorothea, by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Dr. Faustus, by Christopher Marlowe
Vol. 20. The Divine Comedy, Dante
The Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri
Vol. 21–30
Vol. 21. I Promessi Sposi, Manzoni
I Promessi Sposi, by Alessandro Manzoni
Vol. 22. The Odyssey, Homer
The Odyssey, by Homer
Vol. 23. Two Years Before the Mast, Dana
Two Years Before the Mast, by Richard Henry Dana, Jr.
Vol. 24. On the Sublime, French Revolution, etc., Burke
On Taste, On the Sublime and Beautiful, Reflections on the French Revolution, and A Letter to a Noble Lord, by Edmund Burke
Vol. 25. J.S. Mill and Thomas Carlyle
Autobiography and On Liberty, by John Stuart Mill
Characteristics, Inaugural Address at Edinburgh, and Sir Walter Scott, by Thomas Carlyle
Vol. 26. Continental Drama
Life is a Dream, by Pedro Calderón de la Barca
Polyeucte, by Pierre Corneille
Phèdre, by Jean Racine
Tartuffe, by Molière
Minna von Barnhelm, by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
William Tell, by Friedrich von Schiller
Vol. 27. English Essays, Sidney to MacaulayThe Defense Of Poesy by Sir Philip SidneyOn Shakespeare by Ben JonsonOn Bacon by Ben JonsonOf Agriculture by Abraham CowleyThe Vision of Mirza by Joseph AddisonWestminster Abbey by Joseph AddisonThe Spectator Club by Sir Richard SteeleHints Towards an Essay on Conversation by Jonathan SwiftA Treatise on Good Manners and Good Breeding by Jonathan SwiftA Letter of Advice to a Young Poet by Jonathan SwiftOn the Death of Esther Johnson [Stella] by Jonathan SwiftThe Shortest-Way with the Dissenters by Daniel DefoeThe Education of Women by Daniel DefoeLife of Addison, 1672-1719 by Samuel JohnsonOf the Standard of Taste by David HumeFallacies of Anti-Reformers by Sydney SmithOn Poesy or Art by Samuel Taylor ColeridgeOf Persons One Would Wish to Have Seen by William HazlittDeaths of Little Children by Leigh HuntOn the Realities of Imagination by Leigh HuntOn the Tragedies of Shakspere by Charles LambLevana and Our Ladies of Sorrow by Thomas De QuinceyA Defence of Poetry by Percy Bysshe ShelleyMachiavelli by Thomas Babington Macaula
Vol. 28. Essays, English and American
William Makepeace ThackeryJonathan SwiftJohn Henry NewmanThe Idea Of A UniversityMatthew ArnoldThe Study Of PoetryJohn RuskinSesame And LiliesWalter BagehotJohn MiltonThomas Henry HuxleyScience And CultureEdward Augustus FreemanRace And LanguageRobert Louis StevensonTruth Of IntercourseSamuel PepysWilliam Ellery ChanningOn The Elevation Of The Laboring ClassesEdgar Allan PoeThe Poetic PrincipleHenry David ThoreauWalkingJames Russell LowellAbraham LincolnDemocracyVol. 29. Voyage of the Beagle, Darwin
The Voyage of the Beagle, by Charles Darwin
Vol. 30. Faraday, Helmholtz, Kelvin, Newcomb, etc.
The Forces of Matter and The Chemical History of a Candle, by Michael Faraday
On the Conservation of Force and Ice and Glaciers, by Hermann von Helmholtz
The Wave Theory of Light and The Tides, by Lord Kelvin
The Extent of the Universe, by Simon Newcomb
Geographical Evolution, by Sir Archibald Geikie
Vol. 31–40
Vol. 31. Autobiography, Cellini
The Autobiography of Benvenuto CelliniVol. 32. Montaigne, Sainte-Beuve, Renan, etc.
Essays, by Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
Montaigne and What is a Classic?, by Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve
The Poetry of the Celtic Races, by Ernest Renan
The Education of the Human Race, by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
Letters upon the Aesthetic Education of Man, by Friedrich von Schiller
Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals, by Immanuel Kant
Byron and Goethe, by Giuseppe Mazzini
Vol. 33. Voyages and Travels
An account of Egypt from The Histories, by Herodotus
Germany, by Tacitus
Sir Francis Drake Revived, by Philip Nichols
Sir Francis Drake's Famous Voyage Round the World, by Francis Pretty
Drake's Great Armada, by Captain Walter Bigges
Sir Humphrey Gilbert's Voyage to Newfoundland, by Edward Haies
The Discovery of Guiana, by Sir Walter Raleigh
Vol. 34. Descartes, Voltaire, Rousseau, Hobbes
Discourse on Method, by René Descartes
Letters on the English, by Voltaire
On the Inequality among Mankind and Profession of Faith of a Savoyard Vicar, by Jean Jacques Rousseau
Of Man, Being the First Part of Leviathan, by Thomas Hobbes
Vol. 35. Froissart, Malory, Holinshead
Chronicles, by Jean Froissart
The Holy Grail, by Sir Thomas Malory
A Description of Elizabethan England, by William Harrison
Vol. 36. Machiavelli, More, Luther
The Prince, by Niccolò Machiavelli
The Life of Sir Thomas More, by William Roper
Utopia, by Sir Thomas More
The Ninety-Five Theses, To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, and On the Freedom of a Christian, by Martin Luther
Vol. 37. Locke, Berkeley, Hume
Some Thoughts Concerning Education, by John Locke
Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous in Opposition to Sceptics and Atheists, by George Berkeley
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, by David Hume
Vol. 38. Harvey, Jenner, Lister, Pasteur
The Oath of Hippocrates
Journeys in Diverse Places, by Ambroise Paré
On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals, by William Harvey
The Three Original Publications on Vaccination Against Smallpox, by Edward Jenner
The Contagiousness of Puerperal Fever, by Oliver Wendell Holmes
On the Antiseptic Principle of the Practice of Surgery, by Joseph Lister
Scientific papers, by Louis Pasteur
Scientific papers, by Charles Lyell
Vol. 39. Famous Prefaces
"Title, Prologue and Epilogues to the Recuyell of the Histories of Troy", by William Caxton
"Epilogue to Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers", by William Caxton
"Prologue to Golden Legend", by William Caxton
"Prologue to Caton", by William Caxton
"Epilogue to Aesop", by William Caxton
"Proem to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales", by William Caxton
"Prologue to Malory's King Arthur"
"Prologue to Virgil's Eneydos", by William Caxton
"Dedication of the Institutes of the Christian Religion" by John Calvin
"Dedication of the Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies" by Nicolaus Copernicus
"Preface to the History of the Reformation in Scotland", by John Knox
"Prefatory Letter to Sir Walter Raleigh on The Faerie Queene", by Edmund Spenser
"Preface to the History of the World" by Sir Walter Raleigh
"Prooemium, Epistle Dedicatory, Preface, and Plan of the Instauratio Magna, etc.", by Francis Bacon
"Preface to the Novum Organum", by Francis Bacon
"Preface to the First Folio Edition of Shakespeare's Plays" by Heminge and Condell
"Preface to the Philosophiae Naturalis Pricipia Mathematica", by Sir Isaac Newton
"Preface to Fables, Ancient and Modern", by John Dryden
"Preface to Joseph Andrews", by Henry Fielding
"Preface to the English Dictionary", by Samuel Johnson
"Preface to Shakespeare", by Samuel Johnson
"Introduction to the Propylaen", by J.W. von Goethe
"Prefaces to Various Volumes of Poems", by William Wordsworth
"Appendix to Lyrical Ballads", by William Wordsworth
"Essay Supplementary to Preface", by William Wordsworth
"Preface to Cromwell", by Victor Hugo
"Preface to Leaves of Grass", by Walt Whitman
"Introduction to the History of English Literature", by H.A. Taine
Vol. 40. English Poetry 1: Chaucer to Gray
Geoffrey Chaucer
"The Prologue to the Canterbury Tales"
The Nun's Priest's TaleTraditional Ballads
"The Douglas Tragedy"
"The Twa Sisters"
"Edward"
"Babylon; or, The Bonnie Banks o Fordie"
"Hind Horn"
"Lord Thomas and Fair Annet"
"Love Gregor"
"Bonny Barbara Allan"
"The Gay Goss-Hawk"
"The Three Ravens"
"The Twa Corbies"
"Sir Patrick Spence"
"Thomas Rymer and the Queen of Elfland"
"Sweet William's Ghost"
"The Wife of Usher's Well"
"Hugh of Lincoln"
"Young Bicham"
"Get Up and Bar the Door"
"The Battle of Otterburn"
"Chevy Chase"
"Johnie Armstrong"
"Captain Car"
"The Bonny Earl of Murray"
"Kinmont Willie"
"Bonnie George Campbell"
"The Dowy Houms o Yarrow"
"Mary Hamilton"
"The Baron of Brackley"
"Bewick and Grahame"
"A Gest of Robyn Hode"
Anonymous
"Balow"
"The Old Cloak"
"Jolly Good Ale and Old"
Sir Thomas Wyatt
"A Supplication"
"The Lover's Appeal"
Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey
"Complaint of the Absence of Her Lover"
"The Means to Attain Happy Life"
George Gascoigne
"A Lover's Lullaby"
Nicholas Breton
"Phillida and Coridon"
Anonymous
"A Sweet Lullaby"
"Preparations"
"The Unfaithful Shepherdess"
Anthony Munday
"Beauty Bathing
Richard Edwardes
"Amantium Irae"
Sir Walter Raleigh
"His Pilgrimage"
"The Lie"
"Verses"
"What Is Our Life"
Sir Edward Dyer
"My Mind to Me a Kingdom Is"
John Lyly
"Cupid and Campaspe"
"Spring's Welcome"
Sir Philip Sidney
"Song"
"A Dirge"
"A Ditty"
"Loving in Truth"
"Be Your Words Made, Good Sir, of Indian Ware"
"To Sleep"
"To the Moon"
Thomas Lodge
"Rosalind's Madrigal"
"Rosaline"
"Phillis"
George Peele
"Paris and none"
Robert Southwell
"The Burning Babe"
Samuel Daniel
"Beauty, Time, and Love Sonnets"
"To Sleep"
Michael Drayton
"Agincourt"
"To the Virginian Voyage"
"Love's Farewell"
Henry Constable
"Diaphenia"
Edmund Spenser
Prothalamion Epithalamion "A Ditty"
"Perigot and Willie's Roundelay"
"Easter"
"What Guile Is This?"
"Fair Is My Love"
"So Oft as I Her Beauty do Behold"
"Rudely Thou Wrongest My Dear Heart's Desire"
"Like as the Culver, on the Bared Bough"
William Habington
"To Roses in the Bosom of Castara"
"Nox Nocti Indicat Scientiam"
Christopher Marlowe
"The Passionate Shepherd to His Love"
"Her Reply" (Written by Sir Walter Raleigh)
Richard Rowlands
"Our Blessed Lady's Lullaby"
Thomas Nashe
"In Time of Pestilence"
"Spring"
William Shakespeare
"Winter"
"O Mistress Mine"
"Fancy"
"Under the Greenwood Tree"
"A Lover and His Lass"
"Silvia"
"Spring"
"Lullaby"
"Ophelia's Song"
"Where the Bee Sucks"
"Take, O Take"
"A Madrigal"
"Amiens' Song"
"Dawn Song"
"Dirge of Love"
"Fidele's Dirge"
Sonnets 18, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 54, 55, 57, 60, 64, 65, 66, 71, 73, 87, 90, 94, 97, 98, 104, 106, 107, 109, 110, 111, 116, 129, 146, 148.
Robert Greene
"Content"
Richard Barnfield
"The Nightingale"
Thomas Campion
"Cherry-ripe"
"Follow your Saint"
"When to Her Lute Corinna Sings"
"Follow thy Fair Sun"
"Turn All thy Thoughts to Eyes"
"Integer Vitae"
Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex
"A Passion of my Lord of Essex"
Sir Henry Wotton
"Elizabeth of Bohemia"
"Character of a Happy Life"
Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford
"A Renunciation"
Ben Jonson
"Simplex Munditiis"
"The Triumph"
"The Noble Nature"
"To Celia"
"A Farewell to the World"
"A Nymph's Passion"
"Epode"
"Epitaph on Elizabeth L. H."
"On Lucy, Countess of Bedford"
"An Ode to Himself"
"Hymn to Diana"
"On Salathiel Pavy"
"His Supposed Mistress"
"To the Memory of My Beloved the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare and What He Hath Left Us"
John Donne
"The Funeral"
"A Hymn to God the Father"
"Valediction, Forbidding Mourning"
"Death"
"The Dream"
"Song"
"Sweetest Love, I do not Go"
"Lover's Infiniteness"
"Love's Deity"
"Stay, O Sweet"
"The Blossom"
"The Good Morrow"
"Present in Absence"
Joshua Sylvester
"Love's Omnipresence"
William Alexander, Earl of Stirling
"To Aurora"
Richard Corbet
"Farewell, Rewards and Fairies"
Thomas Heywood
"Pack, Clouds, Away"
Thomas Dekker
"Country Glee"
"Cold's the Wind"
"O Sweet Content"
Francis Beaumont
"On the Tombs in Westminster Abbey"
"Master Francis Beaumont's Letter to Ben Jonson"
John Fletcher
"Aspatia's Song"
"Melancholy"
John Webster
"Call for the Robin-Redbreast"
Anonymous
"O Waly, Waly"
"Helen of Kirconnell"
"My Love in Her Attire"
"Love Not Me"
William Drummond
"Saint John Baptist"
"Madrigal"
"Life"
"Human Folly"
"The Problem"
"To His Lute"
"For the Magdalene"
"Content and Resolute"
"Alexis, Here She Stayed; Among These Pines"
"Summons to Love"
George Wither
"I Loved a Lass"
"The Lover's Resolution"
William Browne (?)
"On the Countess Dowager of Pembroke"
Robert Herrick
"Cherry-Ripe"
"A Child's Grace"
"The Mad Maid's Song"
"To the Virgins"
"To Dianeme"
"A Sweet Disorder"
"Whenas in Silks"
"To Anthea who may Command Him Any Thing"
"To Daffodils"
"To Blossoms"
"Corinna's Maying"
Francis Quarles
"An Ecstasy"
George Herbert
"Love"
"Virtue"
"The Elixir"
"The Collar"
"The Flower"
"Easter Song"
"The Pulley"
Henry Vaughan
"Beyond the Veil"
"The Retreat"
Francis Bacon, Viscount St. Alban
"Life"
James Shirley
"The Glories of our Blood and State"
"The Last Conqueror"
Thomas Carew
"The True Beauty"
"Ask Me No More"
"Know, Celia"
"Give Me More Love"
Sir John Suckling
"The Constant Lover"
"Why So Pale and Wan"
Sir William D'Avenant
"Dawn Song"
Richard Lovelace
"To Lucasta, on Going to the Wars"
"To Althea from Prison"
"To Lucasta, Going Beyond the Seas"
Edmund Waller
"On a Girdle"
"Go, Lovely Rose!"
William Cartwright
"On the Queen's Return from the Low Countries"
James Graham, Marquis of Montrose
"My Dear and Only Love"
Richard Crashaw
"Wishes for the Supposed Mistress"
"Upon the Book and Picture of the Seraphical Saint Teresa"
Thomas Jordan
"Let Us Drink and Be Merry"
Abraham Cowley
"A Supplication"
"Cheer Up, My Mates"
"Drinking"
"On the Death of Mr. William Hervey"
Alexander Brome
"The Resolve"
Andrew Marvell
"A Garden"
"The Picture of Little T. C. in a Prospect of Flowers"
"Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland"
"Song of the Emigrants in Bermuda"
"Thoughts in a Garden"
Anonymous
"Love Will Find Out the Way"
"Phillada Flouts Me"
Earl of Rochester
"Epitaph on Charles II"
Sir Charles Sedley
"Chloris"
"Celia"
John Dryden
"Ode"
"Song to a Fair Young Lady, Going Out of the Town in the Spring"
"Song for St. Cecilia's Day"
"Alexander's Feast"
"On Milton"
Matthew Prior
"To a Child of Quality"
"Cloe"
"The Dying Adrian to His Soul"
"Epigram"
Isaac Watts
"True Greatness"
Lady Grisel Baillie
"Werena My Heart Licht I Wad Dee"
Joseph Addison
"Hymn"
Allan Ramsay
"Peggy"
John Gay
"Love in Her Eyes Sits Playing"
"Black-Eyed Susan"
Henry Carey
"Sally in our Alley"
Alexander Pope
"Solitude"
"On a Certain Lady at Court"
An Essay on ManAmbrose Philips
"To Charlotte Pulteney"
Colley Cibber
"The Blind Boy"
James Thomson
"Rule, Britannia"
"To Fortune"
Thomas Gray
Elegy "Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College"
"Hymn to Adversity"
"Ode on the Spring"
"The Progress of Poesy"
"The Bard"
"Ode on the Pleasure Arising from Vicissitude"
"On a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes"
George Bubb Dodington, Lord Melcombe
"Shorten Sail"
Vol. 41–50
Vol. 41. English Poetry 2: Collins to Fitzgerald
William Collins
"Fidele"
"Ode Written in MDCCXLVI"
"The Passions"
"To Evening"
George Sewell
"The Dying Man in His Garden"
Alison Rutherford Cockburn
"The Flowers of the Forest"
Jane Elliot
"Lament for Flodden"
Christopher Smart
"A Song to David"
Anonymous
"Willy Drowned in Yarrow"
John Logan
"The Braes of Yarrow"
Henry Fielding
"A Hunting Song"
Charles Dibdin
"Tom Bowling"
Samuel Johnson
"On the Death of Dr. Robert Levet"
"A Satire"
Oliver Goldsmith
"When Lovely Woman Stoops"
"Retaliation"
"The Deserted Village"
"The Traveller; or, A Prospect of Society"
Robert Graham of Gartmore
"If Doughty Deeds"
Adam Austin
"For Lack of Gold"
William Cowper
"Loss of the Royal George"
"To a Young Lady"
"The Poplar Field"
"The Solitude of Alexander Selkirk"
"To Mary Unwin"
"To the Same"
"Boadicea: An Ode"
"The Castaway"
"The Shrubbery"
"On the Receipt of My Mother's Picture Out of Norfolk"
"The Diverting History of John Gilpin"
Richard Brinsley Sheridan
"Drinking Song"
Anna Laetitia Barbauld
"Life"
Isobel Pagan
"Ca' the Yowes to the Knowes"
Lady Anne Lindsay
"Auld Robin Gray"
Thomas Chatterton
"Song from Ælla"
Carolina Oliphant, Lady Nairne
"The Lond o' the Leal"
"He's Ower the Hills that I Lo'e Weel"
"The Auld House"
"The Laird o' Cockpen"
"The Rowan Tree"
"Wha'll be King but Charlie?"
"Charlie Is My Darling"
Alexander Ross
"Wooed and Married and A'"
John Skinner
"Tullochgorum"
Michael Bruce
"To the Cuckoo"
George Halket
"Logie o' Buchan"
William Hamilton of Bangour
"The Braes of Yarrow"
Hector MacNeil
"I Lo'ed Ne'er a Laddie but Ane"
"Come Under My Plaidie"
Sir William Jones
"An Ode"
"On Parent Knees a Naked New-born Child"
Susanna Blamire
"And Ye Shall Walk in Silk Attire"
Anne Hunter
"My Mother Bids Me Bind My Hair"
John Dunlop
"The Year, That's Awa'"
Samuel Rogers
"A Wish"
"The Sleeping Beauty"
William Blake
"The Tiger"
"Ah! Sun-flower"
"To Spring"
"Reeds of Innocence"
"Night"
"Auguries of Innocence"
"Nurse's Song"
"Holy Thursday"
"The Divine Image"
"Song"
John Collins
"To-Morrow"
Robert Tannahill
"Jessie, the Flower o' Dunblane"
"Gloomy Winter's Now Awa'"
William Wordsworth
"Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood"
"My Heart Leaps Up"
"The Two April Mornings"
"The Fountain"
"Written in March"
"Nature and the Poet"
"Ruth: Or the Influence of Nature"
"A Lesson"
"Michael"
"Yarrow Unvisited"
"Yarrow Visited"
"Yarrow Revisited"
"Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey"
"The Daffodils"
"To the Daisy"
"To the Cuckoo"
"The Green Linnet"
"Written in Early Spring"
"To the Skylark"
"The Affliction of Margaret"
"Simon Lee the Old Huntsman"
"Ode to Duty"
"She Was a Phantom of Delight"
"To the Highland Girl of Inversneyde"
"The Solitary Reaper"
"The Reverie of Poor Susan"
"To Toussaint L'Ouverture"
"Character of the Happy Warrior"
"Resolution and Independence"
"Laodamia"
"We Are Seven"
"Lucy"
"The Inner Vision"
"By the Sea"
"Upon Westminster Bridge"
"To a Distant Friend"
"Desiseria"
"We Must Be Free or Die"
"England and Switzerland"
"On the Extonction of the Venetian Republic"
"London, MDCCCII"
"The Same"
"When I Have Borne"
"The World is Too Much With Us"
"Within King's College Chapel, Cambridge"
"Valedictory Sonnet to the River Duddon"
"Composed at Neidpath Castle, the Property of Lord Queensbury"
"Admonition to a Traveller"
"To Sleep"
"The Sonnet"
William Lisle Bowles
"Dover Cliffs"
Samuel Taylor ColeridgeThe Rime of the Ancient Mariner"Kubla Khan"
"Youth and Age"
"Love"
"Hymn Before Sunrise, in the Vale of Chamouni"Christabel"Dejection: an Ode"
Robert Southey
"After Blenheim"
"The Scholar"
Charles Lamb
"The Old Familiar Faces"
"Hester"
"On an Infant Dying as Soon as Born"
Sir Walter Scott
"The Outlaw"
"To a Lock of Hair"
"Jock of Hazeldean"
"Eleu Loro"
"A Serenade"
"The Rover"
"The Maid of Neidpath"
"Gathering Song of Donald the Black"
"Border Ballad"
"The Pride of Youth"
"Coronach"
"Lucy Ashton's Song"
"Answer"
"Rosabelle"
"Hunting Song"
"Lochinvar"
"Bonny Dundee"
"Datur Hora Quieti"
"Here's a Health to King Charles
"Harp of the North, Farewell!"
James Hogg
"Kilmeny"
"When the Kye Comes Hame"
"The Skylark"
"Lock the Door, Lariston"
Robert Surtees
"Barthram's Dirge"
Thomas Campbell
"The Soldier's Dream"
"To the Evening Star"
"Ode to Winter"
"Lord Ullin's Daughter"
"The River of Life"
"To the Evening Star"
"The Maid of Neidpath"
"Ye Mariners of England"
"Battle of the Baltic"
"Hohenlinden"
J. Campbell
"Freedom and Love"
Allan Cunningham
"Hame, Hame, Hame"
"A Wet Sheet and a Flowing Sea"
George Gordon, Lord Byron
"Youth and Age"
"The Destruction of Sennacherib"
"Elegy on Thyrza"
"When We Two Parted"
"For Music"
"She Walks in Beauty"
"All for Love"
"Elegy"
"To Augusta"
"Epistle to Augusta"
"Maid of Athens"
"Darkness"
"Longing"
"Fare Thee Well"The Prisoner of Chillon"On the Castle of Chillon"
"Song of Saul, Before His Last Battle"
"The Isles of Greece"
"On This Day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year"
Thomas Moore
"The Light of Other Days"
"Pro Patria Mori"
"The Meeting of the Waters"
"The Last Rose of Summer"
"The Harp that Once Through Tara's Halls"
"A Canadian Boat-Song"
"The Journey Onwards"
"The Young May Moon"
"Echo"
"At the Mid Hour of Night"
Charles Wolfe
"The Burial of Sir John Moore at Corunna
Percy Bysshe Shelley
"Hymn of Pan"Hellas"Invocation"
"Stanzas Written in Dejection Near Naples"
"I Fear Thy Kisses"
"Lines to an Indian Air"
"To a Skylark"
"Love's Philosophy"
"To the Night"
"Ode to the West Wind"
"Written Among the Euganean Hills, North Italy"
"Hymn to the Spirit of Nature"
"A Lament"
"A Dream of the Unknown"
"The Invitation"
"The Recollection"
"To the Moon"
"A Widow Bird"
"To a Lady, with a Guitar"
"One Word is Too Often Profaned"
"Ozymandias of Egypt"
"The Flight of Love"
"The Cloud"
"Stanzas–April, 1814"
"Music, When Soft Voices Die"
"The Poet's Dream"
"The World's Wanderers"AdonaïsJames Henry Leigh Hunt
"Jenny kiss'd Me"
"Abou Ben Adhem"
John Keats
"The Realm of Fancy"
"Ode on the Poets"
"The Mermaid Tavern"
"Happy Insensibility"
"Ode to a Nightingale"
"Ode on a Grecian Urn"
"Ode to Autumn"
"Ode to Psyche"
"Ode on Melancholy"
"The Eve of St. Agnes"
"La Belle Dame Sans Merci"
"On the Grasshopper and Cricket"
"On First Looking into Chapman's Homer"
"To Sleep"
"The Human Seasons"
"Great Spirits Now on Earth are Sojourning"
"The Terror of Death"
"Last Sonnet"
Walter Savage Landor
"Rose Aylmer"
"Twenty Years Hence"
"Proud Word You Never Spoke"
"Absence"
"Dirce"
"Corinna to Tanagra, from Athens"
"Mother, I Cannot Mind My Wheel"
"Well I Remember"
"No, My Own Love"
"Robert Browning"
"The Death of Artemidora"
"Iphigeneia"
"'Do You Remember Me?'"
"For an Epitaph at Fiesole"
"On Lucretia Borgia's Hair"
"On His Seventy-Fifth Birthday"
"To My Ninth Decade"
"Death Stands Above Me"
"On Living Too Long"
Thomas Hood
"Fair Ines"
"The Bridge of Sighs"
"The Death Bed"
"Past and Present"
Sir Aubrey de Vere
"Glengariff"
Hartley Coleridge
"She Is Not Fair"
Joseph Blanco White
"To Night"
George Darley
"The Loveliness of Love"
Thomas Babington Macaulay, Lord Macaulay
"The Armada"
"A Jacobite's Epitaph"
Sir William Edmondstoune Aytoune
"The Refusal of Charon"
Hugh Miller
"The Babie"
Helen Selina, Lady Dufferin
"Lament of the Irish Emigrant"
Charles Tennyson Turner
"Letty's Globe"
Sir Samuel Ferguson
"The Fair Hills of Ireland"
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
"A Musical Instrument"
"Sonnets from the Portuguese, 1-44"
"The Sleep"
Edward Fitzgerald
"Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam of Naishápúr"
Vol. 42. English Poetry 3: Tennyson to Whitman
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
"The Lady of Shalott"
"Sweet and Low"
"Tears, Idle Tears"
"Blow, Bugle Blow"
"Home They Brought Her Warrior Dead"
"Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal"
"O Swallow, Swallow"
"Break, Break, Break"
"In the Valley of Cauteretz"
"Vivien's Song"
"Enid's Song"
"Ulysses"
"Locksley Hall"
"Morte D'Arthur"
"The Lotos-Eaters"
"You Ask Me, Why"
"Love Thou Thy Land"
"Sir Galahad"
"The Higher Pantheism"
"Flower in the Crannied Wall"
"Wages"
"The Charge of the Light Brigade"
"The Revenge"
"Rizpah"
"To Virgil"
"Maud"
"Crossing the Bar"
Richard Monckton Milnes, Lord Houghton
"Sonnet"
William Makepeace Thackray
"The End of the Play"
Charles Kingsley
"Airly Beacon"
"The Sands of Dee"
"Youth and Old"
"Ode to the North-east Wind"
J. Wilson
"The Canadian Boat Song"
Robert Browning
"Prospice"
"How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix"The Lost LeaderHome-thoughts, from Abroad"Home-thoughts, from the Sea"
"Parting at Morning"
"The Lost Mistress"
"The Last Ride Together"
"Pippa's Song"
"You'll Love Me Yet"
"My Last Duchess"
"The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed's Church"
"Evelyn Hope"
"A Toccata of Galuppi's"
"Memorabilia"
"The Patriot"
"The Grammarian's Funeral"
"Andrea del Sarto"
"One Word More"
"Abt Volger"
"Rabbi Ben Ezra"
Dedication of The Ring and the Book"Epilogue"
Emily Brontë
Last Lines
"The Old Stoic"
Robert Stephen Hawker
"And Shall Trelawny Die?"
Coventry Patmore
"Departure"
William (Johnson) CoryHeraclitus"Mimnermus in Church"
Sydney Dobell
"The Ballad of Keith of Ravelston"
William Allingham
"The Fairies"
George Mac Donald
"That Holy Thing"
"Baby"
Edward, Earl of Lytton
"The Last Wish"
Arthur Hugh Clough
"Say Not the Struggle Naught Availeth"
"The Stream of Life"
"In a London Square"
"Qua Cursum Ventus"
"Where Lies the Land"
Matthew Arnold
"The Forsaken Merman"
"The Song of the Callicles"
"To Marguerite"
"Requiescat"
"Rugby Chapel"
"Memorial Verses"
"Dover Beach"
"The Better Part"
"Worldly Place"
"The Last Word"
George Meredith
"Love in the Valley"
Alexander Smith
"Barbara"
Charles Dickens
"The Ivy Green"
Thomas Edward Brown
"My Garden"
James Thomson (B.V.)
"Gifts"
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
"The Blessed Damozel"
"The Kings Tragedy"
"Lovesight"
"Heart's Hope"
"Genius in Beauty"
"Silent Noon"
"Love-Sweetness"
"Heart's Compass"
"Her Gifts"
Christina Georgina Rossetti
"Song"
"Remember"
"Up-Hill"
"In the Round Tower at Jhansi"
William Morris
"The Defence of Guenevere"
Prologue of The Earthly Paradise"The Nymph's Song to Hylas"
"The Day Is Coming"
"The Days That Were"
John Boyle O'Reilly
"A White Rose"
Arthur William Edgar O'Shaughnessy
"Ode"
Robert Williams Buchanan
"Liz"
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Chorus from "Atalanta"
"Itylus"
"The Garden of Proserpine"
"A Match"
"A Forsaken Garden"
William Ernest Henley
"Margaritæ Sorori"
"Invictus"
"England, My England"
Robert Louis Stevenson
"In the Highlands"
"The Celestial Surgeon"
"Requiem"
William Cullen Bryant
"Thanatopsis"
"Robert of Lincoln"
"Song of Marion's Men"
"June"
"The Past"
"To a Waterfowl"
"The Death of Lincoln"
Edgar Allan Poe
"Lenore"
"The Haunted Palace
"To Helen"
"The Raven"
"Ulalume"
"The Bells"
"To My Mother"
"For Annie"
"Annabel Lee"
"The Conqueror Worm"
Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Good-Bye"
"The Apology"
"Brahma
"Days"
"Give All to Love"
"Concord Hymn"
"The Humble-Bee"
"The Problem"
"Woodnotes"
"Boston Hymn"
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"A Psalm of Life"
"The Light of Stars"
"Hymn to the Night"
"Footsteps of Angels"
"The Wreck of the Hesperus"
"The Village Blacksmith"
"Serenade"
"The Rainy Day"
"The Day is Gone"
"The Bridge"
"Resignation"
"Children"
"The Building of the Ship"
"My Lost Youth"
"The Fiftieth Birthday of Agassiz"
"The Children's Hour"
"Paul Revere's Ride"
"Killed at the Ford"EvangelineJohn Greenleaf Whittier
"The Eternal Goodness"
"Randolph of Roanoke"
"Massachusetts to Virginia"
"Barclay of Ury"
"Maud Muller"
"The Barefoot Boy"
"Skipper Ireson's Ride"
"The Pipes at Lucknow"
"Barbara Frietchie"
Oliver Wendell Holmes
"The Chambered Nautilus"
"Old Ironsides"
"The Last Leaf"
"Contentment"
James Russell Lowell
"The Present Crisis"
"The Pious Editor's Creed"
"The Courtin'"
"Ode Recited at the Harvard Commemoration"
Sidney Lanier
"The Marshes of Glynn"
"The Revenge of Hamish"
"How Love Looked for Hell"
Bret Harte
"The Reveille"
Walt Whitman
"One's Self I Sing"
"Beat! Beat! Drums!"
"Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night"
"Pioneers! O Pioneers!"
"Ethiopia Saluting the Colors"
"The Wound Dresser"
"Give me the Splendid Silent Sun"
"O Captain! My Captain!"
"When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd"
"Prayer of Columbus"
"The Last Invocation"
Vol. 43. American Historical Documents
Introductory Note
"The Voyages to Vinland" (c. 1000)
"The Letter of Columbus to Luis de Sant Angel Announcing His Discovery" (1493)
"Amerigo Vespucci’s Account of His First Voyage" (1497)
"John Cabot’s Discovery of North America" (1497)
"First Charter of Virginia" (1606)
"The Mayflower Compact" (1620)
"The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut" (1639)
"The Massachusetts Body of Liberties" (1641)
"Arbitrary Government Described and the Government of the Massachusetts Vindicated from that Aspersion", by John Winthrop (1644)
"The Instrument of Government" (1653)
"A Healing Question", by Sir Henry Vane" (1656)
"John Eliot’s "Brief Narrative" (1670)
"Declaration of Rights" (1765)
"The Declaration of Independence" (1776)
"The Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence" (1775)
"Articles of Confederation" (1777)
"Articles of Capitulation, Yorktown" (1781)
"Treaty with Great Britain" (1783)
"Constitution of the United States" (1787)
"The Federalist", Nos. 1 and 2 (1787)
"Opinion of Chief Justice Marshall, in the Case of McCulloch vs. the State of Maryland" (1819)
"Washington’s First Inaugural Address" (1789)
"Treaty with the Six Nations" (1794)
"Washington’s Farewell Address" (1796)
"Treaty with France (Louisiana Purchase)" (1803)
"Treaty with Great Britain (End of War of 1812)" (1814)
"Arrangement as to the Naval Force to Be Respectively Maintained on the American Lakes" (1817)
"Treaty with Spain (Acquisition of Florida)" (1819)
"The Monroe Doctrine" (1823)
"Webster-Ashburton Treaty with Great Britain" (1842)
"Treaty with Mexico (1848)
"Fugitive Slave Act" (1850)
"Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address" (1861)
"Emancipation Proclamation" (1863)
"Haskell’s Account of the Battle of Gettysburg"
"Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address" (1863)
"Proclamation of Amnesty" (1863)
"Lincoln’s Letter to Mrs. Bixby" (1864)
"Terms of Lee’s Surrender at Appomattox" (1865)
"Lee’s Farewell to His Army" (1865)
"Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address" (1865)
"Proclamation Declaring the Insurrection at an End" (1866)
"Treaty with Russia (Alaska Purchase)" (1867)
"Annexation of the Hawaiian Islands" (1898)
"Recognition of the Independence of Cuba" (1898)
"Treaty with Spain (Cession of Porto Rico and the Philippines)" (1898)
"Convention Between the United States and the Republic of Panama" (1904)
Vol. 44. Sacred Writings: Volume 1
ConfucianThe Sayings of ConfuciusHebrewThe Book of JobThe Book of PsalmsEcclesiastes; Or, The PreacherChristian, (Part I)The Gospel According to LukeThe Acts of the ApostlesVol. 45. Sacred Writings: Volume 2
Christian, (Part II)
Buddhist
Buddhist Writings, Translated and Annotated by Henry Clarke WarrenHindu
The Bhagavad Gita or Song Celestial, Translated by Sir Edwin ArnoldMohammedan
Chapters from the Koran, Translated and Annotated by E. H. PalmerMecca Suras
Medina Suras
Vol. 46. Elizabethan Drama 1
Edward the Second, by Christopher Marlowe
Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, and The Tempest, by William Shakespeare
Vol. 47. Elizabethan Drama 2
The Shoemaker's Holiday, by Thomas Dekker
The Alchemist, by Ben Jonson
Philaster, by Beaumont and Fletcher
The Duchess of Malfi, by John Webster
A New Way to Pay Old Debts, by Philip Massinger
Vol. 48. Thoughts and Minor Works, Pascal
Thoughts, letters, and minor works, by Blaise Pascal
Vol. 49. Epic and Saga
Beowulf The Song of Roland The Destruction of Dá Derga's Hostel The Story of the Volsungs and Niblungs Songs from The Elder EddaVol. 50. Introduction, Reader's Guide, Indexes
The Editor's Introduction to the Harvard Classics
Reader's Guide to the Harvard Classics
Class I
The History of Civilization
Race and Language
Ancient Egypt
The East in Patriarchal Time
Ancient Greece: Legendary Ancient Greece: Historic Ancient Rome: Republican Ancient Rome: Imperial Germanic Peoples in Primitive Times
Ireland in Primitive Times
The Early Christian Church
The Mohammedan East
The Middle Ages
The Renaissance
Modern Europe
America
Religion and Philosophy
Hebrew
Greek
Roman
Chinese
Hindu
Christian: Primitive and Medieval Mohammedan
Christian: Modern Modern Philosophers
Education
Montaigne...Huxley
Science
Hippocrates...Geikie
Politics
Plutarch...American Historical Documents
Voyages and Travels
Herodotus...Emerson
Criticism of Literature and the Fine Arts
Caxton...Stevenson
Class II
Drama
Greek
English
Spanish
French
German
Biography and Letters
Plutarch...Stevenson
Essays
Montaigne...Stevenson
Narrative Poetry and Prose Fiction
Homer...Lanier
An Index of the First Lines of Poems, Songs and Choruses, Hymns and Psalms
General Index
Chronological Index
Lectures
Lectures on The Harvard Classics
The last volume contains sixty lectures introducing and summarizing the covered fields:
History
"General Introduction", by Robert Matteson Johnston
"Ancient History", by William Scott Ferguson
"The French Revolution", by Robert Matteson Johnston
"The Renaissance", by Murray Anthony Potter
"The Territorial Development of the United States", by Fredrick Jackson Turner
Poetry
"General Introduction", by Carlton Noyes
"Homer and the Epic", by Charles Burton Gulick
"Dante", by Charles Hall Grandgent
"The Poems of John Milton", by Ernest Bernbaum
"The English Anthology", by Carleton Noyes
Natural Science
"General Introduction", by Lawrence Joseph Henderson
"Astronomy", by Lawrence Joseph Henderson
"Physics and Chemistry", by Lawrence Joseph Henderson
"The Biological Sciences", by Lawrence Joseph Henderson
"Kelvin on 'Light' and 'The Tides'", by William Morris Davis
Philosophy
"General Introduction", by Ralph Barton Perry
"Socrates, Plato, and the Roman Stoics", by Charles Pomeroy Parker
"The Rise of Modern Philosophy", by Ralph Barton Perry
"Introduction to Kant", by Ralph Barton Perry
"Emerson", by Chester Noyes Greenough
Biography
"General Introduction", William Roscoe Thayer,
"Plutarch", by William Scott Ferguson,
"Benvenuto Cellini", by Chandler Rathfon Post
"Franklin and Woolman", by Chester Noyes Greenough
"John Stuart Mill", by Oliver Mitchell Wentworth
Prose Fiction
"General Introduction" by William Allan Neilson,
"Popular Prose Fiction" by Fred Norris Robinson,
"Malory", by Gustavus Howard Maynadier
"Cervantes", by Jeremiah D. M. Ford
"Manzoni" by Jeremiah D. M. Ford
Criticism and the Essay
"General Introduction", by Bliss Perry
"What the Middle Ages Read", by William Allan Neilson
"Theories of Poetry", by Bliss Perry
"Æsthetic Criticism in Germany", by William Guild Howard
"The Composition of a Criticism", by Ernest Bernbaum
Education
"General Introduction", by Henry Wyman Holmes
"Francis Bacon", by Ernest Bernbaum
"Locke and Milton", by Henry Wyman Holmes
"Carlyle and Newman", by Frank Wilson Cheney Hersey
"Huxley on Science and Culture", by A. O. Norton
Political Science
"General Introduction", by Thomas Nixon Carver
"Theories of Government in the Renaissance", by O. M. W. Sprague
"Adam Smith and 'The Wealth of Nations'", by Charles J. Bullock
"The Growth of the American Constitution" by William Bennett Munro
"Law and Liberty", by Roscoe Pound
Drama
"General Introduction", by George Pierce Baker
"Greek Tragedy", by Charles Burton Gulick
"The Elizabethan Drama", by William Allan Neilson
"The Faust Legend", by Kuno Francke
"Modern English Drama", by Ernest Bernbaum
Voyages and Travel
"General Introduction", by Roland Burrage Dixon
"Herodotus on Egypt", by George H. Chase
"The Elizabethan Adventurers", by William Allan Neilson
"The Era of Discovery", by William Bennett Monro
"Darwin’s Voyage of the Beagle", by George Howard Parker
Religion
"General Introduction", by Ralph Barton Perry
"Buddhism", by Charles Rockwell Lanman
"Confucianism", by Dwight Sheffield
"Greek Religion", by Clifford Herschel Moore
"Pascal", by Charles Henry Conrad Wright
The Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction
The Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction is a supplement of 20 volumes of modern fiction added in 1917. Items were selected for inclusion by Charles W. Eliot, with notes and introductions by William Allan Neilson.
Vol. 1. HENRY FIELDING 1
The History of Tom Jones, part 1, by Henry Fielding
Vol. 2. HENRY FIELDING 2
The History of Tom Jones, part 2, by Henry Fielding
Vol. 3. LAURENCE STERN, JANE AUSTEN
A Sentimental Journey, by Laurence Sterne
Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen
Vol. 4. SIR WALTER SCOTT
Guy Mannering, by Sir Walter Scott
Vol. 5. WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 1
Vanity Fair, part 1, by William Makepeace Thackeray
Vol. 6. WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 2
Vanity Fair, part 2, by William Makepeace Thackeray
Vol. 7. CHARLES DICKENS 1
David Copperfield, part 1, by Charles Dickens
Vol. 8. CHARLES DICKENS 2
David Copperfield, part 2, by Charles Dickens
Vol. 9. GEORGE ELIOT
The Mill on the Floss, by George Eliot
Vol. 10. HAWTHORNE, IRVING, POE, BRET HARTE, MARK TWAIN, HALE
The Scarlet Letter and Rappaccini's Daughter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, by Washington Irving
Eleonora, The Fall of the House of Usher, and The Purloined Letter, by Edgar Allan Poe
The Luck of Roaring Camp, The Outcasts of Poker Flat, and The Idyl of Red Gulch, by Francis Bret Harte
Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog, by Samuel L. Clemens
The Man Without a Country, by Edward Everett Hale
Vol. 11. HENRY JAMES, JR.
The Portrait of a Lady, by Henry James
Vol. 12. VICTOR HUGO
Notre Dame de Paris, by Victor Marie Hugo
Vol. 13. BALZAC, SAND, DE MUSSET, DAUDET, DE MAUPASSANT
Old Goriot, by Honoré Balzac
The Devil's Pool, by George Sand
The Story of a White Blackbird, by Alfred de Musset
The Siege of Berlin, The Last Class—The Story of a Little Alsatian, The Child Spy, The Game of Billiards, and The Bad Zouave, by Alphonse Daudet
Walter Schnaffs’ Adventure and Two Friends, by Guy de Maupassant
Vol. 14. JOHANN WOLFGANG GOETHE
Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, by Johann Wolfgang Goethe
Vol. 15. GOETHE, KELLER, STORM, FONTANE
The Sorrows of Young Werther, by Johann Wolfgang Goethe
The Banner of the Upright Seven, by Gottfried Keller
The Rider on the White Horse, by Theodor Storm
Trials and Tribulations, by Theodor Fontane
Vol. 16. LEO NIKOLAEVITCH TOLSTOY 1
Anna Karenina, part 1, by Leo Tolstoy
Vol. 17. LEO NIKOLAEVITCH TOLSTOY 2
Anna Karenina, part 2, and Ivan the Fool, by Leo Tolstoy
Vol. 18. FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY
Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Vol. 19. IVAN TURGENEV
A House of Gentlefolk and Fathers and Children, by Ivan Turgenev
Vol. 20. VALERA, BJØRNSON, KIELLAND
Pepita Jimenez, by Juan Valera
A Happy Boy, by Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
Skipper Worse'', by Alexander L. Kielland
References
External links
(Online version.)
(All volumes.)
Book collecting
Classics publications
Great Books
Harvard University publications
Publications established in 1909
Series of books |
19962 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesa%20%28programming%20language%29 | Mesa (programming language) | Mesa is a programming language developed in the late 1970s at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in Palo Alto, California, United States. The language name was a pun based upon the programming language catchphrases of the time, because Mesa is a "high level" programming language.
Mesa is an ALGOL-like language with strong support for modular programming. Every library module has at least two source files: a definitions file specifying the library's interface plus one or more program files specifying the implementation of the procedures in the interface. To use a library, a program or higher-level library must "import" the definitions. The Mesa compiler type-checks all uses of imported entities; this combination of separate compilation with type-checking was unusual at the time.
Mesa introduced several other innovations in language design and implementation, notably in the handling of software exceptions, thread synchronization, and incremental compilation.
Mesa was developed on the Xerox Alto, one of the first personal computers with a graphical user interface, however, most of the Alto's system software was written in BCPL. Mesa was the system programming language of the later Xerox Star workstations, and for the GlobalView desktop environment. Xerox PARC later developed Cedar, which was a superset of Mesa.
Mesa and Cedar had a major influence on the design of other important languages, such as Modula-2 and Java, and was an important vehicle for the development and dissemination of the fundamentals of GUIs, networked environments, and the other advances Xerox contributed to the field of computer science.
History
Mesa was originally designed in the Computer Systems Laboratory (CSL), a branch of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, for the Alto, an experimental micro-coded workstation. Initially, its spread was confined to PARC and a few universities to which Xerox had donated some Altos.
Mesa was later adopted as the systems programming language for Xerox's commercial workstations such as the Xerox 8010 (Xerox Star, Dandelion) and Xerox 6085 (Daybreak), in particular for the Pilot operating system.
A secondary development environment, called the Xerox Development Environment (XDE) allowed developers to debug both the operating system Pilot as well as ViewPoint GUI applications using a world swap mechanism. This allowed the entire "state" of the world to be swapped out, and allowed low-level system crashes which paralyzed the whole system to be debugged. This technique did not scale very well to large application images (several megabytes), and so the Pilot/Mesa world in later releases moved away from the world swap view when the micro-coded machines were phased out in favor of SPARC workstations and Intel PCs running a Mesa PrincOps emulator for the basic hardware instruction set.
Mesa was compiled into a stack-machine language, purportedly with the highest code density ever achieved (roughly 4 bytes per high-level language statement). This was touted in a 1981 paper where implementors from the Xerox Systems Development Department (then, the development arm of PARC), tuned up the instruction set and published a paper on the resultant code density.
Mesa was taught via the Mesa Programming Course that took people through the wide range of technology Xerox had available at the time and ended with the programmer writing a "hack", a workable program designed to be useful. An actual example of such a hack is the BWSMagnifier, which was written in 1988 and allowed people to magnify sections of the workstation screen as defined by a resizable window and a changeable magnification factor. Trained Mesa programmers from Xerox were well versed in the fundamental of GUIs, networking, exceptions, and multi-threaded programming, almost a decade before they became standard tools of the trade.
Within Xerox, Mesa was eventually superseded by the Cedar programming language. Many Mesa programmers and developers left Xerox in 1985; some of them went to DEC Systems Research Center where they used their experience with Mesa in the design of Modula-2+, and later of Modula-3.
Main features
Semantics
Mesa was a strongly typed programming language with type-checking across module boundaries, but with enough flexibility in its type system that heap allocators could be written in Mesa.
Because of its strict separation between interface and implementation, Mesa allows true incremental compilation and encourages architecture- and platform-independent programming. They also simplified source-level debugging, including remote debugging via the Ethernet.
Mesa had rich exception handling facilities, with four types of exceptions. It had support for thread synchronization via monitors. Mesa was the first language to implement monitor BROADCAST, a concept introduced by the Pilot operating system.
Syntax
Mesa has an "imperative" and "algebraic" syntax, based on ALGOL and Pascal rather than on BCPL or C; for instance, compound commands are indicated by the and keywords rather than braces. In Mesa, all keywords are written in uppercase.
