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6875545 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business%20Software%20Association%20of%20Australia | Business Software Association of Australia | The Business Software Association of Australia (BSAA, founded in 1989) was an industry association in Australia of commercial software producers and corporations that advocated software copyright compliancy and assisted the litigation of copyright infringement through support and funding. The BSAA typically retained the law firm Mallesons Stephen Jacques (a particularly notable Australian law firm) to investigate and litigate its interests.
The association published a range of auditing tools and provided information on software copyright and license compliancy.
The association had been particularly more active in the defense of copyright infringement since January 2006 when Australian Copyright law was changed to make the running of an enterprise with infringing software a criminal offense.
As of January 2007, the BSAA is now the Australian branch of the Business Software Alliance.
Members
The full members of the BSAA were Adobe Systems, Microsoft, Computer Associates, Symantec, Autodesk and Apple Computer.
Criticisms
Like most industry associations that support litigation of copyright matters, the BSAA was occasionally mentioned as being draconian, although it is considerably more measured in action it takes than its counterparts in the UK and United States.
Associations such as the BSAA are also sometimes considered as an example of a 'good hand, bad hand' tactic as its members can actively pursue their interests through the association and draw criticism to the association rather than themselves as members.
References
Trade associations based in Australia
Technology trade associations |
28081000 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center%20for%20Information%20Security%20Technologies | Center for Information Security Technologies | The Center for Information Security Technologies at Korea University in Seoul, South Korea is the institute for contribution to the research and development of security such as security protocols (cryptography), network and system security, digital forensics. The Center does a major service to the national operating system related to information security.
Research network
Companies
Microsoft
Hidea
MCURIX
NHN
LDCC
Government agencies
Ministry of Information and Communication
National Intelligence Service
Defense Security Command
National Police Agency
Ministry of Public Administration and Security
Supreme Public Prosecutor's Office
Korea Institute of Finance and National Election Commission
Government-funded agencies
ETRI
KISA
NSRI
Research fields
See also
Graduate School of Information Management and Security(Former Graduate School of Information Security)
External links
Institute website
Institutes of Korea University
Information technology research institutes |
47443487 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracy%20Chou | Tracy Chou | Tracy Chou (born 1987) is a software engineer and advocate for diversity in technology related fields. She previously worked at Pinterest and Quora with internship experience at Rocket Fuel, Google, and Facebook.
She is best known for raising the profile of the issue of the low representation of women in technology companies, and pressuring companies to reveal more statistics about the composition of their workforce. In 2016, she co-founded the advocacy group Project Include with seven other women from the industry.
Early life
Chou is a daughter of computer scientists based in Silicon Valley who immigrated from Taiwan. She attended St. Francis High School in Mountain View.
Education
Chou studied computer science at Stanford University with a specialization in machine learning and artificial intelligence. During that time, she interned at Google, Facebook, and Rocket Fuel and went on to receive a master's degree in computer science. Describing her undergraduate experience studying computer science, Chou said she felt, "really out of place" and less confident than her male colleagues at the beginning and took time to realize that she was outperforming most of them in coursework.
Career
Though she was studying computer science and enjoyed programming, she did not seriously consider programming as a full-time job. Even after an internship as a programmer at Facebook, she was not considering becoming a software engineer and instead hoped to get her doctorate to do quantitative marketing research. However, in 2010, Quora, which was then a small startup, approached her and convinced her to start working as an engineer there. She joined Quora as the company's fourth employee, but left in October 2011 to join Pinterest, becoming one of the first 15 employees at the then-fledgling pinboard company.
In February 2015, Chou signed on as a consultant for the United States Digital Service, a consortium of technology practitioners trying to make government in the United States more efficient. In August 2015, TechCrunch reported that Chou was a featured maker at Makerbase, a service that "make[s] it easier for anyone to discover who built some of the most popular websites and apps people use every day."
As of December 2018, Chou is the CEO and founder of Block Party, "a consumer app that tackles online harassment and puts you back in control."
Activism
In October 2013, Chou attended the annual Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, where she became curious about the issue of female representation in technology companies, and decided to gather data to assess the severity of the issue. This led her to write a blog post urging technology companies to disclose the numbers of women they had in technical roles. To facilitate sharing of the responses she received, Chou set up a repository on code-sharing site GitHub which allows anyone to submit a pull request. Within a week, the repository had statistics on over 50 firms, and by January 2016, it had statistics on 250 firms. Chou's focus on the issue is also credited with pressuring larger companies such as Google, Facebook, and Microsoft to release diversity reports. In July 2014, Chou published an update on Pinterest's engineering blog describing the company's progress so far on diversity and inclusion.
Chou has identified a number of possible reasons for the disparity in the representation of women in technology. She has argued that if nobody suggests to a woman that a career as a software engineer is a realistic possibility, she is less likely to consider it. She also thinks that networking opportunities and role models are more limited for women and minorities. Chou has also stated that condescending attitudes toward women are pervasive in Silicon Valley. According to one of her examples, a man she met at a conference tried to repeatedly correct her about a Quora feature that had been built while she worked at the company. She has also commented that women who look very feminine are often ignored in technical settings.
In late July 2015, Pinterest launched a project to hire more women and minorities and announced its commitment to publicly disclose its progress toward these goals and any obstacles encountered. Chou's role in highlighting the issue has been credited as a reason for the initiative. The initiative received praise from Jesse Jackson. In August 2015, Chou participated in the Twitter hashtag campaign #ILookLikeAnEngineer, started by Isis Anchalee from OneLogin and intended to show that people (particularly women) of a wide range of appearances could be engineers. Chou's participation was noted in the New York Times. May 2016 saw the launch of the diversity consulting group Project Include, founded by Chou, Erica Baker, Freada Kapor Klein, Ellen Pao and others. Its approach was quickly described as "taking a page out of open source software."
Public appearances
In April 2018, Chou spoke at Stanford University's Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Series. In June 2018, she spoke at Vogue Australia's conference Vogue Codes in Sydney. Chou has also previously spoken at TechCrunch's Disrupt SF conference.
References
External links
American software engineers
Living people
American people of Taiwanese descent
Stanford University alumni
American feminists
American activists
American women engineers
Google employees
Facebook employees
1987 births
American computer programmers
21st-century American women |
33861803 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenovo%20Essential%20laptops | Lenovo Essential laptops | In addition to the ThinkPad and IdeaPad laptops, Lenovo also offers a value-priced series of laptops. Called ‘Essential’ on the Lenovo web site, the products available in this line include the G Series, B Series, and V Series. Launched in 2009, the first laptop in the Essential range was the G530.
While some web-based reviews tend to incorrectly refer to these laptops as IdeaPads, the products in the Essential range are referred to as the ‘Lenovo xx’ laptops. For example, Lenovo G470, G580.
G Series
The Essential range of G Series laptops from Lenovo are designed for everyday use for cost-conscious consumers.
2011
The G Series laptops released in 2011 were the G470, G570, G475, G575, and G770.
G470
The G470 launched with the following specifications:
Processor: Intel Core i3-2310M or 2.3 GHz Intel Core i5-2410M
Graphics: CPU-integrated Intel HD 3000
Memory: Up to 8GB DDR3
Storage: 1 x SATA (500GB HDD default) + 1 x Ultrabay SATA (DVD-writer by default) + 1 mSATA
Display: 14" 1366x768 TN LED-backlit
The 6-cell battery offered approximately five hours of battery life. The laptop could also be equipped with a Blu-ray drive instead of a DVD reader/writer.
G570
The G570 was launched at the same time as the G470.
The laptop's specifications are as follows:
Processor:
Intel Core i3-2310M
Intel Core i5-2410M processors
Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 3000
Memory: 4GB DDR3
Storage: 500GB hard disk drive
Display: 15.6"
Battery: 6-cell
Like the G470, the G570 could also be equipped with a Blu-ray drive instead of a DVD reader/writer.
G475
The G475 was first announced in Japan.
The laptop's specifications are as follows:
Processor: 1.6 GHz AMD E350 dual core
Chipset: AMD A50M
Graphics: AMD Radeon HD 6310
Memory: 2GB DDR3
Storage: 250GB
Display: 14" (maximum resolution of 1366 × 768)
Optical Drive: DVD reader/writer
USB Ports: 4 (USB 2.0)
Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium.
With a 6-cell battery, the laptop offered up to 5.6 hours of battery life.
G575
The G575 was scheduled for release in April 2011 by Lenovo.
The laptop's specifications are as follows:
Processor: 1.6 GHz AMD Fusion E360 dual core
Display: 15.6" TFT (maximum resolution of 1366 × 768)
Graphics: AMD Radeon HD 6310
Storage: 320GB
Web camera: 2MP
USB ports: 4 (USB 2.0)
Additional features on the laptop included a two-in-one card reader, Wi-Fi, Ethernet LAN, a HDMI port, and Windows 7 Home Premium.
G770
Also released in 2011, the specifications of the Lenovo G770 are as follows:
Processor: up to Intel Core i5-2410M 2.3 GHz
Graphics:
Intel HD graphics (integrated)
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 6650M (discrete)
Memory: up to 8GB DDR3
Storage: up to 750GB hard disk drive
Optical Drive: a dual layer DVD reader/writer
Display: 17.3" (HD, maximum resolution of 1600 × 900)
Web Camera: integrated
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium
2010
G Series laptops released were the G455, G555, G460, and G560.
G455 and G555
The G455 and G555 models were announced together in 2010.
The specifications common to the G455 and G555 laptops are as follows:
Processors: AMD Turion II dual core
Graphics: ATI Radeon HD (integrated)
The laptops featured 14 inch and 15.6 inch widescreen displays respectively. The G455 was released in China as the G455A; the United States received a later release – March 2010.
The additional features on the G555 laptop are as follows:
Memory: 3GB DDR2
Storage: 160GB hard disk drive
Web camera: integrated
Optical drive: dual Layer DVD reader/writer
Connectivity: WiFi
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium
G460
The G460 and G560 laptops were announced together at CES 2010.
The G460 laptop's specifications are as follows:
Processor: up to Intel Core i3 processors
Memory: up to 8GB DDR3
Display: 14" (16:9, LED backlit, 1366x768)
Storage: 500GB hard disk drive
Optical Drive: dual layer DVD reader/writer
Graphics: Intel HD Graphics (integrated)
The laptop was available with DOS (Disk Operating System) – no other standard operating system was included.
G560
The G560 was released in 2010 by Lenovo, and summarized by Notebook Review as “a solid consumer budget notebook with a weak touchpad”. The laptop weighed 5.73 lbs and had dimensions of 14.8 × 9.8 × 0.7~1.4 inches.
The laptop's specifications are as follows:
Processor: Intel Core i3-330M dual-core 2.13 GHz processor
Chipset: Intel HM55
Graphics: Intel HD Graphics (integrated)
Memory: 4GB (DDR3-1066, dual-channel)
Storage: 320GB 5400RPM
Display: 15.6" (720p, LED backlit, glossy)
Connectivity: Wi-Fi
Optical Drive: DVD reader/writer
Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium
Notebook Review listed the pros of the laptop as the build quality, the keyboard, the large number of ports, battery life, low noise and temperature levels, and overall performance. The cons were the touchpad which did not register clicks accurately, the glossy plastic lid which retained fingerprints, and the low screen resolution.
2009
The G Series laptops released in 2009 were the G530 and G550.
G530
The G530 was the first laptop in the Essential G Series laptops, and received an Editor's Choice award from Notebook Review upon release. The laptop weighed 5 lbs and measured 14.1 × 10.1 × 1.45 inches.
The laptop's specifications are as follows:
Processor:
Intel Pentium Dual Core
Intel Pentium Core 2 Duo
Display: 15.4" (16:10, maximum resolution of 1280x800)
Graphics: Intel GMA 4500MHD (integrated)
Storage: 250GB hard disk drive
Memory: 3GB of DDR2
Optical Drive: DVD reader/writer
Operating System: Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium.
The G530 was compared favorably to the ThinkPad SL500, with Notebook Review stating that, “Lenovo should be pushing this notebook to small and medium businesses instead of the ThinkPad SL500, since the G530 feels like a much better machine”.
G550
The G550 was an updated version of the G530. The most significant difference between the two laptops was a change in screen aspect ratio from 16:10 to 16:9.
The laptop's specifications are as follows:
Processor: Intel Pentium Dual Core 2 GHz T4200 processor
Operating system: Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium
Display: 15.6" (16:9,glossy, maximum resolution of 1366x768)
Graphics: Intel GMA 4500MHD (integrated)
Memory: 3GB DDR3
Storage: 250GB 5400RPM
The laptop measured 14.9 × 9.6 × 1.4 inches. Notebook Review listed the pros of the laptop as its tough construction, textured finish which successfully masked smudges, and the ‘comfortable and solid keyboard’.
Notebook Review also indicated that the laptop functioned well as a desktop replacement, handling web browsing, HD and SD movies, and 2D games with ease. However, some features of the G530 had been removed, among which were one USB port and the Express Card slot. These changes were listed as cons, because the price of the laptop remained unaffected, despite the absence of those features. lenovo has produced new version is called G 580 in G 580 contain webcam and other extra processors that is core i3, core i5, core i7, etc.
B Series
The Essential range of B Series laptops from Lenovo are designed budget-friendly laptops designed for small businesses.
2011
The B Series laptops released in 2011 were B470 and B570.
B470
The B470 laptop was announced by Lenovo in April 2011.
The specifications of the laptop are as follows:
Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium/Professional 64-bit
Processor:
2.1 GHz Intel Core i3-2310M
2.3 GHz Intel Core i5-2410M
Graphics:
Intel HD 3000 Graphics
NVIDIA GeForce 410M Graphics (1GB video RAM)
Memory: Up to 8GB DDR3
Storage: Up to 1TB Hard Drive
Display: 14" (maximum resolution: 1366×768)
Web camera: 0.3 MP
B570
Released in 2011, the B570 laptop received a positive review from CNET, with the reviewer saying, “For such a modestly priced laptop, the Lenovo Essential B570 really does punch above its weight.” The pros of the laptop were listed as the low price, good performance, design, and display. The only con listed by CNET was the low storage capacity.
The specifications of the laptop are as follows:
Processor: 2.1 GHz Core i3-2310M dual core or 2.1 GHz Pentium B950 dual core
Memory: 3 GB or 4GB. Expandable to 8GB
Display: 15.6" (16:9, maximum resolution: 1366×768)
Storage: 320GB or 500 GB
2010
The B Series laptops released in 2010 were the B460 and the B560.
B460
The specifications of the B460 laptop are as follows:
Processor: Up to Intel Core i5-520M
Operating System: Up to Windows 7 Professional
Display: 14" (HD, 16:9, maximum resolution: 1366x768)
Graphics: Up to NVIDIA GeForce 310M (discrete, 512MB video RAM)
Memory: up to 8GB DDR3
Storage: up to 500GB
Optical Drive: DVD reader/writer
Web camera: integrated
B560
The specifications of the B560 laptop are as follows:
Processor: up to Intel Core i5-580M
Operating System: up to Windows 7 Home Premium
Display: 15.6" (HD, 16:9, maximum resolution: 1366x768)
Graphics: up to NVIDIA GeForce 310M (discrete, 512MB video RAM)
Memory: up to 4GB DDR3
Storage: up to 500GB
Optical Drive: Integrated DVD reader/writer
Web camera: integrated
V Series
Like the B Series, the Lenovo V Series laptops are budget-friendly laptops designed primarily for small business users.
2011
The V Series laptops released by Lenovo in 2011 were the V370, V470 and V570.
The 2011 Lenovo V Series laptops offered screen sizes of 13.3 inches, 14 inches, and 15.6 inches respectively, with maximum resolutions of 1366x768 pixels. The laptops could be equipped with up to Intel Core i7 processors and up to 8GB of RAM. The laptops also offered up to 1TB hard disk drives, WiFi b/g/n, Bluetooth, USB 2.0 ports, a HDMI port and an eSATA port. The V370 offered NVIDIA GeForce 315M 1GB graphics while the V470 and V570 offered GeForce 525M 2GB graphics.
2010
The laptops released in the Essential range of V Series laptops in 2010 were the V360, V460, and V560.
V360
The Lenovo V360, released in 2010, offered the following specifications:
Processor: Intel Core i3-330M
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 305M
Display: 13.3" (16:9, maximum resolution of 1366x768)
Weight: 1.75 kg
V460
The Lenovo V460 was summed up by LAPTOP Magazine as: “It looks great and has switchable graphics, but this lightweight notebook for small businesses doesn’t last long enough on a charge.”
The V460 offered the following specifications:
Processor: 2.27 GHz Core i5-430M
Memory: up to 8GB
Storage: 320GB 7200 RPM SATA
Graphics:
Intel Graphics Media Accelerator HD
NVIDIA GeForce 310M
Dimensions (inches): 13.3 × 9.2 × 1.0
Weight: 4.8 lbs
V560
The Lenovo V560 offered the following specifications:
Processor: 2.4 GHz Intel Core i3-370M
Chipset: Intel HM55
Memory: up to 4GB
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 310M
Display: 15.6" (16:9, maximum resolution of 1366x768)
Storage: 640GB 5400RPM
Dimensions (mm): 377 × 250 × 30
References
Lenovo laptops. |
32083207 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACI%20Worldwide | ACI Worldwide | ACI Worldwide Inc. () is a payment systems company headquartered in Miami, Florida. ACI develops a broad line of software focused on facilitating real-time electronic payments. These products and services are used globally by banks, financial intermediaries such as third-party electronic payment processors, payment associations, switch interchanges, merchants, corporations, and a wide range of transaction-generating endpoints, including automated teller machines ("ATM"), merchant point of sale ("POS") terminals, bank branches, mobile phones, tablet computers, corporations, and internet commerce sites.
History
ACI was founded in Omaha, Nebraska as Applied Communications Inc, on
September 1, 1975, to develop software for communications applications using the new NonStop computers from Tandem Computers. The founders were James Cody, Dave Willadsen, and Dennis Gates. Chuck Hackett, Charly Foglesong, and Mike May began ACI's relationship with Tandem. Early projects involved building systems to handle ATMs and front ends for core banking systems, which led to the launch of the first product, BASE24, in 1982. BASE24 was coined by a salesman to represent "Baseline Software for 24 hour-per-day system operations".
BASE24 was expanded over time to service transactions from other channels, such as POS terminals and bank branch systems. The product portfolio grew to cover functions related to card transactions, such as clearing, settlement and fraud detection. The hardware support for these products was extended to suppliers IBM, HP, Stratus and Sun Microsystems.
In the 1990s, ACI's product range was expanded to cover wholesale banking payments with software for ACH transactions and wire transfers leading to the acquisition of IntraNet, Inc. in 1998, and adding the Money Transfer System product.
Since 1995, ACI has been publicly traded on NASDAQ, initially under the name Transaction Systems Architects (TSA), and, since July 2007, under the name ACI Worldwide, Inc. (ACIW). Prior to that ACI had periods of ownership by US West and Tandem, and as a private company.
Acquisitions
August 7, 1998: IntraNet, Inc. was acquired by ACI Worldwide predecessor Transaction Systems Architects, Inc. IntraNet, Inc. manufactured software systems to facilitate electronic payments.
January 11, 2001: MessagingDirect was acquired by Transaction System Architects Inc., for approximately 3.3 million shares of Transaction Systems' Class A Common Stock.
June 29, 2005: S2 Systems signed an agreement to sell substantially all of its assets to Transaction Systems Architects, Inc.
October 5, 2005: Restructuring of Transaction Systems Architects, Inc. into a highly focused organization, merging ACI, Insession and IntraNet into one operating unit under the name ACI Worldwide. The name change became official in July, 2007.
August 8, 2006: P&H Solutions Inc., a provider of a Web-based corporate cash management product, was acquired by ACI Worldwide.
February 7, 2007: Visual WEB Solutions Inc., a financial banking applications company was acquired.
November 17, 2009: Euronet Essentis was purchased by ACI to expand card issuing and merchant management capabilities
March 21, 2011: Acquisition of ISD Corporation, a provider of secure payment management software for retailers in the U.S. and Canada, was announced, to broaden the functionality of ACI's payments products for retailers.
February 13, 2012: S1 Corporation was acquired to broaden ACI's suite of payment offerings for financial organizations, processors and retailers.
March 11, 2013: Online Resources Corporation, a provider of online banking and full service bill pay solutions, was acquired, adding Electronic Bill Presentment and Payment (EBPP) solutions as a strategic part of ACI's Universal Payments portfolio.
November 5, 2013:The purchase of Official Payments Holdings, a seller of electronic bill payment technology that processed about 20 million payments, worth more than $9 billion, annually, was completed.
July 21, 2014: An agreement was announced to acquire Retail Decisions (ReD). It was completed on August 12, 2014.
November 4, 2015: The acquisition of PAY.ON who provide white-label hosted payment gateway services was completed.
February 28, 2019: ACI enters agreement to acquire Speedpay, Western Union's U.S. bill pay business for $750 million
Software products
Retail Payments
Real-time Payments
Merchant Payments
Payments Intelligence
Digital Channels
Bill Payments
See also
List of S&P 400 companies
Membership of ATM Industry Association (ATMIA)
References
External links
ACI Worldwide website
Payment service providers
Financial technology companies
Financial software companies
Financial services companies of the United States
Financial services companies established in 1975
Software companies established in 1975
American companies established in 1975
Companies listed on the Nasdaq
Software companies based in Florida
Companies based in Miami
1970s establishments in Nebraska
1995 initial public offerings
Software companies of the United States |
737187 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mt%20Xinu | Mt Xinu | mt Xinu (from the letters in "Unix™", reversed) was a software company founded in 1983 that produced two operating systems. Its slogan "We know Unix™ backwards and forwards" was an allusion to the company's name and abilities.
mt Xinu offered several products:
mt Xinu was a commercially licensed version of the BSD Unix operating system for the DEC VAX. The initial version was based on 4.1cBSD; later versions were based on 4.2 and 4.3BSD.
more/BSD was mt Xinu's version of 4.3BSD-Tahoe for VAX and HP 9000, incorporating code from the University of Utah's HPBSD. It included NFS.
Mach386 was a hybrid of Mach 2.5/2.6 and 4.3BSD-Tahoe/Reno for 386 and 486-based IBM PC compatibles.
Apart from operating systems, mt Xinu also produced Apple-Unix interoperability software, including an AppleShare server for Unix.
The company's principals were University of California, Berkeley computer science students and graduates, notably Bob Kridle, Alan Tobey, Ed Gould, and Vance Vaughan. Debbie Scherrer was a later contributor.
mt Xinu is also famous for its light-hearted Unix-themed calendars, including:
Command of the Month (1987–1988)
Lessons in Art (1989)
Platform of the Year (1990)
In 1991 a division of mt Xinu broke off to become Xinet.
Notes
References
Berkeley Software Distribution
Mach (kernel)
Unix history |
48568001 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List%20of%20free%20and%20open-source%20software%20organizations | List of free and open-source software organizations | The following are notable organizations devoted to the advocacy, legal aid, financial aid, technical aid, governance, etc. of free and open-source software (FOSS) as a whole, or of one or more specific FOSS projects. For projects that have their own foundation or are part of an umbrella organization, the primary goal is often to provide a mechanism for funding development of the software.
For the most part, these organizations are structured as nonprofit/charity organizations.
This list does not include companies that aim to make money from free and open-source software.
Location-specific
Africa
Ma3bar – a United Nations-affiliated organization that promotes open source software within the Arab world.
Asia
Free Software Movement of India – founded in 2010; a coalition of organizations that advocate the use of free software within India.
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)
Free Software Foundation of India (founded 2001)
International Center for Free and Opensource Software – founded in 2011; ICFOSS is an autonomous organization set up by the Government of Kerala, India for Free and Open Source Software.
International Open Source Network – promoted the use of open-source software in Asia.
Open Source Alliance of Central Asia – founded in 2011; advocates for the use of open source software in Central Asia.
Hamakor – founded in 2003; promotes the use of free and open-source software in Israel.
Australia
Open Source Industry Australia – founded in 2004; promotes open source in Australia, as well as the use of Australian open source software and services around the world.
Europe
Free Software Foundation Europe (founded 2001)
Irish Free Software Organisation – promotes the use of free software in Ireland.
OpenForum Europe – founded in 2002; advocates for the use of open source software in Europe.
Open Technologies Alliance (GFOSS) – founded in 2008; promotes the use of open-source software, open hardware, open data and content in education, in government and the private sector, at all levels, in Greece and cooperates closely with similar organizations in Europe and worldwide.
Open Source Observatory and Repository – a project launched by the European Commission, to support the distribution and re-use of software developed by or for public sector administrations across Europe
April – founded in 1996; promotes free software in the French-speaking world.
Associação Nacional para o Software Livre – founded in 2001; promotes the use of free software in Portugal.
Digital Freedom Foundation (DFF) – founded in 2004; organizes Software and other Freedom Days
"Ceata" Foundation, Romania - officially founded in 2013, but active since 2008 as an informal group
"ProLinux" Association, Romania - founded in 2009
"ROSEdu" Association, Romania
"Informatica la Castel" Free Software Summer School, Arad, Romania - founded in 2003
Open Source Business Alliance, Germany.
North America
Free Software Foundation (FSF) – founded in 1985; began as a development center for the GNU Project. It currently advocates for free software and against proprietary software and formats; and maintains and legally enforces the GNU General Public License. It also created the Free Software Definition.
Open Source Initiative (OSI) – founded in 1998; promotes open source software from a pragmatic rather than moral perspective. Also created the Open Source Definition.
Open Source for America – a consortium of organizations advocating for the use of FOSS in the United States.
Mil-OSS – founded in 2009; promotes the use of open-source software in the United States Department of Defense.
Open Source Software Institute – founded in 2000; promotes the use of open-source software in the United States within government, at all levels.
South America
Free Software Foundation Latin America (founded 2005)
Fundación Vía Libre – founded in 2000; advocates digital rights and the use of free software in Latin America, especially within government.
Oceania
New Zealand Open Source Society – founded in 2003; promotes the use of open-source software in New Zealand.
Free Software Initiative of Japan – founded in 2002; supports free software within Japan
Umbrella organizations
The following organizations host, and provide other services, for a variety of different open-source projects.
Apache Software Foundation – founded in 1999; manages the development of over 350 Apache software projects, including the Apache HTTP Server.
Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) – founded in 2015, to promote containers. It was announced with Kubernetes 1.0, an open source container cluster manager, which was contributed to the foundation by Google as a seed technology.
Eclipse Foundation – founded in 2004; supports the development of over 350 Eclipse projects, including the Eclipse IDE.
Free Software Foundation
GNOME
KDE
Linux Foundation – founded in 2000; supports the development of the Linux kernel, as well as over 60 other projects, only some of which are connected to Linux. Also does advocacy, training and standards.
OASIS Open - founded in 1993; provides communities with foundation-level support, IP and license management, governance, and outreach with an optional path for work to be recognized by de jure standards organizations and referenced in public procurement.
OW2
Open Source Initiative
Sahana Software Foundation – for humanitarian-related software
Software Freedom Conservancy – founded in 2006; hosts around 40 projects.
Software in the Public Interest (SPI) – founded in 1997, originally only for the Debian project; hosts around 35 projects, some of which are umbrella projects themselves.
VideoLAN – multimedia-related projects
Domain-specific organizations
The following organizations host open-source projects that relate to a specific technical area.
freedesktop.org – founded in 2000; hosted by SPI since 2015. Hosts around 25 projects, mostly related to the X Window System.
Open Bioinformatics Foundation – founded in 2001; hosted by SPI since 2012. Hosts around 10 bioinformatics projects.
Open Source Geospatial Foundation – founded in 2006; hosts roughly 25 projects related to geospatial technology.
Open Source Security Foundation – founded in 2020
OSADL – founded in 2005; supports the development of various projects, mostly Linux-based, for the machine tool and automation industries.
Xiph.Org Foundation – founded in 1994 as the "Xiphophorus Company"; became a non-profit under its current name in 2003. Directly develops, and supports outside development of, multimedia-related software and formats.
Project-specific organizations
A large number of single-project organizations (often called "foundations") exist; in most cases, their primary purpose is to provide a mechanism to bring funds from the software's users, including both individuals and companies, to its developers.
.NET Foundation – founded in 2014; supports the development of open-source projects around the .NET Framework.
Alliance for Open Media – founded in 2015; attempting to develop a royalty-free video format.
Blender Foundation – founded in 2002; supports the development of the computer graphics software Blender.
CE Linux Forum – founded in 2003; supports the development of Linux for consumer electronics devices.
Django Software Foundation – founded in 2008; supports the development of the web framework Django.
The Document Foundation – founded in 2012; supports the development of the office suite LibreOffice.
Drupal Association – founded in 2009; does advocacy of the Drupal content management system, including running the DrupalCon conference.
F# Software Foundation – founded in 2013; supports the development of the F# programming language.
Firebird Foundation – founded in 2002; supports the development of the relational database Firebird.
FreeBSD Foundation – founded in 2001; supports the development of the operating system FreeBSD.
GNOME Foundation – founded in 2000; coordinates the development of the GNOME desktop environment.
KDE e.V. – founded in 1997; supports the development of desktop applications by the KDE community.
Krita Foundation – founded in 2013; supports the development of the Krita digital painting application.
Kuali Foundation – founded in 2005; develops the Kuali family of enterprise resource planning software for higher education institutions.
Mozilla Foundation – founded in 2003; supports and manages development of the Mozilla project, in conjunction with the Mozilla Corporation, a for-profit company it owns.
NetBSD Foundation – founded in 1995; supports the development of the operating system NetBSD.
Open Invention Network – founded in 2005; acquires patent non-assertion promises from its members towards other organization members, focused on Linux
OpenBSD Foundation – founded in 2007; supports the development of the operating system OpenBSD and its utilities.
OpenStreetMap Foundation – founded in 2006; supports the development of the OpenStreetMap mapping software.
Perl Foundation – founded in 2000; supports the development of the Perl programming language, including running Yet Another Perl Conference.
Plone Foundation – founded in 2004; supports the development of the Plone web content management system.
Python Software Foundation – founded in 2001; supports the development of the Python programming language.
The Rosetta Foundation – founded in 2009; develops the Service-Oriented Localisation Architecture Solution.
Ruby Central – founded in 2002; supports and advocates for the use of the Ruby programming language.
Sahana Software Foundation – founded in 2009; develops the Sahana suite of disaster and emergency management software.
Signal Messenger – founded in 2018; supports the development of the encrypted communications application Signal.
SIPfoundry – founded in 2004; develops the sipXecs communications system, and does related advocacy.
Sourcefabric – founded in 2010 as a spinoff from the Media Development Investment Fund; develops software for independent news media organizations.
Symbian Foundation – existed from 2008 to 2011; supported the development of the now-defunct Symbian operating system.
VideoLAN – founded in 2009; supports the development of the VLC media player and related software.
Wikimedia Foundation - founded in 2003; develops MediaWiki and hosts related websites, such as the English Wikipedia
X.Org Foundation – founded in 2004; hosted by SPI since 2014. Does funding and advocacy related to the X Window System.
XMPP Standards Foundation – founded in 2001 as the Jabber Software Foundation; renamed in 2007. Supports development around the XMPP communications protocol.
Zope Foundation – founded in 2006; it promotes the development of the Zope platform by supporting the community that develops and maintains the relevant software components.
Cause-specific
Ada Initiative – existed from 2011 to 2015; advocated the participation of women in FOSS development.
PyLadies – founded in 2011; advocates for female participation in the Python community.
Legal aid
IfrOSS – provides legal services for free software in Germany.
Software Freedom Law Center – founded in 2005; provides free legal representation and other legal services to not-for-profit FOSS projects.
User groups
GNU/Linux Users Groups
Linux user group – the general term for organizations of Linux users; see :Category:Linux user groups.
References
Software |
49620715 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proteus%20Design%20Suite | Proteus Design Suite | The Proteus Design Suite is a proprietary software tool suite used primarily for electronic design automation. The software is used mainly by electronic design engineers and technicians to create schematics and electronic prints for manufacturing printed circuit boards.
It was developed in Yorkshire, England by Labcenter Electronics Ltd and is available in English, French, Spanish and Chinese languages.
History
The first version of what is now the Proteus Design Suite was called PC-B and was written by the company chairman, John Jameson, for DOS in 1988. Schematic Capture support followed in 1990, with a port to the Windows environment shortly thereafter. Mixed mode SPICE Simulation was first integrated into Proteus in 1996 and microcontroller simulation then arrived in Proteus in 1998. Shape based autorouting was added in 2002 and 2006 saw another major product update with 3D Board Visualisation. More recently, a dedicated IDE for simulation was added in 2011 and MCAD import/export was included in 2015. Support for high speed design was added in 2017. Feature led product releases are typically biannual, while maintenance based service packs are released as it is required.
Product Modules
The Proteus Design Suite is a Windows application for schematic capture, simulation, and PCB (Printed Circuit Board) layout design. It can be purchased in many configurations, depending on the size of designs being produced and the requirements for microcontroller simulation. All PCB Design products include an autorouter and basic mixed mode SPICE simulation capabilities.
Schematic Capture
Schematic capture in the Proteus Design Suite is used for both the simulation of designs and as the design phase of a PCB layout project. It is therefore a core component and is included with all product configurations.
Microcontroller Simulation
The micro-controller simulation in Proteus works by applying either a hex file or a debug file to the microcontroller part on the schematic. It is then co-simulated along with any analog and digital electronics connected to it. This enables its use in a broad spectrum of project prototyping in areas such as motor control, temperature control and user interface design. It also finds use in the general hobbyist community and, since no hardware is required, is convenient to use as a training or teaching tool. Support is available for co-simulation of:
Microchip Technologies PIC10, PIC12, PIC16, PIC18, PIC24, dsPIC33 microcontrollers
Atmel AVR (and Arduino), 8051 and ARM Cortex-M3 microcontrollers
NXP 8051, ARM7, ARM Cortex-M0 and ARM Cortex-M3 microcontrollers
Texas Instruments MSP430, PICCOLO DSP and ARM Cortex-M3 microcontrollers
Parallax Basic Stamp, Freescale HC11, 8086 microcontrollers
PCB Design
The PCB Layout module is automatically given connectivity information in the form of a netlist from the schematic capture module. It applies this information, together with the user specified design rules and various design automation tools, to assist with error free board design. PCB's of up to 16 copper layers can be produced with design size limited by product configuration.
3D Verification
The 3D Viewer module allows the board under development to be viewed in 3D together with a semi-transparent height plane that represents the boards enclosure. STEP output can then be used to transfer to mechanical CAD software such as Solidworks or Autodesk for accurate mounting and positioning of the board.
See also
Comparison of EDA software
List of free electronics circuit simulators
References
External links
Official site
Discussion Forums
Computer-aided design software for Windows
Computer-aided design software
Electronic design automation companies
Electronic design automation software
1988 software |
39033904 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free%20Software%20Movement%20of%20Karnataka | Free Software Movement of Karnataka | Free Software Movement Karnataka (FSMK) is a non-profit organization working for spreading free software and its ideals. The movement is inspired by software freedom visionaries like Richard Stallman and Eben Moglen. FSMK is one of the member organizations of Free Software Movement of India.
A small organising team was created in 2007 and FSMK's formation was formally announced via several mailing lists on April 7, 2009. The Free Software Movement-Karnataka has a sizable number of followers in Bangalore and South Canara. FSMK has presence in six different districts across Karnataka, namely Bangalore, Mandya, Mysore, Hassan, Mangalore and Tumkur.
Activities and campaigns
In order to build a mass movement for free software, FSMK organizes GNU/Linux User Groups(GLUG) in engineering colleges around Karnataka and currently has around two dozen under it. FSMK hosted the 3rd National Conference on Free Software in Bangalore in the month of March, 2010. More than 1500 participants attended including the delegates from across the country. FSMI, Free Software Movement of India, a platform for all such state level organizations was formed in that National Conference.
FSMK has conducted four major activities after the 2010 National Conference. Free Software Movement-Karnataka and Reva Institute of Technology conducted a State Level Convention for Academicians on Free Software in Research and Teaching in Bangalore. It was a two days convention on 11 and 12 March 2011. The other three events are Winter camp-13 in association with SVIT, Bangalore(January 2013). Swataha-13 in association with PESCE, Mandya(April 2013). With the motto to spread awareness on free software and its philosophy, Free Software Movement of Karnataka (FSMK) along with Jnana Vikas Institute of Technology, Bidadi, organized a 9-days workshop(Summer Camp) between July 20 and 28 at the Institute campus near Bidadi to focus on free software is real freedom to compute.
Akashavaani conducted a discussion on Free Software through its "Yuvavani" program in "Kannada" Language with the members of FSMK Unit from Government Engineering College, Hassan. The Unit named as GLUE (GNU/Linux Users and Enthusiasts) is first of its kind in Hassan.
FSMK conducted protests against internet censorship on April 21, 2012.
FSMK is opposed to the UIDAI project on the grounds that it uses proprietary software and is run by a company that does not conform to privacy laws of the land.
Students from the FSMK supported Community Center participated in the Second National Conference on Free Software held in Kochi.
Efforts are on to localise GNU Health to Kannada.
In Karnataka many DTP Shops, Photography Studios, Ad Agencies, etc. are facing raids from the proprietary companies. These shops are forced to pay huge amount of license fee even if they are using the outdated versions. In the name of software support they are forced to buy new versions and in turn new hardware too which is not economically feasible for many. FSMK is trying to help these small scale enterprises to switch to Free Software alternatives like GIMP, Inkscape, Scribus, Blender, etc.
Internet Censorship
On 21 April 2012, FSMK conducted a street level activity to register its protest against the Internet Censorship. The protest was organised by the Free Software Movement of Karnataka (FSMK), in collaboration with the Software Freedom Law Centre. The performances, singing and short speeches delivered by students and bloggers culminated in a candle light vigil.
Wikileaks Campaign
To popularize the role of internet in democratic opinion and information sharing, Free Software Movement of Karnataka (FSMK) has done an online campaign that would explain to the public the underlying technology and process behind Wikileaks and the reason to oppose the government’s attempt to regulate information and views shared on internet platforms. This was done in the month of May, 2012.
Section 66A of IT Act
On 2 December 2012, FSMK conducted a protest in front of Bangalore Town Hall against the section 66A of Indian IT Act.
Campaign Against Internet Surveillance by NSA (US) & CMS(India)
On 6 October 2013, FSMK conducted session on awareness about electronic surveillance and importance of internet privacy. During this session, various tools which can be used to safeguard one's privacy while using internet was also discussed.
Campaign in support of NetNeutrality
On 23 April 2015, as part of Free Software Movement of India's call for campaign in support of NetNeutrality, FSMK organized a walkathon from National Games Village to Forum Mall in Bangalore.
References
Intellectual property activism
Information technology organisations based in India
Organizations established in 2009
Software industry in India
Free and open-source software organizations
Digital rights organizations |
46195253 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari%20Program%20Recorder | Atari Program Recorder | The Atari Program Recorder is Atari's dedicated magnetic tape data storage device for the Atari 8-bit family of home computers. The original 410 was launched along with the Atari 400 and 800 machines in 1979. The 1010 was a smaller model introduced to match the styling of the XL series released in 1983. XC12 of 1986 matched the XE series and was sold mostly in eastern Europe and South America. Slight variations of all of these models were also introduced from time to time.
The data rate was nominally 600 bps, but the simple error correction and short gaps between the resulting packets lowered this somewhat. In the end, its rate was roughly double that of the formats used by the Commodore Datasette or the TI-99/4. In some markets, where the Program Recorder was the only cost-effective storage solution, software-based high-performance modes were developed that operated more than three times as fast, and as much as four times as fast with simple hardware modifications.
The drives had several features not commonly found on other platforms. The system's device driver supported a packet-based format with checksums for error detection, as opposed to lacking any error detection or using whole-file checksums. The driver included separate formats for binary data and more complex data that required longer to process it. The left audio channel could be used to send audio through to the television speaker, which could be used to provide music during the loading period, or in program-controlled computer aided instruction systems.
Physical design
The original 400 and 800 models, released in 1979, were housed in robust beige colored plastic cases and a series of computer peripherals were released to match this design. The original 410 used a Japanese mechanism by Bigston. It was a relatively large unit and was unique among the line in that it featured a metal carrying handle that slid out from the front of the unit. This was replaced by a somewhat smaller and more rounded unit around 1981 using a new mechanism from Transtek or Chelco Sound in Hong Kong.
The release of the 600XL and 800XL in 1983 led to the system being repackaged in a much smaller form, the 1010. The new model used the black/white/silver styling of the new machines and was assigned a number in the new 1000-series device numbers. Two versions were made, one using a Chelco mechanism and another using Sanyo. They can be distinguished by the colored sticker inside the drive bay, Chelco used silver while Sanyo was orange.
When the XE series were released they were initially sold into existing markets and Atari introduced a number of XE-styled accessories to go with them. This led to the introduction of the XC11 in the UK around 1986, which are essentially the later-model 410's in the new silver-grey XE coloring. Only small numbers seem to have been produced, as by this time floppy disks were now almost universal in the US and most of Europe.
The XE line was later sold primarily in markets like eastern Europe, South America and other markets that had not previously seen low-cost home computers. These markets remained highly cost sensitive and the cassette recorder was still a viable system. Most sets from this era are variations on the XC12, using a Phonemark PM-4401A mechanism, the same unit as the Commodore Datasette. This was sized between the 410 and 1010 and was sold in all of Atari's markets. Several versions of the XC12 were also produced for specific markets, differing primarily in labelling. In Poland, they could be found as the XCA12 or CA12. A later modification led to the XL12 and XC13, sold in Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
All of the versions were mechanically similar. They all used a flip-up door on the top for inserting a tape. A piece of bright orange or silver tape behind the tape window was used make the current position of the tape more visible. The 410 had a power plug and internal power supply, the 1010 used an external power supply and ring-jack plug on the back of the case, and the XC12 and later models were powered through the SIO cable. The 1010 added a red LED to the front to indicate power-on, while the XC12 lacked the power LED but added one on top that lit while writing.
Several other companies produced compatible drives for the Atari machines, notably General Electric's Compu-Mate Computer Data Recorder, the Taihaho Computer Cassette and a number of interfaces that allowed any third party cassette deck to be used.
Electrical design
The Atari 8-bit family machines featured an advanced (for the era) input/output system, Atari SIO. Devices normally had in and out ports that allowed a number of devices to be daisy-chained together into a single port on the host computer. Most devices were "smart", listening for commands being sent through the data stream for instructions pertaining it its own device number. For instance, the Atari 810 floppy disk drive included a MOS 6507 that watched for commands being sent to a device number selected using switches on the back of the drive.
The cassette drive was intended to be a much lower-cost device and this eliminated the possibility of it being smart. Instead, and in contrast to any other devices used with SIO, the cassette system used several dedicated pins in the SIO port that directly controlled the drive. These included pin 8, MOTOR, that turned the tape drive motor on and off, and pin 11, AUDIOIN, which passed through any audio recorded on the left audio channel into the system. Data was read and written to the right audio channel using the standard data pins, pin 3, DATAIN and pin 5, DATAOUT.
Because there was no way to decode commands or perform device selection, any single host computer could only support a single drive. This was enforced by leaving off the daisy-chaining port on the tape decks, forcing it to be the last device on the SIO chain. The exception was the 1010, which included a second port and did allow chaining.
Data format
The system used frequency shift keying (FSK) to store data on the tapes. When being used to write data, the POKEY chip was set up with one of its four channels producing 5327 Hz for mark and another to 3995 Hz for space, while a third channel was set to 600 Hz and used as a clock. Data sent to the cassette device driver toggled which of the two tones was played to DATAOUT while being timed by the clock. Each byte was prefixed by a space bit and postfixed by a mark. Reading was accomplished by two narrowband filters in the drive itself, which produced output when the corresponding tone was heard. During playback, the two outputs would toggle DATAIN on and off, which was automatically interpreted by the POKEY and reformed into a series of bytes for storage.
While most systems of the era wrote bytes of data with no particular overall format, Atari's driver used a simple packetized format to aid in error detection. Data was split into packets of 128 bytes and then sent to the tape with three header bytes and a single checksum byte at the end, so the overall packet was 132 bytes long. The first two bytes were 01010101 01010101, used for clock recovery by the POKEY to address tape stretch and other common problems in cassette systems. The next byte, the control byte, specified if the packet had a complete 128 bytes of data, less than that, or was a special end-of-file (EOF) marker. Only the packet immediately preceding the EOF could be in the shorter format, with the number of used bytes placed in the byte preceding end-of-packet checksum. Both the short packet and EOF packet were padded out to a full 132 bytes long.
Between packets, the system played the mark tone continually, with a short Pre-Record Write Tone and a variable length Post-Record Gap, the two combined known as the InterRecord Gap (IRG). The driver supported two writing modes. In Short IRG mode, the IRG was about 0.25 seconds long. This mode was used for most transfers, leaving just enough time for the computer to calculate the checksum and potentially stop the drive if the checksum failed. The other mode, Normal IRG, played a 3 second gap between packets. This time was selected to ensure that the drive could be stopped and restarted without it having advanced past the next packet.
Normal IRG was intended to allow the computer to perform more complex processing of the data, allowing it to stop the transfer and thereby giving it any amount of time needed. Normal IRG was not widely used, the only known examples being assembler language programs be loaded in ATASCII format, and the much more rarely used ability to load and store BASIC programming language as text. When stored as text, each line had to be read in and then converted to tokenized format, which could take some time. Generally, BASIC programs were instead stored in their tokenized form which could be read and written as binary data using the Short IRG.
Booting from tape
The system lacked any sort of defined file format for general purpose files, but it did define a file format for bootable cassettes. This consisted of a single extra packet at the start of the file, using only the first six bytes of the payload and filling the rest of the packet with zeros. The first of these bytes was unused filler. The second byte held the number of packets in the file, allowing up to 255 packets, or 32 kB of data. The next two bytes specified the starting location of where to place the data in memory, and the final two held the location to jump to, to start the program running.
When the system was booted with the key held down, the computer would attempt a cassette boot. This would play a tone on the television speaker to indicate the computer was ready, at which point the user would press Play on the drive and then press any key on the keyboard to indicate the drive was ready. The system would then assert the MOTOR line to begin playback, reading from the tape for up to 35 seconds looking for the header packet. If it was not found, or some other type of packet was found, an error was reported.
Audio use and CAI
Another feature of the Atari SIO port was the AUDIOIN pin, which was connected to the left channel of the cassette. This allowed audio to be recorded to the channel and then played back through the television speaker. This was originally used with a series of computer aided instruction (CAI) cassettes that were sold by Atari and later by third parties. It was also sometimes used on bootable cassettes to provide music while the program loaded.
When used for CAI, a simple protocol was used to control playback. Each section of audio was marked with a short bit of mark tone, 5327 Hz. The associated program would then turn on the MOTOR line to begin playback and then read data until it saw a series of ones on the POKEY. At this point the program would stop the cassette again and interact with the user. This was typically used to stop and ask multiple-choice questions before proceeding to the next section of audio.
Atari saw the CAI market as a potential entry into the education market, forming an educational arm and producing a series of tapes early in the system's history. Best known among these was States and Capitals, a simple quiz game that became the topic of several of Atari's television ads.
Performance
The basic signaling rate of the system was 600 bps, but there was some additional overhead due to the inter-record gaps and the packet structure. This reduced the effective rate somewhat, to perhaps 550 bps. This compares favorably to similar systems of the era, like the 300 bps Kansas City Standard or the formats used on the TI-99/4 or Commodore Datasette, which had similar signaling rates as Atari but wrote all data twice as an error correction mechanism and thus had effective rates closer to 300 bps.
In those markets where the cassette was the only cost-effective storage medium, the performance of the system was a serious problem. This led to a wide variety of software and hardware upgrades to improve performance. Among the best known was the Turbo 2000 system from Czechoslovakia, which increased the basic data rate of an XC12 to 2270 bps, almost four times as fast as the original standard.
In 1983, Carl Evens posted a short note on ways to improve the reliability of reading data from the decks. A fuller treatment appeared in Antic in February 1984. This involved replacing two resistors, one each in both the high and low-frequency filters. This reduces the width of their bell-curve-shaped frequency response and eliminates any overlap where a signal might produce output in both channels.
Notes
References
Citations
Bibliography
Atari hardware
Atari 8-bit family |
495345 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guide%20to%20Available%20Mathematical%20Software | Guide to Available Mathematical Software | The Guide to Available Mathematical Software (GAMS) is a project of the National Institute of Standards and Technology to classify mathematical software by the type of problem that it solves. GAMS became public in 1985.
It indexes Netlib and other packages, some of them public domain software and some proprietary software.
References
External links
Guide to Available Mathematical Software (GAMS project home page.)
Mathematical software
Public-domain software with source code |
4876634 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UniVBE | UniVBE | UniVBE (short for Universal VESA BIOS Extensions) is a software driver that allows DOS applications written to the VESA BIOS standard to run on almost any display device made in the last 15 years or so.
The UniVBE driver was written by SciTech Software and is also available in their product called SciTech Display Doctor.
The primary benefit is increased compatibility and performance with DOS games. Many video cards have sub-par implementations of the VESA standards, or no support at all. UNIVBE replaces the card's built-in support. Many DOS games include a version of UNIVBE because VESA issues were so widespread.
According to SciTech Software Inc, SciTech Display Doctor is licensed by IBM as the native graphics driver solution for OS/2.
History
The software started out as The Universal VESA TSR (UNIVESA), written by Kendall Bennett. It was renamed to Universal VESA BIOS Extensions (UniVBE) in version 4.2 at the request of VESA organisation, and is no longer freeware.
In version 5.1, VBE/Core 2.0 support has added.
In version 5.2, it was renamed to Scitech Display Doctor. However, UniVBE continued to be the name used for the actual driver.
Version 6 included support of VBE/Core 3.0, VBE/SCI.
Version 6.5 introduced the ability to use Scitech Display Doctor as wrapper video driver.
Version 7 supports VESA/MCCS, and included Scitech GLDirect, an OpenGL emulator. This version was also ported to OS/2 and Linux (as version 1.0). However, the proposed product has never been widely available. Only pre-releases are available to the public. In the Windows SDD prerelease, it included DOS UniVBE driver 7.20 beta, the Scitech Nucleus Graphics driver, GLDirect 2.0 and 3.0 beta. SDD 7 was first released on OS/2 on the 28 February 2002, followed by a Windows beta on 1 March 2002.
SciTech Display Doctor 7.1 marked the final release of SDD, which was available on OS/2, among other operating systems. However, the Scitech Nucleus Graphics engine lived on as SciTech SNAP (System Neutral Access Protocol) Graphics, SciTech SNAP DDC, and SciTech VBE Test Suite 8.0. Unlike UniVBE, SciTech SNAP Graphics is designed as fully accelerated binary compatible graphic device driver, rather than patching a GPU BIOS to be VESA-compliant.
Display Doctor is no longer supported by SciTech Software. SciTech Display Doctor 5.3a, SciTech Display Doctor 6.53, and UniVBE 6.7 were available on their FTP site, but as of 4 October 2009, the FTP site no longer seems to be available; this seems to be related to the acquisition of SciTech Software by Alt Richmond Inc. in December 2008.
One attempt to provide an alternative to SciTech's products was FreeBE/AF, but the last release was on 27 June 1999.
Compatibility
UniVBE requires a video card with at least 512 KB of memory.
Although UniVBE has supported many controllers, the quality of VESA support decayed in newer incarnations, especially for owners with older hardware. In the case of newer GPUs, the video cards that use them have begun to incorporate rewritable firmware, which allows video card manufacturers to offer better VBE patches than SciTech can supply, especially for cards using Matrox processors.
UniVBE does not add 16-colour screen modes or text modes, but offers an option to reuse those modes with a "pass through feature". However, the text mode pass through feature has been broken since the release of SDD 6.
Matrox G-series video cards can only use video modes that utilize at most half of its memory. This is different from the Matrox Millennium, which was documented by SciTech as a hardware flaw.
References
External links
SciTech Software (archived copy)
Scitech Display Doctor VESA VBE enhancement software (archived copy)
SciTech UniVBE utilities (archived copy)
All SciTech UniVBE freeware files (ftp mirror)
RegCodes for former shareware SciTech products turned freeware Wayback Machine archived copy)
Device drivers
VESA |
18747239 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debbie%20Green-Vargas | Debbie Green-Vargas | Debbie Green-Vargas (born June 25, 1958) is a former American volleyball player and coach. She is regarded as the greatest American women's volleyball setter of all time. Green-Vargas was a member of the U.S. National Team and won the silver medal at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.
Early life
Debbie Green was born in South Korea in 1958. She grew up in California and attended Westminster High School. At the age of 16 Green-Vargas was a part of the Adidas Junior Team which swept the USVBA Nationals. She was named an All-American, the youngest player ever to be so honored.
Collegiate career
Despite her small stature, Green was a two time All-American setter at USC. She perfected the jump set, allowing her to meet the ball higher in the vertical plane and create a higher tempo in the offense. In doing so she was able to consistently create opportunities advantageous for her hitters. In 1977, Green led the Trojans to a 38–0 record and an AIAW National Championships. Hers was the first college volleyball team to ever register a perfect season. Green led the Trojans to their second National Championship the following year in 1978. She won the Broderick Award, (now the Honda Sports Award) as the nation's best female collegiate volleyball player in 1978.
Olympic career
Green was on the roster for the 1980 Olympic, but was disappointed by the 1980 Olympic boycott. In 1984, Green helped team USA to a silver medal, at the time the best finish in U.S. women's volleyball history (later matched by the 2008 team).
Professional
Green played for the Los Angeles Starlites of Major League Volleyball (MLV), a women's professional indoor league, and helped the squad earn the league's first two championships in 1987 and 1988
Green-Vargas was an assistant coach for the Long Beach State women's volleyball team for 23 years, retiring after the 2008–09 season.
Personal life
Green-Vargas earned a BA in communications from Long Beach State in 1992.
Green married Joe Vargas and has two children, Nicole and Dana. Nicole played setter at Long Beach State, where Green-Vargas worked as an assistant coach. Dana was a setter for UCSB.
In 1986, she was selected to the United States Volleyball Association Hall of Fame, and in the spring of 1986 received the All-Time Great Volleyball Player award. On April 30, 1998, Green became the first woman to enter the Orange County Sports Hall of Fame.
References
External links
Debbie Green-Vargas at Long Beach State official website
1958 births
Living people
American women's volleyball players
American volleyball coaches
California State University, Long Beach alumni
Olympic silver medalists for the United States in volleyball
People from Westminster, California
USC Trojans women's volleyball players
Volleyball players at the 1984 Summer Olympics
Medalists at the 1984 Summer Olympics
Pan American Games silver medalists for the United States
Pan American Games medalists in volleyball
Setters (volleyball)
Volleyball players at the 1983 Pan American Games
Medalists at the 1983 Pan American Games
Volleyball players from California |
20670240 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwind%20%28company%29 | Northwind (company) | Northwind is a privately held company that develops property management systems, as well as GDS/web based booking solutions for the hospitality industry. Maestro Enterprise Suite, the company's flagship product, includes a variety of modules which can be coordinated to comply with a hotel or hotel chain's requirements. Maestro is a multi-platform system, with over 10,000 users, allowing for optimized adaptibility to single or multi-property businesses. Northwind's headquarters are in Markham, Ontario, with sales and support offices located worldwide.
History
1978 - Company formed to respond to the need for custom software development
1979 - Custom development of back office accounting, travel agency commission payables, and guest history management for a major Canadian hotel chain
1980 - Ongoing development of various custom software modules in a mini computer environment
1982 - Begin development of UNIX based hotel property management system (PMS)
1983 - Development of Telephone Answering Services Management software
1984 - Computerized Hospitality Solutions (CHS) Front Office successfully introduced to the market
1986 - Decision to focus strictly on hospitality and retire non-hotel software
1989 - U.S. sales office established in Florida.
1992 - Begin development of UNIX and Windows version of new client/server PMS “CHS2000”
1994 - CHS2000 Version 1 successfully introduced to the market
1994 - First installation of CHS2000 Windows PMS
1997 - Yield management functionality implemented as an integrated component of CHS2000
1999 - CHS legacy software retired, existing clients offered free upgrade to Maestro
1999 - CHS2000 redesigned and deployed as Maestro PMS
2000 - Spa & Activities Management module developed for resort operations
2001 - Shuttle Services Management module developed
2002 - Extended Stay Management enhancements added to PMS
2002 - Maestro Enterprise Multi-Property deployed
2003 - Enhanced service initiative (Diamond Plus) deployed to all Maestro users
2003 - Development of condominium owner accounting module
2003 - ResEze real-time fully integrated Web Booking Engine introduced
2004 - Added ASP Citrix & Terminal Services based support
2005 - Enhanced security features including credit card masking and database encryption added for PCI compliance
2006 - Enhanced Spa & Activities Management, Retail POS, and interfaces including 2-way GDS/OTA, 2-way Yield management
2006 - Added Fine Dining POS, Club Membership and Golf Scheduling Modules
2007 - Integrated Member Management system introduced
2007 - Table Reservations with On-line functionality introduced
2008 - ResWave Booking Engine extends functionality of online presence for clients
2008 - Maestro Users Group is formed to promote client collaboration
2008 - Diamond Plus Service expanded to include free On-Demand Live Training and Beginners Education program, Web Connection initiative of online features & functions deployed
2010 - Launches Maestro Self-Service Touch Screen Kiosk, fully tokenized interface for payment card processing & Maestro PMS Certified for PCI Compliancy, PA-DSS Standards
2011 - Integrated online property based member Loyalty Program, handheld checkin/checkout support
2012 - Online loyalty program integration
2013 - Introduction of self serve eLearning website for Maestro PMS users
2014 - Introduction of Maestro Web, a browser based, feature equivalent version of Maestro PMS
2014 - EMV credit card support added (Chip and Pin) for secure credit card payments
2015 - Mobile tools added including housekeeping, online check in, and tablet based folio display
2016 - Post Checkin Surveys, Mobile Checkout, Online Payment Portal
2017 - Northwind acquires assets of Navicom Inc. to provide reputation management for its clients
Products & services
Maestro Enterprise Suite
The Maestro Enterprise Suite is a sophisticated property management system used by single and multi-property hotel groups to share information between all branches of an operation, allowing for total network control. The Maestro Enterprise Suite has the following modules:
Maestro Property Management Suite
Maestro Sales & Catering Suite
Maestro Multi-Property Suite
Maestro Corporate Enterprise Suite
ResWave
ResWave is Northwind's real-time, on-line web booking suite, allowing package customization of guest services such as room, spa, dining & event reservations, and group management.
Diamond Plus
Diamond Plus is a support service initiative provided by Northwind to its clients. The service includes access to a 24/7 support center, remote training facilities for clients, software customization, and access to self-serve web training and documentation.
Executives
Warren Dehan - President
Audrey MacRae - Vice President
References
Companies based in Markham, Ontario
Software companies of Canada
Privately held companies of Canada |
40682382 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliance%20authentication | Reliance authentication | Reliance authentication is a part of the trust-based identity attribution process whereby a second entity relies upon the authentication processes put in place by a first entity. The second entity creates a further element that is unique and specific to its purpose, that can only be retrieved or accessed by the authentication processes of the first entity having first being met.
Reliance authentication can be achieved by one or more tokens with random characteristics being transmitted to a secure area controlled by the first entity, where such secure area is only accessible by the person authorised to use the account. The secure area may be an online banking portal, telephone banking system, or mobile banking application.
The token is often in the form of a single or plural of debit or credits to a financial account, where the numerical values of the debit or credits form the token, whose numeric value is to be confirmed by the account holder.
The token are retrieved by the cardholder accessing a secure area from the first entity's secure area, which is protected and accessible only by satisfying the first entity's authentication means. In the case of financial services, authentication to access the secure area normally includes multi-factor and in the SEPA would likely involve strong authentication.
The transmission and requirement to retrieve the token adds a further challenge and response factor to the overall authentication process when considered from the point of view of the second party, which generates and transmits the token.
The token may be generated by the second party dynamically, and can thus act as a one-time password.
The reliance authentication method has particular application with financial instruments such as credit cards, e-mandate and direct debit transactions, whereby a person may instigate a transaction on a financial instrument, however the financial instrument is not verified as belonging to that person until that person confirms the value of the token.
The reliance method often incorporates an out-of-band response means, once the tokens have been retrieved from the secure area.
How it is used
Reliance authentication uses multi-step inputs to ensure that the user is not a fraud. Some examples include:
When using a credit card, swiping a magnetic stripe or inserting a chip followed by a signature (in some cases, the last four digits of the payment card number is taken).
Answering a CAPTCHA question to prove you are not a robot.
Security keys
Verifying an online account via SMS or email.
Time-based one-time password algorithm.
Legal basis
The introduction of strong customer authentication for online payment transactions within the European Union now links a verified person to an account, where such person has been identified in accordance with statutory requirements prior to the account being opened. Reliance authentication makes use of pre-existing accounts, to piggyback further services upon those accounts, providing that the original source is 'reliable'.
The concept of reliability is a legal one derived from various anti money laundering (AML) / counter-terrorism funding (CTF) legislation in the USA, EU28, Australia, Singapore and New Zealand where second parties may place reliance on the customer due diligence process of the first party, where the first party is say a financial institution.
In the Australian legislation, 'reliance' is based upon section 38 of the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006 (Cth).
In the European Commission's Proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on the prevention of the use of the financial system for the purpose of money laundering and terrorist financing, reliance is based upon Article 11(1)(a).
Reliance in the UK has a very specific meaning and relates to the process under Regulation 17 of the Money Laundering Regulations 2007. "Reliance" for the purpose of AML and "reliance authentication" are not the same, although both use similar concepts.
The Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council of the United States of America (FFIEC) issued "Authentication in an Internet Banking Environment", dated October 2005. Reliance authentication is outlined per the final paragraph of page 14.
Advantages
Advantages of reliance authentication methods are:
when used in conjunction with financial services, the identity of the customer has been verified in accordance with AML/CTF legal requirements upon the original account having been opened.
they reuse existing security that is already maintained (e.g. by financial institutions).
they use familiar and trusted sources. Accessing a financial account in order to retrieve the tokens (which are either credits or debits) is a familiar process to the account holder, and is often available via a variety of means including mobile, online, telephone banking and ATM access.
both processes use an in-band method to transmit the tokens, with an out-of-band response mechanism whereby the account holder re-keys in the token value to a new mobile, webpage or app. This mitigates man in the middle and boy in the browser attacks with regards to the token being intercepted.
they are a software solution, not requiring any additional hard tokens or complex integrations. Tokens are transmitted as part of the financial network, without the need for any dedicated new networks.
that they can be implemented without the involvement of the account issuing institution.
Disadvantages
Disadvantages of reliance authentication methods are:
the reliance on low-cost authentication methods like computer chips, incite hackers to steal information.
the absence of effective tools to monitor fraud, particularly since the transition from magnetic stripes to computer chips.
extra time for admins to upload additional software and users to input their information.
its inability to support mobile devices.
poor password practices allow frauds to steal information from multiple platforms.
See also
Authentication
Mutual authentication
One-time password
Strong authentication
References
Authentication methods |
29066981 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threat%20%28computer%29 | Threat (computer) | In computer security, a threat is a potential negative action or event facilitated by a vulnerability that results in an unwanted impact to a computer system or application.
A threat can be either a negative "intentional" event (i.e. hacking: an individual cracker or a criminal organization) or an "accidental" negative event (e.g. the possibility of a computer malfunctioning, or the possibility of a natural disaster event such as an earthquake, a fire, or a tornado) or otherwise a circumstance, capability, action, or event.
This is differentiated from a threat actor who is an individual or group that can perform the threat action, such as exploiting a vulnerability to actualise a negative impact.
A more comprehensive definition, tied to an Information assurance point of view, can be found in "Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) 200, Minimum Security Requirements for Federal Information and Information Systems" by NIST of United States of America
Any circumstance or event with the potential to adversely impact organizational operations (including mission, functions, image, or reputation), organizational assets, or individuals through an information system via unauthorized access, destruction, disclosure, modification of information, and/or denial of service. Also, the potential for a threat-source to successfully exploit a particular information system vulnerability.
National Information Assurance Glossary defines threat as:
Any circumstance or event with the potential to adversely impact an IS through unauthorized access, destruction, disclosure, modification of data, and/or denial of service.
ENISA gives a similar definition:
Any circumstance or event with the potential to adversely impact an asset [G.3] through unauthorized access, destruction, disclosure, modification of data, and/or denial of service.
The Open Group defines threat as:
Anything that is capable of acting in a manner resulting in harm to an asset and/or organization; for example, acts of God (weather, geological events,etc.); malicious actors; errors; failures.
Factor analysis of information risk defines threat as:
threats are anything (e.g., object, substance, human, etc.) that are capable of acting against an asset in a manner that can result in harm. A tornado is a threat, as is a flood, as is a hacker. The key consideration is that threats apply the force (water, wind, exploit code, etc.) against an asset that can cause a loss event to occur.
National Information Assurance Training and Education Center gives a more articulated definition of threat:
The means through which the ability or intent of a threat agent to adversely affect an automated system, facility, or operation can be manifest. Categorize and classify threats as follows: Categories Classes Human Intentional Unintentional Environmental Natural Fabricated 2. Any circumstance or event with the potential to cause harm to a system in the form of destruction, disclosure, modification or data, and/or denial of service. 3. Any circumstance or event with the potential to cause harm to the ADP system or activity in the form of destruction, disclosure, and modification of data, or denial of service. A threat is a potential for harm. The presence of a threat does not mean that it will necessarily cause actual harm. Threats exist because of the very existence of the system or activity and not because of any specific weakness. For example, the threat of fire exists at all facilities regardless of the amount of fire protection available. 4. Types of computer systems related adverse events (i. e. , perils) that may result in losses. Examples are flooding, sabotage and fraud. 5. An assertion primarily concerning entities of the external environment (agents); we say that an agent (or class of agents) poses a threat to one or more assets; we write: T(e;i) where: e is an external entity; i is an internal entity or an empty set. 6. An undesirable occurrence that might be anticipated but is not the result of a conscious act or decision. In threat analysis, a threat is defined as an ordered pair, <peril; asset category>, suggesting the nature of these occurrences but not the details (details are specific to events). 7. The potential violation of security. 8. A set of properties of a specific external entity (which may be either an individual or class of entities) that, in union with a set of properties of a specific internal entity, implies a risk (according to a body of knowledge).g
Phenomenology
The term "threat" relates to some other basic security terms as shown in the following diagram:
+ - - - - - - - - - - - - + + - - - - + + - - - - - - - - - - -+
| An Attack: | |Counter- | | A System Resource: |
| i.e., A Threat Action | | measure | | Target of the Attack |
| +----------+ | | | | +-----------------+ |
| | Attacker |<==================||<========= | |
| | i.e., | Passive | | | | | Vulnerability | |
| | A Threat |<=================>||<========> | |
| | Agent | or Active | | | | +-------|||-------+ |
| +----------+ Attack | | | | VVV |
| | | | | Threat Consequences |
+ - - - - - - - - - - - - + + - - - - + + - - - - - - - - - - -+
A resource (both physical or logical) can have one or more vulnerabilities that can be exploited by a threat agent in a threat action. The result can potentially compromise the confidentiality, integrity or availability properties of resources (potentially different than the vulnerable one) of the organization and others involved parties (customers, suppliers).
The so-called CIA triad is the basis of information security.
The attack can be active when it attempts to alter system resources or affect their operation: so it compromises Integrity or Availability. A "passive attack" attempts to learn or make use of information from the system but does not affect system resources: so it compromises Confidentiality.
OWASP (see figure) depicts the same phenomenon in slightly different terms: a threat agent through an attack vector exploits a weakness (vulnerability) of the system and the related security controls causing a technical impact on an IT resource (asset) connected to a business impact.
A set of policies concerned with information security management, the Information security management systems (ISMS), has been developed to manage, according to risk management principles, the countermeasures in order to accomplish to a security strategy set up following rules and regulations applicable in a country. Countermeasures are also called security controls; when applied to the transmission of information are named security services.
The overall picture represents the risk factors of the risk scenario.
The widespread of computer dependencies and the consequent raising of the consequence of a successful attack, led to a new term cyberwarfare.
Nowadays the many real attacks exploit Psychology at least as much as technology. Phishing and Pretexting and other methods are called social engineering techniques. The Web 2.0 applications, specifically Social network services, can be a mean to get in touch with people in charge of system administration or even system security, inducing them to reveal sensitive information. One famous case is Robin Sage.
The most widespread documentation on computer insecurity is about technical threats such as a computer virus, trojan and other malware, but a serious study to apply cost effective countermeasures can only be conducted following a rigorous IT risk analysis in the framework of an ISMS: a pure technical approach will let out the psychological attacks that are increasing threats.
Threats classification
Threats can be classified according to their type and origin:
Types of threats:
Physical damage: fire, water, pollution
Natural events: climatic, seismic, volcanic
Loss of essential services: electrical power, air conditioning, telecommunication
Compromise of information: eavesdropping, theft of media, retrieval of discarded materials
Technical failures: equipment, software, capacity saturation,
Compromise of functions: error in use, abuse of rights, denial of actions
Note that a threat type can have multiple origins.
Deliberate: aiming at information asset
spying
illegal processing of data
Accidental
equipment failure
software failure
Environmental
natural event
loss of power supply
Negligence: Known but neglected factors, compromising the network safety and sustainability
Threat classification
Microsoft has proposed a threat classification called STRIDE, from the initials of threat categories:
Spoofing of user identity
Tampering
Repudiation
Information disclosure (privacy breach or Data leak)
Denial of Service (D.o.S.)
Elevation of privilege
Microsoft previously rated the risk of security threats using five categories in a classification called DREAD: Risk assessment model. The model is considered obsolete by Microsoft.
The categories were:
Damage – how bad would an attack be?
Reproducibility – how easy it is to reproduce the attack?
Exploitability – how much work is it to launch the attack?
Affected users – how many people will be impacted?
Discoverability – how easy it is to discover the threat?
The DREAD name comes from the initials of the five categories listed.
The spread over a network of threats can lead to dangerous situations. In military and civil fields, threat level has been defined: for example INFOCON is a threat level used by the US. Leading antivirus software vendors publish global threat level on their websites.
Associated terms
Threat agents or actors
The term Threat Agent is used to indicate an individual or group that can manifest a threat. It is fundamental to identify who would want to exploit the assets of a company, and how they might use them against the company.
Individuals within a threat population; Practically anyone and anything can, under the right circumstances, be a threat agent – the well-intentioned, but inept, computer operator who trashes a daily batch job by typing the wrong command, the regulator performing an audit, or the squirrel that chews through a data cable.
Threat agents can take one or more of the following actions against an asset:
Access – simple unauthorized access
Misuse – unauthorized use of assets (e.g., identity theft, setting up a porn distribution service on a compromised server, etc.)
Disclose – the threat agent illicitly discloses sensitive information
Modify – unauthorized changes to an asset
Deny access – includes destruction, theft of a non-data asset, etc.
It is important to recognize that each of these actions affects different assets differently, which drives the degree and nature of loss. For example, the potential for productivity loss resulting from a destroyed or stolen asset depends upon how critical that asset is to the organization's productivity. If a critical asset is simply illicitly accessed, there is no direct productivity loss. Similarly, the destruction of a highly sensitive asset that does not play a critical role in productivity would not directly result in a significant productivity loss. Yet that same asset, if disclosed, can result in significant loss of competitive advantage or reputation, and generate legal costs. The point is that it is the combination of the asset and type of action against the asset that determines the fundamental nature and degree of loss. Which action(s) a threat agent takes will be driven primarily by that agent's motive (e.g., financial gain, revenge, recreation, etc.) and the nature of the asset. For example, a threat agent bent on financial gain is less likely to destroy a critical server than they are to steal an easily pawned asset like a laptop.
It is important to separate the concept of the event that a threat agent get in contact with the asset (even virtually, i.e. through the network) and the event that a threat agent act against the asset.
OWASP collects a list of potential threat agents to prevent system designers, and programmers insert vulnerabilities in the software.
Threat Agent = Capabilities + Intentions + Past Activities
These individuals and groups can be classified as follows:
Non-Target Specific: Non-Target Specific Threat Agents are computer viruses, worms, trojans and logic bombs.
Employees: Staff, contractors, operational/maintenance personnel, or security guards who are annoyed with the company.
Organized Crime and Criminals: Criminals target information that is of value to them, such as bank accounts, credit cards or intellectual property that can be converted into money. Criminals will often make use of insiders to help them.
Corporations: Corporations are engaged in offensive information warfare or competitive intelligence. Partners and competitors come under this category.
Human, Unintentional: Accidents, carelessness.
Human, Intentional: Insider, outsider.
Natural: Flood, fire, lightning, meteor, earthquakes.
Threat source
Threat sources are those who wish a compromise to occur. It is a term used to distinguish them from threat agents/actors who are those who carry out the attack and who may be commissioned or persuaded by the threat source to knowingly or unknowingly carry out the attack.
Threat communities
Threat communities
Subsets of the overall threat agent population that share key characteristics. The notion of threat communities is a powerful tool for understanding who and what we’re up against as we try to manage risk. For example, the probability that an organization would be subject to an attack from the terrorist threat community would depend in large part on the characteristics of your organization relative to the motives, intents, and capabilities of the terrorists. Is the organization closely affiliated with ideology that conflicts with known, active terrorist groups? Does the organization represent a high profile, high impact target? Is the organization a soft target? How does the organization compare with other potential targets? If the organization were to come under attack, what components of the organization would be likely targets? For example, how likely is it that terrorists would target the company information or systems?
The following threat communities are examples of the human malicious threat landscape many organizations face:
Internal
Employees
Contractors (and vendors)
Partners
External
Cyber-criminals (professional hackers)
Spies
Non-professional hackers
Activists
Nation-state intelligence services (e.g., counterparts to the CIA, etc.)
Malware (virus/worm/etc.) authors
Threat action
Threat action is an assault on system security.
A complete security architecture deals with both intentional acts (i.e. attacks) and accidental events.
Various kinds of threat actions are defined as subentries under "threat consequence".
Threat analysis
Threat analysis is the analysis of the probability of occurrences and consequences of damaging actions to a system. It is the basis of risk analysis.
Threat consequence
Threat consequence is a security violation that results from a threat action.
Includes disclosure, deception, disruption, and usurpation.
The following subentries describe four kinds of threat consequences, and also list and describe the kinds of threat actions that cause each consequence.
Threat actions that are accidental events are marked by "*".
"Unauthorized disclosure" (a threat consequence)
A circumstance or event whereby an entity gains access to data for which the entity is not authorized. (See: data confidentiality.). The following threat actions can cause unauthorized disclosure:
"Exposure"
A threat action whereby sensitive data is directly released to an unauthorized entity. This includes:
"Deliberate Exposure"
Intentional release of sensitive data to an unauthorized entity.
"Scavenging"
Searching through data residue in a system to gain unauthorized knowledge of sensitive data.
* "Human error"
Human action or inaction that unintentionally results in an entity gaining unauthorized knowledge of sensitive data.
* "Hardware/software error"
System failure that results in an entity gaining unauthorized knowledge of sensitive data.
"Interception":
A threat action whereby an unauthorized entity directly accesses sensitive data travelling between authorized sources and destinations. This includes:
"Theft" Gaining access to sensitive data by stealing a shipment of a physical medium, such as a magnetic tape or disk, that holds the data.
"Wiretapping (passive)" Monitoring and recording data that is flowing between two points in a communication system. (See: wiretapping.)
"Emanations analysis" Gaining direct knowledge of communicated data by monitoring and resolving a signal that is emitted by a system and that contains the data but is not intended to communicate the data.
"Inference" A threat action whereby an unauthorized entity indirectly accesses sensitive data (but not necessarily the data contained in the communication) by reasoning from characteristics or byproducts of communications. This includes:
"Traffic analysis" Gaining knowledge of data by observing the characteristics of communications that carry the data.
"Signals analysis" Gaining indirect knowledge of communicated data by monitoring and analyzing a signal that is emitted by a system and that contains the data but is not intended to communicate the data.
"Intrusion" A threat action whereby an unauthorized entity gains access to sensitive data by circumventing a system's security protections. This includes:
"Trespass" Gaining unauthorized physical access to sensitive data by circumventing a system's protections.
"Penetration" Gaining unauthorized logical access to sensitive data by circumventing a system's protections.
"Reverse engineering" Acquiring sensitive data by disassembling and analyzing the design of a system component.
"Cryptanalysis" Transforming encrypted data into plain text without having prior knowledge of encryption parameters or processes.
"Deception" (a threat consequence)
A circumstance or event that may result in an authorized entity receiving false data and believing it to be true. The following threat actions can cause deception:
"Masquerade" A threat action whereby an unauthorized entity gains access to a system or performs a malicious act by posing as an authorized entity.
"Spoof" Attempt by an unauthorized entity to gain access to a system by posing as an authorized user.
"Malicious logic" In context of masquerade, any hardware, firmware, or software (e.g., Trojan horse) that appears to perform a useful or desirable function, but actually gains unauthorized access to system resources or tricks a user into executing other malicious logic.
"Falsification" A threat action whereby false data deceives an authorized entity. (See: active wiretapping.)
"Substitution" Altering or replacing valid data with false data that serves to deceive an authorized entity.
"Insertion" Introducing false data that serves to deceive an authorized entity.
"Repudiation" A threat action whereby an entity deceives another by falsely denying responsibility for an act.
"False denial of origin" Action whereby the originator of data denies responsibility for its generation.
"False denial of receipt" Action whereby the recipient of data denies receiving and possessing the data.
"Disruption" (a threat consequence)
A circumstance or event that interrupts or prevents the correct operation of system services and functions. (See: denial of service.) The following threat actions can cause disruption:
"Incapacitation" A threat action that prevents or interrupts system operation by disabling a system component.
"Malicious logic" In the context of incapacitation, any hardware, firmware, or software (e.g., logic bomb) intentionally introduced into a system to destroy system functions or resources.
"Physical destruction" Deliberate destruction of a system component to interrupt or prevent system operation.
* "Human error" Action or inaction that unintentionally disables a system component.
* "Hardware or software error" Error that causes failure of a system component and leads to disruption of system operation.
* "Natural disaster" Any natural disaster (e.g., fire, flood, earthquake, lightning, or wind) that disables a system component.
"Corruption" A threat action that undesirably alters system operation by adversely modifying system functions or data.
"Tamper" In the context of corruption, deliberate alteration of a system's logic, data, or control information to interrupt or prevent correct operation of system functions.
"Malicious logic" In the context of corruption, any hardware, firmware, or software (e.g., a computer virus) intentionally introduced into a system to modify system functions or data.
* "Human error" Human action or inaction that unintentionally results in the alteration of system functions or data.
* "Hardware or software error" Error that results in the alteration of system functions or data.
* "Natural disaster" Any natural event (e.g. power surge caused by lightning) that alters system functions or data.
"Obstruction" A threat action that interrupts delivery of system services by hindering system operations.
"Interference" Disruption of system operations by blocking communications or user data or control information.
"Overload" Hindrance of system operation by placing excess burden on the performance capabilities of a system component. (See: flooding.)
