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33451348 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TiVo%20Inc.%20v.%20EchoStar%20Corp. | TiVo Inc. v. EchoStar Corp. | TiVo Inc. v. EchoStar Corp. is a case stretching from 2004 to 2011, which took place in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas and the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. TiVo Inc. sued EchoStar Corp. claiming patent infringement of a DVR technology. The issues addressed during litigation included patent infringement, wording of injunctions, infringing product redesign, contempt of court orders, and contempt sanctions. Ultimately, the court held that EchoStar Corp. had indeed infringed TiVo Inc's patent and was in contempt of court for noncompliance of an injunction. The parties reached a settlement wherein EchoStar Corp. paid TiVo Inc. a licensing fee. Further, the court replaced the established contempt test with a single step test. The simplified test makes it more difficult for patent holders to prove contempt as a result of repeat infringement.
Overview
In 2004, TiVo Inc. sued the consortium of companies known as EchoStar Corp. (EchoStar Communications Corporation, EchoStar DBS Corporation, EchoStar Technologies Corporation, Echosphere Limited Liability Company, and EchoStar Satellite LLC, and Dish Network Corporation) in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas alleging they infringed various claims of the "Multimedia Time Warping System" patent (U.S. Patent 6,233,389 or '389 patent) with their line of competing digital video recorders (DVRs).
As described in U.S. Patent 6,233,389, TiVo claims a system for parsing real-time television metadata in an external ASIC. TiVo's system either uses the metadata embedded in an MPEG2 transport stream or generates similar metadata for analog broadcasts using the information provided by North American Broadcast Teletext Standard. The metadata is used to determine when specific events occur. Saving the event log makes it possible for the TiVo system to perform the following operations: "reverse, fast forward, play, pause, index, fast/slow reverse play, and fast/slow play." One novel aspect of TiVo's '389 patent is the ASIC implementation. By dedicating a specialized processing unit to event detection, the application processor can be used for other tasks. TiVo's patent refers to their event coprocessor as the "MediaSwitch."
A jury found EchoStar Corp's products infringed TiVo Inc's patent, resulting in the court issuing a permanent injunction against EchoStar Corp.
EchoStar Corp. appealed the judgment to the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Upon review, the Federal Circuit reversed the judgment of infringement due to the hardware claims; however, the court affirmed the judgment of infringement due to the software claims. The District Court's permanent injunction, stayed during the appeal proceeding, was placed back into effect.
Soon after the appeal concluded, TiVo Inc. motioned to hold EchoStar Corp in contempt of the permanent injunction. The District Court utilized the two-part test for patent infringement established in KSM Fastening Systems, Inc. V. H.A. Jones Company, Inc. The crux of this test involved determining whether there is "more than a colorable difference" between the original infringing product and the redesign. EchoStar claimed significant changes to their DVR system in order to be compliant with the ruling. The key changes to the system were replacing the infringing event detection system with "start code detection was replaced by statistical estimation, a method which EchoStar characterized as an indexless system and a brute-force search method." The court determined that EchoStar Corp's software redesign still infringed TiVo Inc. '389 patent; thus, EchoStar was held in contempt of the Infringement Provision of the permanent injunction.
Furthermore, the District Court held that EchoStar Corp never complied with the Disablement Provision of the permanent injunction. Therefore, EchoStar Corp was held in contempt and sanctioned.
EchoStar Corp. appealed the judgment of contempt to the Federal Circuit. The court was unmoved by EchoStar Corp's arguments and affirmed the District Court's judgment with a 2–1 ruling, EchoStar then motioned for a rehearing en banc. Upon review, the en banc Federal Circuit determined the KSM test was unworkable and instituted a new test for post-infringement contempt proceedings. The en banc Federal Circuit vacated and remanded the judgment on the Infringement Provision of the permanent injunction. However, the judgment of contempt with respect to the violation of the Disablement Provision was affirmed. Thus, EchoStar was held to be in contempt of the permanent injunction with a 7–5 ruling.
On April 29, 2011, the companies reached a $500 million settlement whereby EchoStar Corp. agreed to license DVR technology from TiVo Inc. In addition, all pending litigation was to be dismissed with prejudice and all injunctions dissolved. However, the en banc Federal Circuit appeal was not dismissed because a decision was reached before the settlement. Consequently, the parties were "free upon remand…to request that the District Court dismiss the complaint and vacate its previously imposed sanctions" due to the settlement.
Timeline
TiVo Inc. v. EchoStar Corp. stretched from January 2004 to April 2011, the timeline of events is very complex. Presented below is a rough outline of the major events during the legal proceedings (table adapted from ).
Opinion details
TiVo Inc. v. EchoStar Corp., United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas
In a trial by jury, EchoStar was found to infringe TiVo Inc's '389 patent. The infringing devices were the categorized by their video decoding ASIC. The two categories were DVRs using the 50X series ASIC and DVRs using Broadcom Corporation parts. The jury found, "the 50X DVRs literally infringed the asserted hardware and software claims," the "Broadcom DVRs literally infringed the asserted hardware claims and infringed the asserted software claims under the doctrine of equivalents." As a result, TiVo Inc. was awarded approximately $74 million in damages from lost profits and royalties, and a permanent injunction was issued against EchoStar.
TiVo Inc. v. EchoStar Corp., No. 2006-1574 (Fed. Cir., January 31, 2008)
Before: Circuit Judge Bryson, Senior Circuit Judge Plager, and Chief District Judge Keeley
EchoStar Corp. motioned the Federal Circuit for an appeal and was granted a temporary stay on the permanent injunction. The issues on trial were two hardware claims (1 and 32) and two software claims (31 and 61) of TiVo Inc.'s '389 patent. The Federal Circuit held "Broadcom DVRs do not satisfy the 'is separated' limitation [of the hardware claims] and the 50X DVRs don't satisfy the 'assembles' limitation [of the hardware claims];" thus, the appeals court reversed "the portion of the judgment upholding the jury's verdict that EchoStar's DVRs literally infringe the hardware claims." Finding the jury's reasoning permissible, the Federal Circuit upheld the jury's verdict that EchoStar Corp's DVRs infringed the software claims of TiVo Inc.'s '389 patent. The stay on the permanent injunction dissolved when the appeal became final and the District Court could determine if TiVo Inc. sustained additional damages while the stay was in effect. Additional damages were found to be warranted.
TiVo Inc. v. Dish Network Corp., Civil Action No. 2:04-CV-01 (E.D. Tex., June 2, 2009)
TiVo Inc. motioned to hold EchoStar Corp. in contempt for violating the Infringement and Disablement Provisions of the permanent injunction. The District Court utilized the KSM test to determine if a contempt proceeding was appropriate and if there was continuing infringement. The first step of the KSM test was to determine whether there was a "colorable" difference between the infringing and modified products. The second step was to compare the modified products to the patent claims to determine if the modified product infringes.
EchoStar argued that its redesign of the infringing products was more than colorably different by the KSM test. Upon a comparison between the infringing and modified products, the District Court held "any differences between the infringing and modified products are no more than colorable … As a result, contempt proceeding in this case are appropriate [by the KSM test]." Applying the second step of the KSM test, the District Court held "modifications do not affect elements of the disputed claims as construed … the infringing and modified devices may be treated as the same." Therefore, EchoStar Corp. continued to infringe TiVo Inc. patent '389 and was held in contempt of permanent injunction's Infringement Provision.
With respect to the Disablement Provision, the District Court stated "even if EchoStar had achieved a non-infringing design-around, this Court would still find that EchoStar is in contempt of this Court's permanent injunction … [regarding] the Disablement Provision of this Court's order, which ordered EchoStar to 'disable the DVR functionality.'" EchoStar argued the Disablement Provision only covered original infringing products (non-software updated 50X and Broadcom DVRs). However, the District Court held that a plain reading of the order includes all 50X and Broadcom DVRs whether non-infringing redesigned or original infringing. The District Court ordered EchoStar Corps. to deactivate the DVR capability of all 50X and Broadcom DVRs regardless of the software utilized by the device; EchoStar Corps. did not comply and were held in contempt of the Disablement Provision of the permanent injunction.
TiVo Inc. v. Dish Network Corp., Civil Action No. 2:04-CV-01 (E.D. Tex., September 4, 2009)
This ruling determined the sanctions against EchoStar Corp. for violation the permanent injunction. The District Court awarded TiVo Inc. "$2.25 per DVR subscriber per month for the contempt period," which amounts to nearly $90 million in addition to the original jury award. Furthermore, EchoStar Corp. must reimburse TiVo Inc's legal fees for the contempt proceedings. The District Court amended its earlier injunction to require "EchoStar seek the court's approval before implementing future non-infringing workarounds to its DVR software."
TiVo Inc. v. EchoStar Corp., No. 2009-1374 (Fed. Cir., March 4, 2010)
Majority Opinion (Circuit Judges Mayer and Lourie)
EchoStar Crop. appealed the District Court's contempt ruling on the grounds that issues relating to continued infringement are impermissible in a contempt proceeding due to changes made during the redesign. The Federal Circuit disagreed and held that the District Court "used the proper standard in its analysis," the KSM test. The Federal Circuit concluded there was no "abuse of discretion in the court's decision to hold contempt proceedings," In addition, the Federal Circuit was persuaded that the District Court could find EchoStar in contempt of the Infringement Provision and that there was "clear and convincing evidence" to do so. With regards to the Disablement Provision, the Federal Circuit held a plain reading "would have provided EchoStar with notice of what is now being held in contempt;" furthermore, the chance to appeal the provision language has passed. The amendment to the permanent injunction which required EchoStar Crop. to seek pre-approval for any new design-around effort was affirmed.
Dissenting Opinion (Circuit Judge Rader)
Judge Rader argued the District Court's injunction was too broad and ambiguously worded. Furthermore, the dissenting opinion argued "TiVo should not be able to bootstrap its new, previously abandoned infringement theory to that [previous] verdict," because this "discourages good faith efforts to design around an infringement verdict."
TiVo Inc. v. EchoStar Corp., No. 2009-1374 (Fed. Cir. April 20, 2011) (en banc)
Majority Opinion (Circuit Judges Lourie, Newman, Mayer, Bryson, Moore, O'Malley, and Reyna; In Part Chief Circuit
Judge Rader, Circuit Judges Gajarsa, Linn, Dyk, and Prost)
EchoStar Corp. petitioned for a rehearing en banc by the Federal Circuit to challenge "the enforceability of the District Court's injunction based on overbreadth and vagueness." Upon review, the en banc Federal Circuit overruled the case which the KSM test was from, "we conclude that KSM's two-step inquiry has been unworkable and now overrule that holding of KSM." The en banc Federal Circuit replaced the KSM test with a straight "more than colorable difference test." As a result of the application of the new test, the en banc Federal Circuit vacated the District Court's finding of contempt for violating the Infringement Provision of the permanent injunction. However, the en banc Federal Circuit affirmed the District Court's holding with regards to the Disablement Provision; thus, affirming the District Court's finding of contempt. The en banc Federal Circuit found EchoStar Corp's arguments for overbreath and vagueness in the permanent injunction "unpersuasive."
The original jury award was vacated; however, the contempt sanctions were affirmed. In addition, the District Court's holding of infringement provision contempt was remanded "to make a finding concerning any colorable difference between the previously adjudicated infringing devices and the newly accused devices" using the new test laid out in this case.
Dissenting Opinion (Chief Circuit Judge Rader; and Circuit Judges Gajarsa, Linn, and Prost)
The dissenting opinion focused on the Disablement Provision of the permanent injunction, which argued that the finding of contempt should have been reversed outright. "In my view, the disablement provision does not bar the installation of modified software that renders the devices non-infringing, and, even if the provision were unclear, an unclear injunction cannot be the basis for contempt." In addition, the dissenting opinion argued this case should not be remanded to the lower court due to the Infringement Provision since "that provision plainly was not violated."
Precedent established
As a result of the en banc ruling of the Federal Circuit, a new test to determine whether an adjudged infringer can be held in contempt for continued infringement was implemented. This new test replaced the old two-step KSM test from the 1985 decision in KSM Fastening Systems, Inc. V. H.A. Jones Company, Inc. The new test "raised the bar for proving that defendant committed contempt" by requiring that a patentee show "the elements found infringing in the original product without significant change in the redesign." The KSM test required that the original and redesign were "generally similar." In addition, the patentee must "show that the defendant's redesigned product infringes upon the same patent claims as the original product."
References
United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit cases
United States patent case law
2011 in United States case law
Dish Network
TiVo |
12055300 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JUCE | JUCE | JUCE is a partially open-source cross-platform C++ application framework, used for the development of desktop and mobile applications. JUCE is used in particular for its GUI and plug-ins libraries.
The aim of JUCE is to allow software to be written such that the same source code will compile and run identically on Windows, macOS and Linux platforms. It supports various development environments and compilers.
History
Juce resulted from a split-out of the underlying C++ code that was developed by Julian Storer to create Tracktion's (now Waveform) DAW graphic and audio capabilities. It was first released to the public in 2004. It is covered by a dual GPL/commercial license.
JUCE and Raw Material Software were acquired in November 2014 by London-based hardware manufacturer ROLI for an undisclosed amount.
In April 2020 it was announced that JUCE had been sold by ROLI to the audio technology company PACE.
Official support
JUCE is intended to be usable in exactly the same way on multiple platforms and compilers. Raw Material Software gives the following list of platforms and compilers on which support is officially confirmed; others may work, but have not been officially tested.
Supported platforms
JUCE is supported on the following platforms.
Windows Vista, 7, 8, and 10
macOS versions 10.7 and later
iOS versions 3 and later
Linux kernel series 2.6 and later
Android using NDK-v5 and later
Supported compilers
JUCE is officially confirmed to work properly with the following compilers.
GCC versions 4.8 and later
LLVM - LLVM Clang
Microsoft Visual Studio - Visual C++ 2015 and later
Features
Like many other frameworks (e.g., Qt, wxWidgets, GTK, etc.), JUCE contains classes providing a range of functions that cover user-interface elements, graphics, audio, XML and JSON parsing, networking, cryptography, multi-threading, an integrated interpreter that mimics ECMAScript's syntax, and various other commonly used features. Application developers needing several third-party libraries may thus be able to consolidate and use only the JUCE library, or at least reduce the number of third-party libraries they use. In this, the original inspiration was Java's JDK, and JUCE was intended to be "something similar for C++".
A notable feature of JUCE when compared to other similar frameworks is its large set of audio functionality; this is because JUCE was originally developed as a framework for Tracktion, an audio sequencer, before being split off into a standalone product. JUCE has support for audio devices (such as CoreAudio, ASIO, ALSA, JACK, WASAPI, DirectSound) and MIDI playback, polyphonic synthesizers, built-in readers for common audio file formats (such as WAV, AIFF, FLAC, MP3 and Vorbis), as well as wrappers for building various types of audio plugin, such as VST effects and instruments. This has led to its widespread use in the audio development community.
JUCE comes with wrapper classes for building audio and browser plugins. When building an audio plugin, a single binary is produced that supports multiple plugin formats (VST & VST3, RTAS, AAX, Audio Units). Since all the platform and format-specific code is contained in the wrapper, a user can build Mac and Windows VST/VST3/RTAS/AAX/AUs from a single codebase. Targeting LV2 is also possible with the use of a fork.
Browser plugins are handled in a similar way: a single binary is produced that functions as both an NPAPI and an ActiveX plugin.
Tools
The "Projucer" is an IDE tool for creating and managing JUCE projects. When the files and settings for a JUCE project have been specified, the Projucer automatically generates a collection of 3rd-party project files to allow the project to be compiled natively on each target platform. It can currently generate Xcode projects, Visual Studio projects, Linux Makefiles, Android Ant builds and CodeBlocks projects. As well as providing a way to manage a project's files and settings, it also has a code editor, an integrated GUI editor, wizards for creating new projects and files, and a live coding engine useful for user interface design.
See also
Widget toolkit
List of widget toolkits
References
External links
C++ libraries
Free computer libraries
Free software programmed in C++
Widget toolkits |
30773484 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABC%20FlowCharter | ABC FlowCharter | ABC FlowCharter is a flowchart program originally from Texas-based Micrografx, Inc. The trademark for this software was filed on August 25, 1989, and registered in January 1991. It is also known as Micrografx FlowCharter
and iGrafx FlowCharter.
Version 4.0 of ABC FlowCharter was released in 1995. It integrated the ABC ToolKit software from Micrografx and included new diagramming tools and templates. The software added intelligent line routing, which automatically routed connecting lines around other shapes. This software was compatible with an IBM 386 computer with Windows 3.1, 5 Mb of RAM, a VGA monitor, and it required 21 Mb of hard disk space.
Following the acquisition of Micrografx by the Canadian company Corel in 2001, ABC FlowCharter was then maintained by the separate business unit iGrafx, formed in 2003. The software package was renamed to "iGrafx FlowCharter 2003". , the currently available version of this software package is "iGrafx FlowCharter".
References
Diagramming software |
8124711 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List%20of%20Black%20Lagoon%20characters | List of Black Lagoon characters | The following is a list of characters from the Japanese manga and anime Black Lagoon.
The Lagoon Company
The Lagoon Company is a mercenary/pirate group that is the main focus of the series, hired by the many criminal organisations operating in and around Roanapur to locate, acquire and smuggle items by sea.
Rokuro Okajima / Rock
, also known as , is the main character in the series in the anime version, but not in the manga, he is also the narrator of the story.
Rock starts out as a 25-year-old Japanese salaryman for Asahi Industries in Tokyo until he is taken hostage by the crew of the Black Lagoon during their raid on the ship he is on. He joins the Lagoon Company after his department chief Kageyama abandons him (Kageyama declares him dead) in an attempt to cover up the smuggling operation in which Rock had been an unwitting participant. Rock is a caring and good-natured everyman despite being on the business end of guns from friend and foe alike, and often seems surprised at the dangers of the Southeast Asian crime world. He still wears his tie, dress shirt, and dress pants because although now a pirate, he still retains his business persona. He prefers to use words over weapons when interacting with others. Rock, after joining the Lagoon company, has wondered if he is experiencing Stockholm syndrome.
Within the Lagoon Company, Rock is usually responsible for account management, diplomacy, negotiation, interpretation, and the occasional errand. Having once worked in the resource investigation department of Asahi Industries, Rock is also skilled in geology. He is also a natural linguist, being effectively bilingual in Japanese, his native language, and English, as well as being familiar with other languages, including Spanish, Romanian, and Russian. He also has a surprisingly high tolerance for alcohol, owing to the heavy-drinking lifestyle of a ladder-climbing salaryman. Rock's charismatic personality has earned him the interest of several figures in Roanapur, including Balalaika, Mr. Chang, Rowan "Jackpot" Pigeon, Yolanda, Eda (who develops a crush on him), and young Garcia Lovelace. In many ways, Rock is the heart of the Lagoon Company, serving as a balance for his more callous teammates and as an average counterbalance in the world of darkness that is Roanapur. Dutch has stated that he believes Lagoon Company is complete with Rock not holding a gun, saying his bullets are the kind to ricochet back at them.
Despite his lack of combat experience, Rock has come through every adventure, kidnapping, and firefight with only a few bruises, surviving personal confrontations with most of Roanapur's most dangerous criminals at some point. Rock eventually begins to enjoy his life as a pirate and becomes even more comfortable with corruption. This comes to the fore when Mr Chang personally enlists Rock to locate Roberta before she is killed by US Special Forces, as he demonstrates a duplicitous, ruthless side of his personality clearly influenced by Revy and Roanapur. He devises a scheme to extract the US soldiers from the city to draw Roberta out, accounting even for Garcia's loyalty, Roberta's psychosis and the personal vendattas amongst the criminals, treating the entire plan like a gambling game. He is forced back towards kindness in the extra missing pages of chapter 76 after an angered Fabiola shoots him with a blank round. In "The Wired Red Wild Card" arc, he is last seen driving a car with Revy.
While Rock has a family in Tokyo, he has little to no connection with them due to their somewhat cold attitude towards him. It is later revealed that he failed to pass his college entrance exams on his first try, leading his family to lower their expectations of him. It is known that he has a father, a mother, and an older brother who was academically capable and thus attained a job in the Japanese government. He was born in the 49th year of the Shōwa period, according to the manga version, which corresponds to 1974.
Revy
, sometimes referred to by her real name, Rebecca Lee, is the co-protagonist of the series. She does most of the fighting for the Lagoon Company. Very little is revealed about her past. Revy is a Chinese American in her mid to late 20s from Chinatown, Manhattan, near Mott Street, who spent most of her youth as a criminal. Flashbacks throughout the series reveal that she may have honed her skills with firearms by shooting at cans, and that her first murder may have involved shooting her abusive father, using a pillow as a silencer. Revy is very confident, grumpy, aggressive, cynical, and emotionally unstable. Unlike Rock, she is undiplomatic, believing in the use of brute force and violence to get her way. In contrast to this, she is revealed to be highly ticklish. She is also a heavy smoker and drinker. Of all the characters in the series, Revy is recognized as the most foul-mouthed, yelling constant profanity.
She is a sadistic killer without a conscience who will murder anyone at the slightest provocation, even unarmed civilians. She has a loving but bullying attitude towards Rock, the newest and most friendly crew member of the Black Lagoon; though she respects him later in the series, she is mostly threatening towards him, having nearly murdered him on two occasions and threatening him with death on several others. However, she does act to save Rock from critical situations, and later on she admits to Balalaika that she considers Rock as family. It seems likely that she is attracted to Rock, based on her reactions to Eda's teasings, which appear to be motivated by jealousy. Her attraction is further suggested in the last scenes of Season 2 when Eda asks her if she has gotten anywhere with Rock; instead of denying it with a short comment as usual, she replies that she'd rather not say, causing Eda to laugh at her hopelessness when it comes to men.
Revy is also very protective of Rock. An example can be found in her anger and resolve to kill Chaka after he beats Rock. She has also lied or gone against her "nature" in order to save him; such as when he was kidnapped by Takenaka and she lied about him having the documents they required when she actually had them the whole time, or when she stood up to Balalaika as she held Rock at gunpoint after he opposed her plan to destroy the Washimine clan. She also went to Japan as his bodyguard (when Rock acted as Balalaika's interpreter), but as pointed out by Benny, the only real reason she went was to look after him because she was worried about him.
According to CIA agents on Basilan Island, Revy is still regarded as notorious by the NYPD (particularly at the fictional 27th Precinct).
Revy is one of the deadliest fighters in the series, whose skill with firearms and ability to dodge bullets is almost superhuman and unparalleled. There are only a few other characters, such as Roberta and Ginji, that can hold their ground against her in combat. In episode 11 of the first season Revy concedes to Mr. Chang that she does not possess his level of skill but hopes to attain it eventually. Her weapons of choice are a pair of modified Beretta 92FS's; which are made out of stainless steel and had their barrels extended from 4.9" to 5.9" each (the 5.9" is the combat MOD barrel) and also adapted for silencers. They are engraved with the words "9mm Sword Cutlass" on both sides, the Jolly Roger of the pirate Calico Jack (which is also inlaid into the ivory grips), and a manufacturer's inscription in Thai. Due to her ambidextrous marksmanship skills, she is nicknamed "Two Hands" by the denizens of Roanapur, which is based on Douglas E. Winter's novel Run. Revy is also proficient in the use of other weapons, such as high-powered rifles and the M79 grenade launcher. Constantly living on the edge, combined with the tragedies of her past, Revy has developed a rather bleak outlook on life, relying only on her own power, skills, and money.
Dutch
is the African American leader of the Lagoon Company and captain of the ex-U.S. Navy PT boat Black Lagoon. Age 40–50, he is a former Marine who fought in the Vietnam War. Shortly before the war ended (presumably in 1973), Dutch went AWOL, escaping to Thailand to work as a mercenary.
Dutch first appears when he scolds Revy for taking Rock as a hostage when she has no real plan for obtaining any ransom. Because of this, Dutch apologizes and tries to take care of Rock until they find a safe place to abandon him. As Rock later proves to be incredibly useful, Dutch allows Revy to invite him into the Lagoon Company. Dutch tends to stay away from the fighting associated with Lagoon Company's activities. Instead, he gives orders and negotiates contracts with clients from the many criminal groups of Roanapur. However, Dutch is very capable in combat, skillfully wielding a Remington 870 Marine Magnum shotgun and a Smith & Wesson 629 revolver. Despite his amoral lifestyle, Dutch is a polite and laid-back character, and most of the time is very considerate. He has a close association with Balalaika of Hotel Moscow, having saved her life during one of Roanapur's gang wars.
His body is heavily muscled, and he is always seen wearing a pair of sunglasses, typically dressed in camouflage pants and wearing a flak jacket. He appears to be in his 30s, but is most likely in his 40s, given his apparent military service in Vietnam and the setting of Black Lagoon in the 1990s. In the "Baile de los Muertos" saga in the manga, it is suggested that Dutch lied about his Vietnam service and could just simply be a mercenary with no past. However, a U.S. soldier advised Benny to be wary of Dutch, because a man like Dutch never lies without a serious reason.
Benny
is a dropout from a college in Florida where he studied until getting into trouble with the FBI and the mafia. Benny would have ended up dead if Revy had not saved him. He works as the Lagoon Company's mechanic, computer specialist, and researcher. He also functions as the Lagoon's driver and appears to be the owner of the 1969 Dodge Coronet R/T (later replaced with a 1965 Pontiac GTO) that Lagoon Company travels around Roanapur in. He is Jewish, or at least of Jewish descent as he puts it, and is often called "Benny-Boy" by Dutch. Benny joined the Lagoon Company two years before Rock after Revy rescued him. Benny has a level-headed and anxiety-free personality. He readily admits to Rock that the two of them are not gunfighters in any way, shape, or form. Unlike Rock, however, Benny is willing to turn a blind eye to Revy and Dutch's barbaric methods. Benny also tends to be possessive of his computers and will not let anyone else touch them. In the second season, he met Greenback Jane and after impressing her with his computer abilities, began an online relationship with her. Jane returns to Roanapur following the teams completion of the Lovelace Incident and Benny meets up with her. Possibly based on Jake Adelstein.
Hotel Moscow
Hotel Moscow is a branch of the Russian mafia based on Thai soil named after the Hotel Moskva in the Russian capital city of Moscow. The Bougainvillea Trade Company serves as a front for their activities. It is composed of the men who served under Balalaika in the Soviet–Afghan War, who are dedicated to her. They are relatively new to Roanapur, but their brutality, discipline and prior experience make most of the gangsters wary of them.
Balalaika
is the boss of Hotel Moscow. Her real name is Sofia Irinovskaya Pavlovna. She was brought up by her grandfather, the military head of the USSR. Before joining the mafia, Balalaika was a captain in the Soviet Army and a Vozdushno-Desantnye Vojska paratrooper who served in the Soviet–Afghan War. A fine marksman and sniper, she was nicknamed "balalaika", one of the Soviet Army's slang terms for the Dragunov sniper rifle. After being dismissed by the Soviet Military, Balalaika has an intense hatred for the corrupt Russian government and its influence over her country. It is because of this Balalaika decided to work for the Russian Mafia. Due to Balalaika's leadership during the hellish fighting in Afghanistan, her men look up to her as their superior and will do just about anything upon her orders. As a combat officer, she is a skilled strategist and well-rounded fighter, capable of taking care of herself despite the fact that all of her troopers, including Boris, often worry about her. Although she has shown herself to be rather cynical on occasion, she is also a pragmatic and professional businesswoman. She frequently employs Dutch and the Lagoon Company, as he saved her life after she was shot by Mr Chang during a gang war. She, along with Mr Chang, are one of the few people that Revy respects, and Revy would affectionately refer to her as "Sis". In turn, Balalaika also seems to hold Rock in high regard, sometimes relying on his knowledge and business skills.
Balalaika can be easily identified by the burn marks which scar most of the right side of her face, neck, and chest which she suffered in Afghanistan, earning her the nickname "Fry-Face" by those who dislike her. She has long blonde hair, and usually wears a military greatcoat, thrown over a low-cut business suit. She smokes cigars, in contrast with the other characters who smoke cigarettes. Based on her service in Afghanistan and the missed opportunity to participate in the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles due to the Soviet boycott, she is between 31–35 years old.
In critical operations, Balalaika calls upon a personal cadre of ex-Soviet airborne troops and Spetsnaz commandos who are Afghanistan veterans. Known as the Desantniki, they act as Hotel Moscow's special ops team. She and her men share a strong fellowship and there is a great deal of mutual loyalty between them. It is implied that many of her current operatives served with her in Afghanistan. When conducting foreign operations from Thai soil, she uses the Russian cargo ship Maria Zeleska as a legal cover from the police and various law enforcement agencies. In spite of the fact that Balalaika is on the Interpol list, she uses the pseudonym Vladilena N. Vasilinov in Japan, being covered by diplomatic immunity.
Boris
is Balalaika's second-in-command. He can be easily identified by the large scar running from the right side of his forehead to his left cheek. He is a calm, broad-built man with a deep Russian accent. Like Balalaika, he also saw service in Afghanistan. She still refers to him as "Comrade Sergeant" rather than by his name, suggesting that he was her former platoon sergeant. He is very loyal and protective of Balalaika and often worries for her safety when she decides to fight in the field.
The Hong Kong Triad
The Hong Kong Triad are a branch of the Hong Kong-based Triad stationed in Roanapur. They are led by Mr. Chang, who is a proficient gun fighter in his own right. Chang is more patient than Balalaika in terms of getting into battle. Under his services are Shenhua, who is his top assassin; Sawyer, who does disposal jobs for him frequently despite not being a member of the organization, and Leigharch, who is their getaway driver until recent events prevented him from acting in this capacity.
Mr. Chang
is the boss of a Thailand branch of the Sun Yee On Triad. Like Revy, he is adept with dual-wielding pistols (Beretta 76 and AMT Hardballer) in a fashion similar to that of gun fu, the former of which are inscribed with a Chinese symbol, meaning "Heavenly King", on the grips. Chang is far more proficient in this dual-wielding gunfighting style than Revy, who, in episode 11, freely admits that she is "not on his level yet". It may be this prowess in combat that makes Chang the only male whom Revy respectfully refers to as "Sir".
He has a deep respect for Balalaika (who annoys him by referring to him as "Babe"), though their beliefs are known to collide. Their relationship is almost playful in a business sort of way, which began after they survived a shootout with each other. They both recognise they would make a strong partnership in crime, but choose not to because it would make their respective lives boring. Chang is rather amused at Rock's "unique" way of handling things. Unlike most criminal bosses in the town, he advocates cooperation and joint ventures to keep the status quo in Roanapur, knowing outside interference would see all the criminals lose. A conversation with Eda just before Roberta's second rampage reveals Chang is in fact secretly backed by the CIA, being permitted to continue his criminal activities in exchange for keeping Roanapur relatively peaceful.
Chang seems easily amused, and unusually-easygoing and lighthearted, especially given his position. This might be attributed to the fact that he was once a member of law enforcement, which he reveals after being called 'an inhuman scumbag' by Rock and laughing out loud in response, and he might very well be seeing his current position as an ironic twist of fate. The only time he is shown to be truly angry is when Eda (disguising her voice) taunts him about the USA's influence and the fact he has no choice but to cooperate with them.
His past as law enforcer may explain his combat expertise. Chang manages to survive a shootout with Balalaika, escape from ambush of superior number of Islamic front jihadists, and disarm Fabiola easily. His expertise is often overshadowed by his easygoing character, in comparison with the ill-tempered Revy and near-psychotic Roberta.
Mr. Chang is based on characters commonly played by Chow Yun-fat in films by John Woo, such as John Lee in Replacement Killers and especially Mark Gor in A Better Tomorrow, as both Chang and Mark Gor are members of the Hong Kong Triads, wield dual pistols and don similar attire.
Shenhua
is a Taiwanese assassin in the employ of Mr. Chang. She prefers to use various edged weapons in close combat, in particular a pair of Kukri knives linked together with a length of leather rope at the handles, thus using them as modified rope darts. She is also skilled in the use of throwing knives. Shenhua is a professional rival of Revy (who refers to her as "Chinglish" in the anime and "Yes Lady" in the manga; in return Shenhua calls Revy "Twinkie" in the anime (yellow on the outside (Chinese) and white on the inside), whom she has worked with and against at times. Her personal religion is Taoism. However, she tells Eda in episode 18 that she is an atheist, but this was due to a mistranslation in the English dubbed anime. One of her most notable traits is her broken speech pattern, which is always moving between Chinese and English. She is last seen being helped to walk by Lotton (who says that he will take her to a doctor, despite her having suffered what she believes to be a fatal wound) after being shot by Eda while hunting for Greenback Jane. In the El Baile de la Muerte arc, she is revealed to have survived the battle when Revy is shown calling her on the phone. She agrees to take up Revy's offer to help Garcia fight off the Colombian Cartel who is trying to kill Roberta. She showed her first glimpse of fear when in close range combat with Roberta when she managed to catch one of Shenhua's kukri in her teeth and shattered the blade to pieces.
It is unknown if Shenhua has any unarmed hand-to-hand skills, although it seems likely. In the anime, she fights only with blades, and never engages anyone in true hand-to-hand combat. The only other person who does this is Sawyer the Cleaner, who frequently works with her in "disposal" jobs.
Leigharch
is an Irish getaway driver who worked with Shenhua during the incident involving the Islamic Liberation Front. A compulsive user of marijuana, he has a distressingly frequent tendency to hallucinate at inopportune times, such as in the middle of a car chase. Most of his hallucinations are actually references to Western pop culture, such as Playmates, Star Trek characters like Jean-Luc Picard and Klingons, or 1960s rock music such as Jimi Hendrix. Leigharch is said by Shenhua during the Greenback Jane incident to have suffered a massive overdose (he "couldn't get back from Mars"), inducing psychological damage severe enough to commit him to full-time medical attention. Despite his drug addiction and hallucinations, he was still considered a skilled driver before his overdose.
The Colombian Cartel
The Colombian cartel noted in this section is separate from the Manisalera Cartel which was originally responsible for Garcia Lovelace's kidnapping and was subsequently wiped out by Roberta and Balalaika who seems to have since taken over their territory. Along with the Italian Mafia, they are the most brash of the criminal organizations, much to the disgust of Balalaika and Chang. Just them barely appearing often results in needless fighting and bloodshed. They are led by Abrego, who is somewhat of a coward and usually travels with his men. Lately, they have been made a fool of in the criminal underworld because of the Lovelace Family and their two killer maids. While the Italians do it for profit, the Cartels do it as a sense of pride, which usually gets them into unwanted trouble. It is revealed that they had a hand in the assassination of Diego Lovelace.
Abrego
is a Colombian drug cartel boss operating in Roanapur. Whilst very arrogant, he has a tendency to be cowardly. He was presumed dead after the South American maid Roberta detonated a bomb in the bar he was in, although his appearance in later episodes is evidence that he somehow survived. After the explosion and the loss of many of his gunmen, Abrego's influence in Roanapur seems to have fallen, judging from the attitude he takes from Balalaika, Chang and Verrocchio. He is once again made a fool of, this time by Fabiola.
Ever since the incident with Roberta, the Cartel had tried numerous times to figure out where she was hiding; fortunately for Roberta, through her connection with the Lovelace family, Roberta was protected daily by local police and military forces. Thus, the Cartel couldn't even touch her without causing an incident. Currently, he sends for many FARC soldiers to assist the cartel in finding Roberta; however, much of the FARC has been suspicious of the cartel's action and even threatened to betray them.
Gustavo
Voiced by: Paul Dobson (English)
is one of Abrego's main henchmen. At first, he is seen doing simple tasks for Abrego, such as disposal jobs, early in the series. Recently, he's been assigned to track down Roberta after hearing rumors of her returning to the city by other groups, including the police, Triad, and Hotel Moscow. He, along with some men, search for Roberta throughout the city and meets up with Revy and Rock. He then explains the situation within the Cartel regarding Roberta. He then crosses paths with Fabiola, who is requesting the aid of Lagoon Company. Fabiola is threatened by him and his men, as Revy then instigates a fight between them, resulting in a comical argument between him and Bao over the use of the telephone, much to Revy's amusement. In desperation, he tries to call Abrego, who is out with a girl according to his subordinates. He calls all of them in to warn them of another maid who is as fierce as Roberta. Finally, he orders the total destruction of the Yellow Flag, much to Bao's anger as the Yellow Flag is demolished again. He is left behind by his men after Fabiola scares them off. Because of his failure, Abrego has ordered him to be killed on sight. He is later seen at Abrego's side during a meeting with the other gangs, perhaps Abrego becomes aware with heavy losses he caused.
Other Roanapur gangsters
Verrocchio
is the boss of a branch of the Italian mafia based in Thailand. He once attempted to use the child assassins, Hänsel and Gretel, to kill the rival gang leaders, including Balalaika and Mr. Chang, in an attempt to seize complete leadership of Roanapur's criminal underworld. Verrocchio was killed when Hänsel and Gretel turned against him on a murderous whim.
Ronny the Jaws
Ronny the Jaws is Verrocchio's replacement as the Italian Mafia's boss after his death at the hands of the twins. He wears braces; hence his name. His real name was unknown until Chapter 79. Balalaika calls him by the derogatory slang "Dago" prior to this. He seems to have a cooler head than Verrocchio but is still plenty arrogant and foolish. Balalaika and Chang seem to dislike him and his immature way of handling serious business. He doesn't hold much respect for Abrego either and treats him rudely despite being the newest amongst members of those holding the most power in Roanapur. Revy says his group is almost as vicious as Hotel Moscow and he appears to have an alliance with the Albanian Mafia.
Chen
was a Chinese crime boss whose business suffered as a result of Hotel Moscow recently muscling into Roanapur. He is quite cowardly, and Dutch had already stopped taking him seriously after he pulled out of a previous contract he had made with the Lagoon Company. After unsuccessfully trying to intimidate Dutch into ending his contracts with Hotel Moscow, he has a proxy hire Lagoon Company for a job and then sends the pirate gang of Luak to ambush them, but Revy and Dutch wipe out the entire fleet. Chen, having bragged about his plan to most of Roanapur, is then located by Hotel Moscow and murdered; they tie him to a chair in his apartment and blow it up using plastic explosives and gasoline.
Luak
is the captain of a Vietnamese pirate gang that operated in the rivers and seas of Thailand, mostly composed by former Việt Cộng defectors. He was contracted by Chen to kill off the Lagoon Company when Dutch wouldn't accept Chen over Balalaika. Luak's gang ambushed the Black Lagoon, but the entire gang was wiped out by Revy and Dutch. Revy is seen to fire a round from an M79 grenade launcher into his boat at the end of the fight destroying it, so he is presumed dead.
The Church of Violence/The Rip-Off Church
The Church of Violence is a drugs and weapon smuggling operation located in Roanapur. The church is notorious for its double dealings. Using their front as a Christian church, their main business is illegal imports, mainly firearms. However, they are known to import other items, including drugs, which seems to offend Balalaika as it is bad for their business. So far they have consistently outsmarted Hotel Moscow in terms of imports. Dutch refers them as "The Rip-Off Church" due to the group charging heavily on goods, especially those needed for missions. Rock has been able to arrange proper business deals with the Church. The Church is always money-hungry and are known to do double-dealings, much to the disgust of Revy.
Eda
is a woman posing as a nun in the Rip-Off Church, with ties to the underground, since the convent is mainly a smuggling organization. About 30 years old, she is friends with Revy and often drinks with her in the Rip-off Church, but this does not prevent them from confronting each other, as they share the same hotheaded personality. She has taken a liking to Rock during the "Second Barrage" episodes, and makes fun of Revy by threatening to take Rock for herself. She often calls Rock "Romeo".
Eda has blond hair, blue eyes, and wears angular pink sunglasses even with her nun's habit, and is often seen either chewing gum or smoking. Before she came to work for the Church, she claimed to be from Langley, Virginia. Langley, Virginia, is a metonym for the CIA as its headquarters is located there. Later on, it is revealed that Eda is an operative for the CIA and is being hosted by the Church of Violence in return for monetary payments. She is given an assignment by the CIA to track down Grey Fox, the same foe Roberta is hunting as they are a threat to her CIA division. Using a voice changer inside a mobile, Eda acts as an anonymous handler for Mr. Chang, providing him with intelligence about Grey Fox's mission to capture a major figure in the Triad's drug manufacturing operation. Chang is aggravated by the way he is being manipulated, but Eda mocks him as just a "two-bit thug" compared to the USA. Rock is perhaps the only person in Roanapur who openly suspects who Eda might be working for.
Eda's preferred firearm is a Glock 17L (as seen in manga chapter 41), which she wields proficiently, despite Revy's claims that she is a "second-rate gunman".
She apparently was loosely modeled after the character Thana from Ms. 45.
Yolanda
is the leader of The Rip-Off Church. She appears to be quite old and wears an eyepatch over her right eye. Despite her age and gentle appearance, she leads her organization with an iron fist. As the head of her organization, Yolanda usually never fights, leaving this job to gunmen like Eda and Rico. However, she does carry a customized golden Desert Eagle and uses it without hesitation in due course, such as in chapter 38 of the manga. She can fire the Desert Eagle one-handed and with deadly accuracy, seemingly unaffected by the gun's infamous weight and heavy recoil. Her looks could be based on Mother Angelica, a real-life Roman Catholic nun who, at one time, wore an eyepatch over her left eye. Yolanda is usually stern with Eda drinking alcohol in the church and seems to love tea. After an intelligent conversation with Rock, who convinces her to make a deal with Lagoon Company, she is impressed by his abilities and credits Dutch for finding someone as rare as him. She refers to Revy as "Rebecca" and tells her that she might learn a thing or two from Rock. She has connections with all the criminal organization in terms of intelligence, and though not officially part of the CIA, she serves as Eda's informant and confidant. She gives Eda fair warning that her opponent is no rookie and that she should be careful.
Rico
(Ricardo) is an apprentice priest in the Rip-Off Church. Like Eda and Yolanda, he is a highly skilled gunman whose choice of weapon is a M60 machine gun. He refers to Eda as "Big sis" ("Ane-san" in Japanese) instead of "Sister", much to her chagrin.
Citizens of Roanapur
Bao
is the bartender and owner of the Yellow Flag bar, which he named in honor of the former South Vietnam flag. He is an ex-ARVN soldier who fought in the Vietnam War. He often feels harassed by Lagoon Company, especially Revy, for messing up his bar whenever they get into a fight with another party and reminds Revy to pay for the damage she has caused, which she always avoids doing. Balalaika seems to cover the repairs after Roberta destroyed it, which implies that the bar may be owned by Hotel Moscow. Seen as a great hang-out by most of the residents as it give many "jobs" to locals. After being rebuilt, he calls the Lagoon Company to tell them that Roberta is back in town. When Revy and Rock arrive along with Gustavo, they all meet up with Fabiola. After some words, Revy instigates a fight between Gustavo and Fabiola leading once again to the destruction of his bar. Bao claims that his bar has been destroyed more than 15 times, most of it done by Revy.
Flora
Madame Flora is the morbidly obese madam of the "Sloppy Swing", a brothel located on the top floor of Bao's bar. She took a liking to Rock and offered to "service him herself" (were she a bit younger).
Rowan "Jackpot" Pigeon
is the owner and manager of the GoofFest strip club on Rachiada Street in Roanapur. Of African-American descent, he has employed Revy as an S/M dancer once in the past, possibly putting her as a dominatrix. He has stated, however, that she "could give it and take it", implying that Revy could also have been the submissive. This is changed in the anime, with Rowan consistently asking Revy to join his BDSM show when she comes to his place, but with her expressing disgust at the idea. He is also a movie dealer who carries both legal and illegal genres (such as all forms of pornography and snuff films). He is extremely frightened of Hotel Moscow, especially of Balalaika.
Chief Watsup
is the chief of the Roanapur police force. He receives a regular stipend from Roanapur's criminal cartels, as well as the Lagoon Company, to stay away from their illegal activities. It is implied throughout the series that Revy tends to cause a lot of trouble in public and he usually has to bail her out much to his chagrin. He gets used to Revy's trouble making and he and Revy became sort of friends. For the most part, Watsup upholds this deal as long as his benefactors do not cause public incidents. He has dealt with Balalaika on more than one occasion, although she detests him for reasons unknown.
Bounty hunters and mercenaries
The Captain
The Captain is the rank of an unknown mercenary in the employ of the Extra Order Company, a fictional private military company similar to modern day Blackwater Worldwide and the now defunct Executive Outcomes, where the initials EO come from. An experienced ex-soldier who saw action in the Liberian civil war in the early 1990s, Captain had no qualms with killing anyone he was asked to kill. He was also something of a challenge-seeker, since he wanted to prolong his fight with the Lagoon Company, whom he saw as worthy opponents. This proved to be his undoing however, since Rock realized this and came up with a strategy to exploit Captain's attitude. While attacking the Black Lagoon head-on in a Mil Mi-24, the boat launched itself off a sunken ship and fired two torpedoes that brought down the Captain's helicopter, one hitting him in the face before detonating.
Sawyer the Cleaner
, also known as Sawyer the Cleaner, is a young girl, appearing to be in her late teens-early twenties, who specializes in body disposal, but also does occasional bounty hunter work. She is the person that the Triads turn to execute people in the most brutal ways possible, usually to serve as examples for their clientele and enemies. Her legitimate business front is, fittingly, a meat packing business named "U.G. Pork".
Sawyer works in a white-tiled room, which is covered in blood from her various executions, and uses a chainsaw as her tool of trade. When on the job, she is dressed like a surgeon, but otherwise she wears gothic clothing. Few people seem to recognize her when she is not wearing her surgeon's robes. Because her throat had been cut open at some point, she speaks with an Ultravoice. Upon losing the Ultravoice, she is shown to become extremely emotionally distressed and drops into a fetal position.
Like Shenhua, Sawyer is an assassin who eschews the use of firearms in combat. Instead, she utilizes a thick-bladed chainsaw over half-her-height long, the same one she uses on her victims. The size and build of the weapon allows her to deflect rapid gun-fire with horrifying ease, although this can still push her back.
Much like Roberta, Sawyer is presented as an "unstoppable" attacker, much in the manner of Leatherface from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, where she will cut through any obstacle in her path while stalking her prey, and the fact she enjoys her work immensely makes her even more dangerous. Her name may also be a homage to the Sawyer family of that film series and when she realized she had lost her Ultravoice in episode 18 she briefly reenacts Leatherface's "chainsaw dance" of rage. Strangely, she is one of the few bounty hunters to survive the manhunt on Jane, and is later seen doing some "cleanup" work on a Roanapur side street in the morning. She worked with Shenhua and Lotton in helping Garcia fight off the Colombian Cartel, who were trying to kill Roberta. She also seems to have replaced her hand held Ultravoice with a wraparound version of the device that can be worn around her neck. Just like Shenhua, she first showed her fear of Roberta after their first encounter when Roberta managed to stop and break the chain of Sawyer's chainsaw with her guns.
She does not only do disposal jobs, but also cleaning jobs for hotel rooms. When she forgets her Ultravoice, she requests someone to translate for her and draws descriptions on a window or on a person's back to "speak". Given the chance to explain, she's extremely graphic about the details of her profession to the point those around her tell her to stop being descriptive. Despite the gruesome nature of her job, Sawyer seems to have a rather happy, yet morbid demeanor at times. In chapter 78 when she explained to Rock that he touched a mattress that had absorbed the bodily fluids of the corpses that died 14 days prior in the hotel room he, Benny, Jane and Feng Yifei were staying in, Sawyer has a blissful expression while everyone else vomits at this information.
Claude "Torch" Weaver
is a heavyset, middle-aged man with blonde hair and glasses and always sports a grin with a look of an archetypical everyman. As his nickname would suggest, he is a pyromaniac who uses a lighter shaped-and-sized flamethrower as his weapon of choice, although for heavy-duty jobs, he will also use a full-sized flamethrower. In spite of his profession and the fact he burnt his own wife to death (which he claims took five minutes), Weaver claims to be religious (which religion is unknown) and is a teetotaler. He is one of the few characters in the series that does not use foul language, preferring to speak with euphemisms (such as "darn" or "shucks") instead. He also moves fast for a man of his weight. He is blown up by Revy while hunting for Greenback Jane.
Lotton the Wizard
is a mysterious-looking man and one of the bounty hunters hired to capture "Greenback" Jane. He has silver hair, wears a black trenchcoat and shaded glasses, and speaks in a light voice. His weapon of choice is one or more Mauser C96(s) with an extended magazine, although it's unknown whether this is an actual Mauser or a foreign version of the gun. He does not drink alcohol (he claims he's allergic to it). He gets shot by Revy when he tries to make a fancy entrance. It is implied that he is not a mighty fighter, but a poser. However, he did survive a fall from atop a warehouse building after getting shot due to his Kevlar vest, so the full extent of his abilities is still in question. He worked with Sawyer and Shenhua in helping Garcia fight off the Colombian Cartel, who were trying to kill Roberta.
He is also one of the few bounty hunters to survive the manhunt for Jane. After the battle takes off in the sea, he gets up and aids a gravely wounded Shenhua and Sawyer. Due to the uncommon act of kind-heartedness, Shenhua comments that he is not the type to kill and would be better as a host in a bordello, but Lotton claims that he is too clumsy for that. He is seen playing video games with Sawyer at Shenhua's residence in chapter 57 of the manga (as well as the OVA). Revy refers him as being more of a gigolo than a gunman; in addition, Revy forgets that she shot Lotton during the Greenback Jane incident (she shot him on reflex) causing Shenhua and Sawyer to mock her intelligence.
Major Shane Caxton
is an American black-ops operator hiding in Roanapur, awaiting deployment into Indochina. Like Dutch, Caxton is a Vietnam War veteran who still holds on to his moral code of conduct. Caxton's team, called "Gray Fox", under orders from a division of the NSA, orchestrated the assassination of Garcia Lovelace's father. Then were then dispatched to Roanapur in order to infiltrate the Golden Triangle and capture a key player who have tie with Khun Sa in the drug trade for trial in the US. However, he and is men are tracked by the formidable Roberta, and their conflict draws in all the major players in Roanapur, including the Triad, Hotel Moscow, and the Church of Violence. When he meets up with Lagoon Company, he automatically recognizes Dutch and mentions something to Dutch that seemed to shock him.
He is held in high esteem by his colleagues, especially Gray Fox's second in command, for his integrity and honorable conduct, being the ideal symbol of America in the story. In a flashback, he executed one of his subordinates, Larkin, in retaliation for murdering innocent women and trying to rape a young girl during the Vietnam War. He also protects Garcia Lovelace as he and his team are escaping from Hotel Moscow. After escaping Roanapur and deploying to capture a drug baron in the Golden Triangle, his men are ambushed by Roberta, but he is actually shot by Garcia himself, who wants to end Roberta's rampage. It is later shown the gun was filled with blanks.
Bren the Black Death
Bren the Black Death runs a murder for hire business. According to Revy, he has an office in Roanapur but rarely does jobs there because of overlapping contracts. Roberta hires him to gather a team to attack Grey Fox to drive them out into the open. He sends in a group of hired guns knowing very well that they will be slaughtered by the trained soldiers. He then kills the one survivor himself.
Filano
Filano is a young boy who works for Bren the Black Death. He is seen observing the battle between the Grey Foxes and Roberta. He says he prefers to kill with an ordinary object or with nothing at all. He is particularly fond of pushing people downstairs or in front of trains. He considers guns to be the lowest form of killing. He does however like to play first person shooters. He also likes anime.
U-1324 Crew and Passengers
The following are the crew members and passengers of the U-1324:
Lieutenant Commander Wentzel Ahbe
was the decorated skipper of the Type IXC U-boat U-1324 and a survivor of the Battle of the Atlantic. His last order in the closing months of World War II in Europe was to take the U-1324 and its veteran crew along with two passengers from the Kriegsmarine naval base at Kiel to ostensibly return Lt. Col. Matsuda to Batavia. He succeeded in getting safely to the Indian Ocean, but ran into trouble with US Navy destroyers near the Nicobar Islands on March 25, 1945, which succeed in fatally crippling the U-1324 with depth charges, leaving it stranded on the seafloor. With only two hours of air left, he relieved his crew of their military duties and allowed them to face death however they chose. Ahbe was a patriot, but he despised the Nazi cause, expressing his bitterness to the SS Lieutenant Colonel that the Nazis had brought Germany to ruin and satisfaction that U-1324's sinking had meaning if his children would never see the Nazi flag again, leading the latter to shoot him. In their last act of loyalty to their captain, his crew avenged him. Ahbe left behind a wife and two children.
His Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords is sought after by Revy after she and Rock recover The Twelve Knights Led by Brunhilda for its value on the open market. Ahbe is also shown to have received the Iron Cross 1st Class among his other decorations.
He is apparently modeled after Jürgen Prochnow's character from Das Boot. Additionally, the U-1324 bears the famed laughing sawfish emblem of the .
Lieutenant Colonel Matsuda
Lieutenant Colonel Matsuda was an Imperial Japanese Army officer posted to Germany to study aeronautics, where he remained until the early part of 1945. Returning him to Japanese-held Batavia is the apparent final mission of the U-1324. He formed a fast friendship with Captain Ahbe and was sociable with the crew, engaging them in games of shogi during the voyage from Kiel to Batavia. When the U-1324 was fatally depth charged and runs aground on the seabed near the Nicobar Islands, he committed seppuku (ritual suicide) using his katana. He does not appear in the manga.
Matsuda is based on the Imperial Japanese Navy lieutenant commander Genzo Shoji, who was posted to Germany to study aeronautics as well, and tried to return to Japan as a passenger of U-234. However, when Germany surrendered in the midst of the voyage, the captain of U-234 decided to surrender to the U.S. Navy. Consequently, Shoji committed seppuku—suicide—to avoid capture. This episode was turned into the movie Das Letzte U-Boot in Germany in 1990.
SS Lieutenant Colonel Spielberger
SS Lieutenant Colonel (Obersturmbannführer) was the U-1324's second passenger. A member of the SD, he was charged with the care of the painting The Twelve Knights Led by Brunhilda, which is part of a Nazi plot to prepare for the Nazis' eventual return to power following their defeat in World War II.
He boarded the U-1324 the night before it sailed. Unlike Lt. Col. Matsuda, he was not as sociable, tending to keep to himself belowdecks, even when the U-boat was safely cruising on the surface in daytime. Like Captain Ahbe he also had a family, a wife and child in Stuttgart, but unlike the former, was more focused on the failure of his mission rather than on them in his final hours. Ahbe's anti-Nazi comments infuriated him, leading him to fatally shoot the captain. About to then shoot himself, he decided to take down as many of the U-1324's crewmembers as possible in his final moments when they avenged their captain's murder.
Aryan Socialist Union
The Aryan Socialist Union is a group of aspiring Neo Nazis styling themselves along the lines of the Nazi Sturmabteilung. They have a large arsenal of weapons such as MAC-10 machine pistols, MG3 machine guns, AK47 assault rifles, Luger, MP5 Sub-Machineguns, and double-action trigger-outfitted Colt 45 pistols and even TOW Anti-Tank Missiles.
However, they do not realize that they have been lied to and are being set up by Sir Alfred, the head of the Neo Nazi movement, who believes they are a waste. There are more than 30 of them aboard their recovery ship, along with seemingly innocent hostages used to pilot the ship. It is unknown how many, if any, survived the conflict with the Lagoon Company.
Ratchman
is a short, fat man who leads the Aryan Socialist Union. He and his men are sent to retrieve a painting that was supposedly painted by Hitler and will reunite the Nazis and return them back to their former glory. He hopes that, by obtaining the painting, he will have proven himself and his men loyal enough to be accepted into the Neo-Nazi underworld. Though he shows loyalty on the surface, he is a coward at heart. Ratchman's lack of foresight and proper planning enables the Lagoon Company to sneak onto the ASU's recovery ship and launch a surprise attack while his men are drunk from celebrating after they recover the painting. He is murdered by Revy and Dutch.
Gruppenführer
The is the commander of the Aryan Socialist Union's Suicide Corps. He is the only man, other than Ratchman, to get emotionally worked up over the latter's bombastic pronouncement of his mission. Feller leads his men down to the U-1324 using a special diving pod to connect with the U-boat's hatch. Getting caught up in a firefight with Revy, he is the only member of his team to set foot in the U-1324 to make it out alive, recovering the painting in the process.
When Revy and Dutch assault the Aryan Socialist Union aboard their recovery ship, he attempts to arm himself with a MG42 to fight back, but is shot in the back by Revy in the ship's magazine. In the manga, he is last seen fighting Revy inside the submarine; his fate afterwards is unknown.
Fritz Stanford
is the Captain of the Nazi boat that is sent to obtain the World War II painting in the sunken U-boat. He is a physically huge man, and is filled with blind faith and overconfidence. In the end, it is this overconfidence that gets him killed when he brags about his weapon and threatens Revy (as she slowly reloads her weapon), who shoots him in the chest and then point blank in the head, mostly just to shut him up. He wields a large gold Luger chambered for the .454 Casull cartridge.
Sir Alfred
Little is known about , except he seems to be the head of the Neo-Nazi underworld. He is an elderly man, most likely in his 80s, since he was in the SS during the war, and it is implied that he is a combat veteran. Sir Alfred sets up a test of loyalty and ability for Ratchman and his Aryan Socialist Union, in which he purposely sends them to face-off with the Lagoon Company. Even though he sets them up, he already knows that Ratchman will most likely be defeated. Ratchman and the Lagoon Company are unaware that they are being set up. Sir Alfred feels that Ratchman and his men are idiots and a disgrace to call themselves Nazis, seeing their easy defeat by a group of "racially inferior" members as proof of their incompetence in his view. He even thanks Dutch and Revy for killing them off for him, and even harbours an amount of respect for Dutch, despite being a black man. Dutch later finds out that the Spaniard who hired him was in fact The Boss setting him up.
Protectors of the Islamic Front
The Protectors of the Islamic Front is a Jihadist group based in South East Asia.
Masahiro Takenaka
is a co-leader of the terrorist group "Protectors of the Islamic Front" and a patient, sociable person who rarely loses his cool. Despite being involved with an Islamic terrorist group, he himself is an atheist. Born in the Adachi ward in Tokyo, Masahiro was once an enthusiastic activist for human rights before joining the Japanese Red Army during the Cold War. Later, he was forced to evade arrest by hiding overseas after most of its members were arrested; and it was the time he traveled to Bekaa, Lebanon, that he met Ibraha. Takenaka is based on the Japanese Red Army member Kozo Okamoto.
Ibraha
is a co-leader of the "Protectors of the Islamic Front", leading one of its main cells in the Philippines. He is a Lebanese, and is resolute in his hatred of Israel, as his son was killed by Israeli soldiers in Beirut, Lebanon in 1987, after which he dedicated his life to destroying the West. Compared to Takenaka, he is the exact opposite in personality. While chasing Revy, Rock, and Shenhua towards a Basilan military base, he is shot and killed by Takenaka for refusing to pull their forces back for a retreat.
The Washimine Group
The Washimine Group were a Yakuza formerly run by . Balalaika came to Japan to work out a deal with the Washimine group to expand their influence in Japan in exchange for helping them weaken a rival Yakuza group, the Kousa Council. However, when Hotel Moscow's methods went too far, Tsugio Bando, the current head of the Washimine group, tried to stop them and was killed by Balalaika, who decided she would instead destroy both groups and take over their operations. Following his death, Ryuzo's daughter was put in charge. In the end, the entire Washimine group, and family, were wiped out along with the Kousa Council.
Yukio Washimine
is a high school senior and the only daughter of Ryuzo Washimine, who was the former kumicho (boss) of the yakuza organization "Washimine-gumi" (Washimine Group). She has a chance meeting with Rock and Revy when they come to Tokyo in the employ for Hotel Moscow. Her discussions with Rock lead him to think he might return to an ordinary life, although things soon turn dark when Rock learns that she was born into the Washimine Group. Having lived a normal life free of conflict, she learns that she is the only possible leader of her father's crime family, as the Kousa Council refused to allow anyone other than a blood relative take over. When her bodyguard and unspoken love Ginji resolves to fight "Hotel Moscow", she decides join him, assuming the mantle of leader. She falls, seemingly inevitably, into the world of the yakuza, although Rock desperately tries to persuade her to walk away. She initially claims her actions are to uphold the honour of the Washimine Group, but in reality she believes this is the only way she can be with Ginji. In her spare time, Yukio enjoyed reading a wide variety of books, particularly those concerning philosophy (she is once seen reading a book written by Martin Heidegger). She commits suicide with Ginji's sword after he is killed by Revy. Thoughtful, intelligent and talented, the misfortune of being the only heir to the Washimine group proved too much to bear.
Ginji Matsuzaki
is the acting wakagashira (underboss) of Washimine Group, and is Yukio's most loyal and humble personal body guard, and possibly love interest. He works as a street stall vendor, but was formerly an assassin nicknamed "Hitokiri Ginji" (Manslayer Ginji) due to his use of a katana in combat, serving the Washimine until the death of his leader, who was also Yukio's father. His skills with his blade are exceptional, manifesting themselves in such feats as cleaving bullets in two in midflight. Coupled with his ability to evade gunfire from multiple foes, Ginji almost completely eschews the use of firearms. He and Yukio quietly share an unspoken love, but neither choose to act upon it.
Ginji had protected Yukio for a long time and hoped that she would live a normal life despite her family's criminal background. He seems to regret his past as a murderer, and is unwilling to take up arms again until his friend and former leader Tsugio Bando is killed by Hotel Moscow. Ginji attacks the Japanese branch of the Russian Mafia to hunt down Balailaka, though he changes targets when the Washimine enforcer Chaka goes rogue and kidnaps Yukio. He briefly allied with Revy and Rock to rescue her, massacring Chaka's henchmen before cutting off the enforcer's hands and drowning him in a pool. Ginji then assists Yukio in her efforts to avenge the slaughter of her clan, and they capture Rock so that he can lead them to Hotel Moscow's base. However, Revy catches up with them, prompting Ginji to face her in a duel.
Ginji comes within inches of killing Revy, shattering her cutlass and stabbing her. However, he is distracted by Yukio's admission of love at the last moment; he only manages to put his sword through her leg as she shoots him in the throat. Revy comments that this hesitation was all that stopped Ginji killing her.
Although Revy calls Ginji "Jumbo" because of his height, the name "Jumbo" may also refer to Takashi Takeda (AKA "Jumbo") from the Yotsuba&! manga series with whom he shares an uncanny resemblance.
Tsugio Bando
is the wakagashira (underboss) of the Washimine Group. Since the position of boss of the Washimine Group is left vacant by the death of the former boss Ryuzo Washimine, Yukio's father, Tsugio is the actual boss of the Washimine Group. Tsugio is very loyal to the memory of Ryuzo, who had protected him after he just arrived in Tokyo from Osaka. Due to his hate of the Kousa Council's ill-treatment of the Washimine Group, he allied with Hotel Moscow for a short time in order for his group to rise and make a name for itself. However, his plans and Hotel Moscow's completely differed in approach as Balalaika was more brutal in her methods, much to the dismay of Bando. He is killed in a desperate attempt to assassinate Balalaika and protect the Washimine Group, Balalaika easily dodging his attempt to stab her and then breaking his neck, before sending back to the Washimine the suitcase including his body.
Yoshida
is one of the enforcers working for the Washimine Group. He was very loyal to Tsugio Bando and refers to him as an older brother. Yoshida is usually seen as a bodyguard for Tsugio, and later Yukio when she inherits the leadership of the Washimine Group. During Yukio's inheritance of the Washimine Group's head position, it was Yoshida who rallied support for the young lady. He is killed by Chaka during Yukio's kidnapping.
Chaka
is one of the enforcers working for the Washimine Group who fancies himself as a "Wild West" gunman and is fluent in English. Arrogant, cruel, and sadistic, Chaka is often seen as an idiot by his peers. His earlier appearance showed that Revy's reputation as a gunman in Roanapur is such that even the yakuza in Japan have heard of her. Shortly after Yukio becomes the boss of the Group, Chaka makes his bid to take over the leadership by kidnapping her with the help of a street gang. He was determined to fight Revy in a quickdraw showdown, but she refused and lured him into fighting a duel with Ginji instead, who defeated and finished him off by letting him drown in a pool with both his hands severed. His character and appearance is likely based on Kakihara from Ichi the killer, as both of them are longing for a strong opponent equal to them and are sadistically violent. Possibly based on a presumably-existing Kudo-kai member hanging around Harajuku.
The Lovelace Family
The Lovelace Family are one of the 13 prominent South American families, and their origin is from Venezuela. However, the family has come under hard times from not only their peers due to their political beliefs, but also from the Colombian Cartel, which has been harassing employees of the family in order to take control of their land. However, because of Diego Lovelace's military and political connections, the family is constantly protected from threats. In addition, the family includes Roberta (aka Rosarita Cisneros), a former FARC terrorist who is wanted by both the Cartel and various law enforcement agencies. Because of her close relationship with the family, she is accepted as one of their own, serving as maid and, if necessary, bodyguard. Another maid, who is combat ready like Roberta, is Fabiola Igesias.
Diego Jose San Fernando Lovelace
was the former head of the Lovelace family, eleventh in succession. While it is one of the thirteen noble families of South America, the Lovelace family fell upon hard times, with only the meager income from their plantations maintaining their lifestyle. He took in Rosarita Cisneros, when she was escaping from the Colombian Cartel as a favor to his old friend, Rosarita's father. He took her in and treated her as family. Recently, he was assassinated during a speech due to the fact his political beliefs were seen as a threat by many. This event makes Roberta take up the "Bloodhound" persona once more.
Garcia Lovelace
is the only son of Diego Jose San Fernando Lovelace, was heir to the Lovelace family line, and as such, is its current head, the twelfth in succession after his father was assassinated. He was kidnapped for a short while by a Colombian cartel and was transported by the Lagoon Company as "goods". He and Roberta left Roanapur shortly afterwards, with some help from Hotel Moscow. He has apparently returned to Roanapur searching for Roberta with a new maid named Fabiola, waiting in a local hotel called the "Sunken Palace Hotel" and seemed to have matured greatly in terms of emotional strength, as commented by Rock, since his last appearance. He treats both Roberta and Fabiola as if they were his extended family and in return, both care for him equally. He requests help to find Roberta from Lagoon Company with additional help from Chang, Shenhua, Sawyer, and Lotton. However, the only person he truly trusts in Roanapur is Rock. To stop Roberta, Garcia comes up with the most drastic plan to fake Caxton's death with his own hands, thus taking away Roberta's "Path of Justice"; this causes her to hallucinate once more and shoot him. Her consequent horror finally snaps her out of her insanity. In the aftermath, Chang told Rock that the Lovelace family will still have a hard road ahead of them in future.
Roberta
is a Colombian maid who worked for four years at the Lovelace household in Venezuela. Although her domestic skills such as cleaning and cooking were poor, she developed a close friendship with the young son of the Lovelace family, Garcia. Roberta was once known as , a former FARC guerrilla trained as an assassin in Cuba and an internationally wanted criminal. Balalaika refers her as a "hardcore terrorist" to the point that Hotel Moscow had to deploy all their commandos as well as Balalaika getting involved in the situation personally should things get out of hand. Revy refers to her as "Fucking Four Eyes" or "That Fucking Glasses Bitch". She earned the moniker "Bloodhound of Florencia" for her relentless drive to achieve her objectives. Her tormented past and the smell of blood, gunpowder and muck like that of a sewer rat emanating from her was something Revy understood full well.
In combat, Roberta is a truly fearsome opponent, having trained in a wide variety of martial, stealth, and weapon skills. Among the weapons she has used were a .50 caliber Barrett M82, SPAS-12 shotgun disguised as an umbrella (reinforced with Kevlar), machine gun, and semi-automatic grenade launcher hidden in a suitcase, Trench knife, and twin IMBEL Model 1911 pistols (see Colt M1911 pistols). Her strength, speed, endurance, and instincts were honed to almost superhuman levels, so much so that Rock at one point refers to her sardonically as "a killer robot from the future" (a reference to James Cameron's Terminator movies). At one point in the manga she was also described as the only person worthy of inheriting the title "Jackal" from Carlos.
While Roberta is one of the most powerful warrior-women in Black Lagoon, she is also highly conscientious. She is unwaveringly devoted to her master and his son, Garcia, whom she loves deeply. Roberta and Revy fight each other, but only to beat themselves up. Rock interferes, but Roberta and Revy tell him to stay out of it. In the manga and anime, the fight ends in a draw right after they punch each other out simultaneously (though Garcia claims she won because she remained conscious). Her kindness can easily change as seen in a humorous omake in Volume 1 of the manga when Garcia slapped her butt in a playful manner, which prompted her to pinch his arm and lift him up off the ground by the skin of his arm as punishment.
She admitted that she did murder children, women, or anyone in name of revolution during her FARC years. Disillusioned by the fact that she was merely a tool for the drug cartels in cahoots with FARC, she opted out and joined the Lovelace clan as a maid through her father who was a good friend of Diego Lovelace. Despite being asked by Garcia not to pick up gunfighting anymore, later events in the manga, which depicts her watching helplessly as a bomb was set killing many including Diego Lovelace. Garcia's question of why his father was a victim makes her go into battle again, seeking revenge. Roberta's anger almost pushed her to the limit; she is shown taking mouthfuls of anti-psychotics, and experiencing haunting hallucinations in the form of her past victim (Japanese engineer). She once again stalks the city of Roanapur in search of the one responsible for assassinating her master. Unfortunately, it turns out to be the US Special Forces. Roberta's quest for vengeance has put many of the residents including Hotel Moscow, the Triad, and the Colombian Cartel on high alert as it could mean the end for all of them if their new enemy is the United States. Most of the residents blame the Lagoon Company for attracting her back to Roanapur despite the fact the group was in the dark about the situation and brushed it off as if it were an Elvis sighting. Further into her quest, she begins to lose sight of her goal, almost returning to her former persona to the point she begins to lose her sanity and has trouble identifying friend and foe, thus almost harming Garcia in the process. The FARC commander even comments that she is no longer the hound they once knew, but a diseased stray wolf searching for purpose. Her oath as the "Bloodhound of Florencia" is "In the name of Santa Maria, a hammer blow of righteousness to all injustice."
In Chapter 73, Roberta is seen with an American woman, presumably Eda, passing through airport security to continue her pursuit of the Americans. She finally catches up with Grey Fox and kills 8-9 soldiers (there were 18 soldiers in three groups: Alpha, Bravo and Charlie), but Caxton himself is shot by Garcia in the hope she will give up her thirst for revenge. A still hallucinating Roberta then reflexively shoots Garcia when he turns his gun on her, but her horror at her attack at last restores her sanity. Garcia's gun is in fact loaded only with blanks, and Caxton survives; Garcia himself suffers only minor injuries.
In the extra missing pages of chapter 76, she and Garcia kissed and they made up with each other and returns to the Lovelace home. However exclusive to the anime, in the fifth episode of the OVA, Roberta is severely injured and is confined to a wheelchair as she later regains the ability to walk slowly (she has lost her left arm, her right eye, has a prosthetic foot and ankle, implying her lower right leg has been amputated as well).
In issue #50 of Anime Insider magazine, director Sunao Katabuchi comments that the animation staff referred Roberta as an "Evil Mary Poppins". He goes on to add that creator Rei Hiroe long thought of Roberta as a kind of "Death Poppins".
Fabiola Iglesias
is a young maid in the employ of the Lovelace family. She is one of the maids who work as Roberta's subordinates, and the only other combat-trained person among the maids apart from Roberta herself. In combat, she prefers to use two MAG-7s that were given to her by Roberta. She also carries a pump action China Lake NATIC (Mistakenly referred to as an EX 41 grenade launcher in the Manga). She also has heel blades concealed in her shoes. She is the same age with Garcia.
Fabiola first appears in the same bar, The Yellow Flag, that Roberta met the Lagoon crew in, panicking everybody with her resemblance to Roberta. However, unlike Roberta, her suitcase is revealed to be filled with lollipops and a lunchbox with Scooby Doo and Ranger Smith on it. She is currently helping Garcia search for Roberta. She is something of a comic relief when compared with Roberta (whom she calls "head housemaid" with the utmost respect), as she is little, carries her grenade launcher concealed in her outfit, and is often prominent in humorous situations; such as her height, being picked up like a bratty little kid, to being made fun of her breast size.
Dutch describes her as a "short version of the Killer Maid", after she destroys Bao's bar. She states that she comes from the poorest slums of Caracas, where she lived with her ten siblings until she was employed by the Lovelace Family. As noticed by Rock, she does not brawl, being a proficient practitioner of capoeira. According to her, she and Roberta are the only two maids in the Lovelace house who are proficient in firearms, with Roberta being the better of the two. She also mentions that there are three other maids in the Lovelace house: Karina, Masica and Davia (though it's unknown at this time if they're combat proficient as well). This makes Revy question her "Just what is the Lovelace plantation like? Full of bad-ass motherfuckers who could storm the Iranian embassy by themselves?". Fabiola was disgusted at Revy for being heartless and merciless against her foes, with Revy lecturing her that love and friendship do not apply in Roanapur. She and Garcia are reunited with Roberta; but the happiness is short lived when she and Roberta witness Garcia shooting Caxton with a 1911 Colt .45 filled with blanks and in retaliation Roberta shoots Garcia. She and Roberta then tend to a wounded Garcia. On their way back, they encountered Rock and Fabiola gets upset and disgusted with him and shot him with a blank round which injured Rock's ribs for "gambling with people's lives". She told Rock they will not meet again and that he shall "continue to dance with the walking dead in Roanapur."
Just like Roberta, Fabiola is very protective of Garcia. She is more brash than her mentor, but not as much as Revy. She tries to attack Chang after seeing him with Garcia, but he easily disarms her without trying. She loves to play in the pool when she's relaxing, but is embarrassed to ask Garcia for a break, despite the fact he is aware of her activities.
Other characters
The following are the other characters of this anime:
Kageyama
is one of the department chiefs of Asahi Industries, based in Tokyo. He was entrusted by its board of directors to ensure that their illegal activities were not exposed. Kageyama betrayed Rock by appointing Captain to kill him and the Lagoon Company, thus encouraging Rock to stay on with the Lagoon Company. Although Kageyama is married and has three children (consisting of one teenage son, one teenage daughter, and one pre-teen daughter), he seems to place more emphasis on his job than on his family.
Hänsel and Gretel
Hänsel
Gretel
Hänsel and Gretel (also known as Fratele Meu (Romanian for "my brother") and Sora Mea ("my sister")) are two Romanian twin orphans. They were abandoned in a state-run orphanage as their parents' could not afford to look after them, following the overthrow of Nicolae Ceaușescu, before being sold to black market. As a result of being repeatedly forced to participate in paedophilic snuff films in which they are either raped or forced to murder other children, and being repeatedly forced to watch the orphanage workers beat children to death, the twins eventually became deranged, sadistic killers. The horrid engrossment with their torturing and murdering for pleasure is shown during the first part of Season 2 when the twins first arrive to Roanupor and purposely wound one of Balalaika's men during a gunfight, bring him back to their temporary stay with Verrocchio's headquarters, probe his body with sharp objects as a medical experiment, and then drain his body of blood and organs for them to bathe in; afterwards they kill Verrocchio and his men out of indulgence, even though they were supposed to help them escape the city. Unknown to most people, "Hänsel" and "Gretel" are actually two personalities alternately adopted by the two children, both of whom suffer from dissociative identity disorder, meaning they swap being "Hänsel" and "Gretel" with each other from time to time (it is likely that these were their screen names in the films). There are slight implications that they could be incestuous, possibly due to the abuse they suffered in the state-run orphanage. It is never made clear of what gender the twins are: in one scene, "Gretel" (formerly "Hänsel" before swapping) shows 'her' genitalia to Rock in what she presumably came to believe was a show of gratitude, causing him to flee in disgust and horror at how utterly broken “Gretel” was, having known nothing but 'blood and darkness' their whole lives.
In combat, "Hänsel" wields a sharp battle axe while "Gretel" uses a M1918 Browning Automatic Rifle that appears to be taller than 'she' is. Both also carry additional sidearms. While they were mentally deranged, Hänsel and Gretel were also cunning, having used two other children as decoys to distract the bounty hunters and using money to distract Eda. They were also not above using their innocent appearance to deceive their enemies.
As revenge for killing Balalaika's men, “Hänsel” is lured into a hunt across the city for Hotel Moscow's forces, until he locates Balalaika herself at a fountain, where he is abruptly shot dead by her snipers. “Gretel” manages to escape and eventually boards the Black Lagoon of her own volition. Due to Rock's kindness she takes a genuine liking to him. However, just as “Gretel” disembarks she is gunned down by the getaway man Dutch contacted, who was bribed by Hotel Moscow. Though initially shocked by her sudden death, Rock is glad that now “she”and “her brother” could rest in peace.
The characters' names are taken from the German fairy tale, Hänsel and Gretel. Many of the series' characters compare them to a similar pair of disturbed, sadistic twins from the American film The Shining. In the manga, the song sung by Gretel to Rock on the Black Lagoon is called "Midnight, the Stars and You", the song used in the ending credits to The Shining. In the anime, she sings "The World of Midnight", made for the anime and sung by Minako Obata.
Greenback Jane
, also known as , is a professional money counterfeiter and hacker from India. She served as the leader for her project team, which was spread around the world but was connected thanks to the internet, and is quite knowledgeable on the details of the dollar bill. Coincidentally, she falls in love with Benny after he displays his hacking skills. Janet currently has a long-distance relationship with Benny. One of the running gags of her story arc is her clumsiness and poor luck, which usually result in her being subject to a pantyshot. After the Lovelace incident, Janet returns to Roanapur searching out Benny and the team. She, with help of her counterfeiting group, hacks a server of the "Rainbach AG" Corporation and makes a scapegoat of a PLA spy. Jane is apparently a nymphomaniac, though Benny calls it "a bit broad-minded as far as sex goes". Revy replies that "if that's "a bit", then Death Valley is a sand pit in a park".
Russell
is a middle-aged American man who works for the Florida crime syndicate that's tracking Jane. He is quite distinguishable, since he dresses like a cowboy: he has the trademark hat, boots with spurs, a revolver at the hip, bandolier belt, tan shirt and jeans. He is not taken serious by the other bounty hunters because he is an outsider. Even Shenhua says, "Cowboy, this no Florida", meaning that he is in over his head. However, his skills are shown to be more than everyone thought, when he is the last bounty hunter left in the hunt for Jane and he duels Eda on board the Lagoon. It is then later revealed that he and Eda have met previously in the United States, but Eda says they have never met. Shortly before killing him, she confesses to him to be from the CIA.
Vasili Laptev
is the boss of a branch of the Russian mafia that is based in Tokyo. A former KGB officer, Laptev had many difficulties operating in Japan due to his status as a gaijin (foreigner). Considered distasteful and incompetent by Balalaika, he appeared to lose his standing with his peers back in Russia and this was reflected in his arrogant personality, since he did not speak Japanese despite being based in Japan. Laptev's detachment is slaughtered single-handedly by Ginji when the fallout between Hotel Moscow and the Washimine-gumi begins.
Masami Kousa
Head of the Kousa Council. In past both Washimine and Kousa Yakuza's were allies as Yukio's father and Masami's "brother" were blood brothers. When they both died and Masami took over, any relationship the two groups had were gone and the Kousa's mistreated the Washime group badly to the point that Masami wouldn't recognize Yukio as the heir to the Washimine group and wanted someone in his group to take over. His mistreatment led the Washime group to call Hotel Moscow to weaken them. In the end of Fujiyama Gangsters arc, Masami was about to form an alliance with Hotel Moscow when Balalaika, after talking with Rock, decided to kill him and his lieutenants cited she wouldn't want to work with a group with such poor merchandise.
Maki
Maki is a female high school junior and goes to the same high school as her friend, Yukio Washimine. Maki seems to be a symbolic representative of the typical Japanese high school girl who is interested in skin-care, has a part-time job, reads light novels, and has poor school grades.
Feng Yifei/Li Xinlin
Li Xinlin is a Chinese hacker in the People's Liberation Army. She is assigned to infiltrate Greenback Jane's group under the alias Feng Yifei. However, Jane and the other hacker are aware of this and use her to tap into the PLA's computers. When this is discovered, Li's superiors believed she was a traitor and put a contract on her life to Roanapur-based mercenaries.
References
External links
YouTube
Crunchyroll
Funimation
Black Lagoon
Black Lagoon |
1129627 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gremlin%20Interactive | Gremlin Interactive | Gremlin Graphics Software Limited, later Gremlin Interactive Limited and ultimately Infogrames Studios Limited was a British software house based in Sheffield, working mostly in the home computer market. Like many software houses established in the 1980s, their primary market was the 8-bit range of computers such as the ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, MSX, Commodore 16 and Commodore 64. The company was acquired by French video game publisher Infogrames in 1999, and was renamed Infogrames Studios in 2000. Infogrames Studios closed down in 2003.
History
The company, originally a computer store called Just Micro, was established as a software house in 1984 with the name Gremlin Graphics Software Ltd by Ian Stewart and Kevin Norburn with US Gold's Geoff Brown owning 75% of the company until mid-1989. Gremlin's early success was based on games such as Wanted: Monty Mole for the ZX Spectrum and Thing on a Spring for the Commodore 64.
In 1994, it was renamed as Gremlin Interactive, now concentrating on the 16-bit, PC and console market. Gremlin enjoyed major success with the Zool and Premier Manager series in the early 1990s, and then with Actua Soccer, the first football game in full 3D; other successful games included the Lotus racing series; a futuristic racing game, Motorhead; a stunt car racing game, Fatal Racing (1995); and the 1998 flight simulator Hardwar. Following EA's success with the EA Sports brand, Gremlin also released their own sports videogame series, adding Golf, Tennis and Ice Hockey to their Actua Sports series. During this time, they used a motif from the Siegfried Funeral March from Götterdämmerung as introductory music.
The company was floated on the stock market to raise funds.
In 1997, Gremlin acquired Imagitec Design and DMA Design (creators of Grand Theft Auto and Lemmings). In 1999, they themselves were bought by Infogrames for around £24 million and renamed "Infogrames Sheffield House". Infogrames closed the studio in 2003. The building they latterly occupied near Devonshire Green has since been demolished when Infogrames Sheffield House was supposed to be renamed "Atari Sheffield House". In October 2003, Zoo Digital, the successor company to Gremlin, purchased the company's assets from the now-named Atari.
Following the administration of Zoo Digital (later renamed Zushi Games), Gremlin Interactive's catalogue and name were bought up by Ian Stewart's new company Urbanscan.
Key staff
Gremlin staff had included:
Kevin Bulmer - Designer/graphics artist
Jon Harrison - Designer/graphics artist
Gary Priest - Programmer
Bill Allen - Programmer
Richard Stevenson - Programmer
David Martin - Marketing Director
Ben Daglish - Outsourced Musician
Ade Carless - Designer/graphics artist
Shaun McClure - Graphics artist / Art Resource Manager
Antony Crowther ('Ratt') - Designer, programmer
Paul Whitehead - Tester / Designer
Ian Stewart - Managing director
Kevin Norburn - Operations director
Patrick Phelan - Software manager/sound engineer
Chris Harvey - Lead console programmer
Wayne Laybourn - Artist
Chris Shrigley - Designer / Programmer
Peter Harrap - Programmer
Chris Kerry - Programmer
Shaun Hollingworth - Programmer
MicroProjects Ltd (Jason Perkins, Mark Rogers, Anthony Clarke)
Richard Hall - Production Manager
Video games
As Gremlin Interactive
Monty Mole series (1984-1990)
Wanted: Monty Mole (1984)
Monty Is Innocent (1985)
Monty on the Run (1985)
Auf Wiedersehen Monty (1987)
Moley Christmas (1987)
Impossamole (1990)
Potty Pigeon (1984)
Bounder (1985)
Re-Bounder (1987)
Grumpy Gumphrey Supersleuth (1985)
Gauntlet (1985)
Gauntlet: The Deeper Dungeons (1987)
Thing on a Spring (1985)
Zone X (1985)
Jack the Nipper (1986)
Trailblazer (1986)
Cosmic Causeway: Trailblazer II (1987)
Alternative World Games (1987)
Basil the Great Mouse Detective (1987)
Deflektor (1987)
Gary Lineker's Superstar Soccer (1987)
Technocop (1988)
Motor Massacre (1988)
Dark Fusion (1988)
Mickey Mouse: The Computer Game (1988)
The Muncher (1988)
Axel's Magic Hammer (1989)
Federation of Free Traders (1989)
H.A.T.E.: Hostile All-Terrain Encounter (1989)
Switchblade (1989)
Switchblade II (1991)
Lotus series (1990-1992)
Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge (1990)
Lotus Turbo Challenge 2 (1991)
Lotus III: The Ultimate Challenge (1992)
Skidz (1990)Super Cars (1990)Super Cars II (1991)Toyota Celica GT Rally (1990)Venus The Flytrap (1990)HeroQuest (1991)HeroQuest II: Legacy of Sorasil (1994)Spacewrecked: 14 Billion Light Years from Earth (1990)Utopia: The Creation of a Nation (1991)Harlequin (1992)Jeep Jamboree: Off Road Adventure (1992)Nigel Mansell's World Championship Racing (1992)Plan 9 from Outer Space (1992)Premier Manager series (1992-2000)Premier Manager (1992)Premier Manager 2 (1993)Premier Manager 3 (1994)Premier Manager 97 (1996)Premier Manager 98 (1997)Premier Manager: Ninety Nine (1999)Space Crusade (1992)Top Gear (1992)Top Gear 2 (1993)Top Gear 3000 (1995)Zool (1992)Zool 2 (1993)Jungle Strike (1993)Litil Divil (1993)Full Throttle: All-American Racing (1994)K240 (1994)Newman/Haas IndyCar featuring Nigel Mansell (1994)Race Days (1994)Shadow Fighter (1994)Actua Sports series (1995-1999)Actua Soccer (1995)Actua Golf (1996)Actua Soccer 2 (1997)Actua Golf 2 (1998)Actua Ice Hockey (1998)Actua Tennis (1998)Actua Soccer 3 (1998)Actua Pool (1999)Actua Ice Hockey 2 (1999)Actua Golf 3 (1999)Fatal Racing (1995)Loaded (1995)Re-Loaded (1996)Slipstream 5000 (1995)Normality (1996)UEFA Euro 1996 (1996)Hardcore 4X4 (1996)Fragile Allegiance (1996)Realms of the Haunting (1997)Monopoly (1997)Buggy (1998)Motorhead (1998)N2O (1998)Body Harvest (1998)Hardwar (1998)Wild Metal Country (1999)Soulbringer'' (2000)
As Infogrames Sheffield House
See also
Sumo Digital: Game developer founded by former members of Gremlin management.
Martech: Video game publisher founded in the 1980s by David Martin.
References
External links
Wayback Archive
Gremlin Interactive profile from MobyGames
1984 establishments in England
2003 disestablishments in England
Defunct video game companies of the United Kingdom
Video game companies established in 1984
Video game companies disestablished in 2003
Defunct companies based in Sheffield
Video game development companies |
1408614 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNICE | UNICE | UNICE or Unice may refer to:
Union of Industrial and Employers' Confederations of Europe, (now BusinessEurope), a Brussels-based industry association
Université de Nice Sophia Antipolis, a subsumed public university in Côte d'Azur, France
U.N.I.C.E., a character in Bibleman, an American television series
Únice, Czech village in Strakonice, South Bohemia
See also
Josh Unice (born 1989) U.S. ice hockey player
Ice (disambiguation)
Eunice (disambiguation)
Eunuch (disambiguation)
Unix (disambiguation)
Unix, whose plural is "unices"
Unix-like, sometimes referred to as "unices"
List of Unices, of Unix systems
University of Nice Sophia Antipolis, the university in Nice, France
Digging out of ice
Deicing
UNECE |
52625218 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List%20of%20unicorn%20startup%20companies | List of unicorn startup companies | This is a list of unicorn startup companies. In finance, a unicorn is a privately held startup company with a current valuation of US$1 billion or more, across technology centers throughout the world.
Notable lists of unicorn companies are maintained by The Wall Street Journal, Fortune Magazine, CNNMoney/CB Insights, TechCrunch, PitchBook/Morningstar, and Tech in Asia.
History
List
Unicorns are concentrated in a few countries/regions: US (460), China (300), India(92), Israel (30), UK (30), France (24), Canada (19), Germany (16), South Korea (13), Brazil (12), Singapore (10), Hong Kong (8), Mexico (7), Australia (7), Japan (7), Indonesia (7), Sweden (6), Portugal (5), Switzerland (5), Argentina (3), Ireland (3), Netherlands (3), Nigeria (3), Spain (3), Turkey (3), Thailand (3), Austria (2), Belgium (3), Denmark (2), Estonia (2), Norway (2), Philippines (2), UAE (2) and eleven other countries (1 each).