Due to PARC's using the 1963 variant of ASCII rather than the more common 1967 variant, the Alto's character set included a left-pointing arrow (←) rather than an underscore. The result of this is that Alto programmers (including those using Mesa, Smalltalk etc.) conventionally used CamelCase for compound identifiers, a practice which was incorporated in PARC's standard programming style. On the other hand, the availability of the left-pointing arrow allowed them to use it for the assignment operator, as it originally had been in ALGOL.
When the Mesa designers wanted to implement an exception facility, they hired a recent M.Sc. graduate from Colorado who had written his thesis on exception handling facilities in algorithmic languages. This led to the richest exception facility for its time, with primitives , , , , , and . Because the language did not have type-safe checks to verify full coverage for signal handling, uncaught exceptions were a common cause of bugs in released software.
Cedar
Mesa was the precursor to the programming language Cedar. Cedar's main additions were garbage collection, dynamic types, better string support through ropes, a limited form of type parameterization, and special syntax for identifying the type-safe parts of multi-module software packages, to ensure deterministic execution and prevent memory leaks.
Descendants
The United States Department of Defense approached Xerox to use Mesa for its "IronMan" programming language (see Steelman language requirements), but Xerox declined due to conflicting goals. Xerox PARC employees argued that Mesa was a proprietary advantage that made Xerox software engineers more productive than engineers at other companies. The Department of Defense instead eventually chose and developed the Ada programming language from the candidates.
The original Star Desktop evolved into the ViewPoint Desktop and later became GlobalView which was ported to various Unix platforms, such as SunOS Unix and AIX. A Mesa to C compiler was written and the resulting code compiled for the target platform. This was a workable solution but made it nearly impossible to develop on the Unix machines since the power of the Mesa compiler and associated tool chain was lost using this approach. There was some commercial success on Sun SPARC workstations in the publishing world, but this approach resulted in isolating the product to narrow market opportunities.
In 1976, during a sabbatical at Xerox PARC, Niklaus Wirth became acquainted with Mesa, which had a major influence in the design of his Modula-2 language.
Java explicitly refers to Mesa as a predecessor.
See also
History of the graphical user interface
References
External links
Mesa Programming Language Manual, Version 5 (1979) at bitsavers.org
Other Mesa documents at bitsavers.org
World-Stop Debuggers, Don Gillies, Xerox SDD/ISD Employee, 1984–86.
Xerox
Procedural programming languages
Concurrent programming languages
Programming languages created in 1976
Statically typed programming languages
Systems programming languages |
16088226 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1st%20Space%20Operations%20Squadron | 1st Space Operations Squadron | The 1st Space Operations Squadron (1 SOPS) is a United States Space Force unit responsible for space-based space domain awareness. Located at Schriever Space Force Base, Colorado, the squadron operates the Space Based Space Surveillance system, the Advanced Technology Risk Reduction system, the Operationally Responsive Space-5 satellite, and the Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program.
It was first activated in 1961 as the 1st Aerospace Surveillance and Control Squadron as the SPACETRACK component of NORAD's Space Detection and Tracking System. It was the operational version of Project Space Track. It continued this mission as the 1st Aerospace Control Squadron until inactivation in 1976. It depends on Space Delta 9 when this unit is created in 24 July 2020.
Mission
The squadron conducts command and control for four distinct constellations: Defense Support Program (DSP), Midcourse Space Experiment (MSX) and a NASA research and development program, in low earth to deep space orbits, and is Air Force Space Command's only multi-mission Satellite Operations Control Center. 1 SOPS is supported by the Air Force Reserves unit, the 7th Space Operations Squadron.
The squadron operates and maintains 24-hour Air Force Satellite Control Network command and control capability for Defense Support Program and Midcourse Space Experiment constellations. It also operates and maintains a research and development space system providing vital space weather data worldwide.
The 1st Squadron performs launch and early-orbit operations for GPS and DSP systems including satellite activation, initial checkout and transfer to mission orbit. It plans and executes tracking, telemetry and command functions for GPS, DSP, MXS and a NASA research and development satellite to maintain spacecraft state-of-health, sustain on-orbit operations and accomplish mission taskings. They respond to all satellite emergencies, and support end-of-life testing and disposal operations for GPS, DSP and MSX and NASA research and development spacecraft as required.
The squadron maintains DSP spacecraft positional knowledge and distributes data to worldwide users. It also conducts MSX and NASA research and development training and evaluation.
The Multi-Mission Space Operations Center (MMSOC) is a revolutionary approach to space operations—an operations center focused on forging a one-of-a-kind operations/acquisition team to demonstrate and field emerging space missions and satellite C2 technologies in a rapid, decisive manner. The MMSOC is structured to operate a variety of satellite missions, including satellite initiatives without a program office, satellite missions of small scale (small constellations), new missions transitioning from concept toward full-scale operations, and all research, development, test and evaluation satellites with operational utility remaining after test and evaluation are complete.
Mission control crew shifts conduct 24-hour operations supporting the three major functions of satellite control; telemetry, tracking and commanding. Orbital analysts and program engineers provide program specific knowledge and support to the crews. The operators perform pre-contact planning, real time contact and post-contact evaluation. The squadron conducts more than 2,000 contacts a month.
History
Space Track
The squadron was originally organized on 14 February 1961, as the 1st Aerospace Surveillance and Control Squadron, a unit of Air Defense Command and became operational on 1 July 1961 as the SPACETRACK component of NORAD Space Detection and Tracking System (SPADATS). It was the operational version of research and development Project Space Track. Effective 1 October 1961, the Squadron was assigned to the 9th Aerospace Defense Division, which had been activated on 15 July 1961. The squadron name changed to 1st Aerospace Control Squadron on 1 July 1962.
Until April 1966, when operations were moved to the NORAD Cheyenne Mountain Complex, The squadron was located on the bottom two floors of Ent Air Force Base building P4 Annex, a former hospital building, adjacent to the NORAD command center.
The squadron was responsible for tracking all artificial earth satellites, space probes, carrier rockets, and debris, US and foreign. The mission included detecting additional objects previously unknown and maintaining a complete catalogue. It controlled a global network of ground sensors. It was the operational version of research and development Project Space Track and the Space Track component of NORAD's Space Detection and Tracking System
Sensors
The squadron had essentially the same set of sensors used by Project Space Track, with the addition of two additional Baker-Nunn cameras, one of which was used by the Royal Canadian Air Force at RCAF Station Cold Lake, Alberta, Canada. In March 1961, the Laredo Air Force Base sensor was transferred from Air Research and Development Command to Air Defense Command. It was operated by Detachment 1 of the squadron. In January 1968, the System 440L over-the-horizon radar reached initial operational capability. In 1968, SPACETRACK was also supported by the Royal Radar Establishment at Great Malvern, England. By mid-1969, three USAF Baker-Nunn cameras were operated in support of SPACETRACK under the 18th Surveillance Squadron, despite questions about their on-going utility in view of increasing radar tracking accuracies. An AN/FPS-85 phased array radar became operational at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, in May 1970.
Orbital computations
The squadron initially made orbital predictions by computing ephemerides based on standard Kepler orbits. As a satellite got lower into the atmosphere, drag made it difficult to forecast the ephemeris of the satellite accurately. By 1962, the situation was somewhat better. The Soviet satellite Sputnik 4 was slowly entering lower orbits because of atmospheric drag. Using a new program, (Satellite General Perturbations Differential Corrections) and observations from the radar at Shemya Air Force Station, the orbital analyst plotted the changing orbital period and was able to predict the exact revolution on which the satellite reentered the atmosphere. To make progress in automating ephemeris forecasts, Aeronutronic and TRW Inc. developed sophisticated new programs. Squadron orbital analysts evaluated the two programs. The Aeronutronic submission was named Spiral Decay and the TRW submission, Electronic Systems Precision Orbit Determination (ESPOD). ESPOD had been developed for Program 437, an anti-satellite program, to enable computation of trajectories for satellite intercept.
As a demonstration of the effectiveness of Spiral Decay, the program was used to forecast the reentry of Soviet Kosmos 23. Public media had been alerted to the impending decay and many people in Canada saw the fiery reentry. One racetrack even dimmed the lights to enhance the show. Spiral Decay was considered a more sophisticated program than ESPOD and used less computer time to attain more accurate results. It was selected as the standard for analysis, significantly helping predict future decay trajectories. It was also adopted as the primary computer capability for weapon engagement and was useful in more precisely locating sensors, such at the radar at Dyarbakir Air Station, Turkey.
On 1 March 1965, the rocket body of Kosmos 61 exploded between revolutions 1 and 2, giving 1st Aero another challenge to catalog the many fragments. Because the orbital period was 106 minutes, the fragments would not decay quickly. Two computer programs, SPACESWEEP and ALTEC, aided automation of the task but, when Cosmos 200 broke up on 23 January 1968, the breakup created severe problems to the Space Defense Center because of the amount of manual work needed. Also in March 1965, the Special Projects Division was supporting evaluation of the upgraded Shemya radar and the associated computer, in a project nicknamed Blue Fox. Blue Fox used both Spiral Decay and ESPOD to determine the accuracy of the new Shemya system, tracking satellites Transit 2A and ANNA 1B, a Navy geodetic satellite. The Blue Fox results, showing radar range biases of 129 meters or less, proved that the Shemya AN/FPS-80M was now the most accurate tracking radar in the system.
Orbital elements computed by the squadron, along with those computed by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, were included in the Satellite Situation Reports regularly published by the Goddard Center.)
Operations
In April 1961 a Philco 2000 computer was installed for dedicated squadron use. It was considered the fastest computer in the world at the time of installation. It still used IBM punched cards for data entry and was infamous for devouring the cards. The computer was programmed using Fortran for batch processing and the TAC assembly language for other work. However, Orbital Analysts still had Friden Square Root Calculators on their desks, a necessary tool.
Project Space Track at Laurence G. Hanscom Field, Massachusetts was the backup facility for squadron operations. About 49 hours before the 1st Squadron became operational, the Navy's Transit 4A carrier rocket exploded. Orbital analysts at the 1st and at Hanscom achieved a landmark in satellite tracking by identifying 296 of the fragments. On 5 June 1962, the relationship with Hanscom was formalized when several squadron officers activates the Space Track Center Alternate Facility at Hanscom. From 25 March to 6 April 1962, squadron orbital computations were transferred to Project Space Track while the Ent computer was being modified.
In mid-1962, the NORAD Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence expressed appreciation for the information and technical assistance the squadron provided in support of NORAD analysis of the Soviet Vostok 3 and Vostok 4 operations.
A new Soviet launch, which occurred on 1 November 1963. In plotting the observations made by the BMEWS radar at RAF Fylingdales, England, and other sensors the data showed an apparent change in the satellite's orbital period. The data indicated that the Soviets had boosted the satellite, changing its orbit. This confirmed a boast by Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev that the Soviets had a maneuverable satellite, something that had been treated with some disbelief by the intelligence community. It is now known that the satellite, called Polyot, was in fact a prototype orbital carrier rocket for an anti satellite system. Only one other Polyot was launched (in April 1964); the system never became operational.
In mid-1965, there was concern that two Soviet satellites had attempted a rendezvous in space. Aeronutronic technicians combined the existing Xroads and Groundtrack programs into a new program that could compare the relative positions of two satellites. This enabled the duty orbital analyst to prove that a rendezvous had not taken place.
In 1966, the Gemini IV astronauts saw what appeared to be a nearby space object. The COMBO program did not identify any nearby satellites. Shortly thereafter a short movie clip of the mystery object taken by the astronauts indicated it was probably something associated with the spacecraft, perhaps dangling from a tether.
Squadron operations were based on the techniques developed at Project Space Track. By 1962, initial observations were processed by the Report Association Program which ran automatically twice a day plus twice for BMEWS data. The program associated observations with known orbits. The output of the program, plus data from the Checker Program, was sent to the duty space surveillance officer and technician for review with some assistance from the duty orbital analyst as needed.
Other special duty orbital analyst activity occurred when a satellite neared decay. When the orbital period fell below 90 minutes, the duty space surveillance officer notified the duty orbital analyst and a special analyst was normally assigned to monitor the decay. In the unusual case of the decay of a Discoverer recovery vehicle that had not come down where programmed, the duty orbital analyst had access to a special computer program, which provided a sub-satellite trace for one revolution, to assist in specifying the track. New friendly launches were handled by a duty orbital analyst dedicated to the task but, in the case of new Soviet launches, an analyst for intelligence was assigned.
Analysis of interplanetary and lunar probe launches were handled by Special Project Analysts, who had several special astrodynamic programs to assist in computations. The Encke program was used when the vehicle was within 125 earth radii and the Interplanetary program, adjusting for planetary perturbations, for vehicles beyond that distance. The Special Project Analysts also handled special requests for such things as very accurate orbital elements or decay information for a satellite (as might be required by research or educational groups). These analysts also monitored incoming technical papers, attended technical meetings to obtain information which was of use to the mission, and monitored improvements in decay forecasts.
Satellite control
On 5 October 1987, the squadron was reactivated, renamed the 1st Satellite Control Squadron, and began its ever-growing satellite control mission. On 16 February 1988, the squadron began its first commanding on the DSP constellation.
The Space Operations Center (SOC) was operationally turned over to AFSPC on 21 December 1989. The SOC increased its mission on 20 February 1990, when the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program mission was operationally turned over. In May 1996, satellite command authority for the first research and development satellite controlled by AFSPC, Technology for Autonomous Operational Survivability, was given to 1st SOPS.
On 4 December 1998, the squadron assumed command and control capability on the Midcourse Space Experiment, which became an operational program on 1 October 2000, with the first-ever transfer of operations from the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization to AFSPC.
Operated Space Detection and Tracking System Center, tracking and cataloging man-made objects in space, 1961-1976. Satellite command and control for the NAVSTAR Global Positioning System, the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program, and the Defense Support Program, 1987-.
List of commanders
Col Robert Miller, 27 Mar 1961
Col Bill R. Adams, 1 Jan 1965-unknown (at least Mar 1967)
Col William C. Watts, by 1 Jan 1968
Col Stanton G. Daries, 1 Jul 1970
Col Bernard J. Szczutkowski Jr., 18 Sep 1972
Col Thomas C. Brandt, by 30 Jun 1973-at least 30 Sep 1975
Lt Col Donna L. Burk, 5 Oct 1987
Maj Louis H. Schweichler, 10 Jun 1988 (acting)
Maj Thomas Baugh, 14 Jun 1988
Lt Col Alan H. Payne, 9 Feb 1990
Lt Col Robert L. Hooten, 20 Feb 1992
Lt Col Evan J. Hoapili, 4 Aug 1994
Lt Col John F. Anthony Jr., 24 Jun 1996
Lt Col Barry J. Bennett, 10 Jul 1998
Lt Col Michael K. Chesonis, 30 May 2000
Lt Col B. Edwin Wilson, 3 Jul 2002
Lt Col Steven L. Lootens, 3 Jul 2003
Lt Col Craig L. Bomberg, 6 Jul 2005
Lt Col Erik J. Eliasen, 28 Jun 2007
Lt Col Lorenzo Bradley, 16 July 2009
Lt Col Michael Manor, July 2011
Lt Col Toby Doran, 24 June 2013
Lt Col Casey M. Beard, July 2015
Lt Col Mark Bigley, 7 July 2017
Lt Col Ryan Bell, ~2019
Lt Col Patrick Gaynor, 21 June 2021
Lineage
Constituted as the 1st Aerospace Surveillance and Control Squadron and activated on 6 February 1961 (not organized)
Organized on 14 February 1961
Redesignated 1st Aerospace Control Squadron on 1 July 1962
Inactivated on 21 April 1976
Redesignated 1st Satellite Control Squadron on 25 September 1987
Activated on 5 October 1987
Redesignated 1st Space Operations Squadron on 30 January 1992
Assignments
Air Defense Command, 6 February 1961 (not organized)
9 Aerospace Defense Division, 1 October 1961
Fourteenth Aerospace Force, 1 July 1968 – 21 April 1976
2d Space Wing, 5 October 1987
50th Operations Group, 30 January 1992 – present
Stations
Ent Air Force Base, Colorado, 14 February 1961
Cheyenne Mountain Complex, Colorado, April 1966 - 21 April 1976
Falcon Air Force Station (later Falcon Air Force Base, Schriever Space Force Base), Colorado, 5 October 1987 – present
Spacecraft Operated
Global Positioning System (December 1989-December 2007)
Defense Support Program (February 1988-before 2008)
Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (December 1989-c 1996)
Technology for Autonomous Operational Survivability (STEP Mission O) (May 1996-after 1997)
DoD boosters (May 2003-March 2009)
Space Based Space Surveillance (September 2010 – present)
Midcourse Space Experiment (October 2000-July 2008)
Miniature Sensor Technology Integration-3 1st and 3d Space Operations Squadron members were deployed to Alexandria, VA control center from March - September 1996 on a 50 SW/CC initiative to bring tactical satellite command and control to Air Force Space Command. After they completed their deployment, the MSTI-3 command and control continued by SMC/TE (Onizuka AS, CA and Kirtland AFB, NM; now Space Development and Test Wing, Kirtland AFB) until the satellite was successfully deorbited on 11 December 1997.
Awards
References
Notes
Explanatory notes
Citations
Bibliography
External links
50th Space Wing Public Affairs: Schriever AFB Main Webpage
Squadrons of the United States Space Force
Military units and formations in Colorado |
101639 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nils%20Torvalds | Nils Torvalds | Nils Ole Hilmer Torvalds (born 7 August 1945) is a Finnish politician who has been a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) since 2012. He is a member of the Swedish People's Party of Finland, part of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe.
Swedo-Finnish Torvalds is the son of the poet Ole Torvalds, and the father of the software engineer Linus Torvalds of Linux kernel fame.
Education and experience
Torvalds was a member of the Communist Party of Finland from 1969 to 1982. He studied economics in Moscow and was the editor of the taistoist magazine Arbetartidningen Enhet. Torvalds has later described his communism as "rebellion". Between 1995 and 2004 Torvalds worked as a foreign correspondent for the Finnish Broadcasting Company in Moscow and Washington.
Torvalds is fluent in Swedish, Finnish, English, German, and Russian and he also understands Dutch, Danish, Italian and Norwegian.
Political career
Career in national politics
In 2006, Torvalds joined the Swedish People's Party, and the following year he was elected to the post of the third vice chairperson. This upset some party voters due to Torvalds' past. In 2008, he was elected to Helsinki City Council for term 2009–2012.
On 11 June 2017 the Swedish People's Party chose Torvalds as the party candidate for the 2018 presidential election. Some of his campaign themes were education, technology and the environment. Torvalds was the only candidate who openly supported Finland's NATO membership during his campaign. In the election, Torvalds placed last with 1.5 percent of the votes, while the incumbent president Sauli Niinistö went on to secure his second term.
Member of the European Parliament
Torvalds was a candidate for European Parliament election in 2009 on the Swedish People's Party list. He received 14,044 votes which was insufficient for a seat. However, on 5 July 2012, he was installed in the European Parliament, when Carl Haglund left his seat to join the Katainen Cabinet as Minister of Defence. In the 2014 European Parliament election Torvalds received about 29,000 votes and was elected.
As an MEP his positions have included vice-chair of the Fisheries committee (PECH) and member of the committee for Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE). Since 2021, he has been part of the Parliament's delegation to the Conference on the Future of Europe.
Torvalds has served as shadow rapporteur on the circular economy and on the biofuels directive (which became directive 2015/1513) and as rapporteur of the annual report 2018 on the European banking union.
Torvalds opposed the Copyright Directive (2019) since it was first proposed, considering it unbalanced especially because of its article 13 (i.e. 17).
In addition to his committee assignments, Torvalds is part of the MEPs Against Cancer group.
Following the 2019 elections, Torvalds was part of a cross-party working group in charge of drafting the European Parliament's five-year work program on economic and fiscal policies as well as trade.
Linux kernel statement
Linus Torvalds, the creator of the Linux kernel, joked during a LinuxCon keynote on 18 September 2013 that the NSA, creators of SELinux, wanted a backdoor in the kernel. However, later, Linus' father revealed that the NSA had actually asked for the installation of backdoors in Linux.
Other activities
Reimagine Europa, Member of the Advisory Board
Works
References
External links
Nils Torvalds personal website (in Swedish) (in Finnish) (in English)
Official EP website
1945 births
Living people
People from Raseborg
Swedish-speaking Finns
Finnish communists
Swedish People's Party of Finland politicians
Finnish reporters and correspondents
MEPs for Finland 2009–2014
MEPs for Finland 2014–2019
MEPs for Finland 2019–2024
Candidates for President of Finland
Nils |
50168182 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary%20Coombs | Mary Coombs | Mary Coombs (née Blood) (born 1929) is a British computer programmer and schoolteacher. Employed in 1952 as the first woman to work on the LEO computers, she is recognised as the first female commercial programmer. The National Museum of Computing documents her contribution.
Education
In her early years, Mary Blood attended Putney High School and St Paul's Girls' School. She went on to earn a BA Honours degree in French, with History, from Queen Mary University of London.
Her father, William Blood, believed in women's education and her sister worked in microbiology and bacteriology. Unlike her sister, and unlike others in computing, she did not have a background in maths or science. After graduating, she moved to Surrey when her father became a Medical Officer for the catering company, J. Lyons and Co. He was clear that women should have their own careers and interests.
Career at J. Lyons and Co.
After obtaining her degree, Coombs spent a year teaching English in Lausanne, Switzerland. Returning home in 1952, she began work at J. Lyons and Co. as a temporary clerical worker, a job she reluctantly accepted while searching for a better alternative. Coombs' mathematical skills soon allowed her to transfer from the Ice Cream Sales department to the Statistical Office, where she heard that the division working on LEO computers had been looking to hire additional programmers.
The selection process, devised by Raymond Thompson, was conducted as a "computer appreciation course", which consisted of a gruelling week of daytime lectures and evening written assignments designed to test the candidates' aptitude for computer work. Of the 10 who took part in the original selection process, she was the only female.
Coombs' performance in the computer appreciation course was stellar, and as a result, she was one of just two candidates to be offered a job in the computer division, along with Frank Land. According to Coombs, she was one of a handful of women to take the computer appreciation course, and she was the only one to be offered a job as a result.
Once Coombs began officially working with LEO in 1952, she was taught how to program by John Grover, one of the first LEO programmers. Initially, she was the only woman on the team and worked alongside Leo Fantl, John Grover, and Derrick Hemy, using LEO to automatically calculate payroll for employees at J. Lyons and Co. The team later went on to do payroll for Ford Motor Company using LEO. Coombs is recognised as the first woman to work on a commercial computer.
Coombs continued to work for J. Lyons and Co as the LEO II and LEO III were built. She spent most of her time as a supervisor, checking for logical and syntactical errors in the programs that other people wrote. She developed programs for internal company use and for outside clients as another portion of the business computing service offered by the firm. She was also in charge of rewriting programs from LEO II to work with LEO III, since LEO III used a different programming language.
J. Lyons and Co. provided a good work environment for Coombs. The company had a number of sports clubs that Coombs was involved in, and an Amateur Dramatic Society. However, the company provided very low pay.
After J. Lyons and Co.
Coombs was transferred to English Electric Leo Computers in 1963, a company jointly created by the merger of J. Lyons and Co. and English Electric. Later, in 1968 she was transferred to International Computers Limited (ICL) when they bought out English Electric Leo Computers. In 1964, because of family commitments she moved from working full-time to part-time. She continued to work in the computing field, mainly editing manuals. She briefly taught a computer programming course at Princess Marina Centre at Seer Green for disabled residents.
In 1969, when she realised that she would not be able to go back working full-time, Coombs left the LEO team and briefly worked for Freelance Programmers, a company started by Dame Stephanie Shirley. After three years at home looking after her children she returned to work, firstly as a primary school teacher in a private school and then – following a year working for a post-graduate Certificate in Education – about 10 years in primary schools in Buckinghamshire. In retirement she taught piano, and ran the church choir.
Personal life
She married John Coombs, a co-worker at LEO. They had a daughter together, who became disabled as a toddler and died at the age of 6. Mary and John adopted three children.
References
British women computer scientists
1929 births
Living people
Schoolteachers from Buckinghamshire
History of computing in the United Kingdom
People from Muswell Hill |
23455017 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St.%20Paul%20University%20Dumaguete | St. Paul University Dumaguete | Saint Paul University, also referred to by its acronym SPUD or SPU Dumaguete, is a private Roman Catholic research non-profit coeducational basic and higher education institution run by the Sisters of Saint Paul of Chartres in
Dumaguete City, Negros Oriental, Philippines. It was founded by the Paulinian Sisters in October 29, 1904.
It is one of 40 schools owned, managed, and operated by the Sisters of Saint Paul of Chartres (SPC) in the Philippines. It offers basic, undergraduate and graduate education.
Origins and history
The university traces its origins to the coming of the Sisters of Saint Paul of Chartres (SPC) to the Philippines. On October 29, 1904, the said sisters who came from Vietnam arrived in the Philippines and established the first Saint Paul's school in the Philippines in Dumaguete, Negros Oriental. The seven sisters were Mother Marthe de Saint Paul, Superior Sr. Marie Louise du Sacre Coeur Sr. Ange Marie Sr. Anne de la Croix Sr. Charles de Genes Sr. Catherine, and Sr. Josephine. The institution they established initially offered elementary education. High school was offered starting in 1920. The first high school graduation took place in 1925. Collegiate courses were offered years later. For many years, the institution operated as Saint Paul College of Dumaguete. In 2004, the year of its centennial celebration, the college was granted university status becoming one of the four universities in Dumaguete.
January 9, 1905, the new school opened with 30 girls (15 of whom were aged 15 to 20), four of them boarders, and six boys. Children, women, and young men came to the school for religious instruction. Besides the regular academic courses, there were supplementary ones in music, drawing, painting, French, sewing, and embroidery. The medium of instruction was English. However, since the Americans had been in the Philippines for only five years, very few pupils were acquainted with the language. Hence, the Sisters were obliged to learn Visayan and Spanish to be able to communicate with their charges.
Academic programs
Postgraduate
Doctor of Education (Ed. D.)
Doctor in Business Administration (DBA)
Doctor in Public Administration (DPA)
Master of Arts in Education (M.A.)
Master of Arts in Nursing (M.A.N.)
Master in Business Administration (M.B.A.)
Master in Public Administration (M.P.A.)
Diploma in Public Management (D.P.M.)
Master in Information Technology (M.I.T.)
Master of Science in Information Technology (M.S.I.T.)
Master of Arts in Religious Education (M.A.R.E.)
Master in Business Administration (M.B.A.) major in Tourism & HRM
M.S. Environmental Management Studies ( MSES)
Master of Art in Mass Communication
Undergraduate
College of Arts and Education
Bachelor of Arts
Mass Communication
Bachelor of Science in Psychology
Bachelor of Elementary Education
Bachelor of Special Education
Bachelor of Early Childhood Education
Bachelor of Culture & Arts Education
Bachelor of Physical Education
Bachelor of Secondary Education
Math
English
Science
Values & Religious Education
Social Studies/ Social Sciences
College of Business and Information Technology
Bachelor of Science in Accountancy BSA
Bachelor of Science in Internal Audit BSIA
Bachelor of Science in Business Administration BSBA
Bachelor of Science in Hospitality Management BSHM
Bachelor of Science in Information Technology BSIT
Bachelor of Science in Management Accounting BSMA
Bachelor of Science in Tourism Management BSTM
Bachelor of Science in Entrepreneurship (BSE)
Certificate in Environmental Management
Associate in Tourism
Associate in Hotel & Restaurant Management
College of Nursing
Bachelor of Science in Nursing
Basic Education
Senior High
Grade 11
Grade 12
Junior High
Grade 1-6
Kinder
Nursery (Preschool)
Source:
References
External links
Saint Paul University, Surigao
Saint Paul University, Quezon City
Catholic universities and colleges in the Philippines
Universities and colleges in Negros Oriental
Education in Dumaguete |
46226166 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluralsight | Pluralsight | Pluralsight, Inc. is an American privately held online education company that offers a variety of video training courses for software developers, IT administrators, and creative professionals through its website. Founded in 2004 by Aaron Skonnard, , Fritz Onion, and Bill Williams, the company has its headquarters in Farmington, Utah. , it uses more than 1,400 subject-matter experts as authors, and offers more than 7,000 courses in its catalog. Since first moving its courses online in 2007, the company has expanded, developing a full enterprise platform, and adding skills assessment modules.
History
Pluralsight was founded in 2004 as a classroom training company that involved sending an instructor to a business or training event. By 2007, the company shifted its emphasis to online video training.
Since 2011, the company has seen rapid growth. It has been named to the Inc. 5000 list of fastest growing private companies, ranking as the #9 Top Education company and the #19 Top Utah company. In October 2017, Pluralsight was named #29 on MountainWest Capital Network's Utah 100 list. In 2017, it ranked #20 on the Forbes Cloud 100 list. That same year, it appeared in Great Place To Work's 2017 Best Workplaces in the small and medium-sized company category. The following year, it ranked #9 in the category.
In April 2018, Pluralsight filed for an initial public offering. On May 17, 2018, the company opened on the NASDAQ exchange at a $15 share price, and closed its first day of trading at $20.
In 2020, Pluralsight had 18,000 corporate clients which includes 70% of Fortune 500 companies.
In December 2020, Pluralsight announced it would be acquired by private equity firm Vista Equity Partners for $3.5 billion. Regulatory approval is expected in the first half of 2021, and Pluralsight would no longer be publicly traded.
In April 2021, Vista Equity Partners successfully completed its acquisition of Pluralsight for $22.50 per share.
Business model
Through a subscription business model, Pluralsight provides online professional tech training to individual and business customers. The company pays its course authors a royalty, based on how often their videos are viewed. In 2013, author Scott Allen became the first of its authors to earn over $1 million in royalties from his courses.
The company also offers a complete SaaS platform for its enterprise users.
Pluralsight was reportedly working with roughly 40% of Fortune 500 companies in 2017 and with 70% by 2019. That year, business-to-business sales accounted for 86% of the company's billings.
In 2017, the company announced its participation in the Pledge 1% movement—a global initiative to encourage corporate philanthropy by asking companies to commit 1% of their efforts towards nonprofit organizations. The company launched Pluralsight One in September 2017, with the goal of improving technology education in the nonprofit sector.
Venture funding
When Pluralsight first started, its four founders each contributed $5,000. For the first nine years, the company and its founders received no outside funding.
In December 2012, the company raised $27.5 million in Series A funding from Insight Venture Partners. On March 18, 2014 it received an additional $2.5 million in Series A Funding. On August 27, 2014, it received $135 million in Series B funding from Insight Venture Partners, ICONIQ Capital, and Sorenson Capital—reported at the time to be the largest venture funding round ever received by a Utah company. Co-founder and CEO Aaron Skonnard stated that after this round of funding, the company's valuation had increased from less than $100 million in 2012 to nearly $1 billion.
In December 2016, the company raised an additional $30 million in a Series C round that valued the company over $1 billion. The round included funding from existing investors Insight Venture Partners and Iconiq Capital.
Acquisitions
For most of its history, Pluralsight grew its author base and course catalog from within. Starting in 2013, it has acquired a number of e-learning and education companies to bolster its technology, course offerings, and executive leadership.
On July 24, 2013, it acquired PeepCode, a provider of open source training to developers, for an undisclosed amount. This added about 100 new courses in the Open Source category to Pluralsight's course catalog, expanding it beyond its traditional realm of offerings focused mainly on developers who worked on Microsoft technologies. On August 5, it acquired Chicago-based TrainSignal, a company providing training for Information technology personnel, for $23.6 million. It absorbed 35 TrainSignal employees, and maintained its office in Chicago as a satellite. On October 31, Pluralsight acquired Tekpub, producer of a series of screencasts on new development technologies, for an undisclosed amount. Co-founder Rob Conery joined Pluralsight, and continues to produce training videos under its brand. Other authors from Tekpub, including Jon Skeet and Scott Hanselman, also became Pluralsight authors.
On April 9, 2014, Pluralsight announced it acquired Digital-Tutors, a company providing training for creative professionals, for $45 million. This acquisition expanded the company's training catalog to more than 3000 titles, broadening its topic coverage to media and design. Approximately 30 employees from Digital-Tutors joined Pluralsight. Pluralsight maintained the former Digital-Tutors headquarters in Oklahoma City as a satellite office. On November 19, Pluralsight announced it had acquired Smarterer, an online skills assessment platform, for $75 million. Based in Boston, Smarterer was founded in 2010 and was backed by Google Ventures, among others. Smarterer founder and CEO Dave Balter stated that his entire 18-person staff would remain with the company.
On January 26, 2015, Pluralsight announced its acquisition of Orlando-based Code School, an online training site offering video courses and exercise-based lessons related to entry-level and intermediate coding and programming. It was reported that the acquisition was for $36 million. Code School's office, and its team of 39 full-time employees, remain open in Orlando. On July 9, Pluralsight announced its acquisition of HackHands for an undisclosed amount. Founded in 2013, San Francisco-based HackHands provides on-demand live assistance for technology learners via video and audio chat, instant messaging, and screen sharing. The HackHands acquisition marked Pluralsight's seventh deal in two years.
On July 19, 2016, Pluralsight announced it had acquired Train Simple, a video training company with a focus on Adobe software.
On May 1, 2019, Pluralsight announced its acquisition of GitPrime, a developer team productivity tool, for $170 million in cash.
On January 12, 2021, Pluralsight announced the acquisition of Next Tech, a San Diego, California provider of cloud-based computing environments, enabling the authoring and hosting of labs in software development, data science, and machine learning for an undisclosed amount.
On June 2, 2021, Pluralsight announced the acquisition of A Cloud Guru, an Austin, Texas provider of an interactive, online learning platform designed to help IT professionals re-skill in cloud technology. The transaction was closed on July 8, 2021.
Partnerships and community involvement
In October 2012, Microsoft and Pluralsight announced a partnership making Pluralsight courses available to MSDN subscribers and through its DreamSpark, BizSpark, WebsiteSpark, and Engineer Excellence programs. The customized "Pluralsight Starter Subscription" consisted of several Visual Studio 2012 courses. In November 2014, the two companies partnered again, giving MSDN subscribers a 12-month access to a selection of Pluralsight's courses.
In May 2013, Pluralsight launched a free programming coding bootcamp for kids ages 10 and up to help teach coding in school.
In 2014, Pluralsight partnered with the state of Utah's Office of Economic Development to offer Utah K–12 teachers a free one-year subscription to their training library. Utah Governor Gary Herbert valued the donation between $5 million and $10 million.
Pluralsight also partnered with LaunchCode in November 2014 to help candidates secure jobs in technology by offering one year of free access to the Pluralsight course library. In December 2014, the company supported the "Hour of Code" movement by hosting an hour of code for a week. More than 200 students across the state participated.
In 2017, Pluralsight announced partnerships with Microsoft, Adobe, and Oracle, to expand their offerings and course availability.
In September 2017, during a panel discussion with Ivanka Trump about increasing access to STEM-related programs in public schools, Pluralsight pledged $10 million as part of a private-sector contribution reaching over $300 million. Other participants include Amazon, Google, General Motors, and Facebook.
In 2017, Google announced, in association with Pluralsight, 100,000 scholarships to help developers gain access to advanced learning curriculum in emerging technologies, including mobile and web development, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and cloud platforms in India.
In 2020, Pluralsight partnered with Google and Andela for a developer skills program available to all countries in Africa. The program, Google Africa Developer Scholarship, offers all participants free access to Pluralsight's training courses.
References
External links
Educational technology companies of the United States
Virtual learning environments
Education companies established in 2004
Software companies established in 2004
Internet properties established in 2004
American companies established in 2004
Software companies based in Utah
Companies based in Davis County, Utah
Farmington, Utah
2004 establishments in Utah
2018 initial public offerings
2021 mergers and acquisitions
Private equity portfolio companies
American educational websites
Software companies of the United States
Companies formerly listed on the Nasdaq |
55201723 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011%20Widnes%20Vikings%20season | 2011 Widnes Vikings season | The Widnes Vikings competed in the Championship in the 2011 season and was their first full season under new head coach Denis Betts. During this season the club was confirmed a place in the Super League under the licensing system with the announcement being made in March 2011, but failed to improve upon their league position from the previous year again finishing 5th with 38 points.
Squad
Results
{| class="wikitable" style="font-size:80%;" width="100%"
! Round !! Opponent !! Result !! Score !! HT !! H/A !! Attendance !! Date !! Tries !! Goals !! Field Goals !! Lineup!! Subs
|- bgcolor="#ddffdd"
| 1 || Sheffield || Won || 16-44 || 12-22 || A || 1,831 || 13 March || Tyrer (7,25), Finnigan (20,59), Netherton (28), Allen (41,64,73) || Tyrer 6/8 || N/A || Danny Craven, Dean Gaskell, James Ford, Steve Tyrer, Mat Gardner, Anthony Thackeray, Thomas Coyle, Ben Kavanagh, Kirk Netherton, Daniel Heckenberg, Shane Grady, Kurt Haggerty, Simon Finnigan || Chaz I’Anson, Steve Pickersgill, Dave Allen, Danny Sculthorpe ||-
|- bgcolor="#ffdddd"
| 2 || Hunslet || Lost || 10-18 || 0-12 || H || 3,023 || 20 March || Varkulis (47), Thackeray (52) || Tyrer 1/2 || N/A || Paddy Flynn, Dean Gaskell, James Ford, Steve Tyrer, Mat Gardner, Anthony Thackeray, Thomas Coyle, Ben Kavanagh, Kirk Netherton, Steve Pickersgill (Sin Bin - 62nd Minute - Late Challenge), Dave Allen, Kurt Haggerty, Simon Finnigan || Richard Varkulis, Chaz I’Anson, Daniel Heckenberg, Shane Grady ||-
|- bgcolor="#ffdddd"
| 3 || Leigh || Lost || 54-16 || 8-16 || A || 3,198 || 27 March || Finnigan (19), Thackeray (29), Flynn (32) || Tyrer 2/3 || N/A || Danny Craven, Paddy Flynn, Tangi Ropati, Steve Tyrer, Mat Gardner, Anthony Thackeray, Chaz I’Anson, Steve Pickersgill, Kirk Netherton, Daniel Heckenberg, Dave Allen, Simon Finnigan, Ben Kavanagh || Richard Varkulis, Thomas Coyle, Chris Gerrard, Macgraff Leuluai ||-
|- bgcolor="#ddffdd"
|4 || York || Won || 76-12 || 28-6 || H || 4,087 || 3 April || Flynn (15), Tyrer (18,22,40), Craven (26), Leuluai (45), Varkulis (50), Lunt (54), Thackeray (57,77) Pickersgill (65,69) || Tyrer 12/13 || N/A || Danny Craven, Paddy Flynn, Tangi Ropati, Steve Tyrer, Dean Gaskell, Chris Gerrard, Chaz I’Anson, Steve Pickersgill, Thomas Coyle, Ben Kavanagh, Dave Allen, Macgraff Leuluai, Simon Finnigan (Sin Bin - 44th Minute - Fighting) || Richard Varkulis, Anthony Thackeray, Chris Lunt, Danny Sculthorpe ||-
|- bgcolor="#ffdddd"
| 5 || Batley || Lost || 32-12 || 10-12 || A || 1,101 || 17 April || Hulme (22), Varkulis (30) || Grady 2/2 || N/A || Danny Hulme, Mat Gardner, Tangi Ropati, James Ford, Paddy Flynn, Anthony Thackeray, Chaz I’Anson, Steve Pickersgill, Thomas Coyle, Daniel Heckenberg, Shane Grady, Macgraff Leuluai, Dave Allen || Richard Varkulis, Chris Gerrard, Logan Tomkins, Dominic Crosby ||-
|- bgcolor="#ddffdd"
| 6 || Halifax || Won || 47-36 || 38-18 || H || 3,669 || 21 April || Hulme (2,7,10), Finnigan (19,55), Tomkins (24,34), Thomas Coyle (29) || Tyrer 7/10 || Chaz I’Anson || Danny Hulme, Paddy Flynn, Tangi Ropati, Steve Tyrer, Mat Gardner, Chaz I’Anson, Joe Mellor, Richard Varkulis, Thomas Coyle, Ben Kavanagh, Simon Finnigan, Macgraff Leuluai, Dave Allen || Shane Grady, Dave Houghton, Logan Tomkins, Danny Sculthorpe ||-
|- bgcolor="#ffdddd"
| 7 || Barrow || Lost || 30-12 || 24-6' || A || 1,965 || 25 April || Mellor (21,79) || Tyrer 2/2 || N/A || Danny Hulme, Paddy Flynn, Tangi Ropati, Steve Tyrer, Mat Gardner, Chaz I’Anson, Joe Mellor, Steve Pickersgill, Thomas Coyle, Ben Kavanagh, Simon Finnigan, Macgraff Leuluai, Dave Allen || Dean Gaskell, Richard Varkulis, David Houghton, Logan Tomkins ||-
|- bgcolor="#ddffdd"
| 8 || Toulouse || Won || 26-12 || 10-6 || H || 3,601 || 28 April || Crosby (23), Gaskell (40), Mellor (42), Tomkins (48), Ropati (53) || Tyrer 3/5 || N/A || Paddy Flynn, Dean Gaskell, Tangi Ropati, Steve Tyrer, Mat Gardner, Chaz I’Anson, Joe Mellor, Steve Pickersgill, Thomas Coyle, Ben Kavanagh, Simon Finnigan, Macgraff Leuluai, Dave Allen || Shane Grady, Logan Tomkins, Danny Sculthorpe, Dominic Crosby ||-
|- style="background:#ffffdd"
| 9 || Dewsbury || Drawn || 34-34 || 16-24 || A || 1,087 || 15 May || I’Anson (20,30), Leuluai (25), Allen (39), Flynn (63), Tyrer (70) || Tyrer 5/6 || N/A || Paddy Flynn, Dean Gaskell, Tangi Ropati, Steve Tyrer, Kevin Penny, Chaz I’Anson, Joe Mellor, Steve Pickersgill, Thomas Coyle, Ben Kavanagh, Macgraff Leulaui, Shane Grady, Dave Allen || Richard Varkulis, Logan Tomkins, Dominic Crosby, Danny Sculthorpe ||-
|- bgcolor="#ddffdd"
| 11 || Barrow || Won || 42-14 || 22-8 || H || 3,331 || 26 May || I’Anson (6), Flynn (20), Owens (24), Penny (35), Tomkins (50), Tyrer (55), Mellor (70), Thomas Coyle (80) || Tyrer 5/8 || N/A || Jack Owens, Paddy Flynn, Tangi Ropati, Steve Tyrer, Kevin Penny, Chaz I’Anson, Joe Mellor, Steve Pickersgill, Thomas Coyle, Ben Kavanagh, Simon Finnigan, Macgraff Leuluai, Dave Allen || Richard Varkulis, Mat Gardner, Logan Tomkins, Dominic Crosby ||-
|- bgcolor="#ddffdd"
| 13 || York || Won || 18-22 || 12-12 || A || 1,172 || 12 June || Haggerty (19), Leuluai (37), Crosby (43), Ropati (53) || Haggerty 1/1, Tyrer 2/3 || N/A || Paddy Flynn, Dean Gaskell, Tangi Ropati, Steve Tyrer, Kevin Penny, James Coyle, Chaz I’Anson, Steve Pickersgill, Thomas Coyle, Ben Kavanagh, Simon Finnigan, Macgraff Leuluai, Kurt Haggerty || Mat Gardner, Richard Varkulis, Chris Lunt, Dominic Crosby ||-
|- bgcolor="#ddffdd"
| 14 || Sheffield || Won || 38-24 || 22-6 || H || 4,027 || 26 June || Hulme (10), Leuluai (13), Varkulis (25), Penny (38,58), Haggerty (50), Allen (70) || Haggerty 4/6, Ropati 1/1 || N/A || Danny Hulme, Paddy Flynn, Tangi Ropati, Mat Gardner, Kevin Penny, Chaz I’Anson, Joe Mellor, Steve Pickersgill, Thomas Coyle, Ben Kavanagh, Simon Finnigan, Macgraff Leuluai, Kurt Haggerty || Richard Varkulis, Dave Allen, Dominic Crosby, James Coyle ||-
|- bgcolor="#ddffdd"
| 15 || Hunslet || Won || 22-24'' || 16-6 || A || 1,101 || 3 July || Kavanagh (16), Tyrer (51), Grady (57), Flynn (63), Haggerty (80) || Tyrer 2/5 || N/A || Danny Hulme, Paddy Flynn, Tangi Ropati, Steve Tyrer, Mat Gardner, Joe Mellor, Chaz I’Anson, Steve Pickersgill, Thomas Coyle, Richard Varkulis, Macgraff Leuluai, Kurt Haggerty, Ben Kavanagh || Shane Grady, Danny Sculthorpe, Logan Tomkins, Dominic Crosby ||-
|- bgcolor="#ddffdd"
| 16 || Dewsbury || Won || 36-22 || 24-10 || H || 4,030 || 10 July || Gore (3), Tomkins (6), Kavanagh (13.50), Tyrer (34), Penny (46) || Tyrer 6/6 || N/A || Danny Hulme, Paddy Flynn, Mat Gardner, Steve Tyrer, Kevin Penny, Grant Gore, Thomas Coyle, Ben Kavanagh, Logan Tomkins, Dominic Crosby, Macgraff Leuluai, Simon Finnigan, Kurt Haggerty || Richard Varkulis, Dave Allen, Shane Grady, Danny Sculthorpe ||-
|- bgcolor="#ddffdd"
| 17 || Toulouse || Won || 16-30 || 16-12 || A || 1,157 || 23 July || Tyrer (4,15), Gardner (48), Allen (55), Finnigan (73) || Tyrer 5/5 || N/A || Danny Hulme, Kevin Penny, Mat Gardner, Steve Tyrer, Paddy Flynn, Joe Mellor, Chaz I’Anson, Steve Pickersgill, Thomas Coyle, Ben Kavanagh, Shane Grady, Simon Finnigan, Kurt Haggerty || Richard Varkulis, Dave Allen, Macgraff Leuluai, Logan Tomkins ||-
|- bgcolor="#ddffdd"
| 18 || Batley || Won || 24-22 || 16-20 || H || 3,873 || 31 July || Kavanagh (2), Flynn (24), Mellor (37), Penny (61) || Tyrer 4/5 || N/A || Danny Hulme, Paddy Flynn, Mat Gardner, Steve Tyrer, Kevin Penny, Chaz I’Anson, Joe Mellor, Steve Pickersgill, Thomas Coyle, Ben Kavanagh, Shane Grady, Simon Finnigan, Kurt Haggerty || Richard Varkulis, Dave Allen, Macgraff Leuluai, Dominic Crosby ||-
|- bgcolor="#ffdddd"
| 19 || Leigh || Lost || 18-24 || 18-12 || H || 4,732 || 7 August || Tyrer (5), Crosby (30), Tomkins (37) || Tyrer 3/3 || N/A || Danny Hulme, Kevin Penny, Steve Tyrer, Mat Gardner, Paddy Flynn, Joe Mellor, Chaz I’Anson, Ben Kavanagh, Thomas Coyle, Steve Pickersgill, Macgraff Leuluai, Simon Finnigan, Dave Allen || Shane Grady, Richard Varkulis, Dominic Crosby, Logan Tomkins ||-
|- bgcolor="#ffdddd"
| 20 || Halifax ||| Lost || 26-24 || 12-18 || A || 2,090 || 11 August || Hulme (14), Mellor (25,39), Varkulis (50) || Tyrer 4/4 || N/A || Danny Hulme, Kevin Penny, Steve Tyrer, Tangi Ropati, Paddy Flynn, Joe Mellor, James Coyle, Dominic Crosby, Thomas Coyle, Steve Pickersgill, Simon Finnigan, Shane Grady, Kurt Haggerty || Richard Varkulis, Dave Allen, Logan Tomkins, Ben Kavanagh ||-
|- bgcolor="#ffdddd"
| 10 || Featherstone || Lost || 56-16 || 26-0 || A || 2,021 || 17 August || Hulme (47,76), Grady (74) || Haggerty 2/3 || N/A || Danny Hulme, Paddy Flynn, Tangi Ropati, Steve Tyrer, Mat Gardner, Joe Mellor, James Coyle, Steve Pickersgill, Thomas Coyle, Ben Kavanagh, Shane Grady, Simon Finnigan, Dave Allen || Richard Varkulis, Kurt Haggerty, Macgraff Leuluai, Logan Tomkins ||-
|- bgcolor="#ffdddd"
| 22 || Featherstone || Lost || 4-44 || 0-16 || H || 5,021 || 4 September || Craven (55) || Haggerty 0/1 || N/A || Danny Craven, Paddy Flynn, Steve Tyrer, Shane Grady, Kevin Penny, James Coyle, Joe Mellor, Steve Pickersgill (Sin Bin - 62nd Minute - Punching), Thomas Coyle, Ben Kavanagh, Macgraff Leuluai, Dave Allen, Kurt Haggerty || Richard Varkulis, Chaz I’Anson, Dominic Crosby, Logan Tomkins ||-
|- bgcolor="#ffdddd"
| Elimination Play-Offs || Sheffield || Lost || 36-20 || 14-4 || A || 564 || 9 September || Flynn (14,50), Ropati (66), Craven (74) || Craven 2/4 || N/A || Danny Craven, Paddy Flynn, Tangi Ropati, Shane Grady, Mat Gardner, Joe Mellor, James Coyle, Steve Pickersgill, Thomas Coyle, Ben Kavanagh, Macgraff Leuluai, Simon Finnigan, Dave Allen || Richard Varkulis, Kurt Haggerty, Logan Tomkins, Dominic Crosby ||-
|}Northern Rail Cup ResultsChallenge Cup Results'''
References
Widnes Vikings seasons
2011 in rugby league by club
2011 in English rugby league |
16993467 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GoTo%20%28US%20Company%29 | GoTo (US Company) | GoTo, formerly LogMeIn Inc., is a flexible-work provider of software as a service (SaaS) and cloud-based remote work tools for collaboration and IT management, with products including GoTo Connect, GoTo Resolve, Rescue, Central, and more, built for small and midsized business IT departments but powerful enough for the enterprise. The company was founded in 2003 and based in Boston, Massachusetts, and rebranded from LogMeIn to GoTo on February 2, 2022. The rebrand to GoTo comes with a simplified product portfolio to a single application and two flagship products: the IT management & support product, GoTo Resolve, and a new experience for the unified-communications-as-a-service (UCaaS) product, GoTo Connect. These products are unified by a single application, administrative system, and converging user experience.