"Usurpation" (a threat consequence)
A circumstance or event that results in the control of system services or functions by an unauthorized entity. The following threat actions can cause usurpation:
"Misappropriation" A threat action whereby an entity assumes unauthorized logical or physical control of a system resource.
"Theft of service" Unauthorized use of service by an entity.
"Theft of functionality" Unauthorized acquisition of actual hardware, software, or firmware of a system component.
"Theft of data" Unauthorized acquisition and use of data.
"Misuse" A threat action that causes a system component to perform a function or service that is detrimental to system security.
"Tamper" In the context of misuse, deliberate alteration of a system's logic, data, or control information to cause the system to perform unauthorized functions or services.
"Malicious logic" In the context of misuse, any hardware, software, or firmware intentionally introduced into a system to perform or control the execution of an unauthorized function or service.
"Violation of permissions" Action by an entity that exceeds the entity's system privileges by executing an unauthorized function.
Threat landscape or environment
A collection of threats in a particular domain or context, with information on identified vulnerable assets, threats, risks, threat actors and observed trends.
Threat management
Threats should be managed by operating an ISMS, performing all the IT risk management activities foreseen by laws, standards and methodologies.
Very large organizations tend to adopt business continuity management plans in order to protect, maintain and recover business-critical processes and systems. Some of these plans foreseen to set up computer security incident response team (CSIRT) or computer emergency response team (CERT)
There is some kind of verification of the threat management process:
Information security audit
Penetration test
Most organizations perform a subset of these steps, adopting countermeasures based on a non-systematic approach: computer insecurity studies the battlefield of computer security exploits and defences that results.
Information security awareness is a significant market (see :category:Computer security companies). There has been a lot of software developed to deal with IT threats, including both open-source software (see :category:free security software) and proprietary software (see :category:computer security software companies for a partial list).
Cyber threat management
Threat management involves a wide variety of threats including physical threats like flood and fire. While ISMS risk assessment process does incorporate threat management for cyber threats such as remote buffer overflows the risk assessment process doesn't include processes such as threat intelligence management or response procedures.
Cyber threat management (CTM) is emerging as the best practice for managing cyber threats beyond the basic risk assessment found in ISMS. It enables early identification of threats, data-driven situational awareness, accurate decision-making, and timely threat mitigating actions.
CTM includes:
Manual and automated intelligence gathering and threat analytics
Comprehensive methodology for real-time monitoring including advanced techniques such as behavioural modelling
Use of advanced analytics to optimize intelligence, generate security intelligence, and provide Situational Awareness
Technology and skilled people leveraging situational awareness to enable rapid decisions and automated or manual actions
Threat hunting
Cyber threat hunting is "the process of proactively and iteratively searching through networks to detect and isolate advanced threats that evade existing security solutions." This is in contrast to traditional threat management measures, such as firewalls intrusion detection systems, and SIEMs, which typically involve an investigation after there has been a warning of a potential threat, or an incident has occurred.
Threat hunting can be a manual process, in which a security analyst sifts through various data information using their knowledge and familiarity with the network to create hypotheses about potential threats. To be even more effective and efficient, however, threat hunting can be partially automated, or machine-assisted, as well. In this case, the analyst utilizes software that harnesses machine learning and user and entity behaviour analytics (UEBA) to inform the analyst of potential risks. The analyst then investigates these potential risks, tracking suspicious behaviour in the network. Thus hunting is an iterative process, meaning that it must be continuously carried out in a loop, beginning with a hypothesis. There are three types of hypotheses:
Analytics-driven: "Machine-learning and UEBA, used to develop aggregated risk scores that can also serve as hunting hypotheses"
Situational-awareness driven: "Crown Jewel analysis, enterprise risk assessments, company- or employee-level trends"
Intelligence-driven: "Threat intelligence reports, threat intelligence feeds, malware analysis, vulnerability scans"
The analyst researches their hypothesis by going through vast amounts of data about the network. The results are then stored so that they can be used to improve the automated portion of the detection system and to serve as a foundation for future hypotheses.
The SANS Institute has conducted research and surveys on the effectiveness of threat hunting to track and disrupt cyber adversaries as early in their process as possible. According to a survey released in 2016, "adopters of this model reported positive results, with 74 percent citing reduced attack surfaces, 59 percent experiencing faster speed and accuracy of responses, and 52 percent finding previously undetected threats in their networks."
See also
Cyber threat hunting
Exploit (computer security)
IETF
Information technology security audit
Information Security
Intrusion detection system
IT risk
Physical Security
Vulnerability management
References
External links
Term in FISMApedia
Cyber Threat Management Framework
Computer security exploits
Security compliance |
50111809 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DiVincenzo%27s%20criteria | DiVincenzo's criteria | The DiVincenzo criteria are conditions necessary for constructing a quantum computer, conditions proposed in 2000 by the theoretical physicist David P. DiVincenzo, as being those necessary to construct such a computer—a computer first proposed by mathematician Yuri Manin, in 1980, and physicist Richard Feynman, in 1982—as a means to efficiently simulate quantum systems, such as in solving the quantum many-body problem.
There have been many proposals for how to construct a quantum computer, all of which meet with varying degrees of success against the different challenges of constructing quantum devices. Some of these proposals involve using superconducting qubits, trapped ions, liquid and solid state nuclear magnetic resonance, or optical cluster states, all of which show good prospects but also have issues that prevent their practical implementation.
The DiVincenzo criteria consist of seven conditions an experimental setup must satisfy to successfully implement quantum algorithms such as Grover's search algorithm or Shor factorization. The first five conditions regard quantum computation itself. Two additional conditions regard implementing quantum communication, such as that used in quantum key distribution. One can demonstrate that DiVincenzo's criteria are satisfied by a classical computer. Comparing the ability of classical and quantum regimes to satisfy the criteria highlights both the complications that arise in dealing with quantum systems and the source of the quantum speed up.
Statement of the criteria
According to DiVincenzo's criteria, constructing a quantum computer requires that the experimental setup meet seven conditions. The first five are necessary for quantum computation:
A scalable physical system with well characterized qubit
The ability to initialize the state of the qubits to a simple fiducial state
Long relevant decoherence times
A "universal" set of quantum gates
A qubit-specific measurement capability
The remaining two are necessary for quantum communication:
The ability to interconvert stationary and flying qubits
The ability to faithfully transmit flying qubits between specified locations
Justification
DiVincenzo proposed his criteria after many attempts to construct a quantum computer. Below describes why these statements are important, and presents examples.
Scalability with well-characterised qubits
Most models of quantum computation require the use of qubits. Quantum mechanically, a qubit is defined as a 2-level system with some energy gap. This can sometimes be difficult to implement physically, and so we focus on a particular transition of atomic levels. Whatever the system we choose, we require that the system remain almost always in the subspace of these two levels, and in doing so we can say it is a well-characterised qubit. An example of a system that is not well characterised would be 2 one-electron quantum dots, with potential wells each occupied by a single electron in one well or the other, which is properly characterised as a single qubit. However, in considering a state such as , such a system would correspond to a two-qubit state.
With today's technology, a system that has a well characterised qubit can be created, but it is a challenge to create a system that has an arbitrary number of well-characterised qubits. Currently, one of the biggest problems being faced is that we require exponentially larger experimental setups to accommodate a greater number of qubits. The quantum computer is capable of exponential speed-ups in computing classical algorithms for prime factorisation of numbers; but if this requires an exponentially large setup, then our advantage is lost. In the case of using liquid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), it was found that increased macroscopic size led to system initialisation that left computational qubits in a highly mixed state. In spite of this, a computation model was found that could still use these mixed states for computation, but the more mixed these states are the weaker the induction signal corresponding to a quantum measurement is. If this signal is below the noise threshold, a solution is to increase the size of the sample to boost the signal strength; and this is the source of the non-scalability of liquid-state NMR as a means for quantum computation. One could say that as the number of computational qubits increases they become less well characterised until a threshold is reached at which they are no longer useful.
Initialising qubits to a simple fiducial state
All models of quantum and classical computation are based on performing operations on states maintained by qubits or bits and measuring and reporting a result, a procedure that is dependent on the initial state of the system. In particular, the unitarity nature of quantum mechanics makes initialisation of the qubits extremely important. In many cases, initialisation is accomplished by letting the system anneal to the ground state. This is of particular importance when you consider quantum error correction, a procedure to perform quantum processes that are robust against certain types of noise and that require a large supply of freshly initialised qubits, which places restrictions on how fast the initialisation can be.
An example of annealing is described in a 2005 paper by Petta, et al., where a Bell pair of electrons is prepared in quantum dots. This procedure relies on T1 to anneal the system, and the paper focuses on measuring the T2 relaxation time of the quantum-dot system and gives an idea of the timescales involved (milliseconds), which would be a fundamental roadblock, given that then the decoherence time is shorter than the initialisation time. Alternate approaches (usually involving optical pumping) have been developed to reduce the initialisation time and improve the fidelity of the procedure.
Long relevant decoherence times
Decoherence is a problem experienced in large, macroscopic quantum computation systems. The quantum resources used by quantum computing models (superposition or entanglement) are quickly destroyed by decoherence. Long decoherence times are desired, much longer than the average gate time, so that decoherence can be combated with error correction or dynamical decoupling. In solid-state NMR using nitrogen-vacancy centers, the orbital electron experiences short decoherence times, making computations problematic; the proposed solution has been to encode the qubit in the nuclear spin of the nitrogen atom, thus increasing the decoherence time. In other systems, such as the quantum dot, issues with strong environmental effects limit the T2 decoherence time. Systems that can be manipulated quickly (through strong interactions) tend to experience decoherence via these very same strong interactions, and so there is a trade-off between ability to implement control and increased decoherence.
A "universal" set of quantum gates
In both classical and quantum computing, the algorithms that we can compute are restricted by the number of gates we can implement. In the case of quantum computing, a universal quantum computer (a quantum Turing machine) can be constructed using a very small set of 1- and 2-qubit gates. Any experimental setup that manages to have well-characterised qubits; quick, faithful initialisation; and long decoherence times must also be capable of influencing the Hamiltonian (total energy) of the system, in order to effect coherent changes capable of implementing a universal set of gates. A perfect implementation of gates is not always necessary, as gate sequences can be created that are more robust against certain systematic and random noise models. Liquid-state NMR was one of the first setups capable of implementing a universal set of gates, through the use of precise timing and magnetic field pulses. However, as mentioned above, this system was not scalable.
A qubit-specific measurement capability
For any process modifying the quantum states of qubits, the final measurement of those states is of fundamental importance when performing computations. If our system allows for non-destructive projective measurements, then, in principle, this can be used for state preparation. Measurement is at the foundation of all quantum algorithms, especially in concepts such as quantum teleportation. Measurement techniques that are not 100% efficient are typically repeated to increase the success rate. Examples of reliable measurement devices are found in optical systems where homodyne detectors have reached the point of reliably counting how many photons have passed through the detecting cross-section. More challenging is the measurement of quantum dots, where the energy gap between the and (the singlet state) is used to measure the relative spins of the 2 electrons.
Interconverting stationary and flying qubits and faithfully transmitting flying qubits between specified locations
Interconverting and transmitting are necessary when considering quantum communication protocols, such as quantum key distribution, that involve the exchange of coherent quantum states or entangled qubits (for example, the BB84 protocol). When creating pairs of entangled qubits in experimental setups, these qubits are usually "stationary" and cannot be moved from the laboratory. If these qubits can be sent as flying qubits, such as being encoded into the polarisation of a photon, then sending entangled photons to a third party and having them extract that information, leaving two entangled stationary qubits at two different locations, can be considered. The ability to transmit the flying qubit without decoherence is a major problem. Currently, at the Institute for Quantum Computing there are efforts to produce a pair of entangled photons and transmit one of the photons to some other part of the world by reflecting it off a satellite. The main issue now is the decoherence the photon experiences whilst interacting with particles in the atmosphere. Similarly, some attempts have been made to use optical fibres, although the attenuation of the signal has kept this from becoming a reality.
See also
Quantum computing
Nuclear magnetic resonance quantum computer
Trapped ion quantum computer
References
Boolean algebra
Propositional calculus
Logic in computer science |
1324867 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Message%20passing | Message passing | In computer science, message passing is a technique for invoking behavior (i.e., running a program) on a computer. The invoking program sends a message to a process (which may be an actor or object) and relies on that process and its supporting infrastructure to then select and run some appropriate code. Message passing differs from conventional programming where a process, subroutine, or function is directly invoked by name. Message passing is key to some models of concurrency and object-oriented programming.
Message passing is ubiquitous in modern computer software. It is used as a way for the objects that make up a program to work with each other and as a means for objects and systems running on different computers (e.g., the Internet) to interact. Message passing may be implemented by various mechanisms, including channels.
Overview
Message passing is a technique for invoking behavior (i.e., running a program) on a computer. In contrast to the traditional technique of calling a program by name, message passing uses an object model to distinguish the general function from the specific implementations. The invoking program sends a message and relies on the object to select and execute the appropriate code. The justifications for using an intermediate layer essentially falls into two categories: encapsulation and distribution.
Encapsulation is the idea that software objects should be able to invoke services on other objects without knowing or caring about how those services are implemented. Encapsulation can reduce the amount of coding logic and make systems more maintainable. E.g., rather than having IF-THEN statements that determine which subroutine or function to call a developer can just send a message to the object and the object will select the appropriate code based on its type.
One of the first examples of how this can be used was in the domain of computer graphics. There are various complexities involved in manipulating graphic objects. For example, simply using the right formula to compute the area of an enclosed shape will vary depending on if the shape is a triangle, rectangle, ellipse, or circle. In traditional computer programming this would result in long IF-THEN statements testing what sort of object the shape was and calling the appropriate code. The object-oriented way to handle this is to define a class called Shape with subclasses such as Rectangle and Ellipse (which in turn have subclasses Square and Circle) and then to simply send a message to any Shape asking it to compute its area. Each Shape object will then invoke the subclass's method with the formula appropriate for that kind of object.
Distributed message passing provides developers with a layer of the architecture that provides common services to build systems made up of sub-systems that run on disparate computers in different locations and at different times. When a distributed object is sending a message, the messaging layer can take care of issues such as:
Finding the process using different operating systems and programming languages, at different locations from where the message originated.
Saving the message on a queue if the appropriate object to handle the message is not currently running and then invoking the message when the object is available. Also, storing the result if needed until the sending object is ready to receive it.
Controlling various transactional requirements for distributed transactions, e.g. ACID-testing the data.
Synchronous versus asynchronous message passing
Synchronous message passing
Synchronous message passing occurs between objects that are running at the same time. It is used by object-oriented programming languages such as Java and Smalltalk.
Synchronous messaging is analogous to a synchronous function call; just as the function caller waits until the function completes, the sending process waits until the receiving process completes. This can make synchronous communication unworkable for some applications. For example, large, distributed systems may not perform well enough to be usable. Such large, distributed systems may need to operate while some of their subsystems are down for maintenance, etc.
Imagine a busy business office having 100 desktop computers that send emails to each other using synchronous message passing exclusively. One worker turning off their computer can cause the other 99 computers to freeze until the worker turns their computer back on to process a single email.
Asynchronous message passing
With asynchronous message passing the receiving object can be down or busy when the requesting object sends the message. Continuing the function call analogy, it is like a function call that returns immediately, without waiting for the called function to complete. Messages are sent to a queue where they are stored until the receiving process requests them. The receiving process processes its messages and sends results to a queue for pickup by the original process (or some designated next process).
Asynchronous messaging requires additional capabilities for storing and retransmitting data for systems that may not run concurrently, and are generally handled by an intermediary level of software (often called middleware); a common type being Message-oriented middleware (MOM).
The buffer required in asynchronous communication can cause problems when it is full. A decision has to be made whether to block the sender or whether to discard future messages. A blocked sender may lead to deadlock. If messages are dropped, communication is no longer reliable.
Hybrids
Synchronous communication can be built on top of asynchronous communication by using a Synchronizer. For example, the α-Synchronizer works by ensuring that the sender always waits for an acknowledgement message from the receiver. The sender only sends the next message after the acknowledgement has been received. On the other hand, asynchronous communication can also be built on top of synchronous communication. For example, modern microkernels generally only provide a synchronous messaging primitive and asynchronous messaging can be implemented on top by using helper threads.
Distributed objects
Message-passing systems use either distributed or local objects. With distributed objects the sender and receiver may be on different computers, running different operating systems, using different programming languages, etc. In this case the bus layer takes care of details about converting data from one system to another, sending and receiving data across the network, etc. The Remote Procedure Call (RPC) protocol in Unix was an early example of this. Note that with this type of message passing it is not a requirement that sender nor receiver use object-oriented programming. Procedural language systems can be wrapped and treated as large grained objects capable of sending and receiving messages.
Examples of systems that support distributed objects are: Emerald, ONC RPC, CORBA, Java RMI, DCOM, SOAP, .NET Remoting, CTOS, QNX Neutrino RTOS, OpenBinder and D-Bus. Distributed object systems have been called "shared nothing" systems because the message passing abstraction hides underlying state changes that may be used in the implementation of sending messages.
Distributed, or asynchronous, message-passing has additional overhead compared to calling a procedure. In message-passing, arguments must be copied to the new message. Some arguments can contain megabytes of data, all of which must be copied and transmitted to the receiving object.
Traditional procedure calls differ from message-passing in terms of memory usage, transfer time and locality. Arguments are passed to the receiver typically by general purpose registers requiring no additional storage nor transfer time, or in a parameter list containing the arguments' addresses (a few bits). Address-passing is not possible for distributed systems since the systems use separate address spaces.
Web browsers and web servers are examples of processes that communicate by message-passing. A URL is an example of referencing a resource without exposing process internals.
A subroutine call or method invocation will not exit until the invoked computation has terminated. Asynchronous message-passing, by contrast, can result in a response arriving a significant time after the request message was sent.
A message-handler will, in general, process messages from more than one sender. This means its state can change for reasons unrelated to the behavior of a single sender or client process. This is in contrast to the typical behavior of an object upon which methods are being invoked: the latter is expected to remain in the same state between method invocations. In other words, the message-handler behaves analogously to a volatile object.
Mathematical models
The prominent mathematical models of message passing are the Actor model and Pi calculus. In mathematical terms a message is the single means to pass control to an object. If the object responds to the message, it has a method for that message.
Alan Kay has argued that message passing is more important than objects in OOP, and that objects themselves are often over-emphasized. The live distributed objects programming model builds upon this observation; it uses the concept of a distributed data flow to characterize the behavior of a complex distributed system in terms of message patterns, using high-level, functional-style specifications.
Examples
Actor model implementation
Amorphous computing
Communicating sequential processes
Flow-based programming
SOAP
See also
Active message
Distributed computing
Event loop
Messaging pattern
Message passing in computer clusters
Message Passing Interface
Programming languages that include message passing as a centric feature:
AppleScript
Erlang
Elixir
HyperCard / LiveCode
Go
Objective-C
Rust
Scala
Smalltalk
Self
Concurrent ML
References
Further reading
External links
A Packet History of Message Passing
Distributed computing architecture
Inter-process communication |
29251171 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiscanning | Multiscanning | Multiscanning is running multiple anti-malware or antivirus engines concurrently. Traditionally, only a single engine can actively scan a system at a given time. Using multiple engines simultaneously can result in conflicts that lead to system freezes and application failures. However, a number of security applications and application suites have optimized multiple engines to work together.
Reason
Testing agencies published results showing that no single antivirus engine is 100% effective against every malware threat. Because each engine uses different scanning methodologies and updates their malware definition files at various frequencies, using multiple engines increases the likelihood of catching malware before it can affect a system or network.
Notable vendors
F-Secure – Combines an in-house engine with Avira's engine.
G Data AntiVirus – Combines in-house and BitDefender's engines. avast has been removed with version 2014.
HitmanPro – Combines an in-house behavioral engine with a cloud containing engines from Kaspersky Lab, BitDefender and Sophos.
Lavasoft Ad-Aware – Combines an in-house anti-spyware engine with Bitdefender's engine.
Microsoft Forefront – Combines the engines of Authentium, Kaspersky, Norman and VirusBuster, with its own in-house engine.
OPSWAT MetaDefender Cloud – Combines over 30 anti-malware engines to scan files for malware. Also available on-premise.
Qihoo 360 Internet Security use Bitdefender Engine, QVM 2 Engine, 360 Cloud engine. But, the Chinese version includes the Avira engine additionally.
TrustPort Antivirus – Combines the engines of BitDefender and AVG.
See also
Comparison of antivirus software
Comparison of firewalls
Internet Security
References
Antivirus software |
9919443 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dating | Dating | Dating is a stage of romantic relationships whereby two people meet socially with the aim of each assessing the other's suitability as a prospective partner in a future intimate relationship. It represents a form of courtship, consisting of social activities carried out by the couple, either alone or with others. The protocols and practices of dating, and the terms used to describe it, vary considerably from society to society and over time. While the term has several meanings, the most frequent usage refers to two people exploring whether they are romantically or sexually compatible by participating in dates with the other. With the use of modern technology, people can date via telephone or computer or arrange to meet in person.
Dating may also involve two or more people who have already decided that they share romantic or sexual feelings toward each other. These people may have dates on a regular basis, and they may or may not be having sexual relations. This period of courtship is sometimes seen as a precursor to engagement. Some cultures require or encourage people to wait until reaching a certain age before beginning dating,
which has become a source of controversy.
History
Dating as an institution is a relatively recent phenomenon which has mainly emerged in the last few centuries. From the standpoint of anthropology and sociology, dating is linked with other institutions such as marriage and the family which have also been changing rapidly and which have been subject to many forces, including advances in technology and medicine. As humans societies have evolved from hunter-gatherers into civilized societies, there have been substantial changes in relations between people, with perhaps one of a few remaining biological constants being that both adult women and men must have sexual intercourse for human procreation to happen.
Humans have been compared to other species in terms of sexual behavior. Neurobiologist Robert Sapolsky constructed a reproductive spectrum with opposite poles being tournament species, in which males compete fiercely for reproductive privileges with females, and pair bond arrangements, in which a male and female will bond for life. According to Sapolsky, humans are somewhat in the middle of this spectrum, in the sense that humans form pair bonds, but there is the possibility of cheating or changing partners. These species-particular behavior patterns provide a context for aspects of human reproduction, including dating. However, one particularity of the human species is that pair bonds are often formed without necessarily having the intention of reproduction. In modern times, emphasis on the institution of marriage, traditionally described as a male-female bond, has obscured pair bonds formed by same-sex and transgender couples, and that many heterosexual couples also bond for life without offspring, or that often pairs that do have offspring separate. Thus, the concept of marriage is changing widely in many countries.
Historically, marriages in most societies were arranged by parents and older relatives with the goal not being love but legacy and "economic stability and political alliances", according to anthropologists. Accordingly, there was little need for a temporary trial period such as dating before a permanent community-recognized union was formed between a man and a woman. While pair-bonds of varying forms were recognized by most societies as acceptable social arrangements, marriage was reserved for heterosexual pairings and had a transactional nature, where wives were in many cases a form of property being exchanged between father and husband, and who would have to serve the function of reproduction. Communities exerted pressure on people to form pair-bonds in places such as Europe; in China, society "demanded people get married before having a sexual relationship" and many societies found that some formally recognized bond between a man and a woman was the best way of rearing and educating children as well as helping to avoid conflicts and misunderstandings regarding competition for mates.
Generally, during much of recorded history of humans in civilization, and into the Middle Ages in Europe, weddings were seen as business arrangements between families, while romance was something that happened outside of marriage discreetly, such as covert meetings. The 12th-century book The Art of Courtly Love advised that "True love can have no place between husband and wife." According to one view, clandestine meetings between men and women, generally outside of marriage or before marriage, were the precursors to today's dating.
From about 1700 a worldwide movement perhaps described as the "empowerment of the individual" took hold, leading towards greater emancipation of women and equality of individuals. Men and women became more equal politically, financially, and socially in many nations. Women eventually won the right to vote in many countries and own property and receive equal treatment by the law, and these changes had profound impacts on the relationships between men and women. Parental influence declined. In many societies, individuals could decide—on their own—whether they should marry, whom they should marry, and when they should marry. A few centuries ago, dating was sometimes described as a "courtship ritual where young women entertained gentleman callers, usually in the home, under the watchful eye of a chaperone," but increasingly, in many Western countries, it became a self-initiated activity with two young people going out as a couple in public together. Still, dating varies considerably by nation, custom, religious upbringing, technology, and social class, and important exceptions with regards to individual freedoms remain as many countries today still practice arranged marriages, request dowries, and forbid same-sex pairings. Although in many countries, movies, meals, and meeting in coffeehouses and other places is now popular, as are advice books suggesting various strategies for men and women, in other parts of the world, such as in South Asia and many parts of the Middle East, being alone in public as a couple is not only frowned upon but can even lead to either person being socially ostracized.
In the twentieth century, dating was sometimes seen as a precursor to marriage but it could also be considered as an end-in-itself, that is, an informal social activity akin to friendship. It generally happened in that portion of a person's life before the age of marriage, but as marriage became less permanent with the advent of divorce, dating could happen at other times in peoples lives as well. People became more mobile. Rapidly developing technology played a huge role: new communication technology such as the telephone, Internet and text messaging enabled dates to be arranged without face-to-face contact. Cars extended the range of dating as well as enabled back-seat sexual exploration. In the mid-twentieth century, the advent of birth control as well as safer procedures for abortion changed the equation considerably, and there was less pressure to marry as a means for satisfying sexual urges. New types of relationships formed; it was possible for people to live together without marrying and without children. Information about human sexuality grew, and with it an acceptance of all types of consensual sexual orientations is becoming more common. Today, the institution of dating continues to evolve at a rapid rate with new possibilities and choices opening up particularly through online dating.
Etymology
The word "dating" entered the American language during the 1920s. Prior to that, courtship was a matter of family and community interest. Starting around the time of the Civil War, courtship became a private matter for couples.
As a social relationship
Wide variation in behavior patterns
Social rules regarding dating vary considerably according to variables such as country, social class, race, religion, age, sexual orientation and gender. Behavior patterns are generally unwritten and constantly changing. There are considerable differences between social and personal values. Each culture has particular patterns which determine such choices as whether the man asks the woman out, where people might meet, whether kissing is acceptable on a first date, the substance of conversation, who should pay for meals or entertainment, or whether splitting expenses is allowed. Among the Karen people in Burma and Thailand, women are expected to write love poetry and give gifts to win over the man. Since dating can be stressful, there is the possibility of humor to try to reduce tensions. For example, director Blake Edwards wanted to date singing star Julie Andrews, and he joked in parties about her persona by saying that her "endlessly cheerful governess" image from movies such as Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music gave her the image of possibly having "lilacs for pubic hair"; Andrews appreciated his humor, sent him lilacs, dated him and later married him, and the couple stayed together for 41 years until his death in 2010.
Different meanings of the term
While the term dating has many meanings, the most common refers to a trial period in which two people explore whether to take the relationship further towards a more permanent relationship; in this sense, dating refers to the time when people are physically together in public as opposed to the earlier time period in which people are arranging the date, perhaps by corresponding by email or text or phone. Another meaning of the term dating is to describe a stage in a person's life when he or she is actively pursuing romantic relationships with different people. If two unmarried celebrities are seen in public together, they are often described as "dating" which means they were seen in public together, and it is not clear whether they are merely friends, exploring a more intimate relationship, or are romantically involved. A related sense of the term is when two people have been out in public only a few times but have not yet committed to a relationship; in this sense, dating describes an initial trial period and can be contrasted with "being in a committed relationship".
Evaluation
One of the main purposes of dating is for two or more people to evaluate one another's suitability as a long term companion or spouse. Often physical characteristics, personality, financial status, and other aspects of the involved persons are judged and, as a result, feelings can be hurt and confidence shaken. Because of the uncertainty of the whole situation, the desire to be acceptable to the other person, and the possibility of rejection, dating can be very stressful for all parties involved. Some studies have shown that dating tends to be extremely difficult for people with social anxiety disorder.
While some of what happens on a date is guided by an understanding of basic, unspoken rules, there is considerable room to experiment, and there are numerous sources of advice available. Sources of advice include magazine articles, self-help books, dating coaches, friends, and many other sources. And the advice given can pertain to all facets of dating, including such aspects as where to go, what to say, what not to say, what to wear, how to end a date, how to flirt, and differing approaches regarding first dates versus subsequent dates. In addition, advice can apply to periods before a date, such as how to meet prospective partners, as well as after a date, such as how to break off a relationship.
There are now more than 500 businesses worldwide that offer dating coach services—with almost 350 of those operating in the U.S. And the number of these businesses has surged since 2005 Frequency of dating varies by person and situation; among singles actively seeking partners, 36% had been on no dates in the past three months, 13% had one date, 22% had two to four dates and 25% had five or more dates, according to a 2005 U.S. survey.
Meeting places
There are numerous ways to meet potential dates, including blind dates, classified ads, dating websites, hobbies, holidays, office romance, social networking, speed dating, or simply talking in public places, vehicles or houses. A Pew study in 2005 which examined Internet users in long-term relationships including marriage, found that many met by contacts at work or at school. The survey found that 55% of relationship-seeking singles agreed that it was "difficult to meet people where they live." Work is a common place to meet potential spouses, although there are some indications that the Internet is overtaking the workplace as an introduction venue. In Britain, one in five marry a co-worker, but half of all workplace romances end within three months. One drawback of office dating is that a bad date can lead to "workplace awkwardness."
Gender differences
There is a general perception that men and women approach dating differently, hence the reason why advice for each sex varies greatly, particularly when dispensed by popular magazines. For example, it is a common belief that heterosexual men often seek women based on beauty and youth. Psychology researchers at the University of Michigan suggested that men prefer women who seem to be "malleable and awed", and prefer younger women with subordinate jobs such as secretaries and assistants and fact-checkers rather than executive-type women. Online dating patterns suggest that men are more likely to initiate online exchanges (over 75%) and extrapolate that men are less "choosy", seek younger women, and "cast a wide net". In a similar vein, the stereotype for heterosexual women is that they seek well-educated men who are their age or older with high-paying jobs. Evolutionary psychology suggests that "women are the choosier of the genders" since "reproduction is a much larger investment for women" who have "more to lose by making bad choices."
All of these are examples of gender stereotypes which plague dating discourse and shape individuals' and societies' expectations of how heterosexual relationships should be navigated. In addition to the detrimental effects of upholding limited views of relationships and sexual and romantic desires, stereotypes also lead to framing social problems in a problematic way. For example, some have noted that educated women in many countries including Italy and Russia, and the United States find it difficult to have a career as well as raise a family, prompting a number of writers to suggest how women should approach dating and how to time their careers and personal life. The advice comes with the assumption that the work-life balance is inherently a "woman's problem." In many societies, there is a view that women should fulfill the role of primary caregivers, with little to no spousal support and with few services by employers or government such as parental leave or child care. Accordingly, an issue regarding dating is the subject of career timing which generates controversy. Some views reflect a traditional notion of gender roles. For example, Danielle Crittenden in What Our Mothers Didn't Tell Us argued that having both a career and family at the same time was taxing and stressful for a woman; as a result, she suggested that women should date in their early twenties with a seriousness of purpose, marry when their relative beauty permitted them to find a reliable partner, have children, then return to work in their early thirties with kids in school; Crittenden acknowledged that splitting a career path with a ten-year baby-raising hiatus posed difficulties. There are contrasting views which suggest that women should focus on careers in their twenties and thirties.
In studies comparing children with heterosexual families and children with homosexual families, there have been no major differences noted; though some claims suggest that kids with homosexual parents end up more well adjusted than their peers with heterosexual parents, purportedly due to the lack of marginalizing gender roles in same-sex families.
It is increasingly common today, however, with new generations and in a growing number of countries, to frame the work-life balance issue as a social problem rather than a gender problem. With the advent of a changing workplace, the increased participation of women in the labor force, an increasing number of men who are picking up their share of parenting and housework, and more governments and industries committing themselves to achieving gender equality, the question of whether or not, or when to start a family is slowly being recognized as an issue that touches (or should touch) both genders.
Love
The prospect of love often entails anxiety, sometimes with a fear of commitment and a fear of intimacy for persons of both sexes. One woman said "being really intimate with someone in a committed sense is kind of threatening" and described love as "the most terrifying thing." In her Psychology Today column, research scientist, columnist, and author Debby Herbenick compared it to a roller coaster:
One dating adviser agreed that love is risky, and wrote that "There is truly only one real danger that we must concern ourselves with and that is closing our hearts to the possibility that love exists."
Controversy
What happens in the dating world can reflect larger currents within popular culture. For example, when the 1995 book The Rules appeared, it touched off media controversy about how men and women should relate to each other, with different positions taken by columnist Maureen Dowd of The New York Times and British writer Kira Cochrane of The Guardian and others. It has even caused anthropologists such as Helen Fisher to suggest that dating is a game designed to "impress and capture" which is not about "honesty" but "novelty", "excitement" and even "danger", which can boost dopamine levels in the brain. The subject of dating has spun off popular culture terms such as the friend zone which refers to a situation in which a dating relation evolves into a platonic non-sexual union.
Risks of violence
Since people dating often do not know each other well, there is the risk of violence, including date rape. According to one report, there was a 10% chance of violence between students happening between a boyfriend and girlfriend, sometimes described as "intimate partner violence", over a 12–month period. A 2004 estimate was that 20% of U.S. high school girls aged 14–18 were "hit, slapped, shoved or forced into sexual activity". Violence while dating isn't limited to any one culture or group or religion, but remains an issue in different countries. (It is usually the female who is the victim, but there have been cases where males have been hurt as well.) Sara McCorquodale suggests that women meeting strangers on dates meet initially in busy public places, share details of upcoming dates with friends or family so they know where they'll be and who they'll be with, avoid revealing one's surname or address, and conduct searches on them on the Internet prior to the date. One advisor suggested: Don't leave drinks unattended; have an exit plan if things go badly; and ask a friend to call you on your cell phone an hour into the date to ask how it's going.
Technology
The Internet is shaping the way new generations date. Facebook, Skype, WhatsApp, and other applications have made remote connections possible. Particularly for the LGBTQ+ community, where the dating pool can be more difficult to navigate due to discrimination and having a 'minority' status in society.
Online dating tools are an alternate way to meet potential dates. Many people use smartphone apps such as Tinder, Grindr, or Bumble which allow a user to accept or reject another user with a single swipe of a finger. Some critics have suggested that matchmaking algorithms are imperfect and are "no better than chance" for the task of identifying acceptable partners. Others have suggested that the speed and availability of emerging technologies may be undermining the possibility for couples to have long-term meaningful relationships when finding a replacement partner has potentially become too easy.
Worldwide
Dating customs and habits vary considerably throughout the world. The average duration of courtship before proceeding to engagement or marriage varies considerably throughout the world.
Africa
Ethiopia
According to one source, there are four ways that marriage can happen among the Nyangatom people: (1) arranged marriage, when well-respected elders are sent to the girl's family on behalf of the boy's family; (2) courtship or dating after a friendly meeting between boy and girl such as at a market place or holiday where there's dancing; (3) abduction, such as during a blood feud between families; (4) inheritance.
North Africa
In North Africa like in many parts of the Middle East, sex without marriage is considered unacceptable. Dating in North Africa is predominantly done under family supervision, usually in a public place.
Asia
Asia is a mix of traditional approaches with involvement by parents and extended families such as arranged marriages as well as modern dating. In many cultural traditions, including some in South Asia, and the Middle East and to some extent East Asia, as in the case of Omiai in Japan and the similar "Xiangqin" (相親) practiced in the Greater China Area, a date may be arranged by a third party, who may be a family member, acquaintance, or professional matchmaker.
China
Patterns of dating are changing in China, with increased modernization bumping into traditional ways.
A 2003 report in China Daily suggested that dating for most Chinese university women was "difficult", required work, stole time away from academic advancement, and placed women in a precarious position of having to balance personal success against traditional Chinese relationships. Many women were reported to have high standards for men they sought, but also worried that their academic credentials could "scare away more traditional Chinese men." It was reportedly difficult finding places to have privacy, since many dormitory rooms had eight or more pupils in one suite, while dating in restaurants tended to be expensive. One student remarked: "American couples drink and dance together. But in China, we study together."
Romantic love is more difficult during times of financial stress, and economic forces can encourage singles, particularly women, to select a partner primarily on financial considerations. Some men postpone marriage until their financial position is more secure and use wealth to help attract women. One trend is towards exclusive matchmaking events for the 'rich and powerful'; for example, an annual June event in Wuhan with expensive entry-ticket prices for men (99,999 RMB) lets financially secure men choose so-called bikini brides based on their beauty and education, and the financial exclusivity of the event was criticized by the official news outlet China Daily. Surveys though from 2015 to 2018 suggest that the majority of Chinese respondents (especially college students) would place the character and personality of their partners above material assets, with also increasing acceptance towards evenly splitting bills or going Dutch.
There have been conflicting reports on expatriate dating in China's capital city. One account in 2006 suggested the dating scene in Beijing to be "sad" with particular difficulties for foreign women hoping to find romance. It was reportedly due to the cold, uninterested, or unappealing attitudes of the male expats and the shyness and cultural differences of the Chinese men, and another account in 2010 documented similar, if slightly improved results. A different report in 2010, though, suggested that some Chinese men preferred Western women, viewing them as less girlish and materialistic, and also more independent and straightforward than Chinese women. A 2016 survey of Chinese students abroad, however, imply there have been significant barriers to foreign dating, and the intermarriage rate of Chinese women in Shanghai has been decreasing.
A new format of Internet "QQ" chat rooms is gaining ground against so-called "traditional dating agencies" in Changsha (Hunan Province); the QQ rooms have 20,000 members, and service is much less expensive than dating agencies which can charge 100 to 200 yuan ($13 to US$26) per introduction. Internet dating, with computer-assisted matchmaking, is becoming more prevalent; one site supposedly has 23 million registered users. Speed dating has come to Shanghai and other cities. Worldwide online matchmakers have explored entering the Chinese market via partnerships or acquisitions.
Each year, November 11 has become an unofficial holiday known as China's Singles' Day when singles are encouraged to make an extra effort to find a partner. Worried parents of unmarried children often arrange dates for their offspring on this day as well as others. Before the day approaches, thousands of college students and young workers post messages describing their plans for this day. In Arabic numerals, the day looks like "1111", that is, "like four single people standing together", and there was speculation that it originated in the late 1990s when college students celebrated being single with "a little self-mockery" but a differing explanation dates it back to events in the Roman Empire. For many, Singles' Day offers people a way to "demonstrate their stance on love and marriage". In 2005, a government-sponsored agency called Shanghai Women's Activities Centre (Chinese: Jinguoyuan) organized periodic matchmaking events often attended by parents.
There has been concern that young people's views of marriage have changed because of economic opportunities, with many choosing deliberately not to get married, as well as young marrieds who have decided not to have children, or to postpone having them. Cohabiting relationships are tolerated more often. Communities where people live but do not know each other well are becoming more common in China like elsewhere, leading to fewer opportunities to meet somebody locally without assistance. Divorce rates are rising in cities such as Shanghai, which recorded 27,376 divorces in 2004, an increase of 30% from 2003.
Relationships between students preparing for college are frowned upon by many parents in China. There was a report that sexual relations among middle schoolers in Guangzhou sometimes resulted in abortions. There have been reports of scams involving get-rich-quick schemes; a forty-year-old migrant worker was one of a thousand seduced by an advertisement which read "Rich woman willing to pay 3 million yuan for sperm donor" but the worker was cheated out of his savings of 190,000 yuan (US$27,500).
The dating game show If You Are the One, titled after Chinese personal ads, featured some provocative contestants making sexual allusions and the show reportedly ran afoul of authorities and had to change its approach. The two-host format involves a panel of 24 single women questioning a man to decide if he'll remain on the show; if he survives, he can choose a girl to date; the show gained notoriety for controversial remarks and opinions such as model Ma Nuo saying she'd prefer to "weep in a BMW than laugh on a bike", who was later banned from making appearances.
India
Indian dating is heavily influenced by the custom of arranged marriages which require little dating, although there are strong indications that the institution is undergoing change, and that love marriages are becoming more accepted as India becomes more intertwined with the rest of the world. In the cities at least, it is becoming more accepted for two people to meet and try to find if there is compatibility.
The majority of Indian marriages are arranged by parents and relatives, and one estimate is that 7 of every 10 marriages are arranged. Sometimes the bride and groom don't meet until the wedding, and there is no courtship or wooing before the joining. In the past, it meant that couples were chosen from the same caste and religion and economic status. There is widespread support for arranged marriages generally. Writer Lavina Melwani described a happy marriage which had been arranged by the bride's father, and noted that during the engagement, the woman was allowed to go out with him before they were married on only one occasion; the couple married and found happiness. Supporters of arranged marriage suggest that there is a risk of having the marriage fall apart whether it was arranged by relatives or by the couple themselves, and that what's important is not how the marriage came to be but what the couple does after being married. Parents and relatives exert considerable influence, sometimes posting matrimonial ads in newspapers and online. Customs encourage families to put people together, and discourage sexual experimentation as well as so-called serial courtship in which a prospective bride or groom dates but continually rejects possible partners, since the interests of the family are seen as more important than the romantic needs of the people marrying. Indian writers, such as Mistry in his book Family Matters, sometimes depict arranged marriages as unhappy. Writer Sarita Sarvate of India Currents thinks people calculate their "value" on the "Indian marriage market" according to measures such as family status, and that arranged marriages typically united spouses who often didn't love each other. She suggested love was out of place in this world because it risked passion and "sordid" sexual liaisons. Love, as she sees it, is "Waking up in the morning and thinking about someone." Writer Jennifer Marshall described the wife in an arranged marriage as living in a world of solitude without much happiness, and feeling pressured by relatives to conceive a son so she wouldn't be considered as "barren" by her husband's family; in this sense, the arranged marriage didn't bring "love, happiness, and companionship." Writer Vijaysree Venkatraman believes arranged marriages are unlikely to disappear soon, commenting in his book review of Shoba Narayan's Monsoon Diary, which has a detailed description of the steps involved in a present-day arranged marriage. There are indications that even the institution of arranged marriages is changing, with marriages increasingly being arranged by "unknown, unfamiliar sources" and less based on local families who know each other. Writer Lavina Melwani in Little India compared Indian marriages to business deals:
Relationships in which dating is undertaken by two people, who choose their dates without parental involvement and sometimes carry on clandestine get-togethers, has become increasingly common. When this leads to a wedding, the resulting unions are sometimes called love marriages. There are increasing instances when couples initiate contact on their own, particularly if they live in a foreign country; in one case, a couple met surreptitiously over a game of cards. Indians who move abroad to Britain or America often follow the cultural patterns of their new country: for example, one Indian woman met a white American man while skiing, and married him, and the formerly "all-important relatives" were reduced to bystanders trying to influence things ineffectively. Factors operating worldwide, such as increased affluence, the need for longer education, and greater mobility have lessened the appeal for arranged marriages, and these trends have affected criteria about which possible partners are acceptable, making it more likely that pairings will cross previously impenetrable barriers such as caste or ethnic background. Indian Americans in the U.S. sometimes participate in Singles Meets organized by websites which happen about once a month, with 100 participants at each event; an organizer did not have firm statistics about the success rate leading to a long-term relationship but estimated about one in every ten members finds a partner through the site.
Dating websites are gaining ground in India. Writer Rupa Dev preferred websites which emphasized authenticity and screened people before entering their names into their databases, making it a safer environment overall, so that site users can have greater trust that it is safe to date others on the site. Dev suggested that dating websites were much better than the anonymous chatrooms of the 1990s.
During the interval before marriage, whether it is an arranged or a love marriage, private detectives have been hired to check up on a prospective bride or groom, or to verify claims about a potential spouse made in newspaper advertising, and there are reports that such snooping is increasing. Detectives investigate former amorous relationships and can include fellow college students, former police officers skilled in investigations, and medical workers "with access to health records."
Transsexuals and eunuchs have begun using Internet dating in some states in India.
The practice of dating runs against some religious traditions, and one particular Hindu group Sri Ram Sena threatened to "force unwed couples" to marry, if they were discovered dating on Valentine's Day; a fundamentalist leader said "drinking and dancing in bars and celebrating this day has nothing to do with Hindu traditions." The threat sparked a protest via the Internet which resulted in cartloads of pink panties being sent to the fundamentalist leader's office. as part of the Pink Chaddi Campaign (Pink Underwear/Panties Campaign). Another group, Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha, threatened to do the same, for which it was severely mocked online and on the day after Valentine's Day, had protesters outside its Delhi headquarters, with people (mockingly) complaining that it did not fulfill its "promise", with some having come with materials for the wedding rituals.
Japan
There is a type of courtship called Omiai in which parents hire a matchmaker to give resumes and pictures to potential mates for their approval, leading to a formal meeting with parents and matchmaker attending. If the couple has a few dates, they're often pressured by the matchmaker and parents to decide whether or not to marry.
Korea
The reasons for dating in Korea are various. Research conducted by Saegye Daily showed that teenagers choose to date for reasons such as "to become more mature," "to gain consultation on worries, or troubles," or "to learn the difference between boys and girls," etc. Similarly, a news report in MK Daily showed that the primary reasons for dating for workers of around ages 20–30 are "emotional stability," "marriage," "someone to spend time with," etc. An interesting feature in the reasons for dating in Korea is that many Koreans are somewhat motivated to find a date due to the societal pressure that often views single persons as incompetent.
Present Korean dating shows a changing attitude due to the influence of tradition and modernization. There are a lot of Confucian ideas and practices that still saturate South Korean culture and daily life as traditional values. Patriarchy in Korea has been grounded on Confucian culture that postulated hierarchical social orders according to age and sex. Patriarchy is "a system of social structure and practices in which men dominate, oppress and exploit women” which is well reflected in the ways of dating in Korea. Adding to it, there is an old saying that says a boy and a girl should not sit together after they have reached the age of seven. It is one of the old teachings of Confucianism and reveals its inclination toward conservatism.
Most Koreans tend to regard dating as a precursor to marriage. According to a survey conducted by Gyeonggi-do Family Women's Researcher on people of age 26–44, 85.7% of respondents replied as ‘willing to get married’. There is no dating agency but the market for marriage agencies are growing continuously. DUO and Gayeon are one of the major marriage agencies in Korea. Also, "Mat-sun", the blind date which is usually based on the premise of marriage, is held often among ages of late 20s to 30s. But the late trend is leaning towards the separation between dating and marriage unlike the conservative ways of the past. In the survey conducted by a marriage agency, of 300 single males and females who were asked of their opinions on marrying their lovers, about only 42% of the males and 39% of the females said yes. There are also cases of dating without the premise of marriage. However, the majority still takes getting into a relationship seriously.
Dating in Korea is also considered a necessary activity supported by society. Korean adults are constantly questioned whether or not they are dating by the people around them. During family gatherings on holidays one of the questions that people hate getting asked the most is related to marriage. According to a survey it was the highest ranked by 47.3 percent.
College students in their sophomore to junior year who have not been in a relationship feel anxious that they are falling behind amongst their peers. Most of them try "sogaeting", going out on a blind date, for the first time to get into a relationship. Dating is a duty that most people feel they must take on to not seem incompetent.
In recent trends, even dramas such as “”Shining Romance” (“빛나는 로맨스”), and “Jang Bo-ri is Here!” (“왔다 장보리”), and in a variety show called, “Dad! Where Are We Going?” (“아빠 어디가?”) there are elementary children confessing their love.
Dating has also been depicted to be an activity of fun and happiness. There are Korean TV programs that film celebrities together as married couples supporting this depiction of dating such as “We Got Married” (“우리 결혼했어요”), “With You” (“님과 함께”) and “The Man Who Gets Married Daily” (“매일 결혼 하는 남자.”)
According to a survey by wedding consulting agency, men consider a physical relation as a catalyst of love, otherwise, women regard it as a confirmation of affection. Adding to it, both 79.2% of men and 71.0% of women stated that how deep their physical relation in dating is concerned in the decision of whether to marry.
Pakistan
Marriages and courtship in Pakistan are influenced by traditional cultural practices similar to those elsewhere in the Indian subcontinent as well as Muslim norms and manners. Illegitimate relationships before marriage are considered a social taboo and social interaction between unmarried men and women is encouraged at a modest and healthy level. Couples are usually wedded through either an arranged marriage or love marriage. Love marriages are those in which the individuals have chosen a partner whom they like by their own choice prior to marriage, and usually occur with the consent of parents and family. Arranged marriages on the other hand are marriages which are set and agreed by the families or guardians of the two individuals where the couple may not have met before. In either cases and in consistency with traditional marital practices, individuals who marry are persuaded to meet and talk to each other for some time before considering marrying so that they can check their compatibility.
Singapore
Singapore's largest dating service, SDU, Social Development Unit, is a government-run dating system. The original SDU, which controversially promoted marriages among university graduate singles, no longer exists today. On 28 January 2009, it was merged with SDS [Social Development Services], which just as controversially promoted marriages among non-graduate singles. The merged unit, SDN Social Development Network seeks to promote meaningful relationships, with marriage touted as a top life goal, among all resident [Singapore] singles within a conducive network environment of singles, relevant commercial and public entities.
Taiwan
One report suggested that in southern Taiwan, "traditional rules of courtship" still apply despite the influence of popular culture; for example, men continue to take the initiative in forming relationships. A poll in 2009 of students at high schools and vocational schools found that over 90% admitted that they had "no clear idea of how to approach someone of the opposite sex who interested them". What caused relationships to break up? 60% said "changes of heart" or "cheating". Dating more than one person at a time was not permissible, agreed 70%.
Iran
People of different sexes are not allowed to "mix freely" in public. Since 1979, the state has become a religious autocracy, and imposes Islamic edicts on matters such as dating. Clerics run officially sanctioned internet dating agencies with strict rules. Prospective couples can have three meetings: two with strict supervision inside the center, and the third being a "brief encounter on their own"; afterwards, they can either (1) choose to marry or (2) agree to never see each other again. This has become the subject of a film by Iranian filmmaker Leila Lak. Iran has a large population of young people with 70 percent of the 83-million population being under the age of thirty. However, economic hardship discourages marriage, and divorce rates have increased in Tehran to around a quarter of marriages, even though divorce is taboo. While the Iranian government "condemns dating and relationships", it promotes marriage with (1) online courses (2) "courtship classes" where students can "earn a diploma" after sitting through weekly tests and "hundreds of hours of education" (3) "marriage diplomas" (4) matchmaking and arranged marriages. Authorities push a conservative approach and shun unmarried romantic relationships and encourage "traditional match-making". But young people have disobeyed the restrictions; one said "It is wiser to have different relationships" and believed in defying religious rules which suggest "short-term illegitimate relationships harm dignity." Adultery can be punished by death. While youths can flout selected restrictions, there are almost no instances in which unmarried people move in together. There have been efforts to promote Sigheh (temporary marriage).
Israel
In Israel, in the secular community, dating is very common amongst both heterosexual and homosexual couples. However, because of the religious community, there are some religious exceptions to the dating process. In the Haredi and Chasidic communities (Ultra-Orthodox Judaism) most couples are paired through a matchmaker.
Lebanon
One report suggests the Lebanese dating game is hampered by "the weight of family demands upon individual choice" and that there were difficulties, particularly for people seeking to marry across religious lines, such as a Christian seeking to marry a Muslim.
Saudi Arabia
The Saudi Gazette quoted a Wikipedia article on domestic violence, suggesting it was an issue for Saudis, including abusive behavior while dating by one or both partners.
North America
United States
One report suggested the United States as well as other western-oriented countries were different from the rest of the world because "love is the reason for mating," as opposed to marriages being arranged to cement economic and class ties between families and promote political stability. Dating, by mutual consent of two single people, is the norm. British writer Kira Cochrane, after moving to the U.S., found herself grappling with the American approach to dating. She wondered why it was acceptable to juggle "10 potential partners" while weighing different attributes; she found American-style dating to be "exhausting and strange." She found dating in America to be "organized in a fairly formal fashion" with men approaching women and asking point blank for a date; she found this to be "awkward." She described the "third date rule" which was that women weren't supposed to have sex until the third date even if they desired it, although men were supposed to try for sex. She wrote: "Dating rules almost always cast the man as aggressor, and the woman as prey, which frankly makes me feel nauseous." Canadian writer Danielle Crittenden, however, chronicling female angst, criticized a tendency not to take dating seriously and suggested that postponing marriage into one's thirties was problematic:
Journalist Emily Witt in 2016 wrote that while "social mores had changed to accept a wider range of sexual practices", there was still much "loneliness and anxiety". She traveled to San Francisco and began dating a lot, using Internet dating services and apps, and sometimes going to singles' bars alone, only to find that the "romantic-comedy concept of love" with a "perfect, permanent, tea-for-two ending" was not going to happen to her.
There is evidence that couples differ in the pace and timing with which they initiate sex in their relationships. Studies show that approximately 50% of premarital young adult couples become sexually involved within the first month of dating, while 25% initiate sex one to three months after beginning to date and a small proportion of couples wait until marriage before initiating sexual relations.
Teenagers and college-aged students tend to avoid the more formal activity of dating, and prefer casual no-strings-attached experiments sometimes described as 'hookups'. It permits young women to "go out and fit into the social scene, get attention from young men, and learn about sexuality", according to one report by sociologists. The term hookup can describe a wide variety of behavior ranging from kissing to non-genital touching; according to one report, only about one third of people had sexual intercourse. A contrary report, however, suggested there has been no "sea change" in sexual behavior regarding college students from 1988 onwards, and that the term hookup itself continued to be used to describe a variety of relationships, including merely socializing or passionate kissing as well as sexual intercourse.
Muslims living in the United States can choose whether to use traditional Islamic methods, or date American-style; Muslims choosing to stick to Islamic tradition can "only marry another Muslim", according to one Malaysian account. Mosques have been known to try to bring people together––one in California has a dating service for Muslims.
Europe
United Kingdom
In Britain, the term dating bears similarity to the American sense of the tentative exploratory part of a relationship. If two people are going out together, it may mean they're dating but that their relationship has advanced to a relatively long-standing and sexual boyfriend-girlfriend relationship although they're not cohabiting. Although Britons are familiar with the term dating, the rituals surrounding courtship are somewhat different from those commonly found in North America. Writer Kira Cochrane advises daters to "get out there and meet people" while noting a trend of temporary suspension of marriage until an individual reaches his or her thirties. She sees a trend for developing new ways of meeting people. In contrast, writer Bibi van der Zee found dating etiquette rules to be helpful, and found that supposedly liberated advice such as "just be yourself" to be the "most useless advice in history." She expresses frustration following fruitless sexual relationships, and that her mid twenties saw dating relationships with partners who were less willing to return phone calls or display interest in long-term commitment. She felt "clueless and unwanted", she wrote, and found advice books such as The Rules helpful. British writer Henry Castiglione signed up for a "weekend flirting course" and found the experience helpful; he was advised to talk to and smile at everyone he met. Emailing back-and-forth, after meeting on a dating website, is one way to get to know people in Britain, and elsewhere. In the UK, one estimate from 2009 is that 15 million people are single, and half of these are seeking a long-term relationship; three-quarters of them have not been in a relationship for more than 18 months. In a twelve-month period, the average number of dates that a single person will have is four. When dating, 43% of people google their dates ahead of time. Almost five million Britons visited a dating website in the past twelve months. A third admitting to lying on their profile. A fifth of married individuals between 19 and 25 met their spouse online. One poll in 2009 of 3,000 couples suggested that the average duration of their courtship period, between first meeting to the acceptance of a marriage proposal, was three years. In 2017 Britain online dating fraud victim numbers at record high. According to the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau, there were 3,889 victims of so-called romance fraud last year who handed over a record £39m. Online dating safety in the UK is a concern for authorities and individuals.
German-speaking countries
While analysts such as Harald Martenstein and others suggest that it is easier for persons to initiate contact in America, many Germans view the American dating habits as "unspontaneous", "ridiculous" and "rigid". Until the 1960s, countries such as Germany, Switzerland and Austria had a more formal approach for first contacts that was eased during seasonal festivals like carnival and festivals and funfairs like the Oktoberfest, which allowed for more casual flirts.
Membership in voluntary associations is relatively high in German-speaking countries and these provided further chances for possible partners to meet. Strolling on Esplanades and Promenade walkways such as the one in Hamburg called the Jungfernstieg (maidens way), have been another venue for introductions as early as the 19th century. Analyst Geoffrey Gorer described dating as an American idiosyncrasy focusing on youth of college age and expressed in activities such as American proms. In contrast German speaking countries and the longstanding musical tradition there provided ample opportunity of persons of varying ages enjoying social dances, such as the Vienna Opera Ball and other occasions.
Romantic encounters were often described with French terms like rendezvous or tête-à-tête. The German term of Stelldichein (as translated by Joachim Heinrich Campes) is used to signify dating when the age of consent to marriage was relatively high. German traditions to signify lovers who met in hiding were described with terms like Fensterln (windowing) or Kiltgang (dawn stroll) used in Bavaria and Switzerland. Analyst Sebastian Heinzel sees a major cultural divide between American dating habits and European informality, and leads to instances in which European expatriates in cities such as New York keep to themselves.
Today, most German couples in long-term relationships get to know each other through mutual friends, at work or while going out at night; the first few months of dating often involve sexual intercourse, but are still rather casual and do not imply a serious wish to get married.
Latin-speaking countries
Italians maintain a conservative approach to dating. Also, inviting friends or relatives during a date is not uncommon. More modern approaches such as blind dates, speed dating and dating websites are not as popular as abroad, and are not considered very effective by the majority of the population.
One report suggested Spanish women were the "greatest flirts", based on an unofficial study by a dating website which ranked countries based on initiations of contact.
Oceania
Australia
A recent study revealed that 50% of Australians agreed it was permissible to request a date via a text message but not acceptable to break up with them this way. Flirting while texting, dubbed flirtext, was more likely to be done by girls after a relationship was started. A survey of newspaper readers suggested it was time to abandon the "old fashioned rule" of men paying for the first date, based on women's greater earning capacity. A dating show on TV features three couples who live under one roof, but who can only have contact in a "specially created dark room", and the show is scheduled to be hosted by Miss Australia model Laura Dundovic.
South America
Brazil
In Brazil there is a longer time interval before children move out of the house, which affects dating. As a result, parents offer advice about dating although it may not be heeded.
LGBT+
Dating behavior of non-heterosexual individuals doesn't always reflect their self-ascribed sexual orientation. Some of them recognized from early age that they're attracted to the same sex or both/all sexes, but may initially adhere to heterosexual norms in their dating behaviors. Some individuals who identify as LGBT+ in one way or another but are questioning or haven't come out to their peers and family may wait years before they start dating their preferred sex.
According to a Psychology Today report, men who identify as homosexual recognize their same-sex attraction in their late teens or early twenties, and they tend to care more about physical attractiveness than the status of a prospective partner. Men who identify as homosexual, on average, tend to have more sexual partners, while women who identify as lesbian tend to form steadier one-on-one relationships, and tend to be less promiscuous than heterosexual women.
In India, transgender individuals and eunuchs have used internet dating to help them find partners, but there continue to be strong societal pressures which marginalize them.
Matchmakers
People can meet other people on their own or the get-together can be arranged by someone else. Matchmaking is an art based entirely on hunches, since it is impossible to predict with certainty whether two people will like each other or not. "All you should ever try and do is make two people be in the same room at the same time," advised matchmaker Sarah Beeny in 2009, and the only rule is to make sure the people involved want to be set up. One matchmaker advised it was good to match "brains as well as beauty" and try to find people with similar religious and political viewpoints and thinks that like-minded people result in more matches, although acknowledging that opposites sometimes attract. It is easier to put several people together at the same time, so there are other candidates possible if one doesn't work out. And, after introducing people, don't meddle.
Friends as matchmakers
Friends remain a common way for people to meet. However, the Internet promises to overtake friends in the future, if present trends continue. A friend can introduce two people who do not know each other, and the friend may play matchmaker and send them on a blind date. In The Guardian, British writer Hannah Pool was cynical about being set up on a blind date; she was told "basically he's you but in a male form" by the mutual friend. She googled her blind date's name along with the words "wife" and "girlfriend" and "partner" and "boyfriend" to see whether her prospective date was in any kind of relationship or gay; he wasn't any of these things. She met him for coffee in London and she now lives with him, sharing a home and business. When friends introduce two people who do not know each other, it is often called a blind date.
Family as matchmakers
Parents, via their contacts with associates or neighbors or friends, can introduce their children to each other. In India, parents often place matrimonial ads in newspapers or online, and may post the resumes of the prospective bride or groom.
Matchmaking systems and services
Dating systems can be systematic and organized ways to improve matchmaking by using rules or technology. The meeting can be in-person or live as well as separated by time or space such as by telephone or email or chat-based. The purpose of the meeting is for the two persons to decide whether to go on a date in the future.
Speed dating consists of organized matchmaking events that have multiple single persons meet one-on-one in brief timed sessions so that singles can assess further whether to have subsequent dates. An example is meeting perhaps twenty potential partners in a bar with brief interviews between each possible couple, perhaps lasting three minutes in length, and shuffling partners. In Shanghai, one event featured eight-minute one-on-one meetings in which participants were pre-screened by age and education and career, and which costs 50 yuan (US$6) per participant; participants are asked not to reveal contact information during the brief meeting with the other person, but rather place names in cards for organizers to arrange subsequent dates. Advantages of speed dating: efficiency; "avoids an embarrassing disaster date"; cost-effective; way to make friends. Disadvantages: it can turn into a beauty contest with only a few good-looking participants getting most offers, while less attractive peers received few or no offers; critics suggest that the format prevents factors such as personality and intelligence from emerging, particularly in large groups with extra-brief meeting times.
systems of the 1980s and 1990s especially, where customers gave a performance on (typically VHS) video, which was viewable by other customers, usually in private, in the same facility. Some services would record and play back videos for men and women on alternate days to minimize the chance that customers would meet each other on the street.
Phone dating systems of about the same vintage, where customers call a common voice mail or phone-chat server at a common local phone number, and are connected with other (reputed) singles, and typically charged by the minute as if it were a long-distance call (often a very expensive one). A key problem of such systems was that they were hard to differentiate from a phone porn service or "phone sex" where female operators are paid to arouse male customers and have no intention of ever dating them.
Online dating systems use websites or mobile phone apps to connect possible romantic or sexual partners.
Computers as matchmakers
Computer dating systems of the later 20th century, especially popular in the 1960s and 1970s, before the rise of sophisticated phone and computer systems, gave customers forms that they filled out with important tolerances and preferences, which were "matched by computer" to determine "compatibility" of the two customers. The history of dating systems is closely tied to the history of technologies that support them, although a statistics-based dating service that used data from forms filled out by customers opened in Newark, New Jersey in 1941.
The first large-scale computer dating system, The Scientific Marriage Foundation, was established in 1957 by Dr. George W. Crane. In this system, forms that applicants filled out were processed by an IBM card sorting machine. The earliest commercially successfully computerized dating service in either the US or UK was Com-Pat, started by Joan Ball in 1964. Operation Match, started by Harvard University students a year later is often erroneously claimed to be the "first computerized dating service." In actuality, both Com-Pat and Operation Match were preceded by other computerized dating services in Europe—the founders of Operation Match and Joan Ball of Com-Pat both stated they had heard about these European computer dating services and that those served as the inspiration for their respective ideas to create computer dating businesses.
The longest running and most successful early computer dating business, both in terms of numbers of users and in terms of profits, was Dateline, which was started in the UK in 1965 by John Patterson. Patterson's business model was not fully legal, however. He was charged with fraud on several occasions for selling lists of the women who signed up for his service to men who were looking for prostitutes. Dateline existed until Patterson's death from alcoholism in 1997, and during the early 1990s it was reported to be the most profitable computer dating company in the world.
In the early 1980s in New York City, software developers wrote algorithms to match singles romantically, sometimes using collaborative filtering technologies.
Compatibility algorithms and matching software are becoming increasingly sophisticated.
Using the Internet
Online dating services charge a fee to user to post a profile of himself or herself, perhaps using video or still images as well as descriptive data and personal preferences for dating, such as age range, hobbies, and so forth.
Online dating was a $2 billion per year industry, , with an annual growth rate of 5%. The industry is dominated by a few large companies, such as EHarmony, Zoosk and InterActiveCorp, or IAC, which owns several brands including Match.com and OkCupid, and new entrants continue to emerge. In 2019, Taimi, previously targeted to gay men, was re-introduced as a dating service for all LGBTQI+ people.
Online dating businesses are thriving financially, with growth in members, service offerings, and membership fees and with many users renewing their accounts, although the overall share of Internet traffic using online dating services in the U.S. has declined from 2003 (21% of all Internet users) to 2006 (10%).
While online dating has become more accepted, it retains a slight stigma. After controversies such as the 2015 hacking of Ashley Madison user data, dating sites must work to convince users that they are safe places with quality members.
There is widespread evidence that online dating has increased rapidly and is becoming "mainstream" with new websites appearing regularly. One study suggested that 18% of single persons had used the Internet for dating purposes.
Reports vary about the effectiveness of dating web sites to result in marriages or long–term relationships. Pew Research, based on a 2005 survey of 3,215 adults, estimated that three million Americans had entered into long-term relationships or marriage as a result of meeting on a dating web site. While sites have touted marriage rates from 10% to 25%, sociologists and marriage researchers are highly skeptical that valid statistics underlie any such claims.
The Pew study (see table) suggested the Internet was becoming increasingly prominent and accepted as a way to meet people for dates, although there were cautions about deception, the risk of violence, and some concerns about stigmas. The report suggested most people had positive experiences with online dating websites and felt they were excellent ways to meet more people. The report also said that online daters tend to have more liberal social attitudes compared to the general population.
In India, parents sometimes participate in websites designed to match couples. Some online dating sites can organize double dates or group dates.
Research from Berkeley University in California suggests there's a dropoff in interest after online daters meet face-to-face. It's a lean medium not offering standard cues such as tone of voice, gestures, and facial expressions. There is substantial data about online dating habits; for example, researchers believe that "the likelihood of a reply to a message sent by one online dater to another drops roughly 0.7 percent with every day that goes by". Psychologist Lindsay Shaw Taylor found that even though people said they'd be willing to date someone of a different race, that people tend to choose dates similar to themselves.
Internet "QQ" chat rooms, cheaper than traditional websites and agencies, are gaining popularity in China.
There are dating applications or apps on mobile phones.
Virtual dating incorporates elements of video-game play and dating. Users create avatars and spend time in virtual worlds in an attempt to meet other avatars with the purpose of meeting for potential dates.
Mobile dating or cellphone dating refers to exchanging text messages to express interest in others on the system. These may be web-based or online as well, depending on the company.
At a singles event, a group of singles are brought together to take part in various activities for the purposes of meeting new people. Events might include parties, workshops, and games. Many events are aimed at singles of particular affiliations, interests, or religions. A weekend flirting course in Britain advised daters to "love the inner you" and understand the difference between arrogance from insecurity and "true self-confidence"; it featured exercises in which students were told to imagine that they were "great big beautiful gods and goddesses" and treat others similarly.
Media
Board games
Mystery Date is a board game from the Milton Bradley Company, originally released in 1965 and reissued in 1970, 1999, and in 2005, whose object is to be ready for a date by acquiring three matching color-coded cards to assemble an outfit. The outfit must then match the outfit of the date at the "mystery door". If the player's outfit does not match the date behind the door, the door is closed and play continues. The game has been mentioned, featured, or parodied in several popular films and television shows.
Television
Numerous television reality and game shows, past and current, address dating. For example, the dating game shows The Dating Game first aired in 1965, while more modern shows in that genre include The Manhattan Dating Project (US Movie about Dating in New York City), Blind Date, The 5th Wheel, and The Bachelor and its spinoff series, in which a high degree of support and aids are provided to individuals seeking dates. These are described more fully here and in the related article on "reality game shows" that often include or motivate romantic episodes between players. Another category of dating-oriented reality TV shows involves matchmaking, such as Millionaire Matchmaker and Tough Love. A popular dating-themed TV show in the UK is Take Me Out.
Age groups
Dating can happen for people in most age groups with the possible exception of young children. Teenagers and tweens have been described as dating; according to the CDC, three-quarters of eighth and ninth graders in the United States described themselves as "dating", although it is unclear what is exactly meant by this term. A 2018 study in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence found that serious dating among teenagers can have negative affects on a teenager's mood. This is most likely due to the incomplete cognitive and emotional development of teenagers that cause a lack of ability to handle the challenging aspects of romantic relationships.
Young persons are exposed to many in their high schools or secondary schools or college or universities. There is anecdotal evidence that traditional dating—one-on-one public outings—has declined rapidly among the younger generation in the United States in favor of less intimate sexual encounters sometimes known as hookups (slang), described as brief sexual experiences with "no strings attached", although exactly what is meant by the term hookup varies considerably. Dating is being bypassed and is seen as archaic, and relationships are sometimes seen as "greedy" by taking time away from other activities, although exclusive relationships form later. Some college newspapers have decried the lack of dating on campuses after a 2001 study was published, and conservative groups have promoted "traditional" dating. When young people are in school, they have a lot of access to people their own age, and do not need tools such as online websites or dating services. Chinese writer Lao Wai, writing to homeland Chinese about America, considered that the college years were the "golden age of dating" for Americans, when Americans dated more than at any other time in their life. There are indications people in their twenties are less focused on marriage but on careers.
People over thirty, lacking the recency of a college experience, have better luck online finding partners. Economist Sylvia Ann Hewlett in 2002 found that 55% of 35-year-old career women were childless, while 19% of male corporate executives were, and concluded that "the rule of thumb seems to be that the more successful the woman, the less likely it is she will find a husband or bear a child."
While people tend to date others close to their own age, it's possible for older men to date younger women. In many countries, the older-man-younger-woman arrangement is seen as permissible, sometimes with benefits. It's looked on more positively in the U.S. than in China; older men are described as more knowledgeable sexually and intellectually, supportive, skilled in the ways of women, and financially more secure so there's "no more going Dutch." In China, older men with younger women are more likely to be described as "weird uncles" rather than "silver foxes." One Beijing professor reportedly advised his male students to delay dating:
A notable example of the older-woman-younger-man is Demi Moore pairing with 15-years-her-junior Ashton Kutcher. Older women in such relations have recently been described as "cougars", and formerly such relationships were often kept secret or discreet, but there is a report that such relationships are becoming more accepted and increasing.
Since divorce is increasing in many areas, sometimes celebrated with "divorce parties", there is dating advice for the freshly divorced as well, which includes not talking about your ex or your divorce, but focusing on "activities that bring joy to your life." Adviser Claire Rayner in The Guardian suggests calling people from your address book with whom you haven't been in touch for years and say "I'd love to get back in contact." Do activities you like doing with like-minded people; if someone seems interesting to you, tell them. It's more acceptable for this group for women to ask men out.
See also
Age disparity in sexual relationships
Charity dating
Dating coach
Group dating
List of online dating websites
Online dating service
Secret dating
Teen dating violence
Notes
References
Further reading
External links
Philosophy of love
Socialization |
21030422 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dell%20Inspiron%20Mini%20Series | Dell Inspiron Mini Series | The Dell Inspiron Mini Series is a line of subnotebook/netbook computers designed by Dell. The series was introduced in September 2008 amidst the growing popularity of low-cost netbook computers introduced by competitors.
9 Series
The Dell Inspiron Mini 9 (also called the Inspiron 910), was announced on September 4, 2008, as a netbook set to contend with other low-cost ultra-portables such as the ASUS Eee PC and Acer Aspire One. The Mini 9 was also sold as the Dell Vostro A90 by the Dell Small Business Unit.
The Mini 9 began shipping on September 16, 2008, starting at US$349. It is built by Compal Electronics, which also makes the MSI Wind Netbook and the HP Mini-Note 2133.
It is Dell's first netbook. It was retired on May 29, 2009.
Features
SSD/Ubuntu Netbook Remix
Dell initially shipped versions of the Mini 9 with only partially usable storage, after models were built using a software image that fit just the basic 4GB SSD. Standard operating system upgrades later fixed the issue.
SSD
The Mini 9 uses a very special SSD drive. It is a 50mm solid state module (MO-300A) with mini PCIe interface. It uses IDE/PATA signal, so replacing it with a module with SATA signal won't work, although it will fit in the socket.
Battery capacity
In January, it was suspected that some units were shipping with 24 watt-hour capacity batteries, labeled as 32 watt-hour. The low-capacity batteries appear to be those manufactured in Tokyo. It was later determined that the software used to examine the batteries was incorrectly reporting the capacity and has since been reported to be fixed with an upgrade of the BIOS.
Specifications
Processor: Intel Atom N270.
Memory: 512 MB, 1 GB or 2 GB of shared dual channel DDR2 SDRAM @ 533 MHz.
Chipset: Intel US15W Express.
Graphics: integrated Intel GMA 950.
LCD Display: 8.9" LED-backlit widescreen with 1024 × 600 resolution.
Storage: 8 or 16 GB SSD (Windows XP Home Edition SP3 32-bit), or 32 GB (Ubuntu Linux version 8.04.1) SSD.
Optical Drive: None;
Battery: 4-cell (32 Whr) lithium-ion battery.
Camera: 0.3 MP webcam.
Wi-Fi Card: Dell Wireless 1395 802.11g mini-card.
Bluetooth: Dell Wireless Bluetooth Internal 350 (2.0).
I/O ports: 3 USB 2.0 ports, 1 Fast Ethernet port, 1 3-in-1 memory card reader, 1 VGA output, 1 headphone jack, 1 microphone jack, and 1 power adapter port.
10 Series
Dell Inspiron Mini 10 (1010)
The Mini 10 (1010) is a netbook with a 10.1" screen that was designed to fill the gap between the Mini 9 and Mini 12. It began shipping on February 26, 2009 with a base price of US$399.
It has the Intel Atom Z520 and Z530 processor configurations. The default Mini 10 model has a 16:9 widescreen display with a 1024x600 (originally 1024x576) or 1366x768 (described as 720p) HD resolution and an HDMI port. It uses the Poulsbo chipset. It can be customized with GPS or integrated TV tuner. The service manual displays two full-height MiniPCI-E internal slots, and one half-height. It is unclear whether the connectors are all in place, but the manual shows one full-height TV tuner in place.
The device also features a multi-touch touchpad. Provided with a driver from Elantech, it can be used for scrolling, 3 button operation, dragging, resizing, rotating pictures and system shortcuts as Start Menu and Explorer (on Windows), browser back and forward, minimizing and maximizing windows, window switching, desktop showing and hiding, and running custom commands.
Dell Inspiron Mini 10v (1011)
To fill the gap left when the Mini 9 was discontinued, Dell introduced a 'value' version, the Inspiron Mini 10v, which ships with a standard VGA connector, 1024x600 resolution display (1024x576 on early models) and the same Atom N270 processor that the Mini 9 used (an optional upgrade to the N280 was briefly later available.) In fact, the 10v has nearly exactly the same hardware as the Mini 9 and, as such, is also able to run Linux. The Mini 10v has since been discontinued.
(The Dell Mini 10v is one of, if not the most, popular or 'compatible' netbook and/or laptop to be "Hackintoshed".)
Dell Inspiron Mini 10v Nickelodeon Slime Edition
The Inspiron Mini 10 Nickelodeon Slime Edition was created from a partnership between Dell and Nickelodeon. The laptop had a white lid with the "slime" design, ran Windows XP and had a custom "slime"-themed GUI made using StarDock's MyColors. It included parental controls using McAfee's Family Safety. System folders were blocked as well. The desktop featured gadgets linking to Nickelodeon's website and another that linked to Whyville.
Dell Inspiron Mini 10 (1012)
The Mini 10 (1012) has a similar form factor to the older Mini 10 (1010) and 10v (1011); it is distinguished by the use of the newer Atom n450 processor, and its supporting chipset. The HDMI port is also replaced with a standard VGA connector.
Dell Inspiron Mini 10n
Dell released the Mini 10n based on the Mini 10. The only difference between the 10n and the 10 (1012) is the installed OS has been changed to Ubuntu Moblin Remix Developer Edition, bridging Canonical's Ubuntu and Intel's Moblin graphical environment and Atom optimizations.
Dell no longer preinstalls full Ubuntu releases on the Mini 10n. Because this model uses a standard Intel platform, Ubuntu (or almost any other up-to-date Linux distribution) can be installed by an end user.
The Mini 10n hardware is the same as the newer version of the Mini 10 with the Atom N450 CPU, 160G disk and NM10 video. It does not have an available option to add the "media processor" upgrade as on the Windows version of the 1012 which can allow better performance for full-motion video, particularly from HD sources.
Dell Inspiron Mini (1018)
On August 19, 2010, Dell Europe announced the introduction of the Dell Mini 1018. This new Dell Mini features the Atom N455 CPU which supports DDR3 memory. Design has also been tweaked and stated specs include 7+ hours of battery life on the 6-cell battery (unconfirmed). As of January 2011, the model has been made available in Asia. The Asian release of the 1018 features 1GB of DDR3 RAM and is shipped with Windows 7 Starter as well as Office 2010 starter.
However the N455 is actually 64-bit and Hyper Threading capable, and thus is actually capable of running 64-bit variants of Windows 7.
Specification comparison
12 Series
The Dell Inspiron Mini 12 (also known as Dell Inspiron 1210) was released online on October 16, 2008 and announced on October 26, 2008 as a larger counterpart to the Mini 9. It was mainly created for the netbook market, with a secondary goal of competing with subnotebooks. It began shipping on December 8, 2008, with a starting price of $549. The netbook originally shipped with Windows Vista Home Basic SP1 32-bit, but an option for XP Home SP3 32-bit was added a month later. It was criticized for being slow with Vista. It was retired on August 7, 2009.
Features
It features a 12.1 inch (1280x800) WXGA Truelife widescreen display running on a 1.33 GHz or 1.6 GHz Intel Atom Silverthorne CPU, and comes bundled with Windows XP Home or Ubuntu 8.04. It comes with 1GB of RAM (the maximum for the device), a 40/60/80GB hard drive, and a small speaker located above the keyboard.
For connectivity, the device carries WiFi and 3 USB ports. A 1.3 MP webcam and internal bluetooth are available as options. The Dell Inspiron Mini 12 is 1.1 inches thick and weighs 3.2 pounds (with six-cell battery), or 2.8 pounds (with three-cell battery).
In dell black and silver colour. The outside is shiny black. On site one year warranty by Dell.
Specifications
Processor: Intel Atom Z520 or Z530.
Memory: 512 MB or 1 GB of shared dual channel DDR2 SDRAM @ 533 MHz.
Chipset: Intel US15W Express.
Graphics: integrated Intel GMA 500.
Display: 12.1" LED-backlit widescreen with 1280 × 800 resolution.
Storage: 32, 40 or 60 GB PATA HDD@ 5,400 RPM.
Optical Drive: None;
Battery: 3-cell (24 Whr) or 6-cell (48 Whr) lithium-ion battery.
Camera: 1.3 MP webcam.
Wi-Fi Card: Dell Wireless 1395 802.11g mini-card.