{| class="wikitable sortable"
!Company
!Valuation(US$ billions)
!Valuation date
!Industry
!Country/countries
!Founder(s)
|-
|ByteDance
|400
|April 2021
|Internet
|
|Zhang Yiming, Liang Rubo
|-
|SpaceX
|100
|October 2021
|Aerospace
|
|Elon Musk
|-
|Stripe
|95
|March 2021
|Financial services
| /
|Patrick and John Collison
|-
|Klarna
|45.6
|June 2021
|Financial technology
|
|Sebastian Siemiatkowski, Niklas Adalberth, Victor Jacobsson
|-
|Epic Games
|42
|November 2021
|Video games
|
|Tim Sweeney
|-
|Canva
|40
|September 2021
|Graphic design
|
|Melanie Perkins, Clifford Obrecht, Cameron Adams
|-
|Checkout.com
|40
|January 2022
|Financial technology
|
| Guillaume Pousaz
|-
|Instacart
|39
|March 2021
|Retail
|
|Apoorva Mehta, Max Mullen, Brandon Leonardo
|-
|Databricks
|38
|August 2021
|Software
|
|Ali Ghodsi
|-
|Revolut
|33
|July 2021
|Financial technology
|
|Nikolay Storonsky, Vlad Yatsenko
|-
|FTX
|32
|January 2022
|Cryptocurrency
|
|Sam Bankman-Fried and Gary Wang
|-
|Telegram
|30
|January 2021
|Internet
| /
|Nikolai and Pavel Durov
|-
|Chime
|25
|August 2021
|Financial services
|
|Chris Britt and Ryan King
|-
|Byju's
|21
|November 2021
|Education technology
|
|Byju Raveendran, Divya Gokulnath
|-
|J&T Express
|20
|April 2021
|Logistics
|
|
|-
|Xiaohongshu
|20
|October 2021
|E-commerce
|
|
|-
|Fanatics
|18
|August 2021
|E-commerce
|
|
|-
|Miro
|17.5
|January 2022
|Software
|
|
|-
|Dunamu
|17
|November 2021
|Cryptocurrency
|
|Song Chi-hyung
|-
|Trendyol
|16.5
|May 2021
|E-commerce
|
|Demet Mutlu
|-
|Yuanfudao
|15.5
|October 2020
|Education technology
|
|
|-
|DJI
|15
|September 2016
|Technology
|
|Frank Wang (Wang Tao)
|-
|GoPuff
|15
|July 2021
|E-commerce
|
|Yakir Gola, Rafael Ilishayev
|-
|Shein
|15
|February 2021
|E-commerce
|
|Chris Xu
|-
|Plaid
|13.4
|April 2021
|Financial Technology
|
|Zach Perret, William Hockey
|-
|OpenSea
|13.3
|January 2022
|Blockchain
|
|
|-
|Grammarly
|13
|November 2021
|Collaborative Software
|
|Alex Shevchenko, Max Lytvyn, and Dmytro Lider
|-
|Devoted Health
|12.6
|October 2021
|Healthcare
|
|
|-
|Faire
|12.4
|November 2021
|E-commerce
|
|
|-
|Brex
|12.3
|October 2021
|Finance
|
|Henrique Dubugras and Pedro Franceschi
|-
|Biosplice Therapeutics
|12
|April 2021
|Health
|
|Osman Kibar
|-
|Bitmain
|12
|June 2018
|Cryptocurrency
|
|
|-
|GoodLeap
|12
|October 2021
|Finance Technology
|
|
|-
|SenseTime
|12
|January 2021
|Artificial intelligence
| /
|
|-
|Northvolt
|11.75
|June 2021
|Batteries
|
|
|-
|Airtable
|11
|December 2021
|Collaborative Software
|
|Howie Liu, Andrew Ofstad, Emmett Nicholas
|-
|Celonis
|11
|June 2021
|Software
|
|
|-
|ZongMu Technology
|11
|June 2021
|Self-driving cars
|
|
|-
|Bolt Financial
|11
|January 2022
|Financial Technology
|
|Ryan Breslow
|-
|Alchemy
|10.2
|January 2022
|Blockchain
|
|Joe Lau and Nikil Viswanathan
|-
|Swiggy
|10.7
|January 2022
|Food delivery
|
|Nandan Reddy, Sriharsha Majety
|-
|Aurora
|10
|December 2020
|Self-driving cars
|
|
|-
|Chehaoduo
|10
|July 2021
|Marketplace
|
|
|-
|Digital Currency Group
|10
|November 2021
|Venture capital
|
|
|-
|Figma
|10
|June 2021
|Software
|
|Dylan Field and Evan Wallace
|-
|Gusto
|10
|August 2021
|Software
|
|Joshua Reeves and Edward Kim
|-
|Lalamove
|10
|January 2021
|Supply chain management
| /
|
|-
|Notion Labs
|10
|October 2021
|Productivity Software
|
|
|-
|Reddit
|10
|August 2021
|Internet media
|
|Steve Huffman, Aaron Swartz, Alexis Ohanian
|-
|Ripple
|10
|December 2019
|Cryptocurrency
|
|
|-
|Talkdesk
|10
|August 2021
|Software as a service
| /
|Cristina Fonseca, Tiago Paiva
|-
|Oyo
|9.6
|August 2021
|Hospitality
|
|Ritesh Agarwal
|-
|Klaviyo
|9.5
|May 2021
|Marketing
|
|
|-
|OutSystems
|9.5
|February 2021
|Software development
| /
|
|-
|ServiceTitan
|9.5
|June 2021
|Software
|
|
|-
|Tanium
|9
|June 2020
|Cybersecurity
|
|David Hindawi, Orion Hindawi
|-
|Kavak
|8.7
|October 2021
|Marketplace
|
|
|-
|Rapyd
|8.7
|August 2021
|Financial technology
|
|
|-
|Nuro
|8.6
|November 2021
|Robotics
|
|
|-
|Snyk
|8.5
|September 2021
|Application security
|
|
|-
|Bolt
|8.4
|January 2022
|Transportation
|
|Markus Villig
|-
|Lacework
|8.3
|November 2021
|Cloud security
|
|
|-
|Tempus
|8.1
|December 2020
|Health
|
|
|-
|Dream11
|8
|November 2021
|Fantasy sports
|
|Harsh Jain, Bhavit Sheth
|-
|Flexport
|8
|February 2022
|Logistics
|
|Ryan Petersen
|-
|Hopin
|7.75
|August 2021
|Virtual event
|
|
|-
|Dapper Labs
|7.6
|September 2021
|NFT
|
|
|-
|Getir
|7.56
|June 2021
|Retail
|
|Nazım Salur
|-
|Netskope
|7.5
|July 2021
|Computer security
|
|Sanjay Beri, Lebin Cheng, Ravi Ithal, Krishna Narayanaswamy
|-
|Razorpay
|7.5
|December 2021
|Financial technology
|
|Harshil Mathur, Shashank Kumar
|-
|Carta
|7.4
|August 2021
|Software
|
|Henry Ward
|-
|Viva Republica (Toss)
|7.4
|June 2021
|Financial technology
|
|
|-
|Ola Cabs
|7.3
|December 2021
|Transportation
|
|Bhavish Aggarwal, Ankit Bhati
|-
|Scale AI
|7.3
|April 2021
|Artificial intelligence
|
|
|-
|Argo AI
|7.25
|July 2020
|Artificial intelligence
|
|Bryan Salesky and Peter Rander
|-
|Gong
|7.25
|June 2021
|Artificial intelligence
|
|
|-
|TripActions
|7.25
|October 2021
|Travel
|
|Ariel Cohen and Ilan Twig
|-
|Discord
|7
|December 2020
|Software
|
|Jason Citron, Stanislav Vishnevsky
|-
|Automation Anywhere
|6.8
|November 2019
|Robotic process automation
|
|
|-
|1Password
|6.8
|July 2021
|Password manager
|
|
|-
|WeDoctor
|6.8
|February 2021
|Healthcare
|
|
|-
|Ziroom
|6.6
|March 2020
|Real estate technology
|
|
|-
|Mollie
|6.5
|June 2021
|Financial technology
|
|
|-
|Rippling
|6.5
|October 2021
|Workforce management
|
|Parker Conrad
|-
|DataRobot
|6.3
|July 2021
|Artificial intelligence
|
|
|-
|Personio
|6.3
|October 2021
|Software
|
|
|-
|Lianjia (Homelink)
|6.04
|April 2017
|Real estate
|
|
|-
|Better.com
|6
|April 2021
|Financial services
|
|
|-
|Wiz
|6
|October 2021
|Cybersecurity
|
|
|-
|Xingsheng Youxuan
|6
|January 2021
|Retail
|
|
|-
|Vice Media
|5.7
|February 2020
|Mass media
|
|
|-
|Fivetran
|5.6
|September 2021
|Data infrastructure
|
|
|-
|PharmEasy
|5.6
|October 2021
|Health technology
|
|Siddharth Shah
|-
|Postman
|5.6
|August 2021
|Software as a service
| /
|
|-
|Airwallex
|5.5
|November 2021
|Financial services
| /
|
|-
|PhonePe
|5.5
|December 2020
|Financial technology
|
|Sameer Nigam, Rahul Chari
|-
|Samsara
|5.4
|May 2020
|Technology
|
|
|-
|Pony.ai
|5.3
|November 2020
|Artificial intelligence
| /
|James Peng, Tiancheng Lou
|-
|Trade Republic
|5.3
|May 2021
|Financial technology
|
|
|-
|Rappi
|5.25
|July 2021
|Transportation
|
|
|-
|Blockchain.com
|5.2
|March 2021
|Cryptocurrency
|
|
|-
|OneTrust
|5.1
|December 2020
|Cybersecurity
| /
|
|-
|SambaNova
|5.1
|April 2021
|Artificial intelligence
|
|
|-
|Collibra
|5+
|January 2019
|Data governance
|
|Pieter De Leenheer, Felix Van de Maele, Stijn Christiaens
|-
|Thrasio
|5+
|October 2021
|Holding company
|
|Josh Silberstein and Carlos Cashman
|-
|CloudKitchens
|5
|November 2019
|Ghost kitchen
|
|
|-
|Hello TransTech
|5
|March 2021
|Transportation
|
|
|-
|Hopper
|5
|August 2021
|Travel
|
|
|-
|JUUL Labs
|5
|October 2019
|Electronic Cigarettes
|
|
|-
|OfBusiness
|5
|December 2021
|B2B e-commerce
|
|Bhuvan Gupta, Vasant Sridhar, Ruchi Kalra, Nitin Jain, Asish Mohapatra
|-
|Ola Electric
|5
|January 2022
|Electric vehicles
|
|Bhavish Aggarwal
|-
|Ro
|5
|March 2021
|Health technology
|
|
|-
|Royole
|5
|August 2018
|Flexible electronics
| /
|
|-
|UBtech Robotics
|5
|May 2018
|Robotics
|
|
|-
|United Imaging Healthcare
|5
|September 2017
|Healthcare
|
|
|-
|Zepz
|5
|August 2021
|Financial technology
|
|
|-
|Animoca Brands
|5
|January 2022
|Blockchain gaming
|
|Yat Siu
|-
|Meesho
|4.9
|September 2021
|E-commerce
|
|Vidit Aatrey, Sanjeev Barnwal
|-
|Anduril Industries
|4.6
|June 2021
|Defense Technology
|
|Palmer Luckey
|-
|Checkr
|4.6
|August 2021
|Human resource management
|
|
|-
|Dataiku
|4.6
|August 2021
|Artificial intelligence
| /
|
|-
|Magic Leap
|4.5
|February 2016
|Augmented Reality
|
|
|-
|Socure
|4.5
|November 2021
|Identity management
|
|
|-
|Vinted
|4.5
|May 2021
|Marketplace
|
|
|-
|Zenefits
|4.5
|May 2015
|Human resource management
|
|
|-
|Meizu
|4.4
|October 2016
|Consumer electronics
|
|
|-
|Outreach
|4.4
|June 2021
|Sales
|
|
|-
|Arctic Wolf Networks
|4.3
|July 2021
|Cybersecurity
|
|
|-
|Sorare
|4.3
|September 2021
|Fantasy sports
|
|
|-
|Chainalysis
|4.2
|June 2021
|Blockchain
|
|
|-
|Relativity Space
|4.2
|June 2021
|Aerospace
|
|
|-
|SSENSE
|4.15
|June 2021
|E-commerce
|
|
|-
|Bitpanda
|4.1
|August 2021
|Cryptocurrency
|
|
|-
|Dataminr
|4.1
|March 2021
|Data analytics
|
|
|-
|Yello Mobile
|4.05
|November 2016
|Software industry
|
|
|-
|Branch Metrics
|4
|February 2022
|Marketing
|
|
|-
|BrowserStack
|4
|June 2021
|Software
|
|Ritesh Arora, Nakul Aggarwal
|-
|Clubhouse
|4
|April 2021
|Messaging
|
|Paul Davison and Rohan Seth
|-
|CRED
|4
|October 2021
|Financial technology
|
|Kunal Shah
|-
|Houzz
|4
|June 2017
|Interior design
|
|
|-
|iCapital Network
|4
|July 2021
|Financial services
|
|
|-
|Megvii
|4
|May 2019
|Technology
|
|
|-
|Melio
|4
|September 2021
|Financial technology
|
|
|-
|Next Insurance
|4
|March 2021
|Insurance
|
|
|-
|Olive
|4
|June 2021
|Health technology
|
|
|-
|Patreon
|4
|April 2021
|Online Membership service
|
|Jack Conte, Sam Yam
|-
|PointClickCare
|4
|January 2021
|Software
|
|
|-
|
|4
|May 2021
|Real Estate
|
|
|-
|Niantic
|3.95
|January 2019
|Video games
|
|
|-
|StockX
|3.8
|April 2021
|E-commerce
|
|
|-
|Articulate
|3.75
|July 2021
|Education technology
|
|
|-
|Cohesity
|3.7
|March 2021
|Software
|
|
|-
|Noom
|3.7
|May 2021
|Healthcare
|
|
|-
|Papaya Global
|3.7
|September 2021
|Workforce management
| /
|
|-
|ShareChat
|3.7
|December 2021
|Social network
|
|Ankush Sachdeva, Bhanu Pratap Singh, Farid Ahsan
|-
|VAST Data
|3.7
|May 2021
|Data storage
|
|
|-
|WHOOP
|3.6
|August 2021
|Wearable technology
|
|
|-
|Shouqi
|3.55
|December 2016
|Transportation
|
|
|-
|Alchemy
|3.5
|October 2021
|Blockchain
|
|
|-
|Coalition
|3.5
|September 2021
|Cybersecurity
|
|
|-
|Commure
|3.5
|September 2021
|Health technology
|
|
|-
|Digit Insurance
|3.5
|July 2021
|Insurance
|
|Kamesh Goyal
|-
|Mirakl
|3.5
|September 2021
|Marketplace
|
|
|-
|N26
|3.5
|July 2019
|Financial services
|
|
|-
|OwnBackup
|3.35
|August 2021
|Data storage
|
|
|-
|Preferred Networks
|3.33
|September 2019
|Artificial intelligence
|
|
|-
|CARS24
|3.3
|December 2021
|Marketplace
|
|Vikram Chopra, Mehul Agrawal, Gajendra Jangid and Ruchit Agarwal
|-
|Rubrik
|3.3
|January 2019
|Computer storage
|
|Bipul Sinha, Arvind Jain, Soham Mazumdar, Arvind Nithrakashyap
|-
|Scopely
|3.3
|October 2020
|Mobile gaming
|
|
|-
|WeRide
|3.3
|June 2021
|Self-driving cars
|
|
|-
|Youxia Motors
|3.3
|October 2018
|Electric vehicles
|
|
|-
|MoonPay
|3.4
|November 2021
|Cryptocurrency
|
|
|-
|Unacademy
|3.4
|August 2021
|Education Technology
|
|Gaurav Munjal
|-
|Starburst Data
|3.3
|February 2022
|Data Analytics
|
|
|-
|ApplyBoard
|3.2
|June 2021
|Education technology
|
|Martin Basiri, Massi Basiri, Meti Basiri
|-
|Back Market
|3.2
|May 2021
|Marketplace
|
|
|-
|Blockstream
|3.2
|August 2021
|Fintech
|
|
|-
|ConsenSys
|3.2
|November 2021
|Blockchain
|
|
|-
|Cybereason
|3.2
|July 2021
|Cybersecurity
| /
|
|-
|Eruditus
|3.2
|August 2021
|Educational technology
|
|
|-
|PsiQuantum
|3.15
|July 2021
|Quantum computing
|
|
|-
|SpotOn
|3.15
|September 2021
|Financial technology
|
|
|-
|TiendaNube
|3.1
|August 2021
|E-commerce
|
|
|-
|SentinelOne
|3.1
|November 2020
|Cybersecurity
|
|
|-
|Udaan
|3.1
|January 2021
|B2B e-commerce
|
|Vaibhav Gupta, Amod Malviya, Sujeet Kumar
|-
|Wildlife
|3+
|August 2020
|Mobile gaming
|
|
|-
|CMR Surgical
|3
|January 2021
|Robotics
|
|
|-
|Traveloka
|3
|January 2017
|Travel
|
|
|-
|ActiveCampaign
|3
|April 2021
|Marketing
|
|
|-
|Age of Learning, Inc.
|3
|June 2021
|Education
|
|
|-
|Automattic
|3
|September 2019
|Internet
|
|Matt Mullenweg
|-
|Calendly
|3
|January 2021
|Software
|
|
|-
|Contentful
|3
|July 2021
|Content management system
|
|
|-
|Delhivery
|3
|May 2021
|Logistics
|
|
|-
|Forter
|3
|May 2021
|Software
| /
|
|-
|Grafana Labs
|3
|August 2021
|Software
|
|
|-
|Groww
|3
|April 2021
|Financial technology
|
|Lalit Keshre, Harsh Jain, Ishan Bansal, Neeraj Singh
|-
|Hinge Health
|3
|January 2021
|Healthcare
|
|
|-
|Horizon Robotics
|3
|February 2018
|Semiconductors
|
|
|-
|Lucid Software
|3
|June 2021
|Software
|
|
|-
|MessageBird
|3
|October 2020
|Cloud communications
|
|
|-
|Paytm Mall
|3
|July 2019
|E-commerce
|
|
|-
|Pine Labs
|3
|May 2021
|Financial technology
|
|Lokvir Kapoor, Rajul Garg, Tarun Upaday
|-
|Seismic
|3
|August 2021
|Software
|
|
|-
|Sky Mavis
|3
|October 2021
|Video games
|
|
|-
|Souche
|3
|September 2018
|Marketplace
|
|
|-
|TradingView
|3
|October 2021
|Finance
|
|
|-
|Upstox
|3
|November 2021
|Financial technology
|
|
|-
|VANCL
|3
|February 2014
|E-commerce
|
|
|-
|VIPKID
|3
|June 2018
|Education
|
|
|-
|Warby Parker
|3
|August 2020
|Retail
|
|
|-
|Wefox
|3
|June 2021
|Insurance
|
|-
|Yixia Technology
|3
|November 2016
|Internet media
|
|
|-
|OVO
|2.9
|March 2019
|Financial technology
|
|
|-
|Workrise
|2.9
|May 2021
|Workforce management
|
|
|-
|DriveWealth
|2.85
|August 2021
|Financial technology
|
|
|-
|BharatPe
|2.8
|August 2021
|Financial technology
|
|Ashneer Grover
|-
|Contentsquare
|2.8
|May 2021
|Software as a service
|
|
|-
|Graphcore
|2.8
|December 2020
|Semiconductors
|
|
|-
|Icertis
|2.8
|March 2021
|Software
| /
|Samir Bodas, Monish Darda.
|-
|OakNorth
|2.8
|February 2019
|Finance
|
|
|-
|UnionPay
|2.8
|October 2016
|Finance
|
|
|-
|Urban Company
|2.8
|December 2021
|Home improvement
|
|
|-
|Bird
|2.78
|October 2019
|Transportation
|
|
|-
|Convoy
|2.75
|November 2019
|Trucking
|
|
|-
|Illumio
|2.75
|June 2021
|Cybersecurity
|
|
|-
|MasterClass
|2.75
|May 2021
|Education technology
|
|
|-
|Zipline
|2.75
|June 2021
|Logistics
|
|
|-
|Daangn Market
|2.7
|August 2021
|E-commerce
|
|
|-
|Nextiva
|2.7
|September 2021
|Software
|
|
|-
|Tradeshift
|2.7
|March 2021
|Financial technology
|
|
|-
|Deliverect
|1.4
|January 2022
|Ordering software for POS
|
|
|-
|Odoo
|2.63
|July 2021
|CRM
|
|
|-
|AmWINS Group
|2.6
|October 2016
|Insurance
|
|
|-
|ManoMano
|2.6
|July 2021
|E-commerce
|
|
|-
|Pendo
|2.6
|July 2021
|Software
|
|
|-
|Sourcegraph
|2.6
|July 2021
|Developer platform
|
|
|-
|Jumpcloud
|2.56
|September 2021
|Software
|
|
|-
|eToro
|2.5
|December 2020
|Financial technology
|
|
|-
|Infra.Market
|2.5
|August 2021
|Marketplace
|
|Aaditya Sharda, Souvik Sengupta
|-
|Lenskart
|2.5
|May 2021
|Retail
|
|Peyush Bansal, Amit Chaudhary, Sumeet Kapahi
|-
|Monzo
|2.5
|June 2019
|Financial services
|
|
|-
|Ualá
|2.45
|November 2019
|Personal finance
|
|
|-
|HoneyBook
|2.4
|November 2021
|Financial services
| /
|
|-
|BitSight
|2.4
|September 2021
|Cybersecurity
|
|Nagarjuna Venna, Stephen Boyer
|-
|Exabeam
|2.4
|June 2021
|Cybersecurity
|
|
|-
|Paxos
|2.4
|April 2021
|Cryptocurrency
|
|
|-
|Mozido
|2.39
|October 2014
|E-commerce
|
|
|-
|Wemakeprice
|2.33
|September 2015
|E-commerce
|
|Huh Min
|-
|Highspot
|2.3
|February 2021
|Sales
|
|
|-
|MPL
|2.3
|September 2021
|Mobile gaming
|
|
|-
|Uptake
|2.3
|November 2017
|Asset Performance Management
|
|
|-
|Algolia
|2.25
|June 2021
|Software
| /
|
|-
|KeepTruckin
|2.25
|June 2021
|Logistics
|
|
|-
|Via Transportation
|2.25
|March 2020
|Transportation
|
|
|-
|Zume
|2.25
|November 2018
|Food packaging, Logistics
|
|Alex Garden, Julia Collins
|-
|Acorns
|2.2
|May 2021
|Financial technology
|
|
|-
|Bitso
|2.2
|May 2021
|Cryptocurrency
|
|
|-
|Gympass
|2.2
|June 2021
|Fitness
| /
|
|-
|Kurly
|2.2
|July 2021
|E-commerce
|
|
|-
|Transmit Security
|2.2
|June 2021
|Cybersecurity
| /
|
|-
|Addepar
|2.17
|June 2021
|Financial technology
|
|
|-
|Eightfold.ai
|2.1+
|June 2021
|Artificial intelligence
|
|
|-
|6sense
|2.1
|March 2021
|Artificial intelligence
|
|
|-
|
|2.1
|December 2020
|Financial services
|
|
|-
|Mambu
|2.1
|January 2021
|Financial technology
|
|
|-
|Moveworks
|2.1
|June 2021
|Artificial intelligence
|
|
|-
|Nextdoor
|2.1
|May 2019
|Social network
|
|
|-
|Webflow
|2.1
|January 2021
|Web development
|
|
|-
|Octopus Energy
|2.06
|December 2020
|Energy supply
|
|
|-
|Babylon Health
|2+
|August 2019
|Healthcare
|
|
|-
|Bought By Many
|2+
|June 2021
|Insurance
|
|
|-
|FlixMobility
|2+
|August 2019
|Transportation
|
|
|-
|Tipalti
|2+
|October 2020
|Financial Technology
| /
|
|-
|XtalPi
|2+
|August 2021
|Pharmaceuticals
|
|
|-
|Mural
|2
|July 2021
|Technology
| /
|Patricio Jutard
|-
|Aiven
|2
|October 2021
|Data infrastructure
|
|
|-
|AppsFlyer
|2
|November 2020
|Mobile Marketing Analytics
| /
|
|-
|Beijing Weiying Technology
|2
|April 2016
|E-commerce, Movie Ticket Booking Platform
|
|
|-
|BlaBlaCar
|2
|April 2021
|Transportation
|
|
|-
|Calm
|2
|December 2020
|Digital health
|
|Michael Acton Smith, Alex Tew
|-
|Clearco
|2
|April 2021
|Financial services
|
|
|-
|ClickHouse
|2
|October 2021
|Database management
|
|
|-
|Clip
|2
|June 2021
|Financial technology
|
|
|-
|Cockroach Labs
|2
|January 2021
|Database management
|
|
|-
|Deliverr
|2
|November 2021
|Logistics
|
|
|-
|Divvy Homes
|2
|August 2021
|Real estate technology
|
|
|-
|Druva
|2
|April 2021
|Cloud computing
| /
|
|-
|Firstp2p
|2
|September 2016
|Financial services
|
|
|-
|Formlabs
|2
|May 2021
|3D printing
|
|
|-
|Huimin.cn
|2
|September 2016
|B2B e-commerce
|
|
|-
|Iterable
|2
|June 2021
|Marketing
|
|
|-
|Kry
|2
|April 2021
|Healthcare
|
|
|-
|Meicai.cn
|2
|June 2016
|Agriculture, E-commerce
|
|
|-
|Mynt
|2
|November 2021
|Financial technology
|
|-
|OPay
|2
|August 2021
|Financial technology
|
|
|-
|Oxford Nanopore Technologies
|2
|November 2012
|Nanopore sequencing
|
|
|-
|StarkWare
|2
|November 2021
|Blockchain
|
|
|-
|Sword Health
|2
|November 2021
|Health
|
|
|-
|Taopiaopiao
|2
|July 2017
|E-commerce, online movie ticket booking platform
|
|
|-
|Trendy International Group
|2
|February 2012
|Fashion, Retail
| /
|
|-
|Unqork
|2
|October 2020
|Software development
|
|
|-
|Zerodha
|2
|May 2021
|Financial technology
|
|
|-
|Zilch
|2
|November 2021
|Financial technology
|
|
|-
|Akulaku
|2
|February 2022
|Fintech
|
|
|-
|Avant
|1.98
|September 2015
|Consumer Finance
|
|
|-
|Intarcia Therapeutics
|1.95
|September 2016
|Pharmaceutical
|
|
|-
|ThoughtSpot
|1.95
|August 2019
|Analytics
|
|
|-
|Yinlong Group
|1.95
|December 2016
|Energy
|
|
|-
|Sanpower Group
|1.93
|March 2018
|Holding Company
|
|
|-
|Bunq
|1.9
|July 2021
|Financial services
|
|
|-
|CoinSwitch Kuber
|1.9
|October 2021
|Cryptocurrency
|
|Ashish Singhal, Vimal Sagar Tiwari, Govind Soni
|-
|Dfinity
|1.9
|August 2018
|Cloud computing
|
|
|-
|Prosper Marketplace
|1.9
|August 2015
|Financial technology
|
|
|-
|Musinsa
|1.89
|November 2019
|Fashion
|
|
|-
|Apus Group
|1.85
|August 2017
|Mobile internet
|
|
|-
|BenevolentAI
|1.85
|August 2015
|Drug discovery
|
|
|-
|Landa Digital Printing
|1.8
|June 2018
|Printing
|
|
|-
|Lightricks
|1.8
|September 2021
|Software development
|
|
|-
|NantOmics
|1.8
|June 2015
|Biotechnology
|
|
|-
|Orca Security
|1.8
|October 2021
|Cybersecurity
|
|
|-
|Quora
|1.8
|April 2017
|Social Network
|
|
|-
|Zocdoc
|1.8
|August 2015
|Healthcare
|
|
|-
|L&P Cosmetic
|1.78
|March 2018
|Cosmetics
|
|
|-
|
|1.75
|December 2020
|Financial services
|
|-
|Spinny
|1.75
|November 2021
|Marketplace
|
|Niraj Singh, Ramanshu Mahaur, Ganesh Pawar, Mohit Gupta
|-
|Trulioo
|1.75
|June 2021
|Identity management
|
|
|-
|bKash
|1.7
|
|Financial technology
|
|Kamal Quadir
|-
|Dragos
|1.7
|October 2021
|Cybersecurity
|
|
|-
|dutchie
|1.7
|March 2021
|Cannabis
|
|
|-
|Harness
|1.7
|June 2021
|Software
|
|Jyoti Bansal
|-
|PAX Labs
|1.7
|April 2019
|Cannabis
|
|
|-
|Pleo
|1.7
|July 2021
|Financial technology
|
|-
|Taihe Music Group
|1.7
|June 2018
|
|
|
|-
|Thumbtack
|1.7
|July 2019
|
|
|
|-
|Vestiaire Collective
|1.7
|September 2021
|Marketplace
|
|
|-
|
|1.7
|September 2020
|Technology
|
|
|-
|Wave
|1.7
|September 2021
|Financial technology
| /
|
|-
|Workato
|1.7
|December 2020
|Technology
|
|
|-
|Alan
|1.68
|April 2021
|Health technology
|
|
|-
|GoStudent
|1.67
|June 2021
|Education technology
|
|
|-
|Hibob
|1.65
|October 2021
|HR technology
| /
|
|-
|Solarisbank
|1.65
|July 2021
|Financial Technology
|
|
|-
|Wayflyer
|1.6
|Feb 2022
|Financial Technology
|
|
|-
|Afiniti
|1.6
|May 2017
|Software development
|
|
|-
|Aiways
|1.6
|April 2018
|Electric vehicles
|
|
|-
|Caocao Zhuanche
|1.6
|January 2018
|
|
|
|-
|Clari
|1.6
|March 2021
|Software
|
|
|-
|Clio
|1.6
|April 2021
|Legal technology
|
|
|-
|Cognite
|1.6
|May 2021
|Software
|
|
|-
|HomeLight
|1.6
|September 2021
|Real estate
|
|
|-
|Infinidat
|1.6
|October 2017
|Data storage
| /
|
|-
|Judo Bank
|1.6
|December 2020
|Financial services
|
|
|-
|SafetyCulture
|1.6
|May 2021
|Technology
|
|Luke Anear
|-
|SmartHR
|1.6
|May 2021
|
|
|
|-
|Unite Us
|1.6
|March 2021
|Healthcare
|
|
|-
|CureFit
|1.56
|November 2021
|
|
|Mukesh Bansal, Ankit Nagori
|-
|HeartFlow
|1.5+
|February 2018
|
|
|
|-
|Aihuishou
|1.5
|January 2018
|
|
|
|-
|Andela
|1.5
|September 2021
|Education
| /
|
|-
|Culture Amp
|1.5
|July 2021
|Software
|
|
|-
|Devo Inc
|1.5
|October 2021
|Software
|
|
|-
|Gett
|1.5
|May 2019
|Transportation
|
|
|-
|ID.me
|1.5
|March 2021
|Identity verification service
|
|
|-
|Ledger
|1.5
|June 2021
|Cryptocurrency
|
|
|-
|Matillion
|1.5
|September 2021
|Data analytics
|
|
|-
|MOLOCO
|1.5
|August 2021
|Advertising technology
|
|
|-
|Mu Sigma
|1.5
|February 2013
|Management consulting
| /
|
|-
|NextSilicon
|1.5
|June 2021
|Semiconductors
|
|
|-
|NotCo
|1.5
|July 2021
|Food technology
|
|
|-
|Podium
|1.5
|August 2019
|Software
|
|
|-
|Remote
|1.5
|July 2021
|Software
| /
|
|-
|Spring Rain Software
|1.5
|June 2016
|
|
|
|-
|Starling Bank
|1.5
|March 2021
|Financial technology
|
|
|-
|Tujia.com
|1.5
|October 2017
|
|
|
|-
|ZBJ.com
|1.5
|June 2015
|
|
|
|-
|Ascend Money
|1.5
|September 2021
|Financial technology
|
|
|-
|Hellobike
|1.47
|June 2018
|
|
|
|-
|Suning Sports
|1.47
|July 2018
|Holding company
|
|
|-
|Koudai Gouwu
|1.45
|October 2014
|
|
|
|-
|M1 Finance
|1.45
|July 2021
|Financial technology
|
|
|-
|Zeta
|1.45
|May 2021
|Financial technology
|
|Bhavin Turakhia, Ramki Gaddipati
|-
|Away
|1.4
|May 2019
|Retail
|
|
|-
|Cabify
|1.4
|January 2018
|Transportation
|
|
|-
|Chargebee
|1.4
|April 2021
|Financial technology
| /
|
|-
|Deezer
|1.4
|January 2016
|Music
|
|
|-
|Epidemic Sound
|1.4
|March 2021
|Music
|
|Peer Åström, David Stenmarck, Oscar Höglund, Jan Zachrisson
|-
|FiscalNote
|1.4
|May 2021
|Data analytics
|
|Timothy Hwang, Gerald Yao, Jonathan Chen
|-
|Five Star Finance
|1.4
|March 2021
|Financial services
|
|
|-
|Gupshup
|1.4
|April 2021
|Messaging
| /
|
|-
|IAD
|1.4
|Oct 2021
|Real estate
|
|
|-
|NetDocuments
|1.4
|May 2021
|Software
|
|
|-
|Panther Labs, Inc.
|1.4
|December 2021
|Computer Security
|
|Jack Naglieri
|-
|Pristyn Care
|1.4
|December 2021
|Health technology
|
|
|-
|QOMPLX, Inc.
|1.4
|March 2021
|Computer Security
|
|
|-
|Rebel Foods
|1.4
|October 2021
|Ghost kitchen
|
|
|-
|Stash
|1.4
|February 2021
|Financial technology
|
|
|-
|Symphony
|1.4
|June 2019
|Software
|
|
|-
|Yotpo
|1.4
|March 2021
|Marketing
| /
|
|-
|Zetwerk
|1.33
|August 2021
|
|
|
|-
|GPClub
|1.32
|December 2018
|
|
|
|-
|DistroKid
|1.3
|August 2021
|Music
|
|
|-
|ETCP
|1.3
|October 2016
|
|
|
|-
|Feedzai
|1.3
|March 2021
|Artificial intelligence
| /
|
|-
|G2
|1.3
|June 2021
|Technology
|
|Tim Handorf, Godard Abel, Matt Gorniak, Mark Myers, Mike Wheeler
|-
|Innovaccer
|1.3
|February 2021
|Health care
| /
|Abhinav Shashank, Kanav Hasija, Sandeep Gupta
|-
|Knotel
|1.3
|August 2019
|
|
|
|-
|Konfio
|1.3
|September 2021
|Financial services
|
|
|-
|Kr Space
|1.3
|June 2018
|
|
|
|-
|Sonder
|1.3
|July 2020
|Hospitality
|
|
|-
|Yugabyte
|1.3
|October 2021
|Database management
|
|
|-
|Incode
|1.25
|December 2021
|Technology
|
|
|-
|Applied Intuition
|1.25
|October 2020
|Software
|
|
|-
|BigID
|1.25
|May 2018
|Cybersecurity
| /
|
|-
|Deel
|1.25
|April 2021
|
| /
|
|-
|ezCater
|1.25
|April 2019
|
|
|Stefania Mallett, Briscoe Rodgers
|-
|Iwjw
|1.25
|November 2015
|
|
|
|-
|Marshmallow
|1.25
|September 2021
|Insurance
|
|
|-
|Rec Room Inc
|1.25
|March 2021
|Video games
|
|
|-
|Nexii
|1.23
|September 2021
|Building services engineering
|
|
|-
|Spiber
|1.22
|September 2021
|Biotechnology
|
|
|-
|Mamaearth
|1.2
|January 2022
|Personal Care
|
|Varun Alagh and Ghazal Alagh
|-
|Merama
|1.2
|December 2021
|E-commerce
|
|-
|Jokr
|1.2
|June 2021
|Transportation
|
|
|-
|Ada
|1.2
|May 2021
|Software
|
|
|-
|Alation
|1.2
|June 2021
|Software
|
|Satyen Sangani, Aaron Kalb, Feng Niu, and Venky Ganti
|-
|Apotea
|1.2
|April 2021
|E-commerce
|
|
|-
|Axonius
|1.2
|March 2021
|Cybersecurity
| /
|
|-
|Byton
|1.2
|June 2018
|Automotive
|
|
|-
|CarDekho
|1.2
|October 2021
|Marketplace
|
|
|-
|Copado
|1.2
|September 2021
|Software
| /
|
|-
|Dada
|1.2
|August 2018
|
|
|
|-
|Dental Monitoring
|1.2
|October 2021
|Healthcare
|
|
|-
|Deutsche Health
|1.2
|August 2020
|
| /
|
|-
|Droom
|1.2
|July 2021
|Marketplace
|
|Sandeep Aggarwal
|-
|Fair
|1.2
|December 2018
|
|
|
|-
|FirstCry
|1.2
|February 2020
|E-commerce
|
|
|-
|FloQast
|1.2
|July 2021
|Software
|
|
|-
|Forto
|1.2
|June 2021
|Software
|
|
|-
|Glossier
|1.2
|March 2019
|
|
|
|-
|Intercom
|1.2
|March 2018
|Software
|
|
|-
|Kyriba
|1.2
|October 2021
|Cloud software
|
|
|-
|MindTickle
|1.2
|August 2021
|Software as a service
|
|
|-
|MyGlamm
|1.2
|November 2021
|E-commerce
|
|
|-
|Rohlik
|1.2
|June 2021
|Retail
|
|
|-
|upGrad
|1.2
|August 2021
|Educational technology
|
|
|-
|Voodoo
|1.2
|August 2020
|Gaming
|
|
|-
|Workhuman
|1.2
|June 2020
|Software
|
|
|-
|Sysdig
|1.18
|April 2021
|Cybersecurity
|
|
|-
|Doctolib
|1.13
|March 2019
|
|
|
|-
|Acko
|1.1
|October 2021
|Insurance
|
|
|-
|Apna
|1.1
|September 2021
|
|
|
|-
|Carousell
|1.1
|September 2021
|Marketplace
|
|
|-
|CoinDCX
|1.1
|August 2021
|Cryptocurrency
|
|Sumit Gupta, Neeraj Khandelwal
|-
|Coveo
|1.1
|November 2019
|Software as a service
|
|
|-
|GlobalBees
|1.1
|December 2021
|
|
|
|-
|Luoji Siwei
|1.1
|September 2017
|
|
|
|-
|Nexthink
|1.1
|February 2021
|Technology
|
|
|-
|Sisense
|1.1
|January 2020
|Business intelligence
| /
|
|-
|SmartNews
|1.1
|August 2019
|
|
|
|-
|Trax
|1.1
|May 2019
|
| /
|
|-
|Virta Health
|1.1
|December 2020
|Healthcare
|
|
|-
|Benevity
|1.1
|December 2020
|Software as a service
|
|Bryan de Lottinville
|-
|Zego
|1.1
|March 2021
|Insurance
|
|
|-
|TANAAKK
|1.1
|Feb 2022
|Software as a service
|
|Shoichiro Tanaka
|-
|Instabase
|1.05
|October 2019
|Software
|
|Anant Bhardwaj
|-
|Rivigo
|1.05
|October 2019
|Logistics
|
|Deepak Garg, Gazal Kalra
|-
|Aprogen
|1.04
|December 2019
|
|
|
|-
|Pentera
|1.0
|January 2022
|Cybersecurity
|
|Arik Liberzon, Arik Faingold
|-
|Gymshark
|1+
|August 2020
|Sportswear
|
|Ben Francis, Lewis Morgan
|-
|Kopi Kenangan
|1+
|December 2021
|Coffee Shop
|
|Edward Tirtanata, James Prananto, Cynthia Chaerunnisa
|-
|Clara
|1+
|December 2021
|Financial technology
|
|
|-
|58 Daojia
|1+
|October 2015
|
|
|
|-
|Acronis
|1+
|September 2019
|Software
| /
|
|-
|Aircall
|1+
|October 2021
|Cloud
|
|
|-
|Ajaib
|1+
|October 2021
|Financial technology
|
|
|-
|Amber Group
|1+
|June 2021
|Cryptocurrency
|
|
|-
|AppDirect
|1+
|October 2015
|
|
|
|-
|Aqua Security
|1+
|March 2021
|Cloud computing
|
|
|-
|Asia First Media
|1+
|September 2019
|Media
|
|
|-
|Assent Compliance
|7.6
|January 2022
|Supply chain management
|
|
|-
|Beibei
|1+
|June 2016
|E-commerce
|
|
|-
|Blackbuck
|1+
|July 2021
|Logistics
|
|
|-
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Former unicorns
These companies were formerly unicorns, but exited the list due to IPO or acquisitions: United States (81), China (42), India (12), Canada (4), United Kingdom (4), South Korea (3), Sweden (3)
References
Entrepreneurship
Unicorn |
1286798 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairchild%20C-82%20Packet | Fairchild C-82 Packet | The C-82 Packet is a twin-engine, twin-boom cargo aircraft designed and built by Fairchild Aircraft. It was used briefly by the United States Army Air Forces and the successor United States Air Force following World War II.
Design and development
Developed by Fairchild, the C-82 was intended as a heavy-lift cargo aircraft to succeed prewar civilian designs like the Curtiss C-46 Commando and Douglas C-47 Dakota using non-critical materials in its construction, primarily plywood and steel, so as not to compete with the production of combat aircraft. However, by early 1943 changes in specifications resulted in plans for an all-metal aircraft. The aircraft was designed for a number of roles, including cargo carrier, troop transport, parachute drop, medical evacuation, and glider towing. It featured a rear-loading ramp with wide doors and an empennage set 14 feet (4.3 m) off the ground that permitted trucks and trailers to back up to the doors without obstruction. The single prototype first flew on 10 September 1944. The aircraft were built at the Fairchild factory in Hagerstown, Maryland, with deliveries beginning in 1945 and ending in September 1948.
Problems surfaced almost immediately, as the aircraft was found to be underpowered and its airframe inadequate for the heavy lifting it was intended to perform. As a result, the Air Force turned to Fairchild for a solution to the C-82's shortcomings. A redesign was quickly performed under the designation XC-82B, which would overcome all of the C-82A's initial problems.
Operational history
First flown in 1944, the first delivery was not until June 1945 and only a few entered service before the end of the war. In the end, only 223 C-82As would be built, a small number for a wartime production cargo aircraft. Most were used for cargo and troop transport, although a few were used for paratroop operations or towing military gliders. A redesign of the XC-82B would result in the production of the Fairchild C-119 Flying Boxcar.
In 1946, the United States Postal Service explored the concept of flying post offices using highly modified C-82s, which would operate similarly to those on trains where mail would be sorted by clerks and put in bags and then transferred to trucks on landing.
In 1948, a C-82 was fitted with track-gear landing gear, similar to the tracks on a crawler tractor, that allowed landings on unpaved, primitive runways.
During the Berlin Blockade, five C-82 aircraft carried large disassembled earthmoving equipment into the city to enable the construction of Berlin Tegel Airport in the fall of 1948.
Though relatively unsuccessful, the C-82A is best considered as an early development stage of the much more successful C-119B Flying Boxcar. The C-82A saw limited production before being replaced by the Flying Boxcar.
The C-82 was retired from the United States Air Force inventory in 1954.
Civil airline operations
After the C-82A became surplus to United States Air Force requirements, small numbers were sold to civilian operators in Brazil, Chile, Mexico and the United States and these were utilized for many years as rugged freight aircraft, capable of carrying bulky items of cargo. The last example was retired in the late 1980s.
Variants
XC-82
Prototype, one built.
C-82A Packet
Initial production version, 220 built.
EC-82A
1948, fitted with Firestone-designed tracked landing gear. 13 aircraft allocated for conversion from C-82A, but only one completed .
XC-82B
1947, fitted with 2650hp Pratt & Whitney R-4360 Wasp Major radial engines as a precursor to the C-119 series. One converted from a C-82A.
C-82N
1946, Production aircraft built by North American Aviation. Only three were completed, before the remaining 997 were cancelled.
Steward-Davis Jet-Packet 1600
1956, civil conversion of Fairchild C-82A with Westinghouse J30-W turbojet booster engine in pod above upper fuselage. At least three converted.
Steward-Davis Jet-Packet 3200
Conversion of Jet-Packet 1600 with two J30-W engines in above-fuselage pod. One converted in 1957.
Jet-Packet 3400
Jet-Packet with a Westinghouse J34-WE-34, or Westinghouse J34-WE-36 booster engine. At least four converted from 1962.
Steward-Davis Jet-Packet II
Airframe weight reduction program to increase cargo weights and increased power from Pratt & Whitney R-2800CB-16 engines. Application applied to at least three Jet-Packet 1600s or 3400s, including the TWA C-82A Ontos.
Steward-Davis Skytruck I
1964, C-82A aircraft with takeoff weight, improved performance and a hot-air de-icing system, one converted. The Skytruck brand-name was allegedly the inspiration for Elleston Trevor's Skytruck in the 1964 novel, The Flight of the Phoenix.
Steward-Davis Skypallet
1965 A C-82A redesign with the fuselage floor separating from the aircraft from nose to tail for large cargoes and the installation of an internal hoist. Only one aircraft was converted.
Operators
Brazilian Air Force — the Primeiro Grupo de Transporte de Tropa (1st Troop Transport Group) operated C-82s of 1956-1969
Serviços Aéreos Cruzeiro do Sul
Linea Aerea Taxpa Ltda
Honduran Air Force
Compania Mexicana de Aviacion (CMA)
Interior Airways
Trans World Airlines — Used for transporting replacement engines
United States Army Air Forces
Surviving examples
Brazil
45-57783 — C-82A stored at Eduardo Gomes International Airport in Manaus. The aircraft is in poor condition.
48-0585 — C-82A stored at the Museu Aeroespacial at Campo dos Afonsos in Rio de Janeiro. It is an ex-Brazilian Air Force aircraft.
United States
44-22991 — C-82A fuselage only in storage in the Walter Soplata Collection in Newbury Center, Ohio.
44-23006 — C-82A on static display at the Pima Air & Space Museum in Tucson, Arizona.
45-57814 — C-82A on static display at the Hagerstown Aviation Museum in Hagerstown, Maryland. The aircraft was flown to the airport on 15 October 2006, marking the world's last flight of a C-82.
48-0574 — C-82A on static display at the McChord Air Museum at McChord Field in Tacoma, Washington.
48-0581 — C-82A on static display at the National Museum of the United States Air Force at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio. This aircraft recently underwent an extensive restoration of its fabric control surfaces in the Museum's restoration facility, but is now again on display.
Specifications (C-82A)
Popular culture
The C-82 is perhaps best known for its role in the 1964 novel, The Flight of the Phoenix, and Robert Aldrich's original 1965 film version. Based on the novel by Elleston Trevor, the story features a C-82A Packet operated by the fictional Arabco Oil Company. It crashes in the Libyan desert, and is rebuilt by the passengers and crew, using one tail boom, and is then flown to safety. Such an aircraft was made for the movie, the Tallmantz Phoenix P-1. It was certified airworthy by the Federal Aviation Administration. Paul Mantz, possibly the greatest Hollywood stunt pilot in history with 25,000 flight hours, was killed with the cameras rolling when he bounced the skids of the craft down too hard in a touch-and-go, buckling and breaking the fuselage behind the wing, sending the craft nose-down hard into the desert, tumbling it completely over at 90 mph. Mantz was killed instantly.
Minor league baseball namesake
In 1953, the local minor league baseball team in Hagerstown, Maryland, was the Hagerstown Braves, so called because they were a minor league affiliate of the major league Milwaukee Braves. The Hagerstown team switched affiliation to the Washington Senators for the 1954 season. Instead of using the major league nickname, they chose the name Hagerstown Packets in tribute to the C-82. The Hagerstown Packets played in the Piedmont League during the 1954 and 1955 seasons.
See also
References
Notes
Bibliography
Bridgman, Leonard. Jane's All the World's Aircraft 1948. London: Sampson Low, Marston & Company, Ltd.
Lloyd, Alwyn T. Fairchild C-82 Packet and C-119 Flying Boxcar. Hinckley, UK: Aerofax, 2005.
Swanborough, F.G. and Peter M. Bowers. United States Military Aircraft since 1909. London: Putnam, first edition, 1963.
External links
"Super Size Freighter Resembles P-38 Fighter", Popular Mechanics, March 1944; first illustration of C-82 released to public — bottom half of p. 16
C-82 packet
Fairchild C-082 Packet
C-082
Twin-boom aircraft
High-wing aircraft
Hagerstown, Maryland
Aircraft first flown in 1944
Twin piston-engined tractor aircraft |
32865416 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London%20Hackspace | London Hackspace | London Hackspace (abbreviated LHS) is a non-profit hackerspace in London, UK, established in 2009. Originally located in Islington, it moved to Hoxton in July 2010, and later to Wembley. In 2012, it was the largest hackerspace in the United Kingdom by membership, with over 1000 paying members.
Founding
The group held its first meeting at Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese on 10 February 2009.
Organisational status
London Hackspace became the world's first virtualised non-profit corporation on 27 July 2011 when the members at the AGM voted to use the OneClickOrgs platform to carry out all the procedures of the board of directors.
Facilities
London hackspace has a wide variety of facilities split across two floors and a large car park, including equipment for electronics, 3D printing, craft, laser cutting, woodwork, metalwork, biology, amateur radio, robotics, and many other things. An incomplete list of equipment can be found on their wiki.
Projects
At Maker Faire 2011, members combined an Xbox Kinect and a pair of Tesla Coils to make an Evil Genius Simulator.
The Nanode, a networked Arduino clone was developed at the space.
Workshops & events
London Hackspace hosts regular workshops for Biohacking, Lockpicking, Amateur radio and Hacking on OneClickOrgs. Additional irregular workshops cover Arduino programming, Python programming and OpenStreetMap mapping.
There is also a regular Tuesday night social event.
References
External links
Homepage
Wiki
Event Calendar
Hackerspaces
2009 establishments in England
Computer clubs in the United Kingdom |
28846687 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet | Stuxnet | Stuxnet is a malicious computer worm first uncovered in 2010 and thought to have been in development since at least 2005. Stuxnet targets supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems and is believed to be responsible for causing substantial damage to the nuclear program of Iran. Although neither country has openly admitted responsibility, the worm is widely understood to be a cyberweapon built jointly by the United States and Israel in a collaborative effort known as Operation Olympic Games.
Stuxnet specifically targets programmable logic controllers (PLCs), which allow the automation of electromechanical processes such as those used to control machinery and industrial processes including gas centrifuges for separating nuclear material. Exploiting four zero-day flaws, Stuxnet functions by targeting machines using the Microsoft Windows operating system and networks, then seeking out Siemens Step7 software. Stuxnet reportedly compromised Iranian PLCs, collecting information on industrial systems and causing the fast-spinning centrifuges to tear themselves apart. Stuxnet's design and architecture are not domain-specific and it could be tailored as a platform for attacking modern SCADA and PLC systems (e.g., in factory assembly lines or power plants), most of which are in Europe, Japan, and the United States. Stuxnet reportedly ruined almost one-fifth of Iran's nuclear centrifuges. Targeting industrial control systems, the worm infected over 200,000 computers and caused 1,000 machines to physically degrade.
Stuxnet has three modules: a worm that executes all routines related to the main payload of the attack; a link file that automatically executes the propagated copies of the worm; and a rootkit component responsible for hiding all malicious files and processes, to prevent detection of Stuxnet. It is typically introduced to the target environment via an infected USB flash drive, thus crossing any air gap. The worm then propagates across the network, scanning for Siemens Step7 software on computers controlling a PLC. In the absence of either criterion, Stuxnet becomes dormant inside the computer. If both the conditions are fulfilled, Stuxnet introduces the infected rootkit onto the PLC and Step7 software, modifying the code and giving unexpected commands to the PLC while returning a loop of normal operation system values back to the users.
Discovery
Stuxnet, discovered by Sergey Ulasen, initially spread via Microsoft Windows, and targeted Siemens industrial control systems. While it is not the first time that hackers have targeted industrial systems, nor the first publicly known intentional act of cyberwarfare to be implemented, it is the first discovered malware that spies on and subverts industrial systems, and the first to include a programmable logic controller (PLC) rootkit.
The worm initially spreads indiscriminately, but includes a highly specialized malware payload that is designed to target only Siemens supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems that are configured to control and monitor specific industrial processes. Stuxnet infects PLCs by subverting the Step-7 software application that is used to reprogram these devices.
Different variants of Stuxnet targeted five Iranian organizations, with the probable target widely suspected to be uranium enrichment infrastructure in Iran; Symantec noted in August 2010 that 60% of the infected computers worldwide were in Iran. Siemens stated that the worm has caused no damage to its customers, but the Iran nuclear program, which uses embargoed Siemens equipment procured secretly, has been damaged by Stuxnet. Kaspersky Lab concluded that the sophisticated attack could only have been conducted "with nation-state support." F-Secure's chief researcher Mikko Hyppönen, when asked if possible nation-state support was involved, agreed "That's what it would look like, yes."
In May 2011, the PBS program Need To Know cited a statement by Gary Samore, White House Coordinator for Arms Control and Weapons of Mass Destruction, in which he said, "we're glad they [the Iranians] are having trouble with their centrifuge machine and that we – the U.S. and its allies – are doing everything we can to make sure that we complicate matters for them," offering "winking acknowledgement" of United States involvement in Stuxnet. According to The Daily Telegraph, a showreel that was played at a retirement party for the head of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Gabi Ashkenazi, included references to Stuxnet as one of his operational successes as the IDF chief of staff.
On 1 June 2012, an article in The New York Times said that Stuxnet is part of a US and Israeli intelligence operation named Operation Olympic Games, devised by the NSA under President George W. Bush and executed under President Barack Obama.
On 24 July 2012, an article by Chris Matyszczyk from CNET reported how the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran e-mailed F-Secure's chief research officer Mikko Hyppönen to report a new instance of malware.
On 25 December 2012, an Iranian semi-official news agency announced there was a cyberattack by Stuxnet, this time on the industries in the southern area of the country. The malware targeted a power plant and some other industries in Hormozgan province in recent months.
According to expert Eugene Kaspersky, the worm also infected a nuclear power plant in Russia. Kaspersky noted, however, that since the power plant is not connected to the public Internet, the system should remain safe.
History
The worm was at first identified by the security company VirusBlokAda in mid-June 2010. Journalist Brian Krebs's blog posting on 15 July 2010 was the first widely read report on the worm. The original name given by VirusBlokAda was "Rootkit.Tmphider;" Symantec however called it "W32.Temphid," later changing to "W32.Stuxnet." Its current name is derived from a combination of some keywords in the software (".stub" and "mrxnet.sys"). The reason for the discovery at this time is attributed to the virus accidentally spreading beyond its intended target (the Natanz plant) due to a programming error introduced in an update; this led to the worm spreading to an engineer's computer that had been connected to the centrifuges, and spreading further when the engineer returned home and connected his computer to the internet.
Kaspersky Lab experts at first estimated that Stuxnet started spreading around March or April 2010, but the first variant of the worm appeared in June 2009. On 15 July 2010, the day the worm's existence became widely known, a distributed denial-of-service attack was made on the servers for two leading mailing lists on industrial-systems security. This attack, from an unknown source but likely related to Stuxnet, disabled one of the lists, thereby interrupting an important source of information for power plants and factories. On the other hand, researchers at Symantec have uncovered a version of the Stuxnet computer virus that was used to attack Iran's nuclear program in November 2007, being developed as early as 2005, when Iran was still setting up its uranium enrichment facility.
The second variant, with substantial improvements, appeared in March 2010, apparently because its authors believed that Stuxnet was not spreading fast enough; a third, with minor improvements, appeared in April 2010. The worm contains a component with a build time-stamp from 3 February 2010. In the United Kingdom on 25 November 2010, Sky News reported that it had received information from an anonymous source at an unidentified IT security organization that Stuxnet, or a variation of the worm, had been traded on the black market.
In 2015, Kaspersky Lab noted that the Equation Group had used two of the same zero-day attacks prior to their use in Stuxnet, in another malware called fanny.bmp. and commented that "the similar type of usage of both exploits together in different computer worms, at around the same time, indicates that the Equation Group and the Stuxnet developers are either the same or working closely together".
In 2019, Chronicle researchers Juan Andres Guerrero-Saade and Silas Cutler presented evidence of at least four distinct threat actor malware platforms collaborating to create the different versions of Stuxnet. The collaboration was dubbed 'GOSSIP GIRL' after a threat group leaked from classified CSE slides that included Flame. GOSSIP GIRL is a cooperative umbrella that includes the Equation Group, Flame, Duqu, and Flowershop (also known as 'Cheshire Cat').
In 2020, researcher Facundo Muñoz found evidence suggesting that Equation Group collaborated with Stuxnet developers in 2009 by lending them at least one zero-day exploit, and one exploit from 2008 that was being actively used in-the-wild by the Conficker computer worm and Chinese hackers. In 2017, a group of hackers known as The Shadow Brokers leaked a massive trove of tools belonging to Equation Group, including new versions of both exploits compiled in 2010, showing significant code overlaps as both Stuxnet's exploits and Equation Group's exploits were developed using a set of libraries called "Exploit Development Framework" also leaked by The Shadow Brokers.
Affected countries
A study of the spread of Stuxnet by Symantec showed that the main affected countries in the early days of the infection were Iran, Indonesia and India:
Iran was reported to have "beefed up" its cyberwar abilities following the Stuxnet attack, and has been suspected of retaliatory attacks against United States banks.
Operation
Unlike most malware, Stuxnet does little harm to computers and networks that do not meet specific configuration requirements; "The attackers took great care to make sure that only their designated targets were hit ... It was a marksman's job." While the worm is promiscuous, it makes itself inert if Siemens software is not found on infected computers, and contains safeguards to prevent each infected computer from spreading the worm to more than three others, and to erase itself on 24 June 2012.
For its targets, Stuxnet contains, among other things, code for a man-in-the-middle attack that fakes industrial process control sensor signals so an infected system does not shut down due to detected abnormal behavior. Such complexity is very unusual for malware. The worm consists of a layered attack against three different systems:
The Windows operating system,
Siemens PCS 7, WinCC and STEP7 industrial software applications that run on Windows and
One or more Siemens S7 PLCs.
Windows infection
Stuxnet attacked Windows systems using an unprecedented four zero-day attacks (plus the CPLINK vulnerability and a vulnerability used by the Conficker worm). It is initially spread using infected removable drives such as USB flash drives, which contain Windows shortcut files to initiate executable code. The worm then uses other exploits and techniques such as peer-to-peer remote procedure call (RPC) to infect and update other computers inside private networks that are not directly connected to the Internet. The number of zero-day exploits used is unusual, as they are highly valued and malware creators do not typically make use of (and thus simultaneously make visible) four different zero-day exploits in the same worm. Amongst these exploits were remote code execution on a computer with Printer Sharing enabled, and the LNK/PIF vulnerability, in which file execution is accomplished when an icon is viewed in Windows Explorer, negating the need for user interaction. Stuxnet is unusually large at half a megabyte in size, and written in several different programming languages (including C and C++) which is also irregular for malware. The Windows component of the malware is promiscuous in that it spreads relatively quickly and indiscriminately.
The malware has both user mode and kernel mode rootkit ability under Windows, and its device drivers have been digitally signed with the private keys of two public key certificates that were stolen from separate well-known companies, JMicron and Realtek, both located at Hsinchu Science Park in Taiwan. The driver signing helped it install kernel mode rootkit drivers successfully without users being notified, and thus it remained undetected for a relatively long period of time. Both compromised certificates have been revoked by Verisign.
Two websites in Denmark and Malaysia were configured as command and control servers for the malware, allowing it to be updated, and for industrial espionage to be conducted by uploading information. Both of these domain names have subsequently been redirected by their DNS service provider to Dynadot as part of a global effort to disable the malware.
Step 7 software infection
According to researcher Ralph Langner, once installed on a Windows system Stuxnet infects project files belonging to Siemens' WinCC/PCS 7 SCADA control software (Step 7), and subverts a key communication library of WinCC called s7otbxdx.dll. Doing so intercepts communications between the WinCC software running under Windows and the target Siemens PLC devices, when the two are connected via a data cable. The malware is able to modify the code on PLC devices unnoticed, and subsequently to mask its presence from WinCC if the control software attempts to read an infected block of memory from the PLC system.
The malware furthermore used a zero-day exploit in the WinCC/SCADA database software in the form of a hard-coded database password.
PLC infection
The entirety of the Stuxnet code has not yet been disclosed, but its payload targets only those SCADA configurations that meet criteria that it is programmed to identify.
Stuxnet requires specific slave variable-frequency drives (frequency converter drives) to be attached to the targeted Siemens S7-300 system and its associated modules. It only attacks those PLC systems with variable-frequency drives from two specific vendors: Vacon based in Finland and Fararo Paya based in Iran. Furthermore, it monitors the frequency of the attached motors, and only attacks systems that spin between 807 Hz and 1,210 Hz. This is a much higher frequency than motors operate in most industrial applications, with the notable exception of gas centrifuges. Stuxnet installs malware into memory block DB890 of the PLC that monitors the Profibus messaging bus of the system. When certain criteria are met, it periodically modifies the frequency to 1,410 Hz and then to 2 Hz and then to 1,064 Hz, and thus affects the operation of the connected motors by changing their rotational speed. It also installs a rootkit – the first such documented case on this platform – that hides the malware on the system and masks the changes in rotational speed from monitoring systems.
Removal
Siemens has released a detection and removal tool for Stuxnet. Siemens recommends contacting customer support if an infection is detected and advises installing Microsoft updates for security vulnerabilities and prohibiting the use of third-party USB flash drives. Siemens also advises immediately upgrading password access codes.
The worm's ability to reprogram external PLCs may complicate the removal procedure. Symantec's Liam O'Murchu warns that fixing Windows systems may not fully solve the infection; a thorough audit of PLCs may be necessary. Despite speculation that incorrect removal of the worm could cause damage, Siemens reports that in the first four months since discovery, the malware was successfully removed from the systems of 22 customers without any adverse effects.
Control system security
Prevention of control system security incidents, such as from viral infections like Stuxnet, is a topic that is being addressed in both the public and the private sector.
The US Department of Homeland Security National Cyber Security Division (NCSD) operates the Control System Security Program (CSSP). The program operates a specialized computer emergency response team called the Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team (ICS-CERT), conducts a biannual conference (), provides training, publishes recommended practices, and provides a self-assessment tool. As part of a Department of Homeland Security plan to improve American computer security, in 2008 it and the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) worked with Siemens to identify security holes in the company's widely used Process Control System 7 (PCS 7) and its software Step 7. In July 2008, INL and Siemens publicly announced flaws in the control system at a Chicago conference; Stuxnet exploited these holes in 2009.
Several industry organizations and professional societies have published standards and best practice guidelines providing direction and guidance for control system end-users on how to establish a control system security management program. The basic premise that all of these documents share is that prevention requires a multi-layered approach, often termed defense in depth. The layers include policies and procedures, awareness and training, network segmentation, access control measures, physical security measures, system hardening, e.g., patch management, and system monitoring, anti-virus and intrusion prevention system (IPS). The standards and best practices also all recommend starting with a risk analysis and a control system security assessment.
Target and origin
Experts believe that Stuxnet required the largest and costliest development effort in malware history. Developing its many abilities would have required a team of highly capable programmers, in-depth knowledge of industrial processes, and an interest in attacking industrial infrastructure. Eric Byres, who has years of experience maintaining and troubleshooting Siemens systems, told Wired that writing the code would have taken many man-months, if not man-years. Symantec estimates that the group developing Stuxnet would have consisted of between five and thirty people, and would have taken six months to prepare. The Guardian, the BBC and The New York Times all claimed that (unnamed) experts studying Stuxnet believe the complexity of the code indicates that only a nation-state would have the abilities to produce it. The self-destruct and other safeguards within the code implied that a Western government was responsible, or at least is responsible for its development. However, software security expert Bruce Schneier initially condemned the 2010 news coverage of Stuxnet as hype, stating that it was almost entirely based on speculation. But after subsequent research, Schneier stated in 2012 that "we can now conclusively link Stuxnet to the centrifuge structure at the Natanz nuclear enrichment lab in Iran".
Iran as a target
Ralph Langner, the researcher who identified that Stuxnet infected PLCs, first speculated publicly in September 2010 that the malware was of Israeli origin, and that it targeted Iranian nuclear facilities. However Langner more recently, at a TED conference, recorded in February 2011, stated that, "My opinion is that the Mossad is involved, but that the leading force is not Israel. The leading force behind Stuxnet is the cyber superpower – there is only one; and that's the United States." Kevin Hogan, Senior Director of Security Response at Symantec, reported that most infected systems were in Iran (about 60%), which has led to speculation that it may have been deliberately targeting "high-value infrastructure" in Iran including either the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant or the Natanz nuclear facility. Langner called the malware "a one-shot weapon" and said that the intended target was probably hit, although he admitted this was speculation. Another German researcher and spokesman of the German-based Chaos Computer Club, Frank Rieger, was the first to speculate that Natanz was the target.
Natanz nuclear facilities
According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, in September 2010 experts on Iran and computer security specialists were increasingly convinced that Stuxnet was meant "to sabotage the uranium enrichment facility at Natanz – where the centrifuge operational capacity had dropped over the past year by 30 percent." On 23 November 2010 it was announced that uranium enrichment at Natanz had ceased several times because of a series of major technical problems. A "serious nuclear accident" (supposedly the shutdown of some of its centrifuges) occurred at the site in the first half of 2009, which is speculated to have forced Gholam Reza Aghazadeh, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) to resign. Statistics published by the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) show that the number of enrichment centrifuges operational in Iran mysteriously declined from about 4,700 to about 3,900 beginning around the time the nuclear incident WikiLeaks mentioned would have occurred. The Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) suggests, in a report published in December 2010, that Stuxnet is a reasonable explanation for the apparent damage at Natanz, and may have destroyed up to 1,000 centrifuges (10 percent) sometime between November 2009 and late January 2010. The authors conclude:
The ISIS report further notes that Iranian authorities have attempted to conceal the breakdown by installing new centrifuges on a large scale.
The worm worked by first causing an infected Iranian IR-1 centrifuge to increase from its normal operating speed of 1,064 hertz to 1,410 hertz for 15 minutes before returning to its normal frequency. Twenty-seven days later, the worm went back into action, slowing the infected centrifuges down to a few hundred hertz for a full 50 minutes. The stresses from the excessive, then slower, speeds caused the aluminium centrifugal tubes to expand, often forcing parts of the centrifuges into sufficient contact with each other to destroy the machine.
According to The Washington Post, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) cameras installed in the Natanz facility recorded the sudden dismantling and removal of approximately 900–1,000 centrifuges during the time the Stuxnet worm was reportedly active at the plant. Iranian technicians, however, were able to quickly replace the centrifuges and the report concluded that uranium enrichment was likely only briefly disrupted.
On 15 February 2011, the Institute for Science and International Security released a report concluding that:
Iranian reaction
The Associated Press reported that the semi-official Iranian Students News Agency released a statement on 24 September 2010 stating that experts from the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran met in the previous week to discuss how Stuxnet could be removed from their systems. According to analysts, such as David Albright, Western intelligence agencies had been attempting to sabotage the Iranian nuclear program for some time.
The head of the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant told Reuters that only the personal computers of staff at the plant had been infected by Stuxnet and the state-run newspaper Iran Daily quoted Reza Taghipour, Iran's telecommunications minister, as saying that it had not caused "serious damage to government systems". The Director of Information Technology Council at the Iranian Ministry of Industries and Mines, Mahmud Liaii, has said that: "An electronic war has been launched against Iran... This computer worm is designed to transfer data about production lines from our industrial plants to locations outside Iran."
In response to the infection, Iran assembled a team to combat it. With more than 30,000 IP addresses affected in Iran, an official said that the infection was fast spreading in Iran and the problem had been compounded by the ability of Stuxnet to mutate. Iran had set up its own systems to clean up infections and had advised against using the Siemens SCADA antivirus since it is suspected that the antivirus contains embedded code which updates Stuxnet instead of removing it.
According to Hamid Alipour, deputy head of Iran's government Information Technology Company, "The attack is still ongoing and new versions of this virus are spreading." He reported that his company had begun the cleanup process at Iran's "sensitive centres and organizations." "We had anticipated that we could root out the virus within one to two months, but the virus is not stable, and since we started the cleanup process three new versions of it have been spreading", he told the Islamic Republic News Agency on 27 September 2010.
On 29 November 2010, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stated for the first time that a computer virus had caused problems with the controller handling the centrifuges at its Natanz facilities. According to Reuters, he told reporters at a news conference in Tehran, "They succeeded in creating problems for a limited number of our centrifuges with the software they had installed in electronic parts."
On the same day two Iranian nuclear scientists were targeted in separate, but nearly simultaneous car bomb attacks near Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran. Majid Shahriari, a quantum physicist was killed. Fereydoon Abbasi, a high-ranking official at the Ministry of Defense was seriously wounded. Wired speculated that the assassinations could indicate that whoever was behind Stuxnet felt that it was not sufficient to stop the nuclear program. That same Wired article suggested the Iranian government could have been behind the assassinations. In January 2010, another Iranian nuclear scientist, a physics professor at Tehran University, was killed in a similar bomb explosion. On 11 January 2012, a Director of the Natanz nuclear enrichment facility, Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, was killed in an attack quite similar to the one that killed Shahriari.
An analysis by the FAS demonstrates that Iran's enrichment capacity grew during 2010. The study indicated that Iran's centrifuges appeared to be performing 60% better than in the previous year, which would significantly reduce Tehran's time to produce bomb-grade uranium. The FAS report was reviewed by an official with the IAEA who affirmed the study.
European and US officials, along with private experts told Reuters that Iranian engineers were successful in neutralizing and purging Stuxnet from their country's nuclear machinery.
Given the growth in Iranian enrichment ability in 2010, the country may have intentionally put out misinformation to cause Stuxnet's creators to believe that the worm was more successful in disabling the Iranian nuclear program than it actually was.
Israel
Israel, through Unit 8200, has been speculated to be the country behind Stuxnet in many media reports and by experts such as Richard A. Falkenrath, former Senior Director for Policy and Plans within the US Office of Homeland Security. Yossi Melman, who covers intelligence for Israeli newspaper Haaretz and wrote a book about Israeli intelligence, also suspected that Israel was involved, noting that Meir Dagan, the former (up until 2011) head of the national intelligence agency Mossad, had his term extended in 2009 because he was said to be involved in important projects. Additionally, in 2010 Israel grew to expect that Iran would have a nuclear weapon in 2014 or 2015 – at least three years later than earlier estimates – without the need for an Israeli military attack on Iranian nuclear facilities; "They seem to know something, that they have more time than originally thought", he added. Israel has not publicly commented on the Stuxnet attack but in 2010 confirmed that cyberwarfare was now among the pillars of its defense doctrine, with a military intelligence unit set up to pursue both defensive and offensive options. When questioned whether Israel was behind the virus in the fall of 2010, some Israeli officials broke into "wide smiles", fueling speculation that the government of Israel was involved with its genesis. American presidential advisor Gary Samore also smiled when Stuxnet was mentioned, although American officials have suggested that the virus originated abroad. According to The Telegraph, Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that a video celebrating operational successes of Gabi Ashkenazi, retiring Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Chief of Staff, was shown at his retirement party and included references to Stuxnet, thus strengthening claims that Israel's security forces were responsible.
In 2009, a year before Stuxnet was discovered, Scott Borg of the United States Cyber-Consequences Unit (US-CCU) suggested that Israel may prefer to mount a cyber-attack rather than a military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities. And, in late 2010 Borg stated, "Israel certainly has the ability to create Stuxnet and there is little downside to such an attack because it would be virtually impossible to prove who did it. So a tool like Stuxnet is Israel's obvious weapon of choice." Iran uses P-1 centrifuges at Natanz, the design for which A. Q. Khan stole in 1976 and took to Pakistan. His black market nuclear-proliferation network sold P-1s to, among other customers, Iran. Experts believe that Israel also somehow acquired P-1s and tested Stuxnet on the centrifuges, installed at the Dimona facility that is part of its own nuclear program. The equipment may be from the United States, which received P-1s from Libya's former nuclear program.
Some have also cited several clues in the code such as a concealed reference to the word MYRTUS, believed to refer to the Latin name myrtus of the Myrtle tree, which in Hebrew is called hadassah. Hadassah was the birth name of the former Jewish queen of Persia, Queen Esther. However, it may be that the "MYRTUS" reference is simply a misinterpreted reference to SCADA components known as RTUs (Remote Terminal Units) and that this reference is actually "My RTUs"–a management feature of SCADA. Also, the number 19790509 appears once in the code and may refer to the date 1979 May 09, the day Habib Elghanian, a Persian Jew, was executed in Tehran. Another date that appears in the code is "24 September 2007", the day that Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke at Columbia University and made comments questioning the validity of the Holocaust. Such data is not conclusive, since, as noted by Symantec, "...attackers would have the natural desire to implicate another party".
United States
There has also been testimony on the involvement of the United States and its collaboration with Israel, with one report stating that "there is vanishingly little doubt that [it] played a role in creating the worm." It has been reported that the United States, under one of its most secret programs, initiated by the Bush administration and accelerated by the Obama administration, has sought to destroy Iran's nuclear program by novel methods such as undermining Iranian computer systems. A diplomatic cable obtained by WikiLeaks showed how the United States was advised to target Iran's nuclear abilities through 'covert sabotage'. A New York Times article as early as January 2009 credited a then unspecified program with preventing an Israeli military attack on Iran where some of the efforts focused on ways to destabilize the centrifuges. A Wired article claimed that Stuxnet "is believed to have been created by the United States". Dutch historian Peter Koop speculated that the Tailored Access Operations could have developed Stuxnet, possibly in collaboration with Israel.
The fact that John Bumgarner, a former intelligence officer and member of the United States Cyber-Consequences Unit (US-CCU), published an article prior to Stuxnet being discovered or deciphered, that outlined a strategic cyber strike on centrifuges and suggests that cyber attacks are permissible against nation states which are operating uranium enrichment programs that violate international treaties gives some credibility to these claims. Bumgarner pointed out that the centrifuges used to process fuel for nuclear weapons are a key target for cybertage operations and that they can be made to destroy themselves by manipulating their rotational speeds.
In a March 2012 interview with 60 Minutes, retired US Air Force General Michael Hayden – who served as director of both the Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency – while denying knowledge of who created Stuxnet said that he believed it had been "a good idea" but that it carried a downside in that it had legitimized the use of sophisticated cyber weapons designed to cause physical damage. Hayden said, "There are those out there who can take a look at this... and maybe even attempt to turn it to their own purposes". In the same report, Sean McGurk, a former cybersecurity official at the Department of Homeland Security noted that the Stuxnet source code could now be downloaded online and modified to be directed at new target systems. Speaking of the Stuxnet creators, he said, "They opened the box. They demonstrated the capability... It's not something that can be put back."
Joint effort and other states and targets
In April 2011 Iranian government official Gholam Reza Jalali stated that an investigation had concluded that the United States and Israel were behind the Stuxnet attack. Frank Rieger stated that three European countries' intelligence agencies agreed that Stuxnet was a joint United States-Israel effort. The code for the Windows injector and the PLC payload differ in style, likely implying collaboration. Other experts believe that a US-Israel cooperation is unlikely because "the level of trust between the two countries' intelligence and military establishments is not high."
A Wired magazine article about US General Keith B. Alexander stated: "And he and his cyber warriors have already launched their first attack. The cyber weapon that came to be known as Stuxnet was created and built by the NSA in partnership with the CIA and Israeli intelligence in the mid-2000s."
China, Jordan, and France are other possibilities, and Siemens may have also participated. Langner speculated that the infection may have spread from USB drives belonging to Russian contractors since the Iranian targets were not accessible via the Internet. In 2019 it was reported that an Iranian mole working for the Dutch intelligence at the behest of Israel and the CIA inserted the Stuxnet virus with a USB flash drive or convinced another person working at the Natanz facility to do so.
Sandro Gaycken from the Free University Berlin argued that the attack on Iran was a ruse to distract from Stuxnet's real purpose. According to him, its broad dissemination in more than 100,000 industrial plants worldwide suggests a field test of a cyber weapon in different security cultures, testing their preparedness, resilience, and reactions, all highly valuable information for a cyberwar unit.
The United Kingdom has denied involvement in the worm's creation.
Stratfor Documents released by WikiLeaks suggest that the International Security Firm 'Stratfor' believe that Israel is behind Stuxnet – "But we can't assume that because they did Stuxnet that they are capable of doing this blast as well".
In July 2013, Edward Snowden claimed that Stuxnet was cooperatively developed by the United States and Israel.
Deployment in North Korea
According to a report by Reuters, the NSA also tried to sabotage North Korea's nuclear program using a version of Stuxnet. The operation was reportedly launched in tandem with the attack that targeted Iranian centrifuges in 2009–10. The North Korean nuclear program shares many similarities with the Iranian, both having been developed with technology transferred by Pakistani nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan. The effort failed, however, because North Korea's extreme secrecy and isolation made it impossible to introduce Stuxnet into the nuclear facility.
Stuxnet 2.0 cyberattack
Gholamreza Jalali, Iran's chief of the National Passive Defence Organisation (NPDO), claims that his country fended off a Stuxnet-like attack targeting the country's telecom infrastructure. Iran's Telecommunications minister Mohammad-Javad Azari Jahromi has since accused Israel of orchestrating the attack. Iran plans to sue Israel through International Court of Justice (ICJ) and is also willing to launch a retaliation attack if Israel does not desist.
Related malware
"Stuxnet's Secret Twin"
A November 2013 article in Foreign Policy magazine claims existence of an earlier, much more sophisticated attack on the centrifuge complex at Natanz, focused on increasing centrifuge failure rate over a long time period by stealthily inducing uranium hexafluoride gas overpressure incidents. This malware was capable of spreading only by being physically installed, probably by previously contaminated field equipment used by contractors working on Siemens control systems within the complex. It is not clear whether this attack attempt was successful, but it being followed by a different, simpler and more conventional attack is indicative.
Duqu
On 1 September 2011, a new worm was found, thought to be related to Stuxnet. The Laboratory of Cryptography and System Security (CrySyS) of the Budapest University of Technology and Economics analyzed the malware, naming the threat Duqu. Symantec, based on this report, continued the analysis of the threat, calling it "nearly identical to Stuxnet, but with a completely different purpose", and published a detailed technical paper. The main component used in Duqu is designed to capture information such as keystrokes and system information. The exfiltrated data may be used to enable a future Stuxnet-like attack. On 28 December 2011, Kaspersky Lab's director of global research and analysis spoke to Reuters about recent research results showing that the platform Stuxnet and Duqu both originated in 2007, and is being referred to as Tilded due to the ~d at the beginning of the file names. Also uncovered in this research was the possibility for three more variants based on the Tilded platform.
Flame
In May 2012, the new malware "Flame" was found, thought to be related to Stuxnet. Researchers named the program "Flame" after the name of one of its modules. After analysing the code of Flame, Kaspersky Lab said that there is a strong relationship between Flame and Stuxnet. An early version of Stuxnet contained code to propagate infections via USB drives that is nearly identical to a Flame module that exploits the same vulnerability.
Targeting military command, control, communications and intelligence
Former U.S. Secretary of Defense William J. Perry and Tom Z. Collina, Director of Policy at the Ploughshares Fund, wrote that there are thousand and maybe millions of attacks each day on the U.S. military's use of the internet and similar DoD-only communications. If a cybersecurity attack on any nuclear-weapon state does what the U.S. and Israel reportedly did to Iran with Stuxnet, it could convince the leaders of that country that they were being attacked with nuclear weapons when they weren't. This could lead them to start a nuclear war by mistake, believing that they could lose the ability to respond appropriately if they waited for more information.
If the country targeted with such a cybersecurity attack were India or Pakistan, the resulting nuclear war would likely produce a nuclear autumn during which roughly a quarter of humanity, most of whom were not directly impacted by nuclear explosions, could starve to death if they did not die of something else sooner. If the United States, Russia or China (or maybe even the United Kingdom or France) experienced such a cybersecurity attack, the resulting nuclear war would likely produce a nuclear winter, during which 98 percent of humanity would die of starvation if they did not succumb to something else sooner.
Perry and Collina also noted that a nuclear war by accident is much more likely than Russia launching a first strike on the United States. They claimed that the world's major nuclear arsenals are focusing on the wrong problem. They cited several sources to support this claim including a GAO study that found that many advanced weapon systems in the U.S. use commercial and free software without changing the default passwords. Hackers working for the GAO were able to penetrate DoD systems undetected in part using default passwords found on the internet.
Media coverage
Since 2010, there has been extensive international media coverage on Stuxnet and its aftermath. In early commentary, The Economist pointed out that Stuxnet was "a new kind of cyber-attack." On 8 July 2011, Wired then published an article detailing how network security experts were able to decipher the origins of Stuxnet. In that piece, Kim Zetter claimed that Stuxnet's "cost–benefit ratio is still in question." Later commentators tended to focus on the strategic significance of Stuxnet as a cyber weapon. Following the Wired piece, Holger Stark called Stuxnet the "first digital weapon of geopolitical importance, it could change the way wars are fought." Meanwhile, Eddie Walsh referred to Stuxnet as "the world's newest high-end asymmetric threat." Ultimately, some claim that the "extensive media coverage afforded to Stuxnet has only served as an advertisement for the vulnerabilities used by various cybercriminal groups." While that may be the case, the media coverage has also increased awareness of cyber security threats.
Alex Gibney's 2016 documentary Zero Days covers the phenomenon around Stuxnet. A zero-day (also known as 0-day) vulnerability is a computer-software vulnerability that is unknown to, or unaddressed by, those who should be interested in mitigating the vulnerability (including the vendor of the target software). Until the vulnerability is mitigated, hackers can exploit it to adversely affect computer programs, data, additional computers or a network.
In 2016, it was revealed that General James Cartwright, the former head of the U.S. Strategic Command, had leaked information related to Stuxnet. He later plead guilty for lying to FBI agents pursuing an investigation into the leak. On 17 January 2017, he was granted a full pardon in this case by President Obama, thus expunging his conviction.
In popular culture
In Castle, season 8, episode 18 "Backstabber" Stuxnet is revealed to have been (fictionally) created by MI-6, and a version of it is used to take down the London power grid.
Trojan Horse is a novel written by Windows utility writer and novelist Mark Russinovich. It features the usage of the Stuxnet virus as a main plot line for the story, and the attempt of Iran to bypass it.
In Ghost in the Shell: Arise, Stuxnet is the named type of computer virus which infected Kusanagi and Manamura allowing false memories to be implanted.
In July 2017, MRSA (Mat Zo) released a track named "Stuxnet" through Hospital Records.
In Ubisoft's 2013 video game Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Blacklist, the protagonist, Sam Fisher, makes use of a mobile, airborne headquarters ("Paladin") which is said at one point within the game's story mode to have been targeted by a Stuxnet-style virus, causing its systems to fail and the plane to careen towards the ocean, and would have crashed without Fisher's intervening.
In Michael Mann's 2015 movie Blackhat, the code shown as belonging to a virus used by a hacker to cause the coolant pumps explosion in a nuclear plant in Chai Wan, Hong Kong, is actual Stuxnet decompiled code.
In the third episode of Star Trek: Discovery, "Context Is for Kings", characters identify a segment of code as being part of an experimental transportation system. The code shown is decompiled Stuxnet code. Much the same code is shown in the eighth episode of The Expanse, "Pyre", this time as a visual representation of a "diagnostic exploit" breaking into the control software for nuclear missiles.
See also
References
Further reading
Ralph Langner's Stuxnet Deep Dive
Kim Zetter, Countdown to Zero Day: Stuxnet and the Launch of the World's First Digital Weapon. New York: Crown Publishing Group, 2014. .
External links
fanny.bmp – at Securelist
fanny.bmp source – at GitHub
Stuxnet code – at Internet Archive
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21970 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual%20Boy | Virtual Boy | The Virtual Boy is a 32-bit tabletop portable video game console developed and manufactured by Nintendo. Released in 1995, it was marketed as the first console capable of displaying stereoscopic "3D" graphics. The player uses the console like a head-mounted display, placing the head against the eyepiece to see a red monochrome display. The games use a parallax effect to create the illusion of depth. Sales failed to meet targets, and Nintendo ceased distribution and game development in 1996, having released only 22 games for the system.
Development of the Virtual Boy lasted four years and began under the project name VR32. Nintendo entered a licensing agreement to use a stereoscopic LED eyepiece technology which had been developed since the 1980s by US company Reflection Technology. It also built a factory in China to be used only for Virtual Boy manufacturing. Over the course of development, the console technology was downscaled due to high costs and potential health concerns, and an increasing amount of resources were reallocated to the development of the Nintendo 64, Nintendo's next home console. Lead game designer Shigeru Miyamoto had little involvement with the Virtual Boy software. The Virtual Boy was pushed to market in an unfinished state in 1995 to focus on the Nintendo 64.
The Virtual Boy was panned by critics and was a commercial failure, even after repeated price drops. Its failure has been attributed to its high price, monochrome display, unimpressive stereoscopic effect, lack of true portability, and health concerns. Stereoscopic technology in video game consoles reemerged in later years to more success, including Nintendo's 3DS handheld console. , it is Nintendo's lowest-selling standalone console and the only to have less than 1 million units sold, seconded by the Wii U's 13.6 million units.
History
Development
Since 1985, a red LED eyepiece display technology called Scanned Linear Array was developed by Massachusetts-based Reflection Technology, Inc. (RTI). The company produced a stereoscopic head-tracking prototype called the Private Eye, featuring a tank game. Seeking funding and partnerships by which to develop it into a commercial technology, RTI demonstrated Private Eye to the consumer electronics market, including Mattel and Hasbro. Sega declined the technology, due to its single-color display and concerns about motion sickness.
Nintendo enthusiastically received the Private Eye, as led by Gunpei Yokoi, the general manager of Nintendo's R&D1 and the inventor of the Game & Watch and Game Boy handheld consoles. He saw this as a unique technology that competitors would find difficult to emulate. Additionally, the resulting game console was intended to enhance Nintendo's reputation as an innovator and to "encourage more creativity" in games. Codenaming the project "VR32", Nintendo entered into an exclusive agreement with Reflection Technology, Inc. to license the technology for its displays. While Nintendo's Research & Development 3 division (R&D3) was focused on developing the Nintendo 64, the other two engineering units were free to experiment with new product ideas.
Spending four years in development and eventually building a dedicated manufacturing plant in China, Nintendo worked to turn its VR32 vision into an affordable and health-conscious console design. Yokoi retained RTI's choice of red LED because it was the cheapest, and because unlike a backlit LCD, its perfect blackness could achieve a more immersive sense of infinite depth. RTI and Nintendo said a color LCD system would have been prohibitively expensive, retailing for more than . A color LCD system was also said to have caused "jumpy images in tests". With ongoing concerns about motion sickness, the risk of developing lazy eye conditions in young children, and Japan's new Product Liability Act of 1995, Nintendo eliminated the head tracking functionality and converted its headmounted goggle design into a stationary, heavy, precision steel-shielded, tabletop form factor conformant to the recommendation of the Schepens Eye Research Institute.
Several were used to show the Virtual Boy's capabilities. Driving Demo is one of the more advanced demos; its 30-second clip shows a first-person view of driving by road signs and palm trees. This demo was shown at E3 and CES in 1995. The startup screen of the Virtual Boy prototype was shown at Shoshinkai 1994. A "very confident" projection of "sales in Japan of 3 million hardware units and 14 million software units as of March 1996" was given to the press. The demo of what would have been a Star Fox game showed an Arwing doing various spins and motions. Cinematic camera angles were a key element, as they are in Star Fox 2. It was shown at E3 and CES in 1995.
As a result of increasing competition for internal resources alongside the flagship Nintendo 64, and little involvement from lead game designer Shigeru Miyamoto, Virtual Boy software was developed without Nintendo's full attention. According to David Sheff's book Game Over, the increasingly reluctant Yokoi never intended for the increasingly downscaled Virtual Boy to be released in its final form. However, Nintendo pushed it to market so that it could focus development resources on its next console, the Nintendo 64.
Release
The New York Times previewed the Virtual Boy on November 13, 1994. The console was officially announced via press release the next day, November 14. Nintendo promised that Virtual Boy would "totally immerse players into their own private universe". Initial press releases and interviews about the system focused on its technological capabilities, avoiding discussion of the actual games that would be released. The system was demonstrated the next day at Nintendo's Shoshinkai 1994 trade show. Nintendo of America showed the Virtual Boy at the Consumer Electronics Show on January 6, 1995.
Even with cost-saving measures in place, Nintendo priced the Virtual Boy at a relatively high . Though slightly less expensive and significantly less powerful than a home console, this was considerably more costly than the Game Boy handheld. With seemingly more advanced graphics than Game Boy, the Virtual Boy was not intended to replace the handheld in Nintendo's product line, as use of the Virtual Boy requires a steady surface and completely blocks the player's peripheral vision. Design News described the Virtual Boy as the logical evolution of the View-Master 3D image viewer.
The Virtual Boy was released on July 21, 1995, in Japan and on August 16, 1995, in North America with the launch games Mario's Tennis, Red Alarm, Teleroboxer, and Galactic Pinball. It was not released in PAL markets. In North America, Nintendo shipped Mario's Tennis with every Virtual Boy sold, as a pack-in game. Nintendo had initially projected sales of 3 million consoles and 14 million games. The system arrived later than other 32-bit systems like PlayStation, 3DO, and Saturn, but at a lower price.
At the system's release, Nintendo of America projected hardware sales of 1.5 million units and software sales numbering 2.5 million by the end of the year. Nintendo had shipped 350,000 units of the Virtual Boy by December 1995, around three and a half months after its North American release. The system is number 5 on GamePros "Top 10 Worst Selling Consoles of All Time" list in 2007.
The Virtual Boy had a short market timespan following its disappointing sales. The last game officially released for the Virtual Boy was 3D Tetris, released on March 22, 1996. More games were announced for the system at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in May 1996, but these games were never released. The Virtual Boy was discontinued that year without any announcement. In June 1996, Nintendo reported to Famitsu worldwide sales of 770,000 Virtual Boy units, including 140,000 in Japan. Next Generation reported that 13,000 Virtual Boy units were sold in December 1996.
Promotion
Nintendo extensively advertised the Virtual Boy and claimed to have spent on early promotional activities. Advertising promoted the system as a paradigm shift from past consoles; some pieces used cavemen to indicate a historical evolution, while others utilized psychedelic imagery. Nintendo targeted an older audience with advertisements for the Virtual Boy, shifting away from the traditional child-focused approach it had employed in the past. Nintendo portrayed the system as a type of virtual reality, as its name indicates. Nintendo also focused on the technological aspects of the new console in its press releases, neglecting to detail specific games.
Challenged by showing 3-dimensional gameplay on 2-dimensional advertisements, the company partnered with Blockbuster and NBC. A campaign promoted NBC's late 1995 lineup alongside the Virtual Boy. American viewers were encouraged via television advertisements on NBC to rent the console for $10 at a local Blockbuster. This affordable demonstration provided 750,000 consoles for rent, some in a clamshell Blockbuster case. Upon returning the unit, renters received a coupon for $10 off its purchase from any store. The promotion included 3,000 Blockbuster locations, and sweepstakes with prizes including trips to see the taping of NBC shows. The popular rental system proved harmful to the Virtual Boy's long-term success, allowing gamers to see just how non-immersive the console was. By mid-1996, Blockbuster was selling its Virtual Boy units at $50 each. The marketing campaign overall was commonly thought of as a failure.
Hardware
The central processing unit is a 32-bit RISC chip, making the Virtual Boy Nintendo's first 32-bit system. The Virtual Boy system uses a pair of 1×224 linear arrays (one per eye) and rapidly scans the array across the eye's field of view using flat oscillating mirrors. These mirrors vibrate back and forth at a very high speed, thus the mechanical humming noise from inside the unit. Each Virtual Boy game cartridge has a yes/no option to automatically pause every 15–30 minutes so that the player may take a break before any injuries come to the eyes. One speaker per ear provides the player with audio.
Display
The Virtual Boy is the first video game console that was supposed to be capable of displaying stereoscopic "3D" graphics, marketed as a form of virtual reality. Whereas most video games use monocular cues to achieve the illusion of three dimensions on a two-dimensional screen, the Virtual Boy creates an illusion of depth through the effect known as parallax. Like using a head-mounted display, the user looks into an eyepiece made of neoprene on the front of the machine, and then an eyeglass-style projector allows viewing of the monochromatic (in this case, red) image.
The display consists of two 2-bit monochrome red screens of 384×224 pixels and a frame rate of approximately 50.27 Hz. It uses an oscillating mirror to transform a single line of LED-based pixels into a full field of pixels. Nintendo claimed that a color display would have made the system too expensive and resulted in "jumpy" images, so the company opted for a monochrome display. To achieve a color display, Nintendo would have used a combination of red, green, and blue LEDs. At the time, blue LEDs were still considerably expensive and would in turn raise the price of the final product. This in combination with the other drawbacks helped influence Nintendo's decision to release the Virtual Boy as a monochrome device.
Controller
The Virtual Boy is meant to be used while sitting down at a table, and Nintendo promised but did not release a harness for players to wear while standing.
The Virtual Boy's heavy emphasis on three-dimensional movement requires the controller to operate along a Z-axis. Its controller is an attempt to implement dual digital D-pads to control elements in the 3D environment. The controller is shaped like an "M", like a Nintendo 64 controller. The player holds onto either side of the controller which has a unique extendable power supply that slides onto the back, housing the system's six AA batteries. The batteries can be substituted with a wall adapter, via a "slide-on" attachment for constant power.
In more traditional 2-dimensional games, the two directional pads are interchangeable. For others with a more 3D environment, like Red Alarm, 3D Tetris, or Teleroboxer, each pad controls a different feature. The symmetry of the controller also allows left-handed gamers to reverse the controls, as does the Atari Lynx.
Connectivity
During development, Nintendo promised the ability to link systems for competitive play. A Virtual Boy link cable was being worked on at Nintendo as late as the third quarter of 1996. The system's EXT (extension) port, located on the underside of the system below the controller port, was never officially supported because no "official" multiplayer games were ever published. Two games were intended to use the EXT port for multiplayer play, but the multiplayer features were removed from Waterworld and Faceball was canceled. Later a reproduction link cable was made.
Games
Nintendo initially showcased three games for the Virtual Boy. It planned three launch games, and two or three per month thereafter. Given the system's short lifespan, only 22 games were actually released. Of them, 19 games were released in the Japanese market, and 14 were released in North America. Third party support was extremely limited compared to previous Nintendo platforms. According to Gunpei Yokoi, Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi had dictated that only a select few third-party developers be shown the Virtual Boy hardware before its formal unveiling, to limit the risk of poor-quality software appearing on the system.
When asked if Virtual Boy games were going to be available for download on the Virtual Console for the Nintendo 3DS, Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime said he could not answer, as he was unfamiliar with the platform. He noted that, given his lack of familiarity, he would be hard-pressed to make the case for the inclusion of the games on the Virtual Console.
The hobbyist community at Planet Virtual Boy has developed Virtual Boy software. Two previously unreleased games, Bound High and Niko-Chan Battle (the Japanese version of Faceball) were released.
Reception
The Virtual Boy garnered negative critical reviews and was a commercial failure. It failed for several reasons including "its high price, the discomfort caused by play [...] and what was widely judged to have been a poorly handled marketing campaign".
Gamers who previewed the system at the Shoshinkai trade show in 1994 complained that the Mario demo was not realistic enough, was not in full color, and didn't motion-track the image when players turn their heads. In the lead editorial of Electronic Gaming Monthly following the show, Ed Semrad predicted that the Virtual Boy would have poor launch sales due to the monochrome screen, lack of true portability, unimpressive lineup of games seen at the Shoshinkai show, and the price, which he argued was as low as it could get given the hardware but still too expensive for the experience the system offered. Next Generations editors were also dubious of the Virtual Boy's prospects when they left the show, and concluded their article on the system by commenting, "But who will buy it? It's not portable, it's awkward to use, it's 100% antisocial (unlike multiplayer SNES/Genesis games), it's too expensive and – most importantly – the 'VR' (i.e. 3D effect) doesn't add to the game at all: it's just a novelty."
Following its release, reviews of the Virtual Boy tended to praise its novelty but questioned its ultimate purpose and longtime viability. The Los Angeles Times described the gameplay as being "at once familiar and strange." The column praised the quality of motion and immersive graphics but considered the hardware itself tedious to use and non-portable. A later column by the same reviewer found the system to be somewhat asocial, although it held out hope for the console's future. Reviewing the system shortly after its North American launch, Next Generation said, "Unusual and innovative, the Virtual Boy can be seen as a gamble in the same way that the Game Boy was, but it's a lot harder to see the VB succeeding to the same world-conquering extent that the Game Boy did." They elaborated that while the sharp display and unique 3D effect are impressive, aspects such as the monochrome display and potential vision damage to young gamers severely limit the system's appeal. They added that the software library was decent, but failed to capitalize on Nintendo's best-selling franchises (Zelda and Metroid games were absent, and the Mario games were not in the same style as the series's most successful installments) and lacked a system seller to compare with the Game Boy's Tetris.
Though Nintendo had promised a virtual reality experience, the monochrome display limits the Virtual Boy's potential for immersion. Reviewers often considered the 3-dimensional features a gimmick, added to games that were essentially 2- or even 1-dimensional. The Washington Post said that even when a game gives the impression of 3-dimensionality, it suffers from "hollow vector graphics". Yokoi, the system's inventor, said the system did best with action and puzzle games, although those types of games provided only minimal immersion. Multiple critics lamented the absence of head-tracking in the Virtual Boy hardware. Critics found that, as a result, players were unable to immerse themselves in the game worlds of Virtual Boy games. Instead, they interacted simply via a controller, in the manner of any traditional 2-dimensional game. Boyer said the console "struggles to merge the two distinct media forms of home consoles and virtual reality devices". Though the device employs some basic virtual reality techniques, it does so like the traditional home console with no bodily feedback incorporated into gameplay.