The rebrand to GoTo announced the launch of a single application with two flagship products: GoTo Resolve for IT management and GoTo Connect for a collaboration application.
On October 9, 2015, LogMeIn acquired LastPass for $110 million. On December 14, 2021, the company announced that LastPass would spin off into its own cloud-based security company.
In February 2017, LogMeIn completed a merger with GetGo, the corporate spin-off of the GoTo product line from Citrix Systems.
On December 17, 2019, LogMeIn announced an agreement to be sold for $4.3 billion to Francisco Partners and Evergreen Coast Capital Corp., which is a private equity affiliate of Elliott Management Corporation. The deal closed on August 31, 2020.
History
LogMeIn was founded in 2003 in Budapest as 3am Labs, and changed its name in 2006.
3am Labs acquired the Hamachi VPN product.
LogMeIn, Inc., completed an initial public offering in 2009. Trading of LogMeIn, Inc., shares on the NASDAQ Global Market commenced on July 1, 2009.
In 2011, the company began a move into cloud services for the Internet of things by acquiring Pachube, which would later become the Xively service. In May 2014, it added to this initiative by acquiring Ionia Corp., which specializes in integrating connected objects.
LogMeIn, Inc., acquired Bold Software, LLC, in 2012.
The company abruptly discontinued LogMeIn Free on January 21, 2014, giving users only a seven-day grace period to migrate to LogMeIn Pro.
LogMeIn acquired Meldium for $15 Million in September 2014 and retired the Meldium product offering in July 2017.
In July 2016, LogMeIn announced in a merger with Citrix's GoTo products using a Reverse Morris Trust.
In February 2018, the company announced the sale of Xively to Google for $50 million. Also in February 2018, the company announced the acquisition of Jive Communications for $342 million.
On August 31, 2020, Elliott Management Corporation, by its affiliate Francisco Partners, completed its acquisition of LogMeIn, and LogMeIn's stock delisted from NASDAQ.
On February 2, 2022, LogMeIn was rebranded as GoTo, restoring the original brand that ExpertCity created in 1998, before Citrix Systems acquired it in 2004.
Products
The company's products are focused on three business areas, including Unified Communications & Collaboration services, Identity & Access Management services, and Customer engagement & support services. The products include:
GoTo UCC Products
GoTo Connect
GoTo Meeting
GoTo Webinar
GoTo Training
GoTo Contact
GoTo Room
Grasshopper
join.me
Remote Support
Rescue – remote support (help desk) web application used by large contact centers and help desks for diagnosing and troubleshooting computers, smartphones and tablets.
Rescue Live Lens
Rescue Live Guide
GoToAssist
GoToMyPC
Pro – subscription-based remote access and administration software
Central – web application focused on IT management for remotely managing PCs and servers running on Windows or Mac OS X operating systems
Hamachi – network virtualization and VPN service
LogMeIn Backup – remote backup software
RemotelyAnywhere – remote access and administration software
See also
Comparison of remote desktop software
References
External links
2003 establishments in Massachusetts
2009 initial public offerings
2020 mergers and acquisitions
American companies established in 2003
Companies based in Boston
Companies formerly listed on the Nasdaq
Private equity portfolio companies
Remote administration software
Remote desktop
Software companies based in Massachusetts
Software companies established in 2003
Software companies of the United States |
181382 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymity | Anonymity | Anonymity describes situations where the acting person's identity is unknown. Some writers have argued that namelessness, though technically correct, does not capture what is more centrally at stake in contexts of anonymity. The important idea here is that a person be non-identifiable, unreachable, or untrackable. Anonymity is seen as a technique, or a way of realizing, a certain other values, such as privacy, or liberty. Over the past few years, anonymity tools used on the dark web by criminals and malicious users have drastically altered the ability of law enforcement to use conventional surveillance techniques.
An important example for anonymity being not only protected, but enforced by law is the vote in free elections. In many other situations (like conversation between strangers, buying some product or service in a shop), anonymity is traditionally accepted as natural. There are also various situations in which a person might choose to withhold their identity. Acts of charity have been performed anonymously when benefactors do not wish to be acknowledged. A person who feels threatened might attempt to mitigate that threat through anonymity. A witness to a crime might seek to avoid retribution, for example, by anonymously calling a crime tipline. Criminals might proceed anonymously to conceal their participation in a crime. Anonymity may also be created unintentionally, through the loss of identifying information due to the passage of time or a destructive event.
In a certain situations, however, it may be illegal to remain anonymous. In the United States, 24 states have "stop and identify" statutes that require persons detained to self-identify when requested by a law enforcement officer.
The term "anonymous message" typically refers to a message that does not reveal its sender. In many countries, anonymous letters are protected by law and must be delivered as regular letters.
In mathematics, in reference to an arbitrary element (e.g., a human, an object, a computer), within a well-defined set (called the "anonymity set"), "anonymity" of that element refers to the property of that element of not being identifiable within this set. If it is not identifiable, then the element is said to be "anonymous."
Pseudonymity
Sometimes a person may desire a long-term relationship (such as a reputation) with another party without necessarily disclosing personally identifying information to that party. In this case, it may be useful for the person to establish a unique identifier, called a pseudonym. Examples of pseudonyms are pen names, nicknames, credit card numbers, student numbers, bank account numbers, etc. A pseudonym enables the other party to link different messages from the same person and, thereby, to establish a long-term relationship. Pseudonyms are widely used in social networks and other virtual communication, although recently some important service providers like Google try to discourage pseudonymity.
Someone using a pseudonym would be strictly considered to be using "pseudonymity" not "anonymity", but sometimes the latter is used to refer to both (in general, a situation where the legal identity of the person is disguised)
Psychological effects
Anonymity may reduce the accountability one perceives to have for their actions, and removes the impact these actions might otherwise have on their reputation. This can have dramatic effects, both useful and harmful to various parties involved. Thus, it may be used for psychological tactics involving any respective party to purport or support or discredit any sort of activity or belief.
In conversational settings, anonymity may allow people to reveal personal history and feelings without fear of later embarrassment. Electronic conversational media can provide physical isolation, in addition to anonymity. This prevents physical retaliation for remarks, and prevents negative or taboo behavior or discussion from tarnishing the reputation of the speaker. This can be beneficial when discussing very private matters, or taboo subjects or expressing views or revealing facts that may put someone in physical, financial, or legal danger (such as illegal activity, or unpopular, or outlawed political views).
In work settings, the three most common forms of anonymous communication are traditional suggestion boxes, written feedback, and Caller ID blocking. Additionally, the appropriateness of anonymous organizational communication varies depending on the use, with organizational surveys or assessments typically perceived as highly appropriate and firing perceived as highly inappropriate. Anonymity use and appropriateness have also been found to be significantly related to the quality of relationships with key others at work.
With few perceived negative consequences, anonymous or semi-anonymous forums often provide a soapbox for disruptive conversational behavior. The term "troll" is sometimes used to refer to those who engage in such disruptive behavior.
Relative anonymity is often enjoyed in large crowds. Different people have different psychological and philosophical reactions to this development, especially as a modern phenomenon. This anonymity is an important factor in crowd psychology, and behavior in situations such as a riot. This perceived anonymity can be compromised by technologies such as photography. Groupthink behavior and conformity are also considered to be an established effect of internet anonymity.
Anonymity also permits highly trained professionals such as judges to freely express themselves regarding the strategies they employ to perform their jobs objectively.
Anonymity, commerce, and crime
Anonymous commercial transactions can protect the privacy of consumers. Some consumers prefer to use cash when buying everyday goods (like groceries or tools), to prevent sellers from aggregating information or soliciting them in the future. Credit cards are linked to a person's name, and can be used to discover other information, such as postal address, phone number, etc. The ecash system was developed to allow secure anonymous transactions. Another example would be Enymity, which actually makes a purchase on a customer's behalf. When purchasing taboo goods and services, anonymity makes many potential consumers more comfortable with or more willing to engage in the transaction. Many loyalty programs use cards that personally identify the consumer engaging in each transaction (possibly for later solicitation, or for redemption or security purposes), or that act as a numerical pseudonym, for use in data mining.
Anonymity can also be used as a protection against legal prosecution. For example, when committing unlawful actions, many criminals attempt to avoid identification by the means of obscuring/covering their faces with scarves or masks, and wear gloves or other hand coverings in order to not leave any fingerprints. In organized crime, groups of criminals may collaborate on a certain project without revealing to each other their names or other personally identifiable information. The movie The Thomas Crown Affair depicted a fictional collaboration by people who had never previously met and did not know who had recruited them. The anonymous purchase of a gun or knife to be used in a crime helps prevent linking an abandoned weapon to the identity of the perpetrator.
Anonymity in charity
There are two aspects, one, giving to a large charitable organization obscures the beneficiary of a donation from the benefactor, the other is giving anonymously to obscure the benefactor both from the beneficiary and from everyone else.
Anonymous charity has long been a widespread and durable moral precept of many ethical and religious systems, as well as being in practice a widespread human activity. A benefactor may not wish to establish any relationship with the beneficiary, particularly if the beneficiary is perceived as being unsavory. Benefactors may not wish to identify themselves as capable of giving. A benefactor may wish to improve the world, as long as no one knows who did it, out of modesty, wishing to avoid publicity. Another reason for anonymous charity is a benefactor who does not want a charitable organization to pursue them for more donations, sometimes aggressively.
Issues facing the anonymous
Attempts at anonymity are not always met with support from society.
Anonymity sometimes clashes with the policies and procedures of governments or private organizations. In the United States, disclosure of identity is required to be able to vote, though the secret ballot prevents disclosure of individual voting patterns. In airports in most countries, passengers are not allowed to board flights unless they have identified themselves to airline or transportation security personnel, typically in the form of the presentation of an identification card.
On the other hand, some policies and procedures require anonymity.
Referring to the anonymous
When it is necessary to refer to someone who is anonymous, it is typically necessary to create a type of pseudo-identification for that person. In literature, the most common way to state that the identity of an author is unknown is to refer to them as simply "Anonymous". This is usually the case with older texts in which the author is long dead and unable to claim authorship of a work. When the work claims to be that of some famous author the pseudonymous author is identified as "Pseudo-", as in Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, an author claiming—and long believed—to be Dionysius the Areopagite, an early Christian convert.
Anonymus, in its Latin spelling, generally with a specific city designation, is traditionally used by scholars in the humanities to refer to an ancient writer whose name is not known, or to a manuscript of their work. Many such writers have left valuable historical or literary records: an incomplete list of such Anonymi is at Anonymus.
In the history of art, many painting workshops can be identified by their characteristic style and discussed and the workshop's output set in chronological order. Sometimes archival research later identifies the name, as when the "Master of Flémalle"—defined by three paintings in the Städelsches Kunstinstitut in Frankfurt— was identified as Robert Campin. The 20th-century art historian Bernard Berenson methodically identified numerous early Renaissance Florentine and Sienese workshops under such sobriquets as "Amico di Sandro" for an anonymous painter in the immediate circle of Sandro Botticelli.
In legal cases, a popularly accepted name to use when it is determined that an individual needs to maintain anonymity is "John Doe". This name is often modified to "Jane Doe" when the anonymity-seeker is female. The same names are also commonly used when the identification of a dead person is not known. The semi-acronym Unsub is used as law enforcement slang for "Unknown Subject of an Investigation".
The military often feels a need to honor the remains of soldiers for whom identification is impossible. In many countries, such a memorial is named the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
Anonymity and the press
Most modern newspapers and magazines attribute their articles to individual editors, or to news agencies. An exception is the Markker weekly The Economist. All British newspapers run their leaders, or editorials, anonymously. The Economist fully adopts this policy, saying "Many hands write The Economist, but it speaks with a collective voice". Guardian considers that "people will often speak more honestly if they are allowed to speak anonymously". According to Ross Eaman, in his book The A to Z of Journalism, until the mid-19th century, most writers in Great Britain, especially the less well known, did not sign their names to their work in newspapers, magazines and reviews.
Anonymity on the Internet
Most commentary on the Internet is essentially done anonymously, using unidentifiable pseudonyms. However this has been widely discredited in a study by the University of Birmingham, which found that the number of people who use the internet anonymously is statistically the same as the number of people who use the internet to interact with friends or known contacts. While these usernames can take on an identity of their own, they are sometimes separated and anonymous from the actual author. According to the University of Stockholm this is creating more freedom of expression, and less accountability. Wikipedia is collaboratively written mostly by authors using either unidentifiable pseudonyms or IP address identifiers, although a few have used identified pseudonyms or their real names.
However, the Internet was not designed for anonymity: IP addresses serve as virtual mailing addresses, which means that any time any resource on the Internet is accessed, it is accessed from a particular IP address, and the data traffic patterns to and from IP addresses can be intercepted, monitored, and analysed, even if the content of that traffic is encrypted. This address can be mapped to a particular Internet Service Provider (ISP), and this ISP can then provide information about what customer that IP address was leased to. This does not necessarily implicate a specific individual (because other people could be using that customer's connection, especially if the customer is a public resource, such as a library), but it provides regional information and serves as powerful circumstantial evidence.
Anonymizing services such as I2P and Tor address the issue of IP tracking. In short, they work by encrypting packets within multiple layers of encryption. The packet follows a predetermined route through the anonymizing network. Each router sees the immediate previous router as the origin and the immediate next router as the destination. Thus, no router ever knows both the true origin and destination of the packet. This makes these services more secure than centralized anonymizing services (where a central point of knowledge exists).
Sites such as Chatroulette, Omegle, and Tinder (which pair up random users for a conversation) capitalized on a fascination with anonymity. Apps like Yik Yak, Secret and Whisper let people share things anonymously or quasi-anonymously whereas Random let the user to explore the web anonymously. Other sites, however, including Facebook and Google+, ask users to sign in with their legal names. In the case of Google+, this requirement led to a controversy known as the nymwars.
The prevalence of cyberbullying is often attributed to relative Internet anonymity, due to the fact that potential offenders are able to mask their identities and prevent themselves from being caught. A principal in a high school stated that comments made on these anonymous site are "especially vicious and hurtful since there is no way to trace their source and it can be disseminated widely. "Cyberbullying, as opposed to general bullying, is still a widely-debated area of Internet freedom in several states.
Though Internet anonymity can provide a harmful environment through which people can hurt others, anonymity can allow for a much safer and relaxed internet experience. In a study conducted at Carnegie Mellon University, 15 out of 44 participants stated that they choose to be anonymous online because of a prior negative experience during which they did not maintain an anonymous presence. Such experiences include stalking, releasing private information by an opposing school political group, or tricking an individual into traveling to another country for a job that did not exist. Participants in this study stated that they were able to avoid their previous problems by using false identification online.
David Chaum is called the Godfathers of anonymity and he has a claim to be one of the great visionaries of contemporary science. In the early 1980s, while a computer scientist at Berkeley, Chaum predicted the world in which computer networks would make mass surveillance a possibility. As Dr. Joss Wright explains: "David Chaum was very ahead of his time. He predicted in the early 1980s concerns that would arise on the internet 15 or 20 years later." There are some people though that consider anonymity in internet being a danger for our society as a whole. David Davenport, an assistant professor in the Computer Engineering Department of Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey, considers that by allowing anonymous Net communication, the fabric of our society is at risk. "Accountability requires those responsible for any misconduct be identified and brought to justice. However, if people remain anonymous, by definition, they cannot be identified, making it impossible to hold them accountable." he says.
Arguments for and against anonymity
As A. Michael Froomkin says: "The regulation of anonymous and pseudonymous communications promises to be one of the most important and contentious Internet-related issues of the next decade". Anonymity and pseudonymity can be used for good and bad purposes. And anonymity can in many cases be desirable for one person and not desirable for another person. A company may, for example, not like an employee to divulge information about improper practices within the company, but society as a whole may find it important that such improper practices are publicly exposed.
Good purposes of anonymity and pseudonymity:
People dependent on an organization, or afraid of revenge, may divulge serious misuse, which should be revealed. Anonymous tips can be used as an information source by newspapers, as well as by police departments, soliciting tips aimed at catching criminals. Not everyone will regard such anonymous communication as good. For example, message boards established outside companies, but for employees of such companies to vent their opinions on their employer, have sometimes been used in ways that at least the companies themselves were not happy about [Abelson 2001]. Police use of anonymity is a complex issue, since the police often will want to know the identity of the tipper in order to get more information, evaluate the reliability or get the tipper as a witness. Is it ethical for police to identify the tipper if it has opened up an anonymous tipping hotline?
People in a country with a repressive political regime may use anonymity (for example Internet-based anonymity servers in other countries) to avoid persecution for their political opinions. Note that even in democratic countries, some people claim, rightly or wrongly, that certain political opinions are persecuted. [Wallace 1999] gives an overview of uses of anonymity to protect political speech. Every country has a limit on which political opinions are allowed, and there are always people who want to express forbidden opinions, like racial agitation in most democratic countries.
People may openly discuss personal stuff which would be embarrassing to tell many people about, such as sexual problems. Research shows that anonymous participants disclose significantly more information about themselves [Joinson 2001]. People might also feel more open to sharing their personal work anonymously if they feel that their friends and family would harass them or disapprove of their work. Examples of such work could include fan fiction or vocal performances.
People may get more objective evaluation of their messages, by not showing their real name.
People are more equal in anonymous discussions, factors like status, gender, etc., will not influence the evaluation of what they say.
Pseudonymity can be used to experiment with role playing, for example a man posing as a woman in order to understand the feelings of people of different gender.
Pseudonymity can be a tool for timid people to dare establish contacts which can be of value for them and others, e.g. through contact advertisements.
People can contribute to online social discussion with reduced risk of harm by online predators. Online predators include "criminals, hackers, scammers, stalkers, and malicious online vendors."
People can avoid becoming famous by publishing their work anonymously.
There has always, however, also been a negative side of anonymity:
Anonymity can be used to protect a criminal performing many different crimes, for example slander, distribution of child pornography, illegal threats, racial agitation, fraud, intentional damage such as distribution of computer viruses, etc. The exact set of illegal acts varies from country to country, but most countries have many laws forbidding certain "informational" acts, everything from high treason to instigation of rebellion, etc., to swindling.
Anonymity can be used for online payments for criminals paying others to perform illegal acts or purchases.
Anonymity can be used to seek contacts for performing illegal acts, like a Child grooming searching for children to abuse or a swindler searching for people to rip off.
Even when the act is not illegal, anonymity can be used for offensive or disruptive communication. For example, some people use anonymity in order to say harmful things about other people, known as cyberbullying.
Internet trolls use anonymity to harm discussions in online social platforms.
The border between illegal and legal but offensive use is not very sharp, and varies depending on the law in each country.
Anonymous (group)
Anonymous (used as a mass noun) is a loosely associated international network of activist and hacktivist entities. A website nominally associated with the group describes it as "an internet gathering" with "a very loose and decentralized command structure that operates on ideas rather than directives". The group became known for a series of well-publicized publicity stunts and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on government, religious, and corporate websites. An image commonly associated with Anonymous is the "man without a head" represents leaderless organization and anonymity.
Legal protection of anonymity
Anonymity is perceived as a right by many, especially the anonymity in the internet communications. The partial right for anonymity is legally protected to various degrees in different jurisdictions.
United States
The tradition of anonymous speech is older than the United States. Founders Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay wrote The Federalist Papers under the pseudonym "Publius" and "the Federal Farmer" spoke up in rebuttal. The US Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized rights to speak anonymously derived from the First Amendment.
The right to anonymous political campaigning was established in the U.S. Supreme Court decision in McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission (1995) case: "Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority...It thus exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights, and of the First Amendment in particular: to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation—and their ideas from suppression—at the hand of an intolerant society". The Supreme court explained that protecting anonymous political speech receives the highest protection however, this priority takes on new dimensions in the digital age.
The right of individuals for "anonymous communication" was established by the decision in case Columbia Insurance Company v. Seescandy.com, et al. (1999) of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California: "People are permitted to interact pseudonymously and anonymously with each other so long as those acts are not in violation of the law".
The right of individuals for "anonymous reading" was established in the U.S. Supreme Court decision in United States v. Rumely (1953): "Once the government can demand of a publisher the names of the purchasers of his publications, the free press as we know it disappears. Then the spectre of a government agent will look over the shoulder of everyone who reads".
The pressure on anonymous communication has grown substantially after the 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and the subsequent new political climate. Although it is still difficult to oversee their exact implications, measures such as the US Patriot Act, the European Cybercrime Convention and the European Union rules on data retention are only few of the signs that the exercise of the right to the anonymous exchange of information is under substantial pressure.
An above-mentioned 1995 Supreme Court ruling in McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission reads: "(...) protections for anonymous speech are vital to democratic discourse. Allowing dissenters to shield their identities frees them to express critical minority views . . . Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority. . . . It thus exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights and of the First Amendment in particular: to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation . . . at the hand of an intolerant society."
However, anonymous online speech is not without limits. It is clearly demonstrated in a case from 2008, one in which the defendant stated on a law-school discussion board that two women should be raped, an anonymous poster's comments may extend beyond free speech protections. In the case, a Connecticut federal court must apply a standard to decide whether the poster's identity should be revealed. There are several tests, however, that the court could apply when considering this issue.
European Union
The right to internet anonymity is also covered by European legislation that recognizes the fundamental right to data protection, freedom of expression, freedom of impression. The European Union Charter of Fundamental Rights recognizes in Article. 8 (Title II: “Freedoms”) the right of everyone to protection of personal data concerning him. The right to privacy is now essentially the individual's right to have and to maintain control over information about him.
International legislation
One of the most controversial international legal acts, regarding this subject is Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). As of February 2015, the treaty was signed -but not all ratified- by 31 states as well as the European Union. Japan was on 4 October 2012 the first to ratify the treaty. It creates an international regime for imposing civil and criminal penalties on Internet counterfeiting and copyright infringement. Although ACTA is intentionally vague, leaving signatories to draw precise rules themselves, critics say it could mean innocent travellers having their laptops searched for unlicensed music, or being jailed for carrying a generic drug. Infringers could be liable for the total loss of potential sales (implying that everyone who buys a counterfeit product would have bought the real thing). It applies to unintentional use of copyright material. It puts the onus on website owners to ensure they comply with laws across several territories. It has been negotiated secretively and outside established international trade bodies, despite EU criticisms.
Anonymity and politics
The history of anonymous expression in political dissent is both long and with important effect, as in the Letters of Junius or Voltaire's Candide, or scurrilous as in pasquinades. In the tradition of anonymous British political criticism, The Federalist Papers were anonymously authored by three of America's Founding Fathers. Without the public discourse on the controversial contents of the U.S. Constitution, ratification would likely have taken much longer as individuals worked through the issues. The United States Declaration of Independence, however, was not anonymous. If it had been unsigned, it might well have been less effective. John Perry Barlow, Joichi Ito, and other U.S. bloggers express a very strong support for anonymous editing as one of the basic requirements of open politics as conducted on the Internet.
Anonymity and pseudonymity in art
Anonymity is directly related to the concept of obscurantism or pseudonymity, where an artist or a group attempts to remain anonymous, for various reasons such as adding an element of mystique to themselves or their work, attempting to avoid what is known as the "cult of personality" or hero worship (in which the charisma, good looks, wealth or other unrelated or mildly related aspects of the people is the main reason for interest in their work, rather than the work itself) or to break into a field or area of interest normally dominated by males (as by the famous science fiction author James Tiptree, Jr who was actually a woman named Alice Bradley Sheldon, and likely JT LeRoy). Some seem to want to avoid the "limelight" of popularity and to live private lives, such as Thomas Pynchon, J. D. Salinger, De Onbekende Beeldhouwer (an anonymous sculptor whose exhibited work in Amsterdam attracted strong attention in the 1980s and 1990s), and by DJ duo Daft Punk (1993-2021). For street artist Banksy, "anonymity is vital to him because graffiti is illegal".
Anonymity has been used in music by avant-garde ensemble The Residents, Jandek (until 2004), costumed comedy rock band The Radioactive Chicken Heads, and DJs Deadmau5 (1998-present) and Marshmello (2015-present).
This is frequently applied in fiction, from The Lone Ranger, Superman, and Batman, where a hidden identity is assumed.
Mathematics of anonymity
Suppose that only Alice, Bob, and Carol have keys to a bank safe and that, one day, contents of the safe go missing (lock not violated). Without additional information, we cannot know for sure whether it was Alice, Bob or Carol who emptied the safe. Notably, each element in {Alice, Bob, Carol} could be the perpetrator with a probability of 1. However, as long as none of them was convicted with 100% certainty, we must hold that the perpetrator remains anonymous and that the attribution of the probability of 1 to one of the players has to remain undecided.
If Carol has a definite alibi at the time of perpetration, then we may deduce that it must have been either Alice or Bob who emptied the safe. In this particular case, the perpetrator is not completely anonymous anymore, as both Alice and Bob now know "who did it" with a probability of 1.
See also
List of anonymously published works
List of anonymous masters
Notname
Data anonymization
Friend-to-friend
Internet privacy
Online disinhibition effect
Personally identifiable information
Anonymity (social choice)
Notes
References |
59013381 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary%20Lacity | Mary Lacity | Mary Cecilia Lacity (born May 27, 1963) is a Walton Professor of Information Systems and the Director of the Blockchain Center of Excellence at the University of Arkansas, Sam M. Walton College of Business.
Lacity was previously the Curators’ Distinguished Professor of Information Systems and International Business Fellow at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. She also held the position of Visiting Scholar at the MIT Center for Information Systems Research. Additionally, she has held visiting positions at the London School of Economics, Washington University, and Oxford University. She is best known for her research in automation, outsourcing and blockchain.
Early life
Mary Lacity was born May 27, 1963 in Atlantic City, New Jersey. She got her undergraduate degree in Quantitative Business Analysis at Pennsylvania State University in 1985. Before Mary received her PhD, she was a consultant for Technology Partners International and a systems analyst for Exxon. In 1992, she received her Ph.D. in Information Systems from the University of Houston, C.T. Bauer College of Business.
Career
University of Missouri-St. Louis
Mary Lacity started at the University of Missouri-St. Louis in 1992, and was there for 26 years. Starting as an Assistant Professor of MIS, she moved to Associate Professor in 1998 and full professor in 2004. In 2012, she became the Curators’ Distinguished Professor of Information Systems, and International Business Fellow. She taught classes on Qualitative Research Methods and The Philosophy of Science and Qualitative Research Methods.
Sam M. Walton College of Business
After her time at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, Mary Lacity moved to Fayetteville, Arkansas for a position as the Director of the Blockchain Center of Excellence. The goals of the Blockchain Center of Excellence are to develop research partnerships, promote the dissemination of knowledge about blockchain, and push industry adoption of blockchain technology.
Other roles
Mary Lacity has served in many different roles in her career. She held the position of Visiting Scholar at the MIT Center for Information Systems Research. Additionally, she has held visiting positions at the London School of Economics, Washington University, and Oxford University. She is also a Certified Outsourcing Professional. She is a coeditor of the Palgrave Series: Work, Technology, and Globalization, senior editor of MIS Quarterly Executive and Journal of Information Technology Teaching Cases, and on the editorial boards for the Journal of Information Technology, the Journal of Strategic Information Systems, IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, and Strategic Outsourcing: An International Journal.
Additionally, Mary is an industry advisor for Symphony Ventures and a member of the IAOP Outsourcing Hall of Fame. She received the 2000 World Outsourcing Achievement Award and 2008 Gateway to Innovation Award. Her publications have appeared in Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, MIS Quarterly, IEEE Computer, and Communications of the ACM.
Books
Information Systems Outsourcing: Myths, Metaphors and Realities (1993)
Beyond The Information Systems Outsourcing Bandwagon: The Insourcing Response (1995)
Inside Information Technology Outsourcing: A State-of-the-art Report (2000)
Global Information Technology Outsourcing: In Search of Business Advantage (2001)
Netsourcing: Renting Business Applications and Services Over a Network (2002)
Outsourcing: All You Need to Know (2004)
Information Systems and Outsourcing (2008)
Information Systems and Outsourcing: Studies in Theory and Practice (2008)
Offshore Outsourcing of It Work (2008)
The Practice of Outsourcing: From Information Systems to BPO and Offshoring (2009)
Emerging ITO and BPO Markets: Rural Sourcing and Impact Sourcing (2012)
The Rise of Legal Services Outsourcing: Risk and Opportunity (2014)
South Africa’s BPO Service Advantage: Becoming Strategic in the Global Marketplace (2015)
Nine Keys to World-Class Business Process Outsourcing (2015)
Service Automation: Robots and the Future of Work (2016)
Robotic Process Automation and Risk Mitigation: The Definitive Guide (2017)
Robotic Process and Cognitive Automation (2018)
A Manager's Guide to Blockchains for Business (2018)
Becoming Strategic with Robotic Process Automation (2019)
Blockchain Foundations For the Internet of Value (2020)
References
External links
People associated with cryptocurrency
Living people
1963 births
People from Margate City, New Jersey
University of Arkansas faculty
Pennsylvania State University alumni
University of Houston alumni
Database researchers
American women computer scientists
American computer scientists
Information systems researchers
University of Missouri–St. Louis faculty
American women academics |
27265595 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serena%20Software | Serena Software | With operations in 11 countries, Serena Software Inc. is an American software company that provides IT management products to enterprises. Serena solutions offer a process orchestration approach and span the areas of development, DevOps and IT management.
Serena is headquartered in Silicon Valley, California and has 400+ employees. The company has been a subsidiary of the British software and information company Micro Focus since 2016.
History
Serena Software acquired Merant Software in 2004 which provided Serena ownership rights to PVCS.
In May 2004, Serena announced it would acquire TeamShare, producers of the defect management system TeamTrack. This later became Serena Business Mashups (SBM), which was shortly renamed Serena Business Manager.
In November 2005, Serena Software announced that it had agreed to be acquired by Silver Lake Partners in a leveraged buyout transaction. The buyout was announced at a price of per share in cash, and the transaction occurred in 2006. Following the transaction, Silver Lake, a technology focused private equity firm acquired about 70% of the Serena stock. The Silver Lake Partners acquisition resulted in no immediate changes to the executive management team and daily operations continued much as they had before.
In October 2006, Serena announced the acquisition of Pacific Edge Software to enter the emerging project portfolio management (PPM) market. Mariner, a leading provider of Project and Portfolio Management (PPM) solutions was determined to be a good match for Serena's existing portfolio of products. After Pacific Edge, Serena made a number of more minor acquisitions, purchasing prototyping technology from Apptero, requirements management technology from Integrated Chipware and asset discovery technology from Data Sciences Corporation.
In September 2008 Serena announced the acquisition of Projity, an open source software as a service (SaaS)-based project management company.
John Nugent was appointed CEO in November 2009.
In November 2010, Serena announced a new strategy to orchestrate application delivery with a process-driven approach.
In January 2012, Serena's solutions for Orchestrated IT, Serena Service Manager (SSM) and Serena Release Manager (SRM) were named finalists for the Pink Elephant 2011 Innovation of the Year Award.
In February 2012, Serena Service Manager was named the winner of Pink Elephant's 2011 Innovation of the Year Award.
Greg Hughes was appointed CEO in January 2013.
During 2013 Serena tried to address falling profits and increase operating margins by reducing its workforce by some 175 employees, hoping to cut operating expenses for the fiscal year 2014. By July the company had total outstanding debt of US$410 million.
In March 2014, Serena announced the acquisition of the company by a partnership of founder Doug Troxel and private equity firm HGGC. The acquisition was completed in April 2014.
In March 22, 2016, Micro Focus announced its intent to acquire Serena Software, Inc., with acquisition expected to close in early May 2016, with transaction valued at . In 2016-05-02, Micro Focus announced it has completed the acquisition.
Products
The company provides process-based solutions for managing and automating application development, DevOps and IT operations. The company's revenues are generated through software licenses, maintenance contracts and professional services.
Serena's products and solutions address the following industry segments:
Deployment automation (SDA)
IT management
Request management
Demand management
Requirements management (RM)
Application lifecycle management (ALM)
Release management (RLM)
Agile development
Configuration management (Dimensions CM)
Issue & defect management
IT service management (ITSM)
Information technology operations (IT Operations)
DevOps
Product development
Mainframe
References
External links
Serena Software Inc.
Micro Focus Serena page
2006 mergers and acquisitions
2014 mergers and acquisitions
2016 mergers and acquisitions
American subsidiaries of foreign companies
Companies based in San Mateo, California
Development software companies
Micro Focus International
Software companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area
Software companies established in 1980
Software companies of the United States
American companies established in 1980
1980 establishments in California |
33515996 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huawei%20E5 | Huawei E5 | The E5 is a mobile Wi-Fi device produced by Huawei Technologies, and is part of the company's mobile Wi-Fi series that includes the E5830s, E585, E583c and E586. The E5 series connect to other devices using a wireless interface. The devices are pocket size and allow users to access the Internet through any Wi-Fi device, mobile phone, game console, digital camera, notebook and personal digital assistant (PDA).
Products
E5
Huawei launched the E5 at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February 2009. It was originally named the E583X and is also known as the E5830/E5852. The E5 offers high-speed wireless connectivity, providing users with group internet access, individual Wi-Fi hotspots and connection to devices such as notebooks, digital cameras and games consoles. It also allows users to play games online and transfer pictures.
The E5 is 95mm × 48mm × 13mm, 90g in weight and is equipped with a microSD card with storage capacity of up to 32GB. It can support networks such as GSM, EDGE, GPRS, UMTS and HSPA and comes with five LED indicators. The E5 has download speeds of 7.2 Mbit/s and uplink speeds of 5.76Mbit/s.
E5830s
The E5830s mobile Wi-Fi device connects to devices using its wireless interface, providing Internet access through any Wi-Fi device, mobile phone, game console, digital camera, notebook and PDA. Key features include: intelligent power control, temperature protection, web messages, web SD card information sharing, small screen page setting and screen display of statuses.
E585
Huawei developed the E585 based on feedback from consumers and UK wireless carrier 3, including a start-up button and OLED display detailing information such as signal strength, 3G or HSDPA connectivity, number of devices connected to the hub, battery level, and the network being used. It is equipped with a personal mobile Wi-Fi hotspot for a maximum of five compatible devices including notebooks, iPads, or handheld gaming consoles simultaneously. The E585 is compatible with Windows, Mac and Linux.
E583c
Huawei announced the launch of its next-generation mobile Wi-Fi device, the E583C in July 2010. The device was based on the original E5, but the company stated that it had made further improvements to the E583c's performance and stability. The E583c converts 3.5G HSPA mobile signal into Wi-Fi coverage, automatically creating Internet access and individual Wi-Fi hotspots for up to five Wi-Fi-enabled digital devices. It can also provide simultaneous Internet access to a sixth device when it is connected to a laptop computer via a USB cable. The E583c weighs 90 grams and features a 1-inch color OLED display that shows information such as network operator details, signal strength, Wi-Fi connection status, and battery level. It enables wireless data transmission or online gaming on a range of Wi-Fi-enabled digital devices, including iPads, iPod Touch, netbooks, laptop computers, portable multimedia centers, game consoles, PDAs, mobile phones and digital cameras.
The E583c is compatible with Windows, Mac or Linux and has data transmission speeds of up to 5.76Mbit/s (uplink) and 7.2Mbit/s (download). It also has a built-in microSD memory card slot (maximum 32GB) that can be used as a USB memory stick. Linux requires a driver that is not shipped with the unit.
E586
On 17 August 2011, UK 3 announced its new high-speed mobile Wi-Fi device: the Huawei-built E586 MiFi, the first mobile Wi-Fi device in the UK to feature next generation HSPA+ mobile broadband technology. Compared with the E585, the E586 provides users with approximately 40% faster download and uplink, offering 21.1 Mbit/s download (HSDPA) and 5.76 Mbit/s uplink (HSUPA). Similarly to previous models, the E586's features include Wi-Fi for iPads, laptops or handheld games consoles. The E586 also features an OLED screen displaying information such as the amount of data used, speed of the current connection and length of browsing time, as well as a newly designed dashboard for viewing text messages and changing settings. A new feature of the E586 allows users to see their Wi-Fi user name and password on screen for pairing with new gadgets. The device has an internal memory slot for microSD card that supports up to 32GB and approximately 4.5 hours battery life.
E587
The Huawei E587 was presented at the Mobile World Congress in 2011. Compared to the earlier products Huawei doubles (50%) the download and upload speed. Customers getting up to 42.2 Mbit/s throughout the DC-HSPA+ technology. The upload speed provides 11 Mbit/s (HSUPA). Beside WiFi IEEE 802.11 b/g the Huawei E587 also supports IEEE 802.11n. The OLED-Display expose signal strength with technology, current operator, battery lifetime, amount of the current WiFi users, incoming messages and internet connection status. The mobile Hotspot has an internal memory slot for microSD card that supports up to 32GB and approximately 5 hours battery life (2200 mAh). Additionally the device has an external antenna connector (TS-9).
E589
On 13 January 2012, Huawei unveils the world's first multi-mode WiFi device, the Huawei E589, at the CES. In comparison with the predecessor the Huawei E589 supports LTE category 3 (100 Mbit/s downlink and 50 Mbit/s uplink) and provides internet connection up to 10 devices. Connected to 3G the MiFi reaches download speed up to 42.2 MBit/s. The E589 also features a TFT screen displaying information such as the amount of data used, speed of the current connection and length of browsing time. The mobile Hotspot has an internal memory slot for microSD card that supports up to 32GB and approximately 6 hours battery life (3000 mAh). Additionally the device has an external antenna connector (TS-9). Vodafone offers a branded version, the R210, which is nearly similar to the original device.
E5786
On 23 February 2014, Huawei introduced the world's first category 6 (up to 300 Mbit/s downlink) LTE mobile Hotspot at Mobile World Congress. Huawei uses a HiSilicon LTE Cat6 chipset that runs on a 28 nm HPM Cortex-A9 processor. Beside faster download speed the Huawei E5786 offers support for dual band (2.4/5 GHz) Wi-Fi ac including easy access by connecting with simply scanning a QR code.
Specifications
Huawei E5830, E5830s, E583c and E585
Huawei E586, E587 and E589
Huawei E5151, E5220 and E5221
Huawei E5330, E5331, E5332 and E5336
Huawei E5372, E5373 and E5377/E5377T/EC5377
Huawei E5573
Huawei E5730, E5756, E5775 and E5776
Huawei E5786
Huawei Mobile Wi-Fi E5878
Reception and awards
By December 2009, shipments of the E5 wireless modem exceeded 300,000 units and orders had been placed by 40 network operators worldwide. Huawei's 2010 annual report stated that more than three million units of E5 had been sold around the world, . According to market research agency GfK Group, the E5 ranked number one in Japan for sales of wireless network cards with nearly 30% of market share.
The E5 series have received awards including: "Best iPad Accessory 2010" at the Macworld Awards 2010 and "Work Gadget of the Year" at the T3 Gadget Awards 2010, both for the Huawei E5.
References
External links
Huawei mobile Wi-Fi devices
The Top 5 4G LTE Mobile Routers Review 2015
Information appliances
Huawei products
Wi-Fi
Mobile hotspots |
17747429 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008%20Noida%20double%20murder%20case | 2008 Noida double murder case | The 2008 Noida double murder case refers to the unsolved murders of 13-year-old girl Aarushi Talwar and 45-year-old man Hemraj Banjade, a live-in domestic worker employed by her family. The two were killed on the night of 15–16 May 2008 at Aarushi's home in Noida, India. The case aroused public interest as a whodunit story, and received heavy media coverage. The sensational media coverage, which included salacious allegations against Aarushi and the suspects, was criticized by many as a trial by media.
When Aarushi's body was discovered on 16 May, Hemraj, who was missing at the time, was considered the main suspect. The next day, Hemraj's partially decomposed body was discovered on the terrace. The police were heavily criticized for failing to secure the crime scene immediately. After ruling out former domestic servants of the family, the police treated Aarushi's parents—Dr. Rajesh Talwar and Dr. Nupur Talwar—as the prime suspects. The police suspected that Rajesh had murdered the two after finding them in an "objectionable" position, or because Rajesh's alleged extra-marital affair had led to his blackmail by Hemraj and a confrontation with Aarushi. The accusations enraged the Talwars' family and friends, who accused the police of framing the Talwars in order to cover up the botched-up investigation. The case was then transferred to the CBI, which exonerated the parents and suspected the Talwars' assistant Krishna Thadarai and two domestic servants—Rajkumar and Vijay Mandal. Based on the 'narco' interrogation conducted on the three men, the CBI assumed that they had killed Aarushi after an attempted sexual assault, and Hemraj for being a witness. The CBI was accused of using dubious methods to extract a confession, and all the three men were released after it could not find any solid evidence against them.
In 2009, the CBI handed over the investigation to a new team, which recommended closing the case due to critical gaps in the evidence. Based on circumstantial evidence, it named Rajesh Talwar as the sole suspect, but refused to charge him due to the lack of any hard evidence. The parents opposed the closure report, calling CBI's suspicion of Rajesh Talwar as baseless. Subsequently, a special CBI court rejected the CBI's claim that there was not enough evidence, and ordered proceedings against the Talwars. In November 2013, the parents were convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment, but many critics argued that the judgment was based on weak evidence. The Talwars challenged the decision in the Allahabad High Court.
On 12 October 2017, the court acquitted them, calling the evidence against them unsatisfactory and severely criticizing the police, CBI and the media for not having investigated the murder properly. On 8 March 2018, the CBI challenged the acquittal in the Supreme Court. The case remains unsolved.
Background
Aarushi Talwar (24 May 1994 – 16 May 2008) was a 13-year-old student at the Delhi Public School. She was the daughter of a dentist couple, Dr. Rajesh Talwar and Dr. Nupur Talwar. Rajesh Talwar is the son of Dr. Janak Raj Talwar. The family lived in an apartment in Sector 25 (Jalvayu Vihar) of Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India. Rajesh and Nupur practiced together at their clinic in Sector 27 of Noida. They also saw patients at the Fortis Hospital, where Rajesh headed the dental department. In addition, Rajesh taught at the ITS dental college in Greater Noida. Anita and Praful Durrani, another dentist couple and close family friends of the Talwars, lived in the same city. The couple shared the Noida clinic with the Talwars: Rajesh and Anita worked at the clinic in the mornings (9am–12pm), while Praful and Nupur worked there in the evenings (5pm–7pm). The Durranis and the Talwars also shared a clinic in Hauz Khas area of Delhi.
Yam Prasad Banjade (16 January 1963 - 16 May 2008), better known as Hemraj, was the Talwar family's live-in domestic help and cook. He belonged to Dharapani village in the Arghakhanchi district of Nepal.
Events preceding the murders
The murders on the night of 15–16 May 2008 were preceded by the following events:
Before 9 pm (15 May)
On 15 May 2008, Nupur Talwar worked at her clinic during 9 am–1 pm. She picked up Aarushi from school at 1:30 pm and returned to their Jalvayu Vihar apartment. Nupur's sister-in-law Vandana Talwar (wife of Rajesh's brother Dinesh) joined them for lunch. Then Nupur and Vandana left, while Aarushi stayed at home. Nupur worked at the Fortis Hospital from 4:30 pm to 7:00 pm. She returned to the apartment around 7.30 pm.
Rajesh Talwar taught at the ITS Dental College from 8:45 am to 3:30 pm and then attended patients at the clinic until 8:30 pm.
9 pm – 10 pm
Rajesh and his driver Umesh Sharma returned to Jalvayu Vihar around 9:30 pm.
Sharma dropped Rajesh in front of the apartment building and drove away to park the car at the house of Nupur's parents, which was a walking distance away (the Talwars did not have a garage).
Sharma returned to the Talwar residence around 9:40 pm to hand over the car keys and Rajesh's bag to Hemraj, who had cooked the dinner for the family.
Sharma saw Nupur and Aarushi near the dining table, and Rajesh coming out of his bedroom. He was the last known outsider to see Aarushi and Hemraj alive.
10 pm – 11 pm
According to the Talwars, after the dinner, they went to Aarushi's room, and gave her a Sony DSC-W130 digital camera. The camera had arrived earlier that day via courier and had been received by Hemraj. Rajesh originally planned to give it to Aarushi on her birthday (24 May), but Nupur persuaded Rajesh to give it to Aarushi that day as an early birthday surprise.
Aarushi clicked several photographs of herself and her parents, the last one at 10:10 pm.
Subsequently, Aarushi's parents retired to their room, while Aarushi remained in her room.
11 pm – 12 am
According to the parents, around 11 pm, Rajesh asked Nupur to switch on the internet router, which was in Aarushi's room. When Nupur came to Aarushi's room, the teenager was reading Chetan Bhagat's The 3 Mistakes of My Life. Nupur switched on the router and returned to her own room.
Around this time, Rajesh answered a call from the US on the landline phone (kept in the couple's room). This indicates that the ringer was not silent.
Rajesh then surfed some stock market and dentistry websites, and sent an e-mail. He visited an e-mail site at 11:41:53 pm, which is when the desktop and the laptop show the last internet usage.
After 12 am (16 May)
Around midnight, Aarushi's friend Anmol tried calling her on her mobile as well as the Talwar residence's landline. The calls were not answered. Around 12:30 am, he sent her an SMS message: This message was not received by Aarushi's phone.
The Internet router was used for the last time at 12:08 am. Based on this, CBI inferred that Rajesh was online until 12:08 am.
The exact sequence of events between midnight and 6:00 am could not be determined by the investigators with certainty (see conjecture below). According to their post-mortem reports, Aarushi and Hemraj were killed between 12:00 am and 1:00 am.
The apartment
The 1300 sq. ft. apartment had 3 bedrooms(including servants' room), a drawing-dining room and a servants' quarters, where Hemraj slept. Rajesh and Nupur slept in the master bedroom, while Aarushi slept in an adjacent room. Hemraj's room had a separate entry from outside the apartment; it also opened into the apartment from inside.
The entrance to the Talwars' apartment at Jalvayu Vihar had three doors: the outermost grill gate, a middle grill door located in the passageway, and the innermost wooden door. Hemraj's room had two doors - one door opened inside the apartment, and the other door was located between the two grill doors. The Talwars had the outermost gate removed a year after the murders.
Discovery of Aarushi's body
On 16 May 2008, the family's housemaid Bharati Mandal (35) rang their doorbell around 6 am. She had been employed six days earlier. Every day, Hemraj would open the door for her, as Nupur and Rajesh were late risers, but this time, nobody opened the door even after she rang a second time. She later stated that she tried pushing the outermost gate, but it did not open.