Bluetooth: DelI Wireless Bluetooth Internal 350 (2.0).
I/O ports: 3 USB 2.0 ports, 1 Fast Ethernet port, 1 3-in-1 memory card reader, 1 VGA output, 1 headphone jack, 1 microphone jack, and 1 power adapter port.
Successor
While not labelled an "Inspiron Mini" or marketed as a netbook, the Inspiron 11z has replaced the Mini 12 in most markets and occupies a similar position in the model line.
See also
Comparison of netbooks
Dell Mini 5
Quiet PC
References
Inspiron Mini Series
Discontinued products
Subnotebooks
Linux-based devices
Netbooks |
35368674 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United%20States%20v.%20Manning | United States v. Manning | United States v. Manning was the court-martial of former United States Army Private First Class Bradley E. Manning, known now as Chelsea Manning.
After serving in Iraq since October 2009, Manning was arrested in May 2010 after Adrian Lamo, a computer hacker in the United States, indirectly informed the Army's Criminal Investigation Command that Manning had acknowledged passing classified material to the whistleblower website, WikiLeaks. Manning was ultimately charged with 22 specified offenses, including communicating national defense information to an unauthorized source, and the most serious of the charges, aiding the enemy. Other charges included violations of the Espionage Act of 1917, stealing U.S. government property, charges under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 and charges related to the failure to obey lawful general orders under Article 92 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Manning entered guilty pleas to 10 of 22 specified offenses in February 2013.
The trial on the 12 remaining charges began on June 3, 2013. It went to the judge on July 26, 2013, and findings were rendered on July 30. Manning was acquitted of the most serious charge, that of aiding the enemy, for giving secrets to WikiLeaks. In addition to five or six espionage counts, Manning was also found guilty of five theft specifications, two computer fraud specifications and multiple military infractions.
On August 21, 2013, Manning was sentenced to 35 years' imprisonment, reduction in pay grade to E-1, forfeiture of all pay and allowances, and a dishonorable discharge. On January 17, 2017, President Barack Obama commuted Manning's sentence to a total of seven years' confinement. Manning was released on May 17, 2017. On May 31, 2018, the U.S. Army Court of Criminal Appeals upheld Manning's conviction of violating the Espionage Act of 1917.
Background
The material in question includes 251,287 United States diplomatic cables, over 400,000 classified army reports from the Iraq War (the Iraq War logs), and approximately 90,000 army reports from the war in Afghanistan (the Afghan War logs). WikiLeaks also received two videos. One was of the July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike (dubbed the "Collateral Murder" video); the second, which was never published, was of the May 2009 Granai airstrike in Afghanistan.
Manning was charged on July 5, 2010, with violations of Articles 92 and 134 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which were alleged to have taken place between November 19, 2009, and May 27, 2010. These were replaced on March 1, 2011, with 22 specifications, including aiding the enemy, wrongfully causing intelligence to be published on the Internet knowing that it was accessible to the enemy, theft of public property or records, and transmitting defense information. Manning was found not guilty of aiding the enemy, the most serious charge, for which Manning could have faced the death penalty or life imprisonment.
Pre-trial hearings
Article 32 hearing
A panel of experts ruled in April 2011 that Manning was fit to stand trial. An Article 32 hearing, presided over by Lieutenant Colonel Paul Almanza, was convened on December 16, 2011, at Fort Meade, Maryland, to determine whether to proceed to a court martial. The army was represented by Captains Ashden Fein, Joe Morrow, and Angel Overgaard. Manning was represented by military attorneys Major Matthew Kemkes and Captain Paul Bouchard, and by civilian attorney David Coombs.
The hearing resulted in Almanza recommending that Manning be referred to a general court-martial, and on February 3, 2012, the convening authority, Major General Michael Linnington, commander of the Military District of Washington, ordered Manning to stand trial on all 22 specified charges, including aiding the enemy. Manning was arraigned on February 23, and declined to enter a plea.
Prosecution evidence
The lead prosecutor, Captain Fein, argued that Manning had given enemies "unfettered access" to the material and had displayed an "absolute indifference" to classified information. He showed the court a video of Adam Gadahn, an al-Qaeda spokesman, referencing the leaked material.
The prosecution presented 300,000 pages of documents in evidence, including chat logs and classified material. Nicks writes that Manning appeared to have taken few security precautions. After Manning's arrest, detectives searched a basement room in Potomac, Maryland, and found an SD card they say contained the Afghan and Iraq War logs, along with a message to WikiLeaks. Investigators said Manning had also left computer trails of Google and Intelink searches, and of using Wget to download documents.
Lieutenant Colonel Almanza heard from two army investigators, Special Agent David Shaver, head of the digital forensics and research branch of the army's Computer Crime Investigative Unit (CCIU), and Mark Johnson, a digital forensics contractor from ManTech International, who works for the CCIU. They testified that they had found 100,000 State Department cables on a computer Manning had used between November 2009 and May 2010; 400,000 U.S. military reports from Iraq and 91,000 from Afghanistan on the SD card; and 10,000 cables on a personal MacBook Pro and storage devices that they said had not been passed to WikiLeaks because a file was corrupted. They also said they had recovered an exchange from May 2010 between Manning and Eric Schmiedl, a Boston mathematician, in which Manning had admitted to being the source of the Baghdad helicopter attack ("Collateral Murder") video.
Johnson said he found a text file called wl-press.txt on an external hard drive in Manning's room in Iraq. The file was created on November 30, 2009, and gave the contact detail in Iceland for WikiLeaks. He said he also recovered 14–15 pages of encrypted chats, in unallocated space on Manning's MacBook's hard drive, between Manning and someone believed to be Julian Assange, using the Adium instant messaging client. The MacBook's log-in password was found to be the encryption key. Two of the chat handles, which used the Berlin Chaos Computer Club's domain (ccc.de), had names associated with them, Julian Assange and Nathaniel Frank. Johnson also said he found SSH logs on the MacBook that showed an SFTP connection, from an IP address that resolved to Manning's aunt's home, to a Swedish IP address with links to WikiLeaks. There was also a text file named "Readme" attached to the logs, apparently written by Manning:
Johnson said there had been two attempts to delete material from the MacBook. The operating system was re-installed in January 2010, and on or around January 31 an attempt was made to erase the hard drive by doing a "zero-fill," which involves overwriting material with zeroes. This process was started, cancelled, then started again with a single pass. The material was recovered after the overwrite attempts from unallocated space.
Defense arguments
The defense named 48 people it wanted to appear on Manning's behalf. The list was believed to include President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Clinton had said that the diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks "did not represent significant consequences to foreign policy." Obama was named because of an April 2011 statement that Manning "broke the law":
Obama's statement was later echoed by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, who said "We're a nation of laws. He did violate the law."
Manning's lawyers argued that the government had overstated the harm the release of the documents had caused, and had overcharged Manning in order to obtain evidence against Assange. They suggested that other people had had access to Manning's workplace computer, and under cross-examination Shaver acknowledged that some of the 10,000 cables on Manning's personal computer did not match cables published by WikiLeaks. Coombs asked for the dismissal of any charge related to the use of unauthorized software, arguing that Manning's unit had been "lawless ... when it comes to information assurance."
The defense also raised the issue of whether Manning's gender identity disorder had affected Manning's judgment. Manning had e-mailed master sergeant, Paul Adkins, in April 2010 to say she was suffering from gender confusion and, despite then living as a man, attaching a photograph of herself dressed as a woman. After Manning's arrest, the army found information about hormone replacement therapy in her room, and Manning's commander, Captain Steven Lim, learned that she had been calling herself Breanna. Defense lawyers argued that the superiors had failed to provide adequate counseling, and had not taken disciplinary action or revoke Manning's security clearance. They also suggested that the "don't ask, don't tell" policy—which was repealed in September 2011—had made it difficult for Manning to serve in the army as a gay man.
Defense request to depose six witnesses
After the hearing, in January 2012, Coombs filed a request to depose six witnesses, whose names were redacted in the application, and who are believed to have been involved in classifying the leaked videos. Coombs argues that the videos were not classified at the time they were obtained by WikiLeaks.
Article 39 hearing
An Article 39 hearing was convened on April 24, 2012, during which the judge, Colonel Denise Lind, denied a defense motion to dismiss the charge of aiding the enemy, and ruled that the government must be able to show that Manning knew the enemy would be able to access information on the WikiLeaks site. She ordered the CIA, FBI, DIA, State Department, and Department of Justice to release documents showing their assessment of whether the leaked material had damaged the national interest of the United States. Lind said she would decide after reading the documents whether to make them available to Manning's lawyers. She also ordered forensic imaging of five computers removed from Manning's work station that had not yet been wiped clean.
At the start of the hearing, Manning replaced the assigned two military defense lawyers, Major Matthew Kemkes and Captain Paul Bouchard, with Captain Joshua Tooman. The next Article 39 hearing was set for June 6–8 and trial was set for September 2012.
Petition to the Army Court of Criminal Appeals
The Center for Constitutional Rights filed a petition in May 2012 asking the Army Court of Criminal Appeals to order press and public access to motion papers, orders, and transcripts. Petitioners included Julian Assange, Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!, Chase Madar, author of The Passion of Bradley Manning (2011), and Glenn Greenwald of Salon.
Motion to dismiss
On September 19, 2012, Manning's attorneys filed a motion to dismiss all charges with prejudice, arguing that Manning had been unable to obtain a speedy trial. The motion said that the 845 days spent in pretrial confinement was longer than the periods that the law says is unreasonable (United States military law normally requires a trial within 120 days). Judge Lind ruled against the defense motion and allowed for the delay because the prosecution needed more time to prepare its case.
Initial plea
On February 28, 2013, Manning pleaded guilty to 10 of the 22 specified charges. Military judge Colonel Denise Lind accepted the guilty pleas, for which Manning could face up to 20 years in prison. Manning did not plead guilty to the most significant charge of aiding the enemy.
Manning acknowledged having provided archives of military and diplomatic files to WikiLeaks. She pleaded guilty to 10 criminal counts in connection with the material leaked, which included videos of airstrikes in Iraq and Afghanistan in which civilians were killed, logs of military incident reports, assessment files of detainees held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and a quarter-million cables from American diplomats stationed around the world. Manning read a statement recounting how she joined the military, became an intelligence analyst in Iraq, decided that certain files should become known to the American public to prompt a wider debate about foreign policy, downloaded them from a secure computer network and then ultimately uploaded them to WikiLeaks.
When the judge asked Manning to explain how she could admit that her actions were wrong, Manning replied, "Your Honor, regardless of my opinion or my assessment of documents such as these, it's beyond my pay grade—it's not my authority to make these decisions about releasing confidential files." An audio recording of Manning's statement was released by journalist Glenn Greenwald on March 12, 2013.
Manning put the files on a camera digital storage card and took it home on a leave in early 2010. Manning then decided to give the files to a newspaper, first calling The Washington Post. Next, The New York Times was contacted and an unanswered voice mail message was left. In January 2010, Manning called the public editor's line at Bloomberg News, but got no response. Manning then copied the files and uploaded them to WikiLeaks, through its website, using a directory the group designated as a "cloud drop box" server. Manning was frustrated that WikiLeaks did not publish files about 15 people who printed "anti-Iraqi" pamphlets. After uploading the files, Manning was engaged in more online conversations with someone from WikiLeaks, who Manning thought was a senior figure, like Julian Assange. In retrospect, Manning described the relationship as "artificial."
Trial
The trial began on June 3, 2013, at Fort Meade, Maryland, before Colonel Denise Lind, chief judge, U.S. Army Trial Judiciary, 1st Judicial Circuit.
Opening for the prosecution, Captain Joe Morrow accused Manning of having "harvested" hundreds of thousands of documents from secure networks, then making them available within hours to the US's enemies by dumping them on the Internet: "This is a case about what happens when arrogance meets access to classified information," he said. For the defense, Coombs described Manning as "young, naïve and good intentioned." Coombs recounted an incident in which a convoy was hit by an IED, which U.S. troops were relieved did not result in any American fatalities. Manning was reportedly disturbed by her comrades' lack of sympathy upon later learning that an Iraqi civilian had been killed in the incident. Coombs said that by releasing material she felt the public should see, Manning had hoped to make a difference. Manning additionally believed that much of the information she released was "already basically in the public domain," and that it was of historical importance.
On July 2, at the trial's 14th day of sessions, prosecutors rested their case, having presented testimony from 80 witnesses and evidence showing that Manning's training repeatedly instructed her to not give classified information to unauthorized people. The government also presented evidence that Osama bin Laden asked for and received from an associate the Afghanistan battlefield reports WikiLeaks published, and that al-Qaeda leaders reveled in WikiLeaks' publication of reams of classified U.S. documents, urging members to study them before devising ways to attack the United States.
On July 10, the defense rested its case after presenting evidence from 10 witnesses. Manning did not take the stand. Attempting to undercut the most serious charge against Manning—aiding the enemy—defense lawyers called Harvard Law School professor Yochai Benkler, who testified that until WikiLeaks started publishing the material Manning leaked, even the Pentagon apparently viewed the anti-secrecy website as a legitimate journalistic enterprise. Thereafter, said Benkler, the public, the military and traditional news media perceived WikiLeaks as a group that supported terrorism.
On July 18, Judge Lind rejected a defense motion to dismiss the charge of aiding the enemy, citing Manning's extensive training as an intelligence analyst and the sheer volume of records that were leaked as reasons to allow the charge to proceed. In its rebuttal case, the prosecution entered three tweets from WikiLeaks that Manning may have viewed to show that the organization was not a legitimate journalistic enterprise. In surrebuttal, the defense entered articles into evidence depicting WikiLeaks as an important journalism outlet, a platform "just as important as" the Freedom of Information Act (United States).
On July 25, chief prosecutor Maj. Ashden Fein delivered the government's closing argument, portraying Manning as an "anarchist" who sought to "make a splash" by providing vast archives of secret documents to WikiLeaks. Arguing that Manning must be found guilty of aiding the enemy, Fein said, "He was not a whistleblower. He was a traitor, a traitor who understood the value of compromised information in the hands of the enemy and took deliberate steps to ensure that they, along with the world, received it." Fein contended that Manning's "wholesale and indiscriminate compromise of hundreds of thousands of classified documents" for release by the WikiLeaks staff, whom he called "essentially information anarchists," was not an ordinary journalistic disclosure but a bid for "notoriety, although in a clandestine form." Fein addressed the court for nearly six hours.
The next day, defense attorney Coombs countered with his own closing argument, portraying Manning as "a young, naïve, but good-intentioned soldier who had human life and his humanist beliefs center to his decisions, whose sole focus was, 'Maybe I just can make a difference, maybe make a change. Coombs said his client released only files she believed would cause no harm yet spark debate and prompt change, and that if Manning had not been selective, she would have leaked much more. Playing excerpts from the Baghdad helicopter attack ("Collateral Murder") video that Manning admitted supplying to WikiLeaks, Coombs told Judge Lind: "When the court looks at this, the defense requests that you not disengage, that you not look at this from the eyes of 'this happened on a battlefield.' Did they all deserve to die? That is what Private Manning is thinking as he is watching this video he is seeing, and he's questioning."
With closing arguments concluded, Col. Lind began her deliberations. Manning chose to have her court-martial heard by the judge only instead of a jury.
Findings
On July 30, 2013, Judge Lind issued her findings regarding the charges. Manning was acquitted of aiding the enemy by knowingly giving out intelligence through indirect means, and was convicted of 19 of the 21 or 22 specified charges, including theft and six counts of espionage. The hearing on sentencing began on July 31, 2013. The maximum sentence that Manning could have faced was 136 years' imprisonment. This was subsequently reduced to 90 years after the military court granted the defense's motion to merge some of the 20 counts that Manning was being charged with on the grounds that they overlapped.
Sentencing
The judge ruled in January 2013 that Manning's sentence would be reduced by 112 days because of treatment during confinement at Quantico. The sentencing phase of the trial began on July 31. A military psychologist who had treated Manning, Capt. Michael Worsley, testified that Manning had been left isolated in the army, trying to deal with gender-identity issues in a "hyper-masculine environment." On August 14 during the sentencing hearing, Manning apologized for past actions, telling the court: "I am sorry that my actions hurt people. I'm sorry that they hurt the United States. I am sorry for the unintended consequences of my actions. When I made these decisions I believed I was going to help people, not hurt people. ... At the time of my decisions I was dealing with a lot of issues." On August 21, 2013, Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison. Manning was given credit of 1,293 days (3 years and 6 months) served in pre-trial confinement, and may be eligible for parole after serving one-third of the sentence. Manning was also reduced to the lowest enlisted pay grade (E-1), forfeited all pay and allowances, and given a dishonorable discharge.
Petition for commutation of sentence
On September 3, 2013, Manning's attorney announced that he had filed on his client's behalf a Petition for Commutation of Sentence, submitted with a letter to the Secretary of the Army and, through the Department of Justice's Office of the Pardon Attorney, to President Obama, seeking a presidential pardon.
On January 17, 2017, President Obama commuted Manning's sentence to a total of seven years' confinement, starting with the initial date of arrest. As a result of the commutation Manning was released on May 17, 2017.
Appeal
On May 31, 2018, the U.S. Army Court of Criminal Appeals upheld Manning's 2013 court-martial conviction of violating the Espionage Act. The court rejected Manning's contention that the statute is too vague to provide fair notice of the criminal nature of disclosing classified documents. "The facts of this case," the three-judge panel ruled, "leave no question as to what constituted national defense information. Appellant's training and experience indicate, without any doubt, she was on notice and understood the nature of the information she was disclosing and how its disclosure could negatively affect national defense." The court also rejected Manning's assertion that her actions in disclosing classified information related to national security are protected by the First Amendment. Manning, the court found, "had no First Amendment right to make the disclosures—doing so not only violated the nondisclosure agreements she signed, but also jeopardized national security."
See also
Material alleged to have been leaked
Afghan War documents leak
Iraq War documents leak
Guantanamo Bay files leak
United States diplomatic cables leak
Collateral Murder video
Granai airstrike video
Miscellaneous
List of material published by WikiLeaks
Military Whistleblower Protection Act
United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces
Notes
Further reading
Articles
Carbone, Christopher. "Have gay rights groups abandoned Bradley Manning?" The Guardian. Tuesday July 30, 2013.
Gabbatt, Adam. "Bradley Manning not guilty of aiding the enemy – live updates." The Guardian. Tuesday July 30, 2013.
Greenwald, Glenn. "The strange and consequential case of Bradley Manning, Adrian Lamo and WikiLeaks", Salon, June 18, 2010.
Hansen, Evan. "Manning-Lamo Chat Logs Revealed", Wired magazine, July 13, 2011; archived, Wired magazine, July 13, 2011; archived from the original on March 28, 2012.
Nakashima, Ellen. "Messages from alleged leaker Bradley Manning portray him as despondent soldier", The Washington Post, June 10, 2010.
Nicks, Denver. "Private Manning and the Making of Wikileaks", This Land, September 23, 2010.
Pilkington, Ed. "Bradley Manning defence rests after calling just 10 witnesses." The Guardian. Wednesday July 10, 2013.
Books
Madar, Chase. The Passion of Bradley Manning. . OR Books, 2012.
Mitchell, Greg; Gosztola, Kevin. Truth and Consequences: The U.S. vs. Bradley Manning. . Sinclair Books, 2012.
Video
Smith, Martin. "The Private Life of Bradley Manning", PBS Frontline, March 2011.
Websites
The Law Offices of David E. Coombs, Bradley Manning's lawyer, accessed April 7, 2012.
Unofficial trial transcripts from the Freedom of the Press Foundation
What Happened At Bradley Manning's Hearing This Week? The 300,000 documents, Arun Rath, PBS Frontline, December 22, 2011.
"Witness: Manning said leak would lift 'fog of war Army investigators, including the reference to Eric Schmiedl, see David Dishneau and Pauline Jelinek, Associated Press, December 19, 2011
"Investigators link WikiLeaks suspect to Assange", Agence France-Presse, December 20, 2011.
2013 in United States case law
Court-martial cases
Iraq War legal issues
United States diplomatic cables leak
WikiLeaks
Articles containing video clips |
3648704 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenBSD%20security%20features | OpenBSD security features | The OpenBSD operating system focuses on security and the development of security features. According to author Michael W. Lucas, OpenBSD "is widely regarded as the most secure operating system available anywhere, under any licensing terms."
API and build changes
Bugs and security flaws are often caused by programmer error. A common source of error is the misuse of the strcpy and strcat string functions in the C programming language. There are two common alternatives, strncpy and strncat, but they can be difficult to understand and easy to misuse, so OpenBSD developers Todd C. Miller and Theo de Raadt designed the strlcpy and strlcat functions. These functions are intended to make it harder for programmers to accidentally leave buffers unterminated or allow them to be overflowed. They have been adopted by the NetBSD and FreeBSD projects but not by the GNU C Library.
On OpenBSD, the linker has been changed to issue a warning when unsafe string manipulation functions, such as strcpy, strcat, or sprintf, are found. All occurrences of these functions in the OpenBSD source tree have been replaced. In addition, a static bounds checker is included in OpenBSD in an attempt to find other common programming mistakes at compile time. Other security-related APIs developed by the OpenBSD project include issetugid and arc4random.
Kernel randomization
In a June 2017 email, Theo de Raadt stated that a problem with stable systems was that they could be running for months at a time. Although there is considerable randomization within the kernel, some key addresses remains the same. The project in progress modifies the linker so that on every boot, the kernel is relinked, as well as all other randomizations. This differs from kernel ASLR; in the email he states that "As a result, every new kernel is unique. The relative offsets between functions and data are unique ... [The current] change is scaffolding to ensure you boot a newly-linked kernel upon every reboot ... so that a new random kernel can be linked together ... On a fast machine it takes less than a second ... A reboot runs the new kernel, and yet another kernel is built for the next boot. The internal deltas between functions inside the kernel are not where an attacker expects them to be, so he'll need better info leaks".
Memory protection
OpenBSD integrates several technologies to help protect the operating system from attacks such as buffer overflows or integer overflows.
Developed by Hiroaki Etoh, ProPolice is a GCC extension designed to protect applications from stack-smashing attacks. It does this through a number of operations: local stack variables are reordered to place buffers after pointers, protecting them from corruption in case of a buffer overflow; pointers from function arguments are also placed before local buffers; and a canary value is placed after local buffers which, when the function exits, can sometimes be used to detect buffer overflows. ProPolice chooses whether or not to protect a buffer based on automatic heuristics which judge how vulnerable it is, reducing the performance overhead of the protection. It was integrated in OpenBSD's version GCC in December 2002, and first made available in OpenBSD 3.3; it was applied to the kernel in release 3.4. The extension works on all the CPU architectures supported by OpenBSD and is enabled by default, so any C code compiled will be protected without user intervention.
In May 2004, OpenBSD on the SPARC platform received further stack protection in the form of StackGhost. This makes use of features of the SPARC architecture to help prevent exploitation of buffer overflows. Support for SPARC64 was added to in March 2005.
OpenBSD 3.4 introduced W^X, a memory management scheme to ensure that memory is either writable or executable, but never both, which provides another layer of protection against buffer overflows. While this is relatively easy to implement on a platform like x86-64, which has hardware support for the NX bit, OpenBSD is one of the few OSes to support this on the generic i386 platform, which lacks built in per-page execute controls.
During the development cycle of the 3.8 release, changes were made to the malloc memory management functions. In traditional Unix operating systems, malloc allocates more memory by extending the Unix data segment, a practice that has made it difficult to implement strong protection against security problems. The malloc implementation now in OpenBSD makes use of the mmap system call, which was modified so that it returns random memory addresses and ensures that different areas are not mapped next to each other. In addition, allocation of small blocks in shared areas are now randomized and the free function was changed to return memory to the kernel immediately rather than leaving it mapped into the process. A number of additional, optional checks were also added to aid in development. These features make program bugs easier to detect and harder to exploit: instead of memory being corrupted or an invalid access being ignored, they often result in a segmentation fault and abortion of the process. This has brought to light several issues with software running on OpenBSD 3.8, particularly with programs reading beyond the start or end of a buffer, a type of bug that would previously not be detected directly but can now cause an error. These abilities took more than three years to implement without considerable performance loss.
Cryptography and randomization
One of the goals of the OpenBSD project is the integration of facilities and software for strong cryptography into the core operating system. To this end, a number of low-level features are provided, including a source of strong pseudo random numbers; built-in cryptographic hash functions and transforms; and support for cryptographic hardware (OpenBSD Cryptographic Framework). These abilities are used throughout OpenBSD, including the bcrypt password-hashing algorithm derived from Bruce Schneier's Blowfish block cipher, which takes advantage of the CPU-intensive Blowfish key schedule, making brute-force attacks less practical.
To protect sensitive information such as passwords from leaking on to disk, where they can persist for many years, OpenBSD supports encryption of the swap partition. The swap space is split up into many small regions that are each assigned their own encryption key: as soon as the data in a region is no longer required, OpenBSD securely deletes it by discarding the encryption key. This feature is enabled by default in OpenBSD 3.9 and later.
The network stack also makes heavy use of randomization to increase security and reduce the predictability of various values that may be of use to an attacker, including TCP initial sequence numbers and timestamps, and ephemeral source ports. A number of features to increase network resilience and availability, including countermeasures for problems with ICMP and software for redundancy, such as CARP and pfsync, are also included. The project was the first to disable the plain-text telnet daemon in favor of the encrypted SSH daemon, in 1999, and features other integrated cryptographic software such as IPsec. The telnet daemon was completely removed from OpenBSD in 2005 before the release of OpenBSD version 3.8.
X11
In X11 on OpenBSD, neither the X server nor X clients normally have any escalated direct memory or hardware privileges: When driving X with the Intel(4) or Radeon(4) drivers, these normally interact with the underlying hardware via the Direct Rendering Management(4) kernel interface only, so that lowlevel memory/hardware access is handled solely by the kernel. Other drivers such as WSFB follow a similar pattern. For this reason, X11 on OpenBSD does not open up lowlevel memory or hardware access to user/root programs as is done on some other systems, and as was done in the past, which then needed the user to escalate the machdep.allowaperture setting from its default zero setting, to an unsecure setting.
OpenBSD's version of the X Window System (named Xenocara) has some security modifications. The server and some of the default applications are patched to make use of privilege separation, and OpenBSD provides an "aperture" driver to limit X's access to memory. However, after work on X security flaws by Loïc Duflot, Theo de Raadt commented that the aperture driver was merely "the best we can do" and that X "violates all the security models you will hear of in a university class." He went on to castigate X developers for "taking their time at solving this > 10-year-old problem." On November 29, 2006, a VESA kernel driver was developed that permitted X to run, albeit more slowly, without the use of the aperture driver.
On February 15, 2014, X was further modified to allow it to run without root privileges.
After the discovery of a security vulnerability in X, OpenBSD doesn't support the running of X as a root user and only supports running X via a display manager as a dedicated _x11 user.
Other features
Privilege separation, privilege revocation, chrooting and randomized loading of libraries also play a role in increasing the security of the system. Many of these have been applied to the OpenBSD versions of common programs such as tcpdump and Apache, and to the BSD Authentication system.
OpenBSD has a history of providing its users with full disclosure in relation to various bugs and security breaches detected by the OpenBSD team. This is exemplified by the project's slogan: "Only two remote holes in the default install, in a heck of a long time!"
In OpenBSD 5.3, support for full disk encryption was introduced.
OpenBSD 5.8 introduced the pledge system call for restricting process capabilities to a minimal subset required for correct operation. If the process is compromised and attempts to perform an unintended behavior, it will be terminated by the kernel. Since its introduction, applications and ports have been changed to support pledge, including the Chromium web browser.
OpenBSD 6.4 introduced the unveil system call for restricting filesystem visibility to a minimum level.
References
External links
Exploit Mitigation Techniques: an Update After 10 Years
Theo de Raadt's email about secure programming: On the matter of strlcpy/strlcat acceptance by industry
Security
Operating system security
Embedded operating systems
OpenBSD |
68874202 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021%20Toyota%20200 | 2021 Toyota 200 | The 2021 Toyota 200 presented by CK Power was the 16th stock car race of the 2021 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series season, the 21st iteration of the event, the first race of the playoffs, and the first race of the Round of 10. The race was held on Friday, August 20, 2021 in Madison, Illinois at World Wide Technology Raceway. The race was extended from 160 laps to 163 due to a NASCAR overtime finish. After dominating most of the race, Sheldon Creed of GMS Racing would win the race and lock himself into the Round of 8. To fill the rest of the podium, Matt Crafton and Ben Rhodes, both from ThorSport Racing would finish 2nd and 3rd, respectively.
The race was the debut for Chris Hacker.
Background
Known as Gateway Motorsports Park until its renaming in April 2019, World Wide Technology Raceway is a 1.25-mile (2.01 km) paved oval motor racing track in Madison, Illinois, United States. The track previously held Truck races from 1998 to 2010, and returned starting in 2014.
Entry list
*Withdrew due to the team breaking the rules, as they did not know they had run an illegal nose on the car. NASCAR rules state that 2018 bodies for the car after June 30, 2021 are only allowed for dirt races and road courses, and as Norm Benning had a 2018 body, they were forced to withdraw.
**Withdrew due to unknown reasons.
***Driver changed to Chris Hacker in order for Hacker to make his NASCAR Camping World Truck Series debut.
Starting lineup
Qualifying was determined by a qualifying metric system based on the previous race, the 2021 United Rentals 176 at The Glen and owner's points. As a result, Austin Hill of Hattori Racing Enterprises would win the pole.
The entry of Clay Greenfield of Clay Greenfield Motorsports and the initial entry of Chris Hacker for On Point Motorsports would fail to qualify, albeit Hacker would replace Lawless Alan in the #34 Reaume Brothers Racing truck to ensure that he would make his debut.
Race
Pre-race ceremonies
Race recap
Post-race driver comments
Race results
Stage 1 Laps: 55
Stage 2 Laps: 55
Stage 3 Laps: 50
References
2021 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series
NASCAR races at Gateway Motorsports Park
August 2021 sports events in the United States
2021 in sports in Illinois |
20973854 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retalix | Retalix | Retalix Ltd. is a former Israeli software company that developed, licensed, implemented and supported software applications for retailers, wholesalers and distributors of fast-moving consumer goods, mainly in the grocery, convenience store, and foodservice industries.
Retalix software includes point of sale, retail operations, customer loyalty, supply chain management (SCM), warehouse management (WMS), and transportation management (TMS). In 2011, Retalix was ranked among the top four software vendors for grocery retailers and among the top ten large software vendors to retailers.
Retalix was established in 1982 by Barry Shaked and Brian Cooper as Point of Sale Ltd.
Retalix was headquartered in Ra'anana, Israel, Retalix's North American headquarters was located in Plano, Texas. Retalix also operated offices in the UK, France, Italy, Australia, and Japan. In February 2013, Retalix was acquired by NCR Corporation.
Company history
Since its inception until the mid-1990s, the company focused on the development and sale of store-level software solutions to grocery retailers. During the late 1990s, the company widened its offerings to cover also solutions for the fuel and convenience retail market, as well as solutions covering the management of retail operations at the chain level. In 2000, the company changed its name from "Point Of Sale Ltd" to "Retalix Ltd", to reflect the expansion of its solutions offering beyond the store level.
On March 27, 2006, Retalix Ltd. restated its second- and third-quarter results on accounting issues, reducing revenue and earnings in both periods.
Retalix's growth strategy has been to expand its enterprise and supply chain management applications while maintaining close integration with its widely installed, in-store solutions. It has grown both organically and through acquisition. In 2004 Retalix acquired OMI International, a warehouse management system (WMS) and supply chain management (SCM) vendor that was also focused on the retail food sector. The company continued with its growth strategy in 2005 through the acquisition of IDS, which expanded its offerings to include enterprise software for wholesale distributors. Also in 2005, Retalix acquired TCI Solutions, a software provider for grocery retailers in the area of store and headquarters management and operations. In recent years, Retalix introduced new solutions complementing current retail industry focuses, such as customer loyalty and optimization of ordering.
Between 1994 and 2013, Retalix was a public company. The company's ordinary shares traded on the NASDAQ Global Select Market under the symbol RTLX. The company's shares also traded in the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE). Retalix was listed on the Tel-Tech 15 Index, the TASE's leading technology index, as well as on the TA-100 Index, consisting of the TASE's top 100 stocks by market capitalization. In November 2012, it was announced that NCR Corporation had agreed to acquire Retalix for , or $30 per share. The acquisition was completed in February 2013, subsequent to which Retalix was delisted from both the Nasdaq and the TASE.
Customers
Retalix software is used by grocery and convenience store retailers, petrol stations and quick-service restaurants as well as by foodservice, convenience and grocery wholesale distributors. Among the company's customers are eight of the top 25 worldwide food retailers.
Retalix software has been installed at approximately 70,000 sites in 51 countries. Retalix customers include as Tesco, Carrefour, Delhaize, Intermarche, Morrisons, Sainsbury’s, Jumbo and Argos in Europe; Target Canada; Woolworths, Coles and Metcash in Australia; Food Lion, Hannaford Bros., Hy-Vee, Costco, K-VA-T Food City, Big Y, Save-A-Lot, and Save Mart in the United States; large convenience store and fuel retailers, such as BP in Australia, the UK, and North America; the Reitan group in Scandinavia, PetroChina and Reliance in Asia; Casey's, Husky, Irving, Love's, Pilot Travel Centers, and The Pantry in North America; and large health and beauty retailers such as Walgreens in the United States and A.S. Watson Group in Europe and Asia.
References
External links
Point of sale companies
Supply chain software companies
Software companies of Israel
Companies established in 1982
Companies formerly listed on the Nasdaq
Israeli brands
1982 establishments in Israel
Mergers and acquisitions of Israeli companies |
19126338 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritzing | Fritzing | Fritzing is an open-source initiative to develop amateur or hobby CAD software for the design of electronics hardware, to support designers and artists ready to move from experimenting with a prototype to building a more permanent circuit. It was developed at the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam. Fritzing is free software under the GPL 3.0 or later license, with the source code available gratis on GitHub and the binaries at a monetary cost, which is allowed by the GPL.
Goals
The software is created in the spirit of the Processing programming language and the Arduino microcontroller and allows a designer, artist, researcher, or hobbyist to document their Arduino-based prototype and create a PCB layout for manufacturing. The associated website helps users share and discuss drafts and experiences as well as to reduce manufacturing costs.
Fritzing can be seen as an electronic design automation (EDA) tool for non-engineers: the input metaphor is inspired by the environment of designers (the breadboard-based prototype), while the output is focused on accessible means of production. As of December 2, 2014 Fritzing has made a code view option, where one can modify code and upload it directly to an Arduino device.
Component images are distributed under CC BY-SA 3.0, which will also be the license for any generated breadboard views.
Developer
The Fritzing source code is written in C++ using the Qt-framework. The source code can be downloaded
and edited via the GitHub repositories. The source is split in two main repositories: Fritzing-App and Fritzing-Parts.
Maker
Fritzing allows for easy creation of printed circuit boards. FritzingFab enables users to order PCBs with designs made on the Fritzing software.
See also
Comparison of EDA software
List of free and open source software packages
List of free electronics circuit simulators
References
External links
User Forum
FabService
Fritzing overview
Free electronic design automation software
Physical computing
Electronic design automation software for Linux
Engineering software that uses Qt |
8136798 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan%20Bergstra | Jan Bergstra | Johannes Aldert "Jan" Bergstra (born 1951) is a Dutch computer scientist. His work has focussed on logic and the theoretical foundations of software engineering, especially on formal methods for system design. He is best known as an expert on algebraic methods for the specification of data and computational processes in general.
Biography
Jan Bergstra was born in 1951 in Rotterdam, the son of Tjeerd Bergstra and Johanna Bisschop. He was educated at the Montessori Lyceum Rotterdam (gymnasium beta) and then studied mathematics at Utrecht University, starting in 1969. After an MSc he wrote a PhD thesis, defended in 1976, on recursion theory in higher types, under the supervision of Dirk van Dalen.
Bergstra held posts at the Institute of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science of the University of Leiden (1976–82), and the Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) in Amsterdam. In 1985 he was appointed Professor of Programming and Software Engineering at the Informatics Institute of the University of Amsterdam and, at the same time, Professor of Applied Logic at Utrecht University; such split positions are not uncommon in the Netherlands. These two chairs he continues to hold.
He has been an Advisor of the CWI (1985–2004). In 1989 he worked for a year at Philips Research in Eindhoven as a project leader and, subsequently, continued as a consultant there until 2002. While at Philips he was involved in industrial projects on consumer electronics and medical equipment.
He founded CONCUR, the international conference series in Concurrency Theory, by organising the first two conferences in Amsterdam in 1990 and 1991. He is a member of several editorial boards, and is the managing editor of Science of Computer Programming and the Journal of Logic and Algebraic Programming.
In 2004 Jan Bergstra contacted Mark Burgess of the Oslo University College, looking for scientific backing for a proposed one year masters course at the University in system administration. In spite of very different backgrounds, they shared a likeness of mind in their attitudes to science and research. This resulted in them becoming friends and going on to discuss and hone several parts of Promise theory together on mutual visits between Norway and the Netherlands.
He is honorary Professor of Computer Science at Swansea University and a member of Academia Europaea since 2006.
Work
On formal methods
Bergstra's research on computation has focussed on fundamental concepts, mathematical theories and practical tools. His main theoretical research programmes are:
a systematic study of specification methods for abstract data types starting in 1979, with John V. Tucker;
the invention, development and application of process algebras, especially ACP starting in 1984, with Jan Willem Klop, Jos Baeten and others;
Module Algebra starting in 1986, together with Paul Klint and Jan Heering;
Program Algebra starting in 1998, with Marijke Loots.
Based in this theoretical research, he has designed various formal methods and tools. In cooperation with Paul Klint and Jan Heering he designed the specification language ASF (in 1984) and the related ToolBus coordination language and system (in 1995). Some of his work has been undertaken in the setting of the ESPRIT programme. For example, the software projects FAST and METEOR funded the beginnings of the development of the process algebra ACP, and the telecommunications project SPECS led to the development of the specification language muCRL. All systems are still in daily use for research purposes, while ASF has been extensively used in the Dutch banking industry.
In academia
Through his research and organisational activities, Bergstra has had considerable influence on computer science in the Netherlands. For example, he has supervised the work of over 40 PhD students, many of whom have become academic computer scientists, 12 at professorial level. He set up the new computer science curriculum at Leiden in 1976, and for cognitive artificial intelligence at Utrecht University in 1989.
In 2000 he became the Director of the Teaching Institute of Information Sciences at the University of Amsterdam. In this role he has been responsible for the redesign of all courses when the bachelor-master system of degrees was introduced into the Netherlands.
Bergstra became a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2011.
Publications
Publications, a selection:
J. A. Bergstra, A. Ponse and S. A. Smolka (editors), The Handbook of Process Algebra, Elsevier, 2001.
J. A. Bergstra and M. E. Loots, "Program Algebra for Component Code", Formal Aspects of Computing, 12(1):1–17, 2000.
J. A. Bergstra and J. V. Tucker, "Equational specifications, complete term rewriting systems, and computable and semicomputable algebras", Journal of the ACM, 42(6):1194–1230, 1995.
J. A. Bergstra, J. Heering and P. Klint, "Module Algebra", Journal of the ACM, 37(2):335–372, 1990.
J. A. Bergstra, J. Heering and P. Klint (editors), Algebraic Specification, Addison Wesley, 1989.
References
External links
home page at fnwi.uva.nl
Jan Bergstra, Alban Ponse "A Bypass of Cohen's Impossibility Result", Advances in Grid Computing - EGC 2005, LNCS 3470, pages 1097-1106. Springer-Verlag, 2005
1951 births
Living people
Engineers from Rotterdam
Utrecht University alumni
Leiden University faculty
University of Amsterdam faculty
Utrecht University faculty
Academics of Swansea University
Dutch computer scientists
Members of Academia Europaea
Formal methods people
Philips employees
Members of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences |
17910680 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayOnLinux | PlayOnLinux | PlayOnLinux is a graphical frontend for the Wine software compatibility layer which allows Linux users to install Windows-based video games, Microsoft Office (2000 to 2010), Microsoft Internet Explorer, as well as many other applications such as Apple iTunes and Safari.
While initially developed for Linux-based systems, it is also used on macOS and FreeBSD under the names PlayOnMac and PlayOnBSD, respectively. It can also be used on other operating systems supported by Wine.
Internals
PlayOnLinux is developed using a combination of Bash, Python and wxPython.
The system provides wrapper shell scripts that specify the configuration of Wine needed in order to install and run a particular application.
It uses an online database of scripts to apply to different applications that need special configuration; if the game is not in the database, a manual installation can be performed. Programs can be installed and each one is put in a different container (WINEPREFIX) to prevent interference of one with another. This provides isolation in much the same way that CrossOver's bottles work.
Thus, applications may use different versions and configurations of Wine as appropriate. The installation of these is managed by the PlayOnLinux software itself without the requirement to install Wine separately.
The program also allows the user to create virtual partitions, in which specific programs can be installed with different Wine versions and programs, similar to a multi-boot computer.
Scripting language
PlayOnLinux includes advanced functions in Bash allowing the community to make scripts easily by controlling the installation process. Each supported program has its own script written in this language.
For example, the simple following script will popup a setup window with the message Hello World:
#!/bin/bash
[ "$PLAYONLINUX" = "" ] && exit 0
source "$PLAYONLINUX/lib/sources"
POL_SetupWindow_Init
POL_SetupWindow_message "Hello World!" "My first message"
POL_SetupWindow_Close
exit
See also
CrossOver (software)
Lutris
Proton (software)
Wine
Wine-Doors
References
External links
Supported software at PlayOnLinux
Wine (software)
Software derived from or incorporating Wine
Software that uses wxPython
Products introduced in 2007 |
594689 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM%205100 | IBM 5100 | The IBM 5100 Portable Computer is a portable computer (one of the first) introduced in September 1975, six years before the IBM Personal Computer, and eight before the first successful IBM compatible portable computer, the Compaq Portable. It was the evolution of a prototype called the SCAMP (Special Computer APL Machine Portable) that was developed at the IBM Palo Alto Scientific Center in 1973. Whether considered evolutionary from SCAMP or revolutionary, it still needed to be plugged into an electric socket.
When the IBM PC was introduced in 1981, it was originally designated as the IBM 5150, putting it in the "5100" series, though its architecture was unrelated to the IBM 5100's. The 5100 was IBM's second transportable computer. Previously, a truck-based IBM 1401 configured in 1960 for military use was designated a portable computer, and nicknamed a DataMobile.
The IBM 5100 was withdrawn in March 1982, by which time IBM had announced its larger cousins, the IBM 5110 (January 1978) and the IBM 5120 (February 1980).
SCAMP, the prototype
In 1973, Bill Lowe was instrumental in fostering an engineering prototype called SCAMP (Special Computer APL Machine Portable) created by Dr. Paul Friedl and a team at the IBM Los Gatos Scientific Center. SCAMP has been dubbed in PC Magazine as "the world's first personal computer". The IBM Los Gatos engineering prototype and a design model by IBM Industrial designer Tom Hardy, were utilized internally by Lowe in his early efforts to demonstrate the viability of creating a single-user computer. SCAMP emulated an IBM 1130 minicomputer in order to run APL\1130. In 1973, APL was generally available only on mainframe computers, and most desktop sized microcomputers such as the Wang 2200 or HP 9800 offered only BASIC. Because SCAMP was the first to emulate APL\1130 performance on a portable, single user computer, PC Magazine in 1983 designated SCAMP a "revolutionary concept" and "the world's first personal computer".
Description
The IBM 5100 is based on a 16-bit processor module called PALM (Put All Logic in Microcode). The IBM 5100 Maintenance Information Manual also referred to the PALM module as the controller. The PALM could directly address 64 KiB of memory. Some configurations of the IBM 5100 had Executable ROS (ROM) and RAM memory totalling more than 64 KiB, so a simple bank switching scheme was used. The actual APL and BASIC interpreters were stored in a separate Language ROS address space which the PALM treats as a peripheral device. Prices ranged from $11,000 (16k model) to $20,000 (64k). There were twelve models available: with BASIC, APL, or both. Memory could be 16 KB, 32 KB, 48 KB or 64 KB of main
storage. The 5100 sold for between $8,975 and $19,975 (between c. $ and $ in today's dollars).
Often described as being "approximately fifty pounds", its weight was closer to 55 pounds (25 kg). In December 1975 BYTE stated "Welcome, IBM, to personal computing". Describing the 5100 as "a 50-lb package of interactive personal computing," the magazine said that with the company's announcement "personal computing gains an entry from the industry's production and service giant," albeit "at a premium price".
A single integrated unit provided the keyboard, five-inch CRT display, tape drive, processor, several hundred KiB of read-only memory containing system software, and up to 64 KiB of RAM. It was the size of a small suitcase, weighed about 55 lb (25 kg), and could be transported in an optional carrying case, hence the "portable" designation.
In 1975, it was an amazing technical accomplishment to package a complete computer with a large amount of ROM and RAM, CRT display, and a tape drive into a machine that small. Earlier desktop computers of approximately the same size, such as the HP 9830, did not include a CRT nor nearly as much memory. The 5100 has an internal CRT (five-inch diagonal) and displays 16 lines of 64 characters. IBM provided an option switch to allow the user to display all 64 characters of each line, or only the left or right 32 characters (interspersed with spaces). Also there was a switch to display the first 512 bytes of main memory in hexadecimal for diagnostic purposes.
Two solutions existed for obtaining hardcopy output: printers such as the IBM 5103, and attaching a typewriter via
an interface. The TYCOM 5100 (from a company named Tycom Systems Corporation) enabled controlling an IBM Selectric typewriter, printing at 15.5 CPS.
Mass storage was provided by removable quarter-inch cartridge (QIC) magnetic tape drives that use standard DC300 cartridges to store 204 Kbytes. One drive was installed in the machine and a second (Model 5106) could be added in an attached box. The data format included several types and were written in 512 byte records. The introduction of a floppy option was not until the IBM 5110.
At the same time IBM announced the IBM 5100, it also announced the IBM 5100 Communications Adapter, that allowed the 5100 to transmit data to and receive data from a remote system. It made the 5100 appear the same as an IBM 2741 Communications Terminal and was designed to be able to communicate with IBM 2741 compatible machines in start-stop mode using the EBCD (Extended Binary Coded Decimal) notation. EBCD was similar to the more common IBM EBCDIC code, but not identical. A feature that does not appear in any advertisement for this computer is an optional Serial I/O port. In order to access the port extensions, they needed to be loaded from tape for the APL and BASIC programming languages. Unlike the Communications Adapter which could only be used to connect devices that supported the IBM 2741 Communications Terminal, this feature allowed users to connect and code for any device that used a standard Serial I/O port, including devices not made by IBM.
One periodical described "an interesting standard feature"; that a 5100 could be connected to a television. An external video monitor receiver could be connected to the IBM 5100 via a BNC connector on the back panel. While the 5100 had a front panel switch to select between white on black or black on white for the internal display. This switch did not affect the external monitor, which only offered bright characters on a black background. The vertical scan rate was fixed at 60 Hz.
Research Device Coupler
In Volume 16, Number 1, Page 41 (1977) of the IBM Systems Journal the article "The IBM 5100 and the Research Device Coupler — A personal laboratory automation system" read: "A small laboratory automation system has been developed by using the IBM 5100 Portable Computer in conjunction with the Research Device Coupler. This compact system provides a dedicated, high-level-language computer and a versatile data acquisition and control interface for experiments in which data rates do not exceed 9600 baud. Two experiments exemplify the use of the system. The Research Device Coupler described in this paper is a prototype of the IBM 7406 Device Coupler."
Programming languages
The 5100 was available with APL, BASIC, or both programming languages. At the time of introduction, APL was generally available only on mainframe computers, and most desktop sized computers such as the Wang 2200 or HP 9830 offered only BASIC.
Machines that supported both languages provided a toggle switch on the front panel to select the language. On the 5100's front panel, it was the third toggle from the left: up for APL, down for BASIC.
When the engineers at IBM asked one beta tester, Donald Polonis, for his analysis, he commented that if folks had to learn APL to use it, the IBM 5100 would not make it as a personal computer. He tried to impress the fact that a personal computer had to be easy to use to be accepted. Presumably, the special APL character set and APL keyboard were the primary obstacles to newcomers learning APL easily. APL had powerful features for manipulating data as vectors and matrices, while the competing HP 9830 had to offer language extensions on an add-on ROM for matrix operations.
Although not meant for regular users, the maintenance manual described a keyboard sequence to switch the 5100 into a maintenance mode. In this mode it was possible to read and write directly in RAM memory, video memory, CPU registers, interrupt vectors, clock counter, etc, using hexadecimal codes equivalent to assembly language. This allowed writing sophisticated programs directly into RAM. As this mode was a single-user system effectively running without an operating system, a determined user could manage the memory space and write stable multi-tasking programs using interrupts.
Emulator in microcode
The 5100 was based on IBM's innovative concept that, using an emulator written in microcode, a small and relatively cheap computer could run programs already written for much larger, and much more expensive, existing computers, without the time and expense of writing and debugging new programs.
Two such programs were included: a slightly modified version of APLSV, IBM's APL interpreter for its System/370 mainframes, and the BASIC interpreter used on IBM's System/3 minicomputer. Consequently, the 5100's microcode was written to emulate most of the functionality of both a System/370 and a System/3.
IBM later used the same approach for its 1983 introduction of the XT/370 model of the IBM PC, which was a standard IBM PC XT with the addition of a System/370 emulator card.
References
Further reading
External links
IBM 5100 Portable Computer
IBM 5100 from oldcomputers.net
IBM-5100 and collection of old digital and analog computers at oldcomputermuseum.com
IBM-5100 German/APL keyboard at University of Stuttgart Computer Museum
Computer-related introductions in 1975
History of computing hardware
5100
Portable computers
16-bit computers |
21291483 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows%20NT | Windows NT | Windows NT is a proprietary graphical operating system produced by Microsoft, the first version of which was released on July 27, 1993. It is a processor-independent, multiprocessing and multi-user operating system.
The first version of Windows NT was Windows NT 3.1 and was produced for workstations and server computers. It was a commercially focused operating system intended to complement consumer versions of Windows that were based on MS-DOS (including Windows 1.0 through Windows 3.1x). Gradually, the Windows NT family was expanded into Microsoft's general-purpose operating system product line for all personal computers, deprecating the Windows 9x family.
"NT" was formerly expanded to "New Technology" but no longer carries any specific meaning. Starting with Windows 2000, "NT" was removed from the product name and is only included in the product version string along with several low-level places within the system.
NT was the first purely 32-bit version of Windows, whereas its consumer-oriented counterparts, Windows 3.1x and Windows 9x, were 16-bit/32-bit hybrids. It is a multi-architecture operating system. Initially, it supported several instruction set architectures, including IA-32, MIPS, and DEC Alpha; support for PowerPC, Itanium, x64, and ARM were added later. The latest versions support x86 (including IA-32 and x64) and ARM. Major features of the Windows NT family include Windows Shell, Windows API, Native API, Active Directory, Group Policy, Hardware Abstraction Layer, NTFS, BitLocker, Windows Store, Windows Update, and Hyper-V.
Naming
It has been suggested that Dave Cutler intended the initialism "WNT" as a play on VMS, incrementing each letter by one. However, the project was originally intended as a follow-on to OS/2 and was referred to as "NT OS/2" before receiving the Windows brand. One of the original NT developers, Mark Lucovsky, states that the name was taken from the original target processor—the Intel i860, code-named N10 ("N-Ten"). A 1998 question-and-answer (Q&A) session with Bill Gates revealed that the letters were previously expanded to "New Technology" but no longer carry any specific meaning. The letters were dropped from the names of releases from Windows 2000 and later, though Microsoft described that product as being "Built on NT Technology".
Major features
One of the main purposes of NT is hardware and software portability. Various versions of NT family operating systems have been released for a variety of processor architectures, initially IA-32, MIPS, and DEC Alpha, with PowerPC, Itanium, x86-64 and ARM supported in later releases. An initial idea was to have a common code base with a custom Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) for each platform. However, support for MIPS, Alpha, and PowerPC was later dropped in Windows 2000. Broad software compatibility was initially achieved with support for several API "personalities", including Windows API, POSIX, and OS/2 APIs – the latter two were phased out starting with Windows XP. Partial MS-DOS and Windows 16-bit compatibility is achieved on IA-32 via an integrated DOS Virtual Machine – although this feature is not available on other architectures.
NT has supported per-object (file, function, and role) access control lists allowing a rich set of security permissions to be applied to systems and services. NT
has also supported Windows network protocols, inheriting the previous OS/2 LAN Manager networking, as well as TCP/IP networking (for which Microsoft used to implement a TCP/IP stack derived at first from a STREAMS-based stack from Spider Systems, then later rewritten in-house).
Windows NT 3.1 was the first version of Windows to use 32-bit flat virtual memory addressing on 32-bit processors. Its companion product, Windows 3.1, used segmented addressing and switches from 16-bit to 32-bit addressing in pages.
Windows NT 3.1 featured a core kernel providing a system API, running in supervisor mode (ring 0 in x86; referred to in Windows NT as "kernel mode" on all platforms), and a set of user-space environments with their own APIs which included the new Win32 environment, an OS/2 1.3 text-mode environment and a POSIX environment. The full preemptive multitasking kernel could interrupt running tasks to schedule other tasks, without relying on user programs to voluntarily give up control of the CPU, as in Windows 3.1 Windows applications (although MS-DOS applications were preemptively multitasked in Windows starting with Windows/386).
Notably, in Windows NT 3.x, several I/O driver subsystems, such as video and printing, were user-mode subsystems. In Windows NT 4, the video, server, and printer spooler subsystems were moved into kernel mode. Windows NT's first GUI was strongly influenced by (and programmatically compatible with) that from Windows 3.1; Windows NT 4's interface was redesigned to match that of the brand new Windows 95, moving from the Program Manager to the Windows shell design.
NTFS, a journaled, secure file system, is a major feature for NT. Windows NT also allows for other installable file systems; since versions 3.1, NT may be installed on FAT or HPFS file systems.
Windows NT introduced its own driver model, the Windows NT driver model, and is incompatible with older driver frameworks. With Windows 2000, the Windows NT driver model was enhanced to become the Windows Driver Model, which was first introduced with Windows 98, but was based on the NT driver model. Windows Vista added native support for the Windows Driver Foundation, which is also available for Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and to an extent, Windows 2000.
Development
Microsoft decided to create a portable operating system, compatible with OS/2 and POSIX and supporting multiprocessing, in October 1988. When development started in November 1989, Windows NT was to be known as OS/2 3.0, the third version of the operating system developed jointly by Microsoft and IBM. To ensure portability, initial development was targeted at the Intel i860XR RISC processor, switching to the MIPS R3000 in late 1989, and then the Intel i386 in 1990. Microsoft also continued parallel development of the DOS-based and less resource-demanding Windows environment, resulting in the release of Windows 3.0 in May 1990.
Windows 3.0 was eventually so successful that Microsoft decided to change the primary application programming interface for the still unreleased NT OS/2 (as it was then known) from an extended OS/2 API to an extended Windows API. This decision caused tension between Microsoft and IBM and the collaboration ultimately fell apart.
IBM continued OS/2 development alone while Microsoft continued work on the newly renamed Windows NT. Though neither operating system would immediately be as popular as Microsoft's MS-DOS or Windows products, Windows NT would eventually be far more successful than OS/2.
Microsoft hired a group of developers from Digital Equipment Corporation led by Dave Cutler to build Windows NT, and many elements of the design reflect earlier DEC experience with Cutler's VMS, VAXELN and RSX-11, but also an unreleased object-based operating system developed by Dave Cutler at Digital codenamed MICA. The team was joined by selected members of the disbanded OS/2 team, including Moshe Dunie.
The VMS kernel was primarily written in VAX MACRO, but Windows NT was designed to run on multiple instruction set architectures and multiple hardware platforms within each architecture. The platform dependencies are hidden from the rest of the system by the HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer).
While creating Windows NT, Microsoft developers rewrote VMS in C. Although they added the Win32 API, NTFS file system, GUI, and backwards compatibility with DOS, OS/2, and Win16, DEC engineers almost immediately noticed the two operating systems' internal similarities; parts of VAX/VMS Internals and Data Structures, published by Digital Press, accurately describe Windows NT internals using VMS terms. Instead of a lawsuit, Microsoft agreed to pay DEC $65–100 million, help market VMS, train Digital personnel on Windows NT, and continue Windows NT support for DEC Alpha.
Windows NT and VMS memory management, processes, and scheduling are very similar. Windows NT's process management differs by implementing threading, which DEC did not implement until VMS 7.0 in 1995, likely to compete with Microsoft.
Like VMS, Windows NT's kernel mode code distinguishes between the "kernel", whose primary purpose is to implement processor- and architecture-dependent functions, and the "executive". This was designed as a modified microkernel, as the Windows NT kernel was influenced by the Mach microkernel developed by Richard Rashid at Carnegie Mellon University, but does not meet all of the criteria of a pure microkernel. Both the kernel and the executive are linked together into the single loaded module ntoskrnl.exe; from outside this module, there is little distinction between the kernel and the executive. Routines from each are directly accessible, as for example from kernel-mode device drivers.
API sets in the Windows NT family are implemented as subsystems atop the publicly undocumented "native" API; this allowed the late adoption of the Windows API (into the Win32 subsystem). Windows NT was one of the earliest operating systems to use Unicode internally.
Releases
Windows NT 3.1 to 3.51 incorporated the Program Manager and File Manager from the Windows 3.1x series. Windows NT 4.0 onwards replaced those programs with Windows Explorer (including a taskbar and Start menu), which originally appeared in Windows 95.
The first release was given version number 3.1 to match the contemporary 16-bit Windows; magazines of that era claimed the number was also used to make that version seem more reliable than a ".0" release. Also the Novell IPX protocol was apparently licensed only to 3.1 versions of Windows software.
The NT version number is not now generally used for marketing purposes, but is still used internally, and said to reflect the degree of changes to the core of the operating system. However, for application compatibility reasons, Microsoft kept the major version number as 6 in releases following Vista, but changed it later to 10 in Windows 10. The build number is an internal identifier used by Microsoft's developers and beta testers.
Starting with Windows 8.1, Microsoft changed the Version API Helper functions' behavior. If an application is not manifested for Windows 8.1 or later, the API will always return version 6.2, which is the version number of Windows 8. This is because the manifest feature was introduced with Windows 8.1, to replace GetVersion and related functions.
Programming language
Windows NT is written in C and C++, with a very small amount written in assembly language. C is mostly used for the kernel code while C++ is mostly used for user-mode code. Assembly language is avoided where possible because it would impede portability.
Supported platforms
32-bit platforms
In order to prevent Intel x86-specific code from slipping into the operating system by developers used to developing on x86 chips, Windows NT 3.1 was initially developed using non-x86 development systems and then ported to the x86 architecture. This work was initially based on the Intel i860-based Dazzle system and, later, the MIPS R4000-based Jazz platform. Both systems were designed internally at Microsoft.
Windows NT 3.1 was released for Intel x86 PC compatible, PC-98, DEC Alpha, and ARC-compliant MIPS platforms. Windows NT 3.51 added support for the PowerPC processor in 1995, specifically PReP-compliant systems such as the IBM Power Series desktops/laptops and Motorola PowerStack series; but despite meetings between Michael Spindler and Bill Gates, not on the Power Macintosh as the PReP compliant Power Macintosh project failed to ship.
Intergraph Corporation ported Windows NT to its Clipper architecture and later announced an intention to port Windows NT 3.51 to Sun Microsystems' SPARC architecture, in conjunction with the company's planned introduction of UltraSPARC models in 1995, but neither version was sold to the public as a retail product.
Only two of the Windows NT 4.0 variants (IA-32 and Alpha) have a full set of service packs available. All of the other ports done by third parties (Motorola, Intergraph, etc.) have few, if any, publicly available updates.
Windows NT 4.0 was the last major release to support Alpha, MIPS, or PowerPC, though development of Windows 2000 for Alpha continued until August 1999, when Compaq stopped support for Windows NT on that architecture; and then three days later Microsoft also canceled their AlphaNT program,
even though the Alpha NT 5 (Windows 2000) release had reached RC1 status.
On January 5, 2011, Microsoft announced that the next major version of the Windows NT family will include support for the ARM architecture. Microsoft demonstrated a preliminary version of Windows (version 6.2.7867) running on an ARM-based computer at the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show. This eventually led to the commercial release of the Windows 8-derived Windows RT on October 26, 2012, and the implementation of NT over CE on Windows Phone 8.
According to Microsoft, it is a common misconception that the Xbox and Xbox 360 use a modified Windows 2000 kernel. In reality, the Xbox operating system was built from scratch but implements a subset of Windows APIs. The Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S, however, do use a modified version of Windows 10.
Windows 11 is the first non-server version of Windows NT to not support 32-bit platforms.
64-bit platforms
The 64-bit versions of Windows NT were originally intended to run on Itanium and DEC Alpha; the latter was used internally at Microsoft during early development of 64-bit Windows. This continued for some time after Microsoft publicly announced that it was cancelling plans to ship 64-bit Windows for Alpha. Because of this, Alpha versions of Windows NT are 32-bit only.
While Windows 2000 only supports Intel IA-32 (32-bit), Windows XP, Server 2003, Server 2008 and Server 2008 R2 each have one edition dedicated to Itanium-based systems. In comparison with Itanium, Microsoft adopted x64 on a greater scale: every version of Windows since Windows XP (which has a dedicated x64 edition) has x64 editions.
Hardware requirements
The minimum hardware specification required to run each release of the professional workstation version of Windows NT has been fairly slow-moving until the 6.0 Vista release, which requires a minimum of 15 GB of free disk space, a 10-fold increase in free disk space alone over the previous version.
See also
Architecture of Windows NT
F6 disk
Windows Server domain
ReactOS (an open source project with the goal of providing binary- and device driver-level compatibility with Windows NT)
Windows NT startup process
Windows Preinstallation Environment
Microsoft Servers
Notes
References
External links
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1993 software
NT
Advanced RISC Computing |
26245054 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbins%20v.%20Lower%20Merion%20School%20District | Robbins v. Lower Merion School District | Robbins v. Lower Merion School District is a federal class action lawsuit, brought in February 2010 on behalf of students of two high schools in Lower Merion Township, a suburb of Philadelphia. In October 2010, the school district agreed to pay $610,000 to settle the Robbins and parallel Hassan lawsuits against it.
The suit alleged that, in what was dubbed the "WebcamGate" scandal, the schools secretly spied on the students while they were in the privacy of their homes. School authorities surreptitiously and remotely activated webcams embedded in school-issued laptops the students were using at home. After the suit was brought, the school district, of which the two high schools are part, revealed that it had secretly taken more than 66,000 images. The suit charged that in doing so the district infringed on its students' privacy rights. A federal judge issued a preliminary injunction, ordering the school district to stop its secret webcam monitoring, and ordered the district to pay the plaintiffs' attorney fees.
The lawsuit was filed after 15-year-old high school sophomore (second year student) Blake Robbins was disciplined at school for his behavior in his home. The school based its decision to discipline Robbins on a photograph that had been secretly taken of him in his bedroom, via the webcam in his school-issued laptop. Without telling its students, the schools remotely accessed their school-issued laptops to secretly take pictures of students in their own homes, their chat logs, and records of the websites they visited. The school then transmitted the images to servers at the school, where school authorities reviewed them and shared the snapshots with others. In one widely published photo, the school had photographed Robbins in his bed. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), U.S. Attorney's Office, and Montgomery County District Attorney all initiated criminal investigations of the matter, which they combined and then closed because they did not find evidence "that would establish beyond a reasonable doubt that anyone involved had criminal intent". In addition, a U.S. Senate Judiciary subcommittee held hearings on the issues raised by the schools' secret surveillance, and Senator Arlen Specter introduced draft legislation in the Senate to protect against it in the future. Parents, media, and academics criticized the schools, and the matter was cited as a cautionary example of how modern technology can be used to infringe on personal privacy.
In July 2010, another student, Jalil Hassan, filed a parallel second suit. It related to 1,000+ images that the school took surreptitiously via his computer over a two-month period, including shots of him in his bedroom. The district had deactivated its surveillance of the student in February 2010, after the Robbins lawsuit was filed. Five months later—pursuant to a court order in the Robbins case—it informed Hasan for the first time that it had secretly taken the photographs. The district was put on notice of a third parallel suit that a third student intended to bring against the district, for "improper surveillance of the Lower Merion High School student on his school issued laptop", which included taking over 700 webcam shots and screenshots between December 2009 and February 2010.
Complaint
The lawsuit Robbins v. Lower Merion School District was filed on February 11, 2010, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, by plaintiffs' lead lawyer, Mark S. Haltzman of Silverang, Donohoe, Rosenzweig & Haltzman LLC. It was filed on behalf of Blake J. Robbins, and other high school students from the school district, by Robbins' parents.
The complaint alleged that after the high schools issued MacBook laptops with built-in iSight webcams to the students, school staff remotely activated the laptops' webcams covertly while the students were off school property, thereby invading the students' privacy. The plaintiffs said they had not consented to the spying.
The defendants were the Lower Merion School District (LMSD) in Pennsylvania (of which the two high schools are part), its nine-member Board of Directors, and its Superintendent (Christopher McGinley). Henry E. Hockeimer, Jr., of Ballard Spahr LLP was lead counsel for the defendants.
Laptops with covert cameras
Program
At the beginning of the 2009–10 school year, the school district issued individual Apple MacBook laptop computers to each of its 2,306 high school students. The laptops were for both in-school and at-home use.
It was part of the school district's One-to-One initiative. The program was piloted in September 2008 at Harriton High School and expanded in September 2009 to Lower Merion High School. It cost $2.6 million, less than a third of which was covered by grants.
Covert surveillance capability
The school loaded each student's computer with LANrev's remote activation and tracking software. This included the now-discontinued "TheftTrack". While TheftTrack was not enabled by default on the software, the program allowed the school district to elect to activate it, and to enable whichever of TheftTrack's surveillance options the school desired.
The school elected to enable TheftTrack to allow school district employees to secretly and remotely activate the standard webcam featured in all Apple laptops since 2006. That allowed school officials to secretly take photographs through the webcam, of whatever was in front of it and in its line of sight, and send the photographs to the school's server. The system took and sent a new photograph every 15 minutes when the laptop was on, and TheftTrack was activated, though school employees could adjust the timeframe to as low as one-minute intervals. LANrev disabled the webcams for all other uses (e.g., students were unable to use Photo Booth or video chat), so most students mistakenly believed that their webcams did not work at all.
In addition, TheftTrack allowed school officials to take screenshots, and send them to the school's server. Furthermore, a locating device would record the laptop's Internet (IP) address, enabling district technicians to discover which city the laptop was located in and its Internet service provider, though a subpoena to the provider would be required to pinpoint the exact location. In addition, LANrev allowed school officials to take snapshots of instant messages, web browsing, music playlists, and written compositions.
After sending the image to the school's server, the laptop was programmed to erase the "sent" file created on the laptop. That way, there would not be any trace by which students might realize that they were being watched and photographed. The forwarded photos, screenshots, and IP addresses were stored on the school's server, until they were purged by a school employee. It is not clear who in the schools had access to the photos and other images. Further, LANrev could be programmed to capture webcam pictures and screen captures automatically, and store them on the laptop's hard disk for later retrieval in areas of the computer's storage that were not accessible by the student, and which could be deleted remotely.
Fred Cate, Director of the Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research at Indiana University, said: "This is the classic definition of spyware. It's as bad as you can imagine." Eileen Lake of Wynnewood, whose three children attend district schools, said: "If there's a concern that laptops are misplaced or stolen, they should install a chip to locate them instead. There shouldn't be a reason to use webcams for that purpose." Marc Rotenberg, Georgetown University Law School information privacy professor and President and executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), said: "There are less intrusive ways to track stolen laptops, no question about it."
Purchase
Commenting on the now-discontinued TheftTrack, Carol Cafiero (school district Information Systems Coordinator, and supervisor of 16 technicians and administrative assistants) wrote to her boss Virginia DiMedio (district Director of Technology for a number of years, until June 2009, and a member of the district Superintendent's five-person Cabinet) that district Network Technician Mike Perbix "loves it, and I agree it is a great product". Perbix also raved about the spying capabilities of TheftTrack in a May 2008 LANrev promotional webcast, saying he "really, really" liked it.
DiMedio considered Perbix and Cafiero's recommendations that the district purchase the software, including a memo in which Cafiero noted that "we can mark [a student's laptop as] stolen on the LANrev server, and then the laptop will take screenshots and pictures of the user with the built-in camera, and transmit that information back to our server." DiMedio then approved the purchase and installation of the $156,000 surveillance software.
Concealment of surveillance
The school district intentionally did not publicize the existence of the surveillance technology. It also actively sought to conceal it.
The district did not inform students or their parents, in any of its communications with them (including the district's promotion of the laptop program, guidelines about the laptops, and the individual contracts that it gave students to sign), that the laptops gave the district the ability to secretly take photographs of whatever was in the line of sight of the student-issued laptop webcams, and to take screenshots; nor did it inform them that the district would avail itself of those capabilities. The district also did not adopt policies regarding the use of TheftTrack by district employees.
DiMedio said "the district did not widely publicize the feature 'for obvious reasons. She reportedly declined to tell students about TheftTrack because doing so could "defeat its purpose".
Perbix said that when "you're controlling someone's machine, you don't want them to know what you're doing". He praised TheftTrack in a YouTube video he produced, saying: "It's ... just a fantastic feature ... especially when you're in a school environment". Perbix maintained a personal blog in which he discussed computer oversight techniques, including how to cloak remote monitoring so it is invisible to the user.
Concerns raised by student intern
On August 11, 2008, weeks before the district handed the laptops out to students, a Harriton High School student interning in the school's IT Department sent an email to DiMedio, with the subject line: "1:1 concern (Important)". He said that he had recently learned of the district's purchase of LANrev, and had researched the software. He had made the "somewhat startling" discovery that it would allow school employees to monitor students' laptops remotely. He wrote:
I would not find this a problem if students were informed that this was possible, for privacy's sake. However, what was appalling was that not only did the District not inform parents and students of this fact ... [W]hile you may feel that you can say that this access will not be abused, I feel that this is not enough to ensure the integrity of students, and that even if it was no one would have any way of knowing (especially end-users). I feel it would be best that students and parents are informed of this before they receive their computers. ... I could see not informing parents and students of this fact causing a huge uproar.
DiMedio responded:
DiMedio then forwarded the e-mails to District Network Technician Perbix, who suggested a further response to the student intern. With DiMedio's approval, Perbix e-mailed the student intern, also dismissing the student's concern:
Principal Kline
In addition, two members of the Harriton High School student council twice privately confronted their Principal, Steven Kline, more than a year prior to the suit. They were concerned "that the school could covertly photograph students using the laptops' cameras". Students were particularly troubled by the momentary flickering of their webcams' green activation lights, which several students reported would periodically turn on when the camera was not in use, signaling that the webcam had been turned on. Student Katerina Perech recalled: "It was just really creepy." Some school officials reportedly denied that it was anything other than a technical glitch, and offered to have the laptops examined if students were concerned. Kline admitted the school could covertly photograph students using the laptops' cameras. The students told him they were worried about privacy rights, asked whether the school system read the saved files on their computers, and suggested that at minimum the student body should be warned formally of possible surveillance. No such action was taken.
Robbins lawsuit
Covert surveillance
On October 20, 2009, school district officials knew Blake J. Robbins, a sophomore at Harriton High School, was in possession of his laptop and had taken it home. On that day, they nevertheless decided to begin capturing webcam photos and screenshots from his school-issued MacBook, by activating its camera covertly. Building-Level Technician Kyle O'Brien testified later, at his deposition, that Harriton High School Assistant Vice Principal Lindy Matsko directed O'Brien to activate the tracking. O'Brien complied, by e-mailing District Network Technician Perbix, and directing him to initiate the TheftTrack. At her deposition, Matsko denied authorizing the tracking.
Two hours later on October 20, Perbix e-mailed O'Brien to let him know that TheftTrack was running on Robbins' computer, and that Perbix had determined Robbins' location. Perbix wrote: "Now currently online at home." The next day, Perbix asked O'Brien whether he should continue tracking the laptop, and O'Brien responded "yes".
Over the next 15 days, the school district captured at least 210 webcam photos and 218 screenshots. They included photos inside his home of Robbins sleeping and of him partially undressed, as well as photos of his father. The district also snapped images of Robbins' instant messages and video chats with his friends, and sent them to its servers. Those 429 images, however, only reflected the number of images later recovered—during the ensuing litigation the district conceded it had been unable to recover a week's worth of images that it had taken.
On October 26, Perbix observed one of the screenshots of Robbins, taken in his bedroom. Four days later Perbix showed it to his boss, district Director of Information Systems George Frazier. After discussing it with Frazier, Perbix shared the images captured from Robbins' webcam and screenshots with Harriton High School Principal Kline and with Matsko. In early November, a number of Harriton High School administrators, including Kline, Matsko, and Assistant Principal Lauren Marcuson, met to discuss the images. According to Matsko, Kline advised her that unless there was additional evidence giving them a contextual basis for doing so, they should not discuss the images with Robbins or his parents, because they involved off-school-campus activities. However, Matsko ultimately decided to discuss certain images with Robbins or his parents.
Matsko called Robbins into her office on November 11, 2009. She showed him a photograph taken with the webcam embedded in his school-issued laptop, as he was in his bedroom in his Penn Valley home. Matsko indicated that she thought it was "proof", and initially disciplined him for "improper behavior" (drug use and sales). His parents were contacted, and they told school officials that the officials were mistaken. Ultimately, Robbins was not disciplined.
Robbins said that Matsko told him that the district was able to activate the webcam embedded in a student's laptop remotely at any time, and view and capture whatever image was visible—without the knowledge or consent of anyone in the webcam's line of sight. After a district counselor told them that an account of the incident had been placed in Robbins' personal school file, however, the family decided to bring suit.
Complaint
The plaintiffs alleged that:
many of the images captured and intercepted may consist of images of minors and their parents or friends in compromising or embarrassing positions, including ... various stages of dress or undress.
In a widely published photograph, Robbins was shown sleeping in his bed. The hundreds of photos taken of the 15-year-old also included him standing shirtless after getting out of the shower, as well as photos of his father and friends. Not included in what was turned over to the family was one week's worth of images that the school district said it had not been able to recover.
The lawsuit claimed that the district's use of the webcams violated the United States Constitution's guarantees of privacy of the students and their families and friends at home, as well as Pennsylvania common law (expectation of privacy) and Section 1983 of the U.S. Civil Rights Act (right to privacy).
It also accused officials of spying through "indiscriminate use of an ability to remotely activate the webcams incorporated into each laptop", and thereby violating the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution (right to privacy) and a number of electronic communications laws: the U.S. Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA; intentional intercepts of electronic communications), the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA; intentional access of a computer that exceeds authorization to obtain information), the Stored Communications Act (SCA; unauthorized acquisition of stored electronic communications), and the Pennsylvania Wiretapping and Electronic Surveillance Act (PWESA; intentional intercept of electronic communications).
Initial response
School district spokesman Doug Young announced on February 19 that the school district intended to contest the lawsuit. Henry E. Hockeimer, Jr., and four Ballard Spahr attorneys represented the district.
On February 18, 2010, the day the case was made public, the school district posted an initial reply on its website asserting that: "The tracking-security feature was limited to taking a still image of the operator and the operator's screen", and that it "has only been used for the limited purpose of locating a lost, stolen, or missing laptop." On 19 February the district said in a further statement to parents that "this includes tracking down a loaner computer that, against regulations, might be taken off campus." The complaint had not indicated whether Robbins' laptop had been reported lost or stolen, and Young said the district could not disclose that fact. Young asserted that the district never violated its policy of only using the remote-activation software to find missing laptops.
That same day, the district turned off TheftTrack on tracked laptops, and deleted pictures from LANrev, as noted on the 16th page of a subsequent forensics review. The district also denied that the school administrator had ever used a photo taken by a school-issued laptop to discipline a student. The vice principal reiterated the statement in a video distributed to national media on February 24, 2010.
On February 20, 2010, Haltzman, Robbins' counsel, told MSNBC Live that Robbins had been sitting in his home eating "Mike and Ike" candy in front of his school-issued laptop. The attorney said that the vice-principal had accused Robbins of taking illegal pills after seeing him eating the candy in a webcam image. Michael Smerconish, a Philadelphia Inquirer columnist who reviewed the photo, said that it did in fact appear to be the same size and shape as Mike and Ike candy. Haltzman said that his client's laptop had not been reported stolen or lost. The lawyer also raised questions as to who in the school system decided when to activate each student's webcam, and for what reasons.
In a statement to the press on February 24, 2010, Robbins emphasized that the case was about the undisclosed spying capabilities which the district covertly maintained.
Admissions, and further instances
The school district later admitted to "serious mistakes" and "misguided actions". It also acknowledged that its monitoring system was flawed, and was "not handled appropriately". The district's Superintendent admitted that students and parents were not informed of the secret spying feature, and the district said that "notice should have been given" to the students and parents, and that the district's failure to do so "was a significant mistake". School Board President David Ebby said: "It's a big, big horrible error in judgment."
The school district eventually acknowledged that it had taken more than half the images after missing laptops were recovered. A computer forensics study commissioned by the defendants recovered 66,503 images produced by LANrev, though it was not able to recover all that had been deleted by district employees. The district asserted that it did not have any evidence that individual students had been specifically targeted. Haltzman said: "I wish the school district [had] come clean earlier, as soon as they had this information ... not waiting until something was filed in court revealing the extent of the spying".
Christopher Null, technology writer for Yahoo! News, observed: "It's a little difficult to believe that none of the material captured is scandalous".
The district also admitted that in Robbins' case the remote surveillance was activated and left running for two weeks, even though school officials knew the laptop was at Robbins' home. It also admitted that its technology staff activated the camera on his computer, and gave images it covertly took to two Harriton High School principals.
Six days after the initiation of the lawsuit, and after a district review of its privacy policies, the school district disabled its ability to activate students' webcams remotely. Lillie Coney of the Electronic Privacy Information Center said: "If they thought it was right, they wouldn't have stopped."
On February 24, the district suspended and put on paid administrative leave its two staffers who were authorized to activate the remote monitoring, district 12-year veterans Information Systems Coordinator Cafiero and Network Technician Perbix. The district indicated that it had done so as a precautionary measure, in light of their roles in activating TheftTrack, and the ensuing investigation.
In a motion seeking to examine Cafiero's computer, excerpts of emails between her and Amanda Wuest, District Desktop Technician, about the surreptitious webcams were cited in which the technician emailed Cafiero: "This is awesome. It's like a little LMSD soap opera", and Cafiero replied, "I know, I love it". Her lawyer, Charles Mandracchia of the law firm Mandracchia & McWhirk LLC, said she had only turned the webcam system on when requested to do so by school officials.