Many reviewers complained of painful and frustrating physiological symptoms when playing the Virtual Boy. Bill Frischling, writing for The Washington Post, experienced "dizziness, nausea and headaches". Reviewers attributed the problems to both the monochromatic display and uncomfortable ergonomics. Several prominent scientists concluded that the long-term side effects could be more serious, and articles published in magazines such as Electronic Engineering Times and CMP Media's TechWeb speculated that using any immersive headset such as the Virtual Boy could cause sickness, flashbacks, and even permanent brain damage. Nintendo, in the years after Virtual Boy's demise, has been frank about its failure. Howard Lincoln, chairman of Nintendo of America, said flatly that the Virtual Boy "just failed".
Legacy
According to Game Over, Nintendo laid the blame for the machine's faults directly on its creator, Gunpei Yokoi. The commercial failure of the Virtual Boy was reportedly a contributing factor to Yokoi's withdrawal from Nintendo, although he had already planned to retire years prior and then finished the successful Game Boy Pocket, which was released shortly before his departure. According to his Nintendo and Koto colleague Yoshihiro Taki, Yokoi had originally decided to retire at age 50 to do as he pleased but had simply delayed it. Nintendo held that Yokoi's departure was "absolutely coincidental" to the market performance of any Nintendo hardware. The New York Times maintained that Yokoi kept a close relationship with Nintendo. After leaving Nintendo, Yokoi founded his own company, Koto, and collaborated with Bandai to create the WonderSwan, a handheld system competing with the Game Boy.
The commercial failure of the Virtual Boy reportedly did little to alter Nintendo's development approach and focus on innovation. While the console itself is said to have failed in many regards, its focus on peripherals and haptic technology reemerged in later years. The original inventor, Reflection Technology, Inc., was reportedly financially "devastated" by the Virtual Boy's performance, with dwindling operations by 1997.
With the launch of the Nintendo 3DS console in 2011, Nintendo released a handheld gaming console with autostereoscopic "3D" visuals; meaning that the console produces the desired depth effects without any special glasses and is portable. In the period leading up to the release of the Nintendo 3DS, Shigeru Miyamoto discussed his view of the issues with the Virtual Boy. One was the actual use of the three-dimensional effects; while it was designed to render wireframe graphics, the effects are generally used to separate two-dimensional games into different planes separated by depth. Further, Miyamoto stated that the graphics are not as appealing, and while developing the Nintendo 64, had ruled out the use of wireframe graphics as too sparse to draw player characters. Finally, he stated that he perceived the Virtual Boy as a novelty that should not have used the Nintendo license so prominently.
In February 2016, Tatsumi Kimishima stated that Nintendo was "looking into" virtual reality but also explained that it would take more time and effort for them to assess the technology, and in a February 2017 interview with Nikkei, he stated that the company was "studying" VR, and would add it to the Nintendo Switch once it is figured out how users can play for long durations without any issues. Nintendo introduced a VR accessory for the Switch as part of Labo, a line of player-assembled cardboard toys leveraging the console's hardware and Joy-Con controllers. In this case, the console is used as a display for the headset, similarly to VR viewers for smartphones such as Google Cardboard.
Hobbyist emulation of Virtual Boy has been adapted to other displays: modern stereoscopic goggles such as Google Cardboard and Samsung Gear VR in 2016 and Oculus Rift in 2018, and to older NTSC television in 2020.
Nintendo has referenced the Virtual Boy in other games, such as Tomodachi Life—where a trailer for the life simulation game included a scene of several Mii characters worshipping the console. In Luigi's Mansion 3, Luigi uses a device by Professor E. Gadd known as the "Virtual Boo" to access maps and other information in-game (succeeding the use of devices referencing the Game Boy Color and first-generation Nintendo DS in previous installments). Its menus use a red and black color scheme, while E. Gadd optimistically boasts that the device would "fly off the shelves".
See also
Virtual reality
Entex Adventure Vision, a 1982 video game console with similar mechanical operation
Sega VR, a 1993 prototype virtual reality add-on for the Sega Genesis
R-Zone, a 1995 handheld game console released by Tiger Electronics
Famicom 3D System
Virtuality, virtual reality-based arcade games of the 1990s
Nintendo Labo's VR Kit, a peripheral to be used in conjunction with the Nintendo Switch
Notes
References
Further reading
External links
(archived versions at the Internet Archive Wayback Machine)
List of Virtual Boy games at GameFAQs
Virtual Boy Hardware Specifications at Planet Virtual Boy
Virtual Boy Programming Documentation at Planet Virtual Boy
Virtual Boy Review at GBAtemp.net
Products introduced in 1995
Products and services discontinued in 1996
Fifth-generation video game consoles
Regionless game consoles
Virtual reality |
2159354 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POWER6 | POWER6 | The POWER6 is a microprocessor developed by IBM that implemented the Power ISA v.2.03. When it became available in systems in 2007, it succeeded the POWER5+ as IBM's flagship Power microprocessor. It is claimed to be part of the eCLipz project, said to have a goal of converging IBM's server hardware where practical (hence "ipz" in the acronym: iSeries, pSeries, and zSeries).
History
POWER6 was described at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) in February 2006, and additional details were added at the Microprocessor Forum in October 2006 and at the next ISSCC in February 2007. It was formally announced on May 21, 2007. It was released on June 8, 2007 at speeds of 3.5, 4.2 and 4.7 GHz, but the company has noted prototypes have reached 6 GHz. POWER6 reached first silicon in the middle of 2005, and was bumped to 5.0 GHz in May 2008 with the introduction of the P595.
Description
The POWER6 is a dual-core processor. Each core is capable of two-way simultaneous multithreading (SMT). The POWER6 has approximately 790 million transistors and is 341 mm2 large fabricated on a 65 nm process. A notable difference from POWER5 is that the POWER6 executes instructions in-order instead of out-of-order. This change often requires software to be recompiled for optimal performance, but the POWER6 still achieves significant performance improvements over the POWER5+ even with unmodified software, according to the lead engineer on the POWER6 project.
POWER6 also takes advantage of ViVA-2, Virtual Vector Architecture, which enables the combination of several POWER6 nodes to act as a single vector processor.
Each core has two integer units, two binary floating-point units, an AltiVec unit, and a novel decimal floating-point unit. The binary floating-point unit incorporates "many microarchitectures, logic, circuit, latch and integration techniques to achieve [a] 6-cycle, 13-FO4 pipeline", according to a company paper. Unlike the servers from IBM's competitors, the POWER6 has hardware support for IEEE 754 decimal arithmetic and includes the first decimal floating-point unit integrated in silicon. More than 50 new floating point instructions handle the decimal math and conversions between binary and decimal. This feature was also added to the z10 microprocessor featured in the System z10.
Each core has a 64 KB, four-way set-associative instruction cache and a 64 KB data cache of an eight-way set-associative design with a two-stage pipeline supporting two independent 32-bit reads or one 64-bit write per cycle. Each core has semi-private 4 MiB unified L2 cache, where the cache is assigned a specific core, but the other has a fast access to it. The two cores share a 32 MiB L3 cache which is off die, using an 80 GB/s bus.
POWER6 can connect to up to 31 other processors using two inter node links (50 GB/s), and supports up to 10 logical partitions per core (up to a limit of 254 per system). There is an interface to a service processor that monitors and adjusts performance and power according to set parameters.
IBM also makes use of a 5 GHz duty-cycle correction clock distribution network for the processor. In the network, the company implements a copper distribution wire that is 3 μm wide and 1.2 μm thick. The POWER6 design uses dual power supplies, a logic supply in the 0.8-to-1.2 Volt range and an SRAM power supply at about 150-mV higher.
The thermal characteristics of POWER6 are similar to that of the POWER5. Dr Frank Soltis, an IBM chief scientist, said IBM had solved power leakage problems associated with high frequency by using a combination of 90 nm and 65 nm parts in the POWER6 design.
POWER6+
The slightly enhanced POWER6+ was introduced in April 2009, but had been shipping in Power 560 and 570 systems since October 2008. It added more memory keys for secure memory partition, a feature taken from IBM's mainframe processors.
Products
, the range of POWER6 systems includes "Express" models (the 520, 550 and 560) and Enterprise models (the 570 and 595). The various system models are designed to serve any sized business.
For example, the 520 Express is marketed to small businesses while the Power 595 is marketed for large, multi-environment data centers.
The main difference between the Express and Enterprise models is that the latter include Capacity Upgrade on Demand (CUoD) capabilities and hot-pluggable processor and memory "books".
IBM also offers four POWER6 based blade servers. Specifications are shown in the table below.
All blades support AIX, i, and Linux. The BladeCenter S and H chassis is supported for blades running AIX, i, and Linux. The BladeCenter E, HT, and T chassis support blades running AIX and Linux but not i.
At the SuperComputing 2007 (SC07) conference in Reno a new water-cooled Power 575 was revealed. The 575 is composed of 2U "nodes" each with 32 POWER6 cores at 4.7 GHz with up to 256 GB of RAM. Up to 448 cores can be installed in a single frame.
See also
IBM Power microprocessors
POWER7
z10, a mainframe processor sharing much technology with the POWER6.
References
External links
IBM POWER6 Press Kit
IBM's Power6 doubles speed
InformationWeek report on the Power6 announcement
Real World Tech, Dec 19, 2005
InformationWeek, Feb 6, 2006
C|Net, Oct 10, 2006
Heise Online, Oct 12, 2006
Fall Processor Forum 2006: IBM's POWER6, Real World Tech, Oct 16, 2006
Arstechnica, Oct 19, 2006
Arstechnica, Feb 12, 2007
Arstechnica, May 21, 2007
Recommended reading
POWER Roadmap, IBM, Oct 2006
"POWER: The Sixth Generation". (30 October 2006). Microprocessor Report.
IBM microprocessors
Power microprocessors
Computer-related introductions in 2007
64-bit microprocessors |
1779466 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executable%20compression | Executable compression | Executable compression is any means of compressing an executable file and combining the compressed data with decompression code into a single executable. When this compressed executable is executed, the decompression code recreates the original code from the compressed code before executing it. In most cases this happens transparently so the compressed executable can be used in exactly the same way as the original. Executable compressors are often referred to as "runtime packers", "software packers", "software protectors" (or even "polymorphic packers" and "obfuscating tools").
A compressed executable can be considered a self-extracting archive, where a compressed executable is packaged along with the relevant decompression code in an executable file. Some compressed executables can be decompressed to reconstruct the original program file without being directly executed. Two programs that can be used to do this are CUP386 and UNP.
Most compressed executables decompress the original code in memory and most require slightly more memory to run (because they need to store the decompressor code, the compressed data and the decompressed code). Moreover, some compressed executables have additional requirements, such as those that write the decompressed executable to the file system before executing it.
Executable compression is not limited to binary executables, but can also be applied to scripts, such as JavaScript. Because most scripting languages are designed to work on human-readable code, which has a high redundancy, compression can be very effective and as simple as replacing long names used to identify variables and functions with shorter versions and/or removing white-space.
Advantages and disadvantages
Software distributors use executable compression for a variety of reasons, primarily to reduce the secondary storage requirements of their software; as executable compressors are specifically designed to compress executable code, they often achieve better compression ratio than standard data compression facilities such as gzip, zip or bzip2 . This allows software distributors to stay within the constraints of their chosen distribution media (such as CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, or Floppy disk), or to reduce the time and bandwidth customers require to access software distributed via the Internet.
Executable compression is also frequently used to deter reverse engineering or to obfuscate the contents of the executable (for example, to hide the presence of malware from antivirus scanners) by proprietary methods of compression and/or added encryption. Executable compression can be used to prevent direct disassembly, mask string literals and modify signatures. Although this does not eliminate the chance of reverse engineering, it can make the process more costly.
A compressed executable requires less storage space in the file system, thus less time to transfer data from the file system into memory. On the other hand, it requires some time to decompress the data before execution begins. However, the speed of various storage media has not kept up with average processor speeds, so the storage is very often the bottleneck. Thus the compressed executable will load faster on most common systems. On modern desktop computers, this is rarely noticeable unless the executable is unusually big, so loading speed is not a primary reason for or against compressing an executable.
On operating systems which read executable images on demand from the disk (see virtual memory), compressed executables make this process less efficient. The decompressor stub allocates a block of memory to hold the decompressed data, which stays allocated as long as the executable stays loaded, whether it is used or not, competing for memory resources with other applications all along. If the operating system uses a swap file, the decompressed data has to be written to it to free up the memory instead of simply discarding unused data blocks and reloading them from the executable image if needed again. This is usually not noticeable, but it becomes a problem when an executable is loaded more than once at the same time—the operating system cannot reuse data blocks it has already loaded, the data has to be decompressed into a new memory block, and will be swapped out independently if not used. The additional storage and time requirements mean that it has to be weighed carefully whether to compress executables which are typically run more than once at the same time.
Another disadvantage is that some utilities can no longer identify run-time library dependencies, as only the statically linked extractor stub is visible.
Also, some older virus scanners simply report all compressed executables as viruses because the decompressor stubs share some characteristics with those. Most modern virus scanners can unpack several different executable compression layers to check the actual executable inside, but some popular anti-virus and anti-malware scanners have had troubles with false positive alarms on compressed executables. In an attempt to solve the problem of malware obfuscated with the help of runtime packers the IEEE Industry Connections Security Group has introduced a software taggant system.
Executable compression used to be more popular when computers were limited to the storage capacity of floppy disks, which were both slow and low capacity media, and small hard drives; it allowed the computer to store more software in the same amount of space, without the inconvenience of having to manually unpack an archive file every time the user wanted to use the software. However, executable compression has become less popular because of increased storage capacity on computers. It has its use in the demoscene where demos have to stay within a size limit like 64 kilobytes to enter some competitions. Only very sophisticated compression formats, which add to load time, keep an executable small enough to enter these competitions.
See also
Data compression
Disk compression
RAM compression
Executable
Kolmogorov complexity
Self-modifying code
Self-relocating code
Self-extracting archive
Self-booting disk
EXE packers |
5317199 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon%20Tatham | Simon Tatham | Simon Tatham (born 3 May 1977) is a British computer programmer. He created and maintains PuTTY, a free software implementation of Secure Shell (SSH) and Telnet for Microsoft Windows and Unix, along with an xterm terminal emulator. He is also the original author of Netwide Assembler (NASM), and maintains a collection of small computer programs which implement one-player puzzle games. All of them run natively on Nintendo DS, Symbian S60, Unix (GTK+; Android, MacOS), and Windows.
He attended University of Cambridge, and currently works at ARM Holdings.
See also
List of programmers
List of computer scientists
References
External links
1977 births
Living people
Alumni of the University of Cambridge
English engineers
British computer programmers
Free software programmers
Arm Holdings people |
4176787 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumukan%20Ltd%20v%20Commonwealth%20Secretariat | Sumukan Ltd v Commonwealth Secretariat | The Sumukan Limited v Commonwealth Secretariat case was first heard in February 2005 before the internal, administrative tribunal of the Commonwealth Secretariat [CSAT] and on 20 February 2006 an appeal was heard in the Commercial Court of England and Wales before Mr Justice Colman.
Overview
In this lawsuit, the Commonwealth Secretariat is being sued in the UK courts by a British dot com company that claims that the Secretariat has expropriated the company's auction and online tender software.
The Commonwealth Secretariat has in the past relied on its diplomatic immunity to avoid the UK courts (see Mohsin v Commonwealth Secretariat), but since April 2005, a new act, the International Organisations Act 2005 has been passed granting it full immunity in the UK. However the Sumukan case commenced before this came into force.
Case
Sumukan Limited, a London-based dot-com start-up, sued the Commonwealth for expropriating the ownership of its e-commerce software. The British company said it was asked to demonstrate its software to an African government [the government of Namibia] as part of a Commonwealth aid program. The company said it was told that if the government liked the product they would subsequently license it in a three-year deal. It signed a very short consulting agreement for the demonstration for £15,000. The parties fell out because the Secretariat changed internal staff and the new programme office, questioned his predecessor's actions and refused to pay travel expenses and fees for the consulting. Approximately two years later, the Secretariat additionally began to claim ownership of the website developed by the company as well as the software toolkit which Sumukan had used to create its demonstration to the Namibian and South African governments. Sumukan's barrister, Rhodri Thomspon QC of Matrix Chambers described the situation thus at the hearing of 20 February 2006: 'Imagine that you have engaged a painter to paint your house. When he has finished painting your house, you decide you own his brushes and ladder'. Sumukan values its software toolkit as worth over several hundreds of thousands of pounds.
Unfortunately for the dotcom company, the diplomatic immunity granted to the Secretariat under the Commonwealth Secretariat Act 1965 meant there was no initial access to the UK courts.
The company was forced to take the matter to an internal tribunal set up by the Commonwealth, all of whose jurists were appointed by the London-born Commonwealth Secretary General Don McKinnon. In February 2005, the three-person panel of Commonwealth jurists found the Commonwealth Secretariat owned all the software used in the demonstration, a decision that UK lawyers have described as 'absurd'.
On 20 February 2006, Sumukan's appeal on a point of law relating to ownership of the software was heard in the UK commercial courts. Justice Colman found that the Commonwealth Secretariat internal tribunal's judgment was indeed open to serious doubt as claimed by the dotcom company. It was also agreed that the matter was one of general public importance. Nevertheless, Justice Colman found that because the Secretariat's internal rules stated that there was no right of appeal from its tribunal [a fact that the company was not aware of when it entered into the consulting agreement], consequently the company was excluded from bringing the matter up in the UK courts. He gave permission to appeal on this point.
Sumukan had argued that the internal rules of the Commonwealth Secretariat, which prevented appeal to the UK courts, combined with the Commonwealth Secretariat Act which granted immunity to the Commonwealth Secretariat was a violation of their Article 6 rights under the European Human Rights Act, namely the right to an independent and impartial court. Sumukan has also claimed that their European Human Rights Act Article 1 Right to the peaceful enjoyment of their property has been violated by the Commonwealth Secretariat.
It was also Justice Colman's view that he did not have substantive jurisdiction [again due to the immunity of the Commonwealth Secretariat] to make any ruling on the substantive points of the case. However he went on to say that the judgment of the Commonwealth Secretariat Arbitral Tribunal was 'open to serious doubt'.
The company also argued that Commonwealth Secretariat Arbitral Tribunal exhibits serious irregularities and is not compliant with the requirements of article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which ensures the right to an independent and impartial tribunal.
Result of Court of Appeal: Failure to comply with proper procedure in appointing an arbitrator rendered the appointment invalid and the award a nullity.
References
External links
"Power to hear appeal on whether exclusion agreement valid", Times Online
Sumukan Ltd v Commonwealth Secretariat [2007] EWHC 188 (Comm) (14 February 2007)
Commonwealth Secretariat
English case law
2005 in case law
2006 in case law
2005 in British law
2006 in British law |
596137 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brad%20Templeton | Brad Templeton | Brad Templeton (born June 1960 near Toronto) is a Canadian software developer, internet entrepreneur, online community pioneer, publisher of news, comedy, science fiction and e-books, writer, photographer, civil rights advocate, futurist, public speaker, educator and self-driving car consultant. He graduated from the University of Waterloo.
Notable projects
ClariNet
Most notably, Templeton was founder and CEO in 1989 of ClariNet Communications, the first company founded to engage in commercial activity over the early Internet.
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Templeton has been involved with the Electronic Frontier Foundation since 1997, including being chairman from 2000 to 2010. His involvement in online civil rights also includes being subject of one of the first major internet bans and being a plaintiff before the Supreme Court of the United States in Reno v. ACLU Templeton's strongest efforts have been in the areas of free speech, computer security, privacy and intellectual property.
rec.humor.funny and USENET
Templeton played an active role over the life of Usenet, including the development of software tools for it. His most notable activities involved the creation and moderation of the newsgroup "rec.humor.funny", a moderated newsgroup devoted to comedy. USENET statistics reported by Brian Reid reported rec.humor.funny as the most widely read online publication starting in 1989, continuing in that position into the mid-1990s, with an estimated 440,000 readers.
Software career
Templeton began as the first employee of VisiCorp (then called Personal Software Inc.) the first PC applications software company, where he published several games and tools and assisted on Visicalc the first spreadsheet and personal computing productivity tool. He also developed the IBM-PC version of the VisiPlot companion before release of the PC. He was CEO and Founder of Looking Glass Software Ltd. in Ontario. His software specialty has been languages, tools and spreadsheets, as well as software for USENET.
e-Books
Templeton was editor and publisher for ClariNet's Hugo and Nebula Anthology 1993, one of the largest early commercial e-Book projects. It offered 5 full novels still in hardback release, along with a wide array of short fiction and multimedia. In later years, it has become the norm for the administrators of the Hugo Award to produce an annual digital anthology of award nominees.
This was an adjunct of the "Library of Tomorrow" project, which offered a full library of fiction on an "all you can read" subscription basis. The library failed, but presaged many similar attempts to sell online content by subscription.
Foresight Institute
Since 2004, Templeton has been a board member of the Foresight Institute, one of the oldest futurist organizations and the leading one in the field of nanotechnology.
Singularity University
Templeton joined the founding faculty for Singularity University, an educational institution and think-tank devoted to rapidly changing technology and its effects. Since 2010 he has been Chair for Networks and Computing on that faculty.
Robocars
Templeton has been an active writer in the field of Robocars since 2007, building the site Robocars.com and writing regularly at Brad Ideas. In 2010, he joined the Google self-driving car project (now known as Waymo) where he consulted on strategy and technology. He has also served as a consulting advisor for Starship Technologies in the delivery robot space and Quanergy LIDAR, among others. He writes frequently on this topic on his own web site, the Forbes site and others. Templeton is inventor on 21 patents in self-driving cars and telephony.
Speaker
Templeton has been a keynote speaker at many conferences and events, including Wired UK, Pioneers Festival Vienna, University of British Columbia Master Mind Class, Web Summit, Next Berlin, The Next Web Amsterdam, Ontario Centres of Excellence Toronto, USI Paris, Australian Unix Users Group (AUUG) Sydney, Korean Global Leaders Forum, CLSA Forum Hong Kong and Tokyo, Baidu Big Talk, Beijing, Singularity Summit Chile (also Buenos Aires, Christchurch, Budapest, Seville, Johannesburg, Milan, Amsterdam, Berlin and Copenhagen) and Innotown Norway.
Software and bibliography
Author, Time Trek game for Commodore Pet (VisiCorp 1978)
Consultant, Visicalc port to Commodore Pet, (Visicorp 1979)
Port, Checker King game for Apple and Atari (Visicorp 1979)
Port, Microchess game for Atari (Visicorp 1980)
Lead Author, Visiplot graphing tool for IBM PC (Visicorp 1981)
Author, PAL Assembler for Commodore computers (Temtech, 1980)
Author, POWER programming tools for Commodore (Professional Software, Pro-Line) 1981
Lead Author, ALICE: The Personal Pascal Structure editor and integrated development environment for IBM PC, Atari ST and QNX (Looking Glass Software / Software Channels, 1985)
Lead Author, ALICE Basic structure editor and IDE for QNX (Looking Glass Software 1986)
Lead Author, 3-2-1 Blastoff spreadsheet compiler for Lotus 1-2-3 (Frontline Systems/Intel, 1987)
Author, 3-2-1 Gosub programming tool for Lotus 1-2-2 (Frontline Systems, 1988)
Compressor Author, Stuffit Deluxe (Aladdin Systems, 1989)
Author, Newsclip programming language for Usenet filtering, 1988
Author, TVWish wishlist system for MythTV (open source)
Editor, The Internet Jokebook (Peer-to-peer Publishing, 1995)
Editor, The Telejokebook/rec.humor.funny annual Vol I-IV (ClariNet 1988–1992)
Editor, Electric Science Fiction online award nominees (ClariNet, 1992)
Editor, Hugo and Nebula Anthology 1993'' (ClariNet, 1995)
Other roles
Templeton was a director of Bittorrent Inc. Bittorrent's software was the largest driver of internet bandwidth use during the early 21st century. He is also the author of several well known internet essays on copyright and netiquette. He was also an active artist at Burning Man creating installations based on photography and telephony.
Family
Templeton is the son of Charles Templeton and Sylvia Murphy, and the brother of Ty Templeton.
See also
List of University of Waterloo people
References
External links
– Templeton's home page
– rec.humor.funny website
– Templeton's blog
– Robocars
1960 births
Living people
Computer programmers
Canadian businesspeople
Usenet people
University of Waterloo alumni |
26807275 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse%20James | Jesse James | Jesse Woodson James (September 5, 1847April 3, 1882) was an American outlaw, bank and train robber, guerrilla, and leader of the James–Younger Gang. Raised in the "Little Dixie" area of western Missouri, James and his family maintained strong Southern sympathies. He and his brother Frank James joined pro-Confederate guerrillas known as "bushwhackers" operating in Missouri and Kansas during the American Civil War. As followers of William Quantrill and "Bloody Bill" Anderson, they were accused of committing atrocities against Union soldiers and civilian abolitionists, including the Centralia Massacre in 1864.
After the war, as members of various gangs of outlaws, Jesse and Frank robbed banks, stagecoaches, and trains across the Midwest, gaining national fame and often popular sympathy despite the brutality of their crimes. The James brothers were most active as members of their own gang from about 1866 until 1876, when as a result of their attempted robbery of a bank in Northfield, Minnesota, several members of the gang were captured or killed. They continued in crime for several years afterward, recruiting new members, but came under increasing pressure from law enforcement seeking to bring them to justice. On April 3, 1882, Jesse James was shot and killed by Robert Ford, a new recruit to the gang who hoped to collect a reward on James's head and a promised amnesty for his previous crimes. Already a celebrity in life, James became a legendary figure of the Wild West after his death.
Despite popular portrayals of James as an embodiment of Robin Hood, robbing from the rich and giving to the poor, this is a case of romantic revisionism since there is absolutely no evidence that he or his gang shared any loot from their robberies with anyone outside their network. Scholars and historians have characterized James as one of many criminals inspired by the regional insurgencies of ex-Confederates following the Civil War, rather than as a manifestation of alleged economic justice or of frontier lawlessness. James continues to be one of the most famous figures from the era, and his life has been dramatized and memorialized numerous times.
Early life
Jesse Woodson James was born on September 5, 1847, in Clay County, Missouri, near the site of present-day Kearney. This area of Missouri was largely settled by people from the Upper South, especially Kentucky and Tennessee, and became known as Little Dixie for this reason. James had two full siblings: his elder brother, Alexander Franklin "Frank" James, and a younger sister, Susan Lavenia James. He was of English and Scottish descent. His father, Robert S. James, farmed commercial hemp in Kentucky and was a Baptist minister before coming to Missouri. After he married, he migrated to Bradford, Missouri and helped found William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri. He held six slaves and more than of farmland.
Robert traveled to California during the Gold Rush to minister to those searching for gold; he died there when James was three years old. After Robert's death, his widow Zerelda remarried twice, first to Benjamin Simms in 1852 and then in 1855 to Dr. Reuben Samuel, who moved into the James family home. Jesse's mother and Samuel had four children together: Sarah Louisa, John Thomas, Fannie Quantrell, and Archie Peyton Samuel. Zerelda and Samuel acquired a total of seven slaves, who served mainly as farmhands in tobacco cultivation.
Historical context
The approach of the American Civil War loomed large in the James–Samuel household. Missouri was a border state, sharing characteristics of both North and South, but 75% of the population was from the South or other border states. Clay County in particular was strongly influenced by the Southern culture of its rural pioneer families. Farmers raised the same crops and livestock as in the areas from which they had migrated. They brought slaves with them and purchased more according to their needs. The county counted more slaveholders and more slaves than most other regions of the state; in Missouri as a whole, slaves accounted for only 10 percent of the population, but in Clay County, they constituted 25 percent. Aside from slavery, the culture of Little Dixie was Southern in other ways as well. This influenced how the population acted during and for a period of time after the war.
After the passage of the Kansas–Nebraska Act in 1854, Clay County became the scene of great turmoil as the question of whether slavery would be expanded into the neighboring Kansas Territory bred tension and hostility. Many people from Missouri migrated to Kansas to try to influence its future. Much of the dramatic build-up to the Civil War centered on the violence that erupted on the Kansas–Missouri border between pro- and anti-slavery militias.
American Civil War
After a series of campaigns and battles between conventional armies in 1861, guerrilla warfare gripped Missouri, waged between secessionist "bushwhackers" and Union forces which largely consisted of local militias known as "jayhawkers". A bitter conflict ensued, resulting in an escalating cycle of atrocities committed by both sides. Confederate guerrillas murdered civilian Unionists, executed prisoners, and scalped the dead. The Union presence enforced martial law with raids on homes, arrests of civilians, summary executions, and banishment of Confederate sympathizers from the state.
The James–Samuel family sided with the Confederates at the outbreak of war. Frank James joined a local company recruited for the secessionist Drew Lobbs Army, and fought at the Battle of Wilson's Creek in August 1861. He fell ill and returned home soon afterward. In 1863, he was identified as a member of a guerrilla squad that operated in Clay County. In May of that year, a Union militia company raided the James–Samuel farm looking for Frank's group. They tortured Reuben Samuel by briefly hanging him from a tree. According to legend, they lashed young Jesse.
Quantrill's Raiders
Frank James eluded capture and was believed to have joined the guerrilla organization led by William C. Quantrill known as Quantrill's Raiders. It is thought that he took part in the notorious massacre of some two hundred men and boys in Lawrence, Kansas, a center of abolitionists. Frank followed Quantrill to Sherman, Texas, over the winter of 1863–1864. In the spring he returned in a squad commanded by Fletch Taylor. After they arrived in Clay County, 16-year-old Jesse James joined his brother in Taylor's group.
Taylor was severely wounded in the summer of 1864, losing his right arm to a shotgun blast. The James brothers then joined the bushwhacker group led by William "Bloody Bill" Anderson. Jesse suffered a serious wound to the chest that summer. The Clay County provost marshal reported that both Frank and Jesse James took part in the Centralia Massacre in September, in which guerrillas stopped a train carrying unarmed Union soldiers returning home from duty and killed or wounded some 22 of them; the guerrillas scalped and dismembered some of the dead. The guerrillas also ambushed and defeated a pursuing regiment of Major A. V. E. Johnson's Union troops, killing all who tried to surrender, who numbered more than 100. Frank later identified Jesse as a member of the band who had fatally shot Major Johnson.
As a result of the James brothers' activities, Union military authorities forced their family to leave Clay County. Though ordered to move South beyond Union lines, they moved north across the nearby state border into Nebraska Territory.
After "Bloody Bill" Anderson was killed in an ambush in October, the James brothers separated. Frank followed Quantrill into Kentucky, while Jesse went to Texas under the command of Archie Clement, one of Anderson's lieutenants. He is known to have returned to Missouri in the spring. At the age of 17, Jesse suffered the second of two life-threatening chest wounds when he was shot while trying to surrender after they ran into a Union cavalry patrol near Lexington, Missouri.
After the Civil War
At the end of the Civil War, Missouri remained deeply divided. The conflict split the population into three bitterly opposed factions: anti-slavery Unionists identified with the Republican Party; segregationist conservative Unionists identified with the Democratic Party; and pro-slavery, ex-Confederate secessionists, many of whom were also allied with the Democrats, especially in the southern part of the state.
The Republican-dominated Reconstruction legislature passed a new state constitution that freed Missouri's slaves. It temporarily excluded former Confederates from voting, serving on juries, becoming corporate officers, or preaching from church pulpits. The atmosphere was volatile, with widespread clashes between individuals and between armed gangs of veterans from both sides of the war.
Jesse recovered from his chest wound at his uncle's boardinghouse in Harlem, Missouri (north across the Missouri River from the City of Kansas's River Quay [changed to Kansas City in 1889]). He was tended to by his first cousin, Zerelda "Zee" Mimms, named after Jesse's mother. Jesse and his cousin began a nine-year courtship that culminated in their marriage. Meanwhile, his former commander Archie Clement kept his bushwhacker gang together and began to harass Republican authorities.
These men were the likely culprits in the first daylight armed bank robbery in the United States during peacetime, the robbery of the Clay County Savings Association in the town of Liberty, Missouri, on February 13, 1866. The bank was owned by Republican former militia officers who had recently conducted the first Republican Party rally in Clay County's history. During the gang's escape from the town, an innocent bystander, 17-year-old George C. "Jolly" Wymore, a student at William Jewell College, was shot dead on the street.
It remains unclear whether Jesse and Frank took part in the Clay County robbery. After the James brothers successfully conducted other robberies and became legendary, some observers retroactively credited them with being the leaders of the robbery. Others have argued that Jesse was at the time still bedridden with his wound and could not have participated. No evidence has been found that connects either brother to the crime or that conclusively rules them out. On June 13, 1866, in Jackson County, Missouri, the gang freed two jailed members of Quantrill's gang, killing the jailer in the effort. Historians believe that the James brothers were involved in this crime.
Local violence continued to increase in the state; Governor Thomas Clement Fletcher had recently ordered a company of militia into Johnson County to suppress guerrilla activity. Archie Clement continued his career of crime and harassment of the Republican government, to the extent of occupying the town of Lexington, Missouri, on election day in 1866. Shortly afterward, the state militia shot Clement dead. James wrote about this death with bitterness a decade later.
The survivors of Clement's gang continued to conduct bank robberies during the next two years, though their numbers dwindled through arrests, gunfights, and lynchings. While they later tried to justify robbing the banks, most of their targets were small, local banks based on local capital, and the robberies only penalized the locals they claimed to support. On May 23, 1867, for example, they robbed a bank in Richmond, Missouri, in which they killed the mayor and two others. It remains uncertain whether either of the James brothers took part, although an eyewitness who knew the brothers told a newspaper seven years later "positively and emphatically that he recognized Jesse and Frank James... among the robbers." In 1868, Frank and Jesse James allegedly joined Cole Younger in robbing a bank in Russellville, Kentucky.
Jesse James did not become well known until December 7, 1869, when he (and most likely Frank) robbed the Daviess County Savings Association in Gallatin, Missouri. The robbery netted little money. Jesse is believed to have shot and killed the cashier, Captain John Sheets, mistakenly believing him to be Samuel P. Cox, the militia officer who had killed "Bloody Bill" Anderson during the Civil War.
James claimed he was taking revenge, and the daring escape he and Frank made through the middle of a posse shortly afterward attracted newspaper coverage for the first time. An 1882 history of Daviess County said, "The history of Daviess County has no blacker crime in its pages than the murder of John W. Sheets."
The only known civil case involving Frank and Jesse James was filed in the Common Pleas Court of Daviess County in 1870. In the case, Daniel Smoote asked for $223.50 from Frank and Jesse James to replace a horse, saddle, and bridle stolen as they fled the robbery of the Daviess County Savings Bank. The brothers denied the charges, saying they were not in Daviess County on December 7, the day the robbery occurred. Frank and Jesse failed to appear in court, and Smoote won his case against them. It is unlikely that he ever collected the money due.
The 1869 robbery marked the emergence of Jesse James as the most famous survivor of the former Confederate bushwhackers. It was the first time he was publicly labeled an "outlaw"; Missouri Governor Thomas T. Crittenden set a reward for his capture. This was the beginning of an alliance between James and John Newman Edwards, editor and founder of the Kansas City Times. Edwards, a former Confederate cavalryman, was campaigning to return former secessionists to power in Missouri. Six months after the Gallatin robbery, Edwards published the first of many letters from Jesse James to the public asserting his innocence. Over time, the letters gradually became more political in tone and James denounced the Republicans and expressed his pride in his Confederate loyalties. Together with Edwards's admiring editorials, the letters helped James become a symbol of Confederate defiance of federal Reconstruction policy. James's initiative in creating his rising public profile is debated by historians and biographers. The high tensions in politics accompanied his outlaw career and enhanced his notoriety.
James–Younger Gang
Meanwhile, the James brothers joined with Cole Younger and his brothers John, Jim, and Bob, as well as Clell Miller and other former Confederates, to form what came to be known as the James–Younger Gang. With Jesse James as the most public face of the gang (though with operational leadership likely shared among the group), the gang carried out a string of robberies from Iowa to Texas, and from Kansas to West Virginia. They robbed banks, stagecoaches, and a fair in Kansas City, often carrying out their crimes in front of crowds, and even hamming it up for the bystanders.
On July 21, 1873, they turned to train robbery, derailing a Rock Island Line train west of Adair, Iowa, and stealing approximately $3,000 (). For this, they wore Ku Klux Klan masks. By this time, the Klan had been suppressed in the South by President Grant's use of the Enforcement Acts. Former rebels attacked the railroads as symbols of threatening centralization.
The gang's later train robberies had a lighter touch. The gang held up passengers only twice, choosing in all other incidents to take only the contents of the express safe in the baggage car. John Newman Edwards made sure to highlight such techniques when creating an image of James as a kind of Robin Hood. Despite public sentiment toward the gang's crimes, there is no evidence that the James gang ever shared any of the robbery money outside their personal circle.
Jesse and his cousin Zee married on April 24, 1874. They had two children who survived to adulthood: Jesse Edward James (b. 1875) and Mary Susan James (later Barr, b. 1879). Twins Gould and Montgomery James (b. 1878) died in infancy. Jesse Jr. became a lawyer who practiced in Kansas City, Missouri, and Los Angeles, California.
Pinkertons
In 1874, the Adams Express Company turned to the Pinkerton National Detective Agency to stop the James–Younger Gang. The Chicago-based agency worked primarily against urban professional criminals, as well as providing industrial security, such as strike breaking. Because the gang received support by many former Confederate soldiers in Missouri, they eluded the Pinkertons. Joseph Whicher, an agent dispatched to infiltrate Zerelda Samuel's farm, was soon found killed. Two other agents, Captain Louis J. Lull and John Boyle, were sent after the Youngers; Lull was killed by two of the Youngers in a roadside gunfight on March 17, 1874. Before he died, Lull fatally shot John Younger. A deputy sheriff named Edwin Daniels also died in the skirmish.
Allan Pinkerton, the agency's founder and leader, took on the case as a personal vendetta. He began to work with former Unionists who lived near the James family farm. On the night of January 25, 1875, he staged a raid on the homestead. Detectives threw an incendiary device into the house; it exploded, killing James's young half-brother Archie (named for Archie Clement) and blowing off one of Zerelda Samuel's arms. Afterward, Pinkerton denied that the raid's intent was arson. But biographer Ted Yeatman found a letter by Pinkerton in the Library of Congress in which Pinkerton declared his intention to "burn the house down."
Many residents were outraged by the raid on the family home. The Missouri state legislature narrowly defeated a bill that praised the James and Younger brothers and offered them amnesty. Allowed to vote and hold office again, former Confederates in the legislature voted to limit the size of rewards the governor could offer for fugitives. This extended a measure of protection over the James–Younger gang by minimizing the incentive for attempting to capture them. The governor had offered rewards higher than the new limit only on Frank and Jesse James.
Across a creek and up a hill from the James house was the home of Daniel Askew, who is thought to have been killed by James or his gang on April 12, 1875. They may have suspected Askew of cooperating with the Pinkertons in the January 1875 arson of the James house.
Downfall of the gang
On September 7, 1876, the opening day of hunting season in Minnesota, the James–Younger gang attempted a raid on the First National Bank of Northfield, Minnesota. The robbery quickly went wrong, however, and after the robbery only Frank and Jesse James remained alive and free.
Cole and Bob Younger later said they selected the bank because they believed it was associated with the Republican politician Adelbert Ames, the governor of Mississippi during Reconstruction, and Union general Benjamin Butler, Ames's father-in-law and the Union commander of occupied New Orleans. Ames was a stockholder in the bank, but Butler had no direct connection to it.
The gang attempted to rob the bank in Northfield at about 2 pm. To carry out the robbery, the gang divided into two groups. Three men entered the bank, two guarded the door outside, and three remained near a bridge across an adjacent square. The robbers inside the bank were thwarted when acting cashier Joseph Lee Heywood refused to open the safe, falsely claiming that it was secured by a time lock even as they held a Bowie knife to his throat and cracked his skull with a pistol butt. Assistant cashier Alonzo Enos Bunker was wounded in the shoulder as he fled through the back door of the bank. Meanwhile, the citizens of Northfield grew suspicious of the men guarding the door and raised the alarm. The five bandits outside fired into the air to clear the streets, driving the townspeople to take cover and fire back from protected positions. They shot two bandits dead and wounded the rest in the barrage. Inside, the outlaws turned to flee. As they left, one shot the unarmed cashier Heywood in the head. Historians have speculated about the identity of the shooter but have not reached consensus.
The gang barely escaped Northfield, leaving two dead companions behind. They killed Heywood and Nicholas Gustafson, a Swedish immigrant from the Millersburg community west of Northfield. A substantial manhunt ensued. It is believed that the gang burned 14 Rice County mills shortly after the robbery. The James brothers eventually split from the others and escaped to Missouri. The militia soon discovered the Youngers and one other bandit, Charlie Pitts. Pitts died in a gunfight and the Youngers were taken prisoner. Except for Frank and Jesse James, the James–Younger Gang was destroyed.
Later in 1876, Jesse and Frank James surfaced in the Nashville, Tennessee, area, where they went by the names of Thomas Howard and B. J. Woodson, respectively. Frank seemed to settle down, but Jesse remained restless. He recruited a new gang in 1879 and returned to crime, holding up a train at Glendale, Missouri (now part of Independence), on October 8, 1879. The robbery was the first in a spree of crimes, including the holdup of the federal paymaster of a canal project in Killen, Alabama, and two more train robberies. But the new gang was not made up of battle-hardened guerrillas; they soon turned against each other or were captured. James grew suspicious of other members; he scared away one man and some believe that he killed another gang member.
In 1879, the James gang robbed two stores in far western Mississippi, at Washington in Adams County and Fayette in Jefferson County. The gang left with $2,000 cash from the second robbery and took shelter in abandoned cabins on the Kemp Plantation south of St. Joseph, Louisiana. A law enforcement posse attacked and killed two of the outlaws but failed to capture the entire gang. Among the deputies was Jefferson B. Snyder, later a long-serving district attorney in northeastern Louisiana.
By 1881, with local Tennessee authorities growing suspicious, the brothers returned to Missouri, where they felt safer. James moved his family to St. Joseph, Missouri, in November 1881, not far from where he had been born and reared. Frank, however, decided to move to safer territory and headed east to settle in Virginia. They intended to give up crime. The James gang had been reduced to the two of them.
Death
With his gang nearly annihilated, James trusted only the Ford brothers, Charley and Robert. Although Charley had been out on raids with James, Bob Ford was an eager new recruit. For protection, James asked the Ford brothers to move in with him and his family. James had often stayed with their sister Martha Bolton and, according to rumor, he was "smitten" with her. By that time, Bob Ford had conducted secret negotiations with Missouri Governor Thomas T. Crittenden, planning to bring in the famous outlaw. Crittenden had made capture of the James brothers his top priority; in his inaugural address he declared that no political motives could be allowed to keep them from justice. Barred by law from offering a large reward, he had turned to the railroad and express corporations to put up a $5,000 bounty for the delivery of each of them and an additional $5,000 for the conviction of either of them.
On April 3, 1882, after eating breakfast, the Fords and Jameses went into the living room before traveling to Platte City for a robbery. From the newspaper, James had just learned that gang member Dick Liddil had confessed to participating in Wood Hite's murder. He was suspicious that the Fords had not told him about it. Robert Ford later said he believed that James had realized they were there to betray him. Instead of confronting them, James walked across the living room and laid his revolvers on a sofa. He turned around and noticed a dusty picture above the mantle, and stood on a chair to clean it. Robert Ford drew his weapon and shot the unarmed Jesse James in the back of the head.
James's two previous bullet wounds and partially missing middle finger served to positively identify the body.
The death of Jesse James became a national sensation. The Fords made no attempt to hide their role. Robert Ford wired the governor to claim his reward. Crowds pressed into the little house in St. Joseph to see the dead bandit. The Ford brothers surrendered to the authorities and were dismayed to be charged with first-degree murder. In the course of a single day, the Ford brothers were indicted, pleaded guilty, were sentenced to death by hanging, and were granted a full pardon by Governor Crittenden. The governor's quick pardon suggested he knew the brothers intended to kill James rather than capture him. The implication that the chief executive of Missouri conspired to kill a private citizen startled the public and added to James's notoriety.
After receiving a small portion of the reward, the Fords fled Missouri. Sheriff James Timberlake and Marshal Henry H. Craig, who were law enforcement officials active in the plan, were awarded the majority of the bounty. Later, the Ford brothers starred in a touring stage show in which they reenacted the shooting. Public opinion was divided between those against the Fords for murdering Jesse and those of the opinion that it had been time for the outlaw to be stopped. Suffering from tuberculosis (then incurable) and a morphine addiction, Charley Ford committed suicide on May 6, 1884, in Richmond, Missouri. Bob Ford operated a tent saloon in Creede, Colorado. On June 8, 1892, Edward O'Kelley went to Creede, loaded a double-barrel shotgun, entered Ford's saloon and said "Hello, Bob" before shooting Ford in the throat, killing him instantly. O'Kelley was sentenced to life in prison, but his sentence was subsequently commuted because of a 7,000-signature petition in favor of his release, as well as a medical condition. The Governor of Colorado pardoned him on October 3, 1902.
James's original grave was on his family property, but he was later moved to a cemetery in Kearney. The original footstone is still there, although the family has replaced the headstone. James's mother Zerelda Samuel wrote the following epitaph for him: "In Loving Memory of my Beloved Son, Murdered by a Traitor and Coward Whose Name is not Worthy to Appear Here." James's widow Zerelda Mimms James died alone and in poverty.
Rumors of survival
Rumors of Jesse James's survival proliferated almost as soon as the newspapers announced his death. Some said that Robert Ford killed someone other than James in an elaborate plot to allow him to escape justice. These tales have received little credence, then or since. None of James's biographers accepted them as plausible. The body buried in Kearney, Missouri, marked "Jesse James" was exhumed in 1995 and subjected to mitochondrial DNA typing. The report, prepared by Anne C. Stone, Ph.D., James E. Starrs, L.L.M., and Mark Stoneking, Ph.D., confirmed that the mtDNA recovered from the remains was consistent with the mtDNA of one of James's relatives in the female line.
The theme of survival was featured in a 2009 documentary, Jesse James' Hidden Treasure, which aired on the History Channel. The documentary was dismissed as pseudo history and pseudoscience by historian Nancy Samuelson in a review she wrote for the Winter 2009–2010 edition of The James-Younger Gang Journal.
J. Frank Dalton claimed to be Jesse James. Dalton was allegedly 101 years old at the time of his first public appearance, in May 1948. Dalton died August 15, 1951, in Granbury, Texas. Oran Baker, Hood County sheriff, conducted a visual postmortem exam and found he had thirty-two bullet wounds and a rope burn around his neck. He was buried in Granbury Cemetery, where the headstone bears the name of "Jesse Woodson James". His story did not hold up to questioning from James's surviving relatives.
Legacy
James's turn to crime after the end of the Reconstruction era helped cement his place in American life and memory as a simple but remarkably effective bandit. After 1873, he was covered by the national media as part of social banditry. During his lifetime, James was celebrated chiefly by former Confederates, to whom he appealed directly in his letters to the press. Displaced by Reconstruction, the antebellum political leadership mythologized the James Gang's exploits. Frank Triplett wrote about James as a "progressive neo-aristocrat" with "purity of race". Some historians credit James's myth as contributing to the rise of former Confederates to dominance in Missouri politics. In the 1880s, both U.S. Senators from the state, former Confederate military commander Francis Cockrell, and former Confederate Congressman George Graham Vest, were identified with the Confederate cause.
In the 1880s, after James's death, the James Gang became the subject of dime novels that represented the bandits as pre-industrial models of resistance. During the Populist and Progressive eras, James became an icon as America's Robin Hood, standing up against corporations in defense of the small farmer, robbing from the rich and giving to the poor. There is no evidence that he shared the loot of his robberies with anyone other than his gang members; they alone enjoyed the riches with him.
In the 1950s, James was pictured as a psychologically troubled man rather than a social rebel. Some filmmakers portrayed the former outlaw as a revenger, replacing "social with exclusively personal motives." While his "heroic outlaw" image is commonly portrayed in films, as well as in songs and folklore, since the late 20th century, historians such as Stiles have classified him as a self-aware vigilante and terrorist who used local tensions to create his own myth among the widespread insurgent guerrillas and vigilantes following the American Civil War.
Jesse James remains a controversial symbol, one who can always be reinterpreted in various ways according to cultural tensions and needs. Some of the neo-Confederate movement regard him as a hero. But renewed cultural battles over the place of the Civil War in American history have replaced the long-standing interpretation of James as a Western frontier hero.
Museums
Museums and sites devoted to Jesse James:
James Farm in Kearney, Missouri: In 1974, Clay County, Missouri, bought the property. The county operates the site as a house museum and historic site. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972, with a boundary increase in 1978.
Jesse James Home Museum: The house where Jesse James was killed in south St. Joseph was moved in 1939 to the Belt Highway on St. Joseph's east side to attract tourists. In 1977, it was moved to its current location, near Patee House, which was the headquarters of the Pony Express. The house is owned and operated by the Pony Express Historical Association.
The Jesse James Bank Museum, on the square in Liberty, Missouri, is the site of the first daylight bank robbery in the United States in peacetime. The museum is managed by Clay County along with the James Farm Home and Museum outside of Kearney.
First National Bank of Northfield: The Northfield Historical Society in Northfield, Minnesota, has restored the building that housed the First National Bank, the scene of the 1876 raid.
Heaton Bowman Funeral Home, 36th Street and Frederick Avenue, St. Joseph, Missouri: The funeral home's predecessor conducted the original autopsy and funeral for Jesse James. A room in the back holds the log book and other documentation.
The Jesse James Tavern is located in Asdee, County Kerry, Ireland. It has been claimed that James's ancestors were from that area of Ireland. But documented evidence suggests that on his father's side, Jesse was a third-generation American of English descent.
According to the National Park Service, Jesse James has a historical connection to Mammoth Cave National Park, having reportedly occupied some of the cave's inner areas during his escapes from the law, and having committed a stage coach robbery between Cave City and Mammoth Cave. These claims are disputed, as, according to Katie Cielinski, a local cave expert, "If every cave that claims Jesse James had been there (was valid), Jesse James would never have been on the surface." It is likely these legends are based on the ample evidence that the Kentucky cave system played host to outlaw camps in general.
Festivals
The Defeat of Jesse James Days in Northfield, Minnesota, is among the largest outdoor celebrations in the state. It is held annually in September during the weekend after Labor Day. Thousands of visitors watch reenactments of the robbery, a championship rodeo, a carnival, performances of a 19th-century style melodrama musical, and a parade during the five-day event.
Jesse James's boyhood home in Kearney, Missouri, is operated as a museum dedicated to the town's most famous resident. Each year a recreational fair, the Jesse James Festival, is held during the third weekend in September.
The annual Victorian Festival in Jersey County, Illinois, is held on Labor Day weekend at the 1866 Col. William H. Fulkerson estate Hazel Dell. Festivities include telling Jesse James's history in stories and by reenactments of stagecoach holdups. Over the three-day event, thousands of spectators learn of the documented James Gang's stopover at Hazel Dell and of their connection with ex-Confederate Fulkerson.
Russellville, Kentucky, the site of the robbery of the Southern Bank in 1868, holds a reenactment of the robbery every year as of the Logan County Tobacco and Heritage Festival.
The small town of Oak Grove, Louisiana, also hosts a town-wide annual Jesse James Outlaw Roundup Festival, usually in the early to mid autumn. This is a reference to a short time James supposedly spent near this area.
Cultural depictions
References
Bibliography
Fellman, Michael. Inside War: The Guerrilla Conflict in Missouri onto the American Civil War. Oxford University Press, 1990. .
Settle, William A. Jesse James Was His Name, or, Fact and Fiction Concerning the Careers of the Notorious James Brothers of Missouri'. University of Nebraska Press, 1977. .
Stiles, T. J. Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War. Knopf Publishing, 2002. .
Yeatman, Ted P. Frank and Jesse James: The Story Behind the Legend. Cumberland House Publishing, 2000. .
Quist, B. Wayne, The History of the Christdala Evangelical Swedish Lutheran Church of Millersburg, Minnesota, Dundas, Minnesota, Third Edition, July 2009, page 19–23, The Murder of Nicholaus Gustafson.
Further reading
Dyer, Robert. "Jesse James and the Civil War in Missouri,"University of Missouri Press, 1994
Hobsbawm, Eric J. Bandits, Pantheon, 1981
Koblas, John J. Faithful Unto Death, Northfield Historical Society Press, 2001
Smith, Carter F. Gangs and the Military: Gangsters, Bikers, and Terrorists with Military Training. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017.
Thelen, David. Paths of Resistance: Tradition and Dignity in Industrializing Missouri, Oxford University Press, 1986
Wellman, Paul I. A Dynasty of Western Outlaws. Doubleday, 1961; 1986.
White, Richard. "Outlaw Gangs of the Middle Border: American Social Bandits," Western Historical Quarterly'' 12, no. 4 (October 1981)
External links
Primary sources and essays by Jesse James biographer T. J. Stiles
Official website for the Family of Jesse James
Death pics Jesse James
FBI Records: The Vault - Jesse James at fbi.gov
A 1901 newspaper interview with the Younger brothers
Death of Jesse James with pictures from the National Archives and Library of Congress
Jesse James on IMDb
1847 births
1882 deaths
1869 crimes in the United States
1882 murders in the United States
19th-century American criminals
American people of English descent
American people of Scottish descent
American bank robbers
American folklore
American murder victims
American people of Welsh descent
Bushwhackers
Deaths by firearm in Missouri
Gunslingers of the American Old West
James–Younger Gang
Male murder victims
Missouri State Guard
Murdered criminals
Outlaws of the American Old West
People from Kearney, Missouri
People murdered in Missouri
People of the California Gold Rush
People of Missouri in the American Civil War
Train robbers |
1446484 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network%20emulation | Network emulation | Network emulation is a technique for testing the performance of real applications over a virtual network. This is different from network simulation where virtual models of traffic, network models, channels, and protocols are applied. The aim is to assess performance, predict the impact of change, or otherwise optimize technology decision-making.
Methods of emulation
Network emulation is the act of testing the behavior of a network (5G, wireless, MANETs, etc) in a lab. A personal computer or virtual machine runs a software to perform the network emulation; a dedicated emulation device is sometimes used for link emulation.
Networks introduce delay, errors, and drop packets. The primary goal of network emulation is to create an environment whereby users can connect the devices, applications, products, and/or services being tested in order to validate their performance, stability, or functionality against real-world network scenarios. Once tested in a controlled environment against actual network conditions, users can have confidence that the item being tested will perform as expected.
Emulation, simulation, and traffic generation
Emulation differs from simulation in that a network emulator appears to be a network; end-systems such as computers can be attached to the emulator and will behave as if they are attached to a network. A network emulator mirrors the network which connects end-systems, not the end-systems themselves.
Network simulators are typically programs that run on a single computer, take an abstract description of the network traffic such as a flow arrival process, and yield performance statistics such as throughput, delay, loss etc.
These products are typically found in the Development and QA environments of Service Providers, Network Equipment Manufacturers, and Enterprises.
Network emulation software
Software developers typically want to analyze the response time and sensitivity to packet loss of client-server applications and emulate specific network access (5G, Tactical data links, MANET Waveforms etc.) with different round-trip-time, throughput, bit error rate, network dropouts, and application dropouts. Emulators for this purpose come in many different forms including browser-based or integrated development environment appliances.
Two open-source network emulators are Common Open Research Emulator (CORE) and Extendable Mobile Ad hoc Network Emulator (EMANE). They both support operation as network black boxes, i.e. external machines/devices can be hooked up to the emulated network with no knowledge of emulation. They also support both wired and wireless network emulation with various degrees of fidelity. CORE is more useful for quick network layouts (layer 3 and above) and single machine emulation. EMANE is better suited for distributed high fidelity large-scale network emulation (layers 1/2).
The most popular network simulation software packages, OPNET and Tetcos NetSim, also have emulation modules for real-time interconnects. In general simulation tools with emulation capabilities provide more sophistication than emulation devices. Emulation devices only provide for emulation of the physical link and do not factor in the effects of the higher layers (MAC, network, transport, etc.). Simulation tools however factor in effects from the entire network stack when running in emulation mode. They would allow for connecting multiple sources/destinations, routers, base stations, MANET protocols, etc.
Traffic generation software
The network performance under maximum throughput conditions can be analyzed by network traffic measurement in a testbed network, using a network traffic generator such as iperf. The traffic generator sends dummy packets, often with a unique packet identifier, making it possible to keep track of the packet delivery in the network using a network analyzer.
See also
Network simulator
Network traffic simulation
Traffic generation model
Further reading
External links
EMANE
NETSIM
Network architecture |
8694644 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministry%20of%20Communications%20and%20Information%20Technology%20%28Afghanistan%29 | Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (Afghanistan) | The Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (, ) (MCIT) is an organ of the government of Afghanistan. Current communications minister is Najibullah Haqqani. The Ministry was subjected to a suicide attack in 2019.
The Ministry of Communications and Information Technology provides an annual report to inform the public of advancements in Afghanistan's technological sector. At the end of 2001, there were an estimated 35,000 phones working in all of Afghanistan serving a population of 27 million, one of the lowest teledensities in the world. Calls could only be completed over satellite facilities and only among Afghanistan's six major urban areas. The Ministry of Communications with international consulting aid developed a modern telecommunications and Internet sector policy published in October 2002. That policy framework is credited with laying the foundation for transparent, private sector-led competition. As of November 2009, there are more than 10.4 million mobile subscribers, a 300-fold increase in seven years. More than $1.2 billion has been invested in the sector.
In 2003 internationally funded advisers assisted with the drafting of a new Telecom Law which was adopted by Presidential Decree in December 2005. An independent regulator was appointed June 2006 and launched competitive tenders to license new telecom services.
The telecom sector leads economic reconstruction with four mobile service providers which cover 75% of the country with over 2,400 towers in more than 250 of the largest urban areas. 50,000 direct and indirect jobs were created by the sector.
There are 15 Internet Service Providers (ISP) licensed and operating in 20 major urban areas.
Afghan Telecom, an Afghan government telecom company, was incorporated in September 2006; an 80% stake of the company is being privatize from 2008.
Currently, there are an estimated 45,000 landlines and about 10,400,000 cellphone subscribers. While a number of ISPs offer services, the number of users has not been precisely researched yet.
April 2019 attack
On April 20, 2019, a suicide attack on the Ministry ended with all five attackers dead, while four civilians and three police officers were killed. ISIS-K later claimed responsibility, which caused the evacuation of two government ministries.
See also
Communications in Afghanistan
Afghan Post
Afghan Telecom
Sayed Sadaat, a communications minister in Afghanistan up to 2018, but a bicycle-riding food delivery man in Germany by August 2021
References
External links
Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) of Afghanistan – Official website
Communications and Information Technology
Communications in Afghanistan
Afghanistan |
3784100 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zmist | Zmist | Zmist (also known as Z0mbie.Mistfall) is a metamorphic computer virus created by the Russian virus writer known as Z0mbie. It was the first virus to use a technique known as "code integration". In the words of Ferrie and Ször:
This virus supports a unique new technique: code integration.
The Mistfall engine contained in it is capable of
decompiling Portable Executable files to [their] smallest
elements, requiring 32 MB of memory. Zmist will insert
itself into the code: it moves code blocks out of the way,
inserts itself, regenerates code and data references, including
relocation information, and rebuilds the executable.
Variants
Zmist.gen!674CD7362358 - discovered in 2012.
ZMist!IK - discovered 2011 - 2012.
Zmist.A - discovered in 2006 - 2007.
See also
Simile, a well-known metamorphic virus
Computer virus
Comparison of computer viruses
References
External links
"Hunting for metamorphic", Metamorphic viruses description by Ször and Ferrie
"Virus.Win32.ZMist.Predetect" by Secure List.
Windows file viruses |
63444 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen%20of%20Troy | Helen of Troy | In Greek mythology, Helen of Troy, Helen, Helena, (Ancient Greek: Ἑλένη Helénē, ) also known as beautiful Helen, Helen of Argos, or Helen of Sparta, was said to have been the most beautiful woman in the world. She was believed to have been the daughter of Zeus and Leda, and was the sister of Clytemnestra, Castor and Pollux, Philonoe, Phoebe and Timandra. She was married to King Menelaus of Sparta "who became by her the father of Hermione, and, according to others, of Nicostratus also."
The usual tradition is that after the goddess Aphrodite promised her to Paris in the Judgement of Paris, she was seduced by him and carried off to Troy. This resulted in the Trojan War when the Achaeans set out to reclaim her. Another ancient tradition, told by Stesichorus, tells of how "not she, but her wraith only, had passed to Troy, while she was borne by the Gods to the land of Egypt, and there remained until the day when her lord [Menelaus], turning aside on the homeward voyage, should find her there."
Elements of her putative biography come from classical authors such as Aristophanes, Cicero, Euripides, and Homer (in both the Iliad and the Odyssey). Her story reappears in Book II of Virgil's Aeneid. In her youth, she was abducted by Theseus. A competition between her suitors for her hand in marriage saw Menelaus emerge victorious. All of her suitors were required to swear an oath (known as the Oath of Tyndareus) promising to provide military assistance to the winning suitor, if Helen were ever stolen from him. The obligations of the oath precipitated the Trojan War. When she married Menelaus she was still very young; whether her subsequent departure with Paris was an abduction or an elopement is ambiguous (probably deliberately so).
The legends of Helen during her time in Troy are contradictory: Homer depicts her ambivalently, both regretful of her choice and sly in her attempts to redeem her public image. Other accounts have a treacherous Helen who simulated Bacchic rites and rejoiced in the carnage she caused. Ultimately, Paris was killed in action, and in Homer's account Helen was reunited with Menelaus, though other versions of the legend recount her ascending to Olympus instead. A cult associated with her developed in Hellenistic Laconia, both at Sparta and elsewhere; at Therapne she shared a shrine with Menelaus. She was also worshiped in Attica and on Rhodes.
Her beauty inspired artists of all times to represent her, frequently as the personification of ideal human beauty. Images of Helen start appearing in the 7th century BC. In classical Greece, her abduction by Paris—or escape with him—was a popular motif. In medieval illustrations, this event was frequently portrayed as a seduction, whereas in Renaissance paintings it was usually depicted as a "rape" (i. e. abduction) by Paris. Christopher Marlowe's lines from his tragedy Doctor Faustus (1604) are frequently cited: "Was this the face that launched a thousand ships / And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?"
Etymology
The etymology of Helen's name continues to be a problem for scholars. Georg Curtius related Helen () to the moon (Selene; ). Émile Boisacq considered Ἑλένη to derive from the well-known noun meaning "torch". It has also been suggested that the λ of arose from an original ν, and thus the etymology of the name would be connected with the root of Venus. Linda Lee Clader, however, says that none of the above suggestions offers much satisfaction.
More recently, Otto Skutsch has advanced the theory that the name Helen might have two separate etymologies, which belong to different mythological figures respectively, namely *Sṷelenā (related to Sanskrit svaraṇā "the shining one") and *Selenā, the first a Spartan goddess, connected to one or the other natural light phenomenon (especially St. Elmo's fire) and sister of the Dioscuri, the other a vegetation goddess worshiped in Therapne as Ἑλένα Δενδρῖτις ("Helena of the Trees").
Others have connected the name's etymology to a hypothetical Proto-Indo-European sun goddess, noting the name's connection to the word for "sun" in various Indo-European cultures. In particular, her marriage myth may be connected to a broader Indo-European "marriage drama" of the sun goddess, and she is related to the divine twins, just as many of these goddesses are. Martin L. West has thus proposed that Helena ("mistress of sunlight") may be constructed on the PIE suffix -nā ("mistress of"), connoting a deity controlling a natural element.
None of the etymological sources appear to support the existence, save as a coincidence only, of a connection between the name of Helen and the name by which the classical Greeks commonly described themselves, namely Hellenes, after Hellen (; ) the mythological progenitor of the Greeks.
Prehistoric and mythological context
The origins of Helen's myth date back to the Mycenaean age. Her name first appears in the poems of Homer but scholars assume that such myths derive from earlier Mycenaean Greek sources. Her mythological birthplace was Sparta of the Age of Heroes, which features prominently in the canon of Greek myth: in later ancient Greek memory, the Mycenaean Bronze Age became the age of the Greek heroes. The kings, queens, and heroes of the Trojan Cycle are often related to the gods, since divine origins gave stature to the Greeks' heroic ancestors. The fall of Troy came to represent a fall from an illustrious heroic age, remembered for centuries in oral tradition before being written down. Recent archaeological excavations in Greece suggest that modern-day Laconia was a distinct territory in the Late Bronze Age, while the poets narrate that it was a rich kingdom. Archaeologists have unsuccessfully looked for a Mycenaean palatial complex buried beneath present-day Sparta. Modern findings suggest the area around Menelaion in the southern part of the Eurotas valley seems to have been the center of Mycenaean Laconia.
Family
Helen and Paris had three sons, Bunomus, Aganus ("gentle"), Idaeus and a daughter also called Helen.
Mythology
Birth
In most sources, including the Iliad and the Odyssey, Helen is the daughter of Zeus and of Leda, the wife of the Spartan king Tyndareus. Euripides' play Helen, written in the late 5th century BC, is the earliest source to report the most familiar account of Helen's birth: that, although her putative father was Tyndareus, she was actually Zeus' daughter. In the form of a swan, the king of gods was chased by an eagle, and sought refuge with Leda. The swan gained her affection, and the two mated. Leda then produced an egg, from which Helen emerged. The First Vatican Mythographer introduces the notion that two eggs came from the union: one containing Castor and Pollux; one with Helen and Clytemnestra. Nevertheless, the same author earlier states that Helen, Castor and Pollux were produced from a single egg. Fabius Planciades Fulgentius also states that Helen, Castor and Pollux are born from the same egg. Pseudo-Apollodorus states that Leda had intercourse with both Zeus and Tyndareus the night she conceived Helen.
On the other hand, in the Cypria, part of the Epic Cycle, Helen was the daughter of Zeus and the goddess Nemesis. The date of the Cypria is uncertain, but it is generally thought to preserve traditions that date back to at least the 7th century BC. In the Cypria, Nemesis did not wish to mate with Zeus. She therefore changed shape into various animals as she attempted to flee Zeus, finally becoming a goose. Zeus also transformed himself into a goose and raped Nemesis, who produced an egg from which Helen was born. Presumably, in the Cypria, this egg was somehow transferred to Leda. Later sources state either that it was brought to Leda by a shepherd who discovered it in a grove in Attica, or that it was dropped into her lap by Hermes.
Asclepiades of Tragilos and Pseudo-Eratosthenes related a similar story, except that Zeus and Nemesis became swans instead of geese. Timothy Gantz has suggested that the tradition that Zeus came to Leda in the form of a swan derives from the version in which Zeus and Nemesis transformed into birds.
Pausanias states that in the middle of the 2nd century AD, the remains of an egg-shell, tied up in ribbons, were still suspended from the roof of a temple on the Spartan acropolis. People believed that this was "the famous egg that legend says Leda brought forth". Pausanias traveled to Sparta to visit the sanctuary, dedicated to Hilaeira and Phoebe, in order to see the relic for himself.
Pausanias also says that there was a local tradition that Helen's brothers, "the Dioscuri" (i.e. Castor and Pollux), were born on the island of Pefnos, adding that the Spartan poet Alcman also said this, while the poet Lycophron's use of the adjective "Pephnaian" (Πεφναίας) in association with Helen, suggests that Lycophron may have known a tradition which held that Helen was also born on the island.
Youthful abduction by Theseus
Two Athenians, Theseus and Pirithous, thought that since they were sons of gods, they should have divine wives; they thus pledged to help each other abduct two daughters of Zeus. Theseus chose Helen, and Pirithous vowed to marry Persephone, the wife of Hades. Theseus took Helen and left her with his mother Aethra or his associate Aphidnus at Aphidnae or Athens. Theseus and Pirithous then traveled to the underworld, the domain of Hades, to kidnap Persephone. Hades pretended to offer them hospitality and set a feast, but, as soon as the pair sat down, snakes coiled around their feet and held them there. Helen's abduction caused an invasion of Athens by Castor and Pollux, who captured Aethra in revenge, and returned their sister to Sparta. In Goethe's Faust, Centaur Chiron is said to have aided the Dioscuri brothers in returning Helen home.
In most accounts of this event, Helen was quite young; Hellanicus of Lesbos said she was seven years old and Diodorus makes her ten years old. On the other hand, Stesichorus said that Iphigenia was the daughter of Theseus and Helen, which obviously implies that Helen was of childbearing age. In most sources, Iphigenia is the daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, but Duris of Samos and other writers followed Stesichorus' account.
Ovid's Heroides give us an idea of how ancient and, in particular, Roman authors imagined Helen in her youth: she is presented as a young princess wrestling naked in the palaestra, alluding to a part of girls' physical education in classical (not Mycenaean) Sparta. Sextus Propertius imagines Helen as a girl who practices arms and hunts with her brothers:
Suitors
When it was time for Helen to marry, many kings and princes from around the world came to seek her hand, bringing rich gifts with them or sent emissaries to do so on their behalf. During the contest, Castor and Pollux had a prominent role in dealing with the suitors, although the final decision was in the hands of Tyndareus. Menelaus, her future husband, did not attend but sent his brother, Agamemnon, to represent him.
Oath of Tyndareus
Tyndareus was afraid to select a husband for his daughter, or send any of the suitors away, for fear of offending them and giving grounds for a quarrel. Odysseus was one of the suitors, but had brought no gifts because he believed he had little chance to win the contest. He thus promised to solve the problem, if Tyndareus in turn would support him in his courting of Penelope, the daughter of Icarius. Tyndareus readily agreed, and Odysseus proposed that, before the decision was made, all the suitors should swear a most solemn oath to defend the chosen husband against whoever should quarrel with him. After the suitors had sworn not to retaliate, Menelaus was chosen to be Helen's husband. As a sign of the importance of the pact, Tyndareus sacrificed a horse. Helen and Menelaus became rulers of Sparta, after Tyndareus and Leda abdicated. Menelaus and Helen rule in Sparta for at least ten years; they have a daughter, Hermione, and (according to some myths) three sons: Aethiolas, Maraphius, and Pleisthenes.
The marriage of Helen and Menelaus marks the beginning of the end of the age of heroes. Concluding the catalog of Helen's suitors, Hesiod reports Zeus' plan to obliterate the race of men and the heroes in particular. The Trojan War, caused by Helen's elopement with Paris, is going to be his means to this end.
Seduction or kidnapping by Paris
Paris, a Trojan prince, came to Sparta to claim Helen, in the guise of a supposed diplomatic mission. Before this journey, Paris had been appointed by Zeus to judge the most beautiful goddess; Hera, Athena, or Aphrodite. In order to earn his favour, Aphrodite promised Paris the most beautiful woman in the world. Swayed by Aphrodite's offer, Paris chose her as the most beautiful of the goddesses, earning the wrath of Athena and Hera.
Although Helen is sometimes depicted as being raped by Paris, Ancient Greek sources are often elliptical and contradictory. Herodotus states that Helen was abducted, but the Cypria simply mentions that after giving Helen gifts, "Aphrodite brings the Spartan queen together with the Prince of Troy." Sappho argues that Helen willingly left behind Menelaus and their nine-year-old daughter, Hermione, to be with Paris:
Dio Chrysostom gives a completely different account of the story, questioning Homer's credibility: after Agamemnon had married Helen's sister, Clytemnestra, Tyndareus sought Helen's hand for Menelaus for political reasons. However, Helen was sought by many suitors, who came from far and near, among them Paris who surpassed all the others and won the favor of Tyndareus and his sons. Thus he won her fairly and took her away to Troia, with the full consent of her natural protectors. Cypria narrate that in just three days Paris and Helen reached Troy. Homer narrates that during a brief stop-over in the small island of Kranai, according to Iliad, the two lovers consummated their passion. On the other hand, Cypria note that this happened the night before they left Sparta.
In Egypt
At least three Ancient Greek authors denied that Helen ever went to Troy; instead, they suggested, Helen stayed in Egypt during the duration of the Trojan War. Those three authors are Euripides, Stesichorus, and Herodotus. In the version put forth by Euripides in his play Helen, Hera fashioned a likeness of Helen (eidolon, εἴδωλον) out of clouds at Zeus' request, Hermes took her to Egypt, and Helen never went to Troy instead spending the entire war in Egypt. Eidolon is also present in Stesichorus' account, but not in Herodotus' rationalizing version of the myth. In addition to these accounts, Lycophron 822 states that Hesiod was the first to mention Helen's eidolon. This statement may mean Hesiod stated this in a literary work or that the idea was widely known/circulated in early archaic Greece during the time of Hesiod and was consequently attributed to him.
Herodotus adds weight to the "Egyptian" version of events by putting forward his own evidence—he traveled to Egypt and interviewed the priests of the temple (Foreign Aphrodite, ξείνη Ἀφροδίτη) at Memphis. According to these priests, Helen had arrived in Egypt shortly after leaving Sparta, because strong winds had blown Paris's ship off course. King Proteus of Egypt, appalled that Paris had seduced his host's wife and plundered his host's home in Sparta, disallowed Paris from taking Helen to Troy. Paris returned to Troy without a new bride, but the Greeks refused to believe that Helen was in Egypt and not within Troy's walls. Thus, Helen waited in Memphis for ten years, while the Greeks and the Trojans fought. Following the conclusion of the Trojan War, Menelaus sailed to Memphis, where Proteus reunited him with Helen.
In Troy
When he discovered that his wife was missing, Menelaus called upon all the other suitors to fulfill their oaths, thus beginning the Trojan War.
The Greek fleet gathered in Aulis, but the ships could not sail for lack of wind. Artemis was enraged by a sacrilege, and only the sacrifice of Agamemnon's daughter, Iphigenia, could appease her. In Euripides Iphigenia in Aulis, Clytemnestra, Iphigenia's mother and Helen's sister, begs her husband to reconsider his decision, calling Helen a "wicked woman". Clytemnestra tries to warn Agamemnon that sacrificing Iphigenia for Helen's sake is, "buying what we most detest with what we hold most dear".
Before the opening of hostilities, the Greeks dispatched a delegation to the Trojans under Odysseus and Menelaus; they endeavored without success to persuade Priam to hand Helen back. A popular theme, The Request of Helen (Helenes Apaitesis, Ἑλένης Ἀπαίτησις), was the subject of a drama by Sophocles, now lost.
Homer paints a poignant, lonely picture of Helen in Troy. She is filled with self-loathing and regret for what she has caused; by the end of the war, the Trojans have come to hate her. When Hector dies, she is the third mourner at his funeral, and she says that, of all the Trojans, Hector and Priam alone were always kind to her:
These bitter words reveal that Helen gradually realized Paris' weaknesses, and decided to ally herself with Hector. There is an affectionate relationship between the two, and Helen has harsh words for Paris when she compares the two brothers:
After Paris was killed in combat, there was some dispute among the Trojans about which of Priam's surviving sons she should remarry: Helenus or Deiphobus, but she was given to the latter.
During the Fall of Troy
During the fall of Troy, Helen's role is ambiguous. In Virgil's Aeneid, Deiphobus gives an account of Helen's treacherous stance: when the Trojan Horse was admitted into the city, she feigned Bacchic rites, leading a chorus of Trojan women, and, holding a torch among them, she signaled to the Greeks from the city's central tower. In Odyssey, however, Homer narrates a different story: Helen circled the Horse three times, and she imitated the voices of the Greek women left behind at home—she thus tortured the men inside (including Odysseus and Menelaus) with the memory of their loved ones, and brought them to the brink of destruction.
After the deaths of Hector and Paris, Helen became the paramour of their younger brother, Deiphobus; but when the sack of Troy began, she hid her new husband's sword, and left him to the mercy of Menelaus and Odysseus. In Aeneid, Aeneas meets the mutilated Deiphobus in Hades; his wounds serve as a testimony to his ignominious end, abetted by Helen's final act of treachery.
However, Helen's portraits in Troy seem to contradict each other. From one side, we read about the treacherous Helen who simulated Bacchic rites and rejoiced over the carnage of Trojans. On the other hand, there is another Helen, lonely and helpless; desperate to find sanctuary, while Troy is on fire. Stesichorus narrates that both Greeks and Trojans gathered to stone her to death. When Menelaus finally found her, he raised his sword to kill her. He had demanded that only he should slay his unfaithful wife; but, when he was ready to do so, she dropped her robe from her shoulders, and the sight of her beauty caused him to let the sword drop from his hand. Electra wails:
Fate
Helen returned to Sparta and lived with Menelaus, where she was encountered by Telemachus in Book 4 of The Odyssey. As depicted in that account, she and Menelaus were completely reconciled and had a harmonious married life—he holding no grudge at her having run away with a lover and she feeling no restraint in telling anecdotes of her life inside besieged Troy.
According to another version, used by Euripides in his play Orestes, Helen had been saved by Apollo from Orestes and was taken up to Mount Olympus almost immediately after Menelaus' return. A curious fate is recounted by Pausanias the geographer (3.19.11–13), which has Helen share the afterlife with Achilles.
Pausanias also has another story (3.19.9–10): "The account of the Rhodians is different. They say that when Menelaus was dead, and Orestes still a wanderer, Helen was driven out by Nicostratus and Megapenthes and came to Rhodes, where she had a friend in Polyxo, the wife of Tlepolemus. For Polyxo, they say, was an Argive by descent, and when she was already married to Tlepolemus, shared his flight to Rhodes. At the time she was queen of the island, having been left with an orphan boy. They say that this Polyxo desired to avenge the death of Tlepolemus on Helen, now that she had her in her power. So she sent against her when she was bathing handmaidens dressed up as Furies, who seized Helen and hanged her on a tree, and for this reason the Rhodians have a sanctuary of Helen of the Tree."
Tlepolemus was a son of Heracles and Astyoche. Astyoche was a daughter of Phylas, King of Ephyra who was killed by Heracles. Tlepolemus was killed by Sarpedon on the first day of fighting in the Iliad. Nicostratus was a son of Menelaus by his concubine Pieris, an Aetolian slave. Megapenthes was a son of Menelaus by his concubine Tereis, no further origin.
In Euripides's tragedy The Trojan Women, Helen is shunned by the women who survived the war and is to be taken back to Greece to face a death sentence. This version is contradicted by two of Euripides' other tragedies Electra, which predates The Trojan Women, and Helen, as Helen is described as being in Egypt during the events of the Trojan War in each.
Artistic representations
From Antiquity, depicting Helen would be a remarkable challenge. The story of Zeuxis deals with this exact question: how would an artist immortalize ideal beauty? He eventually selected the best features from five virgins. The ancient world starts to paint Helen's picture or inscribe her form on stone, clay and bronze by the 7th century BC. Dares Phrygius describes Helen in his History of the Fall of Troy: "She was beautiful, ingenuous, and charming. Her legs were the best; her mouth the cutest. There was a beauty-mark between her eyebrows."
Helen is frequently depicted on Athenian vases as being threatened by Menelaus and fleeing from him. This is not the case, however, in Laconic art: on an Archaic stele depicting Helen's recovery after the fall of Troy, Menelaus is armed with a sword but Helen faces him boldly, looking directly into his eyes; and in other works of Peloponnesian art, Helen is shown carrying a wreath, while Menelaus holds his sword aloft vertically. In contrast, on Athenian vases of c. 550–470, Menelaus threateningly points his sword at her.
The abduction by Paris was another popular motif in ancient Greek vase-painting; definitely more popular than the kidnapping by Theseus. In a famous representation by the Athenian vase painter Makron, Helen follows Paris like a bride following a bridegroom, her wrist grasped by Paris' hand. The Etruscans, who had a sophisticated knowledge of Greek mythology, demonstrated a particular interest in the theme of the delivery of Helen's egg, which is depicted in relief mirrors.
In Renaissance painting, Helen's departure from Sparta is usually depicted as a scene of forcible removal (rape) by Paris. This is not, however, the case with certain secular medieval illustrations. Artists of the 1460s and 1470s were influenced by Guido delle Colonne's Historia destructionis Troiae, where Helen's abduction was portrayed as a scene of seduction. In the Florentine Picture Chronicle Paris and Helen are shown departing arm in arm, while their marriage was depicted into Franco-Flemish tapestry.
In Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus (1604), Faust conjures the shade of Helen. Upon seeing Helen, Faustus speaks the famous line: "Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships, / And burnt the topless towers of Ilium." (Act V, Scene I.) Helen is also conjured by Faust in Goethe's Faust.
In William Shakespeare's play Troilus and Cressida, Helen is a minor character who adores Troilus.
In Pre-Raphaelite art, Helen is often shown with shining curly hair and ringlets. Other painters of the same period depict Helen on the ramparts of Troy, and focus on her expression: her face is expressionless, blank, inscrutable. In Gustave Moreau's painting, Helen will finally become faceless; a blank eidolon in the middle of Troy's ruins.
Cult
The major centers of Helen's cult were in Laconia. At Sparta, the urban sanctuary of Helen was located near the Platanistas, so called for the plane trees planted there. Ancient sources associate Helen with gymnastic exercises or/and choral dances of maidens near the Evrotas River. This practice is referenced in the closing lines of Lysistrata, where Helen is said to be the "pure and proper" leader of the dancing Spartan women. Theocritus conjures the song epithalamium Spartan women sung at Platanistas commemorating the marriage of Helen and Menelaus:
Helen's worship was also present on the opposite bank of Eurotas at Therapne, where she shared a shrine with Menelaus and the Dioscuri. The shrine has been known as "Menelaion" (the shrine of Menelaus), and it was believed to be the spot where Helen was buried alongside Menelaus. Despite its name, both the shrine and the cult originally belonged to Helen; Menelaus was added later as her husband. Isocrates writes that at Therapne Helen and Menelaus were worshiped as gods, and not as heroes. Clader argues that, if indeed Helen was worshiped as a goddess at Therapne, then her powers should be largely concerned with fertility, or as a solar deity. There is also evidence for Helen's cult in Hellenistic Sparta: rules for those sacrificing and holding feasts in their honor are extant.
Helen was also worshiped in Attica along with her brothers, and on Rhodes as Helen Dendritis (Helen of the Trees, Έλένα Δενδρῖτις); she was a vegetation or a fertility goddess. Martin P. Nilsson has argued that the cult in Rhodes has its roots to the Minoan, pre-Greek era, when Helen was allegedly worshiped as a vegetation goddess. Claude Calame and other scholars try to analyze the affinity between the cults of Helen and Artemis Orthia, pointing out the resemblance of the terracotta female figurines offered to both deities.
In popular culture
Pre-modern
Helen frequently appeared in Athenian comedies of the fifth century BC as a caricature of Pericles's mistress Aspasia. In Hellenistic times, she was associated with the moon due to the similarity of her name to the Greek word Σελήνη (Selēnē), meaning "Moon, goddess of the moon". One Pythagorean source claimed that Helen had originally come from a colony on the moon, where people were larger, stronger, and "fifteen times" more beautiful than ordinary mortals. She is one of the eponymous women the tragedy The Trojan Women produced in 415 BC by the Greek playwright Euripides.
Dio Chrysostom absolved Helen of guilt for the Trojan War by making Paris her first, original husband and claiming that the Greeks started the war out of jealousy. Virgil, in his Aeneid, makes Aeneas the one to spare Helen's life, rather than Menelaus, and instead portrays the act as a lofty example of self-control. Meanwhile, Virgil also makes Helen more vicious by having her betray her own husband Deiphobos and give him over to Menelaus as a peace offering. The satirist Lucian of Samosata features Helen in his famous Dialogues of the Dead, in which he portrays her deceased spirit as aged and withered.
In the early Middle Ages, after the rise of Christianity, Helen was seen as a pagan equivalent to Eve from the Book of Genesis. Helen was so beloved by early medieval Christians that she even took on some of the roles of the Virgin Mary. During the Renaissance, the French poet Pierre de Ronsard wrote 142 sonnets addressed to a woman named Hélène de Surgères, in which he declared her to be the "true", French Helen, rather than the "lie" of the Greeks.
Helen appears in various versions of the Faust myth, including Christopher Marlowe's 1604 play The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, in which Faustus famously marvels, "Was this the face that launched a thousand ships / And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?" upon seeing a demon impersonating Helen. The line, which is frequently quoted out of context, is a paraphrase of a statement from Lucian's Dialogues of the Dead. It is debated whether the phrase conveys astonishment at Helen's beauty, or disappointment that she is not more beautiful. The German poet and polymath Johann Wolfgang von Goethe re-envisioned the meeting of Faust and Helen. In Faust: The Second Part of the Tragedy, the union of Helen and Faust becomes a complex allegory of the meeting of the classical-ideal and modern worlds.
In 1803, when French zoologist François Marie Daudin was to name a new species of beautifully colored snake, the trinket snake (Coelognathus helena), he chose the specific name helena in reference to Helen of Troy.
Modern
In 1864, Paris saw the premiere of the operetta La belle Hélène by Jacques Offenbach.
Helen of Troy is a minor character in the opera Mefistofele by Arrigo Boito, which received its premiere in Milan in 1868.
In 1881, Oscar Wilde published a poem entitled "The New Helen", in which he declared his friend Lillie Langtry to be the reincarnation of Helen of Troy. Wilde portrays this new Helen as the antithesis of the Virgin Mary, but endows her with the characteristics of Jesus Christ himself. The Irish poet William Butler Yeats compared Helen to his muse, Maude Gonne, in his 1916 poem "No Second Troy". The anthology The Dark Tower by C. S. Lewis includes a fragment entitled "After Ten Years". In Egypt after the Trojan War, Menelaus is allowed to choose between the real, disappointing Helen and an ideal Helen conjured by Egyptian magicians.
The English Pre-Raphaelite painter Evelyn De Morgan portrayed a sexually assertive Helen in her 1898 painting Helen of Troy. Salvador Dalí was obsessed with Helen of Troy from childhood and saw his wife Gala Dalí and the surrealist character Gradiva as the embodiments of Helen. He dedicates his autobiography Diary of a Genius to "my genius Gala Gradiva, Helen of Troy, Saint Helen, Gala Galatea Placida."
Minor planet 101 Helena discovered by James Craig Watson in 1868, is named after Helen of Troy.
John Erskine's 1925 bestselling novel The Private Life of Helen of Troy portrayed Helen as a "sensible, bourgeois heroine", but the 1927 silent film of the same name, directed by Alexander Korda, transformed Helen into "a shopaholic fashion maven".
In 1928, Richard Strauss wrote the German opera Die ägyptische Helena (The Egyptian Helena), which is the story of Helen and Menelaus's troubles when they are marooned on a mythical island.
The 1938 short story, "Helen O'Loy", written by Lester del Rey, details the creation of a synthetic woman by two mechanics. The title is wordplay that combines "Helen of Troy" with "alloy".
The 1951 Swedish film Sköna Helena is an adapted version of Offenbach's operetta, starring Max Hansen and Eva Dahlbeck In 1956, a Franco-British epic titled Helen of Troy was released, directed by Oscar-winning director Robert Wise and starring Italian actress Rossana Podestà in the title role. It was filmed in Italy, and featured well-known British character actors such as Harry Andrews, Cedric Hardwicke, and Torin Thatcher in supporting roles.
The 1971 film The Trojan Women was an adaptation of the play by Euripides in which Irene Papas portrayed (a non-blonde) Helen of Troy.
In the 1998 TV series Hercules, Helen appears as a supporting character at Prometheus Academy as a student. Helen is caring and enthusiastic. She was the most popular girl in the academy and Adonis' girlfriend. Helen tries her best to keep Adonis from behaving stupidly, but mostly fails. She likes Hercules, but as a friend. She is a princess as in the myth but is not a half-sister of Hercules in the series. She was voiced by Jodi Benson.
A 2003 television version of Helen's life up to the fall of Troy, Helen of Troy, in which she was played by Sienna Guillory. In this version, Helen is depicted as unhappy in her marriage and willingly runs away with Paris, with whom she has fallen in love, but still returns to Menelaus after Paris dies and Troy falls. Helen was portrayed by Diane Kruger in the 2004 film Troy. In this adaptation, as in the 2003 television version, she is unhappily married to Menelaus and willingly leaves with Paris, whom she loves. However, in this version she does not return to Sparta with Menelaus (who is killed by Hector), but escapes Troy with Paris and other survivors when the city falls. Jacob M. Appel's 2008 play, Helen of Sparta, retells Homer's Iliad from Helen's point of view.
Inspired by the line, "Was this the face that launched a thousand ships...?" from Marlowe's Faustus, Isaac Asimov jocularly coined the unit "millihelen" to mean the amount of beauty that can launch one ship. Canadian novelist and poet Margaret Atwood re-envisioned the myth of Helen in modern, feminist guise in her poem "Helen of Troy Does Countertop Dancing".
In the Legends of Tomorrow episode "Helen Hunt", Helen is portrayed by Israeli-American model and actress Bar Paly. In the episode, Helen is an anachronism and appears in 1930s Hollywood. She lands a job as an actress and unintentionally starts a war between two film studios. The Legends travel to the 1930s and try to get Helen back to the Bronze Age. She regretfully goes along telling the team she wishes to stay away. After analyzing historical records of her impact on history, Zari Tomaz finds the best time to take her away from the fighting of her time and takes her to Themyscira. Helen reappears in the season three finale, "The Good, the Bad, and the Cuddly" as an Amazon warrior, who assists the Legends in defeating the demon Mallus's army.
In the 2018 TV miniseries Troy: Fall of a City, Helen was portrayed by Bella Dayne.
Pop singer-songwriter Al Stewart released a song called Helen and Cassandra on the reissue of his 1988 album Last Days of the Century. In it he addresses many aspects of the Helen myth and contrasts her with the seer Cassandra.
See also
Astyanassa
Simon Magus and Helen
Notes
References
Additional references
Primary sources
Aristophanes, Lysistrata. For an English translation see the Perseus Project.
Cicero, De inventione II.1.1–2
Cypria, fragments 1, 9, and 10. For an English translation see the Medieval and Classical Literature Library.
Dio Chrysostom, Discourses. For an English translation, see Lacus Curtius.
Euripides, Helen. For an English translation, see the Perseus Project.
Euripides, Iphigenia in Aulis. For an English translation, see the Perseus project.
Euripides, Orestes. For an English translation, see the Perseus Project.
Herodotus, Histories, Book II. For an English translation, see the Perseus Project.
Hesiod, Catalogs of Women and Eoiae. For an English translation see the Medieval and Classical Literature Library.
Homer, Iliad, Book III; Odyssey, Books IV, and XXIII.
Hyginus, Fables. Translated in English by Mary Grant.
Isocrates, Helen. For an English translation, see the Perseus Project.
Servius, In Aeneida I.526, XI.262
Lactantius Placidus, Commentarii in Statii Thebaida I.21.
Little Iliad, fragment 13. For an English translation, see the Medieval and Classical Literature Library.
Ovid, Heroides, XVI.Paris Helenae. For an English translation, see the Perseus Project.
Pausanias, Description of Greece, Book III. For an English translation, see the Perseus Project.
Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, Book III; Epitome.
Sappho, fragment 16.
Sextus Propertius, Elegies, 3.14. Translated in English by A.S. Kline.
Theocritus, Idylls, XVIII (The Epithalamium of Helen). Translated in English by J. M. Edmonds.
Virgil, Aeneid. Book VI. For an English translation see the Perseus Project.
Secondary sources
Rozokoki, Alexandra. "The Significance of the Ancestry and Eastern Origins of Helen of Sparta". Quaderni Urbinati Di Cultura Classica, New Series, 98, no. 2 (2011): 35–69. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23048961.
External links
An analysis of the legend including historical evidence of worship as a goddess.
See reviews of Helen of Troy: Goddess, Princess, Whore by Bettany Hughes (2005) New York: Alfred A. Knopf. , which has been translated into ten languages, on http://www.bettanyhughes.co.uk/
Solar goddesses
Princesses in Greek mythology
Queens in Greek mythology
Children of Zeus
Women of the Trojan war
People of the Trojan War
Characters in the Odyssey
Kidnapped people
Mythological rape victims
Women in Greek mythology
Characters in Greek mythology
Laconian mythology |
3982609 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoulder%20surfing%20%28computer%20security%29 | Shoulder surfing (computer security) | In computer security, shoulder surfing is a type of social engineering technique used to obtain information such as personal identification numbers (PINs), passwords and other confidential data by looking over the victim's shoulder. Unauthorized users watch the keystrokes inputted on a device or listen to sensitive information being spoken, which is also known as eavesdropping.
Methods and history
This attack can be performed either at close range (by directly looking over the victim's shoulder) or from a longer range with, for example a pair of binoculars or similar hardware. Attackers do not need any technical skills in order to perform this method, and keen observation of victims' surroundings and the typing pattern is sufficient. In the early 1980s, shoulder surfing was practiced near public pay phones to steal calling card digits and make long-distance calls or sell them in the market for cheaper prices than the original purchaser paid. However, the advent of modern-day technologies like hidden cameras and secret microphones makes shoulder surfing easier and gives the attacker more scope to perform long range shoulder surfing. A hidden camera allows the attacker to capture whole login process and other confidential data of the victim, which ultimately could lead to financial loss or identity theft. Shoulder surfing is more likely to occur in crowded places because it is easier to observe the information without getting the victim's attention.