After Bharati rang the doorbell a third time, Nupur opened the innermost wooden door. Speaking through the mesh of the middle grill door, she told Bharati that this door was locked from outside. She asked Bharati about the whereabouts of Hemraj. When Bharati said that she had no idea, Nupur remarked that Hemraj must have gone outside to fetch milk and must have locked the door from outside. She asked Bharati to wait outside until Hemraj returned. Bharati did not want to wait and asked Nupur to throw the keys. Nupur asked her to go downstairs so that she could throw the keys to her from the balcony.
Nupur then called Hemraj's mobile phone, but the call was abruptly cut. When she tried calling him again, the phone appeared to have been switched off. When Bharati reached downstairs, Nupur asked her to go back and check if the door was just latched, not locked. Bharati insisted that Nupur throw the keys anyway, so that she wouldn't have to take the stairs again, in case the door was locked. Nupur then threw the keys down to Bharati.
According to the Talwars, by this time, Rajesh also woke up. He entered the living room and saw a near-empty Scotch whisky bottle on the dining table, which surprised him. He asked Nupur who had kept the bottle there, and then alarmed, asked her to check Aarushi's room. Aarushi's room had a self-locking door, and it would generally be locked. It could be opened only from inside or from outside with a key. But the couple found it unlocked on that morning. When they entered the room, they saw Aarushi's dead body lying on her bed. Rajesh started screaming, while Nupur remained silent (due to shock, according to her).
Meanwhile, Bharati returned to the outermost gate: she pushed it, and it opened without the key. She found that the middle door was latched, but not locked. She opened the latch and walked in. When she entered the apartment, she saw Rajesh and Nupur crying. Nupur asked her to come inside Aarushi's room. Bharati stood at the entrance of the room, as Nupur walked inside. Aarushi's body lay on her bed; it was covered with a flannel blanket. Nupur pulled the blanket, and Bharati saw that Aarushi's throat was slit. Both the parents blamed Hemraj for Aarushi's murder in front of the maid. Bharati walked out of the apartment to inform the neighbours. She returned to the house and asked the Talwars if they wanted her to do the daily household chores. When they said "No", she moved on to work in other households.
The Talwars called their family and friends. Puneesh Rai Tandon, a neighbour who lived one floor below the Talwars, asked the Jalvayu Vihar security guard Virendra Singh to inform the police. By the time the police arrived, there were 15 people in the living room and 5-6 people in the Talwars' bedroom; only Aarushi's room was vacant. The crime scene had been "completely trampled upon". The story of a murder in an affluent neighbourhood also attracted many mediapersons, who gathered around the house by 8 am.
Hemraj as the suspect
On 16 May, the missing servant Hemraj was the prime suspect. In his police complaint, Rajesh blamed Hemraj for his daughter's murder. He repeatedly told the police to pursue Hemraj instead of wasting time in the apartment, and offered them 25,000 rupees to rush to Hemraj's native village in Nepal. The police suspected that Hemraj entered Aarushi's room in an inebriated state after consuming Scotch whisky, and tried to sexually assault her. When she resisted, he killed her with a kukri (a Nepali knife). The police announced a reward of 20,000 for tips leading to his capture.
Aarushi's body was taken for post-mortem around 8:30 am by two Uttar Pradesh police constables. Rajesh's brother Dinesh Talwar, his driver Umesh Sharma and his childhood friend Ajay Chadha accompanied the constables. Around 1 pm, the body was brought home and placed on ice slabs in the living room. It was taken for cremation at the Antim Niwas crematorium around 4 pm. According to the Talwars, who were later accused of being in a hurry to cremate the body, it was decomposing fast, and the family elders were pushing for cremation. In addition, the police confirmed that the body was not needed for any further examination.
The police later alleged that the Talwars' domestic staff showed undue haste in cleaning Aarushi's room. In Talwars' defence, their compounder Vikas Sethi told the court that he had received the permission to clean the house from the police personnel and a lady constable present on the crime scene.
A part of Aarushi's blood-stained mattress was cut out and sent to the forensics lab along with her pillow, bed sheet and clothes. Vikas Sethi later testified that he, along with three others, tried to dump the remaining part of the mattress on the terrace, but found it locked. An old lady then told him to put the mattress on the neighbouring terrace. Rajesh's driver Sharma then asked the neighbour Puneesh Tandon for the key to his terrace. Earlier, at 4 pm also, Sharma had asked Tandon for the key, saying that he needed to dump the ice brought for Aarushi's body. This time, Tandon opened the terrace himself. Sharma, Sethi and two others dragged the mattress to his terrace. Tandon then locked the terrace door. None of them noticed the body of Hemraj, which was lying on the adjacent terrace, separated by a grilled wall.
According to CBI, when the post-mortem report was being written between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. on 16 May, a series of telephonic conversations had happened between Dinesh Talwar, Dr. Sushil Chaudhury (Dinesh's friend and the chairman of the ICARE Eye Hospital) and K K Gautam (retired Deputy Superintendent of Police). K K Gautam, while deposing at the CBI court later in 2012, stated that Chaudhury had requested him to get any references to a sexual assault removed from the post-mortem report, but he refused to oblige. He told the court that he had mentioned this incident to the first CBI team, but they left out this information from their records.
Discovery of Hemraj's body
On the morning of 16 May, the visitors to the Talwars' house noticed some bloodstains on the terrace door handle. Rajesh's former colleagues Rajiv Kumar Varshney and Rohit Kochhar later told the police that they saw bloodstains on the terrace door, its lock and the staircase leading to the terrace. While visiting the Talwars' house, Varshney had taken the stairs to the terrace by mistake. However, several other witnesses testified that they had not noticed any bloodstains on the staircase in the morning. These witnesses included several police officers, Umesh Sharma, Puneesh Rai Tandon, Bharati Mandal and Vikas Sethi. Thus, the bloodstains might have been left by the group that tried taking Aarushi's mattress to the Talwars' terrace.
Kocchar stated that the bloodstains on the terrace door were brought to the attention of a police constable named Akhilesh Kumar. Praful Durrani, who also visited the house, claimed that the policeman initially dismissed the spot on the terrace door as rust, and was also dismissive of the bloodstains on the floor. According to Varshney, the police told him that the killer must have tried to escape through or hide weapon on the terrace, but returned after finding it locked. Eventually, the police were persuaded to investigate the terrace, but they could not get the key to the terrace door. Rohit Kochhar later testified that when a policeman asked Rajesh for the terrace key, he "went into the house and did not come out for a long time." Varshney told the court that Rajesh went "towards staircase and immediately returned and went inside the house". Rajesh later stated that he does not have exact recollection of what happened at that time, but he insisted that he never stopped the investigators from visiting any part of the house. Ultimately, the police were unable to open the door and let it remain locked until the next day. Superintendent of Police (SP) Mahesh Mishra testified that he had asked for the terrace door to be opened on 16 May. However, his subordinates told him that Rajesh Talwar couldn't find the key and they couldn't find a mechanic to break open the door. He also stated that he had filed a report on this "carelessness" with the Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Noida.
On the morning of 17 May, Rajesh and Nupur Talwar left for Haridwar to immerse Aarushi's ashes in the Ganges river as per the Hindu custom. Several visitors continued to arrive at the Talwars' house (which was being managed by Dinesh Talwar) with their condolences. These visitors included retired police officer K.K. Gautam, who had been requested by Sushil Chaudhury to come to the Talwars' house. After arriving at the house, Gautam examined the rooms of Aarushi and Hemraj. Dinesh then showed him the blood stains on the terrace door handle. According to Gautam, Dinesh requested him to get the terrace door unlocked. Gautam then called SP Mahesh Mishra, and told him that the lock needed to be broken. Mishra promised that he would himself visit the crime scene, and meanwhile, sent the station officer Dataram Nauneria to the apartment. The key to the terrace was still missing. Anita Durrani asked the Talwars' neighbour Puneesh Tandon if he had a duplicate key to the Talwars' terrace, to which Tandon replied in the negative. Ultimately, Dataram Nauneria broke open the lock. As the group entered the terrace, they saw bloody drag marks. A body "in advanced stage of putrefaction" was discovered lying in a pool of blood at about 10:30 am.
Dinesh Talwar couldn't identify the newly discovered body, and called Rajesh and Nupur (who were on their way to Haridwar), asking them to return home. Meanwhile, SP Mahesh Mishra also reached the spot. When the couple arrived at the home, Nupur didn't enter the house: she sat in the car with Aarushi's ashes, as she considered it inauspicious to take the ashes inside. Rajesh went upstairs to identify the body. He told the police that he couldn't be sure that the body was that of Hemraj, due to the injuries and the decomposition. Later, a friend of Hemraj identified the body as his.
Rajesh and Nupur later resumed their journey to Haridwar and returned the same day. At Haridwar, Rajesh entered the time of Aarushi's death as 2 am in the priest's records. An autopsy of Hemraj's body was conducted at night by Dr. Naresh Raj.
Evidence gathered
The UP police did not cordon off the crime scene immediately, and many people, including the media, were freely roaming in the apartment without any permission when the forensic team arrived to gather evidence. According to the CBI team, 90% of the evidence at the crime scene was destroyed due to the police's negligence.
The injuries
According to their post-mortem reports, both Aarushi and Hemraj died between 12 am and 1 am. Both had been first attacked with a heavy blunt weapon, which caused a "U/V-shaped" scar and resulted in their deaths. Then, their throats were slit with a sharp weapon. There was no sign of asphyxia.
Weapon used for inflicting the blunt injury
In May 2008, the forensic scientists stated that Aarushi was first assaulted with "a heavy sharp-edged weapon". The first hit on the forehead resulted in her death within two minutes, as indicated by the blood clot size.
In 2012, after Aarushi's parents were charged with the murder, the CBI claimed that according to the experts, the "dimensions of the striking distance" of one of Rajesh's golf clubs was identical to the dimensions of the injuries found on the bodies. Dr. Sunil Dohre testified that the weapon used for the U/V-shaped injuries could possibly be a golf club. The defence argued that the CBI officers had drawn the words "golf club" from Dohre's mouth. Talwars' lawyer stated that Aarushi had suffered a hairline fracture, and produced the forensic expert Dr. RK Sharma, who told the court that this fracture could not have been caused by a golf club.
Weapon used for slitting the throats
The weapon used for slitting the throats of the victims was never found. The identical measurements of the lacerated wounds indicated that the same weapon was used on both the victims. In May 2008, the forensic scientists remarked that the wounds displayed a "clinical precision and careful thought", as they were inflicted at the right spot to cut the windpipe and dissect the vital left common carotid artery which supplies oxygenated blood to the brain. Initially, when the Noida police first suspected the parents, they stated that the weapon used was a "surgical knife". By June 2008, the CBI's suspicion had shifted to the three Nepali men, and the weapon was believed to be a kukri, a type of Nepali knife.
The second CBI team returned to the "surgical instrument" theory. In 2013, CBI told the court that according to the faculty at the Talwars' alma mater Maulana Azad Medical College, their dental students were taught surgery. The defence argued that a dentist's scalpel has a cutting surface of about a centimeter: the instrument is too delicate to cut through the carotid artery. According to the defence witness Dr. RK Sharma, the wounds could have been caused by surgical scalpel No. 10 (not used by dentists) or a kukri.
Aarushi's room
Aarushi's body lay on her bed, covered with a white flannel blanket. Her face was covered with her schoolbag.
There was blood on the pillow, the bed, the walls, the floor and the front side of the bedroom door. However, there was no blood on the toys, the schoolbag and the pink pillow kept on the back of the bed. These items were within the range of the splashed blood area, which indicates that they were placed on the bed after the murder. Aarushi's body lay undisturbed on the bed, and the bed sheet was laid out smoothly. According to the CBI, no bloodstains were found on the book The 3 Mistakes of My Life, which Aarushi was supposedly reading before her murder.
Aarushi's body
The 2008 post-mortem report written by Dr. Sunil Dohre marked Aarushi's genital area as "nothing abnormal detected", thus ruling out a sexual assault, but also noted the presence of a "whitish discharge" at her vagina. The whitish discharge sample was sent for pathological examination at the local district hospital, which reported absence of semen. However, later, in 2009, when this vaginal swab sample was sent to CBI's forensic labs, it was suspected to have been tampered with (see below). Ultimately, the CBI concluded that the sample had got contaminated, but not deliberately tampered with. Later, gynaecologist Dr. Urmila Sharma testified that the whitish discharge is normal in 13- and 14-year-old girls after the beginning of a menstrual cycle.
The bed sheet had a wet circular mark below her pelvic area, which was not urine. There was no such wet patch on her pyjamas, which were untied; no urine or any other bodily fluid was found on her underwear either. The lower garments of Aarushi appeared to have been pulled up or pulled down, as her buttock cleavage was visible. CBI suspected that her pelvic area was swabbed clean, and the pyjamas were pulled up afterwards.
Later in 2012, Dr. Dohre stated that Aarushi's private parts were "extraordinarily dilated", although there were no signs of rape. He stated that her hymen was ruptured and that it had an old tear. He also stated that her vaginal orifice was "unduly large", the mouth of her cervix was visible and the whitish discharge was confined to the vagina, when it should have spread to the "entire area". Dr. Dohre stated that he had not mentioned these observations in his original report, because these were his "subjective findings", and because "the findings were non-specific and were very strange". He added the wide vaginal opening found on Aarushi's body could have resulted only when someone manipulated it while the rigor mortis was setting in. He thus concluded that Aarushi's private parts appeared to have been cleaned after she died.
Hemraj's body and the terrace
Hemraj's body had been dragged at least 20 feet on the terrace after his death, as evident by a blood trail and abrasion-contusion on his elbows.
The body was lying on the left of the roof entrance near the external unit of the air conditioner (AC), and was covered by a panel from the roof cooler. The body appeared to have been dragged towards to AC unit, as the quantity of blood was more near the AC unit. An expert from Gandhinagar as well as a team of experts from CFSL concluded that the drag mark on the roof resulted from a blood-soaked body being dragged after being kept in a bed sheet. This raised suspicion that Hemraj might have been killed somewhere else, and his body dragged to the terrace in order to hide it. However, in June 2008, CBI's UV Light testing team reported that it didn't find Hemraj's bloodstains anywhere except the terrace. So, unless the killer cleaned up the original murder spot, Hemraj seems to have been killed on the terrace. The blood found on the staircase leading to the terrace on 17 May might have come from the mattress that the cleaners were trying to dump on the terrace.
A double-bed cover was draped upon the iron grill that separated the Talwars' terrace from the neighbouring terrace. The investigators found a smudged blood-stained palm print on the terrace wall. The blood was later identified as that of Hemraj, but the print could not be identified. The police also photographed a blood-stained shoe print on the terrace; the shoe size was 8 or 9.
According to the Talwars' lawyer Pinaki Mishra, those who had found Hemraj's body saw hair in his mouth, possibly that of his killer. However, the police did not check this.
Unlike Aarushi's body, which had undigested food in the stomach, Hemraj had just 25 ml of liquid in his stomach, indicating that he did not have dinner. This evidence was also supported by the fact that his dinner was found untouched in the kitchen on the morning of 16 May.
In 2012, during proceedings against Aarushi's parents as suspects, Dr. Naresh Raj told the court that Hemraj's penis was swollen when his body was brought for autopsy. According to him, this meant that he was either in middle of a sexual intercourse, or was about to have one. The defence lawyer cited a medical book which stated that this swelling of penis after death was normal. In response, the doctor stated that his conclusion was not based on any medical authority, but on experiences from his own married life.
Hemraj's room
On 1 July 2008, the first CBI team recorded a statement by KK Gautam, describing Hemraj's room as he found it on 17 May. According to this statement, Gautam saw three glasses, two of which had some quantity of liquor in them, while the third one was empty. He also found three bottles: Kingfisher beer, a Sprite and Sula whisky. Later, DNA of Hemraj was found on the Kingfisher bottle, although according to CBI's investigators, he was a teetotaler.
Gautam also visited the servant's toilet where he "found urine of more than one person". According to the statement, he also saw a depression on Hemraj's mattress pointing to the presence of three people in his room. However, in 2012, Gautam told the court that there was no liquor in any of the glasses. He also stated that he had not suggested presence of three people in the room, based on the state of the mattress. When questioned about the discrepancies, he stated that the investigating officer should be asked why his statements were not recorded correctly. He stated that an officer from the first CBI team "distorted several things he said, added things he did not say, and produced a statement that suited the line of investigation at the time."
The doors and the keys
There were no signs of forced entry into the apartment, and the middle grill door had been found latched from the outside in the morning. There were two known sets of keys to the house entrance. One set was with the Talwars, and another with Hemraj. Nupur threw down one bunch of keys to the maid on the morning of 16 May. According to the CBI, Nupur had taken these keys from Hemraj's room. According to Nupur, Hemraj's keys would usually be kept on the sideboard, but she couldn't find them on that morning; so, she threw down her own keys to the maid. The question whether this key was that of Nupur or Hemraj was initially relevant to the investigation, as there were reports that the middle grill door had been locked from outside with a key (If both the keys were inside and CBI was right, it could mean that the parents locked the door, then went inside their apartment through Hemraj's door which they locked from inside, in order to mislead the investigators). However, later, the maid Bharati's testimony in the court established that the door was merely latched from outside. Thus, if the killers were not the parents, they could have shut the innermost wooden door (which automatically locked when shut), and then latched the middle grill door from outside.
When the maid, Bharati, visited the house on the morning of 16 May, she tried to push the outermost gate but could not open it. When she came back at the gate after collecting the bunch of keys (which Nupur had thrown down), she could open it by pushing it. The CBI theorized that the gate was originally latched from inside: when Bharati went down to fetch the keys, Nupur came to the passage via Hemraj's room, and unlatched it. In September 2012, the defence claimed that the maid Bharati Mandal was a tutored witness, as she told the court ("I am saying whatever I was explained.") However, Bharati denied that she had given any incorrect statement under CBI's pressure. The defence stated that this door was not closed, and presented Rajesh's driver Umesh Sharma as a witness, who stated that this outermost door could be opened by pushing it hard.
The key to the terrace door was never found. According to the Talwars, this key was present in Hemraj's bunch of keys, which went missing after the murders.
The door to Aarushi's room (and the main door of the house) would lock automatically when shut. Aarushi's door could either be opened from inside, or from outside with a key. Usually, her room would be locked at the night, and its keys would be at Nupur's bedside. There was no sign of forced entry in Aarushi's room. On the morning of 16 May, the key was found in its shoe-shaped key ring, on top of a framed wall sculpture near the house entrance, in the living room. Nupur later told police that she was not sure whether she closed Aarushi's door the last time she entered the room at 11:00 pm, and if she did, she might have let the keys hanging in the key slot. She claims to have stated this in several lie detector, brain mapping and narco-analysis tests that she cleared. In 2013, the SP Mahesh Kumar Mishra told the court that, on 16 May 2008, Rajesh Talwar claimed that he had locked Aarushi's room from outside at 11:30 pm on the previous night. Rajesh also told him that he had forgotten to lock his own bedroom door from inside, and someone could have stolen the key to Aarushi's room from his room.
Phone records
Both Aarushi and Hemraj had mobile phones, and both the phones disappeared after the murder.
Hemraj
Hemraj used a Tata Indicom mobile with the electronic serial number #20CFA3EC. The SIM card was registered in name of Rajesh. On 15 May, Hemraj had received two calls from the Talwars' clinic: the first call at 4:58 pm lasted for 10 minutes, and the second call at 5:37 pm lasted for 2 and a half minutes. Rajesh was working in his Hauz Khas clinic at the time, while Nupur was in another area of Noida (Fortis Hospital), as indicated by her mobile phone records. The Talwars' defence lawyer later claimed that Krishna Thadarai was working in the Noida clinic at that time.
The last call made to Hemraj during his lifetime was at 8:27 pm, and it lasted for 6 minutes. The call had been made from a PCO in Sector 31; the PCO was located a kilometer away from the Talwars' apartment. The investigators were unable to determine who made this call.
The phone records confirmed that Nupur called Hemraj's phone from the Talwars' landline at 6.01 a.m. on 16 May. The call was picked up, but disconnected after two seconds. This call was the last received on the phone, which was somewhere in the coverage area of the Nithari village cell tower 1362/254. The cell tower had a radius of around 1 km, and covered the apartment complex in which the Talwars (and Thadarai) lived. The police therefore suspected that the killer was present inside the house or in its vicinity on the morning of 16 May.
Hemraj's phone was never found, but according to the CBI, the number was briefly active in Punjab.
Aarushi
Aarushi used a gloss black Nokia N72. She would usually chat with her friends on phone until past midnight. However, on the night of 15 May, her mobile phone was inactive after 9:10 pm. According to the investigators, some of her friends had tried to contact her, but found her mobile phone switched off. The police suspected that either the battery of Aarushi's mobile phone had died or it had been confiscated by this time.
Around midnight, Aarushi's friend Anmol tried calling Aarushi on her mobile and then on the family's landline, but there was no response. Anmol sent an SMS message to her mobile phone at around half-past-midnight. According to the phone records, this SMS was not received by Aarushi's phone.
A few days after her death, Aarushi's phone was found on a dirt track by a housemaid named Kusum, near Noida's Sadarpur area. The phone was possessed by her brother Ram Bhool since May 2008, but he started using it only in February 2009, when he bought a new SIM card. He used it intermittently; on 12 September 2009, the police traced the phone to his residence in Bulandshahar, and recovered the phone from one Jitender whom he had just sold the phone to. Kusum and Ram Bhool were taken into custody for questioning, but the CBI determined that they had no role in the murders: they were not aware that the phone belonged to Aarushi, and had no mala fide intention in keeping it. The police did not find a data card, pictures or text messages on the recovered phone.
Family's landline
The family's landline phone was kept in the bedroom of Rajesh and Nupur Talwar. According to the investigators, Anmol called the landline phone around 11:30 pm, and the call lasted 34 seconds. However, Rajesh denied any knowledge about such a call. Anmol also dialed the family's landline number around midnight, after having failed to reach Aarushi on her mobile: there was no response. The Talwars say that Aarushi would sometimes turn off the ringer on the landline at night, and she might have done it on that night too.
The neighbour Puneesh Tandon later told the court that when he visited the Talwar residence on the morning of 16 May, he asked Nupur's father if he had called the police. Nupur's father told him that the landline was out-of-order.
Rajesh
Rajesh's mobile phone records do not indicate anything out of the ordinary. The tower location indicates that he was at his residence. He had exchanged 16 calls with his fellow practitioner Anita Durrani until 8 pm. At 9:50 pm, he called the Impressionzz traders in Mumbai, from whom he had ordered Aarushi's camera through Indiatimes shopping, probably to ask about a camera feature. At 10.04 pm, he received a call from the father of a patient, who had an appointment on the next day. At 10:06, he called Dr. Mridul Seth to consult on a surgery scheduled on the next day. At 10:15, he received a call from Vikas Sethi, an employee at his Hauz Khas clinic. At 10:38, he received a call from a UAE number. At 10:54 pm and 11:01 pm, he made calls to the American Academy of Implant Dentistry, Chicago. The next call from his mobile was at 6:19 am on the next day, after the discovery of Aarushi's body.
Nupur
Nupur's mobile phone was switched off from 7:40 pm on 15 May to 1 pm on 18 May. The call records showed that it had not been switched off even once during 60 days preceding the murder.
Claims of threat to Hemraj's life
According to the police, Hemraj had told some of his friends about a threat to his life. Although Hemraj's son-in-law Jeevan denied any knowledge of such a threat, a social worker Usha Thakur confirmed that five days before his murder, Hemraj had told her that he feared for "his life and that of some of his near and dear ones". Later, she told the investigators that she could not do anything for him that day, since she had rush to Bangalore due to a family emergency.
Nearly three years after the murder, in March 2011, Hemraj's wife Khumkala, a resident of Nepal, came to India. She moved a plea at the CBI court in Ghaziabad, alleging that she suspected the Talwars to be the murderers. She stated that Hemraj treated Aarushi like his own daughter, but had strained relations with Rajesh. She claimed when Hemraj visited Nepal in December 2007, he had described Rajesh as a short-tempered person who rebuked him for trivial things and even chased him to beat him up. She also claimed that Hemraj had called her from a PCO 15 days before his murder: He told her that Rajesh and Nupur suspected him of leaking their family secrets. When Rajesh's brother Dinesh visited their house, he also looked upon Hemraj with suspicion. The three threatened to kill him, if he dared leak the family's private information to the outsiders. According to her, Hemraj was frustrated with the Talwars' behaviour and was searching for a new job. Hemraj's wife also claimed that Hemraj had not sent any money back home since December 2007, and had told her that he had kept the money with the Talwars. But the Talwars did not send her Hemraj's dues after his murder. When asked why she had not made these revelations earlier, she stated that she had faith in India's judiciary until that point; her lawyer stated that she came from a poor family and had little awareness.
Other evidence
Hemraj had apparently served himself dinner in a plate around 10:30 pm, but never ate it. His bed was still tidy in the morning, indicating that he didn't go to sleep on that night.
A Ballantine's Scotch whisky bottle with bloodstains was found on the dining table. The bloodstains were confirmed as that of Aarushi and Hemraj by a DNA expert. The Scotch whisky bottle came from a mini-bar concealed behind a wooden panel, so it appears that the person who took it out knew the house well. The bottle was seized on the morning of 16 May, but no clear fingerprints could be recovered from it.
Constable Chunnilal Gautam took the first photographs of the crime scene and collected fingerprints on 16 May. The police had gathered 26 fingerprints from the crime scene. According to a CBI official, 24 of these were gathered through wrong methods and could not be preserved. Only 2 fingerprints were suitable for evidential purposes, but these did not match with any of the suspects. Chunni Lal did not take fingerprints of Aarushi.
Aarushi's camera had photographs numbered 13, 15, 20, 22 and 23: this indicates that at least 23 photographs had been taken using the camera, out of which 18 had been deleted. The CBI considered the possibility of the photographs having been deleted by someone other than Aarushi. Nupur suggested a simpler explanation: Aarushi took several pictures, and deleted the ones she didn't like.
At around 3:43 am, nearly 3 hours after Aarushi's murder, the Internet router in Aarushi's room switched off. The CBI produced a technical expert from CERT-In who stated that the switching on/off of the router after a long gap can only happen due to either a power cut or manual intervention. There was no power cut on the night of the murders, a fact attested to by the electricity department. The router was next switched on at 6.01 am. However, the router switched on and off a number of times with long gaps throughout 16 May, even when the police and the visitors were present in the apartment. The CBI concluded that such unexplained router activity made this piece of evidence unreliable.
Previous servants as suspects
The discovery of Hemraj's body had greatly embarrassed the police, as their initial investigation focused on him as the murderer. The police were also criticized for other investigation lapses, such as not cordoning off the crime scene. The investigating officer Dataram Nauneria (Noida Sector-20 police Station Officer) was shifted on 17 May. The next day, Superintendent of Police (City) Mahesh Mishra was also transferred.
On 19 May the police named the Talwars' former Nepali domestic help Vishnu Sharma (alias Vishnu Thapa) as the suspect. Vishnu had worked as a servant and a clinic helper for the Talwars for 10 years. He would go on long vacations; each time, he would replace himself with a distant relative. When he left for a vacation 8 months before the murder, he introduced Hemraj to the Talwars as his replacement. However, when he returned, he found himself out of job: the Talwars preferred to retain Hemraj as a permanent employee. The police suspected that an angry Vishnu might have killed Hemraj for usurping his job; Aarushi might have been killed for being a witness. Vishnu was taken into custody, along with former servants of the Talwars. However, the police were unable to find any evidence that connected him to the murders. It was confirmed that he was in Nepal on the day of the murders.
Parents as the suspects
On 21 May, Delhi Police joined the UP police in the investigation. By this time, the police as well as the media had started suspecting the parents for multiple reasons:
The distance between the beds of Aarushi and her parents (in different bedrooms) was around 7–8 feet. Yet, the parents claimed that they didn't hear any noise and slept through the murders.
There was no sign of forced entry into Aarushi's room, which would usually be locked at night. Someone outside the room could open it only with a key usually kept beside Nupur's bedside. The parents could not explain how the murderers gained access to this key, which was found in the living room after the murder.
On the morning of 16 May, Rajesh asked the police to stop wasting time in his house and pursue Hemraj instead. He even offered to cover the cost of police's visit to Hemraj's native village in Nepal. This offer was seen as a diversionary tactic.
Rajesh ignored the police's request for the key to the terrace door. An attempt had been made to hide Hemraj's body, as evident by the fact that it had been covered with a cooler panel and that the iron grill separating the adjacent terrace had been covered with a bed sheet. The police suspected that the Talwars planned to blame Aarushi's murder on Hemraj, and hid his body on the terrace for disposing of it later. However, the media glare and a constant stream of visitors made it impossible for them to get rid of the body.
When Hemraj's body was discovered, Rajesh told the police that he could not identify it.
The crime scene had been dressed-up. Aarushi's bed sheet remained undisturbed, and her body had been covered with a white flannel blanket. There was no blood on the toys, the schoolbag and a pink pillow, indicating that these items had been kept at the crime scene after the murder.
The family allegedly showed "undue" haste in cremating Aarushi's body and cleaning the crime scene on 16 May.
According to some of the visitors, the parents did not display shock or grief. SP Mahesh Kumar Mishra claimed that the Talwars looked "very nervous" when he questioned them on 16 May.
During 16–17 May, a series of telephonic conversations happened between KK Gautam, Dr. Sushil Chaudhury and Rajesh's brother Dinesh Talwar. Gautam later alleged that Chaudhury, a friend of Dinesh, had asked him to get any reference to a sexual assault removed from the post-mortem-report.
Hemraj had spoken of a threat to his life before his death. The police suspected that he knew about Rajesh's alleged extra-marital affair, and Rajesh had threatened him not to talk about it.
Accordingly, the police started investigating the parents as the suspects. On 22 May, Meerut inspector-general Gurdarshan Singh speculated about a scenario where Hemraj was the main target of the killing, but stated that no arrests will be made without evidence:
Hemraj knew about Rajesh's alleged extra-marital affair, and was blackmailing him
Rajesh took Hemraj to the terrace on the pretext of discussing the issue
Rajesh killed Hemraj on the terrace
Aarushi was killed for being a witness and for objecting to her father's affair
On 23 May, Rajesh and Nupur were taken to the Police Lines area, where they were split up. Nupur was put in a room with her cousin and a woman constable, while Rajesh was arrested and taken to a local magistrate. Subsequently, Rajesh was taken to the Dasna jail. Rajesh later claimed that the magistrate did not allow him to make any phone calls, and police threatened him into signing a confession on the way to the jail. He claimed that the police were talking whether they should kill him; when he refused to sign the confession, they abused and threatened him throughout the day. Since it was Friday, Rajesh could not apply for a bail until Monday. He spent the weekend in the jail. He later stated that the police threatened him to sign the confession again while he was in their custody.
On the same day, Gurdarshan Singh organized a press conference. He announced that Rajesh killed Aarushi and Hemraj to hide his extramarital affair with Anita Durrani. He claimed that Aarushi's friend Anmol stated that she had told him about her father's affair. (On 22 May, the police had questioned Anmol, who had 688 phone interactions with her in the 45 days preceding her murder.) Singh presented the following possible sequence of events, but did not mention any specific evidence:
Rajesh was having an extra-marital affair with Anita Durrani. Aarushi objected to this relationship. Disturbed by her father's adultery, Aarushi had confided in (or even started a sexual relationship with) Hemraj.
On 15 May, Rajesh left the home at 9:30 pm, and came back at around 11:30 pm
When he arrived, he found Aarushi and Hemraj in an "objectionable, though not compromising, position"
Rajesh took Hemraj to the terrace, hit him with a heavy weapon, and then slit his throat.
He then locked the terrace door, and had Scotch whisky.
Then he killed his daughter.
The police accused Nupur Talwar of helping cover up the crime. The prosecution later alleged that she deliberately called Hemraj's phone to make the investigators believe that the killer was elsewhere. In the last week of May 2008, the police claimed that they had a confession from Rajesh Talwar, but the Talwars denied this. Rajesh stated that one Dinesh Verma was framing him, but the investigators later stated that there was no person with this name working on the case.
The public opinion turned against the Talwars, and many of their friends started avoiding them. The Fortis Hospital fired Rajesh on the same day. However, the members of the Indian Dental Association and former patients professed their belief in Rajesh's innocence.
The police seized Rajesh Talwar's laptop, and the hard disk of Aarushi's computer on 25 May. A few days later, they claimed that Aarushi's e-mails to her father "justify her relations with three other boys", and that "objectionable" words were used in her interactions with her friends. The police released selective e-mails to indicate that Aarushi was not on good terms with her father. For example, one of the e-mails to her father read "I just wanted to try it out coz I heard from mah frndz ... so wotz da harm ... I wnt do it again n I kinda noe hw u r feelin." (This particular e-mail was actually a year old, and was Aarushi's apology for her insistence to go out for watching the movie Namaste London with her friends without an adult). In June, a report in the Mid-Day newspaper quoted an unnamed Delhi police official as saying that the Talwars were part of a wife swapping club, and they would lock Aarushi in her room whenever the club members met at the Talwar residence. It further claimed that Hemraj told Aarushi about this club, and called a number in Dubai, where the kingpin of this club was residing a night before the murder. On 6 July, an English daily Mail Today reported that the Talwars spent the night of the murders at a high-society party in a posh South Delhi hotel, quoting CBI sources. Both Nupur Talwar and CBI refuted the allegations.
Aarushi's friends and relatives were outraged at the character assassination of the family, especially at the suggestion that she was in a sexual relationship with Hemraj. The supporters of the Talwars say that the police and the media tried to malign Aarushi as a disturbed, promiscuous teenager. Aarushi had received a bouquet of flowers from an admirer, had done a school project on drug addiction, and had 688 interactions with her schoolmate Anmol in 45 days. All these were used to build a "portrait of promiscuity" according to the Talwars' supporters. Her schoolmates at the Delhi Public School organized a candlelight vigil condemning the police for maligning her name. Renuka Chowdhury, the Minister for Women and Child Development, demanded the suspension of Inspector-General Singh. Singh was transferred a month later, only to be transferred back two months later.
Parents' defense
Rajesh claimed that he was being framed by the police to cover up their own botched-up investigation. The case was transferred to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on 31 May at the request of Aarushi's parents. In June, CBI started investigating the case under the Joint-Director Arun Kumar IPS.
The Talwars provided counter-arguments for the points that had made them the prime suspects:
Sleeping through the murders
The Talwars stated that they slept through the murders because of the noise produced by two air conditioners on the hot night. The couple's room had a window AC, and Aarushi's room had a split AC; both were switched on the night of 15 May. In addition, their bedroom was shut. Aarushi is also believed to have had a throat infection, due to which she could not have screamed aloud. In 2013, the defence witness and forensic expert Dr. RK Sharma stated that a 14-year-old child would have fallen unconscious immediately due to the first blow from the blunt weapon, and would not have been able to scream for help. He based this statement on an analysis of the injuries on Aarushi's body. A sound expert team later recreated the air conditioners' noise in the house on CBI's invitation. The team concluded that it was possible that the Talwars' could not hear the sounds outside their room, and thus, could have slept through the activities in their house on that night.
Murder of Aarushi and Hemraj in a fit of anger on finding them together
The later evidence suggested that the killers did not drag Hemraj's body to the terrace to hide it: he was killed on the terrace, which nullifies the theory that Rajesh killed him when he saw him in Aarushi's room.
Rajesh's driver Sharma testified that the clothes worn by Rajesh on the morning of 16 May were the same as the ones he saw him wearing the previous night when he came to return the keys. His description of Rajesh's clothes matched that of the maid Bharati, who told the court that Rajesh was wearing a red T-shirt and a half trouser, while Nupur was wearing a blue maxi gown. There was only Aarushi's blood on Rajesh's clothes, but no blood of Hemraj could be traced on these clothes. There was no blood on the clothes that Nupur was seen wearing in the photographs taken by Aarushi on the night before. This implied that the parents could not have committed the murders under sudden provocation, as speculated by the police.
The parents also pointed out that they would not partake in something like honor killing, as they came from liberal educated families and had an inter-caste marriage.
Undue haste in cremation and cleaning
The parents denied that they had dressed up the crime scene, pointing out that if they wanted to do so, they would have not left the Scotch whisky bottle with bloodstains in the living room for everyone to see. The family denied that they had shown any haste in cleaning the crime scene or cremating Aarushi's body. Nupur's mother Lata Chitnis and their clinic manager Vikas Sethi stated they received permission from the police to clean the house. The police had told them that they had already collected all the necessary evidence, including a part of Aarushi's mattress. It was the police who suggested that Aarushi's mattress be taken to the terrace for now, given the media clamor downstairs. Vikas found the terrace locked, and when he could not find the key, he placed the mattress on the neighbouring terrace. The family also claimed that the police confirmed that they wouldn't need the body for any further analysis, since the post-mortem had already been done. Since it was decomposing fast, they cremated it.
Access to Aarushi's room
Nupur explained the killer's force-free entry into Aarushi's room by stating that she might have left the key hanging at the door lock, when she arrived to switch on the Internet router.
Extra-marital affair
The Talwars and the Durranis denied that Rajesh and Anita were engaged in an extramarital affair. According to them, the two couples had close ties, because they shared dental clinics and both were nuclear families with teenage daughters.
Other
The fingerprints of the parents were not found on the Scotch whisky bottle or the blood-stained clothes of the victims.
Rajesh stated that he urged the police to pursue Hemraj, because being missing, he was the obvious suspect.
Rajesh also claimed that he had no recollection of the police asking him for the keys to the terrace door.
He could not recognize Hemraj's body as it was highly decomposed. He also claimed that he noticed that the T-shirt on the body read "New York"; the police had told him that the person was wearing a kada (a bracelet). He went down to ask Nupur (who was sitting in the car) whether Hemraj had worn these two items. When Nupur confirmed that he did, Rajesh called Dinesh to say that the body was most likely that of Hemraj.
Dinesh denied asking KK Gautam to use his influence to change the post-mortem report. He claimed that CBI could not find any records of him making calls at the post-mortem house.
The crime scene had been compromised, so CBI turned to polygraph test (lie-detector), brain-mapping tests and narco-analysis. Rajesh and Nupur cleared two lie-detector tests and a brain-mapping test, which did not find any evidence of lying on their part.
The Talwars' relatives and friends state that the parents displayed adequate signs of grief. Nupur's father BG Chitnis reported that "Rajesh had become hysterical and was banging his head against the wall." Radhika Chada, a family friend, stated that Nupur was in "complete shock". Masooma Ranalvi, mother of Aarushi's friend Fiza, said that Rajesh and Nupur were "numb with grief".
The size of the shoeprint found on the terrace was 8 or 9, while Rajesh's shoe size is 6.
Thadarai, Rajkumar and Mandal as the suspects
According to the Talwars, the idea of Aarushi and Hemraj having a relationship and that of Rajesh's extra-marital affair was planted by Krishna Thadarai, an assistant at the Talwars' dental clinic. Rajesh stated that two days before the murders, he had reprimanded Thadarai for making an incorrect dental cast. This claim was supported by Anita Durrani. Rajesh's driver Umesh Sharma stated that he had heard Thadarai and Hemraj talking loudly in Nepali in the car. When he inquired, Thadarai told him that he would "deal with Rajesh". Hemraj's phone was present in the Jalvayu Vihar apartment complex on the morning of 16 May, and Thadarai (along with the Talwars) lived in the same area.
On 7 June, Thadarai was detained on suspicion. The CBI team searched his house and found a pillow cover, along with a blood-stained kukri and trousers. He was subjected to polygraph test twice at Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL), Delhi. On 9 June, he appeared for a psychological assessment test at AIIMS, New Delhi. On 12 June, he was administered a polygraph test and Narco Analysis test at the Bowring Hospital, Bangalore under the supervision of an expert team from the Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL), led by assistant director Dr. S Malini and anaesthetist Dr. Srikanta Murthy. He was arrested on 13 June. Meanwhile, lie detection tests conducted on Rajesh and Nupur Talwar both turned out to be inconclusive. A second set of tests did not find any evidence of deception on their part.
In his Narco test, Thadarai talked of a second murderer. Accordingly, the CBI also started investigating his friend Rajkumar, who was a domestic servant with the Durranis. During 23–26 June, Rajkumar was subjected to polygraph test, psychological assessment, brain mapping and narco analysis at FSL, Gandhinagar. The CBI seized washed T-shirts with faint human blood stains from his residence, and sent them for DNA matching. The Durranis, who were close friends of the Talwars, stated that the stains could be from the boils that Rajkumar had on his body. On 27 June, Rajkumar was arrested on suspicion.
On 30 June 2008, Vijay Mandal (aka Shambhu), another friend of Thadarai, was reported as a suspect in the media. Mandal was a driver and domestic help for Talwars' neighbour Puneesh Tandon. Hemraj, Thadarai and Rajkumar were all of Nepali origin, and had been recruited through Vishnu, the ex-servant of the Talwars. On 9 July, Rajkumar was subjected to a second narco-analysis test at FSL Bangalore, and the next day, the media reported that he had confessed to the murders. Vijay Mandal, already being investigated, was also arrested on 11 July.
According to a later petition by the Talwars, the Narco tests had revealed that the three suspects had watched a Nepali song on the TV in Hemraj's room on the night of the murders. This had been told to the journalist Nalini Singh by the CBI official Anuj Arya. Nalini Singh, the owner of the Nepalese channel on which the song was telecast, had been asked for the details of the songs telecast on her channel on the night of the murders. Anuj Arya told her that the information provided by her matched with the suspects' revelations.
During a press-conference on 11 July 2008, Arun Kumar stated that the case was still unsolved. He stated that no evidence had been found against Rajesh Talwar, but also added that the CBI had not given him a "clean chit". He stated that Thadarai, Rajkumar and Mandal seemed to be the prime suspects, based on the narco tests, but the CBI had not found any corroborative evidence against them.
The three men had described different sequences of events during their narco tests. There were different versions even among the same person's test. For example, Thadarai provided three different versions regarding the murder weapon. CBI did not make the transcripts of narco tests available to the public, and there were conflicting media reports about the exact sequence of events, which was somewhat like this:
Hemraj invited Thadarai, Rajkumar and Mandal (Shambhu) to his servant quarters at the Talwars' apartment. The three men reached the Talwars residence around midnight.
According to Rajkumar's narco test, Mandal was a domestic help working for Talwars' neighbours, but he had no role to play in the murders.
The four men started drinking beer. Thadarai spoke of his humiliation by Rajesh Talwar, and expressed his desire to take revenge.
Aarushi's room was surprisingly unlocked that day. What happened exactly after that differs according to different narco tests and media reports:
Rajkumar's version:
Aarushi threatened to expose what the suspects said about her father, so Thadarai took out his Kukri and killed her.
The suspects planned to flee, but Hemraj developed cold feet and threatened to expose them.
Thadarai and Rajkumar dragged Hemraj to the terrace and killed him.
The mobile phones of Aarushi and Hemraj were destroyed.
Thadarai's version 1:
Rajkumar and Thadarai entered Aarushi's room, and Rajkumar tried to sexually assault her.
When Aarushi resisted, Thadarai drew out a kukri and killed her.
Then the two men dragged Hemraj to the terrace and killed him for being a witness.
Thadarai's version 2
Rajkumar and Mandal (Shambhu) entered Aarushi's room and tried to rape her.
When Aarushi resisted, Mandal hit her on the head and Rajkumar then killed her with a kukri
The murder weapon was cleaned with a tissue paper and flushed down in Aarushi's washroom.
Thadarai, Rajkumar and Mandal then took Hemraj to the terrace and killed him.
The three men "escaped from the roof of the building after locking the terrace door".
Thadarai's version 3
Rajkumar walked towards Aarushi's room. Thadarai and Mandal followed him.
Rajkumar tried to sexually assault Aarushi.
When she resisted, Thadarai took out his kukri and slit her throat: the blow was so hard that her neck ripped open and she fell dead.
Hemraj got scared and threatened to tell Aarushi's parents about the incident. So, the other men took him to the terrace and killed him.
Thadarai, Mandal and Rajkumar tried entering the Talwars' room but found it locked.
Rajesh Talwar was released later in the day, for lack of evidence, after having spent 50 days in prison. Rajesh and Nupur relocated to their parents' home after his release. The three other suspects were arrested, but the drug-induced confession was not enough to charge them.
Defence of Thadarai, Rajkumar and Mandal
Alibis
Thadarai's family members and his landlord KN Johri stated that he was at his house (L-14, Sector 25) on the night of 15 May.
Vijay Mandal's employer and Talwars' neighbour Puneesh Tandon told investigators that his servant was in his garage (L-28, Sector 25).
Rajkumar's employer Anita Durrani stated that he was present in her house (35-A, Kanchanjanga Apartment, Sector 35) at least until 12.30 am. Rajkumar stated that he had gone to the New Delhi Railway station with his employer Praful Durrani to receive Anita Durrani: they had returned home at 11:30 pm, had dinner and everybody slept around 12:30 am (the Durranis say that Rajkumar's bathroom was outside the house's main back door, and he had the key, so he could go outside anytime he wished). The time needed to reach the Talwars' apartment from the Durranis' house by bicycle is about 20 minutes. The watchman at the gate of the society where Rajkumar lived did not see him leaving the place on that night.
Jalvayu Vihar's six security guards - Virender Singh, Sanjay Singh, Ram Kumar, Chandra Bhushan, Devender Singh and Ram Vishal - stated that they had not seen anyone visiting or leaving the Talwars' house (L-32, Sector 25) that night. However, CBI also noted that the guards were mobile during the night, and their statements cannot be considered foolproof. The complex has 1886 apartments and houses nearly 10,000 people. Virender Singh, who was at the main gate, stated that there were several ways of getting in and out of the complex without encountering him.
Confessions in the Narco tests
Narco tests are not reliable, and are considered inadmissible as evidence. The Narco report of Thadarai and Rajkumar stated that Aarushi's mobile phone was sent to Nepal. However, it was recovered from India in September 2009 (having been discovered by a maid in 2008). This further highlighted the unreliability of the narco tests.
Rajkumar's lawyer Naresh Yadav approached the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), stating that the three men had been tortured by the CBI officers during the investigation. As evidence, he submitted video recordings of tests that allegedly showed the CBI officers "putting words in their mouth and torturing them to confess to the murders." Nepali organizations such as Mool Pravah Akhil Bharat Nepali Ekta Samaj and Rastriya Janamorcha also alleged that CBI was pressurizing the poor men to make confessional statements, in order to protect the Talwars.
In 2015, a 58.55-minute-long video of Thadarai's Narco test was leaked on YouTube; CBI had only a 45-minute video in its records. The leaked video shows Thadarai saying that he had not committed any crime, and that the IG (Inspector General Arun Kumar) had asked him to confess to the murders. Kumar claimed that the "original" footage did not have this portion.
According to the CBI officials, Thadarai had confessed to the crime, but changed his statements several times.
Vijay Mandal had not been mentioned in the test, and "Shambhu" being his alias was CBI's conjecture. On 31 July, the TV channel Aaj Tak alleged that Vijay Mandal had been drilled with leading information, prior to his narco-analysis tests. It also alleged that his apparent confessions during the tests had many gaps.
Other
No DNA or fingerprints belonging to the three men could be identified from the items seized in the Talwars' house. On 17 June 2008, SK Singla, a serologist at the Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL) Delhi, said he could not identify any human blood on the kukri recovered from Thadarai's room. The kukri was then sent to the CFSL DNA expert BK Mahapatra, who said he could not extract any DNA from the weapon.
CBI could not find any hard evidence of any physical or phone-based interaction between Thadarai, Rajkumar, Mandal and Hemraj on that day. Besides, Rajkumar and Mandal did not try to abscond even after Thadarai was arrested.
On 6 November 2008, a report from CDFD Hyderabad stated that the blood marks on the pillow recovered from Thadarai's residence matched Hemraj's blood. Nobody in the CBI team, including Arun Kumar or the investigating officer MS Phartiyal noticed this. When the Talwars' defence lawyers noticed this in 2011, the CBI stated that there was an error in the report: the pillow in the question was the one recovered from Hemraj's room, not from Thadarai's residence. The lab acknowledged CBI's claim.
On 9 August 2008, the CBI director Ashwani Kumar stated that the case remained unsolved, but also added that Rajesh Talwar should be exonerated. The three men were released in September, after the police could not find any hard evidence against them. Immediately after his release, Vijay Mandal alleged that the CBI had used physical force and threats against him, and at times, praised him to coax him into turning an approver against Thadarai and Rajkumar. He insisted that the charges against all three of them were false and an attempt to frame them. He also stated that he did not know Rajkumar at all, and that the CBI "trapped" him into saying something wrong when he was semi-conscious.