When Haltzman sought to depose Cafiero, she fought his effort to ask her questions at a deposition. However, U.S. District Judge Jan DuBois refused to quash Haltzman's subpoena, ruling in April 2010 that Cafiero may have information relevant to the case. In her first deposition, Cafiero declined to answer questions, citing her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. However, after she was interviewed by the FBI in April 2010, in a later deposition she answered questions under oath. Others deposed included Matsko, Perbix, and O'Brien.
In June and July 2010, in accordance with an order from the federal judge, dozens of other high school students were notified by counsel for the schools that they too had been secretly photographed by school authorities via their webcams. The school district said that more than 58,000 photos had been taken from November 2008 through February 2010 and recovered on school servers, but that the exact number was not known as a number of the photos had been deleted by the district. The students and their parents were invited to privately review the photos that had been taken, and a federal judge oversaw the review process. In about 15 cases, the school said it had no answer as to who ordered the surreptitious webcam activation, or why.
Student reactions
Tom Halpern, a 15-year-old sophomore who attends the high school, told CBS News, "Everybody's pretty disgusted. ... I think it's pretty despicable." Many students said they mostly used their laptops in their bedrooms, and rarely turned them off. Karen Gotlieb, whose daughter attends the school, said, "I just received an e-mail from my daughter, who is very upset, saying, 'Mom, I have my laptop open in my room all the time, even when I'm changing. Savanna Williams, a sophomore at Harriton, said she always kept her computer open, its webcam exposed, when she was changing in her bedroom, and in the bathroom when she was taking a shower. She said: "I was like, 'Mom, I have this open all the time. ... This is disturbing. Her mother said: "the possibility of this being true is a complete violation of her privacy, of our entire home—not just Savanna. They have the option to watch [me], my husband, my other child. They violated our trust."
Mother Candace Chacona said she was "flabbergasted" by the allegations: "My first thought was that my daughter has her computer open almost around the clock in her bedroom. Has she been spied on?" Chuck Barsh, an insurance broker whose son is in high school, called the district's actions a "gross invasion" of student privacy, and supported the lawsuit, saying: "These people were able to look at our kids in our house". Mike Salmonson, father of an elementary school student, said the matter was "part of ... institutional arrogance—a lack of full disclosure and honesty" on the part of district administrators.
Reactions of legal experts and computer experts
John Palfrey, Harvard Law School professor and Vice Dean, and co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society cyberspace research center, said: "If the facts are as they appear to be in the claims by the student, it's shocking." David Kairys, a Temple University Law School professor who specializes in civil rights and constitutional law and is author of Philadelphia Freedom: Memoir of a Civil Rights Lawyer, described the school district's policy as "Orwellian". He said that it appeared to be a "very clear civil-rights violation", continuing: "It's pretty outrageous. It's sort of beyond belief that they wouldn't say, 'This is going too far. Susan Friewald, University of San Francisco Law School professor and expert in electronic privacy law, said: "they had to get consent to take photos ... [I]f the school districts are going to use [laptops] to spy on students, we should certainly be concerned."
Witold "Vic" Walczak, the Legal Director of the Pennsylvania chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (not a party in the lawsuit), commented:
Joseph Daly, who retired in 2009 as Lower Merion Police Superintendent, when told about the pictures snapped from students' laptops, said: "That's illegal as hell."
Lillie Coney, associate director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (a civil liberties public interest research center), said: "This definitely was not ... a rational thing for the school to be engaged in", and called it "an outrageous invasion of individual privacy". Ari Schwartz, Vice President and COO at the Center for Democracy and Technology (a civil liberties public interest organization), said: "What about the [potential] abuse of power from higher-ups, trying to find out more information about the head of the PTA ? If you don't think about the privacy and security consequences of using this kind of technology, you run into problems."
Kevin Bankston, senior staff attorney specializing in privacy law with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (an international digital rights advocacy and legal organization), said: "I've never heard of anything this egregious. Nobody would have imagined that schools would peer into students' private homes, and even bedrooms, without any kind of justification." He continued: "This is utterly shocking, and a blatant violation of [the students' Fourth Amendment] constitutional rights. The school district would have no more right to [use the laptop's webcam] than to install secret listening devices in the textbooks that they issued students." He suggested that students tape over the lens of their laptop's camera. Parry Aftab, an Internet privacy lawyer and executive director of WiredSafety.org, said the district committed a clear violation of several laws including the Fourth Amendment.
Dan Tynan, Executive Editor of PC World and author of Computer Privacy Annoyances (2005), said: "This is extremely creepy, and way beyond the purview of the school. ... There's really no need to try to take a picture of someone—in fact, how can you prove the person in front of the laptop was the one who stole it? ... And to install this stuff on anyone's computer and not notify them about, it is just begging for a world of pain." Robert Richardson, Director of the Computer Security Institute, said: "It's incredible that they didn't realize they were playing with fire." Technology journalist Robert X. Cringely wrote in InfoWorld:
LANrev, the manufacturer of the software—which was acquired by Absolute Software, and rebranded as "Absolute Manage" in February 2010—denounced the use of its software for any illegal purpose, emphasized that theft recovery should be left to law enforcement professionals, and criticized vigilantism. The company denied any knowledge of, or complicity in, either Perbix's or the district's actions. Absolute Software then permanently disabled TheftTrack in its next LANrev update.
Media reactions
The Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Monica Yant Kinney wrote:
The newspaper, in an editorial, called the school's decision to use the remote camera feature "misguided", and wrote "families had every right to be shocked. As an anti-theft strategy, the webcam tracking was overkill—and not even as useful as other means. Then failing to disclose the webcam use was a huge gaffe, compounded by a lack of policies safeguarding students' privacy." Talk radio host and The Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Michael Smerconish added:
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette wrote in an editorial: "Schools have no business or jurisdiction in the homes of students. The ... District ... should never have been in the business of surveillance in the first place. Tough laws are needed to prevent Lower Merion or other school districts from going down this path again." The New York Times, in an editorial, said: "Conducting video surveillance of students in their homes is an enormous invasion of their privacy. If the district was really worried about losing the laptops, it could have used GPS devices to track their whereabouts ... Whatever it did, the school had a responsibility to inform students that if they accepted the laptops, they would also accept monitoring."
Technology writer Dan Gillmor, writing in Salon, said: "The case also reminds us that civil lawsuits play a vital role in our society. ... sometimes, as in this case, they are the last line of defense when powerful institutions beat up on individuals. We forget that at our peril."
Motions; injunction and legal fees granted
Haltzman filed an emergency motion seeking an injunction to prevent the school district from reactivating what he referred to as its "peeping-tom technology". The Pennsylvania chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) submitted an amicus brief in support of the student, arguing that the photo amounted to an illegal search. Citing case law regarding privacy and unconstitutional searches, the ACLU's brief stated: "While the act of placing the camera inside students' laptops may not implicate the Fourth Amendment, once the camera is used a search has occurred that, absent a warrant or consent, violates the Fourth Amendment (see United States v. Karo)." Witold "Vic" J. Walczak, the ACLU of Pennsylvania Legal Director, said:
U.S. District Court Judge Jan DuBois granted Haltzman's request on February 23, 2010, ordering the district to stop remotely activating the web cameras and taking screenshots from the students' school-issued laptops, and to preserve all relevant electronic data. While remote activation of the webcam was deactivated, the LANrev software was not removed. Untrusting students at the two high schools took to taping over their laptops' webcams, even though school officials insisted they had stopped the practice. In May, after it was revealed that the school had secretly captured tens of thousands of webcam images and screenshots, the judge made the ban on the school's secret webcam monitoring permanent.
In addition, the court issued a gag order, prohibiting district officials from discussing the case with students and parents without first clearing their communications with the plaintiffs' attorney.
The class-action lawsuit sought class status on the grounds that individual compensation may be small, and therefore multiple parties would need to share in covering the legal fees. On July 7, 2010, Judge DuBois issued an order granting the district its second extension of time to respond to plaintiffs' request for class action certification.
The judge issued an order in April 2010 granting Haltzman's motion requiring Cafiero to let Haltzman make copies of the hard drives of her two personal computers, to determine whether Cafiero had used the software to spy on students, and transferred images to her own computers. The judge issued an order in May, requiring school officials to arrange for 40 high school students and their parents to see the images secretly taken from their laptops. Judge DuBois in June 2010 ordered the district to share with a consultant for Robbins some of its computer evidence, gathered in an investigation conducted by lawyers and computer experts hired by the defendants.
The district suggested that Robbins had a 'loaner' laptop, because he had not paid a $55 insurance fee which would have permitted him to use a regular computer. In a 2009 letter to parents, Harriton High School Principal Kline said that "no uninsured laptops are permitted off campus", and said that students who had not paid the insurance fee could use a loaner. Asked if Robbins took a loaner computer home without authorization, Young declined to comment. Haltzman denied that Robbins was ever notified that his computer use was a problem, and said that Robbins had taken his computer home "every single day" for a month. He also pointed out that while Robbins was one of about 20 students who had not paid the $55 insurance fee, he was the only one tracked.
On August 31, 2010, Judge DuBois ordered the school district, as the losing party, to pay plaintiffs' attorney his legal fees related to his bringing the action that led to the preliminary injunction against the school district's secret webcam monitoring, inasmuch as plaintiffs were the successful "prevailing party" in a civil rights case.
School district litigation with its insurance company
The school district and its insurance company, Graphic Arts Mutual Insurance Company, filed federal lawsuits against each other in April 2010. They argued over who should pay any settlements by the district, and the district's related bills. Ballard Spahr also represented the district in the insurance litigation.
Graphic Arts asked for a declaratory judgment, so it would not have to pay the district's legal bills. The insurance company contended that none of Robbins' claims amounted to "personal injury", as defined and covered in the district's $1 million liability policy. The district and the insurance company also accused each other of breaching their contract.
The district, on Philadelphia's Main Line, is one of Pennsylvania's richest school systems. It had a $193 million budget and spent $21,600 per student in 2008–09, the most in the Philadelphia region.
The district had been billed $953,000 in legal fees by May 2010 by Ballard Spahr's four attorneys. In addition, L-3 Communications, its computer consultant, had billed the district $240,000 through May 2010 for forensically analyzing the district's computers. Furthermore, by June 30, software company SunGard had billed the district $32,000 to help it revise its policies on school-issued laptops. The district was also paying the aggregate $200,000 salary of its two employees whom it had suspended. If the judge were to side fully with the insurance company, the district would have also been responsible for paying all of the costs of its litigation with the insurer.
Ultimately, the insurance company agreed to cover $1.2 million of the district's costs.
Defendants' report
Conclusions
The defendants commissioned a 69-page report, which was prepared by lawyers from Ballard Spahr, the same law firm that the school district had hired to defend it in the Robbins lawsuit. The defendants' counsel nevertheless entitled their May 3, 2010, report: "Independent Investigation".
The report cited the district for inconsistent policies, shoddy recordkeeping, misstep after misstep, and "overzealous" use of technology "without any apparent regard for privacy considerations". As to some of the secret surveillance, the report remarked: "the wisdom and propriety of activating image tracking in these circumstances are questionable at best."
The report said that to the extent that district Board members, its Superintendent (who learned of TheftTrack at a meeting of his Cabinet in 2008), and its principals were aware of TheftTrack's capabilities, they "did not appreciate the potential of that ability to raise serious privacy concerns, and they should have sought more information ... or advice" from the district lawyer. The report also said that school Board members and school administrators who knew that tracking was in place failed to ask the right questions regarding privacy issues, district lawyers did not probe the legal considerations of handing out computers, and administrators did not talk about the ramifications. It noted that Harriton High School Principal Kline, for example, learned about TheftTrack monitoring in September 2008, and said he asked DiMedio whether the district should advise students and parents about it. But he never revisited the subject after DiMedio opined that the district should not because doing so would undermine TheftTrack's effectiveness. The report faulted district administrators and staffers for failing to disclose and mismanaging the surveillance system, and for failing to establish strict policies to protect "unsuspecting" students' privacy.
The report also found that district officials knew that Robbins had taken his laptop home, but still decided to activate the covert surveillance that secretly captured hundreds of webcam photos and screenshots—included pictures of Robbins sleeping and partially undressed, a photo of his father, and images of instant messages and photos of friends with whom Robbins was video-chatting. After the program was activated on Robbins' computer, one district employee had emailed another: "Now currently online at home".
The report acknowledged that investigators were unable to find explanations for a number of the tracking activations, and for why the district failed to consider privacy implications. It noted conflicting accounts from district employees, that there were gaps in data, and said evidence was still being gathered. The report said the covert cameras were used both for missing computers and for unknown purposes, and that the district left such webcams activated for long periods in cases "in which there was no longer any possible legitimate reason" for capturing images.
Images recovered
The report attached an L-3 computer forensics study indicating it had recovered 66,503 images produced by LANrev from those instances in which the school chose to activate the covert webcam snapshot and screenshot feature, though the investigators were not able to recover all images as a number had been deleted by district employees. Of those images that were recovered, the report indicated that 30,564 webcam photos and 27,428 screenshots were recovered from the LANrev server itself. The report noted that images that had been covertly taken were deleted from the district server intermittently from March 2009 on. Many of the photographs were of students, their family members, and others in their homes and elsewhere. The secret photos included "a number of photographs of males without shirts, and other content that the individuals appearing in the photographs might consider to be of a similarly personal nature".
Looking at the information available to it, the report found evidence of TheftTrack being triggered on 177 laptops in the 2008–2010 time period. In 57% of the cases, the school chose to activate only the IP-address-tracking feature, and not to activate the feature that triggered the capture of secret webcam snapshots and screenshots. Based on the available evidence, the report found that Cafiero activated TheftTrack 3 times on student laptops, and Perbix activated it 161 times. The report noted that in a number of instances TheftTrack was left on, taking photos and screenshots for extended periods of time even when a laptop was not considered missing or stolen.
In addition, there were 13 activations on student laptops for which investigators were unable to determine who activated TheftTrack, as well as 10 activations for which investigators were unable to determine why tracking was initiated. Together, they resulted in thousands of photos and screenshots. Of the 10 unexplained activations, in 7 cases the investigators were unable to recover any images at all from the remaining district record.
It was not only students who had their laptops' covert surveillance mechanism turned on. The school also activated surveillance through the laptops of six high school teachers. Investigators were unable to determine why the teachers' secret surveillance had been initiated or, in half the cases, who had made the surveillance request.
Investigators were not able to determine how often the images were viewed by school personnel. A total of 18 members of the district's systems staff had LANrev administrator permissions during the 2008–2010 school years, and 16 of them had access to data stored on the LANrev server. Furthermore, those with access to the photos and screenshots could, and in some circumstances did, forward the photos and screenshots to others.
IT staff
The report also criticized the district information systems personnel. The district's top technology administrator since July 2009, George Frazier, told investigators that he considered the systems department the "Wild West", "because there were few official policies, and no manuals of procedures, and personnel were not regularly evaluated". The report said former information systems Director DiMedio and her staffers "were not forthcoming" about the tracking technology; DiMedio declined to be interviewed unless the district reimbursed her for the cost of her retaining an attorney, which the district declined to do. DiMedio's lawyer criticized the report for faulting DiMedio's role in the district's use of web cameras. He criticized the cover-page description of the investigators' work as an "independent" probe, saying: "It was not an independent investigation. What flows from that [report] is a clear attempt to insulate and protect the current [district] board at the expense of the IT [information technology] department and employees like Ginny ... to throw her under the bus." He said DiMedio never hid the software's tracking features from administrators or board members. He also noted that DiMedio had been gone for months when the assistant principal confronted Robbins with the photo taken by his laptop webcam in his home.
The report criticized Perbix for reacting negatively on September 11, 2009, when Frazier told him a teacher had requested that his webcam be disabled, with Perbix writing to Frazier: "teachers should not even be allowed to cover the cameras as they do now ... theft track ... does not record video, only a snapshot every 15 minutes. Is someone afraid that we are spying on them?" Jason Hilt, district Supervisor of Instructional Technology, when he learned that TheftTrack could be activated without police involvement, taped over his camera and shared his concern about remote webcam activation with Frazier and Director of Curriculum Services Steve Barbato.
Changes in policy
The school district did not have any official policies or procedures for the use of TheftTrack. Neither its Board, administrators, school administrators, nor the heads of its IT Department imposed any official restrictions on the use of the software's covert surveillance features.
In May 2010, Judge DuBois ordered the district to adopt a policy relating to its surveillance through students' laptops. The district promised never to look at a student's laptop files, unless: a) the laptop has been returned to the school; b) there is "reasonable suspicion" that the student is violating law, school rules, or district policies; or c) a student has signed a consent form. Following criticism of the district's training requirements and computer responsibility standards, the district is considering new written policies in those areas as well. On August 16, 2010, the Board banned the district from conducting webcam surveillance through students' laptops, in response to the Robbins lawsuit.
Opposition
In opposition to the lawsuit, some parents formed the Lower Merion Parents committee. The parents on the one hand were angry about the school district's secret use of webcams to view students and their friends and families in their homes. On the other hand, however, the parents were concerned that they themselves would have to bear a financial cost in paying for the district's litigation, and possible settlement or court-ordered penalty.
The group was concerned that the Robbins lawsuit would be costly, attract negative attention to the district while harming its "civic tone" and distracting from its educational mission, and take a long time to resolve. Particular attention was given to the fact that payment for the members of the class in the class action suit would effectively come from the district's taxpayers, if not its insurer. Lower Merion Parents did not, however, oppose a full investigation of the district's technological capabilities and of any abuses the district committed.
On March 2, 2010, more than 100 parents met in Narberth, Pennsylvania, to discuss the issues. Robbins' attorney Mark Haltzman requested an opportunity to speak to the group to update the parents, but was denied. The meeting focused on whether the parents wanted the Robbins family to represent them, how to lift the court's "gag order" agreement that district officials and school board members not talk about the case without first consulting the Robbinses and their lawyer, and how to learn what actually happened with the laptops and webcams. One option opposing parents have is to file a motion to intervene, which is an agreement to be parties in the case, but with different interests than the plaintiff. A similar group called Parents in Support of the Lower Merion School District collected over 750 signatures by March 3 in an online petition. Philadelphia Weekly noted that "Paradoxically, this group of Lower Merion parents are going to try to stop the gratuitous litigation by getting more lawyers involved."
Criminal investigations
The FBI, U.S. Attorney, and Montgomery County District Attorney all investigated whether the school district had violated criminal laws. On August 17, 2010, U.S. Attorney Zane David Memeger announced he would not file charges against district officials, because: "We have not found evidence that would establish beyond a reasonable doubt that anyone involved had criminal intent".
The U.S. Attorney's Office in Philadelphia had initiated a criminal probe, and in February 2010 issued a grand jury subpoena, asking the district for a broad range of records. The Office took the unusual step of announcing on February 22 that it would be investigating the matter, and said that: "Our focus will only be on whether anyone committed any crimes." In April, the Office sought access to the photos of a number of children, some of which may include nude or partially clothed shots, inasmuch as taking nude images of children could be criminal conduct.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation investigated whether federal criminal laws, including wiretap, computer-intrusion, and privacy laws, were violated. The FBI and U.S. Attorney's Office said in a joint statement in July 2010: "[The U.S. Attorneys Office] intend[s] to work as a team with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Montgomery County District Attorney's Office, Montgomery County detectives, and the Lower Merion Police Department to determine if any crimes were committed". FBI agents reviewed the school district's computers and thousands of images secretly captured from students' computers, interviewed district employees, and reviewed district records.
The Montgomery County District Attorney and Lower Merion detectives had also launched an investigation to see if any criminal laws were broken, including wiretap and privacy laws. District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman said: "we were inundated with calls from members of the community asking about this. It became clear to me that we needed to look at this further."
The civil lawsuit had a much lower burden of proof, and was unaffected by the decision. Lower Merion Police Superintendent Michael McGrath said: "This would appear to be a matter to be resolved in civil court."
U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee hearing
Arlen Specter, U.S. senator (D-PA) and Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Drugs, held a hearing on March 29, 2010, investigating the use of computers to spy on students. Specter said: "The issue is one of surreptitious eavesdropping. Unbeknownst to people, their movements and activities were under surveillance."
Specter said existing wiretap and video-voyeurism statutes do not address today's widespread use of cellphone, laptop, and surveillance cameras. After hearing testimony at the hearing from Blake Robbins and others, Specter said that new federal legislation was needed to regulate electronic privacy.
Specter introduced legislation to clarify that it is illegal to capture silent visual images inside a person's home. Specter said there was "a very significant invasion of privacy with these webcams". ... us expect to ... video surveillance when we leave our homes and go out each day—at the ATM, at traffic lights, or in stores ... we do not expect is ... surveillance in our homes, in our bedrooms ... we do not expect it for our children in our homes.
Other ramifications
An "LMSD is Watching You" Facebook page was started, and within days had hundreds of members. At the same time, parody T-shirts were already being sold on the net, including one featuring the ominous red camera eye of HAL 9000 from the science fiction movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, inside the school district's circular logo.
Both The Philadelphia Inquirer and The New York Times reported that: "With a mop of brown hair and clad in a black T-shirt and jeans, Blake Robbins smiled when told the suit had earned him a Wikipedia page."
The litigation also prompted a "What's Wrong With People?" segment on the Dr. Phil show. The British news organization The Register reported that: "The U.K. agency in charge of IT in UK schools has insisted there is no chance of the government's free laptops program exposing the bedroom activities of British students."
The litigation also prompted new legislation in New Jersey, sponsored by New Jersey State Senator Donald Norcross. "Big Brother has no place in our schools. It's the administration's job to educate, not monitor their students," said Norcross. New Jersey's "Anti-Big Brother Act" (S-2057) was signed into law by New Jersey Governor Chris Christie on April 15, 2013. The law requires New Jersey school districts to notify students (and their parents) who receive electronic devices from their school that their activities may be monitored or recorded. It subjects a school district that fails to comply with the law's requirements to a fine of $250 per student, per incident.
Hasan lawsuit
On July 27, 2010, a second high school student, Jalil Hasan, and his mother filed a civil suit for invasion of privacy against the school district. The suit was over the school's surveillance of Jalil at his home, via his school-issued computer, without the high school student's or his parents' knowledge or consent. Hasan was 17 years old at the time. The suit also named as defendants the district's board of directors and Superintendent, as well as Perbix, Charles Gintner (a district IS Department employee), and "John Does 1–5" (district employees who requested, authorized, activated, or viewed the images, or allowed the surveillance to continue). Mark Haltzman also represented the Hasans.
Lower Merion school administrators had informed the Hasans by letter that the schools had secretly monitored Jalil by the webcam embedded in his school-issued laptop for two months, while he was a senior at Lower Merion High School. The letter was one of 40 that the district sent out to comply with a May 2010 court order by U.S. Chief Magistrate Judge Thomas Rueter. Rueter had ordered the district to send out letters to all relevant high school students indicating the dates of the schools' activations of their webcams, and the number of photographs and screenshots taken by each affected student's computer.
Hasan had misplaced his laptop at his high school on Friday, December 18, 2009. The complaint states that day a teacher found the laptop, and turned it in to the IS Department, from which Hasan retrieved it on Monday, December 21, 2009. However, the complaint alleges that it is believed that on the day Hasan retrieved the laptop from information systems, Gitner, Perbix, and others covertly activated the TheftTrack surveillance software on Hasan's school-issued laptop. They allegedly continued to run the surveillance for the nearly two months after returning the laptop to Hasan. They only deactivated the surveillance in the wake of the publicity surrounding the Robbins lawsuit that broke on February 18, 2010.
Over 1,000 images were surreptitiously taken by the district through Hasan's school-issued laptop—consisting of 469 photographs taken via the laptop's webcam and 543 screenshots. They included shots of him in his bedroom in his Ardmore, Pennsylvania, home, and of other family members and friends. The school district did not inform Hasan and his family of this until July 8, 2010, when a lawyer for the district (Hank Hockeimer) notified them of the existence of the photographs. The complaint said: "In fact, had the Robbins class action lawsuit not been filed, arguably Jalil's laptop would have continued whirring away snapping photographs and grabbing screenshots each time it was powered up."
The lawsuit was brought on the basis of defendants' invasion of Hasan's privacy without his knowledge or authorization, referring to the same laws cited in the Robbins lawsuit. It charged the district with:
Jalil Hasan said, "When I saw these pictures, it really freaked me out." His mother said: "Right now I feel very violated ... When I'm looking at these pictures, and I'm looking at these snapshots, I'm feeling, 'Where did I send my child?
The district was put on notice of a third parallel suit that a third student intended to bring against the district, for "improper surveillance of the Lower Merion High School student on his school issued laptop", which included taking 729 webcam shots and screenshots between December 14, 2009, and February 18, 2010. The third student also learned about the school's surveillance of him when he received a letter from the district that the judge had ordered the district send to all students who had been subjected to webcam surveillance. Sources told Main Line Media News that the student never reported the computer missing.
Settlement of $610,000
In October 2010, the school district agreed to pay $610,000 to settle the Robbins and Hasan lawsuits against it. The settlement must be approved by Judge DuBois, who could also make his injunction barring the district from secretly tracking students permanent. The settlement also included $175,000 that was to be placed in a trust for Robbins and $10,000 for Hasan. The attorneys for Robbins and Hasan got $425,000.
See also
Internet privacy
iSeeYou
Spyware
Webcam
List of class-action lawsuits
References
External links
"Class Action Complaint", Robbins v. Lower Merion School District, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, February 11, 2010
"Brief of Amicus Curae American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania Supporting Issuance of Injunction", Robbins v. Lower Merion School District, February 22, 2010, friend of the court brief citing privacy caselaw in favor of Robbins
"Complaint", Hasan v. Lower Merion School District, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, July 27, 2010
"Dockets & Filings", Robbins v. Lower Merion School District, Justia.com
Report Regarding Monitoring of Student Laptop Computers by the Lower Merion School District, Ballard Spahr (LMSD's counsel), May 3, 2010
, Ballard Spahr (LMSD's counsel), May 3, 2010
, LMSD Redacted Forensic Analysis, L-3 Services – prepared for Ballard Spahr (LMSD's counsel), May 2010
Michael Perbix of LMSD, discussing the use of LANrev (laptop tracking software)
Best thing since sliced bread, personal tech blog of Michael Perbix, District Network Technician (administrative leave)
lmsdparent.org, parents opposed
"LMSD is Watching You", Facebook page
United States privacy case law
Surveillance scandals
Pennsylvania law
United States computer case law
Privacy of telecommunications
United States class action case law
Information privacy
2010 controversies
Telecommunications in the United States
2010 in United States case law
2010 in Pennsylvania
2010 in education
Education in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania
United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania cases
Lower Merion Township, Pennsylvania |
43255975 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian%20Institute%20of%20Information%20Technology%2C%20Kalyani | Indian Institute of Information Technology, Kalyani | Indian Institute of Information Technology, Kalyani (IIIT Kalyani) is an Indian Institute of Information Technology located at Kalyani, West Bengal. The institute was set up by the Government of India Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of West Bengal and industry partners (Coal India and Rolta) using the not-for-profit Public Private Partnership (N-PPP) model, at a ratio of 50:35:15 respectively between three parties. Admission to IIIT Kalyani is done on the basis of the marks obtained in JEE Main.IIIT Kalyani has been attributed the status of Institute of National Importance (INI) by the cabinet in March 2017 under the IIIT Act. The institute is run by the Board of Governors of IIIT Kalyani whose members include the representatives of Government of India (MHRD), Government of West Bengal, industry partners and eminent people from academia, industry and civil society. Virendra Kumar Tewari (Director, IIT Kharagpur) is the Mentor-Director for IIIT, Kalyani and IIT Kharagpur is the mentor institute.
Prof. Santanu Chattopadhyay has taken charge as the Director of the Institute on December 16, 2020.
History
The classes started from the first week of July 2014 under the mentorship of IIEST Shibpur, from the temporary campus located at the campus of JIS College of Engineering. On 19 August 2014, the official inauguration of the institute was done by the former mentor director Ajoy Kumar Ray, the director of IIEST Shibpur. The mentorship was passed on to IIT Kharagpur in 2017 and the institute has since been operating from a transit campus at Webel IT Park.
Campus
On Jun 30, 2015 Hon'ble Chief Minister, Mamata Banerjee laid the foundation stone of the Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) campus in Kalyani.The campus will be built on 50 acres on Kalyani Expressway on the outskirts of Kalyani town.
References
External links
Kalyani
Universities and colleges in Nadia district
Kalyani, West Bengal
Educational institutions established in 2014
2014 establishments in West Bengal |
16486313 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lara-B | Lara-B | Lara-B (born Lara Baruca, born August 1, 1979, in Koper, SR Slovenia is a singer who began her career in her early teens. Her musical style combines rock, electronic, industrial and soul.
Baruca began performing in 1992. After performing at various music festivals (MMS '95, Kraška popevka '95, Slovenska popevka '99, EMA '99, MMS '99, Malta Festival '99), she turned her music aspirations mainly to concert stages. She combines her live performances with her studio work, and has created several albums: Hudič izgublja moč in 1997, Kar ne piše in 1999, Beenarni sistem in 2001, Mindhacker in 2005, and X in 2007, which is a compilation consisting mainly of live performances of the previous material, and represents a 10-year anniversary from her debut. She has also written scores for several theatrical performances (Behind that courtain 2002, Confi-dance 2003, Glasba in gib 2004, Tihe resnice 2005). Her musical expression has been expressed in other genres as well (house, ambient, and drum 'n' bass).
Mindhacker
Lara's first major album release was Mindhacker on Menart Records. Paul Flowers, in his review for WUSC-FM in Columbia, South Carolina, call the album a step forward that shows a continued maturity in singing, composition and a new creative edge. When discussing the album, Baruca jokingly alluded to certain aspects of the album being "emo" in appearance. Mindhacker encompasses a great amount of her personal energies and life experiences, dealing with personal loss and growth emotionally.
Photos
References
External links
Official website
Slovenian rock singers
Living people
Slovenian rock musicians
1979 births
21st-century Slovenian women singers
Musicians from Koper
20th-century Slovenian women singers |
34514957 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estonian%20Information%20Technology%20College | Estonian Information Technology College | The Estonian Information Technology College (EITC) () was a private non-profit institution of professional higher education (university of applied sciences) in Estonia, located in Tallinn. EITC provided Estonian applied higher education diploma-level (at least 180 ECTS credit points; equal to the Bachelor's degree under the Bologna process) education in information technology in four main programmes (IT Systems Administration, IT Systems Development, Information Systems Analysis and Technical Communication), carried out shorter-term vocational training programmes as well as various R&D-oriented activities. In 2017 it merged with the Tallinn University of Technology.
Founding and History
The governing body of the IT College, the Estonian Information Technology Foundation, was established in March 2000 by the Republic of Estonia (represented by the Ministry of Education and Research), the University of Tartu, the Tallinn University of Technology, AS Eesti Telekom, and the Estonian Association of Information Technology and Telecommunications. One of the main forces behind the formation of EITC was the rapidly growing need for IT professionals which could not be met by universities and attracted people with uneven educational and professional background. During the first years, all students had to pay for the tuition (a small number of stipends were available for best students) - however, starting from 2007, 100 places are funded by the state, in a similar manner to state universities. In addition, up to 150 self-financing students are admitted every year.
The college was inaugurated by the Prime Minister Mart Laar in September 2000 and received the Estonian Award of Educational Achievement for that year. The location was in the downtown Tallinn until 2008 when the college moved into a new building in Mustamäe, at the vicinity of Tallinn University of Technology and Tehnopol.
served as the rector of EITC from the beginning to 2010. Linnar Viik held the office in 2011, the current rector Tiit Roosmaa was inaugurated in August 2011.
Academic studies
The college's three-year curriculum totalling at 180 credit points in the European Credit Transfer System produces a specific vocational qualification equal to a bachelor's degree. The college's priority is to train IT specialists, yet graduates may choose to pursue their studies at the master's level either in Estonia or abroad.
The IT Systems Development and IT Systems Administration programmes are available in the daytime study format either in full-time, part-time or external study forms. The Information Systems Analysis and Technical Communication programmes are available in the evening study format in full-time, part-time or external study forms. The evening study format with classes starting at 6 p.m. on business days is targeted at the people who work during the daytime. All four programmes have received full accreditation.
The graduates of the IT Systems Administration programme will have an in-depth knowledge of the structure, indicators and functions of appropriate IT systems (computer and telecommunications networks, Internet, databases etc.). They will be able to administer, expand and retune these systems, as well as contribute to developing new services and applications.
The IT Systems Development programme provides a comprehensive education in the field of software development and IT systems (computer and telecommunications networks, Internet, databases etc.). Graduates will develop thorough knowledge of different programming languages and tools, development environments and teamwork basics necessary for development of modern application software.
The graduates of the Information Systems Analysis programme will have a balanced knowledge of the processes occurring in both IT and business systems. They will be able to participate in devising complex business information systems, applications or services and work as applications integrators, system architects, data systems developers and system analysts.
The Technical Communication programme introduces students not only to the basics of IT but also skills in oral and written self-expression, and knowledge of design, printing technology, etc. Graduates in this subject area will be able to work in positions that require providing users of IT products and services with specific IT terminology and content. Graduates will have the skills of producing user guidelines, product catalogues and technical texts (both as publications and web-based presentations) for selected target groups, and designing advertising / promotional materials.
The language of instruction is Estonian, but some courses are available in English as well.
Completing a three-year programme of 180 credit points students acquire a special qualification that corresponds to the bachelor's degree and is aimed at working in a specific field. The graduates are able to continue their studies at the master's level at Tallinn University of Technology, Tartu University or elsewhere.
Research and development
Although EITC is not a research-oriented institution, it takes part in a number of applied research and development projects. Via the EITF as the mother institution, it also cooperates with the Estonian e-Learning Development Centre in various national and international development projects and events in e-learning.
Vocational training
EITC offers a wide variety of vocational training courses on a diverse choice of subjects (operating systems, application software, software development, systems administration, data security etc.) on different levels. The college is also a training partner to the Estonian Unemployment Insurance Fund, taking part in retraining programmes for unemployed people.
Public lectures
The tradition of public lectures at EITC is as old as the college itself (the first one took place in 2000.) Over the years, the lecturers have included Richard M. Stallman from the Free Software Foundation, Jon 'Maddog' Hall from Linux International, Mikko Hyppönen and Jarno Niemelä from F-Secure, Akira Hirooka from DoCoMo, Andrew Kass from Microsoft, U.S. Ambassador to Estonia Michael C. Polt and many others.
Student life and traditions
The EITC Robotics Club aims towards practical application of academic knowledge by creative work, increasing the motivation to study and teamwork skills as well as promoting the college. The RC is a many times winner and runner-up of the annual nationwide Robotex robotics contest.
MUG and LUG - there is a (usually friendly) rivalry between the Microsoft and Linux user camps.
The New Beginning Initiative is a recurring project to restore and restock old computers which are then donated to those in need (schools, orphanages etc.).
The Curiosity Day is the annual visitor day for prospective students, where EITC students play an important part in bringing in fresh people.
The Shrove Tuesday Bun. (Bun Point) is the annual celebration of Shrove Tuesday with free buns and soft drinks.
The Student Bar turns the cafeteria into a pub for one evening in a term.
The April Fools' Day has seen MIT-style hacks (e.g. rewriting the cafeteria whiteboard to display IT-related names for dishes).
Student Festivals are larger events for all students twice in a year. At EITC, these are celebrated with various events like rock concerts or sports competitions (also featuring events like printer throwing or CRT carrying).
Accessibility
EITC has given high priority to accessibility and special needs since its foundation. The current building was erected with accessibility in mind and was tested by a disability activist group in 2010, and as a result, received 2.7 points out of 3 (at the time, it was considered the only Estonian UAS to be fully accessible). The college subsequently received a commendation from the Estonian Chamber of Disabled People.
Scholarships
Throughout the history of the college (as of 2012), the scholarships have been founded by Baltic Computer Systems, Datel, Elion, EMT, Eesti Ühispank / SEB, Hansapank / Swedbank, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Kungla Dialoog, Liewenthal Electronics, Mantador Estonia, Microlink, Microsoft, Nokia, Open Estonia Foundation, Oracle, Santa Monica Networks, Starman, Sybase Symantec, Tallinn City Government and Tele2.
Partnership programmes
The college takes part in the following partnership programmes:
Microsoft IT Academy and MSDN Academic Alliance (since 2003); a dedicated faculty position is funded by Microsoft since 2008.
Oracle Academy (since 2002).
Cisco Networking Academy (Cisco Regional Network Academy since 2002).
Linux Professional Institute (LPI Academic Training Partner since 2011).
International Cooperation
International partnerships include
Lulea University of Technology (Sweden)
University of Aveiro, University of Madeira (Portugal)
Yeditepe University, Istanbul Arel University (Turkey)
University of Zilina (Slovakia)
University of Rostock, Schmalkalden UAS, Kiel UAS (Germany)
University of Economy Bydgoszcz (Poland)
Haaga-Helia UAS, Laurea UAS, Vaasa UAS, Turku UAS (Finland)
Copenhagen Technical College (Denmark)
HU University of Applied Sciences Utrecht (Netherlands)
Technological Educational Institute of Crete (Greece)
University of Applied Sciences Technikum Wien (Austria)
Vilnius College, Kaunas College (Lithuania)
Miscellaneous
The college uses a small team of core faculty combined with a much larger number of visiting lecturers (either academics from different universities (TUT, UT, TLU) or experienced practitioners from the field) in order to strike a balance between academic excellence and practical experience.
An important part of the techno-culture of EITC has been technological agnosticism and plurality of platforms. All the PC labs were designed to run dual-boot (MS Windows + a flavour of Linux) from the day one, the Apple lab was added in 2004 and a triple-boot mobile platforms (iOS, Android, Windows Phone, MeeGo) lab running on Apple hardware in 2011.
References
External links
EITC wiki
EITC Robotics Club
Universities and colleges in Estonia
Education in Tallinn |
12478849 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andalusian%20ICT%20schools%20Network | Andalusian ICT schools Network | This document describes the CGA's hierarchy structure and the tools they used each school year in ICT schools.
School year 2003–04
During the school year 2003-2004, the Andalusian Government opened 100 ICT schools in Andalusia as a pilot experience.
50 ICT schools for e-Government
50 ICT schools for educational process
A total of 18.000 PCs
Tools that they used:
Cheops
Bugzilla
Nagios
MRTG
Hierarchy structure of the staff:
School year 2004–05
150 schools for e-Government
150 schools for educational process
A total of 58.000 PCs
Software that CGA used during this school year:
Cheops
Nagios
MRTG
Sigila (self-made: Sistema Integral de Gestión de Incidencias y Localización de Averias or Integral System to Manage and Localize system's Breakdowns)
Unattended Operating System installations
PXE
SystemImager
Tools to share and security
NFS
LDAP
rsync
School year 2005–06
618 for the two purpose (for e-Government and for educational process)
A total of 105.000 PCs
CGA omitted the use of this software tools because they were not useful for a big Network with 105.000 PC:
Cheops
Nagios
MRTG
Control software tools:
Sigila
Unattended installations of the Operating System
PXE
SystemImager
Tools to share and security
NFS
LDAP
RSYNC
Unattended software installations:
CFEngine
Munin
Visco (self-made, this is Nagios' adaptation for a bigger network)
Software to be used at the schools
Apagado remoto de equipos (Remote shutdown for all PC in the ICT School)
CRV (Cañón de red virtual or Virtual Network Projector)
iTALC
School year 2006–07
1.100 ICT Schools
185.000 PC
Human and technical resource are difficult to scalar, then, the CGA needed to design a new solution
to reach two objectives:
Control, management and flexibility
To control the grown of human and technical resources
To reach these objectives CGA used ITIL
Related links
Centro de Gestión Avanzado de Centros TIC
https://web.archive.org/web/20070717170623/http://www.cga.org.es/blog/
http://www.guadalinex.org
See also
CGA (Advanced Management Centre)
Education in Spain
Free software culture and documents
Governmental educational technology organizations |
42057048 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal%20Information%20Technology%20Acquisition%20Reform%20Act | Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act | The Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act made changes to the ways the U.S. federal government buys and manages computer technology. It became law as a part of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2015 (Title VIII, Subtitle D, .
One of the requirements would be that the government develop a streamlined plan for its acquisitions. The bill would increase the power of existing chief information officers (CIO) within federal agencies so that they could be more effective. Each agency would also be reduced to having only one CIO in the agency, who is then responsible for the success and failure of all IT projects in that agency. The bill would also require the federal government to make use of private sector best practices. The bill is intended to reduce IT procurement related waste.
Earlier versions of FITARA were introduced in 2013 () and passed in a voice vote in the United States House of Representatives during the 113th United States Congress.
Background
The U.S. federal government spends over $80 billion a year on IT products and services. Almost half of this goes to maintaining old and out-of-date systems.
Provisions of the bill
This summary is based largely on the summary provided by the Congressional Research Service, a public domain source.
The Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act would modify the current framework governing the management of information technology (IT) within the federal government to: (1) require presidential appointment or designation of the chief information officer (CIO) in 16 specified federal agencies (thereby providing consistency with the presidential appointment or designation of chief financial officers for such agencies, but specifically excludes the United States Department of Defense [DOD] and provides for the heads of other agencies to continue to designate an agency CIO), (2) designate the Chief Information Officers Council as the lead interagency forum for improving agency coordination information resources investment, and (3) require the Comptroller General (GAO) to examine the effectiveness of the Council.
The bill would direct such CIOs to report directly to the head of the agency. It would set forth authorities relating to budget planning and the hiring of IT personnel.
The bill would require each agency to have only one CIO but permits offices within an agency to designate a deputy, associate, or assistant CIO.
The bill would require the Federal Chief Information Officer (FCIO) (defined as the Administrator of the Office of E-Government & Information Technology in the Office of Management and Budget [OMB]) to develop and implement an initiative to be known as the Federal Data Center Optimization Initiative to optimize the usage and efficiency of federal data centers. It would also set forth permitted methods for agencies to consolidate data centers and achieve maximum server utilization and energy efficiency. The bill would require agencies to track costs resulting from implementation of the Initiative within the agency and submit an annual report on such costs to the FCIO.
The bill would require the OMB Director to: (1) develop a plan for conducting a government-wide inventory of IT assets, and (2) assess all publicly available websites of federal agencies and require agencies to eliminate or consolidate any duplicate or overlapping websites.
The bill would express the sense of Congress that transition to cloud computing offers significant potential benefits for the implementation of federal IT projects. The bill would also permit CIOs to establish cloud service working capital funds.
The bill would prohibit an executive agency from issuing a solicitation for certain covered contract vehicles unless the agency performs a business case analysis and obtains approval from the Administrator for Federal Procurement Policy (FPP).
The bill would direct the OMB Director to: (1) establish a Federal Infrastructure and Common Application Collaboration Center to serve as a focal point for coordinated program management practices and to develop and maintain requirements for the acquisition of IT infrastructure and applications commonly used by federal agencies, and (2) designate Assisted Acquisition Centers of Excellence (AACEs) to develop areas of specialized acquisition expertise within various executive agencies. Sets forth authority for AACEs to implement best practices, assist agencies in expedient and low-cost interagency acquisitions by engaging in repeated and frequent acquisition of similar IT requirements, and assist with recruitment and training.
The bill would require the OMB Director to submit to Congress: (1) a five-year strategic plan to develop, strengthen, and solidify IT acquisition cadres; and (2) a plan for improving management of IT programs and projects.
The bill would direct the FPP Administrator to prescribe regulations requiring a comparative value analysis to be included in the contract file when the federal government purchases services and supplies offered under the Federal Strategic Sourcing Initiative from sources outside such Initiative.
The bill would permit executive agencies to state in solicitations that awards will be made using a fixed price technical competition under which all offerors compete solely on nonprice factors and the fixed award price is pre-announced in the solicitation.
The bill would require additional information concerning blanket purchase agreements and IT investments to be made available to the public.
The bill would establish guidance with respect to the validity of open source software as a procurement option required to receive full consideration alongside other options (in merit-based requirements development and evaluation processes promoting choices based on performance and value) in a manner free of preconceived preferences based on how technology is developed, licensed, or distributed within the federal government. Prohibits such guidance from modifying the federal policy of following technology-neutral principles when selecting and acquiring information technology.
The bill would require federal computer standards to include guidelines necessary to enable effective adoption of open source software. Directs the OMB Director to issue guidance for the use and collaborative development of open source software within the federal government.
Congressional Budget Office report
This summary is based largely on the summary provided by the Congressional Budget Office, as ordered reported by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on March 20, 2013. This is a public domain source.
H.R. 1232 would amend the laws governing the procurement and management of information technology (IT) throughout the federal government. Specifically, the legislation would increase the authority of Chief Information Officers (CIOs) and the CIO Council, establish a collaboration center to coordinate the acquisition of IT products, and require a number of additional reports and analysis by government agencies.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that implementing H.R. 1232 would cost $145 million over the 2014-2018 period, assuming appropriation of the necessary amounts. Enacting the bill could affect direct spending by agencies not funded through annual appropriations; therefore, pay-as-you-go procedures apply. CBO estimates, however, that any net increase in spending by those agencies would not be significant. Enacting the bill would not affect revenues.
H.R. 1232 contains no intergovernmental or private-sector mandates as defined in the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act and would impose no costs on state, local, or tribal governments.
Procedural history
The Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act was introduced into the United States House of Representatives on March 18, 2013 by Rep. Darrell E. Issa (R, CA-49). It was referred to the United States House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor announced on February 21, 2014 that the bill would be considered under a suspension of the rules on February 25, 2014. On February 25, 2014, the House voted to pass the bill in a voice vote.
Debate and discussion
The Federal Times said that this bill makes the "most significant changes to the federal IT procurement system since the Information Technology Management Reform Act of 1996."
According to Representative Gerry Connolly (D-VA), the ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and co-sponsor of the bill, "there are more than 250 identified CIOs in the federal government, yet none possess the necessary authority to effectively manage IT investments" which has "resulted in duplicative and wasteful IT spending."
Information Week reports that the bill could "save the federal government as much as $2 billion annually by changing wasteful buying practices." It would do this by "eliminating unused and underused software licenses and eradicating noncompliant software that incurs financial penalties for the federal government." According to Tom Schatz, president of Citizens Against Government Waste, "Section 301 of FITARA requires federal agencies to optimize their software licenses by knowing the software licensing requirements of their workforce prior to purchasing or renewing licenses, thus avoiding overpaying for software licenses they do not need or being subject to penalties for using more software licenses than they purchased."
Provisions adopted within the NDAA
Title VIII of the National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2015 contains a Subtitle D entitled "Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform" and commonly referred to as FITARA (although it is not a stand-alone Act). Within that Subtitle
Sec. 831 requires specified federal agencies to ensure that the Chief Information Officer (CIO) of the agencies has specified authorities and responsibilities in planning, programming, budgeting, and executing processes related to information technology.
Sec. 832 requires the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to make the cost, schedule, and performance data of specified information technology investments publicly available. Requires the CIO of each agency to categorize the investments according to risk and review those that have a high level of risk.
Sec. 833 requires OMB to implement a process to assist specified agencies in reviewing their portfolio of information technology investments, including the development of standardized cost savings and cost avoidance metrics and performance indicators. Requires the CIO of each agency to conduct an annual review of the information technology portfolio and requires the Administrator of the Office of Electronic Government to submit a quarterly report to Congress identifying cost savings and reductions in duplicative investments identified by the review.
Sec. 834 provides for the consolidation of federal data centers.
Sec. 835 requires OMB to work with federal agencies to update their acquisition human capital plans to address how the agencies are meeting their human capital requirements to support the timely and effective acquisition of information technology.
Sec. 836 directs OMB to prescribe regulations requiring a comparative value analysis to be included in the contract file when the federal government purchases services and supplies offered under the Federal Strategic Sourcing Initiative from sources outside the Initiative.
Sec. 837 requires the General Services Administration to develop a strategic sourcing initiative to enhance government-wide acquisitions, shared use, and dissemination of software, as well as compliance with end use license agreements.
Effects
OMB published guidance to U.S. federal agencies on how to respond to the law in OMB Memorandum M-15-14: Management and Oversight of Federal Information Technology. The OMB memo also related FITARA's requirements to those of the Clinger-Cohen Act of 1996 and the E-Government Act of 2002
See also
List of bills in the 113th United States Congress
Notes/References
External links
Library of Congress - Congress.gov H.R. 1232
congress.gov H.R. 1232
GovTrack.us H.R. 1232
OpenCongress.org H.R. 1232
WashingtonWatch.com H.R. 1232
House Republican Conference's Legislative Digest on H.R. 1232
Congressional Budget Office Report on H.R. 1232
FY2015 National Defense Authorization Act
https://oversight.house.gov/hearing/federal-information-technology-acquisition-reform-act-fitara-scorecard-3-0-measuring-agencies-implementation/
https://oversight.house.gov/hearing/the-federal-information-technology-reform-act-scorecard-2-0/
https://www.actiac.org/groups/project-fitara
Proposed legislation of the 113th United States Congress |
42960763 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey%20Owen%20Katz | Jeffrey Owen Katz | Jeffrey Owen Katz (born 1950) is an American scientist best known for his pivotal contribution to the field of factor analysis and his development of innovative AI (artificial intelligence) tools. Born April 6, 1950, he is the only child of Nathan Katz (accountant) and Rosalyn Anker (talent agent, entertainer, lapidary shop owner, and founder of Animals in Distress). He grew up in Queens, New York, but moved with his family to Merrick, N.Y. in 1962. He was a recognized child prodigy in electronic engineering, able to read and draw schematic diagrams before he could read and write English. Rather than send their only child away to a boarding school for gifted children, his parents arranged for home-schooling, which was continued until Katz' mid-teens when he began auditing college level courses at local universities.
Education
Eventually Katz enrolled in undergraduate studies at Stony Brook University, part of the State University of New York. Katz rapidly advanced through mathematics, psychology, psychophysiology, physics, and biology. As a graduate student in mathematics at Stony Brook University, he published a new method of factor rotation, programmed (in Fortran) a portion of the Numerical Taxonomy Systems Package, and published a number of papers in refereed journals.
In the mid-1970s, Katz was invited to enroll at the University of Lancaster in England, where his academic interests and expertise coalesced in the application of mathematics and psychometrics to the study of psychophysiology and genetics via sophisticated instrumentation which he designed and built. Katz's graduate studies were interrupted by an extended critical illness during which time he returned to his family home in the U.S. In 1983, Katz received a Ph.D. from the University of Lancaster, England, under the mentorship of both Phillip Levy, Chair of Lancaster's Psychology Department, and Hans Eysenck, psychometrician and founder of the Psychology Department at the University of London. Despite the offer of a teaching and research position in Dr. Eysenck's department, after graduation Katz returned to Long Island to be close to his family.
Research
After graduation, Katz held several research positions. He worked for the Brain Research Laboratories (New York University) developing neurometric systems based on the multivariate statistical analysis of electroencephalographic signals (EEG). He later worked for HeartMap, a biomedical company, where he headed the design, hardware prototyping, software development and testing of a 64-channel cardiac monitor with special analytic capabilities, including neural network pattern recognition and the ability to generate 3-D images of the electrical potentials across the surface of the heart. He also worked for the American Society for Psychical Research. where he developed experimental protocols, conducted data analysis, as well as designed and built low noise instrumentation for a variety of psycho physiological and physical experiments.
In 1989, Katz founded and became CEO of Scientific Consultant Services, Inc. (www.scientific-consultants.com), a firm that provides advanced solutions to difficult data handling problems in diverse fields. To that end, he developed sophisticated artificial intelligence software (neural networks and genetic algorithms). His clients have ranged from the U.S. Navy to the Swedish Lumber Authority; major asset management firms to individual investors. His accomplishments include the development of the first commercially available neural network model that forecasts the date, direction and degree of S&P 500 and OEX turning points from one day to months in advance (NexTurn); the development of the first 32-bit neural network development tool for PCs (N-Train); and the development of the first neurogenetic development tool, designed for the genetic evolution of neural networks (LogiVolve).
In addition, Katz served as Managing Principal and Director of Trading and System Development of Blackhorn Asset Management, LLC (2005–2008); Technical Director of Interactive Software Laboratories, Inc. (1995–1998), a firm offering data, data management tools and predictive software to the financial community; and Co-Founder, Vice President, and Director of Software Development, Datatek, Inc. (1990–1993), a consulting and trading system development firm.
Throughout his life, Katz has given generously of his time and resources to various nonprofit causes, ranging from animal welfare to science education. He has lectured and taught classes at all levels of academia and at private organizations, has published extensively in several fields (in refereed journals, trade magazines, anthologies) and, with his wife, co-authored three books for McGraw-Hill
Astronomy and Custer Institute
From 2003-2013, Katz devoted substantial time to one of his main passions: science education. During that period, he established research and internship programs at the Custer Institute, Inc., where he also served on the Board of Directors (2003–2013), as Observatory Director (2004–2012), and as Research Chair (2006–2012). He was the founder and coordinator of the Custer Institute's “Education Through Research” Program, and served as mentor for students from high school through graduate school, often helping them achieve grants and competitive awards. To help promote the Institute and its programs, for several years Katz wrote a monthly astronomy column for the Long Island Pulse magazine, and was featured in numerous media productions, including the PBS award-winning documentary, "The Souls of New York." To facilitate the work of the Institute, he obtained grants for its research and educational programs, enlisted the participation of many local scientists and academicians, and developed specialized hardware (e.g., optics innovations) and software (e.g., a unique deconvolution algorithm for image enhancement). In acknowledgment of his accomplishments, he was awarded a Citation from the New York State Assembly. Katz is currently on the Advisory Board of Montauk Observatory, Inc.
While at the Custer Institute, Katz's childhood interest in amateur radio resurfaced. He revitalized the Institute's amateur radio and radio astronomy programs and was pivotal in arranging the donation and installation of a 55-foot crank-up radio tower from the Great South Bay Amateur Radio Club (of which he is still a member).
Katz's latest research endeavor is the development of a multi-schedule survey of symptomatology and treatment of fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome. Nearly 5000 respondents have participated in this study, which revealed important correlations between a number of factors, including the relationship between thyroid conditions and these disorders. Katz is currently working on a publication about this study and the results.
Publications
Katz, Jeffrey Owen. "Star Gazer." Monthly column on astronomy published in Long Island Pulse magazine, 20072012.
Katz, Jeffrey Owen (April 1992). "Developing Neural Network Forecasters for Trading." Technical Analysis of Stocks and Commodities, pp. 58–68.
Katz, Jeffrey Owen. Personal construct theory and the emotions: An interpretation in terms of primitive constructs. British Journal of Psychology, 1984, (75), pp. 315–327.
Katz, Jeffrey Owen. An introduction to constructtheoretic psychology. Journal of Perceptual and Motor Skills, 1983 (37), pp. 983–999.
Katz, Jeffrey Owen. Psi sources and brain events: An examination of cortical evoked potentials at the moment of observation in a Schmidtian PK task. Research in Parapsychology, 1982, pp. 218–221.
Katz, Jeffrey Owen. An empirical study of the genetic selection of psychological characteristics in man. MENSA Research Journal, Winter 1978, Vol. 7, No. 1, pp. 47–59.
Katz, Jeffrey Owen, and McCormick, Donna L. Advanced Option Pricing Models: An Empirical Approach to Valuing Options. McGrawHill, March 2005.
Katz, Jeffrey Owen, and McCormick, Donna L. (February 2002). "Trading Options with Finesse." Futures, Vol. 31, No. 3, pp. 42–46.
Katz, Jeffrey Owen, and McCormick, Donna L. How to Start Day Trading Futures, Options, and Indices. McGrawHill, October 2001.
Katz, Jeffrey Owen, and McCormick, Donna L. (June 2001c). "More Intelligent Option Pricing." Futures, Vol. 30, No. 7, pp. 42–45.
Katz, Jeffrey Owen, and McCormick, Donna L. (May 2001b). "Market Realities and Options Pricing." Futures, Vol. 30, No. 6, pp. 38–40.
Katz, Jeffrey Owen, and McCormick, Donna L. The Encyclopedia of Trading Strategies. McGrawHill, Spring 2000.
Katz, Jeffrey Owen, and McCormick, Donna L. "Case Study: Building An Advanced Trading System." In Computerized Trading, Mark Jurik, Editor. Prentice Hall, 1999.
Katz, Jeffrey Owen, and McCormick, Donna L. (February 1999). "Trading Stocks with a Cyclical System." Technical Analysis of Stocks and Commodities, pp. 36–42.
Katz, Jeffrey Owen, and McCormick, Donna L. (July 1998). "Barrier Stops and Trendlines." Technical Analysis of Stocks and Commodities, pp. 44–49.
Katz, Jeffrey Owen, and McCormick, Donna L. (May 1998). "Using Barrier Stops in Exit Strategies." Technical Analysis of Stocks and Commodities, pp. 63–89.
Katz, Jeffrey Owen, and McCormick, Donna L. (April 1998). "Using Trailing Stops in Exit Strategies." Technical Analysis of Stocks and Commodities, pp. 86–92.
Katz, Jeffrey Owen, and McCormick, Donna L. (March 1998). "Testing Exit Strategies." Technical Analysis of Stocks and Commodities, pp. 35–42.
Katz, Jeffrey Owen, and McCormick, Donna L. (February 1998). "Exits, Stops and Strategy." Technical Analysis of Stocks and Commodities, pp. 32–40.
Katz, Jeffrey Owen, and McCormick, Donna L. (November 1997). "Adding the Human Element to Neural Nets." Technical Analysis of Stocks and Commodities, pp. 52–64.
Katz, Jeffrey Owen, and McCormick, Donna L. (September 1997). "Sunspots and Market Activity." Technical Analysis of Stocks and Commodities, pp. 46–54.
Katz, Jeffrey Owen, and McCormick, Donna L. (August 1997). "Using Statistics with Trading Systems." Technical Analysis of Stocks and Commodities, pp. 32–38.
Katz, Jeffrey Owen, and McCormick, Donna L. (July 1997). "Evaluating Trading Systems with Statistics." Technical Analysis of Stocks and Commodities, pp. 50–61.
Katz, Jeffrey Owen, and McCormick, Donna L. (June 1997). "Lunar Cycles and Trading." Technical Analysis of Stocks and Commodities, pp. 38–46.
Katz, Jeffrey Owen, and McCormick, Donna L. (May 1997). "Cycles and Trading Systems." Technical Analysis of Stocks and Commodities, pp. 38–46.
Katz, Jeffrey Owen, and McCormick, Donna L. (April 1997). "Seasonality and Trading." Technical Analysis of Stocks and Commodities, pp. 50–61.
Katz, Jeffrey Owen, and McCormick, Donna L. (February 1997). "Genetic Algorithms and RuleBased Systems." Technical Analysis of Stocks and Commodities, pp. 46–60.
Katz, Jeffrey Owen, and McCormick, Donna L. (December 1996). "A RuleBased Approach to Trading." Technical Analysis of Stocks and Commodities, pp. 22–3
Katz, Jeffrey Owen, and McCormick, Donna L. (January 1997). "Developing Systems with a Rule Based Approach." Technical Analysis of Stocks and Commodities, pp. 38–52.
Katz, Jeffrey Owen, and McCormick, Donna L. (November 1996). "On Developing Trading Systems." Technical Analysis of Stocks and Commodities, pp. 46–60.
Katz, Jeffrey Owen, and McCormick, Donna L. "Introduction to Artificial Intelligence: Basics of Expert Systems, Fuzzy Logic, Neural Networks, and Genetic Algorithms." In Virtual Trading, Jess Lederman and Robert Klein, Editors. Probus Publishing, 1995.
Katz, Jeffrey Owen, and McCormick, Donna L. "Neural Networks in Trading." In Virtual Trading, Jess Lederman and Robert Klein, Editors. Probus Publishing, 1995.
Katz, Jeffrey Owen, and McCormick, Donna L. (1994). "Neural Networks: Some Advice to Beginners." Trader's Catalog and Resource Guide, Vol. II, No. 4, p. 36.
Katz, Jeffrey Owen, and McCormick, Donna L. (July/August 1994). "Neurogenetics and Its Use in Trading System Development." NeuroVe$t Journal, pp. 8–11.
Katz, Jeffrey Owen, and McCormick, Donna L. (March/April 1993). "Vendor's Forum: The Evolution of NTRAIN." PCAI, pp. 44–46.
Katz, Jeffrey Owen, and Rohlf, F. James. Primary product functionplane: An oblique rotation to simple structure. Multivariate Behavioral Research, April 1975, Vol. 10, pp. 219–232.
Katz, Jeffrey Owen, and Rohlf, F. James. Functionplane: A new approach to simple structure rotation. Psychometrika, March 1974, Vol. 39, No. 1, pp. 37–51.
Katz, Jeffrey Owen, and Rohlf, F. James. Functionpoint cluster analysis. Systematic Zoology, September 1973, Vol. 22, No. 3, pp. 295–301.
Personal life
Katz is fluent in written and spoken Spanish, enjoys music ranging from early 20th century jazz to heavy metal, is an avid amateur astronomer, and holds an Extra Class amateur radio license (AC2BQ).
Katz currently lives in Selden, New York, with his wife, Donna L. McCormick (married in 2009).
References
External links
American astronomers
20th-century American writers
People from Brookhaven, New York
People from Suffolk County, New York
1950 births
Living people
Parapsychologists
Scientists from New York (state) |
27237024 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon%20%28remote%20sensing%29 | Dragon (remote sensing) | Dragon refers to any of several remote sensing image processing
software packages. This software provides capabilities for displaying,
analyzing, and interpreting digital images
from earth satellites and raster data files
that represent spatially distributed data. All the Dragon packages
derive from code created by Goldin-Rudahl
Systems, Incorporated, and focus on geography education:
OpenDragon is free to educational users. It was intended to be free worldwide, as well as open source (hence the name) but due to funding problems, is currently available only in Southeast Asia.
Dragon Academic is functionally identical to OpenDragon.
Dragon Professional is expanded to handle full-scene data sets from sensors such as Landsat TM, SPOT, and Aster.
History
The initial version of Dragon was released in 1987 and ran on the MS-DOS
operating system. Dragon was the first commercial remote sensing software
package designed to use only the native capabilities of off-the-shelf personal
computers. At the time Dragon was developed, other PC remote sensing products
such as Erdas required expensive special purpose graphics
devices. Dragon was intended to be used for education in geography, geology,
forestry and other disciplines that use spatial information; thus it was very
important to minimize the costs of required hardware. The first version
of Dragon ran on a basic IBM-PC with two floppy disks and a
four-color or gray-level graphics display. Alternatively, it could use any of several models of Japanese PC.
The MS-DOS phase of Dragon development focused on trying to squeeze
functionality into very limited disk and memory space, and to get full-color
image display using rapidly changing graphics
hardware with no standardized drivers. The VESA display standard was a
turning point in making full-color display functionality available in
MS-DOS. This VESA/SVGA/MS-DOS version of Dragon can still be adapted
for embedded systems use.
The move to Microsoft Windows 95/98 was painful because these
operating systems did not provide true multitasking. Unfortunately this phase
coincided with the publication of the well-known Gibson and Powers textbook
(Gibson,2000) which included a copy of the Windows 95 Dragon. With the advent
of Windows NT and successors (Windows 2000, XP, Vista, etc.), it became
possible to create a Windows version of Dragon that allowed simultaneous
display of and interaction with multiple images.
In 2004, funding became available from Thailand to create a free educational
version of the software which became known as OpenDragon. This project lasted
for three years. The software is still available at no cost in Thailand,
Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam (although it has only been translated into Thai).
After funding for OpenDragon was discontinued, Dragon Professional was
developed to reach beyond the customary educational users. New personal
computer capabilities, which by then extended to gigabytes of memory and
hundreds of gigabytes of disk storage, all at low cost, made it possible to
store and process the very large data sets produced by twenty-first-century
high-resolution satellites.
Dragon Professional required major changes in the user interaction model,
which previously had assumed a 1-to-1 relationship between the image on the
screen and the sensor data. At the same time, image processing operations such
as selection of ground control points require access to individual data
elements (pixels) selected from the more than 30 million available in a
typical full-scene image. Thus, the appearance and behavior of Dragon
Professional are quite different from OpenDragon/Dragon Academic.
The name
Asian dragons are considered symbolic of wisdom and knowledge, unlike the
ferocious western dragons. Thus, the name Dragon/ips(r) or Dragon Image
Processing System is intended to imply wisdom in the knowledge of and
intelligent use of the world in which we live.
The Software
Because the expected user is assumed to be relatively untrained, Dragon pays
more attention to the user experience than to having a large selection of
possibly obscure processing operations. Within the user interface, which has
been translated into several languages, context-sensitive help explains every
user choice, and reasonable defaults are provided where possible. The User
Manual (English only) details all processing algorithms.
The software provides a fairly conventional set of remote sensing operations,
which are intended to be those which a student of geography arguably ought to
know. These include:
Single and multiband image display;
Filtering for image enhancement;
Band combinations such as sum and ratio;
Principal components analysis;
Image statistics and measurement;
A variety of supervised and unsupervised classification algorithms;
Registration and geometric correction;
Heads-up digitizing to capture vector data;
Some raster geographic information systems GIS operations such as slope, aspect, and buffer calculations;
Import from and export to various standard image file formats such as GeoTIFF.
In order to provide interoperability with other software packages, and to permit users
to add their own custom processing operations, all important file formats are
documented and an API called the Programmer's Toolkit is available.
Problems
Dragon Academic and Dragon Professional use a USB dongle for copy protection. While this allows the license to permit unlimited copying, it is also sometimes inconvenient. Other protection methods are being considered.
Supervised and unsupervised classification operations in all versions of the software currently can process only four image bands at a time.
Dragon can measure length and area on any georeferenced image. However this assumes the image uses a distance-preserving projection. If the image uses latitude-longitude, the measurements will be incorrect in high latitudes.
The software runs only on Microsoft Windows, although three of its four components also build and run on Linux.
References
Goldin and Rudahl: OpenDragon Programmer's Toolkit: A Framework for Learning Geoinformatics Software Development, Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, Baltimore, MD, March, 2009
Dragon User Manual, Goldin-Rudahl Systems, Inc., 2008
Dragon User Manual, Chapter 1, Goldin-Rudahl Systems, Inc., 2008
Gibson, J and Power, C: Introductory Remote Sensing Digital Image Processing and Applications, Routledge, 2000
Rudahl and Goldin, The Impact of New Technologies on Remote Sensing Education, Proceedings of the Asian Conference on Remote Sensing 1994.
Goldin, S.E. and Rudahl, K.T.: Dragon and Phoenix: Low-cost Image Processing for Developing Countries. Proceedings of the South East Asian Regional Computer Conference. Computer Association of Thailand, 1986, pp 41–42.
External links
Home page for Dragon
Home page for OpenDragon
University site which uses OpenDragon extensively
Discussion of Dragon's Portuguese version (in Portuguese)
A study of urban heat modeling using Dragon
Remote sensing software
GIS software
https://instagram.com/the_crazy_boy_tmt?utm_medium=copy_link
the_crazy_boy_tmt
https://instagram.com/the_crazy_boy_tmt?utm_medium=copy_link |
46999487 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity-based%20conditional%20proxy%20re-encryption | Identity-based conditional proxy re-encryption | Identity-based conditional proxy re-encryption (IBCPRE) is a type of proxy re-encryption (PRE) scheme in the identity-based public key cryptographic setting. An IBCPRE scheme is a natural extension of proxy re-encryption on two aspects. The first aspect is to extend the proxy re-encryption notion to the identity-based public key cryptographic setting. The second aspect is to extend the feature set of proxy re-encryption to support conditional proxy re-encryption. By conditional proxy re-encryption, a proxy can use an IBCPRE scheme to re-encrypt a ciphertext but the ciphertext would only be well-formed for decryption if a condition applied onto the ciphertext together with the re-encryption key is satisfied. This allows fine-grained proxy re-encryption and can be useful for applications such as secure sharing over encrypted cloud data storage.
Introduction
A public-key encryption scheme allows anyone who has the public key of a receiver to encrypt messages to the receiver using the public key in such a way that only the corresponding private key known only to the receiver can decrypt and recover the messages. The public key of a user, therefore, can be published for allowing everyone to use it for encrypting messages to the user while the private key of the user has to be kept secret for the decryption purpose. Both the public key and the corresponding private key of the user are generated by the user in general .
Under the identity-based cryptographic setting, the public key of the user can be an arbitrary string of bits provided that the string can uniquely identify the user in the system. The unique string, for example, can be an email address, a phone number, and a staff ID (if used only internally within an organization). However, the corresponding private key is no longer generated by the user. From the public key, which is a unique binary string, there is a key generation center (KGC), which generates and issues the private key to the user. The KGC has a public key, which is assumed to be publicly known, and the encryption and decryption then work under the unique binary string defined public key and the corresponding private key, respectively, with respect to the KGC’s public key.
Proxy Re-encryption allows a ciphertext, which originally can only be decrypted by a user, to be transformed by a public entity, called proxy, to another ciphertext so that another user can also decrypt. Suppose the two users are Alice and Bob. Alice has some messages: . She intends to encrypt them under her public key, and then upload the encrypted messages to some server.
Now when Alice wants to share these n encrypted messages with Bob, Alice can use a proxy re-encryption scheme to allow the server to re-encrypt these n encrypted messages so that Bob can decrypt these re-encrypted messages directly using his own private key.
To do so in the proxy re-encryption scheme, Alice uses her private key and the public key of Bob to generate a re-encryption key. Alice then sends the re-encryption key to the server. Upon receiving this re-encryption key, the server uses the key to transform all the n encrypted messages to a new form denoted as D1, D2, …, Dn. Bob can then download , decrypt them, and recover the messages using his private key.
In an identity-based conditional proxy re-encryption (IBCPRE) system, users set their public keys as unique identities of the users. One of the main advantages of using identity-based cryptographic algorithms is the elimination of public key certificates which can help enhance the usability of the target security applications. The term ‘Conditional’ in IBCPRE refers to an additional feature, which allows each encrypted message to have a ‘tag’ associated with. In addition to the tag, each re-encryption key also has a ‘tag’ attached. The IBCPRE is designed so that only if the tag of an encrypted message matches with the tag of a re-encryption key can the encrypted message be re-encrypted.
Features
One of the key features of IBCPRE is that when Alice as a data owner encrypts messages, the encryption is done for herself and only Alice herself can decrypt the encrypted messages using her secret key. There is no need for Alice to know in advance about who that she would like to share the encrypted messages with. In other words, picking the friends to share with by Alice can be done after she encrypts the messages and uploads to the Server.
Another feature of IBCPRE is that it supports end-to-end encryption. The server which stores the encrypted messages cannot decrypt the messages both before and after the re-encryption.
IBCPRE supports one-to-many encryption. The data owner Alice can choose multiple friends to share her data with. For multiple friends to share the encrypted messages with, Alice simply needs to generate a re-encryption key for each of her friends and sends all the re-encryption keys to the server for carrying out the re-encryption. The number of re-encryption keys that Alice needs to generate depends on the number of friends that Alice wants to share the encrypted messages with. It does not depend on the number of encrypted messages. One re-encryption key will allow the Server to convert all the encrypted messages provided the tag of the encrypted messages and the tag of the re-encryption key matches.
The conditional ‘tag’ of the IBCPRE facilitates the fine-grained access of encrypted messages. By setting different tag values onto different encrypted messages, the data owner Alice can control the exact set of encrypted messages that she wants to share with any particular friends of her with great flexibility.
Applications
Consider a user Alice who encrypts some messages M1, M2, …, Mt with a tag ‘Private’, Mt+1, Mt+2, …, Mm with a tag ‘toShareWithFamily’, Mm+1, Mm+2, …, Mn with a tag ‘toShareWithFriend’, using IBCPRE under her unique identity, which is considered as the public key of Alice. Alice then uploads the corresponding encrypted messages C1, C2, …, Ct, Ct+1, …, Cm, Cm+1, …, Cn to a server.
When Alice is about to share Mm+1, Mm+2, …, Mn with another user Bob, who becomes her friend recently, Alice generates a re-encryption key using IBCPRE with an associated tag ‘toShareWithFriend’. This generation is done by taking as input Alice’s private key and Bob’s identity. Then Alice sends the re-encryption key to the server. By using the re-encryption key, the server runs the IBCPRE re-encryption function on Cm+1, Cm+2, …, Cn for transforming them into another form, Dm+1, Dm+2, …, Dn so that Bob can decrypt them directly using his private key. This transformation can be done as the tag associated with the encrypted messages, namely ‘toShareWithFriend’, matches with the tag associated with the re-encryption key.
Note that the server cannot transform C1, C2, …, Ct, Ct+1, …, Cm to another form for Bob to decrypt using the re-encryption key because the tag of these m encrypted messages, namely ‘Private’ or 'toShareWithFamily', does not match with the tag of the re-encryption key. Also note that the server cannot retrieve any of the messages at any time.
IBCPRE has been used for secure cloud data sharing and related key management solutions in products of AtCipher Limited.
Schemes and security
A related concept to proxy re-encryption called decrypt right delegation was introduced by Mambo and Okamoto in 1997. Then in 1998, Blaze, Bleumer and Strauss formalized the notion of proxy re-encryption by giving a definition to the set of algorithms of a proxy re-encryption scheme. The authors also proposed a scheme for achieving chosen-plaintext security (CPA-security). Later on, various PRE schemes have been proposed.
In 2007, Green and Ateniese and Ivan and Dodis independently proposed several proxy re-encryption schemes in the identity-based cryptographic setting. This type of scheme is usually called identity-based proxy re-encryption (IBPRE). The schemes are unidirectional, namely, the re-encryption key is for one party to re-encrypt cipher-texts to another party, but not vice versa. A new re-encryption key has to be generated for the other direction of re-encryption. In terms of security, the security analyses of the schemes have been done in the random oracle model. One is CPA-secure, multi-hop and the other is chosen-ciphertext-attack-secure (CCA-secure), single-hop. The schemes, however, are not collusion resistant. This means that if a proxy colludes with the corresponding delegatee, the private key of the delegator will be compromised. CPA-secure IBPRE schemes secure without random oracles were subsequently proposed by Matsuo and Mizuno and Doi.
Type-based PRE and conditional PRE (CPRE) are designed to ensure that the proxy can re-encrypt a ciphertext tagged with a specific condition only if the re-encryption key given by the delegator is tagged with the same condition. Two identity-based CPRE (IBCPRE) schemes were proposed to achieve conditional control in both re-encryption and identity-based re-encryption by Liang et al., and achieved CCA security in the standard model, and the other by Shao et al. and achieved CCA security in the random oracle model.
See also
ID-based encryption
ID-based cryptography
Proxy re-encryption
References
Identity-based cryptography
Public-key cryptography |
50643476 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shreya%20Singhal%20v.%20Union%20of%20India | Shreya Singhal v. Union of India | Shreya Singhal v. Union of India is a judgement by a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court of India in 2015, on the issue of online speech and intermediary liability in India. The Supreme Court struck down Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, 2000, relating to restrictions on online speech, as unconstitutional on grounds of violating the freedom of speech guaranteed under Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution of India. The Court further held that the Section was not saved by virtue of being a 'reasonable restriction' on the freedom of speech under Article 19(2). The Supreme Court also read down Section 79 and Rules under the Section. It held that online intermediaries would only be obligated to take down content on receiving an order from a court or government authority. The case is considered a watershed moment for online free speech in India.
Background
History of Section 66A
Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, 2000 made it a punishable offence for any person to send 'grossly offensive' or 'menacing' information using a computer resource or communication device. The provision also made it punishable to persistently send information which the sender knows to be false for annoyance, inconvenience, danger, obstruction, insult, injury, criminal intimidation, enmity, hatred or ill will. Additionally, Section 66A made it punishable to send an 'electronic mail message' for the purpose of causing annoyance, or inconvenience, or to deceive or to mislead the recipient about the origin of the message.
The vague and arbitrary terms used in the Section led to much misuse of both personal and political nature, with several criminal cases being instituted against innocuous instances of online speech, including political commentary and humour. Section 66A and 79 of the IT Act, as well as rules made under the Act created an onerous liability regime for internet intermediaries.
History of the case
The provisions were challenged in the Supreme Court, in a series of writ petitions by individuals (Shreya Singhal), NGOs (People's Union for Civil Liberties, Common Cause), and companies(Mouthshut.com). The various petitions were clubbed together and heard by a two-judge bench of Justices Chelameswar and Nariman.
Judgement
In a 52-page judgement, the Supreme Court struck down Section 66-A of the Information Technology Act, read down Section 79 of the Information Technology Act and the related rules, and affirmed the constitutionality of Section 69A of the Act.
Speaking for the Court, Justice Nariman discussed the various standards which are applicable to adjudge when restrictions on speech can be deemed reasonable, under Article 19(2) of the Indian Constitution. The Court held that Section 66-A was vague and over-broad, and therefore fell foul of Article 19(1)(a), since the statute was not narrowly tailored to specific instances of speech which it sought to curb. Importantly, the Court also considered the 'chilling effect' on speech caused by vague and over-broad statutory language as a rationale for striking down the provision. Further, the Court held that the 'public order' restriction under Article 19(2) of the Constitution would not apply to cases of 'advocacy', but only to 'incitement', specifically incitement which has a proximate relation to public disorder.
On the equal protection challenge Article 14 of the Constitution of India, the Court held that "we are unable to agree with counsel for the petitioners that there is no intelligible differentia between the medium of print, broadcast and real live speech as opposed to speech on the internet. The intelligible differentia is clear – the internet gives any individual a platform which requires very little or no payment through which to air his views."
The Supreme Court further read down Section 79 and Rule 3(4) of the Intermediaries Guidelines, under the Act, which deals with the liability of intermediaries, mostly those which host content and provide online services. Whereas the Section itself uses the term 'receiving actual knowledge', of the illegal material as the standard at which the intermediary is liable for removing content, the Court held that it must be read to mean knowledge received that a Court order has been passed asking it to take down the infringing material.
Finally, the Court also upheld the secret blocking process under Section 69A of the Act, by which the Government can choose to take down content from the Internet, holding that it did not suffer from the infirmities in Section 66A or Section 79, and is a narrowly drawn provision with adequate safeguards.
Significance
While the decision of the Supreme Court is of immense significance in protecting online free speech against arbitrary restrictions, Section 66A, which was declared unconstitutional, has continued to be used as a punitive measure against online speech in several cases.
The reading down of Section 79 of the IT act by the Supreme Court, to include the requirement that a takedown notice must be sanctioned by a court or government authority, has also been interpreted by the Delhi High Court in the case of MySpace v. Super Cassettes, to not apply to cases of copyright infringement under the Indian Copyright Act.
References
Supreme Court of India cases
Internet case law
Internet censorship in India |
44359594 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fei-Fei%20Li | Fei-Fei Li | Fei-Fei Li (; born 1976) is an American computer scientist. She is the Sequoia Capital Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University. Li is a Co-Director of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, and a Co-Director of the Stanford Vision and Learning Lab. She served as the director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL) from 2013 to 2018.
In 2017, she co-founded AI4ALL, a nonprofit organization working to increase diversity and inclusion in the field of artificial intelligence. Her research expertise includes artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, deep learning, computer vision and cognitive neuroscience. She was the leading scientist and principal investigator of ImageNet.