There are two types of shoulder-surfing attack: direct observation attacks, in which authentication information is obtained by a person who is directly monitoring the authentication sequence, and recording attacks, in which the authentication information is obtained by recording the authentication sequence for later analysis to open the device. Apart from threats to password or PIN entry, shoulder surfing also occurs in daily situations to uncover private content on handheld mobile devices; shoulder surfing visual content was found to leak sensitive information of the user and even private information about third-parties.
Countermeasures
Gaze-based password entry
The basic procedure for gaze-based password entry is similar to normal password entry, except that in place of typing a key or touching the screen, the user looks at each desired character or trigger region in sequence (same as eye typing). The approach can, therefore, be used both with character-based passwords by using an on-screen keyboard and with graphical password schemes as surveyed in. A variety of considerations is important for ensuring usability and security. Eye tracking technology has come a long way since its origins in the early 1900s. State of the art eye trackers offers non-encumbering, remote video-based eye tracking with an accuracy of 1˚ of visual angle. Eye trackers are a specialized application of computer vision. A camera is used to monitor the user's eyes. One or more infrared light sources illuminate the user's face and produce a glint – a reflection of the light source on the cornea. As the user looks in different directions the pupil moves but the location of the glint on the cornea remains fixed. The relative motion and position of the center of the pupil and the glint are used to estimate the gaze vector, which is then mapped to coordinates on the screen plane.
Researchers proposed ways to counter shoulder surfing on mobile devices by leveraging the front-facing camera for gaze-based password entry. For example, GazeTouchPIN and GazeTouchPass combine gaze input in the form of eye movements to the left/right, and touch input by tapping on-screen buttons. These methods are more secure than traditional touch-based input (e.g., PIN and Lock Patterns) because they require shoulder surfers to (1) observe the user's eyes, (2) observe the user's touch input, and (3) combine the observations.
Painting album mechanism
Painting album mechanism is an anti-shoulder surfing mechanism, which has characteristics of both recall and recognition graphical techniques. Rather than using a regular PIN or password involving alphanumeric characters, users select a remembered colour or picture (selected as a "favourite picture" during the setup of the system) to unlock the system. This anti-shoulder surfing security method was developed based on survey results of users' affinity of choices, and through observation on the way children paint pictures. The resulting mechanism was developed from the survey of user choices, and the outcome created three input schemes, named Swipe Scheme, Colour Scheme, and Scot Scheme, which are the methods for password creation. Each input scheme is not identical, and it is up to the user to choose the input scheme they prefer. Swipe Scheme is implemented in Microsoft Windows 8, and in later versions, it is known as Picture Password; however it has drawn criticism for requiring the user to use a secure enough gesture.
Secret tap method
For access to sensitive information with a low risk of shoulder surfing, the secret tap method is a technique that does not expose the authentication information during entry, even if other individuals try to view the input process. Additionally, the risk of camera recordings also poses a threat. Therefore, it is necessary to make the authentication process more complex in order to prevent authentication information from being any smartphones, are biometrics such as fingerprint scanning or facial recognition, which cannot be replicated by a shoulder surfer.
The secret tap authentication method can use icons or some other form of system. The goals of a secret tap system are:
Covert observation resistance: Maintain the resistance strength at a level that prevents the authentication information from being revealed to other individuals, even if the authentication operation is performed numerous times.
Recording attack resistance: Maintain the resistance strength at a level that prevents the authentication information from being analyzed by other individuals even if the authentication operation is fully recorded.
Brute-force attack resistance: Maintain the resistance strength at a level that prevents the authentication process from broken more easily than by a brute-force attack on a four digit PIN. This policy follows the standard put forth in ISO 9564-1.
Usability: Maintain a level of usability that permits operators to perform the authentication operation with ease.
Comparison of risks between alphanumeric and graphical passwords
The primary benefit of graphical passwords compared to alphanumeric passwords is the improved memorability. However, the potential detriment of this advantage is the increased risk of shoulder-surfing. Graphical passwords that use graphics or pictures such as PassFaces, Jiminy, VIP, Passpoints or a combination of graphics and audio such as AVAP are likely all subject to this increased risk unless somehow mitigated in implementation. The results indicate the fact that both alphanumeric and graphical password-based authentication mechanisms may have a significant vulnerability to shoulder-surfing unless certain precautions are taken. Despite the common belief that nondictionary passwords are the most secure type of password-based authentication, our results demonstrate that it is, in fact, the most vulnerable configuration to shoulder-surfing.
PIN entry
Personal identification number (or PIN for short) is used to authenticate oneself in various situations, while withdrawing or depositing the money from an automatic teller machine, unlocking a phone, a door, a laptop or a PDA. Though this method of authentication is a two step verification process in some situations, it is vulnerable to shoulder surfing attack. An attacker can obtain the PIN either by directly looking over the victim's shoulder or by recording the whole login process. On items such as mobile phones with glass, glossy screens, the user could leave smudges on the screen, revealing a PIN. Some highly advanced attacks use thermal cameras to see the thermal signature of the PIN entered. So, various shoulder surfing resistant PIN entry methodologies are used to make the authentication process secure. Examples include PIN pads with covers to protect the privacy of the user, a system implemented at most ATMs. Another example used in ATMs and some entry systems is that of the use of metal PIN pads, making thermal camera attacks nearly impossible due to their material.
Countermeasure testing
The cognitive trapdoor game has three groups involved in it: a machine verifier, a human prover, and a human observer. The goal of each group is that a human prover has to input the PIN by answering the questions posed by the machine verifier while an observer attempts to shoulder surf the PIN. As the countermeasures are by design harder to easily usurp, it is not easy for the observer to remember the whole login process unless the observer had a recording device.
See also
Social engineering (security)
Information diving
Credit card fraud
Phishing
References
Hacking (computer security)
Hacker culture
Computing terminology |
1711082 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theatre%20Europe | Theatre Europe | Theatre Europe is a turn-based strategy video game developed and published by Personal Software Services. It was first released in the United Kingdom for the Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC and Atari 8-bit family home computers in 1985. It was later released in France by ERE Informatique in 1986, and was released in the United States by Datasoft later that year. A port for the Tatung Einstein was released in 1989, in the UK. It is the fifth installment of the Strategic Wargames series.
The game is set during a fictional war in Europe between NATO and the Warsaw Pact, in which both sides use nuclear and chemical weapons. The developers used information and statistics on military strength from the Ministry of Defence and the Soviet embassy in London. The objective is to fight conventional battles in continental Europe, whilst trying to avoid a worldwide nuclear holocaust. During the game, capital cities and their civilian populations are destroyed by nuclear weapons. The game ends once either side is forced to surrender or if the entire population of Europe perishes. To request a nuclear strike, the player was required to call a dedicated telephone number to hear and automated message giving the authorisation code.
Theatre Europe was criticized by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and The Sun newspaper. Some high street retail chains refused to sell the game upon release. The game received critical acclaim for its accuracy, playability and value for money. It won the "Best Strategy Game" award at the 1985 Golden Joystick Awards and was nominated for "Game of the Year".
Gameplay
The game is a turn-based strategy and revolves around a fictional conflict between the powers of NATO and allies of the Warsaw Pact. The player has the choice of choosing either NATO or the Warsaw Pact (collectively referred to as Soviet forces), or a "demo" computer versus computer option, where the game plays itself. The game takes place over a period of 30 in-game days, in which one day is equal to one "round". There are three types of difficulty; level one, in which unless provoked, the enemy will not use nuclear weapons, whilst levels two and three will enable the enemy to use nuclear and chemical attacks to prevent the player from winning the game.
The main feature of the game is focused on a map of Europe and western Russia, which displays accurate terrain such as mountain ranges, major cities, borders and all military forces belonging to each side. The game also features an arcade sequence which involves shooting down enemy units in order to secure combat bonuses; this gameplay mode, however, can be ignored by changing the game's settings. If the arcade sequences are turned on, the player will be notified to choose a battle on the map. Depending on the area chosen, an illustration of a battle commencing in countryside or a city is presented with various forms of military equipment including aeroplanes, helicopters and tanks. The player must shoot down and destroy enemy units using their cursor, in similar style to Missile Command. The outcome of the arcade sequence will affect the game; performing poorly will result in severe losses throughout that round.
After combat has been resolved, the player must move and assemble their forces in continental Europe, which is known as the movement phase. Two special units are exclusively available to the Warsaw Pact: "the 1st Airborne Army which can be flown directly behind enemy lines, and the 1st Amphibious Army which can move over the sea to a tactical attack point". Units are moved by cursor, and only one may be moved at a time. Once all units have been moved within a round, the attack phase will begin. Any amount of friendly units may attack an opposing army; however, once a unit has been dispatched for battle it cannot be stopped until the current attack phase concludes. During the attacking phase, a separate screen displaying combat information, such as enemy numbers and casualties, is displayed. If the screen detailing the attacking phase has been turned off in the settings, the battle will instead be decided on warrants of air superiority and armaments.
After battle sequences, the player will have the opportunity to rebuild their units by allocating a quantity of armament supplies, such as air support, which can be issued to any friendly unit on the map. After rebuilding ground units, the game will move onto an "air phase", which consists of commanding aircraft such as aeroplanes, bombers and a limited number of reserve air units. Several options for allocating air forces include: counter air strikes, reconnaissance on enemy movement, interdiction, assault breakers, and deep strikes. Counter air strikes involve attacks on enemy air bases, whereas interdiction involves aircraft being sent behind enemy lines in order to attack supply and movement networks. If interdiction aircraft are discovered in enemy territory, there will be a chance that the side will respond with a retaliatory nuclear strike. The remaining three aircraft options are to attack a single unit, strike enemy territory, and attack railways in order to disable enemy reinforcements, respectively.
The game allows the player to request chemical and nuclear tactical strikes against the enemy. A chemical attack is automatically targeted at an enemy capital city, and will conclude with a readout announcing the outcome of the attack, such as civilian casualties. In order to launch a strategic nuclear attack, the player is given 30 seconds to call a dedicated 1-800 telephone number and obtain a special authorisation code from the automated answerphone message (the authorisation code was 'Midnight Sun'). Once the authorisation code has been received, the player will be given three separate options on how to proceed. Standby mode will postpone the nuclear launch, whereas a strategic launch will involve one nuclear warhead targeting a city. The third option, known as "Fire-Plan", will issue a full-scale nuclear strike across Europe and results in a nuclear holocaust, which will end the game.
Background and release
Personal Software Services was founded in Coventry, West Midlands, by Gary Mays and Richard Cockayne in 1981. The company were known for creating games that revolved around historic battles and conflicts, such as Battle of Britain, Bismarck and Falklands '82. The company had a partnership with French video game developer ERE Informatique, and published localised versions of their products to the United Kingdom. In 1986, Cockayne took a decision to alter their products for release on 16-bit consoles, as he found that smaller 8-bit consoles such as the ZX Spectrum lacked the processing power for larger strategy games. The decision was falsely interpreted as "pulling out" from the Spectrum market by video game journalist Phillipa Irving. Following years of successful sales throughout the mid-1980s, Personal Software Services experienced financial difficulties; Cockayne admitted in a retrospective interview that "he took his eye off the ball". The company was acquired by Mirrorsoft in February 1987, and was later dispossessed by the company due to strains of debt.
In an interview with Your Computer magazine, Gary Mays stated that Theatre Europe received heavy criticism from the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). The CND accused the developers of "bad taste", despite Cockayne claiming that the organisation never "looked into the product". During development of the game, Cockayne and Mays obtained figures and statistics of various military strength from the Ministry of Defence and the Soviet embassy in London. Cockayne asserted that the statistics the developers gained were realistically plausible, stating that he would let the "horrifying results speak for themselves" during the game. Game designer Alan Steel stated that during testing, he was "alarmed" to discover when the computer played itself, the Warsaw Pact always won a conventional war overwhelmingly, forcing NATO to either surrender or begin a nuclear war. Steel adjusted the game to give NATO a chance to win. Theatre Europe was first released in the United Kingdom for the Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC and Atari 8-bit home computers in 1985. It was then re-released in France and the United States for those consoles in 1986. Due to lobbying from the CND, high street outlets such as Boots and John Menzies refused to sell the game in their stores, with the former finding it "morally offensive".
Reception
The game received critical acclaim upon release. Gwyn Hughes of Your Sinclair defended the accuracy and morality of the game, stating that it was not in "bad taste" and that the game was a "well researched program", which he thought would give the player an insight into the nature of modern war. Philippa Irving of Crash similarly stated that Theatre Europe offered more than a usual "run-of-the-mill" war game and heralded its simplistic nature, adding that novice gamers would "get in to it with ease". John Gilbert of Sinclair User added scepticism over the developer's intention of making something "so serious" as opposed to their other titles; however he praised the game as a "brilliant, if chilling" simulation. A reviewer writing for ZX Computing similarly stated that the game was "superbly chilling" and "extremely" well-presented. A reviewer of Computer and Video Games criticised the inferior graphics on the ZX Spectrum, stating that they were "a bit flawed" in comparison to the Commodore 64 version.
Bill Harrington reviewed the game for Computer Gaming World, and stated that " TE does a credible job of demonstrating the perils of escalation and dramatizing how slippery the slope to nuclear war might be, but is basically a game in search of a market."
Mark Reed of Computer Gamer noted that the game attracted media attention, despite the objective of the game discouraging the use of nuclear weapons. Reed praised the presentation and gameplay, also stating that the use of a joystick and keyboard is "excellent". A reviewer from Zzap!64 heralded the presentation and value for money, stating that it is overall "very special indeed". The reviewer also gave praise to the sound, suggesting that the game featured "one of the best pieces of micro music ever". Antic stated that the Atari 8-bit version's "execution is uneven". The magazine reported that the arcade portion "quickly becomes a nuisance" and NATO could not defeat the Warsaw Pact because of lack of balance, flaws that did not exist in the Commodore 64 version. Peter Connor of Advanced Computer Entertainment said that Theatre Europe was a "gift", in regards to its value of money and level of playability. In a 1994 survey of wargames Computer Gaming World gave the title two-plus stars out of five, stating that it was "rendered obsolete by history and game play".
The game won the "Best Strategy Game" award at the 1985 Golden Joystick Awards and was nominated for "Game of the Year".
References
External links
Images, reviews and longplay links
1985 video games
Amstrad CPC games
Apple II games
Atari 8-bit family games
Cold War video games
Commodore 64 games
Tatung Einstein games
Turn-based strategy video games
Video games about nuclear war and weapons
Video games developed in the United Kingdom
ZX Spectrum games
Personal Software Services games
World War III video games |
22293636 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic%20University%20of%20Mozambique | Catholic University of Mozambique | The Catholic University of Mozambique (, UCM) is a university in Mozambique.
The university was founded on 10 August 1996 by the Mozambican conference of Bishops. At the time, higher education in Mozambique was only available in the capital, Maputo. The university currently has locations in Beira, Chimoio, Cuamba, Nampula, Pemba, Quelimane and Tete. One of the intentions was to make higher education available to central and northern Mozambique. , approximately 3,270 students were enrolled at the university. The rector is Prof. Dr. Padre Alberto Ferreira.
History
The initiative to create the Catholic University of Mozambique (UCM) came up during the peace negotiations in Rome between Frelimo and Renamo. In June 1992 the negotiations were deadlocked; to unblock them, the mediator, Dom Jaime Pedro Gonçalves, Archbishop of Beira, presented the idea to establish a quality university for the centre and north of Mozambique. The Catholic Church promised to correct the unequal structure of the concentration of higher education institutions in Maputo. Subsequently, this led to the signing of the peace agreement on October 4, 1992 between Frelimo and Renamo.
The Catholic University of Mozambique was established as a contribution to peace and reconciliation, as an institutional compromise, and was officially founded in 1995 (Boletim da República, Decreto N° 43/95, September 14). In August 1996 UCM opened its first faculties in Beira and Nampula.
Enrolment
From 2000 onwards, there has been an exponential increase in student enrolment. In 2000, UCM had an enrolment of 50 students; by 2005 this had increased to 405 students, and by 2008 UCM had an enrolment of 4497 students. To date over 7,000 students have graduated from UCM and the number is anticipated to continue increasing at an exponential rate as observed in these previous years. Table 1 summarises student enrolment at UCM from 2000 to 2008.
The number of female students has always been consistently lower than the number of male counterparts. On average, UCM has had 36% female students and 64% male students.
Institutional structure and management
UCM is involved in the national framework of governance and administration for higher education institutions and belongs to the Episcopal Conference of Mozambique. UCM is governed by the chancellor, the Archbishop of Beira, the rector, the vice-rector for finance and administration and secretary general, and the vice-rector for academic affairs and development.
UCM currently has six faculties in four provinces:
Faculty of Economics and Management (Beira)
Faculty of Law (Nampula)
Faculty of Education and Communication (Nampula)
Faculty of Agriculture (Cuamba)
Faculty of Health Sciences (Beira)
Faculty of Tourism Management and Information Technology (Pemba)
To date UCM has established research centres in Nampula (Konrad Adenauer Research Centre), Beira (Centre for Geographic Information, GEA-Consult, Medical Research Centre) and Chimoio (Study and Research Centre), as well as a distance education centre (Beira) for teacher education. As part of UCM's strategy to bring higher education to the people, it opened faculty delegations in Chimoio (Economics, Law), Nampula (Economics), Beira (Information Technology), Tete (Economics) and Quelimane (Information Technology and Law).
Each faculty has a faculty board composed of the dean, pedagogic director and administrator. Centres only have directors. In the rectory office there is the rector, vice rector finance and administration, academic affairs and development, human resources department and public relations department.
Finances
As a private institution, UCM is funded by tuition fees, paid by its students, their families and sometimes by private and public scholarships. In 2008, tuition fees for a three-year bachelor program was fixed at an equivalent of US$1,200, tuition fees for an additional year to obtain a Bachelor of Honour’s degree are at US$1,500, same as the annual tuition fees for the medicine faculty.
References
External links
Official website
Universities in Mozambique
Catholic universities and colleges in Mozambique
Educational institutions established in 1996
1996 establishments in Mozambique |
14250628 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hart%20v.%20Comcast%20Corp. | Hart v. Comcast Corp. | Hart v. Comcast was a suit filed by Jon Hart, a citizen of California against Comcast in Alameda County. Comcast is a provider of internet access and services. The suit alleged that Comcast was illegally interfering with certain types of internet traffic, such as BitTorrent. The suit alleged that Comcast is guilty of false advertising for advertising high speed service yet deliberately using technology to interfere with access speeds. The suit also claimed Comcast's actions violated established Federal Communications Commission policies on Net Neutrality. The case has since been settled out of court.
The suit states:
Hart has requested that the suit be declared a class action suit so that all Comcast customers in California can receive damages under the suit.
Comcast High-speed internet service
Comcast, the largest cable provider in the United States, offers downstream speeds of up to 4, 6, 8, or 17.6 Mbit/s and upstream speeds of 384 kbit/s (48 kB/s), or 768 kbit/s (96 kB/s) for the 8 Mbit/s downstream package, for standard home connections.
According to the Comcast High Speed Internet terms of service, customers are provided with dynamic IP addresses. Despite the general expectation that Comcast's service is unlimited, Comcast has a policy of terminating broadband customers who allegedly use excessive bandwidth. Comcast has declined to disclose a numerical bandwidth limit, arguing that the limit is variable on a monthly basis and dependent on the capacity of specific cable nodes. Comcast claims this policy only affects users whose bandwidth consumption is among the top one percent of high-speed internet customers. Statements issued by Comcast in response to press inquiries suggest that excessive usage is generally defined as several hundred gigabytes per month. However, their terms of service state that a customer's use should not "represent (in the sole judgment of Comcast) an overly large burden on the network."
Comcast has implemented traffic shaping measures using Sandvine hardware which sends forged RST packets, disrupting the BitTorrent protocol. This has prevented some Comcast users from uploading, or "seeding" files they have downloaded via BitTorrent. Some Comcast users also may experience packet loss and latency, resulting in lag. This effect is most often noticed when dealing with time critical traffic in online gaming, and especially pronounced when such users host online games on ad-hoc networks (such as in Halo 3). This practice is becoming an increasingly common trend. The effects of packet loss and latency vary greatly depending on locale and the conditions of the local plant. Some Comcast customers may experience severe packet loss, while others may see no packet loss. The issues resulting from local variables affect all Internet Service Providers.
Blocking Internet Access
The Associated Press confirmed a story by TorrentFreak that indicates that Comcast "actively interferes with attempts by some of its high-speed Internet subscribers to share files online, a move that runs counter to the tradition of treating all types of Net traffic equally." Legal controversy ensued when Comcast terminated BitTorrent connections by sending forged RST packets represented as coming from the end users rather than from Comcast. This was through a partnership with Sandvine. This effectively blocks the user from making full use of BitTorrent. The controversy arises because Comcast is impersonating end users in terminating connections. Recently, a few Comcast users claimed to find temporary solutions for both Microsoft Windows and Linux systems by using a firewall to filter RST packets. This however was later revealed to be futile as it would have to be implemented on both ends—if the other end did not ignore the spoofed RST packet, the connection would be severed on the remote end.
Now there is also evidence of Comcast using RST packets on groupware applications that have nothing to do with file sharing. Kevin Kanarski, who works as a Lotus Notes messaging engineer, noticed some strange behavior with Lotus Notes dropping emails when hooked up to a Comcast connection and has managed to verify that Comcast's reset packets are the culprit. A lawsuit, Hart v. Comcast, has been filed accusing Comcast of false advertising and other unfair trade practices.
Comcast customers have also reported a sporadic inability to use Google because forged RST packets are also interfering with HTTP access to google.com, which has further angered users.
Outcome
Comcast agreed to settle the case by setting up a 16 Million dollar compensation fund. Each affected subscriber was entitled to $16.
References
United States computer case law
2007 in United States case law
Comcast |
44166212 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shon%20Harris | Shon Harris | Shon Harris (March 27, 1968 – October 8, 2014) was a prolific author of books and articles on topics related to information security, including study guides for CISSP security certification examination. At the time of her death, over 1,000,000 copies of her books had been sold.
Harris also served as an engineer in the United States Air Force Information Warfare Unit, was an information-security consultant, and founder of information-security training company, Logical Security.
In 2015 Logical Security was acquired by former associates of Harris, and rebranded as Human Element. The company continues to offer Shon Harris Training for CISSP using the same information security consultants who had previously worked with Shon, based on the training curriculum and approach originally designed by her.
Harris was recognized as one of the top 25 women in the information-security field by Information Security magazine.
Harris posthumously won the FISSEA 2014 Educator of the Year Award and the Information Systems Security Association's Hall of Fame award in 2015. Her friend, colleague, and co-author Michael Lester accepted the award on behalf of her family.
Updated editions of her CISSP books were published posthumously by McGraw-Hill in 2015 and 2016.
The University of Texas offers the "Shon Harris Memorial Endowed Scholarship in Computer Science" to students in need.
References
External links
Shon Harris's articles on TechTarget
Human Element Security Website
1968 births
2014 deaths
American women writers
Place of death missing
Place of birth missing
Writers about computer security
21st-century American women |
22547912 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker%20Halted | Hacker Halted | Hacker Halted is a global series of Computer and Information Security conferences presented by EC-Council. The objective of the Hacker Halted conferences is to raise international awareness towards increased education and ethics in IT Security. The event is currently in its 14th year. Also present at Hacker Halted is EC-Council's H@cker Halted | Academy, trainings and workshops led by EC-Council instructors and trainers.
Past Conferences
Hacker Halted india
Hacker Halted Malaysia was held in 2004, 2007, and in 2018 in New Delhi
Hacker Halted Egypt 2010
Hacker | Halted conference was held in Egypt on 13 and 14 December 2018
Hacker Halted india
Hacker Halted Dubai was held in 2005 and in 2006 in Dubai, United A
Hacker Halted Singapore
Hacker Halted Singapore was held in 2005 in Singapore.
Hacker Halted Mexico
Hacker Halted Mexico was held in 2005 in Mexico.
Hacker Halted Japan
Hacker Halted Japan was held November 11, 2008 in Tokyo, Japan.
Hacker Halted USA
Hacker Halted USA was held in 2008 in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina
Hacker Halted USA was held in September 20–24, 2009 in Miami, Florida, at the Hilton Head hotel, and will include events to include a "Capture the Flag" event.
Hacker Halted USA was held in 2010 in Miami.
Hacker Halted USA was held in Miami on 25 and 27 October 2011. The theme for 2011 was "Stop the Data Leaks. Secure the Code".
Hacker Halted USA was held in Miami on October 29–31, 2012.
Hacker Halted USA was held in Atlanta in 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018.
Upcoming Conferences
Hacker Halted USA 2019 returns to Atlanta, GA
Conference Tracks
Some of the talks will include tracks to include:
Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH)
Incident Response & Computer Forensics
Threats & Counter Measures
Governance, Policies & Standards
Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery
Mobile Security
Virtualization Security
Secure Programming
Malware and Botnets
Social Engineering
Physical Security
H@cker Halted Academy
Hacker Halted USA 2009 was the launch of the Hacker Halted Academy. The Hacker Halted Academy is a series of classes presented by EC-Council partners. Many of the classes include EC-Council training and certification, including the Certified Ethical Hacker and Licensed Penetration Tester, as well as vendor specific certification, including, Certified Information Systems Security Professional(CISSP) and NSA NSA Information Security Assessment Methodology(IAM)/Information security Evaluation Methodology(IEM) training.
See also
EC-Council
Hacker conference
References
External links
Hacker Halted Website
Hacker Halted Academy
Hacker Halted Egypt Website
Computer security conferences |
5164286 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal%20audit | Internal audit | Internal auditing is an independent, objective assurance and consulting activity designed to add value to and improve an organization's operations. It may help an organization accomplish its objectives by bringing a systematic, disciplined approach to evaluate and improve the effectiveness of risk management, control and governance processes. Internal auditing might achieve this goal by providing insight and recommendations based on analyses and assessments of data and business processes. With commitment to integrity and accountability, internal auditing provides value to governing bodies and senior management as an objective source of independent advice. Professionals called internal auditors are employed by organizations to perform the internal auditing activity.
The scope of internal auditing within an organization may be broad and may involve topics such as an organization's governance, risk management and management controls over: efficiency/effectiveness of operations (including safeguarding of assets), the reliability of financial and management reporting, and compliance with laws and regulations. Internal auditing may also involve conducting proactive fraud audits to identify potentially fraudulent acts; participating in fraud investigations under the direction of fraud investigation professionals, and conducting post investigation fraud audits to identify control breakdowns and establish financial loss.
Internal auditors are not responsible for the execution of company activities; they advise management and the board of directors (or similar oversight body) regarding how to better execute their responsibilities. As a result of their broad scope of involvement, internal auditors may have a variety of higher educational and professional backgrounds.
The Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA) is the recognized international standard setting body for the internal audit profession and awards the Certified Internal Auditor designation internationally through rigorous written examination. Other designations are available in certain countries. In the United States the professional standards of the Institute of Internal Auditors have been codified in several states' statutes pertaining to the practice of internal auditing in government (New York State, Texas, and Florida being three examples). There are also a number of other international standard setting bodies.
Internal auditors work for government agencies (federal, state and local); for publicly traded companies; and for non-profit companies across all industries. Internal auditing departments are led by a chief audit executive ("CAE") who generally reports to the audit committee of the board of directors, with administrative reporting to the chief executive officer (In the United States this reporting relationship is required by law for publicly traded companies).
History of internal auditing
The internal auditing profession evolved steadily with the progress of management science after World War II. It is conceptually similar in many ways to financial auditing by public accounting firms, quality assurance and banking compliance activities. While some of the audit technique underlying internal auditing is derived from management consulting and public accounting professions, the theory of internal auditing was conceived primarily by Lawrence Sawyer (1911–2002), often referred to as "the father of modern internal auditing"; and the current philosophy, theory and practice of modern internal auditing as defined by the International Professional Practices Framework (IPPF) of the Institute of Internal Auditors owes much to Sawyer's vision.
With the implementation in the United States of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002, the profession's exposure and value was enhanced, as many internal auditors possessed the skills required to help companies meet the requirements of the law . However, the focus by internal audit departments of publicly traded companies on SOX related financial policy and procedures derailed progress made by the profession in the late 20th century toward Larry Sawyer's vision for internal audit. Beginning in about 2010, the IIA once again began advocating for the broader role internal auditing should play in the corporate arena, in keeping with the IPPF's philosophy.
Organizational independence
While internal auditors are hired directly by their company, they can achieve independence through their reporting relationships. Independence and objectivity are a cornerstone of the IIA professional standards; and are discussed at length in the standards and the supporting practice guides and practice advisories. Professional internal auditors are mandated by the IIA standards to be independent of the business activities they audit. This independence and objectivity are achieved through the organizational placement and reporting lines of the internal audit department. Internal auditors of publicly traded companies in the United States are required to report functionally to the board of directors directly, or a sub-committee of the board of directors (typically the audit committee), and not to management except for administrative purposes.
The required organizational independence from management enables unrestricted evaluation of management activities and personnel and allows internal auditors to perform their role effectively. Although internal auditors are part of company management and paid by the company, the primary customer of internal audit activity is the entity charged with oversight of management's activities. This is typically the audit committee, a sub-committee of the board of directors.
Organizational independence is effectively achieved when the chief audit executive reports functionally to the board. Examples of functional reporting to the board involve the board:
Approving the internal audit charter; Approving the risk based internal audit plan; Approving the internal audit budget and resource plan; Receiving communications from the chief audit executive on the internal audit activity's performance relative to its plan and other matters; Approving decisions regarding the appointment and removal of the chief audit executive; Approving the remuneration of the chief audit executive; and Making appropriate inquiries of management and the chief audit executive to determine whether there are inappropriate scope or resource limitations.
Role in internal control
Internal auditing activity is primarily directed at evaluating internal control. Under the COSO Framework, internal control is broadly defined as a process, effected by an entity's board of directors, management, and other personnel, designed to provide reasonable assurance regarding the achievement of the following core objectives for which all businesses strive:
Effectiveness and efficiency of operations.
Reliability of financial and management reporting.
Compliance with laws and regulations.
Safeguarding of Assets
Management is responsible for internal control, which comprises five critical components: the control environment; risk assessment; risk focused control activities; information and communication; and monitoring activities. Managers establish policies, processes, and practices in these five components of management control to help the organization achieve the four specific objectives listed above. Internal auditors perform audits to evaluate whether the five components of management control are present and operating effectively, and if not, provide recommendations for improvement.
In the United States, the internal audit function independently tests managements control assertions and reports to the company's audit committee of the board of directors.
Role in risk management
Internal auditing professional standards require the function to evaluate the effectiveness of the organization's Risk management activities. Risk management is the process by which an organization identifies, analyses, responds, gathers information about, and monitors strategic risks that could actually or potentially impact the organization's ability to achieve its mission and objectives.
Under the COSO enterprise risk management (ERM) Framework, an organization's strategy, operations, reporting, and compliance objectives all have associated strategic business risks – the negative outcomes resulting from internal and external events that inhibit the organization's ability to achieve its objectives. Management assesses risk as part of the ordinary course of business activities such as strategic planning, marketing planning, capital planning, budgeting, hedging, incentive payout structure, credit/lending practices, mergers and acquisitions, strategic partnerships, legislative changes, conducting business abroad, etc. Sarbanes–Oxley regulations require extensive risk assessment of financial reporting processes. Corporate legal counsel often prepares comprehensive assessments of the current and potential litigation a company faces. Internal auditors may evaluate each of these activities, or focus on the overarching process used to manage risks entity-wide. For example, internal auditors can advise management regarding the reporting of forward-looking operating measures to the board, to help identify emerging risks; or internal auditors can evaluate and report on whether the board and other stakeholders can have reasonable assurance the organization's management team has implemented an effective enterprise risk management program.
In larger organizations, major strategic initiatives are implemented to achieve objectives and drive changes. As a member of senior management, the chief audit executive (CAE) may participate in status updates on these major initiatives. This places the CAE in the position to report on many of the major risks the organization faces to the audit committee, or ensure management's reporting is effective for that purpose.
The internal audit function may help the organization address its risk of fraud via a fraud risk assessment, using principles of fraud deterrence. Internal auditors may help companies establish and maintain Enterprise Risk Management processes. This process is highly valued by many businesses for establishing and implementing effective management systems and ensuring quality is maintained & professional standards are met Internal auditors also play an important role in helping companies execute a SOX 404 top-down risk assessment. In these latter two areas, internal auditors typically are part of the risk assessment team in an advisory role.
Role in corporate governance
Internal auditing activity as it relates to corporate governance has in the past been generally informal, accomplished primarily through participation in meetings and discussions with members of the board of directors. According to COSO's ERM framework, governance is the policies, processes and structures used by the organization's leadership to direct activities, achieve objectives, and protect the interests of diverse stakeholder groups in a manner consistent with ethical standards. The internal auditor is often considered one of the "four pillars" of corporate governance, the other pillars being the board of directors, management, and the external auditor.
A primary focus area of internal auditing as it relates to corporate governance is helping the audit committee of the board of directors (or equivalent) perform its responsibilities effectively. This may include reporting critical management control issues, suggesting questions or topics for the audit committee's meeting agendas, and coordinating with the external auditor and management to ensure the committee receives effective information. In recent years, the IIA has advocated more formal evaluation of corporate governance, particularly in the areas of board oversight of enterprise risk, corporate ethics, and fraud.
Audit project selection or "annual audit plan"
Based on the risk assessment of the organization, internal auditors, management and oversight boards determine where to focus internal auditing efforts. This focus or prioritization is part of the annual/ multi-year annual audit plan. The audit plan is typically proposed by the CAE (sometimes with several options or alternatives) for the review and approval of the audit committee or the board of directors. Internal auditing activity is generally conducted as one or more discrete assignments.
It should be adapted to the specific purpose of audit, and the selection of audit method must be adapted to its specific purpose. Otherwise, it will deviate from the purpose of the audit.
Internal audit execution
A typical internal audit assignment involves the following steps:
Establishing and communicating the scope and objectives of the audit to appropriate members of management.
Developing an understanding of the business area under review – this includes objectives, measurements & key transaction types and involves interviews and a review of documents – flowcharts and narratives may be created, if necessary.
Describing the key risks facing the business activities within the scope of the audit.
Identifying management practices in the five components of control used to ensure that each key risk is properly controlled and monitored. An internal audit checklist can be a helpful tool to identify common risks and desired controls in the specific process or specific industry being audited.
Developing and executing a risk-based sampling and testing approach to determine whether the most important management controls are operating as intended.
Reporting issues and challenges identified and negotiating action plans with the management to address these problems.
Following-up on reported findings at appropriate intervals. Internal audit departments maintain a follow-up database for this purpose.
Audit assignment length varies based on the complexity of the activity being audited and internal audit resources available. Many of the above steps are iterative and may not all occur in the sequence indicated.
In addition to assessing business processes, specialists called information technology (IT) auditors review information technology controls.
Internal audit reports
Internal auditors typically issue reports at the end of each audit that summarize their findings, recommendations, and any responses or action plans from management. An audit report may have an executive summary—a body that includes the specific issues or findings identified and related recommendations or action plans, and appendix information such as detailed graphs and charts or process information. Each audit finding within the body of the report may contain five elements, sometimes called the "5 C's":
Condition: What is the particular problem identified?
Criteria: What is the standard that was not met? The standard may be a company policy or other benchmark.
Cause: Why did the problem occur?
Consequence: What is the risk/negative outcome (or opportunity foregone) because of the finding?
Corrective action: What should management do about the finding? What have they agreed to do and by when?
The recommendations in an internal audit report are designed to help the organization achieve effective and efficient governance, risk and control processes associated with operations objectives, financial and management reporting objectives; and legal/regulatory compliance objectives.
Audit findings and recommendations may also relate to particular assertions about transactions, such as whether the transactions audited were valid or authorized, completely processed, accurately valued, processed in the correct time period, and properly disclosed in financial or operational reporting, among other elements.
Under the IIA standards, a critical component of the audit process is the preparation of a balanced report that provides executives and the board with the opportunity to evaluate and weigh the issues being reported in the proper context and perspective. In providing perspective, analysis and workable recommendations for business improvements in critical areas, auditors help the organization meet its objectives.
Quality of internal audit report
Objectivity – The comments and opinions expressed in the report should be objective and unbiased.
Clarity – The language used should be simple and straightforward.
Accuracy – The information contained in the report should be accurate.
Brevity – The report should be concise.
Timeliness – The report should be released promptly immediately after the audit is concluded, within a month.
Strategy
Internal audit functions may also develop functional strategies described in multi-year strategic plans. Professional guidance on building an Internal Audit strategic plan was issued by the Institute of Internal Auditors in July 2012 via a Practice Guide called Developing the Internal Audit Strategic Plan. A key aspect of developing IA strategy is understanding the expectations of stakeholders, such as the audit committee and top management. This helps guide the IA function in its mission of helping the organization address the risks it faces. Specific topics considered in IA strategic planning include:
Scope and emphasis: An IA function may be involved in addressing risks related to financial reporting, operations, legal and regulatory compliance, and the company strategy. There may also be special topics of interest to stakeholders that change considerably year-to-year.
Portfolio of services: IA functions may provide traditional audit assurance across the risk spectrum as well as consulting project support in a variety of areas such as project management, data analysis, and monitoring of major company initiatives. Larger audit functions may establish specialty areas to handle their service portfolio.
Competency development: The stakeholder expectations around scope and service portfolio determine what competencies the function needs, which drives decisions regarding hiring of specific skills and training programs. The internal audit function is often used as a "management training ground" to provide employees with a deeper knowledge of the company's operations before they are rotated into a management position.
Technology: IA functions use a variety of technology tools/software to support audit process workflow, statistical analysis, and obtaining data from systems.
Building the IA strategy may involve a variety of strategic management concepts and frameworks, such as strategic planning, strategic thinking, and SWOT analysis.
Other topics
Measuring the internal audit function
The measurement of the internal audit function can involve a balanced scorecard approach. Internal audit functions are primarily evaluated based on the quality of counsel and information provided to the audit committee and top management. However, this is primarily qualitative and therefore difficult to measure. "Customer surveys" sent to key managers after each audit engagement or report can be used to measure performance, with an annual survey to the audit committee. Scoring on dimensions such as professionalism, quality of counsel, timeliness of work product, utility of meetings, and quality of status updates are typical with such surveys. Understanding the expectations of senior management and the audit committee represent important steps in developing a performance measurement process, as well as how such measures help align the audit function with organizational priorities.
Independent peer reviews are part of the quality assurance process for many internal audit groups as they are often required by standards. The resulting peer review report is made available to the audit committee.
Reporting of critical findings
The chief audit executive (CAE) typically reports the most critical issues to the audit committee quarterly, along with management's progress towards resolving them. Critical issues typically have a reasonable likelihood of causing substantial financial or reputational damage to the company. For particularly complex issues, the responsible manager may participate in the discussion. Such reporting is critical to ensure the function is respected, that the proper "tone at the top" exists in the organization, and to expedite resolution of such issues. It is a matter of considerable judgment to select appropriate issues for the audit committee's attention and to describe them in the proper context.
Audit philosophy
Some of the philosophy and approach of internal auditing is derived from the work of Lawrence Sawyer. His philosophy and guidance on the role of internal audit was a forerunner of the current definition of internal auditing. It emphasized assisting management and the board in achieving the organization's objectives through well-reasoned audits, evaluations, and analyses of operational areas. He encouraged the modern internal auditor to act as a counsellor to management rather than as an adversary. Sawyer saw auditors as active players influencing events in the business rather than criticizing all degrees of errors and mistakes. He also foresaw a more desirable auditor future involving a stronger relationship with members of audit committee and the board and a divorce from direct reporting to the chief financial officer.
Sawyer often talked about “catching a manager doing something right” and providing recognition and positive reinforcement. Writing about positive observations in audit reports was rarely done until Sawyer started talking about the idea. He understood and forecast the benefits of providing more balanced reporting while simultaneously building better relationships. Sawyer understood the psychology of interpersonal dynamics and the need for all people to receive acknowledgment and validation for relationships to prosper.
Sawyer helped make internal auditing more relevant and more interesting through a sharp focus on operational or performance auditing. He strongly encouraged looking beyond financial statements and financial-related auditing into areas such as purchasing, warehousing and distribution, human resources, information technology, facilities management, customer service, field operations, and program management. This approach helped catapult the chief audit executive into the role of a respected and knowledgeable adviser who was thought to be reasonable, objective, and concerned about helping the organization achieve the stated goals.
See also
Certified Information Systems Auditor
Chartered Institute of Internal Auditors
Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (COSO)
Fraud deterrence
Institute of Internal Auditors
International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board
International Register of Certificated Auditors
IS audit
Operational auditing
Risk-based internal audit
References
Auditing
Types of auditing |
5314244 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison%20of%20version-control%20software | Comparison of version-control software | The following is a comparison of version-control software. The following tables include general and technical information on notable version control and software configuration management (SCM) software. For SCM software not suitable for source code, see Comparison of open-source configuration-management software.
General information
Table explanation
Repository model describes the relationship between various copies of the source code repository. In a client–server model, users access a master repository via a client; typically, their local machines hold only a working copy of a project tree. Changes in one working copy must be committed to the master repository before they are propagated to other users. In a distributed model, repositories act as peers, and users typically have a local repository with version history available, in addition to their working copies.
Concurrency model describes how changes to the working copy are managed to prevent simultaneous edits from causing nonsensical data in the repository. In a lock model, changes are disallowed until the user requests and receives an exclusive lock on the file from the master repository. In a merge model, users may freely edit files, but are informed of possible conflicts upon checking their changes into the repository, whereupon the version control system may merge changes on both sides, or let the user decide when conflicts arise. Distributed version control systems usually use a merge concurrency model.
Technical information
Table explanation
Software: The name of the application that is described.
Programming language: The coding language in which the application is being developed
Storage Method: Describes the form in which files are stored in the repository. A snapshot indicates that a committed file(s) is stored in its entirety—usually compressed. A changeset, in this context, indicates that a committed file(s) is stored in the form of a difference between either the previous version or the next.
Scope of change: Describes whether changes are recorded for individual files or for entire directory trees.
Revision IDs: are used internally to identify specific versions of files in the repository. Systems may use pseudorandom identifiers, content hashes of revisions, or filenames with sequential version numbers (namespace). With Integrated Difference, revisions are based on the Changesets themselves, which can describe changes to more than one file.
Network protocols: lists the protocols used for synchronization of changes.
Source code size: Gives the size of the source code in megabytes.
Features
Table explanation
Software: The name of the application that is described.
Atomic commits: refers to a guarantee that all changes are made, or that no change at all will be made.
File renames: describes whether a system allows files to be renamed while retaining their version history.
Merge file renames: describes whether a system can merge changes made to a file on one branch into the same file that has been renamed on another branch (or vice versa). If the same file has been renamed on both branches then there is a rename conflict that the user must resolve.
Symbolic links: describes whether a system allows revision control of symbolic links as with regular files. Versioning symbolic links is considered by some people a feature and some people a security breach (e.g., a symbolic link to /etc/passwd). Symbolic links are only supported on select platforms, depending on the software.
Pre-/post-event hooks: indicates the capability to trigger commands before or after an action, such as a commit, takes place.
Signed revisions: refers to integrated digital signing of revisions, in a format such as OpenPGP.
Merge tracking: describes whether a system remembers what changes have been merged between which branches and only merges the changes that are missing when merging one branch into another.
End of line conversions: describes whether a system can adapt the end of line characters for text files such that they match the end of line style for the operating system under which it is used. The granularity of control varies. Subversion, for example, can be configured to handle EOLs differently according to the file type, whereas Perforce converts all text files according to a single, per-client setting.
Tags: indicates if meaningful names can be given to specific revisions, regardless of whether these names are called tags or labels.
International support: indicates if the software has support for multiple language environments and operating system
Unicode filename support: indicates if the software has support for interoperations under file systems using different character encodings.
Supports large repos: Can the system handle repositories of around a gigabyte or larger effectively?
Advanced features
Table explanation
keyword expansion: supports automatic expansion of keywords such as file revision number.
interactive commits: interactive commits allow the user to cherrypick common lines of code used to anchor files (patch-hunks) that become part of a commit (leaving unselected changes as changes in the working copy), instead of having only a file-level granularity.
external references: embedding of foreign repositories in the source tree
partial checkout/clone: ability to check out or clone only a specified subdirectory from a repository.
permissions: tracks file permission bits in the revision history.
timestamp preservation: overwrites the last modified filesystem attribute with the commit time upon checkout.
custom automatic merge tool: automatic merging can be attempted by any tool of the user's choice (hopefully configurable on a per-file basis)
supported formats: either read/write support or read-only (conversion, potentially repeated)
shared build cache of derived objects: the ability to automatically substitute (wink-in) derived-objects that were built by other confederated clients that share exactly the same dependencies instead of rebuilding them locally
Basic commands
Table explanation
Commands in green rectangles that are not surrounded by [square brackets] are at an interactive command-line prompt. Text in [square brackets] is an explanation of where to find equivalent functionality.
repository init: Create a new empty repository (i.e., version control database)
clone: Create an identical instance of a repository (in a safe transaction)
pull: Download revisions from a remote repository to a local repository
push: Upload revisions from a local repository to a remote repository
local branches: Create a local branch that does not exist in the original remote repository
checkout: Create a local working copy from a (remote) repository
update: Update the files in a working copy with the latest version from a repository
lock: Lock files in a repository from being changed by other users
add: Mark specified files to be added to repository at next commit
remove: Mark specified files to be removed at next commit (note: keeps cohesive revision history of before and at the remove.)
move: Mark specified files to be moved to a new location at next commit
copy: Mark specified files to be copied at next commit
merge: Apply the differences between two sources to a working copy path
commit: Record changes in the repository
revert: Restore working copy file from repository
generate bundle file: Create a file that contains a compressed set of changes to a given repository
rebase: Forward-port local commits to the updated upstream head
Advanced commands
Table explanation
Commands in green rectangles that are not surrounded by [square brackets] are at an interactive command-line prompt. Text in [square brackets] is an explanation of where to find equivalent functionality.
command aliases: create custom aliases for specific commands or combination thereof
lock/unlock: exclusively lock a file to prevent others from editing it
shelve/unshelve: temporarily set aside part or all of the changes in the working directory
rollback: remove a patch/revision from history
cherry-picking: move only some revisions from a branch to another one (instead of merging the branches)
bisect: binary search of source history for a change that introduced or fixed a regression
incoming/outgoing: query the differences between the local repository and a remote one (the patches that would be fetched/sent on a pull/push)
grep: search repository for lines matching a pattern
record: include only some changes to a file in a commit and not others
User interfaces
Table explanation
Software: The name of the application that is described.
Web Interface: Describes whether the software application contains a web interface. A web interface could allow the software to post diagnostics data to a website, or could even allow remote control of the software application.
GUIs: A GUI is a graphical user interface. If a software product features a GUI its functionality can be accessed through application windows as opposed to accessing functionality based upon typing commands at the command prompt such as a DOS interface.
Plug-ins: functionality is available through an Integrated Development Environment. Minimum functionality should be to list the revision state of a file and check in/check out files.
History and adoption
Table explanation
Software: The name of the application that is described.
History: briefly describes the software's origins and development.
Notable users: is a list of well known projects using the software as their primary revision control system, excluding the software itself, followed by a link to a full list if available.
See also
List of version-control software
Comparison of source-code-hosting facilities
Notes
References
Version control software |
18438526 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes%20Remote | ITunes Remote | iTunes Remote (also known simply as Remote) is a software application developed by Apple Inc. for iOS devices that allows for remote control of Apple TV or iTunes library in an area with Wi-Fi connectivity using the proprietary Digital Audio Control Protocol (DACP). It is currently available as a free download from the App Store for iOS devices such as iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, and Apple Watch.
History
On July 10, 2008, Apple released iTunes Remote app on the App Store. That same day, Apple released the Apple TV 2.1 software update that added recognition for the iPhone and iPod Touch as remote control devices. Later revisions added support for the iPad, and introduced support for new features as they were added to iTunes. The remote application was intended as a software alternative to the Apple Remote, allowing users to control their media collection via their iOS device.
Patent filing
Unofficial software modifications for including this functionality in both iOS and the Apple TV OS had existed previously, but rumors of Apple giving remote control capabilities between iOS and Apple TV had existed since early 2007, when the U.S. Patent Office published a patent filed by Apple on September 11, 2006 that depicted a "media-player with remote control capabilities" alongside a "multi-media center for computing systems".
Features
History
The initial release, version 1.0, allowed users to control the basic functions of their media library, limited to much the same functions of the physical Apple Remote Later revisions of version 1 added the ability to create and edit playlists in iTunes, search the user's media library, and generate Genius playlists. These features were further improved with the release of version 2.0, which added support for the iPad and the then new retina display. Features added in version 2.0 included support for Shared Libraries, and control of AirPlay hardware. Gestures were also supported, allowing users to control their Apple TVs with swipes similar to the navigation through Cover Flow.
Subsequent updates to version 2 improved stability of the application, and added AirPlay video support to Apple TVs. Version 2.1 also allowed users to control the internet radio feature of iTunes, and play rented movies or TV shows. Other additions to later releases of version 2 included support for the new iTunes Match feature, and support for iOS 5 and 6. Version 2 also allowed guests connected to a wireless network to request songs to be played using iTunes DJ. The interface was designed to emulate the iOS Music app when used on an iPhone or iPod Touch, whilst iPad users controlled their library using an interface based on the desktop iTunes application.
Current version
With the release of iTunes 11, Apple updated the iTunes Remote application. The new version, which is compatible with most newer iPhone hardware, included a new user interface; emulating the iOS 6 Music application on iPhone and iPod Touch, and iTunes 11's new grid view on iPad. In accordance with the removal of iTunes DJ from the desktop software, the application no longer provides the function for guest to request songs. New features include the ability to see and edit the Up Next list, and an improved dynamic search function that searches content as the user types. This version removes support for users running iOS 4, instead requiring a minimum of iOS 5.0. Users can play, pause, or skip back and forth through their collection. They can also create or edit playlists, generate Genius results, and control the output volume of iTunes or the selected AirPlay device. When multiple iTunes libraries or Apple TVs are found one network, users can select which one they wish to control, and swap between them. Currently, no more than one library at a time can be manually added; this effectively forces any user with two or more devices to enable Home Sharing if they wish to use a single remote for all those devices.
tvOS 9.1 (released on December 9, 2015), in addition to the 4.2.3 Remote app update for iOS and WatchOS, returned basic app functionality to the 4th generation Apple TV; text input, navigation, and control.
See also
Apple TV
iTunes
References
External links
IOS software
Remote
Remote control |
387788 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BEA%20Systems | BEA Systems | BEA Systems, Inc. was a company that specialized in enterprise infrastructure software products which was wholly acquired by Oracle Corporation on April 29, 2008.
History
BEA began as a software company, founded in 1995 and headquartered in San Jose, California. It grew to have 78 offices worldwide at the time of its acquisition by Oracle.
The company's name is an initialism of the first names of the company's three founders: Bill Coleman, Ed Scott, and Alfred Chuang. All were former employees of Sun Microsystems, and launched the business in 1995 by acquiring Information Management and Independence Technologies. These firms were the largest resellers of Tuxedo, a distributed transaction management system sold by Novell. BEA soon acquired the Tuxedo product itself, and went on to acquire other middleware companies and products.
In 1998, BEA acquired the San Francisco start-up WebLogic, which had built the first standards-based Java application server. WebLogic's application server became the impetus for the Sun Microsystems' J2EE specification and formed the basis of BEA's WebLogic application server sold today.
They were a sponsor for Team Rahal (now Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing) from 2002 to 2008, which included Buddy Rice's 2004 Indianapolis 500 win and Vitor Meira's 2005 Indianapolis 500 runner-up finish.
In 2005, BEA launched a new brand identity with the slogan "Think Liquid". This was considered cutting Edge marketing. BEA also announced a new product line called AquaLogic, which is an infrastructure software family for service-oriented architecture (SOA). The same year, it made its entrance into telecommunications infrastructure through the acquisition of Incomit, a Swedish telecommunications software provider. In late 2005, the company announced the acquisitions of Compoze Software, a provider of collaboration software, M7, an Eclipse-based tools company, and SolarMetric, editors of the Kodo persistence engine.
The acquisitions continued in 2006 with Plumtree Software, an enterprise portal company; Fuego, a business process management (BPM) software company; and Flashline, a metadata repository company. These acquisitions have since become parts of the AquaLogic SOA product stack.
On October 12, 2007, Oracle announced their intent to buy BEA Systems for $6.7 billion. As a result of the offer, BEA's stock price rose over five dollars upon the opening of trading for the day. BEA turned the offer down the same day, saying that the company is "worth substantially more". On January 16, 2008, Oracle signed a definite agreement to buy BEA for $8.5 billion. It is believed that Carl Icahn, one of the company's most prominent shareholders, was the main reason that the deal happened.
On April 29, 2008, Oracle completed its acquisition of BEA.
Products
BEA had three major product lines:
Tuxedo, now Oracle Tuxedo - transaction-oriented middleware platform
BEA WebLogic, now Oracle WebLogic Server - Java EE enterprise infrastructure platform
AquaLogic, now Oracle Service Bus - Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) platform
BEA started out with the Tuxedo software product, but the products they are best known for in the computer industry are the WebLogic product family, which consists of WebLogic Server, WebLogic Workshop, WebLogic Portal, WebLogic Integration and JRockit. In 2005, BEA launched a new product family called AquaLogic for service-oriented architecture deployment. They have also entered the telecommunications field with their WebLogic Communications Platform, which includes WebLogic SIP Server and WebLogic Network Gatekeeper, technologies obtained through the acquisition of Swedish telecommunications software company Incomit. BEA also has a product offering for the RFID market called the BEA WebLogic RFID Product Family.
AquaLogic
BEA Systems produced the AquaLogic software suite for managing service-oriented architecture (SOA). It includes following products:
BEA AquaLogic BPM suite, a set of business process management (BPM) tools. It combines workflow and process technology with enterprise application integration functionality. The suite consists of tools aimed for line of business personnel for creating business process models (AquaLogic BPM Designer), as well as tools for IT personnel to create actual business process applications directly from said models (AquaLogic BPM Studio). The completed business process applications are deployed on a production server (AquaLogic BPM Enterprise Server), from which they integrate to backend applications and generate portal views for human interactions in the process. It also comes with a customizable tools for live business activity monitoring (BAM).
BEA AquaLogic User Interaction, a set of tools used to create portals, collaborative communities composite applications and other applications that use service architecture. These technologies work cross-platform. This technology came to BEA Systems from its acquisition of Plumtree Software.
BEA AquaLogic Enterprise Repository, a vital element of effective Service-oriented architecture life cycle governance, manages the metadata for any type of software asset, from business processes and web services to patterns, frameworks, applications, and components. It maps the relationships and interdependencies that connect these assets to improve impact analysis, promote and systematize code reuse, and measure the impact on the bottom line.
BEA AquaLogic Service Bus, an enterprise service bus (ESB) with operational service-management that allows the interaction between services, routing relationships, transformations, and policies.
BEA AquaLogic Service Registry, a UDDI v3 registry with an embedded governance framework. It provides a repository where services can be registered and reused for developing or modifying applications.
BEA AquaLogic Data Services Platform (previously known as Liquid Data), providing tools for creating and managing different data services. It uses the XQuery language for data composition and transformation for a variety of data sources, including relational databases and web services.
BEA AquaLogic Enterprise Security, a security infrastructure application for distributed authentication, fine-grained entitlements and other security services. Features include allowing users to define access rules for applications without modifying the software itself, including JSP pages, EJBs and portlets.
BEA AquaLogic Commerce Services (often shortened as ALCS), an e-Commerce solution based on Elastic Path e-Commerce solution integrated with WebLogic application server. Discontinued on version 6.0 in year 2009 (after BEA acquisition by Oracle).
See also
List of acquisitions by Oracle
References
External links
BEA Systems - World Website
Companies based in San Jose, California
Software companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area
CRM software companies
Software companies established in 1995
Oracle acquisitions
2008 mergers and acquisitions
1997 initial public offerings
Software companies of the United States |
16423669 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1873%20Agenor | 1873 Agenor | 1873 Agenor (prov. designation: ) is a dark Jupiter trojan from the Trojan camp, approximately in diameter. It was discovered during the Palomar–Leiden Trojan survey in 1971, and later named after Agenor from Greek mythology. The dark Jovian asteroid belongs to the 100 largest Jupiter trojans and has a rotation period of 20.60 hours.
Discovery
Agenor was discovered on 25 March 1971, by Dutch astronomer couple Ingrid and Cornelis van Houten at Leiden, on photographic plates taken by Dutch–American astronomer Tom Gehrels at Palomar Observatory in the Palomar Mountain Range, southeast of Los Angeles.
Palomar–Leiden survey
The discovery was made in a survey of faint Trojans, one night after the discovery of 1870 Glaukos. The trio of Dutch and Dutch–American astronomers also collaborated on the productive Palomar–Leiden survey in the 1960s, using the same procedure as for this (smaller) survey: Tom Gehrels used Palomar's Samuel Oschin telescope (also known as the 48-inch Schmidt Telescope), and shipped the photographic plates to Cornelis and Ingrid van Houten at Leiden Observatory where astrometry was carried out.
Orbit and classification
Agenor is a dark Jovian asteroid in a 1:1 orbital resonance with Jupiter. It is located in the trailering Trojan camp at the Gas Giant's Lagrangian point, 60° behind its orbit . It is also a non-family asteroid of the Jovian background population. It orbits the Sun at a distance of 4.7–5.7 AU once every 11 years and 12 months (4,370 days; semi-major axis of 5.23 AU). Its orbit has an eccentricity of 0.09 and an inclination of 22° with respect to the ecliptic. The body's observation arc begins with its official discovery observation at Palomar in March 1971.
Physical characteristics
Agenor is an assumed, carbonaceous C-type asteroid.
Rotation period
In February 1994, photometric observations with the ESO 1-metre telescope by astronomer Stefano Mottola and Anders Erikson at La Silla Observatory in Chile, were used to build a rotational lightcurve showing a rotation period of hours with a brightness variation of in magnitude ().
Diameter and albedo
According to the surveys carried out by the Japanese Akari satellite and the NEOWISE mission of NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, Agenor measures between 50.80 and 54.38 kilometers in diameter and its surface has an albedo between 0.038 and 0.062. The Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link derives an albedo of 0.0506 and a diameter of 53.89 kilometers based on an absolute magnitude of 10.2.
Naming
This minor planet was named for Agenor, who was able to inflict a wound on the Greek warrior Achilles. The Olympian deity Apollo assumed Agenor's form to distract Achilles while the Trojans forces were retreating. The minor planets 588 Achilles and 1862 Apollo are named after these two figures from Greek mythology. The body's name was suggested by Brian G. Marsden, the then director of the MPC. The official was published by the Minor Planet Center on 1 June 1975 ().
References
External links
Asteroid Lightcurve Database (LCDB), query form (info )
Dictionary of Minor Planet Names, Google books
Asteroid 1873 Agenor at the Small Bodies Data Ferret
001873
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
19710325 |
64539683 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USC%20Trojans%20men%27s%20basketball%20statistical%20leaders | USC Trojans men's basketball statistical leaders | The USC Trojans men's basketball statistical leaders are individual statistical leaders of the USC Trojans men's basketball program in various categories, including points, assists, blocks, rebounds, and steals. Within those areas, the lists identify single-game, single-season, and career leaders. The Trojans represent the University of Southern California in the NCAA's Pac-12 Conference.
USC began competing in intercollegiate basketball in 1906. However, the school's record book does not generally list records from before the 1950s, as records from before this period are often incomplete and inconsistent. Since scoring was much lower in this era, and teams played much fewer games during a typical season, it is likely that few or no players from this era would appear on these lists anyway.
The NCAA did not officially record assists as a stat until the 1983–84 season, and blocks and steals until the 1985–86 season, but USC's record books includes players in these stats before these seasons. These lists are updated through the end of the 2020–21 season.
Scoring
Rebounds
Assists
Steals
Blocks
References
Lists of college basketball statistical leaders by team
Statistical |
23412432 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional%20safety | Functional safety | Functional safety is the part of the overall safety of a system or piece of equipment that depends on automatic protection operating correctly in response to its inputs or failure in a predictable manner (fail-safe). The automatic protection system should be designed to properly handle likely human errors, systematic errors, hardware failures and operational/environmental stress.
Objective
The objective of functional safety is freedom from unacceptable risk of physical injury or of damage to the health of people either directly or indirectly (through damage to property or to the environment) by the proper implementation of one or more automatic protection functions (often called safety functions). A safety system (often called a safety-related system) consists of one or more safety functions.
Functional safety is intrinsically end-to-end in scope in that it has to treat the function of a component or subsystem as part of the function of the entire automatic protection function of any system. Thus, although functional safety standards focus on electrical, electronic, and programmable systems (E/E/PS), the end-to-end scope means that in practice, functional safety methods must extend to the non-E/E/PS parts of the system that the E/E/PS actuators, valves, motor controls or monitors.
Achieving functional safety
Functional safety is achieved when every specified safety function is carried out and the level of performance required of each safety function is met. This is normally achieved by a process that includes the following steps as a minimum:
Identifying what the required safety functions are. This means the hazards and safety functions have to be known. A process of function reviews, formal HAZIDs, HAZOPs and accident reviews are applied to identify these.
Assessment of the risk-reduction required by the safety function, which will involve a safety integrity level (SIL) or performance level or other quantification assessment. A SIL (or PL, AgPL, ASIL) applies to an end-to-end safety function of the safety-related system, not just to a component or a part of the system.
Ensuring the safety function performs to the design intent, including under conditions of incorrect operator input and failure modes. This will involve having the design and lifecycle managed by qualified and competent engineers carrying out processes to a recognised functional safety standard. In Europe, that standard is IEC EN 61508, or one of the industry specific standards derived from IEC EN 61508, or for simple systems some other standard like ISO 13849.
Verification that the system meets the assigned SIL, ASIL, PL or agPL by determining the probability of dangerous failure, checking minimum levels of redundancy, and reviewing systematic capability (SC). These three metrics have been called "the three barriers". Failure modes of a device are typically determined by failure mode and effects analysis of the system (FMEA). Failure probabilities for each failure mode are typically determined using failure mode, effects, and diagnostic analysis FMEDA.
Conduct functional safety audits to examine and assess the evidence that the appropriate safety lifecycle management techniques were applied consistently and thoroughly in the relevant lifecycle stages of product.
Neither safety nor functional safety can be determined without considering the system as a whole and the environment with which it interacts. Functional safety is inherently end-to-end in scope. Modern systems often have software intensively commanding and controlling safety-critical functions. Therefore, software functionality and correct software behavior must be part of the Functional safety engineering effort to ensure acceptable safety risk at the system level.
Certifying functional safety
Any claim of functional safety for a component, subsystem or system should be independently certified to one of the recognized functional safety standards. A certified product can then be claimed to be Functionally Safe to a particular Safety Integrity Level or a Performance Level in a specific range of applications: the certificate and the assessment report is provided to the customers describing the scope and limits of performance
Certification bodies
Functional safety is a technically challenging field. Certifications should be done by independent organizations with experience and strong technical depth (electronics, programmable electronics, mechanical, and probabilistic analysis). Functional safety certification is performed by accredited Certification Bodies (CB). Accreditation is awarded to a CB organization by an Accreditation Body (AB). In most countries there is one AB. In the United States, the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) is the AB for functional safety accreditation. In the UK, the United Kingdom Accreditation Service (UKAS) provides functional safety accreditation. ABs are members of the International Accreditation Forum (IAF) for work in management systems, products, services, and personnel accreditation or the International Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation (ILAC) for laboratory testing accreditation. A Multilateral Recognition Arrangement (MLA) between ABs will ensure global recognition of accredited CBs.
IEC 61508 functional safety certification programs have been established by several global Certification Bodies. Each has defined their own scheme based upon IEC 61508 and other functional safety standards. The scheme lists the referenced standards and specifies procedures which describes their test methods, surveillance audit policy, public documentation policies, and other specific aspects of their program. Functional safety certification programs for IEC 61508 standards are being offered globally by several recognized CBs including Intertek, SGS, TÜV Rheinland, TÜV SÜD and UL.
An important element of functional safety certification is on-going surveillance by the certification agency. Most CB organizations have included surveillance audits in their scheme. The follow-up surveillance ensures that the product, sub-system, or system is still being manufactured in accordance with what was originally certified for functional safety. Follow-up surveillance may occur at various frequencies depending on the certification body, but will typically look at the product's field failure history, hardware design changes, software changes, as well as the manufacturer's ongoing compliance of functional safety management systems.
Military aerospace
For military aerospace and defense systems MIL-STD-882E addresses functional hazard analyses (FHA) and determining which functions implemented in hardware and software are safety significant. The Functional safety focus is on ensuring safety critical functions and functional threads in the system, subsystem and software are analyzed and verified for correct behavior per safety requirements, including functional failure conditions and faults and appropriate mitigation in the design. These system safety principles underpinning functional safety were developed in the military, nuclear and aerospace industries, and then taken up by rail transport, process and control industries developing sector specific standards. Functional safety standards are applied across all industry sectors dealing with safety critical requirements and are especially applicable anytime software commands, controls or monitors a safety-critical function. Thousands of products and processes meet the standards based on IEC 61508: from bathroom showers, automotive safety products, medical devices, sensors, actuators, diving equipment, Process Controllers and their integration to ships, aircraft and major plants.
Aviation
The US FAA have similar functional safety certification processes, in the form of US RTCA DO-178C for software and DO-254 for complex electronic hardware, which is applied throughout the aerospace industry. Functional Safety and design assurance on civil/commercial transport aircraft is documented in SAE ARP4754A as Functional Design Assurance Levels (FDALS). The system FDALs drive the depth of engineering safety analysis. The level of rigor (LOR) or safety tasks performed to ensure acceptable risk are dependent upon the identification of specific functional failure condition and hazard severity relating to the safety-critical functions (SCF). In many cases functional behavior in embedded software is thoroughly analyzed and tested to ensure the system functions as intended under credible fault and failure conditions. Functional safety is becoming the normal focused approach on complex software intensive systems and highly integrated systems with safety consequences. The traditional software safety tasks and model based functional safety tasks are performed to provide objective safety evidence that the system functionality and safety features perform as intended in normal and off nominal failures. The entry point of functional safety begins early in the process by performing Functional Hazard Analyses (FHA)to identify hazards and risks and to influence the safety design requirements and functional allocation and decomposition to mitigate hazards. The behavior of the software and SCFs at the system level is a vital part of any functional safety effort. Analyses and implementation results are documented in Functional Hazard Assessments (FHA) or System Safety Assessments or Safety Cases. Model Based Functional Safety processes are often used and required on highly integrated and complex software intensive systems to understand all of the many interactions and predicted behavior and to help in the safety verification and certification process
Safety Review Boards
At Boeing, a Safety Review Board (SRB) is responsible for deciding only if an issue is or is not a safety issue; a SRB brings together multiple company subject matter experts (SMEs) in many disciplines. The most knowledgeable SME presents the issue, assisted and guided by the Aviation Safety organization. The safety decision is taken as a vote. Any vote for "safety" results in a board decision of "safety".
Space
In the US, NASA developed an infrastructure for safety critical systems adopted widely by industry, both in North America and elsewhere, with a standard, supported by guidelines. The NASA standard and guidelines are built on ISO 12207, which is a software practice standard rather than a safety critical standard, hence the extensive nature of the documentation NASA has been obliged to add, compared to using a purpose designed standard such as IEC EN 61508. A certification process for systems developed in accord with the NASA guidelines exists.
Medical
Modern E/E/PS medical devices are being certified to 510(k) on the basis of the industry sector specific IEC EN 62304 standard, based on IEC EN 61508 concepts.
Automotive
The automotive industry has developed the ISO 26262 Road Vehicles Functional Safety Standard based on IEC 61508. The certification of those systems ensures the compliance with the relevant regulations and helps to protect the public. The ATEX Directive has also adopted a functional safety standard, it is BS EN 50495:2010 'Safety devices required for the safe functioning of equipment with respect to explosion risks' covers safety related devices such as purge controllers and Ex e motor circuit breakers. It is applied by Notified Bodies under the ATEX Directive. The standard ISO 26262 particularly addresses the automotive development cycle. It is a multi-part standard defining requirements and providing guidelines for achieving functional safety in E/E systems installed in series production passenger cars. The standard ISO 26262 is considered a best practice framework for achieving automotive functional safety. (See also main article: ISO 26262). The compliance process usually takes time as employees need to be trained in order to develop the expected competencies.
Contemporary functional safety standards
The primary functional safety standards in current use are listed below:
IEC EN 61508 Parts 1 to 7 is a core functional safety standard, applied widely to all types of safety critical E/E/PS and to systems with a safety function incorporating E/E/PS. (Safety Integrity Level - SIL)
UK Defence Standard 00-56 Issue 2
US RTCA DO-178C North American Avionics Software
US RTCA DO-254 North American Avionics Hardware
EUROCAE ED-12B European Airborne Flight Safety Systems
IEC 62304 - Medical Device Software
IEC 61513, Nuclear power plants – Instrumentation and control for systems important to safety – General requirements for systems, based on EN 61508
IEC 61511-1, Functional safety – Safety instrumented systems for the process industry sector – Part 1: Framework, definitions, system, hardware and software requirements, based on EN 61508
IEC 61511-2, Functional safety – Safety instrumented systems for the process industry sector – Part 2: Guidelines for the application of IEC 61511-1, based on EN 61508
IEC 61511-3, Functional safety – Safety instrumented systems for the process industry sector – Part 3: Guidance for the determination of the required safety integrity levels, based on EN 61508
IEC 62061, Safety of machinery - Functional safety of safety-related electrical, electronic and programmable electronic control systems, based on EN 61508
ISO 13849-1, -2 Safety of machinery - Safety-related parts of control systems. Non-technology dependent standard for control system safety of machinery. (Performance Levels - PL)
EN 50126, Railway Industry Specific - RAMS review of Operations, System and Maintenance conditions for project equipment
EN 50128, Railway Industry Specific - Software (Communications, Signaling & Processing systems) safety review
EN 50129, Railway Industry Specific - System Safety in Electronic Systems
EN 50495, Safety devices required for the safe functioning of equipment with respect to explosion risks
NASA Safety Critical Guidelines
ISO 19014 - Earth Moving Machinery -- Functional Safety
ISO 25119 - Tractors and Machinery for Agriculture and Forestry -- Safety-Related Parts of Control Systems
ISO 26262 - Road Vehicles Functional Safety
The standard ISO 26262 particularly addresses the automotive development cycle. It is a multi-part standard defining requirements and providing guidelines for achieving functional safety in E/E systems installed in series production passenger cars. The standard ISO 26262 is considered a best practice framework for achieving automotive functional safety.
See also
IEC 61508
ALARP
Hazard and Operability Study
HAZID
Safety Integrity Level
Spurious Trip Level
FMEA
FMEDA
References
External links
IEC Functional safety zone
61508.org The 61508 Association
Safety
Risk management
nl:Safety Integrity Level
sk:Safety Integrity Level |
46177995 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LibrePlanet | LibrePlanet | LibrePlanet (literally, "Free Planet") is a community project created and supported by the Free Software Foundation. Its objective is the promotion of free software around the world by bringing every year an international conference to local communities and organizations.
History
The project was born in 2006, at a gathering of members associated with the Foundation and the will to organize into geographical groups. The wiki serves as the primary portal for people who want to become involved in free software activism in local, grassroots modes of cooperation.
LibrePlanet conference
The conference is organized annually by the Free Software Foundation in or around Boston, Massachusetts and staffed by a mixture of foundation staff and community volunteers. The conference replaces and incorporates the FSF Annual Members Meeting (AMM) which ran around the same time each year.
Each conference has its own theme and a website. The event typically includes a speech from FSF president, Richard Stallman and FSF executive director John Sullivan, the Free Software awards well as members of the wider free software community and the Free Software awards ceremony
Notable events
Edward Snowden spoke at the convention in 2016.
LibrePlanet 2020 13-15 March: In-person components were canceled due to the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak. Instead a virtual conference and livestream was held.
Richard Stallman announced he would be rejoining the FSF board of directors at the 2021 conference.
See also
Libre Software Meeting
Linux-libre
References
External links
LibrePlanet official website and wiki
International conferences
Free software culture and documents
Computer-related events
Free Software Foundation |
45716860 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensewhere | Sensewhere | sensewhere Ltd. is a privately held software company based in Edinburgh, Scotland, that develops patented indoor positioning technology for retailers, advertisers and app publishers. The company delivers location information indoors or in tight urban areas where there is no or inaccurate GPS signal using automatic crowdsourcing on mobile phones[2]. It was founded as a spun-out company of the University of Edinburgh in 2010.
The system created by sensewhere relies on trilateration of radiofrequency signals between mobile devices and Wireless Access Points that are inherently present in most large indoor venues around the world. The solution is predominantly advertised as a monetisation tool for games, apps, social networks, mapping, search and enterprises.
In November 2014, the company released its Software Development Kit that provides low power positioning (latitude, longitude and altitude) using a combination of Global Positioning System GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and sensor data. The sensor technology uses whatever sensors available on a smart mobile device, such as accelerometers, gyros, and barometers and does not rely on additional hardware installation or manual surveying[3].
SDK
In November 2014, the company released its latest sensewhere Software Development Kit that provides low power positioning (latitude, longitude and altitude) using a combination of Global Positioning System GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and sensor data. The sensor technology uses whatever sensors available on a smart mobile device, such as accelerometers, gyros, and barometers and does not rely on additional hardware installation or manual surveying[3].
In August 2015 sensewhere signed a partnership contract with China’s largest technology company, Tencent and received a cash injection of an unspecified amount to further invest in its software. The solution has since been deployed throughout China generating a vast location database of all major indoor venues across China.
In September 2016 sensewhere expanded its collaboration with Micello by integrating Micello's newly launched Indoor Context API into its applications including adwhere, a location based advertising solution.
In May 2017 the company launched a location based marketing tool allowing retailers to advertise their products based on information about customers’ physical store visits.
Partnerships
In August 2015 sensewhere signed a partnership contract with China’s largest technology company, Tencent and received a cash injection of an unspecified amount to further invest in its software. The solution has since been deployed throughout China generating a vast location database of all major indoor venues across China.
In June 2016 sensewhere teamed up with TomTom to enable the two companies to conquer GPS black spots and bring location based services indoors.
References
External links
Software companies established in 2009
Software companies of Scotland
Companies based in Edinburgh
Software companies of the United Kingdom
University of Edinburgh
2009 establishments in Scotland |
13213727 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tillinghast | Tillinghast | Tillinghast was the world's largest actuarial practice focused on insurance and a unit of Towers Perrin specializing in risk management and actuarial consulting. The Tillinghast business of Towers Perrin provided consulting and software solutions to insurance and financial services companies and advised other organizations on risk financing and self-insurance.
In January 2010, Towers Perrin merged with Watson Wyatt Worldwide to form Towers Watson where Tillinghast became part of the risk management group.
Brief history
In 1986, Atlanta-based Tillinghast, Nelson & Warren Inc., then the nation's largest independent risk management consultant, merged with Towers, Perrin, Forster & Crosby, Inc (TPF & C). The company was restructured assigning Tillinghast's benefits practice to TPF & C and TPF & C's risk management practice to Tillinghast. The following year in 1987, the firm was rebranded under the name Towers Perrin. Today, Tillinghast is integrated into the company Willis Towers Watson.
Products and services
Mergers, acquisitions, and restructuring
Tillinghast advises clients on merger and acquisition transactions by planning and developing acquisition strategy, providing actuarial appraisals, and forecasting changes to shareholder value and reactions from rating agencies
Risk management services
Tillinghast provides risk management services including risk management process assessment and benchmarking, insurance marketing assistance and vendor selection, claims management effectiveness, risk management organizational effectiveness, risk management information system (RMIS) needs assessments, system selection and implementation support, workers' compensation cost management/integrated disability management, and enterprise risk management (ERM). Tillinghast's risk management services clients include 71 of the Fortune Global 500 companies.
Risk financing assistance
Tillinghast performs reviews on clients' risk financing programs to determine ideal coverage and present cost-efficient solutions, as well as assisting in implementing the programs. These services can be provided either as a one-time project or in an ongoing advisory capacity, on the entire risk financing programs, or on a single risk issue.
Captive insurance company consulting
Tillinghast offers specialized consulting to companies considering or operating captive insurance companies and other alternate risk vehicles including services such as feasibility studies, implementation assistance, and ongoing actuarial support and strategic planning. Tillinghast publishes a Captive Insurance Company Glossary and a monthly newsletter Captive Insurance Company Reports.
Actuarial analysis
Tillinghast is the leading global actuarial consulting firm and the largest consulting employer of qualified casualty actuaries. Actuarial consulting services include funding/pricing analysis, loss reserve and financial statement accruals, retention analysis, premium/cost-allocation models, product development, comparative cost benchmarking, and financial modeling.
Financial modeling software
RiskAgility: Tillinghast's new software framework for risk management built from the ground up using current Microsoft software to take advantage of the latest advances in technology.
MoSes: originally developed by Australia-based Classic Solutions which merged with Tillinghast in 2002, MoSes provides a single common platform for many financial models. MoSes features transparency in its calculations for ease of auditing.
TAS Tillinghast Actuarial Software: a software package layer over the MoSes platform for analysis and reporting of life and annuity insurance products
TAS P/C Tillinghast Actuarial Software: property and casualty-specific software package
Economic Scenario Generators: including real-world and market-consistent approaches for financial analysis
Client industries
Financial services companies
Life insurance companies
Property and casualty insurance companies
Hospitals and managed care organizations
Risk financing for all organizations
Notable awards
"Best Consultancy of the Year" by Reactions Magazine, 2007
"Top Consultancy Firm for 2005" by U.S. Insurer, 2005
"Consultancy of the Year" for Services to the Re/Insurance Industry by Reactions Magazine, 2005
"Consultancy of the Year" for Services to the Re/Insurance Industry by Reactions Magazine, 2004
Notes and references
External links
Tillinghast - Tillinghast home page
Actuarial firms |
36205658 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO%20Communications%20and%20Information%20Agency | NATO Communications and Information Agency | The NATO Communications and Information Agency (NCI Agency) is NATO's technology and cyber hub.
The Agency provides C4ISR (Command, Control, Communications, and Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance; refer to Command and control terminology) technology, including cyber and missile defence.
Organization
The NCI Agency, led by the General Manager, is headquartered in Brussels, Belgium. The Agency is the executive arm of the NATO Communication and Information Organisation (NCIO).
NCIO is managed by an Agency Supervisory Board (ASB) composed of representative from each NATO nation. The ASB oversees the work of the NCIO. After consulting with the NATO Secretary General, NCIO’s ASB appoints the General Manager of the Agency. All NATO nations are members of the NCIO.
The ASB, which reports to the North Atlantic Council (NAC), issues directives and makes general policy decisions to enable NCIO to carry out its work. Its decisions on fundamental issues such as policy, finance, organization and establishment require unanimous agreement by all member countries.
Evolution
At the Lisbon Summit in November 2010, NATO Heads of State and Government agreed to reform the 14 existing NATO Agencies, located in seven member states. In particular, Allies agreed to streamline the agencies into three major programmatic themes: procurement, support, and communications and information. The reform aims to enhance efficiency and effectiveness in the delivery of capabilities and services, to achieve greater synergy between similar functions and to increase transparency and accountability.
As part of the reform process, the NCI Agency was created on 1 July 2012 through the merger of the NATO C3 Organisation, NATO Communication and Information Systems Services Agency (NCSA), NATO Consultation, Command and Control Agency (NC3A), NATO Air Command and Control System Management Agency (NACMA), and NATO Headquarters Information and Communication Technology Service (ICTM).
Management
The NCI Agency is led by the General Manager, Kevin J. Scheid. In November, 2016, Mr Scheid was elected by the 28 Nations of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to serve as General Manager, NATO Communications and Information Agency, effective 1 July 2017.
Location
The NATO Communications and Information Agency's (NCI Agency) has 4 main campuses located in the European Union – Brussels and Mons in Belgium, The Hague in The Netherlands, and Oeiras in Portugal. The NCI Agency has over 30 locations in Europe, North America and South-East Asia.
Services
The NCI Agency's area of expertise and key projects range from missile defense to secure desktops:
Command and Control services
Common Operational Picture tools for the land, maritime and air domains
Medical information and coordination system
Education and Training
Support to Exercises and Operations
Operational analysis, defence planning
Air and Missile Defence Command and Control
Air Command and Control System to conduct air policing and protect NATO European airspace
Ballistic Missile Defence
NATO’s consultation and command networks
Core enterprise services for NATO entities and Nations
Federated Mission Networking for Forces
Modernization of NATO’s IT
Joint Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance
Airborne IP chat capability for the AWACS aircraft
Secure satellite communications for Alliance Ground Surveillance
iGeoSIT
Cyber security services
NATO’s cyber shield
NATO Computer Incident Response Capability
NATO Industry Cyber Partnership
NATO Rapid Reaction Team
Success at Locked Shields
NATO, led by the NATO Communications and Information (NCI) Agency, won the world’s largest live-fire cyber exercise, Locked Shields 2018 for the third consecutive year.
References
Information operations units and formations of NATO |
62779541 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DO-248 | DO-248 | DO-248C, Supporting Information for DO-178C and DO-278A, published by RTCA, Incorporated, is a collection of Frequently Asked Questions and Discussion Papers addressing applications of DO-178C and DO-278A in the safety assurance of software for aircraft and software for CNS/ATM systems, respectively. Like DO-178C and DO-278A, it is a joint RTCA undertaking with EUROCAE and the document is also published as ED-94C, Supporting Information for ED-12C and ED-109A. The publication does not provide any guidance additional to DO-178C or DO-278A; rather, it only provides clarification for the guidance established in those standards. The present revision is also expanded to include the "Rationale for DO-178C/DO-278A" section to document items that were considered when developing DO-178B and then DO-178C, DO-278A, DO-330, and the supplements (DO-331, DO-332, DO-333).
Corresponding with the releases of DO-178C and DO-278A, the present revision, DO-248C, is an update to the previous revision DO-248B, Report for Clarification of DO-178B "Software Considerations in Airborne Systems and Equipment Certification". While new FAQs and Discussion Papers have been added, most of the FAQs and Discussion Papers of DO-248C are carried over from DO-248B. Some of these items have been marked as deleted or updated as the subjects were addressed by the releases of DO-178C, DO-330, supplements, or other publications. An errata section is not included as the release of DO-178C addressed the errata of DO-178B and errata of DO-178C has yet to be published.
Initially an annual clarification report, DO-248B (2001) was preceded by DO-248A (2000) and DO-248 (1999).
Outline of contents
DO-248C contains the following:
84 frequently asked questions (some noted as either deleted or addressed by other publications)
21 discussion papers
Verification Tool Selection Considerations
The Relationship of DO-178B/ED-12B to the Code of Federal Regulations (CFRs) and Joint Aviation Requirements (JARs)
The Differences Between DO-178A and DO-178B Guidance for Meeting the Objective of Structural Coverage
Service History Use—Rationale for DO-178C
Application of Potential Alternative Methods Compliance for Previously Developed Software (PDS)
Transition Criteria
Definition of Commonly Used Verification Terms
Structural Coverage and Safety Objectives
Certification With Known Software Problems
Considerations Addressed When Deciding to Use Previously Developed Software (PDS)
Qualification of a Tool Using Service History
Object Code to Source Code Traceability Issues
Definitions of Statement Coverage, Decision Coverage, and Modified Condition/Decision Coverage (MC/DC)
Partitioning Aspects in DO-178C/DO-278A
Relationship Between Regression Testing and Hardware Changes
Cache Management
Usage of Floating-Point Arithmetic
Service Experience Rationale for DO-278A
Independence in DO-178C/DO-278A
Parameter Data Items and Adaptation Data Items
Clarification on Single Event Upset (SEU) as It Relates to Software
Rationale for DO-178C/DO-278A
References
RTCA standards |
1753169 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagle%27s%20algorithm | Nagle's algorithm | Nagle's algorithm is a means of improving the efficiency of TCP/IP networks by reducing the number of packets that need to be sent over the network. It was defined by John Nagle while working for Ford Aerospace. It was published in 1984 as a Request for Comments (RFC) with title Congestion Control in IP/TCP Internetworks in .
The RFC describes what he called the "small-packet problem", where an application repeatedly emits data in small chunks, frequently only 1 byte in size. Since TCP packets have a 40-byte header (20 bytes for TCP, 20 bytes for IPv4), this results in a 41-byte packet for 1 byte of useful information, a huge overhead. This situation often occurs in Telnet sessions, where most keypresses generate a single byte of data that is transmitted immediately. Worse, over slow links, many such packets can be in transit at the same time, potentially leading to congestion collapse.
Nagle's algorithm works by combining a number of small outgoing messages and sending them all at once. Specifically, as long as there is a sent packet for which the sender has received no acknowledgment, the sender should keep buffering its output until it has a full packet's worth of output, thus allowing output to be sent all at once.
Algorithm
The RFC defines the algorithm as
inhibit the sending of new TCP segments when new outgoing data arrives from the user if any previously transmitted data on the connection remains unacknowledged.
Where MSS is the maximum segment size, the largest segment that can be sent on this connection, and the window size is the currently acceptable window of unacknowledged data, this can be written in pseudocode as
if there is new data to send then
if the window size ≥ MSS and available data is ≥ MSS then
send complete MSS segment now
else
if there is unconfirmed data still in the pipe then
enqueue data in the buffer until an acknowledge is received
else
send data immediately
end if
end if
end if
Interaction with delayed ACK
This algorithm interacts badly with TCP delayed acknowledgments (delayed ACK), a feature introduced into TCP at roughly the same time in the early 1980s, but by a different group. With both algorithms enabled, applications that do two successive writes to a TCP connection, followed by a read that will not be fulfilled until after the data from the second write has reached the destination, experience a constant delay of up to 500 milliseconds, the "ACK delay". It is recommended to disable either, although traditionally it's easier to disable Nagle, since such a switch already exists for real-time applications.
A solution recommended by Nagle is to avoid the algorithm sending premature packets by buffering up application writes and then flushing the buffer:
The user-level solution is to avoid write–write–read sequences on sockets. Write–read–write–read is fine. Write–write–write is fine. But write–write–read is a killer. So, if you can, buffer up your little writes to TCP and send them all at once. Using the standard UNIX I/O package and flushing write before each read usually works.
Nagle considers delayed ACKs a "bad idea", since the application layer does not usually respond within the time window. For typical use cases, he recommends disabling "delayed ACK" instead of his algorithm, as "quick" ACKs do not incur as much overhead as many small packets do.
Disabling either Nagle or delayed ACK
TCP implementations usually provide applications with an interface to disable the Nagle algorithm. This is typically called the TCP_NODELAY option. On Microsoft Windows the TcpNoDelay registry switch decides the default. TCP_NODELAY is present since the TCP/IP stack in 4.2BSD of 1983, a stack with many descendents.
The interface for disabling delayed ACK is not consistent among systems. The flag is available on Linux since 2001 (2.4.4) and potentially on Windows, where the official interface is . Setting TcpAckFrequency to 1 in the Windows registry turns off delayed ACK by default.
Negative effect on larger writes
The Nagle algorithm applies to data writes of any size. If the data in a single write spans 2n packets, where there are 2n-1 full-sized TCP segments followed by a partial TCP segment, the original Nagle algorithm would withhold the last packet, waiting for either more data to send (to fill the packet), or the ACK for the previous packet (indicating that all the previous packets have left the network).
In any non-pipelined stop-and-wait request-response application protocol where request data can be larger than a packet, this can artificially impose a few hundred milliseconds latency between the requester and the responder. Originally this was not felt to be a problem, since any non-pipelined stop-and-wait protocol is probably not designed to achieve high performance in the first place, so a few hundred milliseconds extra delay should make little difference. A later refinement to Nagle’s algorithm, called Minshall’s Modification, solved this problem with stop-and-wait protocols that send one short message and then wait for an acknowledgement before sending the next, removing the incentive for them to disable Nagle’s algorithm (though such protocols will still be limited by their design to one message exchange per network round-trip time).
In general, since Nagle's algorithm is only a defense against careless applications, disabling Nagle’s algorithm will not benefit most carefully written applications that take proper care of buffering. Disabling Nagle’s algorithm will enable the application to have many small packets in flight on the network at once, instead of a smaller number of large packets, which may increase load on the network, and may or may not benefit the application performance.
Interactions with real-time systems
Applications that expect real-time responses and low latency can react poorly with Nagle's algorithm. Applications such as networked multiplayer video games or the movement of the mouse in a remotely controlled operating system, expect that actions are sent immediately, while the algorithm purposefully delays transmission, increasing bandwidth efficiency at the expense of latency. For this reason applications with low-bandwidth time-sensitive transmissions typically use TCP_NODELAY to bypass the Nagle-delayed ACK delay.
Another option is to use UDP instead.
Operating systems implementation
Most modern operating systems implement Nagle's algorithms. In AIX, Linux, and Windows it is enabled by default and can be disabled on a per-socket basis using the TCP_NODELAY option.
References
External links
Nagle delays in Nagle's Algorithm
Nagle's algorithm
TCP Performance problems caused by interaction between Nagle's Algorithm and Delayed ACK
Design issues - Sending small data segments over TCP with Winsock
Networking algorithms
Transmission Control Protocol |
33805846 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patient%20management%20software | Patient management software | Patient management software (PMS) is referred to as software that is regulated as a medical device. It is software that is used to acquire medical information from a medical device to be used in the treatment or diagnosis of a patient. It can also be software that is an adjunct to a medical device and directly contributes to the treatment of the patient by performing analysis, or providing treatment or diagnosis functionality that replaces the decision and judgment of a physician.
Clinical applications
Medical devices are classified and these classifications became somewhat less restrictive in December, 2010. Regulations provide rules for classifying medical devices into four increasing risk levels – Class I, Class II, Class III, and Class IV. Patient management software is classified as either Class I or Class II. Software that is intended to be used to view images, or other real time data, as an adjunct to the monitoring device itself, for the purpose of aiding in treatment or diagnosis of a patient, would be Class I medical devices. Medical device software that is an adjunct to another medical device and is involved in data manipulation, data analysis, data editing, image generation, determination of measurements, identification of a region of interest in an image, or identification (by an alarm or alert) of results from a monitor that are outside of an established range, is a Class II medical device if it: (1) provides the only means and opportunity to capture or acquire data from a medical device for aiding directly in diagnosis or treatment of a patient; or (2) replaces a diagnostic or treatment decision made by a physician.
Examples of patient management software are PACS, remote patient monitoring. Others include any medical device that is used to transmit data from a medical device or analyze data from a medical device such as blood pressure monitors and glucose monitors.
Controversies
Many in the health care industry have raised concerns over the quality and software development process of PMS. The development of PMS is often criticized as too focused on simply the software development process and not the product. Much of these concerns are rooted in safety issues
Computerized physician order entry, an example of PMS, highlights some of these safety concerns.
Other criticisms are aimed at the regulations in place. Some critics argue that regulations stifle innovation and that vendors will no longer have any incentive to create new products. Also, existing and future products will have to adhere to strict licensing procedures and this may affect the sustainability of these products.
Another concern is that the rules are disproportionately strict in comparison to the actual risk associated with a wide variety of eHealth systems and this may prevent companies from initiating the development of new products.
Canada
Regulation of patient management software applies to anyone importing, distributing or selling the software. Health Canada is responsible for regulating the sale, advertising and distribution of patient management software in Canada. Regulated software is classified based on risk increasing from Class I to Class II.
The type of license required depends on the classification of the software. An establishment license is required from a vendor or manufacturer of Class I PMS and a medical device license is required from a vendor or manufacturer of Class II PMS. ISO 13485 certification is required of manufacturers of Class II medical devices.
History
In August, 2009, Health Canada which is responsible for regulating the advertising, manufacturing and sale of medical devices in Canada issued a notice confirming that patient management software is a medical device and is subject to the Medical Devices Regulations and the Food and Drugs Act. The development of the regulation of patient management software as a medical device began three years earlier when a company called MedManager created a patient portal technology that was deemed a Class II medical device and subject to regulation by Health Canada. Developments had taken place thereafter, to indicate that medical device classification include patient management software. A notice was officially released by Health Canada in August, 2009 indicating that patient management software was indeed a medical device.
Therefore, organizations that import, sell or otherwise distribute Class I patient management software must have an establishment license and Class II patient management software must have a medical device licence. In order to obtain a medical device licence, manufacturers must hold a quality management system (QMS) certificate issued by an accredited registrar showing that the QMS is compliant with ISO 13485: 2003 Medical devices – Quality management systems – requirements for regulatory purposes. Organizations are also required to perform certain post-market responsibilities such as maintaining distribution and complaint handling records, mandatory problem reporting and recalls.