2009-10 investigation
In January 2009, CBI announced that the agency was ready to file a chargesheet against Thadarai, Rajkumar and Mandal. However, in the absence of any hard evidence, this could not be done.
Alleged tampering of Aarushi's sample
In September 2009, it was reported that Aarushi Talwar's vaginal swab sample had been tampered with. The sample had been collected by Dr. Sunil Dohre during her post-mortem, and sent to the Gautam Budh Nagar district hospital. The hospital's medico-legal register, which contained the information about Aarushi's sample, went missing in 2008. Pathologist Dr. Ritcha Saxena (the wife of Dr. Naresh Raj, who conducted Hemraj's post-mortem) performed the procedure of converting the swabs into slides and conducted the vaginal swab test. According to her, when the sample arrived at the hospital, it was collected by her lab technicians Vikas and Navneet.
Ritcha Saxena's tests established here that no semen was present in the sample. The slides were then kept into a steel almirah in the hospital's laboratory. On 1 June 2008, CBI contacted Ritcha over phone requesting access to the sample. Ritcha, who was in Patna at the time, guided the CBI team to her lab over the phone. According to her, the slide was handed over to the CBI by the Chief Medical Superintendent S C Singhal in her absence. Singhal and Ritcha had been involved in a dispute over her transfer: Ritcha had been transferred in 2008, but she neither took up her new post nor resigned. Singhal thus considered her as officially on leave at the time she prepared Aarushi's slides. Ritcha alleged that Singhal had deliberately taken all her registers away to mark her absent, although she regularly came to the hospital every day.
The CBI later sent the sample to their own CFSL lab in Delhi, where Dr. BK Mohapatra found it to be a mix of two vaginal samples, one of which was Aarushi's. The CBI then sent the sample for further testing to the Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics (CDFD) in Hyderabad. The CDFD stated that the sample largely contained DNA of a person other than Aarushi. Initially, the CBI considered the possibility of a conspiracy to destroy the evidence that Aarushi might have been sexually assaulted or had consensual intercourse prior to her death.
Dr. Ritcha Saxena was suspected of tampering with the samples. Her involvement came under scrutiny, because she personally knew Aarushi's mother Nupur Talwar. Ritcha denied that Nupur Talwar tried to influence the results of her tests in any way. She also stated that she knew Nupur only to some extent: her son had been treated by Nupur at the Fortis hospital several years before, and her daughter was Aarushi's junior at the Delhi Public School. She claimed that when she tested Aarushi's swab, she did not know that the subject was Nupur's daughter.
The Talwars were questioned about the tampering allegations during their lie-detector and brain-mapping tests, but were cleared. The CBI also questioned Ritcha, searched her labs and retrieved over a dozen vaginal swab slides. These slides were sent to Hyderabad for testing, but none matched the unidentified DNA traced in Aarushi's slide. The CBI ultimately concluded that the original sample was that of Aarushi, but it had become contaminated. It dismissed the entire episode as a genuine mistake and not a cover-up. In an unrelated development, Ritcha was later fired for absenteeism as she had not reported to her new post.
New CBI team
In July 2008, the Uttar Pradesh government had announced Arun Kumar's recall to the UP cadre. At that time, the UP government had clarified that the recall had no connection with the Aarushi case. Arun Kumar's tenure at CBI ended in September 2009. The media had accused him of not investigating the alleged tampering scandal, and speculated that this scandal had resulted in him being taken off the case.
In September 2009, the case was transferred to a new CBI team headed by SP Neelabh Kishore. Additional SP AGL Kaul served as the investigating officer.
Parents suspected again
Apart from the reasons that had made the parents the prime suspects earlier, the new CBI team came up with some additional points. The CBI questioned the doctors who had conducted the postmortem on Aarushi's body. Both Dr. Sunil Dohre and Dr. Naresh Raj made new statements (see the Evidence section above). Dr. Dohre stated that Aarushi's hymen was ruptured, and her private parts appeared to have been cleaned. Dr. Naresh Raj stated that Hemraj's swollen private part indicated the possibility of sexual intercourse. In October 2009, a crime-scene analysis was done for CBI based on the photographs of the scene. This analysis supported the conjecture that the crime scene had been dressed-up after the murders.
Dr. Sunil Dohre later told the court that before the autopsy began, Dinesh Talwar gave him a phone and asked him to talk to "Dr. Dogra". Dohre was under the impression that the person on the line was AIIMS Forensics head Dr. TD Dogra. The person asked him to take blood samples among other samples, and Dohre replied that he would do whatever he felt was required. Later, it was found out that the Dr. Dogra of AIIMS did not talk to Dohre. The CBI inferred that Dinesh was trying to influence the report, but the defence argued that asking someone to take blood samples cannot be considered as such an attempt.
The new CBI team identified the weapon used for the initial blow as a golf club because of the "triangular-shaped head injury". The CBI suspected that the weapon used to deliver the blow was one of Rajesh's golf clubs. Rajesh was an amateur and infrequent golf player. His neighbour Puneesh Tandon had given him a golf bag 8–9 years back. On 29 October 2009, after the Talwars had moved away from their Noida house, the CBI asked them to send Rajesh's golf set to them. Rajesh complied the next day, handing over the golf set consisting of 3 woods (No. 1, 3 and 5), 7 irons (No. 3-9) and a putter. The CBI later stated that the dimensions of the striking surface of the golf club bearing No. 5 were identical to the dimensions of the injuries on the heads of the victims. No blood, DNA or any other biological fluid could be recovered from the golf clubs. A CFSL expert stated that two particular golf clubs marked as Exhibit 3 (the 5-wood) and Exhibit 5 (the 4-iron) "appeared to have been thoroughly cleaned so much so that they were visibly distinct" from the other golf clubs. The CBI suggested that these clubs might have been cleaned to hide their use in the murders. According to Rajesh, the golf clubs bearing No. 4 and No. 5 were originally placed in his car. When the car was sent for servicing (before the murders), the driver Umesh Sharma placed them in Hemraj's room. This event was confirmed by Sharma. Rajesh also says that he never tried to hide these clubs: they were always in plain sight of the investigators, and when he had moved to Delhi, all his belongings, including the golf clubs, were packed under the supervision of a CBI inspector. However, the CBI stated that in the photographs of Hemraj's room, taken by CFSL on 1 June 2008, only one golf club is visible and the other is missing. Rajesh also stated that his friend Ajay Chadda and his wife Nupur had found a golf club in the loft of their residence, when the loft was being cleaned a year after the murders. However, they did not inform CBI for over a year. This information was confirmed by Chadda. The defence pointed out that this is irrelevant to the case: the golf set had two clubs numbered 5 - the iron found in the loft, and the one that the CBI suspected to be the murder weapon, which was a wood.
Nilabh Kishore questioned the Talwars at his Dehradun office on 18–19 May 2010. A few days later, on 24 May (Aarushi's birthday), a story in The Pioneer implied that Aarushi had been murdered by Rajesh in an honor killing, quoting unnamed sources in the CBI. On 21 July, Rajesh Talwar asked the court to pass a restraint order against the "unethical and misleading information" being published by the print media outlets. When the Court issued a show cause notice to The Pioneer, Nilabh Kishore issued an affidavit on 4 October 2010 stating that "no authorised person in the CBI" had spoken to The Pioneer'''s correspondent, and that the article was full of "factual infirmities and conjectures".
CBI's closure report
On 29 December 2010, CBI filed a closure report, naming Rajesh Talwar as the sole suspect.
The CBI officer AGL Kaul later revealed that he wanted to file a chargesheet against the parents for the murders, but his superiors Nilabh Kishore and Javed Ahmed decided to file a closure report due to insufficient evidence. Arun Kumar of the first CBI team was consulted before filing the closure report, and he stated that there was no evidence that linked the Talwars to the murder. The Talwars' relatives and their supporters alleged that all the CBI officers investigating the case were colleagues of the state police who botched the original investigation.
Since the report named Rajesh Talwar as a suspect, the Talwars criticized CBI for making "false and baseless" allegations against them; Nupur lamented that the CBI had condemned them for life. On 24 January 2011, a 29-year-old self-proclaimed vigilante Utsav Sharma assaulted Rajesh Talwar with a meat cleaver in front of the court. Rajesh suffered deep cuts on his hands and the right side of his face. Sharma, who claimed to be upset at the slow pace of the case, had previously attacked former police chief S.P.S. Rathore of the Ruchika Girhotra Case. Nupur accused the CBI of "unleashing mob" on her family, and criticized the media commentary on the case.
On 30 January 2011, people gathered at Jantar Mantar demanding justice for Aarushi. The protest was attended by activists including those from the Middle Finger Protests group who held banners that read, "CBI - Congress Bureau of Injustice" and "CBI - Congress Bureau of Investigation".
The case against the Talwars
In January 2011, the Talwars filed a petition protesting against the CBI's attempt to close the case. However, their petition was rejected by the magistrate Preeti Singh of the special CBI court in Ghaziabad. On 9 February 2011, she converted the CBI closure report into a charge sheet, and summoned Rajesh and Nupur as the accused. The Talwars moved the Allahabad High Court and then the Supreme Court, petitioning against being summoned and proceedings being initiated against them. However, both the courts rejected their pleas.
The formal trial began from 11 May 2013. CBI was represented by senior advocate Siddharth Luthra. The Talwars were defended by the former solicitor-general Harish Salve, Mukul Rohatgi and Rebecca Mammen John, all of whom worked pro bono. The defence lawyers focused on opposing the clean chit given to Thadarai, Rajkumar and Mandal; providing counter-arguments to the points that raised suspicions on their clients; and pointing out lapses in the investigation. The Talwars were given access to the witness statements and the photographs on which CBI was relying for prosecution. However, they were not given access to the polygraph, narco-analysis and brain-mapping test reports of Thadarai, Rajkumar and Mandal. The Talwars also objected to the CBI's claim that the narco tests on the three men were unreliable. They moved to the Supreme Court to seek these reports, but in October 2013, the Court rejected their plea on the grounds that such reports are inadmissible in evidence.Special Leave Petition (Crl.) No.7966 of 2013, Supreme Court of India The Court also stated that the Talwars were adopting delaying tactics, citing the several applications filed by them at every stage. The CBI court also rejected the Talwars' plea to summon Anuj Arya and Nalini Singh to prove that the three men were present in Hemraj's room on the night.
In August 2012, the media reported that the CBI officer AGL Kaul had been using the e-mail ID [email protected] for the CBI's official communication with the Talwars, under the name "Hemraj Singh". CBI initially denied these allegations, but later admitted that the email ID was created for some "specific purpose" which they refused to explain. The journalist Avirook Sen alleged that this was a crude pressure tactic against the Talwars, since they were forced to respond to the mails purportedly coming from someone named "Hemraj".
The Talwars asked for a Touch DNA test to analyze the palm print found on the terrace, and the Scotch whisky bottle. The Talwars also asked for a Touch DNA test on the golf club that was allegedly used as the murder weapon. They even offered to pay for these tests. The CBI consulted J Nagaraju, a molecular genetics scientist (and director of the Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics, which conducted the DNA testing for the Aarushi case). Nagaraju dismissed the reliability of the LCN DNA technology and the possibility of it yielding any fresh evidence. The Supreme Court rejected the Talwars' appeal, and refused to order any further investigation.
In August 2012, the CFSL DNA scientist BK Mahapatra claimed that he had found male DNA on Aarushi's pillow, leading credence to the theory that Hemraj was present in her room. However, the CBI later clarified that Mahapatra's claim was wrong. The pillow was from Hemraj's room; it was a part of "Parcel 21", which had been collected from the Talwars' house on 1 June 2008. The defence argued that the CBI had deliberately created this misunderstanding to frame the Talwars.
Also in September, the CBI tried to debunk the claim that the parents could not have heard the outside happenings because of the air conditioner's noise. It claimed that a portion of the wall between the couple's room and Aarushi's room was made of a plywood partition. It also alleged that after the murders, the Talwars hired a painter named Shohrat, who painted the partition with a colour matching the other walls of Aarushi's room. Shohrat testified that Rajesh asked him to paint the wooden partition with a wall-matching color twice - once in 2009 and again on 19 April 2010. He also stated that Rajesh asked him to remove the outermost grill gate along with the iron grill on the balcony, both of which were in good shape. The CBI implied that the parents were trying to tamper with the evidence. The Talwars branded this claim as false, saying that the rooms were separated by a brick wall that had a plywood lamination over it. The defence also stated that Shohrat had been hired to paint the entire apartment, not just the partition. Besides, the painting was done in July 2009, more than a year after the murders, and when the apartment was vacant. The Talwars also stated that they possessed e-mails from CBI that granted them the permission to renovate the apartment.
In its 2010 closure report, the CBI had stated the sequence of events on the night of the murders was unclear. However, after the court asked the Talwars to be charged with the murders, the CBI investigator AGL Kaul narrated the following possible sequence of events during his cross-examination in the court, in April 2013:
Rajesh heard some noise and went to Hemraj's room.
He did not find Hemraj in his room, but heard some noise coming from Aarushi's room. He picked up a golf club stick from Hemraj's room and rushed to Aarushi's room.
He saw Aarushi and Hemraj in an objectionable position on Aarushi's bed.
In a fit of anger, Rajesh hit Hemraj's head with the golf club. When he tried to hit him a second time, Hemraj moved and Aarushi was hit instead.
Awakened by the noise, Nupur Talwar came to Aarushi's room. By this time, both the victims were near-dead.
The parents decided to hide Hemraj's body in order to dispose of it at a more opportune time. They wrapped his body in a bed sheet and dragged him to the terrace. They slit his throat and covered the body with a cooler panel.
Then they came to Aarushi's room, dressed-up the crime scene and also slit her throat to ensure that the wounds on the two bodies looked similar.
They then cleaned the blood stains on the floor. They also collected all the blood-stained clothes and the sharp-edged weapon in order to dispose of them.
They then walked out of the flat, latched the middle grill door from outside and entered the house through Hemraj's room, in order to mislead the investigators.
Rajesh then drank Scotch whiskey.
Court verdict
On 25 November 2013, a special CBI court held Rajesh and Nupur Talwar guilty for the two murders. The Special Judge Shyam Lal convicted the couple for murder, destruction of evidence, misleading the probe and filing a wrong FIR. On 26 November 2013, they were sentenced to life imprisonment for the twin murders.
The Talwar family called the verdict a miscarriage of justice, and alleged that the points proving innocence of Rajesh and Nupur were not produced by the CBI before the court. Journalist Avirook Sen alleged that the judge wrote the case verdict even before the defence side finished their arguments. In January 2014, the Talwars challenged the decision in the Allahabad High Court.
On 12 October 2017, the High Court acquitted the Talwars of all charges, stating that the evidence presented by the CBI against the Talwars was not satisfactory beyond reasonable doubt, and therefore they must be given benefit of the doubt instead of being convicted based solely on suspicion. The High Court castigated the CBI for its theory on the murder of domestic help Hemraj in the Aarushi murder case, saying it was an "impossible hypothesis" and "patently absurd". It also severely castigated the media for having jeopardized the investigation by sensationalizing the murder and carrying out their own botched up "trial by media". The verdict was criticized as unjust by Hemraj's wife Khumkala, and her brother Ashok Bhushal. Hemraj's family members and relatives in Nepal continue to believe that the Talwars are guilty.
A book analyzing the trial court verdict titled 'The Killing of Aarushi and the Murder of Justice' critiques the judgment as well as the quality of evidence that was tendered in the case. It also argues that the Aarushi case holds up a mirror to similar cases of injustice in thousands of other criminal cases in India.
On 8 March 2018, the CBI challenged the acquittal in the Supreme Court, and on 10 August, the Supreme Court admitted the CBI's appeal.
Public attention
After the discovery of Hemraj's body, the case attracted public attention as a bizarre whodunit. The speculations about a sexual relationship between a teenage girl and her male servant provided material for yellow journalism, as did the allegations about the extra-marital affair of Aarushi's father. The critics argued that the alleged tabloid journalism by an overzealous media, along with the police's missteps, had "prejudiced the course of justice". On 22 July 2008, a Supreme Court bench consisting of Justice Altamas Kabir and Justice Markandey Katju asked the media to be careful in its coverage of the case, and abstain from making baseless allegations doubting the character of Aarushi or her father. It criticised the "sensationalist" media reports as lacking in "sensitivity, taste and decorum". On 25 July, the Ghaziabad court judge objected to the "inhuman treatment" of Thadarai, Rajkumar and Mandal by the police.
In 2012, while lodged in the Dasna Jail, Nupur Talwar expressed her wish to write a book on the case, titled Mystery behind Aarushi's murder - A Tale of Unfortunate Mother. However, the jail authorities seized the 17 pages written by her, stating that she would need to seek permission from the court to write a book on the under-trial case.
Rajesh Talwar's sister-in-law Vandana Talwar, along with her other relatives and friends, launched a campaign to prove the innocence of the Talwars. Through the website www.justiceforaarushitalwar.com, the group blamed CBI for goof-ups in investigation. Vandana also created a Facebook page, a Twitter account and sent e-mails proclaiming the parents' innocence.
In popular culture
In 2008, Balaji Telefilms decided to depict an "inspired" version of the murder case on their soap opera Kahaani Ghar Ghar Ki. Nupur Talwar requested the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) to stop Balaji Telefilms from airing the show, saying that the production house was trying to earn TRPs by exploiting a tragedy. However, the production house refused to change the script.
The 2015 film Rahasya (mystery) was inspired by the twin murders. Talvar, another 2015 film, written by Vishal Bhardwaj and directed by Meghna Gulzar, is also based on the Aarushi-Hemraj murder case. Resembling in treatment Akira Kurosawa's 1950 Japanese film Rashomon, Talvar depicts three contradictory accounts of the case, including the parents' version.
Journalist Avirook Sen has written a book titled Aarushi, released in 2015. The book argues that Aarushi's parents are the victims of a miscarriage of justice.
A digital content company, Arré, has created a podcast about this case titled Trial By Error: The Aarushi Files. Produced by Delhi-based film-making collective Jamun, the podcast has been aired on Arré and Saavn on a weekly basis since early May 2016.
The 2017 Tamil language movie Nibunan features a plot in which a young girl and a family servant are murdered by the girl's parents for having an affair. This story is seemingly inspired by Aarushi-Hemraj murder case.
In October 2017, a four-part investigative documentary series Aarushi - Beyond Reasonable Doubt, which explores the arguments and circumstances of the case, its investigations, and the remaining unresolved questions, premiered on Channel NewsAsia. Commissioned by Channel NewsAsia, it was produced by StoryTeller Films.
In November 2017 a Star World original production in association with HBO Asia released a crime documentary mini series called The Talwars: Behind Closed Doors.''
See also
List of unsolved murders
References
External links
CBI's closure report (Mirror)
Court orders in Aarushi-Hemraj murder case
The State of U.P. Through the C.B.I. vs. Rajesh Talwar & Another, the CBI court case that resulted in Talwars' conviction.
Supreme Court case documents
Dr Mrs Nupur Talwar vs Cbi Delhi And Anr on 6 January, 2012
Rajesh Talwar vs C.B.I & Ors. on 2 March, 2012
Nupur Talwar vs Cbi & Anr on 7 June, 2012
Rajesh Talwar & Anr vs Cbi & Anr on 8 October, 2013
CBI documents
Aarushi's post-mortem report from September 2009
Hemraj's autopsy report
Crime Scene Analysis
Rajesh computer usage record
Crime scene photographs:
The untold story (includes photos of Aarushi's body)
Girl murder case takes a new turn (includes a photograph of the terrace where Hemraj's body was found)
The Aarushi Case Files (another photograph of the terrace)
Narco test of Krishna
2000s murders in India
2008 crimes in India
2008 murders in Asia
Crime in Noida
Deaths by beating
Indian case law
Indian murder victims
Murdered Indian children
People murdered in India
Unsolved murders in India
Incidents of violence against girls |
47006353 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List%20of%20Strike%20Back%20characters | List of Strike Back characters | Strike Back is a British/American action and military television series, based on a novel of the same name by novelist and former Special Air Service soldier Chris Ryan. The series follows the actions of Section 20, a secretive branch of the British Defence Intelligence service, who operate several high risk, priority missions throughout the globe. The series began broadcasting on Sky1 on 5 May 2010, showing the first six-part series. After a second series was commissioned, it was announced that Cinemax would co-produce the franchise. The first episode of the ten-part second series, under the banner title Project Dawn in the United Kingdom, first aired on Cinemax on 12 August 2011. The ten-part third series, under the title Strike Back: Vengeance, began airing on Cinemax on 17 August 2012. On 3 October 2012, Cinemax and Sky commissioned a fourth series, which was broadcast on Cinemax beginning 9 August 2013. A ten-episode fifth and final season aired in 2015.
The following is a list of characters that have appeared on the television series.
Section 20
Other characters
Chris Ryan's Strike Back
James Middleton (played by Colin Salmon), a civil servant who sits between the British government and the Ministry of Defence, and who oversees Section 20 in the first four episodes.
Katie Dartmouth (played by Orla Brady), a British war correspondent covering the Iraq war. She is kidnapped by the terrorist group the Sword of Islam. During her capture terrorists cut off one of her hands. John Porter succeeds in rescuing her.
Hakim Al Nazeri (played by Dhaffer L'Abidine), the leader of the Sword of Islam responsible for kidnapping Dartmouth. Killed by John Porter.
As'ad (played by Fenar Mohammed Ali), also known as "scarface", a member of the Sword of Islam. Previously, As'ad was thought to be responsible for killing two British soldiers, but in fact witnessed Collinson committing the act. As'ad decides to aid Porter and Dartmouth's escape. However, Collinson refuses As'ad entry into the rescue helicopter, and he is last seen running for his life from other Sword members, and is presumed dead.
Kenneth Bratton (played by David Butler in Chris Ryan's Strike Back, Alistair Petrie in Project Dawn) is an executive of the weapons contractor ATAT. In the beginning of the first series, he is kidnapped in Iraq in 2003, and then rescued. In Project Dawn, it is revealed that Bratton was pressured to plant VX gas in Iraq, but has since kept it in storage in South Africa. He is kidnapped by Daniel Connolly to steal the VX, and is then killed by Donnolly.
Diane Porter (played by Nicola Stephenson) is Porter's wife. The two are separated following Porter's resignation. In episode three she is revealed to be diagnosed with cancer, and in the next episode she dies from complications with the surgery.
Alexandra Porter (played by Laura Greenwood) is Porter's daughter. They become estranged after Porter's resignation. Following her mother's death she lives with Collinson and his wife.
Felix Masuku (played by Shaun Parkes), a former SAS soldier who was ordered to assassinate Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe. He is arrested after killing a double. Porter is assigned to break him out of prison and kill him before his trial. Following the escape, Porter spares his life after learning that Masuku was duped to assassinate Mugabe by the British, but in fact a South African diplomat. Masuku, having his roots in Zimbabwe, decides to stay in the country.
Colonel Tshuma (played by David Harewood), the warden of the prison Masuku is being held. Following Porter and Masuku's escape, Tshuma leads a manhunt to find the two. Killed by Porter.
Gerald Baxter (played by Ewen Bremner), a British computer hacker working for the American armed forces. At some point he joins the Taliban to intercepts missiles to kill American soldiers. Porter extracts him, but learns he is suffering from a mental disorder after a tragic event in his past. Killed by the Taliban.
Zahar Sharq (played by Alexander Siddig), an Afghan politician and Baxter's employer. He conspires with the American government to have Baxter killed in exchange for arms and intelligence so he could lead an Afghan insurgent movement.
Frank Arlington (played by Toby Stephens), an American liaison in the UK, conspiring with Sharq as he is deemed fit to lead the insurgence movement in Afghanistan. Through his order, Arlington also wants Baxter and Porter killed (Porter survives).
Project Dawn
Latif (played by Jimi Mistry) is a Pakistani intelligence agent turned terrorist and the main antagonist of Project Dawn. He is the mastermind behind a plot to attack an international summit in Budapest using VX nerve gas stolen from a hidden cache. Latif is motivated by a desire to expose Operation Trojan Horse, a plot to plant weapons of mass destruction in Iraq prior to the 2003 invasion which Pakistan was complicit in. By revealing the conspirators, Latif hopes to discredit the West and trigger regime change in Pakistan. He is killed when Eleanor Grant forces him to shoot an explosive charge she is carrying.
Akmal Ramiz (played by Silas Carson) is a Pakistani general who retires to pursue a presidential campaign. Ramiz is held in high esteem by the West for his progressive and pro-democracy stance, but approved of Pakistan's involvement in Operation Trojan Horse and arranged for the capture and execution of John Porter. He is viewed as a liar and a hypocrite by Latif, who attempts to force Ramiz to confess to his role in Trojan Horse. When Ramiz refuses, Latif shoots him.
Daniel Connelly (played by Liam Cunningham) is a former IRA enforcer turned freelance terrorist who is hired by Latif to acquire samples of VX nerve gas from defence contractor ATAT. During his time in Ireland he gained a reputation for brutality, coercing civilians into carrying out attacks, often promising to spare the loved ones of his victims only to kill them. Connelly claims to be carrying on with the fight against Britain, but Scott accuses him of being little more than an anarchist. Connelly lives up to his reputation when kills Kate Marshall despite promising to spare her, prompting Section 20 to track him down and execute him.
Gerald Crawford (played by Iain Glen) is a former Royal Marine who turned to arms smuggling. He is an associate of Latif, which brings him to Section 20's attention. In apprehending him, they inadvertently interfere in his attempt to pay a ransom for his estranged daughter, Claire. He agrees to help Section 20 if they secure her release. Crawford is cynical, viewing human interactions as business transactions. He attempts to re-connect with Claire, only to be rebuffed. He is killed in the cross-fire between Sudanese government troops and local Janjaweed militia.
Clare Somersby (played by Laura Haddock) is a doctor working with an aid organisation in northern Africa and the estranged daughter of Gerard Crawford. She is kidnapped by Janjaweed fighters, prompting Section 20 to launch a rescue attempt to secure her father's co-operation. Her rescue is complicated by her insistence that Stonebridge and Section 20 refrain from violence even when faced with mortal peril. Claire later breaks down under the stress of their situation, admitting that her entire life has been defined by a desire to prove that she is different from her father.
Tahir (played by Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) is the chieftain of a group of Janjaweed militants terrorising the Dafur region of Sudan. Under his command, the Janjaweed have raided villagers, murdering and raping civilians on a daily basis. Tahir is seemingly killed several times, surviving gunshots, knife wounds and explosions, leading him to claim that he cannot be killed. He is finally shot by Stonebridge when he is momentarily distracted and dies in a state of disbelief.
Hassani (played by Mel Raido) is an Albanian mobster based in Kosovo who trafficks in drugs, human organs and sexual slavery. He is hired by Latif to take a group of political advisors hostage, giving Latif access to an MI6 agent travelling with them without revealing his presence. Hassani is killed by Latif because he oversteps his instructions and draws the attention of Section 20 to Kosovo while Latif is there.
Dana (played by Annabelle Wallis) is an economic analyst who is kidnapped in Kosovo by Hassani's men. She forms an immediate connection with Scott and takes a leading role amongst the hostages. When the hostages are re-captured, she is to be sold into sexual servitude until she is rescued by Scott. Dana expresses interest in a relationship with him but he rebuffs her as she means something more important to him.
Donoghue is an American captain leading KFOR peacekeeping operations. Initially friendly to Scott and Stonebridge, he is revealed to be corrupt and complicit in Hassani's crimes. He is killed by Scott when Scott raids Hassani's sex trafficking operation; cornered and unarmed, he attempts to negotiate his way out, prompting Scott to shoot him.
Vengeance
Conrad Knox (played by Charles Dance) is the main antagonist of Vengeance. Knox is a billionaire philanthropist running food aid, vaccination and weapons disarmament projects across Africa who believes that the continent has never fully escaped its colonial-era heritage. He recommissions four Apartheid-era nuclear weapons and acquires the trigger devices from a Libyan nuclear scientist. Knox plans to stage a coup in Zimbabwe with the warheads used as a deterrent to force the West into withdrawing its interests from Africa. When his plan is thwarted, he attempts to distribute the warheads to radical groups to fulfil his plan. Section 20 intervene again, prompting Knox to keep the remaining warheads in Johannesburg where he intends to detonate them in the vaults of a colonial-era bank that he believes is a symbol of the corruption at the foundation of modern Africa. He attempts to flee when Scott and Stonebridge disarm the remaining weapons, but as he is a wanted man, he is recognised by members of the public and shoots himself.
Karl Matlock is Knox's right-hand man, tasked with recovering the nuclear triggers when the scientist transporting them attempts to sell them to someone else. Once a soldier, he grew disillusioned after witnessing atrocities committed during a peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He joined Knox because he believed in Knox's vision, but quits when the coup fails and Knox plans to detonate the warheads. Matlock is shot and killed by Hanson moments later.
Craig Hanson, a former SAS operative and friend of Stonebridge. His younger brother Jake enlists in the SAS training programme overseen by Stonebridge, but is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and turns on his squadron during a live-fire training exercise. Stonebridge is forced to shoot Jake to save the others, incurring Hanson's wrath. Hanson murders Stonebridge's wife and flees Britain, resurfacing in South Africa where he offers his services to Knox. Stonebridge is nearly consumed with rage upon seeing Hanson and very nearly compromises Section 20's mission. Stonebridge recomposes himself and kills Hanson before disarming the bombs under Johannesburg.
Rebecca Levi (played by Lyne Renée), a Mossad agent sent to South Africa to kill two Apartheid-era nuclear scientists before they can complete the warheads to Knox as Israel had facilitated the South African nuclear programme. She forms a relationship with Scott who recognises the toll her work is taking on her. Rebecca succeed in her mission but forces Scott to shoot her, hoping that he will kill her. Scott refuses, leaving her to be attended to by paramedics. She later appears in Shadow Warfare where she stays with Mossad and goes undercover to investigate links between a terrorist financier and South American drug cartels. She assists Section 20 in extracting their target, but is shot and killed during a firefight.
Christy Bryant (played by Stephanie Vogt) is a CIA agent working in Africa who has a history with Scott; after being dishonourably discharged, Scott worked as a contract killer with Bryant as his handler and lover. Many of her actions in Africa are ostensibly designed to stop terror groups from gaining a foothold, but actually benefit Knox as the CIA sees the merit in his planned coup. When Knox is accused of assassinating a popular Zimbabwean democracy activist and of having nuclear weapons, the CIA cut all ties with him and disavow Bryant. She tries to work with Section 20 to acquire the nuclear warheads and reclaim her standing with the CIA. Although she provides reliable information, Scott refuses to trust her and Bryant is left to fend for herself. She later appears in Legacy when Scott and Stonebridge are being pursued by a CIA assassination team. Bryant betrays them both for money, but is shot and killed by the assassins.
Shadow Warfare
Leo Kamali is a British-Lebanese accountant and financier to al-Zuhari, a notorious and elusive terrorist. Kamali is apprehended by Section 20 in Colombia, but reveals that he is a CIA agent tasked with infiltrating al-Zuhari's network. He aids Section 20 in thwarting al-Zuhari's plans until Section 20 discover that al-Zuhari was killed in an Israeli airstrike and that Kamali has become the de facto leader of the network. His "aid" was actually intended to tie up loose ends and enable him to acquire a weaponised smallpox virus that he plans to release at a NATO air base. The attack is stopped and Kamali detained by his backer Arkady Ulyanov to be handed over to Section 20. Scott and Stonebridge are forced to kill him in front of his daughter when he attempts to release a sample of smallpox.
Ester Kamali is Leo Kamali's daughter. He believes that she is the one good thing he has done in the world and tries to shelter her from it and his true nature. She forms an unexpected bond with Scott that is broken when he is forced to kill her father in front of her.
Miguel Gomez is a Colombian police captain turned cartel leader. He and the other cartels form an alliance with the al-Zuhari network to finance their attacks. When Section 20 attack his estate, he swears revenge and succeeds in killing Rebecca and capturing Scott and Stonebridge. He is killed by Scott when they break free.
James Leatherby (played by Dougray Scott) is a former SAS officer who works for al-Zuhari as a smuggler, courier and enforcer. He was caught by the Republican Guard during the 2003 invasion of Iraq and disavowed by the British government, but escaped and sought revenge. Leatherby is a homosexual with a dominant personality and is prone to homicidal fits of rage. Section 20 exploit this by apprehending his lover and threatening him to interrogate Leatherby. Leatherby commits suicide by shooting his lover, forcing Scott and Stonebridge to turn their weapons on him.
Mairead McKenna is the leader of a Real IRA cell driven out of Ireland. Now based in Budapest, they make a deal with al-Zuhari to attack the British Embassy with an improvised mortar in exchange for accessing a secure NATO network in the building. McKenna resents the British presence in general and Philip Locke in particular, especially after he reveals that her brother Francie was an informant for the British and threatens to tarnish his reputation within the Republican movement. McKenna is killed by Kamali during the attack on the embassy.
Nina Pirogova (played by Tereza Srbova) is a Major in the FSB, the Russian security services. She uses her position to break Scott and Stonebridge out of Black Bear prison and assists in the raid on the Dzehna biological weapons facility. Pirogova returns in Legacy to extract Scott and Stonebridge from North Korea and to help track rogue North Korean agents in Vienna before leaving the team for good—with a warning that if they need help in the future, they should ask someone else—after their operation sees one of her friends killed.
Arkady Ulyanov is a powerful Russian mobster with ties to the security services and influence over federal politics. He sends his son Viktor to a meeting with Kamali and the Colombian cartels, but swears revenge on Section 20 after Viktor is killed in a raid. He operates the private Black Bear prison in Moscow, providing prisoners to al-Zuhari as test subjects for experimentation with a weaponised smallpox virus. When Section 20 prevent Kamali from carrying out the attack, Locke persuades Ulyanov to surrender Kamali to Section 20 in exchange for Scott and Stonebridge. Ulyanov agrees, but is killed by Section 20 when Kamali attempts to release the smallpox virus.
Legacy
Mei Foster (played by Michelle Yeoh) is the wife of Robin Foster, the British Ambassador to Thailand, and the major antagonist of Legacy. She is revealed to be Li-Na, a sleeper agent working for North Korea's Office 39, and had been trained for her mission since childhood. Mei uses her position to secure vital components for North Korea's nuclear weapons programme and to orchestrate the assassination of a North Korean general by her husband to further divide North Korea and the West. Although Mei succeeds in her mission, she becomes increasingly frustrated by North Korean politicians who refuse to act on her knowledge of Section 20. When Scott and Stonebridge sabotage the missile programme and escape from her custody, Mei is held responsible and her execution ordered. She escapes with the help of her lover, Kwon, and turns rogue, planning to detonate an improvised nuclear weapon at a United Nations conference in Geneva. Scott and Stonebridge intervene and take her into custody but she is summarily executed by a CIA kill team during her prisoner transfer. Her final words are a warning to Scott and Stonebridge, allowing them to escape the same fate.
Kwon (played by Will Yun Lee) is a childhood friend and later lover of Mei. Like Mei, he was trained from childhood to become a sleeper agent and thus they represent the only genuine relationship the two have ever had. Kwon's career takes him into politics and he is assigned to be Mei's "liaison" upon her return to Korea; in reality, he is to spy on her. Mei repeatedly advises him to report that she is corrupt as a way of avoiding retribution when she is found responsible for the failure of the missile programme. However, Kwon kills a senior officer to aid her escape and the two turn rogue. He is killed when Scott and Stonebridge storm the UN conference.
Finn is Scott's teenage son who Scott meets for the first time in Bangkok. After getting in trouble with his step-father, Finn runs to Bangkok where he initially believes Scott works as an IT consultant. The two are forced to go on the run when the Yakuza attack Section 20. The two start to bond before Scott is called upon to infiltrate North Korea. Although they part ways, Mei organises his abduction and uses him to capture Scott and Stonebridge, and then to confess that their actions in North Korea were a deliberate act of war. The three escape, but Finn is shot in the process. After recovering in a Russian hospital, he is escorted home by Martinez. He is later seen going on a road trip to Las Vegas with Scott and Stonebridge.
Robin Foster (played by Tim McInnerny) is the British ambassador to Thailand and the husband of Mei Foster. He has dedicated his career to the denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula. Foster succeeds in getting the North Koreans to agree to a summit in Bangkok, but his plans are jeopardised when his daughter Chloe is kidnapped. He contacts Phillip Locke to have Section 20 discreetly handle the situation, but surrenders to the kidnappers' demands when the rescue attempt fails. The kidnappers use Foster to deliver a bomb to the North Korean delegation, which kills a general. Foster is critically injured in the blast and is later murdered by Mei in his hospital bed.
Ray McQueen is a British gangster based in Bangkok who kidnaps Chloe Foster. He is a local gun-for-hire employed by the Yakuza to conceal their role in the crime. Section 20 track him down after the embassy bombing and persuade him to assist them by protecting his wife and unborn child. McQueen is killed when the Yakuza send corrupt Bangkok police to attack Section 20's headquarters.
Shiro, the son of a senior Yakuza crime lord who oversees operations in South-East Asia. He supplies Mei with materials for the missile programme in exchange for shipments of methamphetamines. Mei maniputes him into killing his father to assume control of the entire Yakuza operation and uses them to attack Section 20. Mei later abandons him when he is seriously injured; realising her betrayal, Shiro prepares to aid Philip Locke, but is shot by a CIA kill team.
Christopher Desmond (played by Michael McElhatton) is a freelance bomb-maker. Known by his alias Oppenheimer, he works for the highest bidder whether they are terrorist groups or governments. Desmond shows no remorse for his crimes, claiming he simply builds the bombs for his clients. He is enlisted by Mei to build an improvised nuclear device until he is tracked down by Locke. Locke accuses Desmond of building the bomb that killed his son Anthony, but Desmond refuses to accept responsibility and instead claims that Locke himself was the target and that Desmond was hired by the British government. Desmond denies knowing why Locke was targeted, but it is strongly implied that his death would fulfil a political objective. When Desmond refuses to divulge the location of the bomb he built for Mei, Locke executes him.
Charles Ridley (played by James Wilby) is a bureaucrat working for an anonymous government department and Locke's commanding officer. He openly questions the value of intelligence gathered by Section 20 and even goes so far as to disband them when Locke disobeys orders. Ridley arranges for Mei and Section 20 to be killed because it is politically convenient for Mei's attack in Geneva to be covered up. Stonebridge and Scott ultimately survive and Stonebridge visits Ridley to remind him of the human cost to his decisions and threatens his life if anyone comes after him. The events of Retribution strongly imply that Ridley was assassinated and that Stonebridge was held responsible.
Faber and Mason are members of a private military contractor working as a CIA-sanctioned assassination team. They function as bounty hunters, given greater rewards for quicker kills. They pose as smugglers to get close to their target, Shiro, before Section 20 inadvertently intervene. Mason and Faber join forces to thwart the transfer of missile components, but turn on Section 20 as soon as they get a chance to kill Shiro. They later lead the ambush on Section 20, killing Mei and leading the hunt for Scott and Stonebridge, going so far as to torture civilians for information. When Scott and Stonebridge are cornered in a barn, Faber offers them the chance to buy their freedom. He expresses disbelief that they are not as corrupt as he is before Stonebridge kills him. Mason is killed in the subsequent assault on the barn.
Retribution
Will Jensen (played by Phil Dunster), an intelligence analyst working for Section 20. He is eager to get experience working in the field and resents being called "Computer Guy" by the rest of the team. Jensen gradually gets more field experience but comes into conflict with the other team members who feel that he is "playing soldier" and unable to handle the demands of fieldwork. He is captured and tortured by Jane Lowry, losing an eye in the process. Although he returns to work, he is murdered by Donovan when he discovers her involvement with Lowry. A running gag sees Wyatt unable to pronounce his name, referring to him as "Johnson".
Omair Idrisi (played by Don Hany), a terrorist who established himself in Libya after the fall of the Gaddafi regime. He was captured in Syria, but after his men infiltrated the army unit escorting him, he is considered so dangerous that British military intelligence re-activated Section 20 to apprehend him. He was radicalised after his father was killed in an airstrike that misidentified its target. Idrisi purchases Stinger missiles from an American arms dealer and plans to unify the factions fighting in Libya to attack Western interests. He is seemingly killed in an airstrike when Section 20 raid his mountainside bunker but is subsequently revealed to have survived and is incarcerated in a secret prison in Poland. Following his escape, he reunites with his wife Jane Lowry and attempts to recover a register of all British military intelligence operations and release it to the Russians.
Jane Lowry (played by Katherine Kelly), Idrisi's wife and the major antagonist of Retribution. Originally a prostitute, she was radicalized after spending time in a British prison and assumes control over her husband's men when he is captured in Syria. Lowry is the mastermind behind his escape and encourages him to advance his plans and continues to supply terrorist groups with material support after his death. She abducts a Russian biochemist and forces him to develop a lethal nerve agent as part of her plans and plans to infiltrate a notorious secret prison and ultimately expose "Project Tenebrae", a disavowed intelligence operation that she was a part of with Adeena Donovan. As part of Project Tenebrae, Lowry planned to infiltrate her later-husband's terrorist group with the knowledge and support of British intelligence, but betrayed them after she was radicalized by Idrisi and attacked a civilian target, killing an American diplomat. She created "the Atlas", a dossier compiling active intelligence operations, which she plans to release, compromising British and American relations. Lowry is shot and killed by MacAllister shortly after being reunited with her husband.
Morgan Ives (played by Trevor Eve), an American arms dealer with a reputation for selling anything to anyone and a crass, bigoted outlook on humanity. He supplies armed forces, private military contractors and terrorist cells alike. Ives manipulates all three for his own profit. His helicopter is shot down after he sells a consignment of Stinger missiles to Idrisi, and forces Section 20 to escort him to safety in exchange for what he knows. Section 20 abandon him in a Bedouin military camp. Ives is implied to have been killed by the Bedouins, but he survives and discreetly follows Section 20. He captures them when they have Idrisi in their custody and after attempting to kill them, he tries to use Idrisi to force Lowry to lead him to the Atlas, which he intends to sell to the highest bidder. He is overpowered by Idrisi's Russian collaborators, who execute him after telling a bigoted joke about Russians.
Rosa Varga, Jozef Varga's sister and the leader of Magyar Ultra, a white nationalist street gang based in Budapest. Under Rosa's leadership, the group transformed itself from a loose collection of thugs to a citywide criminal enterprise. She shows no particular dedication to Magyar Ultra's violent ideology and instead seeks enough money to escape her criminal life. Rosa is contacted by Jane Lowry to locate a biochemist named Markov, believing that Lowry can pay her enough to start a new life. She is killed by her brother when she betrays him by freeing Markov.
Josef Varga, Rosa Varga's brother and recruiter for Magyar Ultra. He was once a soldier serving in the NATO coalition in Afghanistan before being dishonourably discharged for a racially charged assault. Like Rosa, he is looking to escape his criminal life, but he is often temperamental and impulsive. Josef is killed in a shoot-out with Section 20.
Kamil Markov, a fugitive Russian biochemist. Once a pivotal figure in the Russian chemical weapons programme, he was forced into hiding after exposing researchers to Novichok, a potent nerve gas, as revenge for his being fired. Now living in Budapest, he is forcibly recruited by Jane Lowry to continue his work. He is killed in the crossfire between the FSB and Section 20 when Section 20 raid his lab in Pripyat.
Milos Borisovich (played by Peter Firth), the heir to a Belorussian crime syndicate. He is greatly concerned with his family's honour but fears that his son is too weak to take over the business. Borisovich loans his methamphetamine labs to Lowry, allowing her to start producing Novichok. Section 20 infiltrate his villa during his mother's funeral, inadvertently incurring his wrath when Wyatt and MacAllister hijack the hearse with her body inside and use it as a getaway vehicle. After Section 20 repeatedly destroy his production facilities, he makes a deal with Lowry allowing him to hand Markov over to the FSB to collect the bounty on his head. He is killed when Lowry betrays him and exposes him to Novichok.
Yuri Shevchenko, a semi-retired hitman working for Borisovich. He tracks Section 20 across Belarus and the Ukraine, repeatedly trying to kill them. His preferred weapon of choice is a garrotte or manual strangulation. After successfully ambushing Wyatt, he is overpowered by MacAllister and the two hang him in the ensuing fight.
Volkan, Omair Idrisi's lieutenant in Europe. He assumes de facto control of Idrisi's operations after his apparent death and Lowry's disappearance. He underestimates the loyalty of his men to Idrisi and Lowry, who begins to suspect that he is disloyal but offers him the chance to recommit to her cause.
Rachel Sheridan, a former CIA officer who joined German-American private military contractor Octagon. She designs high-security black site prisons for the extraordinary rendition of terrorism suspects where they can be detained and questioned without civilian oversight or being bound by the Geneva Convention. Sheridan is unapologetic, claiming that she is perfectly justified in her actions and willing to sacrifice her loved ones in the name of national security.
Colonel Parker, Wyatt's commanding officer prior to his joining Section 20. Ostensibly part of the Joint Special Operations Command, he is running an illegal rendition programme, detaining and torturing terrorism suspects.
Arkady Krupkin and Katya, a pair of Russian GRU operatives who lead a team similar to Section 20. They support Idrisi in the search for the Atlas and lead the defence of a Russian military intelligence bunker that Section 20 attack in retaliation. Katya is knocked out after surrendering to Reynolds, claiming that she was only ever doing her job; Krupkin forces Wyatt to kill him instead of deactivating an explosive charge in the bunker.
Revolution
Pavel Kuragin is a Russian military intelligence officer who acts as a liaison between Moscow and Alpha Group units in the field. He is Zarkova's handler, although she largely keeps him in the dark about her activities. He is later revealed to be an agent of Kingfisher. Kuragin is responsible for the theft of a Russian nuclear weapon and deals through a complex network of cut-outs and shell companies to conceal his identity. He is disavowed by the Russian government following the failure of Project Kingfisher and turns rogue, stealing the keys to a chemical weapons facility in Azerbaijan. He forces Zarkova and Novin to kill him rather than tell them the override code. The name Pavel Kuragin is an alias, though he claims his birth name is unimportant. Zarkova identifies him as Denis Brusilov, who was recruited by the army as a young man after spending years in foster care. His superiors exploited his need for acceptance and his need to be made to feel special, turning him into Kuragin. It is implied that he was present when Section 20 raided a GRU server farm in Retribution.
Operations Directorate 338 is the name given to a clandestine branch of the Russian intelligence community. The Directorate is made up of nationalist and ultra-nationalist sympathisers in the military, intelligence and diplomatic corps. They believe that Russia has been humiliated by the West following the imposition of economic sanctions that wiped $600 billion from the Russian economy and pushed twenty percent of the population below the poverty line. They devised Project Kingfisher as a way of restoring Russia's dignity. They arrange for a Russian warhead to be stolen and rebuilt as portable suitcase bombs to conceal their origin. These are then given to terrorist groups who are apprehended by military units and used as evidence to support a coup, installing a puppet government friendly to Russia. When Project Kingfisher—and a series of related operations—is shut down, Operations Directorate 338 support its agents by giving them the means to fire missiles armed with VX nerve gas on Western cities to force a war between Russia and the West.
Laoshu (played by Tom Wu) is an enforcer for a Triad based in Kuala Lumpur. He disappeared for eight years after the "Night of Blood" in which he single-handedly killed every member of a rival gang and has since become the stuff of urban legend. His reputation precedes him as he is able to kill most of an Alpha Group unit in minutes, overpower McAllister and evade police. Laoshu is revealed to be the biological father of police captain Amy Leong, and that the "Night of Blood" was revenge for a targeted hit that killed his wife. He is later killed by Novin after a fistfight.
James McKitterick is the British High Commissioner to Malaysia. Coltrane and Section 20 report directly to him, but begin to suspect he is deliberately hindering them after the Triads are tipped off to a raid. They learn that McKitterick owes gambling debts to the Triads. The Triads force him to authorise passage of a truck carrying a nuclear weapon out of Kuala Lumpur. Section 20 try to extract him and have him rescind the order, but believing the Triads will kill his family, McKitterick commits suicide.
Gopan is a self-taught nuclear physicist and the leader of a Hindu nationalist terror cell. He is initially introduced as the right-hand man of Anjali Vartak, but has misled her and used her to finance his plot. Gopan takes possession of the nuclear warhead and convert it into two dirty bombs for Kingfisher before passing them on to Kingfisher's next cut-out. While his men are well-funded, they are under-equipped and poorly trained; nevertheless, they represent a different kind of threat as they are a danger to everyone around them. Gopan is killed by Zarkova as he tries to escort the bombs out of Goa.