Li was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) in 2020 for contributions in building large knowledge bases for machine learning and visual understanding. She is also a member of the National Academy of Medicine (NAM), and American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS).
Early life and education
Li was born in Beijing, China in 1976 and grew up in Chengdu. When she was 12, her father moved to the US; when she was 15, she and her mother joined him in Parsippany-Troy Hills, New Jersey. She graduated from Parsippany High School in 1995, where she was inducted to the Hall of Fame of Parsippany High School in 2017.
Li majored in physics but also studied computer science and engineering as an undergraduate student at Princeton University, from where she graduated with high honors with an A.B. in physics and certificates in applied and computational mathematics and engineering physics in 1999. Li completed her senior thesis, titled "Auditory Binaural Correlogram Difference: A New Computational Model for Huggins Dichotic Pitch", under the supervision of Professor of Electrical Engineering Bradley Dickinson. During her years at Princeton, she returned home most weekends so that she could work in her parents' dry-cleaning store.
Li then pursued graduate studies at the California Institute of Technology, where she received a Ph.D. in electrical engineering in 2005. Li completed her dissertation, titled "Visual Recognition: Computational Models and Human Psychophysics", under the primary supervision of Pietro Perona and secondary supervision of Christof Koch. Her graduate studies were supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship and The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans.
Career
From 2005 to August 2009, Li was an assistant professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Computer Science Department at Princeton University, respectively. She joined Stanford in 2009 as an assistant professor, and was promoted to associate professor with tenure in 2012, and then full professor in 2017. At Stanford, Li served as the director of Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab (SAIL) from 2013 to 2018. She became the founding co-director of Stanford's University-level initiative - the Human-Centered AI Institute, along with co-director Dr. John Etchemendy, former provost of Stanford University.
On her sabbatical from Stanford University from January 2017 to fall of 2018, Li joined Google Cloud as its Chief Scientist of AI/ML and Vice President. At Google, her team focused on democratizing AI technology and lowering the barrier for entrance to businesses and developers, including the developments of products like AutoML.
In September 2017, Google secured a contract from the Department of Defense called Project Maven, which aimed to use AI techniques to interpret images captured by drone cameras. Google told employees who protested the company's work on Project Maven that their role was "specifically scoped to be for non-offensive purposes." In June 2018, Google told employees it would not seek renewal of the contract. In internal emails which were later leaked to reporters, Li expressed enthusiasm for the Google Cloud role in Project Maven, but warned against mentioning its AI component, saying that military AI is linked in the public mind with the danger of autonomous weapons. Asked about those leaked emails, Li told The New York Times, "I believe in human-centered AI to benefit people in positive and benevolent ways. It is deeply against my principles to work on any project that I think is to weaponize AI."
In the fall of 2018, Li left Google and returned to Stanford University to continue her professorship.
Li is also known for her nonprofit work as the co-founder and chairperson of nonprofit organization AI4ALL, whose mission is to educate the next generation of AI technologists, thinkers and leaders by promoting diversity and inclusion through human-centered AI principles. The program was created in collaboration with Melinda Gates and Jensen Huang.
Prior to establishing AI4ALL in 2017, Li and her former student Olga Russakovsky, currently an assistant professor in Princeton University, co-founded and co-directed the precursor program at Stanford called SAILORS (Stanford AI Lab OutReach Summers). SAILORS was an annual summer camp at Stanford dedicated to 9th grade high school girls in AI education and research, established in 2015 till it changed its name to AI4ALL @Stanford in 2017. In 2018, AI4ALL has successfully launched five more summer programs in addition to Stanford, including Princeton University, Carnegie Mellon University, Boston University, U. of California Berkeley, and Canada's Simon Fraser University.
Li has been described as an "AI pioneer" and a "researcher bringing humanity to AI".
Li was elected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2021, the National Academy of Engineering, and the National Academy of Medicine in 2020.
In May 2020, Li joined the board of directors of Twitter as an independent director.
Research
Li works on AI, machine learning, computer vision, cognitive neuroscience and computational neuroscience. She has published more than 300 peer-reviewed research papers. Her work appears in computer science and neuroscience journals including Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Journal of Neuroscience, Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, International Conference on Computer Vision, Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems, European Conference on Computer Vision, International Journal of Computer Vision, and IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence. Among her best-known work is the ImageNet project, which has revolutionized the field of large-scale visual recognition.
Li has led the team of students and collaborators to organize the international competition on ImageNet recognition tasks called ImageNet Large-Scale Visual Recognition Challenge (ILSVRC) between 2010 and 2017 in the academic community.
Li's research in computer vision contributed significantly to a line of work called Natural Scene Understanding, or later, Story-telling of images. She is a recognized for her work in this area by the International Association for Pattern Recognition in 2016. She delivered a talk on the main stage of TED in Vancouver in 2015, and has since then been viewed more than 2 million times.
In recent years, Fei-Fei Li's research work expanded to AI and Healthcare, collaborating closely with Stanford Medical School professor Arnold Milstein.
Teaching
She teaches the Stanford course CS231n on "Convolutional Neural Networks for Visual Recognition", whose 2015 version was previously online at Coursera. She has also taught CS131, an introductory class on computer vision.
Selected honors and awards
2021 ACM Fellow
2021 Elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
2020 Elected member of the National Academy of Engineering
2020 Elected member of the National Academy of Medicine
2020 Distinguished Alumni Award Winner of California Institute of Technology
2020 Member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR)
2019 Technical Leadership Abie Award Winner, AnitaB.org
2018 Elected as ACM Fellow for "contributions in building large knowledge bases for machine learning and visual understanding"
2018 "America's Top 50 Women In Tech" by Forbes
2018 U.S. Congressional hearing by Subcommittee on Research and Technology & Subcommittee on Energy
2017 WITI@UC Athena Award for Academic Leadership, University of California
2017 One of Seven Women in Technology honorees, Elle Magazine
2016 IEEE PAMI Mark Everingham Prize [reference link]
2016 J.K. Aggarwal Prize, International Association for Pattern Recognition (IAPR)
2016 One of the 40 “The great immigrants,” Carnegie Foundation
2015 One of the Leading Global Thinkers of 2015, Foreign Policy
2011 Fellow, Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship
2010 Best Paper Honorable Mention, IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR)
2009 NSF CAREER Award
2006 Microsoft Research New Faculty Fellowship
1999 Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans
Books
Li contributed one chapter to Architects of Intelligence: The Truth About AI from the People Building it (2018) by the American futurist Martin Ford.
References
External links
1976 births
21st-century American scientists
American nonprofit executives
American science writers
American women academics
American women computer scientists
American computer scientists
American writers of Chinese descent
BBC 100 Women
Businesspeople from New Jersey
California Institute of Technology alumni
Chinese emigrants to the United States
Computer vision researchers
Educators from Beijing
Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery
Living people
Machine learning researchers
Parsippany High School alumni
People from Parsippany-Troy Hills, New Jersey
Princeton University alumni
Princeton University faculty
Scientists from Beijing
Sloan Research Fellows
Stanford University Department of Computer Science faculty
University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign faculty
Women nonprofit executives
Writers from Beijing
Writers from New Jersey
21st-century American women |
34344977 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quintiq | Quintiq | Quintiq is a Dutch company that develops planning, scheduling and supply chain optimization software. The company is headquartered in 's-Hertogenbosch and its North American headquarters are in Radnor, Pennsylvania.
History
The company was founded in 's-Hertogenbosch (Den Bosch) in September 1997 by former Bolesian employees including Dr. Victor Allis. Allis and several colleagues initially began developing a scheduling application for an aluminum manufacturer as a side project. It was offered first to Allis's then-employer, but Bolesian was not interested. Because the software they developed was highly configurable, and thus of use to many other types of companies, it was decided that a new firm should be created around the software. Preparing the software for sale to as wide a variety as possible of corporate customers took two years of development.
Quintiq sold its software to a client for the first time in 1999.
In 2011, two investment firms, LLR Partners Inc. and NewSpring Capital Ventures LP, bought into Quintiq, giving them a 48% stake in the company's ownership.
Later in 2014, Quintiq was bought by Dassault Systèmes.
Products
Quintiq's Supply Chain Planning software has three layers or modules: one based on service-oriented architecture, with both optimization and planning management features; one that provides a variety of different templates for use in different industries; and one customized for each Quintiq customer. Quintiq's uses AI pattern recognition to help customers manage their supply chain logistics. Other features of the software include adaptive capacity planning, automated real-time scheduling, a multi-function company planner, a multi-scenario macro planner, materials management tools, and proprietary algorithms for coordinating production with customer orders. Competitor software is more robust in a number of specific areas, and for this reason some Quintiq users employ both Quintiq software and competitors' products in a hybrid approach to supply chain management.
Locations
In addition to its world headquarters in Den Bosch and its North American headquarters in Radnor, Quintiq has offices in Melbourne, Australia; Shanghai, China; Vantaa, Finland; Mannheim, Germany; Rome, Italy; Petaling Jaya, Malaysia; and London, United Kingdom.
Clients
Notable companies and organizations which use Quintiq software include Copenhagen Airport, Danone, international shipping company DHL, the United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Jumbo (supermarket), KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, freight forwarder P&O Ferrymasters, and retailer Walmart.
Acquisition
On July 24, 2014, Dassault Systèmes announced plans to acquire Quintiq for $336 million. The deal was subject to regulatory approval in Germany and Austria. By October 2014, the sale was complete.
References
Software companies of the Netherlands
Supply chain software companies |
18977 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minix | Minix | Minix (from mini-Unix) is a Unix-like operating system based on a microkernel architecture. Since version 2.0, it has been Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX) compliant.
Early versions of MINIX were created by Andrew S. Tanenbaum for educational purposes. Starting with MINIX 3, the primary aim of development shifted from education to the creation of a highly reliable and self-healing microkernel OS. MINIX is now developed as open-source software.
MINIX was first released in 1987, with its complete source code made available to universities for study in courses and research. It has been free and open-source software since it was relicensed under the BSD-3-Clause license in April 2000.
Implementation
Minix 1.0
Andrew S. Tanenbaum created MINIX at Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam to exemplify the principles conveyed in his textbook, Operating Systems: Design and Implementation (1987).
An abridged 12,000 lines of the C source code of the kernel, memory manager, and file system of MINIX 1.0 are printed in the book. Prentice-Hall also released MINIX source code and binaries on floppy disk with a reference manual. MINIX 1 was system-call compatible with Seventh Edition Unix.
Tanenbaum originally developed MINIX for compatibility with the IBM PC and IBM PC/AT 8088 microcomputers available at the time.
Minix 1.5
MINIX 1.5, released in 1991, included support for MicroChannel IBM PS/2 systems and was also ported to the Motorola 68000 and SPARC architectures, supporting the Atari ST, Commodore Amiga, Apple Macintosh and Sun SPARCstation computer platforms. There were also unofficial ports to Intel 386 PC compatibles (in 32-bit protected mode), National Semiconductor NS32532, ARM and Inmos transputer processors. Meiko Scientific used an early version of MINIX as the basis for the MeikOS operating system for its transputer-based Computing Surface parallel computers. A version of MINIX running as a user process under SunOS and Solaris was also available, a simulator named SMX (operating system) or just SMX for short.
Minix 2.0
Demand for the 68k-based architectures waned, however, and MINIX 2.0, released in 1997, was only available for the x86 and Solaris-hosted SPARC architectures. It was the subject of the second edition of Tanenbaum's textbook, cowritten with Albert Woodhull and was distributed on a CD-ROM included with the book. MINIX 2.0 added POSIX.1 compliance, support for 386 and later processors in 32-bit mode and replaced the Amoeba network protocols included in MINIX 1.5 with a TCP/IP stack.
Version 2.0.3 was released in May 2001. It was the first version after MINIX had been relicensed under the BSD-3-Clause license, which was retroactively applied to all previous versions.
Minix-vmd
Minix-vmd is a variant of MINIX 2.0 for Intel IA-32-compatible processors, created by two Vrije Universiteit researchers, which adds virtual memory and support for the X Window System.
Minix 3
Minix 3 was publicly announced on 24 October 2005 by Tanenbaum during his keynote speech at the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Symposium on Operating Systems Principles (SOSP). Although it still serves as an example for the new edition of Tanenbaum's textbook, coauthored by Albert S. Woodhull, it is comprehensively redesigned to be "usable as a serious system on resource-limited and embedded computers and for applications requiring high reliability."
Minix 3 currently supports IA-32 and ARM architecture systems. It is available in a live CD format that allows it to be used on a computer without installing it on the hard drive, and in versions compatible with hardware emulating and virtualizing systems, including Bochs, QEMU, VMware Workstation and Fusion, VirtualBox, and Microsoft Virtual PC.
Version 3.1.2 was released on 18 April 2006. It was the first version after MINIX had been relicensed under the BSD-3-Clause license with a new fourth clause.
Version 3.1.5 was released on 5 November 2009. It contains X11, emacs, vi, cc, gcc, perl, python, ash, bash, zsh, ftp, ssh, telnet, pine, and over 400 other common Unix utility programs. With the addition of X11, this version marks the transition away from a text-only system. In many cases it can automatically restart a crashed driver without affecting running processes. In this way, MINIX is self-healing and can be used in applications demanding high reliability. MINIX 3 also has support for virtual memory management, making it suitable for desktop OS use. Desktop applications such as Firefox and OpenOffice.org are not yet available for MINIX 3 however.
As of version 3.2.0, the userland was mostly replaced by that of NetBSD and support from pkgsrc became possible, increasing the available software applications that MINIX can use. Clang replaced the prior compiler (with GCC now having to be manually compiled), and GDB, the GNU debugger, was ported.
Minix 3.3.0, released in September 2014, brought ARM support.
Minix 3.4.0RC, Release Candidates became available in January 2016; however, a stable release of MINIX 3.4.0 is yet to be announced.
Minix supports many programming languages, including C, C++, FORTRAN, Modula-2, Pascal, Perl, Python, and Tcl.
Minix 3 still has an active development community with over 50 people attending MINIXCon 2016, a conference to discuss the history and future of MINIX.
All Intel chipsets post-2015 are running MINIX 3 internally as the software component of the Intel Management Engine.
Relationship with Linux
Early influence
Linus Torvalds used and appreciated Minix, but his design deviated from the Minix architecture in significant ways, most notably by employing a monolithic kernel instead of a microkernel. This was disapproved of by Tanenbaum in the Tanenbaum–Torvalds debate. Tanenbaum explained again his rationale for using a microkernel in May 2006.
Early Linux kernel development was done on a Minix host system, which led to Linux inheriting various features from Minix, such as the Minix file system.
Samizdat claims
In May 2004, Kenneth Brown of the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution made the accusation that major parts of the Linux kernel had been copied from the MINIX codebase, in a book named Samizdat. These accusations were rebutted universally—most prominently by Tanenbaum, who strongly criticised Brown and published a long rebuttal on his own personal Web site, also claiming that Brown was funded by Microsoft.
Licensing
At the time of MINIX's original development, its license was relatively liberal. Its licensing fee was very small ($69) relative to those of other operating systems. Tanenbaum wished for MINIX to be as accessible as possible to students, but his publisher was unwilling to offer material (such as the source code) that could be copied freely, so a restrictive license requiring a nominal fee (included in the price of Tanenbaum's book) was applied as a compromise. This prevented the use of MINIX as the basis for a freely distributed software system.
When free and open-source Unix-like operating systems such as Linux and 386BSD became available in the early 1990s, many volunteer software developers abandoned MINIX in favor of these. In April 2000, MINIX became free and open-source software under the BSD-3-Clause license, which was retroactively applied to all previous versions. However, by this time other operating systems had surpassed its capabilities, and it remained primarily an operating system for students and hobbyists. In late 2005, MINIX was relicensed with a fourth clause added to the BSD-3-Clause license.
See also
MINIX file system
Minix-vmd
MINIX 3
Redox —an operating system in Rust using a Minix-like kernel
Xinu
Notes
References
External links
History of MINIX from Andrew Tanenbaum
1987 software
Computer-related introductions in 1987
ARM operating systems
Computer science in the Netherlands
Dutch inventions
Educational operating systems
Free software operating systems
Information technology in the Netherlands
Lightweight Unix-like systems
Microkernel-based operating systems
Microkernels
Operating system distributions bootable from read-only media
Software using the BSD license
Unix variants |
59976854 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STIR/SHAKEN | STIR/SHAKEN | STIR/SHAKEN, or SHAKEN/STIR, is a suite of protocols and procedures intended to combat caller ID spoofing on public telephone networks. Caller ID spoofing is used by robocallers to mask their identity or to make it appear the call is from a legitimate source, often a nearby phone number with the same area code and exchange, or from well-known agencies like the Internal Revenue Service or Ontario Provincial Police. This sort of spoofing is common for calls originating from voice-over-IP (VoIP) systems, which can be located anywhere in the world.
STIR, short for Secure Telephony Identity Revisited, has been defined as a series of RFC standards documents by a Working Group of the Internet Engineering Task Force. It works by adding a digital certificate to the Session Initiation Protocol information used to initiate and route calls in VoIP systems. The first public connection on the system, typically the VoIP service provider, examines the caller ID and compares it to a known list of IDs they provide to that customer. The provider then attaches an encrypted certificate to the SIP header with the service provider's identity and a trust value. VoIP software on the receiving end can check the authenticity of the message by decrypting STIR using the provider's public key.
For non-VoIP systems, like cell phones and landlines, call routing information is carried by SS7. In these cases, the SIP header is not directly useful as it cannot be sent to users unless they are on a VoIP connection. This is the purpose of the SHAKEN system, short for Signature-based Handling of Asserted information using toKENs. SHAKEN is a suite of guidelines for public switched telephone networks that indicate how to deal with calls that have incorrect or missing STIR information. This may be in the form of additional information in the CNAM information of caller ID indicating the number has been spoofed, but the details have not been finalized.
, STIR/SHAKEN is a major ongoing effort in the United States, which is suffering an "epidemic" of robocalls. The Federal Communications Commission requires use of the protocols by June 30, 2021. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission requires use of the protocols by November 30, 2021.
The name was inspired by Ian Fleming's character James Bond, who famously prefers his martinis "shaken, not stirred." STIR having existed already, the creators of SHAKEN "tortured the English language until [they] came up with an acronym.”
Background
Caller ID
The idea of sending the phone number to the customer for identification purposes dates to 1968, when Ted Paraskevakos introduced the idea of modem-like devices that would send and receive the information over normal voice lines. It sent a small burst of information using the 1200 bit/s Bell 202 modulation in the time between the first and second rings. The concept was developed through the 1970s and had its first public trial with Bell Atlantic in 1984 and a follow-up in 1987.
The system was widespread in the United States and Canada by the mid-1990s, and spread to most other countries by the end of the decade. It soon became an indispensable system allowing customers to screen calls from telemarketers. Marketers often provided alternative numbers in the caller ID so returned calls went to an inbound call center instead of the telemarketing firm where the call originated. Unscrupulous users began using this concept, which became known as "spoofing", to hide the true origins of the call to prevent callbacks. This became so common that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) was given the mandate to sue companies that provided false caller ID information.
VoIP and SIP
The introduction of voice-over-IP (VoIP) systems allowed users to place calls to other users directly through the internet without ever using the public telephone network. Initially, these systems were proprietary, but over time a series of proposals created the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), a messaging protocol that contained the information needed to set up a VoIP call between two endpoints. SIP borrowed from existing protocols, including the use of simple headers like "From:" in a format similar to the SMTP email system. SIP requests are sent to proxy servers that provide access information for end-users to the caller, which is then used to provide a direct connection between the two endpoints.
As the cost of an Internet line with enough bandwidth to host a given number of simultaneous calls is much less than leasing that number of telephone lines, there was a strong economic benefit for companies to switch to VoIP as well. From the late 1990s a number of new PBX-like systems emerged that use SIP and VoIP to route calls wherever possible, only exiting to the plain old telephone service (POTS) system when required to call a non-VoIP user. A company with several of these systems in separate offices could forward the call to the one closest to the number being dialed, thereby reducing or eliminating long distance charges.
As these systems became popular, new telephony providers emerged that offered centralized SIP routing, allowing both companies and end-users to use VoIP systems to call the service and then route back out to the POTS. Many of these also allowed incoming calls from conventional phone equipment, providing local or toll-free numbers for the inbound calls. This allowed users to place calls to and from anywhere with local access for a greatly reduced cost by avoiding the telephone company's own long-distance service.
Today, a call may travel for most of its "distance" as a SIP-initiated VoIP call, only exiting to the SS7 POTS network at the final stages, if ever. As this sort of call became common, even the largest service providers, like AT&T, began offering SIP/VoIP to their customers. In this case, the caller ID information is taken from the SIP headers, not the provider, and that information is often editable by the end-user.
ID spoofing
The opening of the telephone network to VoIP systems resulted in a dramatic lowering in cost for the support of multiple simultaneous phone calls. This was as much of a boon to robocallers as it was to legitimate users. By purchasing commodity personal computers and running suitable software, a robocaller can make hundreds of simultaneous calls for the cost of a single Internet connection.
In the early days of such robocalling, the caller would often attempt to hide their identity by entering false caller ID information into the VoIP software. This had the added advantage to the robocaller of making it impossible for the called user to call back to complain, or even report the call to their provider or government agency like the Federal Trade Commission. Users quickly learned to stop taking calls from obviously faked IDs.
In response, robocallers began using less obviously incorrect IDs, but these had a lower chance of being picked up – the chance to ignore a call from an unknown user was precisely why many used caller ID in the first place. Robocallers changed their tactics again, first by using phone numbers that were similar to the user's to make it appear local, and later by using well-known numbers, often government agencies, as part of scams. Using such tactics, robocalls become an increasing problem, rising another 18% year-over-year in 2019 with 26 billion calls between January and October, with an estimated 5.7 billion robocalls in the US placed in October 2019 alone. Estimates for 2020 are 46 billion robocalls in the US alone.
STIR
The STIR system aims to add information to the SIP headers that allow the endpoints along the system to positively identify the origin of the data. This does not directly prevent the ability for a robocaller to spoof a caller ID, but it does allow upstream points to decide whether or not to trust that ID.
For instance, a business system using a VoIP-based PBX might connect to the wider telephony network through a SIP service provider. When the SIP packet is received by these providers, they will add additional information to the header, indicating whether they are sure the call originates with a known customer and whether or not the caller ID they provided is one that is known to their system. In this example, the internal phone number may not be known by the provider, but they may agree that all numbers starting with 555-555 do indeed belong to that customer, and that the provided ID, 555-555-1234, is therefore valid. Likewise, a customer might use a separate toll-free number for return calls and thus have a legitimate reason to use a totally different caller ID number, perhaps 800-123-4567.
There are three levels of verification, or "attestation", possible in the STIR protocol. The highest level, "Full Attestation", indicated in the STIR header with an "A", indicates that the provider recognizes the entire phone number as being registered with the originating subscriber. This would be the case for a landline or mobile phone where the customer connects directly to the VoIP network and the phone number can be verified as being a particular customer, or in the case of a company that has registered a particular callback number. "Partial Attestation", or "B", indicates that the call originated with a known customer but the entire number cannot be verified, which would be the case with a call originating from a client PBX where the extension number is not registered with the provider. "Gateway Attestation", "C", indicates the call can only be verified as coming from a known gateway, for instance, a connection to another service provider.
STIR systems produce a JSON Web Token containing, among other things, the originating phone number as provided by the original SIP, the number being called, and the level of attestation being given by the provider. This information is then encrypted with the provider's private key, encoded using Base64, and appended to the original SIP header in a new Identity field. The new information now travels along with the original SIP request until it reaches its destination, another VoIP system or provider that will route the call to an external telephone.
On reception, the STIR information is decoded using the provider's public key. If this fails, the STIR information can be considered invalid. If it properly decodes, it can extract the information and examine the attestation to decide whether to allow the call to continue. In the case of a VoIP endpoint on a smart phone, for instance, the display might show that the call is of an unknown origin ("C") or that it failed verification entirely.
Anyone on the VoIP side of the call can add a STIR header claiming "A" attestation even to known-bad calls. This may start in a robocaller's software, for instance. In this case, upstream users would not have the keys necessary to decode the STIR header and the authentication would fail. The software might also encode a header to pose as a trusted source, but in this case, the known public key for trusted source would fail to decode the header and the authentication would fail.
The STIR system relies on a chain of trust. For this to work, the system requires certification services that are well known so end-user software knows whom to query to retrieve the public key, and are trusted to provide valid information and not provide keys to known-bad players. This network will be based on the existing Certificate Authority system in use today.
The robocaller might find a VoIP provider willing to sign their calls even though they are known-bad, in the same fashion that there are Internet service providers that provide service to known email spam farms . To combat this, the STIR header contains both the original phone number when it enters the provider as well as the caller ID being claimed. If these do not match, the STIR authentication fails. For such a certificate to get through, the provider would also have to be willing to fake the number on reception, for instance, by copying whatever caller ID number the robocaller provided. In this case the STIR will validate correctly, and stopping such calls will have to be done at a higher level, through key revocation or similar.
The STIR system is defined as a series of Request for Comments documents by the IETF:
- Authenticated Identity Management in the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)
- PASSporT: Personal Assertion Token
- Secure Telephone Identity Credentials: Certificates
- Personal Assertion Token (PaSSporT) Extension for Signature-based Handling of Asserted information using toKENs (SHAKEN)
SHAKEN
STIR is based on SIP and is designed to work with calls being routed through a VoIP network. It does not work within the "original" telephony network, which relies on standards such as SS7 to route calls. VoIP calls enter the network at the "edge" through a variety of VoIP-to-telephony gateways, and they can receive STIR information at that point or anywhere earlier during the VoIP section of the call. But once inside the telephony network there is no standard for forwarding that STIR information to the end user.
Additionally, STIR does not define how authentication failures should be handled within the network. In a system where most calls will not have STIR information, at least during the period where the system is being set up, failed STIR checks cannot simply block the call. Some sort of information has to be sent to the user, but the precise nature of that information is not part of STIR itself.
Developed jointly by the SIP Forum and ATIS (the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions) to efficiently implement the Internet Engineering Task Force’s (IETF) STIR (for Secure Telephony Identity Revisited) standard, SHAKEN (for Signature-based Handling of Asserted information using toKENs) defines a mechanism to verify the calling number and specifies how it will be transported across communications networks.
Together, STIR/SHAKEN offers a practical mechanism to provide verified information about the calling party as well as the origin of the call — what is known as “attestation” — for the first time in the network. Giving service providers the tools needed to sign and verify calling numbers makes it possible for businesses and consumers to know, before answering, that the calls they receive are from legitimate parties.
In the common case of a robocaller calling an end user on a landline or mobile phone, it is the last step of the connection that does not directly handle STIR. For instance, if a call originates in a VoIP system and was tagged with a STIR header that successfully authenticated, the caller ID provided to the user might be appended with "(verified)", whereas one that fails might say "(spoofed)" or "(no verification)".
, the exact nature of the messages sent to end users is still being discussed. The Secure Telephone Identity Governance Authority, or STI-GA, is organizing these discussions as well as calling for certificate authorities who will handle the majority of the key protocol. Additionally, the Secure Telephone Identity Policy Administrator, or STI-PA, has the job of actually carrying out policy decisions like key revocation. On May 30, 2019, the GA announced iconectiv had won the role of PA.
Implementation
STIR/SHAKEN was designed to allow expansion to carriers outside the US.
On December 9, 2019, FCC commissioner Ajit Pai and CRTC chairman Ian Scott conducted "the first official cross-border call" using the protocol. The same day, the CRTC announced that it "expects" all phone providers to adopt STIR/SHAKEN no later than September 30, 2020. This was later extended to June 30, 2021 at the request of Rogers Communications Canada Inc. The implementation date was again pushed back to November 30, 2021, as the CRTC announced that no TSP will be exempted from the requirement.
Enforcement
In January 2018, the CRTC issued Compliance and Enforcement and Telecom Decision 2018-32, which states that the CRTC expects Canadian Telecommunications Service Providers to implement STIR/SHAKEN by 31 March 2019, establish a Canadian administrator, and issue progress reports.
In December 2019, the CRTC issued decision 2019-402, which extended the deadline to 30 September 2020. At the same time, the CRTC issued CRTC 2019-403, which approved the establishment of the Canadian Secure Token Governance Authority (CSTGA) as Governance Authority for STIR/SHAKEN.
In September 2020, the CRTC issued decision 2019-402-2, which extended the deadline to 30 June 2021.
In December 2019, the TRACED Act (Telephone Robocall Abuse Criminal Enforcement and Deterrence Act) was signed into U.S. law, which compels the FCC to mandate implementation of the protocols by all U.S. phone companies. The FCC approved the mandate on March 31, 2020, under which large carriers must implement the systems by June 30, 2021, and smaller and rural carriers by June 30, 2022.
In July 2021, the CRTC issued decision 2021-123, further pushing back the implementation deadline to 30 November 2021, while also making it clear that no carrier in Canada would be exempt from the implementation date, in contrast to FCC's decision to grant exemptions to smaller and rural operators.
Testing
Interoperability working:
T-Mobile - Sprint
Production
AT&T - Comcast
Verizon (internal)
Brightlink
References
Citations
Bibliography
Caller ID
Confidence tricks
Telemarketing |
9426616 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OMB%20Circular%20A-130 | OMB Circular A-130 | OMB Circular A-130, titled Managing Information as a Strategic Resource, is one of many Government circulars produced by the United States Federal Government to establish policy for executive branch departments and agencies.
Circular A-130 was first issued in December 1985 to meet information resource management requirements that were included in the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA) of 1980. Specifically, the PRA assigned responsibility to the OMB Director to develop and maintain a comprehensive set of information resources management policies for use across the Federal government, and to promote the application of information technology to improve the use and dissemination of information in the operation of Federal programs. The initial release of the Circular provided a policy framework for information resources management (IRM) across the Federal government.
Since the time of the Circular's first release in 1985, Congress has enacted several additional laws and OMB issued several guidance documents that related to information technology management in federal agencies. To account for these new laws and guidance, OMB has revised the Circular three times, in 1994, 1996, and 2000. A complete rewrite of the Circular to both update and to correct for known deficiencies has been considered since at least 2005, but as of October 2014, this rewrite has not yet occurred. A revised version was released on July 27, 2016.
As expressed in the US Federal CIO Council's Architecture Alignment and Assessment Guide (2000), Circular A-130 can be thought of as a "one-stop shopping document for OMB policy and guidance on information technology management".
Specific Guidance
A-130 includes specific guidelines that require
all federal information systems to have security plans
systems to have formal emergency response capabilities
a single individual to have responsibility for operational security
Federal Management and Fiscal Integrity Act reports to Congress be made in regards to the security of the system
security awareness training be available to all government users, administrators of the system
regular review and improvement upon contingency plans for the system to be done
Federal DAA Involvement
The Federal Designated Approving Authority has specific requirements and responsibilities provided by this circular. It is required that this individual should be a management official, knowledgeable in the information and processes supported by the system. The individual should also know the management, personnel, operational, and technical controls used in the protection of this system.
The Federal DAA is also responsible for the security of this system as well as the use of the security products and techniques used therein.
Authorities
A-130 establishes official OMB policy and guidance on information technology management for federal executive agencies based on the following laws, Executive Orders, and prior OMB guidance documents:
Laws:
the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA) of 1980 (amended by the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995[44 U.S.C. Chapter 35])
the Clinger-Cohen Act (Pub L. 104–106, Division E)
the Privacy Act of 1974, as amended [5 U.S.C. 552a]
the Chief Financial Officers Act of 1990 (31 U.S.C. 3512 et seq.)
the Federal Property and Administrative Services Act of 1949, as amended [40 U.S.C. 487]
the Computer Security Act of 1987 (Pub. L. 100–235)
the Budget and Accounting Act, as amended [31 U.S.C. Chapter 11]
the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993(GPRA)
the Office of Federal Procurement Policy Act (41 U.S.C. Chapter 7)
the Government Paperwork Elimination Act of 1998 (Pub. L. 105–277, Title XVII)
Executive Orders:
Executive Order 12046 of March 27, 1978 ("Relating to the transfer of telecommunications functions")
Executive Order 12472 of April 3, 1984 ("Assignment of national security and emergency preparedness telecommunications functions")
Executive Order 13011 of July 17, 1996 ("Federal Information Technology")
Other OMB circulars:
OMB Circular A-11 (Preparation, Submission, and Execution of the Budget)
Prior OMB guidance documents:
(All below have been rescinded after incorporation of guidance content into A-130):
M-96-20 Implementation of the Information Technology Reform Act of 1996
M-97-02 Funding Information Systems Technology
M-97-09 InterAgency Support for Information Technology
M-97-15 Local Telecommunications Services Policy
M-97-16 Information Technology Architectures
Any information that the information system uses that is classified automatically requires the system to have National security emergency preparedness guidelines that conform to Executive Order 12472.
References
External links
List of OMB Circulars at the Office of Management and Budget.
HTML Version of Circular A-130
United States Office of Management and Budget
Government documents of the United States |
1783100 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows%20Media%20DRM | Windows Media DRM | Windows Media DRM or WMDRM, is a Digital Rights Management service for the Windows Media platform. It is designed to provide delivery of audio or video content over an IP network to a PC or other playback device in such a way that the distributor can control how that content is used.
WMDRM includes the following components:
Windows Media Rights Manager (WMRM) SDK for packaging content and issuing licenses
Windows Media Format SDK (WMF SDK) for building Windows applications which support DRM and the Windows Media format
Windows Media DRM for Portable Devices (WMDRM-PD) for supporting offline playback on portable devices (Janus)
Windows Media DRM for Network Devices (WMDRM-ND) for streaming protected content to devices attached to a home network (Cardea)
Windows Media DRM was replaced in Windows 10 Anniversary Update in favor of Microsoft PlayReady.
How it works
In May 2007 Microsoft published the network protocol behind its license acquisition mechanism. According to the specification, the client software obtains a 7 byte plain-text content key Kcontent from the license server. The server encrypts the key before transferring it to the client with a globally predefined 160-bit ECC key, ECC1. The server also sends a content key ID, unencrypted. The client then uses the Kcontent as an RC4 key to decrypt the licensed media stream.
As an anti-spoofing measure, additional fields such as playback rights and a random number are encrypted with three more predefined ECC key pairs either by the client or server software:
client software ECC key pair KC,
client machine ECC key pair KM,
server software ECC key pair KS.
An analysis of version 2 of the DRM scheme in Windows Media Audio revealed that it was using a combination of elliptic curve cryptography key exchange, the DES block cipher, a custom block cipher dubbed MultiSwap (for MACs only), the RC4 stream cipher, and the SHA-1 hashing function.
Windows Media DRM is designed to be renewable, that is, it is designed on the assumption that it will be cracked and must be constantly updated by Microsoft. The result is that while the scheme has been cracked several times, it has usually not remained cracked for long.
Version 1 was released in April 1999 and supported basic business rules such as expiration dates. Version 2 was released in January 2003 and is also known as version 7.x and 9, to keep in sync with the equivalent versions of Windows Media Player. Version 3, better known as DRM v10, was released in 2004. Earlier versions of the system have cracks available, meaning content restricted with these versions can have the protections stripped. Version 10 was cracked in early 2005, but a software update was shortly pushed which sealed the relevant hole.
Generally, these sorts of cracks have all worked in the same way to a certain extent. Rather than break the encryption itself, which is infeasible, they hook or interfere with the "black box" component as it runs to dump out the content keys or the unencrypted content from memory.
Interoperability
Content delivered with WMDRM encryption is not universally accessible. Microsoft Windows supports playback of content protected with WMDRM encryption, and the format has become popular with consumer electronics manufacturers, many of whom have licensed the WMDRM decode component for devices like television sets, set-top boxes and Blu-ray players.
The open network protocol for digital rights management, [MS-DRM] from the MCPP collection, stipulates that software developers have a right to implement the protocol outside the Microsoft's development tools and environment.
Removal
Tools have been created to strip files of Windows Media DRM, enabling them to be played on non-Janus platforms. These tools typically were developed with one specific Individualized Blackbox Component (IBX) version in mind and rarely work on a version they were not explicitly designed for. Microsoft in addition to upgrading the IBX whenever it was cracked, also pursued legal action against those who developed and hosted these tools, driving the development and distribution even further underground and fragmenting it. These tools can be split into three categories: decrypter, key-finder, and all-in-one (finds the keys and then decrypts). Microsoft has been more successful in squashing the development and distribution of the tools capable of key finding than those that decrypt encoding, as is apparent by the continual existence of the SourceForge project FreeMe2.
FairUse4WM
It was claimed that one particular tool, FairUse4WM (released on August 19, 2006) written by Viodentia, had the ability to strip DRM from files protected with WMDRM. This is an all-in-one tool.
Microsoft responded in several ways. First, on August 28, 2006 Microsoft released a new version of the IBX to prevent this particular tool from working. Microsoft also informed partners that they were working to further resolve this issue, given that allegedly the fix was also circumvented within days. Microsoft also issued takedown notices to Web site owners distributing FairUse4WM. Finally, on September 22, 2006, Microsoft filed a federal lawsuit against John Does 1–10 a/k/a "viodentia", hoping to identify the person or persons responsible. However, the operator of the highest-ranked mirror of the utility, James Holden, denies having received any such notices or threats. Unable to find the identity of Viodentia, in April 2007 Microsoft dropped the civil suits they had filed.
By October 16, 2006, distributors using the Windows Media DRM protection, such as Sky Anytime, were using a patched codec. On September 6, 2007, Microsoft updated IBX to version 11.0.6000.7000, in an attempt to thwart circumvention efforts by variants of the original program. And, as of November 28, 2007, DRM Removal under Windows XP on new installs or updated computers (i.e. those that already contain IBX version 11.0.6000.7000), is not possible without rolling back to Windows Media Player 10. In 2008 another patched version of FairUse4WM was released, allowing it to work with Windows Vista, and IBX versions lower than 11.0.6000.6324. In a ploy to confuse the abusers or software tools, Microsoft revisited the controversial 11.0.6000.6324 version number, releasing a new IBX version, but giving the file a deceptive older version number.
DRMDBG
DRMDBG is a key-finder, it extracts the keys by hooking an instance of Windows Media Player that it launches. There are several version available each targeting a specific version. The version released on March 3, 2009 supports IBX versions 11.0.6000.6324 and 11.0.6001.8000.
Mirakagi
Mirakagi was one of the first key-finders; it is no longer in development.
See also
Janus (DRM)
Cardea (DRM)
Windows Media
PlayReady
References
External links
,Google Patent
FairUse4WM topic-thread on doom9-net forums
Microsoft Windows multimedia technology
Digital rights management systems
Digital rights management circumvention software |
509688 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian%20packet | Martian packet | A Martian packet is an IP packet seen on the public Internet that contains a source or destination address that is reserved for special-use by Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). On the public Internet, such a packet either has a spoofed source address, and it cannot actually originate as claimed, or the packet cannot be delivered. The requirement to do this is found in , Section 5.2.3 (Local Delivery Decision).
Martian packets commonly arise from IP address spoofing in denial-of-service attacks, but can also arise from network equipment malfunction or misconfiguration of a host.
In Linux terminology, a martian packet is an IP packet received by the kernel on a specific interface, while routing tables indicate that the source IP is expected on another interface.
The name is derived from packet from Mars, meaning that packet seems to be not of this Earth.
IPv4 and IPv6
In both IPv4 and IPv6, a Martian packet has a source address, a destination address, or both within one of the special-use ranges.
Transition mechanisms
6to4
6to4 is an IPv6 transition technology where the IPv6 address encodes the originating IPv4 address such that every IPv4 has a corresponding, unique IPv6 prefix. Because 6to4 relays use the encoded value for determining the end site of the 6to4 tunnel, 6to4 addresses corresponding to IPv4 martians are not routable and should never appear on the public Internet.
Teredo tunneling
Teredo is another IPv6 transition technology that encodes the originating IPv4 address in the IPv6 address. However, the encoding format encodes the Teredo server address and tunnel information before the IPv4 client address. Thus there is no definable set of prefixes more specific than for Teredo packets with martian end-site addresses. It is, however, possible to spoof Teredo packets with the Teredo server IPv4 address set to a martian.
See also
Bogon filtering
Christmas tree packet
Broadcast storm
References
Packets (information technology)
Denial-of-service attacks
IP addresses |
744621 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privilege%20escalation | Privilege escalation | Privilege escalation is the act of exploiting a bug, a design flaw, or a configuration oversight in an operating system or software application to gain elevated access to resources that are normally protected from an application or user. The result is that an application with more privileges than intended by the application developer or system administrator can perform unauthorized actions.
Background
Most computer systems are designed for use with multiple user accounts, each of which has abilities known as privileges. Common privileges include viewing and editing files or modifying system files.
Privilege escalation means users receive privileges they are not entitled to. These privileges can be used to delete files, view private information, or install unwanted programs such as viruses. It usually occurs when a system has a bug that allows security to be bypassed or, alternatively, has flawed design assumptions about how it will be used. Privilege escalation occurs in two forms:
Vertical privilege escalation, also known as privilege elevation, where a lower privilege user or application accesses functions or content reserved for higher privilege users or applications (e.g. Internet Banking users can access site administrative functions or the password for a smartphone can be bypassed.)
Horizontal privilege escalation, where a normal user accesses functions or content reserved for other normal users (e.g. Internet Banking User A accesses the Internet bank account of User B)
Vertical
This type of privilege escalation occurs when the user or process is able to obtain a higher level of access than an administrator or system developer intended, possibly by performing kernel-level operations.
Examples
In some cases, a high-privilege application assumes that it would only be provided with input matching its interface specification, thus doesn't validate this input. Then, an attacker may be able to exploit this assumption, in order to run unauthorized code with the application's privileges:
Some Windows services are configured to run under the Local System user account. A vulnerability such as a buffer overflow may be used to execute arbitrary code with privilege elevated to Local System. Alternatively, a system service that is impersonating a lesser user can elevate that user's privileges if errors are not handled correctly while the user is being impersonated (e.g. if the user has introduced a malicious error handler)
Under some legacy versions of the Microsoft Windows operating system, the All Users screensaver runs under the Local System account – any account that can replace the current screensaver binary in the file system or Registry can therefore elevate privileges.
In certain versions of the Linux kernel it was possible to write a program that would set its current directory to /etc/cron.d, request that a core dump be performed in case it crashes and then have itself killed by another process. The core dump file would have been placed at the program's current directory, that is, /etc/cron.d, and cron would have treated it as a text file instructing it to run programs on schedule. Because the contents of the file would be under attacker's control, the attacker would be able to execute any program with root privileges.
Cross Zone Scripting is a type of privilege escalation attack in which a website subverts the security model of web browsers, thus allowing it to run malicious code on client computers.
There are also situations where an application can use other high privilege services and has incorrect assumptions about how a client could manipulate its use of these services. An application that can execute Command line or shell commands could have a Shell Injection vulnerability if it uses unvalidated input as part of an executed command. An attacker would then be able to run system commands using the application's privileges.
Texas Instruments calculators (particularly the TI-85 and TI-82) were originally designed to use only interpreted programs written in dialects of TI-BASIC; however, after users discovered bugs that could be exploited to allow native Z-80 code to run on the calculator hardware, TI released programming data to support third-party development. (This did not carry on to the ARM-based TI-Nspire, for which jailbreaks using Ndless have been found but are still actively fought against by Texas Instruments.)
Some versions of the iPhone allow an unauthorised user to access the phone while it is locked.
Jailbreaking
A jailbreak is the act or tool used to perform the act of breaking out of a chroot or jail in UNIX-like operating systems or bypassing digital rights management (DRM). In the former case, it allows the user to see files outside of the filesystem that the administrator intends to make available to the application or user in question. In the context of DRM, this allows the user to run arbitrarily defined code on devices with DRM as well as break out of chroot-like restrictions. The term originated with the iPhone/iOS jailbreaking community and has also been used as a term for PlayStation Portable hacking; these devices have repeatedly been subject to jailbreaks, allowing the execution of arbitrary code, and sometimes have had those jailbreaks disabled by vendor updates.
iOS systems including the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch have been subject to iOS jailbreaking efforts since they were released, and continuing with each firmware update. iOS jailbreaking tools include the option to install Cydia, Sileo, or Installer.app third-party alternatives to the App Store, as a way to find and install system tweaks and binaries. To prevent iOS jailbreaking, Apple has made the device boot ROM execute checks for SHSH blobs in order to disallow uploads of custom kernels and prevent software downgrades to earlier, jailbreakable firmware. In an "untethered" jailbreak, the iBoot environment is changed to execute a boot ROM exploit and allow submission of a patched low level bootloader or hack the kernel to submit the jailbroken kernel after the SHSH check.
A similar method of jailbreaking exists for S60 Platform smartphones, where utilities such HelloOX allow the execution of unsigned code and full access to system files. or edited firmware (similar to the M33 hacked firmware used for the PlayStation Portable) to circumvent restrictions on unsigned code. Nokia has since issued updates to curb unauthorized jailbreaking, in a manner similar to Apple.
In the case of gaming consoles, jailbreaking is often used to execute homebrew games. In 2011, Sony, with assistance from law firm Kilpatrick Stockton, sued 21-year-old George Hotz and associates of the group fail0verflow for jailbreaking the PlayStation 3 (see Sony Computer Entertainment America v. George Hotz and PlayStation Jailbreak).
Android
Android phones can be officially rooted by either going through manufacturers controlled process, using an exploit to gain root, or flashing custom recovery. Manufacturers allow rooting through a process they control, while some allow the phone to be rooted simply by pressing specific key combinations at boot time, or by other self-administered methods. Using a manufacturers method almost always voids the warranty permanently, even if the device is derooted and reflashed. Software exploits commonly either target a root-level process that is accessible to the user, by using an exploit specific to the phone's kernel, or using a known Android exploit that has been patched in newer versions; by not upgrading the phone, or intentionally downgrading the version.
Mitigation strategies
Operating systems and users can use the following strategies to reduce the risk of privilege escalation:
Data Execution Prevention
Address space layout randomization (to make it harder for buffer overruns to execute privileged instructions at known addresses in memory)
Running applications with least privilege (for example by running Internet Explorer with the Administrator SID disabled in the process token) in order to reduce the ability of buffer overrun exploits to abuse the privileges of an elevated user.
Requiring kernel mode code to be digitally signed.
Patching
Use of compilers that trap buffer overruns
Encryption of software and/or firmware components.
Use of an operating system with Mandatory Access Controls (MAC) such as SELinux
Horizontal
Horizontal privilege escalation occurs when an application allows the attacker to gain access to resources which normally would have been protected from an application or user. The result is that the application performs actions with the same user but different security context than intended by the application developer or system administrator; this is effectively a limited form of privilege escalation (specifically, the unauthorized assumption of the capability of impersonating other users).
Examples
This problem often occurs in web applications. Consider the following example:
User A has access to their own bank account in an Internet Banking application.
User B has access to their own bank account in the same Internet Banking application.
The vulnerability occurs when User A is able to access User B's bank account by performing some sort of malicious activity.
This malicious activity may be possible due to common web application weaknesses or vulnerabilities.
Potential web application vulnerabilities or situations that may lead to this condition include:
Predictable session IDs in the user's HTTP cookie
Session fixation
Cross-site scripting
Easily guessable passwords
Theft or hijacking of session cookies
Keystroke logging
See also
Defensive programming
Hacking of consumer electronics
Illegal number
Principle of least privilege
Privilege revocation (computing)
Privilege separation
Rooting (Android OS)
Row hammer
References
Operating system security |
57933968 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolando%20Vargas | Rolando Vargas | Rolando Vargas is the head tennis coach for the Troy Trojans men's tennis team. He was previously the head coach of the Radford Highlanders men's tennis team in 2018, as well the head coach for the AUM Warhawks men's and women's tennis teams.
Vargas is a graduate of Troy University and former player for the Trojans. He played professionally after graduating from college, achieving a career-high ATP ranking of #839.
In 2021, he led the Troy Trojans to a Conference high 20-4 record finishing with a #8 ranking in the Southern region.
Although the 2019-20 season was cut short due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Vargas' squad continued to show improvement. Under Vargas' leadership, the Trojans posted an 11-4 overall record and ended the season on a six-match winning streak.
In his first season in 2018-19, he guided his squad to 17 wins, the most since the program won 25 during the 2014-15 season.
Vargas spent one season as the head coach at Radford, where he led the Highlanders to a four-win improvement from the year prior.
While Vargas was head coach of both men's and women's teams at AUM during the 2017 season, he led both programs to national and regional rankings while playing its first full NCAA Division II schedule as the men ranked 13th and the women 19th nationally.
Previously, he took his teams to the NAIA National Tournament every season finishing fifth-place or better every year. The highlight while coaching the men's team was leading them to the NAIA Finals. Likewise, Vargas was able to lead the women's team to four NAIA national championships and finished with a career record of 150-35.
Vargas coached 58 NAIA All-Americans, 30 ITA All-Americans and 10 conference players of the year.
In 2013, he had his teams ranked #1 in the Nation and finished #1 in singles and doubles with both men’s and women’s. Furthermore, he had players finish in the ITA All-Star team (best players in College and all Divisions) in 4 different years as the best ranked player at the end of the year automatically qualified.
In 2011, he won his first National Championship with only five players on the roster.
He is a certified USPTA Elite Professional and has been a member since 2009.
Head coaching record
References
Year of birth missing (living people)
Living people
American tennis coaches
Auburn Montgomery Warhawks
College tennis coaches in the United States
Radford Highlanders coaches
Troy Trojans |
202893 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogon%20filtering | Bogon filtering | Bogon filtering is the practice of filtering bogons, which are bogus (fake) IP addresses of a computer network. Bogons include IP packets on the public Internet that contain addresses that are not in any range allocated or delegated by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) or a delegated regional Internet registry (RIR) and allowed for public Internet use. The areas of unallocated address space are called the bogon space.
Bogons also include some address ranges from allocated space, also known as Martian packets, mainly when they are being used as source address. Addresses reserved for private networks, such as those in , , and , loopback interfaces like and , and link-local addresses like and are part of it. Also addresses for Carrier-grade NAT, Teredo, and 6to4 and documentation prefixes fall into this category.
Many ISPs and end-user firewalls filter and block bogons, because they have no legitimate use, and usually are the result of accidental misconfiguration or malicious intent. Bogons can be filtered by using router access-control lists (ACLs), or by BGP blackholing.
IP addresses that are currently in the bogon space may not be bogons at a later date because IANA and other registries frequently assign new address space to ISPs. Announcements of new assignments are often published on network operators' mailing lists (such as NANOG) to ensure that operators have a chance to remove bogon filtering for addresses that have become legitimate. For example, addresses in were not allocated prior to August 2010, but are now used by APNIC. , the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) recommends that, since there are no longer any unallocated IPv4 s, IPv4 bogon filters based on registration status should be removed.
However, bogon filters still need to check for Martian packets.
Etymology
The term bogon stems from hacker jargon, with the earliest appearance in the Jargon File in version 1.5.0 (dated 1983). It is defined as the quantum of bogosity, or the property of being bogus. A bogon packet is frequently bogus both in the conventional sense of being forged for illegitimate purposes, and in the hackish sense of being incorrect, absurd, and useless.
These unused IP addresses are collectively known as a bogon, a contraction of "bogus logon", or a logon from a place you know no one can actually logon.
See also
Reverse-path forwarding
IP hijacking
Ingress filtering
Internet background noise
References
External links
Bogons Ate My Website
Bogon traffic analysis report, netflow and spam analysis
RIPE NCC: De-Bogonising New Address Blocks
Team Cymru Bogon Reference
Computer jargon
Internet Protocol |
3223838 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VersionTracker | VersionTracker | VersionTracker was a website that tracked software releases. It began as a Mac OS software tracker, eventually expanding into Mac OS X, iPhone, Microsoft Windows and Palm OS software.
VersionTracker did not host the majority of the software listed - it merely linked to them.
Browsing and searching the database was free. Paid users had access to a streamlined download process and the VersionTracker Pro software application. VersionTracker Pro tracked software versions on the user's computer and compared those versions to VersionTracker's database.
History
VersionTracker was created by Kurt Christenson, a Sacramento, CA native in 1995. It started as an Apple-only site but eventually expanded to include software related to the Microsoft Windows and Palm Pilot platforms.
Upon the advent of Mac OS X, the Macintosh section was split into Classic Mac OS and a section devoted to software for the new operating system. As releases of software for the older Mac OS dried up, its section was discontinued.
In August 2007, VersionTracker and sister sites MacFixIt and iPhone Atlas became CNET sites. CNET's Download.com promotes VersionTracker heavily on its website, through ads and following file downloads, although without specifically referencing its ownership of CNET.
On September 7, 2010, VersionTracker became fully integrated into the CNET site structure and has merged with Download.com. The software update tracking features are all still available, but the old layout is no longer used. Daily updates for programs are listed, and users can download CNET's TechTracker utility for maintaining their installed software through the Download.com site. The VersionTracker URL is no longer active.
The old VersionTracker Pro utility (TechTracker's predecessor) has been known to have had the lowest rating of 1 star for a long time to this day, even after being heavily promoted by CNET. The new version of the software has been heavily overhauled and integrates with the CNET account and website. There are currently no equivalent star ratings for the new version of the software.
The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) has various posts from former VersionTracker users who seem to be migrating to MacUpdate rather than using CNET, which no longer includes the wealth of information formerly available at VersionTracker after 15 years of user reviews.
As always-on broadband internet connections became the norm, developers began incorporating update-checking features directly into their applications, reducing the audience for sites like VersionTracker. App stores like the Mac App Store, in which applications can be searched, purchased, and kept up to date, further reduced the audience for VersionTracker, and download sites in general.
References
Defunct CBS Interactive websites
Internet properties established in 1995
Macintosh websites |
34521983 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computerized%20Criminal%20History | Computerized Criminal History | Computerized Criminal History
FBI CCH
On December 10, 1970, the Attorney General decided that the FBI would take over management responsibility for the CCH system, rather than LEAA, a joint LEAA/FBI entity, or a consortium of States. The FBI named the system the Computerized Criminal History (CCH) program and operated it as part of NCIC, using NCIC computers and communication lines.
The CCH program began operations on November 29, 1971, joining wanted persons and stolen property files maintained in the NCIC. On an interim basis, the CCH file was to contain the detailed criminal history of each offender whose record was entered by the States into the system. Eventually, under the single- State/multi-State plan adopted by the FBI, NCIC/CCH would maintain only summary data in the form of an index of single-State offenders, while the States would maintain detailed records. For multi-State offenders and Federal offenders, NCIC/CCH would maintain the detailed records."
CCH Alabama
"CCH (Computerized Criminal History System), an online database of criminal offender information available to qualified criminal justice agencies. CCH provides complete, statewide "rap sheets" on offenders, as well as a rapid flow of criminal offender information that aids criminal justice officials in making more realistic decisions with respect to bail, sentencing, probation, and parole. Alabama is an Interstate Identification Index (III) and Felon Identification in Firearms Sales (FIFS) participant."
CCH Colorado
"The Computerized Criminal History (CCH) database contains detailed information of arrest records based upon fingerprints provided by Colorado law enforcement agencies. Arrests which are not supported by fingerprints will not be included in this database. Additionally, warrant information, sealed records, and juvenile records are not available to the public. To locate information regarding registered sex offenders, you must contact your local law enforcement agency."
CCH Florida
The Falcon Project. "The Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE), in its mission of promoting safety and protecting life, is a nationwide leader in information technology for preventing, investigating, solving, and prosecuting crimes. Its computerized criminal history records (CCH) represent the third largest state criminal history repository in the nation: over 4 million offenders, 15 million arrests. The CCH, along with an automated fingerprint repository (AFIS), has been an invaluable source of information for criminal justice agencies, government, and the public."
CCH Georgia
"GCIC maintains Georgia's computerized criminal history database that includes the fingerprint and criminal history records of more than 2,600,000 persons. Georgia traditionally ranks among the top states in the nation, along with California, New York and Florida in the number of criminal fingerprint records processed each year."
CCH Louisiana
"The Bureau of Criminal Identification and Information manages and oversees the Automated Fingerprint Identification System. AFIS is a statewide, automated fingerprint identification system, which is integrated with mugshot and computerized criminal history (CCH) information. The goal of this system is to provide real time identification of individuals at the time of booking, resulting in timely updates to the state's CCH, mugshot and fingerprint databases. All of this is accomplished in a paperless environment. The Bureau of Criminal Identification and Information provides operational management and technical assistance to the users of the system in addition to ensuring system operational compliance and quality control."
CCH Minnesota
"The Computerized Criminal History (CCH) System is the State central repository for data on subjects arrested for felony, gross misdemeanor, enhanced misdemeanor and some misdemeanor offenses. It is used by the criminal justice community for decisions regarding investigations, arrests, bail/bond, criminal charges, plea bargains, convictions, probation, and placement in correctional facilities. It is also used during mandated background checks on individuals seeking employment or licensing for various positions. CCH also contains valuable information for researchers.
"
CCH New Jersey
"Presently, there are over four thousand New Jersey Criminal Justice Information System (NJCJIS) field terminals which access the Bureau's computerized criminal history files for arrest, prosecutorial, and custody information."
CCH New York
"Source: New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services, Computerized Criminal History system.
Includes all fingerprintable arrests for NY State Penal Law Article 221 offenses as the most serious
charge in an arrest event. Ages 16 and older. 1978 data was used for 1977."
CCH Oregon
"The Computerized Criminal History unit is responsible for maintaining criminal history information through LEDS (Law Enforcement Data System). The computerized criminal history is established based on fingerprints and includes arrest information, court information, and custody information received from the Department of Corrections. Law enforcement agencies are required by statute to submit a fingerprint card to ISS for all felony crimes as well as all sex and drug misdemeanor crimes."
CCH South Dakota
The State's Computerized Criminal History (CCH) system contains data on subjects arrested for misdemeanors and felonies in South Dakota (per SDCL 23-5-1 and 4) that go through the State courts, along with all penitentiary entries and follow-up criminal information.
CCH Texas
Chapter 66, Code of Criminal Procedure (CCP) defines the Computerized Criminal History System (CCH) as the statewide repository of criminal history data reported to 01691064 by local criminal justice agencies in Texas. CCH is one component of the Texas Criminal Justice Information System (CJIS). The other component of CJIS is the Corrections Tracking System (CTS) managed by the Criminal Record of Texas (DCJ).
References
Law enforcement in the United States
History of criminal justice
Science and technology in the United States |
39418 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s%20law | Moore's law | Moore's law is the observation that the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit (IC) doubles about every two years. Moore's law is an observation and projection of a historical trend. Rather than a law of physics, it is an empirical relationship linked to gains from experience in production.
The observation is named after Gordon Moore, the co-founder of Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel (and former CEO of the latter), who in 1965 posited a doubling every year in the number of components per integrated circuit, and projected this rate of growth would continue for at least another decade. In 1975, looking forward to the next decade, he revised the forecast to doubling every two years, a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 41%. While Moore did not use empirical evidence in forecasting that the historical trend would continue, his prediction held since 1975 and has since become known as a "law".
Moore's prediction has been used in the semiconductor industry to guide long-term planning and to set targets for research and development, thus functioning to some extent as a self-fulfilling prophecy. Advancements in digital electronics, such as the reduction in quality-adjusted microprocessor prices, the increase in memory capacity (RAM and flash), the improvement of sensors, and even the number and size of pixels in digital cameras, are strongly linked to Moore's law. These step changes in digital electronics have been a driving force of technological and social change, productivity, and economic growth.
Industry experts have not reached a consensus on exactly when Moore's law will cease to apply. Microprocessor architects report that semiconductor advancement has slowed industry-wide since around 2010, below the pace predicted by Moore's law. Between 2019 and 2021, the highest commercially available chip transistor count increased from 39.54 trillion to 57 trillion or 44% - less than half of the doubling predicted by Moore's Law. Similarly, since the mid-2010s, the increase in the performance of the top supercomputers has been slowing down substantially.
History
In 1959, Douglas Engelbart discussed the projected downscaling of integrated circuit (IC) size in the article "Microelectronics, and the Art of Similitude". Engelbart presented his ideas at the 1960 International Solid-State Circuits Conference, where Moore was present in the audience.
That same year, Mohamed Atalla and Dawon Kahng invented the MOSFET (metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor), also known as the MOS transistor, at Bell Labs. The MOSFET was the first truly compact transistor that could be miniaturized and mass-produced for a wide range of uses, with its high scalability and low power consumption resulting in a higher transistor density and making it possible to build high-density IC chips. In the early 1960s, Gordon E. Moore recognized that the ideal electrical and scaling characteristics of MOSFET devices would lead to rapidly increasing integration levels and unparalleled growth in electronic applications.
In 1965, Gordon Moore, who at the time was working as the director of research and development at Fairchild Semiconductor, was asked to contribute to the thirty-fifth anniversary issue of Electronics magazine with a prediction on the future of the semiconductor components industry over the next ten years. His response was a brief article entitled "Cramming more components onto integrated circuits". Within his editorial, he speculated that by 1975 it would be possible to contain as many as 65,000 components on a single quarter-square-inch semiconductor.
The complexity for minimum component costs has increased at a rate of roughly a factor of two per year. Certainly over the short term this rate can be expected to continue, if not to increase. Over the longer term, the rate of increase is a bit more uncertain, although there is no reason to believe it will not remain nearly constant for at least 10 years.
Moore posited a log-linear relationship between device complexity (higher circuit density at reduced cost) and time. In a 2015 interview, Moore noted of the 1965 article: "...I just did a wild extrapolation saying it’s going to continue to double every year for the next 10 years." One historian of the law cites Stigler's law of eponymy, to introduce the fact that the regular doubling of components was known to many working in the field.
In 1974, Robert H. Dennard at IBM recognized the rapid MOSFET scaling technology and formulated what became known as Dennard scaling, which describes that as MOS transistors get smaller, their power density stays constant such that the power use remains in proportion with area. MOSFET scaling and miniaturization have been the key driving forces behind Moore's law. Evidence from the semiconductor industry shows that this inverse relationship between power density and areal density broke down in the mid-2000s.
At the 1975 IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting, Moore revised his forecast rate, predicting semiconductor complexity would continue to double annually until about 1980, after which it would decrease to a rate of doubling approximately every two years. He outlined several contributing factors for this exponential behavior:
The advent of metal–oxide–semiconductor (MOS) technology
The exponential rate of increase in die sizes, coupled with a decrease in defective densities, with the result that semiconductor manufacturers could work with larger areas without losing reduction yields
Finer minimum dimensions
What Moore called "circuit and device cleverness"
Shortly after 1975, Caltech professor Carver Mead popularized the term "Moore's law". Moore's law eventually came to be widely accepted as a goal for the semiconductor industry, and it was cited by competitive semiconductor manufacturers as they strove to increase processing power. Moore viewed his eponymous law as surprising and optimistic: "Moore's law is a violation of Murphy's law. Everything gets better and better." The observation was even seen as a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The doubling period is often misquoted as 18 months because of a prediction by Moore's colleague, Intel executive David House. In 1975, House noted that Moore's revised law of doubling transistor count every 2 years in turn implied that computer chip performance would roughly double every 18 months (with no increase in power consumption). Moore's law is closely related to MOSFET scaling, as the rapid scaling and miniaturization of MOSFETs is the key driving force behind Moore's law. Mathematically, Moore's Law predicted that transistor count would double every 2 years due to shrinking transistor dimensions and other improvements. As a consequence of shrinking dimensions, Dennard scaling predicted that power consumption per unit area would remain constant. Combining these effects, David House deduced that computer chip performance would roughly double every 18 months. Also due to Dennard scaling, this increased performance would not be accompanied by increased power, i.e., the energy-efficiency of silicon-based computer chips roughly doubles every 18 months. Dennard scaling ended in the 2000s. Koomey later showed that a similar rate of efficiency improvement predated silicon chips and Moore's Law, for technologies such as vacuum tubes.
Microprocessor architects report that since around 2010, semiconductor advancement has slowed industry-wide below the pace predicted by Moore's law. Brian Krzanich, the former CEO of Intel, cited Moore's 1975 revision as a precedent for the current deceleration, which results from technical challenges and is "a natural part of the history of Moore's law". The rate of improvement in physical dimensions known as Dennard scaling also ended in the mid-2000s. As a result, much of the semiconductor industry has shifted its focus to the needs of major computing applications rather than semiconductor scaling. Nevertheless, leading semiconductor manufacturers TSMC and Samsung Electronics have claimed to keep pace with Moore's law with 10 nm and 7 nm nodes in mass production and 5 nm nodes in risk production .
Moore's second law
As the cost of computer power to the consumer falls, the cost for producers to fulfill Moore's law follows an opposite trend: R&D, manufacturing, and test costs have increased steadily with each new generation of chips. Rising manufacturing costs are an important consideration for the sustaining of Moore's law. This had led to the formulation of Moore's second law, also called Rock's law, which is that the capital cost of a semiconductor fab also increases exponentially over time.
Major enabling factors
Numerous innovations by scientists and engineers have sustained Moore's law since the beginning of the IC era. Some of the key innovations are listed below, as examples of breakthroughs that have advanced integrated circuit and semiconductor device fabrication technology, allowing transistor counts to grow by more than seven orders of magnitude in less than five decades.
Integrated circuit (IC) The raison d'être for Moore's law. The germanium hybrid IC was invented by Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments in 1958, followed by the invention of the silicon monolithic IC chip by Robert Noyce at Fairchild Semiconductor in 1959.
Metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) Invented by Mohamed M. Atalla and Dawon Kahng at Bell Labs in 1959, it was the first transistor that could be miniaturized and mass produced, due to its high scalability.
Complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) The CMOS process was invented by Chih-Tang Sah and Frank Wanlass at Fairchild Semiconductor in 1963.
Dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) Bipolar DRAM was developed by Toshiba in 1965, and then MOS DRAM was independently developed by Robert H. Dennard at IBM in 1967. MOS DRAM made it possible to fabricate single-transistor memory cells on IC chips.
Chemically-amplified photoresist Invented by Hiroshi Ito, C. Grant Willson and J. M. J. Fréchet at IBM circa 1980, which was 5-10 times more sensitive to ultraviolet light. IBM introduced chemically amplified photoresist for DRAM production in the mid-1980s.
Deep UV excimer laser photolithography Invented by Kanti Jain at IBM circa 1980. Prior to this, excimer lasers had been mainly used as research devices since their development in the 1970s. From a broader scientific perspective, the invention of excimer laser lithography has been highlighted as one of the major milestones in the 50-year history of the laser.
Interconnect innovations Interconnect innovations of the late 1990s, including chemical-mechanical polishing or chemical mechanical planarization (CMP), trench isolation, and copper interconnects—although not directly a factor in creating smaller transistors—have enabled improved wafer yield, additional layers of metal wires, closer spacing of devices, and lower electrical resistance.
Computer industry technology road maps predicted in 2001 that Moore's law would continue for several generations of semiconductor chips.
Recent trends
One of the key challenges of engineering future nanoscale transistors is the design of gates. As device dimension shrinks, controlling the current flow in the thin channel becomes more difficult. Modern nanoscale transistors typically take the form of multi-gate MOSFETs, with the FinFET being the most common nanoscale transistor. The FinFET has gate dielectric on three sides of the channel. In comparison, the gate-all-around MOSFET (GAAFET) structure has even better gate control.
A gate-all-around MOSFET (GAAFET) was first demonstrated in 1988, by a Toshiba research team led by Fujio Masuoka, who demonstrated a vertical nanowire GAAFET which he called a "surrounding gate transistor" (SGT). Masuoka, best known as the inventor of flash memory, later left Toshiba and founded Unisantis Electronics in 2004 to research surrounding-gate technology along with Tohoku University.
In 2006, a team of Korean researchers from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) and the National Nano Fab Center developed a 3 nm transistor, the world's smallest nanoelectronic device at time, based on FinFET technology.
In 2010, researchers at the Tyndall National Institute in Cork, Ireland announced a junctionless transistor. A control gate wrapped around a silicon nanowire can control the passage of electrons without the use of junctions or doping. They claim these may be produced at 10-nanometer scale using existing fabrication techniques.
In 2011, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh announced the development of a single-electron transistor, 1.5 nanometers in diameter, made out of oxide-based materials. Three "wires" converge on a central "island" that can house one or two electrons. Electrons tunnel from one wire to another through the island. Conditions on the third wire result in distinct conductive properties including the ability of the transistor to act as a solid state memory. Nanowire transistors could spur the creation of microscopic computers.
In 2012, a research team at the University of New South Wales announced the development of the first working transistor consisting of a single atom placed precisely in a silicon crystal (not just picked from a large sample of random transistors). Moore's law predicted this milestone to be reached for ICs in the lab by 2020.
In 2015, IBM demonstrated 7 nm node chips with silicon-germanium transistors produced using EUVL. The company believes this transistor density would be four times that of current 14 nm chips.
Samsung and TSMC plan to manufacture 3nm GAAFET nodes by 20212022. Note that node names, such as 3nm, have no relation to the physical size of device elements (transistors).
A Toshiba research team including T. Imoto, M. Matsui and C. Takubo developed a "System Block Module" wafer bonding process for manufacturing three-dimensional integrated circuit (3D IC) packages in 2001. In April 2007, Toshiba introduced an eight-layer 3D IC, the 16GB THGAM embedded NAND flash memory chip which was manufactured with eight stacked 2GB NAND flash chips. In September 2007, Hynix introduced 24-layer 3D IC, a 16GB flash memory chip that was manufactured with 24 stacked NAND flash chips using a wafer bonding process.
V-NAND, also known as 3D NAND, allows flash memory cells to be stacked vertically using charge trap flash technology originally presented by John Szedon in 1967, significantly increasing the number of transistors on a flash memory chip. 3D NAND was first announced by Toshiba in 2007. V-NAND was first commercially manufactured by Samsung Electronics in 2013.
In 2008, researchers at HP Labs announced a working memristor, a fourth basic passive circuit element whose existence only had been theorized previously. The memristor's unique properties permit the creation of smaller and better-performing electronic devices.
In 2014, bioengineers at Stanford University developed a circuit modeled on the human brain. Sixteen "Neurocore" chips simulate one million neurons and billions of synaptic connections, claimed to be 9,000 times faster as well as more energy efficient than a typical PC.
In 2015, Intel and Micron announced 3D XPoint, a non-volatile memory claimed to be significantly faster with similar density compared to NAND. Production scheduled to begin in 2016 was delayed until the second half of 2017.
In 2017, Samsung combined its V-NAND technology with eUFS 3D IC stacking to produce a 512GB flash memory chip, with eight stacked 64-layer V-NAND dies. In 2019, Samsung produced a 1TB flash chip with eight stacked 96-layer V-NAND dies, along with quad-level cell (QLC) technology (4-bit per transistor), equivalent to 2trillion transistors, the highest transistor count of any IC chip.
In 2020, Samsung Electronics plans to produce the 5 nm node, using FinFET and EUV technology.
In May 2021, IBM announces the creation of the first 2 nm computer chip, with parts supposedly being smaller than human DNA.
Microprocessor architects report that semiconductor advancement has slowed industry-wide since around 2010, below the pace predicted by Moore's law. Brian Krzanich, the former CEO of Intel, announced, "Our cadence today is closer to two and a half years than two." Intel stated in 2015 that improvements in MOSFET devices have slowed, starting at the 22 nm feature width around 2012, and continuing at 14 nm.
The physical limits to transistor scaling have been reached due to source-to-drain leakage, limited gate metals and limited options for channel material. Other approaches are being investigated, which do not rely on physical scaling. These include the spin state of electron spintronics, tunnel junctions, and advanced confinement of channel materials via nano-wire geometry. Spin-based logic and memory options are being developed actively in labs.
Alternative materials research
The vast majority of current transistors on ICs are composed principally of doped silicon and its alloys. As silicon is fabricated into single nanometer transistors, short-channel effects adversely change desired material properties of silicon as a functional transistor. Below are several non-silicon substitutes in the fabrication of small nanometer transistors.
One proposed material is indium gallium arsenide, or InGaAs. Compared to their silicon and germanium counterparts, InGaAs transistors are more promising for future high-speed, low-power logic applications. Because of intrinsic characteristics of III-V compound semiconductors, quantum well and tunnel effect transistors based on InGaAs have been proposed as alternatives to more traditional MOSFET designs.
In the early 2000s, the atomic layer deposition high-κ film and pitch double-patterning processes were invented by Gurtej Singh Sandhu at Micron Technology, extending Moore's law for planar CMOS technology to 30 nm class and smaller.
In 2009, Intel announced the development of 80-nanometer InGaAs quantum well transistors. Quantum well devices contain a material sandwiched between two layers of material with a wider band gap. Despite being double the size of leading pure silicon transistors at the time, the company reported that they performed equally as well while consuming less power.
In 2011, researchers at Intel demonstrated 3-D tri-gate InGaAs transistors with improved leakage characteristics compared to traditional planar designs. The company claims that their design achieved the best electrostatics of any III-V compound semiconductor transistor. At the 2015 International Solid-State Circuits Conference, Intel mentioned the use of III-V compounds based on such an architecture for their 7 nanometer node.
In 2011, researchers at the University of Texas at Austin developed an InGaAs tunneling field-effect transistors capable of higher operating currents than previous designs. The first III-V TFET designs were demonstrated in 2009 by a joint team from Cornell University and Pennsylvania State University.
In 2012, a team in MIT's Microsystems Technology Laboratories developed a 22 nm transistor based on InGaAs which, at the time, was the smallest non-silicon transistor ever built. The team used techniques currently used in silicon device fabrication and aims for better electrical performance and a reduction to 10-nanometer scale.
Biological computing research shows that biological material has superior information density and energy efficiency compared to silicon-based computing.
Various forms of graphene are being studied for graphene electronics, e.g. graphene nanoribbon transistors have shown great promise since its appearance in publications in 2008. (Bulk graphene has a band gap of zero and thus cannot be used in transistors because of its constant conductivity, an inability to turn off. The zigzag edges of the nanoribbons introduce localized energy states in the conduction and valence bands and thus a bandgap that enables switching when fabricated as a transistor. As an example, a typical GNR of width of 10 nm has a desirable bandgap energy of 0.4eV.) More research will need to be performed, however, on sub 50 nm graphene layers, as its resistivity value increases and thus electron mobility decreases.
Forecasts and roadmaps
In April 2005, Gordon Moore stated in an interview that the projection cannot be sustained indefinitely: "It can't continue forever. The nature of exponentials is that you push them out and eventually disaster happens." He also noted that transistors eventually would reach the limits of miniaturization at atomic levels:
In 2016 the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors, after using Moore's Law to drive the industry since 1998, produced its final roadmap. It no longer centered its research and development plan on Moore's law. Instead, it outlined what might be called the More than Moore strategy in which the needs of applications drive chip development, rather than a focus on semiconductor scaling. Application drivers range from smartphones to AI to data centers.
IEEE began a road-mapping initiative in 2016, "Rebooting Computing", named the International Roadmap for Devices and Systems (IRDS).
Most forecasters, including Gordon Moore, expect Moore's law will end by around 2025. Although Moore’s Law will reach a physical limitation, many forecasters are optimistic about the continuation of technological progress in a variety of other areas, including new chip architectures, quantum computing, and AI and machine learning.
Consequences
Digital electronics have contributed to world economic growth in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The primary driving force of economic growth is the growth of productivity, and Moore's law factors into productivity. Moore (1995) expected that "the rate of technological progress is going to be controlled from financial realities". The reverse could and did occur around the late-1990s, however, with economists reporting that "Productivity growth is the key economic indicator of innovation." Moore's law describes a driving force of technological and social change, productivity, and economic growth.
An acceleration in the rate of semiconductor progress contributed to a surge in U.S. productivity growth, which reached 3.4% per year in 1997–2004, outpacing the 1.6% per year during both 1972–1996 and 2005–2013. As economist Richard G. Anderson notes, "Numerous studies have traced the cause of the productivity acceleration to technological innovations in the production of semiconductors that sharply reduced the prices of such components and of the products that contain them (as well as expanding the capabilities of such products)."
The primary negative implication of Moore's law is that obsolescence pushes society up against the Limits to Growth. As technologies continue to rapidly "improve", they render predecessor technologies obsolete. In situations in which security and survivability of hardware or data are paramount, or in which resources are limited, rapid obsolescence often poses obstacles to smooth or continued operations.
Because of the intensive resource footprint and toxic materials used in the production of computers, obsolescence leads to serious harmful environmental impacts. Americans throw out 400,000 cell phones every day, but this high level of obsolescence appears to companies as an opportunity to generate regular sales of expensive new equipment, instead of retaining one device for a longer period of time, leading to industry using planned obsolescence as a profit centre.
An alternative source of improved performance is in microarchitecture techniques exploiting the growth of available transistor count. Out-of-order execution and on-chip caching and prefetching reduce the memory latency bottleneck at the expense of using more transistors and increasing the processor complexity. These increases are described empirically by Pollack's Rule, which states that performance increases due to microarchitecture techniques approximate the square root of the complexity (number of transistors or the area) of a processor.
For years, processor makers delivered increases in clock rates and instruction-level parallelism, so that single-threaded code executed faster on newer processors with no modification. Now, to manage CPU power dissipation, processor makers favor multi-core chip designs, and software has to be written in a multi-threaded manner to take full advantage of the hardware. Many multi-threaded development paradigms introduce overhead, and will not see a linear increase in speed vs number of processors. This is particularly true while accessing shared or dependent resources, due to lock contention. This effect becomes more noticeable as the number of processors increases. There are cases where a roughly 45% increase in processor transistors has translated to roughly 10–20% increase in processing power.
On the other hand, manufacturers are adding specialized processing units to deal with features such as graphics, video, and cryptography. For one example, Intel's Parallel JavaScript extension not only adds support for multiple cores, but also for the other non-general processing features of their chips, as part of the migration in client side scripting toward HTML5.
Moore's law has affected the performance of other technologies significantly: Michael S. Malone wrote of a Moore's War following the apparent success of shock and awe in the early days of the Iraq War. Progress in the development of guided weapons depends on electronic technology. Improvements in circuit density and low-power operation associated with Moore's law also have contributed to the development of technologies including mobile telephones and 3-D printing.
Other formulations and similar observations
Several measures of digital technology are improving at exponential rates related to Moore's law, including the size, cost, density, and speed of components. Moore wrote only about the density of components, "a component being a transistor, resistor, diode or capacitor", at minimum cost.
Transistors per integrated circuit – The most popular formulation is of the doubling of the number of transistors on ICs every two years. At the end of the 1970s, Moore's law became known as the limit for the number of transistors on the most complex chips. The graph at the top shows this trend holds true today. As of 2017, the commercially available processor possessing the highest number of transistors is the 48 core Centriq with over 18 billion transistors.
Density at minimum cost per transistor
This is the formulation given in Moore's 1965 paper. It is not just about the density of transistors that can be achieved, but about the density of transistors at which the cost per transistor is the lowest.
As more transistors are put on a chip, the cost to make each transistor decreases, but the chance that the chip will not work due to a defect increases. In 1965, Moore examined the density of transistors at which cost is minimized, and observed that, as transistors were made smaller through advances in photolithography, this number would increase at "a rate of roughly a factor of two per year".