In December, 2010, a notice was released by Health Canada further clarifying the definition, classification and licensing requirements of software regulated as a medical device. For example, software used to transmit data from a medical device, or software that analyzes data from a medical device and makes diagnostic or treatment decisions normally made by a physician, would be considered software regulated as a medical device. A product that only stores and displays patient information is not a medical device. Examples of software that are not medical devices are middleware, EHR's including those that are custom built for use only within the organization, applications that perform administrative calculations and manipulations (such as determining time between appointments, or workflow management), the Wii Fit video game, personal BMI calculators and pedometer software used for fitness. The regulations apply to software that is distributed with or without compensation.
Notes
Health informatics
Regulation of medical devices
Medical software |
36260727 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetMiner | NetMiner | NetMiner is an application software for exploratory analysis and visualization of large network data based on SNA(Social Network Analysis). It can be used for general research and teaching in social networks. This tool allows researchers to explore their network data visually and interactively, helps them to detect underlying patterns and structures of the network.
It features data transformation, network analysis, statistics, visualization of network data, chart, and a programming language based on the Python script language. Also, it enables users to import unstructured text data(e.g. news, articles, tweets, etc.) and extract words and network from text data. In addition, NetMiner SNS Data Collector, an extension of NetMiner, can collect some social networking service(SNS) data with a few clicks.
It has been released in 2001 as a commercial analysis software specialized in social network analysis. There are various license not only for commercial use, but also for non-commercial academic use. The current version is 4 for Microsoft Windows (2000 or later version).
Release history
The first version of NetMiner was released on Dec 21, 2001. There have been four major updates from 2001.
NetMiner
Released on December 21, 2001.
Network analysis modules and network visualization modules were integrated to one package
User interface for data analysis and management was added
Generic data structure for multi-layer network was introduced
NetMiner 2
Released on April 9, 2003.
Modules for importing external data were introduced
Some measures and methods for network analyses and statistical analyses are added and improved
Some algorithms for visualization processes are added and improved
NetMiner 3
Released on May 15, 2007.
Data structure was improved for huge network analysis
Analysis and visualization modules are integrated to support standardized analysis processes
Data import modules to access external DB such as Oracle and MS SQL were introduced
Environments for visualization and analysis were integrated to one
NetMiner 4
Released on May 10, 2011.
Python-based NetMiner Script was introduced
Encryption module for NMF format was added
Diffusion, Mining modules was added (Version 4.1.0.b.130318)
Two mode analysis modules and Mining(Classification, Regression, Anomaly Detection, Frequent Subgraph etc.) was added (Version: 4.2.0)
Morphological analyzer and new features(Word Cloud, Topic modeling algorithm, etc.) for Semantic network analysis was introduced. (Version 4.3.0)
Extension 'SNS Data Collector(Twitter, Facebook, YouTube)' was introduced - NetMiner can analyze networks between user and text at the same time. (Version: 4.4.0)
Current(2018.12) version: 4.4.2
Extension
NetMiner Extension is small program to extend the functionality of NetMiner. In other words, it enables you to customize NetMiner according to your needs. By adding ‘NetMiner Extension’, you can expand your research.
Download data from web
SNS Data Collector: It collects social media data from Facebook, YouTube or Twitter, which have a large number of social media users worldwide.
File formats
NetMiner data file format
.NMF
Importable/exportable formats
Plain text data: .TXT, .CSV
MS-Excel data: .XLS, .XLSX
NetMiner 2 data: .NTF
UCINet data: .DL, .DAT
Pajek data: .NET, .VEC, .CLU, .PER
StOCNET data file: .DAT
Graph Modelling Language data: .GML(importing only)
Unstructured text data: .TXT, .CSV
Data structure
Hierarchy of NetMiner data structure
A DataSet is a basic unit in NetMiner and used as an input data for all the analysis and visualization Modules. A DataSet is composed of four types of data items: Main Nodeset, Sub Nodeset, 1-mode Network data and 2-mode Network data. A DataSet can have only one Main Nodeset. But multiple 1-mode Network data can be contained in a DataSet. Moreover, a DataSet contains multiple Sub Nodesets and multiple 2-mode Network data. ProcessLogs which are generated by analysis and visualization process can be managed with a DataSet in a Workfile. A Project contains independent multiple Workfiles. A number of nodes in Main NodeSet of each workfile does not need to be the same. In this way, the hierarchy of NetMiner data structure is as follow:
Script workbench in NetMiner 4
NetMiner 4 equips script workbench based on Python script language with script generator which enables users to generate a programmable script automatically. Then users can operate functions in NetMiner 4 by using GUI or programmable script language. Most functions of NetMiner can be performed using script rather than clicking menu so that complicated series of commands can be stored in script and executed repeatedly. Various existing libraries written by Python can be applicable within NetMiner 4 without any modifications, and ordinary data structures which were provided by Python can be defined. Users can develop their own algorithms by combinations of NetMiner features. A generated script file can be added to NetMiner 4 as a one of menu by a form of plug-in which can be shared with other NetMiner users. Using loops, conditionals, in-depth analysis is available. And users can create and use a batch file which is executed automatically for NetMiner.
See also
Social network analysis software
Semantic network analysis
References
External links
NetMiner official website
Social network analysis software
Windows-only software
Data analysis software |
64963775 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Io%20uring | Io uring | io_uring (previously known as aioring) is a Linux kernel system call interface for storage device asynchronous I/O operations addressing performance issues with similar interfaces provided by functions like / or / etc. for operations on data accessed by file descriptors.
Interface
It was primarily developed by Jens Axboe at Facebook.
Internally it works by creating two buffers dubbed as "queue rings" (circular buffers) for storage of submission and completion of I/O requests (for storage devices, submission queue (SQ) and completion queue (CQ) respectively). Keeping these buffers shared between the kernel and application helps to boost the I/O performance by eliminating the need to issue extra and expensive system calls to copy these buffers between the two. According to the io_uring design paper, the SQ buffer is writable only by consumer application, and CQ - by kernel.
The API provided by library for userspace (applications) can be used to interact with the kernel interface more easily.
Both kernel interface and library were adapted in Linux 5.1 kernel version.
The Linux kernel has had asynchronous I/O since version 2.5, but it was seen as difficult to use and inefficient.
References
External links
Efficient I/O with io_uring, in-depth description of motivation behind io_uring, interface (data structures etc.), and performance assessment
Interfaces of the Linux kernel
Linux kernel features |
39537461 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninetology%20Stealth%20II | Ninetology Stealth II | The Ninetology Stealth II (I9500) is a smart mobile phone manufactured by Ninetology with dual SIM capabilities. It is a high-end smartphone, using a dual core (1.0 GHz) processor, and runs the Android Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0 Operating System.
The phone is offered sealed with a default SIM card from a Malaysian telecommunications provider (Digi).
History
Ninetology is a Malaysian Based Smartphone Manufacturer. In 2013 their revenues were about MYR 180 million. For the year 2014, the company set revenue target of MYR 380 million. Also Ninetology will invest up to MYR 5 million, to increase its experiential centres to 9 other locations across Malaysia by 2015 as part of their expansion plan in the country
Release
The Ninetology Stealth II I9500 was announced on March 6, 2013.
Feature
Hardware
The Ninetology Stealth II I9500 has a dimension of 147.0 mm (H) X 76.5 mm (W) X 9.7 mm (T) and weighs 164 grams. A dual core 1.0 GHz processor is used to power the device. It has a 5.0 inch capacitive IPS LCD screen display with a FWVGA (196 ppi pixel density) resolution of 854 X 480, displaying up to 16M colors.
It possesses an 8.0 megapixel rear camera with a LED flash feature and an auto focus function, as well as a VGA front-facing camera.
The main SIM card slot is visible once the back cover is removed and can be accessed by removing the battery pack.
The second SIM Card slot is located right below the main SIM card slot. The battery possesses a capacity of Li-Ion 2000mAh.
Additional storage is available via a MicroSD card socket, which is certified to support up to 32 GB of additional storage.
Software
The Ninetology Stealth II I9500 is running on the Android Ice Cream Sandwich Operating System and is preloaded with a variety of applications:
Web: Native Android Browser
Social: Facebook, YouTube
Media: Camera, Gallery, FM Radio, Music Player, Video Player,
Personal Information Management: Calendar, Detail Contact Information
Utilities: Calculator, Alarm Clock, Google Maps, News and Weather Application, Voice Recorder
References
External links
http://ninetology.com/malaysia/products_smartphones_stealth_d2.html
Smartphones
Mobile phones introduced in 2013
Android (operating system) devices |
32329761 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytica%20%28software%29 | Analytica (software) | Analytica is a visual software package developed by Lumina Decision Systems for creating, analyzing and communicating quantitative decision models. It combines hierarchical influence diagrams for visual creation and view of models, intelligent arrays for working with multidimensional data, Monte Carlo simulation for analyzing risk and uncertainty, and optimization, including linear and nonlinear programming. Its design, especially its influence diagrams and treatment of uncertainty, is based on ideas from the field of decision analysis. As a computer language, it combines a declarative (non-procedural) structure for referential transparency, array abstraction, and automatic dependency maintenance for efficient sequencing of computation.
Hierarchical influence diagrams
Analytica models are organized as influence diagrams. Variables (and other objects) appear as nodes of various shapes on a diagram, connected by arrows that provide a visual representation of dependencies. Analytica influence diagrams may be hierarchical, in which a single module node on a diagram represents an entire submodel.
Hierarchical influence diagrams in Analytica serve as a key organizational tool. Because the visual layout of an influence diagram matches these natural human abilities both spatially and in the level of abstraction, people are able to take in far more information about a model's structure and organization at a glance than is possible with less visual paradigms, such as spreadsheets and mathematical expressions. Managing the structure and organization of a large model can be a significant part of the modeling process, but is substantially aided by the visualization of influence diagrams.
Influence diagrams also serve as a tool for communication. Once a quantitative model has been created and its final results computed, it is often the case that an understanding of how the results are obtained, and how various assumptions impact the results, is far more important than the specific numbers computed. The ability of a target audience to understand these aspects is critical to the modeling enterprise. The visual representation of an influence diagram quickly communicates an understanding at a level of abstraction that is normally more appropriate than detailed representations such as mathematical expressions or cell formulae. When more detail is desired, users can drill down to increasing levels of detail, speeded by the visual depiction of the model's structure.
The existence of an easily understandable and transparent model supports communication and debate within an organization, and this effect is one of the primary benefits of investing in quantitative model building. When all interested parties are able to understand a common model structure, debates and discussions will often focus more directly on specific assumptions, can cut down on "cross-talk", and therefore lead to more productive interactions within the organization. The influence diagram serves as a graphical representation that can help to make models accessible to people at different levels.
Intelligent multidimensional arrays
Analytica uses index objects to track the dimensions of multidimensional arrays. An index object has a name and a list of elements. When two multidimensional values are combined, for example in an expression such as
Profit = Revenue − Expenses
where Revenue and Expenses are each multidimensional, Analytica repeats the profit calculation over each dimension, but recognizes when same dimension occurs in both values and treats it as the same dimension during the calculation, in a process called intelligent array abstraction. Unlike most programming languages, there is no inherent ordering to the dimensions in a multidimensional array. This avoids duplicated formulas and explicit FOR loops, both common sources of modeling errors. The simplified expressions made possible by intelligent array abstraction allow the model to be more accessible, interpretable, and transparent.
Another consequence of intelligent array abstraction is that new dimensions can be introduced or removed from an existing model, without requiring changes to the model structure or changes to variable definitions. For example, while creating a model, the model builder might assume a particular variable, for example discount_rate, contains a single number. Later, after constructing a model, a user might replace the single number with a table of numbers, perhaps discount_rate broken down by Country and by Economic_scenario. These new divisions may reflect the fact that the effective discount rate is not the same for international divisions of a company, and that different rates are applicable to different hypothetical scenarios. Analytica automatically propagates these new dimensions to any results that depend upon discount_rate, so for example, the result for Net present value will become multidimensional and contain these new dimensions. In essence, Analytica repeats the same calculation using the discount rate for each possible combination of Country and Economic_scenario.
This flexibility is important when exploring computation tradeoffs between the level of detail, computation time, available data, and overall size or dimensionality of parametric spaces. Such adjustments are common after models have been fully constructed as a way of exploring what-if scenarios and overall relationships between variables.
Uncertainty analysis
Incorporating uncertainty into model outputs helps to provide more realistic and informative projections. Uncertain quantities in Analytica can be specified using a distribution function. When evaluated, distributions are sampled using either Latin hypercube or Monte Carlo sampling, and the samples are propagated through the computations to the results. The sampled result distribution and summary statistics can then be viewed directly (mean, fractile bands, probability density function (PDF), cumulative distribution function (CDF)), Analytica supports collaborative decision analysis and probability management through the use of the SIPMath(tm) standard.
Systems dynamics modeling
System dynamics is an approach to simulating the behaviour of complex systems over time. It deals with feedback loops and time delays on the behaviour of the entire system. The Dynamic() function in Analytica allows definition of variables with cyclic dependencies, such as feedback loops. It expands the influence diagram notation, which does not normally allow cycles. At least one link in each cycle includes a time lag, depicted as a gray influence arrow to distinguish it from standard black arrows without time lags.
As a programming language
Analytica includes a general language of operators and functions for expressing mathematical relationships among variables. Users can define functions and libraries to extend the language.
Analytica has several features as a programming language designed to make it easy to use for quantitative modeling: It is a visual programming language, where users view programs (or "models") as influence diagrams, which they create and edit visually by adding and linking nodes. It is a declarative language, meaning that a model declares a definition for each variable without specifying an execution sequence as required by conventional imperative languages. Analytica determines a correct and efficient execution sequence using the dependency graph. It is a referentially transparent functional language, in that execution of functions and variables have no side effects i.e. changing other variables. Analytica is an array programming language, where operations and functions generalize to work on multidimensional arrays.
Applications of Analytica
Analytica has been used for policy analysis, business modeling, and risk analysis. Areas in which Analytica has been applied include energy, health and pharmaceuticals,
environmental risk and emissions policy analysis, wildlife management,
ecology,
climate change, technology and defense,
strategic financial planning,
R&D planning and portfolio management,
financial services,
aerospace, manufacturing and environmental health impact assessment.
Editions
The Analytica software runs on Microsoft Windows operating systems. Analytica Free 101 is available for free and lets you build models of up to 101 user objects. It also lets you run, change inputs but not modify structure for models of any size. Analytica Professional, Enterprise, Optimizer are desktop editions with increasing levels of functionality. The Analytica Cloud Platform lets users share models via a server and run them via a web browser. Analytica 5.4 was released in June 2020.
History
Analytica's predecessor, called Demos, grew from the research on tools for policy analysis by Max Henrion as a PhD student and later professor at Carnegie Mellon University between 1979 and 1990. Henrion founded Lumina Decision Systems in 1991 with Brian Arnold. Lumina continued to develop the software and apply it to environmental and public policy analysis applications. Lumina first released Analytica as a product in 1996.
References
External links
Mathematical modeling
Mathematical optimization software
Science software
Statistical programming languages
Visual programming languages
Numerical programming languages
Numerical software
Array programming languages
Science software for Windows
Computer algebra systems
Plotting software |
42129549 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenNN | OpenNN | OpenNN (Open Neural Networks Library) is a software library written in the C++ programming language which implements neural networks, a main area of deep learning research. The library is open-source, licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License.
Characteristics
The software implements any number of layers of non-linear processing units for supervised learning. This deep architecture allows the design of neural networks with universal approximation properties. Additionally, it allows multiprocessing programming by means of OpenMP, in order to increase computer performance.
OpenNN contains machine learning algorithms as a bundle of functions. These can be embedded in other software tools, using an application programming interface, for the integration of the predictive analytics tasks. In this regard, a graphical user interface is missing but some functions can be supported by specific visualization tools.
History
The development started in 2003 at the International Center for Numerical Methods in Engineering, within the research project funded by the European Union called RAMFLOOD (Risk Assessment and Management of FLOODs). Then it continued as part of similar projects.
At present, OpenNN is being developed by the startup company Artelnics.
Applications
OpenNN is a general purpose artificial intelligence software package. It uses machine learning techniques for solving predictive analytics tasks in different fields. For instance, the library has been applied in the engineering, energy, or chemistry sectors.
See also
Comparison of deep learning software
Neural Designer, also developed by Artelnics
Artificial intelligence
Machine learning
Deep learning
Artificial neural network
References
Applied machine learning
Artificial intelligence applications
Artificial neural networks
C++ libraries
Data mining and machine learning software
Deep learning
Free software programmed in C++
Machine learning
Neural network software
Open-source artificial intelligence
Software using the LGPL license |
1183889 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpacket%20gap | Interpacket gap | In computer networking, the interpacket gap (IPG), also known as interframe spacing, or interframe gap (IFG), is a pause which may be required between network packets or network frames. Depending on the physical layer protocol or encoding used, the pause may be necessary to allow for receiver clock recovery, permitting the receiver to prepare for another packet (e.g. powering up from a low-power state) or another purpose. It may be considered as a specific case of a guard interval.
Ethernet
Ethernet devices must allow a minimum idle period between transmission of Ethernet packets. A brief recovery time between packets allows devices to prepare for reception of the next packet. While some physical layer variants literally transmit nothing during the idle period, most modern ones continue to transmit an idle pattern signal. The standard minimum interpacket gap for transmission is 96 bit times (the time it takes to transmit 96 bits of data on the medium).
During data reception, some interpacket gaps may be smaller due to variable network delays, clock tolerances (all speeds), and the presence of repeaters (10 Mbit/s only).
Some manufacturers design adapters transmitting with a smaller interpacket gap for slightly higher data transfer rates. That can lead to data loss when mixed with standard adaptors.
Fibre Channel
For Fibre Channel, there is a sequence of primitives between successive frames, sometimes called interframe gap as well. The minimum sequence consists of six primitives, IDLE|IDLE|R_RDY|R_RDY|IDLE|IDLE. Each primitive consists of four channel words of 10 bits each for 8b/10b encoded variants (1–8 Gbit/s), equivalent to four data bytes.
References
Ethernet |
32035 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix%20shell | Unix shell | A Unix shell is a command-line interpreter or shell that provides a command line user interface for Unix-like operating systems. The shell is both an interactive command language and a scripting language, and is used by the operating system to control the execution of the system using shell scripts.
Users typically interact with a Unix shell using a terminal emulator; however, direct operation via serial hardware connections or Secure Shell are common for server systems. All Unix shells provide filename wildcarding, piping, here documents, command substitution, variables and control structures for condition-testing and iteration.
Concept
The most generic sense of the term shell means any program that users employ to type commands. A shell hides the details of the underlying operating system and manages the technical details of the operating system's application programming interface, which is the level of the operating system that programs running on that operating system use.
In Unix-like operating systems, users typically have many choices of command-line interpreters for interactive sessions. When a user logs into the system interactively, a shell program is automatically executed for the duration of the session. The type of shell, which may be customized for each user, is typically stored in the user's profile, for example in the local file or in a distributed configuration system such as NIS or LDAP; however, the user may execute any other available shell interactively.
On hosts with a windowing system, like macOS, some users may never use the shell directly. On Unix systems, the shell has historically been the implementation language of system startup scripts, including the program that starts a windowing system, configures networking, and many other essential functions. However, some system vendors have replaced the traditional shell-based startup system (init) with different approaches, such as systemd.
Early shells
The first Unix shell was the Thompson shell, sh, written by Ken Thompson at Bell Labs and distributed with Versions 1 through 6 of Unix, from 1971 to 1975. Though rudimentary by modern standards, it introduced many of the basic features common to all later Unix shells, including piping, simple control structures using if and goto, and filename wildcarding. Though not in current use, it is still available as part of some Ancient UNIX systems.
It was modeled after the Multics shell, developed in 1965 by American software engineer Glenda Schroeder. Schroeder's Multics shell was itself modeled after the RUNCOM program Louis Pouzin showed to the Multics Team. The "rc" suffix on some Unix configuration files (for example, ".vimrc"), is a remnant of the RUNCOM ancestry of Unix shells.
The PWB shell or Mashey shell, sh, was an upward-compatible version of the Thompson shell, augmented by John Mashey and others and distributed with the Programmer's Workbench UNIX, circa 1975–1977. It focused on making shell programming practical, especially in large shared computing centers. It added shell variables (precursors of environment variables, including the search path mechanism that evolved into $PATH), user-executable shell scripts, and interrupt-handling. Control structures were extended from if/goto to if/then/else/endif, switch/breaksw/endsw, and while/end/break/continue. As shell programming became widespread, these external commands were incorporated into the shell itself for performance.
But the most widely distributed and influential of the early Unix shells were the Bourne shell and the C shell. Both shells have been used as the coding base and model for many derivative and work-alike shells with extended feature sets.
Bourne shell
The Bourne shell, sh, was a new Unix shell by Stephen Bourne at Bell Labs. Distributed as the shell for UNIX Version 7 in 1979, it introduced the rest of the basic features considered common to all the later Unix shells, including here documents, command substitution, more generic variables and more extensive builtin control structures. The language, including the use of a reversed keyword to mark the end of a block, was influenced by ALGOL 68. Traditionally, the Bourne shell program name is and its path in the Unix file system hierarchy is . But a number of compatible work-alikes are also available with various improvements and additional features. On many systems, sh may be a symbolic link or hard link to one of these alternatives:
Almquist shell (ash): written as a BSD-licensed replacement for the Bourne Shell; often used in resource-constrained environments. The sh of FreeBSD, NetBSD (and their derivatives) are based on ash that has been enhanced to be POSIX conformant.
Busybox: a set of Unix utilities for small and embedded systems, which includes 2 shells: ash, a derivative of the Almquist shell; and hush, an independent implementation of a Bourne shell.
Debian Almquist shell (dash): a modern replacement for ash in Debian and Ubuntu
Bourne-Again shell (bash): written as part of the GNU Project to provide a superset of Bourne Shell functionality. This shell can be found installed and is the default interactive shell for users on most Linux systems.
KornShell (ksh): written by David Korn based on the Bourne shell sources while working at Bell Labs
Public domain Korn shell (pdksh)
MirBSD Korn shell (mksh): a descendant of the OpenBSD /bin/ksh and pdksh, developed as part of MirOS BSD
Z shell (zsh): a relatively modern shell that is backward compatible with bash. It's the default shell in Kali Linux since 2020.4 and macOS since 10.15 Catalina.
The POSIX standard specifies its standard shell as a strict subset of the Korn shell, an enhanced version of the Bourne shell. From a user's perspective the Bourne shell was immediately recognized when active by its characteristic default command line prompt character, the dollar sign ().
C shell
The C shell, csh, was modeled on the C programming language, including the control structures and the expression grammar. It was written by Bill Joy as a graduate student at University of California, Berkeley, and was widely distributed with BSD Unix.
The C shell also introduced many features for interactive work, including the history and editing mechanisms, aliases, directory stacks, tilde notation, cdpath, job control and path hashing. On many systems, csh may be a symbolic link or hard link to TENEX C shell (tcsh), an improved version of Joy's original version. Although the interactive features of csh have been copied to most other shells, the language structure has not been widely copied. The only work-alike is Hamilton C shell, written by Nicole Hamilton, first distributed on OS/2 in 1988 and on Windows since 1992.
Configuration files
Shells read configuration files in various circumstances. These files usually contain commands for the shell and are executed when loaded; they are usually used to set important variables used to find executables, like $PATH, and others that control the behavior and appearance of the shell. The table in this section shows the configuration files for popular shells.
Explanation:
blank means a file is not read by a shell at all.
"yes" means a file is always read by a shell upon startup.
"login" means a file is read if the shell is a login shell.
"n/login" means a file is read if the shell is not a login shell.
"int." means a file is read if the shell is interactive.
Other shells
Variations on the Unix shell concept that don't derive from Bourne shell or C shell include the following:
es – A functional programming rc-compatible shell written in the mid-1990s.
Friendly interactive shell (fish) – First released in 2005.
PowerShell – An object-oriented shell developed originally for Windows OS and now available to macOS and Linux.
Qshell – A shell on the IBM i operating system based on POSIX and X/Open standards.
rc – The default shell on Plan 9 from Bell Labs and Version 10 Unix written by Tom Duff. Ports have been made to various Unix-like operating systems.
scsh – A Scheme Shell.
wish – A windowing shell for Tcl/Tk.
See also
References
System administration |
224279 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pango | Pango | Pango (stylized as Παν語) is a text (i.e. glyph) layout engine library which works with the HarfBuzz shaping engine for displaying multi-language text.
Full-function rendering of text and cross-platform support is achieved when Pango is used with platform APIs or third-party libraries, such as Uniscribe and FreeType, as text rendering backends. Pango-processed text will appear similar under different operating systems.
Pango is a special-purpose library for text and not a general-purpose graphics rendering library such as Cairo, with which Pango can be used. The Cairo documentation recommends Pango be used to "render" text rather than Cairo for all but the simplest text "rendering".
History and naming
The name pango comes from Greek pan (παν, "all") and Japanese go (語, "language").
In January 2000 the merger of the GScript and GnomeText projects was named Pango.
Pango version 1.0.0 was released 11 March 2002.
Support for OpenType features
Pango 1.17 and newer support the feature tag that allows localized glyphs to be used for the same Unicode code point. Assuming you have Verdana version 5.01 installed, which supports the locl feature for the latn/ROM (Romanian) script, a quick demonstration (on Linux) is:
for lang in en ro; do pango-view \
--font="Verdana 64" \
--text "şţ vs. șț in $lang" \
--language=$lang; done
For an explanation of the substitutions rules for Romanian, see this discussion.
Setting the locale via the POSIX environment variable, e.g. LANG=ro_RO.UTF-8 will also cause Pango to use locl font feature. Finally, you can change the language on the fly in the same text using Pango markup, e.g.:
pango-view \
--font="Verdana 24" \
--markup \
--text 'In the same text: şţ(en) and <span lang="ro">şţ(ro).</span>'
Since 1.37.1, Pango added more attributes to provide complete support for processing OpenType feature.
The official showcase of Pango's script-aware features is here.
Major users
Pango has been integrated into most Linux distributions. The GTK UI toolkit uses Pango for all of its text rendering. The Linux versions of the Mozilla Firefox web browser and Mozilla Thunderbird mail client use Pango for text rendering.
See also
HarfBuzz (text shaping engine which is incorporated into Pango itself but can be also used stand-alone)
Core Text (modern multilingual text rendering engine introduced in Mac OS X 10.5)
Graphite (multiplatform open source smart-font renderer)
WorldScript (Old Macintosh multilingual text rendering engine)
Typographic ligature
Computer font
References
External links
Pango, an open-source Unicode text layout engine. by Owen Taylor in Twenty fifth Internationalization and unicode conference, April 2004
"Pango: internationalized text handling" Owen Taylor in Ottawa linux symposium 2001
Pango Reference Manual
, at linux.conf.au 2017 Simon Cozens explained the rendering of fonts
Computer-related introductions in 1999
C (programming language) libraries
Free computer libraries
Free software programmed in C
Freedesktop.org libraries
GNOME libraries
GTK
Software that uses Meson
Text rendering libraries |
354418 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter%20Norton | Peter Norton | Peter Norton (born November 14, 1943) is an American programmer, software publisher, author, and philanthropist. He is best known for the computer programs and books that bear his name and portrait. Norton sold his software business to Symantec Corporation in 1990.
Early life
Norton was born in Aberdeen, Washington, and raised in Seattle. He attended Reed College in Portland, Oregon, graduating in 1965. Before he became involved with microcomputers, he spent a dozen years working on mainframes and minicomputers for companies including Boeing and Jet Propulsion Laboratory. His earliest low-level system utilities were designed to allow mainframe programmers access to a block of RAM that IBM normally reserved for diagnostics.
Career
Utility software
When the IBM PC made its debut in 1981, Norton was among the first to buy one. After he was laid off during an aerospace industry cutback, he took up microcomputer programming to make ends meet. One day he accidentally deleted a file. Rather than re-enter the data, as most would have, he decided to write a program to recover the information from the disk. His friends were delighted with the program and he developed a group of utility programs that he sold – one at a time – to user groups. In 1982, he founded Peter Norton Computing with $30,000 and an IBM computer.
The company was a pioneer in IBM PC compatible utilities software. Its 1982 introduction of the Norton Utilities included Norton's UNERASE tool to retrieve erased data from MS-DOS and IBM PC DOS formatted disks. Norton marketed the program (primarily on foot) through his one-man software publishing company, leaving behind little pamphlets with technical notes at users group meetings and computer stores. A publisher saw his pamphlets, and saw that he could write about a technical subject. The publisher called him and asked him if he wanted to write a book. Norton's first computer book, Inside the IBM PC: Access to Advanced Features & Programming (Techniques), was published in 1983. Eight editions of this bestseller were published, the last in 1999.<ref>The third and fourth editions were renamed Inside the IBM PC and PS/2. From the 5th edition onward, Peter Norton's Inside the PC.</ref> Norton wrote several other technical manuals and introductory computing books. He began writing monthly columns in 1983 for PC Magazine and later PC Week magazine as well, which he wrote until 1987. He soon became recognized as a principal authority on IBM personal computer technology.
In 1984, Norton Computing reached $1 million in revenue, and version 3.0 of the Norton Utilities was released. Norton had three clerical people working for him. He was doing all of the software development, all of the book writing, all of the manual writing and running the business. The only thing he wasn't doing was stuffing the packages. He hired his fourth employee and first programmer, Brad Kingsbury, in July 1985. In late 1985, Norton hired a business manager to take care of the day-to-day operations.
In 1985, Norton Computing produced the Norton Editor, a programmer's text editor created by Stanley Reifel, and Norton Guides, a TSR program which showed reference information for assembly language and other IBM PC internals, but could also display other reference information compiled into the appropriate file format. Norton Commander, a file managing tool for, was introduced in 1986.
Norton Computing revenue rose to $5 million in 1986, $11 million in 1987, and $15 million in 1988. Its products won several utility awards, and it was ranked 136th on the 1988 Inc. magazine list of the 500 fastest-growing private companies in America, with 38 employees. Norton himself was named "Entrepreneur of the Year" by Arthur Young & Co. (1988 High Technology Award Winner Greater Los Angeles Region) and Venture magazine.
On April 12, 1989, Norton appointed Ron Posner chief executive of Norton Computing. Norton continued as chairman. Posner's goal was to rapidly grow the company into a major software vendor. Soon after his arrival, Posner hired a new president, a new chief financial officer, and added a vice president of sales.
In March 1990, Norton Computing released the Norton Backup program dedicated to backing up and restoring hard disks. Norton Utilities for the Macintosh was launched in July.
In 1989, Norton Computing had $25 million in sales. In August 1990, Norton sold it to Symantec for $70 million. Posner orchestrated the merger. Norton was given one-third of Symantec's stock, worth about $60 million, and a seat on Symantec's board of directors. The acquired company became a division of Symantec and was renamed Peter Norton Computing Group. About one-third of Norton Computing's 115 employees were laid off after the merger. The Norton brand name lives on in such Symantec products as Norton AntiVirus, Norton 360, Norton Internet Security, Norton Personal Firewall, Norton SystemWorks (which now contains a current version of the Norton Utilities), Norton AntiBot, Norton AntiSpam, Norton GoBack (formerly Roxio GoBack), Norton PartitionMagic (formerly PowerQuest PartitionMagic), and Norton Ghost. Norton's image was used on the packaging of all Norton-branded products until 2001.
Books
In September 1983, Norton started work on The Peter Norton Programmer's Guide to the IBM PC. The book was a popular and comprehensive guide to programming the original IBM PC platform (covering BIOS and MS-DOS system calls in great detail). The first (1985) edition was nicknamed "the pink shirt book", after the pink shirt that Norton wore for the cover photo, and Norton's crossed-arm pose on that cover is a U.S. registered trademark.
The second (1988) edition, renamed The New Peter Norton Programmer's Guide to the IBM PC & PS/2, again featured the crossed arms, pink shirt cover image. Richard Wilton co-authored the second edition. This was followed by the third (1993) edition of "the Norton book", renamed The Peter Norton PC Programmer's Bible, co-authored with Wilton and Peter Aitken. Later editions of Peter Norton's Inside the PC, a broad-brush introduction to personal computer technology, featured Norton in his crossed-arm pose on the cover, wearing a white shirt.
Later career
In 2002, Acorn Technologies lured Norton out of a 10-year business hibernation. Norton has a "significant investment" in the company and serves as Chairman of Acorn's board of directors.Commercialization venture proved tempting for Norton, Los Angeles Business Journal, March 11, 2002
Norton is chairman of eChinaCash, a company he founded in 2003. Posner is CEO.
Personal life
Norton spent around five years in a Buddhist monastery in the San Francisco Bay area during the 1970s. In 1983, Norton married Eileen Harris, who grew up in Watts, California. They had two children, and lived in the Los Angeles area.
In the summer of 1990 they enjoyed a visit to Martha's Vineyard and returned the following year. They purchased an 1891 eight-bedroom Queen Anne house in Oak Bluffs. They bought and lived in a nearby house while initiating redesign of the main house, which had originally been built by Philip Corbin. It was completed in 1994. "My children are half-black, and we thought Oak Bluffs would give them an opportunity to summer around other kids like them," Norton said in a 2007 interview with Laura D. Roosevelt for Martha's Vineyard Magazine, alluding to Oak Bluff's reputation as a popular summer spot among upper-class blacks.
In 2000, the couple divorced. Norton afterward lived much of the time in New York. In February 2001, a fire caused by faulty wiring destroyed the Martha's Vineyard home; Norton had it rebuilt to almost exactly as it was before the fire. Meanwhile, he began a relationship with New York financier Gwen Adams. She was an "Islander" and also lived in the area. Since then, the couple spend ten weeks of summer in the Corbin-Norton House annually. In May 2007 they married in a church in nearby Edgartown; the ceremony was performed on the island by their neighbor, Henry Louis Gates Jr., a scholar and author.
Philanthropy
In 1989 Peter and Eileen Norton founded the Peter Norton Family Foundation, which gives financial support to visual and contemporary non-profit arts organizations, as well as human social services organizations.
Norton serves on the boards of the California Institute of Technology, California Institute of the Arts, Crossroads School (Santa Monica, California), and the Museum of Modern Art in New York (since 1999). He is a trustee emeritus of Reed College.
In 2003, Norton became the chairman of the board of MoMA PS1, which he also joined in 1999. In 2004, he re-joined the Whitney Museum of American Art's board after leaving it in 1998. He also serves on the executive committee of the Guggenheim Museum’s International Directors’ Council, that museum's primary acquisition committee, and on the board of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
With his first wife, Norton accumulated one of the largest modern contemporary art collections in the United States. Many of the pieces are on loan all over the world at any given time; many were on view at Symantec Corporation. The foundation and the Norton Family Office are located in Santa Monica. ARTnews magazine regularly lists Norton among the world's top 200 collectors.
In 1999, Norton purchased letters written to Joyce Maynard by reclusive author J. D. Salinger for $156,500. (Salinger had a year-long affair with Maynard in 1972 when she was 18.) Maynard said she was forced to auction the letters for financial reasons. Norton announced that his intention was to return the letters to Salinger.
In 1999 Norton donated $600,000 to the Signature Theatre Company (New York City) which renamed its home Off Broadway theatre at 555 West 42nd Street to "Signature Theatre Company at the Peter Norton Space." It maintained that name until the theatre moved to a new venue in 2012.
In March 2015, Norton organized a second major art donation project: he donated numerous pieces from his personal art collection to museums internationally. The Rose Art Museum received 41 artworks, ranging from prints, sculptures, photography, and other mixed media.
In April 2016, Norton donated an additional 100+ pieces from his personal art collection to selected university art museums, namely, 75 pieces to the University of California, Riverside ARTSblock organization and 68 pieces to Northwestern University's Block Museum.
Books
Inside the IBM PC: Access to Advanced Features & Programming Techniques (1983) The Peter Norton Programmer's Guide to the IBM PC (1985)
Visual Basic For Windows Versão 3.0, Tradução 3a.Edição Americana, Author: Steven Olzner/The Peter Norton Computing Group, Editora Campus,
Peter Norton's Assembly Language Book for the IBM PC by Peter Norton, John Socha
Peter Norton's Intro to Computers 6/e by Peter Norton
Inside the IBM PC by Peter Norton
The Peter Norton Programmer's Guide to the IBM PC by Peter Norton
Peter Norton's Guide to UNIX by Peter Norton, Harley Hahn
Peter Norton's Introduction to Computers Fifth Edition, Computing Fundamentals, Student Edition by Peter Norton
Peter Norton's Guide to Visual Basic 6 by Peter Norton, Michael R. Groh
Peter Norton's DOS Guide Peter Norton's DOS Guide by Peter Norton
Advanced Assembly Language, with Disk by Peter Norton
Peter Norton's New Inside the PC by Peter Norton, Scott Clark
Complete Guide to Networking by Peter Norton, David Kearns
Peter Norton's Complete Guide to DOS 6.22 by Peter Norton
Peter Nortons Guide to Windows Programming with MFC: With CDROM by Peter Norton
PC Problem Solver by Peter Norton, Robert Jourdain
Peter Norton's Windows 3.1 Pow by Peter Norton
Peter Norton's Guide to Access 2000 Programming (Peter Norton (Sams)) by Peter Norton, Virginia Andersen
Peter Norton's Complete Guide to Windows XP by Peter Norton, John Paul Mueller
Peter Norton's Upgrading And Repairing PCs by Peter Norton, Michael Desmond
Peter Norton's Introduction to Computers: Essential Concepts by Peter Norton
Peter Norton's Maximizing Windows Nt Server 4 by Peter Norton
Peter Norton's Advanced DOS 6 by Peter Norton, Ruth Ashley, Judi N. Fernandez
Peter Norton's Network Security Fundamentals by Peter Norton, Mike Stockman
Peter Norton's Guide to Qanda 4 by Peter Norton, Dave Meyers
The Peter Norton's Introduction to Computers Windows NT 4.0 Tutorial with 3.5 IBM Disk by Peter Norton
Essential Concepts by Peter Norton
Peter Norton's Macintosh by Peter Norton
Word 2002: A Tutorial to Accompany Peter Norton's Introduction to Computers Student Edition with CD-ROM by Peter Norton
Peter Norton's Introduction to Computers MS-Works 4.0 for Windows 95 Tutorial with 3.5 IBM Disk by Peter Norton, Kim Bobzien
Peter Norton's Guide to Visual C++' [With CD (Audio)] by Peter Norton
Complete Guide to TCP/IP by Peter Norton, Doug Eckhart (Joint Author)
Peter Norton's Maximizing Windows 98 Administration (Sams)
References
1943 births
American textbook writers
Living people
American computer businesspeople
American computer programmers
American technology writers
Reed College alumni
People from Aberdeen, Washington
People from Oak Bluffs, Massachusetts
NortonLifeLock |
1362313 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firewall | Firewall | Firewall may refer to:
Firewall (computing), a technological barrier designed to prevent unauthorized or unwanted communications between computer networks or hosts
Firewall (construction), a barrier inside a building, designed to limit the spread of fire, heat and structural collapse
Firewall (engine), the part of a vehicle that separates the engine compartment from the rest of the vehicle
Firewall (physics), a hypothetical phenomenon where a freely falling observer spontaneously burns up at the horizon of a black hole
Arts, entertainment, and media
Music
Firewall, an alias of British musician Lange (born 1974)
"Firewall", a song by Steve Vai from the 2005 album Real Illusions: Reflections
"Firewall", a song by Kompany from the 2019 extended play Metropolis
Literature
Firewall (Andy McNab novel), a Nick Stone adventure
Firewall (Mankell novel), a 1998 novel by Henning Mankell, featuring Kurt Walland
Film and television
Firewall (film), a 2006 thriller film written by Joe Forte, starring Harrison Ford
"Firewall" (Person of Interest), an episode of the American television drama series Person of Interest
"Firewall", an episode from the Canadian computer animated series ReBoot
Characters
Firewall, a fictional character in the G.I. Joe universe
See also
Alberta Agenda, also known as the Alberta Firewall, a political proposal for the Canadian province
firewalld, a firewall management tool for Linux operating systems
Great Firewall, China's internet censorship firewall
Chinese wall, a zone of non-communication between distinct sections of a business, in order to prevent conflicts of interest
Personal firewall, a very popular form of firewall designed to protect personal computers
Wall of Fire (disambiguation) |
26666281 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free%20Software%20Movement%20of%20India | Free Software Movement of India | Free Software Movement of India (FSMI) is a national coalition of various regional and sectoral free software movements operating in different parts of India. The formation of FSMI was announced in the valedictory function of the National Free Software Conference - 2010 held in Bangalore during 20–21 March 2010. FSMI is a pan Indian level initiative to propagate the ideology of free software and to popularize the usage of the free software. One of the declared aims of the movement is to take Free Software and its ideological implications to computer users “across the digital divide”, to under-privileged sections of society.
Member Organisations
FSMI differentiates itself from other organisations, forums or user groups in the free software domain by the method of movement building which is primarily grass root and mass movement.
Regional movements
Democratic Alliance of Knowledge Front, Kerala (abbrv. DAKF)
Free Software Movement of Delhi/NCR
Free Software Movement of Karnataka (abbrv. FSMK)
Free Software Movement of Maharashtra (abbrv. FSMM)
Free Software Movement of Rajasthan
Free Software Foundation Tamilnadu (abbrv. FSFTN)
Free Software Movement of West Bengal
Swadhin, Odisha
Swecha, Telangana & Andhra Pradesh
Sectoral movements
Appropriate Technology Promotion Society
Knowledge Commons
National Consultative Committee of Computer Teachers Association(abbrv. NCCCTA)
Open Source Geospatial Foundation India (abbrv. OSGEO India)
Sectoral movements such as Knowledge Commons, Academics Initiative, OSGEO India and the National Consultative Committee of Computer Teachers (NCCCTA) joined the national coalition at the very initial stage itself.
Governance
FSMI elects the General Council, Executive Committee, Office Bearers including General Secretary & President in FSMI National Conferences.
The founding conference of FSMI elected a General Council having 69 members, an Executive Committee with 28 members with Joseph Thomas as the founding President and Kiran Chandra Yarlagadda as founding General Secretary. The second national conference named as 4Ccon was held in B.S. Abdur Rahman University, Vandalur, Chennai. Prabir Purkayastha was elected as the President and Kiran Chandra Yarlagadda was re-elected as the General Secretary at the second conference.
Objectives
FSMI is a pan Indian level initiative to propagate the ideology of free software and to popularize the usage of the free software. One of the declared aims of the movement is to take Free Software and its ideological implications to computer users “across the digital divide”, to under-privileged sections of society.
Activities
The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) had made mandatory the use of the proprietary Office 365 in all engineering colleges in the country. This mandatory mandate was rescinded after intervention by several groups led by FSMI.
The Free Software Movement of India (FSMI) has alleged that the new Guidelines for Examination of Computer Related Inventions are illogical. It argues that they violate the spirit and law contained in the amended Patents Act of 1970 and could pose a grave threat to innovation in our country. It cautioned that permitting software patents through the backdoor would severely restrict the innovative capabilities and would adversely impact the creative and entrepreneurial spirit of the youth in the India.
FSMI has strongly criticized the Indian Telecom Giant Airtel for tampering user's online communications on its 3G network, and maliciously inserting advertisements into its user's data. In a statement issued they also stated that Airtel acted in violation of the privacy rights of at least thousands if not millions of Indian citizens and has rendered their online communications unsafe. FSMI appealed to all groups working on net neutrality to oppose Airtel and Flash Networks illegal and unethical actions and share the code that exposes Airtel widely, thus defeating corporate attempts to muzzle citizens right to free speech (which are only intended to cover up acts of corporate malfeasance).
A call to Protest on 9 June 2012 for Internet Freedom was given by FSMI to which there was a good response across the country. In Hyderabad police scuttled a planned protest by activists of Free Software Movement of India (FSMI). A good number of software engineers, students and other campaigners assembled near People's Plaza on the Necklace Road.A senior police official threatened FSMI activists with arrest and confiscation of all protest material and T-shirts. The activists contended that theirs was a token protest and they had no plans to organise a rally. The police initially took Y. Kiran Chandra, General Secretary of FSMI in to policy custody along with fellow activists. After hour-long arguments, the police spoke to higher officials who directed them to be shifted to Indira Park. The protestors left the venue with a police patrol team piloting the protest for.
National Convention for Academics and Research was organised by FSMI in December 2011. The conference was inaugurated by former President of India Dr A P J Abdul Kalam. The concept of Free Software, wherein knowledge is created by the community for the community, without being driven by commercial interests, must be extended to research to solve problems in health care, agriculture, energy and safe drinking water, the former President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, said.
Controversy
A report in the Malayalam daily Mathrubhumi stated that the new organisation was under the tutelage of certain political parties and that it had driven a wedge in the free software movement in India by sidetracking the Free Software Foundation of India (FSFI). The report in Mathrubhumi was criticized by FSMI in another newspaper for not upholding basic journalistic ethics and code of conduct of contacting the FSMI leadership before making allegations. A rejoinder to the report has been published by FSMI. The Mathrubhumi article stated that the general secretary of FSMI, Kiran Chandra was a representative of Novell while the FSFI website showed that he is on the Board of Directors.
See also
Free Software Movement
History of free and open-source software
List of free software project directories
List of free and open-source software organizations
Comparison of free and open-source software licences
Software Freedom Law Center
References
External links
Free and open-source software organizations
Information technology organisations based in India
Software industry in India
Free software movement
Privacy organizations
Internet governance organizations |
207928 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM%20700/7000%20series | IBM 700/7000 series | The IBM 700/7000 series is a series of large-scale (mainframe) computer systems that were made by IBM through the 1950s and early 1960s. The series includes several different, incompatible processor architectures. The 700s use vacuum-tube logic and were made obsolete by the introduction of the transistorized 7000s. The 7000s, in turn, were eventually replaced with System/360, which was announced in 1964. However the 360/65, the first 360 powerful enough to replace 7000s, did not become available until November 1965. Early problems with OS/360 and the high cost of converting software kept many 7000s in service for years afterward.
Architectures
The IBM 700/7000 series has six completely different ways of storing data and instructions:
First scientific (36/18-bit words): 701 (Defense Calculator)
Later scientific (36-bit words, hardware floating-point): 704, 709, 7040, 7044, 7090, 7094
Commercial (variable-length character strings): 702, 705, 7080
1400 series (variable-length character strings): 7010
Decimal (10-digit words): 7070, 7072, 7074
Supercomputer (64-bit words): 7030 "Stretch"
The 700 class use vacuum tubes, the 7000 class is transistorized. All machines (like most other computers of the time) use magnetic core memory; except for early 701 and 702 models, which initially used Williams tube CRT memory and were later converted to magnetic core memory.
Software compatibility issues
Early computers were sold without software. As operating systems began to emerge, having four different mainframe architectures plus the 1400 midline architectures became a major problem for IBM since it meant at least four different programming efforts were required.
The System/360 combines the best features of the 7000 and 1400 series architectures into a single design both for commercial computing and for scientific and engineering computing. However, its architecture is not compatible with those of the 7000 and 1400 series, so some 360 models have optional features that allow them to emulate the 1400 and 7000 instruction sets in microcode. One of the selling points of the System/370, the successor of the 360 introduced in mid-1970, was improved 1400/7000 series emulation, which could be done under operating system control rather than shutting down and restarting in emulation mode as was required for emulation of 7040/44, 7070/72/74, 7080 and 7090/94 on most of the 360s.
Peripherals
While the architectures differ, the machines in the same class use the same electronics technologies and generally use the same peripherals. Tape drives generally use 7-track format, with the IBM 727 for vacuum tube machines and the 729 for transistor machines. Both the vacuum tube and most transistor models use the same card readers, card punches, and line printers that were introduced with the 701. These units, the IBM 711, 721, and 716, are based on IBM accounting machine technology and even include plugboard control panels. They are relatively slow and it was common for 7000 series installations to include an IBM 1401, with its much faster peripherals, to do card-to-tape and tape-to-line-printer operations off-line. Three later machines, the 7010, the 7040 and the 7044, adopted peripherals from the midline IBM 1400 series. Some of the technology for the 7030 was used in data channels and peripheral devices on other 7000 series computers, e.g., 7340 Hypertape.
First scientific architecture (701)
Known as the Defense Calculator while in development in the IBM Poughkeepsie Laboratory, this machine was formally unveiled April 7, 1953 as the IBM 701 Electronic Data Processing Machine.
Data formats
Numbers are either 36 bits or 18 bits long, only fixed point.
Fixed-point numbers are stored in binary sign/magnitude format.
Instruction format
Instructions are 18 bits long, single address.
Sign (1 bit) – Whole-word (-) or Half-word (+) operand address
Opcode (5 bits) – 32 instructions
Address (12 bits) – 4096 Half-word addresses
To expand the memory from 2048 to 4096 words, a 33rd instruction was added that uses the most-significant bit of its address field to select the bank. (This instruction was probably created using the "No OP" instruction, which appears to have been the only instruction with unused bits, as it originally ignored its address field. However, documentation on this new instruction is not currently available.)
Registers
Processor registers consisted of:
AC – 38-bit Accumulator
MQ – 36-bit Multiplier-Quotient
Memory
2,048 or 4,096 – 36-bit binary words with six-bit characters
Later scientific architecture (704/709/7090/7094)
IBM's 36-bit scientific architecture was used for a variety of computation-intensive applications. First machines were the vacuum-tube 704 and 709, followed by the transistorized 7090, 7094, 7094-II, and the lower-cost 7040 and 7044. The ultimate model was the Direct Coupled System (DCS) consisting of a 7094 linked to a 7044 that handled input and output operations.
Data formats
Numbers are 36 bits long, both fixed point and floating point.
Fixed-point numbers are stored in binary sign/magnitude format.
Single-precision floating-point numbers have a magnitude sign, an 8-bit excess-128 exponent and a 27-bit magnitude
Double-precision floating-point numbers, introduced on the 7094, have a magnitude sign, a 17-bit excess-65536 exponent, and a 54-bit magnitude
Alphameric characters are 6-bit BCD, packed six to a word.
Instruction format
The basic instruction format is a three-bit prefix, fifteen-bit decrement, three-bit tag, and fifteen-bit address. The prefix field specifies the class of instruction. The decrement field often contains an immediate operand to modify the results of the operation, or is used to further define the instruction type. The three bits of the tag specify three (seven in the 7094) index registers, the contents of which are subtracted from the address to produce an effective address. The address field either contains an address or an immediate operand.
Registers
Processor registers consisted of:
AC – 38-bit Accumulator
MQ – 36-bit Multiplier-Quotient
XR – 15-bit Index Registers (three or seven)
SI – 36-bit Sense Indicator
The accumulator (and multiplier-quotient) registers operate in sign/magnitude format.
The Index registers operate using two's complement format and when used to modify an instruction address are subtracted from the address in the instruction. On machines with three index registers, if the tag has two or three bits set (i.e. selected multiple registers) then their values are ORed together before being subtracted. The IBM 7094, with seven index registers has a "compatibility" mode to permit programs from earlier machines that used this trick to continue to be used.
The Sense Indicators permit interaction with the operator via panel switches and lights.
Memory
704: 4,096 or 8,192 or 32,768 – 36-bit binary words with six-bit characters
709, 7090, 7094, 7094 II, 7040, 7044: 32,768 – 36-bit binary words with six-bit characters
Input/output
The 709/7090 series use Data Synchronizer Channels for high speed input/output, such as tape and disk. The basic 7-bit DSCs, e.g., 7607, execute their own simple programs from the computer memory that controls the transfer of data between memory and the I/O devices; the more advanced 9-bit 7909 supports more sophisticated channel programs. Because the unit record equipment on the 709x was so slow, Punched card I/O and high-speed printing were often performed by transferring magnetic tapes to and from an off-line IBM 1401. Later, the data channels were used to connect a 7090 to a 7040 or a 7094 to a 7044 to form the IBM 7094/7044 Direct Coupled System (DCS). In that configuration, the 7044, which could use faster 1400 series peripherals, primarily handled I/O.
FORTRAN assembly program
The FORTRAN Assembly Program (FAP) is an assembler for the 709, 7090, and 7094 under IBM's makeshift FMS (Fortran Monitor System) and IBSYS operating systems. An earlier assembler was SCAT (SHARE Compiler-Assembler-Translator). Macros were added to FAP by Bell Laboratories (BE-FAP), and the final 7090/7094 assembler was IBMAP, under IBSYS/IBJOB.
Its pseudo-operation BSS, used to reserve memory, is the origin of the common name of the "BSS section", still used in many assembly languages today for designating reserved memory address ranges of the type not having to be saved in the executable image.
Commercial architecture (702/705/7080)
The IBM 702 and IBM 705 are similar, and the 705 can run many 702 programs without modification, but they are not completely compatible.
The IBM 7080 is a transistorized version of the 705, with various improvements. For backward compatibility it can be run in 705 I mode, 705 II mode, 705 III mode, or full 7080 mode.
Data format
Data is represented by a variable-length string of characters terminated by a Record mark.
Instruction format
Five characters: one character opcode and four character address – OAAAA
Registers
702
two Accumulators (A & B) – 512 characters
705
one Accumulator – 256 characters
14 auxiliary storage units – 16 characters
one auxiliary storage unit – 32 characters
7080
one Accumulator – 256 characters
30 auxiliary storage units – 512 characters
32 communication storage units – 8 characters
Memory
702
2,000 to 10,000 characters in Williams tubes (in increments of 2,000 characters)
Character cycle rate – 23 microseconds
705 (models I, II, or III)
20,000 or 40,000 or 80,000 characters of core memory
Character cycle rate – 17 microseconds or 9.8 microseconds
7080
80,000 or 160,000 characters of Core memory
Character cycle rate – 2.18 microseconds
Input/output
The 705 and the basic 7080 use channels with a 7-bit interface. The 7080 can be equipped with 7908 data channels to attach faster devices using a 9-bit interface.
1400 series architecture (7010)
The 700/7000 commercial architecture inspired the very successful IBM 1400 series of mid-sized business computers. In turn, IBM later introduced a mainframe version of the IBM 1410 called the IBM 7010.
Data format
Data is represented by a variable length string of characters terminated by a word mark.
Instruction format
Variable length: 1, 2, 6, 7, 11, or 12 characters.
Registers
None, all instructions operated on memory. However, fifteen five-character fields in fixed locations in low memory can be treated as index registers, whose values can be added to the address specified in an instruction. Also, certain internal registers that would today be invisible, such as the addresses of the characters being currently processed, are exposed to the programmer.
Memory
100,000 characters
Decimal architecture (7070/7072/7074)
The IBM 7070, IBM 7072, and IBM 7074 are decimal, fixed-word-length machines. They use a ten-digit word like the smaller and older IBM 650, but are not instruction set compatible with the 650.
Data format
Word length – 10 decimal digits plus sign
Digit encoding – two-out-of-five code
Floating point – optional, with a two-digit exponent
Three signs for each word – Plus, Minus, and Alpha
Plus and Minus indicate 10-digit numeric values
Alpha indicates five characters of text coded by pairs of digits. 61 = A, 91 = 1.
Instruction format
All instructions use one word
Two-digit opcode (including sign, Plus or Minus only)
Two-digit index register
Two-digit field control – allows selecting sets of digits, shifting left or right
Four-digit address
Registers
All registers use one word and can also be addressed as memory.
Accumulators – three (addresses 9991, 9992, and 9993 – standard; 99991, 99992, and 99993 – extended 7074)
Program register – one (address 9995 – standard; 99995 – extended 7074)
Addressable from console only. Stores current instruction.
Instruction counter – one (address 9999 – standard; 99999 – extended 7074)
Addressable from console only
Index registers – 99 (addresses 0001-0099)
Memory
5000 to 9990 words (standard)
15000 to 30000 words (extended 7074)
Access time – 6 microseconds (7070/7072), 4 microseconds (7074)
Add time – 72 microseconds (7070), 12 microseconds (7072), 10 microseconds (7074)
Input/output
The 707x uses channels with a 7-bit interface. The 7070 and 7074 can be equipped with 7907 data channels to attach faster devices using a 9-bit interface.
Timeline
An IBM 7074 was used by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service in 1962.
The IBM 7700 Data Acquisition System is not a member of the IBM 7000 series, despite its number and its announcement date of December 2, 1963.
Performance
All of the 700 and 7000 series machines predate standard performance measurement tools such as the Whetstone (1972), Dhrystone (1984), LINPACK (1979), or Livermore loops (1986) benchmarks.
In the table below, the Gibson and Knight measurements report speed, where higher numbers are better; the TRIDIA measurement reports time, where lower numbers are better.
See also
IBM 650
Notes
References
External links
IBM Mainframe family tree
The Architecture of IBM's Early Computers (PDF)
C Gordon Bell, Computer Structures: Readings and Examples, McGraw-Hill, 1971; part 6, section 1, "The IBM 701-7094 II Sequence, a Family by Evolution",
IBM 705
IBM 7030 Stretch
IBM 7070
IBM 7094
IBM 7090/94 Architecture
Jack Harper's FAP page
Birth of an Unwanted IBM Computer, by Bob Bemer
Series
Series |
30341698 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%3Blogin%3A | ;login: | ;login: is a long-running technical journal published by the USENIX Association, focusing on the UNIX operating system and system administration in general. It was founded by Mel Ferentz in 1975 as UNIX News, changing its name to ;login: in 1977. Currently, issues from 1997 through the present are available online directly from USENIX, whereas issues between 1983 and 2000 have been archived in the Internet Archive since 2018.
The leading semicolon is a reference to the appearance of the login prompt of early versions of UNIX, where an escape code specific to the Teletype model 37 computer terminal would appear as a semicolon on other models of terminal.
References
External links
;login: - The USENIX Magazine — issues since 1998
— archive of issues between 1983 and 2000
Computer magazines published in the United States
Magazines established in 1975 |
471015 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doxygen | Doxygen | Doxygen ( ) is a documentation generator and static analysis tool for software source trees. When used as a documentation generator, Doxygen extracts information from specially-formatted comments within the code. When used for analysis, Doxygen uses its parse tree to generate diagrams and charts of the code structure. Doxygen can cross reference documentation and code, so that the reader of a document can easily refer to the actual code.
Doxygen is free software, released under the terms of the GNU General Public License version2 (GPLv2).
Design
Like Javadoc, Doxygen extracts documentation from source file comments. In addition to the Javadoc syntax, Doxygen supports the documentation tags used in the Qt toolkit and can generate output in HyperText Markup Language (HTML) as well as in Microsoft Compiled HTML Help (CHM), Rich Text Format (RTF), Portable Document Format (PDF), LaTeX, PostScript or man pages.
Uses
Programming languages supported by Doxygen include C, C++, C#, D, Fortran, IDL, Java, Objective-C, Perl, PHP, Python, and VHDL. Other languages can be supported with additional code.
Doxygen runs on most Unix-like systems, macOS, and Windows.
The first version of Doxygen borrowed code from an early version of DOC++, developed by Roland Wunderling and Malte Zöckler at Zuse Institute Berlin. Later, the Doxygen code was rewritten by Dimitri van Heesch.
Doxygen has built-in support to generate inheritance diagrams for C++ classes. For more advanced diagrams and graphs, Doxygen can use the "dot" tool from Graphviz.
Example code
The generic syntax of documentation comments is to start a comment with an extra asterisk after the leading comment delimiter '/*':
/**
<A short one line description>
<Longer description>
<May span multiple lines or paragraphs as needed>
@param Description of method's or function's input parameter
@param ...
@return Description of the return value
*/
Many programmers like to mark the start of each line with space-asterisk-space, as follows, but that is not necessary.
/**
* <A short one line description>
*
* <Longer description>
* <May span multiple lines or paragraphs as needed>
*
* @param Description of method's or function's input parameter
* @param ...
* @return Description of the return value
*/
Many programmers avoid using C-style comments and instead use C++ style single line comments. Doxygen accepts comments with additional slash as Doxygen comments.
/// <A short one line description>
///
/// <Longer description>
/// <May span multiple lines or paragraphs as needed>
///
/// @param Description of method's or function's input parameter
/// @param ...
/// @return Description of the return value
The following illustrates how a C++ source file can be documented.
/**
* @file
* @author John Doe <[email protected]>
* @version 1.0
*
* @section LICENSE
*
* This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
* modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as
* published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of
* the License, or (at your option) any later version.
*
* This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
* WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
* MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
* General Public License for more details at
* https://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
*
* @section DESCRIPTION
*
* The time class represents a moment of time.
*/
class Time {
public:
/**
* Constructor that sets the time to a given value.
*
* @param timemillis is a number of milliseconds
* passed since Jan 1, 1970.
*/
Time (int timemillis) {
// the code
}
/**
* Get the current time.
*
* @return A time object set to the current time.
*/
static Time now () {
// the code
}
};
An alternative approach for documenting parameters is shown below. It will produce the same documentation.
/**
* Constructor that sets the time to a given value.
*/
Time (int timemillis ///< Number of milliseconds passed since Jan 1, 1970.>
)
{
// the code
}
Richer markup is also possible. For instance, add equations using LaTeX commands:
/**
*
* An inline equation @f$ e^{\pi i}+1 = 0 @f$
*
* A displayed equation: @f[ e^{\pi i}+1 = 0 @f]
*
*/
Doxygen source and development
The Doxygen sources are currently hosted at GitHub, where the main developer, Dimitri van Heesch, contributes under the user name "doxygen". Doxygen is written in C++, and consists of around 300,000 source lines of code. For lexical analysis, the standard tool Lex (or its replacement Flex) is run via approximately 35,000 lines of lex script. The parsing tool Yacc (or its replacement Bison) is also used, but only for minor tasks; the bulk of language parsing is done by native C++ code. The build process is based on CMake and also involves some Python scripts.
See also
Comparison of documentation generators
API Writer
Static program analysis
References
External links
Code navigation tools
Cross-platform software
Free computer programming tools
Free documentation generators
Free software programmed in C++
Online help
Software that uses Qt |
442448 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orkut | Orkut | Orkut was a social networking service owned and operated by Google in its later years. The service was designed to help users meet new and old friends and maintain existing relationships. The website was named after its creator, Google employee Orkut Büyükkökten.
Orkut was one of the most visited websites in India and Brazil in 2008. In 2008, Google announced that Orkut would be fully managed and operated in Brazil, by Google Brazil, in the city of Belo Horizonte. This was decided due to the large Brazilian user base and growth of legal issues.
On June 30, 2014, Google announced it would be closing Orkut on September 30, 2014. No new accounts could be created starting from July 2014. Users could download their profile archive by Google Takeout.
Features
Orkut's features and interface changed significantly with time. Initially, each member could become a fan of any of the friends in their list and also evaluate whether their friend is "Trustworthy", "Cool", "Sexy" on a scale of 1 to 3 (marked by icons), which was aggregated as a percentage. Unlike Facebook, where one can only view profile details of people in their network, Orkut initially allowed anyone to visit everyone's profile, unless a potential visitor was on a person's "Ignore List" (this feature was eventually changed so that users could choose between showing their profile to all networks or specified ones). Each member was also able to customize their profile preferences and restrict information that appears on their profile from their friends and/or others. Another feature was that any member can add any other member on Orkut to his/her "Crush List".
When a user logged in, they saw the people in their friends list in the order of their login to the site, the first person being the latest one to do so. Orkut's competitors were other social networking sites including Myspace and Facebook. The site Ning was a more direct competitor, as it allowed for the creation of social networks similar to Orkut's "communities".
An Orkut user was also able to add videos to their profile from either YouTube or Google Video with the additional option of creating either restricted or unrestricted polls for polling a community of users. There was at one point an option to integrate GTalk with Orkut, enabling chat and file sharing. Similar to Facebook, users could also use a "like" button to share interests with friends. Users could also change their interface from a wide range of colorful themes in the library. Themes were only available in Brazil and India. Orkut was arguably 'the only thriving social networking site' in India during 2005–2008.
History
Origins
Orkut was quietly launched on January 22, 2004 by Google. Orkut Büyükkökten, a Turkish software engineer, developed it as an independent project while working at Google. While previously working for Affinity Engines, he had developed a similar system, InCircle, intended for use by university alumni groups. In late June 2004, Affinity Engines filed suit against Google, claiming that Büyükkökten and Google had based Orkut on InCircle code. The allegation is based on the presence of 9 identical bugs in Orkut that also existed in InCircles.
Redesigns
First redesign
On August 25, 2007, Orkut announced a redesign and the new UI contained round corners and soft colors, including small logotype at upper left corner. By August 30, 2007, most users on Orkut could see changes on their profile pages as per the new redesign. On August 31, 2007, Orkut announced its new features including improvements to the way you view your friends, 9 rather than 8 of your friends displayed on your homepage and profile page and basic links to your friends' content right under their profile picture as you browse through their different pages. It also announced the initial release of Orkut in 6 new languages: Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Tamil, Kannada and Telugu. Profile editing could then take place by clicking the settings button under the user profile photo (or alternatively, clicking the blue settings link at the top of any page).
On September 4, 2007, Orkut announced that user would be able to see an "Updates from your friends" box on the homepage, where it would be possible to obtain real-time updates when friends made changes to their profiles, photos and videos. Moreover, in case someone wanted to keep some information on their profile private, Orkut added an opt-out button on the settings page. Scraps were also HTML-enabled letting users post videos or pictures. On November 8, 2007, Orkut greeted its Indian users Happy Diwali by allowing them to change their Orkut look to a Diwali-flavored reddish theme. On April Fools' Day 2008, Orkut temporarily changed its name on its webpage to yogurt, apparently as a prank. On June 2, 2008, Orkut launched its theming engine with a small set of default themes. Photo tagging also was available.
Second redesign: New Orkut
On October 27, 2009, Orkut released their 2nd redesigned version. It was available to only a few users at first. These users were able to send invites to their Orkut friends to join this new version. The new version used Google Web Toolkit (GWT), thus making extensive use of AJAX in the user interface. However, users of the new version could still switch back to the old one.
Google stated the new Orkut was faster, simpler, and more customizable. More particular features included video chat, promotions and easy navigation.
The look was completely new. User interface and workflow were also drastically changed. Orkut added different colours choices for the users profiles. The themes were eventually removed and an Orkut badge was visible for those who didn't change to the new Orkut. The new logo also had the word "My" in it, as in My Orkut. Vertical scroll bars were added in the friend and community list in the home page to allow viewing all friends/communities from the home page itself. In the home page, the recent visitor's list now displayed six most recent visitor's profile image as small clickable icons. Orkut also allowed users to sign in with their Google Mail, or Gmail, credentials.
Messages Black Hole
Before the introduction of the New Orkut, users had two options to message friends: via the scrapbook (equivalent to the Facebook wall) or by sending a private message. Since the New Orkut introduced a privacy control for scraps posted to the scrapbook, the messages system was disabled in this version, but not for those still using the old version. This created a strange situation in which messages sent by a user of the old version to someone using the New Orkut go completely unnoticed by its recipient (the New Orkut does not inform the user of these lost messages, that can only be read if he/she switches back to the old version).
Controversy
Fake profiles
As with any online social networking community, a number of fake and cloned profiles existed on Orkut. Due to the large number of users and the deactivation of the jail system, the profiles were often left unremoved or, when removed, recreated easily.
Hate groups
In 2005, incidents of racism among Orkut users were reported to police and were documented in Brazilian media. In 2006, a judicial measure was opened by the Brazil federal justice denouncing a 20-year-old student accused of racism against those of Black African ancestry and spreading defamatory content on Orkut. Brazilian Federal Justice subpoenaed Google in March 2006 to explain the crimes that had occurred in Orkut.
Orkut had a Report Abuse feature available for all communities. Orkut communities could be reported if they contain hateful/violent content.
State censorship
In Iran
Orkut was very popular in Iran, but the website was then blocked by the government. According to official reports, this was due to national security issues, and Islamic ethical issues about dating and match-making. To get around this block, sites such as orkutproxy.com (now defunct) were made for Iranian users. Other websites such as Yahoo! Groups and Google Groups had communities dedicated to receiving updates on the newest location of Iran's Orkut proxy. At one time it had been possible to bypass governmental blockage of Orkut, but the site had closed its HTTPS pages on all anonymous proxies. Then it was almost impossible for ordinary users to visit this site inside Iran.
Many other sites have been published in Iran since Orkut's blockage, using the same social-networking model – examples include MyPardis, Cloob and Bahaneh.
In the United Arab Emirates
In August 2006, the United Arab Emirates followed the footsteps of Iran in blocking the site. This block was subsequently removed in October 2006. On July 3, 2007, Gulf News revisited the issue, publishing complaints from members of the public against Orkut communities like "Dubai Sex", and officially bringing the complaints to the attention of the state telecom monopoly Etisalat. By July 4, 2007, Etisalat placed a renewed ban on the site, which remained in effect despite Google's promise to negotiate the ban with the UAE.
In Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia is another country that had blocked access to Orkut, while Bahrain's Information Ministry was also under pressure to follow suit.
Security
MW.Orc worm
On June 19, 2006, FaceTime Security Labs' security researchers Christopher Boyd and Wayne Porter discovered a worm, dubbed MW.Orc. The worm steals users' banking details, usernames and passwords by propagating through Orkut. The attack was triggered as users launched an executable file disguised as a JPEG file. The initial executable file that caused the infection installed two additional files on the user's computer. These files then e-mailed banking details and passwords to the worm's anonymous creator when infected users clicked on the "My Computer" icon. The infection spread automatically by posting a URL in another user's Orkut Scrapbook, a guestbook where visitors could leave comments visible on the user's page. This link used to lure visitors with a message in Portuguese, falsely claiming to offer additional photos. The message text that carried an infection link varied from case to case. In addition to stealing personal information, the malware could also enable a remote user to control the PC and make it part of a botnet, a network of infected PCs.
The initial executable file (Minhasfotos.exe) created two additional files when activated, winlogon_.jpg and wzip32.exe (located in the System32 Folder). When the user clicked the "My Computer" icon, a mail was sent containing their personal data. In addition, they might be added to an XDCC Botnet (used for file sharing), and the infection link might be sent to other users that they knew in the Orkut network. The infection could be spread manually, but also had the ability to send "back dated" infection links to people in the "friends list" of the infected user. According to statements made by Google, as noted in Facetime's Greynets Blog, the company had implemented a temporary fix for the dangerous worm.
Session management and authentication
On June 22, 2007 Susam Pal and Vipul Agarwal published a security advisory on Orkut vulnerabilities related to authentication issues. The vulnerabilities were considered very dangerous in cybercafes, or in the case of man-in-the-middle attack as they could lead to session hijacking and misuse of legitimate accounts. The vulnerabilities were not known to be fixed yet and therefore posed threat to the Orkut users.
A week later, on June 29, 2007 Susam Pal published another security advisory which described how the Orkut authentication issue could be exploited to hijack Google and Gmail sessions and misuse the compromised account of a legitimate user under certain conditions...
Joseph Hick performed an experiment on the basis of the advisories published by Susam Pal, to find out how long a session remains alive even after a user logs out. His experiment confirmed that the sessions remain alive for 14 days after the user has logged out. It implies that a hijacked session could be used for 14 days by the hijacker because logging out did not kill the session.
W32/KutWormer
On December 19, 2007, a worm written in Javascript started to cause havoc. Created by a Brazilian user called "Rodrigo Lacerda", it automatically made the user join the virus related community and infect all friends' scrapbooks with copies of itself, the worm infected over 700,000 Orkut users. The worm spread through Orkut's tool that allows users to write messages that contain HTML code.
Legal issues
India
On October 10, 2006, the Bombay High Court's Aurangabad bench served a notice on Google for allowing a hate campaign against India. This referred to a community on Orkut called 'We Hate India', which initially carried a picture of an Indian flag being burned and some anti-India content. The High Court order was issued in response to a public-interest petition filed by an Aurangabad advocate. Google had six weeks to respond. Even before the petition was filed, many Orkut users had noticed this community and were mailing or otherwise messaging their contacts on Orkut to report the community as bogus to Google, which could result in its removal. The community has now been deleted but has spawned several 'We hate those who hate India' communities. Prior to the 60th Independence Day of India, Orkut's main page was revamped. The section which usually displayed a collage of photos of various people, showed a stylized Orkut logo. The word Orkut was written in Devanagari script and was coloured in Indian national colours. Clicking on the logo redirects to a post by the Orkut India ProductManager, Manu Rekhi, on the Orkut internal blog. There has also been some media outcry against Orkut after a couple of youngsters were apparently lured by fake profiles on the site and later murdered.
On November 24, 2006, Bombay High Court asked the state government to file its reply in connection with a petition demanding a ban on social networking site, Orkut, for hosting an anti-Shivaji Web community.
In 2007, the Pune rural police cracked a rave party filled with narcotics. The accused have been charged under anti-narcotic laws, the (Indian) Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropics Substances Act, 1985 (NDPS). Besides the NDPS, according to some media reports, the police were deliberating on the issue of charging the accused under the (Indian) Information Technology Act, 2000 perhaps because Orkut was believed to be a mode of communication for drug abuses of this kind.
The police in India have entered into an agreement with Orkut to have a facility to catch and prosecute those misusing Orkut since complaints are rising.
Brazil
On August 22, 2006, Brazilian Federal Judge José Marcos Lunardelli ordered Google to release by September 28 Orkut user's information of a list of about twenty-four Brazilian nationals, believed to be using Orkut to sell drugs and to be involved in child pornography. The judge ordered Google to pay $23,000 per day in fines until the information is turned over to the Brazilian government. According to the Brazilian government, the information would also be used to identify individuals who are spreading child pornography and hate speech. As of September 27, 2006 Google has stated that it will not release the information, on the grounds that the requested information is on Google servers in the U.S. and not Google servers in Brazil, and is therefore not subject to Brazilian laws.
Shutdown
On June 30, 2014, Google announced that Orkut would be shutting down completely on September 30, 2014. Users could export their photo albums before the final shutdown date. Orkut profiles, scraps, testimonials, and community posts could be exported until September 2016. Google engineering director Paulo Golgher said in a blog post: "Over the past decade, Facebook, YouTube, Blogger and Google+ have taken off, with communities springing up in every corner of the world. Because the growth of these communities has outpaced Orkut's growth, we've decided to bid Orkut farewell." Orkut was the result of a 20 percent project in which Google workers got to spend a fifth of their time on ideas not necessarily related to their job responsibilities.
However, the public contents of all public communities were archived by Google, and are available permanently for consulting online in the Orkut Community Archive (although editing is no longer possible.)
The website still exists, but shows a letter from the founder, stating that Hello would be the replacement of Orkut and "it is the first social media site based on loves, not likes." Hello is operated under Hello Networks, not Google.
See also
Business network
Google Buzz
List of Google products
Social software
References
Further reading
Das, Anupam, and Susan C. Herring. "Greetings and interpersonal closeness: The case of Bengalis on Orkut." Language & Communication 47 (2016): 53-65. online
de Sa, Vanessa Mendes Moreira. "Piracy & Social Change| From Orkut to Facebook: How Brazilian Pirate Audiences Utilize Social Media to Create Sharing Subcultures." International Journal of Communication 9 (2015): 18+ online.
External links
Osama Bin Laden Fan Clubs Build Online Communities
"Google Won't Hand Data To Brazil Judge". Associated Press at Businessweek
Blog hosting services
Defunct social networking services
Discontinued Google services
Internet properties disestablished in 2014
Internet properties established in 2004 |
17838934 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DiGiCo | DiGiCo | DiGiCo is a British company, founded in 2002, that manufactures digital mixing consoles targeted for live audio mixing applications. DiGiCo is part of the Audiotonix Group.
Products
DiGiCo's most current console lineup comprises the SD-Series of consoles, powered by Stealth Digital Processing. Pioneered with their flagship SD7, Stealth Digital Processing describes DiGiCo's first use of a single large scale FPGA for audio processing. Combined with Tiger SHARC DSP chips for effects processing and control, this new technology allows an entire audio engine to occupy only a single PCB.
The SD7 continues to be the flagship of the range, with consoles derived from it targeting other market areas and sizes of application. Currently the rest of the range comprises the SD5, SD10, SD8, SD9 and rack-mountable SD11, listed in order of size. T (Theatre) and B (Broadcast) software is also available for selected consoles.
The use of a flexible FPGA processing engine allows dedicated software to be written to further refine the consoles features and operation for specific applications. The SD7, SD10 and SD9 are available with the optional theatre upgrade package, with the SD7, SD5, SD10, SD9 and SD11 having the option of a broadcast package.
Legacy DiGiCo consoles include the D1 and D5 Live platforms, as well as the D5T theatre console and DS00 studio production and broadcast console. The D-Series of consoles used a modular DSP engine, combining multiple SHARC DSP chips to form a large scale audio engine, still the method by which virtually all digital console manufacturers design their products.
In January 2016, DiGiCo announced "Stealth Core2", an upgrade to release additional processing from the audio core of the SD series of consoles.
Consoles
As of January 2020, DiGiCo's line up of consoles consist of:
Quantum Range
Listed in size order.
Quantum 7 (Flagship Console, based on SD7 previously known as SD7 Quantum) (Broadcast and Theatre Software Variations Available)
Quantum 5 (Based on SD5, announced on winter NAMM 2020)
Quantum 338 (Brand new product, announced on winter NAMM 2020)
Quantum 225, provides 25 motorised faders in two banks of twelve plus a master and one 17" touchscreen
SD Range
Listed in size order.
SD7 (Flagship Console) (Broadcast and Theatre Software Variations Available)
SD5 (Broadcast and 5CS (MADI only) versions available)
SD12 (Released at NAMM 2017)
SD10 (Broadcast and Theatre Software Variations Available) (Also available in smaller form factor (SD10-24)
SD8 (Also available in smaller form factor (SD8-24)
SD9 (Broadcast and Theatre Software Variations Available)
SD11 (Broadcast and "i" Software Variations Available) (SD11i has 80 channels instead of 48)
S Range
S21
S31
Racks
As of September 2017, DiGiCo's line up of racks consist of:
SD Rack
SD-Mini Rack
SD-Nano Rack
Waves SoundGrid
SD-RE Rack (Redundant engine for SD10)
D-Rack
MiNi-DiGiRack
RR-PSU (Low Noise Remote power supply for the SD Range)
D2-Rack
EX-007 (Fader Expansion for SD7)
Interfaces and Converters
As of September 2017, DiGiCo's line up of additional products include:
Orange Box (2 DMI slots allowing a variety of 16 different DMI cards to be used as conversion between various Digital Audio Protocols including MADI and Dante, as well as to and from analogue formats such as D-Type microphone preamp connectors)
UB MADI (48x48 MADI/USB 2.0 interface)
Purple Box ( MADI (CAT5 or BNC)/optical interface)
Little Red Box
Little Blue Box
Use
Musical Theatre
DiGiCo's consoles have been used on many Musical Theatre Productions; on tour, on Broadway and on the West-end. Most Theatre productions using SD and Quantum 7 consoles use the 'Theatre' software version, as it provides a number of application specific features such as a specialized cue and DCA assignment system that allows spreadsheet-style editing of DCA members. These features were implemented by DiGiCo in collaboration with Autograph Sound Recording's founder Andrew Bruce.
References
External links
Audio mixing console manufacturers
Audio equipment manufacturers of the United Kingdom |
20753688 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear%20magnetic%20resonance%20spectra%20database | Nuclear magnetic resonance spectra database | A nuclear magnetic resonance spectra database is an electronic repository of information concerning Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectra. Such repositories can be downloaded as self-contained data sets or used online. The form in which the data is stored varies, ranging from line lists that can be graphically displayed to raw free induction decay (FID) data. Data is usually annotated in a way that correlates the spectral data with the related molecular structure.
Data format
Line list
The form in which most NMR is described in literature papers. It is common for databases to display line lists graphically in a manner that is similar to how processed spectra might appear. These line list however lack first and higher order splitting, satellites from low abundance isotopes like carbon or platinum, as well as the information concerning line width and other informative aspects of line shape. The advantage of a line list is that it requires a minimal amount of memory.
Processed image
Once an FID is processed into a spectrum it can be converted into an image that usually takes up less memory than the FID. This method requires more memory than a line list but supplies the user with considerably more information. The processed image has less information that a raw FID but it also take less memory and is easily displayed in browsers and requires no specialty data handling software.
Raw FID file
The raw free induction decay data obtained when performing the experiment are stored according to the formatting preferences of the instrument manufacturer. This data format contains the most information and requires the most storage space. A variety of commercial and free of software programs allow users to process FID data into useful spectra once FID data is downloaded.
Common search methods
Some database search methods are commonly available:
Compound name — May include official IUPAC names and common names.
Molecular formula — Either an exact formula or a range.
Molecular structure — This method requires a molecular editor interface.
Registration number — Commonly the CAS Registry Number but most databases also have their own numbering scheme.
Peak range or other spectral characteristics'' — The user numerically enters data related to a spectra of an unknown compound. This data is used to for compounds which share the shifts within specified constraints. This allows users to locate the exact compound or molecules with similar functional groups.
Spectra search — Software is used to search a database for spectra that resemble the a submitted spectra.
List of databases
The following is a partial list of nuclear magnetic resonance spectra databases:
ACD/Labs
Advanced Chemistry Development (ACD/labs) is a chemoinformatics company which produces software for use in handling NMR data and predicting NMR spectra. ACD/Labs offers the Aldrich library as an add-on to their general spectrum processing software and specialized NMR software products. The NMR predictors allow improving the prediction of NMR spectra by adding data to user training databases. The content databases used to train the prediction algorithms (HNMR DB, CNMR DB, FNMR DB, NNMR DB, and PNMR DB) also include references to instruments and literature. These databases can be either purchased or leased as libraries through individual or group contracts.
Aldrich NMR Library
A portion of this database is still available in a three volume print version from Aldrich. The full electronic version includes a supplement of spectra not included in the paper version. In all, this database includes more than 15,000 compounds with the associated 300 MHz 1H and 75 MHz 13C spectra. The product includes the software necessary to view and handle the NMR data. This database can be purchased as a library through individual or group contracts. The spectra data appear to be stored as images of processed FID data.
Biological Magnetic Resonance Data Bank
The Biological Magnetic Resonance Data Bank (BioMagResBank or BMRB) is sponsored by the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin–Madison; it is dedicated to Proteins, Peptides, Nucleic Acids, and other Biomolecules. It stores a large variety of raw NMR data.
Wiley's KnowItAll NMR Spectral Library
Wiley offers a comprehensive collection of spectral data, including their Sadtler standard spectra. Their collection of NMR spectral data can be searched or used to build predictions; it includes CNMR, HNMR, and XNMR (F-19 NMR, P-31 NMR, N-15 NMR, etc.) spectra.
ChemGate
A database that was developed and maintained by the publisher John Wiley & Sons. This database included more than 700,000 NMR, IR and MS Spectra, statistics specific to the NMR spectra are not listed. The NMR data includes 1H,13C, 11B, 15N, 17O, 19F, 29Si, and 31P. The data were in the form of graphically displayed line lists. Access to the database could be purchased piecemeal or leased as the entire library through individual or group contracts. These data are now made available through Wiley Online Library.
ChemSpider
The ChemSpider chemical database accepts user submitted raw NMR data. The data in accepted in the JCAMP-DX format which can be actively viewed online with the JSpecView applet or the data can be downloaded for processing with other software packages.
NMRShiftDB
The NMRDShiftDB features a graphically displayed line list data. The data are hosted by Cologne University. Online access is free and user participation is encouraged. The data are available under the GNU FDL license. Contained 53972 measured spectra of, among other nuclei, 13C, 1H, 15N, 11B, 19F, 29Si, and 31P NMR as of March 4, 2021.
SpecInfo on the Internet
Available through Wiley Online Library (John Wiley & Sons), SpecInfo on the Internet NMR is a collection of approximately 440,000 NMR spectra (organized as 13C, 1H, 19F, 31P, and 29Si NMR databases). The data are accessed via the Internet using a Java interface and are stored in a server developed jointly with BASF. The software includes PDF report generation, spectrum prediction (database-trained and/or algorithm based), structure drawing, structure search, spectrum search, text field search, and more. Access to the databases is available to subscribers either as NMR only or combined with mass spectrometry and FT-IR data. Many of these data were also made available via ChemGate, described below. Coverage can be freely verified at Compound Search. A smaller collection of these data is still available via STN International.
Spectral Database for Organic Compounds
The Spectral Database for Organic Compounds (SDBS) is developed and maintained by Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology. SDBS includes 14700 1H NMR spectra and 13000 13C NMR spectra as well as FT-IR, Raman, ESR, and MS data. The data are stored and displayed as an image of the processed data. Annotation is achieved by a list of the chemical shifts correlated to letters which are also used to label a molecular line drawing. Access to the database is available free of charge for noncommercial use. Users are requested not to download more than 50 spectra and/or compound information in one day. Between 1997 and February 2008 the database has been accessed more than 200 million times. T. Saito, K. Hayamizu, M. Yanagisawa and O. Yamamoto are attributed reproducibility for the NMR data.
See also
Chemical database
NMR spectroscopy
References
External links
Nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy
Chemical databases |
331986 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc%20Andreessen | Marc Andreessen | Marc Lowell Andreessen ( ; born July 9, 1971) is an American entrepreneur, investor, and software engineer. He is the co-author of Mosaic, the first widely used web browser; co-founder of Netscape; and co-founder and general partner of Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. He co-founded and later sold the software company Opsware to Hewlett-Packard. Andreessen is also a co-founder of Ning, a company that provides a platform for social networking websites. He sits on the board of directors of Meta Platforms. Andreessen was one of six inductees in the World Wide Web Hall of Fame announced at the First International Conference on the World-Wide Web in 1994.
Early life and education
Andreessen was born in Cedar Falls, Iowa, and raised in New Lisbon, Wisconsin. He is the son of Patricia and Lowell Andreessen, who worked for a seed company. In December 1993, he received his bachelor's degree in computer science from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. As an undergraduate, he interned twice at IBM in Austin, Texas. He worked in the AIX graphics software development group responsible for the MIT X Window implementation and ports of the 3D language APIs: SGI's Graphics Language (GL) and PHIGS. He also worked at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois, where he became familiar with Tim Berners-Lee's open standards for the World Wide Web. Andreessen and full-time salaried co-worker Eric Bina worked on creating a user-friendly browser with integrated graphics that would work on a wide range of computers. The resulting code was the Mosaic Web browser.
Career
During his career, Andreesen has worked at Netscape, Opsware, founded Andreessen Horowitz and invested in many successful companies including, Facebook, Foursquare, GitHub, Pinterest, LinkedIn and Twitter.
Netscape
After his graduation from UIUC in 1993, Andreessen moved to California to work at Enterprise Integration Technologies. Andreessen then met with Jim Clark, the founder of Silicon Graphics, who had recently exited the firm. Clark believed the Mosaic browser had great commercial possibilities and suggested starting an Internet software company. Soon, Mosaic Communications Corporation was in business in Mountain View, California, with Andreessen as co-founder and vice president of technology. The University of Illinois was unhappy with the company's use of the Mosaic name, so Mosaic Communications changed its name to Netscape Communications, and its flagship Web browser was the Netscape Navigator.
Netscape's IPO in 1995 put Andreessen into the public eye. He was featured on the cover of Time and other publications.
Netscape was acquired in 1999 for $4.3 billion by AOL. Andreessen's hiring as its Chief Technology Officer was contingent on the completion of the acquisition. The same year, he was named to the MIT Technology Review TR100 as one of the top 100 innovators in the world under the age of 35.
Loudcloud
After AOL acquired Netscape in late 1998, Andreessen went on to found Opsware with Ben Horowitz, Tim Howes, and In Sik Rhee. Originally named Loudcloud, the company provided computing, hosting and software services to consumer facing internet and e-commerce companies. Loudcloud sold its hosting business to EDS and changed its name to Opsware in 2003, with Andreessen serving as chairman. Acquired by Hewlett-Packard for $1.6 billion in 2007, it was one of the first companies to offer software as a service and to attempt cloud hosting.
Andreessen Horowitz
Between 2005 and 2009, Andreessen and longtime business partner Ben Horowitz separately invested a total of $80 million in 45 start-ups that included Twitter and Qik. The two became well known as super angel investors. On July 6, 2009, Andreessen and Horowitz announced their Silicon Valley venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.
The firm had been scrutinized among several other venture capital firms for lack of diversity in its workforce. In an interview with New York Magazine, Andreessen stated the diversity discussion was valid, however, he believed the firm, as well as other venture capital firms of Silicon Valley, had been wrongly accused of intentionally discriminating against women and people of color. When asked specifically about the critique of ethnic and gender diversity in Silicon Valley, Andreessen responded that the issues were the "same thing."
Investments
Begun with an initial capitalization of $300 million, within three years the firm grew to $2.7 billion under management across three funds. Andreessen Horowitz's portfolio holdings include Facebook, Foursquare, GitHub, Pinterest, Twitter, and Honor, Inc.
On September 1, 2009, an investor group that included Andreessen Horowitz acquired a majority stake in Skype for $2.75 billion, which was considered risky. The deal paid off in May 2011 when Microsoft bought Skype for $8.5 billion. In 2010, the firm assisted Silicon Valley attorney Ted Wang in creating the first free standardized seed round financing documents, the Series Seed Documents.
Andreessen first joined the eBay board of directors in 2008, and served on it for six years. In October 2014, Andreessen announced his resignation from the board due to the company's decision to break off its online payments unit PayPal. The decision to cut ties with PayPal was a point of contention between Andreessen and investor Carl Icahn. Icahn advocated for the PayPal split while Andreessen opposed the spin off, resulting in public disputes. Andreessen was accused by Icahn of putting his own interests in front of what was best for shareholders. Icahn published his argument in an open letter that detailed alleged conflicts of interest in eBay's 2009 sale of Skype to a group of private investors, which included Andreessen's own firm.
Industry influence
Andreessen advises the leaders of companies in which Andreessen Horowitz invests, including Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Mark Pincus of Zynga.
Andreessen and Horowitz were ranked No. 6 on Vanity Fairs 2011 New Establishment List, no. 1 on CNET's 2011 most influential investors list and Nos. 2 and 21, respectively, on the 2012 Forbes Midas List of Tech's Top Investors.
In April 2012, Andreessen and Andreessen Horowitz General Partners Ben Horowitz, Peter Levine, Jeff Jordan, John O'Farrell, and Scott Weiss pledged to donate half of their lifetime incomes from venture capital to charitable organizations.
In 2012, Andreessen was named in the Time 100, an annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world assembled by Time. His essay "Software is eating the world" has been influential and highly cited.
In 2013, Andreessen was one of five Internet and Web pioneers awarded the inaugural Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering.
In April 2020, early in the COVID-19 pandemic, Andreessen published an opinion article, "It's time to build", describing the United States' COVID-19 response and suggesting technological and cultural solutions to the problem.
Ventures
Andreessen cofounded and was chairman of Ning, the third company he established after Netscape and Loudcloud. In September 2011, it was announced that Ning had been sold to Mode Media for a reported price of $150 million. Andreessen joined Glam Media's board of directors following the sale.
He is a personal investor in companies including LinkedIn and boutique bank Raine.
Andreessen serves on the board of Facebook, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Kno, Stanford Hospital, Bump Technologies, Anki, Oculus VR, OpenGov, Dialpad, and TinyCo.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise announced in February 2018 that board member Andreessen would not seek reelection at the 2018 Annual Meeting of Stockholders on April 4. In his time at Hewlett Packard, Andreessen had been partially blamed for some of the company's failures, including the recruiting of Leo Apotheker as well as the acquisitions of Autonomy and Palm.
He serves as advisor to Asana and director of CollabNet.
Andreessen is a proponent of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency.
Andreessen serves on an advisory board for Neom, Saudi Arabia’s plan to build a futuristic megacity in the desert.
Criticism
In February 2016, Andreessen posted a tweet in response to India's decision to apply net neutrality to Facebook's proposed project Free Basics. The tweet suggested that anti-colonialism had been catastrophic for the Indian people. Andreessen later deleted the tweet following criticism from Indians and non-Indians alike (including Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg). Facebook spent millions advertising Free Basics to the Indian public. The project failed due to violations, setting preferential tariffs in accessing content and setting up a "walled garden" on the internet.
Andreessen was a supporter for the controversial British journalist Milo Yiannopoulos, whose verified status was revoked by Twitter in 2016 for abusive behavior and hateful conduct, growing into an ongoing controversy. Marc Andreessen tweeted in support of Yiannopoulos.
Conflict of interest
In April 2016, Facebook shareholders filed a class action lawsuit to block Zuckerberg's plan to create a new class of non-voting shares. The lawsuit alleges Andreessen secretly coached Zuckerberg through a process to win board approval for the stock change, while Andreessen served as an independent board member representing stockholders.
According to court documents, Andreessen shared information with Zuckerberg regarding their progress and concerns as well as helping Zuckerberg negotiate against shareholders. Court documents included transcripts of private texts between Zuckerberg and Andreessen.
Personal life
Andreessen married Laura Arrillaga in 2006. She is the founder of the Silicon Valley Social Venture Fund and daughter of Silicon Valley real estate billionaire John Arrillaga. They have one son together.
In 2012, Andreessen expressed some support for Republican candidate Mitt Romney. During the 2016 primary season, he endorsed Republican candidate Carly Fiorina, but after Fiorina dropped out of the race, Andreessen switched his endorsement to the Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, citing the Republican nominee Donald Trump's immigration stance.
Andreessen has a chapter giving advice in Tim Ferriss' book Tools of Titans.