Anjali Vartak is an Indian textile magnate, aspiring politician and privately a radical Hindu nationalist. She blames Muslim extremists for the death of her infant son and plots revenge, planning to detonate radiological devices to irradiate mosques throughout Goa. However, Gopan believes that her privileged life means her anger will be short-lived and instead encourages her to pursue a career in politics to legitimise their cause. When her ties to the terrorist group are revealed, Anjali plans a suicide mission. She is killed when Wyatt tackles her out of the window of a fourth-story in an effort to wrestle her bomb away.
Jean-Baptiste Zaza is a drug lord producing methamphetamines in Myanmar. Fleeing his native Rwanda during the 1994 genocide, he found himself in South-West Asia and rose quickly through the ranks of the gangs. Zaza styles himself as a liberator, funding schools and hospitals with drug money, but in reality he is deeply paranoid and prone to jealous rages that quickly turn violent. He intercepts Kingfisher's courier transporting the dirty bombs and attempts to sell them to al-Shabaab militants. Section 20 attempt to intercept the buyer and locate the bombs, but lose the intelligence. Zaza is killed in an explosion when Section 20 raid his compound and secure the bombs.
Lauren Gillespie is a DEA agent stationed in Myanmar and an acquaintance of Alexander Coltrane. It is implied that she was exiled to a remote province as punishment for her renegade tactics. She likens Myanmar to the Wild West and is quite happy to use murder and extortion to achieve her objectives. Gillespie is mostly interested in keeping the drug gangs of Myanmar in a state of détente and is happy to let the stolen dirty bombs fall into terrorist hands to maintain that state. She uses DEA slush funds to illegally finance Zaza's rise to power, hoping to earn the favour of her superiors, but Zaza is aware of her plotting and instead controls her. Gillespie is mortally wounded during the raid on Zaza's compound.
Madison Wyatt is Wyatt's wife. While married, they live separately. When she serves him with divorce papers and he is shot by Kuragin, Wyatt reconsiders their relationship and attempts to make amends. Unable to adjust to civilian life, he lies to her and returns to the field but ultimately feels guilt when Kuragin sends assassins after her.
Hassan Ahmad is the former leader of a jihadist terror network until he was imprisoned. He was released as part of a deradicalisation programme and has largely been forgotten by the world until Kuragin offers him a chance at notoriety. He attempts to detonate one of Kugarin's bombs in Jakata, only to find that it is rigged to be inoperable. Section 20 attempt to apprehend him as proof of Kugarin's plot, but he is shot before he can be taken into custody.
Colonel Aldo is the leader of Squad Komodo, an elite Indonesian counter-terrorist unit. Squad Komodo was disbanded after it resorted to kidnappings and extrajudicial killings, becoming little more than a death squad. Most of the unit was court-martialled and stripped of their ranks, but Aldo was allowed to keep his position as a political show of good faith. He uses Kugarin's support to reform Squad Komodo as a mercenary unit with access to cutting-edge weapons and equipment. Under Kugarin's plan, Aldo would lead a military coup in Indonesia, becoming a puppet of the Russian government. He is apprehended after Section 20 kill the Squad Komodo members; Wyatt empathises with his frustration at a government ambivalent to the safety of its own people, convincing Aldo to lower his weapon.
Natasha Petchrenko is a former SVR operative who was disavowed and her death staged by the Russian government to free up her ability to carry out covert operations. She goes rogue and joins Kuragin after Project Kingfisher—and several other, similar operations—is shut down. Petchrenko brokers a deal with American tech entrepreneur Caleb Montgomery to acquire a weaponised computer virus capable of breaching Russian military encryption, which they then use to bring down a defunct satellite carrying missile launch keys. She is killed when she is exposed to VX nerve gas during Section 20's raid on the missile silo.
Artem Orlov is a former Russian marine who, like Petchrenko, was disavowed and his death staged by the Russian government to free up his ability to carry out covert operations. He goes rogue after Project Kingfisher is shut down, justifying his actions as patriotism. However, he has trouble with Kuragin's willingness to kill indiscriminately, especially when it means killing Russians. He is killed when Kuragin uses him as a human shield.
Chief of General Staff Pokrovsky is the liaision between Section 20 and the Russian Armed Forces and Zarkova's commanding officers. He oversees the interrogation and recruitment of Coltrane and Section 20, but grows to resent Russia's dependence on the West to thwart Kuragin and comes to sympathise with him. Pokrovsky interferes with Section 20's investigation by informing Kuragin of their activities and attempts to have Zarkova court martialled when she deduces that someone in the chain of command is working with Kuragin. He is killed after his interrogation by Section 20 when he draws a weapon on Coltrane.
Vendetta
Zayef Hidjari is the main antagonist of Vendetta. The brothers are Bosnian Muslims whose parents were killed in a massacre during the Balkan War. They became radicalised and formed a splinter group of Islamic State. They are well-organised and well-funded, but largely unknown to Western intelligence agencies. Zayef grows increasingly unstable and paranoid, killing his men on the mere suspicion of disloyalty. He plans an attack on a NATO security conference in Münich, followed by waves of attacks across Europe. Section 20 catch him as he attempts to smuggle a shipment of weapons out of Albania and he provides them with evidence of a conspiracy between intelligence agencies. He dies when he goads Coltrane into summarily executing him.
Mahir Hidjari is Zayef's older brother and responsible for planning the brothers' attacks. He claims loyalty to Zayef, but is disgusted by him and working for British intelligence. Mahir is to oversee a false flag operation that would see Zayef stage an unsuccessful attack on Münich and then get caught shipping arms to terror cells across Europe. This wouls give the West an excuse to deploy soldiers in Eastern Europe. However, Zayef learns of Mahir's treachery and straps him into a suicide vest in Münich, killing him and leaving Zayef free to carry out his plan without Mahir controlling him.
Dr. Helen McCluskey is a British biochemist stationed in Pristina, Kosovo. She is working on a covert program to weaponise a strain on the Marbug virus that was started and later abandoned by Serbia during the Balkan War. She is captured by the Demarchi crime family and forced to reveal the virus' location. Section 20 is deployed to rescue her, but Coltrane is given a secret order to execute her to prevent her from becoming a whistleblower.
Edon Demachi is the patriarch of an Italian-Albanian crime family in Kosovo. He is the mastermind behind the theft of a weaponised strain of the Marbug virus. His family is quite small within the Albanian mafia as his father disgraced their name in a feud with the Italian Vironi family. Edon hopes that he can reconcile with the Veronis by having his son Loric marry the Veronis' heir. He is killed in a shoot-out with McAllister.
Arianna Demachi (born Elena Stanikova) is Edon Demachi's wife. She is more compassionate towards her son than Edon is, but is equally ruthless. She swears a blood feud against Section 20 after her husband's death. Arianna takes control of the Albanian mafia and is revealed to be a Russian deep-cover agent tasked with seizing control of organised crime in the former Yugoslavia. Her family's dealings with Zayef reveal Britain and America's role in his plot, and she tries to secure a hard drive with evidence on it for use against the West. Although she fails when the drive is erased, the GRU decide to invest $250 million to continue her takeover of organised crime in Eastern Europe, allowing them to destabilise Europe by controlling the flow of drugs and guns in major cities. Realising that Section 20 will never stop hunting her, Arianna steals the $250 million and starts a new life in Mexico. Section 20 nevertheless track her down and Coltrane executes her.
Loric Demachi is the son of Edon and Adrianna. He is to be married to the daughter of a rival family, but is a closeted homosexual. He resents his father and agrees to help Section 20 if they kill him. However, he later regrets his actions and joins Arianna in swearing a blood feud. He and his mother take control in of the Albanian mafia in a bloody coup and Loric admits to Zayef that he betrayed his father to Section 20. Arianna uses this to remove him from power and ends up stabbing him to death when he resists.
Yoni Spiegel is an Israeli patrol officer who is caught up in a gun battle involving Section 20. He is self-conscious as his colleagues do not take him seriously, and jumps at the chance to help McAllister. McAllister tries to enlist him as a local source, but Spiegel takes things too far when he tries to arrest Zayef and Mahir, leading to a shoot-out in a bus terminal. He is killed when Zayef's men storm his police precinct.
Nadav Topal is a Palestinian taxi driver working in Tel Aviv. He attempts to sell a Russian military-grade cyberweapom that he steals from a treasonous Russian officer. He is killed by Spiegel when he resists arrest.
Danny Dahar is a drug runner and friend of Topal. He kidnaps and tortures Novin for the cyberweapon Imperiya and is able to capture most of Section 20 when they attempt a rescue. He is killed by Coltrane.
Yana Haim is an Israeli gangster-turned-property developer. Topal turns to him to try and sell Imperiya, but Haim tries to double-cross him. Topal kills him in self-defence when Danny and his men attack Haim's villa.
Sir James Spencer is the head of MI6 and the creator of Section 20. He has a father-son relationship with Coltrane, which he tries to use to influence Section 20's operations; Coltrane sees through this, but still views Spencer as a mentor. Spencer is the architect of the plan to use Zayef and tries to reason with Coltrane when Section 20 uncover the conspiracy. He is mortally wounded when the CIA betray him and dies when he sets off a grenade, killing several assassins in the process.
Carolyn Fortier is a senior CIA officer and Spencer's partner in the plan to use Zayef. She sees his belief in Coltrane as a weakness and has no problem sending a hit squad to kill them when Spencer tries to reason with Coltrane. She later recruits Section 20 to help find Chetri before the Russians do, but discreetly authorises Wyatt to kill her if necessary. She is killed when a bomb planted by a Russian sleeper agent is set off.
Sevastian Levkin is Arianna's handler in the GRU. He has little field experience and tries to take over her interrogation of Chetri, ostensibly to protect her if it goes poorly, but she rebuffs him. He is later transferred to managing a casino in Armenia and launder Arianna's money, which he sees as a demotion. He is killed by Novin for his role in Chetri's death.
References
Lists of American television series characters
Lists of British television series characters
Lists of action television characters
Lists of drama television characters
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676632 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John%20Lions | John Lions | John Lions (19 January 1937 – 5 December 1998) was an Australian computer scientist. He is best known as the author of Lions' Commentary on UNIX 6th Edition, with Source Code, commonly known as the Lions Book.
Early life
Lions gained a degree with first-class honours from the University of Sydney in 1959. He applied, and received a scholarship to study at the University of Cambridge where he earned his doctorate on Control engineering in 1963. After his graduation, he worked at the consulting firm KCS Ltd in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. In 1967, he briefly took a position at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada before moving on to working for Burroughs in Los Angeles as a Systems Analyst.
Later life
In 1972 he moved back to Sydney, Australia and became a senior lecturer in the Department of Computer Science at the University of New South Wales (UNSW). In 1980, he was promoted to Associate Professor and apart from sabbaticals in 1978, 1983 and 1989 at Bell Laboratories, he remained at the school until retiring in 1995 due to bad health.
Work
His most famous work, the Lions Book, was written as course notes for his operating systems course at UNSW.
Lions organised the Australian UNIX Users' Group and was its founding president from 1984 to 1986.
Lions was involved in the setting up of an annual conference for academics, the Australian Computer Science Conference and he was the editor of the Australian Computer Journal for six years and was made a fellow of the Australian Computer Society for his contribution.
Personal life
John Lions was married to Marianne and had two children, Katherine and Elizabeth.
Posthumous honours
John Lions Chair in Computer Science
After his death, John O'Brien, Steve Jenkin, Chris Maltby and Greg Rose, former students of Lions, commenced a campaign to raise funds to create a chair in his name at UNSW, the John Lions Chair of Operating Systems. With donations from many UNSW alumni, corporations, Usenix, Linux Australia, the chair was created in 2006, becoming the first chair at UNSW funded by contributions from alumni. In 2009, Gernot Heiser became the inaugural John Lions Chair. Of the Usenix donations, US$6,000 came from the 1998 auction of the California UNIX license plate by Ted Dolotta, won by John Mashey, who had lent his copies of the Lions book he had gotten at Bell Labs years before and never gotten back. Lions had graciously replaced them with autographed copies on an earlier visit of Mashey to Sydney. They now are members of the collection at the Computer History Museum.
John Lions Garden
In 2002, UNSW dedicated the John Lions Garden in front of the new Computer Science and Engineering building to Lions' memory.
John Lions Award for Contribution to Open Software
In 2011, The School of Computer Science and Engineering at UNSW initiated the John Lions Award for Contribution to Open Software. The Prize is open to high school and undergraduate university students enrolled in an Australian secondary or tertiary institution. Full-time and part-time students are eligible, as well as local and internationals students. The annual prize is valued at $1,000.
External links
In Memoriam: John Lions (Peter H. Salus, USENIX News, 22 March 1999)
Code Critic (Rachel Chalmers, Salon 30 November 1999)
The John Lions Award For Research Work in Open Systems (Australian Unix Users' Group)
The John Lions Chair in Operating Systems (University of New South Wales)
1937 births
1998 deaths
Unix people
Australian computer scientists
University of New South Wales faculty
Burroughs Corporation people |
3858596 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flooding%20%28computer%20networking%29 | Flooding (computer networking) | Flooding is used in computer networks routing algorithm in which every incoming packet is sent through every outgoing link except the one it arrived on.
Flooding is used in bridging and in systems such as Usenet and peer-to-peer file sharing and as part of some routing protocols, including OSPF, DVMRP, and those used in ad-hoc wireless networks (WANETs).
Types
There are generally two types of flooding available, uncontrolled flooding and controlled flooding.
In uncontrolled flooding each node unconditionally distributes packets to each of its neighbors. Without conditional logic to prevent indefinite recirculation of the same packet, broadcast storms are a hazard.
Controlled flooding has its own two algorithms to make it reliable, SNCF (Sequence Number Controlled Flooding) and RPF (reverse-path forwarding). In SNCF, the node attaches its own address and sequence number to the packet, since every node has a memory of addresses and sequence numbers. If it receives a packet in memory, it drops it immediately while in RPF, the node will only send the packet forward. If it is received from the next node, it sends it back to the sender.
Algorithms
There are several variants of flooding algorithms. Most work roughly as follows:
Each node acts as both a transmitter and a receiver.
Each node tries to forward every message to every one of its neighbors except the source node.
This results in every message eventually being delivered to all reachable parts of the network.
Algorithms may need to be more complex than this, since, in some case, precautions have to be taken to avoid wasted duplicate deliveries and infinite loops, and to allow messages to eventually expire from the system.
Selective flooding
A variant of flooding called selective flooding partially addresses these issues by only sending packets to routers in the same direction. In selective flooding, the routers don't send every incoming packet on every line but only on those lines which are going approximately in the right direction.
Advantages
The advantages of this method are that it is very simple to implement,
if a packet can be delivered then it will (probably multiple times), and since flooding naturally utilizes every path through the network it will also use the shortest path.
Disadvantages
Flooding can be costly in terms of wasted bandwidth. While a message may only have one destination it has to be sent to every host. In the case of a ping flood or a denial of service attack, it can be harmful to the reliability of a computer network.
Messages can become duplicated in the network further increasing the load on the network as well as requiring an increase in processing complexity to disregard duplicate messages. Duplicate packets may circulate forever, unless certain precautions are taken:
Use a hop count or a time to live (TTL) count and include it with each packet. This value should take into account the number of nodes that a packet may have to pass through on the way to its destination.
Have each node keep track of every packet seen and only forward each packet once.
Enforce a network topology without loops.
Examples
In Open Shortest Path First (OSPF), flooding is used for transferring updates to the topology (LSAs).
In low data rate communications, flooding can achieve fast and robust data communications in dedicated protocols such as VEmesh, which operates in the Sub-1 GHz frequency band and Bluetooth mesh networking, which operates in the 2.4 GHz frequency band. Both these protocols serve as underlying technologies in the Digital Addressable Lighting Interface in use in professional and commercial lighting control.
See also
Broadcasting (networking)
Flood search routing
Multicast
Spanning Tree Protocol
References
Routing algorithms
Flooding algorithms |
23699874 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOFA%20Statistics | SOFA Statistics | SOFA Statistics is an open-source statistical package. The name stands for Statistics Open For All. It has a graphical user interface and can connect directly to MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, MS Access (map), and Microsoft SQL Server. Data can also be imported from CSV and Tab-Separated files or spreadsheets (Microsoft Excel, OpenOffice.org Calc, Numeric, Google Docs). The main statistical tests available are Independent and Paired t-tests, Wilcoxon signed ranks, Mann–Whitney U, Pearson's chi squared, Kruskal Wallis H, one-way ANOVA, Spearman's R, and Pearson's R. Nested tables can be produced with row and column percentages, totals, Sd, mean, median, lower and upper quartiles, and sum.
Installation packages are available for several Operating Systems such as Microsoft Windows, Ubuntu, Arch Linux, Linux Mint, and macOS (Leopard upwards).
SOFA Statistics is written in Python, and the widget toolkit used is python. The statistical analyses are based on functions available through the SciPy stats module.
Statistics Features - Workflows
As a basic workflow the users are guided through the selection of the appropriate basic statistical methods and assignment of the basic statistical on the table column of the data that should be analyzed, so it the workflow of SOFA is addressing more or less beginners.
In comparison to Open Source R Statistics Software with a very large repository of statistics packages the features that are available within SOFA for statistical analysis are limited.
See also
Comparison of statistical packages
List of statistical packages
List of open-source software for mathematics
References
External links
SOFA Statistics Homepage
SOFA Statistics project page at Source Forge
SOFA Statistics project page at Launchpad
SOFA Statistics page at Show Me Do
Cross-platform free software
Cross-platform software
Free statistical software
Numerical software
Science software for Linux
Science software for MacOS
Science software for Windows
Software that uses wxPython
Software using the GNU AGPL license |
12067267 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RCA%20Spectra%2070 | RCA Spectra 70 | The RCA Spectra 70 was a line of electronic data processing (EDP) equipment manufactured by the Radio Corporation of America’s computer division beginning in April 1965. The Spectra 70 line included several CPU models, various configurations of core memory, mass-storage devices, terminal equipment, and a variety of specialized interface equipment.
The system architecture and instruction-set were largely compatible with the non-privileged instruction-set of the IBM System/360, including use of the EBCDIC character set. While this degree of compatibility made some interchange of programs and data possible, differences in the operating system software precluded transparent movement of programs between the two systems.
Competition in the mainframe market was fierce, and in 1971 the company sold the computer division and the Spectra 70 line to Sperry Rand, taking a huge write down in the process.
System overview
Five models of the Spectra 70 CPU were announced around 1965, ranging from a small system (70/15) to the large scale (70/55). Some of the main features were:
The systems were upward-compatible, allowing programs written for a smaller model to run on any larger machine in the series.
Larger machines in the series were also faster, with memory access times ranging from two microseconds in the 70/15 to 0.84 microseconds in the 70/55.
Memory capacities ranged from a minimum of 4,096 bytes (4 KB) in the 70/15 to a maximum of 524,288 bytes (512 KB) in the 70/55.
All used the Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code (EBCDIC) of eight bits plus parity for internal data representation.
The use of a standard electrical interface allowed the same peripherals to be used with any CPU model in the series.
Simultaneous input and output was accomplished by the use of intelligent communication channels. Like the IBM 360, two types of channel were available (on all but the 70/15): selector channels which could address up to 256 devices (one at a time), and multiplexer channels (not on the 70/15) which could simultaneously address up to 256 channels by time-sharing the channel.
The full instruction set comprised 144 instructions, including optional floating-point. All machines supported decimal and binary fixed-point arithmetic. Floating-point instructions were not available on the 70/15 and 70/25.
These systems all ran RCA's real-memory operating systems, DOS and TDOS. The 70/45 could also run a time-sharing operating system, The RCA 70/45 Basic Time Sharing System (BTSS), supporting up to 16 users. The systems that supported virtual memory, the Spectra 70/46 and 70/61 and the later RCA 3 and 7, could also run the RCA's Virtual Memory Operating System (VMOS). VMOS was originally named TSOS (Time Sharing Operating System), but was renamed to expand the market for the system beyond time-sharing. TSOS was the first mainframe, demand paged, virtual memory operating system on the market. The Spectra series was later supplemented by the RCA Series (RCA 2, 3, 6, 7— later renamed the 70/2, 70/3, 70/6, and 70/7, which competed against the IBM System/370. The RCA 2 and 6 ran the real-memory batch-oriented OS/70 operating system, while the RCA 3 and 7 ran VMOS. Some English Electric System 4 mainframes were rebadged Spectra 70 machines; others were English Electric-designed clones of the RCA Spectra 70 clones of the IBM System/360 range.
Models
Model 70/15
The RCA Model 70/15 (1965) was a discrete small-scale processor that could still support a variety of applications. Memory limitations and relatively low processing speed made its use as a stand-alone computer system somewhat impractical. It implemented a small subset of 25 instructions of the full Spectra 70 architecture, and was not downward compatible with the rest of the range. Also, the limited memory size available "obviates the need for a base address in that the displacement has the necessary addressing range by the addition of a high-order bit to permit addressing of up to 8,192 bytes." In this respect it was similar to the IBM System/360 Model 20.
Two memory configurations for the 70/15 were available: either 4,096 bytes or 8,192 bytes of core memory. The memory cycle time for a 70/15 was 2 microseconds per byte of information.
The 70/15 was often used as a satellite processor for larger systems or used as an intelligent terminal for remote job entry. Typical applications of a satellite processor would include card-to-tape conversion, card/tape-to-printer report generation, tape-to-card punching, input pre-processing and verification, or tab-shop tasks like file sorting, merge, and data selection. Software for this model did not include an operating system—the RCA 70/15 Programming System consisted of an "Assembly System, Loader Routines, Input-Output Control, Test Routines, Utility Routines, Communication Control, System Maintenance Routines, Report Program Generator, and Sort/Merge." Sort/Merge required a system with 8 KB of memory. The remainder could run in 4 KB. Programs could be run from punched-cards or magnetic tape.
Weighed .
Model 70/25
The RCA Model 70/25 (1965) was a discrete small-to-medium scale computer system that supported a wider variety of applications, including use as a free standing system. In large installations, the 70/25 might also be used as a subsystem in a multi-processor complex. High throughput was facilitated by the use of fast memory and multiple simultaneous input/output streams. Equipped with selector channels and a multiplexer channel, the 70/25 could concurrently operate eight low-speed devices in addition to eight high-speed devices. Like the Model 15, it implemented a (slightly larger) subset of 31 instructions of the full range architecture.
Memory capacities for the 70/25 ranged from a minimum of 16,384 bytes to a maximum of 65,536 bytes. The memory cycle time was 1.5 microseconds to access one 8 bit byte.
Weighed .
Model 70/35
The RCA Model 70/35 was the fifth in the series of Spectra computers that was announced in September 1965 (first delivery in 1966). It was a medium-scale computer combining third-generation technology (including integrated circuits) and speed in an efficient low-cost data system. The Spectra 70/35 handled a wide range of tasks at almost twice the speed of other general-purpose computers in its price range. Unlike the Model 70/45 and 70/55 it did not offer the option of a floating point processor. The maximum memory was limited to 32,768 bytes from two 16,384 byte core memories. It was offered with both synchronous and asynchronous controllers that allowed it to communicate with other computers.
It was used by the Oklahoma State-Wide Computer Science System, starting in 1966, to connect remote RCA 301 computers in 8 cities to host Vocational-Technical Education in computer science, which was the first state-sponsored program set up exclusively to train data processing personnel. The students were learning the fundamentals of programming and system operation with "hands-on" experience.
Weighed .
Model 70/45
The RCA Model 70/45 (1966) was a medium scale processor of relatively good performance for its time. A floating-point processor was available as an option and the 70/45 was considered suitable for commercial, scientific, communications, and real-time applications.
With a communications multiplexer, the 70/45 could accommodate up to 256 communication lines for interactive use as well as batch processing. Thus, the 70/45 was ideal as the core of a multi-system installation. The 70/45 was one of the first computer systems to use monolithic integrated circuits in its construction. This level of integration was to become the defining characteristic of third-generation computers.
Memory capacity for the 70/45 ranged from a minimum of 16,384 bytes (16 KB) to 262,144 bytes (256 KB). The memory cycle time was 1.44 microseconds to access two bytes (one half word) of information.
Weighed .
Model 70/46
The RCA Model 70/46 (1967) is a modified version of the 70/45 with an added virtual memory capability. Advertisements for this computer as a timesharing machine referred to it as the Octoputer.
Programs can run in either 70/45 mode—without virtual memory—or in 70/46 mode with virtual memory enabled. Virtual addresses are 24 bits in length. Pages can be specified to be either 2048 or 4096 bytes in length, depending on program requirements, however 2048 byte pages occupy the lower half of a page frame in memory. The system allows a maximum of 512 pages. Virtual memory is divided into segments of 64 pages indicated by bits 1-5 of a virtual address. Although the Instruction set architecture defines up to 32 segments, only eight are used in the 70/46. Incrementation of addresses wraps around on a segment boundary. With 4 KB pages, segments are 256 KB in length, and total virtual memory size is up to 2 MB. With 2 KB pages these numbers are halved.
Model 70/55
The RCA Model 70/55 (1966) was a medium-to-large scale processor with excellent processor characteristics well suited to both scientific and large-scale commercial processing. The 70/55 maintained a high-throughput capability by offering up to 14 simultaneous job-streams. Like the 70/45, the Model 70/55 made extensive use of monolithic integrated circuits.
Memory capacity for the 70/55 ranged from 65,536 bytes (64 KB) of core memory to 524,288 bytes (512 KB). The memory cycle time was 0.84 microseconds to access four bytes of information.
Weighed .
Model 70/60
The RCA Model 70/60 was a later addition to the Spectra 70 series, having been announced in 1969.
Model 70/61
The RCA Model 70/61 was the virtual memory model of the 70/60, and
it was referred to as the Octoputer II in some advertisements. The 70/60 and 70/61 were the first RCA central computers to be capable of supporting 1 MB of core memory which was housed in 4 standard racks that formed a "T" with the rest of the computer. Each memory cabinet housed 256 KB of core memory with memory stacks and control logic and power supply in the bottom. These machines later became RCA 6 and RCA 7 respectively when the company replaced the blue and white cabinets with a new more modern scheme. Although these computers were fast and reliable they came too late to impact the lead of the IBM 360 product line.
Input-output devices
Input-output devices on the Spectra 70 series were specifically designed to interface with all models of the Spectra processor using the RCA Standard Interface. Initial product offerings in 1965 included:
Card punches that were fully buffered and able to operate at 100 or 300 cards per minute, depending upon the specific model.
Three models of printers were offered: a medium-speed printer running at 600 lines per minute, a high-speed printer running at 1,250 lines per minute, and a bill-printer running at 600 lines per minute on continuous forms and 800 lines per minute on card-stock. Like the card punches, the printers were fully buffered.
The Spectra optical card reader was able to read at up to 1,435 cards per minute with optional mark-sense reading available.
Paper-tape capability was offered with 5, 6, 7, or 8 channel tape punches and readers. The punched tape reader operated at 200 characters per second and the tape punch ran at 100 characters per second.
Three versions of magnetic tape were available running at 30, 60, or 120 kilobytes per second. In purely numeric mode, the tape reading and writing was performed at 240,000 digits per second. All tape drives were “industry” (meaning IBM) compatible and contained automatic error-checking systems. Either 7 or 9 channel tape code could be used and tapes could be written in the forward direction and read in both forward and reverse directions.
Mass storage was available in the form of both magnetic drum and magnetic disc with an interchangeable disc-pack capacity of 7.25 MB at a data interchange rate of 156 kbit/s. The high-speed drum had a capacity of 1 MB with an average access time of 8.6 milliseconds.
The Videoscan Document Reader was an optical character recognition scanner with a speed of 1,300 documents per minute. This was primarily used to scan checks and similar transaction documents.
See also
History of computing hardware (1960s–present)
RCA
UNIVAC Series 70
References
External links
Mainframe computers
32-bit computers
RCA brands
Computer-related introductions in 1965
Products introduced in 1965 |
51544 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced%20Interior%20Gateway%20Routing%20Protocol | Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol | Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP) is an advanced distance-vector routing protocol that is used on a computer network for automating routing decisions and configuration. The protocol was designed by Cisco Systems as a proprietary protocol, available only on Cisco routers. Functionality of EIGRP was converted to an open standard in 2013 and was published with informational status as in 2016.
EIGRP is used on a router to share routes with other routers within the same autonomous system. Unlike other well known routing protocols, such as RIP, EIGRP only sends incremental updates, reducing the workload on the router and the amount of data that needs to be transmitted.
EIGRP replaced the Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (IGRP) in 1993. One of the major reasons for this was the change to classless IPv4 addresses in the Internet Protocol, which IGRP could not support.
Overview
Almost all routers contain a routing table that contains rules by which traffic is forwarded in a network. If the router does not contain a valid path to the destination, the traffic is discarded. EIGRP is a dynamic routing protocol by which routers automatically share route information. This eases the workload on a network administrator who does not have to configure changes to the routing table manually.
In addition to the routing table, EIGRP uses the following tables to store information:
Neighbor Table: The neighbor table keeps a record of the IP addresses of routers that have a direct physical connection with this router. Routers that are connected to this router indirectly, through another router, are not recorded in this table as they are not considered neighbors.
Topology Table: The topology table stores routes that it has learned from neighbor routing tables. Unlike a routing table, the topology table does not store all routes, but only routes that have been determined by EIGRP. The topology table also records the metrics for each of the listed EIGRP routes, the feasible successor and the successors. Routes in the topology table are marked as "passive" or "active". Passive indicates that EIGRP has determined the path for the specific route and has finished processing. Active indicates that EIGRP is still trying to calculate the best path for the specific route. Routes in the topology table are not usable by the router until they are inserted into the routing table. The topology table is never used by the router to forward traffic. Routes in the topology table will not be inserted into the routing table if they are active, are a feasible successor, or have a higher administrative distance than an equivalent path.
Information in the topology table may be inserted into the router's routing table and can then be used to forward traffic. If the network changes (for example, a physical link fails or is disconnected), the path will become unavailable. EIGRP is designed to detect these changes and will attempt to find a new path to the destination. The old path that is no longer available is removed from the routing table. Unlike most distance vector routing protocols, EIGRP does not transmit all the data in the router's routing table when a change is made, but will only transmit the changes that have been made since the routing table was last updated. EIGRP does not send its routing table periodically, but will only send routing table data when an actual change has occurred. This behavior is more inline with link-state routing protocols, thus EIGRP is mostly considered a hybrid protocol.
When a router running EIGRP is connected to another router also running EIGRP, information is exchanged between the two routers. They form a relationship, known as an adjacency. The entire routing table is exchanged between both routers at this time. After the exchange has completed, only differential changes are sent.
EIGRP is often considered a hybrid protocol because it also sends link state updates when link states change.
Features
EIGRP supports the following features:
Support for Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) and variable length subnet masking. Routes are not summarized at the classful network boundary unless auto summary is enabled.
Support for load balancing on parallel links between sites.
The ability to use different authentication passwords at different times.
MD5 and SHA-2 authentication between two routers.
Sends topology changes, rather than sending the entire routing table when a route is changed.
Periodically checks if a route is available, and propagates routing changes to neighboring routers if any changes have occurred.
Runs separate routing processes for Internet Protocol (IP), IPv6, IPX and AppleTalk, through the use of protocol-dependent modules (PDMs).
Backwards compatibility with the IGRP routing protocols.
Configuration
Cisco IOS example
Example of setting up EIGRP on a Cisco IOS router for a private network. The 0.0.15.255 wildcard in this example indicates a subnetwork with a maximum of 4094 hosts—it is the bitwise complement of the subnet mask 255.255.240.0. The no auto-summary command prevents automatic route summarization on classful boundaries, which would otherwise result in routing loops in discontiguous networks.
Router# configure terminal
Router(config)# router eigrp 1
Router (config-router)# network 10.201.96.0 0.0.15.255
Router (config-router)# no auto-summary
Router (config-router)# exit
Technical details
EIGRP is a distance vector & Link State routing protocol that uses the diffusing update algorithm (DUAL) (based on work from SRI International) to improve the efficiency of the protocol and to help prevent calculation errors when attempting to determine the best path to a remote network. EIGRP determines the value of the path using five metrics: bandwidth, load, delay, reliability and MTU. EIGRP uses Five different messages to communicate with its neighbor routers. EIGRP messages are Hello, Update, Query, Reply, and Acknowledgement.
EIGRP routing information exchanged to a router from another router within the same autonomous system has a default administrative distance of 90. EIGRP routing information that has come from an EIGRP-enabled router outside the autonomous system has a default administrative distance of 170.
EIGRP does not operate using the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) or the User Datagram Protocol (UDP). This means that EIGRP does not use a port number to identify traffic. Rather, EIGRP is designed to work on top of layer 3 (i.e. the IP protocol). Since EIGRP does not use TCP for communication, it implements Cisco's Reliable Transport Protocol (RTP) to ensure that EIGRP router updates are delivered to all neighbors completely. The reliable transport protocol also contains other mechanisms to maximize efficiency and support multicasting. EIGRP uses 224.0.0.10 as its multicast address and protocol number 88.
Distance vector routing protocol
Cisco Systems now classifies EIGRP as a distance vector routing protocol, but it is normally said to be a hybrid routing protocol. While EIGRP is an advanced routing protocol that combines many of the features of both link-state and distance-vector routing protocols, EIGRP's DUAL algorithm contains many features which make it more of a distance vector routing protocol than a link-state routing protocol. Despite this, EIGRP contains many differences from most other distance-vector routing protocols, including:
the use of explicit hello packets to discover and maintain adjacencies between routers.
the use of a reliable protocol to transport routing updates.
the use of a feasibility condition to select a loop-free path.
the use of diffusing computations to involve the affected part of the network into computing a new shortest path.
EIGRP composite and vector metrics
EIGRP associates six different vector metrics with each route and considers only four of the vector metrics in computing the Composite metric:
Router1# show ip eigrp topology 10.0.0.1 255.255.255.255
IP-EIGRP topology entry for 10.0.0.1/32
State is Passive, Query origin flag is 1, 1 Successor(s), FD is 40640000
Routing Descriptor Blocks:
10.0.0.1 (Serial0/0/0), from 10.0.0.1, Send flag is 0x0
Composite metric is (40640000/128256), Route is Internal
Vector metric:
Minimum bandwidth is 64 Kbit
Total delay is 25000 microseconds
Reliability is 255/255
Load is 197/255
Minimum MTU is 576
Hop count is 2
Bandwidth Minimum Bandwidth (in kilobits per second) along the path from router to destination network.
Load Number in range 1 to 255; 255 being saturated
Total Delay Delay, in 10s of microseconds, along the path from router to destination network
Reliability Number in range 1 to 255; 255 being the most reliable
MTUMinimum path Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU) (never used in the metric calculation)
Hop Count Number of routers a packet passes through when routing to a remote network, used to limit the EIGRP AS. EIGRP maintains a hop count for every route, however, the hop count is not used in metric calculation. It is only verified against a predefined maximum on an EIGRP router (by default it is set to 100 and can be changed to any value between 1 and 255). Routes having a hop count higher than the maximum will be advertised as unreachable by an EIGRP router.
Routing metric
The composite routing metric calculation uses five parameters, so-called K values, K1 through K5. These act as multipliers or modifiers in the composite metric calculation. K1 is not equal to Bandwidth, etc.
By default, only total delay and minimum bandwidth are considered when EIGRP is started on a router, but an administrator can enable or disable all the K values as needed to consider the other Vector metrics.
For the purposes of comparing routes, these are combined together in a weighted formula to produce a single overall metric:
where the various constants ( through ) can be set by the user to produce varying behaviors. An important and unintuitive fact is that if is set to zero, the term is not used (i.e. taken as 1).
The default is for and to be set to 1, and the rest to zero, effectively reducing the above formula to .
Obviously, these constants must be set to the same value on all routers in an EIGRP system, or permanent routing loops may result. Cisco routers running EIGRP will not form an EIGRP adjacency and will complain about K-values mismatch until these values are identical on these routers.
EIGRP scales the interface Bandwidth and Delay configuration values with following calculations:
= 107 / Value of the bandwidth interface command
= Value of the delay interface command
On Cisco routers, the interface bandwidth is a configurable static parameter expressed in kilobits per second (setting this only affects metric calculation and not actual line bandwidth). Dividing a value of 107 kbit/s (i.e. 10 Gbit/s) by the interface bandwidth statement value yields a result that is used in the weighted formula. The interface delay is a configurable static parameter expressed in tens of microseconds. EIGRP takes this value directly without scaling into the weighted formula. However, various show commands display the interface delay in microseconds. Therefore, if given a delay value in microseconds, it must first be divided by 10 before using it in the weighted formula.
IGRP uses the same basic formula for computing the overall metric, the only difference is that in IGRP, the formula does not contain the scaling factor of 256. In fact, this scaling factor was introduced as a simple means to facilitate backward compatility between EIGRP and IGRP: In IGRP, the overall metric is a 24-bit value while EIGRP uses a 32-bit value to express this metric. By multiplying a 24-bit value with the factor of 256 (effectively bit-shifting it 8 bits to the left), the value is extended into 32 bits, and vice versa. This way, redistributing information between EIGRP and IGRP involves simply dividing or multiplying the metric value by a factor of 256, which is done automatically.
Feasible successor
A feasible successor for a particular destination is a next hop router that is guaranteed not to be a part of a routing loop. This condition is verified by testing the feasibility condition.
Thus, every successor is also a feasible successor. However, in most references about EIGRP the term feasible successor is used to denote only those routes which provide a loop-free path but which are not successors (i.e. they do not provide the least distance). From this point of view, for a reachable destination, there is always at least one successor, however, there might not be any feasible successors.
A feasible successor provides a working route to the same destination, although with a higher distance. At any time, a router can send a packet to a destination marked "Passive" through any of its successors or feasible successors without alerting them in the first place, and this packet will be delivered properly. Feasible successors are also recorded in the topology table.
The feasible successor effectively provides a backup route in the case that existing successors become unavailable. Also, when performing unequal-cost load-balancing (balancing the network traffic in inverse proportion to the cost of the routes), the feasible successors are used as next hops in the routing table for the load-balanced destination.
By default, the total count of successors and feasible successors for a destination stored in the routing table is limited to four. This limit can be changed in the range from 1 to 6. In more recent versions of Cisco IOS (e.g. 12.4), this range is between 1 and 16.
Active and passive state
A destination in the topology table can be marked either as passive or active. A passive state is a state when the router has identified the successor(s) for the destination. The destination changes to active state when the current successor no longer satisfies the feasibility condition and there are no feasible successors identified for that destination (i.e. no backup routes are available). The destination changes back from active to passive when the router received replies to all queries it has sent to its neighbors. Notice that if a successor stops satisfying the feasibility condition but there is at least one feasible successor available, the router will promote a feasible successor with the lowest total distance (the distance as reported by the feasible successor plus the cost of the link to this neighbor) to a new successor and the destination will remain in the passive state.
Feasibility condition
The feasibility condition is a sufficient condition for loop freedom in EIGRP-routed network. It is used to select the successors and feasible successors that are guaranteed to be on a loop-free route to a destination. Its simplified formulation is strikingly simple:
If, for a destination, a neighbor router advertises a distance that is strictly lower than our feasible distance, then this neighbor lies on a loop-free route to this destination.
or in other words,
If, for a destination, a neighbor router tells us that it is closer to the destination than we have ever been, then this neighbor lies on a loop-free route to this destination.
It is important to realize that this condition is a sufficient, not a necessary, condition. That means that neighbors which satisfy this condition are guaranteed to be on a loop-free path to some destination, however, there may be also other neighbors on a loop-free path which do not satisfy this condition. However, such neighbors do not provide the shortest path to a destination, therefore, not using them does not present any significant impairment of the network functionality. These neighbors will be re-evaluated for possible usage if the router transitions to Active state for that destination.
Unequal Path Cost Load Balancing
EIGRP features load balancing on paths with different costs. A multiplier, called variance, is used to determine which paths to include into load balancing. The variance is set to 1 by default, which means load balancing on equal cost paths. The maximum variance is 128. The minimum metric of a route is multiplied by the variance value. Each path with a metric that is smaller than the result is used in load balancing.
With the functionality of the Unequal Path Cost Load Balancing on EIGRP, OSPF protocol is unable to design the network by Unequal Path Cost Load Balancing. Regarding the Unequal Path Cost Load Balancing function on industry usage, the network design can be flexible with the traffic management.
EIGRP and compatibility to other vendors
Cisco released details of the proprietary EIGRP routing protocol in an RFC in an effort to assist companies whose networks operate in a multi-vendor environment. The protocol is described in . EIGRP was developed 20 years ago, yet it is still one of the primary Cisco routing protocols due to its purported usability and scalability in comparison to other protocols.
Cisco has stated that EIGRP is an open standard but they leave out several core details in the RFC definition which makes interoperability hard to setup between different vendors' routers when the protocol is used.
References
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External links
Cisco protocols
Routing protocols
he:Interior Gateway Routing Protocol#EIGRP |
4834143 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIDI%20tuning%20standard | MIDI tuning standard | MIDI Tuning Standard (MTS) is a specification of precise musical pitch agreed to by the MIDI Manufacturers Association in the MIDI protocol. MTS allows for both a bulk tuning dump message, giving a tuning for each of 128 notes, and a tuning message for individual notes as they are played.
Frequency values
If ƒ is a frequency, then the corresponding frequency data value d may be computed by
The quantity log2 (ƒ / 440 Hz) is the number of octaves above the 440-Hz concert A (it is negative if the frequency is below that pitch). Multiplying it by 12 gives the number of semitones above that frequency. Adding 69 gives the number of semitones above the C five octaves below middle C.
Since 440 Hz is a widely used standard concert A (e.g. USA, UK), and since that is represented in MIDI terms by the integer 69 (nine semitones above middle C, which is 60), this gives a real number which expresses pitch in a manner consistent with MIDI and integer notation, known as the midi note number.
Converting from midi note number (d) to frequency (f) is given by the following formula:
Frequency Data Format
The frequency data format allows for the precise notation of frequencies that differ from equal temperament.
"Frequency data shall be defined in [units] which are fractions of a semitone. The frequency range starts at MIDI note 0, C = 8.1758 Hz, and extends above MIDI note 127, G = 12543.854 Hz. The first byte of the frequency data word specifies the highest equal-tempered semitone not exceeding the frequency. The next two bytes (14 bits) specify the fraction of 100 cents above the semitone at which the frequency lies. Effective resolution = 100 cents / 214 = .0061 cents."
This higher resolution allows a logarithmic representation of pitch in which the semitone is divided into 1282 = 214 = 16384 parts, which means the octave is divided into 196608 (logarithmically) equal parts. These parts are exactly 100/16384 cents (approximately 0.0061 cents) in size, which is far below the threshold of human pitch perception and which therefore allows a very accurate representation of pitch.
Applications
The precision pitch values may be used in microtonal music, just intonation, meantone temperament, or other alternative tunings.
Software which supports MTS includes Scala, TiMidity++, ZynAddSubFX and FluidSynth.
Software plugin instruments which support MTS include Native Instruments FM8, Synthogy Ivory, and Xen-Arts' various xenharmonic VSTi plugins, including the FMTS FM synthesizer, Ivor virtual analog synthesizer, and XenFont SoundFont sample player.
Hardware instruments in current production which support MTS include: Dave Smith Instruments (DSI) Rev-2, Prophet-12, Prophet-6, Oberheim OB-6, Moog Sub37, Minitaur, Novation Bass Station II, Peak, Sonoclast Plastic Pitch Plus, and the Waldorf Kyra.
See also
Microtonal music
Microtuner
Musical tuning
References
External links
MTS specification
MTS specification
Microtonal music software supporting MTS
Scala (Windows, Linux, Mac)
Custom Scale Editor (Windows, Mac)
microsynth (Windows, Mac)
alt-tuner (Windows, Linux, Mac)
TiMidity++ (Windows, Linux, Mac)
FluidSynth (Windows, Linux, Mac)
Tune Smithy (Windows)
Xen-Arts Microtonal MIDI Software (Windows VSTi)
Relayer (Windows, Mac)
L'il Miss' Scale Oven (Mac)
Gervill (Windows, Linux, Mac)
Computer file formats
Electronic music
MIDI standards
MIDI
Music notation file formats
Musical tuning |
20866707 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CrunchBang%20Linux | CrunchBang Linux | CrunchBang Linux (abbreviated #!) was a Linux distribution derived from Debian by Philip Newborough (who is more commonly known by his username, corenominal).
CrunchBang was designed to use comparatively few system resources. Instead of a desktop environment it used a customized implementation of the Openbox window manager. Many of its preinstalled applications used the GTK+ widget toolkit.
CrunchBang had its own software repository but drew the vast majority of packages from Debian's repositories.
Philip Newborough announced on 6 February 2015 that he had stopped developing CrunchBang and that users would benefit from using vanilla Debian. Some Linux distributions have arisen in its place in an effort to continue its environment. Among the most significant are BunsenLabs and CrunchBang++.
Editions
CrunchBang Linux provided an Openbox version for i686, i486 and amd64 architectures. Until October 2010 there also was a "Lite" version with fewer installed applications. The "Lite" version was effectively discontinued after the distribution on which it was based – Ubuntu 9.04 – reached its end-of-life and CrunchBang prepared to switch to a different base system.
CrunchBang 10, made available in February 2011, was the first version based on Debian. The final version, CrunchBang 11, was made available on 6 May 2013.
Each CrunchBang Linux release was given a version number as well as a code name, using a name of a Muppet Show character. The first letter of the code name was the first letter of the upstream Debian release (previously Debian Squeeze and CrunchBang Statler and currently Debian Wheezy and CrunchBang Waldorf).
Reception
In May 2013 Jim Lynch of desktoplinuxreviews.com reviewed CrunchBang 11:
Successors
Newborough announced in February 2015 that he was abandoning further development of CrunchBang Linux, feeling that it no longer served a purpose. The users did not all agree, and a number proceeded to develop successor distributions BunsenLabs, CrunchBang++ (#!++) and CrunchBang-Monara.
BunsenLabs
BunsenLabs Linux is a community-organized successor to Crunchbang. It is based on the Debian 10 (Buster) stable release. Between 17 and 30 September 2015, CrunchBang's domain began redirecting to BunsenLabs.
BunsenLabs is one of the few modern Debian-based live distributions that still offers a CD edition supporting 32-bit systems, with both the X Window System and a modern version of Firefox, making the distro useful for running on old computers with just around 1 GB of RAM.
The latest version, based on Debian 10, was released on 2 August 2020.
CrunchBang++
CrunchBang PlusPlus (#!++) was developed in response to Newborough's announcement of the end of CrunchBang. It is currently based on the Debian Buster (release 10.1) distribution. Release 1.0 was announced on 29 April 2015. A version based on Debian 10.0 was released on 8 July 2019. The latest version based on Debian 11.0 was released on 16 August 2021.
CrunchBang-Monara
CrunchBang-Monara is another successor to CrunchBang. It is based on the Debian 8 stable release.
References
External links
https://www.crunchbangplusplus.org/ Official Crunchbang++ website
Official website archives, on Archive.org
CrunchBang Archive
Debian-based distributions
Discontinued Linux distributions
Linux distributions |
33391540 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow%20table | Shadow table | Shadow tables are objects in computer science used to improve the way machines, networks and programs handle information. More specifically, a shadow table is an object that is read and written by a processor and contains data similar to (in the same format as) its primary table, which is the table it's "shadowing". Shadow tables usually contain data that is relevant to the operation and maintenance of its primary table, but not within the subset of data required for the primary table to exist. Shadow tables are related to the data type "trails" in data storage systems. Trails are very similar to shadow tables but instead of storing identically formatted information that is different (like shadow tables), they store a history of modifications and functions operated on a table.
History
Shadow tables, as an abstract concept, have been used since the beginning of modern computing. However, widespread usage of the specific phrase "shadow table" began when relational database management systems (RDBMS) became widely used in the 1970s.
The initial usage of relational DBMs for commercial purposes lead to the term "shadow tables" becoming widespread. A relational DBM uses related data fields (columns) to correlate information between tables. For example, two tables, transaction_user and transaction_amount, would both contain the column "key", and keys between tables would match, making it easy to find both the user and the amount of a specific transaction if the key is known. This relational technology allowed people to correlate information stored in a primary table and its shadow.
Applications
Since shadow tables are such an abstract concept, their applications remain in the realm of computer science. Although their usage may not be specifically declared as "shadow table(s)", the concept remains the same. Shadow tables are usually used in order to improve the performance, capacity, and ability of an existing computer/network system. In most applications, shadow tables are usually a carbon copy of their primary tables' structure, but with unique data.