Dennard scaling – This posits that power usage would decrease in proportion to area (both voltage and current being proportional to length) of transistors. Combined with Moore's law, performance per watt would grow at roughly the same rate as transistor density, doubling every 1–2 years. According to Dennard scaling transistor dimensions would be scaled by 30% (0.7x) every technology generation, thus reducing their area by 50%. This would reduce the delay by 30% (0.7x) and therefore increase operating frequency by about 40% (1.4x). Finally, to keep electric field constant, voltage would be reduced by 30%, reducing energy by 65% and power (at 1.4x frequency) by 50%. Therefore, in every technology generation transistor density would double, circuit becomes 40% faster, while power consumption (with twice the number of transistors) stays the same. Dennard scaling came to end in 2005–2010, due to leakage currents.
The exponential processor transistor growth predicted by Moore does not always translate into exponentially greater practical CPU performance. Since around 2005–2007, Dennard scaling has ended, so even though Moore's law continued for several years after that, it has not yielded dividends in improved performance. The primary reason cited for the breakdown is that at small sizes, current leakage poses greater challenges, and also causes the chip to heat up, which creates a threat of thermal runaway and therefore, further increases energy costs.
The breakdown of Dennard scaling prompted a greater focus on multicore processors, but the gains offered by switching to more cores are lower than the gains that would be achieved had Dennard scaling continued. In another departure from Dennard scaling, Intel microprocessors adopted a non-planar tri-gate FinFET at 22 nm in 2012 that is faster and consumes less power than a conventional planar transistor. The rate of performance improvement for single-core microprocessors has slowed significantly. Single-core performance was improving by 52% per year in 1986–2003 and 23% per year in 2003–2011, but slowed to just seven percent per year in 2011–2018.
Quality adjusted price of IT equipment – The price of information technology (IT), computers and peripheral equipment, adjusted for quality and inflation, declined 16% per year on average over the five decades from 1959 to 2009. The pace accelerated, however, to 23% per year in 1995–1999 triggered by faster IT innovation, and later, slowed to 2% per year in 2010–2013.
While quality-adjusted microprocessor price improvement continues, the rate of improvement likewise varies, and is not linear on a log scale. Microprocessor price improvement accelerated during the late 1990s, reaching 60% per year (halving every nine months) versus the typical 30% improvement rate (halving every two years) during the years earlier and later. Laptop microprocessors in particular improved 25–35% per year in 2004–2010, and slowed to 15–25% per year in 2010–2013.
The number of transistors per chip cannot explain quality-adjusted microprocessor prices fully. Moore's 1995 paper does not limit Moore's law to strict linearity or to transistor count, "The definition of 'Moore's Law' has come to refer to almost anything related to the semiconductor industry that on a semi-log plot approximates a straight line. I hesitate to review its origins and by doing so restrict its definition."
Hard disk drive areal density – A similar prediction (sometimes called Kryder's law) was made in 2005 for hard disk drive areal density. The prediction was later viewed as over-optimistic. Several decades of rapid progress in areal density slowed around 2010, from 30–100% per year to 10–15% per year, because of noise related to smaller grain size of the disk media, thermal stability, and writability using available magnetic fields.
Fiber-optic capacity – The number of bits per second that can be sent down an optical fiber increases exponentially, faster than Moore's law. Keck's law, in honor of Donald Keck.
Network capacity – According to Gerry/Gerald Butters, the former head of Lucent's Optical Networking Group at Bell Labs, there is another version, called Butters' Law of Photonics, a formulation that deliberately parallels Moore's law. Butters' law says that the amount of data coming out of an optical fiber is doubling every nine months. Thus, the cost of transmitting a bit over an optical network decreases by half every nine months. The availability of wavelength-division multiplexing (sometimes called WDM) increased the capacity that could be placed on a single fiber by as much as a factor of 100. Optical networking and dense wavelength-division multiplexing (DWDM) is rapidly bringing down the cost of networking, and further progress seems assured. As a result, the wholesale price of data traffic collapsed in the dot-com bubble. Nielsen's Law says that the bandwidth available to users increases by 50% annually.
Pixels per dollar – Similarly, Barry Hendy of Kodak Australia has plotted pixels per dollar as a basic measure of value for a digital camera, demonstrating the historical linearity (on a log scale) of this market and the opportunity to predict the future trend of digital camera price, LCD and LED screens, and resolution.
The great Moore's law compensator (TGMLC), also known as Wirth's law – generally is referred to as software bloat and is the principle that successive generations of computer software increase in size and complexity, thereby offsetting the performance gains predicted by Moore's law. In a 2008 article in InfoWorld, Randall C. Kennedy, formerly of Intel, introduces this term using successive versions of Microsoft Office between the year 2000 and 2007 as his premise. Despite the gains in computational performance during this time period according to Moore's law, Office 2007 performed the same task at half the speed on a prototypical year 2007 computer as compared to Office 2000 on a year 2000 computer.
Library expansion – was calculated in 1945 by Fremont Rider to double in capacity every 16 years, if sufficient space were made available. He advocated replacing bulky, decaying printed works with miniaturized microform analog photographs, which could be duplicated on-demand for library patrons or other institutions. He did not foresee the digital technology that would follow decades later to replace analog microform with digital imaging, storage, and transmission media. Automated, potentially lossless digital technologies allowed vast increases in the rapidity of information growth in an era that now sometimes is called the Information Age.
Carlson curve – is a term coined by The Economist to describe the biotechnological equivalent of Moore's law, and is named after author Rob Carlson. Carlson accurately predicted that the doubling time of DNA sequencing technologies (measured by cost and performance) would be at least as fast as Moore's law. Carlson Curves illustrate the rapid (in some cases hyperexponential) decreases in cost, and increases in performance, of a variety of technologies, including DNA sequencing, DNA synthesis, and a range of physical and computational tools used in protein expression and in determining protein structures.
Eroom's law – is a pharmaceutical drug development observation which was deliberately written as Moore's Law spelled backwards in order to contrast it with the exponential advancements of other forms of technology (such as transistors) over time. It states that the cost of developing a new drug roughly doubles every nine years.
Experience curve effects says that each doubling of the cumulative production of virtually any product or service is accompanied by an approximate constant percentage reduction in the unit cost. The acknowledged first documented qualitative description of this dates from 1885. A power curve was used to describe this phenomenon in a 1936 discussion of the cost of airplanes.
Edholm's law – Phil Edholm observed that the bandwidth of telecommunication networks (including the Internet) is doubling every 18 months. The bandwidths of online communication networks has risen from bits per second to terabits per second. The rapid rise in online bandwidth is largely due to the same MOSFET scaling that enables Moore's law, as telecommunications networks are built from MOSFETs.
Haitz's law predicts that the brightness of LEDs increases as their manufacturing cost goes down.
Swanson's law is the observation that the price of solar photovoltaic modules tends to drop 20 percent for every doubling of cumulative shipped volume. At present rates, costs go down 75% about every 10 years.
See also
Notes
References
Further reading
Brock, David C. (ed.) (2006). Understanding Moore's Law: Four Decades of Innovation. Philadelphia: Chemical Heritage Foundation. . .
Thackray, Arnold; David C. Brock, and Rachel Jones (2015). Moore's Law: The Life of Gordon Moore, Silicon Valley's Quiet Revolutionary. New York: Basic Books.
Tuomi, Ilkka (2002). The lives and death of Moore's Law. First Monday, 7(11), November 2002. https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v7i11.1000
External links
Intel press kit – released for Moore's Law's 40th anniversary, with a 1965 sketch by Moore
No Technology has been more disruptive... Slide show of microchip growth
Intel (IA-32) CPU speeds 1994–2005 – speed increases in recent years have seemed to slow down with regard to percentage increase per year (available in PDF or PNG format)
International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS)
"Gordon Moore, His Law, and Integrated Circuit", Dream 2047, October 2006
ASML's 'Our Stories', Gordon Moore about Moore's Law, ASML Holding
1965 introductions
Computer architecture statements
Digital Revolution
History of computing hardware
MOSFETs
Rules of thumb
Technological change |
26033941 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian%20Assange | Julian Assange | Julian Paul Assange (; né Hawkins; born 3 July 1971) is an Australian editor, publisher and activist who founded WikiLeaks in 2006. WikiLeaks came to international attention in 2010 when it published a series of leaks provided by U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning. These leaks included the Baghdad airstrike Collateral Murder video (April 2010), the Afghanistan war logs (July 2010), the Iraq war logs (October 2010), and Cablegate (November 2010). After the 2010 leaks, the United States government launched a criminal investigation into WikiLeaks.
In November 2010, Sweden issued an international arrest warrant for Assange over allegations of sexual misconduct. Assange said the allegations were a pretext for his extradition from Sweden to the United States over his role in the publication of secret American documents. After losing his battle against extradition to Sweden, he breached bail and took refuge in the Embassy of Ecuador in London in June 2012. He was granted asylum by Ecuador in August 2012 on the grounds of political persecution, with the presumption that if he were extradited to Sweden, he would be eventually extradited to the US. Swedish prosecutors dropped their investigation in 2019, saying their evidence had "weakened considerably due to the long period of time that has elapsed since the events in question."
During the 2016 U.S. election campaign, WikiLeaks published confidential Democratic Party emails, showing that the party's national committee favoured Hillary Clinton over her rival Bernie Sanders in the primaries.
On 11 April 2019, Assange's asylum was withdrawn following a series of disputes with the Ecuadorian authorities. The police were invited into the embassy and he was arrested. He was found guilty of breaching the Bail Act and sentenced to 50 weeks in prison. The United States government unsealed an indictment against Assange related to the leaks provided by Manning. On 23 May 2019, the United States government further charged Assange with violating the Espionage Act of 1917. Editors from newspapers, including The Washington Post and The New York Times, as well as press freedom organisations, criticised the government's decision to charge Assange under the Espionage Act, characterising it as an attack on the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, which guarantees freedom of the press. On 4 January 2021, UK District Judge Vanessa Baraitser ruled against the United States' request to extradite Assange and stated that doing so would be "oppressive" given concerns over Assange's mental health and risk of suicide. On 6 January 2021, Assange was denied bail, pending an appeal by the United States. On 10 December 2021, the High Court in London ruled that Assange can be extradited to the US to face the charges.
Assange has been confined in Belmarsh maximum-security prison in London since April 2019.
Early life
Assange was born Julian Paul Hawkins on 3 July 1971 in Townsville, Queensland, to Christine Ann Hawkins (b. 1951), a visual artist, and John Shipton, an anti-war activist and builder. The couple separated before their son was born. When Julian was a year old, his mother married Brett Assange, an actor with whom she ran a small theatre company and whom Julian regards as his father (choosing Assange as his surname). Christine and Brett Assange divorced around 1979. Christine then became involved with Leif Meynell, also known as Leif Hamilton, whom Julian Assange later described as "a member of an Australian cult" called The Family. They separated in 1982.
Julian had a nomadic childhood, living in more than 30 Australian towns and cities by the time he reached his mid-teens, when he settled with his mother and half-brother in Melbourne. Assange attended many schools, including Goolmangar Primary School in New South Wales (1979–1983) and Townsville State High School in Queensland as well as being schooled at home.
In 1987, aged 16, Assange began hacking under the name Mendax, supposedly taken from Horace's splendide mendax (nobly lying). He and two others, known as "Trax" and "Prime Suspect", formed a hacking group they called "the International Subversives". According to David Leigh and Luke Harding, Assange may have been involved in the WANK (Worms Against Nuclear Killers) hack at NASA in 1989, but this has never been proven.
In September 1991, Assange was discovered hacking into the Melbourne master terminal of Nortel, a Canadian multinational telecommunications corporation. The Australian Federal Police tapped Assange's phone line (he was using a modem), raided his home at the end of October and eventually charged him in 1994 with 31 counts of hacking and related crimes. In December 1996, he pleaded guilty to 24 charges (the others were dropped) and was ordered to pay reparations of A$2,100 and released on a good behaviour bond. He received a lenient penalty due to the absence of malicious or mercenary intent and his disrupted childhood.
Assange studied programming, mathematics and physics at Central Queensland University (1994) and the University of Melbourne (2003–2006), but did not complete a degree.
In 1993, Assange used his computing skills to help the Victoria Police Child Exploitation Unit to prosecute individuals responsible for publishing and distributing child pornography. In the same year, he was involved in starting one of the first public Internet service providers in Australia, Suburbia Public Access Network. He began programming in 1994, authoring or co-authoring the TCP port scanner Strobe (1995), patches to the open-source database PostgreSQL (1996), the Usenet caching software NNTPCache (1996), the Rubberhose deniable encryption system (1997) (which reflected his growing interest in cryptography), and Surfraw, a command-line interface for web-based search engines (2000). During this period, he also moderated the AUCRYPTO forum, ran Best of Security, a website "giving advice on computer security" that had 5,000 subscribers in 1996, and contributed research to Suelette Dreyfus's Underground (1997), a book about Australian hackers, including the International Subversives. In 1998, he co-founded the company Earthmen Technology.
Assange stated that he registered the domain leaks.org in 1999, but "didn't do anything with it". He did publicise a patent granted to the National Security Agency in August 1999, for voice-data harvesting technology: "This patent should worry people. Everyone's overseas phone calls are or may soon be tapped, transcribed and archived in the bowels of an unaccountable foreign spy agency."
Founding WikiLeaks
Early publications
Assange and others established WikiLeaks in 2006. Assange became a member of the organisation's advisory board and described himself as the editor-in-chief. From 2007 to 2010, Assange travelled continuously on WikiLeaks business, visiting Africa, Asia, Europe and North America. During this time, the organisation published internet censorship lists, leaks, and classified media from anonymous sources. These publications including revelations about drone strikes in Yemen, corruption across the Arab world, extrajudicial executions by Kenyan police, 2008 Tibetan unrest in China, and the "Petrogate" oil scandal in Peru.
WikiLeaks' international profile increased in 2008 when a Swiss bank, Julius Baer, failed to block the site's publication of bank records. Assange commented that financial institutions ordinarily "operate outside the rule of law", and received extensive legal support from free-speech and civil rights groups.
In September 2008, during the 2008 United States presidential election campaign, the contents of a Yahoo! account belonging to Sarah Palin (the running mate of Republican presidential nominee John McCain) were posted on WikiLeaks after being hacked into by members of Anonymous. After briefly appearing on a blog, the membership list of the far-right British National Party was posted to WikiLeaks on 18 November 2008.
WikiLeaks released a report disclosing a "serious nuclear accident" at the Iranian Natanz nuclear facility in 2009. According to media reports, the accident may have been the direct result of a cyber-attack at Iran's nuclear program, carried out with the Stuxnet computer worm, a cyber-weapon built jointly by the United States and Israel.
Iraq and Afghan War logs and US diplomatic cables
The material WikiLeaks published between 2006 and 2009 attracted various degrees of international attention, but after it began publishing documents supplied by U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, WikiLeaks became a household name.
In April 2010, WikiLeaks released the Collateral Murder video, which showed United States soldiers fatally shooting 18 civilians from a helicopter in Iraq, including Reuters journalists Namir Noor-Eldeen and his assistant Saeed Chmagh. Reuters had previously made a request to the US government for the Collateral Murder video under Freedom of Information but had been denied. Assange and others worked for a week to break the U.S. military's encryption of the video.
In October 2010, WikiLeaks published the Iraq War logs, a collection of 391,832 United States Army field reports from the Iraq War covering the period from 2004 to 2009. Assange said that he hoped the publication would "correct some of that attack on the truth that occurred before the war, during the war, and which has continued after the war".
Regarding his own role within WikiLeaks, he said, "We always expect tremendous criticism. It is my role to be the lightning rod... to attract the attacks against the organization for our work, and that is a difficult role. On the other hand, I get undue credit".
Other Manning material published by WikiLeaks included the Afghanistan War logs in July 2010, and the Guantánamo Bay files in April 2011.
WikiLeaks published a quarter of a million U.S. diplomatic cables, known as the "Cablegate" files, in November 2010. WikiLeaks initially worked with established Western media organisations, and later with smaller regional media organisations, while also publishing the cables upon which their reporting was based. The files showed United States espionage against the United Nations and other world leaders, revealed tensions between the U.S. and its allies, and exposed corruption in countries throughout the world as documented by U.S. diplomats, helping to spark the Arab Spring. The Cablegate and Iraq and Afghan War releases impacted diplomacy and public opinion globally, with responses varying by region.
Legal issues
US criminal investigation
After WikiLeaks released the Manning material, United States authorities began investigating WikiLeaks and Assange personally to prosecute them under the Espionage Act of 1917. In November 2010, US Attorney-General Eric Holder said there was "an active, ongoing criminal investigation" into WikiLeaks. It emerged from legal documents leaked over the ensuing months that Assange and others were being investigated by a federal grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia.
In August 2011, WikiLeaks volunteer Sigurdur Thordarson, working in his home country Iceland, contacted the FBI and, after presenting a copy of Assange's passport at the American embassy, became the first informant to work for the FBI from inside WikiLeaks. In November 2011, WikiLeaks dismissed Thordarson due to what the organization said was his embezzlement of $50,000, to which charge (along with several other offences) he later pleaded guilty in an Icelandic court. According to Thordarson, a few months after his dismissal by WikiLeaks the FBI agreed to pay him $5,000 as compensation for work missed while meeting with agents.
In December 2011, prosecutors in the Chelsea Manning case revealed the existence of chat logs between Manning and an interlocutor they claimed was Assange. Assange said that WikiLeaks has no way of knowing the identity of its sources and that chats with sources, including user-names, were anonymous. In January 2011, Assange described the allegation that WikiLeaks had conspired with Manning as "absolute nonsense". The logs were presented as evidence during Manning's court-martial in June–July 2013. The prosecution argued that they showed WikiLeaks helping Manning reverse-engineer a password. During her trial, Manning said she acted on her own to send documents to WikiLeaks and no one associated with WikiLeaks pressured her into giving more information.
In 2013, US officials said that it was unlikely that the Justice Department would indict Assange for publishing classified documents because it would also have to prosecute the news organisations and writers who published classified material.
In June 2013, The New York Times said that court and other documents suggested that Assange was being examined by a grand jury and "several government agencies", including by the FBI. Court documents published in May 2014 suggest that Assange was under "active and ongoing" investigation at that time.
Some Snowden documents published in 2014 showed that the U.S. government had put Assange on its 2010 "Manhunting Timeline", an annual account of efforts to capture or kill alleged terrorists and others, and in the same period urged allies to open criminal investigations into Assange. In the same documents, there was a proposal by the National Security Agency (NSA) to designate WikiLeaks a "malicious foreign actor", thus increasing the surveillance against it.
In January 2015, WikiLeaks issued a statement saying that three members of the organisation had received notice from Google that Google had complied with a federal warrant by a US District Court to turn over their emails and metadata on 5 April 2012. In July 2015, Assange called himself a "wanted journalist" in an open letter to the French president published in Le Monde. In a December 2015 court submission, the US government confirmed its "sensitive, ongoing law enforcement proceeding into the Wikileaks matter".
Under the Obama Administration, the Department of Justice did not indict Assange because it was unable to find any evidence that his actions differed from those of a journalist. However, after President Donald Trump took office, CIA director Mike Pompeo and Attorney General Jeff Sessions stepped up pursuit of Assange.
In April 2017, US officials were preparing to file formal charges against Assange. Legal scholar Steve Vladeck said prosecutors accelerated the case in 2019 due to the impending statute of limitations on Assange's largest leaks.
Swedish sexual assault allegations
Assange visited Sweden in August 2010. During his visit, he became the subject of sexual assault allegations from two women. Assange denied the allegations and said he was happy to face questions in Britain.
On 20 November 2010, the Swedish police issued an international arrest warrant. Later that day, Assange told journalist Raffi Khatchadourian that Sweden has a "very, very poor judicial system" and a culture of "crazed radical feminist ideology". He commented that, more importantly, his case involved international politics, and that "Sweden is a U.S. satrapy." In a later interview he described Sweden as "the Saudi Arabia of feminism." On 8 December 2010, Assange gave himself up to British police and attended his first extradition hearing, where he was remanded in custody. On 16 December 2010, at the second hearing, he was granted bail by the High Court of Justice and released after his supporters paid £240,000 in cash and sureties. A further hearing on 24 February 2011 ruled that Assange should be extradited to Sweden. This decision was upheld by the High Court on 2 November and by the Supreme Court on 30 May the next year.
After previously stating that she could not question a suspect by video link or in the Swedish embassy, prosecutor Marianne Ny wrote to the English Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) in 2013. Her letter advised that she intended to lift the detention order and withdraw the European arrest warrant as the actions were not proportionate to the costs and seriousness of the crime. In response, the CPS tried to dissuade Ny from doing so.
In March 2015, after public criticism from other Swedish law practitioners, Ny changed her mind about interrogating Assange, who had taken refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. These interviews, which began on 14 November 2016, involved the British police, Swedish prosecutors and Ecuadorian officials, and were eventually published online. By that time, the statute of limitations had expired on all three of the less serious allegations. Since the Swedish prosecutor had not interviewed Assange by 18 August 2015, the questioning pertained only to the open investigation of "lesser degree rape".
On 19 May 2017, the Swedish authorities suspended their investigation, saying they could not expect the Ecuadorian Embassy to communicate reliably with Assange with respect to the case. Chief prosecutor Marianne Ny officially revoked his arrest warrant, but said the investigation could still be resumed if Assange visited Sweden before August 2020.
Following Assange's arrest on 11 April 2019, the case was reopened, in May 2019, under prosecutor Eva-Marie Persson. On 19 November, she announced that she had discontinued her investigation, saying that the evidence was not strong enough. She added that although she was confident in the complainant, "the evidence has weakened considerably due to the long period of time that has elapsed".
Ecuadorian embassy period
Entering the embassy
On 19 June 2012, the Ecuadorian foreign minister, Ricardo Patiño, announced that Assange had applied for political asylum, that the Ecuadorian government was considering his request, and that Assange was at the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
Assange and his supporters said he was not concerned about any proceedings in Sweden as such, but said that the Swedish allegations were designed to discredit him and were a pretext for his extradition from Sweden to the United States.
British Foreign Secretary William Hague gave a news conference in response. He said "We will not allow Mr Assange safe passage out of the United Kingdom, nor is there any legal basis for us to do so," whilst adding, "The United Kingdom does not recognise the principle of diplomatic asylum."
Assange breached his bail conditions by taking up residence in the embassy rather than appearing in court, and faced arrest if he left. Assange's supporters, including journalist Jemima Goldsmith, journalist John Pilger, and filmmaker Ken Loach, forfeited £200,000 in bail. Goldsmith said she was surprised at his asylum bid and had expected him to face the Swedish allegations.
The UK government wrote Patiño that the police were entitled to enter the embassy and arrest Assange under UK law. Patiño said it was an implied threat, stating that "such actions would be a blatant disregard of the Vienna Convention". Officers of the Metropolitan Police Service were stationed outside the embassy from June 2012 to October 2015 to arrest Assange if he left the embassy, and compel him to attend the extradition appeal hearing. The police officers were withdrawn on grounds of cost in October 2015, but the police said they would still deploy "several overt and covert tactics to arrest him". The Metropolitan Police Service said the cost of the policing for the period was £12.6million.
WikiLeaks insiders stated that Assange decided to seek asylum because he felt abandoned by the Australian government. The Australian attorney-general, Nicola Roxon, had written to Assange's lawyer, Jennifer Robinson, saying that Australia would not seek to involve itself in any international exchanges about Assange's future. She suggested that if Assange was imprisoned in the US, he could apply for an international prisoner transfer to Australia. Assange's lawyers described the letter as a "declaration of abandonment".
On 16 August 2012, Patiño announced that Ecuador was granting Assange political asylum because of the threat represented by the United States secret investigation against him. In its formal statement, Ecuador said that "as a consequence of Assange's determined defense to freedom of expression and freedom of press... in any given moment, a situation may come where his life, safety or personal integrity will be in danger". Latin American states expressed support for Ecuador. Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa confirmed on 18 August that Assange could stay at the embassy indefinitely, and the following day Assange gave his first speech from the balcony. An office converted into a studio apartment, equipped with a bed, telephone, sun lamp, computer, shower, treadmill, and kitchenette, became his home until 11 April 2019.
WikiLeaks publishing
On 24 April 2011, WikiLeaks began publishing the Guantanamo Bay files leak, 779 classified reports on prisoners, past and present, held by the U.S. at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba. The documents, dated from 2002 to 2008, revealed prisoners, some of whom were coerced to confess, included children, the elderly and mentally disabled.
In July 2012, WikiLeaks began publishing the Syria Files, a collection of more than two million emails from Syrian political figures, government ministries and companies. Assange said the "Syria Files" collection
In 2013, Assange analysed the Kissinger cables held at the US National Archives and released them in searchable form.
By 2015, WikiLeaks had published more than ten million documents and associated analyses, and was described by Assange as "a giant library of the world's most persecuted documents".
In June 2015, WikiLeaks began publishing confidential and secret Saudi Arabian government documents.
On 25 November 2016, WikiLeaks released emails and internal documents that provided details on U.S. military operations in Yemen from 2009 to March 2015. In a statement accompanying the release of the "Yemen Files", Assange said about the U.S. involvement in the Yemen war: "The war in Yemen has produced 3.15million internally displaced persons. Although the United States government has provided most of the bombs and is deeply involved in the conduct of the war itself, reportage on the war in English is conspicuously rare."
In December 2016, WikiLeaks published emails from the Turkish government in response to Erdoğan's post-coup purges in Turkey. The emails covered the period from 2010 to July 2016. In response, Turkey blocked access to the WikiLeaks site.
Public positions
WikiLeaks Party
Assange stood for the Australian Senate in the 2013 Australian federal election for the newly formed WikiLeaks Party but failed to win a seat. The party experienced internal dissent over its governance and electoral tactics and was deregistered due to low membership numbers in 2015.
Edward Snowden
In 2013, Assange and others in WikiLeaks helped whistleblower Edward Snowden flee from US law enforcement. After the United States cancelled Snowden's passport, stranding him in Russia, they considered transporting him to Latin America on the presidential jet of a sympathetic Latin American leader. In order to throw the US off the scent, they spoke about the jet of the Bolivian president Evo Morales, instead of the jet they were considering. In July 2013, Morales's jet was forced to land in Austria after the US pressured Italy, France, and Spain to deny the jet access to their airspace over false rumours Snowden was on board. Assange said the grounding "reveals the true nature of the relationship between Western Europe and the United States" as "a phone call from U.S. intelligence was enough to close the airspace to a booked presidential flight, which has immunity". Assange advised Snowden that he would be safest in Russia which was better able to protect its borders than Venezuela, Brazil or Ecuador. In 2015, Maria Luisa Ramos, the Bolivian ambassador to Russia, accused Assange of putting Morales' life at risk. Assange stated that he regretted what happened but that "[w]e can't predict that other countries engage in some... unprecedented criminal operation".
Operation Speargun
Documents provided by Edward Snowden showed that in 2012 and 2013 the NZ government worked to establish a secret mass surveillance programme which it called "Operation Speargun". On 15 September 2014, Assange appeared via remote video link on Kim Dotcom's Moment of Truth town hall meeting held in Auckland, which discussed the programme. Assange said the Snowden documents showed that he had been a target of the programme and that "Operation Speargun" represented "an extreme, bizarre, Orwellian future that is being constructed secretly in New Zealand".
On 3 July 2015, Paris newspaper Le Monde published an open letter from Assange to French President François Hollande in which Assange urged the French government to grant him refugee status. In response to this letter, Hollande said: "France cannot act on his request. The situation of Mr Assange does not present an immediate danger."
Other developments
In 2015, La Repubblica stated that it had evidence of the UK's role via the English Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) in creating the "legal and diplomatic quagmire" which prevented Assange from leaving the Ecuadorian embassy. La Repubblica sued the CPS in 2017 to obtain further information but its case was rejected with the judge saying "the need for the British authorities to protect the confidentiality of the extradition process outweighs the public interest of the press to know". A further appeal was rejected in September 2019.
On 5 February 2016, the UN's Working Group on Arbitrary Detention concluded that Assange had been subject to arbitrary detention by the UK and Swedish Governments since 7 December 2010, including his time in prison, on conditional bail and in the Ecuadorian embassy. The Working Group said Assange should be allowed to walk free and be given compensation. The UK and Swedish governments denied the charge of detaining Assange arbitrarily. The UK Foreign Secretary, Philip Hammond, said the charge was "ridiculous" and that the group was "made up of lay people", and called Assange a "fugitive from justice" who "can come out any time he chooses", and called the panel's ruling "flawed in law". Swedish prosecutors called the group's charge irrelevant. The UK said it would arrest Assange should he leave the embassy. Mark Ellis, executive director of the International Bar Association, stated that the finding is "not binding on British law". US legal scholar Noah Feldman described the Working Group's conclusion as astonishing, summarising it as "Assange might be charged with a crime in the US. Ecuador thinks charging him with violating national security law would amount to 'political persecution' or worse. Therefore, Sweden must give up on its claims to try him for rape, and Britain must ignore the Swedes' arrest warrant and let him leave the country."
In September 2016 and again on 12 January 2017, WikiLeaks tweeted that Assange would agree to US prison in exchange for President Obama granting Chelsea Manning clemency. After commuting Manning's sentence on 17 January 2017, Obama stated that Assange's offer had not been a consideration.
On 19 May 2017, Assange emerged on the embassy's balcony and told a crowd that, despite no longer facing a Swedish sex investigation, he would remain inside the embassy to avoid extradition to the United States.
2016 U.S. presidential election
During the 2016 US Democratic Party presidential primaries, WikiLeaks hosted a searchable database of emails sent or received by presidential candidate Hillary Clinton while she was Secretary of State. The emails had been released by the US State Department under a Freedom of information request in February 2016. The emails were a major point of discussion during the presidential election and prompted an FBI investigation of Clinton for using a private email server for classified documents while she was US Secretary of State.
In February 2016, Assange wrote: "I have had years of experience in dealing with Hillary Clinton and have read thousands of her cables. Hillary lacks judgment and will push the United States into endless, stupid wars which spread terrorism. ...she certainly should not become president of the United States." On 25 July, following the Republican National Convention, Assange said that choosing between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump is like choosing between cholera or gonorrhoea. "Personally, I would prefer neither." In an Election Day statement, Assange criticised both Clinton and Trump, saying that "The Democratic and Republican candidates have both expressed hostility towards whistleblowers."
On 22 July 2016, WikiLeaks released emails and documents from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in which the DNC seemingly presented ways of undercutting Clinton's competitor Bernie Sanders and showed apparent favouritism towards Clinton. The release led to the resignation of DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz and an apology to Sanders from the DNC. The New York Times wrote that Assange had timed the release to coincide with the 2016 Democratic National Convention because he believed Clinton had pushed for his indictment and he regarded her as a "liberal war hawk".
On 7 October Assange posted a press release on WikiLeaks exposing a second batch of emails with over 2,000 mails from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.
In mid-October, the Ecuadorian government severed Assange's Internet connection because of the leaks. In December, Assange said the connection had been restored.
Cybersecurity experts attributed the attack to the Russian government. The Central Intelligence Agency, together with several other agencies, concluded that Russian intelligence agencies hacked the DNC servers, as well as Podesta's email account, and provided the information to WikiLeaks to bolster Trump's election campaign. As a result of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections, 12 Russian GRU military intelligence agents were indicted on 13 July 2018 for the attack on the DNC mail-server. According to the Mueller report, this group shared these mails using the pseudonym Guccifer 2.0 with WikiLeaks and other entities. The investigation also unearthed communications between Guccifer 2.0, WikiLeaks and the Trump campaign, in which they coordinated the release of the material. The Senate Intelligence Committee reported that "WikiLeaks actively sought, and played, a key role in the Russian intelligence campaign and very likely knew it was assisting a Russian intelligence influence effort."
In interviews, Assange repeatedly said that the Russian government was not the source of the DNC and Podesta emails, and accused the Clinton campaign of "a kind of neo-McCarthy hysteria" about Russian involvement. On the eve of the election, Assange addressed the criticism he had received for publishing Clinton material, saying that WikiLeaks publishes "material given to us if it is of political, diplomatic, historical or ethical importance and which has not been published elsewhere," that it had never received any information on Trump, Jill Stein, or Gary Johnson's campaign.
A 2017 article in Foreign Policy said that WikiLeaks turned down leaks on the Russian government, focusing instead on hacks relating to the US presidential election. WikiLeaks said that, as far as it could recall, the material was already public.
In April 2018, the DNC sued WikiLeaks for the theft of the DNC's information under various Virginia and US federal statutes. It accused WikiLeaks and Russia of a "brazen attack on American democracy". The Committee to Protect Journalists said that the lawsuit raised several important press freedom questions. The suit was dismissed with prejudice in July 2019. Judge John Koeltl said that WikiLeaks "did not participate in any wrongdoing in obtaining the materials in the first place" and were therefore within the law in publishing the information.
Seth Rich
In a July 2016 interview on Dutch television, Assange hinted that DNC staffer Seth Rich was the source of the DNC emails and that Rich had been killed as a result. Seeking clarification, the interviewer asked Assange whether Rich's killing was "simply a murder," to which Assange answered, "No. There's no finding. So, I'm suggesting that our sources take risks, and they become concerned to see things occurring like that." WikiLeaks offered a $20,000 reward for information about his murder and wrote: "We treat threats toward any suspected source of WikiLeaks with extreme gravity. This should not be taken to imply that Seth Rich was a source to WikiLeaks or to imply that his murder is connected to our publications."
Assange's comments were highlighted by Fox News, The Washington Times and conspiracy website InfoWars and set off a spike in attention to the murder. Assange's statements lent credibility and visibility to what had at that point been a conspiracy theory in the fringe parts of the Internet. According to the Mueller investigation, Assange "implied falsely" that Rich was the source to obscure the fact that Russia was the source. Assange received the emails when Rich was already dead and continued to confer with the Russian hackers to coordinate the release of the material.
Later years in the embassy
In March 2017, WikiLeaks began releasing the largest leak of CIA documents in history, codenamed Vault 7. The documents included details of the CIA's hacking capabilities and software tools used to break into smartphones, computers and other Internet-connected devices. In April, CIA director Mike Pompeo called WikiLeaks "a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia". Assange accused the CIA of trying to "subvert" his right to freedom of speech. According to former intelligence officials, in the wake of the Vault7 leaks, the CIA plotted to kidnap Assange from Ecuador's London embassy, and some senior officials discussed his potential assassination. Yahoo! News found "no indication that the most extreme measures targeting Assange were ever approved." Some of its sources stated that they had alerted House and Senate intelligence committees to the plans that Pompeo was suggesting. In October 2021, Assange's lawyers introduced the alleged plot during a hearing of the High Court of Justice in London as it considered the U.S. appeal of a lower court's ruling that Assange could not be extradited to face charges in the U.S.
On 6 June 2017, Assange tweeted his support for NSA leaker Reality Winner, who had been arrested three days earlier. Winner had been identified in part because a reporter from The Intercept showed a leaked document to the government without removing possibly incriminating evidence about its leaker. WikiLeaks later offered a $10,000 reward for information about the reporter responsible.
On 16 August 2017, US Republican congressman Dana Rohrabacher visited Assange and told him that Trump would pardon him on condition that he said Russia was not involved in the 2016 Democratic National Committee email leaks. At his extradition hearings in 2020, Assange's lawyers told the court that Rohrabacher had said the offer was made "on instructions from the president". Trump and Rohrabacher said they had never spoken about the offer and Rohrabacher said he had made the offer on his own initiative.
In August 2017, in the midst of the Qatar diplomatic crisis, Dubai-based Al Arabiya said Assange had refrained from publishing two cables about Qatar after negotiations between WikiLeaks and Qatar. Assange said Al Arabiya had been publishing "increasingly absurd fabrications" during the dispute. In September 2017, Assange released "Spy Files Russia," revealing "how a St. Petersburg-based technology company called Peter-Service helped Russian state entities gather detailed data on Russian cellphone users, part of a national system of online surveillance called System for Operative Investigative Activities (SORM)." According to Moscow-based journalist Fred Weir, "experts say it casts a timely spotlight on the vast surveillance operations mounted by Russian security services."
Assange was granted Ecuadorian citizenship in December 2017.
In February 2018, after Sweden had suspended its investigation, Assange brought two legal actions, arguing that Britain should drop its arrest warrant for him as it was "no longer right or proportionate to pursue him" and the arrest warrant for breaching bail had lost its "purpose and its function". In both cases, Senior District Judge Emma Arbuthnot ruled that the arrest warrant should remain in place.
In March 2018, Assange used social media to criticise Germany's arrest of Catalonian separatist leader Carles Puigdemont. On 28 March 2018, Ecuador responded by cutting Assange's internet connection because his social media posts put at risk Ecuador's relations with European nations. In May 2018, The Guardian reported that over five years Ecuador had spent at least $5million (£3.7m) to protect Assange, employing a security company and undercover agents to monitor his visitors, embassy staff and the British police. Ecuador reportedly also devised plans to help Assange escape should British police forcibly enter the embassy to seize him. The Guardian reported that by 2014 Assange had compromised the embassy's communications system. WikiLeaks described the allegation as "an anonymous libel aligned with the current UK-US government onslaught against Mr Assange". In July 2018, President Moreno said that he wanted Assange out of the embassy provided that Assange's life was not in danger. By October 2018, Assange's communications were partially restored.
On 16 October 2018, congressmen from the United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs wrote an open letter to President Moreno which described Assange as a dangerous criminal and stated that progress between the US and Ecuador in the areas of economic cooperation, counter-narcotics assistance and the return of a USAID mission to Ecuador depended on Assange being handed over to the authorities.
In October 2018, Assange sued the government of Ecuador for violating his "fundamental rights and freedoms" by threatening to remove his protection and cut off his access to the outside world, refusing him visits from journalists and human rights organisations and installing signal jammers to prevent phone calls and internet access. An Ecuadorian judge ruled against him, saying that requiring Assange to pay for his Internet use and clean up after his cat did not violate his right to asylum.
In November 2018, Pamela Anderson, a close friend and regular visitor of Assange, gave an interview in which she asked the Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, to defend Assange. Morrison rejected the request with a response Anderson considered "smutty". Anderson responded that "[r]ather than making lewd suggestions about me, perhaps you should instead think about what you are going to say to millions of Australians when one of their own is marched in an orange jumpsuit to Guantanamo Bay – for publishing the truth. You can prevent this."
On 21 December 2018, the UN's Working Group on Arbitrary Detention urged the UK to let Assange leave the embassy freely. In a statement, the organisation said that the "Swedish investigations have been closed for over 18 months now, and the only ground remaining for Mr Assange's continued deprivation of liberty is a bail violation in the UK, which is, objectively, a minor offence that cannot post-facto justify the more than six years' confinement that he has been subjected to".
In February 2019, the parliament of Geneva passed a motion demanding that the Swiss government extend asylum to Assange. In January 2020, the Catalan Dignity Commission awarded Assange its 2019 Dignity Prize for supporting the Catalan people during the 2017 Catalan independence referendum.
In March 2019, Assange submitted a complaint to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights asking the Ecuadorian government to "ease the conditions that it had imposed on his residence" at the embassy and to protect him from extradition to the US. It also requested US prosecutors unseal criminal charges that had been filed against him. Assange said the Ecuadorian embassy was trying to end his asylum by spying on him and restricting his visitors. The commission rejected his complaint.
Surveillance of Assange in the embassy
On 10 April 2019, WikiLeaks said it had uncovered an extensive surveillance operation against Assange from within the embassy. WikiLeaks said that "material including video, audio, copies of private legal documents and a medical report" had surfaced in Spain and that unnamed individuals in Madrid had made an extortion attempt.
On 26 September 2019, the Spanish newspaper El País reported that the Spanish defence and security company Undercover Global S.L. (UC Global) had spied on Assange for the CIA during his time in the embassy. UC Global had been contracted to protect the embassy during this time. According to the report UC Global's owner David Morales had provided the CIA with audio and video of meetings Assange held with his lawyers and colleagues. Morales also arranged for the US to have direct access to the stream from video cameras installed in the embassy at the beginning of December 2017. The evidence was part of a secret investigation by Spain's High Court, the Audiencia Nacional, into Morales and his relationship with US intelligence. The investigation was precipitated by a complaint by Assange that accused UC Global of violating his privacy and client-attorney privileges as well as committing misappropriation, bribery and money laundering.
Morales was arrested in September on charges involving violations of privacy and client-attorney privileges, as well as misappropriation, bribery, money laundering and criminal possession of weapons. He was released on bail. On 25 September, Spanish Judge José de la Mata sent British authorities a European Investigation Order (EIO) asking for permission to question Assange by videoconference as a witness in the case against Morales. The United Kingdom Central Authority (UKCA), which is in charge of processing and responding to EIOs in the UK, provisionally denied De la Mata's request to question Assange, raised a number of objections to the request, and asked for more details. De la Mata responded to UKCA's objections on 14 October by stating that Assange was the victim who had filed the complaint and that unlawful disclosure of secrets and bribery are also crimes in the UK. He said that the crimes were partially committed on Spanish territory because the microphones used to spy on Assange were bought in Spain, and the information obtained was sent and uploaded to servers at UC Global S. L.'s headquarters in Spain.
Spanish judicial bodies were upset at having their EIO request denied by UKCA and believed the British justice system is concerned by the effect the Spanish case may have on the process to extradite Assange to the US.
In a November 2019 article, Stefania Maurizi said she had access to some of the videos, audios and photos showing a medical examination of Assange, a meeting between Ecuadorian ambassador Carlos Abad Ortiz and his staff, a meeting between Assange, Glenn Greenwald and David Miranda and lunch between Assange and British rapper M.I.A. Microphones had been placed in the women's toilets to capture meetings between Assange and his lawyers. Phones belonging to some of the embassy's visitors were compromised. Spanish lawyer Aitor Martinez, who is part of Assange's legal team, said videos were taken of meetings between Assange and his legal defence team. Maurizi concluded that, based on statements from former employees of UC Global, internal UC Global emails and the type of information collected, it was clear that the surveillance was conducted on behalf of the US government and the information gathered would be used by the US to assist in its case for extraditing Assange.
Britain agreed to allow Judge De la Mata to interview Assange via video link on 20 December. According to his lawyer, Assange testified that he was unaware that cameras installed by Undercover Global were also capturing audio and suggested the surveillance likely targeted his legal team.
Imprisonment and extradition proceedings
Arrest in the embassy
On 2 April 2019, Ecuador's president Moreno said that Assange had violated the terms of his asylum, after photos surfaced on the internet linking Moreno to a corruption scandal. WikiLeaks said it had acquired none of the published material, and that it merely reported on a corruption investigation against Moreno by Ecuador's legislature. WikiLeaks reported a source within the Ecuadorian government saying that, due to the controversy, an agreement had been reached to expel Assange from the embassy and place him in the custody of UK police. According to Assange's father, the revoking of Assange's asylum was connected to an upcoming decision by the International Monetary Fund to grant Ecuador a loan, an assertion also made by critics of Moreno, such as former Ecuadorian foreign minister Guillaume Long.
On 11 April 2019 the Ecuadorian government invited the Metropolitan Police into the embassy, and they arrested Assange on the basis of a US extradition warrant. Moreno stated that Ecuador withdrew Assange's asylum after he interfered in Ecuador's domestic affairs, calling Assange a "miserable hacker". British foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt and prime minister Theresa May applauded Moreno's actions, while Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, said the arrest "has got nothing to do with [Australia], it is a matter for the US". United Nations Special Rapporteur Agnès Callamard said that British authorities had arbitrarily detained Assange and further endangered his life by their actions.
Conviction for breach of bail
On the day of his arrest, Assange was charged with breaching the Bail Act 1976 and was found guilty after a short hearing. Assange's defence said chief magistrate Emma Arbuthnot, who had dealt with his case, was biased against him as her husband was directly affected by WikiLeaks' allegations. Judge Michael Snow said it was "unacceptable" to air the claim in front of a "packed press gallery" and that Assange was "a narcissist who cannot get beyond his own selfish interest" and he had "not come close to establishing reasonable excuse".
Assange was remanded to Belmarsh Prison, and on 1 May 2019 was sentenced to 50 weeks imprisonment. The judge said he would be released after serving half of his sentence, subject to other proceedings and conditional upon committing no further offences. The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention said that the verdict contravened "principles of necessity and proportionality" for what it considered a "minor violation". Assange appealed his sentence, but dropped his appeal in July.
Espionage indictment in the United States
In 2012 and 2013, US officials indicated that Assange was not named in a sealed indictment. On 6 March 2018, a federal grand jury for the Eastern District of Virginia issued a sealed indictment against Assange. In November 2018, US prosecutors accidentally revealed the indictment.
In February 2019, Chelsea Manning was subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury in Virginia in the case. When Manning condemned the secrecy of the hearings and refused to testify, she was jailed for contempt of court on 8 March 2019. On 16 May 2019, Manning refused to testify before a new grand jury investigating Assange, stating that she "believe[d] this grand jury seeks to undermine the integrity of public discourse with the aim of punishing those who expose any serious, ongoing, and systemic abuses of power by this government". She was returned to jail for the 18-month term of the grand jury with financial penalties. In June 2021, Chelsea Manning said her grand jury resistance was not contingent on Julian Assange being the target, and that she was not even sure he was. "I treated this no differently than if it was for a protest or for some other grand jury—if it was a grand jury in general, I would respond the same way. But it did appear that this one was about, specifically, the 2010 disclosures; the media was speculating, but our legal team and ourselves, we never got full confirmation as to whether that was the case."
On 11 April 2019, the day of Assange's arrest in London, the indictment against him was unsealed. He was charged with conspiracy to commit computer intrusion (i.e., hacking into a government computer), which carries a maximum five-year sentence. The charges stem from the allegation that Assange attempted and failed to crack a password hash so that Chelsea Manning could use a different username to download classified documents and avoid detection. This allegation had been known since 2011 and was a factor in Manning's trial; the indictment did not reveal any new information about Assange.
On 23 May 2019, Assange was indicted on 17 new charges relating to the Espionage Act of 1917 in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. These charges carried a maximum sentence of 170 years in prison. The Obama administration had debated charging Assange under the Espionage Act, but decided against it out of fear that it would have a negative effect on investigative journalism and could be unconstitutional. The New York Times commented that it and other news organisations obtained the same documents as WikiLeaks also without government authorisation. It said it was not clear how WikiLeaks' publications were legally different from other publications of classified information.
Most cases brought under the Espionage Act have been against government employees who accessed sensitive information and leaked it to journalists and others. Prosecuting people for acts related to receiving and publishing information has not previously been tested in court. In 1975, the Justice Department decided after consideration not to charge journalist Seymour Hersh for reporting on US surveillance of the Soviet Union. Two lobbyists for a pro-Israel group were charged in 2005 with receiving and sharing classified information about American policy toward Iran. The charges, however, did not relate to the publication of the documents and the case was dropped in 2009.
The Associated Press reported that the indictment raised concerns about media freedom, as Assange's solicitation and publication of classified information is a routine job journalists perform. Steve Vladeck, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law, stated that what Assange is accused of doing is factually different from but legally similar to what professional journalists do. Suzanne Nossel of PEN America said it was immaterial if Assange was a journalist or publisher and pointed instead to First Amendment concerns.
While some American politicians supported the arrest and indictment of Julian Assange, several non-government organisations for press freedom condemned it. Mark Warner, vice chairman of the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said that Assange was "a dedicated accomplice in efforts to undermine American security". Several jurists, politicians, associations, academics and campaigners viewed the arrest of Assange as an attack on freedom of the press and international law. Reporters Without Borders said Assange's arrest would "set a dangerous precedent for journalists, whistle-blowers, and other journalistic sources that the US may wish to pursue in the future". Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, wrote that Assange's prosecution for publishing leaked documents is "a major threat to global media freedom". United Nations human rights expert Agnes Callamard said the indictment exposed him to the risk of serious human rights violations. Ben Wizner from the American Civil Liberties Union said that prosecuting Assange "for violating US secrecy laws would set an especially dangerous precedent for US journalists, who routinely violate foreign secrecy laws to deliver information vital to the public's interest".
Imprisonment in the UK
Since his arrest on 11 April 2019, Assange has been incarcerated in Belmarsh Prison in London.
After examining Assange on 9 May 2019, Nils Melzer, the United Nations special rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, concluded that "in addition to physical ailments, Mr Assange showed all symptoms typical for prolonged exposure to psychological torture, including extreme stress, chronic anxiety and intense psychological trauma." The British government said it disagreed with some of his observations. In a later interview, Melzer criticised the "secretive grand jury indictment in the United States", the "abusive manner in which Swedish prosecutors disseminated, re-cycled and perpetuated their 'preliminary investigation' into alleged sexual offences", the "termination by Ecuador of Mr Assange's asylum status and citizenship without any form of due process", and the "overt bias against Mr Assange being shown by British judges since his arrest". He said the United States, UK, Sweden and Ecuador were trying to make an example of Assange. He also accused journalists of "spreading abusive and deliberately distorted narratives". Shortly after Melzer's visit, Assange was transferred to the prison's health care unit.
On 13 September 2019, District Judge Vanessa Baraitser ruled that Assange would not be released on 22 September when his prison term ended because he was a and his lawyer had not applied for bail. She said when his sentence came to an end, his status would change from a serving prisoner to a person facing extradition.
On 1 November 2019, Melzer said that Assange's health had continued to deteriorate and his life was now at risk. He said that the UK government had not acted on the issue.
On 22 November, an open letter to the UK Home Secretary and Shadow Home Secretary signed by a group of medical practitioners named Doctors for Assange said Assange's health was declining to such an extent that he could die in prison. Subsequent attempts by the group, made to the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice Robert Buckland, and to Marise Payne, the Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs, also yielded no result.
On 30 December 2019, Melzer accused the UK government of torturing Julian Assange. He said Assange's "continued exposure to severe mental and emotional suffering... clearly amounts to psychological torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment."
On 17 February 2020, the medical journal The Lancet published an open letter from Doctors for Assange in which they said Assange was in a "dire state of health due to the effects of prolonged psychological torture in both the Ecuadorian embassy and Belmarsh prison" which could lead to his death and that his "politically motivated medical neglect... sets a dangerous precedent". On the same day, Reporters Without Borders posted a separate petition which accused the Trump administration of acting in "retaliation for (Assange's) facilitating major revelations in the international media about the way the United States conducted its wars". The petition said, Assange's publications "were clearly in the public interest and not espionage". Australian MPs Andrew Wilkie and George Christensen visited Assange and pressed the UK and Australian governments to intervene to stop his being extradited.
On 25 March 2020, Assange was denied bail after Judge Baraitser rejected his lawyers' argument that his imprisonment would put him at high risk of contracting COVID-19. She said Assange's past conduct showed how far he was willing to go to avoid extradition. In November 2021, his father told a French interview program that Assange had received a non-mandatory COVID-19 vaccination in Belmarsh Prison.
On 25 June 2020, Doctors for Assange published another letter in The Lancet, "reiterating their demand to end the torture and medical neglect of Julian Assange", in which they state their "professional and ethical duty to speak out against, report, and stop torture".
In September 2020, an open letter in support of Assange was sent to Boris Johnson with the signatures of two current heads of state and approximately 160 other politicians. The following month, U.S. Representatives Tulsi Gabbard, a Democrat, and Thomas Massie, a Republican, introduced a resolution opposing the extradition of Assange. In December 2020, German human rights commissioner Bärbel Kofler cautioned the UK about the need to consider Assange's physical and mental health before deciding whether to extradite him.
Hearings on extradition to the U.S.
On 2 May 2019, the first hearing was held in London into the U.S. request for Assange's extradition. When asked by Judge Snow whether he consented to extradition, Assange replied, "I do not wish to surrender myself for extradition for doing journalism that has won many, many awards and protected many people". On 13 June, British Home Secretary Sajid Javid said he had signed the extradition order.
Towards the end of 2019, Judge Emma Arbuthnot, who had presided at several of the extradition hearings, stepped aside because of a "perception of bias". Vanessa Baraitser was appointed as the presiding judge.
On 21 October 2019, Assange appeared at the court for a case management hearing. When Judge Baraitser asked about his understanding of the proceedings, Assange replied:
In February 2020, the court heard legal arguments. Assange's lawyers contended that he had been charged with political offences and therefore could not be extradited. The hearings were delayed for months due to requests for extra time from the prosecution and the defence and due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In March, the International Bar Association's Human Rights Institute, IBAHRI, condemned the mistreatment of Julian Assange in the extradition trial.
Assange appeared in court on 7 September 2020, facing a new indictment with 18 counts:
Conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defence information;
Conspiracy to commit computer intrusions;
Obtaining national defence information (seven counts); and
Disclosure of national defence information (nine counts).
The US Department of Justice stated that the new indictment "broaden[s] the scope of... alleged computer intrusions", alleging that Assange "communicated directly with a leader of the hacking group LulzSec[,]... provided a list of targets for LulzSec to hack" and "[conspired] with Army Intelligence Analyst Chelsea Manning to crack a password hash". Judge Baraitser denied motions by Assange's barristers to dismiss the new charges or to adjourn in order to better respond.
Some witnesses who testified in September, such as Daniel Ellsberg, did so remotely via video link due to COVID-19 restrictions. Technical problems caused extensive delays. Amnesty International, PEN Norway, and eight members of the European Parliament had their access to the livestream revoked. Baraitser responded that the initial invitations had been sent in error. Torture victim Khaled el-Masri, who was originally requested as a defence witness, had his testimony reduced to a written statement. Other witnesses testified that the conditions of imprisonment, which would be likely to worsen upon extradition to the U.S., placed Assange at a high risk of depression and suicide which was exacerbated by his Asperger syndrome. During the court proceedings the defence drew attention to a prison service report stating that a hidden razor blade had been found by a prison officer during a search of Assange's cell. During the proceedings it was also revealed that Assange had contacted the Samaritans phone service on numerous occasions.
Patrick Eller, a former forensics examiner with the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command, testified that Assange did not crack and could not have cracked the password mentioned in the U.S. indictment, as Chelsea Manning had intentionally sent only a portion of the password's hash. Moreover, Eller stated that password cracking was a common topic of discussion among other soldiers stationed at Forward Operating Base Hammer, suggesting that Manning's message was unrelated to the classified documents which were already in her possession. Testimony on 30 September revealed new allegations surrounding the surveillance of the Ecuadorian embassy by UC Global. A former UC Global employee, who spoke anonymously fearing reprisals, stated that the firm undertook "an increasingly sophisticated operation" after it was put into contact with the Trump administration by Sheldon Adelson. According to the employee, intelligence agents discussed plans to break into the embassy to kidnap or poison Assange and attempted to obtain the DNA of a baby who was believed to be Assange's child.
To coincide with the end of the hearing, Progressive International convened a virtual event called the Belmarsh Tribunal, modelled after the Russell Tribunal, to scrutinise what it calls "the crimes that have been revealed by Assange, and the crimes that have been committed against him, in turn".
Hearings, including a statement in support of the defence by Noam Chomsky, concluded on 1 October 2020.
On 4 January 2021, Judge Baraitser ruled that Assange could not be extradited to the United States, citing concerns about his mental health and the risk of suicide in a US prison. She sided with the US on every other point, including whether the charges constituted political offences and whether he was entitled to freedom of speech protections.
Appeal and other developments
On 6 January 2021, Assange was denied bail on the grounds that he was a flight risk, pending an appeal by the United States. The US prosecutors lodged an appeal of the denial of extradition on 15 January.
Following the decision by Judge Baraitser that it would be "oppressive to extradite [Assange] to the United States," in July 2021 the Biden administration assured the Crown Prosecution Services that "Mr Assange will not be subject to SAMs or imprisoned at ADX (unless he were to do something subsequent to the offering of these assurances that meets the tests for the imposition of SAMs or designation to ADX)". The United States also assured that it "will consent to Mr Assange being transferred to Australia to serve any custodial sentence imposed on him." An Amnesty International expert on national security and human rights in Europe said, "Those are not assurances at all. It's not that difficult to look at those assurances and say: these are inherently unreliable, it promises to do something and then reserves the right to break the promise".
In June 2021 Icelandic newspaper Stundin published details of an interview with Sigurdur Ingi Thordarson, the witness identified as "Teenager" in the U.S. Justice Department's case against Assange. In the interview Thordarson, who had received a promise of immunity from prosecution in return for co-operating with the FBI, stated he had fabricated allegations used in the U.S. indictment.
In June 2021, Julian Assange's half brother Gabriel Shipton and father John Shipton left Australia to conduct a month-long 17 city tour of the United States to generate awareness and support for Assange and press freedom. In a Saint Paul, Minnesota event, sponsored by Women Against Military Madness, the Shiptons asked supporters to appeal to members of Congress to weigh in with the Justice Department to reconsider its prosecution. Ecuador revoked Assange's citizenship in July 2021.
In August 2021 in the High Court, Lord Justice Holroyde decided that Judge Baraitser may have given too much weight to what Holroyde called "a misleading report" by an expert witness for the defence, psychiatrist Prof Michael Kopelman, and granted permission for the contested risk of suicide to be raised on the appeal.
In October 2021, the High Court held a two-day appeal hearing presided over by Ian Burnett, Baron Burnett of Maldon, Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, and Lord Justice Holroyde. In opening the U.S. as appellant argued that Assange's health issues were less severe than claimed during the initial extradition hearing and that his depression was moderate rather than severe. They also drew attention to binding assurances given by the U.S. concerning his proposed treatment in custody. In answer Assange's defence drew attention to a Yahoo! News report that the CIA had plotted to poison, abduct or assassinate Assange. Edward Fitzgerald QC argued: "Given the revelations of surveillance in the embassy and plots to kill [Assange]," "there are great grounds for fearing what will be done to him" if extradited to the U.S. He urged the court "not to trust [the] assurances" of the "same government" alleged to have plotted Assange's killing. According to his partner Stella Moris, Assange suffered a mini-stroke on 27 October while sitting through the court hearing and was subsequently given anti-stroke medication.
On 10 December 2021, the High Court ruled in favour of the United States. The Lord Chief Justice and Lord Justice Holroyde ruled that, in line with previous judgements, when the US administration gives a promise of fair and humane treatment its word should not be doubted. The case has been remitted to Westminster Magistrates' Court with the direction that it be sent to the Home Secretary Priti Patel for the final decision on whether to extradite Assange. On 24 January 2022 Assange was granted permission to petition the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom for an appeal hearing.
Writings and opinions
Assange has written a few short pieces, including "State and terrorist conspiracies" (2006), "Conspiracy as governance" (2006), "The hidden curse of Thomas Paine" (2008), "What's new about WikiLeaks?" (2011), and the foreword to Cypherpunks (2012). Cypherpunks is primarily a transcript of World Tomorrow episode eight, a two-part interview between Assange, Jacob Appelbaum, Andy Müller-Maguhn, and Jérémie Zimmermann. In the foreword, Assange said, "the Internet, our greatest tool for emancipation, has been transformed into the most dangerous facilitator of totalitarianism we have ever seen". He also contributed research to Suelette Dreyfus's Underground (1997), and received a co-writer credit for the Calle 13 song "Multi Viral" (2013). In 2010, Assange said he was a libertarian and that "WikiLeaks is designed to make capitalism more free and ethical".
In 2010, Assange received a deal for his autobiography worth at least US$1.3million. In 2011, Canongate Books published Julian Assange, The Unauthorised Autobiography. Assange immediately disavowed it, stating, "I am not 'the writer' of this book. I own the copyright of the manuscript, which was written by Andrew O'Hagan." Assange accused Canongate of breaching their contract by publishing, against his wishes, a draft that Assange considered "a work in progress" and "entirely uncorrected or fact-checked by me." In 2014, O'Hagan wrote about his experience as Assange's ghostwriter. "The story of his life mortified him and sent him scurrying for excuses," O'Hagan recalled. "He didn't want to do the book. He hadn't from the beginning." Colin Robinson, co-publisher of Assange's 2012 book Cypherpunks, criticised O'Hagan for largely ignoring the bigger issues about which Assange had been warning, and noted that O'Hagan's piece "is no part of an organised dirty tricks campaign. But by focusing as it does on Assange's character defects, it ends up serving much the same purpose."
Assange's book When Google Met WikiLeaks was published by OR Books in 2014. It recounts when Google CEO Eric Schmidt requested a meeting with Assange, while he was on bail in rural Norfolk, UK. Schmidt was accompanied by Jared Cohen, director of Google Ideas; Lisa Shields, vice president of the Council on Foreign Relations; and Scott Malcomson, the communications director for the International Crisis Group. Excerpts were published on the Newsweek website, while Assange participated in a Q&A event that was facilitated by the Reddit website and agreed to an interview with Vogue magazine.
In 2011, an article in Private Eye by its editor, Ian Hislop, recounted a rambling phone call he had received from Assange, who was especially angry about Private Eye′s report that Israel Shamir, an Assange associate in Russia, was a Holocaust denier. Assange suggested, Hislop wrote, "that British journalists, including the editor of The Guardian, were engaged in a Jewish-led conspiracy to smear his organization." Assange subsequently responded that Hislop had "distorted, invented or misremembered almost every significant claim and phrase." He added, "We treasure our strong Jewish support and staff, just as we treasure the support from pan-Arab democracy activists and others who share our hope for a just world."
Personal life
While in his teens, Assange married a girl named Teresa, and in 1989 they had a son named Daniel. The couple separated and disputed custody of Daniel until 1999. According to Assange's mother, during the time of the custody dispute, his brown hair turned white. In 2015, in an open letter to French President Hollande, Assange said that his youngest child was French, as was the child's mother. He also said his family had faced death threats and harassment because of his work, forcing them to change identities and reduce contact with him.
In 2015, Assange began a relationship with Stella Moris ( Stella Moris-Smith Robertson), his South African-born lawyer. They became engaged in 2017 and had two children. Moris revealed their relationship in 2020 because she feared for Assange's life. On 7 November 2021, the couple said they were preparing legal action against Deputy UK Prime Minister Dominic Raab and Jenny Louis, governor of Belmarsh prison. Assange and Moris accused Raab and Louis of denying their and their two children's human rights by blocking and delaying Moris and Assange from getting married. On 11 November, the prison service said it had granted permission for the couple to marry in Belmarsh prison. The service said the application had been "considered in the usual way by the prison governor".
Assessments
Views on Assange have been given by a number of public figures, including journalists, well-known whistleblowers, activists and world leaders. In July 2010, Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg said that "Assange has shown much better judgment with respect to what he has revealed than the people who kept those items secret inside the government." In October 2010, Ellsberg flew to London to give Assange his support. In November 2010, an individual from the office of Dmitry Medvedev, the President of Russia, suggested that Assange should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In December 2010, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, then President of Brazil, said "They have arrested him and I don't hear so much as a single protest for freedom of expression". Vladimir Putin, the prime minister of Russia, asked at a press conference "Why is Mr Assange in prison? Is this democracy?" In the same month, Julia Gillard, Prime Minister of Australia, described his activities as "illegal", but the Australian Federal Police said he had not broken Australian law. Joe Biden, the vice president of the United States, was asked whether he saw Assange as closer to a high-tech terrorist than to whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg. Biden responded that he "would argue it is closer to being a high-tech terrorist than the Pentagon Papers". In November 2011, Vaughan Smith, founder of the Frontline Club, supported Assange and in July 2012 offered his residence in Norfolk for Assange to continue WikiLeaks' operations whilst in the UK. In April 2012, interviewed on Assange's television show World Tomorrow, Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa praised WikiLeaks and told his host "Cheer up! Cheer up! Welcome to the club of the persecuted!" In August 2012, historian and journalist Tariq Ali and former ambassador and author Craig Murray spoke in support of Assange outside the Ecuadorian embassy. In April 2013, filmmaker Oliver Stone stated that "Julian Assange did much for free speech and is now being victimised by the abusers of that concept." In November 2014, Spanish Podemos party leader Pablo Iglesias also gave his support to Assange. In July 2015, British Member of Parliament Jeremy Corbyn opposed Assange's extradition to the US, and as Labour Party leader in April 2019 said the British government should oppose Assange's extradition to the US "for exposing evidence of atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan".
In July 2016, artist and activist Ai Weiwei, musicians Patti Smith, Brian Eno and PJ Harvey, scholars Noam Chomsky and Yanis Varoufakis, fashion designer Vivienne Westwood and filmmaker Ken Loach were amongst those attending an event in support of Assange at the embassy. That same month, the documentary filmmaker and long-time supporter Michael Moore also visited Assange in the embassy. In December 2019, Australian journalist Mary Kostakidis said, "I became fascinated at this young, idealistic Australian, very tech-savvy, who developed a way for whistleblowers to upload data anonymously" and that she would be giving "100 per cent of my attention and resources" to his defence. In January 2021, Australian journalist John Pilger stated that, were Assange to be extradited, "no journalist who challenges power will be safe".
American politicians Mitch McConnell, Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin each either referred to Assange as "a high-tech terrorist" or suggested that through publishing US diplomatic traffic he was engaged in terrorism. Other American and Canadian politicians and media personalities, including Tom Flanagan, Bob Beckel, Mike Huckabee and Michael Grunwald, called for his assassination or execution, though Grunwald later apologised for this, saying, "It was a dumb tweet. I'm sorry. I deserve the backlash."
Honours and awards
Works
Bibliography
Underground: Tales of Hacking, Madness and Obsession on the Electronic Frontier (1997)
Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet. OR Books, 2012. .
When Google Met WikiLeaks. OR Books, 2014. .
The WikiLeaks Files: The World According to The US Empire. By WikiLeaks. Verso Books, 2015. (with an Introduction by Julian Assange).
Filmography
As himself
The War You Don't See (2010)
The Simpsons (2012) (cameo; episode "At Long Last Leave")
Citizenfour (2014)
The Yes Men Are Revolting (2014)
Terminal F/Chasing Edward Snowden (2015)
Asylum (2016)
Risk (2016)
Architects of Denial (2017)
The New Radical (2017)
See also
List of people who took refuge in a diplomatic mission
List of peace activists
Lauri Love, who in 2018 won an appeal in the High Court of England against extradition to the United States
Gary McKinnon, whose extradition to the United States was blocked in 2012 by then-Home Secretary Theresa May
Ross Ulbricht
Thomas A. Drake
Jeremy Hammond, who was summoned to appear before a Virginia federal grand jury which was investigating Julian Assange. He was held in civil contempt of court after refusing to testify.
Ola Bini, who was arrested in April 2019 in Ecuador apparently due to his association with Julian Assange and WikiLeaks.
Notes
References
Further reading
Books
Nick Cohen, You Can't Read this Book: Censorship in an Age of Freedom (2012).
Films
Underground: The Julian Assange Story (2012), Australian TV drama that premiered at the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival.
Julian (2012), Australian short film about nine-year-old Julian Assange. The film won several awards and prizes.
The Fifth Estate (2013), American thriller that Assange said was a 'serious propaganda attack' on WikiLeaks and its staff.
Mediastan (2013), Swedish documentary produced by Assange to challenge The Fifth Estate.
We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks (2013), American documentary.
Risk (2016), American documentary.
Hacking Justice (2017), German documentary.
Ithaka (2021), Australian documentary produced by Assange's brother Gabriel Shipton, which deals with his father's worldwide campaign for Julian's release from prison.
External links
1971 births
21st-century Australian male writers
Activists from Melbourne
Articles containing video clips
Australian computer programmers
Australian editors
Australian expatriates in the United Kingdom
Australian founders
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Australian publishers (people)
Australian whistleblowers
Australia–United States relations
Central Queensland University alumni
Cypherpunks
Inmates of HM Prison Belmarsh
Internet activists
Living people
Media critics
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People associated with Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections
People associated with the 2016 United States presidential election
People from Townsville
People with Asperger syndrome
Political party founders
Prisoners and detainees of England and Wales
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United Kingdom–United States relations
University of Melbourne alumni
WikiLeaks |
1857208 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symlink%20race | Symlink race | A symlink race is a kind of software security vulnerability that results from a program creating files in an insecure manner. A malicious user can create a symbolic link to a file not otherwise accessible to them. When the privileged program creates a file of the same name as the symbolic link, it actually creates the linked-to file instead, possibly inserting content desired by the malicious user (see example below), or even provided by the malicious user (as input to the program).
It is called a "race" because in its typical manifestation, the program checks to see if a file by that name already exists; if it does not exist, the program then creates the file. An attacker must create the link in the interval between the check and when the file is created.
A symlink race can happen with antivirus products that decide they will quarantine or delete a suspicious file, and then go ahead and do that. During the interval between decision and action, malicious software can replace the suspicious file with a system or antivirus file that the malicious software wants overwritten.
Example
In this naive example, the Unix program foo is setuid. Its function is to retrieve information for the accounts specified by the user. For "efficiency", it sorts the requested accounts into a temporary file (/tmp/foo naturally) before making the queries.
The directory /tmp is world-writable. Malicious user Mallory creates a symbolic link to the file /root/.rhosts named /tmp/foo. Then, Mallory invokes foo with user as the requested account. The program creates the (temporary) file /tmp/foo (really creating /root/.rhosts) and puts information about the requested account (e.g. user password) in it. It removes the temporary file (merely removing the symbolic link).
Now the /root/.rhosts contains password information, which (if it even happens to be in the proper format) is the incantation necessary to allow anyone to use rlogin to log into the computer as the superuser.
Also in some Unix-systems there is a special flag O_NOFOLLOW for open(2) to prevent opening a file via a symbolic-link (dangling or otherwise). It's become standardized in POSIX.1-2008.
Workaround
The POSIX C standard library function mkstemp can be used to safely create temporary files. For shell scripts, the system utility does the same thing.
References
Computer security exploits
Unix |
59265732 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael%20Alan%20Singer | Michael Alan Singer | Michael Alan Singer (or Michael A. Singer; born 6 May 1947) is an American author, journalist, motivational speaker, and former software developer. Two of his books, The Untethered Soul (2007) and The Surrender Experiment (2015), were New York Times bestsellers. Singer graduated from the University of Florida in 1971 with a master's degree in economics, and while attending university, Singer had a spiritual awakening and went into seclusion to focus on meditation and yoga. This experience inspired him to establish the Temple of the Universe in 1975, a meditation center open to men and women of all beliefs and religions who seek inner peace.
Singer is also involved in the medical software industry. He helped form the Medical Manager Corporation, which marketed software that helped medical practitioners to digitize their medical records. In 2000, Medical Manager was recognized by the Smithsonian Institution for its achievements in information technology. Later that year, Medical Manager became a subsidiary of WebMD, in an acquisition valued at roughly $5 billion. Singer continued his work in physician software strategies at WebMD, where he remained as executive VP, physician software strategies, and head of research and development and chief software architect of WebMD Practice Services. He resigned from WebMD in 2005 and focused on writing.
Publications
Singer has written four books, and all of them belong to the genre of religion and spirituality.
The Search for Truth (1974)
The Search for Truth (1974) is Singer's first book, which was written long before he became famous as a writer. According to Singer's account, this book was written as a request from his mentor in his university, as the latter insisted the former to “turn in something for him to read” after the young Singer refused to do a doctoral dissertation.
Three Essays on Universal Law (1975)
Three Essays on Universal Law (1975) is Singer's second book which continues along the theme of his previous book.
The Untethered Soul (2007)
The Untethered Soul (2007) is Singer's first New York Times bestseller. It is a collection of lectures which cover topics on yoga, philosophy, the concept of self, the meaning of life, and the theory of mind. The book caught the attention of talk show host Oprah Winfrey, with whom Singer later gave his first televised interview.
The Surrender Experiment (2015)
The Surrender Experiment (2015) is Singer's second bestselling book. In the autobiography, Singer describes his journey of how he became interested in meditation, how he started the Temple of the Universe and the Medical Manager Corporation, among other things. Singer mixes his life story with teachings of his philosophy, and the central theme of the book is his attempts at "surrendering yourself to life itself", and not letting his personal ego intervene with the flow of life. He identifies The Three Pillars of Zen (1965) by Philip Kapleau and Autobiography of a Yogi (1946) by Paramahansa Yogananda as his influences, naming them responsible for starting his lifelong exploration of Zen and spirituality.
Securities fraud scandal
During his time at WebMD, Singer was prosecuted by the Department of Justice along with other members of Medical Manager's top management staff for securities fraud. Six executives of Medical Manager pleaded guilty to their roles in the scheme. The charges against Singer were eventually dropped. On January 11, 2010, Singer entered into a deferred prosecution agreement and forfeited $2.5 million in settlements. Singer claims he was being framed by another top executive, who invented the fraud story in order to "work a deal" with the FBI to reduce his own punishment, though these claims are unverified.
References
Living people
1947 births
American writers
Medical software |
6943604 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SYDI | SYDI | SYDI (Script Your Documentation Instantly) is an open source project which goal is to help system administrators to document their networks. The files released by the project are hosted at SourceForge.
SYDI is built around scripts which can target computers running the Windows and Linux operating systems. The Windows scripts are written in VBScript while the Linux script is written in the Python programming language.
Each script has two basic functions; Collecting and Reporting. After targeting a system the script collects information from the target and then writes the output to an XML file or a Microsoft Word document.
SYDI is licensed under the BSD License.
SYDI Components
As of version 2.0, SYDI consists of four separate script packages, each of which target specific operating systems or applications.
SYDI-Server
SYDI-Server is the most developed script within the SYDI project. It is used to document Windows servers or clients. It collects information with Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) and by reading the Windows registry. SYDI-Server finds basic hardware settings, installed software, domain membership, network settings etc.
SYDI-Exchange
SYDI-Exchange is used to document Microsoft Exchange Server organizations. Information is gathered through LDAP queries to the Active Directory where the Exchange information is stored.
SYDI-SQL
SYDI-SQL is used to document Microsoft SQL (MS SQL) Servers. Information is gathered by using SQL queries against the target server.
SYDI-Linux
SYDI-Linux is the least developed package within the SYDI project. Information is gathered by reading various files on a Linux system. SYDI-Linux focuses on documenting the Gentoo Linux distribution. Unlike the other SYDI packages this is not able to write Microsoft Word documents, however the XML file created can be converted into an OpenOffice document.
SYDI-SMS
SYDI-SMS is an offshoot of the SYDI project. It was created by a Microsoft MVP to document his System Management Server 2003 unlike the other Microsoft-based SYDI packages, this script only create a Word document.
SYDI-SCCM
SYDI-SCCM is an offshoot of the SYDI project. It was created by a Microsoft MVP to document his System Center Configuration Manager 2007 unlike the other Microsoft-based SYDI packages, this script only create a Word document. This version will document most of CM12 too.
SYDI-CM12
SYDI-SCCM is an offshoot of the SYDI project. It was created by a Microsoft MVP to document his System Center Configuration Manager 2012 unlike the other Microsoft-based SYDI packages, this script will only create a Word document. This version will document most of CM12 too.
External links
Official SYDI Website
Creators blog with news about SYDI
SYDI-SMS, SYDI SCCM, and SYDI CM12 scripts
Free documentation generators
Windows network-related software |
2109782 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Requirements%20management | Requirements management | Requirements management is the process of documenting, analyzing, tracing, prioritizing and agreeing on requirements and then controlling change and communicating to relevant stakeholders. It is a continuous process throughout a project. A requirement is a capability to which a project outcome (product or service) should conform.
Overview
The purpose of requirements management is to ensure that an organization documents, verifies, and meets the needs and expectations of its customers and internal or external stakeholders. Requirements management begins with the analysis and elicitation of the objectives and constraints of the organization. Requirements management further includes supporting planning for requirements, integrating requirements and the organization for working with them (attributes for requirements), as well as relationships with other information delivering against requirements, and changes for these.
The traceability thus established is used in managing requirements to report back fulfilment of company and stakeholder interests in terms of compliance, completeness, coverage, and consistency. Traceabilities also support change management as part of requirements management in understanding the impacts of changes through requirements or other related elements (e.g., functional impacts through relations to functional architecture), and facilitating introducing these changes.
Requirements management involves communication between the project team members and stakeholders, and adjustment to requirements changes throughout the course of the project. To prevent one class of requirements from overriding another, constant communication among members of the development team is critical. For example, in software development for internal applications, the business has such strong needs that it may ignore user requirements, or believe that in creating use cases, the user requirements are being taken care of.
Traceability
Requirements traceability is concerned with documenting the life of a requirement. It should be possible to trace back to the origin of each requirement and every change made to the requirement should therefore be documented in order to achieve traceability. Even the use of the requirement after the implemented features have been deployed and used should be traceable.
Requirements come from different sources, like the business person ordering the product, the marketing manager and the actual user. These people all have different requirements for the product. Using requirements traceability, an implemented feature can be traced back to the person or group that wanted it during the requirements elicitation. This can, for example, be used during the development process to prioritize the requirement, determining how valuable the requirement is to a specific user. It can also be used after the deployment when user studies show that a feature is not used, to see why it was required in the first place.
Requirements activities
At each stage in a development process, there are key requirements management activities and methods. To illustrate, consider a standard five-phase development process with Investigation, Feasibility, Design, Construction and Test, and Release stages.
Investigation
In Investigation, the first three classes of requirements are gathered from the users, from the business and from the development team. In each area, similar questions are asked; what are the goals, what are the constraints, what are the current tools or processes in place, and so on. Only when these requirements are well understood can functional requirements be developed.
In the common case, requirements cannot be fully defined at the beginning of the project. Some requirements will change, either because they simply weren’t extracted, or because internal or external forces at work affect the project in mid-cycle.
The deliverable from the Investigation stage is a requirements document that has been approved by all members of the team. Later, in the thick of development, this document will be critical in preventing scope creep or unnecessary changes. As the system develops, each new feature opens a world of new possibilities, so the requirements specification anchors the team to the original vision and permits a controlled discussion of scope change.
While many organizations still use only documents to manage requirements, others manage their requirements baselines using software tools. These tools allow requirements to be managed in a database, and usually have functions to automate traceability (e.g., by allowing electronic links to be created between parent and child requirements, or between test cases and requirements), electronic baseline creation, version control, and change management. Usually such tools contain an export function that allows a specification document to be created by exporting the requirements data into a standard document application.
Feasibility
In the Feasibility stage, costs of the requirements are determined. For user requirements, the current cost of work is compared to the future projected costs once the new system is in place. Questions such as these are asked: “What are data entry errors costing us now?” Or “What is the cost of scrap due to operator error with the current interface?” Actually, the need for the new tool is often recognized as these questions come to the attention of financial people in the organization.
Business costs would include, “What department has the budget for this?” “What is the expected rate of return on the new product in the marketplace?” “What’s the internal rate of return in reducing costs of training and support if we make a new, easier-to-use system?”
Technical costs are related to software development costs and hardware costs. “Do we have the right people to create the tool?” “Do we need new equipment to support expanded software roles?” This last question is an important type. The team must inquire into whether the newest automated tools will add sufficient processing power to shift some of the burden from the user to the system in order to save people time.