References
External links
1971 births
American computer programmers
American financial company founders
American technology company founders
American venture capitalists
Andreessen Horowitz
AOL employees
Arrillaga family
California Republicans
Directors of Facebook
Grainger College of Engineering alumni
Internet pioneers
Living people
Netscape people
People from Cedar Falls, Iowa
People from New Lisbon, Wisconsin
Silicon Valley people |
21836781 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNSW%20School%20of%20Computer%20Science%20and%20Engineering | UNSW School of Computer Science and Engineering | The UNSW School of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE), is part of the UNSW Faculty of Engineering and was founded in 1991 out of the former Department of Computer Science within the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. It is the highest ranked and largest School of its kind in Australia. The academic staff have research focus in areas such as Artificial Intelligence, Biomedical Image Computing, Data Knowledge, Embedded Systems, Networked Systems and Security, Programming Languages and Compilers, Service Oriented Computing, Theoretical Computer Science and Trustworthy Systems.
UNSW was a founding member of National ICT Australia (NICTA), which merged with CSIRO in 2015 to form Data61. CSE maintains strong ties with Data61.
Excellence in Research for Australia
Australian Research Council's Excellence in Research for Australia initiative results for World-Class Research in Information Technology
2020/21: Ranked first in Australia in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings
2018/19: Shared first with ANU for Computer Software
2018/19: Maintained a rating of 5 for broad research fields of Engineering and Information and Computing Sciences
2013: Only Australian University to achieve a rank of 5 (the highest ranking) in Computer Software
2011: Broadest range (5 areas, the next highest was only in 2 areas) in Australia
Rankings
School Achievements
Student projects
Students of the School are involved in a number of high-profile projects, including:
rUNSWift, the University's team in the international RoboCup Standard Platform League competition, is the most successful team in the world, with wins in 2000, 2001, 2003, 2014 and 2015, as well as coming second in 1999, 2002, 2005 and 2010.
Sunswift Solar Cars
2018: Guinness World Record with car "VIolet" - Lowest Energy Consumption Driving Trans-Australia (Perth to Sydney) - Electric Car.
2014: FIA Land Speed Record with car "Sunswift eVe" - Sunswift eVe breaks the record for the fastest electric car over 500 kilometres (310 mi), with an average speed of 107 kilometres per hour (66 mph). The previous record of 73 kilometres per hour (45 mph) was set in 1988.
2011: Guinness World Record with car "Sunswift IVy" - Fastest Solar Powered Vehicle: 88.8 kilometres per hour (55.2 mph).
2009: Winner of the Silicon Challenge Class at the Global Green Challenge with the car "Sunswift IVy".
BLUEsat Satellite
2018: 8th in the European Rover Challenge (ERC)
Student competitions
Computing facilities
The School has computer laboratories for coursework teaching and student projects, including a number of specialist laboratories. The network supports well in excess of 1000 computers for teaching, research and administration.
300+ Intel-based computers running Linux in 13 generic teaching laboratories; Microsoft Windows is available 'virtualized' in all Linux labs
20 AppleOS computers reserved in a specialized teaching laboratory
40 Linux computers in laboratories reserved for thesis students
1200+ computing sessions available in a 'virtualized' lab environment
150+ heterogeneous computers dedicated to post-grad research students
10+ discrete GPU servers for deep-learning research
40+ discrete CPU servers available in Linux clusters for research
1 multi-host vSphere production cluster with dedicated 60TB SAN
100 virtualized servers for academic staff teaching and research requirements
1 multi-host vSphere research cluster with dedicated 20TB SAN
30 virtualized servers for dedicated and ad-hoc research requirements
30+ heterogeneous computers for administration and systems support
extensive backup infrastructure, utilizing incremental and full backup to tape
The School is committed to a regular cycle of upgrades and invests heavily to maintain a state-of-the-art IT environment.
UNSW Sydney has a very high capacity, free, wireless Internet service for all students and staff.
References
External links
Facebook
LinkedIn
UNSW Computer Science and Engineering website
UNSW Faculty of Engineering website
Schools of the University of New South Wales |
10597563 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward%20J.%20McCluskey | Edward J. McCluskey | Edward Joseph McCluskey (October 16, 1929 – February 13, 2016) was a Professor at Stanford University. He was a pioneer in the field of Electrical Engineering.
Biography
McCluskey worked on electronic switching systems at the Bell Telephone Laboratories from 1955 to 1959. In 1959, he moved to Princeton University, where he was Professor of Electrical Engineering and Director of the University Computer Center. In 1966, he joined Stanford University, where he was Emeritus Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, as well as Director of the Center for Reliable Computing. He founded the Stanford Digital Systems Laboratory (now the Computer Systems Laboratory) in 1969 and the Stanford Computer Engineering Program (now the Computer Science MS Degree Program) in 1970. The Stanford Computer Forum (an Industrial Affiliates Program) was started by McCluskey and two colleagues in 1970 and he was its Director until 1978. Professor McCluskey led the Reliability and Testing Symposium (RATS). McCluskey served as the first President of the IEEE Computer Society. He died on February 13, 2016.
He was known for his disarming wit and occasional eccentric habits, like his hat collection.
Focus of research
McCluskey developed the first algorithm for designing combinational circuits – the Quine–McCluskey logic minimization procedure – as a doctoral student at MIT. His 1956 thesis, supervised by Samuel H. Caldwell, was entitled Algebraic Minimization and the Design of Two-Terminal Contact Networks. At Bell Labs and Princeton, he developed the modern theory of transients (hazards) in logic networks and formulated the concept of operating modes of sequential circuits. He collaborated with Signetics researchers in developing one of the first practical multivalued logic implementations and then worked out a design technique for such circuitry.
His Stanford research focuses on logic testing, synthesis, design for testability, and fault-tolerant computing. Professor McCluskey and his students at the Center for Reliable Computing worked out many key ideas for fault equivalence, probabilistic modeling of logic networks, pseudo-exhaustive testing, and watchdog processors.
Academic descendants
He proudly claimed his students as his main product. He had mentored over 70 PhD students and has an expanding family of academic 'grandchildren'. His direct students include Jacob A. Abraham, Daniel Siewiorek, Nur Touba, Subhasish Mitra, Mehdi Tahoori, Jacob Savir, and Ken Wagner; his academic 'grandchildren' include Prithviraj Banerjee, Wesley Kent Fuchs, and Mario Barbacci.
Awards and honors
McCluskey is the recipient of the 1996 IEEE Emanuel R. Piore Award "for pioneering and fundamental contributions to design automation and fault tolerant computing."
He is also the recipient of the 2012 IEEE John von Neumann Medal, "for fundamental contributions that shaped the design and testing of digital systems."
McCluskey received the 2008 Computer Pioneer Award from the IEEE Computer Society "for seminal contributions to the design and synthesis of digital systems over five decades, including the first algorithm for logic synthesis (the Quine–McCluskey method);" he also earned the 1991 Taylor Booth Award for "outstanding service as a computer science & engineering educator and for inspiring students and educators alike through his prolific contribution as a teacher, author, curriculum developer & graduate research supervisor."
The IEEE Computer Society named its Technical Achievement Award in honor of McCluskey: The Edward J. McCluskey Technical Achievement Award.
He was a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM); and an elected member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) (1998).
He received honorary doctorates from the University of Grenoble and Bowdoin College.
He was honored at a special session of 2008 ACM/SIGDA San Jose, California on November 10–13, 2008, where tributes were shared by distinguished researchers Robert K. Brayton, Bernard Courtois, Giovanni De Micheli, Ravishankar K. Iyer, Daniel P. Siewiorek, Tom Williams and Yervant Zorian.
References
Further reading
McCluskey's page at Stanford.
Curriculum vitae
Biography of McCluskey
Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery
Fellow Members of the IEEE
Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering
2016 deaths
1929 births |
1013713 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RealNetworks%20Public%20Source%20License | RealNetworks Public Source License | The RealNetworks Public Source License (RPSL) is a software licence. It has been approved as a free software licence by both Free Software Foundation and Open Source Initiative (OSI), but it is incompatible with the GPL and the Debian Free Software Guidelines.
The RPSL is used by the Helix project.
See also
RealNetworks
References
External links
RealNetworks Public Source License text
Free and open-source software licenses
Copyleft software licenses]
Public Source License |
49495747 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon%20Lumberyard | Amazon Lumberyard | Amazon Lumberyard is a now superseded freeware cross-platform game engine developed by Amazon and based on CryEngine (initially released in 2002), which was licensed from Crytek in 2015.
In July 2021, Amazon and the Linux Foundation announced that parts of the engine would be used to create a new open source game engine called Open 3D Engine, which would replace it. A new Open 3D Foundation, run by the Linux Foundation, will manage the new engine, which will be licensed under the open source Apache 2.0 license. The new engine is reportedly partially based on Lumberyard but with many parts rewritten, and is considered a new engine.
The Lumberyard engine features integration with Amazon Web Services to allow developers to build or host their games on Amazon's servers, as well as support for livestreaming via Twitch.
Additionally, the engine includes Twitch ChatPlay, allowing viewers of the Twitch stream to influence the game through the associated chat, a method of play inspired by the Twitch Plays Pokémon phenomenon.
The source code is available to end users with limitations: Users may not publicly release the Lumberyard engine source code or use it to release their own game engine.
Lumberyard launched on February 9, 2016 alongside GameLift, a fee-based managed service for deploying and hosting multiplayer games, intended to allow developers the easy development of games that attract "large and vibrant communities of fans."
, the software is currently in beta status and can be used to build games for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, with limited support for iOS and Android and support for macOS being planned for future releases. Virtual reality integration was added in Beta 1.3, allowing developers to build games supporting devices like Oculus Rift and HTC Vive.
Despite being based on the architecture of Crytek's CryEngine, the engine has been developed to use many of its own custom developed systems, some of which are in a preview mode.
A few of these systems include: The Component Entity System, Fur Shader, Modular Gems (which allows developers to either create their own assets or add existing assets to their games), Script Canvas and many others
The audio solution Audiokinetic Wwise, which is used in many popular games, was added in Beta 1.0 released in February 2016.
The first update to Lumberyard was released on March 14, 2016 and included support for certain mobile devices, such as A8-powered iOS devices and Nvidia Shield, an FBX importer and integration with Allegorithmic's texturing software Substance.
On August 16, 2017, the engine's source code was released under a source-available arrangement on GitHub, but remained under a proprietary license.
On July 6, 2021, Amazon announced it was partnering with the Linux Foundation to form the Open 3D Foundation and would be releasing a new version of Lumberyard, rebranded as Open 3D Engine (O3DE), under the Apache-2.0 open source license.
Games using Amazon Lumberyard
References
Footnotes
Citations
External links
2016 software
3D graphics software
Video game engines
Freeware game engines
Software development kits
Video game development
Virtual reality
Amazon Web Services |
41591 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol%20data%20unit | Protocol data unit | In telecommunications, a protocol data unit (PDU) is a single unit of information transmitted among peer entities of a computer network. A PDU is composed of protocol-specific control information and user data. In the layered architectures of communication protocol stacks, each layer implements protocols tailored to the specific type or mode of data exchange.
For example, the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) implements a connection-oriented transfer mode, and the PDU of this protocol is called a segment, while the User Datagram Protocol (UDP) uses datagrams as protocol data units for connectionless communication. A layer lower in the Internet protocol suite, at the Internet layer, the PDU is called a packet, irrespective of its payload type.
Packet-switched data networks
In the context of packet switching data networks, a protocol data unit (PDU) is best understood in relation to a service data unit (SDU).
The features or services of the network are implemented in distinct layers. The physical layer sends ones and zeros across a wire or fiber. The data link layer then organizes these ones and zeros into chunks of data and gets them safely to the right place on the wire. The network layer transmits the organized data over multiple connected networks, and the transport layer delivers the data to the right software application at the destination.
Between the layers (and between the application and the top-most layer), the layers pass service data units (SDUs) across interfaces. The higher layer understands the structure of the data in the SDU, but the lower layer at the interface does not; moreover, the lower layer treats the SDU as the payload, undertaking to get it to the same interface at the destination. In order to do this, the protocol (lower) layer will add to the SDU certain data it needs to perform its function; which is called encapsulation. For example, it might add a port number to identify the application, a network address to help with routing, a code to identify the type of data in the packet and error-checking information. All this additional information, plus the original service data unit from the higher layer, constitutes the protocol data unit at this layer.
The SDU and metadata added by the lower layer can be larger than the maximum size of that layer's PDU (known as the maximum transmission unit; MTU). When this is the case, the PDU must be split into multiple payloads of a size suitable for transmission or processing by the lower layer; a process known as IP fragmentation.
The significance of this is that the PDU is the structured information that is passed to a matching protocol layer further along on the data's journey that allows the layer to deliver its intended function or service. The matching layer, or "peer", decodes the data to extract the original service data unit, decide if it is error-free and where to send it next, etc. Unless we have already arrived at the lowest (physical) layer, the PDU is passed to the peer using services of the next lower layer in the protocol "stack". When the PDU passes over the interface from the layer that constructed it to the layer that merely delivers it (and therefore does not understand its internal structure), it becomes a service data unit to that layer. The addition of addressing and control information (encapsulation) to an SDU to form a PDU and the passing of that PDU to the next lower layer as an SDU repeats until the lowest layer is reached and the data passes over some medium as a physical signal.
The above process can be likened to the mail system in which a letter (SDU) is placed in an envelope on which is written an address (addressing and control information) making it a PDU. The sending post office might look only at the postcode and place the letter in a mailbag so that the address on the envelope can no longer be seen, making it now an SDU. The mailbag is labeled with the destination postcode and so becomes a PDU until it is combined with other bags in a crate when it is now an SDU, and the crate is labeled with the region to which all the bags are to be sent, making the crate a PDU. When the crate reaches the destination matching its label, it is opened and the bags (SDUs) removed only to become PDUs when someone reads the code of the destination post office. The letters themselves are SDUs when the bags are opened but become PDUs when the address is read for final delivery. When the addressee finally opens the envelope, the top-level SDU, the letter itself, emerges.
Examples
OSI model
Protocol data units of the OSI model are:
The Layer 4: transport layer PDU is the segment or the datagram.
The Layer 3: network layer PDU is the packet.
The Layer 2: data link layer PDU is the frame.
The Layer 1: physical layer PDU is the bit or, more generally, symbol.
Given a context pertaining to a specific OSI layer, PDU is sometimes used as a synonym for its representation at that layer.
Internet protocol suite
Protocol data units for the Internet protocol suite are:
The transport layer PDU is the TCP segment for TCP, and the datagram for UDP.
The Internet layer PDU is the packet.
The link layer PDU is the frame.
On TCP/IP over Ethernet, the data on the physical layer is carried in Ethernet frames.
ATM
The data link layer PDU in Asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) networks is called a cell.
Media access control protocol data unit
A media access control protocol data unit (MAC PDU or MPDU) is a message that is exchanged between media access control (MAC) entities in a communication system based on the layered OSI model.
In systems where the MPDU may be larger than the MAC service data unit (MSDU), the MPDU may include multiple MSDUs as a result of packet aggregation. In systems where the MPDU is smaller than the MSDU, then one MSDU may generate multiple MPDUs as a result of packet segmentation.
See also
IP fragmentation
MAC service data unit
Smart card application protocol data unit
Transaction Protocol Data Unit
References
External links
comp.protocols.iso FAQ (search for "PDU")
Data transmission
Packets (information technology) |
887 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MessagePad | MessagePad | The MessagePad is a discontinued series of personal digital assistant devices developed by Apple for the Newton platform in 1993. Some electronic engineering and the manufacture of Apple's MessagePad devices was undertaken in Japan by the Sharp. The devices were based on the ARM 610 RISC processor and all featured handwriting recognition software and were developed and marketed by Apple. The devices ran the Newton OS.
History
The development of Newton Message first began when Apple's former senior vice president of research and development, Jean-Louis Gassée; his team includes Steve Capps, co-writer of macOS Finder, and an employed engineer named Steve Sakoman. Since then, the development of the Newton Message Pad operates in secret until it was eventually revealed to the Apple Board of Directors in late 1990.
When Gassee resigned from his position due to a significant disagreement with the board, seeing how his employer was treated, Sakoman also stopped developing the MessagePad on March 2, 1990.
Bill Atkinson, an Apple Executive responsible for the company's Lisa's graphical interface, invited Steve Capps, John Sculley, Andy Hertzfeld, Susan Kare, and Marc Porat to a meeting on March 11, 1990. There, they brainstormed a way of saving the MessagePad. Sculley suggested adding new features, including libraries, museums, databases, or institutional archives features, allowing customers to navigate through various window tabs or opened galleries/stacks. The Board later approved his suggestion; he then gave Newton it is official and full backing.
The first MessagePad on May 29, 1992 was unveiled by Sculley at the summer Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Chicago. Even so, Sculley caved in to pressure too early because the Newton did not officially ship for another 14 months on August 2, 1993.
Over 50,000 units were sold near late November 1993, starting at the price of $900 to $1,569.
Details
Screen and input
With the MessagePad 120 with Newton OS 2.0, the Newton Keyboard by Apple became available, which can also be used via the dongle on Newton devices with a Newton InterConnect port, most notably the Apple MessagePad 2000/2100 series, as well as the Apple eMate 300.
Newton devices featuring Newton OS 2.1 or higher can be used with the screen turned horizontally ("landscape") as well as vertically ("portrait"). A change of a setting rotates the contents of the display by 90, 180 or 270 degrees. Handwriting recognition still works properly with the display rotated, although display calibration is needed when rotation in any direction is used for the first time or when the Newton device is reset.
Handwriting recognition
In initial versions (Newton OS 1.x) the handwriting recognition gave extremely mixed results for users and was sometimes inaccurate. The original handwriting recognition engine was called Calligrapher, and was licensed from a Russian company called Paragraph International. Calligrapher's design was quite sophisticated; it attempted to learn the user's natural handwriting, using a database of known words to make guesses as to what the user was writing, and could interpret writing anywhere on the screen, whether hand-printed, in cursive, or a mix of the two. By contrast, Palm Pilot's Graffiti had a less sophisticated design than Calligrapher, but was sometimes found to be more accurate and precise due to its reliance on a fixed, predefined stroke alphabet. The stroke alphabet used letter shapes which resembled standard handwriting, but which were modified to be both simple and very easy to differentiate. Palm Computing also released two versions of Graffiti for Newton devices. The Newton version sometimes performed better and could also show strokes as they were being written as input was done on the display itself, rather than on a silkscreen area.
For editing text, Newton had a very intuitive system for handwritten editing, such as scratching out words to be deleted, circling text to be selected, or using written carets to mark inserts.
Later releases of the Newton operating system retained the original recognizer for compatibility, but added a hand-printed-text-only (not cursive) recognizer, called "Rosetta", which was developed by Apple, included in version 2.0 of the Newton operating system, and refined in Newton 2.1. Rosetta is generally considered a significant improvement and many reviewers, testers, and most users consider the Newton 2.1 handwriting recognition software better than any of the alternatives even 10 years after it was introduced. Recognition and computation of handwritten horizontal and vertical formulas such as "1 + 2 =" was also under development but never released. However, users wrote similar programs which could evaluate mathematical formulas using the Newton OS Intelligent Assistant, a unique part of every Newton device.
The handwriting recognition and parts of the user interface for the Newton are best understood in the context of the broad history of pen computing, which is quite extensive.
A vital feature of the Newton handwriting recognition system is the modeless error correction. That is, correction done in situ without using a separate window or widget, using a minimum of gestures. If a word is recognized improperly, the user could double-tap the word and a list of alternatives would pop up in a menu under the stylus. Most of the time, the correct word will be in the list. If not, a button at the bottom of the list allows the user to edit individual characters in that word. Other pen gestures could do such things as transpose letters (also in situ). The correction popup also allowed the user to revert to the original, un-recognized letter shapes - this would be useful in note-taking scenarios if there was insufficient time to make corrections immediately. To conserve memory and storage space, alternative recognition hypotheses would not be saved indefinitely. If the user returned to a note a week later, for example, they would only see the best match. Error correction in many current handwriting systems provides such functionality but adds more steps to the process, greatly increasing the interruption to a user's workflow that a given correction requires.
User interface
Text could also be entered by tapping with the stylus on a small on-screen pop-up QWERTY virtual keyboard, although more layouts were developed by users. Newton devices could also accept free-hand "Sketches", "Shapes", and "Ink Text", much like a desktop computer graphics tablet. With "Shapes", Newton could recognize that the user was attempting to draw a circle, a line, a polygon, etc., and it would clean them up into perfect vector representations (with modifiable control points and defined vertices) of what the user was attempting to draw. "Shapes" and "Sketches" could be scaled or deformed once drawn. "Ink text" captured the user's free-hand writing but allowed it to be treated somewhat like recognized text when manipulating for later editing purposes ("ink text" supported word wrap, could be formatted to be bold, italic, etc.). At any time a user could also direct their Newton device to recognize selected "ink text" and turn it into recognized text (deferred recognition). A Newton note (or the notes attached to each contact in Names and each Dates calendar or to-do event) could contain any mix of interleaved text, Ink Text, Shapes, and Sketches.
While the Newton offered handwriting recognition training and would clean up sketches into vector shapes, both were unreliable and required much rewriting and redrawing. The most reliable application of the Newton was collecting and organizing address and phone numbers. While handwritten messages could be stored, they could not be easily filed, sorted or searched. While the technology was a probable cause for the failure of the device (which otherwise met or exceeded expectations), the technology has been instrumental in producing the future generation of handwriting software that realizes the potential and promise that began in the development of Newton-Apple's Ink Handwriting Recognition.
Connectivity
The MessagePad 100 series of devices used Macintosh's proprietary serial ports—round Mini-DIN 8 connectors. The MessagePad 2000/2100 models (as well as the eMate 300) have a small, proprietary Newton InterConnect port. However, the development of the Newton hardware/software platform was canceled by Steve Jobs on February 27, 1998, so the InterConnect port, while itself very advanced, can only be used to connect a serial dongle. A prototype multi-purpose InterConnect device containing serial, audio in, audio out, and other ports was also discovered. In addition, all Newton devices have infrared connectivity, initially only the Sharp ASK protocol, but later also IrDA, though the Sharp ASK protocol was kept in for compatibility reasons. Unlike the Palm Pilot, all Newton devices are equipped with a standard PC Card expansion slot (two on the 2000/2100). This allows native modem and even Ethernet connectivity; Newton users have also written drivers for 802.11b wireless networking cards and ATA-type flash memory cards (including the popular CompactFlash format), as well as for Bluetooth cards. Newton can also dial a phone number through the built-in speaker of the Newton device by simply holding a telephone handset up to the speaker and transmitting the appropriate tones. Fax and printing support is also built in at the operating system level, although it requires peripherals such as parallel adapters, PCMCIA cards, or serial modems, the most notable of which is the lightweight Newton Fax Modem released by Apple in 1993. It is powered by 2 AA batteries, and can also be used with a power adapter. It provides data transfer at 2,400 bit/s, and can also send and receive fax messages at 9,600 and 4,800 bit/s respectively.
Power options
The original Apple MessagePad and MessagePad 100 used four AAA batteries. They were eventually replaced by AA batteries with the release of the Apple MessagePad 110.
The use of 4 AA NiCd (MessagePad 110, 120 and 130) and 4x AA NiMH cells (MP2x00 series, eMate 300) give a runtime of up to 30 hours (MP2100 with two 20 MB Linear Flash memory PC Cards, no backlight usage) and up to 24 hours with backlight on. While adding more weight to the handheld Newton devices than AAA batteries or custom battery packs, the choice of an easily replaceable/rechargeable cell format gives the user a still unsurpassed runtime and flexibility of power supply. This, together with the flash memory used as internal storage starting with the Apple MessagePad 120 (if all cells lost their power, no data was lost due to the non-volatility of this storage), gave birth to the slogan "Newton never dies, it only gets new batteries".
Later efforts and improvements
The Apple MessagePad 2000/2100, with a vastly improved handwriting recognition system, 162 MHz StrongARM SA-110 RISC processor, Newton OS 2.1, and a better, clearer, backlit screen, attracted critical plaudits.
eMate 300
The eMate 300 was a Newton device in a laptop form factor offered to schools in 1997 as an inexpensive ($799 US, originally sold to education markets only) and durable computer for classroom use. However, in order to achieve its low price, the eMate 300 did not have all the speed and features of the contemporary MessagePad equivalent, the MessagePad 2000. The eMate was cancelled along with the rest of the Newton products in 1998. It is the only Newton device to use the ARM710 microprocessor (running at 25 MHz), have an integrated keyboard, use Newton OS 2.2 (officially numbered 2.1), and its batteries are officially irreplaceable, although several users replaced them with longer-lasting ones without any damage to the eMate hardware whatsoever.
Prototypes
Many prototypes of additional Newton devices were spotted. Most notable was a Newton tablet or "slate", a large, flat screen that could be written on. Others included a "Kids Newton" with side handgrips and buttons, "VideoPads" which would have incorporated a video camera and screen on their flip-top covers for two-way communications, the "Mini 2000" which would have been very similar to a Palm Pilot, and the NewtonPhone developed by Siemens, which incorporated a handset and a keyboard.
Market reception
Fourteen months after Sculley demoed it at the May 1992, Chicago CES, the MessagePad was first offered for sale on August 2, 1993, at the Boston Macworld Expo. The hottest item at the show, it cost $900. 50,000 MessagePads were sold in the device's first three months on the market.
The original Apple MessagePad and MessagePad 100 were limited by the very short lifetime of their inadequate AAA batteries.
Critics also panned the handwriting recognition that was available in the debut models, which had been trumpeted in the Newton's marketing campaign. It was this problem that was skewered in the Doonesbury comic strips in which a written text entry is (erroneously) translated as "Egg Freckles?", as well as in the animated series The Simpsons. However, the word 'freckles' was not included in the Newton dictionary, although a user could add it themselves. Difficulties were in part caused by the long time requirements for the Calligrapher handwriting recognition software to "learn" the user's handwriting; this process could take from two weeks to two months.
Another factor which limited the early Newton devices' appeal was that desktop connectivity was not included in the basic retail package, a problem that was later solved with 2.x Newton devices - these were bundled with a serial cable and the appropriate Newton Connection Utilities software.
Later versions of Newton OS offered improved handwriting recognition, quite possibly a leading reason for the continued popularity of the devices among Newton users. Even given the age of the hardware and software, Newtons still demand a sale price on the used market far greater than that of comparatively aged PDAs produced by other companies. In 2006, CNET compared an Apple MessagePad 2000 to a Samsung Q1, and the Newton was declared better. In 2009, CNET compared an Apple MessagePad 2000 to an iPhone 3GS, and the Newton was declared more innovative at its time of release.
A chain of dedicated Newton only stores called Newton Source existed from 1994 until 1998. Locations included New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago and Boston. The Westwood Village, California, near U.C.L.A. featured the trademark red and yellow light bulb Newton logo in neon. The stores provided an informative educational venue to learn about the Newton platform in a hands on relaxed fashion. The stores had no traditional computer retail counters and featured oval desktops where interested users could become intimately involved with the Newton product range. The stores were a model for the later Apple Stores.
Newton device models
{| class="wikitable"
|+
!Brand
| colspan="2" |Apple
|Sharp
|Siemens
| colspan="2" |Apple
|Sharp
|Apple
|Digital Ocean
|Motorola
|Harris
|Digital Ocean
| colspan="4" |Apple
| colspan="3" |Harris
|Siemens
|Schlumberger
|-
!Device
|OMP (Original Newton MessagePad)
|Newton "Dummy"
|ExpertPad PI-7000
|Notephone.[better source needed]
|MessagePad 100
|MessagePad 110
|Sharp ExpertPad PI-7100
|MessagePad 120
|Tarpon
|Marco
|SuperTech 2000
|Seahorse
|MessagePad 130
|eMate 300
|MessagePad 2000
|MessagePad 2100
|Access Device 2000
|Access Device, GPS
|Access Device, Wireline
|Online Terminal, also known as Online Access Device(OAD)
|Watson
|-
!Introduced
|August 3, 1993 (US) December 1993 (Germany)
|?
|August 3, 1993(US),
? (Japan)
|1993?
| colspan="2" |March 1994
|April 1994
|October 1994 (Germany), January 1995 (US)
| colspan="2" |January 1995 (US)
|August 1995 in the US
|January 1996 in the US
|March 1996
| colspan="2" |March 1997
|November 1997
| colspan="3" |1998
|Announced 1997
|?
|-
!Discontinued
| colspan="3" |March 1994
|?
| colspan="2" |April 1995
|late 1994
|June 1996
|?
|?
|?
|?
|April 1997
| colspan="3" |February 1998
|
|
|
|
|
|-
!Code name
|Junior
|
|?
|?
|Junior
|Lindy
|?
|Gelato
|?
|?
|?
|?
|Dante
|?
|Q
|?
|
|
|
|
|
|-
!Model No.
|H1000
|
|?
|?
|H1000
|H0059
|?
|H0131
|?
|?
|?
|?
|H0196
|H0208
|H0136
|H0149
|
|
|
|
|
|-
!Processor
| colspan="13" |ARM 610 (20 MHz)
|ARM 710a (25 MHz)
| colspan="7" |StrongARM SA-110 (162 MHz)
|-
!ROM
| colspan="7" |4 MB
| colspan="2" |4 MB (OS 1.3) or 8 MB (OS 2.0)
|5 MB
|4 MB
| colspan="5" |8 MB
|
|
|
|
|
|-
!System Memory (RAM)
| colspan="5" |490 KB* SRAM
|544 KB SRAM
|490 KB* SRAM
| colspan="2" |639/687 KB DRAM
|544 KB SRAM
|639 KB DRAM
| colspan="2" |1199 KB DRAM
|1 MB DRAM (Upgradable)
|1 MB DRAM
|4 MB DRAM
| colspan="3" |1 MB DRAM
|?
|1 MB DRAM
|-
!User Storage
| colspan="5" |150 KB* SRAM
|480 KB SRAM
|150 KB* SRAM
| colspan="2" |385/1361 KB Flash RAM
|480 KB SRAM
|385 KB Flash RAM
| colspan="2" |1361 KB Flash RAM
|2 MB Flash RAM(Upgradable)
| colspan="5" |4 MB Flash RAM
|?
|4 MB Flash RAM
|-
!Total RAM
| colspan="5" |640 KB
|1 MB
|640 KB
| colspan="2" |1.0/2.0 MB
| colspan="2" |1 MB
| colspan="2" |2.5 MB
|3 MB (Upgradable via Internal Expansion)
|5 MB
|8 MB
| colspan="3" |5 MB
|?
|5 MB
|-
!Display
| colspan="5" |336 × 240 (B&W)
|320 × 240 (B&W)
|336 × 240 (B&W)
|320 × 240 (B&W)
|320 × 240 (B&W) w/ backlight
|320 × 240 (B&W)
| colspan="3" |320 × 240 (B&W) w/ backlight
| colspan="6" |480 × 320 grayscale (16 shades) w/ backlight
|
|480 × 320 greyscale (16 shades) w/ backlight
|-
!Newton OS version
| colspan="3" |1.0 to 1.05, or 1.10 to 1.11
|1.11
| colspan="2" |1.2 or 1.3
|1.3
| colspan="2" |1.3 or 2.0
| colspan="2" |1.3
| colspan="2" |2.0
|2.1 (2.2)
| colspan="2" |2.1
| colspan="5" |2.1
|-
!Newton OS languages
|English or German
|
|English or Japanese
|German
|English, German or French
|English or French
|English or Japanese
|English, German or French
| colspan="4" |English
|English or German
| colspan="2" |English
|English or German
| colspan="3" |English
|German
|French
|-
!Connectivity
| colspan="3" |RS422, LocalTalk & SHARP ASK Infrared
|Modem and Telephone dock Attachment
| colspan="4" |RS422, LocalTalk & SHARP ASK Infrared
|RS422, LocalTalk & SHARP ASK Infrared
|RS422, LocalTalk, Infrared, ARDIS Network
|RS232, LocalTalk WLAN, V.22bis modem, Analog/Digital Cellular, CDPD, RAM, ARDIS , Trunk Radio
|RS232, LocalTalk, CDPD, WLAN, Optional dGPS, GSM, or IR via modular attachments
|RS422, LocalTalk & SHARP ASK Infrared
|IrDA, headphone port, Interconnect port, LocalTalk, Audio I/O, Autodock
|Dual-mode IR;IrDA & SHARP ASK, LocalTalk, Audio I/O, Autodock, Phone I/O
|Dual-mode IR; IrDA & SHARP ASK, LocalTalk, Audio I/O, Autodock
| colspan="3" |Dual-mode IR;IrDA & SHARP ASK, LocalTalk, Audio I/O, Autodock, Phone I/O
|?
|Dual-mode IR;IrDA & SHARP ASK, LocalTalk, Audio I/O, Autodock, Phone I/O
|-
!PCMCIA
| colspan="13" |1 PCMCIA-slot II, 5v or 12v
|1 PCMCIA-slot I/II/III, 5v
| colspan="2" |2 PCMCIA-slot II, 5v or 12v
| colspan="2" |1 PCMCIA-slot II, 5v or 12v
|1 PCMCIA-slot II, 5v or 12v, 2nd slot Propriety Rado Card
| colspan="2" |1 PCMCIA-slot II, 5v or 12v, 1 Smart Card Reader
|-
!Power
| colspan="5" |4 AAA or NiCd rechargeable or external power supply
|4 AA or NiCd rechargeable or external power supply
|4 AAA or NiCd rechargeable or external power supply
|4 AA or NiCd rechargeable or external power supply
| colspan="2" |NiCd battery pack or external power supply
|4 AA or NiCd rechargeable or external power supply
|NiCd battery pack or external power supply
|4 AA or NiCd rechargeable or external power supply
|NiMH battery pack (built-in) or external power supply
| colspan="2" |4 AA or NiMH rechargeable or external power supply
| colspan="3" |Custom NiMH rechargeable or external power supply
|? Unknown, but likely external power supply
|4 AA or NiMH rechargeable or external power supply
|-
!Dimensions
(HxWxD)
|
|
|
(lid open)
| colspan="2" |
|
|
(lid open)
|
|
|
|?
|
|
|
| colspan="2" |
|?
|?
|?
|9 x 14.5 x 5.1 inches
(23 x 37 x 13 cm)
|?
|-
!Weight
|
|
|
with batteries installed
|
|
| with batteries installed
|
with batteries installed
|with batteries installed
|
|
|?
|
|
with batteries installed
|
| colspan="2" |
|?
|?
|?
|?
|?
|}
* Varies with Installed OS
Notes: The eMate 300 actually has ROM chips silk screened with 2.2 on them. Stephanie Mak on her website discusses this:
If one removes all patches to the eMate 300 (by replacing the ROM chip, and then putting in the original one again, as the eMate and the MessagePad 2000/2100 devices erase their memory completely after replacing the chip), the result will be the Newton OS saying that this is version 2.2.00. Also, the Original MessagePad and the MessagePad 100 share the same model number, as they only differ in the ROM chip version. (The OMP has OS versions 1.0 to 1.05, or 1.10 to 1.11, while the MP100 has 1.3 that can be upgraded with various patches.)
Other uses
There were a number of projects that used the Newton as a portable information device in cultural settings such as museums. For example, Visible Interactive created a walking tour in San Francisco's Chinatown but the most significant effort took place in Malaysia at the Petronas Discovery Center, known as Petrosains.
In 1995, an exhibit design firm, DMCD Inc., was awarded the contract to design a new science museum in the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur. A major factor in the award was the concept that visitors would use a Newton device to access additional information, find out where they were in the museum, listen to audio, see animations, control robots and other media, and to bookmark information for printout at the end of the exhibit.
The device became known as the ARIF, a Malay word for "wise man" or "seer" and it was also an acronym for A Resourceful Informative Friend. Some 400 ARIFS were installed and over 300 are still in use today. The development of the ARIF system was extremely complex and required a team of hardware and software engineers, designers, and writers. ARIF is an ancestor of the PDA systems used in museums today and it boasted features that have not been attempted since.
Anyway & Company firm was involved with the Petronas Discovery Center project back in 1998 and NDAs were signed which prevents getting to know more information about this project. It was confirmed that they purchased of MP2000u or MP2100's by this firm on the behalf of the project under the name of "Petrosains Project Account". By 1998 they had invested heavily into the R&D of this project with the Newton at the center. After Apple officially cancelled the Newton in 1998 they had to acquire as many Newtons as possible for this project. It was estimated initially 1000 Newtons, but later readjusted the figure to possibly 750 Newtons. They placed an “Internet Call” for Newtons. They purchased them in large and small quantities.
The Newton was also used in healthcare applications, for example in collecting data directly from patients. Newtons were used as electronic diaries, with patients entering their symptoms and other information concerning their health status on a daily basis. The compact size of the device and its ease of use made it possible for the electronic diaries to be carried around and used in the patients' everyday life setting. This was an early example of electronic patient-reported outcomes (ePRO)
See also
Newton (platform)
Newton OS
eMate 300
NewtonScript
Orphaned technology
Pen computing
References
Bibliography
Apple's press release on the debut of the MessagePad 2100
Apple's overview of features & limitations of Newton Connection Utilities
Newton overview at Newton Source archived from Apple
Newton FAQ
Pen Computing's First Look at Newton OS 2.0
Newton Gallery
Birth of the Newton
The Newton Hall of Fame: People behind the Newton
Pen Computing's Why did Apple kill the Newton?
Pen Computing's Newton Notes column archive
A.I. Magazine article by Yaeger on Newton HWR design, algorithms, & quality and associated slides
Info on Newton HWR from Apple's HWR Technical Lead
External links
Additional resources and information
Defying Gravity: The Making of Newton, by Kounalakis & Menuez (Hardcover)
Hardcover: 192 pages
Publisher: Beyond Words Publishing (October 1993)
Complete Developer's manual for the StrongARM SA-110
Beginner's overview of the StrongARM SA-110 Microprocessor
Reviews
MessagePad 2000 review at "The History and Macintosh Society"
Prof. Wittmann's collection of Newton & MessagePad reviews
Apple Newton
Products introduced in 1993
Apple Inc. personal digital assistants |
39452111 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyceum%20of%20the%20Philippines%20University%20%E2%80%93%20Laguna | Lyceum of the Philippines University – Laguna | The Lyceum of the Philippines University - Laguna (formerly Lyceum Institute of Technology), one of the campuses of the Lyceum of the Philippines University, is an institute of higher education located in Km. 54, Brgy. Makiling, Calamba City in the province of Laguna, Philippines. It was founded by Senator Sotero H. Laurel on January 18, 2000 as the third campus of the LPU system after Manila and Batangas.
Currently, Lyceum of the Philippines University has 43 degree, non-degree, masters, and doctorate programs to offer.
Institution
The university offers undergraduate and graduate programs in various fields, including computer studies, engineering, arts, business, accountancy, tourism, hospitality management and medicine.
Palaestra Consortio
Palaestra Consortio, which is Latin term for “Training Partner”, is the industry linkage arm of Lyceum. It provides for student on-the-job training and internship programs, job placement programs, and meetings and consultations with industry leaders.
The major industry partners of Lyceum are Yazaki-Torres Manufacturing Inc, a manufacturer of wiring and other automotive parts, and St. Frances Cabrini Medical Center, which led to the formation of LPU-St. Cabrini College of Allied Medicine, a joint effort between LPU-Laguna and St. Cabrini.
Colleges
LPU - St. Cabrini School of Health Sciences
Bachelor of Science in Medical Laboratory Science
Bachelor of Science in Radiologic Technology
Bachelor of Science in Nursing
Bachelor of Science in Pharmacy
Doctor of Optometry
Doctor of Medicine
College of Arts and Sciences
Bachelor of Arts in Communication
Bachelor of Arts in Multimedia Arts
Bachelor of Science in Psychology
Bachelor of Science is Biology
College of Business and Accountancy
Certified Member of Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business or AACSB
Bachelor of Science in Accountancy
Bachelor of Science in Legal Management
Bachelor of Science in Business Administration
BSBA Management Accounting
BSBA Marketing Management
BSBA Operations Management
BSBA Financial Management
BSBA People Management
BSBA Business Economics
Bachelor of Science in Entrepreneurship
Bachelor of Science in Customs Administration
College of Engineering and Computer Studies
Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering
Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering
Bachelor of Science in Electronics Engineering
Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering
Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering
Bachelor of Science in Computer Science
Bachelor of Science in Information Technology
Bachelor of Science in Computer Science Major in Game Development
Associate in Computer Technology
College of International Tourism and Hospitality Management
All programs accredited by The International Centre for Excellence in Tourism and Hospitality Education or THE-ICE
Bachelor of Science in International Hospitality Management with specialization in:
Hotel and Restaurant Administration
Culinary Arts and Kitchen Operations
Cruise Line Operations in Hotel Services
Cruise Line Operations in Culinary Arts
Bachelor of Science in International Travel and Tourism Management
Associate in International Travel and Tourism Management
Associate in Hotel and Restaurant Administration
Associate in Culinary Arts in Kitchen Operations
Associate in Hospitality Management
LPU Graduate School
PhD in Management
Master in Business Administration
Master in Public Administration
MA in English Language Studies
MA in Information Technology Education
MA in Educational Leadership and Management
MA in Psychology
MA in Industrial Engineering
MS in Information Technology
LPU - Laguna International School
Grade 7-10 Junior High School
Grade 11-12 Senior High School
Student Councils and Organizations
University-wide student organizations
Lyceum Supreme Student Council
Lyceum Pirates Dance Troupe
Lyceum Concert Singers
Lyceum Theatre Ensemble
Tatsulok Psychology Organization
The Voyage
Lyceum Music Circle
Peer Facilitator's Society
CFC-Youth for Christ LPU-Laguna Chapter
Lyceum Kalikasan
Youth in Action
League of Warriors
LPU-L General Engineering and Mathematics Society
Mechatronics and Robotics Society of the Philippines LPU Laguna Chapter
Junior Association of Business Managers
Lyceum Filmmakers' Society
International Students' Association
See also
Lyceum of the Philippines University - Batangas
Lyceum of the Philippines University - Cavite
José P. Laurel
References
Lyceum of the Philippines University
Universities and colleges in Laguna (province)
Laurel family
Educational institutions established in 2000
Private schools in the Philippines
Education in Calamba, Laguna
2000 establishments in the Philippines |
54283851 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brent%20Robinson | Brent Robinson | Dr. Brent Robinson (1951–1996, born Charles Brent Robinson) was a lecturer at the University of Cambridge and author. He was a Fellow of Hughes Hall, Cambridge, and wrote books such as Microcomputers and the Language of Arts (English, Language and Education), and works relating to information technology use by teachers. He created the Journal of Information Technology For Teacher Education, in which he was also a researcher. His major interests were in teacher education, and he was formerly Vice President of the Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education.
His family had a tradition: every male in the family were to be named Charles, as a first name. Brent Robinson, however, preferred to be referred to by his middle name. He produced a number of notable works, such as Education Technology: Leadership Perspective.
Literary research
Literary personification was a key research focus for Dr Robinson. He hired a professional writer to play a character who featured in a novel, and then encouraged eighth grade students to write to this character with questions and comments. This however, was done via email communication. Brent was featured in a Cambridge University publication surrounding IT usage in the classroom, when information technology was just coming into fruition.
Personal life
Brent was born in Winchester in 1951. He had a daughter named Charlotte. He married Suzanne D Cowling in 1982, however at a later unknown date, he divorced her.
Death
Robinson died on a Channel ferry on 14 September 1996, according to his family. He was 45.
References
Fellows of Hughes Hall, Cambridge
1951 births
1996 deaths
20th-century British writers
Academics of the University of Cambridge
20th-century British male writers |
12715874 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Del%20Alexander | Del Alexander | DelVaughn Alexander (born July 16, 1971) is an American football coach and former player. He was most recently the wide receivers coach at the University of Notre Dame, a position he had held since 2017.
Coaching career
Alexander was the wide receivers coach for the University of Notre Dame. Prior to that, he coached at Arizona State University, University of Wisconsin–Madison, University of San Diego, Oregon State University and UNLV. He also worked for the National Football League's San Diego Chargers.
College career
Alexander played college football at the University of Southern California where he backed up Johnnie Morton and Keyshawn Johnson. Between 1995 and 1998, Alexander was a graduate assistant coach for the USC Trojans. Prior to USC, Alexander went to West Los Angeles College.
External links
Arizona State profile
Wisconsin profile
1971 births
Living people
American football wide receivers
Oregon State Beavers football coaches
San Diego Chargers coaches
San Diego Toreros football coaches
Players of American football from Los Angeles
UNLV Rebels football coaches
USC Trojans football coaches
USC Trojans football players
Wisconsin Badgers football coaches
Coaches of American football from California
Sports coaches from Los Angeles |
1503358 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-square%20cipher | Two-square cipher | The Two-square cipher, also called double Playfair, is a manual symmetric encryption technique. It was developed to ease the cumbersome nature of the large encryption/decryption matrix used in the four-square cipher while still being slightly stronger than the single-square Playfair cipher.
The technique encrypts pairs of letters (digraphs), and thus falls into a category of ciphers known as polygraphic substitution ciphers. This adds significant strength to the encryption when compared with monographic substitution ciphers, which operate on single characters. The use of digraphs makes the two-square technique less susceptible to frequency analysis attacks, as the analysis must be done on 676 possible digraphs rather than just 26 for monographic substitution. The frequency analysis of digraphs is possible, but considerably more difficult, and it generally requires a much larger ciphertext in order to be useful.
History
Félix Delastelle described the cipher in his 1901 book Traité élémentaire de cryptographie under the name damiers bigrammatiques réduits (reduced digraphic checkerboard), with both horizontal and vertical types.
The two-alphabet checkerboard was described by William F. Friedman in his book Advanced Military Cryptography (1931) and in the later Military Cryptanalysis and Military Cryptanalytics series.
Friedman's co-author on Military Cryptanalytics, Lambros D. Callimahos described the cipher in Collier's Encyclopedia in the Cryptography article.
The encyclopedia description was then adapted into an article in The Cryptogram of the American Cryptogram Association in 1972. After this, the cipher became a regular cipher type in ACA puzzles.
In 1987, Noel Currer‐Briggs described the double Playfair cipher used by Germans in World War II. In this case, double Playfair refers to a method using two Polybius squares plus seriation.
Even variants of Double Playfair that encipher each pair of letters twice are considered weaker than the double transposition cipher.
Other slight variants, also incorporating seriation, are described in Schick (1987) and David (1996).
The two-square cipher is not described in some other 20th century popular cryptography books e.g. by Helen Fouché Gaines (1939) or William Maxwell Bowers (1959), although both describe the Playfair cipher and four-square cipher.
Using two-square
The two-square cipher uses two 5x5 matrices and comes in two varieties, horizontal and vertical. The horizontal two-square has the two matrices side by side. The vertical two-square has one below the other. Each of the 5x5 matrices contains the letters of the alphabet (usually omitting "Q" or putting both "I" and "J" in the same location to reduce the alphabet to fit). The alphabets in both squares are generally mixed alphabets, each based on some keyword or phrase.
To generate the 5x5 matrices, one would first fill in the spaces in the matrix with the letters of a keyword or phrase (dropping any duplicate letters), then fill the remaining spaces with the rest of the letters of the alphabet in order (again omitting "Q" to reduce the alphabet to fit). The key can be written in the top rows of the table, from left to right, or in some other pattern, such as a spiral beginning in the upper-left-hand corner and ending in the center. The keyword together with the conventions for filling in the 5x5 table constitute the cipher key. The two-square algorithm allows for two separate keys, one for each matrix.
As an example, here are the vertical two-square matrices for the keywords "example" and "keyword":
E X A M P
L B C D F
G H I J K
N O R S T
U V W Y Z
K E Y W O
R D A B C
F G H I J
L M N P S
T U V X Z
Algorithm
Encryption using two-square is basically the same as the system used in four-square, except that the plaintext and ciphertext digraphs use the same matrixes.
To encrypt a message, one would Follow these steps:
Split the payload message into digraphs. (help me obi wan kenobi becomes he lp me ob iw an ke no bi)
For a vertical two-square, the first character of both plaintext and ciphertext digraphs uses the top matrix, while the second character uses the bottom.
For a horizontal two-square, the first character of both digraphs uses the left matrix, while the second character uses the right.
Find the first letter in the digraph in the upper/left text matrix.
E X A M P
L B C D F
G H I J K
N O R S T
U V W Y Z
K E Y W O
R D A B C
F G H I J
L M N P S
T U V X Z
Find the second letter in the digraph in the lower/right plaintext matrix.
E X A M P
L B C D F
G H I J K
N O R S T
U V W Y Z
K E Y W O
R D A B C
F G H I J
L M N P S
T U V X Z
A rectangle is defined by the two plaintext characters and the opposite corners define the ciphertext digraph.
E X A M P
L B C D F
G H I J K
N O R S T
U V W Y Z
K E Y W O
R D A B C
F G H I J
L M N P S
T U V X Z
Using the vertical two-square example given above, we can encrypt the following plaintext:
Plaintext: he lp me ob iw an ke no bi
Ciphertext: EH DL XW SD JY NA HO TK DG
Here is the same two-square written out again but blanking all of the values that aren't used for encrypting the digraph "LP" into "DL"
- - - - -
L - - D -
- - - - -
- - - - -
- - - - -
- - - - -
- - - - -
- - - - -
L - - P -
- - - - -
The rectangle rule used to encrypt and decrypt can be seen clearly in this diagram. The method for decrypting is identical to the method for encryption.
Just like Playfair (and unlike four-square), there are special circumstances when the two letters in a digraph are in the same column for vertical two-square or in the same row for horizontal two-square. For vertical two-square, a plaintext digraph that ends up with both characters in the same column gives the same digraph in the ciphertext. For horizontal two-square, a plaintext digraph with both characters in the same row gives (by convention) that digraph with the characters reversed in the ciphertext. In cryptography this is referred to as a transparency. (The horizontal version is sometimes called a reverse transparency.) Notice in the above example how the digraphs "HE" and "AN" mapped to themselves. A weakness of two-square is that about 20% of digraphs will be transparencies.
E X A M P
L B C D F
G H I J K
N O R S T
U V W Y Z
K E Y W O
R D A B C
F G H I J
L M N P S
T U V X Z
Two-square cryptanalysis
Like most pre-modern era ciphers, the two-square cipher can be easily cracked if there is enough text. Obtaining the key is relatively straightforward if both plaintext and ciphertext are known. When only the ciphertext is known, brute force cryptanalysis of the cipher involves searching through the key space for matches between the frequency of occurrence of digraphs (pairs of letters) and the known frequency of occurrence of digraphs in the assumed language of the original message.
Cryptanalysis of two-square almost always revolves around the transparency weakness. Depending on whether vertical or horizontal two-square was used, either the ciphertext or the reverse of the ciphertext should show a significant number of plaintext fragments. In a large enough ciphertext sample, there are likely to be several transparent digraphs in a row, revealing possible word fragments. From these word fragments the analyst can generate candidate plaintext strings and work backwards to the keyword.
A good tutorial on reconstructing the key for a two-square cipher can be found in chapter 7, "Solution to Polygraphic Substitution Systems," of Field Manual 34-40-2, produced by the United States Army.
References
See also
Topics in cryptography
Playfair cipher
Classical ciphers |
706798 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romeo%20Miller | Romeo Miller | Percy Romeo Miller (born August 19, 1989), also known by his stage name Romeo (formerly Lil' Romeo), is an American rapper and actor. He gained fame as a rapper in the early 2000s after signing with No Limit Records, then owned by his father, Master P. He soon released his debut single "My Baby" in 2001 which peaked at number 3 on the Billboard Hot 100. Later the same year, Miller released his debut album Lil' Romeo, which charted the US Billboard 200 at number six selling 99,000 copies in its first week and went on to be certified Gold.
In 2002, Miller released his second album titled Game Time; it charted on the US Billboard 200 at number thirty-three selling 96,000 copies in its first week. In 2004, Miller released his third album Romeoland; it charted on the US Billboard 200 at number seventy selling just 56,000 copies in its first week. In 2006, Miller released his digital album titled Lottery; it was his first album released under the name Romeo. In 2006, Miller released the soundtrack to his film God's Gift; it was his first explicit album. To date, this album has sold over 300,000 copies.
In 2007, Miller was offered and accepted a scholarship to play basketball for the USC Trojans at the University of Southern California. Miller would play for the team until he was let go before his junior season in 2010.
Aside from music, Miller has also worked as an actor, beginning in 2002, when Nickelodeon offered him his own show, Romeo!. The show ran for three seasons. Miller starred in the feature films Jumping the Broom (2011) and Tyler Perry's Madea's Witness Protection (2012).
Miller founded the record labels Guttar Music, Take a Stand, The Next Generation and his current label No Limit Forever Records.
Early life
Miller was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. He is the son of rapper and entrepreneur Master P and former rapper Sonya C. He is the nephew of rappers C-Murder and Silkk the Shocker, cousin of producer, singer and rapper Mo B. Dick and the brother of singer and actress Cymphonique Miller. Romeo was signed to No Limit's subsidiary label Soulja Music Entertainment at the age of 5, after he wrote a rap to his father.
Music career
2001: Lil' Romeo
As Lil' Romeo, his debut album was the self-titled Lil' Romeo. It contains the hit single "My Baby" that charted No. 1 for R&B/Hip-hop Singles. The album peaked at No. 6 on the Billboard 200 and No. 5 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums. On July 28, 2001, it was certified Gold by the RIAA for selling 500,000 copies in the United States. Also in 2001 he was featured on his uncle Silkk the Shocker's remix single of "That's Kool", which was also featured on his own album.
2002–2003: Game Time
In 2002, a year later after his debut album, Miller put out his second studio album, Game Time. It peaked at No. 33 on the Billboard 200 and No. 10 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums. It spawned the Billboard-charting single "2-Way" that charted to No. 66 Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs. It also spawned a second single "True Love" which charted at No. 16 under the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs.
2004: Romeoland
In 2004, Miller released his third studio album Romeoland via The New No Limit and Koch, it would be Miller's last studio album to feature himself billed as Lil' Romeo; it was not as successful in sales. Romeoland charted at No. 70 on the Billboard 200 and at No. 29 on the Top Rap Albums chart.
2005–2007: Collaborations, name change, Lottery and God's Gift soundtrack
In 2005, Miller, along with his father Master P, founded a new record label titled Guttar Music Entertainment. Also in 2005, Miller, along with his brother Valentino Miller and their three cousins C-Los, Lil' D and Willie J, formed the rap group Rich Boyz and on November 22, 2005, they released their debut album titled Young Ballers: The Hood Been Good to Us via Guttar Music. The group later disbanded.
On April 4, 2006, Miller released his debut digital album Lottery via Guttar Music Entertainment, UrbanDigital and GoDigital Music Group, it was Miller's first album released with his official name changed to Romeo. On December 12, 2006, Miller released an album titled God's Gift via Guttar Music, UrbanDigital and GoDigital Music Group, it served as the soundtrack to the same name independent film Miller's father Master P had directed and produced, it was also Miller's first album to be classified as explicit. Both albums contained the song "U Can't Shine Like Me", which was a direct response to fellow rapper/actor Bow Wow, who fans believed dissed Miller and his father Master P in his song "Fresh Azimiz".
In 2007, Miller and his father Master P started a non-explicit record label titled Take A Stand Records. Also in 2007, Miller, along with his father Master P, formed a new group called Miller Boyz. On September 4, 2007, they would release their debut album titled Hip Hop History via Take A Stand Records, UrbanDigital and GoDigital Music Group.
2008–present: Mixtapes, EPs and collaborations
In 2008, Miller stated he was working on his fourth studio album titled Gumbo Station. On June 17, 2008, Miller released the first single from the album "Get Low Wit It", which featured Akon and his brother Valentino Miller, it failed to gain success on the Billboard charts.
On March 3, 2009, Miller released a compilation album titled Get Low that contained singles that were originally supposed to have been on Gumbo Station and also contained original songs from his previous albums. In late 2009, Miller formed a new record label titled The Next Generation Entertainment, the label at the time featured his group the College Boyys.
In 2010, Romeo confirmed that he was still working on his fourth studio album, but changed the name of the album to The College Boy. Later, Romeo announced that the title of the album was going to be I Am No Limit. On January 19, 2010, Miller released a promotional single for the album titled "Tell Me a Million Times" that featured Tempo. On January 26, 2010, Miller released a second promotional single for the album titled "Ice Cream Man Jr." which was a tribute to his father Master P. On February 16, 2010, Miller released his debut mixtape Patience Is A Virtue to promote the album. On March 2, 2010, Miller released two EPs to promote the album which were the Famous Girl and Monster/Practice via his label The Next Generation Entertainment and LPD Music. Also in 2010, Miller would introduce his new group the College Boyys; on May 25, 2010, they released their debut album titled Spring Break via his label The Next Generation Entertainment and Hollywood Dream Music, but the group would later disband due to unknown reasons. Miller also on this day released three promotional singles which were "You" that featured his artist at the time D'Anna and Lil Twist, "She Bad" that featured his cousins/artists Lil' D and Black Don and "They Dont Know". Miller also performed at the 2010 Hip Hop Honors along with his brother Valentino Miller, his cousins Lil' D and Black Don, and his uncle Silkk The Shocker, along with Trina, Gucci Mane and Mystikal to honor Master P and No Limit Records. In late 2010, Miller relaunched No Limit Records as No Limit Forever. Romeo also confirmed that he had changed the name of his album from I Am No Limit to Intelligent Hoodlum.
In 2011, Miller toured with his father and Silkk the Shocker. The tour was titled "No Limit Forever International". On January 11, 2011, Miller released his EP Dont Push Me via his label The Next Generation Entertainment. On May 3, 2011, Miller released the first official single from Intelligent Hoodlum called "Famous Girl (Remix)" which was the mastered version of the original, it still featured the original appearances from Sean Kingston and Miller's cousin Black Don, but it would be later dubbed as a promotional single. On August 19, 2011, Miller released his I Am No Limit mixtape, which was originally supposed to be his fourth studio album, but Miller decided it would be best to just release it as a mixtape for his fans.
In 2012, Miller formed a new group called Resq3 which consisted of himself, drummer Christian Brock and guitarist/vocalist Myles Eberhardt. They released their first single "The Only One" and were scheduled to be releasing their debut album, touring and filming TV show later that year, but the group would disband due to unknown reasons. The group's other releases consisted of songs such as "Right Along" and "No One Else Like You". On April 12, 2012, Miller released his first single from his upcoming fourth album titled "Hug Me Forever", which featured his brother Valentino. On May 19, 2012, Miller released the music video for "Hug Me Forever". On August 15, 2012, Miller announced that he had been working on a new mixtape titled Inception, it was released on August 19, 2012 under his new stage name Maserati Rome.
In 2013, Miller announced that he was working on a mixtape, When in Rome, slated for release in 2014.
On January 5, 2015, Miller released his first collaboration mixtape titled We All We Got with his group Money Mafia that includes himself, his father, Ace B, Young Junne, Eastwood, Gangsta, Play Beezy, Calliope Popeye, Flight Boy and No Limit Forever in-house producer Blaq N Mild. The mixtape would also include a surprise feature from Lil Wayne on the track "Power". On April 20, 2015, Miller released his second collaboration mixtape titled Hustlin with his group Money Mafia. On July 29, 2015, Miller would release two new singles from his upcoming fourth studio album titled "Till the Club Close" featuring fellow No Limit Forever artist Ace B and "Bent" featuring fellow No Limit Forever artists Ace B and Silkk the Shocker. On December 17, 2015, Miller revealed the title, cover art and also announced the release date of his planned fourth studio album titled Fighting Monsters, which was scheduled for release on January 7, 2016.
On January 7, 2016, Miller would release Fighting Monsters as a mixtape; it would feature guest appearances from Ace B, BlaqNmilD, DeCarlo, Eastwood, €$¢Ø, JSlugg500, his father Master P, Silkk the Shocker, and Travis Kr8ts. Fighting Monsters was originally supposed to be his fourth studio album, but Miller decided again it would be best to just release it as a mixtape for his fans. On January 13, 2016, Miller would release the mixtape for retail on iTunes for charity. On November 1, 2016, Miller released two singles from his planned fourth studio album titled "B, All, In" featuring fellow No Limit Forever artist Young Vee, and "Shoulder" featuring DeCarlo and fellow No Limit Forever artist Ace B.
Other ventures
Acting career
In 2001, Miller began his acting career with a cameo appearance in the Walt Disney Pictures' film Max Keeble's Big Move. In 2003, he co-starred with Jessica Alba, Mekhi Phifer and Zachary Isaiah Williams in the dance film Honey. In this film, his supporting character was Benny, a young boy looking for a break. In 2003, he voiced himself on an episode of the animated series, Static Shock, to which he had performed the theme song. He starred in another film with Zachary Isaiah Williams, God's Gift, which was released in 2006. He went on to co-star with his father in a film called Uncle P in 2007. His next project in 2007, was a film called ASL in which he starred as himself, alongside Forrest Lipton and Zachary Isaiah Williams who played the young Romeo; Williams had previously co-starred with Romeo in two films and Nickelodeon's Romeo!. Miller also made a cameo appearance in Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide as a rapping coach. He guest-starred as a rapper accused of murder in the 2010 CBS series The Defenders and acted in Jumping the Broom, released in May 2011. In 2011, he also starred in TV commercials for McDonald's and ICDC College. In 2012, Miller starred in Tyler Perry's film "Madea's Witness Protection". He played as Jake, a young man who is trying to get his money back from a ponzi scheme for his father's church and his retirement. In 2012, he participated in Fox's dating game show The Choice. He was a special guest star on the Nick News with Linda Ellerbee episode If Only I Were An Only Child: The Top 10 Annoying Things My Siblings Do which aired on Nickelodeon on May 13, 2013, on which Romeo (among others) talked about annoying things his siblings did, one of which was his brother took his shoes that Romeo was planning to wear, so he could show them to a girl he liked.
From 2013 to 2014, Romeo Miller appeared in advertisements for ICDC College. Miller was cast in the 2017 feature film Never Heard, also starring his father, Master P. In February 2022, it was announced Miller had landed a role in the Lifetime movie, Wrath : A Seven Deadly Sins Story, set to air on April 16.
Fashion designer
On July 24, 2010, Romeo launched his own clothing line titled "College Boyys". The brand has been promoted by Miller, his group the College Boyys, and also artists such as Justin Bieber, Big Time Rush and Jaden Smith. Romeo stated:
On November 13, 2013, Miller revealed that he was working on a brand new clothing line titled ROME Everything.
Basketball career
Miller played basketball as a point guard for one year at Windward High School before he transferred and became a three-year starter at Beverly Hills High School. As a junior, during the 2005–06 high school season, he averaged 13.9 points and 5.6 assists per game. As a senior, during the 2006–07 high school season, he averaged 8.6 points and 9.0 assists per game.
In the summer of 2006, Miller was invited to the Reebok-sponsored ABCD Camp, a basketball camp in the US. The Teaneck, New Jersey-based camp, an invitation-only basketball showcase, was previously attended by high-profile National Basketball Association (NBA) players including Kobe Bryant, Stephon Marbury, Tracy McGrady, LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony. Surrounded by future NBA players such as O. J. Mayo, Derrick Rose, and Kevin Love, Miller averaged less than 2 points a game and struggled throughout the camp. Sonny Vaccaro, the longtime director of the ABCD Camp, explained that he invited Miller to the 2006 camp, "primarily as a favor to Percy Miller (Romeo's father Master P), whom he knew from the club basketball circuit." Vaccaro also said, "If you're looking for the profile of an athlete who plays basketball at USC, he's not it."
Despite this, On April 13, 2007, Miller verbally committed to the University of Southern California (USC) and signed a letter of intent on November 19. According to The Wall Street Journal, the decision to grant Miller a full scholarship at USC was largely driven by his relationship with friend and teammate DeMar DeRozan, an All-American forward who was rated as the number five prospect in the country on Scout.com, and his father's influence. The Wall Street Journal reported Coach Tim Floyd as saying, "Last April ... Percy Miller called while driving both players from a tournament in Fayetteville, Ark ... Percy Miller said 'Demar and Romeo are ready to make their decision, and would you like to have them both on scholarship?' ... 'I said absolutely.'" Miller and DeRozan began playing in the 2008–2009 season.
Miller only played for the Trojans for two seasons, 2008–09 and 2009–10. He only played a total of 19 minutes in 9 games, scoring 5 points and recording 3 rebounds and 1 assist.
Modeling career
On December 27, Romeo modeled for a new 2011 calendar. On April 10, 2011 Miller modeled for the April issue of TROIX magazine. On April 12, 2011, Miller modeled in a new photoshoot.
Dancing with the Stars
After originally withdrawing from season two of Dancing with the Stars due to an injury, Romeo competed in season twelve. He was partnered with professional dancer, Chelsie Hightower. They were eliminated from the show on May 10, 2011 and finished in the Top 5, one week before the semi-final.
In week 7, Donnie Burns was the guest judge and scored the dances.
Other media
Miller competed on the special for the MTV reality series The Challenge on November 21, 2017 and titled Champs vs. Stars.
He is also the host of MTV's Ex on the beach.
Personal life
Miller is Catholic.
On February 14, 2022, Miller took to Instagram to announce the birth of his first child, a daughter, with girlfriend, Drew Sangster.
Discography
Lil' Romeo (2001)
Game Time (2002)
Romeoland (2004)
Hidden Treasure (2019)
Filmography
Awards and nominations
Billboard Music Awards
2001, Rap Artist of the Year (Winner)
2001, Music Videos: My Baby (Winner)
2002, R&B/Hip-Hop: My Baby (Winner)
Kids Choice Awards
2002, Favorite Male Singer - (Nominated)
2003, Favorite Male Singer - (Nominated)
2004, Favorite Television Actor – Male for: Romeo! (Nominated)
2005, Favorite Television Actor – Male for: Romeo! (Winner)
2006, Favorite Television Actor – Male for: Romeo! (Nominated)
Teen Choice Awards
2004, Choice Breakout Movie Star – Male for: Honey (Nominated)
Black Reel Awards
2004, Choice Breakout Movie Star – Male for: Honey (Nominated)
Young Artist Awards
2005, Best Performance in a TV Series (Comedy or Drama) – Leading Young Actor: Romeo! (Nominated)
NAMIC Vision Awards
2005, Best Comedic Performance: Romeo! (Nominated)
Image Awards
2005, Outstanding Performance in a Youth/Children's Program – Series or Special: Romeo! (Nominated)
Golden Raspberry Awards
2013, Worst Screen Ensemble: Madea's Witness Protection (nominated)
References
External links
USC Athletics Player Biography: No. 15 Percy Miller
1989 births
21st-century African-American musicians
21st-century American male actors
21st-century American male musicians
21st-century American rappers
African-American basketball players
African-American businesspeople
African-American Catholics
African-American fashion designers
African-American male actors
African-American male models
African-American male rappers
African-American models
American child singers
American fashion businesspeople
American fashion designers
American male child actors
American male film actors
American male models
American male rappers
American male television actors
American male voice actors
American men's basketball players
Basketball players from Los Angeles
Basketball players from New Orleans
Beverly Hills High School alumni
Businesspeople from Los Angeles
Businesspeople from Louisiana
Businesspeople from New Orleans
Living people
Male actors from Beverly Hills, California
Male actors from California
Male actors from New Orleans
Male models from California
MNRK Music Group artists
Musicians from Beverly Hills, California
No Limit Records artists
Point guards
Rappers from California
Rappers from Los Angeles
Rappers from New Orleans
Southern hip hop musicians
Sportspeople from Beverly Hills, California
The Challenge (TV series) contestants
USC Trojans men's basketball players |
22616613 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United%20States%20Cyber%20Command | United States Cyber Command | United States Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM) is one of the eleven unified combatant commands of the United States Department of Defense (DoD). It unifies the direction of cyberspace operations, strengthens DoD cyberspace capabilities, and integrates and bolsters DoD's cyber expertise.
USCYBERCOM was created in mid-2009 at the National Security Agency (NSA) headquarters in Fort George G. Meade, Maryland. It cooperates with NSA networks and has been concurrently headed by the director of the National Security Agency since its inception. While originally created with a defensive mission in mind, it has increasingly been viewed as an offensive force. On 18 August 2017, it was announced that USCYBERCOM would be elevated to the status of a full and independent unified combatant command.
Mission statement
According to the US Department of Defense (DoD):
The text "9ec4c12949a4f31474f299058ce2b22a", located in the command's emblem, is the MD5 hash of their mission statement.
The command is charged with pulling together existing cyberspace resources, creating synergies and synchronizing war-fighting effects to defend the information security environment. USCYBERCOM is tasked with centralizing command of cyberspace operations, strengthening DoD cyberspace capabilities, and integrating and bolstering DoD's cyber expertise.
Organization
USCYBERCOM is an armed forces unified command under Department of Defense (DoD).
Service components
U.S. Cyber Command is composed of several service components, units from military services who will provide Joint services to Cyber Command.
Army Cyber Command (Army)
Army Network Enterprise Technology Command / 9th Army Signal Command (NETCOM/9thSC(A))
Cyber Protection Brigade
United States Army Intelligence and Security Command will be under the operational control of ARCYBER for cyber-related actions.
1st Information Operations Command (Land)
780th Military Intelligence Brigade (Cyber)
Fleet Cyber Command/Tenth Fleet (Navy)
Naval Network Warfare Command
Navy Cyber Defense Operations Command
Naval Information Operation Commands
Combined Task Forces
16th Air Force (Air Force)
67th Cyberspace Wing
70th Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Wing
688th Cyberspace Wing
624th Operations Center
Marine Corps Cyberspace Command (Marine Corps)
Cyber teams
Since 2015, the U.S. Cyber Command added 133 new cyber teams. The breakdown was:
Thirteen National Mission Teams to defend against broad cyberattacks
Sixty-eight Cyber Protection Teams to defend priority DoD networks and systems against priority threats
Twenty-seven Combat Mission Teams to provide integrated cyberspace attacks in support of operational plans and contingency operations
Twenty-five Cyber Support Teams to provide analytic and planning support to the national mission and combat mission teams.
Background
An intention by the U.S. Air Force to create a 'cyber command' was announced in October 2006. An Air Force Cyber Command was created in a provisional status in November 2006. However, in October 2008, it was announced the command would not be brought into permanent activation.
On 23 June 2009, the Secretary of Defense directed the Commander of U.S. Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM) to establish USCYBERCOM. In May 2010, General Keith Alexander outlined his views in a report for the United States House Committee on Armed Services subcommittee:
Initial operational capability was attained on 21 May 2010. General Alexander was promoted to four-star rank, becoming one of 38 U.S. generals, and took charge of U.S. Cyber Command in a ceremony at Fort Meade that was attended by Commander of U.S. Central Command GEN David Petraeus, and Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates.
USCYBERCOM reached full operational capability on 31 October 2010.
The command assumed responsibility for several existing organizations. The Joint Task Force for Global Network Operations (JTF-GNO) and the Joint Functional Component Command for Network Warfare (JFCC-NW) were absorbed by the command. The Defense Information Systems Agency, where JTF-GNO operated, provides technical assistance for network and information assurance to USCYBERCOM, and is moving its headquarters to Fort Meade.
President Obama signed into law, on 23 December 2016, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal year (FY) 2017, which elevated USCYBERCOM to a unified combatant command. The FY 2017 NDAA also specified that the dual-hatted arrangement of the commander of USCYBERCOM will not be terminated until the Secretary of Defense and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff jointly certify that ending this arrangement will not pose risks to the military effectiveness of CYBERCOM that are unacceptable to the national security interests of the United States.
Concerns
There are concerns that the Pentagon and NSA will overshadow any civilian cyber defense efforts. There are also concerns on whether the command will assist in civilian cyber defense efforts. According to Deputy Secretary of Defense William J. Lynn, the command "will lead day-to-day defense and protection of all DoD networks. It will be responsible for DoD's networks – the dot-mil world. Responsibility for federal civilian networks – dot-gov – stays with the Department of Homeland Security, and that's exactly how it should be." Alexander notes, however, that if faced with cyber hostilities an executive order could expand Cyber Command's spectrum of operations to include, for instance, assisting the Department of Homeland Security in defense of their networks.
Some military leaders claim that the existing cultures of the Army, Navy, and Air Force are fundamentally incompatible with that of cyber warfare. Major Robert Costa (USAF) even suggested a sixth branch of the military, an Information (Cyber) Service with Title 10 responsibilities analogous to its sister services in 2002 noting:
Others have also discussed the creation of a cyber-warfare branch. Lieutenant Colonel Gregory Conti and Colonel John "Buck" Surdu (chief of staff of the United States Army Research, Development and Engineering Command) stated that the three major services are properly positioned to fight kinetic wars, and they value skills such as marksmanship, physical strength, the ability to leap out of airplanes and lead combat units under enemy fire.
Conti and Surdu reasoned, "Adding an efficient and effective cyber branch alongside the Army, Navy and Air Force would provide our nation with the capability to defend our technological infrastructure and conduct offensive operations. Perhaps more important, the existence of this capability would serve as a strong deterrent for our nation's enemies."
In response to concerns about the military's right to respond to cyber attacks, General Alexander stated "The U.S. must fire back against cyber attacks swiftly and strongly and should act to counter or disable a threat even when the identity of the attacker is unknown" prior to his confirmation hearings before the United States Congress. This came in response to incidents such as a 2008 operation to take down a government-run extremist honeypot in Saudi Arabia. "Elite U.S. military computer specialists, over the objections of the CIA, mounted a cyberattack that dismantled the online forum".
"The new U.S. Cyber Command needs to strike a balance between protecting military assets and personal privacy." stated Alexander, in a Defense Department release. If confirmed, Alexander said, his main focus will be on building capacity and capability to secure the networks and educating the public on the command's intent.
"This command is not about an effort to militarize cyber space," he said. "Rather, it's about safeguarding our military assets."
In July 2011, Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn announced in a conference that "We have, within Cyber Command, a full spectrum of capabilities, but the thrust of the strategy is defensive." "The strategy rests on five pillars, he said: treat cyber as a domain; employ more active defenses; support the Department of Homeland Security in protecting critical infrastructure networks; practice collective defense with allies and international partners; and reduce the advantages attackers have on the Internet."
In 2013, USCYBERCOM held a classified exercise in which reserve officers (with extensive experience in their civilian cyber-security work) easily defeated active duty cyber warriors. In 2015 Eric Rosenbach, the principal cyber adviser to Defense Secretary Ash Carter, said DoD was looking at alternatives to staffing with just active-duty military. Beginning that year, USCYBERCOM added 133 teams (staffing out at 6,000 people), with the intent that at least 15% of the personnel would be reserve cyber operations airmen. These new teams had achieved "initial operating capability" (IOC) as of 21 October 2016. Officials noted that IOC is not the same as combat readiness, but is the first step in that direction.
President Barack Obama's Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity was formed to develop a plan for protecting cyberspace. The commission released a report in December 2016. The report made 16 major recommendations regarding the intertwining roles of the military, government administration and the private sector in providing cyber security.
President Trump indicated that he wanted a full review of Cyber Command during his bid for presidency. During his presidency, the Trump administration made Cyber Command a unified combatant command, and took other measures attempting to deter cyber attacks. However, the FBI reported that they logged a record number of complaints and economic losses in 2019, as cybercrime continued to grow.
International effects and reactions
The creation of U.S. Cyber Command appears to have motivated other countries in this arena. In December 2009, South Korea announced the creation of a cyber warfare command. Reportedly, this was in response to North Korea's creation of a cyber warfare unit. In addition, the British GCHQ has begun preparing a cyber force. Furthermore, a shift in military interest in cyber warfare has motivated the creation of the first U.S. Cyber Warfare Intelligence Center. In 2010, China introduced a department dedicated to defensive cyber war and information security in response to the creation of USCYBERCOM.
Operations
In June 2019, Russia has conceded that it is "possible" its electrical grid was under cyberattack by the United States. The New York Times reported that hackers from the U.S. Cyber Command planted malware potentially capable of disrupting the Russian electrical grid.
Cyber command is using its 2021 exercise Cyber Flag 21-2 to improve its teams' tactics.
List of commanders
See also
List of cyber warfare forces
United States Strategic Command
Joint Task Force-Global Network Operations
United States National Security Agency (NSA)
United States Department of Homeland Security
Information assurance vulnerability alert
Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence (NATO)
National Cyberdefence Centre (Germany)
Cyberwarfare
Cyberwarfare in the United States
Defense Information Systems Agency
2008 cyberattack on United States
2020 United States federal government data breach
References
External links
U.S. Cyber Command website
US Cyber Command Fact Sheet
US Cyber Command Fact Sheet PowerPoint
FACT SHEET: Imposing Costs for Harmful Foreign Activities by the Russian Government
Cyber Command
Cyber Command
Cyberinfrastructure
Cyberwarfare in the United States
National cyber security centres
Net-centric
Cyber Command
Military units and formations established in 2009
2009 establishments in the United States
Military installations in Maryland |
49598544 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratmir%20Timashev | Ratmir Timashev | Ratmir Vilyevich Timashev is a Russian IT entrepreneur, founder and CEO of Veeam Software. He also owns ABRT Venture Fund, which invests in early stage IT startup companies. He has been listed in The Top 25 Innovators of the Year by CRN Magazine and won a Silver Stevie Award for Executive of the Year — Computer Services.
Early life and education
Ratmir Timashev was born in Ufa, Russian SFSR, in 1966. He earned two master's degrees in Physics from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (in 1990) and in Chemical Physics from the Ohio State University (in 1996).
Career
In 1995, while still a graduate student at OSU, he started his first business with his college roommate, Andrei Baronov. The first business established by Timashev was an internet e-commerce start-up. With his partner, Baronov, he built an online store to sell computer parts. Later in 1996, the two partners created several tools for Windows NT administrators and these tools' sales soon exceeded the revenue from the computer parts' sales, which led Timashev to start a new company, Aelita Software. Started in 1997, Aelita Software, was focused on Windows Server systems management and monitoring software. Over the next eight years, Aelita grew to $30 million in sales. At the beginning of 2004, the company was sold to its prime competitor, Quest Software, for about $115 million. Timashev had become a General Manager at Quest Software responsible for the new Windows Enterprise Management business unit. He left Quest Software at the beginning of 2005.
In late 2005, Timashev realized the potential of virtualization technologies. He decided to do something similar to what he and Baronov had done for Windows NT, but for the virtual environment instead. In 2006, Timashev started a new company that he named Veeam Software. The first Veeam products were designed for managing and monitoring the VMware ESX virtualization platform. In 2008 the company released a backup tool called Veeam Backup & Replication. The tool soon became Veeam's flagship product and helped company enter the backup market.
By the end of 2015, Veeam Software employed more than 1,950 people worldwide and reported $474 million in revenue.
Venture activities
Since 2004, Timashev and Baronov started investing in information technology companies that develop internet and software products. They established ABRT Venture Fund (the name ABRT came from the first letters of the founders’ names: Andrei Baronov and Ratmir Timashev). The company mainly invests in eastern and central European-based companies. The fund invests in startup companies, provides its own specialists to enable sales, marketing and other necessary activities, and then exits on IPO or a company’s sale stage.
References
1966 births
Living people
21st-century American businesspeople
American people of Russian descent
American technology company founders
Chief executives in the technology industry
Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology alumni
Ohio State University Graduate School alumni
People from Ufa
Software engineers
Technology company founders |
12013216 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel%20Kane%20%28mathematician%29 | Daniel Kane (mathematician) | Daniel Mertz Kane (born 1986) is an American mathematician.
He is currently an associate professor with a joint position in the Mathematics Department and the Computer Science and Engineering Department at the University of California, San Diego.
Early life and education
Kane was born in Madison, Wisconsin, to Janet E. Mertz and Jonathan M. Kane, professors of oncology and of mathematics and computer science, respectively.
He attended Wingra School, a small alternative K-8 school in Madison that focuses on self-guided education. By 3rd grade, he had mastered K through 9th-grade mathematics. Starting at age 13, he took honors math courses at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and did research under the mentorship of Ken Ono while dual enrolled at Madison West High School. He earned gold medals in the 2002 and 2003 International Mathematical Olympiads. Prior to his 17th birthday, he resolved an open conjecture proposed years earlier by Andrews and Lewis; for this research, he was named Fellow Laureate of the Davidson Institute for Talent Development.
He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2007 with two bachelor's degrees, one in mathematics with computer science and the other in physics.
While at MIT, Kane was one of four people since 2003 (and one of eight in the history of the competition) to be named a four-time Putnam Fellow in the William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition. He also won the 2007 Morgan Prize and competed as part of the MIT team in the Mathematical Contest in Modeling four times, earning the highest score three times and winning the Ben Fusaro Award in 2004, INFORMS Award in 2006, and SIAM Award in 2007. He also won the Machtey Award as an undergraduate in 2005, with Tim Abbott and Paul Valiant, for the best student-authored
paper at the Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science that year, on the complexity of two-player win-loss games.
Kane received his doctorate in mathematics from Harvard University in 2011; his dissertation, on number theory, was supervised by Barry Mazur. In his curriculum vitae, Kane lists as mentors Ken Ono while in high school; Erik Demaine, Joseph Gallian, and Cesar Silva while an undergraduate student at MIT; and Barry Mazur, Benedict Gross, and Henry Cohn while a graduate student at Harvard.
Research contributions
In 2010, joint work with Jelani Nelson and David Woodruff won both the IBM Pat Goldberg Memorial and Symposium on Principles of Database Systems (PODS) best paper awards for work on an optimal algorithm for the count-distinct problem.
References
External links
Daniel Kane's homepage at UCSD
1986 births
Living people
Scientists from Madison, Wisconsin
Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Science alumni
Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni
20th-century American mathematicians
21st-century American mathematicians
Putnam Fellows
International Mathematical Olympiad participants
Mathematicians from Wisconsin
MIT Department of Physics alumni
Madison West High School alumni |
42674 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shor%27s%20algorithm | Shor's algorithm | Shor's algorithm is a quantum computer algorithm for finding the prime factors of an integer. It was discovered in 1994 by the American mathematician Peter Shor.
On a quantum computer, to factor an integer , Shor's algorithm runs in polynomial time, meaning the time taken is polynomial in , the size of the integer given as input. Specifically, it takes quantum gates of order using fast multiplication, thus demonstrating that the integer factorization problem can be efficiently solved on a quantum computer and is consequently in the complexity class BQP. This is almost exponentially faster than the most efficient known classical factoring algorithm, the general number field sieve, which works in sub-exponential time: . The efficiency of Shor's algorithm is due to the efficiency of the quantum Fourier transform, and modular exponentiation by repeated squarings.
If a quantum computer with a sufficient number of qubits could operate without succumbing to quantum noise and other quantum-decoherence phenomena, then Shor's algorithm could be used to break public-key cryptography schemes, such as
The RSA scheme
The Finite Field Diffie-Hellman key exchange
The Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman key exchange
RSA is based on the assumption that factoring large integers is computationally intractable. As far as is known, this assumption is valid for classical (non-quantum) computers; no classical algorithm is known that can factor integers in polynomial time. However, Shor's algorithm shows that factoring integers is efficient on an ideal quantum computer, so it may be feasible to defeat RSA by constructing a large quantum computer. It was also a powerful motivator for the design and construction of quantum computers, and for the study of new quantum-computer algorithms. It has also facilitated research on new cryptosystems that are secure from quantum computers, collectively called post-quantum cryptography.
In 2001, Shor's algorithm was demonstrated by a group at IBM, who factored into , using an NMR implementation of a quantum computer with qubits. After IBM's implementation, two independent groups implemented Shor's algorithm using photonic qubits, emphasizing that multi-qubit entanglement was observed when running the Shor's algorithm circuits. In 2012, the factorization of was performed with solid-state qubits. Also, in 2012, the factorization of was achieved, setting the record for the largest integer factored with Shor's algorithm. In 2019 an attempt was made to factor the number 35 using Shor's algorithm on an IBM Q System One, but the algorithm failed because of accumulating errors. Though larger numbers have been factored by quantum computers using other algorithms, these algorithms are similar to classical brute-force checking of factors, so unlike Shor's algorithm, they are not expected to ever perform better than classical factoring algorithms.
Procedure
The problem that we are trying to solve is, given a composite number , to find a non-trivial divisor of (a divisor strictly between and ). Before attempting to find such a divisor, one can use relatively quick primality-testing algorithms to verify that is indeed composite.
We need to be odd (otherwise is a divisor) and not to be any power of a prime (otherwise that prime is a divisor), so we need to check that there are no integer roots for .
Hence we may assume that is the product of two coprime integers greater than . It follows from the Chinese remainder theorem that there are at least four distinct square roots of modulo (since there are two roots for each modular equation). The aim of the algorithm is to find a square root of modulo that is different from and , because then
for a non-zero integer that gives us the non-trivial divisors and of .
This idea is similar to other factoring algorithms, such as the quadratic sieve.
In turn, finding such a is reduced to finding an element of even period with a certain additional property (as explained below, it is required that the condition of Step 6 of the classical part does not hold). The quantum algorithm is used for finding the period of randomly chosen elements , as this is a difficult problem on a classical computer.
Shor's algorithm consists of two parts:
A reduction, which can be done on a classical computer, of the factoring problem to the problem of order-finding.
A quantum algorithm to solve the order-finding problem.
Classical part
For example: Given , , and , we have , where and . For that is a product of two distinct primes, and , the value of is just , which for is , and divides .
Quantum part: period-finding subroutine
The quantum circuits used for this algorithm are custom designed for each choice of and each choice of the random used in . Given , find such that , which implies that . The input and output qubit registers need to hold superpositions of values from to , and so have qubits each. Using what might appear to be twice as many qubits as necessary guarantees that there are at least different values of that produce the same , even as the period approaches .
Proceed as follows:
Explanation of the algorithm
The algorithm is composed of two parts. The first part of the algorithm turns the factoring problem into the problem of finding the period of a function and may be implemented classically. The second part finds the period using the quantum Fourier transform and is responsible for the quantum speedup.
Obtaining factors from period
The integers less than and coprime with form the multiplicative group of integers modulo , which is a finite abelian group . The size of this group is given by . By the end of step 3, we have an integer in this group. As the group is finite, must have a finite order , which is the smallest positive integer such that
Therefore, divides (also written ). Suppose that we are able to obtain and that it is even. (If is odd, then by step 5, we have to restart the algorithm with a different random number ) Now is a square root of modulo that is different from . This is because is the order of modulo , so , or else the order of in this group would be . If , then by step 6, we have to restart the algorithm with a different random number .
Eventually, we must hit an of order in such that . This is because such a is a square root of modulo other than and , whose existence is guaranteed by the Chinese remainder theorem, as is not a prime power.
We claim that is a proper factor of , i.e., . In fact, if , then divides , so that , which goes against the construction of . If, on the other hand, , then by Bézout's identity, there are integers such that
Multiplying both sides by , we obtain
As divides , we find that divides , so that , again contradicting the construction of .
Therefore, is the required proper factor of .
Finding the period
Shor's period-finding algorithm relies heavily on the ability of a quantum computer to be in many states simultaneously.
Physicists call this behavior a "superposition" of states. To compute the period of a function , we evaluate the function at all points simultaneously.
Quantum physics does not allow us to access all this information directly, however. A measurement will yield only one of all possible values, destroying all others. If not for the no-cloning theorem, we could first measure without measuring , and then make a few copies of the resulting state (which is a superposition of states all having the same ). Measuring on these states would provide different values which give the same , leading to the period. Because we cannot make exact copies of a quantum state, this method does not work. Therefore, we have to carefully transform the superposition to another state that will return the correct answer with high probability. This is achieved by the quantum Fourier transform.
Shor thus had to solve three "implementation" problems. All of them had to be implemented "fast", which means that they can be implemented with a number of quantum gates that is polynomial in .
Create a superposition of states. This can be done by applying Hadamard gates to all qubits in the input register. Another approach would be to use the quantum Fourier transform (see below).
Implement the function as a quantum transform. To achieve this, Shor used repeated squaring for his modular exponentiation transformation. It is important to note that this step is more difficult to implement than the quantum Fourier transform, in that it requires ancillary qubits and substantially more gates to accomplish.
Perform a quantum Fourier transform. By using controlled rotation gates and Hadamard gates, Shor designed a circuit for the quantum Fourier transform (with ) that uses just gates.
After all these transformations, a measurement will yield an approximation to the period . For simplicity assume that there is a such that is an integer. Then the probability to measure is . To see this, we notice that then
for all integers . Therefore, the sum whose square gives us the probability to measure will be , as takes roughly values and thus the probability is . There are possible values of such that is an integer, and also possibilities for , so the probabilities sum to .
Note: Another way to explain Shor's algorithm is by noting that it is just the quantum phase estimation algorithm in disguise.
The bottleneck
The runtime bottleneck of Shor's algorithm is quantum modular exponentiation, which is by far slower than the quantum Fourier transform and classical pre-/post-processing. There are several approaches to constructing and optimizing circuits for modular exponentiation. The simplest and (currently) most practical approach is to mimic conventional arithmetic circuits with reversible gates, starting with ripple-carry adders. Knowing the base and the modulus of exponentiation facilitates further optimizations. Reversible circuits typically use on the order of gates for qubits. Alternative techniques asymptotically improve gate counts by using quantum Fourier transforms, but are not competitive with fewer than 600 qubits owing to high constants.
Discrete logarithms
Given a group with order and generator , suppose we know that , for some , and we wish to compute , which is the discrete logarithm: . Consider the abelian group , where each factor corresponds to modular addition of values. Now, consider the function
This gives us an abelian hidden subgroup problem, as corresponds to a group homomorphism. The kernel corresponds to the multiples of . So, if we can find the kernel, we can find .
See also
GEECM, a factorization algorithm said to be "often much faster than Shor's"
Grover's algorithm
Peter Shor
References
Further reading
.
Phillip Kaye, Raymond Laflamme, Michele Mosca, An introduction to quantum computing, Oxford University Press, 2007,
"Explanation for the man in the street" by Scott Aaronson, "approved" by Peter Shor. (Shor wrote "Great article, Scott! That’s the best job of explaining quantum computing to the man on the street that I’ve seen."). An alternate metaphor for the QFT was presented in one of the comments. Scott Aaronson suggests the following 12 references as further reading (out of "the 10105000 quantum algorithm tutorials that are already on the web."):
. Revised version of the original paper by Peter Shor ("28 pages, LaTeX. This is an expanded version of a paper that appeared in the Proceedings of the 35th Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science, Santa Fe, NM, Nov. 20--22, 1994. Minor revisions made January, 1996").
Quantum Computing and Shor's Algorithm, Matthew Hayward's Quantum Algorithms Page, 2005-02-17, imsa.edu, LaTeX2HTML version of the original LaTeX document, also available as PDF or postscript document.
Quantum Computation and Shor's Factoring Algorithm, Ronald de Wolf, CWI and University of Amsterdam, January 12, 1999, 9 page postscript document.
Shor's Factoring Algorithm, Notes from Lecture 9 of Berkeley CS 294–2, dated 4 Oct 2004, 7 page postscript document.
Chapter 6 Quantum Computation, 91 page postscript document, Caltech, Preskill, PH229.
Quantum computation: a tutorial by Samuel L. Braunstein.
The Quantum States of Shor's Algorithm, by Neal Young, Last modified: Tue May 21 11:47:38 1996.
III. Breaking RSA Encryption with a Quantum Computer: Shor's Factoring Algorithm, Lecture notes on Quantum computation, Cornell University, Physics 481–681, CS 483; Spring, 2006 by N. David Mermin. Last revised 2006-03-28, 30 page PDF document.
This paper is a written version of a one-hour lecture given on Peter Shor's quantum factoring algorithm. 22 pages.
Chapter 20 Quantum Computation, from Computational Complexity: A Modern Approach, Draft of a book: Dated January 2007, Sanjeev Arora and Boaz Barak, Princeton University. Published as Chapter 10 Quantum Computation of Sanjeev Arora, Boaz Barak, "Computational Complexity: A Modern Approach", Cambridge University Press, 2009,
A Step Toward Quantum Computing: Entangling 10 Billion Particles, from "Discover Magazine", Dated January 19, 2011.
Josef Gruska - Quantum Computing Challenges also in Mathematics unlimited: 2001 and beyond, Editors Björn Engquist, Wilfried Schmid, Springer, 2001,
External links
Version 1.0.0 of libquantum: contains a C language implementation of Shor's algorithm with their simulated quantum computer library, but the width variable in shor.c should be set to 1 to improve the runtime complexity.
PBS Infinite Series created two videos explaining the math behind Shor's algorithm, "How to Break Cryptography" and "Hacking at Quantum Speed with Shor's Algorithm".
Quantum algorithms
Integer factorization algorithms
Quantum information science
Articles containing proofs
Post-quantum cryptography |
46566055 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhavani%20Thuraisingham | Bhavani Thuraisingham | Dr. Bhavani Thuraisingham is the Louis A. Beecherl, Jr. Distinguished Professor of computer science and the Executive Director of the Cyber Security Research and Education Institute at the University of Texas at Dallas. She is a Visiting Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Informatics at Kings College University of London and a 2017-2018 Cyber Security Policy Fellow at New America.
Education
Thuraisingham received a B.Sc. in Pure Mathematics, Applied Mathematics, and Physics from the University of Ceylon in 1975. She received an M.Sc. in Mathematical Logic and Foundations of Computer Science from the University of Bristol and an M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Minnesota in 1977 and 1984 respectively. She earned a Ph.D. in the Theory of Computation and Computability Theory from the University of Wales, Swansea in 1979 and a Doctor of Engineering at the University of Bristol in 2011.