Theoretical Application
Since shadow tables are a specific type of object in computer science, the applications vary greatly, because their application depends on what data is stored in the shadow table and how that data is used. The following is a list of general, abstract applications for shadow tables that span all real-world applications.
Storage - The storage of a data entry in a shadow table that would have normally been deleted or modified.
Encapsulation - The placement of data within a shadow table in order to separate a set of data from another.
Modularity - The placement of data within a shadow table to make modification and handling of the data easier.
Engineering Applications
When shadow tables are used to solve current problems in today's computer/network systems, usually a combination of more than one of the aforementioned theoretical/abstract applications of shadow tables are used. The following list is a very tiny subset of all real-world applications of shadow tables and is only shown to give an example of common applications of shadow tables.
Database Management Systems
Database Management Systems (DBMs) are software that handle the maintenance, security, and manipulation of data tables. Well known and widely used examples of DBMs are SQL Server, MySQL, Oracle and PostgreSQL. Each of these DBMs create a virtual "environment" in which tables of data are held and can be read and written to via a specific type of programming language known as a query language. Query languages specialize in the simple modification or retrieval of large and specific amounts of data. Most modern DBMs specifically support SQL(a specific type of query language). Using SQL, one can easily create tables that share the same structure as already existing tables. SQL can also get data written to these new tables, creating a shadow table. Shadow tables are often used with DBMs to improve efficiency by preventing redundant operations being performed by the DBM. Shadow tables are also easy to implement in most modern DBMs because they do not affect the original data, so the way the databases and applications accessing them work together is not affected, unless desired.
For example, shadow tables could be used in an efficient backup system that supports large data tables that rarely change.
Without shadow tables, one could create a program that simply saves a version of that table every day.
After 50 days, with this backup system, there would be 50 copies of the same table,
With shadow tables, one could create an empty "shadow table" of that table and use a program that inserts a copy of a row into the shadow table every time that row gets deleted from the primary table.
After 50 days using the shadow table system in the worst-case scenario, there would be one copy of the primary table, assuming every row in the primary table got deleted.
Interfacing
Interfacing is the process of using "layers" to simplify the communications between technologies and between people and technologies. One example of layered interfacing is the buttons and menus used by home computer operating systems. These graphical objects exist as a link to the underlying "buttons" of the operating system. The command console is one level below these graphical objects as it gives you an even closer link to the underlying functions of the operating system.
Shadow tables are often used as layers between the end-user and the database. For example, if a user logs into his/her bank account and requests a history of all his/her past transactions, the database usually stores all transactions for all users in one huge table and distinguishes the parties involved in each transaction in one specific column of that table. At this point the server has two options:
The database can send the whole transactions table.
The database can send a shadow table that only contains the transactions involving the user that requested his/her transaction history.
The second option is usually more favorable because it saves bandwidth and processing power on the user's end. It also keeps others' transaction data secure.
Operating System Virtualization
Operating system virtualization is the process of simulating the operation of a computer within another computer. This technique is useful for someone who wants to run more than one type of operating system on his/her PC concurrently. Shadow page tables are often used in simulating more than one operating system on a single set of memory and processor. A page table is used by an operating system to map the virtual memory, the actual memory used by programs and the operating system to store information, to its location on the physical memory, the hardware-specific memory stored in bytes on the RAM (Random Access Memory). A shadow page table is a pseudo-page table within a computer's main page table which allows a system to run more than one kind of operating system concurrently.
References
External links
Virtualization: Architectural Considerations And Other Evaluation Criteria
Mountain Man on Database History
Shadow Table Application Specifics
Object-oriented programming |
52822069 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khoros%2C%20LLC | Khoros, LLC | Khoros, formerly Spredfast + Lithium, is a global customer engagement software company that provides online community management, social media marketing, social media analytics, digital care, and content management software and services to enterprise brands and agencies. Khoros owns over a dozen patents for social media marketing, online community, and care technologies.
Khoros is headquartered in Austin, Texas, with offices in San Francisco, Portland, New York City, London, Bangalore, Paris, Sydney, and Hamburg. The largest office, with almost 500 employees, is located in Austin. As of 2019, Khoros has nearly 1,000 employees and works with more than 2,000 brands globally.
History
Khoros is the product of a 2019 merger between two software companies: Spredfast and Lithium Technologies.
Spredfast
Spredfast was founded in 2008 by a group of software engineers and social marketing experts based in Austin, Texas. Spredfast grew quickly as a startup, raising almost $140 million in funding from 2008-2016.
In 2012, Spredfast launched their first annual user conference, Smart Social Summit, with the goal of helping social media marketers learn from peers and industry leaders. The 2012 event was located in Austin, but due to its popularity, Spredfast held additional Smart Social Summits in New York and London in subsequent years. Speakers at these events have included Michelle Obama, Arianna Huffington, and Trevor Noah.
In April 2014, Spredfast acquired Mass Relevance, a social curation company whose technology aggregates and filters tweets to be displayed on broadcast TV. In August 2015, Spredfast acquired data-focused social marketing company Shoutlet.
Before announcing its merger with Lithium in 2018, Spredfast had more than 500 employees and more than 650 customers in 84 countries.
Lithium Technologies
Lithium was founded in 2001 by a group including Dennis Fong, Lyle Fong, Michel Thouati, Kirk Yokomizo, John Joh, Nader Alizadeh, Michael Yang, and Matt Ayres. From the time of its founding to the time of its acquisition in 2017, Lithium secured over $150 million in funding through multiple rounds of investment.
In late 2008, Lithium completed a detailed analysis of a decade's worth of proprietary data that represents billions of interactions and millions of users across dozens of communities. This research helped Lithium contribute to a new standard for measuring online community health – the Community Health Index.
On May 11, 2010, Lithium acquired social media monitoring (SMM) provider Scout Labs, whose service allows brands to engage with their customers beyond the community and monitor, map, and measure customer conversations on the social web.
In October 2012, Lithium acquired the Austin-based company Social Dynamx, which provided cloud-based software that allows large call centers to manage their social customer service. Lithium renamed the former Social Dynamx product "Lithium Social Web" and integrated it with its core Lithium Communities product.
On March 27, 2014: Lithium Technologies acquired Klout, a software that rates users’ influence on social media. The higher a user’s “Klout Score,” the more influential they were on social media. Lithium closed the service on May 25, 2018.
In June 2015, Microsoft and Lithium signed a strategic alliance agreement to integrate Lithium social media and community data into Microsoft Dynamics.
Merger
In May 2017, Lithium announced that it had been acquired by Vista Equity Partners, an Austin-based private equity firm focused on software, data, and technology-enabled businesses. In October 2018, Vista Equity Partners acquired Spredfast and announced that it would be merged with Lithium Technologies.
On March 5, 2019, Spredfast and Lithium formally announced their new name: Khoros, the Greek word for chorus.
In August 2019, Khoros announced that Jack Blaha would take over as chief executive officer. Blaha was formerly CEO at Lone Wolf Technologies, another company in the Vista Equity Partners portfolio.
On September 23, 2019, Khoros opened its new office in Northwest Austin.
Acquisitions
In January 2021, Khoros acquired two companies: Topbox, an enterprise customer experience (CX) analytics software maker, and Flow.ai, a conversational AI platform for designing and managing chatbots.
References
Companies based in Austin, Texas
Social media companies |
89769 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screensaver | Screensaver | A screensaver (or screen saver) is a computer program that blanks the display screen or fills it with moving images or patterns, when the computer has been idle for a designated time. The original purpose of screensavers was to prevent phosphor burn-in on CRT or plasma computer monitors (hence the name). Though most modern monitors are not susceptible to this issue (with the notable exception of OLED technology, which has individual pixels vulnerable to burnout), screensaver programs are still used for other purposes. Screensavers are often set up to offer a basic layer of security, by requiring a password to re-access the device. Some screensaver programs also use otherwise-idle computer resources to do useful work, such as processing for distributed computing projects.
As well as computers, modern television operating systems, media players, and other digital entertainment systems may include optional screensavers.
Purpose
Screen protection
Before the advent of LCD screens, most computer screens were based on cathode ray tubes (CRTs). When the same image is displayed on a CRT screen for long periods, the properties of the exposed areas of the phosphor coating on the inside of the screen gradually and permanently change, eventually leading to a darkened shadow or "ghost" image on the screen, called a screen burn-in. Cathode ray televisions, oscilloscopes and other devices that use CRTs are all susceptible to phosphor burn-in, as are plasma displays to some extent.
Screen-saver programs were designed to help avoid these effects by automatically changing the images on the screen during periods of user inactivity.
For CRTs used in public, such as ATMs and railway ticketing machines, the risk of burn-in is especially high because a stand-by display is shown whenever the machine is not in use. Older machines designed without burn-in problems taken into consideration often display evidence of screen damage, with images or text such as "Please insert your card" (in the case of ATMs) visible even when the display changes while the machine is in use. Blanking the screen is out of the question as the machine would appear to be out of service. In these applications, burn-in can be prevented by shifting the position of the display contents every few seconds, or by having a number of different images that are changed regularly.
Later CRTs were much less susceptible to burn-in than older models due to improvements in phosphor coatings, and because modern computer images are generally lower contrast than the stark green- or white-on-black text and graphics of earlier machines. LCD computer monitors, including the display panels used in laptop computers, are not susceptible to burn-in because the image is not directly produced by phosphors (although they can suffer from a less extreme and usually non-permanent form of image persistence).
Modern usage
While modern screens are not susceptible to the issues discussed above, screensavers are still used. Primarily these are for decorative/entertainment purposes, or for password protection. They usually feature moving images or patterns and sometimes sound effects.
As screensavers are generally expected to activate when users are away from their machines, many screensavers can be configured to ask users for a password before permitting the user to resume work. This is a basic security measure against another person accessing the machine while the user is absent.
Some screensavers activate a useful background task, such as a virus scan or a distributed computing application (such as the SETI@home project). This allows applications to use resources only when the computer would be otherwise idle.
The Ken Burns panning and zooming effect is sometimes used to bring the image to life.
History
Decades before the first computers using this technology were invented, Robert A. Heinlein gave an example of how they might be used in his novel Stranger In A Strange Land (1961):
The first screensaver was allegedly written for the original IBM PC by John Socha, best known for creating the Norton Commander; he also coined the term screen saver. The screensaver, named scrnsave, was published in the December 1983 issue of the Softalk magazine. It simply blanked the screen after three minutes of inactivity (an interval which could be changed by recompiling the program).
By 1983 a Zenith Data Systems executive included "screen-saver" among the new Z-29 computer terminal's features, telling InfoWorld that it "blanks out the display after 15 minutes of nonactivity, preventing burned-in character displays". The first screensaver that allowed users to change the activating time was released on Apple's Lisa, in 1983.
The Atari 400 and 800's screens would also go through random screensaver-like color changes if they were left inactive for about 8 minutes. Normal users had no control over this, though programs did. These computers, released in 1979, are technically earlier "screen savers." Prior to these computers, games for the 1977 Atari VCS/2600 gaming console such as Combat and Breakout, included color cycling in order to prevent burn-in of game images into 1970s-era televisions. In addition, the first model of the TI-30 calculator from 1976 featured a screensaver, which consisted of a decimal point running across the display after 30 seconds of inactivity. This was chiefly used to save battery power, as the TI-30 LED display was more power intensive than later LCD models. These are examples of screensavers in ROM or the firmware of a computer.
Android 4.2 introduced "daydreams", screensavers that activate while the device is docked or charging.
In 2015 the screensaver "Event listeners" of van den Dorpel became the first work of art that was purchased by a museum (Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna) using the cryptocurrency bitcoin.
Today with the help of modern graphics technologies there is a wide variety of screensavers. Because of 3D computer graphics, which provide realistic environments, 3D screensavers are available.
Underlying architecture
Screensavers are usually designed and coded using a variety of programming languages as well as graphics interfaces. Typically the authors of screensavers use the C or C++ programming languages, along with Graphics Device Interface (GDI), such as OpenGL ("Open Graphics Library", which works on many, if not most, platforms capable of 3D rendering), or alternatives such as Microsoft DirectX (which is limited to Microsoft platforms, mainly Microsoft Windows and the Microsoft Xbox), to craft their final products. Several OS X screensavers are created and designed using Quartz Composer. The screensaver interfaces indirectly with the operating system to cause the physical display screen to be overlaid with one or more graphic "scenes". The screensaver typically terminates after receiving a message from the operating system that a key has been pressed or the mouse has been moved.
Microsoft Windows
If the system detects inactivity lasting longer than the time specified in the control panel, check if the active program is a simple program (and not another screensaver) by sending the "WM_SYSCOMMAND" message with the "SC_SCREENSAVE" argument. If the program calls in response the standard system function (DefWindowProc), the screensaver defined in the control panel screen runs.
A Windows screensaver is a regular Portable Executable (PE) with the .scr file extension. This enables malware authors to add ".scr" to the name of any win32 executable file, and thereby increase likelihood that users of Microsoft Windows will run it unintentionally. In addition, this program should support the following command line parameters:
With no parameter – shows the Settings dialog box or do nothing.
ScreenSaver.scr /s
Runs the screensaver.
ScreenSaver.scr /p or /l <HWND>
Previews the screensaver as child of window. <HWND> (presented as unsigned decimal number) is an identifier (handle) of the window in which to appear preview.
ScreenSaver.scr /c
Shows the Settings dialog box, modal to the foreground window.
ScreenSaver.scr /a <HWND>
Changes password, modal to window <HWND>. Windows 95 screensavers must handle it.
MacOS
Under MacOS, screensavers are regular MacOS application bundles with the .saver file extension.
Internally, the screensaver must define a class that is subclass of ScreenSaverView. The new class must be assigned as NSPrincipalClass in the xcode project, so that when the screensaver is launched by the system, this class gets instantiated.
Atari
As one of the first screensavers appeared in 8-bit Atari computers, forcing systemic color changes when the computer is idle lasting a few minutes (different times depending on the model), stored in the system ROM of the computer.
Considerations
Monitors running screensavers consume the same amount of power as when running normally, which can be anywhere from a few watts for small LCD monitors to several hundred for large plasma displays. Most modern computers can be set to switch the monitor into a lower power mode, blanking the screen altogether. A power-saving mode for monitors is usually part of the power management options supported in most modern operating systems, though it must also be supported by the computer hardware and monitor itself.
Using a screensaver with a flat panel or LCD screen not powering down the screen can actually decrease the lifetime of the display, since the fluorescent backlight remains lit and ages faster than it would if the screen is turned off and on frequently. As fluorescent tubes age they grow progressively dimmer, and they can be expensive or difficult to replace. A typical LCD screen loses about 50% of its brightness during a normal product lifetime. In most cases, the tube is an integral part of the LCD and the entire assembly needs to be replaced. This is not true of LED backlit displays.
Thus the term "screen saver" is now something of a misnomer – the best way to save the screen and also save electricity consumed by screen would simply be to have the computer turn off the monitor. Screensavers displaying complex 3D graphics might even add to overall power draw.
Entertainment
After Dark was an early screensaver for the Macintosh platform, and later PC/Windows, which prominently featured whimsical designs such as "flying toasters". Perhaps in response to the workplace environment in which they are often viewed, many screensavers continue this legacy of whimsy by populating the idle monitor with animals or fish, games, and visual expressions of mathematics equations (through the use of fractals, Fourier transforms or other means) as in the Electric Sheep screensaver.
At least one screensaver, Johnny Castaway told a humorous animated story over many months. The ability of screensavers to divert and entertain is used for promotion, especially to build buzz for "event-based" products such as feature films.
The screensaver is also a creative outlet for computer programmers. The Unix-based screensaver XScreenSaver collects the display effects of other Unix screensavers, which are termed "display hacks" in the jargon file tradition of US computer science academics. It also collects forms of computer graphics effects called demo effects, such as were originally produced by the demo scene.
Microsoft Windows
On older versions of Microsoft Windows the native screensaver format had the potential to install a virus when run (as a screen saver was just an ordinary application with a different extension). When any file with the file suffix ".scr" was opened, for example from an e-mail attachment, Windows would execute the .scr (screensaver) file automatically: this had the potential to allow a virus or malware to install itself. Modern versions of Windows can read tags left by applications such as Internet Explorer and verify the publisher of the file, presenting a confirmation to the user.
On August 5, 2006, the BBC reported that "free screensavers" and "screensavers" respectively were the first and third most likely search terms to return links to malware, the second being BearShare.
By launching the "bubbles" screensaver executeable through the bubbles.scr /p65552 command-line parameter, it runs as desktop wallpaper, the bubbles are smaller, and there are more bubbles on screen. This is an easter egg.
See also
Degaussing
References
External links
Display technology
Utility software types |
822130 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hex%20%28Discworld%29 | Hex (Discworld) | Hex is a fictional computer featured in the Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett. First appearing in Soul Music, Hex is an elaborate, magic-powered, self-building computer (not unlike the 'shamble', a kind of magical device used by the Witches of the Discworld) featuring ants and cheese as part of its architecture, and is housed in the basement of the High Energy Magic Building at the Unseen University (UU) in the twin city of Ankh-Morpork.
Hex is a computer unlike any other the Disc has ever seen, which is not particularly exceptional because previously, all other "computers" on the Disc had consisted of druidic stone circles. Programmed via 'Softlore', Hex runs and evolves under the watchful eyes of wizard Ponder Stibbons, who becomes the de facto IT manager at UU because he's the only one who understands what he's talking about.
Origins and evolution
Hex has its origins in a device that briefly appeared in Soul Music, created by Ponder Stibbons and some student Wizards in the High Energy Magic building. In this form it was simply a complex network of glass tubes, containing ants. The wizards could then use punched cards to control which tubes the ants could crawl through, enabling it to perform simple mathematical functions.
By the time of the next novel, Interesting Times, Hex had become a lot more complex, and was constantly reinventing itself. Part of it is now clockwork, which interfaces with the ant-farm via a paternoster lift the ants can ride on that turns a significant cogwheel. Its main purposes were, in a sense, data compression and information retrieval: to analyse spells, to see if there were simpler "meta-spells" underlying them, and to help Stibbons with his study of "invisible writings" by running the spells used to bring the writings into existence. (These spells must be cast rapidly, and each one can only be used once before the universe notices they shouldn't work.) In The Last Continent it was explained that the aforementioned "invisible writings" were snippets of books that were written a long time ago and lost, snippets of books that hadn't been written yet, and snippets of books that would never be written. The theory behind this was, all books are tenuously connected, due to the fact that every book ever written cites information from every other book, whether the writers mean to or not. Hex helps Stibbons by magically trawling the ether for these scraps of information.
In Hogfather, Hex contained several things that nobody remembered installing, and was asking about electricity. It was at around this time that the wizards become concerned that it may be trying to become something they didn't understand.
By The Science of Discworld Hex was capable of "once and future computing": increasing its abilities simply by deducing that the required processing power would exist eventually. Presumably this requires a high expenditure of magic, as it has not been mentioned again; at the time, there was a massive excess of magic available due to a near catastrophic overload of the university's experimental thaumic reactor. This virtual memory appeared as translucent silver towers superimposed onto the real Hex. Hex was sufficiently intelligent by this time not to tell the wizards what it was doing, in case it worried them.
By Unseen Academicals, Ponder Stibbons has placed a mask on the wall to communicate with, even though Hex's voice seems to come from everywhere as it travels in blit space. (Ponder comments "somehow, well, it feels better to have something to talk to.")
By the time of The Science of Discworld II: The Globe Stibbons has hooked Hex up to the University's clacks tower. Hex has worked out all the codes, meaning the University can now use the clacks for free, and has the Disc's first modem. (The legal issues have been carefully considered by Archchancellor Mustrum Ridcully, who concluded that 'no-one was going to find out, so they may as well do as they please.') It is, however, debatable whether-or-not the Patrician, Lord Havelock Vetinari, knows.
In The Art of Discworld, Pratchett explains that "the wizards invented something sufficiently computer-like that computerness entered into it."
Structure and technology
Currently, Hex is activated by "initializing the GBL," which Ponder Stibbons reluctantly admits means "pulling the Great Big Lever" (similar to the Internet slang "BRS", or "big red switch"). This is also a reference to the IBM Mainframe terminology for booting, known as IPL. This action releases millions of ants into a much more complex network of glass tubes that makes up the bulk of Hex, hence the sticker on Hex that reads "Anthill inside": a pun on Intel's advertisement slogan "Intel Inside". Hex "thinks" by controlling which tubes the ants can crawl through, thus allowing it to perform increasingly complex computations if enough ants are provided (that is, if there are enough bugs in the system). This is a reference to Douglas Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach in which there exists a sentient ant colony, with the ants acting as neurons. Hex can now be given input through a huge wooden keyboard, in analogue writing by means of a complicated mechanical eye designed by Hex itself, or vocally through an old hearing trumpet, and gives output by means of a series of wooden blocks and later a quill on a hinged lever (echoing the real-world evolution of computer output from paper tape to video monitor).
It is all powered by a waterwheel covered in male sheep skulls, i.e. RAM. When it is particularly busy, an hourglass comes down on a spring – another sideways reference to Windows. Another apparently important feature is an aquarium, so the operator has something to watch when Hex is working (Hex's screensaver). Hex's long-term memory storage is a massive beehive contained in the next room. The presence of the bees makes this secure memory, because attempting to tamper with it would result in being "stung to death" (as described in Hogfather). As a further advantage, when Hex is turned off for the summer, the beehive will provide quite a lot of honey.
There is also a mouse (pun for a computer pointer) that has built its nest in the middle of Hex. It doesn't seem to do anything, but Hex stops working if it is removed, or if Ponder forgets to feed it cheese (also from Hogfather). Hex also stops working (with the error message "Mine! Waah!") if the FTB is removed/disengaged; "FTB" stands for "Fluffy Teddy Bear," which was Hex's Hogswatchnight gift when Death stood in for the Hogfather. (FTB is a pun on FTP, the File Transfer Protocol.) Stibbons is concerned by these signs that Hex might be alive, but dismisses these thoughts, insisting that Hex only thinks it is alive.
Hex can apparently be shut down completely by means of a Big Red Lever (BRL). This seems to worry it further, indicating sentient life because it is afraid of death (in this case shutting down). An example of this appears in Hogfather: when Death approaches Hex, it asks if it is "Big Red Lever time".
Other Discworld computers
According to The Science of Discworld III: Darwin's Watch, another Hex-like machine has been invented by the smaller magical university of Brazeneck College. This is much simpler than the original, however; according to Stibbons, Hex is technically a Very Big Thing, while the Brazeneck device is barely a Quite Big Thing. (The next step up would be a Great Big Thing, every particle of the universe being modeled within it; apparently these terms are quite exact, as when the Lecturer in Recent Runes postulated that the Brazeneck wizards would try and build an Even Bigger Thing, Ponder Stibbons corrected him. According to him, a Very Big Thing is capable of pushing boundaries twice as big up to three times as far as a Quite Big Thing).
The Hex-like machine was mentioned again in Unseen Academicals, as constructed by the staff of the Higher Energy Magic Building at Brazeneck college (of whom the Archancellor is the retired Dean of Unseen University), and was given the name Pex. Pex was apparently powered by chickens rather than ants, a technology which was considered superior as the eggs it provided were edible. Adrian Turnipseed was responsible for its construction and maintenance, using various technologies he had learned from Ponder while helping to build the original Hex. However, he had apparently not learned well enough, as a seventy-foot chicken broke out of the Higher Energy Magic Building and demolished much of Pseudopolis, and presumably Pex as well.
Messages
Hex has a habit of spewing bizarre messages. Its "Out of Cheese" error from Interesting Times caught the fancy of many information technology employees, turning up in real-world systems
and in programming books.
It alludes to the many confusing error messages that technology users have had to put up with in the Information Age. "Out of Paper" (also seen as "PC LOAD LETTER" for some printers) is familiar to many office workers. "Redo From Start" was the somewhat unhelpful error message produced by the BASIC interpreter in many early home computers when non-numeric characters were entered in response to a prompt for numerical input. Other inscrutable Hex-talk includes:
+++Mr. Jelly! Mr. Jelly!+++
+++Error At Address: 14, Treacle Mine Road, Ankh-Morpork+++
+++MELON MELON MELON+++
+++Divide By Cucumber Error. Please Reinstall Universe And Reboot +++
+++Whoops! Here Comes The Cheese! +++
+++Oneoneoneoneoneoneone+++
Hex's messages are often delimited by the sequence +++, which recalls the escape sequence in the Hayes command set, a standard used in dial-up modems.
In the videogame Discworld II: Missing, Presumed..., if the player asks the question "Why?", Hex spits out various error messages different from those in the books:
*Blip* *Blip* *Blip* End of Cheese Error
*Blip* *Blip* *Blip* Can Not Find Drive Z:
*Blip* *Blip* *Blip* Unknown Application Error
*Blip* *Blip* *Blip* Please Reboot Universe
*Blip* *Blip* *Blip* Year Of The Sloth *Blip* *Blip* *Blip*
This echoes the science-fiction "does not compute" cliché, in which the protagonist confuses, locks up, or destroys a dangerous computer by giving it riddles or making paradoxical statements such as "everything I say is a lie".
Appearances
Hex appears in the books Interesting Times, Soul Music, Hogfather, The Last Continent, Going Postal, The Science of Discworld I, II and III, Making Money and Unseen Academicals and in the video game Discworld II: Missing Presumed...!?
Real world connections
The inspiration for Hex, which evolves through seemingly unexplainable upgrades like extra cheese, the FTB protocol, a CWL (Clothes Wringer from the Laundry, for crunching numbers and other things), and "small religious pictures" (icons), came from Pratchett's own early experiments with upgrades on his ZX-81.
The name is a play on several meanings of the word "hex": a hex can be a witch (hence the video game Hexen meaning witches) or a magical spell, and "hex" is slang for hexadecimal, the base 16 system used to simplify the representation of binary numbers and widely used in the IT world. "Hex" ("6" in Greek) also denotes the number of legs ants have; and refers to Hex, a game that encourages strategy and planning.
In 2001, a new Silicon Graphics Origin 2800 supercomputer was installed as part of the University of Leicester's Centre for Mathematical Modelling and, with Pratchett's blessing, named HEX.
In 2019, Hex GBL was provided as an answer for a practice exam associated with Chapter 6 of Western Governors University's "Managing Cloud Security" course.
References
Fictional computers
Computer humor
Discworld characters |
8663749 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory%20Technology%20Device | Memory Technology Device |
A Memory Technology Device (MTD) is a type of device file in Linux for interacting with flash memory. The MTD subsystem was created to provide an abstraction layer between the hardware-specific device drivers and higher-level applications. Although character and block device files already existed, their semantics don't map well to the way that flash memory devices operate.
USB sticks, MMCs, SDs, CompactFlashes and other popular removable devices are not MTDs. Although they contain flash memory, this is hidden behind a block device interface using a Flash Translation Layer.
When using an MTD, the use of an MTD aware file system such as JFFS2 or YAFFS is recommended. The MTD subsystem exports block devices as well, which allows the use of common filesystem like ext4. However, using an MTD this way is not recommended since there is neither detection of bad blocks nor any kind of wear leveling.
References
Further reading
External links
http://www.linux-mtd.infradead.org
Solid-state computer storage media
Linux kernel features |
17956184 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12th%20Airborne%20Command%20and%20Control%20Squadron | 12th Airborne Command and Control Squadron | The 12th Airborne Command and Control Squadron is a United States Air Force flying unit, assigned to the 461st Air Control Wing, stationed at Robins Air Force Base, Georgia. The squadron flies the Northrop Grumman E-8 Joint STARS (Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System), providing airborne battle management, command and control, surveillance, and target acquisition. The J-STARS radar system detects, locates, classifies, tracks and targets ground movements, communicating information through secure data links with other command posts.
History
Antisubmarine warfare
The first predecessor of the squadron was activated at Langley Field, Virginia in October 1942 as the 523d Bombardment Squadron, one of the original squadrons of the 378th Bombardment Group. One month later, it was redesignated the 2d Antisubmarine Squadron. The squadron was initially equipped with a number of different types of bombers, but by the end of the year had standardized on the Consolidated B-24 Liberator. With the 378th, the squadron engaged in antisubmarine patrols off the east coast of the United States. When the 378th Group was inactivated in December, the unit was assigned directly to the 25th Antisubmarine Wing, which was responsible for Army Air Forces antisubmarine operations off the Atlantic coast of the United States.
In January 1943, it moved to RAF St Eval, Cornwall, being the first of four antisubmarine squadrons to arrive there to participate in the Battle of the Atlantic. From St Eval it began flying antisubmarine patrols around England. Although the squadron remained assigned to the 25th Wing, at St Eval, it was attached to the provisional 1st Antisubmarine Group.
In March 1943, the squadron moved to Craw Field, near Port Lyautey, French Morocco, where it was attached to the 2037th Antisubmarine Wing, another provisional organization, until being reassigned to the newly activated 480th Antisubmarine Group. Its mission was to patrol an area of the Atlantic north and west of Morocco. Its antisubmarine activity reached a peak in July, when German U-boats concentrated off the coast of Portugal to intercept Allied convoys bound for the Mediterranean. Its actions protected supply lines for forces involved in Operation Husky, the invasion of Sicily. The unit most frequently attacked enemy subs 700 miles off the coast of Spain, in what was termed, the "Coffin Corner." This was an area in which the subs surfaced to recharge their batteries. It was also possible to attack them in this location before they joined up into wolfpacks. The 2d Squadron earned a Distinguished Unit Citation for its combat contributions in the Battle of the Atlantic against German submarines.
The squadron returned to the United States at end of 1943 and was disbanded at Clovis Army Air Field in January 1944. Most of the unit's aircrews became cadres for Boeing B-29 Superfortress unit at Clovis.
Airlift operations in the Mediterranean Theater
The 327th Ferrying Squadron, which was activated at Capodichino Air Base, Italy on 31 May 1944 is the second forerunner of the squadron. The 327th flew cargo, passengers, and mail to destinations in Italy, Sardinia, Corsica, North Africa, and southern France. It moved to the United States in late September 1945 and was inactivated in October.
Operation Ranch Hand
In the fall of 1966 Operation Ranch Hand expanded its size with the delivery of eleven additional Fairchild UC-123B Provider aircraft that had been authorized earlier in the year. As a result, the Special Aerial Spray Flight of the 309th Air Commando Squadron expanded to a full squadron at Tan Son Nhut Airport, being replaced by the 12th Air Commando Squadron on 15 October 1966. Sixteen days later, the squadron suffered its first loss when an aircraft was shot down in the Iron Triangle. The expansion to squadron strength led to the expansion of the unit's defoliation mission to area targets, such as War Zone C, War Zone D and the Mekong Delta, in addition to clearing lines of communication. Due to crowding at Tan Son Nhut, also Saigon's commercial airport, the squadron moved to Bien Hoa Air Base in December.
In October 1966, the squadron also began flying insecticide missions. These missions focused on killing malaria spreading mosquitos. A single aircraft was dedicated to this mission, since the application rate of insecticide was much lower than that for herbicides and one mission could cover a large area. Because of the corrosive effects of the insecticide on aircraft camouflage paint, an uncamouflaged aircraft was eventually settled on to fly these missions.
In February 1967, the squadron flew its first mission in the southern portion of the Demilitarized zone (DMZ) between North and South Vietnam. Infiltration through the DMZ posed a significant threat to forces in the I Corps area, but the sensitivity of defoliation in an area so near North Vietnam had delayed operations there. By the late summer, selected targets in the northern portion of the DMZ and nearby infiltration routes within North Vietnam had been added to the target list. DMZ operations were flown from the operating location the squadron maintained at Da Nang Air Base.
The squadron participated in Operation Pink Rose in late 1966 and early 1967. Pink Rose was an attempt to burn forested areas. In this operation, the unit applied two treatments to the target areas with defoliants. Boeing B-52 Stratofortresses then dropped incendiary bombs to ignite fires in the area. Results were disappointing and no further efforts were made to use forest fire as a method of stripping jungle canopies.
In addition to defoliation, the 12th also flew crop destruction missions. Crop destruction missions were flown with planes displaying South Vietnamese markings, and a Republic of Vietnam Air Force member flew on board the lead aircraft. These missions were intended to reduce the amount of food available to Viet Cong forces and to increase the cost of food procurement. Seventh Air Force also found that the missions caused the Viet Cong to divert forces from combat and devote them to raising food. In contrast, a study by the RAND Corporation questioned the effectiveness of these missions, and concluded they increased hostility toward Americans.
In January 1968, the squadron flew 589 sorties on target, the most it would fly during the war. However, on 31 January, its base at Bien Hoa was subjected to intense rocket and mortar attack as part of the Tet Offensive, halting operations. On 2 February, the squadron resumed operations, including emergency airlift missions. Six days later, Military Assistance Command Vietnam directed that the spray tanks be removed from the squadron's aircraft and its planes be devoted to airlift. No operations were flown on 28 February, when another rocket attack destroyed four buildings housing squadron aircrew and heavily damaged another. The squadron flew 2866 airlift sorties during the Tet Offensive before returning to the defoliation mission in mid-March.
Later in 1968, the unit added Nha Trang Air Base and Phu Cat Air Base to Da Nang as staging areas for defoliation operations as missions clearing friendly lines of communication again took precedence over the area targets of the previous two years. Targets also shifted away from the heavily populated III Corps zone. In May, the squadron received its first UC-123K, equipped with two additional General Electric J85 engines, which greatly reduced the planes' vulnerability to loss of an engine. This conversion was completed by April 1969. By this time, the squadron had lost six UC-123Bs on combat missions.
During February 1969, in anticipation of a repeat of the previous year's offensive, the squadron deployed to Phan Rang Air Base, returning to Bien Hoa in early March. As the Nixon administration implemented its plan for American withdrawal from Vietnam, pressure to reduce the squadron's operations increased. Squadron sorties were to be reduced by 30% by July 1970 and in view of the reduction, eleven Providers were transferred to other units in the 315th Special Operations Wing in November. The squadron also lost Nha Trang as a staging base when it was transferred to the South Vietnamese air force. In April 1970, the squadron was notified that the Joint Chiefs of Staff had decided that Agent Orange was no longer to be used. On 9 May, the 12th exhausted its supply of Agent White and flew its last defoliation mission. From 11 May to 6 July, the squadron flew leaflet and flare missions over Cambodia. The reduced insecticide and crop destruction missions no longer required a separate squadron, so the unit moved to Phan Rang, where its personnel and equipment were absorbed by Flight A of the 310th Special Operations Squadron. It became non-operational at the end of July and was inactivated in September 1970.
In its four years of operations, the 12th was awarded four Presidential Unit Citations, an Air Force Outstanding Unit Award with Combat "V" Device and several Vietnamese Gallantry Cross with Palm.
Airborne command and control
In September 1985, the 2d Antisubmarine Squadron and 327th Ferrying Squadron were reconstituted and consolidated with the 12th Special Operations Squadron, and the consolidated unit designated the 12th Airborne Command and Control Squadron. However, the squadron remained inactive until January 1996, when it was activated to fly Northrop Grumman E-8 Joint STARS aircraft as part of the 93d Operations Group for air control and target attack radar system.
In 2002, the JSTARS mission was transferred to the Georgia Air National Guard and the squadron was transferred to the Guard as part of the 116th Operations Group. This arrangement was reversed in 2011, and the squadron returned to the regular Air Force in 2011.
Lineage
2d Antisubmarine Squadron
Constituted as the 523 Bombardment Squadron (Heavy) on 13 October 1942
Activated on 18 October 1942
Redesignated 2d Antisubmarine Squadron (Heavy) on 23 November 1942
Disbanded on 29 January 1944
Reconstituted on 19 September 1985 and consolidated with the 327th Ferrying Squadron and the 12th Special Operations Squadron as the 12th Airborne Command and Control Squadron
327th Ferrying Squadron
Constituted as the 327th Ferrying Squadron on 12 May 1944
Activated on 31 May 1944
Inactivated on 5 October 1945
Disbanded on 8 October 1948
Reconstituted on 19 September 1985 and consolidated with the 2d Antisubmarine Squadron and the 12th Special Operations Squadron as the 12th Airborne Command and Control Squadron
12th Airborne Command and Control Squadron
Constituted as the 12 Air Commando Squadron (Defoliation) and activated on 26 August 1966 (not organized)
Organized on 15 October 1966
Redesignated 12 Special Operations Squadron on 1 August 1968
Inactivated on 30 September 1970
Consolidated with the 2d Antisubmarine Squadron and the 327th Ferrying Squadron as the 12th Airborne Command and Control Squadron on 19 September 1985
Activated on 29 January 1996
Allotted to the Air National Guard on 1 October 2002
Withdrawn from the Air National Guard on 1 October 2011
Assignments
378th Bombardment Group, 18 October 1942
25th Antisubmarine Wing, 14 December 1942 (attached to VIII Bomber Command, c. 2 January 1942, 1st Antisubmarine Group (Provisional), 15 January 1942, 2037th Antisubmarine Wing (Provisional), 1 March 1943 – 21 June 1943)
480th Antisubmarine Group, 21 June 1943 – 29 January 1944
Mediterranean Air Transport Service, 31 May 1944
XII Air Force Service Command, c. 15 September – 5 October 1945
Pacific Air Forces, 26 August 1966 (not organized)
315th Air Commando Wing (later 315th Special Operations Wing, 315th Tactical Airlift Wing), 15 October 1966 – 30 September 1970
93d Operations Group, 29 January 1996
116th Operations Group, 1 October 2002
461st Operations Group, 1 October 2011
Stations
Langley Field, Virginia, 18 October – 26 December 1942
RAF St Eval (Station 129), England, 2 January 1943
Craw Field, Port Lyautey, French Morocco, c. 11 March – 25 November 1943 (air echelon operated from Agadir, French Morocco, in July 1943)
Clovis Army Air Field, New Mexico, c. 4 – 29 January 1944
Capodichino Air Base, Naples, Italy, 31 May 1944 – 5 October 1945
Tan Son Nhut Airport, South Vietnam, 15 October 1966
Bien Hoa Air Base, South Vietnam, 1 December 1966
Phan Rang Air Base, South Vietnam, 10 July – 30 September 1970
Robins Air Force Base, Georgia, 29 Jan 1996 – present
Aircraft
Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress, 1942
Douglas B-18 Bolo, 1942
Lockheed B-34 Lexington, 1942
Consolidated B-24 Liberator, 1942–1944
Curtiss P-40 Warhawk, 1944
Douglas C-47 Skytrain, 1944–1945
Curtiss C-46 Commando, 1945
Fairchild UC-123B Provider, 1966–1978
Fairchild UC-123K Provider, 1968–1970
Northrop Grumman E-8 Joint STARS, 1996–present
Awards and campaigns
Commanders of the 12th Airborne Command and Control Squadron
The commander of the 12th Airborne Command and Control Squadron is an air force position held by a lieutenant colonel. The 12 ACCS is responsible for organizing, equipping, and ensuring the combat capability of more than 200 airmen in the Air Force's first E-8C
Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System operational squadron.
References
Notes
Citations
Bibliography
012
Military units and formations in Georgia (U.S. state)
Command and control squadrons of the United States Air Force |
5736142 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HylaFAX | HylaFAX | HylaFAX is a fax server for Unix-like computer systems. It uses a client-server design and supports the sending and receiving of faxes as well as text pages, on any scale from low to very high volumes, if necessary making use of large numbers of modems. It is open-source, free software and can be used commercially without charge.
History
Sam Leffler, while working at Silicon Graphics (SGI), wrote a fax server for SGI's IRIX servers called FlexFAX and released it to the public in June 1991. Leffler and others worked for several years on FlexFAX, adding new features and porting the software to new platforms. In April 1995 FlexFAX was renamed HylaFAX with the 3.0pl0 release to avoid potential trademark issues.
Following the 4.0pl0 release in September 1996, Leffler began to leave working on the project, which caused development to slow dramatically. He did release version 4.0pl1 in December; however, in February 1997 Sam officially handed maintainership of HylaFAX over to Matthias Apitz, who had previously been known for his maintainership of the SVR4 HylaFAX binary releases and the so-named "HylaFAQ".
Some HylaFAX community members were frustrated that code releases and development work did not increase noticeably after the maintainership transition. Apitz did release HylaFAX 4.0pl2 a year later, in February 1998, and anticipated an eventual 4.0pl3. However, some community members were still unhappy with the slow development pace.
In November 1998, Darren Nickerson, maintainer of the tpc.int network, and Robert Colquhoun led an attempt to revitalize HylaFAX development by the creation of hylafax.org, a central repository for HylaFAX development, downloads, documentation, mailing lists, etc. Colquhoun released a number of "rjc" versions before releasing 4.1beta1 in July 1999 and then 4.1beta2 in August.
In early 2000, newcomer Lee Howard began assisting Nickerson to prepare the next release after development had once again slowed down. A lot of work went into the 4.1beta3 release in February 2001, and in July a non-beta 4.1 was finally released. Since that time releases (now numbered like 4.1.1, 4.1.2, and so forth) have been comparatively regular and the development pace has been relatively steady with releases occurring roughly every six months.
In March 2002, Nickerson started iFAX, Inc., endeavoring to sell and commercialize HylaFAX in particular to enterprise customers. Thus iFAX began selling a proprietary product called HylaFAX Enterprise Edition which supported the proprietary interfacing of BrookTrout fax hardware.
The development pace was still not fast enough for some, in particular Howard. And so after the 4.1.6 release in May 2003 the code repository was branched into a "4.1" legacy branch, to satisfy the conservative elements, and a "4.2" development branch to satisfy Howard. The development branch then began the largest period of code work since before Leffler released 4.0pl0. The Class 1 driver was endowed with ECM capability, fax batching support (sending multiple faxes in one call) was added, extended resolution support began, MMR and JBIG data compressions were supported, and color fax reception was supported all in a relatively short amount of time. This set of developments, and the subsequent stabilization of those features, made HylaFAX not only the best, most feature-rich open-source fax software available, but it also became easily the most feature-rich fax software of any kind that supported average, inexpensive off-the-shelf fax modems.
After many years of disagreements between Howard and Nickerson regarding the direction and pace of the software development, Howard began developing HylaFAX at SourceForge.net in October 2005. That work later became known as HylaFAX+. Version numbers initially added another "dot" (like "4.3.0.11") and then simply changed outright to "5.0.0", "5.0.1", and so forth.
HylaFAX development currently continues both at SourceForge and at hylafax.org. The SourceForge development aims to adopt and release new developments quickly and with little hassle, and so releases there are regular and frequent. The development at hylafax.org continues to be steady with releases occurring less frequently and without adopting all of the features found in HylaFAX+.
External links
HylaFAX site
HylaFAX+ site
AvantFAX - Web 2.0 HylaFAX front-end
MacHylafax - HylaFAX client for Mac OS X
FaxyApp - HylaFAX client for Mac OS X
Fax software
Unix software
Software using the BSD license |
4298516 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LINC%204GL | LINC 4GL | LINC ("Logic and Information Network Compiler") is a fourth-generation programming language, used mostly on Unisys computer systems.
Background
LINC was originally developed as a short-cut (or template) by two programmers to reproduce and automate the production of computer applications for different companies, that had similar requirements and specifications. The requirements were similar, because the companies followed a common, generic, business model.
That is, these businesses dealt with "commodities", or "parts", or "suppliers", or "customers" (named "components" in LINC terminology). These were "manufactured", or "assembled", or "purchased", or "sold" (actions termed "events" in LINC terminology).
These components and events were the "interface specifications" or "ispecs" and contained the database definitions, screen designs, and business rules of the application system.
LIRC (Logic and Information Report Compiler) was part of LINC and was developed to allow the programmer to produce reports (e.g. "purchase orders", "invoices", "credit notes", "consignment notes", "bills of sale"). The information in these reports were accessed by using various user-defined views of these components and events called "profiles".
Because reports run as a separate task (as a separate thread of execution) they could also be written to run as a background process; that is, it could put itself to sleep for a period of time or until woken, to perform some processing, then put itself to sleep again.
Part of the reason for the introduction of this new terminology was to make the system easier for programmers. It isolated them from a lot of the underlying technology. (Similarly, different names were intentionally used for control structures: DO.WHEN rather than IF or LOOP, and LOOK.UP or DETERMINE rather than READ, with the OPEN and CLOSE statements generated automatically.)
What allowed LINC to make programmers much more efficient and the application systems they produced easier to read and maintain, and differentiated it from being simply yet another third generation high level language, was LINC's assumption, use of, and total reliance on all of the facilities available, and packaged, with the Burroughs computer for which it was written: operating system, job control language, COBOL programming language, database management system, network definition, user terminal, etc. (See also "history" below.)
From version 11, its character changed. Where LINC (and LIRC) specifications had previously been held in source-code files, they were now held in a database (designed and developed using the LINC 4GL) and subject to rigorous automatic validation. The new LINC-based system in which specifications were stored was named LINC interactive or LINC Development Environment (LDE).
Extensive reliance on terminal "screen painting" (i.e. "mocking"-up a CRT data-entry screen) was used to assist system definition. e.g. to define a components database attributes (name, length, alpha(numeric), validation rules, etc., and for defining report layouts).
In the early 1990s, a new PC-based tool for developing LINC specifications was released, the LINC Development Assistant (LDA). LDA was written in a mixture of Smalltalk and C++ rather than the LINC 4GL (the latter of which was not intended to run on a personal computer). From version 17, it was intended that all development be done with LDA.
Now LINC is known as Unisys Enterprise Application Environment (EAE) and can generate COBOL code for Burroughs & Sperry mainframes, Microsoft Windows, and various Unix and Linux platforms. It will also generate GUI front-end clients in
Java
Visual Basic 6 clients
Active Server Pages
Web services for Microsoft IIS
ASP.NET
VB.NET
in addition to compiling generated code and deploying databases to correspond with the specification. Databases supported include Burroughs DMSII, Sperry RDMS, Oracle database and Microsoft SQL Server.Recent Update:Unisys is replacing EAE with Unisys Agile Business Suite' (AB Suite). The LDL language is promoted to LDL+, with new object-oriented features. The Development environment makes use of the Microsoft Visual Studio IDE. The Model Driven approach is extended with a UML based Class Diagram integrated with all the source code of the solution, in such a way that a round trip update is achieved. Changes in the Business Rules can result in changes in the UML representation and vice versa.
AB Suite 4.0 makes use of Visual Studio 2012 and integrates with Team Foundation Server 2012.
AB Suite generates to either a .NET environment or a ClearPath MCP environment.
With AB Suite a developer has to write less code than in a traditional C# or Java environment.
History
LINC was originally developed by two New Zealand computer programmers (Gil Simpson and Peter Hoskins) while working in Saudi Arabia in the early 1980s. It was first developed exclusively for operation with a single model of Burroughs computer system comprising a totally integrated system of:
B1000 hardware,
MCP operating system,
COBOL application programming language,
WFL job control language,
DMS II database management system,
NDL Network Definition Language
MT983/ET1100 CRT (user terminal),
etc.
The LINC system created 3rd GL COBOL (application), DMSII (database definition), NDLII (network description), and WFL (job control) source code. The job control statements were themselves subsequently run to compile the other elements and create an integrated system of database, applications, and user terminal network.
Burroughs purchased rights to sell the product in 1982, while product development was retained by the original inventors. An early requirement was to extend the product for use with the Burroughs mid-range and large scale computing platforms.
After Burroughs merged with Sperry Corporation to form Unisys, the language was extended to be used on Sperry's UNIVAC 1100/2200 series machines also.
Subsequently a New Zealand development centre was set up in Christchurch by Gil Simpson to develop the product. Ownership was later on transferred to Unisys and the product and mainframe computer centre resources transitioned to Unisys ACUS, the "Australian Centre for Unisys Software" in Sydney Australia.
Gil Simpsons Christchurch team went on to create the Jade language/database that could import and run LINC code on commodity hardware.
LINC itself is (was) supported on the following platforms:
ClearPath A-Series
ClearPath 2200
Unix SUN Solaris
Unix IBM RS6000
Unix HP9000
Unix Sequent
Unixware
Windows Server
Development work was by ACUS Unisys, but was transitioned from ACUS to an Indian outsourcing operation in early 2008. Eventually, the product was sold to over clients worldwide.
Strengths
It provides an intuitive and easy-to-understand interface to the Burroughs DMS and COBOL programming.
As it has been modernised to support different platforms, it facilitates migration between platforms and databases.
By confining a specification in a database, the entire design can be kept in a single design and development environment.
Once generated, the code is absolutely consistent with its design specification.
A client interface is always consistent with a system generated at the same time.