The question also points out a fundamental point about requirements management. A human and a tool form a system, and this realization is especially important if the tool is a computer or a new application on a computer. The human mind excels in parallel processing and interpretation of trends with insufficient data. The CPU excels in serial processing and accurate mathematical computation. The overarching goal of the requirements management effort for a software project would thus be to make sure the work being automated gets assigned to the proper processor. For instance, “Don’t make the human remember where she is in the interface. Make the interface report the human’s location in the system at all times.” Or “Don’t make the human enter the same data in two screens. Make the system store the data and fill in the second screen as needed.”
The deliverable from the Feasibility stage is the budget and schedule for the project.
Design
Assuming that costs are accurately determined and benefits to be gained are sufficiently large, the project can proceed to the Design stage. In Design, the main requirements management activity is comparing the results of the design against the requirements document to make sure that work is staying in scope.
Again, flexibility is paramount to success. Here’s a classic story of scope change in mid-stream that actually worked well. Ford auto designers in the early ‘80s were expecting gasoline prices to hit $3.18 per gallon by the end of the decade. Midway through the design of the Ford Taurus, prices had centered to around $1.50 a gallon. The design team decided they could build a larger, more comfortable, and more powerful car if the gas prices stayed low, so they redesigned the car. The Taurus launch set nationwide sales records when the new car came out, primarily because it was so roomy and comfortable to drive.
In most cases, however, departing from the original requirements to that degree does not work. So the requirements document becomes a critical tool that helps the team make decisions about design changes.
Construction and test
In the construction and testing stage, the main activity of requirements management is to make sure that work and cost stay within schedule and budget, and that the emerging tool does in fact meet requirements. A main tool used in this stage is prototype construction and iterative testing. For a software application, the user interface can be created on paper and tested with potential users while the framework of the software is being built. Results of these tests are recorded in a user interface design guide and handed off to the design team when they are ready to develop the interface. This saves their time and makes their jobs much easier.
Verification:
This effort verifies that the requirement has been implemented correctly. There are 4 methods of verification: analysis, inspection, testing, and demonstration. Numerical software execution results or through-put on a network test, for example, provides analytical evidence that the requirement has been met. Inspection of vendor documentation or spec sheets also verifies requirements. Actually testing or demonstrating the software in a lab environment also verifies the requirements: a test type of verification will occur when test equipment not normally part of the lab (or system under test) is used. Comprehensive test procedures which outline the steps and their expected results clearly identify what is to be seen as a result of performing the step. After the step or set of steps is completed the last step's expected result will call out what has been seen and then identify what requirement or requirements have been verified (identified by number). The requirement number, title and verbiage are tied together in another location in the test document.
Requirements change management
Hardly would any software development project be completed without some changes being asked of the project. The changes can stem from changes in the environment in which the finished product is envisaged to be used, business changes, regulation changes, errors in the original definition of requirements, limitations in technology, changes in the security environment and so on. The activities of requirements change management include receiving the change requests from the stakeholders, recording the received change requests, analyzing and determining the desirability and process of implementation, implementation of the change request, quality assurance for the implementation and closing the change request. Then the data of change requests be compiled, analyzed and appropriate metrics are derived and dovetailed into the organizational knowledge repository.
Release
Requirements management does not end with product release. From that point on, the data coming in about the application’s acceptability is gathered and fed into the Investigation phase of the next generation or release. Thus the process begins again.
Tooling
Acquiring a tool to support requirements management is no trivial matter and it needs to be undertaken as part of a broader process improvement initiative. It has long been a perception that a tool, once acquired and installed on a project, can address all of its requirements management-related needs. However, the purchase or development of a tool to support requirements management can be a costly decision. Organizations may get burdened with expensive support contracts, disproportionate effort can get misdirected towards learning to use the tool and configuring it to address particular needs, and inappropriate use that can lead to erroneous decisions. Organizations should follow an incremental process to make decisions about tools to support their particular needs from within the wider context of their development process and tooling. The tools are presented in Requirements traceability.
See also
Requirement
Requirements engineering
Requirements analysis
Requirements traceability
Requirements Engineering Specialist Group
Process area (CMMI):
Requirements Development (RD)
Requirements Management (REQM)
Product requirements document
Software quality
References
Further reading
Colin Hood, Simon Wiedemann, Stefan Fichtinger, Urte Pautz Requirements Management: Interface Between Requirements Development and All Other Engineering Processes Springer, Berlin 2007,
Requirements Management - A Practice Guide, PMI
External links
U.K. Office of Government Commerce (OGC) - Requirements management (archive; OGC website ceased activity on 1 October 2011)
CDC Unified Process Practices Guide - Requirements Management
International Requirements Engineering Board (IREB)
What is Requirements Management?
Product lifecycle management
Systems engineering
Software requirements
Systems Modeling Language |
14600170 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List%20of%20Alex%20Rider%20characters | List of Alex Rider characters | This is a list of characters from Anthony Horowitz's Alex Rider series. This includes characters from the novels, the film, the graphic novels, and the short stories.
Main antagonists
Ash
Anthony Sean Howell, more commonly referred to as Ash (his initials), is a major character in Snakehead.
Ash was born in England and worked for MI6 with his best friend John Rider. When John went undercover within Scorpia, Ash was assigned to monitor his progress from a distance in case his friend got into difficulty. Ash was chosen to lead the mission to "capture" John, when he and Yassen Gregorovich were sent to kill a target in Malta. However, the mission was a near total disaster; due to confusion with two clocks that were out of sync, John and Yassen's arrival took Ash by surprise. When Yassen shot Ash, his body armour meant that he was back on his feet in seconds, but this prompted Yassen to fatally shoot four other agents under Ash's copursued Yassen, but was left for dead when he was stabbed by the Russian. Ash only survived this injury when John Rider risked his life to provide emergency first aid. Ash was left with half his stomach gone, and was demoted for his failure. He eventually quit his job because he thought his demotion was unfair and was not satisfied with desk duty. He then went to work for ASIS in Australia.
Alex Rider first meets him in Snakehead when he wanders into a minefield. Ash tells him not to move and leaves, claiming he will get help. This was later found to be a test, to see how Alex would react. Alex discovers that Ash is his godfather after meeting with Ethan Brooke, head of Covert Action for ASIS. The prospect of learning more about his past lures Alex into working for ASIS, alongside Ash, investigating the ruthless Snakehead. They are sent on a mission together to infiltrate the Snakehead by posing as Afghan refugees trying to gain the Snakehead's help in illegally immigrating to Australia. However Major Yu is on to them from the start, so both are captured in Darwin. Alex is sent to a surgery where his organs will be illegally harvested, whilst Ash vanishes along with the Major.
At the end of Snakehead, when Major Yu's oil rig is attacked by a joint British/Australian taskforce, Ash is shot by Ben Daniels, and is then revealed to have been working for SCORPIA since Malta, and had blown Alex's cover before their mission had even started. Alex deduces that Ash was responsible for the death of his parents. Ash confesses to having planted a bomb on their plane, on which they were going to France to start a new life; Alex remained behind due to an ear infection. Ash expresses some regret for his actions before dying from his injuries. Scorpia had already been betrayed once by John Rider and so they put his loyalty to the test by commanding him to place the bomb in position. It is also revealed that Ash had a minor crush on Alex's mother, a charming and beautiful nurse.
Ash is described as having "black curly hair and the beginnings of a rough beard" and has a slight Australian accent. He also has a large scar along his stomach, the result of his encounter with Yassen Gregorovich, a Russian assassin. He had a brief relationship with Jack Starbright, Alex's housekeeper and legal guardian. He is seen smoking at several points in the book, his name possibly being a reference to this. Alex also notes that it is surprising that Ash smokes, considering the fact that he chooses to look after himself in so many other ways.
His role in the series has been compared to that of Alec Trevelyan (aka Agent 006/ Janus) from the James Bond movie GoldenEye.
Damian Cray
Damian Cray is the main antagonist of Eagle Strike.
Cray was born in North London on 5 October 1950, and baptised as Harold Eric Lunt, the only child of Sir Arthur Lunt, a rich businessman who made his name in building multi-storey car parks. Although he desired to be a pop or rock star, his parents sent him to the Royal Academy of Music in London. He sang there with a young Elton John. When he was thirteen, his parents died in a bizarre accident in which their car fell on them, obviously Cray's doing. Although he welcomed their deaths, he pretended to be distraught and left the Royal Academy to travel the world. He changed his name and became Buddhist and vegetarian.
He returned to England in the 1970s and enjoyed a hugely successful music career, starting a band called “Slam!” (a parody of Wham!). This shot him to fame at once. At the end of the 1970s, the band split up and he started a solo career. His first solo album, "Firelight", went platinum and he won several awards and released the single "Something for the Children" at Christmas time in 1986, with all funds given to charity. Cray campaigned for several issues, including saving the rainforests, ending world debt and banning animal testing. His tireless work for charity earned him a knighthood in 1990. The rich superstar then branched into hotels, television, and even started developing "Gameslayer", the most advanced and realistic game console of its time.
However, despite his charitable work and beliefs, Cray had a darker and more sinister side to him; to fulfill some of his charitable notions, such as his campaigns against animal testing, whaling and landmines, he ordered the assassinations of many people responsible for the practises he was campaigning against. This went unnoticed until he called for a hit on Edward Pleasure - father of Sabina Pleasure - a journalist who was threatening to expose Cray's plan. He also orchestrates the killing of a journalist who puts him on the spot by asking him awkward questions regarding video game violence in "Gameslayer".
Cray was planning a nuclear attack to annihilate the major drug-producing parts of the world, killing millions in the process. Under the cover of "Gameslayer" he devised a way of hijacking Air Force One using a flash drive and launching the USA's supply of nuclear missiles. However, Alex has trouble convincing Alan Blunt that Damian Cray is planning to destroy half of the world due to the fact that Cray is considered charitable by MI6, forcing Alex to investigate the situation himself.
After Alex discovers how to sneak into Cray's Gameslayer development centre in Amsterdam, he overhears a conversation between Cray and Charlie Roper, an American NSA agent. It is eventually revealed that Roper made a flash drive capable of hacking into any computer in the world. After taking the flash drive, Cray kills Roper by locking him in a glass case and showering two million dollars worth of nickels onto him in lieu of payment. Cray captures Alex with the help of Yassen Gregorovich, although he later escapes and returns to England, only to find that Sabina has been taken hostage.
Cray takes the two teenagers with him when his men seize Air Force One, and shoots Gregorovich when the Russian refuses to kill the children. He then fires at Alex, seemingly killing him, and gets into a fight with Sabina. This is interrupted when Alex recovers (having worn a bulletproof vest), and with Sabina, shoves Cray out of the plane and into one of the turbines, vaporising him instantly and forcing the pilot (Henryk) to make a crash landing.
Cray is described as very short, with dyed jet-black hair. He has a round face, green eyes, with a small nose positioned "almost unnaturally in the centre of his face". It is mentioned that Cray has probably had plastic surgery in an attempt to look young.
His character and manner of death is very similar to that of Gustav Graves from the James Bond movie Die Another Day. Coincidentally, Toby Stephens, the actor who portrayed Graves, portrays Damian Cray in the Alex Rider TV series, reimagined as an Elon Musk-esque tech billionaire instead of a singer. His TV counterpart is more sympathetic, as it is revealed his war against drugs is because his older brother died of an overdose. The way he obtained the nuclear launch codes is also different: instead of using Gameslayer console production as a front for Roper's work and concentrating it into a flash drive, Cray has installed them in the Feathered Serpent game copies, which once everyone logs on to the game, becomes a supercomputer that obtains the nuclear launch codes. Also, instead of getting sucked to his demise in the turbines, he is shot dead by Yassen Gregorovitch.
Darcus Drake
Darcus Drake is the main antagonist of the short story Alex in Afghanistan. He is an Irish newspaper correspondent-turned-terrorist leader.
Drake was born and raised in Dublin and spent five years working for the Irish Times before moving to London. He then worked for the international press as a war correspondent and photographer, winning several awards and becoming rich. His work took him to such places as Iraq, Sudan, Libya, Yemen and Ethiopia, and he went with scant regard for his own safety. According to Mrs Jones, Drake had "a knack of capturing horror in a way that made you want to look".
However, Drake's line of work soon sharpened his interest in terrorism, thinking that the West was utterly responsible for the destruction that he had photographed, until he vanished two years before the events of Alex in Afghanistan, becoming a terrorist and founding his own group, known simply as "the Awakening". Operating from the Falcon's Edge citadel in the Herat mountains, close to the Afghanistan-Iran border, which had been variously used by Alexander the Great, the British in the nineteenth century and the Soviets, Drake plans to unite all terrorist groups and freedom fighters in the Middle East into the Awakening, in order to drive the West out of the region forever.
Mrs Jones and John Crawley approach Alex (who has no school for a time following the fire caused by his clone), and convince him to go to Falcon's Edge, supposedly to photograph a calutron left over from the Soviet era, over fears that Drake is trying to activate it to supply terrorists with nuclear weapons. Alex is seemingly betrayed by his ally, Faisal, and handed over to Drake, who, over breakfast, reveals his plans to Alex. Drake announces that he doesn't need the calutron, and reveals the first act of the Awakening will be to have Alex executed by firing squad at sunset, in order to show the West what it is doing in that region, as well as to show that the Awakening exists.
Drake has Alex imprisoned, but Faisal (who is revealed to be on Alex's side the whole time) frees him from his cell. Alex steals a horse, and parachutes with it out of Falcon's Edge, trying to make for the Shuja Cemetery (a prearranged meeting point for when the mission concludes). Drake sends twelve men from his personal guard to kill Alex, but his Kuchi allies, Faisal included, kill all the pursuers, saving Alex, before they escort him out of the country.
In London, Alan Blunt and Mrs Jones trick Alex into thinking that his mission had failed, prompting him to leave. However, it is revealed that one of Alex's gadgets (a very powerful Leica camera to photograph the calutron) contains a homing beacon, in order for MI6 to locate Drake and kill him. An RAF jet is promptly launched, and fires two Brimstone missiles that home in on the beacon, killing Drake before a meeting of the Awakening can take place.
Drake is described as being in his mid-thirties, unshaven, with silver hair, a slim build and a handsome face. He also suffers from Mobius Syndrome, causing his face to be permanently smiling, something he despises, saying that "I've been smiling all my life even though I've never found very much to smile about".
Nikolei Drevin
Nikolei Vladimir Drevin is the main antagonist of Ark Angel. Drevin is a famed Russian oligarch, owning many hotels, businesses, and even a football team, Stratford East. While generally viewed as a philanthropist, his wealth was actually attained through deals with several criminal organisations. He is the mastermind behind the Ark Angel space hotel project.
Born in Russia during the rule of the Soviet Union, Drevin apparently served in the KGB. When Communism collapsed during 1989–91, Drevin used his former contacts in the Russian Mafia, the Japanese Yakuza and the Chinese Triads to seize Russia's oil supplies for himself at a quarter of their usual prices, conning the Russian government out of its natural assets. He soon became, thanks to his criminal activities and his ownership of Russian oil, one of the richest men in the world.
The CIA is building up a case against Drevin, storing all of their evidence in The Pentagon in Washington. Meanwhile, Drevin's Ark Angel project went over-budget, and he decided to also destroy it to get some insurance out of it instead of maintaining the project further. It is revealed that he plans to solve both these problems by blowing Ark Angel out of orbit with a bomb as it passes above Washington. The falling space station, guided towards Washington, would serve two purposes: destroy the Pentagon, with all its evidence against Drevin, and destroy the space station itself and claim some insurance. To prevent himself from being accused of sabotaging the project, he hired some men to form Force Three, a fake group of eco-terrorists, which will be blamed for Ark Angel's destruction.
Drevin becomes acquainted with Alex Rider when Alex saves his son, Paul Drevin, from Force Three. (Drevin eventually revealed that the 'attack' on Paul was intended to draw attention away from any possible connection between him and Force Three). He then invites Alex over for "two weeks of the most luxury you have ever had". Later en route to Flamingo Bay, Alex is informed by the CIA of Drevin's criminal activities and is sent in to spy on him. Drevin discovers Alex's assignments with MI6 and orders his head of security, Magnus Payne, to kill him.
Later, Drevin, while trying to shoot Alex, accidentally wounds his own son, Paul. Infuriated, he clambers aboard his seaplane to try to escape. Unknown to him, however, Alex had tied two canoes to the plane's floats. The canoes become tangled in the trees, causing Drevin to crash, killing him. As for his plan, Alex is able to move the bomb to the centre of Ark Angel, so that it simply blows the structure apart.
Dr. Raymond Feng
Dr. Raymond Feng is the main antagonist of the short story Spy Trap. Nearly nothing is known about him.
When first introduced, Feng is supposedly a psychiatrist attached to MI6, assessing Alex after a supposed car crash that took place at the end of the Murmansk incident in Skeleton Key, shortly after Alex returned to the UK. Alex wakes up, suffering with amnesia, in Bellhanger Abbey, ostensibly a rest home used by MI6, and is taken to see Feng in his office. Feng tells Alex to tell him about himself, including his background and how his uncle, Ian Rider, trained him for his life in MI6, as well as the events of Skeleton Key and other aspects of his life. However, Feng lets slip several inconsistencies, such as not knowing who Alan Blunt (the head of MI6 Special Operations) is, and saying that the car Alex was in hit a traffic light, when his underling, Wendy McDarling, saying the crash happened on a motorway.
Soon, Alex pieces together what happened, after investigating Bellhanger Abbey, and through his own memories when they emerge: John Crawley met him after he returned from Murmansk; they drove home in a chauffeur-driven car (the chauffeur is later revealed to be Karl); the car did not crash, but instead was driven into a truck's trailer; the car was then flooded with knockout gas, leading to Alex waking up at the Abbey. Alex's investigations reveal Crawley in another room, completely drugged and unable to move or speak intelligibly.
Alex decides to break out of Bellhanger Abbey, after he finds his mobile phone, which Feng said was destroyed in the phony car crash, undamaged. He steals fishing lines, ties them to the security drone and uses them to fashion a zip wire to glide over the electric fence. However, the security guards discover this, and Feng orders everyone at Bellhanger Abbey to pursue Alex into the forest and kill him. Alex is rescued by MI6, who storm the Abbey and arrest Feng and his surviving underlings. It is revealed, after interrogation, that Feng is in the pay of an unknown country's intelligence service (China and Russia are both mentioned), and that he is refusing to talk. It is also implied that his real name might not be Raymond Feng.
Feng is described as being Chinese, as well as being "very round and fat, with black hair going grey at the sides and a small beard that began under his lower lip and reached about an inch under his chin", s well as having "slab-like teeth that looked false". He drives an orange-coloured Lada, and has an interest in fishing. He also suffers from Photophobia in both his eyes, requiring him to wear dark glasses at all times; he alleges to have inherited his eye problem from both his parents, as his father had photophobia in his right eye, while his mother had it in her left eye.
Yassen Gregorovich
Yassen Gregorovich is a recurring villain in the series, appearing in Stormbreaker, Eagle Strike, and Russian Roulette. He is also mentioned in Scorpia and Snakehead. In the end of Stormbreaker he saves the life of Alex Rider by shooting Herod Sayle on a helicopter pad. He was a Russian-born contract killer, trained by, and apparently working for, the clandestine terrorist organisation Scorpia. A superb assassin, Yassen was believed to be one of the world's best.
Born in Russia as Yasha Gregorovich, Yassen's father was killed by an accident of a biochemical warfare project that was hushed up by the Russian Government. His mother died when the Russian government bombed the village and set it on fire. After his parents' deaths, Yassen, then 14, made his way to Moscow in search of a family friend, Misha Dementyev, who attempts to hand Yassen over to the Soviet police. Yassen manages to escape and then ran errands for a group of thieves, with the leader a boy of 17 named Dimitry who originally stole the bulk of Yasha's money when he arrived. In a desperate heist, Yassen breaks into someone's apartment, but is caught by the owner, Vladimir Sharkovsky. Later, Sharkovsky interviews Yassen. But Yasha is hurt in the mouth, and pronounces his name "Yassen". After four long years of being forced to work for Sharkovsky, an assassin breaks in and shoots Sharkovsky, apparently killing him. Yassen holds the assassin at gunpoint and forces him to take him (Yassen) away from Vladimir's mansion in which he worked. The assassin worked for Scorpia and Yassen joins up. In the very end, Yassen goes back to Sharkovsky's mansion to prove John Rider (Alex's father) wrong about him. He then loads five chambers of Sharkovsky's revolver and places it to his head and shoots, seeing it as his last chance to leave the path of a killer. Yassen once again survives, and kills Sharkovsky. He resolves to become a professional killer to prove John's beliefs about him wrong.
For all his skills, Yassen is obviously best known for his assassinations; throughout the series, his reputation seems to be one of a man who makes no mistakes, and he is considered an active threat by MI6. He has been employed by Iraq, Serbia, Libya, and China. It is suggested that his training included, as is demonstrated on a single occasion when he convinces Alex not to shoot him by describing what will happen when he pulls the trigger, basic psychological warfare. He was also an expert with conventional weaponry and terrorist techniques, though both are demonstrated only once throughout the series before his death. Yassen made another appearance (in a scene set in the past) in the seventh book of the series, Snakehead. He was fluent in nine languages and was learning Japanese at the time of his death, while working with Damian Cray.
Yassen was at least partially instructed by Alex Rider's late father, Ian's brother, John Rider, an MI6 agent under deep cover working as an unspecified instructor for Scorpia on the Italian island of Malagosto. Yassen is in debt to John Rider; during a joint assignment in the Amazon, Rider, under the alias of Hunter, saved his student's life by shooting a black widow spider that had crawled onto Yassen's throat, killing their planned target with the same bullet. Although it left a notable scar on Yassen's neck, it was something which Yassen never forgot. Though Alex does not initially realise the reason, Yassen demonstrates some care for the boy, on more than one occasion sparing his life when he could have easily killed him. Before his death, Yassen actually tells Alex he respected John Rider and is glad that his son (Alex) could be with him in the last moments of his life.
He was shot and killed by his then-employer Damian Cray after he refused to kill Alex and Sabina, claiming that he did not kill children (though evidence in the last book would suggest it had more to do with his reluctance to kill Alex). However he lived long enough to tell Alex to find Scorpia in Venice.
Yassen Gregorovich is described as attractive, having blonde hair (though in the Stormbreaker film he has red hair), pale blue eyes, pale skin, distinctly chiselled lips, and "almost feminine eyelashes". He also has a long, distinctive scar along his neck (a result of the aforementioned incident with the black widow). Yassen's relaxed and graceful poise is often compared to that of a dancer.
He is portrayed by Damian Lewis in the film and Thomas Levin in the series.
Dr. Hugo Grief
Dr. Hugo Grief (real name: Johannes de Leede) is the main antagonist of Point Blanc. He was born in South Africa, where he was head of biology department at the University of Johannesburg. He went on to become South Africa's minister for science while still in his twenties. In this position, he discovered how to clone humans, perfecting the process by experimenting on political prisoners, due to his senior role in BOSS. Grief was also racist, disgusted by how black people and Nelson Mandela became the leaders of South Africa, feeling they would run his country into the ground. He thought that South Africa was excellent when controlled by the white men and thus decided to try to rule the world, and reinstate apartheid globally. Grief believed that he could rule the earth if he could control the main industries, such as technology and food.
To achieve this, Grief devised "The Gemini Project". Using money stolen from the South African government in 1981, he bought a castle in the French Alps and, along with assistant Eva Stellenbosch, turned the castle into an underground laboratory where they cloned him sixteen times. Grief then turned the castle into a school, Point Blanc, for the rebellious sons of rich families. He intended to use plastic surgery on his clones to make them resemble the real boys who were sent to him by their parents. Grief would then send the clones back to the parents - assuming that any minor 'differences' between his clones and the originals would be taken as nothing more than the natural changes the boys would have gone through during their time away-, and when the parents died the clones inherit their businesses. However, two men became suspicious about their sons' (the clones) changed personalities, and contacted Grief, who had them killed by The Gentleman. The possible link between the two deaths, coupled with messages that Alan Blunt had exchanged with one of the fathers - the two men having become friends at university - lead to MI6 sending Alex Rider to Point Blanc to investigate under the name of Alex Friend, resulting in Alex discovering the truth.
After discovering Grief's plan, Alex escapes Point Blanc by snowboarding down the mountain, and MI6 fakes his death after Alex crashes into a fence. Within 24 hours, he returns to the academy with an SAS attack force. With his plan in tatters, Grief attempts to escape by helicopter, but Alex climbs onto a snowmobile and speeds up a ramp. When he is about to reach the edge, he leaps off, sending the empty snowmobile flying into Grief's helicopter and causing a fatal, explosive crash. After his death, the clone meant to replace Alex attacks the real Alex at his school, but Alex fends off the attack, resulting in a fire starting and the clone (Julius Grief) presumed dead. In Scorpia Rising, it is revealed that Julius had survived, albeit with burn injuries. It is also mentioned that the other fifteen clones have been sent to various facilities around the world to give them psychiatric treatment, reasoning that they were made into their current state rather than choosing to be monsters, but at the time of Scorpia Rising, two of the clones are dead and the others show little sign of responding to therapy.
When Alex encountered him, Grief was almost sixty years old. He is described as having "white paper skin" and wears red-tinted spectacles. It is quite likely that he is an albino, to emphasise his white superiority ideas, and the red-tinted spectacles could be a reference to albinistic eyes. His appearance is often compared to that of a skeleton. He moves as if "every bone in his body had been broken and then put back together again". Despite this, he has "beautifully manicured fingernails". Grief was also portrayed as insane by deciding to kill Alex by using him as a live human dissection in a biology class for the clones. Grief was also an admirer of several dictators, such as Adolf Hitler, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin and Julius Caesar, with this admiration being reflected in the names of some of his clones.
On TV, Hugo Grief is renamed Dr Hugo Marius Greif, and despite being South African, just as his book counterpart was, the TV version does not support apartheid, which could in part be because it would not be easy to have somebody from the apartheid era to be a practical villain in the 2020s; this is further hinted at with Greif having worked as a research scientist in his native South Africa and in Turkey, but being expelled from both countries due to ethical violations. Greif idolises various dictators (now including Mao Zedong as well as Hitler and Stalin), believing that genocide and a general reduction of the human population is required to allow humanity to thrive. Moreover, Point Blanc teaches both boys and girls, as opposed to being a boys-only school as originally, and Greif only made eight clones, not sixteen as in the book. The TV clones, whilst resembling their counterparts physically, can easily be identified as duplicates. Another key difference is that Grief does not die in a helicopter explosion, but is captured alive by the British, and reveals almost nothing to them. Whilst being transferred to gaol, he is killed by Yassen Gregorovich, who uses a neurotoxin bomb on that also kills the MI6 agents guarding Greif in the car.
He is portrayed by Haluk Bilginer in the series.
Julius Grief
Julius Grief is first seen in Point Blanc, where he is an antagonist, and also in Scorpia Rising as the clone of Dr. Hugo Grief. He was given plastic surgery to resemble Alex – while posing as Alex Friend, son of billionaire supermarket owner David Friend – in Point Blanc. He is named after Julius Caesar. After Dr. Grief's "Gemini Project" fails and he is killed, Julius evades capture and turns up at Alex's school. His attempt to kill Alex starts a fire in a classroom, and he is believed to have been killed, but he actually survived and was sent to a top-secret prison in Gibraltar. In Scorpia Rising, Scorpia are able to arrange for Julius to escape the prison, faking his death in the process, as part of a plan to frame Alex for an assassination and blackmail MI6 with the resulting information.
Psychiatric tests noted that Julius, although raised as a skilled fighter, was also insanely obsessed with revenge against Alex, made even worse by the fact that he saw his enemy's face in the mirror. Julius joins Razim's pain projects and captures Alex for Razim, expressing an interest in joining Scorpia (although Razim actually plans to kill Julius once his current role is over). Alex is tied up for one of Razim's experiments, and Julius tortures him by seemingly killing Jack Starbright, by detonating the bomb in the car she steals while escaping from Razim's fortress. After the attempt to kill the US Secretary of State fails when Alex distracts him at a crucial moment, Julius flees with Alex not far behind him. A taxi hits Julius and he is injured, and although Alex gives him a chance to live, Julius's final attempt to kill Alex forces Alex to shoot him in self-defence, marking the second time Alex ever deliberately killed someone, the first time being Reverend Desmond McCain in Crocodile Tears. Julius's deep hatred for Alex has often hinted that he was intended to be Alex's archenemy.
Although he does not physically appear in the novel due to his death in Scorpia Rising, Julius had a strong influence in Nightshade in which Alex goes undercover as him in the Gibraltar prison so he could get close to Freddy Grey and follow him to Nightshade. While there, Alex discovers that Julius had made enemies at the prison and created his own escape plan before being broken out by SCORPIA, which he uses to escape himself, along with Freddy. Alex later tries to "join" Nightshade to build trust, but has his cover blown by Dominic Royce. Nightshade then uses him to start a diversion away from their plan, claiming that he really is "Julius", and causing law enforcement to focus on finding him.
He is portrayed by Otto Farrant in the series, who also portrayed Alex.
Grimaldi Twins
Giovanni and Eduardo Grimaldi, also nicknamed "Gio" ("Guido" in other publications) and "Eddie" by each other, make an appearance Scorpia Rising and are the main antagonists of Never Say Die. They are ex-Mafia boss identical twin brothers who served on SCORPIA's executive board before it was disbanded, and ended up evading the authorities while most of the other remaining SCORPIA members were arrested. They are always together and have a tendency to finish each other's sentences, and they ordered the murder of their own father, Mafia boss Carlo Grimaldi, and took over his business, which itself was inherited from Carlo's parents, who were numbers one and two on the FBI's Most Wanted list. Unfortunately, they made a great deal of enemies from this moment on, not understanding mafia laws, and ended up losing a lot of their wealth in doing so, which eventually led them to join SCORPIA until the point of its collapse.
Desperately in need of money in order to sustain their luxurious lifestyle, as well as to begin a new SCORPIA, the twins hatch a scheme named Operation Steel Claw, involving the hijacking of an extremely large and expensive helicopter from the United States Air Force with a metal claw attached, with which they pick up a school bus filled with children from wealthy families, which would them be put on a moving Standard Class 5 steam locomotive called The Midnight Flyer that would transport the bus to a disused coke plant where the children will be held for a two hundred sixty million dollar ransom. Alex Rider becomes involved in their affairs after receiving an email from Jack Starbright, claiming that she's still alive, and Alex encounters the Grimaldi twins during his search for her. After failing to kill Alex with cement shoes, the twins take the children to an abandoned factory complex in Wales, along with Jack, whom they had saved from Abdul-Aziz Al-Razim in order to use her to keep the children under control.
Alex manages to avoid the Grimaldi twins' henchmen and reunite with Jack, and the two of them succeed in rescuing the children by driving the school bus along a disused railway track. However, the Grimaldi twins soon give chase in The Midnight Flyer and desperately attempt to kill Alex with machine-guns, but Alex fills a drinks flask with leaking diesel fuel from the bus before throwing it into the funnel of the locomotive. Seconds later, the thermos explodes, causing the train to derail and crash into the cliff face the tunnel bored through, the wreck explodes and kills the Grimaldi twins.
Giovanni was born first, with Eduardo following five seconds later. Similarly, when Alex caused their train to crash and explode, Giovanni died first, with Eduardo following five seconds later.
In terms of appearances, the twins are identical in every respect, wearing the same clothes, eating the same food at the same time, sleeping at the same time for the same time, and owning the same cars and the same guns. The only way they can be told apart is that they have different dominant hands: Giovanni is left-handed, whilst Eduardo is right-handed, which can add to the illusion that they are mirror images of one another, as shown in their first scene in Never Say Die where they eat breakfast by the swimming pool at their villa, sitting opposite one another, appearing like one man and his reflection. Both are described as being very "neat and delicate, almost like schoolboys, with very round heads and black hair that could have been painted on, coming down in cowlicks over their foreheads", but very unattractive, with dark "always suspicious" eyes, very small mouths and permanent dark stubble across their faces, "like sandpaper", giving them an almost devilish appearance.
Razim
Razim, whose name used to be Abdul-Aziz Al-Rahim, is the main antagonist in Scorpia Rising. He is a former member of Saddam Hussein's secret police, the Mukharabat and an ex al-Qaeda terrorist after abandoning Iraq right before its invasion. He then left al-Qaeda after killing his superior when it was suggested that he become a suicide bomber, as he had no interest in dying for a cause he never believed in, and only joined the group because he enjoyed planning acts of terrorism. He is a new member of Scorpia and a complete sociopath. This is shown when he was mentioned to have strangled his own pet dog just to see how he feels and when he had turned his entire family in for execution to Saddam Hussein's secret police. He wants to create a measurement of pain with a unit called the "Razim". Razim was chosen by Zeljan Kurst to run operation "Horseman", to deliver the Elgin marbles to Greece. His plan was to plant a trail that would lead MI6 to a school in Cairo, have Alex sent to spy there, and then kill him after Alex's 'clone' Julius Grief – in fact a clone of Doctor Hugo Grief who was given plastic surgery to resemble Alex – had assassinated the anti-British American Secretary of State during a visit to Cairo. Afterward, he intended to blackmail London with evidence of them recruiting Alex - he arranged the assassination because otherwise MI6 might have been willing to go public as all of Alex's past assignments involved him saving thousands of innocent people and were hence essentially commendable - thus forcing them to return the Elgin Marbles. After Alex (Pretending to be Grief) opens the doors to Razim's fort to let the secret services in, Razim suddenly feels all the emotions he never felt before: grief, despair, anger. Razim is eventually killed in a fight with Alex by falling into a large pile of salt, which drags him in like quicksand and eventually penetrates his skin, causing a reaction similar to that of a snail.
His lack of emotion is very similar to Viktor Zokas/Renard from the James Bond movie The World Is Not Enough. Moreover, his manner of death echoes what happened to Dr Julius No in the novel Dr. No.
Zeljan Kurst
Zeljan Kurst is a Yugoslavian businessman, the chairman of the terrorist organisation SCORPIA and one of the series' main antagonists. Kurst was the head of the police force in Yugoslavia during the early 1980s, and had been famous for his love of classical music (particularly Mozart) and extreme violence. It is said that he would interrogate prisoners with an opera or a symphony playing in the background and any prisoners who survived his brutal questioning would not be able to listen to whatever piece he had played ever again. Seeing the break-up of his country on the horizon, he fled before the arrival of democracy so he wouldn't be tried for crimes against humanity. Lacking any family, friends, or anywhere he could call home, he rambled around Eastern Europe for years, participating in small-time criminal ventures. During these years, he met Max Grendel, Julia Rothman and Winston Yu - all criminals in similar situations to his - and together they formed SCORPIA, a worldwide criminal syndicate, with Grendel as their first leader. Following Grendel's death at the beginning of the novel Scorpia, Kurst becomes the organization's leader and, though he does not physically appear in the novel, he assigns Rothman to oversee Operation Invisible Sword.
In his first physical appearance, during the novel Snakehead, Kurst devises an operation dubbed Reef Encounter to destroy a small Australian island in which an anti-poverty conference is being held, by planting a powerful non-nuclear, British-made bomb called Royal Blue along a tectonic fault line to create a tsunami that will obliterate the island, as well as a considerable part of the west coast of northern Australia. After Kurst has his agents acquire Royal Blue, he puts the operation under the control of Winston Yu, who will have his snakehead, the most powerful criminal organisation in South East Asia, smuggle the bomb to the fault line. Kurst supervises Yu's progress throughout the novel, and when Alex Rider is found to be investigating Yu's snakehead, he advises the Major not to repeat Julia Rothman's mistake of underestimating Rider's abilities, referencing the boy's success in thwarting operation Invisible Sword during the novel Scorpia.
Kurst meets Yu publicly on at least one occasion in the novel, so Yu can brief him on the progress of the operation. Kurst owns and operates a funeral parlor business which has a secret room that serves as a conference room for Scorpia in London. Unlike most members of Scorpia, Kurst treats Rider with caution, despite his age, knowing that he was responsible for many of Scorpia's failures.
In Scorpia Rising, Kurst masterminds a new plot after a Greek millionaire asks him to return the Elgin Marbles to him. Kurst plans to use Alex Rider and MI6's use of him to obtain that objective. The plan is to use Julius Grief (the clone made of Alex during Point Blanc, who wants revenge against Alex) to assassinate the American Secretary of State in Egypt and frame Alex for it, killing him along the way, and then blackmail the British government with the knowledge of MI6's use of a teenage boy unless they turn over the Elgin Marbles. He assigned a new member of the Scorpia board, Abdul-Aziz Al-Razim, to carry it out. Board member Levi Kroll expresses opposition to the plan in the meeting and, pointing a gun at Kurst, threatens to leave. Kurst orders his assassination through the use of a sniper before using his body to attract MI6's attention on a school in Cairo where they will inevitably send Alex.
Unlike with operations Invisible Sword and Reef Encounter, Kurst decides to follow this operation more closely to prevent mistakes; it is this closer link with the plot that eventually proves his undoing. The plan fails and ends in the deaths of Razim, Julius Grief and Erik Gunter. While he tries to flee to his safe house in Siberia, Kurst is arrested by the Interpol and put on trial for several criminal charges. After Kurst's arrest, Scorpia is officially disbanded.
Kurst, Yassen Gregorovich, the Grimaldi twins, Julius Grief, Nightshade and Dominic Royce are the only major antagonists who are not introduced and killed in the same book. Kurst himself is also, along with Royce, the only main antagonist who is not killed at all and the only main antagonist that Alex never even comes in contact with. Furthermore, his role of being a criminal mastermind is similar to Ernst Stavro Blofeld's, the latter being the head of the James Bond organisation SPECTRE.
Desmond McCain
Desmond McCain is the main antagonist in Crocodile Tears. He is black skinned, bald, and his eyes are grey. He wears an ear stud shaped like a silver crucifix.
McCain was an orphan, found abandoned in a bag of McCain's Oven Chips (where he got his name from) in Hackney, London. He was then adopted and grew up to become a boxer. He won many major boxing titles and was in line for stardom, until his boxing career came to an abrupt end when he was defeated by a boxer called Buddy Sangster in Madison Square Garden. During the bout, his jaw was smashed up badly and suffered a botched plastic surgery operation in Las Vegas when attempting to get it fixed. McCain later hired international assassin The Gentleman to kill both the surgeon and Buddy Sangster.
McCain then went into property development. He built a lot of skyscrapers in London and made a fortune, later becoming involved in politics. He joined the British Conservative Party and was elected as Minister of Sports. Problems piled up and cost him money, so he set fire to one of his properties and claimed the insurance money. McCain was exposed, however, by a homeless man who had seen it happen and sent to prison for nine years for fraud.
While McCain was in jail, he pretended to convert to Christianity for a good image. Because of this, McCain had the ability to insert biblical verses into his sentences at the most convenient of moments. He was released early and set up a charity, First Aid. He created disasters and then collected money for them, keeping half of it. He then made plans to create the ultimate disaster in Kenya. McCain joined a partnership with GM scientist Leonard Straik and created a poisonous gene to be pumped into wheat crop fields in Kenya which would spread a horrible disease that could wipe out half of Africa. When the many millions of pounds flooded in, McCain planned to steal it and hide out in Switzerland with his future wife, Myra Beckett.
Alex first crosses McCain at a New Year's Eve party he is throwing for his charity at Kilmore Castle in Scotland. Alex, McCain and Straik (unknown to Alex at this point) play Texas Hold 'Em together, with Alex eventually winning over twenty-five thousand pounds, which he promptly tells McCain to donate to the charity. When McCain learns that Alex is in the company of journalist Edward Pleasure and his daughter Sabina, he orders them killed, as Edward is investigating McCain's dealings; however, Alex, Sabina and Edward survive the assassination attempt. Alex and McCain's paths cross again, when Alex steals a sample of the wheat disease activator from Straik's office at the Greenfields Bio Centre and gives it, as well as a copy of the hard drive of Straik's computer, to MI6.
After learning who Alex is from Harry Bulman, McCain has Alex captured by Beckett and flown to his business in Kenya. McCain reveals his plan to Alex over dinner one night, and then tortures him for information and then tries to kill him by leaving him to hang over a crocodile infested river, but Alex escapes with the help of Rahim and foils McCain's plans, blowing up a dam that floods the poisoned crops. McCain follows Alex to an airport in a Kenyan village. He kills Rahim, who was piloting the plane, and Alex jumps out near some oil drums and rolls one of the barrels towards McCain. McCain stops it with his foot and just smiles. He is about to shoot Alex, but Alex has attached an exploding pen gadget to the bottom of the oil drum. It sets the drum on fire, engulfing McCain in flames. This makes McCain the first villain that Alex kills deliberately—in the case of all of Alex's other foes either someone else killed them or Alex just took action to remove an immediate threat to his life that happened to result in their deaths.
In the novel, McCain is portrayed as a vicious cynic (which contrasts heavily with the man of faith appearance he dons). He believes that the only way to earn people's respect is through wealth, disregarding the idea that respect may come from talent. The lack of respect he received as a child due to being a black orphan left him obsessed as an adult with obtaining people's respect through any means possible. He also frequently states that most people who are supposedly "kind" by helping others frequently when they are in trouble are some of the worst people alive, since they need people to be miserable so they can help them and thus feel good about themselves (he uses charitable foundations as an absolute example for this).
His manner of death is very similar to Franz Sanchez from the James Bond movie Licence to Kill.
Julia Rothman
Julia Charlotte Glenys Rothman is the main antagonist in the novel Scorpia, the only time the series have a female as the main antagonist. She is a board member of the criminal organisation Scorpia, and the head of Operation Invisible Sword. Rothman was born in Aberystwyth, Wales to Welsh nationalist parents, who would set fire to holiday homes owned by English families. One of the targeted homes was still inhabited and were killed in the fire. As a result, Rothman's parents were jailed for life. Rothman was only six years old at the time, and grew up in institutions, marking the start of her criminal lifestyle. At one time, she was married to Sandro Rothman, an elderly multimillionaire property developer, but he died two days after their wedding when he fell from his seventeen story office building - though it is later mentioned in the Paperback edition of Snakehead that Julia pushed him to his death so she would inherit his fortune.
When John Rider, Alex's father, came to work for Scorpia, Julia fell in love with him, but after he was discovered to be a double agent, Julia plans to kill him. She assigned Ash to kill his friend to prove that he is ready to join Scorpia.
She was in charge of Operation Invisible Sword. This came from a request from a Middle Eastern billionaire to destroy Anglo-American relations, who would pay Scorpia one hundred million pounds to do so. Her plan was to insert poisoned nanoshells into the children's bloodstreams via immunisation injections, which they would receive at school. Scorpia would then make demands of America which they would never accept, such as complete nuclear disarmament, threatening to kill thousands of British children if refused. After America refuses, Scorpia will destroy the capsules, releasing the poison and killing the children. She would then make the same threats in New York, but with more reasonable demands, which they will agree to, thus destroying the alliance between Britain and America.
When Rothman meets Alex, she appears delighted to accept him into Scorpia, having him trained as an assassin by Scorpia. Because of his father's betrayal, however, she secretly plans to kill him as revenge. She arranges for the poisonous capsules used in Invisible Sword to be injected into Alex's bloodstream, without his knowledge, during a medical check-up at their Training and Assessment Centre on the island of Malagosto. During Operation Invisible Sword, the transmitter which would give out terahertz beams (destroying the capsules and killing the children) takes to the skies in a hot-air balloon. Alex climbs onto the balloon and burns the ropes holding the basket to the balloon. The flat metal board falls on Rothman, crushing her to death, destroying the satellite and ending Invisible Sword at the same time.
At the time she met Alex, Rothman was in her forties or fifties. She is described by Alex and Max Grendel as being beautiful with an upturned nose, long black hair in waves down to her shoulders, dark eyes, "blood-red lips," and "perfect teeth".
It is stated in the afterword of Point Blanc that Rothman was inspired by Catherine Zeta-Jones.
Dominic Royce
Dominic Royce is the main antagonist of Nightshade, and the instigator of their operation "Leap of Faith". He is the Permanent Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs to the British government, and a very disagreeable and intimidating man, unlike his friendly predecessor.
Royce first appears at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, in a meeting with Mrs Jones. He has discovered that she has used Alex on numerous occasions, and tells her to never use him again.
After John Crawley discovers that Nightshade are in possession of the VX nerve agent, Royce declares that MI6's incompetence requires him to put a spy of his own in their ranks, because of there being a leak in the intelligence community. Royce installs his equally disagreeable staffer, Owen Andrews, as his spy in MI6's ranks. Mrs Jones and Crawley are affronted by Andrews' presence, and with Chief Science Officer Samantha Redwing's help, they try to keep Andrews, and Royce by extension, in the dark about their operations, including asking Alex to work for them again, to rescue Frederick Grey and Mrs Jones' children, William and Sofia. Despite their best efforts, Andrews discovers Mrs Jones' actions and reports it to Royce.
While Alex is taken to Nightshade's base in Crete, Royce goes straight to Liverpool Street and orders MI6 Special Operations shut down. Jack is forcibly sent home, whilst Mrs Jones and Crawley are put under house arrest; Royce himself declares that the rest of the intelligence services, including MI5 and Special Branch, can handle the critical terror alert better than MI6. He accuses Mrs Jones of being unfit to lead the department.
It is revealed at the end of the book that Royce himself is "the Doctor", the man who is paying Nightshade to carry out Leap of Faith, and he had alerted Nightshade of Alex's presence. Mrs Jones, who is reinstated at MI6's reopening, deduced this from Royce's initials, and through his computer and bank account movements. When questioned, Royce reveals he asked Nightshade to assassinate the Cabinet, the Opposition and many other MPs in one place, out in the open, due to his dissatisfaction with them; he does, however, express regret over the potential deaths of innocents, such as choristers, priests and TV crewers. He says that although the average of an MP is fifty years, they act like petulant children, as though their careers are more important than the issues they were elected to attend to. He believes that the younger generation, given the opportunity, will lead the world to real change; therefore, he arranged for the death of popular former politician James, Lord Clifford, and for Nightshade to detonate the VX at Lord Clifford's memorial at St Paul's Cathedral, as it is impossible to attack the Palace of Westminster. Mrs Jones then arranges for Royce to take a "long holiday" at the Gibraltar holding facility, faking his death in the process which fooled even Nightshade.
General Alexei Sarov
General Alexei Igorevich Sarov is the main antagonist of Skeleton Key. He is a former Russian general who still longs for the old days of communist Russia, of the Soviet Union, and of Stalin.
Sarov was born in 1940, and enlisted in the Soviet Army at the age of sixteen. His first major deployment was to the Hungarian Revolution, where his unit was ambushed in Budapest, and half of it, including Sarov's superiors, were killed, leading him to take command and achieve a victory. He served as a commander in the army from then on, having received a field promotion from private to sergeant for his victory in Hungary, and quickly rose through the ranks. Sarov married when he was 31, and was made a general when he was 38. For ten years he fought in Afghanistan, first as a military adviser and then in personally overthrowing the president, and rose to become second-in-command of the Red Army. He was awarded the Order of Lenin for his efforts.
Sarov wanted his son Vladimir to join the Russian army, but his wife disagreed, which led to their divorce. Eventually, Vladimir, who was a talented athlete, did join the army in 1988 when he was sixteen. He became a powerful and skilled soldier, but was shot and killed by a sniper in Afghanistan, and his funeral was not attended by his father, who refused to abandon his men for any reason at all. When Sarov meets Alex, he sees a lot of his son in him and makes plans to adopt him.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of capitalism, Sarov felt betrayed and disgusted, at the way his country was heading. He promptly quit the army and moved to communist Cuba, which welcomed him outright.
Sarov's residence is the Case de Oro ("House of Gold") on the island of Cayo Esqueleto ("Skeleton Key") in Cuba. There are two entrances to his home, one of them being a booby trapped underwater cave called "The Devil's Chimney". The cave has a security device in which anything that enters the cave is impaled by mechanical stalagmites and stalactites, which are responsible for the deaths of CIA agents Tom Turner (Glen Carver in American editions) and Belinda Troy.
Sarov plans to restore communism in Russia by detonating a nuclear bomb in Murmansk, where abandoned nuclear submarines are kept. The nuclear explosion would kill millions. Russia will be blamed and will turn to their president. Sarov will then release edited footage "exposing" the president as a lazy drunken idiot who says he can't deal with the issue. Russia will go back to communism, and Sarov will be taking over, eventually conquering the world.
Sarov invites the Russian president (and childhood friend), Boris Kiriyenko, to his home on Skeleton Key. Sarov edits several tapes humiliating Kiriyenko, which he will release after he has executed his plan, turning the country against Kiriyenko and allowing Sarov to seize power. During a banquet, he drugs the president's vodka, and that of his retinue, leaving them unconscious. Sarov then steals the president's plane, which will not be searched when they stop to refuel, and thus the bomb will not be discovered. When they land to refuel in Edinburgh, Sarov doesn't permit Alex to leave the plane. Naturally, Alex refuses and attempts to escape, using a stun grenade disguise as a keyring. He finds a telephone in a security section of Edinburgh Airport but a self-confident security guard, George Prescott, notices Alex and won't allow him to warn MI6. Sarov then finds Alex, leads him back to the plane, and leaves his personal assassin, Conrad, to shoot the annoying Prescott. Sarov and Conrad handcuff Alex to his seat and fly over to Murmansk in the far east of Russia to start Sarov's plan of world domination.
At Murmansk, Sarov reunites with men who share his ideals and fought under him in Afghanistan, drives with the bomb to the shipyard, and leaves Alex to die in the explosion, as Alex had refused to be adopted by him. Alex, however, is able to remove the detonation card from the nuclear bomb, when the shipyard is stormed by the Russian Navy (it turns out Prescott's radio was still on when Conrad killed him, and his conversation with Alex was discovered and passed to MI6), who promptly engage in a firefight with Sarov's men. Sarov then arrives and calmly tells Alex to put it back, before threatening to detonate the bomb via an override that will kill everyone in the shipyard, but still allow communism to rule the planet. Alex refuses, throws the card into the sea and states he would rather die than have a father like Sarov. A devastated Sarov pulls out a pistol and shoots himself right in front of Alex, unable to live with himself any more, and also to avoid being captured.
When he met Alex, Sarov was sixty-two years old, but looked "twenty years younger". Sarov is described as not being particularly tall, but he "radiates power and control". He also has short grey hair, pale blue eyes, and an emotionless face. He normally dresses in either suits or his old Red Army uniform.
Several parallels can be drawn between General Sarov and General Zaroff from The Most Dangerous Game, a short story by Richard Connell. Besides the name of the characters, their backgrounds are also very similar. Both are Russian, and while General Sarov is considered a hero in his country, General Zaroff was a Cossack aristocrat and much admired. Both miss a previous Russian era (Zaroff longing for the pre-revolution Russia, while Sarov misses communist Russia). Moreover, both are formal and polite men, usually without any emotion on their face, and yet are both capable of incredible cruelty, violence, and possible madness. Also, their main servers (Conrad in Sarov's case and Ivan in Zaroff's case) are ugly, violent beings that their masters don't really care for.
Herod Sayle
Herod Sayle (named Darrius Sayle in the film adaption of Stormbreaker) is the main antagonist in Stormbreaker. In the original UK edition, Sayle was born in the gutters of Beirut, Lebanon; the US edition changed his nationality to Egyptian. He was one of 13 children (nine boys and four girls). His father was a failed hairdresser (oral hygienist in the US version) and his mother took in washing. At age seven, he saved two rich American tourists from being crushed by a falling piano, who rewarded him by sending him to school in Britain. He was at first delighted at this prospect, but he was severely bullied because he was seen as a foreigner, with the worst bully being the future Prime Minister. Although he did very well in school, achieving nine 'O' levels, he came to hate British schoolchildren, claiming it took "only days" for him to hate the Union Flag.
After his schooling, he went to King's College, Cambridge, where he received a first in economics, and built up a large and successful business empire, becoming a multi-millionaire. He owned, among other things, a computer company, a radio station and a string of unsuccessful racehorses. Even after these contributions, he remained an outsider and was denied citizenship. Sayle also invented a technique that allows computer components to be developed in a non-sterile environment, greatly reducing the price of production. Using this technique, he developed a computer called "Stormbreaker" and planned to donate a Stormbreaker to each school in Britain, in exchange for a British citizenship. However, he plans to fill each Stormbreaker with a lethal smallpox virus (it is later revealed, in the novel Snakehead, that he purchased the smallpox from Scorpia), which will be released into the schools, killing virtually every child (and probably the teachers too) in Britain. MI6 is suspicious about his intentions, and send out agent Ian Rider to investigate. Rider sends out an urgent message to MI6, but is assassinated by Yassen Gregorovich.
MI6 blackmails Ian Rider's nephew, Alex Rider, into investigating Sayle. Alex investigates the plant and its operations and soon discovers Sayle's plan. Alex later reaches the Stormbreaker opening ceremony, and stops the Prime Minister from activating the Stormbreakers, at the same time injuring Sayle in the left arm and shoulder; however, Sayle escapes.
At the end of the book, after debriefing with Mrs. Jones and Alan Blunt, Alex takes a taxi home, only to discover that the driver is Sayle. Sayle takes Alex at gunpoint to the top of a building. He is about to shoot Alex but Yassen Gregorovich climbs out of a helicopter and shoots Sayle, killing him, as Sayle had become "an embarrassment" to SCORPIA. Surprisingly, Gregorovich lets Alex live (he claims there were no instructions for him in regard to Alex) and flies the helicopter away.
Sayle's dislike of the UK, and especially the British schoolchildren and Prime Minister, is a strong contrast to Winston Yu, the antagonist of Snakehead, who is obsessed with Britain and liked being brought up in a British public school (in his case, Harrow). He was only ever bullied on one occasion (the bully was then assassinated by his mother).
In the film adaptation of Stormbreaker, Herod Sayle was portrayed by Mickey Rourke. Herod's nationality was changed to American, and his name changed to Darrius. Also in the movie, Darrius grew up in a trailer park somewhere in California and was sent to be educated in Britain because his mother won a million dollars in the state lottery.
In a First News interview, Anthony Horowitz revealed that Sayle's name is derived from the Christmas Harrods sale. While not specifically stated by Horowitz, Herod may also be an allusion to the Massacre of the Innocents for the nature of his master plan.
His objective of killing British schoolchildren with a virus is very similar to Rothman's.
SCORPIA
SCORPIA (acronym for Sabotage, Corruption, Intelligence and Assassination) is a criminal organisation, and the series' main antagonist. Despite not appearing until the fifth novel Scorpia, their influence was felt in the very first novel, Stormbreaker, as it was revealed when they appeared in Snakehead that they were responsible for supplying the virus Sayle uses, and Yassen Gregorovich's employer. Scorpia has had a great deal of influence on the Alex Rider series, and are mentioned at least three times. They were formed in Paris in the early 1980s by spies and assassins from several governments who, fearing they would lose their jobs when the Cold War ended, decided to go into business for themselves. They split profits equally and are assigned tasks alphabetically, with chairmen chosen as new projects arise. After many years of work, they are now responsible for a tenth of the world's terrorism. Scorpia caused the assassinations of Alex's mother, father, and uncle. In addition, they attempted to kill Alex by using a sniper, however the sniper missed his heart by an inch as Alex was going down a step at the moment the sniper took the shot (Alex lived because his artery shut itself down after he was shot).
Known board members include the acting chairman Zeljan Kurst, Major Winston Yu (deceased), Julia Rothman (killed), Max Grendel (murdered), Levi Kroll (murdered), a Frenchman called Jean Picoq, a Chinese man called Dr. Three who is the world's foremost expert on pain and torture, having written books about it, a Japanese man named Hideo Mikato (it is said in Scorpia that he has a diamond set in his teeth and in Snakehead that he has yakuza tattoos all over his body), and an Australian man named Brendan Chase, who abandoned his job as paymaster of the ASIS when he stole four hundred thousand dollars from them in a drunken haze (he was previously known as #5, as he never used his real name). Three other board members were mentioned to have died before the audience is introduced to the organisation; two of them were murdered and the third died of cancer. Two board members were killed over the course of the fifth novel. The first, Max Grendel, a former German spy and the oldest member at the time at seventy-three, decides to have no part in the operation Invisible Sword and attempts to retire, but is immediately killed by a suitcase of scorpions given to him by Julia Rothman. Rothman herself is then killed when Invisible Sword is foiled by Alex Rider and she is crushed to death by her terahertz transmitter. Major Winston Yu dies in the book Snakehead, having made the same mistake as Rothman by underestimating Rider, thus leaving the current roster at exactly half of what it was at its inception.
In Scorpia Rising, six new members are taken on to bring the roster back up to its original twelve. They include an Irish man from the IRA calling himself Seamus, twins Giovanni and Eduardo Grimaldi from the Italian Mafia, Monsieur Duval, and Razim. A veteran board member, former Israeli agent Levi Kroll, is killed as part of Razim's plan to bring Alex Rider to Cairo. At the end Scorpia Rising it is revealed that Scorpia has disbanded following Razim's failure and death: after failing to defeat a teenager three times, they became a laughing stock. Several executive board members, Kurst included, were arrested.
SCORPIA is sometimes compared to the James Bond organisation SPECTRE.
Executive Board
Zeljan Kurst (chairman; incarcerated)
Major Winston Yu (deceased, broke every single bone in his body spontaneously after his yacht was hit by a tidal wave)
Julia Rothman (deceased, flattened by her own terahertz transmitting equipment)
Max Grendel (chairman; murdered by Julia Rothman, heart failure while being stung by scorpions)
Levi Kroll (murdered on the orders of Zeljan Kurst, shot through the back of his neck and his body thrown into the Thames)
Dr. Three (fate unknown)
Brendan Chase (fate unknown)
Hideo Mikato (fate unknown)
Jean Picoq (fate unknown)
In Scorpia Rising, six new members were added to the Scorpia board, including:
Seamus (incarcerated)
Monsieur Duval (incarcerated)
Razim (Abdul-Aziz Al-Rahim) (deceased, suffocated in his own salt mine)
The Grimaldi brothers Eduardo and Giovanni (escaped; both deceased when their train exploded in Never Say Die)
da Silva
da Silva is the main antagonist of the short story Christmas At Gunpoint. Very little is known about him.
Alex first sees him while staying at the ski resort of Gunpoint, Colorado with his uncle, Ian Rider, during the Christmas before Stormbreaker. He noticed that Ian was focused on da Silva as he checked in to the resort, not noticing Alex walk up to him. Later that night, Alex sees them struggling with a gun, causing him to get involved in the fight. He is able to take the gun and use it to cause all the snow on the roof of the resort to fall on and bury da Silva (with Ian commenting "lets leave him to chill out").
The next day, Alex discovers that da Silva, along with two other men, had kidnapped a friend Alex had made at the resort, Sahara Sands. They intended to use her as blackmail for her father, Cameron Sands, to hand over his laptop computer with unknown government secrets. Alex follows Sands up several ski lifts until they reach the high point of the resort where da Silva and his men were waiting with Sahara. During the exchange, Alex steals the laptop and skis down the course followed by da Silva and his men, ending with Alex crashing and sliding to the middle of a frozen creek. da Silva orders Alex to give him the laptop, though Alex refuses, noting that he is to heavy to step on the ice. da Silva is about to shoot Alex when Ian arrives and shoots da Silva in the shoulder, then orders the men to throw their skis in the creek, forcing them to walk down the mountain. da Silva and the men are presumably arrested when they eventually reach the bottom.
A couple of years later, Alex meets Sahara Sands again, where she reveals her father was working in the office of the American Secretary of Defense, and that his laptop hard drive contained classified information on the withdrawal of troops from Iraq. da Silva had presumably been hired to steal the laptop and leak the data, which would have resulted in a huge embarrassment for the US government.
da Silva is described as being thirty years old, with blond hair that looks painted on, a lazy smile, a Bronx accent, pail skin, bulging muscles, and bad teeth.
Colonel Aubrey Sykes
Colonel Aubrey Sykes, DSO is the main antagonist of the short story The Man With Eleven Fingers. He is an embittered former colonel in the British Army, and a veteran of the Iraq campaign. He was badly wounded during Operation Telic, where he saved eleven of his men during an ambush in Mosul. Despite his bravery and receiving of the Distinguished Service Order medal, he feels as though he has received nothing for his service, and wants revenge, arguing that the army gave him nothing and the government forgot about him.
Sykes gathered together a collection of Iraq veterans in similar situations to his own, feeling forgotten about by Britain in general, and planned an act of revenge that he called 'Operation London Down', allowing them all to get what they felt they deserved. He and his co-conspirators would distribute chocolate bars across London, supposedly from Cadbury, but laced with a hallucinogenic cultivated by Peruvian toads. While not lethal, the hallucinogen would make whoever had consumed the tainted chocolate feel as though they were having a heart attack. With so many chocolate bars distributed and consumed across the city, London would be effectively paralysed, leaving Sykes and his associates free to capture the disgraced City Capital bank chairman Sir Frederick 'Freddy Fingers' Meadows from his theft trial at the Old Bailey and force him, through torture if need be, to surrender the one hundred and twenty million pounds that he had stolen from City Capital, which Sir Frederick was going to give to charity.
When Alex goes for a routine dental appointment, he is offered a tainted chocolate bar by one of Sykes' underlings, and, unaware of the nature of the treat, plans to have it later in the day. However, he stows away in a van, after noticing that it is driven by Charlie (a previously unnamed henchman from Stormbreaker who has joined Sykes' operation), the injuries of some of the chocolate vendors, and an elementary spelling mistake on the chocolate wrapper (saying 'Cadbury's', when it should read 'Cadbury'). Arriving at Sykes' lair in Smithfields, Alex discovers the plan to paralyse London. He knocks out Sarko (another veteran working for Sykes), takes his disguise and infiltrates Sykes and his underlings Charlie, Danny, Gareth and Khyber (disguised as paramedics from the London Ambulance Service) as they drive through the city and abduct Sir Frederick from his trial.
However, when on a yacht (the Phantom Lady) taking them away from London, Alex's cover is blown by Sykes (ripping his disguise off) and Charlie (recognising him from Stormbreaker). When Sykes learns that Alex is a spy from Charlie, he intends to shoot him dead, calling him a "child soldier", but the men suddenly keel over; it is revealed that before abducting Sir Frederick, the men drank coffee at the lair, which was made by Alex and is laced with the hallucinogen. Despite drinking the coffee himself, Sykes is unaffected by the hallucinogen (possibly due to a higher metabolism) and comes close to strangling Alex, when Sir Frederick, disgusted by the scene and fearing for his own life, shoots him. However, it is deliberately left ambiguous if Sykes is dead, with Alex thinking he "might" be dead.
Major Winston Yu
Major Winston Yu is one of the members of the executive board of Scorpia, and the main antagonist of the novel Snakehead. He was asked by Zeljan Kurst, another board member of Scorpia, to command operation "Reef Encounter". This involved generating an artificial tsunami to destroy Reef Island and the west coast of Australia by detonating a stolen bomb named "Royal Blue" between two underwater tectonic plates when they are most vulnerable. He was the superior of Anan Sukit, but apparently inherits control of the Bangkok Snakehead when Ben "Fox" Daniels kills Sukit. Yu suffers from brittle bone disease, which makes his skeleton highly unstable.
Yu was born in Hong Kong, the offspring of an illicit sexual liaison between a businessman from Royal Tunbridge Wells and a chamber maid; his father absconded when he was born. Winston spent part of his early life in poverty as his mother smuggled soap and shampoo home, as they were the only luxury item Winston had at the time. Having been told of the beauty and power of the United Kingdom, Yu's mother became an assassin, working for a snakehead: she undertook this work to have Winston sent to be educated in Britain, and Winston was grateful to his mother for her work. Winston was educated at Harrow, before studying at London University and joining the British Army as an officer at Sandhurst. Shortly after Winston passed out, his mother died, apparently of a heart attack; he was shattered, and bribed a gardener at Buckingham Palace to have her ashes scattered in the rose garden.
Yu fought in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, serving four tours of duty and rising to the rank of major; however, he was soon diagnosed with brittle bone disease and forced to leave the Army. He then took up a desk job at MI6, but he was not satisfied with this job, and secretly sold information to Britain's enemies. When Scorpia was founded in Paris, Yu was one of the twelve founders.
When given responsibility for Reef Encounter, Yu has half a dozen of his underlings steal the Royal Blue bomb from a secret Ministry of Defence laboratory, and ship it to Australia. He later enters his handprint into the bomb's control system, allowing him to be the one who will detonate it.
After capturing Alex, Yu reveals that he will be sent to an illegal organ harvesting clinic in Kakadu, to pay for both his thwarting of Invisible Sword and his damage to Reef Encounter. However, Alex escapes, reunites with the Australian SAS, and storms Yu's Dragon Nine rig, where the bomb is due to be detonated. Although Yu falls down a maintenance tunnel, he survives, despite breaking his ankles, and escapes on his yacht. However, Alex (who had previously scanned his handprint into the control system) detonates the bomb prematurely, which causes a wave that hits Yu's yacht, and he dies when the wave hits, as every bone in his body shatters because of his illness.
Physically speaking, Yu is a Chinese man, of average height, with a full head of hair which, unusually for a Chinese person, is completely white. He dresses in expensive suits, all in white, wears large round glasses, and wears expensive grey gloves to protect his hands. His English is perfect, and his accent is comparable to an old-fashioned newscaster. He is also extremely Anglophilic, having a croquet lawn set up at one of his homes, British-made art and furniture in his rooms, and a habit of taking afternoon tea at the Ritz.
Nightshade
Nightshade are a new criminal organization, introduced properly in Nightshade. They were first mentioned at the end of Never Say Die when Mrs Jones pores over a file marked "Nightshade", concerning a missing child who eventually resurfaced as a teenage assassin.
Nightshade is a freelance terror unit posing as a cult, specialising in capturing the children of families connected to the military, intelligence and other areas, and indoctrinating them to be the perfect child soldier, utterly obedient to the will of the "Teachers", who are the executive committee of Nightshade. The four Teachers, all Americans, are:
"Brother" Lamar Jensen: The founder and chief executive. He is the former chairman of LJ Weapons Systems, one of the world's biggest weapons providers, in Hampton, Virginia, dealing with the American government, the Saudi Arabian government, and the Indian government. He was found to have been conducting private arms sales to Islamic State, the Taliban, Boko Haram and others, until he was discovered and imprisoned, until he broke out of gaol fifteen years previously. He is described as being "completely bald, with a round head that seemed to be melting", and neck and cheeks that "hung down in loose folds, and his lips were so thick that they bulged out beneath his nose". He has a penchant for cigars, and, as one of the Teachers, is seen teaching physics, discussing IEDs.
"Sister" Professor Krysten Shultz: A former director at Harvard School of Engineering, until she disappeared twelve years previously, and responsible for developing the radio implants in the Numbers' heads. She has "long white hair that swept down over her shoulders, and a thin, angular face with a nose like a kitchen knife", with glasses and dangling silver earrings. At Harvard, she was leading microscopic radio receivers using diamonds, so she was responsible for creating the Numbers. She has responsibility for academic training of the Numbers.
"Sister" Jeanne. She has "the look of a matron at a private clinic," is well-built, with chestnut hair which always looks fake, and wears too much makeup to disguise her age. She has medical responsibility for the Numbers.
"Brother" Mike: The sole African-American member of the committee, an extremely unfriendly man, with close-shaven hair, eyes that are always suspicious and a very precise way of speaking. He wears round glasses and has a face "that, from the look of it, had never learned to smile". He has responsibility for physical training of the Numbers, and appears to have an obsession with killing Numbers who are "compromised".
The Numbers are the children in Nightshade's thrall, practically raised for warfare all their lives, to do everything the Teachers say without question; the Teachers explain their decisions as being for the good of the world. Each Number is fitted with a subdermal implant consisting of a bone conduction microphone and radio loop aerial, allowing the Teachers to communicate with them no matter where in the world they are; this has a side effect of creating a "divine voice" that keeps the Numbers in thrall. They are trained heavily, with martial arts, foreign languages, battlefield medicine and skills that are specific to missions, such as parachuting, or piloting model aircraft. Numbers are not even given names, as their designation implies; they are simply given a numeric designation, in order to remove their individuality.
There are twenty-three out of twenty-five Numbers at the beginning of the novel Nightshade: Numbers Fourteen and Twenty-One are said to have died in training accidents. Known Numbers include:
Frederick "Freddy" Grey (Number Nine): The long-lost son of Lieutenant General Sir William Grey, a Royal Engineers veteran of the Iraq War. After being captured, he was sent to the Gibraltar prison after his capture until "Julius" helped him escape. He is named after the British Minister of Defence in the James Bond film Moonraker.
Sofia Jones (Number Six): The long-lost daughter of Mrs. Jones, who was partnered with Freddy Grey on the assassination that eventually led to Nightshade's exposure. She and Freddy appear to be romantically interested in each other.
William Jones (Number Seven): The long-lost son of Mrs. Jones. He was suspicious of "Julius" since his arrival, but presumably initially accepted him after he was saved by "Julius".
"Julius Grief" ("Number Twenty-Six"): in fact Alex Rider in disguise.
Secondary antagonists
This is a list of the series' secondary antagonists, in alphabetical order.
Amanda
Amanda is a formerly Israeli Army soldier and a SCORPIA trainee who befriends Alex in SCORPIA, although it is speculated that she might be spying on him at the orders of their leaders.
Owen Andrews
Owen Andrews is a minor antagonist in Nightshade, the assistant of Dominic Royce. He is placed undercover in MI6 by Royce because of a leak in the intelligence community. He exposes Mrs. Jones' use of Alex to Royce, who disbands them and places Jones and John Crawley under house arrest, and gives Andrews a week's vacation in Costa Rica, with Crawley warning Andrews that he will make sure he regrets his betrayal for the rest of his life. Later when MI6 is reformed, it is revealed that a drunken Andrews was arrested after being found on a beach in a Batman costume with a five hundred gram bag of cocaine concealed in the cape (all of which was set up by Crawley). He is last mentioned to be facing up to ten years in prison.
Dr. Walter Baxter
Dr. Walter Baxter is a secondary antagonist in Point Blanc, who serves as a staple part of Dr. Hugo Grief's plan for world domination. Baxter is a gifted plastic surgeon who suffered from a gambling addiction, which led to him altering the features of a Serbian war criminal, leading to him being struck off from Harley Street. Dr. Grief found Baxter and brought him into his inner circle. Baxter's job involved physically altering Grief's clones to resemble the students at Point Blanc, which he was paid two million pounds for. Alex watches as Baxter and Grief discuss the status of the final clone and Baxter's payment, during which he asks for another million to keep silent, causing Grief to shoot him in the head (also because of Baxter's unreliability) and have his body buried in the mountains.
He is portrayed by Simon Paisley Day in the series.
Mike Beckett
Mike Beckett is a minor independent villain in Point Blanc. He is the former cellmate and fellow drug dealer of Skoda. Beckett proposed the idea of having him and Skoda living together and running their drug dealing ring from an iron barge in Putney River, despite the fact that the barge has "no toilet, no proper kitchen and was freezing in winter", and despite the fact that the barge is located a short distance from the local police station, but "the pigs would never think of looking on their doorstep", so he and Skoda laugh at the police going past, in their cars and boats.
Beckett is described as being "blonde-haired and ugly, with twisted lips".
Dr. Myra Bennett
Dr. Myra Bennett (named Myra Beckett in the US version) is an antagonist in the novel Crocodile Tears. She first appears as the supervisor at Greenfields. She is portrayed as a scientist with very little emotion. She does not care about her appearance, as evidenced by her cheap spectacles and her lack of makeup. She is the fiancée of Desmond McCain, although she never displays any particular emotion in her dealings with him beyond her usual relatively blank appearance (though she once referred to him as "Dezzy"). She is very sadistic, as she takes photos of Alex while he is being tortured. She is killed when she is stabbed from behind by Rahim and falls into a crocodile-infested river, where she is eaten alive, after which her only remains is an ankle in a shoe.
Harry Bulman
Harold Edward "Harry" Bulman is a minor villain in Crocodile Tears.
A freelance journalist who served in the Royal Marine Commandos before being dishonourably discharged for cowardice under fire, Bulman spent most of his time writing stories focusing on the secret services, and had discovered information about Alex's actions during his missions against Herod Sayle, Damian Cray and Winston Yu. He arranges for Alex to be attacked by three Chinese men, supposedly working for the late Major Yu, and photographs Alex fighting the men off. He then approaches Alex and Jack at home, before planning to publish a book on Alex's MI6 life, the profits of which he says he will share with Alex (although he had no real intention of doing so).
Alex, fearing exposure, reluctantly approaches MI6, asking them to discourage Bulman from his work. John Crawley leads Operation Invisible Man, which sees Bulman having his bank accounts drained and credit cards stolen, his car disappearing and locking him out of his own apartment in Chalk Farm, as well as broadcasting the news that Bulman is dead, that he is "his" own killer, escaped Broadmoor inmate Jeremy Harwood. After Bulman is arrested, Crawley meets him and makes it clear that he will vanish off the face of the earth if he ever approaches Alex again or publishes the story.
Unable to get profit out of his story, Bulman is approached by a friend, who hears that somebody (later revealed to be Desmond McCain) is asking for information about Alex, for a lot of money. Wanting to take revenge on Alex, Bulman contacts McCain and tells him all he knows. Bulman sees an opportunity for a story about McCain wanting to know about Alex, and tries to ask for more money; McCain, having anticipated this, and fearing Bulman would write about him anyway, shoots Bulman dead three times, and has his body buried under the construction site for a homeless shelter that his First Aid charity is building.
Bulman is referenced again in Scorpia Rising, where Razim is mentioned as having obtained Bulman's notes.
Carlo
Carlo is a minion of the Salesman who is sent to deliver uranium to General Sarov in Skeleton Key. He is thirty years old with black hair and stubble.
Ravi Chandra
Ravindra Manpreet "Ravi" Chandra is a minor character in Crocodile Tears.
Chandra works at the Jowada nuclear power station near Chennai, India. He has a wife and two boys, aged four and six, whom he wishes to provide for. Desmond McCain offers him a handsome sum of money to infiltrate Jowada's security, plant a bomb, and let loose a radioactive cloud on the city of Chennai. McCain betrays Chandra, however, by lying and telling him that there was a 10-minute delay on the bomb's timer. As there was, in reality, no delay, Chandra is killed in the initial explosion, and McCain's charity (later to be found out as fake) raises thousands of pounds for the victims affected by the disaster. However, Chandra's link with McCain is identified by RAW, the Indian foreign intelligence agency, who dispatch an agent, Rahim, to investigate and eliminate him.
The Big Circle
The Big Circle (collectively) is a secondary independent antagonist in Skeleton Key. They are a Chinese Triad gang involved in drugs, vice, illegal immigration, and gambling. Alex first encounters them at the Wimbledon tennis tournament when they attempt systematic match fixing to earn money in bets. After Alex foils this plan, he becomes a major target of the Triad, who send a high-ranking member after him in Cornwall. After this member fails too, Alex is sent undercover with CIA agents Tom Turner (Glen Carver in U.S. publications) and Belinda Troy for his safety. At the end of the book, Mrs. Jones reveals she bargained with the Triad in a prisoner exchange to leave Alex alone.
Conrad
Conrad is General Alexei Sarov's personal assistant and thus one of the main antagonists of the novel Skeleton Key. He is a Turk that was born in Istanbul, and was a terrorist-for-hire with nine different security services after him. His exact identity is in doubt, but according to the Mission Files, he is possibly Naim Okur, the son of a butcher who had destroyed his school with a home-made bomb as revenge for being put in detention. He is held responsible for terrorist actions in London, Boston, Madrid, and Athens. He is described as a short man with several scars and dead skin all around his body. Half of his head is bald, one of his legs is longer than the other, one of his arms is shorter than the other, one side of his mouth is sagging, and one of his eyes is permanently bloodshot. The reason for his appearance is that in the winter of 1998 a bomb that he was carrying to a military base had exploded early, and to save his life, a group of Albanian scientists from Elbasan had given him metal pins and prosthetics to hold his body together.
He first appears in the novel after placing a bomb in The Salesman's ship, where he is seen by Alex Rider, although Alex doesn't know who he is at the time. Later, after Tom Turner (named Glen Carver in the US version of Skeleton Key) and Belinda Troy are killed in an underwater cave, Conrad kidnaps Alex and puts him in a crusher, only for Alex to be saved by General Sarov, who plans on adopting Alex.
After Alex is saved by Sarov and kept in his home, Conrad expresses tremendous hostility towards him, wishing to shoot him. Throughout Alex's stay, Conrad often says to him that when Sarov disposes of him, he will shoot him or make his death very painful.
Conrad is killed when a magnetic crane, which he used to position Sarov's nuclear bomb, magnetises all the metal pins and prosthetics in his body and attaches him to the magnet, breaking his neck and back and killing him (with Alex commenting, "What an attractive man."). Alex then drops his body in the ocean and he is never seen again.
Force Three
Force Three are a small eco-terrorist organisation created by Nikolei Drevin to act as a scapegoat for his plan to destroy Washington, D.C. (see Nikolei Drevin). Their name refers to Earth being the third planet from the sun. Their members consist of the leader, Kaspar, and four other men, who, as their real names are never used, Alex names "Combat Jacket", "Spectacles", "Steel Watch", and "Silver Tooth" after their distinguishing features.
They are first encountered by Alex when they attempt to kidnap Nikolei Drevin's son Paul from hospital, to convince the world of the danger of Force Three. Alex incapacitates four using a Defibrillator, Oxygen cylinder, Medicine ball, and MRI machine. However Kaspar, acting as driver, knocks Alex out and kidnaps him, believing Alex to be Paul. Alex manages to convince the group that he is not Paul, but they decide to abandon him in a property development owned by Drevin. They intend to allow Alex to escape, but "Combat Jacket" disobeys his orders and attempts to kill Alex in revenge for his humiliation at the hospital, although Alex cheats death again. The group then appear at Stamford Bridge, where Alex first follows "Silver Tooth" to the changing room of Drevin's Football team, where he meets "Combat Jacket", "Spectacles" and Adam Wright, the star player of Drevin's football team, who is then murdered by them with a caesium medallion. Alex is also taken hostage by "Steel Watch", but tempts a drunken supporter of Drevin's team to intervene, allowing Alex to escape. Force Three resurfaces on Drevin's island when Alex is interviewed by Drevin about his role as a spy, and "Combat Jacket" denies trying to kill Alex at the property development. Drevin promptly has the four men shot by his head of security, Magnus Payne, who is revealed to be Kaspar. He is left alive, as he still has a role to play in Drevin's plan.
Franco
Franco is a brutal enforcer serving under Yassen in Eagle Strike who is knocked unconscious by Alex when he infiltrates Yassen's yacht and badly injured by Alex when he escapes after being captured.