Career
Thuraisingham has 35 years work experiences in commercial industry (Honeywell), Federally Funded Research and Development Center (MITRE), Government (NSF) and Academia. She has conducted research in cyber security for thirty years and specializes in applying data analytics for cyber security. Her work has resulted in over 100 keynote addresses, 120 journal papers, 300 conference papers, 15 books (2 pending) and 8 patents (3 pending).
Awards and honors
IEEE Fellow, 2003
IEEE Computer Society 1997 Technical Achievement Award
AAAS Fellow, 2003
British Computer Society Fellow, 2005
ACM SIGSAC Outstanding Contributions Award, 2010
ACM Distinguished Scientist, 2010
IEEE SMC/TS Research Leadership Award, 2010
Society for Design and Process Science (SDPS) Fellow, 2011
SDPS Transformative Achievement Gold Medal, 2012
Information Reuse and Integration (IRI) Fellow, 2011
IRI Research Leadership Award, 2014
IBM Faculty Award 2013
ACM Fellow, 2018
References
Living people
Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery
Fellow Members of the IEEE
University of Texas at Dallas faculty
Sri Lankan computer scientists
1955 births |
1335662 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CA%20Anti-Spyware | CA Anti-Spyware | CA Anti-Spyware is a spyware detection program distributed by CA, Inc. Until 2007, it was known as PestPatrol.
This product is now offered by Total Defense, Inc. and has been named Total Defense Anti-Virus.
History
PestPatrol, Inc. was a Carlisle, PA based software company founded by Dr. David Stang and Robert Bales, which developed PestPatrol and released its first version in 2000. Originally called SaferSite, the company changed its name in 2002 to better reflect the focus of the company.
PestPatrol was an anti-malware product, designed to protect a computer system against threats such as adware, spyware and viruses. It performed automated scans of a system's hard disks, Windows registry and other crucial system areas, and enabled manual scans for specific threats, selected from a very long list of known malicious software. Among its unique features were CookiePatrol, which purges spyware cookies, and KeyPatrol, which detects keyloggers. Unlike most anti-spyware programs designed for home use on a single desktop, PestPatrol also provided a solution for the network environments found in enterprises. Among the features that made it appealing for enterprise security administrators was the ability to manage networked desktops remotely.
Early versions of the product were criticized for the poor user interface, described alternatively as something that "looks like an application that was ported from OS/2, with unclear buttons" or a "clunky, text-based UI", but the reviewers praised its malware detection and removal capabilities, stating "PestPatrol is the most effective anti-spyware system - short of a switch to Linux - that we've ever used".
It was described by InfoWorld as "one of the most established brands in anti-spyware", and in 2002, it was selected as "Security product of year" by Network World, which cited its ability to detect and remove more than 60,000 types of malware, and its defenses against Remote Administration Tools (RATs).
Billing itself as the "Authority in Spyware Protection," it licensed its signature files for use in Yahoo! Companion and others. In 2003, along with other anti-spyware and anti-malware companies such as Webroot, Lavasoft and Aluria, it formed an industry consortium to fight malware called the Consortium of Antispyware Technology (COAST).
Computer Associates (now CA Technologies) bought PestPatrol in 2004 and made it a part of its computer security line, which includes a virus scanner and a firewall. Using the newly acquired technology, CA created a bundle named CA Integrated Threat Management (ITM), which consisted of an anti-virus solution and the PestPatrol anti-spyware.
Renamed CA Anti-Spyware in 2007, the program can be bought separately, or as part of CA Internet Security.
In 2007, the CA Anti-Spyware team was instrumental in exposing the fact that Facebook was collecting personal information about their users, without their knowledge, even when those users opted out of Facebook's ill-fated Beacon program, and even when those users were not logged into Facebook.
References
External links
CA Spyware Information Center
2000 software
Spyware removal
CA Technologies |
17720518 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IGSTK | IGSTK | The Image-Guided Surgery Toolkit (IGSTK: pronounced IGStick) is a software package oriented to facilitate the development of image-guided surgery applications.
IGSTK is an open-source software toolkit designed to enable biomedical researchers to rapidly prototype and create new applications for image-guided surgery. This toolkit provides functionalities that are commonly needed when implementing image-guided surgery applications, such as integration with optical and electromagnetic trackers, manipulation and visualization of DICOM datasets.
History
The development of IGSTK was funded by the US National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, one of the US National Institutes of Health NIH. Development started in 2003 as a collaboration between the ISIS Center at Georgetown University and Kitware. In 2004 a team from the CADDLab at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill joined the project. Atamai a firm dedicated to development of image-guided surgery toolkits, joined in 2005.
The project has been supported by several vendors of trackers.
License
IGSTK is distributed as open-source software, under a BSD license.
It allows unrestricted use, including use in commercial products IGSTK License.
The copyright of IGSTK is held by the Insight Software Consortium.
See also
ITK
CMake
CPack
VTK
3DSlicer
FLTK
Qt (toolkit)
Use in Other Projects
CISST
Slicer - IGSTK Integration
External links
IGSTK wiki
IGSTK: The Book
Georgetown University, ISIS Center
Kitware homepage
Kitware on Wikipedia
References
IGSTK: Development Process and Project Management Best Practices for an Open Source Software Toolkit for Image-Guided Surgery Applications
IGSTK: A State Machine Architecture for an Open Source Software Toolkit for Image-Guided Surgery Applications
Robot Assisted Needle Placement: Application developed using an open source image guided surgery toolkit (IGSTK)
An Architecture Validation Toolset for Ensuring Patient Safety in an Open Source Software Toolkit for Image-Guided Surgery Applications
An open source software toolkit for image-guided surgery Kevin Cleary, Luis Ibanez, David Gobbi, and Kevin Gary,
Free software programmed in C++ |
21158533 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American%20Recovery%20and%20Reinvestment%20Act%20of%202009 | American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 | The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) (), nicknamed the Recovery Act, was a stimulus package enacted by the 111th U.S. Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama in February 2009. Developed in response to the Great Recession, the primary objective of this federal statute was to save existing jobs and create new ones as soon as possible. Other objectives were to provide temporary relief programs for those most affected by the recession and invest in infrastructure, education, health, and renewable energy.
The approximate cost of the economic stimulus package was estimated to be $787 billion at the time of passage, later revised to $831 billion between 2009 and 2019. The ARRA's rationale was based on the Keynesian economic theory that, during recessions, the government should offset the decrease in private spending with an increase in public spending in order to save jobs and stop further economic deterioration.
The politics around the stimulus were very contentious, with Republicans criticizing the size of the stimulus. On the right, it spurred the Tea Party movement and may have contributed to Republicans winning the House in the 2010 midterm elections. Not a single Republican member of the House voted for the stimulus. Only three Republican senators voted for it. Most economists have argued that the stimulus was smaller than needed. Surveys of economists show overwhelming agreement that the stimulus reduced unemployment, and that the benefits of the stimulus outweighed the costs.
Legislative history
Both the House and the Senate versions of the bills were primarily written by Democratic congressional committee leaders and their staffs. Because work on the bills started before President Obama officially took office on January 20, 2009, top aides to President-Elect Obama held multiple meetings with committee leaders and staffers. On January 10, 2009, President-Elect Obama's administration released a report that provided a preliminary analysis of the impact to jobs of some of the prototypical recovery packages that were being considered.
House of Representatives assembly
The House version of the bill, , was introduced on January 26, 2009. chairman, and was co-sponsored by nine other Democrats. On January 23, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said that the bill was on track to be presented to President Obama for him to sign into law before February 16, 2009. Although 206 amendments were scheduled for floor votes, they were combined into only 11, which enabled quicker passage of the bill.
On January 28, 2009, the House passed the bill by a 244–188 vote. All but 11 Democrats voted for the bill, but not a single Republican voted in favor: 177 Republicans voted against it, while one Republican did not vote.
Senate
The Senate version of the bill, , was introduced on January 6, 2009, and later substituted as an amendment to the House bill, . It was sponsored by Harry Reid, the Majority Leader, co-sponsored by 16 other Democrats and Joe Lieberman, an independent who caucused with the Democrats.
The Senate then began consideration of the bill starting with the $275 billion tax provisions in the week of February 2, 2009. A significant difference between the House version and the Senate version was the inclusion of a one-year extension of revisions to the alternative minimum tax, which added $70 billion to the bill's total.
Republicans proposed several amendments to the bill directed at increasing the share of tax cuts and downsizing spending as well as decreasing the overall price. President Obama and Senate Democrats hinted that they would be willing to compromise on Republican suggestions to increase infrastructure spending and to double the housing tax credit proposed from $7,500 to $15,000 and expand its application to all home buyers, not just first-time buyers.
Other considered amendments included the Freedom Act of 2009, an amendment proposed by Senate Finance Committee members Maria Cantwell (D) and Orrin Hatch (R) to include tax incentives for plug-in electric vehicles.
The Senate called a special Saturday debate session for February 7 at the urging of President Obama. The Senate voted, 61–36 (with 2 not voting) on February 9 to end debate on the bill and advance it to the Senate floor to vote on the bill itself. On February 10, the Senate voted 61–37 (with one not voting)
All the Democrats voted in favor, but only three Republicans voted in favor (Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe, and Arlen Specter). Specter switched to the Democratic Party later in the year. At one point, the Senate bill stood at $838 billion.
Comparison of the House, Senate and Conference versions
Senate Republicans forced a near unprecedented level of changes (near $150 billion) in the House bill, which had more closely followed the Obama plan. A comparison of the $827 billion economic recovery plan drafted by Senate Democrats with an $820 billion version passed by the House and the final $787 billion conference version shows huge shifts within these similar totals. Additional debt costs would add about $350 billion or more over 10 years. Many provisions were set to expire in two years.
The main funding differences between the Senate bill and the House bill were: More funds for health care in the Senate ($153.3 vs $140 billion), renewable energy programs ($74 vs. $39.4 billion), for home buyers tax credit ($35.5 vs. $2.6 billion), new payments to the elderly and a one-year increase in AMT limits. The House had more funds appropriated for education ($143 vs. $119.1 billion), infrastructure ($90.4 vs. $62 billion) and for aid to low income workers and the unemployed ($71.5 vs. $66.5 billion).
Spending (Senate – $552 billion, House – $545 billion)
Aid to low income workers and the unemployed
Senate – $47 billion to provide extended unemployment benefits through December 31, increased by $25 a week, and provide job training; $16.5 billion to increase food stamp benefits by 12 percent through fiscal 2011 and issue a one-time bonus payment; $3 billion in temporary welfare payments.
House – Comparable extension of unemployment insurance; $20 billion to increase food stamp benefits by 14 percent; $2.5 billion in temporary welfare payments; $1 billion for home heating subsidies and $1 billion for community action agencies.
Direct cash payments
Senate – $17 billion to give one-time $300 payments to recipients of Supplemental Security Income and Social Security, and veterans receiving disability and pensions.
House – $4 billion to provide a one-time additional Supplemental Security Income and Social Security Disability Insurance payment to the elderly, of $450 for individuals and $630 for married couples.
Conference – $250 one-time payment to each recipient of Supplemental Security Income, Social Security (Regular & Disability) Insurance, Veterans pension, Railroad Retirement, or State retirement system
Infrastructure
Senate – $46 billion for transportation projects, including $27 billion for highway and bridge construction and repair and $11.5 billion for mass transit and rail projects; $4.6 billion for the Army Corps of Engineers; $5 billion for public housing improvements; $6.4 billion for clean and drinking water projects.
House – $47 billion for transportation projects, including $27 billion for highway and bridge construction and repair and $12 billion for mass transit, including $7.5 billion to buy transit equipment such as buses; and $31 billion to build and repair federal buildings and other public infrastructures.
Health care
Senate – $21 billion to subsidize the cost of continuing health care insurance for the involuntarily unemployed under the COBRA program; $87 billion to help states with Medicaid; $22 billion to modernize health information technology systems; and $10 billion for health research and construction of National Institutes of Health facilities.
House – $40 billion to subsidize the cost of continuing health care insurance for the involuntarily unemployed under the COBRA program or provide health care through Medicaid; $87 billion to help states with Medicaid; $20 billion to modernize health information technology systems; $4 billion for preventive care; $1.5 billion for community health centers; $420 million to combat avian flu; $335 million for programs that combat AIDS, sexually transmitted diseases and tuberculosis.
Conference – A 65% COBRA subsidy for 9 months will apply to workers laid off between Sep 1, 2008 and Dec 31, 2009. Those already laid off have 60 days to apply for COBRA.
Education
Senate – $55 billion in state fiscal relief to prevent cuts in education aid and provide block grants; $25 billion to school districts to fund special education and the No Child Left Behind K–12 law; $14 billion to boost the maximum Pell Grant by $400 to $5,250; $2 billion for Head Start.
House – Similar aid to states and school districts; $21 billion for school modernization; $16 billion to boost the maximum Pell Grant by $500 to $5,350; $2 billion for Head Start.
Conference – The Conference Report merged most education aid with the State Fiscal Stabilization fund (administered by the Department of Education) and gave power over the funds to each governor under voluminous restrictions. The Governor is "Required" to spend $45 billion of the money on education to restore funding to 2008 levels but the mechanisms to enforce state maintenance of effort at 2005–06 levels are complex and potentially impossible to implement. Hard hit states such as Nevada cannot possibly find enough funds to get to the 2005–06 state funding levels for education. Some states with no current budget cuts for education, such as Arkansas and North Carolina, may get nothing. This will result in a monumental 50 state legal and political fight over how to re-budget to best take advantage of the federal legislation. Many states will further reduce state funds for education to the 2005–06 minimum so these state resources can be used for other state priorities and the net gain for education will be far less than the total federal appropriation.
Energy
Senate – $40 billion for energy efficiency and renewable energy programs, including $2.9 billion to weatherize modest-income homes; $4.6 billion for fossil fuel research and development; $6.4 billion to clean up nuclear weapons production sites; $11 billion toward a smart electricity grid to reduce waste; $8.5 billion to subsidize loans for renewable energy projects; and $2 billion for advanced battery systems.
House – $28.4 billion for energy efficiency and renewable energy programs, including $6.2 billion to weatherize homes; $11 billion to fund a smart electricity grid.
Homeland security
Senate – $4.7 billion for homeland security programs, including $1 billion for airport screening equipment and $800 million for port security.
House – $1.1 billion, including $500 million for airport screening equipment.
Law enforcement
Senate – $3.5 billion in grants to state and local law enforcement to hire officers and purchase equipment.
House – Comparable provision.
Tax changes ($275 billion)
House – About $145 billion for $500 per-worker, $1,000 per-couple tax credits in 2009 and 2010. For the last half of 2009, workers could expect to see about $20 a week less withheld from their paychecks starting around June. Millions of Americans who don't make enough money to pay federal income taxes could file returns next year and receive checks. Individuals making more than $75,000 and couples making more than $150,000 would receive reduced amounts.
Senate – The credit would phase out at incomes of $70,000 for individuals and couples making more than $140,000 and phase out more quickly, reducing the cost to $140 billion.
Conference – Tax Credit reduced to $400 per worker and $800 per couple in 2009 and 2010 and phaseout begins at $75,000 for individuals and $150,000 for joint filers. Note retirees with no wages get nothing.
Alternative minimum tax
House – No provision.
Senate – About $70 billion to prevent 24 million taxpayers from paying the alternative minimum tax in 2009. The tax was designed to make sure wealthy taxpayers can't use credits and deductions to avoid paying any taxes or paying at a far lower rate than would otherwise be possible. But it was never indexed to inflation, so critics now contend it taxes people it was not intended to. Congress addresses it each year, usually in the fall.
Conference – Includes a one-year increase in AMT floor to $70,950 for joint filers for 2009.
Expanded child credit
House – $18.3 billion to give greater access to the $1,000 per-child tax credit for low income workers in 2009 and 2010. Under current law, workers must make at least $12,550 to receive any portion of the credit. The change eliminates the floor, meaning more workers who pay no federal income taxes could receive checks.
Senate – Sets a new income threshold of $8,100 to receive any portion of the credit, reducing the cost to $7.5 billion.
Conference – The income floor for refunds was set at $3,000 for 2009 & 2010.
Expanded earned income tax credit
House – $4.7 billion to increase the earned income tax credit – which provides money to low income workers – for families with at least three children.
Senate – Same.
Expanded college credit
House – $13.7 billion to provide a $2,500 expanded tax credit for college tuition and related expenses for 2009 and 2010. The credit is phased out for couples making more than $160,000.
Senate – Reduces the amount that can be refunded to low-income families that pay no income taxes, lowering the cost to $13 billion.
Homebuyer credit
House – $2.6 billion to repeal a requirement that a $7,500 first-time homebuyer tax credit be paid back over time for homes purchased from Jan 1 to July 1, unless the home is sold within three years. The credit is phased out for couples making more than $150,000.
Senate – Doubles the credit to $15,000 for homes purchased for a year after the bill takes effect, increasing the cost to $35.5 billion.
Conference – $8,000 credit for all homes bought between 1/1/2009 and 12/1/2009 and repayment provision repealed for homes purchased in 2009 and held more than three years.
Home energy credit
House – $4.3 billion to provide an expanded credit to homeowners who make their homes more energy-efficient in 2009 and 2010. Homeowners could recoup 30 percent of the cost up to $1,500 of numerous projects, such as installing energy-efficient windows, doors, furnaces and air conditioners.
Senate – Same.
Conference – Same.
Unemployment
House – No similar provision.
Senate – $4.7 billion to exclude from taxation the first $2,400 a person receives in unemployment compensation benefits in 2009.
Conference – Same as Senate
Bonus depreciation
House – $5 billion to extend a provision allowing businesses buying equipment such as computers to speed up its depreciation through 2009.
Senate – Similar.
Money-losing companies
House – $15 billion to allow companies to use current losses to offset profits made in the previous five years, instead of two, making them eligible for tax refunds.
Senate – Allows companies to use more of their losses to offset previous profits, increasing the cost to $19.5 billion.
Conference – Limits the carry-back to small companies, revenue under $5 million
Government contractors
House – Repeal a law that takes effect in 2011, requiring government agencies to withhold three percent of payments to contractors to help ensure they pay their tax bills. Repealing the law would cost $11 billion over 10 years, in part because the government could not earn interest by holding the money throughout the year.
Senate – Delays the law from taking effect until 2012, reducing the cost to $291 million.
Energy production
House – $13 billion to extend tax credits for renewable energy production.
Senate – Same.
Conference – Extension is to 2014.
Repeal bank credit
House – Repeal a Treasury provision that allowed firms that buy money-losing banks to use more of the losses as tax credits to offset the profits of the merged banks for tax purposes. The change would increase taxes on the merged banks by $7 billion over 10 years.
Senate – Same.
House – $36 billion to subsidize locally issued bonds for school construction, teacher training, economic development and infrastructure improvements.
Senate – $22.8 billion to subsidize locally issued bonds for school construction, industrial development and infrastructure improvements.
Auto sales
House – No similar provision.
Senate – $11 billion to make interest payments on most auto loans and sales tax on cars deductible.
Conference – $2 billion for deduction of sales tax, not interest payments phased out for incomes above $250,000.
Conference report
Congressional negotiators said that they had completed the Conference Report on February 11. On February 12, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer scheduled the vote on the bill for the next day, before wording on the bill's content had been completed and despite House Democrats having previously promised to allow a 48-hour public review period before any vote. The Report with final handwritten provisions was posted on a House website that evening. On February 13, the Report passed the House, 246–183, largely along party lines with all 246 Yes votes given by Democrats and the Nay vote split between 176 Republicans and 7 Democrats.
The Senate passed the bill, 60–38, with all Democrats and Independents voting for the bill along with three Republicans. On February 17, 2009, President Barack Obama signed the Recovery Act into law.
Provisions of the Act
Section 3 of ARRA listed the basic intent behind crafting the law. This Statement of Purpose included the following:
To preserve and create jobs and promote economic recovery.
To assist those most impacted by the recession.
To provide investments needed to increase economic efficiency by spurring technological advances in science and health.
To invest in transportation, environmental protection, and other infrastructure that will provide long-term economic benefits.
To stabilize State and local government budgets, in order to minimize and avoid reductions in essential services and counterproductive state and local tax increases.
The Act specifies that 37% of the package is to be devoted to tax incentives equaling $288 billion and $144 billion, or 18%, is allocated to state and local fiscal relief (more than 90% of the state aid is going to Medicaid and education). The remaining 45%, or $357 billion, is allocated to federal spending programs such as transportation, communication, wastewater, and sewer infrastructure improvements; energy efficiency upgrades in private and federal buildings; extension of federal unemployment benefits; and scientific research programs. The following are details to the different parts of the final bill and the selected citizen to receive this Government Grants have to come up with $200 for the activation and they must clear the state tax according to the state percentage that will be refund it back along with the Grants.:
Tax incentives for individuals
Total: $237 billion
$116 billion: New payroll tax credit of $400 per worker and $800 per couple in 2009 and 2010. Phaseout begins at $75,000 for individuals and $150,000 for joint filers.
$70 billion: Alternative minimum tax: a one-year increase in AMT floor to $70,950 for joint filers for 2009.
$15 billion: Expansion of child tax credit: A $1,000 credit to more families (even those that do not make enough money to pay income taxes).
$14 billion: Expanded college credit to provide a $2,500 expanded tax credit for college tuition and related expenses for 2009 and 2010. The credit is phased out for couples making more than $160,000.
$6.6 billion: Homebuyer credit: $8,000 refundable credit for all homes bought between January 1, 2009, and December 1, 2009, and repayment provision repealed for homes purchased in 2009 and held more than three years. This only applies to first-time homebuyers.
$4.7 billion: Excluding from taxation the first $2,400 a person receives in unemployment compensation benefits in 2009.
$4.7 billion: Expanded earned income tax credit to increase the earned income tax credit – which provides money to low income workers – for families with at least three children.
$4.3 billion: Home energy credit to provide an expanded credit to homeowners who make their homes more energy-efficient in 2009 and 2010. Homeowners could recoup 30 percent of the cost up to $1,500 of numerous projects, such as installing energy-efficient windows, doors, furnaces and air conditioners.
$1.7 billion: for deduction of sales tax from car purchases, not interest payments phased out for incomes above $250,000.
Tax incentives for companies
Total: $51 billion
$15 billion: Allowing companies to use current losses to offset profits made in the previous five years, instead of two, making them eligible for tax refunds.
$13 billion: to extend tax credits for renewable energy production (until 2014).
$11 billion: Government contractors: Repeal a law that takes effect in 2012, requiring government agencies to withhold three percent of payments to contractors to help ensure they pay their tax bills. Repealing the law would cost $11 billion over 10 years, in part because the government could not earn interest by holding the money throughout the year.
$7 billion: Repeal bank credit: Repeal a Treasury provision that allowed firms that buy money-losing banks to use more of the losses as tax credits to offset the profits of the merged banks for tax purposes. The change would increase taxes on the merged banks by $7 billion over 10 years.
$5 billion: Bonus depreciation, which extends a provision allowing businesses buying equipment such as computers to speed up its depreciation through 2009.
Healthcare
ARRA included the enactment of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act, also known as the HITECH Act.
Total health care spending: $155.1 billion
$86.8 billion for Medicaid
$25.8 billion for health information technology investments and incentive payments
$25.1 billion to provide a 65% subsidy of health care insurance premiums for the unemployed under the COBRA program
$10 billion for health research and construction of National Institutes of Health facilities
$2 billion for Community Health Centers
$1.3 billion for construction of military hospitals
$1.1 billion to study the comparative effectiveness of healthcare treatments
$1 billion for prevention and wellness
$1 billion for the Veterans Health Administration
$500 million for healthcare services on Indian reservations
$300 million to train healthcare workers in the National Health Service Corps
$202 million for a temporary moratorium for certain Medicare regulations
Education
Total: $100 billion
$53.6 billion in aid to local school districts to prevent layoffs and cutbacks, with flexibility to use the funds for school modernization and repair (State Fiscal Stabilization Fund)
$15.6 billion to increase Pell Grants from $4,731 to $5,350
$13 billion for low-income public schoolchildren
$12.2 billion for IDEA special education
$2.1 billion for Head Start
$2 billion for childcare services
$650 million for educational technology
$300 million for increased teacher salaries
$250 million for states to analyze student performance
$200 million to support working college students
$70 million for the education of homeless children
Aid to low income workers, unemployed and retirees (including job training)
Total: $82.2 billion
$40 billion to provide extended unemployment benefits through December 31, and increase them by $25 a week
$19.9 billion for the Food Stamp Program
$14.2 billion to give one-time $250 payments to Social Security recipients, people on Supplemental Security Income, and veterans receiving disability and pensions.
$3.45 billion for job training
$3.2 billion in temporary welfare payments (TANF and WIC)
$500 million for vocational training for the disabled
$400 million for employment services
$120 million for subsidized community service jobs for older Americans
$150 million to help refill food banks
$100 million for meals programs for seniors, such as Meals on Wheels
$100 million for free school lunch programs
Infrastructure investment
Total: $105.3 billion
Transportation
Total: $48.1 billion, some in the form of Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) Grants
$27.5 billion for highway and bridge construction projects
$8 billion for intercity passenger rail projects and rail congestion grants, with priority for high-speed rail
$6.9 billion for new equipment for public transportation projects (Federal Transit Administration)
$1.5 billion for national surface transportation discretionary grants
$1.3 billion for Amtrak
$1.1 billion in grants for airport improvements
$750 million for the construction of new public rail transportation systems and other fixed guideway systems.
$750 million for the maintenance of existing public transportation systems
$200 million for FAA upgrades to air traffic control centers and towers, facilities, and equipment
$100 million in grants for improvements to domestic shipyards
Water, sewage, environment, and public lands
Total: $18 billion
$4.6 billion for the Army Corps of Engineers for environmental restoration, flood protection, hydropower, and navigation infrastructure projects
$4 billion for the Clean Water State Revolving Fund wastewater treatment infrastructure improvements (EPA)
$2 billion for the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund drinking water infrastructure improvements (EPA)
$1.38 billion for rural drinking water and waste disposal projects
$1 billion to the Bureau of Reclamation for drinking water projects for rural or drought-likely areas
$750 million to the National Park Service
$650 million to the Forest Service
$600 million for hazardous waste cleanup at Superfund sites (EPA)
$515 million for wildfire prevention projects
$500 million for Bureau of Indian Affairs infrastructure projects
$340 million to the Natural Resources Conservation Service for watershed infrastructure projects
$320 million to the Bureau of Land Management
$300 million for reductions in emissions from diesel engines (EPA)
$300 million to improve Land Ports of Entry (GSA)
$280 million for National Wildlife Refuges and the National Fish Hatchery System
$220 million to the International Boundary and Water Commission to repair flood control systems along the Rio Grande
$200 million for cleanup of leaking Underground Storage Tanks (EPA)
$100 million for cleaning former industrial and commercial sites (Brownfields) (EPA)
Government buildings and facilities
Total: $7.2 billion
$4.2 billion to repair and modernize Defense Department facilities.
$890 million to improve housing for service members
$750 million for federal buildings and U.S. Courthouses (GSA)
$250 million to improve Job Corps training facilities
$240 million for new child development centers
$240 million for the maintenance of United States Coast Guard facilities
$200 million for Department of Homeland Security headquarters
$176 million for Agriculture Research Service repairs and improvements
$150 million for the construction of state extended-care facilities
$100 million to improve facilities of the National Guard
Communications, information, and security technologies
Total: $10.5 billion
$7.2 billion for complete broadband and wireless Internet access
$1 billion for explosive detection systems for airports
$500 million to update the computer center at the Social Security Administration
$420 million for construction and repairs at ports of entry
$290 million to upgrade IT platforms at the State Department
$280 million to upgrade border security technologies
$210 million to build and upgrade fire stations
$200 million for IT and claims processing improvements for Veterans Benefits Administration
$150 million to upgrade port security
$150 million for the security of transit systems
$50 million for IT improvements at the Farm Service Agency
$26 million to improve security systems at the Department of Agriculture headquarters
Energy infrastructure
Total: $21.5 billion
$6 billion for the cleanup of radioactive waste (mostly nuclear weapons production sites)
$4.5 billion for the Office of Electricity and Energy Reliability to modernize the nation's electrical grid and smart grid.
$4.5 billion to increase energy efficiency in federal buildings (GSA)
$3.25 billion for the Western Area Power Administration for power transmission system upgrades.
$3.25 billion for the Bonneville Power Administration for power transmission system upgrades.
Energy efficiency and renewable energy research and investment
Total: $27.2 billion
$6 billion for renewable energy and electric transmission technologies loan guarantees
$5 billion for weatherizing modest-income homes
$3.4 billion for carbon capture and low emission coal research
$3.2 billion toward Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grants.
$3.1 billion for the State Energy Program to help states invest in energy efficiency and renewable energy
$2 billion for manufacturing of advanced car battery (traction) systems and components.
$800 million for biofuel research, development, and demonstration projects.
$602 million to support the use of energy efficient technologies in building and in industry
$500 million for training of green-collar workers (by the Department of Labor)
$400 million for the Geothermal Technologies Program
$400 million for electric vehicle technologies
$300 million for energy efficient appliance rebates
$300 million for state and local governments to purchase energy efficient vehicles
$300 million to acquire electric vehicles for the federal vehicle fleet (GSA)
$250 million to increase energy efficiency in low-income housing
$204 million in funding for research and testing facilities at national laboratories
$190 million in funding for wind, hydro, and other renewable energy projects
$115 million to develop and deploy solar power technologies
$110 million for the development of high efficiency vehicles
$42 million in support of new deployments of fuel cell technologies
Housing
Total: $14.7 billion
$4 billion to the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) for repairing and modernizing public housing, including increasing the energy efficiency of units.
$2.25 billion in tax credits for financing low-income housing construction
$2 billion for Section 8 housing rental assistance
$2 billion for the Neighborhood Stabilization Program to purchase and repair foreclosed vacant housing
$1.5 billion for rental assistance to prevent homelessness
$1 billion in community development block grants for state and local governments
$555 million in mortgage assistance for wounded service members (Army Corps of Engineers)
$510 million for the rehabilitation of Native American housing
$250 million for energy efficient modernization of low-income housing
$200 million for helping rural Americans buy homes (Department of Agriculture)
$140 million in grants for independent living centers for elderly blind persons (Dept. of Education)
$130 million for rural community facilities (Department of Agriculture)
$100 million to help remove lead paint from public housing
$100 million emergency food and shelter for homeless (Department of Homeland Security)
Scientific research
Total: $7.6 billion
$3 billion to the National Science Foundation
$2 billion to the United States Department of Energy
$1 billion to NASA, including "$400 million for space exploration related activities. Of this amount, $50 million [was] to be used for the development of commercial crew space transportation concepts and enabling capabilities."
$600 million to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
$580 million to the National Institute of Standards and Technology, of which $68 million was spent on new major (+$1M) scientific instruments, $200M went to fund major scientific building construction at research universities, and $110M was spent on new buildings and major upgrades to existing facilities, including energy efficiency and solar panel arrays, at the Gaithersburg MD and Boulder CO campuses.
$230 million for NOAA operations, research and facilities
$140 million to the United States Geological Survey
Other
Total: $10.6 billion
$4 billion for state and local law enforcement agencies
$1.1 billion in waivers on interest payments for state unemployment trust funds
$1 billion in preparation for the 2010 census
$1 billion in added funding for child support enforcement
$750 million for DTV conversion coupons and DTV transition education
$749 million in crop insurance reinstatement, and emergency loans for farmers
$730 million in SBA loans for small businesses
$500 million for the Social Security Administration to process disability and retirement backlogs
$201 million in additional funding for AmeriCorps and other community service organizations
$150 million for Urban and Rural economic recovery programs
$150 million for an increase of claims processing military staff
$150 million in loans for rural businesses
$50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts to support artists
$50 million for the National Cemetery Administration
Buy American provision
ARRA included a protectionist 'Buy American' provision, which imposed a general requirement that any public building or public works project funded by the new stimulus package must use only iron, steel and other manufactured goods produced in the United States.
A May 15, 2009, Washington Post article reported that the 'Buy American' provision of the stimulus package caused outrage in the Canadian business community, and that the government in Canada "retaliated" by enacting its own restrictions on trade with the U.S. On June 6, 2009, delegates at the Federation of Canadian Municipalities conference passed a resolution that would potentially shut out U.S. bidders from Canadian city contracts, in order to help show support for Prime Minister Stephen Harper's opposition to the "Buy American" provision. Sherbrooke Mayor Jean Perrault, president of the federation, stated, "This U.S. protectionist policy is hurting Canadian firms, costing Canadian jobs and damaging Canadian efforts to grow in the world-wide recession." On February 16, 2010, the United States and Canada agreed on exempting Canadian companies from Buy American provisions, which would have hurt the Canadian economy.
Recommendations by economists
Economists such as Martin Feldstein, Daron Acemoğlu, National Economic Council director Larry Summers, and Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences winners Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman favored a larger economic stimulus to counter the economic downturn. While in favor of a stimulus package, Feldstein expressed concern over the act as written, saying it needed revision to address consumer spending and unemployment more directly. Just after the bill was enacted, Krugman wrote that the stimulus was too small to deal with the problem, adding, "And it's widely believed that political considerations led to a plan that was weaker and contains more tax cuts than it should have – that Mr. Obama compromised in advance in the hope of gaining broad bipartisan support." Conservative economist John Lott was more critical of the government spending.
On January 28, 2009, a full-page advertisement with the names of approximately 200 economists who were against Obama's plan appeared in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. This included Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences laureates Edward C. Prescott, Vernon L. Smith, and James M. Buchanan. The economists denied the quoted statement by President Obama that there was "no disagreement that we need action by our government, a recovery plan that will help to jumpstart the economy". Instead, the signers believed that "to improve the economy, policymakers should focus on reforms that remove impediments to work, saving, investment and production. Lower tax rates and a reduction in the burden of government are the best ways of using fiscal policy to boost growth." The funding for this advertisement came from the Cato Institute.
On February 8, 2009, a letter to Congress signed by about 200 economists in favor of the stimulus, written by the Center for American Progress Action Fund, said that Obama's plan "proposes important investments that can start to overcome the nation's damaging loss of jobs", and would "put the United States back onto a sustainable long-term-growth path". This letter was signed by Nobel Memorial laureates Kenneth Arrow, Lawrence R. Klein, Eric Maskin, Daniel McFadden, Paul Samuelson and Robert Solow. The New York Times published projections from IHS Global Insight, Moodys.com, Economy.com and Macroeconomic Advisers that indicated that the economy may have been worse without the ARRA.
A 2019 study in the American Economic Journal found that the stimulus had a positive impact on the US economy, but that the positive impact would have been greater if the stimulus had been more frontloaded.
Congressional Budget Office reports
The CBO estimated ARRA would positively impact GDP and employment. It projected an increase in the GDP of between 1.4 percent and 3.8 percent by the end of 2009, between 1.1 percent and 3.3 percent by the end of 2010, between 0.4 percent and 1.3 percent by the end of 2011, and a decrease of between zero and 0.2 percent beyond 2014. The impact to employment would be an increase of 0.8 million to 2.3 million by the end of 2009, an increase of 1.2 million to 3.6 million by the end of 2010, an increase of 0.6 million to 1.9 million by the end of 2011, and declining increases in subsequent years as the U.S. labor market reaches nearly full employment, but never negative. Decreases in GDP in 2014 and beyond are accounted for by crowding out, where government debt absorbs finances that would otherwise go toward investment. A 2013 study by economists Stephen Marglin and Peter Spiegler found the stimulus had boosted GDP in line with CBO estimates.
A February 4, 2009, report by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said that while the stimulus would increase economic output and employment in the short run, the GDP would, by 2019, have an estimated net decrease between 0.1% and 0.3% (as compared to the CBO estimated baseline).
The CBO estimated that enacting the bill would increase federal budget deficits by $185 billion over the remaining months of fiscal year 2009, by $399 billion in 2010, and by $134 billion in 2011, or $787 billion over the 2009–2019 period.
In a February 11 letter, CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf noted that there was disagreement among economists about the effectiveness of the stimulus, with some skeptical of any significant effects while others expecting very large effects. Elmendorf said the CBO expected short term increases in GDP and employment. In the long term, the CBO expects the legislation to reduce output slightly by increasing the nation's debt and crowding out private investment, but noted that other factors, such as improvements to roads and highways and increased spending for basic research and education may offset the decrease in output and that crowding out was not an issue in the short term because private investment was already decreasing in response to decreased demand.
In February 2015, the CBO released its final analysis of the results of the law, which found that during six years:
Real GDP was boosted by an average ranging from a low of 1.7% to a high of 9.2%
The unemployment rate was reduced by an average ranging from a low of 1.1 percentage points to a high of 4.8 percentage points
Full-time equivalent employment-years was boosted by an average ranging from 2.1 million to 11.6 million
Total outlays were $663 billion, of which $97 billion were refundable tax credits
Recovery.gov
A May 21, 2009, article in The Washington Post stated, "To build support for the stimulus package, President Obama vowed unprecedented transparency, a big part of which, he said, would be allowing taxpayers to track money to the street level on Recovery.gov..." But three months after the bill was signed, Recovery.gov offers little beyond news releases, general breakdowns of spending, and acronym-laden spreadsheets and timelines." The same article also stated, "Unlike the government site, the privately run Recovery.org is actually providing detailed information about how the $787 billion in stimulus money is being spent."
Reports regarding errors in reporting on the Web site made national news. News stories circulated about Recovery.gov reporting fund distribution to congressional districts that did not exist.
A new Recovery.gov website was redesigned at a cost estimated to be $9.5 million through January 2010. The section of the act that was intended to establish and regulate the operation of Recovery.gov was actually struck prior to its passage into law. Section 1226, which laid out provisions for the structure, maintenance, and oversight of the website were struck from the bill. Organizations that received stimulus dollars were directed to provide detailed reports regarding their use of these funds; these reports were posted on recovery.gov.
On July 20, 2009, the Drudge Report published links to pages on Recovery.gov that Drudge alleged were detailing expensive contracts awarded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture for items such as individual portions of mozzarella cheese, frozen ham and canned pork, costing hundreds of thousands to over a million dollars. A statement released by the USDA the same day corrected the allegation, stating that "references to '2 pound frozen ham sliced' are to the sizes of the packaging. Press reports suggesting that the Recovery Act spent $1.191 million to buy "2 pounds of ham" are wrong. In fact, the contract in question purchased 760,000 pounds of ham for $1.191 million, at a cost of approximately $1.50 per pound."
As of 2016, the servers for recovery.gov have been shut down and the site is unavailable.
Developments under the Act and estimates of the Act's effects
The Congressional Budget Office reported in October 2009 the reasons for the changes in the 2008 and 2009 deficits, which were approximately $460 billion and $1.41 trillion, respectively. The CBO estimated that ARRA increased the deficit by $200 billion for 2009, split evenly between tax cuts and additional spending, excluding any feedback effects on the economy.
On February 12, 2010, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which regularly issues economic reports, published job-loss data on a month-by-month basis since 2000. Organizing for America, a community organizing project of the Democratic National Committee, prepared a chart presenting the BLS data for the period beginning in December 2007. OFA used the chart to argue, "As a result [of the Recovery Act], job losses are a fraction of what they were a year ago, before the Recovery Act began." Others argue that job losses always grow early in a recession and naturally slow down with or without government stimulus spending, and that the OFA chart was misleading.
In the primary justification for the stimulus package, the Obama administration and Democratic proponents presented a graph in January 2009 showing the projected unemployment rate with and without the ARRA. The graph showed that if ARRA was not enacted the unemployment rate would exceed 9%; but if ARRA was enacted it would never exceed 8%. After ARRA became law, the actual unemployment rate exceeded 8% in February 2009, exceeded 9% in May 2009, and exceeded 10% in October 2009. The actual unemployment rate was 9.2% in June 2011 when it was projected to be below 7% with the ARRA. However, supporters of the ARRA claim that this can be accounted for by noting that the actual recession was subsequently revealed to be much worse than any projections at the time when the ARRA was drawn up.
According to a March 2009 Industry Survey of and by the National Association of Business Economists, 60.3% of their economists who had reviewed the fiscal stimulus enacted in February 2009 projected it would have a modest impact in shortening the recession, with 29.4% anticipating little or no impact as well as 10.3% predicting a strong impact. The aspects of the stimulus expected by the NABE to have the greatest effectiveness were physical infrastructure, unemployment benefits expansion, and personal tax-rate cuts.
One year after the stimulus, several independent macroeconomic firms, including Moody's and IHS Global Insight, estimated that the stimulus saved or created 1.6 to 1.8 million jobs and forecast a total impact of 2.5 million jobs saved by the time the stimulus is completed. The Congressional Budget Office considered these estimates conservative. The CBO estimated according to its model 2.1 million jobs saved in the last quarter of 2009, boosting the economy by up to 3.5 percent and lowering the unemployment rate by up to 2.1 percent. The CBO projected that the package would have an even greater impact in 2010. The CBO also said, "It is impossible to determine how many of the reported jobs would have existed in the absence of the stimulus package." The CBO's report on the first quarter of 2010 showed a continued positive effect, with an employment gain in that quarter of up to 2.8 million and a GDP boost of up to 4.2 percent. Economists Timothy Conley of the University of Western Ontario and Bill Dupor of the Ohio State University found that while the stimulus' effects on public sector job creation were unambiguously positive, the effects on private sector job creation were ambiguous. Economist Dan Wilson of the Federal Reserve, who used similar methodology, without the same identified errors, estimates that "ARRA spending created or saved about 2 million jobs in its first year and over 3 million by March 2011."
The CBO also revised its assessment of the long-term impact of the bill. After 2014, the stimulus is estimated to decrease output by zero to 0.2%. The stimulus is not expected to have a negative impact on employment in any period of time.
In 2011, the Department of Commerce revised some of its previous estimates. Economist Dean Baker commented:
[T]he revised data ... showed that the economy was plunging even more rapidly than we had previously recognised in the two quarters following the collapse of Lehman. Yet, the plunge stopped in the second quarter of 2009 – just as the stimulus came on line. This was followed by respectable growth over the next four quarters. Growth then weakened again as the impact of the stimulus began to fade at the end of 2010 and the start of this year.
In other words, the growth pattern shown by the revised data sure makes it appear that the stimulus worked. The main problem would seem to be that the stimulus was not big enough and it wasn't left in place long enough to lift the economy to anywhere near potential output.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) established a "Hypocrisy Hall of Fame" to list Republican Representatives who had voted against ARRA but who then sought or took credit for ARRA programs in their districts. As of September 2011, the DCCC was listing 128 House Republicans in this category. Newsweek reported that many of the Republican legislators who publicly argued that the stimulus would not create jobs were writing letters seeking stimulus programs for their districts on the grounds that the spending would create jobs.
The stimulus has been criticized as being too small. In July 2010, a group of 40 prominent economists issued a statement calling for expanded stimulus programs to reduce unemployment. They also challenged the view that the priority should be reducing the deficit: "Making deficit reduction the first target, without addressing the chronic underlying deficiency of demand, is exactly the error of the 1930s."
In July 2010, the White House Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) estimated that the stimulus had "saved or created between 2.5 and 3.6 million jobs as of the second quarter of 2010". At that point, spending outlays under the stimulus totaled $257 billion and tax cuts totaled $223 billion. In July 2011, the CEA estimated that as of the first quarter of 2011, the ARRA raised employment relative to what it otherwise would have been by between 2.4 and 3.6 million. The sum of outlays and tax cuts up to this point was $666 billion. Using a straight mathematical calculation, critics reported that the ARRA cost taxpayers between $185,000 to $278,000 per job that was created, though this computation does not include the permanent infrastructure that resulted.
In August 2010, Republican Senators Tom Coburn and John McCain released a report listing 100 projects it described as the "most wasteful projects" funded by the Act. In total, the projects questioned by the two senators amounted to about $15 billion, or less than 2% of the $862 billion. The two senators did concede that the stimulus has had a positive effect on the economy, though they criticized it for failing to give "the biggest bang for our buck" on the issue of job creation. CNN noted that the two senators' stated objections were brief summaries presenting selective accounts that were unclear, and the journalists pointed out several instances where they created erroneous impressions.
One of the primary purposes and promises of the Act was to launch a large number of "shovel ready" projects that would generate jobs. However, a sizable number of these projects, most of which pertained to infrastructure, took longer to implement than they had expected by most. By 2010, Obama said he had come to realize 'there's no such thing as shovel-ready projects.'
Some of the tax incentives in the Act, including those related to the American opportunity tax credit and Earned Income Tax Credit, were extended for a further two years by the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010.
In November 2011, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) updated its earlier reports concerning the Act. The CBO stated that "the employment effects began to wane at the end of 2010 and have continued to do so throughout 2011." Nevertheless, in the third quarter of 2011, the CBO estimated that the Act had increased the number of full-time equivalent jobs by 0.5 million to 3.3 million. Section 1513 of the Recovery Act stated that reports on the impact of the act were to be submitted quarterly, however the last report issued occurred for the second quarter of 2011. As of December 2012, 58.6% of Americans are employed.
In 2013, the Reason Foundation, an American libertarian group, conducted a study of the results of the ARRA. Only 23% of the 8,381 sampled companies hired new workers and kept all of them when the project was completed. Also, just 41% of sampled companies hired workers at all, while 30% of sampled companies did hire but laid off all workers once the government money stopped funding. These results cast doubt on previously stated estimates of job creation numbers, which do not factor those companies that did not retain their workers or hire any at all.
In February 2014, the White House stated in a release that the stimulus measure saved or created an average of 1.6 million jobs a year between 2009 and 2012, thus averting having the recession descend into another Great Depression. Republicans, such as House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, criticized the report since, in their views, the Act cost too much for too little result.
Oversight and administration
In addition to the Vice President Biden's oversight role, a high-level advisory body, the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board (later renamed and reconstituted as the "President's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness"), was named concurrent to the passage of the act.
As well, the President named Inspector General of the United States Department of the Interior Earl Devaney and the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board (RATB) to monitor administration of the Act, and prevent low levels of fraud, waste and loss in fund allocation. Eleven other inspectors general served on the RATB, and the board also had a Recovery Independent Advisory Panel.
In late 2011, Devaney and his fellow inspectors general on RATB, and more who were not, were credited with avoiding any major scandals in the administration of the Act, in the eyes of one Washington observer.
In May 2016, the chairman of the U.S. Senate Finance Committee, Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT), launched the first steps of an investigation into a part of the stimulus law that gave grants to solar and green energy companies. Hatch sent a letter to the IRS and Treasury Department with a list of questions about the program. According to the Wall Street Journal, letters from senior senators who chair committees can lead to formal investigations by Congress.
One part of the stimulus law, section 1603, gave cash grants to solar companies to encourage investment in solar technology. Because many companies didn't yet make a profit in 2009 in that industry, they were offered cash instead of tax credits. In September 2015, the U.S. government asked that a Spanish company return $1 million it had received from the program. The company issued a statement saying it fully complied with the request.
See also
Internal Revenue Service Restructuring and Reform Act of 1998
Financial crisis of 2007–2008
Economic Stimulus Act of 2008
2009 energy efficiency and renewable energy research investment
2010 United States federal budget
Build America Bonds
Economic Recovery and Middle-Class Tax Relief Act of 2009
Energy law of the United States
European Economic Recovery Plan
Federalreporting.gov
Pathways out of Poverty (POP)
Race to the Top
School Improvement Grant
Tax Credit Assistance Program
References
External links
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, as amended, in PDF/HTML/details in the GPO Statute Compilations collection
Complete text of enacted statute at Wikisource
Recovery.gov – A website of the Executive for transparency of actions taken under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009
Full Video of The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 signing ceremony on February 17, 2009 (from C-SPAN)
Vice President Biden and President Obama speeches on the 1-year anniversary of the ARRA (from C-SPAN)
Council of Economic Advisers-The Economic Impact of the ARRA Five Years Later – February 2014
Analysis
Estimated Impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act on Employment and Economic Output in 2014 — final report from Congressional Budget Office, February 2015
Effect of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act on 33 economic indicators — Bureau of Economic Analysis via FRED
Stimulus.org Tracking the Stimulus, Financial Bailout, and Recovery Spending, from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget
Stimulus Analysis – An economic and fiscal analysis of the Act, from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget
Stimulus Watch.org – built to help the new administration keep its pledge to invest stimulus money smartly
A report of estimated ARRA funds for students with disabilities in public schools by state
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 from Discourse DB
EERE Network News, from Energy.gov
Acts of the 111th United States Congress
Great Recession in the United States
Obama Administration initiatives
Protectionism in the United States
United States housing bubble
United States federal financial legislation
United States federal health legislation
United States federal housing legislation
United States federal taxation legislation
2009 in American politics
Canada–United States relations
Economic stimulus programs
Articles containing video clips
Fiscal policy |
57003560 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/451%20Group | 451 Group | 451 Group is a New York City-based technology industry research firm. Through its Uptime Institute operating unit, the company provides research for data center operators. In December 2019, 451 Group sold an operating division, 451 Research, to information and analytics company S&P Global.
History
451 Group acquired Uptime Institute in 2009. The company subsequently acquired:
consumer spending research firm ChangeWave Research in 2011
events company Tech Touchstone in 2013
mobile communications research firm Yankee Group in 2013
IT professional community Wisegate in 2017.
The company's 451 Research division was acquired by S&P Global Market Intelligence on December 6, 2019, according to a company press release.
Business
Uptime Institute is the operating division of the 451 Group. It is an American professional services organization best known for its "Tier Standard". and the associated certification of data center compliance with the standard.
Founded in 1987 by Kenneth G. Brill, the Uptime Institute was founded as an industry proponent to help owners and operators quantify and qualify their ability to provide a predictable level of performance from data centers, regardless of the status of external factors, such as power utilities.
451 Research
451 Research was formerly part of 451 Group. Until being acquired by S&P Global in December 2019, it was an information technology industry analyst firm, headquartered in New York with offices in London, Boston, Washington DC, and San Francisco.
The company claimed over 250 employees, over 100 industry analysts and over 1000 clients. The company produced qualitative and quantitative research, across thirteen research channels, and targets service providers, technology vendors, enterprise IT leaders and financial professionals.
See also
High availability
Downtime
Uptime
References
External links
Information technology companies of the United States
Consulting firms established in 1993
International information technology consulting firms
Research and analysis firms
Reliability engineering |
36163428 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arch%20Linux%20ARM | Arch Linux ARM | Arch Linux ARM is a port of Arch Linux for ARM processors. Its design philosophy is "simplicity and full control to the end user," and like its parent operating system Arch Linux, aims to be very Unix-like. This goal of minimalism and complete user control, however, can make Arch Linux difficult for Linux beginners as it requires more knowledge of and responsibility for the operating system.
History and development
Arch Linux ARM is based on Arch Linux, which is a minimalist Linux distribution first released on March 11, 2002. The idea of making a single, official port of Arch Linux for devices with ARM processors was born from members of the Arch Linux PlugApps and ArchMobile development teams, notably Mike Staszel, who went on to found the Arch Linux ARM project.
Kevin Mihelich is currently Arch Linux ARM's primary developer. Arch Linux ARM is community-developed, with software development and user support provided fully by volunteer effort and donations. Also, unlike other community-supported operating systems such as Ubuntu, Arch Linux ARM has a relatively small user base, making user participation in development especially important.
Arch Linux ARM has a rolling release cycle, i.e. new software is packaged as it is released. This "bleeding edge" release cycle of small, frequent package updates differs from release cycles of Linux distributions such as Debian, which focus on large, scheduled releases of packages proven to be stable.
Supported processors
Unlike Arch Linux, which is aimed at x86-64 CPUs, Arch Linux ARM supports low- and high-end ARM CPUs.
At the low end, there is support for ARMv5 platforms like plug computers and OXNAS-based ARMv6 Pogoplugs, although support for ARMv5 and ARMv6 will be dropped at the start of February 2022 owing to low usage. Arch Linux ARM also supports many single-board computers such as the Raspberry Pi.
At the higher end, there is support for:
ARMv7 first generation Cortex-A8 platforms, such as the BeagleBoard or Cubieboard
ARMv7 second generation Cortex-A9 and Tegra platforms, such as the PandaBoard or TrimSlice
ARMv7 third generation Cortex-A7 and Cortex-A15 platforms, such as the Cubieboard2, Odroid XU, Samsung Chromebook (series 3), Samsung Chromebook 2 or Raspberry Pi 2
ARMv8 64-bit capable Cortex-A53 and Cortex-A72 platforms, such as the Odroid C2 and N2, Acer Chromebook R13 or Raspberry Pi 3.
Arch Linux ARM can run on any device that supports ARMv5te, ARMv6h, ARMv7 or ARMv8 instruction sets, including the 64-bit ARMv8 instruction set of the Raspberry Pi 3 and 4.
For a list of officially supported platforms, see archlinuxarm.org's Platforms page. For a list of unofficial, community-supported devices, see archlinuxarm.org's Community-Supported Devices forum.
Reception
Arch Linux ARM has gained popularity as a lightweight Linux distribution, and in 2014 was growing in popularity among single-board computer hobbyists. Arch Linux ARM is also known for having good community support.
See also
List of Linux distributions
Comparison of Linux distributions
References
External links
List of Linux ARM distributions at distrowatch.com
ARM Linux distributions
ARM operating systems
Linux distributions |
180457 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keygen | Keygen | A key generator (key-gen) is a computer program that generates a product licensing key, such as a serial number, necessary to activate for use of a software application. Keygens may be legitimately distributed by software manufacturers for licensing software in commercial environments where software has been licensed in bulk for an entire site or enterprise, or they may be distributed illegitimately in circumstances of copyright infringement or software piracy. Illegitimate key generators are typically distributed by software crackers in the warez scene and demoscene. These keygens often play "Keygen music", which may include the genres dubstep or chiptunes in the background and have artistic user interfaces.
Software licensing
A software license is a legal instrument that governs the usage and distribution of computer software. Often, such licenses are enforced by implementing in the software a product activation or digital rights management (DRM) mechanism, seeking to prevent unauthorized use of the software by issuing a code sequence that must be entered into the application when prompted or stored in its configuration.
Key verification
Many programs attempt to verify or validate licensing keys over the Internet by establishing a session with a licensing application of the software publisher. Advanced keygens bypass this mechanism, and include additional features for key verification, for example by generating the validation data which would otherwise be returned by an activation server. If the software offers phone activation then the keygen could generate the correct activation code to finish activation. Another method that has been used is activation server emulation, which patches the program memory to "see" the keygen as the de facto activation server.
Multi-keygen
A multi-keygen is a keygen that offers key generation for multiple software applications. Multi-keygens are sometimes released over singular keygens if a series of products requires the same algorithm for generating product keys. In this case, only a single value encoded within the key has to be changed in order to target a different product.
Authors and distribution
Unauthorized keygens that typically violate software licensing terms are written by programmers who engage in reverse engineering and software cracking, often called crackers, to circumvent copy protection of software or digital rights management for multimedia.
Keygens are available for download on warez sites or through peer-to-peer (P2P) networks.
Malware keygens
Many unauthorized keygens, available through P2P networks or otherwise, contain malicious payloads. These key generators may or may not generate a valid key, but the embedded malware loaded invisibly at the same time may, for example, be a version of CryptoLocker (ransomware).
Antivirus software may discover malware embedded in keygens; such software often also identifies unauthorized keygens which do not contain a payload as potentially unwanted software, often labelling them with a name such as Win32/Keygen or Win32/Gendows.
Keychan
A key changer or keychan is a variation of a keygen. A keychan is a small piece of software that changes the license key or serial number of a particular piece of proprietary software installed on a computer.
See also
BSA (The Software Alliance)
Canadian Alliance Against Software Theft
Free Software Foundation
References
External links
Business Software Alliance and Software Patents
Warez
Copyright infringement of software
Cryptographic software |
49164263 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SUSE%20Enterprise%20Storage | SUSE Enterprise Storage | SUSE Enterprise Storage (SES) is a Linux-based computer data storage product developed by SUSE and built on Ceph technology. The second major release was available in November, 2015, and announced at SUSECon 2015.
New features in 2.0 include cross-platform support in addition to the native Linux kernel and other RADOS-powered endpoints. Adding iSCSI, the ability to connect block storage to any system, even Microsoft Windows, meant an enterprise-grade software-defined storage system was now available for every major operating system supporting an iSCSI initiator.
Features
New features in SES 2.0 were the iSCSI target, encryption, simpler implementation with a Crowbar appliance used for SUSE OpenStack Cloud integration, and relationships with partners to bring Ceph to ARM-based hardware.
SUSE Enterprise Storage and Ceph recommend against traditional fault-tolerance technologies, such as RAID. Ceph provides full duplication of all data so that loss of any single copy leaves at least two others (by default) available from which a new copy can be created and clients can continue to be serviced.
Because the data are duplicated in their entirety, disk-based duplication via RAID is redundant, reducing overall capacity, and is therefore not encouraged. This design also makes mixing and matching sizes and types of disks possible, and allows for commodity grade hardware to be used cutting costs on the storage environment. The presence of multiple copies of data also provides clients with the ability to achieve greater read performance by pulling data from multiple disks simultaneously.
Another feature of Ceph-based storage is the ability to define, via policy, the type of storage used for different types of data. This means that data can be stored more than the default three times providing higher redundancy and performance if deemed important, and it can also be stored on faster or slower disks depending on the business needs. The policies can go as far as to define redundant storage in multiple servers, multiple racks, multiple datacenter, or on different continents, all depending on the needs of the business or system administrator. Cache Tiering can also be used to help write performance by sending writes to cache to faster disks.
SUSE Enterprise Storage 5, based on the Ceph Luminous release, broadens the scope and use cases for the SUSE Software Defined Storage solution. BlueStore, a new native object storage backend increases performance by up to a factor of two , whilst a more pervasive support of erasure coding increases the efficiency of a fault tolerant solution. Efficiency is enhanced with compression capabilities.
SUSE Enterprise Storage 6 is based on the Ceph Nautilus release and built on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP1. SES 6 delivers new features focused on containerized and cloud workload support, improved integration with public cloud, and enhanced data protection capabilities.
SUSE Enterprise Storage 7 is based on the Octopus release of the open source Ceph technology and built on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP2. It introduces a Windows driver for Ceph.
In March 2021 SUSE stated that they were no longer developing or selling support SUSE Enterprise Storage. Existing support for SES7 would expire 31 Jan 2023
History
SUSE Enterprise Storage 1.0 was released as an add-on to the popular SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12. As an add-on, it took advantage of the enterprise Linux stack available as part of SLES 12, and then provided highly-available, highly replicated, and high-performing storage which could be exposed via RADOS or iSCSI to other clients.
SUSE Enterprise Storage (SES 5) was announced at SUSECon in September, 2017 and released in November, 2017
References
SUSE Linux |
41295822 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014%20USC%20Trojans%20football%20team | 2014 USC Trojans football team | The 2014 USC Trojans football team represented the University of Southern California in the 2014 college football season. USC played their home games at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and were members of the South Division of the Pac-12 Conference. They were led by Steve Sarkisian, who returned to USC after coaching Pac-12 opponent Washington for five years. They finished the season 9–4, 6–3 in Pac-12 play to finish in a three-way tie for second place in the South Division. They were invited to the Holiday Bowl where they defeated Nebraska.
Personnel
Coaching staff
Roster
Returning starters
USC returns 16 starters in 2014, including eight on offense, eight on defense, and the starting kicker, punter & long snapper.
Key departures include Kevin Graf (OT), Marqise Lee (WR), Silas Redd (RB), Xavier Grimble (TE), Marcus Martin (C), George Uko (DE / DT), Devon Kennard (DE), Morgan Breslin (LB), Dion Bailey (LB / S), and Demetrius Wright (S)
Offense (8)
Defense (8)
Special teams (3)
: Co-Starter in 2013
Depth chart
Rookies : *
Double Position : #
Recruiting class
2014 NFL Draft
Schedule
Game summaries
Fresno State
Stanford
Boston College
Oregon State
Arizona State
Arizona
Colorado
Cody Kessler 19/26, 319 Yds, 7 TD (school record)
Utah
Washington State
California
UCLA
Notre Dame
Cody Kessler 32/40, 372 Yds, 6 TD
Holiday Bowl
Rankings
Notes
December 27, 2014 – After winning the Holiday Bowl game, Cody Kessler announced he will return next season for his senior year.
References
USC
USC Trojans football seasons
Holiday Bowl champion seasons
USC Trojans football |
1715959 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AAAA | AAAA | AAAA may refer to:
Internet and computing
AAAA protocol, within computer security, "authentication, authorization, accounting and auditing" - the AAA protocol combined with auditing
AAAA record, also known as "IPv6 address record", maps a hostname to a 128-bit IPv6 address in the Domain Name System (DNS)
Internet Authentication Service, as an acronym for the four main services provided: Authentication, Authorization, Accounting, and Auditing
Organizations
Associated Actors and Artistes of America, an association of the performer trade unions Actors' Equity, AFTRA, Agma, and Agva
American Association of Advertising Agencies, a U.S. trade association for advertising agencies
Asociación Argentina Amigos de la Astronomía, an amateur astronomy civil association
Australian Automotive Aftermarket Association, an automotive industry association for automotive aftermarket parts
American Association for the Advancement of Atheism, an atheistic and antireligious organization
Anguilla Amateur Athletic Association, former name of the Anguilla Amateur Athletic Federation, governing body for athletics in Anguilla
Other uses
AAAA battery, a 1.5 volt battery, smaller than the AAA size
AaAa, possible reading of the name Aa, an ancient Egyptian architect
AAAA, a rhyme scheme
See also
4A (disambiguation)
A (disambiguation)
AA (disambiguation)
AAA (disambiguation)
AAAA Tourist attraction
AaAaAA!!! – A Reckless Disregard for Gravity |
7277371 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerritos%20Library | Cerritos Library | The Cerritos Library is the civic library for the City of Cerritos, California. It was rededicated on March 16, 2002, with the new moniker and the current futuristic design. It was the first building to feature an exterior clad with titanium panels in the United States. It boasts to be the first "Experience Library" and focuses on themed spaces, high quality artwork, and inspirational architecture rather than being another library in the traditional sense.
History
During Cerritos' period of rapid growth in the 1970s, a series of high-profile developments, including a new library, was planned. Debate whether or not to join the County of Los Angeles Public Library system and share a branch with neighboring Artesia or to create a separate facility persisted early on. In the end, with the help of various associations such as the Friends of the Cerritos Library and the then-city manager (who wanted to save the residents from a $20-a-year library tax), the city decided to build its own municipal library.
On the corner of Bloomfield and 183rd Street, on the site of a former strawberry field, the initial groundbreaking for the Cerritos Library took place in June 1972. The building would be the first building added to the Cerritos Civic Center and was dedicated on October 13, 1973 in honor of Cerritos native, First Lady Patricia Nixon and all other First Ladies both past and present. The site was designed by local contractor AJ Padelford & Son using blueprints from architect Maurice Fleishman, AIA.
The Cerritos Library at the time was and housed 45,000 books as well as the latest technology (16-mm sound films and projectors, 16 mm microfilm cartridges, record players with headphones, electric typewriters, and copy machines). In addition, the library also had a children's area, theater and law library. Three years later, Cerritos joined the Metropolitan Cooperative Library System, giving patrons access to more than 3 million items at 26 member libraries and interlibrary loans. From the beginning, the seven-day-a-week schedule was popular.
By 1986, the Cerritos economy was thriving and the city earmarked $6.6 million to remodel the 13-year-old building that would add another 21,000 square feet (2,000 m²) to the area. The children's area was tripled to to include an arts and crafts area a medieval mural and a saltwater aquarium. A community room for meetings and receptions was added as well as a new wing that housed reference, study space, and lounge seating. New furnishings, etched glass, and marble counters were also added. The 1986 Cerritos Library won a national award of excellence, the highest honor, by the American Institute of Architecture and the American Library Association.
By this time, 65% of Cerritos residents used the library and borrowed half a million books and media every year. The 1986 expansion resulted in a 40% growth in the number of patrons and a 33% boost in the number of materials circulated.
In the spring of 2000, the western half the Cerritos Library was torn down to make way for the new Cerritos Millennium Library. Prior to the new construction, books and computer stations were inundated with people waiting in line to use some of the materials. Books were constantly being shelved and programs were very popular. Many cities around the world made plans to commemorate the new millennium, and in Cerritos, it was decided that the library would be a "library of the future."
Jim Nardini, AIA, of Charles Walton Associates acted as the project architect on the library. Judy Van Wyk and the team at The Design Studio, INC, provided concept and interior design. The library was built by CW Driver Contractors of Los Angeles; the $40 million library was completed in 2002.
Design, themes, and elements
The Cerritos Library is the result of a complete reevaluation of library services and the emergence of the Internet as a powerful resource. The book, The Experience Economy (B. Joseph Pine et al., Harvard Business School Press, 1999), served as an inspiration for city planning, designers, and staff to make the library more user friendly and customer-service–oriented. The city studied the work of futurists in order to learn information on cutting-edge library services, including interactive learning. The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao served as additional inspiration for the layout and modern design of the exterior of the building. Images on display as well as futuristic sounds from computers, televisions, and the public announcement systems add to the visual/audio experience of a first-time visitor.
Under the leadership of Library Director Waynn Pearson, the Cerritos Millennium Library was expanded to on three stories and added 300,000 books to its collection, a high-tech conference center and kitchen, museum-quality displays, a lecture hall complete with personal computers and over 200 computer workstations. 1,200 Internet ports scattered throughout the building enables patrons to access the web with their laptops.
Children's library
The children's library includes the saltwater aquarium, which was expanded to a 15,000 gallon tank complete with coral and sharks, a lighthouse in which children can read, a model space shuttle ("The Spirit of Cerritos"), a Tyrannosaurus rex fossil replica (named Stan), a little theater, an arts and crafts room, simulated atmospheric changes in a rainforest theme, a night sky theme, a help desk, and about three dozen computer workstations.
Old World Reading Room
Themed after 19th century European elements, the Old World Reading Room contains leather bound books, rare first editions, a fireplace, study spaces, and chandeliers. Together, these elements make this room more suited for readers and serious study.
Main Street
The modern Art Deco styles of Main Street houses a local history room, a souvenir store, and the circulation desk. Palms and a large monitor displaying Cerritos screensavers add a modern touch. It is themed to imitate a pedestrian street for patrons to pass through and connect to the other destinations on the first floor.
Great Room
The Great Room is themed after the unique Craftsman carpentry style. Paperbacks, periodicals and newspapers are located here. Internet Express Stations, which allow easy and quick access to the Internet, are available in this area as well.
World Traditions
In keeping with a reputation for being one of the most diverse cities in the state, the Cerritos Millennium Library maintains an Art Deco-style "World Traditions" area on the second floor. It houses a large collection of print and multimedia resources in several languages.
Multimedia
Below the "World Traditions" is the Multimedia room where DVDs and other videos, audio and materials geared towards young adults are located. It is also themed in a modern Art Deco style consistent with the "World Traditions" level above.
21st Century
Proceeding up the escalator or the glass elevator to the other half of the second floor will lead you in the 21st Century floor. It is a futuristic level and design elements reflect a strictly modern style. Most of the computer workstations are located here, as well as several study rooms that patrons can reserve ahead of time. The library reference desk is located on this floor and illuminated bookshelves line the spaces adjacent to the reference desk.
Conference rooms
The third floor of the library houses a Board Room as well as the large Skyline Room banquet/reception hall. The High-Tech Lab/lecture hall is also located on this floor.
"Illuminations"
In November 2006, in recognition of the City's 50th anniversary, the city unveiled a book shaped sculpture near the front entrance to the library. The sculpture, designed and built by artist Terry Braunstein, is called "Illuminations" and it contains heritage photos of the city, and mosaics depicting life in the city. The sculpture is 10 feet tall, and it is intended to inspire the imagination of the children who patronize the library. The base of the sculpture contains lights, which are turned on at night to enhance the sculpture's artistic design.
Use of technology
Modern technology supports all aspects of the Cerritos Millennium Library. The library has its own Intranet (MyClio). Multimedia resource centers combine print materials with Web resources, in-house content and computer graphics. Computerized InfoStations are scattered throughout the library. Public areas have computers and ethernet ports for library card holders to use and librarians come equipped with wireless headsets and handheld computers to assist patrons. A computerized circulation system that uses radio frequency keeps track of materials in circulation. The library also has magnetic strips on the back of their library cards, much like a credit card. This enables the patron to utilize one of the several electronic self-checkout stations or to log onto a personalized MyClio web page.
Awards and recognition
Best Public Library in 2003 "Best of L.A." issue by Los Angeles Magazine
Best Public Library in 2003 by L.A. Parent Magazine
Best Public Library in 2004 by Reader's Digest magazine
Affiliate with the Smithsonian Institution to enhance exhibits
American Library Association/American Institute of Architects "Award of Excellence"
Expy Award in 2003 by thinkabout
Thea Award in 2003 by the Themed Entertainment Association
Special Mention Library of the Year in 2004 by Library Journal
Best Library for Children in 2008 "Best of L.A" issue by Los Angeles Magazine
Five star rating in March 2009 Library Journal America's Star Libraries#28 in the 50 Most Beautiful Libraries in the World by Best Value Schools 2014References
Eftychiou, A., & Cenovich, M. (2006). Cerritos at 50: celebrating our past and our future. Virginia Beach, VA: The Donning Company Publishers.Cerritos Library History. (n.d.). Retrieved October 3, 2006 from http://www.ci.cerritos.ca.us/library/libhistory.htmlCerritos launches the "Experience Library".'' (n.d.). Retrieved October 3, 2006 from http://www.ci.cerritos.ca.us/library/experience_library.html
External links
Library buildings completed in 2002
Buildings and structures celebrating the third millennium
Cerritos, California
Culture of Los Angeles
Landscape design history of the United States
Libraries in Los Angeles County, California
Libraries established in 1973
Public libraries in California
Smithsonian Institution affiliates
Tourist attractions in Los Angeles County, California
1973 establishments in California |
41492785 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung%20YP-R1 | Samsung YP-R1 | The Samsung YP-R1 (also known as Samsung R1 worldwide or Yepp R1 in Korea or Samsung R'MIX in France because of its DJ feature) is a portable media player made by Samsung, first leaked on the webshop play.com on June 14, 2009 and then released at the end of September 2009. It was developed along with the YP-R0 with which it shares several specifications (similar aluminum design, same Linux kernel and SoC).
The R1 is available in four different Flash memory capacities: 4 GB, 8 GB, 16 GB and 32 GB. It comes in three different colors: black, silver and pink. It features an aluminum case, a 2.6 inch TFT LCD capacitive touchscreen with a resolution of 240 by 400 pixels, a RDS FM tuner, bluetooth (v2.0 + EDR) and a proprietary USB connector. Several EQ and sound effects are available through Samsung's DNSe 3.0 sound engine.
Media support
Audio codecs: MP3, WMA, WAV, OGG Vorbis, AAC-LC/Plus, RA and FLAC.
Video codecs: DivX, Xvid, MPEG-4, H.264, WMV9 in AVI/SVI/MP4/WMV/ASF/MOV containers. Video files up to resolution 720x480 are natively supported so in most cases converting is not necessary.
Picture formats: JPG, BMP, PNG, GIF
Other: TXT and SWF files
Operation
The Samsung R1 is compatible with Microsoft Windows, Linux and Mac OS X when USB mode is set to MSC as a drag and drop USB mass storage device. The player can also function as a Windows Media 10 and up device when USB mode is set to MTP. The R1 is the last Samsung MP3 player to have this proprietary USB connector (first introduced end of 2006 on the YP-K5). Newer devices have a standard microUSB connector. Besides the touchscreen, it also has 3 physical keys (power/hold, volume up, volume down). The R1 only powers fully off after several hours not being used or when pressing the reset hole. The rest of the time it only switches to a sleep mode.
Samsung claims up to 25 hours of music playback (with MP3 128kbit/s files, volume level 15, normal sound mode and display off) and 5 hours of video playback (SVI, brightness 3, volume level 15, normal sound mode).
The R1 features an icon and widget based TouchWiz user interface developed in landscape mode. However it is possible to rotate the "Now Playing" screen to portrait mode.
Special features
Bluetooth
The YP-R1 has a bluetooth 2.0 + EDR chip which supports several profiles including A2DP, AVRCP, HFP, Object Push etc... As a result, it is possible to receive and emit phone calls on the R1 over bluetooth, to send and receive files or to listen to music with a stereo bluetooth headset.
Beat DJ
Marketed as a major feature, especially in France where the commercial name R'MIX comes from, the DJ feature was often viewed as superfluous by the reviewers and users. This feature allows the user to scratch and apply several DJ filters and pre-recorded samples on a music track. The final result cannot be saved though. This feature was first introduced on the Samsung Platine/Beat DJ mobile phone a few months ago.
Other features
The R1 has four embedded games (Bubble Bang, Sudoku Champ, AstroRanger and WiseStar) and also supports SWF flash games and applications. It also has a voice recorder and a TV line-out using a 3.5mm to RCA cable.
Software
No additional CD is shipped with the R1 but the optional software EmoDio can be found in the device's internal memory or can be downloaded from the official Samsung website. EmoDio (discontinued, now replaced by Kies) is able to sync one's library with the R1, convert video files, manage playlists, rip CDs etc..
Samsung original firmware
Samsung released 9 firmware versions, from v1.09 to the latest one, v3.07, released on October 26, 2010. Most of them are only bug fixes releases but Samsung also released two major updates adding or improving features. The first one is v2.00 released on November 24, 2009. which made the overall UI, the coverflow and pictures scroll smoother. It also added two flash games. Then the v3.00 released on December 27, 2009 added the premium fonts and UCI support (in Korea only, the user needs a Korean ID and banking account to pay and download) and SDK 3.0 UCI support (User Created Interface: main menu customization for which the new SDK 3.0 gives more possibilities). It also made the coverflow and videos scroll still smoother. But the most awaited improvement was the playing time with DNSe sound effects enabled. Indeed, while the audio battery life with DNSe disabled is more than 20 hours, with DNSe enabled it was only about 8 hours. With firmware v3.00 this was improved to 12.5 hours.
Like the YP-R0, the R1 is infamous for its many bugs, especially the library update one: when adding new files into the player's internal memory, it automatically updates the media library after disconnecting the device from the computer. It sometimes occurs that due to some specific audio files, the updating process hangs up, leading to brick the device. It is then no longer recognized by the computer and can no longer start up. Samsung released several firmware updates to fix this bug but never managed to find all root causes. As a result, the issue may occur even with the latest firmware v3.07. A preventive solution is to install a modded firmware or Rockbox (see below). Otherwise the user has to send his device back to the after-sales service center or use the leaked recovery tool.
Unlike the older Samsung players which had a specific firmware for every region, on R1 the region code can be changed independently from the firmware (meaning that the firmware is the same worldwide). Each region code (KR, EU, FR, RU, US etc...) has it owns specificities like RDS support, lyrics support, MSC only or MSC/MTP setting etc...
Alternative firmware
Following the success of YP-R0 modded firmware, the Italian developer also worked on a modded firmware for YP-R1. This modded v4.00 based on the official v3.07 was released on September 15, 2011. Compared to the official firmware v3.07 it adds a "Safe Mode" (the device can be connected to the computer even when bricked), a DRK (Device Rescue Kit) to unbrick the device, a CPU downclocking tool to save battery life and the possibility to customize the firmware's resources (pictures, sounds, fonts, language).
Since early 2013 the alternative free and open-source firmware Rockbox can be installed on the YP-R1. Unlike most usual Rockbox targets, the YP-R1 port is not a native port. It runs as an application based on the original Linux kernel used by Samsung in the official firmware. That makes the development easier but on the downside, Rockbox boots up slower as on the other usual targets.
As of December 2013, the YP-R1 port is available as a separate patch and has not been merged into the Rockbox source code yet. The user has to compile the Rockbox bootloader himself or to use a pre-built dualboot modded firmware including the Rockbox bootloader.
Compared to the Samsung original firmware, Rockbox supports more audio codecs and gapless playback among other things.
See also
Samsung YEPP
Samsung Galaxy Player
Samsung Electronics
References
External links
Samsung YP-R1 product page on the official Samsung US website
Samsung YP-R1 subforum on anythingbutipod.com
Samsung Open Source Center
Digital audio players
Portable media players |
6570979 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avi%20Wigderson | Avi Wigderson | Avi Wigderson (; born 9 September 1956) is an Israeli mathematician and computer scientist. He is the Herbert H. Maass Professor in the school of mathematics at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. His research interests include complexity theory, parallel algorithms, graph theory, cryptography, distributed computing, and neural networks. Wigderson received the Abel Prize in 2021 for his work in theoretical computer science.
Biography
Avi Wigderson was born in Haifa, Israel, to Holocaust survivors. Wigderson is a graduate of the Hebrew Reali School in Haifa, and did his undergraduate studies at the Technion in Haifa, Israel, graduating in 1980, and went on to graduate study at Princeton University. He received his Ph.D. in computer science in 1983 after completing a doctoral dissertation, titled "Studies in computational complexity", under the supervision of Richard Lipton. After short-term positions at the University of California, Berkeley, the IBM Almaden Research Center in San Jose, California, and the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute in Berkeley, he joined the faculty of Hebrew University in 1986. In 1999 he also took a position at the Institute for Advanced Study, and in 2003 he gave up his Hebrew University position to take up full-time residence at the IAS.
Awards and honors
Wigderson received the Nevanlinna Prize in 1994 for his work on computational complexity. Along with Omer Reingold and Salil Vadhan he won the 2009 Gödel Prize for work on the zig-zag product of graphs, a method of combining smaller graphs to produce larger ones used in the construction of expander graphs. Wigderson was elected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2011. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2013.
He was elected as an ACM Fellow in 2018 for "contributions to theoretical computer science and mathematics".
In 2019, Wigderson was awarded the Knuth Prize for his contributions to "the foundations of computer science in areas including randomized computation, cryptography, circuit complexity, proof complexity, parallel computation, and our understanding of fundamental graph properties".
In 2021 Wigderson shared the Abel Prize with László Lovász “for their foundational contributions to theoretical computer science and discrete mathematics, and their leading role in shaping them into central fields of modern mathematics."
References
External links
Avi Wigderson's home page
1956 births
Living people
20th-century American scientists
20th-century Israeli engineers
21st-century American scientists
21st-century engineers
Abel Prize laureates
American people of Israeli descent
Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery
Gödel Prize laureates
Knuth Prize laureates
Hebrew University of Jerusalem faculty
Institute for Advanced Study faculty
Israeli computer scientists
20th-century Israeli mathematicians
Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences
Nevanlinna Prize laureates
Princeton University alumni
Technion – Israel Institute of Technology alumni
Theoretical computer scientists |
29878847 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guidewire%20Software | Guidewire Software | Guidewire Software, Inc., commonly Guidewire, is an American software company based in San Mateo, California. It offers an industry platform for property and casualty (P&C) insurance carriers in the U.S. and worldwide.
The company has been cited as being among the 50 most desirable mid-size Bay Area companies (101 to 500 employees) to work for 2010-2012, and was in the "Top 50 Large Companies" in Glassdoor's Best Places To Work for both 2015 and 2016.
History
The company was established in 2001 and founded by: Ken Branson, James Kwak, John Raguin, and Marcus Ryu from Ariba (and McKinsey, where James and Marcus had met); and John Seybold and Mark Shaw from Kana Software. In September 2011, Guidewire filed with the SEC to raise up to $100 million in an initial public offering (IPO) and first publicly traded on the NYSE in January 2012. Guidewire was later cited as being one of the top IPOs of 2012, even #1.
In 2011, Guidewire settled a patent related lawsuit with Accenture regarding their claims management software.
In 2013, Guidewire acquired Millbrook, Inc., a business intelligence company. In 2016, Guidewire acquired ISCS (cloud computing), FirstBest (underwriting) and EagleEye Analytics. In 2017, Guidewire acquired Cyence, a cyber insurance company.
On August 5, 2019, Guidewire appointed Mike Rosenbaum as CEO.
Products
Guidewire is a recurring revenue software company as it sells term licenses. The company also sells its software as a service on a subscription revenue basis. Its three main software products are ClaimCenter, PolicyCenter, and BillingCenter, each servicing a major component of a P&C insurance carrier. There are a number of add-on modules, as well as an increasing number of value-added online services provided via Guidewire Analytics and Guidewire Marketplace. Guidewire develops the Gosu programming language, released as open source in 2010.
References
External links
CRM software companies
Software companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area
Software companies established in 2001
Companies based in San Mateo, California
Companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange
2012 initial public offerings
Software companies of the United States
2001 establishments in California
American companies established in 2001 |
409665 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper%20chip | Clipper chip | The Clipper chip was a chipset that was developed and promoted by the United States National Security Agency (NSA) as an encryption device that secured "voice and data messages" with a built-in backdoor that was intended to "allow Federal, State, and local law enforcement officials the ability to decode intercepted voice and data transmissions." It was intended to be adopted by telecommunications companies for voice transmission. Introduced in 1993, it was entirely defunct by 1996.
Key escrow
The Clipper chip used a data encryption algorithm called Skipjack to transmit information and the Diffie–Hellman key exchange-algorithm to distribute the cryptokeys between the peers. Skipjack was invented by the National Security Agency of the U.S. Government; this algorithm was initially classified SECRET, which prevented it from being subjected to peer review from the encryption research community. The government did state that it used an 80-bit key, that the algorithm was symmetric, and that it was similar to the DES algorithm. The Skipjack algorithm was declassified and published by the NSA on June 24, 1998. The initial cost of the chips was said to be $16 (unprogrammed) or $26 (programmed), with its logic designed by Mykotronx, and fabricated by VLSI Technology, Inc.
At the heart of the concept was key escrow. In the factory, any new telephone or other device with a Clipper chip would be given a cryptographic key, that would then be provided to the government in escrow. If government agencies "established their authority" to listen to a communication, then the key would be given to those government agencies, who could then decrypt all data transmitted by that particular telephone. The newly formed Electronic Frontier Foundation preferred the term "key surrender" to emphasize what they alleged was really occurring.
Clinton Administration
The Clinton Administration argued that the Clipper chip was essential for law enforcement to keep up with the constantly progressing technology in the United States. While many believed that the device would act as an additional way for terrorists to receive information, the Clinton Administration said it would actually increase national security. They argued that because "terrorists would have to use it to communicate with outsiders — banks, suppliers, and contacts — the Government could listen in on those calls."
Other proponents
There were several advocates of the Clipper chip who argued that the technology was safe to implement and effective for its intended purpose of providing law enforcement with the ability to intercept communications when necessary and with a warrant to do so. One proponent, Howard S. Dakoff, writing in the John Marshall Law Review voiced support for the Clipper chip stating that the technology was secure and the legal rationale for its implementation was sound. Another proponent, Stewart Baker, wrote an opinion in Wired magazine debunking a series of purported myths surrounding the technology.
Backlash
Organizations such as the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Electronic Frontier Foundation challenged the Clipper chip proposal, saying that it would have the effect not only of subjecting citizens to increased and possibly illegal government surveillance, but that the strength of the Clipper chip's encryption could not be evaluated by the public as its design was classified secret, and that therefore individuals and businesses might be hobbled with an insecure communications system. Further, it was pointed out that while American companies could be forced to use the Clipper chip in their encryption products, foreign companies could not, and presumably phones with strong data encryption would be manufactured abroad and spread throughout the world and into the United States, negating the point of the whole exercise, and, of course, materially damaging U.S. manufacturers en route. Then-Senators John Ashcroft and John Kerry were opponents of the Clipper chip proposal, arguing in favor of the individual's right to encrypt messages and export encryption software.
The release and development of several strong cryptographic software packages such as Nautilus, PGP and PGPfone was in response to the government push for the Clipper chip. The thinking was that if strong cryptography was freely available on the internet as an alternative, the government would be unable to stop its use.
Technical vulnerabilities
In 1994, Matt Blaze published the paper Protocol Failure in the Escrowed Encryption Standard. It pointed out that the Clipper's escrow system has a serious vulnerability: the chip transmitted a 128-bit "Law Enforcement Access Field" (LEAF) that contained the information necessary to recover the encryption key. To prevent the software that transmitted the message from tampering with the LEAF, a 16-bit hash was included. The Clipper chip would not decode messages with an invalid hash; however, the 16-bit hash was too short to provide meaningful security. A brute-force attack would quickly produce another LEAF value that would give the same hash but not yield the correct keys after the escrow attempt. This would allow the Clipper chip to be used as an encryption device, while disabling the key escrow capability. In 1995 Yair Frankel and Moti Yung published another attack which is inherent to the design and which shows that the key escrow device tracking and authenticating capability (namely, the LEAF) of one device, can be attached to messages coming from another device and will nevertheless be received, thus bypassing the escrow in real time. In 1997, a group of leading cryptographers published a paper, "The Risks of Key Recovery, Key Escrow, and Trusted Third-Party Encryption", analyzing the architectural vulnerabilities of implementing key escrow systems in general, including but not limited to the Clipper chip Skipjack protocol. The technical flaws described in this paper were instrumental in the demise of the Clipper chip as a public policy option. While many leading voices in the computer science community expressed opposition to the Clipper chip and key recovery in general, some supported the concept, including Dorothy E. Denning.
Lack of adoption
The Clipper chip was not embraced by consumers or manufacturers and the chip itself was no longer relevant by 1996; the only significant purchaser of phones with the chip was the United States Department of Justice. The U.S. government continued to press for key escrow by offering incentives to manufacturers, allowing more relaxed export controls if key escrow were part of cryptographic software that was exported. These attempts were largely made moot by the widespread use of strong cryptographic technologies, such as PGP, which were not under the control of the U.S. government.
However, strongly encrypted voice channels are still not the predominant mode for current cell phone communications. Secure cell phone devices and smartphone apps exist, but may require specialized hardware, and typically require that both ends of the connection employ the same encryption mechanism. Such apps usually communicate over secure Internet pathways (e.g. ZRTP) instead of through phone voice data networks.
Later debates
Following the Snowden disclosures from 2013, Apple and Google stated that they would lock down all data stored on their smartphones with encryption, in such a way that Apple and Google themselves could not break the encryption even if ordered to do so with a warrant. This prompted a strong reaction from the authorities, including the chief of detectives for Chicago's police department stating that "Apple['s iPhone] will become the phone of choice for the pedophile". An editorial in the Washington Post argued that "smartphone users must accept that they cannot be above the law if there is a valid search warrant", and after claiming to agree that backdoors would be undesirable, then suggested implementing a "golden key" backdoor which would unlock the data with a warrant. The members of "The Risks of Key Recovery, Key Escrow, and Trusted Third-Party Encryption" 1997 paper, as well as other researchers at MIT, wrote a follow-up article in response to the revival of this debate, arguing that mandated government access to private conversations would be an even worse problem now than twenty years ago.
See also
Bullrun (decryption program)
Cryptoprocessor
Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government—Saving Privacy in the Digital Age by Steven Levy
Trusted Platform Module
Hardware backdoor
References
External links
Clipper chip Q&A
Clipper chip White House Statement
The Evolution of US Government Restrictions on Using and Exporting Encryption Technologies (U), Michael Schwartzbeck, Encryption Technologies, circa 1997, formerly Top Secret, approved for release by NSA with redactions September 10, 2014, C06122418
Oral history interview with Martin Hellman Oral history interview 2004, Palo Alto, California. Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Hellman describes his invention of public key cryptography with collaborators Whitfield Diffie and Ralph Merkle at Stanford University in the mid-1970s. He also relates his subsequent work in cryptography with Steve Pohlig (the Pohlig-Hellman system) and others. Hellman addresses key escrow (the so-called Clipper chip). He also touches on the commercialization of cryptography with RSA Data Security and VeriSign.
History of cryptography
Kleptography
National Security Agency encryption devices
Encryption debate
Mass surveillance
de:Escrowed Encryption Standard |
32539255 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cucumber%20%28software%29 | Cucumber (software) | Cucumber is a software tool that supports behavior-driven development (BDD). Central to the Cucumber BDD approach is its ordinary language parser called Gherkin. It allows expected software behaviors to be specified in a logical language that customers can understand. As such, Cucumber allows the execution of feature documentation written in business-facing text. It is often used for testing other software. It runs automated acceptance tests written in a behavior-driven development (BDD) style.
Cucumber was originally written in the Ruby programming language. and was originally used exclusively for Ruby testing as a complement to the RSpec BDD framework. Cucumber now supports a variety of different programming languages through various implementations, including Java and JavaScript. The open source port of Cucumber in .NET is called SpecFlow. For example, Cuke4php and Cuke4Lua are software bridges that enable testing of PHP and Lua projects, respectively. Other implementations may simply leverage the Gherkin parser while implementing the rest of the testing framework in the target language.
Gherkin language
Gherkin is the language that Cucumber uses to define test cases. It is designed to be non-technical and human readable, and collectively describes use cases relating to a software system. The purpose behind Gherkin's syntax is to promote behavior-driven development practices across an entire development team, including business analysts and managers. It seeks to enforce firm, unambiguous requirements starting in the initial phases of requirements definition by business management and in other stages of the development lifecycle.
In addition to providing a script for automated testing, Gherkin's natural language syntax is designed to provide simple documentation of the code under test. Gherkin currently supports keywords in dozens of languages.
Language Operations
# List available languages
cucumber --i18n help
# List a language's keywords
cucumber --i18n $LANG
Syntax
Syntax is centered around a line-oriented design, similar to that of Python. The structure of a file is defined using whitespace and other control characters. # is used as the line-comment character, and can be placed anywhere in a file. Instructions are any non-empty and non-comment line. They consist of a recognized Gherkin keyword followed by a string.
All Gherkin files have the .feature file extension. They contain a single Feature definition for the system under test and are an executable test script.
Features, scenarios, and steps
Cucumber tests are divided into individual Features. These Features are subdivided into Scenarios, which are sequences of Steps.
Features
A feature is a Use Case that describes a specific function of the software being tested. There are three parts to a Feature
The Feature: keyword
The Feature name (on the same line as the keyword)
An optional description on the following lines
Example Feature definition
Feature: Withdraw Money from ATM
A user with an account at a bank would like to withdraw money from an ATM.
Provided he has a valid account and debit or credit card, he should be allowed to make the transaction. The ATM will tend the requested amount of money, return his card, and subtract amount of the withdrawal from the user's account.
Scenario: Scenario 1
Given preconditions
When actions
Then results
Scenario: Scenario 2
...
Scenarios
Each Feature is made of a collection of scenarios. A single scenario is a flow of events through the Feature being described and maps 1:1 with an executable test case for the system. Keeping with the example ATM withdrawal feature, a scenario might describe how a user requests money and what happens to their account.
Scenario: Eric wants to withdraw money from his bank account at an ATM
Given Eric has a valid Credit or Debit card
And his account balance is $100
When he inserts his card
And withdraws $45
Then the ATM should return $45
And his account balance is $55
In some cases, one might want to test multiple scenarios at once to perform Equivalence partitioning and Boundary-value analysis. A Scenario Outline provides a technique to specify multiple examples to test against a template scenario by using placeholders. For example,
Scenario Outline: A user withdraws money from an ATM
Given <Name> has a valid Credit or Debit card
And their account balance is <OriginalBalance>
When they insert their card
And withdraw <WithdrawalAmount>
Then the ATM should return <WithdrawalAmount>
And their account balance is <NewBalance>
Examples:
| Name | OriginalBalance | WithdrawalAmount | NewBalance |
| Eric | 100 | 45 | 55 |
| Gaurav | 100 | 40 | 60 |
| Ed | 1000 | 200 | 800 |
At runtime the scenario is run against each row in the table. Column values are substituted for each of the named placeholders in the scenario.
Steps
The crux of a Scenario is defined by a sequence of Steps outlining the preconditions and flow of events that will take place. The first word of a step is a keyword, typically one of
Given - Describes the preconditions and initial state before the start of a test and allows for any pre-test setup that may occur
When - Describes actions taken by a user during a test
Then - Describes the outcome resulting from actions taken in the When clause
Occasionally, the combination of Given-When-Then uses other keywords to define conjunctions
And - Logical and
But - Logically the same as And, but used in the negative form
Scenario: A user attempts to withdraw more money than they have in their account
Given John has a valid Credit or Debit card
And his account balance is $20
When he inserts his card
And withdraws $40
Then the ATM displays an error
And returns his card
But his balance remains $20
Tags
Gherkin's Feature structure forces organisation. However, in cases where this default organisation is inconvenient or insufficient, Gherkin provides Tags. Tags are @-prefixed strings and can be placed before
Feature
Scenario
Scenario Outline
Examples
An element can have multiple tags and inherits from parent elements.
Cucumber
Step definitions
Steps in Gherkin's .feature files can be considered a method invocation. Before Cucumber can execute a step it must be told, via a step definition, how that step should be performed.
Definitions are written in Ruby and conventionally filed under features/step_definitions/*_steps.rb. Definitions start with the same keywords as their invocation (including Gherkin's full language support). Each definition takes two arguments
Either a regular expression or string with $variables
A block containing ruby code to execute
Example using regular expressions
Given /(.*) has a valid Credit or Debit card/ do |name|
# Ruby code
end
Example using strings and $variables. Note that at runtime the string is converted into a regular expression, and any $variable is converted to match (.*).