The system's database access code is always consistent with the system's database tables.
Weaknesses
Principally, LINC fails to compete against myriad turnkey systems readily available from many other sources (especially IBM). The cost of purchasing and customising an existing product (e.g. the Hogan retail banking system) is perceived as less expensive/risk than using LINC to create, from scratch, an entire business system with all its rules.
Other weaknesses arise mostly from its dependence and basis on Burroughs DMS and COBOL, which differ greatly from other computing platforms.
People entering the industry or from a Unix / Windows background may struggle to adjust to this different paradigm.
Functionality can be limited by the need to support multiple platforms. You can't use optimal Oracle structures or queries if the mainframe platforms don't support them.
References
External links
Information Exchange Group, provider of utilities for assisting development with LINC, http://www.ieg-inc.com/
Fourth-generation programming languages
Burroughs mainframe computers
Mainframe computer software |
237494 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Management%20information%20system | Management information system | A management information system (MIS) is an information system used for decision-making, and for the coordination, control, analysis, and visualization of information in an organization. The study of the management information systems involves people, processes and technology in an organizational context.
In a corporate setting, the ultimate goal of the use of a management information system is to increase the value and profits of the business. This is done by providing managers with timely and appropriate information allowing them to make effective decisions within a shorter period of time.
History
While it can be contested that the history of management information systems date as far back as companies using ledgers to keep track of accounting, the modern history of MIS can be divided into five eras originally identified by Kenneth C. Laudon and Jane Laudon in their seminal textbook Management Information Systems.
First Era – Mainframe and minicomputer computing
Second Era – Personal computers
Third Era – Client/server networks
Fourth Era – Enterprise computing
Fifth Era – Cloud computing
The first era (mainframe and minicomputer computing) was ruled by IBM and their mainframe computers for which they supplied both the hardware and software. These computers would often take up whole rooms and require teams to run them. As technology advanced, these computers were able to handle greater capacities and therefore reduce their cost. Smaller, more affordable minicomputers allowed larger businesses to run their own computing centers in-house / on-site / on-premises.
The second era (personal computers) began in 1965 as microprocessors started to compete with mainframes and minicomputers and accelerated the process of decentralizing computing power from large data centers to smaller offices. In the late 1970s, minicomputer technology gave way to personal computers and relatively low-cost computers were becoming mass market commodities, allowing businesses to provide their employees access to computing power that ten years before would have cost tens of thousands of dollars. This proliferation of computers created a ready market for interconnecting networks and the popularization of the Internet. (The first microprocessor—a four-bit device intended for a programmable calculator—was introduced in 1971, and microprocessor-based systems were not readily available for several years. The MITS Altair 8800 was the first commonly known microprocessor-based system, followed closely by the Apple I and II. It is arguable that the microprocessor-based system did not make significant inroads into minicomputer use until 1979, when VisiCalc prompted record sales of the Apple II on which it ran. The IBM PC introduced in 1981 was more broadly palatable to business, but its limitations gated its ability to challenge minicomputer systems until perhaps the late 1980s to early 1990s.)
The third era (client/server networks) arose as technological complexity increased, costs decreased, and the end-user (now the ordinary employee) required a system to share information with other employees within an enterprise. Computers on a common network shared information on a server. This lets thousands and even millions of people access data simultaneously on networks referred to as Intranets.
The fourth era (enterprise computing) enabled by high speed networks, consolidated the original department specific software applications into integrated software platforms referred to as enterprise software. This new platform tied all aspects of the business enterprise together offering rich information access encompassing the complete management structure.
Technology
The terms management information system (MIS), Information management system (IMS), information system (IS), enterprise resource planning (ERP), computer science, electrical computer engineering, and information technology management (IT) are often confused. MIS is a hierarchical subset of information systems. MIS are more organization-focused narrowing in on leveraging information technology to increase business value. Computer science is more software-focused dealing with the applications that may be used in MIS. Electrical computer engineering is product-focused mainly dealing with the hardware architecture behind computer systems. ERP software is a subset of MIS and IT management refers to the technical management of an IT department which may include MIS.
A career in MIS focuses on understanding and projecting the practical use of management information systems. It studies the interaction, organization and processes among technology, people and information to solve problems.
Management
While management information systems can be used by any and every level of management, the decision of which systems to implement generally falls upon the chief information officers (CIO) and chief technology officers (CTO). These officers are generally responsible for the overall technology strategy of an organization including evaluating how new technology can help their organization. They act as decision-makers in the implementation process of new MIS.
Once decisions have been made, IT directors, including MIS directors, are in charge of the technical implementation of the system. They are also in charge of implementing the policies affecting the MIS (either new specific policies passed down by the CIOs or CTOs or policies that align the new systems with the organization's overall IT policy). It is also their role to ensure the availability of data and network services as well as the security of the data involved by coordinating IT activities.
Upon implementation, the assigned users will have the appropriate access to relevant information. It is important to note that not everyone inputting data into MIS need necessarily be management level. It is common practice to have inputs to MIS be inputted by non-managerial employees though they rarely have access to the reports and decision support platforms offered by these systems.
Types
The following are types of information systems used to create reports, extract data, and assist in the decision making processes of middle and operational level managers.
Decision support systems (DSSs) are computer program applications used by middle and higher management to compile information from a wide range of sources to support problem solving and decision making. A DSS is used mostly for semi-structured and unstructured decision problems.
Executive information system (EIS) is a reporting tool that provides quick access to summarized reports coming from all company levels and departments such as accounting, human resources and operations.
Marketing information systems are management Information Systems designed specifically for managing the marketing aspects of the business.
Accounting information systems are focused accounting functions.
Human resource management systems are used for personnel aspects.
Office automation systems (OAS) support communication and productivity in the enterprise by automating workflow and eliminating bottlenecks. OAS may be implemented at any and all levels of management.
School Information Management Systems (SIMS) cover school administration, often including teaching and learning materials.
Enterprise resource planning (ERP) software facilitates the flow of information between all business functions inside the boundaries of the organization and manage the connections to outside stakeholders.
Local databases, can be small, simplified tools for managers and are considered to be a primal or base level version of a MIS.
Advantages and disadvantages
The following are some of the benefits that can be attained using MIS:
Improve an organization's operational efficiency, add value to existing products, engender innovation and new product development, and help managers make better decisions.
Companies are able to identify their strengths and weaknesses due to the presence of revenue reports, employee performance records etc. Identifying these aspects can help a company improve its business processes and operations.
Giving an overall picture of the company.
Acting as a communication and planning tool.
The availability of customer data and feedback can help the company to align its business processes according to the needs of its customers. The effective management of customer data can help the company to perform direct marketing and promotion activities.
MIS can help a company gain a competitive advantage.
MIS reports can help with decision-making as well as reduce downtime for actionable items.
Some of the disadvantages of MIS systems:
Retrieval and dissemination are dependent on technology hardware and software.
Potential for inaccurate information.
Enterprise applications
Enterprise systems—also known as enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems—provide integrated software modules and a unified database that personnel use to plan, manage, and control core business processes across multiple locations. Modules of ERP systems may include finance, accounting, marketing, human resources, production, inventory management, and distribution.
Supply chain management (SCM) systems enable more efficient management of the supply chain by integrating the links in a supply chain. This may include suppliers, manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers, and final customers.
Customer relationship management (CRM) systems help businesses manage relationships with potential and current customers and business partners across marketing, sales, and service.
Knowledge management system (KMS) helps organizations facilitate the collection, recording, organization, retrieval, and dissemination of knowledge. This may include documents, accounting records, unrecorded procedures, practices, and skills. Knowledge management (KM) as a system covers the process of knowledge creation and acquisition from internal processes and the external world. The collected knowledge is incorporated in organizational policies and procedures, and then disseminated to the stakeholders.
See also
Bachelor of Computer Information Systems
Business intelligence
Business performance management
Business rule
Corporate governance of information technology
Data mining
Predictive analytics
Purchase order request
Enterprise architecture
Enterprise information system
Enterprise planning system
Management by objectives
Online analytical processing
Online office suite
Real-time computing
Real-time marketing
References
External links
MIS Links (University of York)
Executive Information Systems: Minimising the risk of development
Business software
Decision support systems
Information systems
Information technology management
Management systems
School-administration software |
3447845 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SiteKey | SiteKey | SiteKey is a web-based security system that provides one type of mutual authentication between end-users and websites. Its primary purpose is to deter phishing.
SiteKey was deployed by several large financial institutions in 2006, including Bank of America and The Vanguard Group. Both Bank of America and The Vanguard Group discontinued use in 2015.
The product is owned by RSA Data Security which in 2006 acquired its original maker, Passmark Security.
How it works
SiteKey uses the following challenge-response technique:
The user identifies (not authenticates) himself to the site by entering his username (but not his password). If the username is a valid one the site proceeds.
If the user's browser does not contain a client-side state token (such as a Web cookie or a Flash cookie) from a previous visit, the user is prompted for answers to one or more of the "security questions" the user-specified at site sign-up time, such as "Which school did you last attend?"
The site authenticates itself to the user by displaying an image and/or accompanying phrase that he has earlier configured. If the user does not recognize them as his own, he is to assume the site is a phishing site and immediately abandon it. If he does recognize them, he may consider the site authentic and proceed.
The user authenticates himself to the site by entering his password. If the password is not valid for that username, the whole process begins again. If it is valid, the user is considered authenticated and logged in.
If the user is at a phishing site with a different Web site domain than the legitimate domain, the user's browser will refuse to send the state token in step (2); the phishing site owner will either need to skip displaying the correct security image, or prompt the user for the security question(s) obtained from the legitimate domain and pass on the answers. In theory, this could cause the user to become suspicious, since the user might be surprised to be re-prompted for security questions even if they have used the legitimate domain from their browser recently. However, in practice, there are evidence users generally fail to notice such anomalies.
Weaknesses
A Harvard study found SiteKey 97% ineffective. In practice, real people don't notice, or don't care, when the SiteKey is missing, according to their results.
It also requires users to keep track of more authentication information. Someone associated with N different websites that use SiteKey must remember N different 4-tuples of information: (site, username, phrase, password).
Discontinuation
In May 2015, Bank of America announced that SiteKey would be discontinued for all users by the end of the year, and would allow users to log in with their username and password in one step. In July 2015, Vanguard also discontinued the use of SiteKey for its website.
Notes
External links
Authentication in an Online Banking Environment
SiteKey at Bank of America
Fraud Vulnerabilities in SiteKey Security at Bank of America
Web technology
Computer access control |
37240006 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cordell%20Schachter | Cordell Schachter | Cordell Schachter (born August 30, 1960) is an American technology manager who has held positions in both public service and commercial firms. He is the Chief Information Officer of the United States Department of Transportation and was the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of the New York City Department of Transportation from 2008 to 2021.
Schachter began his career at the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation in the 1980s, rising to the position of Assistant Chief of Technical Services for that agency. He then worked in several private sector posts managing network and media technology. In 2006, he rejoined the city government as Associate Commissioner and Chief Project Officer for the New York City Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications and was promoted to CTO at the city's Department of Transportation in 2008. He moved to the U.S. Department of Transportation in August 2021.
Early life and career
Schachter was born in Dobbs Ferry, New York, the oldest of three children of Maurice and Arlene Schachter; the family moved to Middletown, New York, in 1967. Schachter's father was a principal of Lafayette Avenue Securities, a bond brokerage firm, and his mother was a school library clerk. Schachter graduated from Middletown High School in 1978. He received a BA degree in Economics from the State University of New York at Buffalo (1983), where he served in student government, becoming president of the Student Association in 1982–83, and an MS in Management from the New York University Wagner School of Public Service (1995). He is certified as a Project Management Professional by the Project Management Institute.
Schachter began his career at the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation in the late 1980s, rising to the position of Assistant Chief of Technical Services for that agency, where he oversaw technical support services to all New York City parks. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, he worked in several private sector posts, managing network and media technology projects for leading technology firms including IBM, AT&T, Avaya and Siemens, involving web platforms, national voice-over IP conversions, and international wide area networks, including network support for two Olympics. In 2006, he rejoined the city government as Associate Commissioner and Chief Project Officer for the New York City Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications, where he managed the implementation of a project and portfolio management system and the city's Emergency Communications Transformation Program, among other projects.
He has been an Adjunct Lecturer at St. Peter's University in New Jersey and is an adjunct professor in New York University's Center for Urban Science and Progress and Wagner School of Public Service.
New York City Department of Transportation
In June 2008, Schachter became the Chief Technology Officer of the New York City Department of Transportation (DOT). One project of the DOT, overseen by Schachter in 2012, was the development of a web-based mobile application that allows inspectors at street construction sites to use lightweight touch-screen tablets and the city's private wireless cellular network to retrieve assignments, issue violation notices on the spot, and transmit reports in real time. Using the application, inspections are processed in one day instead of three, improving safety as well as saving the city money. The application won a "Best of New York" mobile app award. In 2013, Schacter's team was praised by InformationWeek for developing a GIS web-based map application that allowed the DOT to rapidly and accurately assess and document damage to city infrastructure caused by Hurricane Sandy, so that rebuilding could begin, and that also helped the department apply for Federal relief funds. The application won a 2013 Digital Government Achievement Award in the "Government-to-government category".
Shachter pursued a strategy of "mobile first development", as most users began accessing DOT information on mobile devices. Writing about the DOT in Internet Evolution, Kim Davis commented: "I was impressed by [Schachter's] refreshingly simple approach to mobile devices, the creative approach to apps (I was amazed that so much of the DoT's app development takes place in-house), and struck by the constraints on IT procurement." During his tenure, among other things, the DOT introduced the Citi Bike program; a map-based app called iRideNYC that lets travellers know when the next bus or subway train will arrive and where the nearest stops are; the Walk NYC wayfinding project; and Vision Zero View, "an interactive tool that details traffic injuries and fatalities, and highlights the city’s response to make the streets safer".<ref>Brown, Justine. "Cities Adopt Cloud-Based Approaches to Disaster Recovery", Government Technology", December 19, 2014</ref> His department won one a Best Practices Award granted by Amazon Web Services (AWS) to local government agencies around the world, in its 2014 City on a Cloud challenge, recognizing "innovative and impactful local government projects running on the AWS Cloud".
In 2014, Schachter's department rolled out a permit management system that, among other capabilities, "streamlines virtually every aspect of obtaining a [construction or repair] permit. ... The new system gives utility workers and construction contractors the ability to apply for permits 24/7/365 [from anywhere] using any device – desktop, tablet or smartphone – and ... to print out permit signs to post on their work sites", while reviewers at the DOT can more quickly process the permits and make sure that there are no conflicting applications or permits issued. The team won the Igniting Innovation 2015 Award from The American Council for Technology and Industry Advisory Council (ACT-IAC) for this system. In 2015, Schachter was featured in Government Technology magazine's article "Best Practices for 24/7 Government".
In 2018, he was named as one of Government Technology'' magazine's "Top 25 Doers, Dreamers & Drivers" of 2018. The feature noted that, among other projects, Schachter led the development of a new GIS-based sign management system for the city that lets staff obtain work orders throughout the city. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Schachter helped his department transition to telework and helped the city to create a streamlined application process for outdoor dining setups in front of restaurants.
Unites States Department of Transportation
Schachter joined the United States Department of Transportation (USDOT) as Chief Information Officer (CIO) on August 30, 2021. There he oversees a $3.5 billion IT budget and inherits 31 major projects left by his predecessor. In December 2021, Schachter testified before the United States House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure about cybersecurity affecting US transportation and infrastructure. He stated that his office is running "a series of cyber sprints" that prioritize "system access control, website security, and improved governance, oversight and coordination", and will "meet the challenge of continuously improving the cybersecurity of DOT information technology systems while keeping those systems available for use."
Personal
In the early 2000s, Schachter was President of Bronx Community School Board 10, where he helped foster the creation of two schools: the IN-Tech Academy and the Riverdale Kingsbridge Academy. An avid skier, in the 2010s Schachter volunteered as the treasurer of the Coalition to Save Belleayre. He serves on the Board of Trustees of Riverdale Temple. Schachter is married to Jackie Kuhls, Chief Budget Officer, Department of Subways, MTA New York City Transit, who was previously executive director of New Yorkers Against Gun Violence. The couple have two adult children.
References
Living people
University at Buffalo alumni
People from Middletown, Orange County, New York
1960 births
People from Dobbs Ferry, New York
New York City public officials
American chief technology officers |
12920 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General%20Packet%20Radio%20Service | General Packet Radio Service | General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) is a packet oriented mobile data standard on the 2G and 3G cellular communication network's global system for mobile communications (GSM). GPRS was established by European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) in response to the earlier CDPD and i-mode packet-switched cellular technologies. It is now maintained by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP).
GPRS is typically sold according to the total volume of data transferred during the billing cycle, in contrast with circuit switched data, which is usually billed per minute of connection time, or sometimes by one-third minute increments. Usage above the GPRS bundled data cap may be charged per MB of data, speed limited, or disallowed.
GPRS is a best-effort service, implying variable throughput and latency that depend on the number of other users sharing the service concurrently, as opposed to circuit switching, where a certain quality of service (QoS) is guaranteed during the connection. In 2G systems, GPRS provides data rates of 56–114 kbit/sec. 2G cellular technology combined with GPRS is sometimes described as 2.5G, that is, a technology between the second (2G) and third (3G) generations of mobile telephony. It provides moderate-speed data transfer, by using unused time-division multiple access (TDMA) channels in, for example, the GSM system. GPRS is integrated into GSM Release 97 and newer releases.
Technical overview
The GPRS core network allows 2G, 3G and WCDMA mobile networks to transmit IP packets to external networks such as the Internet. The GPRS system is an integrated part of the GSM network switching subsystem.
Services offered
GPRS extends the GSM Packet circuit switched data capabilities and makes the following services possible:
SMS messaging and broadcasting
"Always on" internet access
Multimedia messaging service (MMS)
Push-to-talk over cellular (PoC)
Instant messaging and presence—wireless village
Internet applications for smart devices through wireless application protocol (WAP)
Point-to-point (P2P) service: inter-networking with the Internet (IP)
Point-to-multipoint (P2M) service: point-to-multipoint multicast and point-to-multipoint group calls
If SMS over GPRS is used, an SMS transmission speed of about 30 SMS messages per minute may be achieved. This is much faster than using the ordinary SMS over GSM, whose SMS transmission speed is about 6 to 10 SMS messages per minute.
Protocols supported
GPRS supports the following protocols:
Internet Protocol (IP). In practice, built-in mobile browsers use IPv4 before IPv6 is widespread.
Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) is typically not supported by mobile phone operators but if a cellular phone is used as a modem for a connected computer, PPP may be used to tunnel IP to the phone. This allows an IP address to be dynamically assigned (using IPCP rather than DHCP) to the mobile equipment.
X.25 connections are typically used for applications like wireless payment terminals, although it has been removed from the standard. X.25 can still be supported over PPP, or even over IP, but this requires either a network-based router to perform encapsulation or software built into the end-device/terminal; e.g., user equipment (UE).
When TCP/IP is used, each phone can have one or more IP addresses allocated. GPRS will store and forward the IP packets to the phone even during handover. The TCP restores any packets lost (e.g. due to a radio noise induced pause).
Hardware
Devices supporting GPRS are grouped into three classes:
Class A Can be connected to GPRS service and GSM service (voice, SMS) simultaneously. Such devices are now available.
Class B Can be connected to GPRS service and GSM service (voice, SMS), but using only one at a time. During GSM service (voice call or SMS), GPRS service is suspended and resumed automatically after the GSM service (voice call or SMS) has concluded. Most GPRS mobile devices are Class B.
Class C Are connected to either GPRS service or GSM service (voice, SMS) and must be switched manually between one service and the other.
Because a Class A device must service GPRS and GSM networks together, it effectively needs two radios. To avoid this hardware requirement, a GPRS mobile device may implement the dual transfer mode (DTM) feature. A DTM-capable mobile can handle both GSM packets and GPRS packets with network coordination to ensure both types are not transmitted at the same time. Such devices are considered pseudo-Class A, sometimes referred to as "simple class A". Some networks have supported DTM since 2007.
USB 3G/GPRS modems have a terminal-like interface over USB with V.42bis, and data formats. Some models include an external antenna connector. Modem cards for laptop PCs, or external USB modems are available, similar in shape and size to a computer mouse, or a pendrive.
Addressing
A GPRS connection is established by reference to its access point name (APN). The APN defines the services such as wireless application protocol (WAP)
access, short message service (SMS), multimedia messaging service (MMS), and for Internet communication services such as email and World Wide Web access.
In order to set up a GPRS connection for a wireless modem, a user must specify an APN, optionally a user name and password, and very rarely an IP address, provided by the network operator.
GPRS modems and modules
GSM module or GPRS modules are similar to modems, but there's one difference: the modem is an external piece of equipment, whereas the GSM module or GPRS module can be integrated within an electrical or electronic equipment. It is an embedded piece of hardware. A GSM mobile, on the other hand, is a complete embedded system in itself. It comes with embedded processors dedicated to provide a functional interface between the user and the mobile network.
Coding schemes and speeds
The upload and download speeds that can be achieved in GPRS depend on a number of factors such as:
the number of BTS TDMA time slots assigned by the operator
the channel encoding used.
the maximum capability of the mobile device expressed as a GPRS multislot class
Multiple access schemes
The multiple access methods used in GSM with GPRS are based on frequency-division duplex (FDD) and TDMA. During a session, a user is assigned to one pair of up-link and down-link frequency channels. This is combined with time domain statistical multiplexing which makes it possible for several users to share the same frequency channel. The packets have constant length, corresponding to a GSM time slot. The down-link uses first-come first-served packet scheduling, while the up-link uses a scheme very similar to reservation ALOHA (R-ALOHA). This means that slotted ALOHA (S-ALOHA) is used for reservation inquiries during a contention phase, and then the actual data is transferred using dynamic TDMA with first-come first-served.
Channel encoding
The channel encoding process in GPRS consists of two steps: first, a cyclic code is used to add parity bits, which are also referred to as the Block Check Sequence, followed by coding with a possibly punctured convolutional code. The Coding Schemes CS-1 to CS-4 specify the number of parity bits generated by the cyclic code and the puncturing rate of the convolutional code. In Coding Schemes CS-1 through CS-3, the convolutional code is of rate 1/2, i.e. each input bit is converted into two coded bits. In Coding Schemes CS-2 and CS-3, the output of the convolutional code is punctured to achieve the desired code rate. In Coding Scheme CS-4, no convolutional coding is applied. The following table summarises the options.
The least robust, but fastest, coding scheme (CS-4) is available near a base transceiver station (BTS), while the most robust coding scheme (CS-1) is used when the mobile station (MS) is further away from a BTS.
Using the CS-4 it is possible to achieve a user speed of 20.0 kbit/s per time slot. However, using this scheme the cell coverage is 25% of normal. CS-1 can achieve a user speed of only 8.0 kbit/s per time slot, but has 98% of normal coverage. Newer network equipment can adapt the transfer speed automatically depending on the mobile location.
In addition to GPRS, there are two other GSM technologies which deliver data services: circuit-switched data (CSD) and high-speed circuit-switched data (HSCSD). In contrast to the shared nature of GPRS, these instead establish a dedicated circuit (usually billed per minute). Some applications such as video calling may prefer HSCSD, especially when there is a continuous flow of data between the endpoints.
The following table summarises some possible configurations of GPRS and circuit switched data services.
{| class="wikitable" align=center
! Technology
! Download (kbit/s)
! Upload (kbit/s)
! TDMA timeslots allocated (DL+UL)
|- style="text-align:center;"
| CSD
| 9.6
| 9.6
| 1+1
|- style="text-align:center;"
| HSCSD
| 28.8
| 14.4
| 2+1
|- style="text-align:center;"
| HSCSD
| 43.2
| 14.4
| 3+1
|- style="text-align:center;"
| GPRS
| 85.6
| 21.4 (Class 8 & 10 and CS-4)
| 4+1
|- style="text-align:center;"
| GPRS
| 64.2
| 42.8 (Class 10 and CS-4)
| 3+2
|- style="text-align:center;"
| EGPRS (EDGE)
| 236.8
| 59.2 (Class 8, 10 and MCS-9)
| 4+1
|- style="text-align:center;"
| EGPRS (EDGE)
| 177.6
| 118.4 (Class 10 and MCS-9)
| 3+2
|}
Multislot Class
The multislot class determines the speed of data transfer available in the Uplink and Downlink directions. It is a value between 1 and 45 which the network uses to allocate radio channels in the uplink and downlink direction. Multislot class with values greater than 31 are referred to as high multislot classes.
A multislot allocation is represented as, for example, 5+2. The first number is the number of downlink timeslots and the second is the number of uplink timeslots allocated for use by the mobile station. A commonly used value is class 10 for many GPRS/EGPRS mobiles which uses a maximum of 4 timeslots in downlink direction and 2 timeslots in uplink direction. However simultaneously a maximum number of 5 simultaneous timeslots can be used in both uplink and downlink. The network will automatically configure for either 3+2 or 4+1 operation depending on the nature of data transfer.
Some high end mobiles, usually also supporting UMTS, also support GPRS/EDGE multislot class 32. According to 3GPP TS 45.002 (Release 12), Table B.1, mobile stations of this class support 5 timeslots in downlink and 3 timeslots in uplink with a maximum number of 6 simultaneously used timeslots. If data traffic is concentrated in downlink direction the network will configure the connection for 5+1 operation. When more data is transferred in the uplink the network can at any time change the constellation to 4+2 or 3+3. Under the best reception conditions, i.e. when the best EDGE modulation and coding scheme can be used, 5 timeslots can carry a bandwidth of 5*59.2 kbit/s = 296 kbit/s. In uplink direction, 3 timeslots can carry a bandwidth of 3*59.2 kbit/s = 177.6 kbit/s.
Multislot Classes for GPRS/EGPRS
{| class="wikitable"
! Multislot Class
! Downlink TS
! Uplink TS
! Active TS
|- style="text-align:center;"
| 1
| 1
| 1
| 2
|- style="text-align:center;"
| 2
| 2
| 1
| 3
|- style="text-align:center;"
| 3
| 2
| 2
| 3
|- style="text-align:center;"
| 4
| 3
| 1
| 4
|- style="text-align:center;"
| 5
| 2
| 2
| 4
|- style="text-align:center;"
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Attributes of a multislot class
Each multislot class identifies the following:
the maximum number of Timeslots that can be allocated on uplink
the maximum number of Timeslots that can be allocated on downlink
the total number of timeslots which can be allocated by the network to the mobile
the time needed for the MS to perform adjacent cell signal level measurement and get ready to transmit
the time needed for the MS to get ready to transmit
the time needed for the MS to perform adjacent cell signal level measurement and get ready to receive
the time needed for the MS to get ready to receive.
The different multislot class specification is detailed in the Annex B of the 3GPP Technical Specification 45.002 (Multiplexing and multiple access on the radio path)
Usability
The maximum speed of a GPRS connection offered in 2003 was similar to a modem connection in an analog wire telephone network, about 32–40 kbit/s, depending on the phone used. Latency is very high; round-trip time (RTT) is typically about 600–700 ms and often reaches 1s. GPRS is typically prioritized lower than speech, and thus the quality of connection varies greatly.
Devices with latency/RTT improvements (via, for example, the extended UL TBF mode feature) are generally available. Also, network upgrades of features are available with certain operators. With these enhancements the active round-trip time can be reduced, resulting in significant increase in application-level throughput speeds.
History of GPRS
GPRS opened in 2000 as a packet-switched data service embedded in the channel-switched cellular radio network GSM. GPRS extends the reach of the fixed Internet by connecting mobile terminals worldwide.
The CELLPAC protocol developed 1991–1993 was the trigger point for starting in 1993 the specification of standard GPRS by ETSI SMG. Especially, the CELLPAC Voice & Data functions introduced in a 1993 ETSI Workshop contribution anticipate what was later known to be the roots of GPRS. This workshop contribution is referenced in 22 GPRS related US patents. Successor systems to GSM/GPRS like W-CDMA (UMTS) and LTE rely on key GPRS functions for mobile Internet access as introduced by CELLPAC.
According to a study on history of GPRS development, Bernhard Walke and his student Peter Decker are the inventors of GPRS – the first system providing worldwide mobile Internet access.
See also
Code-division multiple access (CDMA)
Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution (EDGE)
GPRS core network
High Speed Packet Access (HSDPA)
IP Multimedia Subsystem
List of device bit rates
Sub-network dependent convergence protocol (SNDCP)
UMTS
References
External links
3GPP AT command set for user equipment (UE)
Free GPRS resources
GSM World, the trade association for GSM and GPRS network operators.
Palowireless GPRS resource center
GPRS attach and PDP context activation sequence diagram
3GPP standards
Link protocols
Telecommunications-related introductions in 1997
ja:GSM#GPRS |
7466964 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise%20modelling | Enterprise modelling | Enterprise modelling is the abstract representation, description and definition of the structure, processes, information and resources of an identifiable business, government body, or other large organization.
It deals with the process of understanding an organization and improving its performance through creation and analysis of enterprise models. This includes the modelling of the relevant business domain (usually relatively stable), business processes (usually more volatile), and uses of information technology within the business domain and its processes.
Overview
Enterprise modelling is the process of building models of whole or part of an enterprise with process models, data models, resource models and/or new ontologies etc. It is based on knowledge about the enterprise, previous models and/or reference models as well as domain ontologies using model representation languages. An enterprise in general is a unit of economic organization or activity. These activities are required to develop and deliver products and/or services to a customer. An enterprise includes a number of functions and operations such as purchasing, manufacturing, marketing, finance, engineering, and research and development. The enterprise of interest are those corporate functions and operations necessary to manufacture current and potential future variants of a product.
The term "enterprise model" is used in industry to represent differing enterprise representations, with no real standardized definition. Due to the complexity of enterprise organizations, a vast number of differing enterprise modelling approaches have been pursued across industry and academia. Enterprise modelling constructs can focus upon manufacturing operations and/or business operations; however, a common thread in enterprise modelling is an inclusion of assessment of information technology. For example, the use of networked computers to trigger and receive replacement orders along a material supply chain is an example of how information technology is used to coordinate manufacturing operations within an enterprise.
The basic idea of enterprise modelling according to Ulrich Frank is "to offer different views on an enterprise, thereby providing a medium to foster dialogues between various stakeholders - both in academia and in practice. For this purpose they include abstractions suitable for strategic planning, organisational (re-) design and software engineering. The views should complement each other and thereby foster a better understanding of complex systems by systematic abstractions. The views should be generic in the sense that they can be applied to any enterprise. At the same time they should offer abstractions that help with designing information systems which are well integrated with a company's long term strategy and its organisation. Hence, enterprise models can be regarded as the conceptual infrastructure that support a high level of integration."
History
Enterprise modelling has its roots in systems modelling and especially information systems modelling. One of the earliest pioneering works in modelling information systems was done by Young and Kent (1958), who argued for "a precise and abstract way of specifying the informational and time characteristics of a data processing problem". They wanted to create "a notation that should enable the analyst to organize the problem around any piece of hardware". Their work was a first effort to create an abstract specification and invariant basis for designing different alternative implementations using different hardware components. A next step in IS modelling was taken by CODASYL, an IT industry consortium formed in 1959, who essentially aimed at the same thing as Young and Kent: the development of "a proper structure for machine independent problem definition language, at the system level of data processing". This led to the development of a specific IS information algebra.
The first methods dealing with enterprise modelling emerged in the 1970s. They were the entity-relationship approach of Peter Chen (1976) and SADT of Douglas T. Ross (1977), the one concentrate on the information view and the other on the function view of business entities. These first methods have been followed end 1970s by numerous methods for software engineering, such as SSADM, Structured Design, Structured Analysis and others. Specific methods for enterprise modelling in the context of Computer Integrated Manufacturing appeared in the early 1980s. They include the IDEF family of methods (ICAM, 1981) and the GRAI method by Guy Doumeingts in 1984 followed by GRAI/GIM by Doumeingts and others in 1992.
These second generation of methods were activity-based methods which have been surpassed on the one hand by process-centred modelling methods developed in the 1990s such as Architecture of Integrated Information Systems (ARIS), CIMOSA and Integrated Enterprise Modeling (IEM). And on the other hand by object-oriented methods, such as Object-oriented analysis (OOA) and Object-modelling technique (OMT).
Enterprise modelling basics
Enterprise model
An enterprise model is a representation of the structure, activities, processes, information, resources, people, behavior, goals, and constraints of a business, government, or other enterprises. Thomas Naylor (1970) defined a (simulation) model as "an attempt to describe the interrelationships among a corporation's financial, marketing, and production activities in terms of a set of mathematical and logical relationships which are programmed into the computer." These interrelationships should according to Gershefski (1971) represent in detail all aspects of the firm including "the physical operations of the company, the accounting and financial practices followed, and the response to investment in key areas" Programming the modelled relationships into the computer is not always necessary: enterprise models, under different names, have existed for centuries and were described, for example, by Adam Smith, Walter Bagehot, and many others.
According to Fox and Gruninger (1998) from "a design perspective, an enterprise model should provide the language used to explicitly define an enterprise... From an operations perspective, the enterprise model must be able to represent what is planned, what might happen, and what has happened. It must supply the information and knowledge necessary to support the operations of the enterprise, whether they be performed by hand or machine."
In a two-volume set entitled The Managerial Cybernetics of Organization Stafford Beer introduced a model of the enterprise, the Viable System Model (VSM). Volume 2, The Heart of Enterprise, analyzed the VSM as a recursive organization of five systems: System One (S1) through System Five (S5). Beer's model differs from others in that the VSM is recursive, not hierarchical: "In a recursive organizational structure, any viable system contains, and is contained in, a viable system."
Function modelling
Function modelling in systems engineering is a structured representation of the functions, activities or processes within the modelled system or subject area.
A function model, also called an activity model or process model, is a graphical representation of an enterprise's function within a defined scope. The purposes of the function model are: to describe the functions and processes, assist with discovery of information needs, help identify opportunities, and establish a basis for determining product and service costs. A function model is created with a functional modelling perspective. A functional perspectives is one or more perspectives possible in process modelling. Other perspectives possible are for example behavioural, organisational or informational.
A functional modelling perspective concentrates on describing the dynamic process. The main concept in this modelling perspective is the process, this could be a function, transformation, activity, action, task etc. A well-known example of a modelling language employing this perspective is data flow diagrams. The perspective uses four symbols to describe a process, these being:
Process: Illustrates transformation from input to output.
Store: Data-collection or some sort of material.
Flow: Movement of data or material in the process.
External Entity: External to the modelled system, but interacts with it.
Now, with these symbols, a process can be represented as a network of these symbols. This decomposed process is a DFD, data flow diagram. In Dynamic Enterprise Modeling, for example, a division is made in the Control model, Function Model, Process model and Organizational model.
Data modelling
Data modelling is the process of creating a data model by applying formal data model descriptions using data modelling techniques. Data modelling is a technique for defining business requirements for a database. It is sometimes called database modelling because a data model is eventually implemented in a database.
The figure illustrates the way data models are developed and used today. A conceptual data model is developed based on the data requirements for the application that is being developed, perhaps in the context of an activity model. The data model will normally consist of entity types, attributes, relationships, integrity rules, and the definitions of those objects. This is then used as the start point for interface or database design.
Business process modelling
Business process modelling, not to be confused with the wider Business Process Management (BPM) discipline, is the activity of representing processes of an enterprise, so that the current ("as is") process may be analyzed and improved in future ("to be"). Business process modelling is typically performed by business analysts and managers who are seeking to improve process efficiency and quality. The process improvements identified by business process modelling may or may not require Information Technology involvement, although that is a common driver for the need to model a business process, by creating a process master.
Change management programs are typically involved to put the improved business processes into practice. With advances in technology from large platform vendors, the vision of business process modelling models becoming fully executable (and capable of simulations and round-trip engineering) is coming closer to reality every day.
Systems architecture
The RM-ODP reference model identifies enterprise modelling as providing one of the five viewpoints of an open distributed system. Note that such a system need not be a modern-day IT system: a banking clearing house in the 19th century may be used as an example ().
Enterprise modelling techniques
There are several techniques for modelling the enterprise such as
Active Knowledge Modeling,
Design & Engineering Methodology for Organizations (DEMO)
Dynamic Enterprise Modeling
Enterprise Modelling Methodology/Open Distributed Processing (EMM/ODP)
Extended Enterprise Modeling Language
Multi-Perspective Enterprise Modelling (MEMO),
Process modelling such as BPMN, CIMOSA, DYA, IDEF3, LOVEM, PERA, etc.
Integrated Enterprise Modeling (IEM), and
Modelling the enterprise with multi-agent systems.
More enterprise modelling techniques are developed into Enterprise Architecture framework such as:
ARIS - ARchitecture of Integrated Information Systems
DoDAF - the US Department of Defense Architecture Framework
RM-ODP - Reference Model of Open Distributed Processing
TOGAF - The Open Group Architecture Framework
Zachman Framework - an architecture framework, based on the work of John Zachman at IBM in the 1980s
Service-oriented modeling framework (SOMF), based on the work of Michael Bell
And metamodelling frameworks such as:
Generalised Enterprise Reference Architecture and Methodology
Enterprise engineering
Enterprise engineering is the discipline concerning the design and the engineering of enterprises, regarding both their business and organization. In theory and practice two types of enterprise engineering has emerged. A more general connected to engineering and the management of enterprises, and a more specific related to software engineering, enterprise modelling and enterprise architecture.
In the field of engineering a more general enterprise engineering emerged, defined as the application of engineering principals to the management of enterprises. It encompasses the application of knowledge, principles, and disciplines related to the analysis, design, implementation and operation of all elements associated with an enterprise. In essence this is an interdisciplinary field which combines systems engineering and strategic management as it seeks to engineer the entire enterprise in terms of the products, processes and business operations. The view is one of continuous improvement and continued adaptation as firms, processes and markets develop along their life cycles. This total systems approach encompasses the traditional areas of research and development, product design, operations and manufacturing as well as information systems and strategic management. This fields is related to engineering management, operations management, service management and systems engineering.
In the context of software development a specific field of enterprise engineering has emerged, which deals with the modelling and integration of various organizational and technical parts of business processes. In the context of information systems development it has been the area of activity in the organization of the systems analysis, and an extension of the scope of Information Modelling. It can also be viewed as the extension and generalization of the systems analysis and systems design phases of the software development process. Here Enterprise modelling can be part of the early, middle and late information system development life cycle. Explicit representation of the organizational and technical system infrastructure is being created in order to understand the orderly transformations of existing work practices. This field is also called Enterprise architecture, or defined with Enterprise Ontology as being two major parts of Enterprise architecture.
Related fields
Business reference modelling
Business reference modelling is the development of reference models concentrating on the functional and organizational aspects of the core business of an enterprise, service organization or government agency. In enterprise engineering a business reference model is part of an enterprise architecture framework. This framework defines in a series of reference models, how to organize the structure and views associated with an Enterprise Architecture.
A reference model in general is a model of something that embodies the basic goal or idea of something and can then be looked at as a reference for various purposes. A business reference model is a means to describe the business operations of an organization, independent of the organizational structure that perform them. Other types of business reference model can also depict the relationship between the business processes, business functions, and the business area’s business reference model. These reference model can be constructed in layers, and offer a foundation for the analysis of service components, technology, data, and performance.
Economic modelling
Economic modelling is the theoretical representation of economic processes by a set of variables and a set of logical and/or quantitative relationships between them. The economic model is a simplified framework designed to illustrate complex processes, often but not always using mathematical techniques. Frequently, economic models use structural parameters. Structural parameters are underlying parameters in a model or class of models. A model may have various parameters and those parameters may change to create various properties.
In general terms, economic models have two functions: first as a simplification of and abstraction from observed data, and second as a means of selection of data based on a paradigm of econometric study. The simplification is particularly important for economics given the enormous complexity of economic processes. This complexity can be attributed to the diversity of factors that determine economic activity; these factors include: individual and cooperative decision processes, resource limitations, environmental and geographical constraints, institutional and legal requirements and purely random fluctuations. Economists therefore must make a reasoned choice of which variables and which relationships between these variables are relevant and which ways of analyzing and presenting this information are useful.
Ontology engineering
Ontology engineering or ontology building is a subfield of knowledge engineering that studies the methods and methodologies for building ontologies. In the domain of enterprise architecture, an ontology is an outline or a schema used to structure objects, their attributes and relationships in a consistent manner. As in enterprise modelling, an ontology can be composed of other ontologies. The purpose of ontologies in enterprise modelling is to formalize and establish the sharability, re-usability, assimilation and dissemination of information across all organizations and departments within an enterprise. Thus, an ontology enables integration of the various functions and processes which take place in an enterprise.
One common language with well articulated structure and vocabulary would enable the company to be more efficient in its operations. A common ontology will allow for effective communication, understanding and thus coordination among the various divisions of an enterprise. There are various kinds of ontologies used in numerous environments. While the language example given earlier dealt with the area of information systems and design, other ontologies may be defined for processes, methods, activities, etc., within an enterprise.
Using ontologies in enterprise modelling offers several advantages. Ontologies ensure clarity, consistency, and structure to a model. They promote efficient model definition and analysis. Generic enterprise ontologies allow for reusability of and automation of components. Because ontologies are schemata or outlines, the use of ontologies does not ensure proper enterprise model definition, analysis, or clarity. Ontologies are limited by how they are defined and implemented. An ontology may or may not include the potential or capability to capture all of the aspects of what is being modelled.
Systems thinking
The modelling of the enterprise and its environment could facilitate the creation of enhanced understanding of the business domain and processes of the extended enterprise, and especially of the relations—both those that "hold the enterprise together" and those that extend across the boundaries of the enterprise. Since enterprise is a system, concepts used in system thinking can be successfully reused in modelling enterprises.
This way a fast understanding can be achieved throughout the enterprise about how business functions are working and how they depend upon other functions in the organization.
See also
Business process modelling
Enterprise architecture
Enterprise Architecture framework
Enterprise integration
Enterprise life cycle
ISO 19439
Enterprise Data Modeling
References
Further reading
August-Wilhelm Scheer (1992). Architecture of Integrated Information Systems: Foundations of Enterprise Modelling. Springer-Verlag.
François Vernadat (1996) Enterprise Modeling and Integration: Principles and Applications, Chapman & Hall, London,
External links
Agile Enterprise Modeling. by S.W. Ambler, 2003-2008.
Enterprise Modeling Anti-patterns. by S.W. Ambler, 2005.
Enterprise Modelling and Information Systems Architectures - An International Journal (EMISA) is a scholarly open access journal with a unique focus on novel and innovative research on Enterprise Models and Information Systems Architectures.
Business terms
Scientific modelling
Systems engineering |
31837013 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William%20J.%20Tobin | William J. Tobin | William J. Tobin is an American entrepreneur, inventor, and business owner known for founding ten different startups since 1968, and securing 15 different patents for products and software. Among the companies he founded and served as CEO and Director of Marketing are PC Flowers, Inc. from 1988, Instruments of Sweden, and Concept Industries, Inc. He was named an "Entrepreneur of the Year" by Inc. Magazine and in 2011 published the memoir and business tutorial Confessions of a Compulsive Entrepreneur and Inventor.
Early life, education
William J. Tobin was raised in a City Assisted Housing Project in New York City. His father was a policeman. Tobin claims he started his first company at age 12, when he borrowed his mother's credit card and she bought him a hand edger and a gas lawn mower at Sears. He worked his landscaping business manually until age 16, when he bought a car and a trailer.
In 1959 he began attending the State University of New York, Farmingdale, where he stayed for two years earning an associate degree in Applied Sciences. By the time he graduated, his landscaping business had grown considerably in size, with 2 trucks and 12 workers. Tobin then joined the United States Army and afterwards attended Adelphi University to earn a BBA in Business, graduating in 1966. He attended C.W. Post College for his MBA.
Career
Starting in 1968, Tobin began founding, financing, and marketing a series of startup companies. In each case he served as CEO and director of marketing. Throughout his career Tobin secured fifteen patents, including U.S. Patent #6,141,666, US Patent #7,505,913, and Japanese Patent #4,021,941.
Cal Industries, Inc.
In 1969 Tobin co-founded Cal Industries, Inc., serving as financier and marketing director. The company provided promotional programs for over 50 companies of the Fortune 500, including Pepsi, Nabisco, General Foods, CPC International, Coca-Cola, and American Tobacco. The company also developed educational materials for multiple major publishers, such as the American Management Association, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Macmillan, and McGraw-Hill. It also developed sales training programs for American Can, A&P, AT&T, Chase Manhattan Bank, General Foods, and Johnson & Johnson. Tobin left the company in 1977.
Travel Concepts, Inc.
Tobin founded and financed a second company in 1971, Travel Concepts, Inc. He served as president and CEO for 14 years. The company developed the first travel kits to be distributed in First Class and Business Class cabins, and also provided in-flight educational games for children. The first class and business class travel kits and the educational game programs have been utilized by most major airlines for 25 years.
Concept Industries, Inc.
Tobin's third company, Concept Industries, Inc., was founded in 1975. While he served as president and CEO, the company developed computer software training programs, which went on to be used by most major word-processing and photo-typsetting systems like Compugraphic, Olivetti, Philips USA, Radio Shack, Royal Typewriter, Savin, and Xerox, to name a few.
Cal Pack Industries, Inc.
In 1977, Tobin founded and served as CEO to Cal Pack Industries, Inc., which invented and sold patented plastic dispensers for disposable cups and napkins, eliminating the need for restaurants to use expensive metal dispensers. The dispensers are still in common use. Tobin remained CEO until 1985.
Software Concepts, Inc.
A year after Cal Pack Industries was founded, Tobin founded Software Concepts, Inc., where he served as president and CEO for 8 years. The company developed software programs for computers, including a map downloading program for the CIA, and one of the first patented software programs in the United States for spelling verification. The latter program was used by most major word-processing and photo-typesetting systems, including Lanier, Philips, and Xerox, among many others. The patent he was issued in 1980 for the Spell-Checking program was one of the first software patents issued in the United States, Canada, and Europe.
Concept Communication, Inc.
From 1984 to 1989, Tobin headed his startup Concept Communication, Inc., which replaced the then 100 pound, $100,000 computers necessary for teleconferencing with a patented, $12,000 circuit board which doubled frame rate from 15 frames per second to 30 frames per second and was reduced in size to a circuit board that fit into any PC. He secured a patent for a codec for full-motion videoconferencing, first demonstrated at AT&T Bell Labs in 1986. Tobin was named Man of the Year by the International Teleconferencing Association for this achievement.
PC Flowers, Inc.
In 1988 Tobin founded PC Flowers, Inc., one of the first online electronic commerce services on the Prodigy Network. The company was the first financially successful interactive electronic commerce service in the United States. By 1991, the company had sales in excess of $6 million. The company linked FTD's 25,000 member florists to the Prodigy Network, becoming their most successful service.
Instruments of Sweden, Inc.
Tobin founded Instruments of Sweden, Inc. in 1987, where he patented, produced, and marketed an instrument used for removing deer ticks. He remained with the company until 1994.
PC Flowers and Gifts
Tobin founded PC Flowers and Gifts in 1994, and using patents he had developed, the company invented the ability to provide tracking, affiliate marketing, and customized "co-branded" flower and gift services for numerous large websites. The company had over 2,700 affiliate marketing partners by 1998, and was sold in May 2000 to Federated Department Stores.
Commerce Technology Licensing, LLC
In 2000, Tobin founded Commerce Technology Licensing, LLC, a consulting firm on patent licensing, co-branding, and e-commerce.
Memoir
In early 2011 Tobin published his first book, ''Confessions of a Compulsive Entrepreneur and Inventor: How I Secured Fifteen Patents, Started Ten Companies, and Became a Pioneer on the Internet, which is part memoir and part tutorial.
Awards
Tobin was named "Entrepreneur of the Year" by Inc. Magazine. He was also named "Man of Year" by the International Teleconferencing Association, and was selected as one of the "Top 100 Marketing Executives" by Ad Age Magazine.
Personal life
Tobin lives on Marco Island, Florida. He founded the Tobin Family Education and Health Foundation, and when not boating, is a frequent speaker and panelist for business startups, management, and the topic of entrepreneurial innovation. He has also worked for a range of causes that search for cures for veterans' illnesses.
Publishing history
References
External links
Patent Example
Video: Bill Tobin Interview
Living people
American inventors
Businesspeople from New York City
American chief executives
American marketing people
Adelphi University alumni
LIU Post alumni
People from Marco Island, Florida
Year of birth missing (living people) |
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