Given "$name has a valid Credit or Debit card" do |name|
# Ruby code
end
Hooks
Hooks are Cucumber's way of allowing for setup to be performed prior to tests being run and teardown to be run afterwards. They are defined as executable Ruby blocks, similar to JUnit methods marked with @Before, @After annotations. Conventionally they are placed under support/, and are applied globally. Three basic types of hooks exist
Before - Runs before a scenario
After - Runs after a scenario
Around - Assumes control and runs around a scenario
Additional hooks include
BeforeStep
AfterStep
AfterConfiguration - Runs after Cucumber configuration and is passed an instance of the configuration
Before, After, and Around hooks optionally take a list of tags filtering scenarios that they apply to. A list of tags in the same string is treated as OR, while individual arguments are treated as AND; tags can be optionally negated by being preceded with ~.
Example of a tagged before hook
Before('@ATM') do |scenario|
# Ruby code
end
Hooks are often used to maintain database state, typically by cleaning up prior to running a scenario. It is also possible to start and roll back a transaction using Before and After hooks, and many Cucumber extensions provide an @txn tag for such a purpose.
Integrations and implementations
Non Ruby implementations of Cucumber exist for popular languages including Java, JavaScript, and Python. Support also exists for integration testing frameworks. A complete list of implementations can be found on Cucumber. Cucumber has integrated testing tools working well with many Continuous Integration configurations. There are cucumber plugins for popular CI tools like Jenkins and TeamCity and also for IDEs like Eclipse and RubyMine.
Below is an example of a step definition written for Java with Cucumber-JVM.
@Given("(.*) has a valid Credit or Debit card")
public void has_card(String name) {
// Java code
}
Formatter plugins
Cucumber uses Formatter Plugins to provide output. Several common formats are provided by default, including
JSON
HTML
JUnit
Available formats are not standardized across different Cucumber implementations, so offerings may differ. Cucumber also supports rich output formats like images and videos.
Browser automation
Cucumber does not provide built in browser automation. However, it does work well with existing programs such as Selenium and WATiR-WebDriver. It does support running tests with transactions through leveraging other programs such as ActiveRecord.
Cucumber command-line
Cucumber comes with a built-in command line interface that covers a comprehensive list of instructions. Like most command line tools, cucumber provides the --help option that provides a summary of arguments the command accepts.
$ cucumber --help
-r, --require LIBRARY|DIR Require files before executing the features.
--i18n LANG List keywords for in a particular language.
Run with "--i18n help" to see all languages.
-f, --format FORMAT How to format features (Default: pretty).
-o, --out [FILE|DIR] Write output to a file/directory instead of
...
Cucumber command line can be used to quickly run defined tests. It also supports running a subset of scenarios by filtering tags.
$ cucumber --tags @tag-name
The above command helps in executing only those scenarios that have the specified @tag-name. Arguments can be provided as a logical OR or AND operation of tags. Apart from tags, scenarios can be filtered on scenario names.
$ cucumber --name logout
The above command will run only those scenarios that contain the word 'logout'.
It is also useful to be able to know what went wrong when a test fails. Cucumber makes it easy to catch bugs in the code with the --backtrace option.
Cucumber can also be configured to ignore certain scenarios that have not been completed by marking them with the Work In Progress tag @wip. When Cucumber is passed the --wip argument, Cucumber ignores scenarios with the @wip tag.
References
External links
Engineering Software as a Service: An Agile Approach Using Cloud Computing by Armando Fox and David Patterson
Cucumber project
Cucumber project documentation
At the Forge - Cucumber, by Reuven M. Lerner in the Linux Journal
Agile 2009 - Aslak Hellesoy - Cucumber test framework, podcast by Bob Payne with Aslak Hellesøy
Cucumber: The Latest in Ruby Testing, by Mike Gunderloy
Specflow, Cucumber in .NET
Free software testing tools
Software using the MIT license
Free software programmed in Ruby |
2906638 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCSK | SCSK | is a Japanese information technology company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, offering IT services and computer software. Outside of Japan, It is widely known for its acquisition of Sega in 1984, ended in the sale to Sammy in 2004, through which Sega Sammy Holdings was established.
History
In 1969, Sumitomo Computer Service Corporation was established by Sumitomo Corporation. In 2005, Sumitomo Computer Service Corporation and Sumitomo Electronics Corporation were merged into Sumitomo Computer System Corporation.
Separately, in 1968, CSK Corporation was established by Japanese entrepreneur Isao Okawa in 1968. The acronym CSK was derived from "Computer Service". CSK established CSK Research Institute, later renamed as CRI Middleware, in 1983. At its peak, the company, the largest independent software company in Japan until it being acquired, was called the CSK Group. In the 2000s, its real estate investment business failed, resulting in heavy losses to the company after Okawa's death in 2001.
In April 2011, Sumitomo Corporation acquired CSK through a takeover. In October 2011, Sumitomo Computer System Corporation and CSK Corporation went through a statutory merger, in which Sumitomo Computer System absorbed CSK Corporation and was re-branded SCSK Corporation.
Services
The company offers the services of system integration, cloud computing, information security and produces computer software in Japan, mostly on a B2B basis for enterprises. SCSK Corporation's business type and scope is similar to those of Itochu Techno-Solutions, Uniadex and Mitsui Knowledge Industry, which also specialize in IT services. The company has been listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange since 1989, then as Sumitomo Computer Service Corporation.
See also
List of companies of Japan
References
External links
Official website
Cloud computing providers
Computer security companies
Information technology consulting firms
Japanese brands
Software companies of Japan
Service companies based in Tokyo
Sumitomo Group
1969 establishments in Japan |
38358855 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Process%20capital | Process capital | Process capital is the value to an enterprise which is derived from the techniques, procedures, and programs that implement and enhance the delivery of goods and services. Process capital is one of the three components of structural capital, itself a component of intellectual capital. Process capital can be seen as the value of processes to any entity, whether for profit or not-for profit, but is most commonly used in reference to for-profit entities.
A process comprises a "series or network of value-added activities, performed by their relevant roles or collaborators, to purposefully achieve the common business goal.
Process capital can be created and enhanced by using business process mapping, business process modeling and business process management
Roots
Process capital in organisations
Organisations invest in process capital in order to build a company’s unique infrastructure for achieving operational and strategic goals. Given the dynamics of industry and technology, the development of process capital evolves and interacts with environmental changes. Organisations have invested in information technology (IT) and organisational change programs to build process capital for achieving business excellence through customer satisfaction. The vast investments include: IT infrastructure implementation, quality-improvement projects, process-redesign projects, and various process integration projects. Although process capital plays an important role in organising resources, processing information, interacting with stakeholders, and delivering organisational values, few studies have discussed its specific content, and it is rare to focus attention on the level of its management. Instead, process capital has usually been hidden in the measurement of IT investment or organisational intellectual capital as an intangible element of organisational assets. Failure to treat process capital as a separate and unique management issue is widespread among both businesses and researchers because most of the systems and processes within the organisations are interdependent. Therefore, a systematic approach to measuring process capital is necessary to manage process potential to its full extent.
Definition
Capital is something owned which provides ongoing services. In the national accounts, or to firms, capital is made up of durable investment goods, normally summed in units of money. Process capital, in practice, embraces the practical knowledge of operations, techniques, and employee programs in the effort to extend and enhance the efficiency of manufacturing or the delivery of products and services for long-term value.
Failure to treat process capital as a separate and unique management issue is widespread among both businesses and researchers because most of the systems and processes within the organisations are interdependent. Therefore, a systematic approach to measuring process capital is necessary to manage process potential to its full extent.
Strategy development
Process capital is essential for strategy development and implementation. Business processes are large with technology, location and other factors combining to generate limitless possibilities. Throughout the process of developing and appropriating technology-enabled processes, collective brainpower is formalised, captured, and leveraged to produce an asset of higher value and affect organisational performance in all aspects.
Organisational performance
Organisational performance can include the operational, managerial, and strategic impacts of different business efforts on the management of business processes. However, because organisational performance is influenced by numerous factors, the benefits from process capital can be expected to take up to several years to filter through the various levels of business performance. For example, a process integration technology may take months to develop and transform into real processes and to generate increased productivity. In addition, after processes emerge into business operation, greater managerial and strategic performance may appear later. Therefore, it is important to use proper measures to reflect process value for both the short and long term.
Measuring process capital
Input method
The input method is measured by the resources invested in process capital for business operations. In economic terms, this is expected to predict the future value of the processes. The two measurement indicators for this method are investment in information technology and administrative expanses. Firm size and industry type are the two controlled variables that are used in all three methods.
Output method
The output method is measured by the total effort of managing the technology and operations which achieve business effectiveness. The process indicators measure the actual value of labor productivity, such as profit per employee, to determine the contribution to the firm's overall productivity. This method is based on reviewing past performances to predict future results.
Management capability
Management capability is the capability of constructing and coordinating resources to integrate and develop processes to respond to changing business conditions. The method measures the value of the process capital at the time of the measurement as a percentage change of the productivity compared to the previous year.
Green capital
Studies show that process capital has a positive influence on competitive advantages of firms.
Competitive advantage
Companies engaging in environmental management and green innovation actively can not only minimise production waste and increase productivity, but also charge relatively high prices for green products, improve corporate images, and thereby obtain corporate competitive advantages under the trends of popular environmentalism consciousness of consumers and severe international regulations of environmental protection. Therefore, the stocks of organisational capabilities, organisational commitments, knowledge management systems, reward systems, information technology systems, databases, managerial institution, operation processes, managerial philosophies, organisational culture, company images, patents, copy rights, and trademarks, etc. about environmental protection or green innovation within a company can help companies obtain competitive advantages.
Measuring green capital
The measurement of green structural capital comprises the following nine items:
(1) whether the management system of environmental protection in the firm is superior to that of its major competitors;
(2) whether innovations about environmental protection
in the firm are more than those of its major competitors;
(3) whether the profits earned from environmental protection activities of the firm is Effect of Green Intellectual Capital on Competitive Advantages of Firms 277 more than that of its major competitors;
(4) whether the ratio of investments in R&D expenditures about environmental protection in the firm to its sales is more than that of its major competitors;
(5) whether the ratio of employees about environmental management to the total employees in the firm is more than that of its major competitors;
(6) whether investments in environmental protection facilities in the firm are more than those of its major competitors;
(7) whether the competence in the development of green products in the firm is better than that of its major competitors;
(8) whether the overall operation processes about environmental protection in the firm work smoothly;
(9) whether the knowledge management system about environmental management in the firm is favorable for the accumulation and sharing of the knowledge of environmental management.
Process capital and nursing
Process capital is one of the three components of structural capital. Nursing structural capital is knowledge converted into information structures that nurses can use to assist with their clinical decision-making and care planning. Nursing structural capital in the form of practice guidelines, care maps or protocols is believed to provide relevant information to nurses for improving the quality of care they deliver. Care maps, practice guidelines and protocols have been found to contribute to improved patient outcomes and reduce the rate of adverse events.
Transforming human capital to structural capital
Distinguishing between information elements
The intellectual capital model distinguishes between three distinct elements: Human Capital, Structural Capital, and Relational Capital. Leadership represents ideas of Human Capital, the intellectual value of the employees in a firm. All intellectual capital first originates as Human Capital. Innovation and process capital represents components of structural capital, elements that show the legal and process value of the company. Innovation capital includes embodied knowledge sets like patents and copyrights. Process capital tends to consist of more intangible elements of a tacit knowledge set which includes process technologies. In other words, structural capital consists of elements with which the firm's members interact to create more knowledge or get the work done. Relational capital is moderated by cultural capital and both of these elements represent the knowledge needed to provide ongoing value-added relations with shareholders.
(Figure 1 source.
Key principle
The key principle illustrated in Figure 1 is that no element of intellectual capital by itself creates ongoing value for the firm but is value creating only when interacting with other elements of the intellectual capital model. Thus, the true nature of the intellectual capital machine within the firm is dynamic and with reference to measurement issues. Measuring one elements may affect the measurement of another and once measurements are made of the element its magnitude and direction of flow may have already changed. Total knowledge of the intellectual capital system through measurement is impossible.
Institutionalisation issues
A problem that may result from narrowly defining the knowledge stocks to be measured is that of reification and institutionalisation of such stock. Identifying a set of importance may over-emphasise the real strategic value of the set, especially in times of strategical change. When knowledge stocks are identified and attention given to them their importance may be rectified by those within the firm and results in the development of core rigidities, or strategic commitment, which may stagnate potentially revitalising innovation. Leonard-Barton identified knowledge as one of the most difficult to change. When it is past success and attention, it creates core rigidities. The term she uses to demonstrate the basic principle is a "way of seeing is also a way of not seeing."
Structuralization assumption
The predominance of a structuralization assumption is that all knowledge needs to be structuralized to be valuable to a firm, leading to reification of knowledge as explicit. This assumption treats all knowledge as easily distinguishable from human experience.
Lynn's anecdote
A woman who had been working in North America for a German company was fired when the firm downsized and moved all its operations back to Germany. Later, the company learned that the woman had been working on strategically important information on the North American market, thus the knowledge this woman had created had been erroneously "let go" in the process of downsizing. The moral of the story espoused by the author was that the company should have structuralized this knowledge so that it could be owned and retained by the firm even after eliminating the woman from its payroll. Why was the woman fired? Surely, the firm should have been more aware of its developing knowledge sets because knowledge sets are the bases from which all intellectual capital emanates. Furthermore, the strategically relevant information is communicable and could have been codified.
Issues in managing multiple capital
How does the firm manage both its structural capital as product and its human capital as process? If this flip side seems humanistic, it is. The human intellect is the only entity that has the capacity to create new knowledge that has value. Computers may reassemble information into new modes analytically but cannot integrate these into something new. Structuralization of human capital may be only possible and desired when it can be used to further help the development of human capital, as non-contextual data or information, or sold as a product for profit. An important insight is that the firm need not own something outright for it to profit from association. An example of such an intangible tacit knowledge set that the firm could hardly structuralize and yet profits by association is seen in the relational capital created between a sales agent and client.
The move towards structuralization of tacit, experiential knowledge may result in other problems. Attempts to measure knowledge stock may disrupt the very process involved in creating new knowledge stocks. In such attempts, will we have killed the goose to get the golden egg? That is, the very process of measurement may interfere with the process by which knowledge creates value. Thus, firms should also look towards leveraging intellectual capital through "organising" rather than "structuralizaing" their knowledge assets: organising attempts to coordinate the intellectual capital elements such that their interaction increases ongoing value of the firm as a " going concern" rather than simply as an asset on a balance sheet.
Another problem here may be called the "false recipe" syndrome where the metaphor is that of the chef who, unconsciously or otherwise, neglects to communicate subtle but important elements of a recipe. Managers often lose the support of labor in initiating productivity improvement exercise because, rightly or wrongly, they are perceived as designed to put workers out of a job.
Product and process
In managing intellectual capital there are at least two distinct things that are being managed. Figure 2 illustrates these two streams flowing from the development of human capital. (Figure 2 source.)
Stock
The first is the knowledge stock itself. The most successful examples of managing intellectual capital from the literature are indicative of this type. Because this type represents the structural capital of the "structuralization" assumption, this is not surprising. It is, however, important. Usually these consist of the products of the intellectual capital development process.
Work
The second thing being managed is the knowledge work itself. This is more difficult to manage than the first because of its intangible nature. Inevitably the knowledge worker will be the best equipped to understand the full requirements of any particular job. In this case, managers must act as facilitators, setting up the structures and process that will help the knowledge worker will be best equipped to understand the full requirements of any particular job. In this case, managers must act as facilitators, setting up the structures and processes that will help the knowledge worker's development and allow for the efficient interaction of human capital with the other elements of the intellectual capital framework.
References
Capital (economics)
Business terms
Business process |
64988125 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History%20of%20mobile%20games | History of mobile games | The popularisation of mobile games began as early as 1997 with the introduction of Snake preloaded on Nokia feature phones, demonstrating the practicality of games on these devices. Several mobile device manufacturers included preloaded games in the wake of Snake's success. In 1999, the introduction of the i-mode service in Japan allowed a wide variety of more advanced mobile games to be downloaded onto smartphones, though the service was largely limited to Japan. By the early 2000s, the technical specifications of Western handsets had also matured to the point where downloadable applications (including games) could be supported, but mainstream adoption continued to be hampered by market fragmentation between different devices, operating environments, and distributors.
The introduction of the iPhone and its dedicated App Store provided a standard means for developers of any size to develop and publish games for the popular smartphone. Several early success stories from app developers in the wake of the App Store's launch in 2008 attracted a large number of developers to speculate on the platform. Most initial games were published as premium (pay-once) titles, but the addition of in-app purchases in October 2009 allowed games to try other models, with notable successes Angry Birds and Cut the Rope using a combination of free-to-try and ad-supported games. Apple's success with the App Store drastically altered the mobile landscape and within a few years left only its and Google's Android-based smartphones using its Google Play app store as the dominant players.
A major transition in game monetization came with the introduction of Candy Crush Saga and Puzzle & Dragons, taking gameplay concepts from social-network games which generally required the player to wait some length of time after exhausting a number of turns for a day, and offering the use of in-app purchases to refresh their energy. These games generated revenue numbers previously unseen in the mobile game sector, and became the standard for many freemium games that followed. Many of the most successful games have hundreds of millions of players, and have annual revenues exceeding a year, with the top games breaking .
More recent trends have included hyper-casual games such as Crossy Road and location-based games like Pokémon Go.
Prior to mobile phones
Early precursors of mobile gaming include handheld electronic games and early handheld video game consoles, though these devices were always game-oriented with nearly no utility function. Nintendo's Gunpei Yokoi had conceived of their Game & Watch line - handheld games that also served as a digital timepiece - after seeing a bored businessman on a commuter train pass time by using a calculator to play makeshift games.
Personal digital assistants (PDAs), precursors themselves to modern smartphones, arrived in 1984, and early models included built-in or add-ons games such as with the Sharp Wizard in 1989. As most PDAs used low resolution monochromatic liquid crystal display (LCD)s designed for displaying text over graphics, these gamed tended to be simple, which included block or tile games like Tetris. These types of games carried over into some of the earlier smartphone models but did not have as much popularity, such as on the Hagenuk MT-2000 in 1993.
Introducing gaming on smartphones (1997−2006)
In 1997, Nokia introduced its Nokia 6110 mobile phone which included a variation of Snake. Snake proved to be one of the phone's popular features, and Nokia continued to include the game, or a variation of it, on nearly every phone it released since, with about 400 million devices shipped with the game installed as of 2016.
In 1999, NTT Docomo launched the i-mode mobile platform in Japan, allowing mobile games to be downloaded onto smartphones. Several Japanese video game developers announced games for the i-mode platform that year, such as Konami announcing its dating simulation Tokimeki Memorial. The same year, Nintendo and Bandai were developing mobile phone adapters for their handheld game consoles, the Game Boy Color and WonderSwan, respectively. By 2001, i-mode had users in Japan, along with more advanced handsets with graphics comparable to 8-bit consoles. A wide variety of games were available for the i-mode service, along with announcements from established video game developers such as Taito, Konami, Namco, and Hudson Soft, including ports of classic arcade games and 8-bit console games.
Snake showed there was a viable interest in expanding the capabilities of mobile phones for gaming applications. With the introduction of the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP), many mobile phones were able to access limited browser-based games, and later downloading new apps that could be purchased from their wireless carrier or a third party distributor to use on their phone. However, at this stage, in the early 2000s, there was a wide discrepancies of technologies available in terms of both hardware and software. Phones were still of a wide ranges of form factors, input features, and screen resolutions, so game developers were typically focused their efforts on specific software platforms and subsets of available devices. Additionally, a range of software platform standards, like J2ME, Macromedia Flash Lite, DoJa, and Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless (BREW), existed, the implementations of which varied by phone manufacturer and model, further limiting portability of games. Thus, while games were developed for mobile devices over the next several years, they tended to be limited. Mobile game discoverability was further complicated by the limitations of the early mobile internet. Games were often primarily offered via a content store provided by a wireless carrier (the "carrier deck"). Publishers would license games for inclusion on these portals. These stores tended to be largely text-based, offering very limited descriptions of products or sophisticated search and navigation. As a result, games promoted by carriers (thereby appearing nearer the top of the store) tended to be greatly more successful, while others listed below would not be seen by many users who did not scroll beyond the first page of the deck.
Prior to 2007, Japan was the leading developer for games on handsets since most of the primary handset developers were located there and smartphones had a greater proliferation among the population. A wide array of various genres were tried, including virtual pet games which used early camera phone features as part of the gameplay cycle.
Meanwhile, handheld consoles still typically offered superior gaming experiences compared to the limited smartphone games; Nintendo had released its Game Boy Advance in 2001 as a successor to the widely popular Game Boy. To try to merge the two markets, Nokia released the N-Gage in 2003, designed as both a handheld console and a phone. The N-Gage was able to offer similar video games as the Advance, but even with its N-Gage QD redesign in 2004, the unit was a commercial failure.
The iPhone and the App Store (2007−2008)
Apple, Inc. had been an early player in the PDA market with the Apple Newton, but Steve Jobs had discontinued the line in 1998 to focus the company's hardware towards devices like the iMac and iPod. Under Jobs' direction, the same teams worked to develop the iPhone, which Apple first released in June 2007. Among key hardware features in the iPhone was a large random access memory (RAM) size compared to most other smartphones on the market as well as a larger screen, making it capable of running more complex apps, and a new operating system that could handle multitasking, far surpassing any other device on the market at the time. The iPhone also included various sensors such as an accelerometer, and also included a capacitive touchscreen that did not require any stylus and could be controlled by a finger, with later models adding support for multipoint sensing. In 2008, alongside the iPhone 3G, Apple released an iPhone OS software development kit, allowing developers to officially and inexpensively develop native apps (whereas previously, only web apps were allowed and native apps could only be installed through jailbreaking), which could be published through the newly available App Store.
Developers, including game developers, rushed to take advantage of the App Store. At launch, there were 500 apps, while six months later, there were over 15,000, along with over half a billion app downloads. These figured doubled three months later (circa March 2009), and by November 2009, the App Store had over 100,000 apps with over 2 billion downloads.
Gaming applications were one major area that found success on the App Store. One such early success was Trism, a tile-matching game incorporating the phone's accelerometer released near the App Store launch developed by a single person, Steve Demeter. Demeter had priced the game at , and within two months of launch, had made in profit, and Demeter was highly publicized as a rags to riches story on the lucrative nature of developing for the iPhone. Another early success was Tap Tap Revenge, a rhythm game by Tapulous, which also was released at the App Store's launch and saw over one million downloads in 20 days. Following on similar stories, numerous smaller developers tried to release the next big game, while larger game publishers took to their existing catalogs and released mobile-compatible titles where possible. PopCap Games, which had already had success with a line of computer and browser-based puzzle games such as Bejeweled, was one of the first companies to transition their products to mobile versions in 2009 which helped them to rapidly grow their mobile business, leading to their acquisition by Electronic Arts in 2011 as to allow Electronic Arts to compete in the mobile and casual games area.
Beyond games, the iPhone and App Store caused most other smartphone manufacturers to abandon their own attempts to build out a more sophisticated smartphone environment, such as BlackBerry and Symbian. BlackBerry had attempted to release its own app store but failed to gain the success as Apple's. Only two major competitors remained after the iPhone's introduction, the Android-based devices (based on the Java language), using the operating system that had been developed by Google, and Windows Phone by Microsoft which has close interoperability with its Microsoft Windows operating system. Both took up the same approach as Apple, introducing app stores in Google Play and Windows Phone Store, respectively, with similar developer policies. Ultimately, Microsoft ceased active development of Windows Phone, leaving iOS and Android as the principle players in the mobile operating system and app store market.
Angry Birds: transitioning from premium to free-to-play (2009–2011)
At launch, the iOS App Store only allowed single-time purchases of apps akin to how one purchased music from iTunes, so most games were purchased on the traditional "premium" model, buying the game upfront. In October 2009, the store introduced "in-app purchases" (IAP), microtransactions that an app could offer with the transaction made through the App Store's storefront. Some existing app devs were savvy to jump on this; Tapulous released Tap Tap Revenge 3 shortly after this change that included IAP to obtain new songs. Similar IAPs were added to the Google Play store on Android as well.
In December 2009, Rovio Entertainment released Angry Birds on the App Store, a physics-based game involving launching cartoonish birds at structures occupied by pigs that have stolen their eggs as to do as much damage as possible, which had been inspired by the browser game Crush the Castle and others like it. As released on the iOS store, it was a still a premium game at , and its low cost, as well as being featured by Apple in February 2010, led to it becoming highly successful and leading the Top Paid App charts by mid-2010. When Rovio ported the game to Android, they introduced an ad-supported version that could be downloaded for free, but a user could pay to remove the ads, such that Rovio gained revenue from both the IAP and the ads, which shortly after the Android's release in October 2010, was estimated to be about a month. Another game, Cut the Rope, released on both iOS and Android at the same time, followed a model of releasing a free version with a few levels, and with an in-game purchase to unlock the rest of the game. It was one of the fastest-selling games on the iOS App Store at that time according to its publisher Chillingo.
Mobile game development was also not limited to the English-speaking world, as Japan and many Asian countries had an active mobile development scene. As the app stores on iOS and Android had regional distinctions, apps developed in different regions typically would not be available in others unless translated or localized. An important region during this period is China. Separate from most other markets, the Chinese video game industry had been relatively small prior to 2008 due to poor economic conditions. The Chinese government set about trying to improve the economic welfare of the country and introduce more high technology education and jobs. However, computer costs remained high and importing consoles were difficult, so many used PC bangs, giving rise to free-to-play or subscription based games like massively multiplayer online games (MMOs). China is also recognized for creating social-network games with Happy Farm, developed by 5 Minutes in 2008, which served as direct inspiration for FarmVille.
Apple further introduced the iPad in 2010, its tablet computer based on similar design principles as the iPhone. While tablets had existed before as descendants of PDAs, the iPad was the first tablet to achieve mass-market success. Part of the iPad's success was using iOS for its operating system, assuring that all apps and games on the App Store worked for the iPad as they did for the iPhone. Android-based phone manufacturers followed suit with their own suite of Android-based tablet in the years that followed to create a similar dichotomy. Mobile game developers had a whole new audience available to them without any extra work, while others saw potential in tablet-based games due to the larger screen space that they offered. These could be geared towards children for educational purposes or elderly where hand dexterity is not as agile to use a smaller screen. Amazon developed its own Amazon Fire tablet first released in 2011 with Quanta Computer with its own customized version of Android as a means to offer digital products from its storefront to users which included apps and games.
Candy Crush Saga and Puzzle & Dragons: Establishing the freemium model (2012–2014)
While casual games like Angry Birds and Cut the Rope were gaining success on mobile devices, the development of new social network sites using advanced web browser technology on personal computers, such as Facebook, gave rise to free-to-play browser games and social-network games, generally supported by ads on the hosting website. One of the most notable examples of these is Zynga's FarmVille, released in 2009. The farm management simulation game had the player work to raise crop and tend livestock on a virtual farm, but were only afforded a limited number of actions per day. Players, however, could engage their Facebook friends to ask for extra actions, and give extra actions back when requested. The "time-lapse" or "energy" gameplay mechanics was heavily criticized by traditional game designers since any reasonable progression required one to commit time to the game. However, the game was considered highly successful, with more than 80 million players by February 2010.
Zygna's success with Farmville drew gamers away from non-social browser games on portal sites. King, who ran one such portal site, was impacted by this and decided to change their own model to incorporate Facebook games that worked alongside their portal games. One of the first games King offered on this approach was Bubble Witch Saga, released in October 2011. Bubble Witch Saga used mechanics similar to the older game Puzzle Bobble, where players shot colored orbs to clear away matching orbs. However, as to avoid the drawn-out gameplay that FarmVille was noted for, King introduced the "saga" model; the game was divided into a number of levels which each was effectively a puzzle. The player had a number of turns (shots) to clear the board or meet other conditions. If they did this, they were able to continue, but otherwise they lose one "life", though these lives would regenerated in real-time, or players could ask friends on Facebook for free lives. The game thus only required the player to commit a few minutes each day. By January 2012, Bubble Witch Saga had over 10 million players and was the fastest-growing game on Facebook. King followed this with Candy Crush Saga on its portal and Facebook by April 2012, a more direct tile-matching game but using the same "saga" approach, which also enjoyed similar success.
Buoyed by the success of these games, King opted to enter the mobile game market with these titles, developing ad-supported versions for iOS that synchronized with the portal and Facebook versions; Bubble Witch Saga for mobile was released in July 2012, and Candy Crush Saga in October 2012. Both games still integrated with Facebook to ask their friends for lives, but also included an in-app purchase to fully restore one's lives or on special powerup, however, the game was still designed to be playable without having to purchase these, and 70% of the players had been able to make it to the final level of the game (as of September 2013) without spending any money. Candy Crush Saga proved to be the more popular game, and by the end of 2013, King had seen over 400 million new players of the game and their revenues had jumped from in 2011 to from advertising revenue and in-app purposes. In June 2013, King opted to eliminate advertising in-game and simply let the mobile version of its games earn revenue from in-app purchases as they continued to release additional games. The strategy proved effective as by the final quarter of 2014, King had seen 356 million monthly unique players, with only 8.3 million spending money on their games (2.3%), but had brought in over per player per month, as to make over across its game portfolio that quarter. King's success with Candy Crush Saga created the freemium model that numerous mobile games that followed used.
Separately, in Japan, developer GungHo Online Entertainment had released Puzzle & Dragons in February 2012 first in Japan, a tile-matching game with some role-playing elements that including improving one's team of "monsters". At the time of its release, one of the more popular mobile apps in Japan were card battle games, but GungHo believed they could improve on the formula. Like Candy Crush Saga, the game used regenerable "stamina" to limit how many times the player could play in a row, but could use in-app purchases to immediately restore their stamina, or obtain other forms of in-game currency. By October 2013 the game has been downloaded 20 million times in Japan (about 1/6th of the nation's population) and over a million times in North America, and was earning an estimated a day. News of these numbers caused GungHo's stock market capitalization to rise sharply in October as to surpass that of Nintendo at around , and further establishing the success of the freemium model for mobile games.
In 2013, Apple was able to secure deals to distribute the iPhone cheaply in China. Because of the feature set and its relatively low cost compared to a computer, the iPhone became nearly ubiquitous for many Chinese residents. This spurred mobile game development within China particularly across the 2013-2014 period. These games followed the established freemium models from Candy Crush Saga and Puzzle & Dragons, using a mix of advertising and in-app purchases for revenue generation. Chinese publishers and developers, though limited by the type of content that they can release within the country due to the government's oversight of the media, were able to publish their games to the mobile app stores to release their titles beyond China, including to other southeast Asian countries or globally when possible, which helped to draw in additional revenue. This also led to some of the larger publishers within China, such as Tencent and Perfect World Games to establish foreign subsidiaries or acquire foreign companies to make them subsidiaries for mobile game development.
Clash of Clans and the massively-multiplayer role-playing experience (2012−2015)
During this same period, Supercell released Clash of Clans in 2012. Clash of Clans is a strategy game that at its core has elements of city management and tower defense as the player oversees a fighting clan's home base. To obtain resources to maintain and upgrade the base, the player can send their forces to attack another player's base, which is handled asynchronously with the opposing player's forces managed by the computer. Should the attacking player win, they steal some resources from the losing player, while the losing player, when they next access the game, will learn of these loses. To encourage cooperation, players can join into "clans" which help to attack or defend automatically. Clash of Clan retains similar in-app purchases as with Candy Crush Saga and Puzzle & Dragons that can be used to rush certain building objectives, but also weigh heavily on social engagement similar to MMOs. By September 2014, the app was earning per day, and many users had reported playing the game for thousands of hours since its launch. Supercell considered part of its success to be able to draw in both casual and hardcore games with the Clash of Clans gameplay.
Clash of Clans inspired numerous other games that gave a simulated multiplayer experience, including Game of War: Fire Age and Empires & Allies that typically required more of a time commitment and a deeper understanding of the game rules to be successful but still could be played in a casual manner.
In China, Tencent released Honor of Kings in 2015, which when it was exported to other markets, rebranded as Arena of Valor. Honor/Arena built up on the type of gameplay found in League of Legends, a multiplayer online battle arena that had been built by Riot Games, an American company which Tencent had previously acquired. Riot had believed that League could not be replicated on mobile devices, leading Tencent and its Chinese studio TiMi Studios to develop Honor of Kings. Within China the game was a success with more than 50 million daily players, and spurred its own esports league by 2016. Tencent saw the potential for its global release, but replace the game's heavy Chinese mythology with more traditional fantasy characters in rebranding it to Arena. With its international release, Honor and Arena and combined have remained one of the top-grossing mobile games overall, with over in annual revenue in 2019. And in 2020 Riot Games did make mobile versions for several of their games, with League of Legends being one of them but with a different name, Wild Rift.
Crossy Road and the growth of the hyper-casual game (2014–2015)
Around early 2015, a new type of gaming app emerged on the app stores, called hyper-casual games, with Crossy Road, by Hipster Whale considered one of the key examples in this period, though earlier games like Flappy Bird by dotGears in 2013 had displayed the same principles in gameplay. Hyper-casual games differentiated themselves from the bulk of existing app games by being small and lightweight downloads, using simple graphics, and having extremely simple rulesets, but were otherwise infinitely replayable. In the case of Crossy Road, the goal is to maneuver a character as far as possible across lanes of a busy road and avoiding traffic, a type of endless game of Frogger, earning in-game coins based on distance and any collected coins picked up that can be used to unlock new characters or buy power-ups. In-app purchases also could be used to buy coins, or coins could be earned through advertising. The game's monetization scheme was designed to avoid some of the bad reputation that in-app purchasing had been getting in recent years, using the lure of new characters to get players to spend money rather than to extend gameplay sessions. Within 90 days of release, the app had earned from over 50 million users.
Other companies soon followed to build on the hyper-casual games market, with Voodoo and Ketchapp among those releasing a new wave of hyper-casual games with similar monetization schemes as Crossy Road. Often these games were reductions of other gameplay concepts or simple expansions of more trivial games: Voodoo's Paper.io was effectively a remake of Snake and its later Hole.io a simpler version of Donut County. Hyper-casual games have continued to gain popularity, both as easier games for players to get into compared to titles like Clash of Clans, and typically are much easier and cheaper to develop, and are said to have disrupted the mobile gaming market as much as Candy Crush Saga had done when it was introduced. For established studios, the rapid development time allowed them to publish more experimental titles which they could monitor to see if players took to enjoy them, and if any title became popular, they could commit more resources and advertising to it.
Pokémon Go and location-based gaming (2016−2017)
Under license from The Pokémon Company and Nintendo, Niantic released Pokémon Go in July 2016 as a freemium app for mobile phones. Having already had experience using location-based games with its prior Ingress title, Niantic used phones' GPS to map out nearby spots close to players where they could find and try to capture Pokémon to which they could then use at virtual local Pokémon gyms, also determined by GPS location. In game, Pokémon were shown to the player using augmented reality atop the camera's view so that the player knew they had found the Pokémon and engage in its capture. In-app purchases could be used to buy improved Pokéballs used to capture Pokémon and other powerups and items to help one's Pokémon. Pokémon Go had record-breaking numbers of players, with both its initial iOS and Android releases seeing over 100 million players worldwide within a month of release. The game was recognized by the Guinness World Records for numerous milestones by August 2016. The game was a cultural phenomena for several months, in a wave of "Pokémon Go Mania", or "Pokémania", though also led to several incidents where due to how Niantic's servers has planned out Pokémon spots and gyms, people were flocking to private homes and sites. By the end of 2017, the game has grossed over in revenue, and has continued to bring in more than each year.
While Pokémon Go was not the first location-based game released for mobile devices, it established a fundamental monetization model to make such a game work and that would engage the user in physical activity in moving to nearby local areas. It also was seen as a positive impact on social interactions since players would often interact face-to-face at the gyms. Other location-based games based on popular properties have since been released with similar gameplay and monetization models, including Harry Potter: Wizards Unite and Minecraft Earth.
Video game analysts had been watching the mobile market for several years, in part due to the growth of mobile gaming from China. Market analysis firms identified that mobile gaming global gross revenues exceeded that of either personal computer or console games for the first time in 2016, earning around , and remained one of the fastest growing sectors of the video game market.
Fortnite and cross-platform play (2018–present)
In mid-2017, Epic Games released Fortnite, a third-person shooter with base-building elements as its Fortnite: Save the World component on personal computers in an early access model and then by September 2017 had released a standalone Fortnite Battle Royale mode, based on the success of the battle royale game genre from PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds released earlier that year. Fortnite Battle Royale rapidly grew popular, leading Epic to port the game to other systems, including onto mobile devices by mid-2018. From the launch, the mobile versions of the games supported cross-platform play with computer and console versions, one of the first games to incorporate mobile games into direct interactive cross-platform play. By June 2018, over 125 million registered players across all platforms. Revenue, earned through the purchase of in-game currency to buy customization options and battle passes, had brought the game to reach over in revenue daily by July 2018. A large portion of the game's audience are younger school-aged children being able to play it on their mobile phone, and parents and teachers expressed concern about the game's impact on coursework inside and out of school.
Notably, Epic Games challenged the requirement from both Apple and Google that in-game purchased had to be made through the specific storefront. In August 2020, Epic purposely released a version of Fortnite on mobile that allowed players to purchase directly from Epic. The game was pulled from both the App Store and Play Store, leading Epic to file a pair of lawsuits against Apple and Google citing that this practice was an anti-trust violation. While the lawsuit was largely decided in Apple's favor in 2021, the judge did affirm that Apple's anti-steering policy which prevented apps from informing users of alternate pay schemes violated various laws and required the company to allow apps to notify users of such systems.
Game subscription services, cloud gaming, and popular players
Apple introduced the Apple Arcade in September 2019 which worked with its iOS, macOS, and Apple TV. Comparable to Xbox Game Pass, users pay a flat monthly fee to gain access to a number of curated games, with new games added to the service periodic while other games are removed over time. Games on the service lack in-game purchase options or advertisements, but allow the user to purchase the game to keep to own, as well as store progress through their iCloud account if they purchase the game at a later time. Thus, games on the Apple Arcade tended to be those that resembled more traditional premium-priced games that were not built on microtransactions. Google followed suit with its own Google Play Pass, launched in the same month, but which also extended to general apps as well as games.
Separately, both Microsoft and Google have been developing cloud gaming services in Xbox Game Pass cloud gaming and Stadia that would allow console-quality games to be run and played on other devices included mobile phones. Currently, due to restricts Apple has on iOS applications, these cloud streaming services are only targeted at Android phones and devices.
The COVID-19 pandemic in 2019 and 2020 caused many people around the globe to be quarantined or forced to stay at home to prevent transmission of the virus, and video games became a popular pastime. Mobile game saw a significant boost in revenues as a result of the pandemic, with a 40% increase year-to-year in the second quarter of 2020 according to Sensor Tower. Mobile-friendly games such as Among Us and Genshin Impact, alongside Fornite and other mobile titles, saw large player counts during the pandemic period.
History through most of mobile gaming's history, mobile game publishers have come from new publishers created in that space, such as Chillingo and Glu Mobile or from the developers themselves such as for Rovio and King, rather than through large AAA publishers such as Electronic Arts, Activision, Ubisoft, and Take-Two Interactive. As mobile provided to be a viable space, these AAA publishers started adapting to the model, either becoming mobile publishers themselves and acquiring studios, or acquiring mobile publishers, but these were still generally seen as secondary business models relative to their computer and console games. Ubisoft was the first major AAA publisher to commit to wane off computer and console games and put a stronger focus on mobile gaming in a 2021 investor report, with plans to transition to this approach by their 2023 fiscal year.
See also
List of highest-grossing mobile games
List of most-played mobile games by player count
References
Mobile games
History of video games |
1062951 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo%20Space%20World | Nintendo Space World | formerly named and was a video game trade show hosted by Nintendo from 1989 to 2001. Its three days of high-energy party atmosphere was the primary venue for Nintendo and its licensees to announce and demonstrate new consoles and games. Anticipated and dissected each year with hype and exclusivity, it was a destination for the international video game press, with some detailed developer interviews and technology demos. The events served as the launch or marketing flashpoints of countless major industrywide products, especially Nintendo's flagship platforms and video games. The show launched the Super Famicom, GameCube, Game Boy Advance, Nintendo 64, 64DD, and all the core games for the Super Mario, The Legend of Zelda, and Pokémon franchises. Some major exhibitions would be teased and then never be seen again, leaving fans and press to maintain hype and inquiry for years as with the Super Mario 128 demo, the controversial Wind Waker teaser video, EarthBound 64, and a litany of lost 64DD games.
Format
The three day format had one day called Shoshinkai (lit. "beginning party") dedicated to press, and two days called Space World for public attendance. The show floor had many third party booths surrounding Nintendo's large main booths, all with videos and many playable prerelease games, and some with outlandish decor and character performances. Unlike most other video game trade events, it was not held at any set interval; Nintendo decided whether and when to hold the show at any time. It always took place in Japan, either in Kyoto which also hosts Nintendo's headquarters, or at the Makuhari Messe convention center in Chiba. After the most recent Space World show in 2001, the company instead began to favor online publishing as well as industry-wide conferences such as E3.
Nintendo Power explains: "Q: What is Famicom Space World? A: Space World is a free show for the public that follows the one-day Shoshinkai. Gamers who wish to attend need only pick up an entry pass at any official Nintendo retail location in Japan."
History
Shoshinkai 1989
The first Shoshinkai show was held on July 28, 1989. The Super Famicom was announced and Super Mario World was reportedly shown.
Shoshinkai 1990
The second Shoshinkai show was held on August 28–29, 1990. The final version of the Super Famicom was unveiled to the public. Famicom, Super Famicom, and Game Boy games were on display in areas that Nintendo called "Symbolic Zones".
Shoshinkai 1991
The third Shoshinkai show was held on April 24 to May 6, 1991. The Super Famicom had been on the market for a few months and much attention was given to its games including Final Fantasy IV and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.
Shoshinkai 1992
The fourth Shoshinkai show was held on August 26, 1992. The Super FX chip was announced.
Shoshinkai 1993
The fifth Shoshinkai show was held on August 22, 1993. On August 23, President of Nintendo, Hiroshi Yamauchi, announced Project Reality, a major strategic partnership with Silicon Graphics for the development of what would become the Nintendo 64.
Shoshinkai 1994
The sixth Shoshinkai show was held on November 15–16, 1994. Project Reality had already been renamed Ultra 64.
Hiroshi Yamauchi introduced the portable Virtual Boy console, along with its hardware specifications, launch games, and future games. The startup screen of the prototype was shown. A "very confident" projection of "sales in Japan of 3 million hardware units and 14 million software units by March 1996" was given to the press. The demo of what would have been a Star Fox game showed an Arwing doing various spins and motions.
Gamers who previewed the system complained that the Mario demo was not realistic enough, was not in full color, and didn't motion-track the image when players turn their heads. In the lead editorial of Electronic Gaming Monthly following the show, Ed Semrad predicted that the Virtual Boy would have poor launch sales due to the monochrome screen, lack of true portability, unimpressive lineup of games seen at Shoshinkai, and the price, which he argued was as low as it could get given the hardware but still too expensive for the experience the system offered. Next Generations editors were also dubious of the Virtual Boy's prospects when they left the show, and concluded their article on the system by commenting, "But who will buy it? It's not portable, it's awkward to use, it's 100% antisocial (unlike multiplayer SNES/Genesis games), it's too expensive and – most importantly – the 'VR' (i.e. 3D effect) doesn't add to the game at all: it's just a novelty."
Shoshinkai 1995
The seventh Shoshinkai show was held on November 22–24, 1995, at the Makuhari Messe convention center in Chiba, Japan. Popular Mechanics described the scene where "hordes of Japanese schoolkids huddled in the cold outside an exhibition hall in a small town near Tokyo, the electricity of anticipation clearly rippling through their ranks". Nintendo Power interviewed Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka about the development of Super Mario 64, Zelda, and game philosophy.
The show featured the public unveiling of the newly renamed Nintendo 64 console, with thirteen games. This included the playable prototypes of Super Mario 64 and Kirby Bowl 64, and a videotape containing a total of three minutes of very early footage of eleven other Nintendo 64 games. Of all these, the development of Super Mario 64 was reportedly the most advanced, though only 50 percent complete. Twelve playable demos had been prepared for the show, but Hiroshi Yamauchi removed ten of them from the itinerary just days beforehand. Zelda 64 was shown in the form of an abstract technical and thematic demonstration video, where Next Generation magazine said "Well, the fact is that the videotape sequences shown at Shoshinkai bear very little resemblance to what the final product will actually look like. Spectacular scenes of a surprisingly large Link clad in polished armor are most likely to end up in cut-scenes rather than representing the actual play." Some brief early footage of Mario Kart 64 was shown on November 24, which Miyamoto said was 95% complete, but which was not shown in playable form due to the difficult logistics of demonstrating the multiplayer features.
Nintendo made its first announcement of the 64DD peripheral, saying it would be launched by the end of 1996, though releasing virtually no technical specifications.
Shoshinkai 1996
The eighth Shoshinkai show was held on November 22–24, 1996 at the Makuhari Messe convention center in Chiba, Japan. New software was shown for the Nintendo 64, Super NES, and Game Boy. Nintendo of America's website published a report of the show including photos and videos, the roster of Nintendo 64 games and some demo reviews, and a translated summary (from Famimaga 64 issue 12) of a panel discussion among key personnel about their philosophy of Nintendo 64 game development.
This show bore the first demonstration of the 64DD, which IGN reported was one of the biggest items of the show along with first-party games, while other gaming press said 64DD was kept out of the spotlight and had no meaningful demonstration of capabilities. Nintendo itself stated that the company was deliberately downplaying the 64DD at the show in order to demonstrate the ongoing commitment to the cartridge format. Nintendo's Director of Corporate Communications, Perrin Kaplan, made the company's first official launch window announcement for 64DD, scheduled for late 1997 in Japan. The 64DD system was shown in its own display booth with the hardware specifications having been finalized, according to Nintendo of America's Chairman Howard Lincoln. The system played a 64DD copy of the Super Mario 64 cartridge game, which had been a rushed improvised conversion onto 64DD disk only to demonstrate the use of the bootable prototype floppy drive storage device at this show. Lincoln explained, "Super Mario 64 is running on the 64DD right now. First they weren't going to show anything on 64DD, but they decided at the last minute to have a game people recognize." The booth also demonstrated the process of rendering audience members' photographed faces onto 3D avatars and shapes—a feature which was ultimately incorporated and released in 2000 as Mario Artist: Talent Studio and the Capture Cassette for 64DD. Another 64DD game in development was Creator, a music and animation game by Software Creations, the same UK company that had made Sound Tool for the Nintendo Ultra 64 development kit. They touted the game's ability to be integrated into other games, allowing a player to replace any such game's textures and possibly create new levels and characters. There was no playable version of Creator available at this show, but the project was later absorbed into Mario Artist: Paint Studio (1999).
Reportedly several developers attended the show to learn how to develop for 64DD, some having traveled from the US for the 64DD presentation and some having received 64DD development kits. Included in the early roster of committed 64DD developers, Rare officially discounted any rumors of the peripheral's impending pre-release cancellation.
N64.com described the presentation of Zelda 64 as "very quick shots on videotape". Yoshi's Island 64 debuted in a short video, and was eventually released as Yoshi's Story. "The biggest surprise" of the show according to IGN and "most impressive [new peripheral]" according to Electronic Gaming Monthly was the Jolting Pak, which would eventually be launched as the Rumble Pak in a bundle with the upcoming Star Fox 64. Next Generation derisively claimed it "was seen as merely another whimsical Nintendo fancy destined to the bin marked Good Idea at the Time".
Miyamoto did an interview including 64DD and Jolting Pak.
The highly anticipated EarthBound 64 debuted as a video trailer segment within the overall video loop. Copies of this footage would be hunted and analyzed for decades as part of EarthBound fandom and lore.
Space World 1997
The ninth show was renamed to Space World, held on November 21–24, 1997. Some media of the event was streamed live on Nintendo's website. The event was heavily focused on peripheral hardware, with a number of 64DD demonstrations and the unveiling of the Game Boy Camera, Game Boy Printer, Transfer Pak, Nintendo 64 Mouse, and Voice Recognition Unit. The event featured a very early prototype of Pokémon Gold and Silver, with two starting Pokémon which don't appear in the final game, and an early Chikorita. The game would not be completed until 1999, by which point it would have largely changed. The ROM image for this demo was anonymously dumped and released online on May 31, 2018.
George Harrison, the Vice President of Nintendo of America, explained that the presentations made by many third party developers at this show were lackluster because of the unexpected difficulty of the industry's transition from 2D to 3D game development. He described the logistics involved in the launch of the already-delayed 64DD.
Space World 1999
Having skipped 1998 because of a lack of 64DD launch games to show, the tenth show was held on August 27–29, 1999. IGN explained that the 64DD's notoriously repeated launch delays were so significant, and the company's software library was so dependent upon the 64DD's launch, that this would directly cause the skipping of the 1998 Space World. The event had been delayed from 1998 to early 1999 and had been expected to slip again to November 1999.
Many games for Nintendo 64 and Game Boy Color were announced and demonstrated, including Zelda Gaiden (later renamed Majora's Mask), Paper Mario, Mother 3, Pokémon Gold and Silver, Doshin the Giant for 64DD, and Gendai Dai-Senryaku: Ultimate War for 64DD. IGN said that Ultimate War was one of the best games of the show, including "competitive network gaming via the Randnet service". Doshin the Giants developer Kazutoshi Iida recalled a "continuous line of people queued to use the eight playable test units, and the 'Large Screen Experience'" with a very enthusiastic foreign press. A "captivated" audience of young children returned on each of the event's three days just to play Doshin. EarthBound 64 was demonstrated. The announcement that it had been converted from 64DD disk to cartridge plus expansion disk was taken by IGN as bad news for the 64DD, having been seen as a crucial launch game for the device.
There was a detailed stage play themed for Pokémon, with lively actors dressed in large, fuzzy costumes. Pokémon audio CDs were given to the audience.
Space World 2000
The eleventh show was held on August 24–26, 2000. This hosted the dual-announcement of GameCube and Game Boy Advance, while maintaining Nintendo 64. In June, Famitsu gaming magazine in Japan had published a seemingly incomplete list of games expected to be covered at the show, for the Nintendo 64, Game Boy, and the upcoming Game Boy Advance. Nintendo's GBA announcement included peripherals such as the Link cable, the GameCube - Game Boy Advance link cable, a rechargeable battery pack, and an infrared communications adaptor which would allow systems to exchange data.
IGN joked that the 64DD was "DeaDD" and Newsweek said, "the gaming press had already witnessed [early pre-launch demonstrations of] the stunning graphics of 128-bit videogame systems like Sega's Dreamcast, Sony's PlayStation 2, and Microsoft's Xbox [so] when you're late to the party, you'd better be dressed to kill."
The show floor had an audience of 2,000, mostly male. Entertainment included "heavy artillery-loud techno music, smoke machines, and women in latex skirts". There was a huge screen at Nintendo's event stage, with two hours of next-generation presentation videos. A compilation trailer of Nintendo licenses running on GameCube hardware was displayed, including Derby Stallion, Super Smash Bros. Melee, Luigi's Mansion, Metroid Prime, Meowth's Party, Mario Kart: Double Dash!!, Kameo: Elements of Power, Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, and Batman: Vengeance. Nintendo conducted the now legendary interactive technology demonstration called Super Mario 128 and played the brief video clip of The Legend of Zelda 128. Created with a realistic and gritty look to demonstrate the GameCube's power, the clip resonated with fans and commentators who hoped it previewed the next Zelda game. Newsweek said "There were 128 Marios bouncing around on an endlessly shifting landscape; a nightclub filled with rambunctious Pokémons; a Star Wars X-wing fighter leading a blazing assault on the Death Starall so vividly rendered that they could have been stolen from a Pixar movie. And judging from the raucous response, the standing-room only crowd clearly felt that GameCube was well worth the wait."
The following two days included hands-on demonstrations of games such as Sin and Punishment, Mystery Dungeon, and Animal Forest for Nintendo 64, and Mario Kart Advance for GBA.
EarthBound 64 was one of the most anticipated games for the show, but had been canceled in an announcement just a few days prior on August 20, 2000.
Space World 2001
The twelfth show was held on August 24–26, 2001 and was the last Space World consumer event. It featured the upcoming GameCube and recently released Game Boy Advance. A short clip of Super Mario Sunshine was shown in its early form.
Following the previous year's show, Nintendo presented a second demo clip of the upcoming Zelda game. Response to the radically different cel-shaded design was divided. Some attendees enjoyed the new look, but there was backlash from disappointed fans who had hoped for a more realistic Zelda like the previous year's demo. Critics derisively dubbed the game "Celda". Miyamoto was surprised at the response.
Other events
From 2003 to 2006, Nintendo held the annual Nintendo Fusion Tour, featuring the announcement of the company's latest video games and a rock music venue.
Nintendo World 2006 showcased the Wii and Nintendo DS. Nintendo World 2011 was in Tokyo from January 8–10, 2011. At this exhibition, the company gave the specific details on the Japanese launch of the Nintendo 3DS.
The company has held a number of gameplay competition events such as Nintendo World Championships, Nintendo PowerFest '94, and Nintendo Campus Challenge. Nintendo has presented major releases and announcements by consistently participating with Electronic Entertainment Expo, and by creating its own online video event series Nintendo Direct.
Legacy
Some Shoshinkai and Space World events served as epicenters of some of the most intense anticipation within the video game industry of the late 1990s and the 2000s. At these shows, Nintendo launched the Super Famicom, GameCube, Game Boy Advance, Nintendo 64, 64DD, and all the core games at the time within the Super Mario, The Legend of Zelda, and Pokémon franchises. Some events showed exclusive videos, playable previews, and live technology demos of vital video game material that would never be seen again, leaving fans and press to build hype and intrigue for years. Ever since, video game historians would mine remnants of papers, video clips, interviews, and software from the show's corpus of media materials. This would be gleaned from trade press coverage at the time, revisited in celebrity developer interviews over the years, and from artifacts discovered in the world's secondary markets over the decades.
In 2014, collectors discovered in a thrift shop in Japan the Super Mario 64 floppy disk for 64DD from Shoshinkai 1996. The global community of video game historians analyzed the software's cosmetic idiosyncrasies which had resulted from its disposable nature as a late improvised demonstration of the floppy drive prototype just for that one show.
EarthBound 64 debuted at Shoshinkai 1996 with exclusive teaser videos and again as a demonstration in 1999. The game was only ever experienced by the public at this trade show, as one of the most anticipated and yet inexplicably unreleased games of Nintendo's history. In 2019, collectors discovered more video clips from the 1996 show, to be analyzed and canonized by EarthBound fandom.
Space World 2000's technology demonstration session launched what would become the decade-long legend of Super Mario 128. It possessed the world's intrigue and created some of the highest anticipation of gaming history, in part because its exclusivity to this one brief event made it so mysterious. Instead of becoming a real game, many pieces of its technology were sowed into various hit games such as Pikmin, Metroid Prime, and Super Mario Galaxy.
Notes
References
Nintendo
1989 establishments in Japan
Recurring events established in 1989
Recurring events disestablished in 2001
Defunct gaming conventions |
1309913 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual%20Pascal | Virtual Pascal | Virtual Pascal is a free 32-bit Pascal compiler, IDE, and debugger for OS/2 and Microsoft Windows, with some limited Linux support. Virtual Pascal was developed by Vitaly Miryanov and later maintained by Allan Mertner.
Features
The compiler is compatible with Turbo Pascal, Borland Delphi, and Free Pascal, although language- and RTL-compatibility is limited for features introduced after Delphi v2 and FPC 1.0.x.
VP was primarily useful for the following purposes:
Easily port existing 16-bit Turbo Pascal programs to 32 bits
Port existing 16-bit OWL programs to 32-bit Windows (in theory)
Write console (text-mode) programs for several platforms
Pascal development using the 32-bit Windows API (the classic development, no COM)
Learn object-oriented programming
Significant features of Virtual Pascal include:
Text-mode IDE
Debugger is integrated directly into the IDE and is reminiscent of Turbo Debugger
Fast compilation
Tool-chain written mostly in Intel assembly
History
Microsoft Windows, OS/2
The compiler was quite popular in the BBS scene, probably because of its OS/2 port and being one of the few affordable multi-target compilers. Also Turbo Pascal had been popular in the BBS scene too, but its successor, Delphi was suddenly for Windows only. Virtual Pascal provided a migration path for existing codebases.
There has been pressure from some users for Virtual Pascal to be made into open-source software. This has not been done, provided the following reasoning:
The compiler source is mostly written in Intel assembly which is hard to change and maintain.
Part of the run-time library is proprietary to Borland (The FreePascal run-time library was ported to VirtualPascal by Noah Silva, however newer versions of the FreePascal RTL use features of the FreePascal compiler which are not supported by VirtualPascal, and so can not be ported).
The patch/diff tool to work around the above (provide changes to proprietary without distributing parts of the original) was proprietary and (Windows) 16 bit only.
Documentation and help are maintained with expensive (and sometimes no longer available) proprietary tools
There is nobody who fully understands the code. Allan said that some of the deeper areas were no-touch for him (original code by Vitaly)
Although it had a wide user base in the late 1990s, VP has not evolved significantly since 2001, and after a few maintenance-only releases, the owner declared that development had ceased in 2005.
On 4 Apr 2005, Virtual Pascal was announced 'dead' on the official site. The last released version (2.1 Build 279) was announced on 13 May 2004.
Linux
Initial version was released on 4 July 1999, with last known version released on 26 September 1999. This version was maintained by Jörg Pleumann. Run-Time Library to 32 bit DPMI.
See also
Free Pascal
References
External links
fPrint (UK) Ltd page: OS/2, Windows 95/98/NT
Jörg Pleumann page: Virtual Pascal for Linux
Community set up by the author of Virtual Pascal
Download site that has the last version
Pascal (programming language) compilers
Freeware
Assembly language software
Pascal (programming language) software
1995 software
Products and services discontinued in 2005 |
7001511 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netgear%20DG834%20%28series%29 | Netgear DG834 (series) | The DG834 series are popular ADSL modem router products from Netgear. The devices can be directly connected to the phone line and establish an ADSL broadband Internet connection to the ISP and share it among several computers via 802.3 Ethernet and (on many models) 802.11b/g wireless data links.
These devices are popular among ISPs as they provide an all in one solution (ADSL modem/router/firewall/switch), which is ideal for home broadband users. The Netgear UK website claims the DG834G is the most popular wireless router in the UK and lists five awards that it has received.
The DG834G is perhaps the most popular product of the series, and has been produced in five versions. All versions have Wi-Fi.
The DG834 (without the G suffix) is the same product but without Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi can be added later by plugging in a wireless access point although this then occupies one of the RJ45 ports.
The DG834GT is a similar product - it looks like a DG834G v2 or v3, but has a Broadcom chipset like a DG834G v4 and supports Atheros Super G which can achieve a 108 Mbit/s signaling rate (double that of standard 802.11g). In the United Kingdom, many DG834GT routers were supplied by Sky Broadband and are branded with a Sky logo. Sky later supplied a DG934G router, which is a DG834G v3 router in a black case.
The DG834GB is similar to DG834GT, have Broadcom chipset, but support only 54Mbit/s wifi. It has modifications to support Annex-B ADSL.
The DG834PN model has Wi-Fi but no external antenna. It has six internal antennas, and is easily recognised by the blue dome on the top of its case.
The DG834GSP model is locked to a particular ISP.
Firmware
Netgear's stock firmware on all products in the series runs Linux. This has led to popularity among computer enthusiasts as it provides a cheaper alternative to a Linux router. Much of the Netgear firmware is built from open-source software, and Netgear provide this source code and the build system to enable users to reassemble a new firmware image. As a result, various individuals and projects have produced modified firmware which extend the capabilities of the built-in firmware. It is also possible to completely replace the built-in firmware for TI-AR7 and Broadcom chipsets with firmware from other projects, such as OpenWRT. All products except the DG834(G) v5 run on a MIPS architecture CPU, the DG834(G) v5 runs on an ARM architecture CPU.
Security issue
Any person who can access the router using a web browser, can enable "debug" mode using and then connect via Telnet directly to the router's embedded Linux system as 'root', which gives unfettered access to the router's operating system via its Busybox functionality. Additionally, a 'hidden' URL also allows unfettered access (On a v5 model a username and password are requested). There is no user option provided to disable this. On default Netgear firmware Telnet access lacks password or other control; on ISP modified versions (such as Sky) a Telnet password exists based on the MAC address which can be found via online websites.
Default settings
IP address: 192.168.0.1 (alternate login URL http://www.routerlogin.net/)
Username: admin (Virgin-branded units have a default user of virgin)
Password: password (Sky-branded units have a default password of sky)
Function set to Router + Modem
Specifications
4-port 10/100 Mbit/s Ethernet switch
Wireless Access Point (802.11b+g) (not on DG834 models)
ADSL/ADSL2/ADSL2+ modem
Firewall (as of DG834G v5 restricted to 20 rules)
Router
Differences between revisions/versions
DG834(G)
DG834(G) v1: first release, known as v1 in retrospect. Grey case, larger than subsequent models. 15 V AC power supply. TI-AR7 chipset (MIPS32 CPU), 16 MB of SDRAM, 4 MB of flash memory. G versions have black removable antenna at the rear left, using an RP-SMA connector.
DG834(G) v2: new smaller design in a white case. Different power supply requirements from v1, otherwise almost identical electrically (uses same firmware as v1). G versions have white removable antenna.
DG834(G) v3:
RoHS-compliant construction.
Expands the Wireless encryption options to include:
WPA2-PSK(Wi-Fi Protected Access 2 with Pre-Shared Key)
WPA-PSK+WPA2-PSK
WPA2-802.1x
WPA-802.1x+WPA2-802.1x
Adds an "Advanced Wireless Settings" page to the enable, various wireless Bridge and Repeater modes.
Removes the Parental control and Trend Micro Security Services functionality.
Add a PPPoE relay mode.
Improves Sync speeds, on good / short lines.
White removable antenna.
DG834(G) v4: Fixed antenna on G versions. Now uses Broadcom BCM6348 V0.7 chipset, also the Ethernet switch is now Broadcom BCM5325 (previously, it was Marvell) and the wifi module is branded Broadcom (previously it was Texas Instruments). Frontal connection LED split in 2: one for "carrier wave" connection, another for PPP link. The 4 Ethernet LEDs are now on the left of the front panel - all previous models had them to the right.
DG834(G) v5 (aka DG834GNA for North America): G versions have the fixed antenna on the right (when viewed from front) - all previous models had antenna on the left. The antenna is attached to the board with a u-FL connector so an upgrade would be possible by somebody willing to void their warranty. Comes with additional buttons for power, Push 'n' Connect using Wi-Fi Protected Setup, and for switching the wireless radio on and off. Reset is achieved by holding in both side buttons simultaneously for about 6 seconds until power light flashes. The chipset used is a Conexant CX94610 which has an ARM CPU (all previous models used a MIPS CPU). Quality of service was also added as a fully changeable feature which was available with firmware version 6.00.25 but with the newer firmware version 1.6.01.34 the quality of service and wireless distribution system is not available.
DG834GT
Only one version produced. White case with a white removable antenna to the rear left of the unit which utilises an RP-SMA connector. Inclusion of a Broadcom BCM6348 chipset make this model notable, particularly as the Broadcom chipset offers superior compatibility over the Texas Instruments AR7 chipset (used in the DG834G v1-3) with ADSL2+ / LLU lines in the UK, partly due to power spectrum density (PSD) masks applied at the DSLAM.
References
External links
Netgear DG834Gv5 Product Information
Netgear DG834Gv5 support
DG834
Hardware routers
Linux-based devices |
2717399 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-profit%20technology | Non-profit technology | Nonprofit technology is the deliberative use of technology by nonprofit organizations to maximize potential in numerous areas, primarily in supporting the organization mission and meeting reporting requirements to funders and regulators.
Types of technology do not differ between nonprofit and for profit organizations. Nonprofit technology is differentiated by specific strategies and purposes. Numerous nonprofit organizations approach technology with an emphasis on cost effectiveness due to limited budgets. Information technology in particular offers low-cost solutions for non profits to address administrative, service and marketing needs. Technology deployment grants nonprofits the opportunity to better allocate staff resources away from administrative tasks to focus on direct services provided by the organization.
Definitional issues
Due to the topic's inherent breadth of reach and the constantly changing nature of technology in general, the sphere of nonprofit technology is somewhat difficult to define. Despite this, in order to provide a stable foundation upon which the remainder of this discussion can stand, it is necessary to engage in laying a groundwork of both baseline and integrated definitional constructs.
Nonprofit technology can be generally defined as any technological tool that assists a nonprofit organization by helping it to work with greater social impact in forwarding the overall organizational mission. Technology is essential to effectively advancing and managing a nonprofit, playing an important role in the advertisement of goods and services offered, the communication of mission, and the recruitment of volunteers among other things. From thoughtful utilization to enhance both internal and external organizational communication efforts, to increased ability to measure, evaluate, and more successfully track and engage specific initiatives, the use of technology within the nonprofit sector is wide-ranging.
Technology use associated with nonprofits is not dedicated in nature, that is, technologies and specific uses of such technology by nonprofits cannot be linked solely to the nonprofit sector. Because of this, constructing a definition of nonprofit technology is based in large part on use.
Uses
Nonprofit organizations use computers, Internet and other networking technology for a number of tasks, including volunteer management and support, donor management, client tracking and support, project management, human resources (paid staff) management, financial accounting, program evaluation, research, marketing, activism and collaboration. Nonprofit organizations that engage in income-generation activities, such as ticket sales, may also use technology for these functions.
Some technology programs are created specifically for use by nonprofit organizations. For instance, there are more than 30 software packages designed for nonprofits to use to analyse donations, manage volunteers. There is software designed to help in the management of animal shelters, software to help nonprofit manage pets, animal rescue, county code management software to help nonprofit performing arts groups sell tickets and manage donors, software to manage sports clubs, and on and on.
Nonprofit organizations also use both proprietary and open-source software, as well as various online tools (the World Wide Web, email, online social networking, wikis, volunteer web blogs micro-blogging, etc.), that are also used by for-profit businesses. Nonprofit groups may leverage web-based services in their media outreach, using online newswires such as Nonprofit Newswire.com to disseminate their press releases.
Because of their limited budgets, nonprofit organizations may not be able to upgrade their hardware or software, buy computers or Internet tools, or provide technology training for staff to the degree of for-profit businesses. This means that, often, nonprofit organizations can be on the wrong side of the digital divide.
Benefits of technology
Implemented correctly, technology stands to benefit nonprofits in a variety of ways. One obvious benefit is the dissemination of information. Technological tools (e.g., computers and cellular telephones) and platforms (e.g., Facebook and Twitter) allow for the aggregation and wide-scale distribution of knowledge and information. To the extent that tools and platforms can be integrated, nonprofits may better serve themselves and their clients.
Krause and Quick discussed a melding of this sort in the area of "maternal health interventions". By combining Facebook's social networking platform with SMS text messaging, the Women's Refugee Commission (WRC) was able to launch a new initiative, which it dubbed "Mama." Mama's mission is to bring clinical practitioners together in a virtual forum (i.e., their Facebook page) for purposes of information sharing and support. Given the remote locales of many maternal health workers, regular access to the Internet can prove difficult, if not impossible. But with the help of SMS messaging, this problem becomes entirely manageable.
The Mama platform readily accepts text messages sent from anywhere in the world. These messages then appear, automatically, on the Mama Facebook page, allowing practitioners with more reliable access to the Internet a chance to appraise the situation and respond. Once the Mama community arrives at a consensus, a text message is dispatched back to the original practitioner. Although this process is a bit deliberative, it is nonetheless instrumental in achieving beneficial outcomes for both the organization and the population it aims to serve. Without an SMS-Facebook linkage, maternal health workers embedded deep within the field would effectively be cut off from both colleagues and information. Technology, it would seem, is aptly suited for bridging this spatial divide.
Cost reductions and efficiency improvements may also encourage nonprofits to adopt new digital and information technologies. According to Luksetich et al., administrative expenses are particularly bothersome for nonprofits and their stakeholders. To the extent, then, that technology can be viewed as a long-term administrative cost-saver, it becomes increasingly likely that nonprofits will become adopters of information technology. Hamann and Bezboruah advanced this premise in a recent study, noting that nonprofits may have greater incentive to deploy technology for the accomplishment of administrative tasks as opposed to provision-of-care tasks.
A final and largely unquantifiable benefit of nonprofit technology is the degree to which these tools can and do save lives. Mama, in particular, has developed a "Lives Saved Counter" to allow members to document each time they save a "woman's, girl's, or newborn's life". The Counter is significant because it acknowledges both individual achievement and evidence-based best practices. Moreover, it stands as a constant reminder and celebration of life, contrasting markedly with the conventional practices in this field, which tend to document only the deaths of mothers.
Social media
The use of social media by nonprofits should follow a stewardship model that includes acts of reciprocity, responsibility, and accountability in an effort to nurture nonprofit relationships and place supporters at the forefront. Referencing organizational partners and supporters is one way in which these ideals can be expressed through social media use. Furthermore, listing the nonprofits specific use of donations and volunteers as well as posting the names of board members and mission statement can cover the responsibility and accountability components.
And although most social media sites provide free services, for social media to be most effective, organizations must provide on-going interactional experiences for users, which requires additional man-hours. It is estimated that for a mid-size nonprofit with revenue between $1 and $5 million annually, having a social media presence will cost, on average, $11 thousand annually to attain an adequate level of interaction. Examples of such interactional components for a nonprofit website might include: downloadable video, RSS feeds, chat rooms, polls or surveys, linked publications and always, contact information.
In a poll conducted with mid-sized nonprofit organizations, 51 percent reported that between one and five hours were spent weekly attending to social media. Additionally, as the nonprofits social media presence grew, more hours were required to sustain the same level of interaction. Yet, these same nonprofit respondents, that had been using social media for at least 12 months, reported less than stellar results for attracting new donors or volunteers, which had been one of the main motivations for establishing a social media presence. Therefore, if a nonprofit organization is insistent on an established social media presence, it is advised to continue direct channels of communication such as direct mailings which still outperforms email and social media marketing.
Practitioners/sources of training and support
Whereas a for-profit business may have the budget to hire a full-time staff member or part-time consultant to help with computer and Internet technology use, nonprofit organizations usually have fewer financial resources and, therefore, may not be able to hire a full-time staff person to manage and support technology use. While there are nonprofits that can afford to pay staff devoted to managing and supporting the nonprofits technology needs, many of those who support nonprofits in their technology use are staff members who have different primary roles (called accidental techies) and volunteers.
Those providing support to nonprofit organizations regarding their use of computers, the Internet and networking technologies are sometimes known as eRiders or circuit riders, or more broadly as NTAPs (nonprofit technology assistance providers).
A membership association for people volunteering or working for pay to support nonprofit technology is NTEN: The Nonprofit Technology Enterprise Network.
Sources of hardware and software
A variety of organizations support NPOs' acquisition of technology, either hardware or software.
Certain NPOs (for example Free Geek or Nonprofit Technology Resources) support local NPOs with discounted refurbished personal computers.
In the United States and Canada, a web-based membership association that provides non-profit organizations with discounts on products and services, including technology providers, is the Non-Profit Purchasing Group.
For developing areas or nations, technology may be available from organizations mentioned in Computer technology for developing areas.
Best practices/guiding principles for effective adoption
A number of contributing factors have effected non-profits' ability to adopt information technology in recent history. Cutbacks in public sector services, decreases in government spending, increased scrutiny on the public sector, increased competition and increased financial transparency are all issues facing non-profit organizations today. Due to these issues, it has become increasingly important for non-profits to be aware of best practices and potential pitfalls when adopting effective IT practices in the public sector.
Planning has become one of the most important practices for the successful strategic utilization of information technology. A 2003 study found that 79 percent of organizations in 2003 (up from 55 percent in 2000) had some sort of "strategic plan" specifically for the use of the Internet, tending to be "medium-sized charities with medium income and larger Web budgets, as well as those that set their sites up earlier and update them more frequently." Among the most important practices in IT planning are budgeting, training and staffing. A 2007 study from the Public Administration Review shows that the majority of nonprofits budget for purchasing and upgrading hardware (57 percent) and software (58 percent), as well as computer maintenance (63 percent), but only 36 percent budget for computer-related training. However, these planning methods receive only 9 percent of the budget after personnel costs are removed, which is of particular importance because 56 percent of nonprofits report that less than 2 percent is available for these essential IT activities. The amount set aside for training varies considerablydepending on overall budgets, making training a luxury for lower-budget organizations.
See also
Capacity building
Circuit rider
Community informatics
Community technology center
Internet activism
Computer technology for developing areas
NTAP (Nonprofit technology assistance provider)
The Rosetta Foundation
References
External links
TechSoup: Technology product donations, data services, and access to technical support for charities, NGOs, and nonprofits
Nonprofit Technology Network (NTEN): membership association for those interested in nonprofit technology
Idealware: Reviews and resources to help nonprofits choose software
TechChange: Courses and learning resources on technology and social change topics |
43949745 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shellshock%20%28software%20bug%29 | Shellshock (software bug) | Shellshock, also known as Bashdoor, is a family of security bugs in the Unix Bash shell, the first of which was disclosed on 24 September 2014. Shellshock could enable an attacker to cause Bash to execute arbitrary commands and gain unauthorized access to many Internet-facing services, such as web servers, that use Bash to process requests.
On 12 September 2014, Stéphane Chazelas informed Bash's maintainer Chet Ramey of his discovery of the original bug, which he called "Bashdoor". Working with security experts, Mr. Chazelas developed a patch (fix) for the issue, which by then had been assigned the vulnerability identifier . The existence of the bug was announced to the public on 2014-09-24, when Bash updates with the fix were ready for distribution.
The bug Chazelas discovered caused Bash to unintentionally execute commands when the commands are concatenated to the end of function definitions stored in the values of environment variables. Within days of its publication, a variety of related vulnerabilities were discovered (). Ramey addressed these with a series of further patches.
Attackers exploited Shellshock within hours of the initial disclosure by creating botnets of compromised computers to perform distributed denial-of-service attacks and vulnerability scanning. Security companies recorded millions of attacks and probes related to the bug in the days following the disclosure.
Because of the potential to compromise millions of unpatched systems, Shellshock was compared to the Heartbleed bug in its severity.
Background
The Shellshock bug affects Bash, a program that various Unix-based systems use to execute command lines and command scripts. It is often installed as the system's default command-line interface. Analysis of the source code history of Bash shows the bug was introduced on 5 August 1989, and released in Bash version 1.03 on 1 September 1989.
Shellshock is an arbitrary code execution vulnerability that offers a way for users of a system to execute commands that should be unavailable to them. This happens through Bash's "function export" feature, whereby one Bash process can share command scripts with other Bash processes that it executes. This feature is implemented by encoding the scripts in a table that is shared between the processes, known as the environment variable list. Each new Bash process scans this table for encoded scripts, assembles each one into a command that defines that script in the new process, and executes that command. The new process assumes that the scripts found in the list come from another Bash process, but it cannot verify this, nor can it verify that the command that it has built is a properly formed script definition. Therefore, an attacker can execute arbitrary commands on the system or exploit other bugs that may exist in Bash's command interpreter, if the attacker has a way to manipulate the environment variable list and then cause Bash to run. At the time the bug was discovered, Bash was installed on macOS and many Linux operating systems as the main command interpreter, so that any program that used the system function to run any other program would use Bash to do so.
The presence of the bug was announced to the public on 2014-09-24, when Bash updates with the fix were ready for distribution, though it took some time for computers to be updated to close the potential security issue.
Reports of attacks
Within an hour of the announcement of the Bash vulnerability, there were reports of machines being compromised by the bug. By 25 September 2014, botnets based on computers compromised with exploits based on the bug were being used by attackers for distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks and vulnerability scanning. Kaspersky Labs reported that machines compromised in an attack, dubbed "Thanks-Rob", were conducting DDoS attacks against three targets, which they did not identify. On 26 September 2014, a Shellshock-related botnet dubbed "wopbot" was reported, which was being used for a DDoS attack against Akamai Technologies and to scan the United States Department of Defense.
On 26 September, the security firm Incapsula noted 17,400 attacks on more than 1,800 web domains, originating from 400 unique IP addresses, in the previous 24 hours; 55% of the attacks were coming from China and the United States. By 30 September, the website performance firm CloudFlare said it was tracking approximately 1.5 million attacks and probes per day related to the bug.
On 6 October, it was widely reported that Yahoo! servers had been compromised in an attack related to the Shellshock issue.
Yet the next day, it was denied that it had been Shellshock that specifically had allowed these attacks.
Specific exploitation vectors
CGI-based web server
When a web server uses the Common Gateway Interface (CGI) to handle a document request, it copies certain information from the request into the environment variable list and then delegates the request to a handler program. If the handler is a Bash script, or if it executes Bash, then Bash will receive the environment variables passed by the server and will process them as described above. This provides a means for an attacker to trigger the Shellshock vulnerability with a specially crafted document request.
Security documentation for the widely used Apache web server states: "CGI scripts can ... be extremely dangerous if they are not carefully checked," and other methods of handling web server requests are typically used instead. There are a number of online services which attempt to test the vulnerability against web servers exposed to the Internet.
OpenSSH server
OpenSSH has a "ForceCommand" feature, where a fixed command is executed when the user logs in, instead of just running an unrestricted command shell. The fixed command is executed even if the user specified that another command should be run; in that case the original command is put into the environment variable "SSH_ORIGINAL_COMMAND". When the forced command is run in a Bash shell (if the user's shell is set to Bash), the Bash shell will parse the SSH_ORIGINAL_COMMAND environment variable on start-up, and run the commands embedded in it. The user has used their restricted shell access to gain unrestricted shell access, using the Shellshock bug.
DHCP clients
Some DHCP clients can also pass commands to Bash; a vulnerable system could be attacked when connecting to an open Wi-Fi network. A DHCP client typically requests and gets an IP address from a DHCP server, but it can also be provided a series of additional options. A malicious DHCP server could provide, in one of these options, a string crafted to execute code on a vulnerable workstation or laptop.
Qmail server
When using Bash to process email messages (e.g. through .forward or qmail-alias piping), the qmail mail server passes external input through in a way that can exploit a vulnerable version of Bash.
IBM HMC restricted shell
The bug can be exploited to gain access to Bash from the restricted shell of the IBM Hardware Management Console, a tiny Linux variant for system administrators. IBM released a patch to resolve this.
Reported vulnerabilities
Overview
The maintainer of Bash was warned about the first discovery of the bug on 2014-09-12; a fix followed soon. A few companies and distributors were informed before the matter was publicly disclosed on 2014-09-24 with CVE identifier . However, after the release of the patch there were subsequent reports of different, yet related vulnerabilities.
On 26 September 2014, two open-source contributors, David A. Wheeler and Norihiro Tanaka, noted that there were additional issues, even after patching systems using the most recently available patches. In an email addressed to the oss-sec and bash-bug mailing lists, Wheeler wrote: "This patch just continues the 'whack-a-mole' job of fixing parsing errors that began with the first patch. Bash's parser is certain [to] have many many many other vulnerabilities".
On 27 September 2014, Michał Zalewski from Google Inc. announced his discovery of other Bash vulnerabilities, one based upon the fact that Bash is typically compiled without address space layout randomization. On 1 October, Zalewski released details of the final bugs and confirmed that a patch by Florian Weimer from Red Hat posted on 25 September does indeed prevent them. He has done that using a fuzzing technique with the aid of software utility known as american fuzzy lop.
Initial report (CVE-2014-6271)
This original form of the vulnerability () involves a specially crafted environment variable containing an exported function definition, followed by arbitrary commands. Bash incorrectly executes the trailing commands when it imports the function. The vulnerability can be tested with the following command:
env x='() { :;}; echo vulnerable' bash -c "echo this is a test"
In systems affected by the vulnerability, the above commands will display the word "vulnerable" as a result of Bash executing the command "echo vulnerable", which was embedded into the specially crafted environment variable named "x".
CVE-2014-6277
Discovered by Michał Zalewski, the vulnerability , which relates to the parsing of function definitions in environment variables by Bash, can cause a segfault.
CVE-2014-6278
Also discovered by Michał Zalewski, this bug () relates to the parsing of function definitions in environment variables by Bash.
CVE-2014-7169
On the same day the original vulnerability was published, Tavis Ormandy discovered this related bug (), which is
demonstrated in the following code:
env X='() { (a)=>\' bash -c "echo date"; cat echo
On a vulnerable system, this would execute the command "date" unintentionally.
Here is an example of a system that has a patch for CVE-2014-6271 but not CVE-2014-7169:
$ X='() { (a)=>\' bash -c "echo date"
bash: X: line 1: syntax error near unexpected token `='
bash: X: line 1: `'
bash: error importing function definition for `X'
$ cat echo
Fri Sep 26 01:37:16 UTC 2014
The system displays syntax errors, notifying the user that CVE-2014-6271 has been prevented, but still writes a file named 'echo', into the working directory, containing the result of the 'date' call.
A system patched for both CVE-2014-6271 and CVE-2014-7169 will simply echo the word "date" and the file "echo" will not be created, as shown below:
$ X='() { (a)=>\' bash -c "echo date"
date
$ cat echo
cat: echo: No such file or directory
CVE-2014-7186
Florian Weimer and Todd Sabin found this bug (), which relates to an out-of-bounds memory access error in the Bash parser code.
An example of the vulnerability, which leverages the use of multiple "<<EOF" declarations (nested "here documents"):
bash -c 'true <<EOF <<EOF <<EOF <<EOF <<EOF <<EOF <<EOF <<EOF <<EOF <<EOF <<EOF <<EOF <<EOF <<EOF' ||
echo "CVE-2014-7186 vulnerable, redir_stack"
A vulnerable system will echo the text "CVE-2014-7186 vulnerable, redir_stack".
CVE-2014-7187
Also found by Florian Weimer, is an off-by-one error in the Bash parser code, allowing out-of-bounds memory access.
An example of the vulnerability, which leverages the use of multiple "done" declarations:
(for x in {1..200} ; do echo "for x$x in ; do :"; done; for x in {1..200} ; do echo done ; done) | bash ||
echo "CVE-2014-7187 vulnerable, word_lineno"
A vulnerable system will echo the text "CVE-2014-7187 vulnerable, word_lineno". This test requires a shell that supports brace expansion.
Patches
Until 24 September 2014, Bash maintainer Chet Ramey provided a patch version bash43-025 of Bash 4.3 addressing CVE-2014-6271, which was already packaged by distribution maintainers. On 24 September, bash43-026 followed, addressing CVE-2014-7169.
Then CVE-2014-7186 was discovered. Florian Weimer from Red Hat posted some patch code for this "unofficially" on 25 September,
which Ramey incorporated into Bash as bash43-027.—These patches provided code only, helpful only for those who know how to compile ("rebuild") a new Bash binary executable file from the patch file and remaining source code files. The patches added a variable name prefix when functions are exported; this prevented arbitrary variables from triggering the vulnerability and enabled other programs to remove Bash functions from the environment.
The next day, Red Hat officially presented according updates for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, after another day for Fedora 21.
Canonical Ltd. presented updates for its Ubuntu Long Term Support versions on Saturday, 27 September;
on Sunday, there were updates for SUSE Linux Enterprise.
The following Monday and Tuesday at the end of the month, Mac OS X updates appeared.
On 1 October 2014, Michał Zalewski from Google Inc. finally stated that Weimer's code and bash43-027 had fixed not only the first three bugs but even the remaining three that were published after bash43-027, including his own two discoveries. This means that after the earlier distribution updates, no other updates have been required to cover all the six issues.
All of them have also been covered for the IBM Hardware Management Console.
References
External links
NIST National Vulnerability Database & CVE Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures
CVE-2014-6271 - 20140924nist & 20140909cve (first bug)
CVE-2014-6277 - 20140927nist & 20140909cve
CVE-2014-6278 - 20140930nist & 20140909cve
CVE-2014-7169 - 20140924nist & 20140924cve (second bug)
CVE-2014-7186 - 20140929nist & 20140925cve
CVE-2014-7187 - 20140929nist & 20140925cve
Bash source code from the GNU Project, includes patches for known vulnerabilities (28 September 2014)
"Shellshock in the Wild", Malware droppers, Reverse shells & backdoors, Data exfiltration, and DDoS at FireEye, Inc.
Collection of attacks seen in the wild (29 September 2014) at SANS Institute
Security Alert for CVE-2014-7169 at Oracle
"VMware remediation of Bash Code Injection Vulnerability via Specially Crafted Environment Variables" at VMware
Cyberwatch Vulnerabilities Database
CVE-2014-6271
CVE-2014-6277
CVE-2014-6278
CVE-2014-7169
CVE-2014-7186
CVE-2014-7187
ShellShock Exploitation with Metasploit Framework
2014 in computing
Injection exploits
Internet security
Software bugs |
43532241 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air%20Force%20Forces%20Command%20%28Germany%29 | Air Force Forces Command (Germany) | The Air Force Forces Command (), previously the Air Fleet Command () from 1970 to 2001, was a high command authority of the German Air Force of the Bundeswehr, responsible for the operations of the Air Force. In 2013, it was disbanded after its functions were merged into the new Air Force Command (Kommando Luftwaffe), along with those of the other high command bodies of the German Air Force.
Its subordinate elements were:
Air Force Operations Command
German Joint Force Air Component Command Headquarters (JFAC HQ)
National Air Defense Command Center
German Space Situational Awareness Center
Air Force Support Command
1st Air Division in Southern Germany
2nd Air Division in Eastern Germany
4th Air Division in Western Germany
Air Command and Control Section 1
Air Command and Control Section 3
Air Command and Control Section 2
Surface-to-Air Missile Wing 5
SAM Battalion 22
SAM Battalion 23
Surface-to-Air Missile Wing 2
SAM Battalion 21
SAM Battalion 24
Surface-to-Air Missile Wing 1
SAM Battalion 25
SAM Battalion 26
Air Transport Wing 61 (disbanded 31 December 2017)
Air Transport Wing 62
Air Transport Wing 63
Helicopter Wing 64
Ministry of Defence Transport Wing
Fighter-Bomber Wing 31 “Boelcke”
Fighter-Bomber Wing 33
Fighter Wing 73 "Steinhoff"
Fighter Wing 74
Reconnaissance Wing 51 "Immelmann"
German Air Force Tactical Training Center Italy
Air Force Regiment "Friesland"
References
Air force commands of Germany
Military units and formations disestablished in 2013
Units and formations of the German Air Force
Military units and formations established in 1970 |
2163756 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprint%20%28word%20processor%29 | Sprint (word processor) | Sprint is a text-based word processor for MS-DOS, first published by Borland in 1987.
History
Sprint originally appeared as the "FinalWord" application, developed by Jason Linhart, Craig Finseth, Scott Layson Burson, Brian Hess, and Bill Spitzak at Mark of the Unicorn - a company (headquartered in Cambridge, MA) which is now better known for its music software products. At the time MOTU sold MINCE and SCRIBBLE, a text editor package based on Emacs. As The FinalWord, the package met with some success: for example, the manuals of the Lotus software package were written on it, as was Marvin Minsky's book The Society of Mind.
FinalWord II was renamed Sprint when it was acquired by Borland, which added a new user interface, new manuals, and features to the application. The editor speed was considered blazing at the time, running with no delays on machines as slow as 8 megahertz.
This was the time of European development for Borland: Sidekick and Turbo Pascal had been founded in Denmark; and the management of the European subsidiary comprised former Micropro France managers (Micropro was at the time the world leader in Word processing software with the famous WordStar line-up. They had success with the launch of WordStar 2000 - the first word processor package with a spelling dictionary in French.)
This is why the development and marketing of the product was conducted in France. Sprint is one of the very few major products from an American software publisher that had a French version shipped before the American version.
Sprint v1.0 shipped in France with notable initial success, capturing a 30 percent market share and getting the jump on competing word processors. MicroPro was weakening with old Wordstar products and still-new WordStar 2000; WordPerfect was having problems with the translation and the user interface; and MS-Word was a decent but less polished or powerful product, and was also DOS and text-based.
The lack of beta-test combined with pressure to ship for back-to-school time resulted in a Sprint 1.0 which had a number of minor glitches and bugs that had to be corrected with version 1.01 and a whole new set of diskettes for every single registered user.
Version 1.0 (equivalent of French 1.01) shipped a few months later in the US and rest of world, with a mixed reception from customers. Traditional Borland fans who bought Sprint were happy with the editor, but wondered why the package included a sophisticated formatter, while business users who wanted a word processor just to write their memos and letters wondered what to do with the heavy manual and powerful features of the formatter language. In any event, word processing was shifting to WYSIWYG.
Version 1.5 did ship with a number of new features and real stability in France, but never made it elsewhere, although a number of localized versions had been built for various European countries. At this time, Borland Scandinavia had gone bankrupt, while Borland France had to be saved by massive financial help from the US. The developers who once worked in Europe had to move to the Scotts Valley CA premises. Version 1.5 was a reasonable success in France for some years, but Microsoft Word and Windows gained momentum and obscured all the other products.
In North America, Sprint never really gained traction in the marketplace, as it was overshadowed by WordPerfect and then Microsoft Word. It built up a small, but loyal and often enthusiastic, following among professional writers, researchers, academics, and programmers who appreciated its power, speed, and ability to handle large documents. Borland did not believe that there was enough of a market to warrant updating the product, and it eventually stopped supporting it.
Features
Crash-recovery: Sprint had incremental back-up, with its swap file updated every 3 seconds, enabling full recovery from crashes. At trade shows, demos were made with one person pulling out the power cord, and the typist resuming work as soon as the machine restarted.
Spell-as-you-type: With this feature, Sprint could beep at you in real time when detecting a typo.
Multilingual editing: Sprint included dictionary switching, support for hyphenation, and spelling and thesaurus dictionaries that have yet to be matched by the competitors.
Separate formatter and programmable editor: These have been useful features for corporate environments aiming at standardizing documents or building "boilerplate" contracts. In France, for example, applications were built for Banques Populaires (loan contracts) or Conseil d'Etat, while some local government agencies created specific applications for tenders and contracts.
Powerful programming language: Programming in Sprint was done with the internal language of the word processor - a language that is much like C. Programmers have the ability to "get under the hood" and add modifications and extensions to an extent not possible with other word processors. Once written, Sprint programs are compiled into the interface, and run at full speed.
Interface switching: Modifications and extensions to Sprint can be saved into separate interfaces which can be easily and quickly switched. This is useful for people working in different languages, as the keys can be mapped to the accents and characters of each language, depending on the interface.
File handling: Users could work in up to 24 files at once. All open files could be saved on exit or not—and nevertheless automatically reopened as left, including each file's cursor position, cut and paste buffer contents, and spell check status. Because this behavior was accomplished using the crash-recovery swap file (see above), it allowed an "instant-on" behavior using the saved state from the previous run; this was unusual for its time.
Handling large documents: Sprint has the ability to publish large documents (hundreds of pages) with strict formatting consistency and automatic table of contents, index generation, tables of figures, and tables of authorities. These features made Sprint a leader in the production of technical documents - and Borland itself did all its manuals on Sprint, for years.
PostScript capabilities: Sprint could print in-line EPS images with dimensioning, and also had the ability to add in-line PostScript procedures. This made the product rather popular in the printing industry. For example, making a 200-page novel fit into 192 pages was simply a matter of changing the point size from 11 to 10.56. Sprint could size by 0.04 increment and scale the line spacing and kerning accordingly. (The 192 pages size is important in the printing industry, where the number of pages often has to be divisible by 32. A 200-page book would have to be printed using 224 pages, the extra 24 pages being empty.)
Consistency with familiar environments: The default editor key bindings were a subset of those provided by EMACS, and the mark-up language was a subset of Scribe, making it easy for people familiar with those tools to use Sprint.
Reception
BYTE in 1984 praised FinalWord 1.16's low memory requirements and many powerful features. Criticisms included great difficulty in learning how to use it and instability, including a serious bug that destroyed four days of work. The magazine in 1989 listed Sprint as among the "Distinction" winners of the BYTE Awards, stating that "if you can live without [WYSIWYG], Sprint may be all you need in word processing software".
See also
MINCE
References
External references
Manuals are on the "Wayback Machine", the Internet Archive in several formats, emobi, pdf, djvu, etc.
FROM
https://archive.org/search.php?query=borland%20sprint
1. Borland Sprint Reference Guide 1988 (Jan 8, 2013)
From the bitsavers.org collection, a scanned-in computer-related document.
Topics: sprint, command, menu, text, file, commands, choose, formatter, chapter, format, reference guide,...
Bitsavers
2. Borland Sprint Users Guide 1988 (Jan 8, 2013)
texts
From the bitsavers.org collection, a scanned-in computer-related document.
Topics: sprint, file, text, choose, command, menu, files, typestyle, press, user, user interface, record...
Bitsavers
3. Borland Sprint Advanced Users Guide 1988 (Jan 8, 2013)
texts
From the bitsavers.org collection, a scanned-in computer-related document.
Topics: sprint, command, text, macro, format, file, commands, formatter, advanced, chapter, sprint...
Bitsavers
4. Borland Sprint Alternative User Interfaces 1988 (Jan 8, 2013)
texts
From the bitsavers.org collection, a scanned-in computer-related document. Topics: sprint, user, menu, command, interface, wordstar, commands, msword, file, alternative, use
Bitsavers
1987 software
DOS word processors
Borland software |
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