The Gentleman
The Gentleman is an unnamed assassin featured briefly in Point Blanc. He obtained the name 'Gentleman' because he always sends flowers to the families of his victims (as mentioned, he sends black tulips in Point Blanc). He is an assassin for hire in his early thirties, but other than this no backstory or facts about him are provided. He is hired by Dr Hugo Grief to assassinate Michael Roscoe in New York when he becomes suspicious of his son Paul's unusual behaviour (Paul had, in fact, been replaced by a surgically altered teenage clone of Grief). The Gentleman posed as an engineer by the name of Sam Green (the real Sam Green was murdered by him), and made a fake hologram of an elevator floor. Similar operations happened in Russia, when Foreign Intelligence Service head General Victor Ivanov died when his motorboat exploded on the Black Sea, and again (according to the Alex Rider Mission Dossier) in Brisbane, where newspaper magnate Robert Merrick died after choking on a chicken bone in a restaurant, despite the fact that he had been a vegetarian for six years; Merrick, Roscoe and Ivanov had both grown suspicious of their sons, who had also been attending Point Blanc Academy.
The Gentleman is also mentioned in Crocodile Tears, as Desmond McCain explains that he hired an assassin to murder a plastic surgeon who did a botched job on McCain's jaw after his boxing accident. He also killed the boxer who ruined McCain's boxing career, Buddy Sangster, by pushing him under a train in New York. It is believed the Gentleman did the work, as Edward Pleasure comments that a fan of Sangster's sent in a dozen black tulips, his calling card.
The Gentleman is one of the two antagonists that have not heard of or met Alex Rider, the other being Ravi Chandra of Crocodile Tears.
It is possible that The Gentleman has either heard of or encountered or used to be 'The Priest', a contract killer MI6 has encountered in the past.
In Scorpia Rising, there is an unnamed assassin in the prison that also contained Julius Grief. This was rumoured to be the Gentleman, although in Nightshade he was revealed to be a West Indian hitman known as Mr Someone.
Max Grendel
Max Grendel is a minor antagonist in the novel SCORPIA. He was an executive board member of SCORPIA who previously served as head chairman, having been a commander in the German secret police. He had an eye problem which causes his eyes to be permanently teary. He was the oldest member of the board at seventy-three. He also has two grandchildren named Hans and Rudi who were about the age of Alex Rider, and in his old age, it is said that he has grown sentimental. Not desiring that SCORPIA kill children the same ages as his grandchildren, he quits the organisation and Julia Rothman presents him with an executive briefcase as a retirement gift. However, once Grendel opens it, dozens of sand coloured scorpions (Parabuthus species) are released. His heart gave up before the neurotoxins killed him.
Mr. Grin
Mr. Grin (real name Sean Green) is a secondary antagonist in both the novel and film adaption of Stormbreaker. He is Herod Sayle's right-hand man and butler. Grin was formerly a circus performer, throwing knives into the air and catching them in his mouth. However, when Grin's mother came to see his act one day, he was distracted by her and his knives cut off most of his tongue, and left him with a Glasgow Smile. It was after this accident he changed his name to Grin.
When it is discovered that Alex Rider is a spy, he is almost tortured by Grin. However, Alex confesses before he is able to. Later, when Sayle goes to London to execute his plan, Grin takes a cargo plane, presumably to help Sayle escape. Alex hijacks the plane, holding Grin at gunpoint, telling him to fly to London.
As they arrive, Alex parachutes out of the plane. Grin then attempts to ram Alex, but he crashes after Alex triggers a smoke-bomb he left in the plane, which causes Grin to crash and die in the docklands. In the film and Graphic novel, Alex shoots him with his mind-controlling fountain pen dart, and Grin's fate is left ambiguous.
Grin is played by Andy Serkis in the film.
Erik Gunter
Erik Gunter is a former Scottish war hero who turned to Scorpia for money. In Scorpia Rising, he is hired to manipulate and eventually tried to kill Alex. He is the head of security at the school Alex is attending. He lures Alex into a trap and was going to kill Alex after Julius was supposed to assassinate the US Secretary of State. Alex asks him to give him a cigarette and when Gunter tries to get a cigarette, a scorpion, which was in the box, stings him. Alex then breaks his nose as he seizes Gunter's gun, sending the security head smashing into the door of the van, with the impact killing him.
Henryk
Henryk is a minor antagonist in Eagle Strike, serving as Damian Cray's hired pilot.
Henryk does not contribute much to the novel, his only major appearances occurring towards the end of the story, when Alex and Sabina are forced to have afternoon tea with Cray, Henryk and Yassen, where Cray explains his plans to the two teenagers, to rid the world of drugs by firing twenty-five American nuclear missiles at various drug-running countries around the world, destroying those countries and their populations in the process. After Cray's men secure Air Force One for the takeover and missile launching, Henryk prepares the plane for take-off, with the destination implied to be Russia.
When Alex and Sabina open a door on the plane and throw Cray out to his doom, a drinks trolley follows Cray into the inner engine on the port wing, disabling the engine and depressurising the cabin, just when Henryk is about to take-off at V1 speed. Henryk tries to control the plane, but it crashes. Mrs Jones later states that Henryk fractured his neck and died in the crash.
Charlene Hicks
Nurse Charlene Hicks is a minor antagonist in Snakehead, serving as Tanner's deputy, secretary, and implied lover. She shares in her boss's unorthodox sense of humour, convincing Alex that it is impossible to escape from the Kakadu hospital that illegally harvests organs, and laughing at the failed attempt of somebody who tried to escape long ago. She is later arrested by ASIS after the Snakehead's operation is blown wide open.
Isabel
Nurse Isabel is a minor antagonist in Snakehead, serving as one of the four nurses at the Kakadu hospital. She is assigned to be Alex's minder until he dies in the hospital. Despite being categorised as an antagonist, she does not do anything openly hostile to Alex. She is later arrested by ASIS.
Jacko
Jacko is a minor antagonist in Snakehead, working as one of the security guards at the Kakadu hospital involved in illegal organ harvesting. He is an Aboriginal thug who does not understand why extra security measures are being put in place around Alex when he will end up dead like everybody else who has been through the hospital. He is later arrested by ASIS when Alex foils Major Yu's operation.
Kolo
Kolo is a minor villain in Ark Angel, and serves as one of Nikolei Drevin's security staff. He is assigned by Drevin to be Alex's diving buddy when Alex decides to go scuba-diving at a submerged wreck off the coast of Flamingo Bay. In reality, Drevin has told Kolo to kill Alex.
Alex and Kolo are taken out to the wreck, where they explore. Kolo tricks Alex into exploring a room on the ship, but once Alex is inside, Kolo seals him in and leaves him to run out of air. CIA agent Tamara Knight follows Kolo, and uses one of Alex's gadgets, a hand grenade disguised as one of Paul Drevin's inhalers, to blow the room open and rescue Alex. Later on, in the night, the two of them attempt to break into Nikolei Drevin's rocket launch facility, and distract the guards, especially seeing how Kolo is among them. Alex uses another gadget, this one a supposed mosquito repellant that actually attracts all manner of bugs, to contaminate the security guards' uniforms. Kolo and his associates change for guard duty, unaware of what has happened, and soon, the guards, including Kolo, are attacked by supposedly every insect on the island.
What Kolo's fate is after the bug attack is never revealed.
Levi Kroll
Levi Kroll is a minor antagonist in the novels SCORPIA, Snakehead, and Scorpia Rising. He was an executive board member of SCORPIA, having been a black ops agent for the Mossad. Kroll was known for his lack of subtlety, the loss of one eye following an accident with a pistol he had kept under his pillow for many years, and his rebellious streak. After Max Grendel's murder, Kroll was passed over for control of the next project on two occasions, and was subsequently furious when Razim was assigned for what would be Scorpia's final project. When Razim suggested taking on Alex Rider for a third time, Kroll resolved to abandon Scorpia, threatening to shoot Zeljan Kurst if anyone tried to stop him. Kurst, who had been considering killing Kroll for some time, then had him shot with a sniper, and had his body thrown in the river Thames with several objects planted on it that would lead MI6 to suspect danger at the Cairo International College of Arts and Education.
Razim's Men
Razim's Men are secondary independent antagonists in Never Say Die. They are former employees of Abdul-Aziz Al-Razim (and possibly SCORPIA) who fell into financial difficulty after Razim was killed in Scorpia Rising. Alex first sees three of them at a coffee bar while he gets a coke and his taxi driver, Yusuf, asks them directions to Razim's fort. During this conversation, the men tell Yusuf to abandon Alex at the fort (presumably for money).
Later at the fort, the men arrive in an old dump truck with various weapons to try to kill Alex, who gives them the nicknames "Bandage", "Skullcap", "Silver Cross", "Baseball Bat", "Ant", and "Dec" after their distinguishing features since he doesn't know their real names. Alex takes them out one by one using salt crystals, a cannonball, and a cactus tied to a clothes line. He is able to knock out "Skullcap", "Baseball Bat", and "Bandage" (who accidentally shoots "Dec"), then confronts "Ant" and "Silver Cross". "Bandage" recovers too quickly and tries to stab Alex with a knife, but is shot and killed by the Egyptian Secret Service, who arrest the surviving members.
The men's identification using nicknames is very similar to that of Force Three.
Colin Maguire
Colin Maguire is a minor independent antagonist in Never Say Die. He is a bully at Elmer E. Robinson High School that Alex goes to while in the care of Sabina Pleasure's family. He has curly black hair, bad skin, freckles, and a body suffering from a bad diet. Like his partner, Clayton Miller, he is hostile toward Alex, calling him "England", and mocking about Alex's parents being dead. Colin is younger than Clayton.
Before Alex leaves for the airport, he encounters them harassing a ten year old and intervenes. Colin attacks Alex with a switchblade, but first has his attack redirected so it cuts Clayton's arm, and then punches a lamppost when Alex blocks his strike, breaking several fingers. He is later mentioned to have been arrested.
Clayton Miller
Clayton Miller is a minor independent antagonist in Never Say Die. He is a bully at Elmer E. Robinson High School who has blond hair, and a lazy eye. Unlike his partner Colin, he works out obsessively. When attempting to pinion Alex after sneaking up from behind, he gets cut in the arm when Alex redirects Colin's switchblade attack. He is later mentioned to have been hospitalized.
Nile
Nile Griffen is a contract killer for the crime organisation Scorpia and one of the main antagonists in the novel Scorpia. He acts as Rothman's henchman, bodyguard, representative and assassin. He is a black man who suffers from vitiligo. Nile was the second best in his class of assassination. According to Julia Rothman, he could have been the first if it was not for his "rather annoying weakness" (later revealed to be his fear of heights).
Nile first encounters Alex in the Widow's Palace. After capturing Alex for trespassing, he locks Alex in a flooding room to kill him. After Alex joins Scorpia, Nile becomes his friend. He accompanies Alex to Scorpia's island, Malagosto, for training, and later helps Alex in his mission to kill Mrs. Jones. When Alex climbs onto the hot-air balloon to stop Invisible Sword from activating, Nile is sent after him, where Alex learns about Nile's fear of heights. Using this to taunt and distract his foe, Alex then slices open the hot air balloon's gas container, causing an explosion, and knocking off the balloon's basket. The explosion not only destroys the basket (Alex survives by holding onto the balloon's ropes), but also knocks Nile's body (which was set aflame) off the balloon, sending him falling to his death.
Njenga
Njenga is a minor antagonist in Crocodile Tears, a Nigerian guard who acts as Desmond McCain's chief enforcer. He is described as being a skilled tracker whose thrill for the hunt borders on sadism.
In Kenya when Alex escapes McCain sends Njenga after Alex. Njenga chases Alex until the dam. Alex makes the dam explode and Njenga falls to his death and his body is washed away.
Dragana Novak
Lieutenant Colonel Dragana Novak is a secondary villainess in Never Say Die. She is a former lieutenant colonel in the Serbian Air Force, until she was court-martialled and expelled from duty after fighting a fellow pilot in the barracks, and severely wounding him, to the point where he was hospitalised. It was at this time she received a call from the Grimaldi twins, requiring her unique services as a pilot, in exchange for two hundred thousand pounds. Novak, an alcoholic, accepted straight away.
The plan involves sending Novak to England, to infiltrate the Suffolk Air Show, and steal a Super Stallion helicopter after murdering the two USAF pilots who were to fly the helicopter at the show's finale. Novak, disguised as a St John Ambulance volunteer called Jane Smith, infiltrates the show, and kills the pilots with an undetectable ceramic dart gun. Then, disguising herself as a pilot, she boards the helicopter and flies it to an abandoned farm, where Grimaldi operatives immobilise the helicopter and disguise it as a windmill.
Novak is seen again, when Alex boards the Grimaldi twins' yacht, the Quicksilver. She is sleeping in one of the staterooms on board when Alex distracts the guards, 'Skunk' and Frankie "The Flame" Stallone, and boards the yacht, looking for Jack Starbright. When he accidentally encounters Novak in her stateroom, they fight, and Novak shoots Alex, who is saved by his passport and mobile phone, which protected him from the shot. Novak is later accidentally shot by Stallone when Alex makes his escape.
After the Grimaldi twins hear that Novak has been hospitalised and is therefore unable to complete Operation Steel Claw, they visit her in hospital, where she suggests they get her cousin, Slavko, also a pilot, as a replacement. After the twins agree to do so, they kill Dragana with sharpened wires they conceal in roses and thrust them up her nose and into her brain.
Physically speaking, Dragana Novak is short and overweight, with round shoulders, leathery skin, and dark red hair which is "cut so badly that it stood straight out on one side of her head and curled in on the other", as well as grey teeth, discoloured by her fondness for wine and cigarettes. Her legs are described as ugly, with "hideous feet" and toes with thick and yellow nails that seem to belong to an old person. She also has a weakness for money and splashing the cash, as seen when she goes shopping in Saint-Tropez after stealing the helicopter, buying a nightdress that would have cost a twelfth of her annual Air Force pay, as well as drinking three bottles of wine and becoming intoxicated during lunch on the day she is shot by Stallone, in addition to fantasising about jewellery, fast cars and expensive chocolates.
Slavko Novak
Slavko Novak is a minor villain in Never Say Die. He is hired by the Grimaldi twins after his cousin and predecessor, Dragana Novak, is unintentionally shot by Frankie "The Flame" Stallone and then killed by the Grimaldi twins. The twins ask Novak as a replacement helicopter pilot for kidnapping fifty-two children from Oxfordshire's private Linton Hall Preparatory School and holding them to ransom for three hundred million pounds. Slavko was suggested by Dragana as a replacement, because he works as a test pilot for a jet company.
The twins contact Slavko and ask him to come to England immediately and pilot the Super Stallion, now outfitted with an electromagnetic plate stolen from an American university, to capture one of the school's buses, driven by their operative Jane Vosper, from the motorway as it takes the schoolchildren to a theatre to see a Shakesperean play, and deposit it onto their train, the Midnight Flyer, which will take it to their base in Wales. In return, the twins promise to pay Novak fifty thousand pounds. Initially, he agrees, but changes his mind at the last moment, asking for double, making it one hundred thousand pounds, which he will then use to take his extramarital affair with a waitress to the next level by having her go to the country for the weekend with him. The twins agree to his new price and give him his cheque before he leaves for his mission.
Novak does as the twins ask him, picking up the bus with the stolen plate and depositing it onto a flat-bed car attached to the Midnight Flyer; however, Alex has climbed aboard, holding onto the bus's underside. Novak is then told to fly the helicopter to an RV point, and then signal a getaway driver with a red button in the helicopter, once he is five miles from his final destination. In reality, due to Novak's greed, possibility of exposing the plan, and possibly outliving his usefulness, the button was actually fitted by the Grimaldi twins, and triggers an instantaneous self-destruct system when pressed. The helicopter blows up, killing Novak.
Slavko Novak is stated as being unhappily married, with four children (all of whose names begin with the letter 'M') who disrespect him.
Magnus Payne
Magnus "Kaspar" Payne is one of the secondary antagonists in the novel Ark Angel. As Kaspar, he is the leader of Force Three, an eco-terrorist organisation created by Nikolei Drevin to act as a scapegoat for his plan to destroy the Pentagon (see Ark Angel). Kaspar is described as having his head and face completely tattooed to resemble the planet Earth. As Magnus Payne, chief of security on Drevin's island, Flamingo Bay, he wears a latex mask. Payne, as Kaspar, was sent up to the Ark Angel station to arm the bomb planted there. When Alex arrives on the station to remove the bomb threat, Kaspar attacks him with a Sabatier chef's knife. In the fight that follows, Alex disarms Kaspar and blinds him by exposing him to the light of the Sun. He then kicks Kaspar away, into the path of the knife, which kills Kaspar when it slices open a major artery.
Kaspar is the second major antagonist to still be alive after the main antagonist of the story (Nikolei Drevin) is killed. The first was Yassen Gregorovitch, who first killed Herod Sayle himself in Stormbreaker, and later died in Eagle Strike shortly after the main antagonist, Damian Cray, was killed.
Quombi
Quombi is a minor antagonist in Snakehead, serving as one of the security guards at the illegal organ-stealing Kakadu hospital run by Major Yu's snakehead. He is an Aboriginal thug, like his partner, Jacko. Quombi is younger than Jacko.
Quombi is stated to have spent a third of his life in prison, before being recruited by the snakehead. He is said to enjoy his work, and taunting the unwilling organ donors until they die. However, he is stated to be greedy, attracted only by money, and is unhappy when he is told to observe Alex until the morning, when he is to lose his eyes to a blind reality TV producer, and will not be getting any overtime pay.
Alex defeats Quombi, by playing on his greed. Alex throws the last of his explosive baht coins out, distracting Quombi long enough so that he does not see the filing cabinet that hits him on his head and knocks him unconscious. Quombi is later arrested by ASIS at the end of the novel, where it is revealed that his skull is fractured.
Raoul
Raoul is a minor antagonist in Eagle Strike who works as a deckhand on Yassen's boat. He also assists Yassen with his missions, planting a bomb in the home of Sabina's parents. He does a poor job, planting the bomb too far away from Mr. Pleasure's room for the blast to kill anyone. Yassen nearly kills him for this failure, but Raoul redeems himself by knocking Alex unconscious after he infiltrates Yassen's boat and knocks out their confederate, Franco. Raoul is not seen afterwards.
Charlie Roper
Charles "Charlie" Roper is a minor antagonist in Eagle Strike. He is an agent of the NSA who helps Damian Cray in his plan to eradicate drugs from the world. After realizing that he would be stuck at his current position and would not earn more money, he decided to sell the codes for the Milstar security locks for the U.S. nuclear arsenal. He decides to sell the codes to Cray at the sum of two million dollars. Under the cover of the Gameslayer system, Cray purchased a large number of supercomputers for a cryptanalysis department for Roper, who successfully incorporated the decryption system on a flash drive compatible with the system in Air Force One.
Cray later discovered that Roper's actions as a gambling addict had attracted the attention of Edward Pleasure, and had Yassen try to kill Pleasure with a bomb, critically wounding him and removing him as a threat, but Cray had decided that Roper had become careless. At their last meeting, watched by Alex, Roper demanded the money Cray owed him, causing Cray to lure him into a sealed room, where he deposited two million dollars - in Nickels (quarters in other publications), onto Roper, crushing him to death.
In the TV show, he was killed by Cray because Charlie refused to be part of Cray's plan any longer. His death was being shot dead by Cray instead of being killed by having two million dollars worth of nickels/quarters just like in the novel. Charlie is more helpful to Alex in the show as helped him pose as a top gamer named K7 to infiltrate Cray's Feathered Serpent project.
The Salesman
The Salesman is a short-term antagonist in Skeleton Key. He is a Mexican from Mexico City. The Salesman's main line of work, as his name suggests, is selling illegal products, such as weapons and drugs. He was the one who sold the uranium to Sarov. CIA agent Tom Turner was placed undercover as a cocaine purchaser to engage a friendship between him and The Salesman on his boat, The Mayfair Lady.
Eventually, The Salesman discovers Turner's real identity and attempts to kill him. However, Alex sneaks onto the boat and sets it on fire. This causes a distraction, allowing Alex to save Turner by shooting The Salesman with a stun-dart (commenting, "He got the wrong number."). After Alex and Turner jump overboard, the Salesman tries to ram them with his boat, but Sarov's assistant, Conrad, had set a bomb on the boat, which is detonated, killing the Salesman and his crew, as well as sinking the boat.
Rick Shaw
Richard "Rick" Shaw is a minor character in Snakehead. He is an associate of Anan Sukit who is brought along to take photos of Sukit's meeting with Ash. Later, he attempts to salvage what he can from the destroyed offices of the Chada Trading Company to prevent any potential evidence from getting out. Ash claims that Shaw escorted him to a meeting with Sukit's deputy, but due to Ash secretly being a mole it is unclear if said meeting ever even took place.
Skoda
Skoda is an antagonist who has a minor role in Point Blanc, and is the main antagonist in the short story Alex Rider: Secret Weapon. His criminal name comes from the manufacturer of his car. He is a drug dealer who hooked many of the pupils at Alex's school on drugs.
Skoda first appears in Point Blanc. Alex follows him from his school to his boat on the Thames, where he manufactures his drugs, intending revenge for hooking his friend Colin on drugs. He then picks seals the doors with wire, unties the boat from the jetty where it is moored, and picks up the boat with a crane, severely injuring Skoda and his fellow drug dealer Mike Beckett, and is forced to drop it on a police conference center when the crane's power is cut off. The conference centre was practically destroyed in the process.
He appears again in the short story Alex Rider: Secret Weapon, this time as the main antagonist. Here, it is revealed that he grew up in Dagenham, in the care of foster parents, after his mother walked out on him when he was three years old. At school, he was a disruptive influence and a bully, getting himself excluded from two schools, refusing to pay attention, and getting involved as a drug dealer in a gang at a young age, as well as being a drug user. At sixteen, the entire gang leadership died in a turf war, allowing him to go into business for himself, buying a barge in Putney and scientific equipment from across London, providing him with a lair and supplies to produce drugs from. He also alters the purity of the drugs that he sells, adding such products as glucose powder, dried milk and rat poison, making the drugs go further and increasing his profits.
After spending two months of a twenty-year sentence in HMP Doncaster, for possession of drugs with intent to supply (worsened by the fact that the drugs were impure, dangerous and possibly lethal), Skoda (whose real name is revealed to be Brian Smith) plots to kill Alex Rider and to escape. He does this by self-harming in the exercise yard and being taken to the prison hospital wing for night, put in the same room as terminally ill fellow inmate Harry Baker (known as 'Spider' because of the huge, self-made tattoo of a tarantula on his face), who is serving a life sentence for killing a policeman in a bank robbery. Skoda suffocates Spider to death with a pillow, then takes the body's place by switching beds and drawing a copy of Spider's tattoo on his own face with a marker pen; when the paramedics arrive, they carry Skoda off to Doncaster Royal Infirmary.
After escaping from the hospital morgue that he is taken to, Skoda steals clothes and money from a patient, and a car from a doctor, and drives to Chelsea. There, he stalks Alex for a while, before disguising himself as a security guard and attacking him in the Victoria and Albert Museum, where Alex is on a school trip to a weapons and warfare exhibition. He attacks Alex with a sword from one of the displays, but before he can kill Alex, supply science teacher Miss Maxwell (also known as Miss Treat in some versions) (one of Alex's school teachers and an undercover MI6 agent) arrives and shoots Skoda in the shoulder. Skoda then non-fatally stabs Miss Maxwell and flees, taking Alex's friend Tom Harris hostage. Over the phone, he forces Alex to meet him at the top of the crane which Alex used to lift his boat and then threatens to kill Tom if he doesn't throw himself off, or show up in thirty minutes. However, thanks to Alex's karate skills and Tom's acting skills, the two boys manage to overpower Skoda, who loses his balance and falls to his death, while Tom and Alex climb back down.
He is described as "in his twenties, bald, and had two broken stumps where his teeth should have been and five metal studs in his ear". When he returns in Alex Rider: Secret Weapon, his face has been damaged by the incident in Point Blanc, and appears almost deformed. It is also said in this story that he has piercings in his tongue, nose and nipples as well, as well as the word "Loosie" tattooed on his arm, showing that he is illiterate. The tattoo refers to Lucy, a girl he saw.
'Skunk'
Skunk is the name given to a minor villain from Never Say Die. He is a henchman of the Grimaldi twins.
'Skunk' is stated to have been a drug addict from the age of twelve, earning his nickname, and this has caused a lot of brain damage to him, as well as affecting the skin around his eyes and mouth, making him look like a dead man. How he came to work for the Grimaldis is never elaborated upon.
'Skunk' is first seen in Saint-Tropez guarding the Grimaldi twins' yacht, the Quicksilver, and is distracted from his position at the gangway when Alex self-destructs his laptop computer and sneaks on board. When Stallone accidentally detonates Alex's gas bomb, 'Skunk' suffers from having his clothes ignite, as well as having one of his eyes swelling shut and his lips swelling so that he cannot talk properly. When Frankie Stallone tries to kill Alex at Needle Point, 'Skunk' is ordered to film it, but Alex fights with Stallone, causing the filming to go awry, such as 'Skunk' missing the scene where Alex is thrown off the cliff, much to his dismay, but getting the scene where Alex stabs Stallone in the neck with a nail.
'Skunk' reappears at the Grimaldi twins' disused former coke plant in Wales, seen only towards the end of the novel, where he attempts to stop Alex and the hostages during their escape, briefly fighting their guard, Ted Philby, before shooting him to death. 'Skunk' is put to work fueling the engine of the twins' train, The Midnight Flyer, as it tries to pursue the coach when Alex and Jack rescue the fifty-two hostages and try to get them out. When Alex drops a thermos full of fuel into the train's smokestack, it explodes, destroying the train and boiling 'Skunk' to death with water from the boiler.
Frankie "The Flame" Stallone
Frankie Stallone, nicknamed "The Flame" because of the fiery tattoo on the back of one of his hands, is an Italian-American former Mafia operative who works for the Grimaldi family, and is a secondary antagonist in Never Say Die. He is from the Bronx area of New York and is stated to have worked for the Grimaldi family for two, possibly three, generations.
Stallone was first known to be employed by Carlo Grimaldi, the father of main antagonists Giovanni and Eduardo, as his bodyguard. However, he was later ordered to kill Carlo by the twins, who sought to take over the criminal empire their family had created; Stallone shot Carlo in his own jacuzzi tub, and became a trusted confidante of the twins.
Stallone is first encountered by Alex in Saint-Tropez, where the twins' yacht, the Quicksilver, is moored in the harbour and guarded by Stallone and his partner, 'Skunk'. Alex self-destructs his laptop computer to distract Stallone and 'Skunk' long enough to board the Quicksilver and try and search for Jack Starbright. Stallone and Skunk later encounter Alex on the yacht when he fights Dragana Novak, and Stallone accidentally causes a gas explosion that injures everybody except Alex. In Stallone's case, he lost his eyebrows, injured his shoulder and had his face burned. He later reports to his masters what happened, during breakfast, and also seals Dragana Novak's fate when he says that she can no longer fly the stolen Super Stallion.
Stallone and 'Skunk' are then informed by their masters to kill Alex by drowning him at Needle Point by chaining his ankles to concrete blocks and throwing him in the sea, when Alex is captured in their villa overhearing the twins' meeting with their henchman Derek Vosper. Stallone is put to work as the executioner, whilst 'Skunk' films it. Despite being stabbed on the side of the neck and head with a sharp nail, Stallone succeeds in throwing Alex into the sea, but the murder attempt fails when Alex is rescued by MI6 agent Ben Daniels.
Stallone reappears later on, at the twins' disused coke plant in Wales that serves as their base, as the head of security and being responsible for guarding the fifty-two schoolchildren who have been taken hostage for a three hundred million pound ransom. He is later given orders to execute all hostages, and Jack Starbright, forcibly employed as their nurse, when the operation is over and the ransom is received. When Alex reunites with Jack, they stage a plan to bypass security and get the hostages out. Part of this plan involves dealing with Stallone: Jack distracts his attention whilst Alex, who Stallone thinks is dead, makes himself look like a ghost, in order to frighten him, so that Jack can knock him out and lock him up.
The plan works, but Stallone is later found and freed. He then drives the twins' train, The Midnight Flyer, with Skunk and the twins aboard, in order to track down the escaping bus and kill everybody on it before it leaves the coke plant. Alex then improvises a grenade from Jane Vosper's tea thermos, filled with diesel from the bus, and drops it into The Midnight Flyers smokestack, where it overheats and explodes, causing the train to crash into a cliff face next to a tunnel that the bus has just driven through, killing Stallone.
Eva Stellenbosch Eva Stellenbosch is a secondary antagonist in the novel Point Blanc. She is co-director of Point Blanc Academy for young men, along with Dr. Hugo Grief. She was formerly an interrogator for the South African Secret Police, and was Miss South Africa in weightlifting for five years in a row. She had known Dr. Grief for twenty-six years. She is described as having huge muscles, and a facial structure that "wasn't quite human". She also has wisps of bright ginger hair and a high domed forehead.
Along with Dr. Grief, she organises the Gemini Project (see Dr. Hugo Grief), having raised Hugo's clones for the first fourteen years of their lives. She is killed by Wolf when the SAS raid Point Blanc Academy. Wolf shoots her in the leg, causing her to stumble backwards and trip into a third-story window, shattering it and falling to her death. However, she shoots Wolf three times.
Eva Stellenbosch is also portrayed as a smoker. At various points in the book, she is pictured smoking cigars.
She is portrayed by Ana Ularu in the series.
Leonard Straik Leonard "Leo" Straik is a secondary antagonist in the novel Crocodile Tears. He runs the company Greenfields that Alex takes a school trip to. He is also a close friend of Desmond McCain, the chief antagonist of the novel, and is known to be the inventor of the gene gun that is demonstrated at Greenfields.
Straik supplies various countries in Africa, including Kenya and Uganda, with his own genetically engineered seeds that will, when activated by a strange "mushroom soup" substance, make the crops poisonous. Alex is sent to Greenfields by MI6 under the guise of a school trip to obtain data on Straik's computer. It is in the act of stealing this information that he discovers Straik's association with McCain. Alex considers Straik to be something of a sadist, especially after seeing the greenhouse marked Poison Dome, which is filled with the most dangerous creatures, plants, and natural chemicals on the planet. It also acts as his method of killing people who may inform the authorities of his work, such as the whistle-blower Philip Masters.
McCain mentions later on in the novel that he had killed Straik by shoving a poisonous Cone snail from the Poison Dome down his throat, as he did not want to share the money with anyone.
Anan Sukit Anan Sukit is a minor antagonist in the novel Snakehead. He is the head of the Bangkok Snakehead, owned by Major Winston Yu.
Sukit first meets Alex while he and Ash are undercover as Afghan refugees, trying to obtain Snakehead's help in illegally immigrating to Australia. Sukit, however, is aware that Alex is undercover, having been warned by Major Yu. Sukit orders that Alex was to retrieve the fake passports they needed from the Snakehead.
When Alex goes to collect the papers, he is kidnapped by Sukit's men and taken to fight in an arena. Alex, cheating, defeats his opponent, a man named 'Sunthorn', in the fight. The gamblers, who had all bet on 'Sunthorn', are enraged, leading Sukit to attack Alex. However, Ben Daniels shorts out the lights, giving Alex a chance to flee the arena.
Later, when Alex attempts to escape from the arena in a swamp boat, Sukit approaches him with a gun. Just before he shoots Alex, Daniels shoots Sukit in the back three times, killing him.
Sukit is described as a short Asian man who wears a strange mixture between a suit and combat clothes. He has no ears, as they were cut off during a deal which was ambushed by a rival Bangkok gang.
'Sunthorn'Sunthorn is a minor antagonist in Snakehead. He is employed by the snakehead as a Muay Thai fighter in an illegal betting operation in Thailand, where unwilling fighters are kidnapped and brought to 'Sunthorn', who, in effect, beats them to death in front of the crowd, who bet on how long the opponent will last.
'Sunthorn' is defeated by Alex, who was captured by Anan Sukit and brought to the arena. After 'Sunthorn' beats Alex up in the first round, Alex resorts to cheating to escape. 'Sunthorn' has water spat into his face by Alex, who then knocks him unconscious. He is presumably killed when the building burns down.
SwainNurse Swain is a minor antagonist in Snakehead. She is one of the nurses who works at the snakehead's Kakadu organ harvesting clinic. Despite being categorised as an antagonist, she does not do anything openly hostile towards Alex. She is later arrested by ASIS at the end of the novel.
Bill Tanner Dr. William "Bill" Tanner is a minor antagonist in Snakehead. He is an Australian doctor who works in an illegal organ harvesting clinic at Kakadu National Park, owned by Major Yu, where Alex was sent to be killed after he was captured. He was in charge of removing Alex's organs for transplants, having been sacked from his previous job and struck off the Australian medical register for telling a patient she could receive an instant heart transplant if she paid him one million dollars. He tells Alex of all the security systems in the hospital, which helps Alex to escape by sea after blowing up the plane that brought him there. After Alex escapes and sets fire to the hospital, Tanner survives the attack and sends a Huey helicopter after Alex. It is later revealed that Tanner commits suicide, rather than face Major Yu's horrible punishment.
Despite being a doctor and surgeon, Tanner has several vices, including alcohol, cigarettes and gambling. He also does not present the image of a doctor, dressing only in open shirts and jeans, without a white coat on.
He is named after Bill Tanner from the James Bond Movie For Your Eyes Only.
VargaVarga is a minor antagonist in Snakehead. He is a technician who helps Winston Yu to develop the detonation procedure for Royal Blue, and who Alex witnesses demonstrating the procedure to Major Yu and Captain de Wynter. He is later arrested by ASIS at the end of the novel.
Nadia Vole Nadia Vole (otherwise known as Fräulein Vole) is Herod Sayle's German assistant. She is described as being broad-shouldered and severe, having blonde hair, a moon-shaped face, wearing wire framed spectacles, and also wears a smear of yellow lipstick. She has a thick German accent and is described to walk like a soldier. She is killed when the tank containing Sayle's Portuguese Man o' War is destroyed by Alex. She is stung by the jellyfish when it lands directly on top of her.
She is portrayed by Missi Pyle in the film Stormbreaker.
Derek Vosper Derek Vosper is a minor antagonist in Never Say Die. He is the husband of Jane Vosper, and works as the curator of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxfordshire.
Vosper is first seen at the Grimaldi twins' villa in Saint-Tropez, where he discusses part of Operation Steel Claw with the twins. From his information, Alex and MI6 at first believe the twins are trying to steal Mesoamerican gold artefacts from the museum, but bugging his office and the museum disproves this theory. Alex works out that it is, in fact, Vosper's wife, Jane, who the twins are going after, after seeing a poster for a Shakespeare play that Vosper mentioned at the villa.
Vosper is later widowed after the twins poison his wife, and is later still arrested by MI6, when it emerges that his wife told him the information he needed and he then sold it on to the twins.
Jane Vosper Jane Vosper is a minor antagonist in Never Say Die. She is the inside operative of the Grimaldi twins' Operation Steel Claw, which will see them capturing fifty-two schoolchildren from Linton Hall Preparatory School in Oxfordshire and hold them to a three hundred million pound ransom from their parents. She works at the school, with one of her duties involving driving a bus. She is nicknamed 'Mrs T' by the schoolchildren, because of the tea thermos that she always carries with her.
The fifty-two hostages are on the bus which is taking them to see a Shakespearean play, and also has a security guard from the school, a schoolteacher in charge of the party, and Vosper as driver. Despite the bus being surrounded by security agents from the school, Vosper tranquilizes the guard on the bus with drugged sweets, and the bus is soon picked up by the Grimaldi twins' stolen Super Stallion, with the stolen electromagnetic plate, and flown to the train that takes it to rural Wales.
Once the hostages are brought to the Grimaldi twins' former coke plant that serves as their base, their henchman Frankie 'The Flame' Stallone orders the hostages out and into their prison, whilst Vosper is invited to afternoon tea with the Grimaldi twins, who kill her by poisoning her tea with cyanide.
R. V. WeinbergR. V. Weinberg is an antagonist in Snakehead. He is an American reality TV producer from Miami who has gone blind, due to a serious condition, and Dr. Tanner has decided to give him Alex's eyes.
Being deprived of his eyes, together with Weinberg's lack of heart, prompts Alex to escape by knocking out Quombi, drugging the security dog, blowing one of the seaplane's floats off and turning it into a canoe, and setting the clinic on fire. In the process, Weinberg is partially set on fire and is last seen putting the fire out in a puddle, with Alex noting that more than just his eyes need medical attention now.
Despite not doing anything openly hostile towards Alex, Weinberg is regarded by Alex as somebody who is physically sickening and heartless, taking his eyes just because he has the money for it, just because he wants it, without any thought.
WilcoxNurse Wilcox is a minor antagonist in Snakehead. She is one of the nurses at the Kakadu organ harvesting clinic, and is meant to be Alex's anaesthetist. She is later arrested by ASIS.
Hermann de WynterCaptain Hermann de Wynter is a minor antagonist in Snakehead. He is the Dutch captain of the snakehead's container ship, the MV Liberian Star, which is used to smuggle illegal immigrants into Australia from elsewhere.
De Wynter is stated to have worked for the snakehead for eleven years, and unquestioningly does as his superiors as of him. He is first seen in a modified container of the Liberian Star, showing the bomb to Major Yu, with which he will destroy Reef Island. When Alex evades capture attempts by the crew after one of the smuggled refugees follows Alex after he breaks out of a modified container designed to carry people, de Wynter reports to Major Yu what has happened. Yu orders him to step up the security operations, despite the fact that the crew has had no sleep and has used every device imaginable to look everywhere on the ship. Yu also states that if Alex escapes, de Wynter should commit suicide.
Despite the crew's best intentions, Alex uses one of his exploding Baht coins to damage the Liberian Star's cargo refrigeration unit, and escape. It is later revealed, when Alex is captured and forced to attend dinner with Major Yu, that Yu himself killed de Wynter, though it is never revealed how.
Yannis Ariston XenopolusYannis Ariston Xenopolus is a minor antagonist in Scorpia Rising. He is an old, terminally ill Greek billionaire worth thirty-five billion dollars and owner of a shipping empire. He becomes SCORPIA's final employer when he pays them to return the Elgin Marbles to Greece through blackmail, which he believes will be his legacy to the Greek people when he dies. He is not mentioned since the disbanding of SCORPIA at the end of the book.
He is described as being in a wheelchair, needing an oxygen mask, having "sunken cheeks, dreadful white skin, hands that are more like claws," and eyes that "had accepted death."
YusufYusuf is a minor character in Never Say Die, he is an Egyptian Taxi driver. Alex first meets him when he tells him to drive him to the Cairo Gateway bus station for a bus to Siwa, only to learn there would be no busses for two days, causing him to convince Yusuf to drive him to Siwa, and then to Razim's abandoned fort. On the way, he in convinced by men who worked for Razim to abandon Alex at the fort (presumably for more money) so they can try to kill him. After abandoning Alex, Yusuf's fate is never revealed.
Protagonists
The following is a list of the protagonists recurring, appearing in, or referred to in the Alex Rider series, listed alphabetically.
Alan Blunt Alan Blunt is the head of MI6 Special Operations. He is an aloof, impassive, and ruthless man. Throughout the series he is known for wearing a grey suit and grey glasses and being driven around in a Rolls-Royce. From the book Point Blanc, it is said that he had graduated with a First-Class Honours degree in mathematics from Cambridge University. Blunt is dedicated to his job and has a very analytical mind.
In the film Stormbreaker, Blunt was portrayed by Bill Nighy, and in the TV series he is portrayed by Stephen Dillane.
Joe Byrne Joe Byrne is the head of the CIA, who has worked with Alex on three separate occasions. Unlike the more cold and manipulative Blunt, who was not above blackmailing Alex to accept missions for him, Byrne generally appeared more willing to simply ask Alex for help rather than forcing him to do something he didn't want to do, and displayed a strong respect for Alex when they worked together.
In the Alex Rider TV series, Joe Byrne is reimagined as a woman and the Deputy CIA Jo Bryne, played by Rakie Ayola.
John Crawley John Crawley has been described as an "office manager" for MI6, and often acts as a messenger between Alex Rider and Special Operations, such as delivering him to MI6 in Stormbreaker and Point Blanc, informing him of his mission in Skeleton Key, visiting him in hospital in Ark Angel and, most recently, leading the "Invisible Man" operation against Harold Bulman in Crocodile Tears. He is known to have worked with John Rider, Alex's father, on a number of occasions and is described as having "the kind of face you forget while you're still looking at it".
In the film adaption of Stormbreaker, he was portrayed by Jimmy Carr, with the character's name changed (by an unusual request from the real MI6) to "John Crawford". In the TV series, he is played by Ace Bhatti, once again under the name "John Crawley".
Ben Daniels Ben Daniels is a minor protagonist who has appeared in Stormbreaker, Snakehead and Never Say Die. He first meets Alex at an SAS training camp in the Brecon Beacons, where Alex was sent by MI6 for training. In Snakehead, Ben secretly kills Anan Sukit, who was attempting to shoot Alex after he had beaten Sukit's fighter "Sunthorn" in an arena fight. Alex later meets Ben again, where he takes him to an MI6 outpost in Bangkok. His real name is Ben Daniels and he was seconded to MI6 from the SAS.
He is portrayed by Ben Peel in the series.
Paul Drevin Paul Drevin is the son of Russian multibillionaire Nikolei Drevin, a minor antagonist of Ark Angel. Alex and Paul first meet in hospital, where Alex is recovering from a bullet wound, and Paul is recovering from appendicitis. When Force Three attempts to kidnap Paul, Alex is kidnapped instead after he pretends he is Paul. When Alex escapes from Force Three, Nikolei invites Alex to stay with them for a few days and view the launch of Ark Angel.
Tom HarrisTom Harris is Alex's best friend at Brookland High School. He first appeared in the novel Scorpia, and has since appeared in Crocodile Tears, Scorpia Rising and Nightshade.
He is portrayed by Brenock O'Connor in the Alex Rider TV series.
Mrs. JonesLâle "Tulip" Jones is second-in-command at MI6 and is Alan Blunt's closest associate. Blunt insists their personal and professional lives remain separate; consequently, Mrs. Jones has never even been inside of his house, despite knowing him better than anyone else in Special Operations. Mrs. Jones has two children, both of whom have been taken by her undercover Russian spy husband to Nightshade at a young age.
In the Stormbreaker film, she is played by Sophie Okonedo, and in the Alex Rider TV series she is played by Vicky McClure.
Tamara KnightTamara Knight is introduced in the novel Ark Angel as Nikolei Drevin's personal assistant. At first, she is cold towards Alex and she doesn't seem to like him at all. However, it was later revealed that she was working for the CIA when she saved Alex's life from drowning when he went scuba diving. Tamara softened towards him and they joined forces to stop Drevin's plans to destroy his Ark Angel space hotel. They were captured by Magnus Payne and the Force Three "freedom fighters", in fact mercenaries working for Drevin. Tamara was injured and was imprisoned. She was later rescued by Ed Shulsky and a CIA task force. She was the one who convinced Alex to go into space and stop Payne from setting off the bomb that would destroy Ark Angel.
Sabina Pleasure Sabina Pleasure is a protagonist who made her first appearance in the novel Skeleton Key and has gone on to appear in Eagle Strike, Snakehead, Crocodile Tears, Scorpia Rising and Never Say Die.
In the film Stormbreaker, the character of Pleasure was portrayed by Sarah Bolger. In the Amazon Prime TV series, Pleasure is renamed Sabina Pleasance and is portrayed by Charithra Chandran.
Alex Rider Alex Rider is the main character of the series. Alex's parents were killed when their private plane crashed – later revealed to have been caused by a bomb planted by Ash – and he was subsequently raised by his uncle Ian Rider, until Ian himself was killed when Alex was fourteen years old. After his uncle's death, MI6 allows Alex's best friend and housekeeper, Jack Starbright, to become his legal guardian and after that he worked for MI6.
He is portrayed by Alex Pettyfer in the film Stormbreaker and Otto Farrant in the Amazon Prime TV series.
Helen Rider Helen Rider (née Beckett) was Alex Rider's mother. She was killed, along with her husband, John Rider, when their best friend Ash, who was working for Scorpia, set a bomb on their private aeroplane. This happened while Alex was still an infant (he had a minor ear infection, so stayed behind), and his uncle, Ian Rider, became his legal guardian.
Ian RiderIan Rider is Alex's uncle and became his guardian after his parents died. He worked for MI6, undercover of being a banker. Ian and Alex had a very good relationship. They were very close, and when Ian was home they did practically everything together. Ian often took Alex around the world to educate him about other cultures. He never let Alex call him "uncle". Ian also taught him a lot of things that prepared him for being a spy, such as scuba diving, climbing and driving. He is killed at the beginning of Stormbreaker by Yassen Gregorovich. His death led Alex into working for MI6.
Ian Rider is played by Ewan McGregor in the film adaptation of Stormbreaker and Andrew Buchan in the Alex Rider TV series.
John Rider John Rider was Alex Rider's father and an agent of MI6.
At Oxford University, Rider studied politics and economics, and was an excellent tennis player. He later joined the Parachute Regiment at Aldershot and served for three years, seeing action in both Northern Ireland and Gambia. John was awarded the Military Cross from the queen, as well as being promoted to the rank of Captain for carrying a wounded soldier to safety under fire during the attack on Goose Green, in the Falklands War.
Derek Smithers Derek Smithers is a protagonist who has appeared in all of the novels, as well as in the film adaption. He creates the various gadgets for MI6 agents, a role similar to that of Q's in the James Bond films. It is often implied that Smithers is one of Alex's two only genuine friends at MI6 (The other probably being Ben Daniels); in Eagle Strike, when Alex attempted to convince MI6 to investigate Damian Cray, he was ignored by Blunt and Mrs. Jones, but Smithers nevertheless supplied him with a high-tech bicycle that played a crucial role in Alex's investigations, and in Ark Angel Smithers took time out from his holiday to provide Alex with new gadgets when the CIA requested Alex's assistance in investigating the father of a new friend. In Scorpia Rising, Smithers reveals that in reality, he was always privately opposed to involving Alex in MI6 in the first place; he believes that the world of spying is dangerous and dirty, and people like Ian Rider, who saw it as one big adventure, could easily get themselves killed.
Smithers was portrayed by Stephen Fry in the film Stormbreaker, and Nyasha Hatendi in the Alex Rider TV series.
James Sprintz James Sprintz is a minor character in Point Blanc. When Alex arrives at Point Blanc Academy, James is the only boy who had not yet been imprisoned and replaced by a Dr. Grief clone. He becomes Alex's only friend at the academy. He often comments on the other boys' strange behaviour (who are, in reality, clones of Dr. Grief), and the day before he was captured and replaced, he had planned to escape Point Blanc. He is eventually freed by Alex and the SAS, along with the other real boys, when the school is raided.
In the series, his nationality is changed to Australian, and is portrayed by Earl Cave
Jack Starbright Jack Starbright is Alex Rider's closest and best friend, a 28-year-old American woman, originally Ian Rider's housekeeper and after his death Alex's legal guardian. She has appeared in every novel so far, with her most prominent roles being in Eagle Strike, Scorpia Rising and Never Say Die. She is described as slim, with tangled red hair, and a boyish, round face that "is always cheerful, even when in a bad mood". She has a crooked smile, and is described to look more like a big sister than a housekeeper.
In the Stormbreaker film adaptation, Jack is played by Alicia Silverstone, and in the Alex Rider TV series, she is played by Ronkẹ Adékoluẹjo.
American Secretary of State
The American Secretary of State is an unnamed minor character in the novel Scorpia Rising. She is described by Joe Byrne as a "hardliner," and is central to Scorpia agent Abdul Aziz al-Razim's plan to have the Elgin Marbles returned to Greece (and is apparently of Greek extract herself). A potential rival to the US President, the Secretary of State is in Egypt to make a speech denouncing Britain as a world power – a speech guaranteed to give her international attention.
Belinda TroyBelinda Troy is a minor protagonist in Skeleton Key. She was a CIA agent partnered with Tom Turner (Glen Carver in the US version) and Alex Rider on a mission to Cuba to investigate General Alexei Sarov. She and Turner do not take to Alex, because he is a minor, and believe he is unnecessary and could put their mission in danger. When Turner is kidnapped on the Salesman's boat, it is hinted that she has feelings for him. She is killed in the same manner as Turner while attempting to infiltrate Sarov's headquarters. She is described as being "a couple of years older than he is (Turner), slim, with brown frizzy hair tumbling down to her shoulders".
Tom TurnerTom Turner (named Glen Carver in the US version of Skeleton Key) is a minor protagonist in Skeleton Key. Like Belinda Troy, he is a CIA agent, sent to Cuba with Troy and Alex, to investigate General Alexei Sarov. Turner and Troy object to Alex being sent with them. They often ignore his opinions and treat him as a hindrance, even after Alex saves Turner from The Salesman. He reveals nothing about his personal life, other than he is a former Marine, and dreams of dying for his country. He and Troy are killed when trying to infiltrate Sarov's headquarters through the "Devil's Chimney", a hidden underwater tunnel. They are killed by the traps which are disguised as stalactites. Turner is described as "about forty, a handsome man, with fair, close-cropped hair, blue eyes and a face that managed to be both tough and boyish". He is also mentioned as Tom Turner in the US of Ark Angel.
WolfWolf is a minor character who appears as being initially hostile towards Alex in the novel Stormbreaker, but returns in a more protagonistic role for the novel Point Blanc. He also appears in the film adaption of Stormbreaker. He is first encountered by Alex while training with the SAS. He is part of "K Unit" along with Alex (Cub), and three other men, codenamed, Fox, Eagle, and Snake/Bear (Snake in the novel and TV series, Bear in the film). He is played by Ashley Walters in the Stormbreaker film adaptation, and by Howard Charles in the Television series.
RahimRahim''' is a minor character who appears in the novel Crocodile Tears''. Rahim is an Indian RAW agent who had been sent to kill Desmond McCain both at his Scottish castle and in Africa to avenge the destruction of the Jowada Power Station. Rahim finds Alex, Sabina and her father when their SUV falls into Loch Arkaig and drives them to the hospital, saving them from hypothermia. Alex later meets the agent again when Rahim kills Myra Beckett and saves Alex from falling into the pack of crocodiles. He had injured his leg when he parachuted into a thornbush, and cannot help Alex destroy the dam that will flood the crops and stop McCain's virus. Alex takes Rahim's plastic explosive that was given to the agent to destroy McCain's aeroplane. Rahim returns to save Alex a third time in McCain's crop duster, after Alex is caught in the raging waters of the destroyed dam. As Rahim and Alex land at a nearby airport, he is shot and killed by McCain.
References
Alex Rider
Alex Rider |
46591027 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randall%20Telfer | Randall Telfer | Randall Telfer (born May 16, 1992) is a former American football tight end. He played college football at the University of Southern California (USC). He was drafted by the Cleveland Browns in the sixth round of the 2015 NFL Draft.
High school career
Telfer was born on May 16, 1992, in Rancho Cucamonga, California. His mother was a physical therapist.
Telfer attended Rancho Cucamonga High School, where he received a 3.5 grade point average. He had no familiarity with football and had never played the game, but head coach Nick Baiz convinced him to begin playing in his freshman year. His height and swiftness led to his being cast as a wide receiver, but he was so poor at catching footballs that he didn't play that year. He played only minimally his sophomore year, but had so rapidly developed as an athlete that he became the team's second receiver in his junior year. In the 2008 season, he caught 42 passes for and five touchdowns. Rancho Cucamonga won the Southern Section Central Division high school championship football game 21-7 over Upland High School. Telfer caught a touchdown that helped win the game for RCHS.
By his senior year, Telfer had developed into a , receiver with superb blocking skills. Considered one of the state's top college football recruits, he had only played in 14 games.
College career
College recruiters saw Telfer more as a tight end than a receiver. He was recruited by eight schools: Arizona State University, Stanford University, the University of California at Los Angeles, the University of Oregon, the University of Southern California (USC), the University of Tennessee, the University of Washington, and Vanderbilt University. He favored Oregon and USC.
Head coach Pete Carroll successfully recruited Telfer for the University of Southern California (USC), where he attended upon receiving an athletic scholarship. He was redshirted his freshman year (the 2010 season), after which Carroll left USC to coach professionally for the Seattle Seahawks. In the spring, the NCAA punished USC for numerous rules and recruiting violations, banning the team from playing in Pac-10 conference championship games and bowl games for two seasons. Telfer had the right to transfer to another school, but declined to do so.
As a sophomore in 2011, Telfer had an outstanding season under head coach Lane Kiffin, catching 26 passes—five of them for touchdowns. He suffered several injuries during the season, but continued to play.
In his junior year, USC began the season ranked Number 1 in the USA Today Coaches' Poll. Telfer had numerous additional injuries, and according to press reports probably should not have continued practicing or playing. Nevertheless, Telfer asked to continue playing, and received permission from coaching staff to do so. Telfer caught a touchdown pass that led USC to defeat the University of Oregon 38-35, a victory that ended the Oregon Ducks 21-home game winning streak. USC's 2012 season was a dismal one, as the team finished 7-6. The team played in the Sun Bowl, losing 21-7 to the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets. A violent altercation (which some media reported as a fistfight, while others said it was verbal) broke out in the USC locker room after the game, in which some younger players criticized senior quarterback Matt Barkley for not playing even though injured and for generally poor leadership throughout the season.
Telfer played with numerous leg injuries in the 2013 season. Coaching staff permitted him to play, but counseled him several times that he should take a more prudent approach to his health. USC lost three of its first five games of Telfer's senior season, and Kiffin was fired as head coach on September 29, 2013. Defensive line coach Ed Orgeron was named the interim head coach, and led the team to a 6–2 record. Over the past two seasons, Telfer caught another 18 passes, five for touchdowns.
Steve Sarkisian was named USC's permanent head coach at the end of the 2013 season. Telfer had arthroscopic surgery on a knee in the spring of 2014, which kept him out of spring training camp. Although many in the press predicted he would have the breakout fifth-year season, and Coach Sarkisian told Telfer he would be an "offensive weapon" in the coming year, Telfer was relegated largely to a role as a blocker. The Trojans ended their season playing in the Holiday Bowl, winning 45-42 over the University of Nebraska Cornhuskers. Telfer ended his college football career with 63 receptions, 12 of them for touchdowns. His USC teammates voted to give him the Chris Carlisle Courage Award for starting every game his final year, despite his significant injuries.
Randall Telfer graduated from the University of Southern California in 2013 with a bachelor's degree in political science. In the fall of 2014, he began work at USC on a master's degree in communications management, with an emphasis on marketing.
Telfer suffered a left mid-foot fracture of the tarsometatarsal articulations while playing in the Holiday Bowl. The injury was difficult to diagnose, and he did not undergo surgery to correct the fracture until mid-February 2015. Healing and rehabilitation for such injuries generally lasts four to six months, although eight months is not uncommon.
Professional career
Cleveland Browns
The Cleveland Browns drafted Telfer in the sixth round of the 2015 NFL Draft. Telfer signed a four-year contract with the Browns on May 6, 2015, although terms of the deal were not immediately disclosed. A later report said the terms were worth $2.397 million, which included a $117,537 signing bonus.
On July 28, 2015, head coach Mike Pettine announced that Telfer would sit out training camp and remain idle until at least midseason. Pettine said that although some athletes return from mid-foot surgery in four to six months, the team would wait eight months and reevaluate Tefler's ability to play in October.
Telfer played 14 games in the 2016 season under new head coach Hue Jackson, catching two passes for four yards and spending most of his time as a blocker.
On May 2, 2018, Telfer was traded to the Kansas City Chiefs in exchange for linebacker Dadi Nicolas. However two days later, the trade was called off and voided. Telfer was waived by the Browns.
Indianapolis Colts
On May 7, 2018, Telfer was claimed off waivers by the Indianapolis Colts, only to be waived the next day after failing his physical.
On August 24, 2018, Telfer announced his retirement from the NFL.
References
External links
USC Trojans bio
College stats
1992 births
Living people
Players of American football from California
Sportspeople from San Bernardino County, California
People from Rancho Cucamonga, California
African-American players of American football
American football tight ends
USC Trojans football players
Cleveland Browns players
Indianapolis Colts players
21st-century African-American sportspeople |
61981197 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IT%20cluster%20Rhine-Main-Neckar | IT cluster Rhine-Main-Neckar | The IT cluster Rhine-Main-Neckar, also known as Silicon Valley of Germany, is one of the most important locations of the IT and high-tech industry worldwide. It is concentrated in the Rhine-Main and Rhine-Neckar metropolitan regions. The IT cluster Rhine-Main-Neckar is the largest IT cluster in Europe. 50 percent of the worldwide revenue of the hundred largest European software companies are generated by companies in this region. The Rhine-Main-Neckar region also has one of the most important biopharmaceutical, fintech, finance and consulting clusters in Europe.
In addition to universities such as Technische Universität Darmstadt and University of Frankfurt and research institutions such as the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence and ATHENE, software companies such as SAP SE, Software AG and T-Systems also have their headquarters in the region.
Importance in the world
In 2010, the French venture capital firm Truffle Capital published in its study "Truffle 100 European Clusters" that the Rhine-Main-Neckar region accounts for 50 percent of the worldwide revenue of the hundred largest European software providers. It compared the Rhine-Main-Neckar region as an IT cluster with Silicon Valley as the "Silicon Valley of Europe". According to this study, the Rhine-Main-Neckar IT cluster combined more than 12.5 billion euros in software-related sales in 2009. The next largest European IT cluster was Paris with 2.4 billion euros.
In a 2009 study, the region was compared with IT clusters such as Oulu (Finland), Bangalore (India) and Silicon Valley. In contrast to the Silicon Valley, the main business area of the companies in the region is enterprise software.
According to a study by the European Commission, Darmstadt has the best cluster among all EU regions in the emerging industries. Emerging industries means future technologies that the EU attaches particular importance to for growth in Europe. Darmstadt also has the best biopharmaceutical cluster in Europe. The Rhineland-Palatinate region, which partly belongs to the Rhine-Main-Neckar region, ranks second among the biopharmaceutical clusters.
The region is one of the most important locations for IT security research worldwide. Darmstadt has the renowned ATHENE, the national center for research in security and privacy in Germany and the largest research institute for IT security in Europe. According to an analysis by Startup Genome, a company specialising in the analysis of startup ecosystems, the Rhine-Main region is also home to one of the world's most important startup ecosystems in the field of IT security and fintech.
Importance in Germany
The IT cluster Rhein-Main-Neckar is part of the Spitzencluster Software-Cluster, which also includes other regions. In January 2010, the Software-Cluster won the German government's Spitzencluster competition, the equivalence to the German Universities Excellence Initiative for clusters. The cluster's goal is to enable the transformation of companies into digital companies. This cluster consists of the centers Darmstadt, Kaiserslautern, Karlsruhe, Saarbrücken and Walldorf. Since 2017, the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research has supported the cooperation between the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence and the Technische Universität Darmstadt with companies and research institutions from Silicon Valley, Singapore and Bahia, Brazil.
In a competition, the Federal Association for Information Technology, Telecommunications and New Media awarded Darmstadt the title of Digital City in 2017. This victory is intended to turn Darmstadt into a digital model city. In 2016, the Federal Ministry of Finance decided to make the region around Darmstadt the pre-eminent hub for the digital transformation of the economy.
According to a study by the auditing firm Ernst & Young from 2018, 24% of all Fintechs in Germany have settled in the Rhine-Main-Neckar region, with Frankfurt being considered the centre. This makes the Rhine-Main-Neckar region one of the most important locations for the fintech industry in Germany.
According to a study from 2013, the Rhine-Main region has the best cluster in Germany in the financial and consulting industry.
According to the German Research Foundation (DFG), the Technische Universität Darmstadt (TU Darmstadt) is one of the best universities in Germany in terms of research in computer science and the University of Mainz in the natural sciences. According to the report of the German Research Foundation (DFG) from 2018, in the period under review from 2014 to 2016 the TU Darmstadt received the highest number of competitive grants in the field of computer science and the University of Mainz the highest number of competitive grants in the natural sciences. In a competitive selection process, the DFG selects the best research projects from researchers at universities and research institutes and finances them. The ranking is thus regarded as an indicator of the quality of research. In a nationwide competition by the Federal Ministry of Economics and Energy, the Technische Universität Darmstadt was honoured as founding university.
Resident universities
Technische Universität Darmstadt
University of Frankfurt
University of Mannheim
University of Mainz
University of Applied Sciences Mainz
Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences
Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences
RheinMain University of Applied Sciences
Technische Universität Kaiserslautern
University of Applied Sciences Worms
The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology is not located directly in the IT-Cluster Rhine-Main-Neckar, but is adjacent to it and has nevertheless contributed to its development.
Resident companies (selection)
SAP
Software AG
DE-CIX
Merck Group
Microsoft Germany
Oracle Germany
IBM Germany
Rakuten Kobo Inc. Germany
Nemetschek
Airbus
Opel
Accenture
Capgemini
Computer Sciences Corporation
Crytek
Fujitsu Semiconductor Europe
Isra Vision
Kalypso Media
MAXON
Schott AG
Singulus Technologies
T-Systems
Terma A/S
TrekStor
United Internet
Resident research institutes (selection)
German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence
GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research
European Space Operations Centre
European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites
ATHENE
Center for IT Security, Privacy and Accountability
See also
Silicon Saxony
German Silicon Valley (disambiguation)
References
Information technology places
Rhine-Neckar
Industry in Germany
Economy of Hesse |
13150864 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josh%20Klinghoffer | Josh Klinghoffer | Josh Adam Klinghoffer (born October 3, 1979) is an American musician best known for being the guitarist for the rock band Red Hot Chili Peppers from 2009 to 2019, with whom he recorded two studio albums, I'm with You (2011) and The Getaway (2016), and the b-sides compilation, I'm Beside You (2013) and as of 2021 a touring member of Pearl Jam. Klinghoffer took the place of his friend and frequent collaborator John Frusciante in 2009, after a period as a touring member. Klinghoffer was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with the Red Hot Chili Peppers in 2012, becoming the Hall of Fame's youngest-ever living inductee at the time, at age 32, passing Stevie Wonder, who was 38 when he was inducted.
In 2021, Klinghoffer joined Pearl Jam in a touring and session capacity, performing guitar, additional percussion and backing vocals on their tour in support of Gigaton (2020). That same year he joined frontman Eddie Vedder's solo band, the Earthlings, alongside his former Red Hot Chili Peppers bandmate Chad Smith.
A multi-instrumentalist, Klinghoffer also fronts the alternative rock band Dot Hacker, a group made up of former touring members of Gnarls Barkley. He is also a former member of the bands Ataxia, Warpaint and The Bicycle Thief. Klinghoffer most commonly plays guitar or drums, and sings backup as well as lead vocals. He has also both recorded and toured as a session musician with notable artists including PJ Harvey, Beck, the Butthole Surfers, Vincent Gallo, Sparks, Golden Shoulders and Cate Le Bon. Klinghoffer also releases solo materials under the pseudonym of Pluralone, originally a working title for the group Dot Hacker.
He has released three solo albums, To Be One with You (2019), I Don't Feel Well (2020) and This Is the Show (2022) under the name Pluralone.
Life and career
Klinghoffer was born on October 3, 1979 in Los Angeles, California. Klinghoffer took drum lessons when he was nine, and taught himself guitar and keyboards.
Early career and The Bicycle Thief (1995–2001)
Dropping out of formal education at the age of 15, Klinghoffer became involved in performing and recording music in Los Angeles at an early age. Klinghoffer describes himself at this time as "[the] little music dork who lived around the corner, dropped out of high school, and was just playing guitar all day long." In 1997, at the age of seventeen, Klinghoffer joined The Bicycle Thief, the then-current project from former Thelonious Monster frontman Bob Forrest. Red Hot Chili Peppers vocalist Anthony Kiedis noted that "Bob [Forrest] has always had a very keen sensibility about finding extremely talented and down-to-earth people who just want to get to a kitchen and write a song." The band's subsequent studio album, You Come and Go Like a Pop Song, marked Klinghoffer's first recording experience. Regarding bandmate Forrest's notorious drug addiction, which arguably stalled Thelonious Monster's commercial success, Klinghoffer stated at this time that he: "Pretty much had enough confidence in myself to know that I wasn't gonna be 'the next Bob Forrest'." It was during the recording of Bicycle Thief album that Josh first met John Frusciante, who came in to record a guitar solo. The two eventually began to hang out and listen to music together at Frusciante's home.
In late 1999, The Bicycle Thief opened for Red Hot Chili Peppers, as the latter toured in support of their seventh studio album, Californication.
John Frusciante and Ataxia (2002–2004)
Klinghoffer and the Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante began writing together in 2002, with the hopes of recording and releasing an album under a band name. This album was eventually released as a John Frusciante solo release in 2004, entitled Shadows Collide with People. Regarding this decision, Frusciante stated:
During the first six months of 2004, Klinghoffer continued to assist Frusciante in the studio. Klinghoffer's drums, bass, vocals, keyboards, and/or guitar can be heard on the full-length albums The Will to Death, Inside of Emptiness, and in 2009's The Empyrean. 2004's A Sphere in the Heart of Silence is also credited to both musicians, and features several tracks with Klinghoffer on vocals, lead guitar, synthesizers and sequencing. He plays drums along with Frusciante and Fugazi bassist Joe Lally in Automatic Writing and AW II, under the name Ataxia.
Frusciante commented on his relationship with Klinghoffer in 2004 stating: "He's simply a very talented person and has been a very close friend for the past four years. He's one of the very few people who I really like to spend a lot of time with. In many respects he's the person who is closest to me, and with whom I can speak honestly about everything. His opinion is very important to me and I value it a lot."
In 2004, Klinghoffer also appeared on the Thelonious Monster album, California Clam Chowder.
Golden Shoulders (2002–present)
In addition to infrequent live appearances with the band, Klinghoffer appeared on Golden Shoulders' first two albums, 2002's Let My Burden Be and 2004's Friendship Is Deep, playing bass guitar. He returned to play bass guitar, drums, electric guitar, mellotron, organ, and synthesizer on 2009's Get Reasonable, and electric guitar and piano on 2019's Could This Be the End.
Gnarls Barkley (2006–2008)
Klinghoffer was a touring and session musician for Gnarls Barkley. Klinghoffer appeared on the band's second album, 2008's The Odd Couple and was part of the band's touring lineup to support their first two studio albums which also included an opening slot for the Red Hot Chili Peppers on their Stadium Arcadium tour, a tour Klinghoffer would eventually join as a backing musician in 2007.
Dot Hacker (2008–present)
Klinghoffer founded his own band, Dot Hacker, in 2008, where he holds the position of primary songwriter, singer, rhythm guitarist and pianist. The group is made up of former touring musicians for Gnarls Barkley. In 2012, they released their first full-length album, Inhibition. The title track to Inhibition was first played in a Bob Forrest radio show. A previously unreleased track, "Rewire", is also included in the digital-only 4-song Dot Hacker EP.
Dot Hacker released a two-album series in 2014, with 'How's Your Process (Work)' being released on July 1, 2014, and the second album, 'How's Your Process (Play)' being released on October 7, 2014. The band has played at The Chapel, San Francisco in July 2014 and are due to play in Los Angeles in August 2014. The band announced plans to play Tokyo in February 2015 in support of the two albums. This will be their first time performing outside of the United States. Dot Hacker released their third album, N°3, on January 20, 2017.
Red Hot Chili Peppers (2007–2019)
In 2007, Klinghoffer played with Red Hot Chili Peppers on the final few legs of their Stadium Arcadium tour, playing additional guitar, backing vocals, and keyboard parts alongside the band. His first show with the band took place on March 12, 2007 at the Cox Convention Center Arena in Oklahoma City. This tour would ultimately be John Frusciante's last with the band, and Klinghoffer's first. On May 8, 2009, amidst confusion as to whether Frusciante still remained within Red Hot Chili Peppers, Klinghoffer, Anthony Kiedis, Flea, Chad Smith, Ron Wood and Ivan Neville performed under the name The Insects at a MusiCares in honor of Kiedis's commitment to helping those struggling with addiction and recovery.
In 2009, the Chili Peppers ended a two-year hiatus, and were joined by Klinghoffer in the studio to begin work on their tenth album, I'm with You. At the time, unbeknownst to the public, Frusciante had already quit the band earlier that year without announcing his departure. In January 2010, Klinghoffer performed with the band for the first time as their lead guitarist at a MusiCares tribute event to Neil Young for a performance of Young's "A Man Needs a Maid." It was later revealed he would permanently replace Frusciante as guitarist. Klinghoffer was officially named the replacement for John Frusciante in early 2010. Regarding his entry into the band, Klinghoffer notes, "I've always been attracted to the idea of a tight-knit unit, a band of family, a brotherhood. Since my earliest memory, they always seemed like a band with a lot of love for each other."
In May 2010, Klinghoffer along with Flea performed the United States national anthem at a Lakers home playoff game during the NBA Western Conference Finals series against the Phoenix Suns.
After eleven months of writing and rehearsing, the Chili Peppers began recording a new album, I'm with You, on September 13, 2010. Klinghoffer also sang, wrote music and played keyboards on the album. Recording was completed on March 18, 2011 and the album was released on August 29, 2011. The album's first single was "The Adventures of Rain Dance Maggie".
In 2011, Klinghoffer wrote and performed the original score for the documentary Bob and the Monster. Klinghoffer also appears in the documentary, which is based on the life and career of musician and drug counselor Bob Forrest. Klinghoffer was said to have recorded on at least one track on former Jane's Addiction bassist Eric Avery's second solo album, however LIFE.TIME. did not include it. On July 10, 2011, Klinghoffer appeared at the 2011 School of Rock's Rock the House Tour which also featured Keith Morris and Page Hamilton. Klinghoffer joined the School of Rock kids on stage to perform Red Hot Chili Peppers songs "Dani California" and "Give It Away". This was the first time he performed any of the Chili Peppers' songs live since officially joining the band as their guitarist.
In April 2012, Klinghoffer was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. At 32 years of age, Klinghoffer is the youngest artist ever inducted, surpassing Stevie Wonder, who was 38 when he was inducted.
In January 2015, Klinghoffer returned to the studio with the Chili Peppers to begin work on their eleventh studio album which would be produced by Gnarls Barkley's Danger Mouse. Recording was put on hold the following month when bassist Flea suffered an injury during a skiing trip. Production resumed in August 2015 and The Getaway was released on June 17, 2016 which was followed by an extensive world tour that concluded in October 2017.
Work on Klinghoffer's album To Be One With You was announced in September 2018, with plans to release it sometime in 2019. However, the recording was delayed due to the Woolsey Fire.
On November 2, 2019, the band performed a charity event at the Silverlake Conservatory of Music in Los Angeles, CA. This would be the band's final show with Klinghoffer.
On December 15, 2019 it was announced via an Instagram post that Josh was “parting ways” with the band after ten years, and that John Frusciante would be rejoining the band. “Josh is a beautiful musician who we respect and love. We are deeply grateful for our time with him, and the countless gifts he shared with us. We also announce, with great excitement and full hearts, that John Frusciante is rejoining our group. Thank you." the band's statement read.
In an interview released on January 18, 2020 by Ultimate Guitar, Klinghoffer spoke briefly for the first time about his departure from the band. Klinghoffer said that he couldn't go into detail about his departure but when asked if there was any hard feelings between him, the band or Frusciante he responded by saying "I don't think so. Not from me."
Klinghoffer on January 23, 2020 gave an interview with Marc Maron on the WTF with Marc Maron podcast where, for the first time, he discussed in detail his firing from the band. Klinghoffer described the meeting with the band as being "really sweet" and that “I rode my bike over [to Flea’s house]. They just said, 'We’ll get right to it. We’ve decided to ask John to come back to the band' And I just sat there quiet for a second and I said, ‘I’m not surprised.’ And the only thing I could think to say was, ‘I wish I could have done something with you guys, musically or creatively, that would have made this an absolute impossibility.” Klinghoffer said that “It’s absolutely John’s place to be in that band. So that’s why I’m happy for him, I’m happy that he’s back with them.” The news of his firing did however come as a “complete shock but not a surprise” as he had known Frusciante had been jamming with Flea in recent months and that Anthony Kiedis was also recently in contact with him. “John and Flea have a musical language. I’ll never be able to contend with the history him and John had.” Klinghoffer also discussed Frusciante's departure in 2009 saying “We had been friends and working together. When they decided they wanted to carry on and he maintained he was sort of done with it, and they asked me to do it, I think he was really surprised that they were going to carry on without him… It was sort of a strange position I was holding.” Klinghoffer maintained that he was fine with the decision and there was "no animosity" between him and the band. “If John coming back had happened five years ago, it would have been hard for me, temporally, to weigh [my contributions] against what they had. Now, after 10 years, two tours, and almost three albums of writing, I’m really proud of what I did with them. I feel like we did create something.”
On January 31, 2020, Klinghoffer was interviewed by Rolling Stone and opened up much more about his firing. Klinghoffer said "I love those guys deeply. I never saw myself as deserving to be there over John." He further discussed the moments when he found out he was being fired saying "It was mostly Flea talking. Anthony didn’t say much. But I can see in his eyes that it was a very painful decision. And I think of Anthony as a very tender and supportive person. We all hugged and Chad texted me before I even got home. He was really heartbroken about the whole thing because Chad and I are very good friends." Klinghoffer said that he was unaware of the band's statement on his firing and said "I was totally surprised. And it does look exactly like a death announcement." Klinghoffer also discussed the two albums he recorded while in the band saying "I’m not particularly fond of the two records. I liked the songs and I think we wrote some really cool songs together, but I’m such a pain in the ass. Rick Rubin was the producer [on I’m With You]. And the reason why I didn’t want to work with him the second time [the band was in talks for Rubin to produce the new album] was because I felt like those four had a relationship and I was the odd man out."
As Pluralone (2019–present)
On August 16, 2019, Klinghoffer released his first solo single "Io Sono Quel Che Sono B/W Menina Mulher Da Pele Preta" under the name Pluralone. The single was made available on vinyl on August 30, 2019. The album featured two covers of non-English songs; "Io Sono Quel Che Sono" is a cover of Italian singer Mina, and "Menina Mulher Da Pele Preta" is by Brazilian singer Jorge Ben. Klinghoffer performed all instruments and vocals across these two tracks, with album art by Dot Hacker partner Eric Gardner.
Klinghoffer released a follow-up album titled To Be One with You on November 22, 2019 under the name Pluralone. The album features guest appearances from Flea and Red Hot Chili Peppers alum Jack Irons. Members of Klinghoffer's band Dot Hacker also appeared along with former Jane's Addiction bassist Eric Avery.
His live debut as a solo artist was going to be opening shows to Pearl Jam as part of the North American leg of Gigaton Tour. The tour dates were scheduled to begin on March 18, 2020 but were postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with an intent to reschedule at a later date.
On August 21, 2020, Klinghoffer performed the Clash's "Rudie Can't Fail" during A Song for Joe: Celebrating the Life of Joe Strummer, a live stream tribute to Joe Strummer on what would have been his 68th birthday.
On September 22, 2020, the release of his second album as Pluralone, I Don't Feel Well, was announced; as a preview the song "The Night Won't Scare Me" was released on digital platforms. The album will be released in vinyl (with a limited edition gold vinyl), CD and digital.
Pearl Jam (2021–present)
Klinghoffer made his debut with Pearl Jam as a multi-instrumentalist touring musician once the band resumed performing live at the Sea.Hear.Now Festival on September 18, 2021.
His involvement with the band, particularly to help flesh out the live versions of songs from Pearl Jam's new album Gigaton, had initially been planned for the band's 2020 tour that was eventually postponed due to the pandemic. He also performed in the recordings of Eddie Vedder’s album Earthling and as a member of Eddie Vedder’s backing band, The Earthlings, at The Ohana Festival in Dana Point, CA, and toured with them in February 2022.
Instruments and sound
Guitars
Klinghoffer has used a wide variety of instruments over the course of his career, but he generally prefers Fender Stratocasters.
Currently, he takes these guitars on tour:
"Dashiell", a sunburst 1960 Stratocaster
"Chick", a sunburst 1959 Stratocaster
"Gus", a black 1974 Stratocaster with a hardtail bridge
"Monty", a pink Fender Custom Shop Master Built Stratocaster
A white Fender Custom Shop Stratocaster with a gold pickguard
A sunburst 1967 Telecaster, a gift from John Frusciante
A black 1974 Starcaster tuned to E-flat
"White Chicken", a white semi-hollow Fender Custom Shop one-off
A sunburst 1965 Firebird VII
A sunburst 1966 Firebird V-12
Klinghoffer has also previously used:
Chad Smith's tobacco sunburst 1963 Stratocaster
A black 1966 Stratocaster with a 1968 neck
A white Gretsch White Penguin
An early 1970s Gibson ES-335
A 'custom color' 1964 Fender Jaguar
A burnt orange Fender Coronado 12-string
A "Fool's Telemaster" (Telecaster/Jazzmaster hybrid)
A late 1970s soviet electric guitar Ural 650A
Effects
Klinghoffer regularly changes his effects setup, but as of early 2017, his pedal board consists of:
Catalinbread CSIDMAN glitch/stutter delay
Electro-Harmonix Deluxe Memory Man
Holy Grail Nano
Death by Audio Interstellar Overdriver
Xotic Effects EP Booster
Boss DM-2 delay
Boss DD-3 delay
Boss DD-6 delay
Boss VB-2 vibrato
Boss CE-2 chorus
Boss RV-5 reverb
Boss DS-2 distortion
Boss FS-5L footswitch
Tone Bender MK 1.5
Klon Centaur
Robot Pedal Factory Brain Freeze filter
Electro-Harmonix B9 Organ Machine
Ibanez AF201 auto filter
BS10 Bass Stack stomps
Xotic Effects SP Compressor
Wampler Tumnus
JHS Firefly Fuzz
Boss SP-1 Spectrum parametric EQ
Line 6 FM4 Filter Modeler
EHX Cathedral
Electro-Harmonix Memory Boy
EarthQuaker Devices Dispatch Master
Boss PS-3 Pitch Shifter/Delay
Electro-Harmonix Holy Grail Reverb
Misty Cave Echo
Amplifiers
As of early 2017, Josh Klinghoffer uses two amplifiers for touring – a 1970s Marshall Major for his low end, and a Fender Tone-Master for his high end.
Tours
The Bicycle Thief (2000) – guitar
Vincent Gallo (2001) – guitar, bass, piano
Butthole Surfers (2001) – guitar
Jon Brion (2002) – guitar
Beck (2003) – guitar
Golden Shoulders (2003) – bass
PJ Harvey (2004) – guitar, drums
Sparks (2006–2008) – guitar
Gnarls Barkley (2006–2008) – guitar, synthesiser, vocals
Red Hot Chili Peppers (2007, official member 2009–2019) – guitar, vocals, synthesiser, drums, percussion
Pearl Jam (2021–present) - guitar, vocals, percussion
Discography
as Josh Klinghoffer
Bob and the Monster Original Score (2013)
as Pluralone
Io Sono Quel Che Sono b/w Menina Mulher Da Pele Preta (2019)
To Be One With You (2019)
You Don't Know What You're Doing b/w Overflowing (2020)
Obscene b/w Fairy Tale (2020)
Nowhere I Am b/w Directrix (2020)
I Don't Feel Well (2020)
Mother Nature (EP) (2021)
Stretch the Truth b/w Green & Gold (digital 2021/7" 2022)
Wile b/w Remembered (digital 2021/7" 2022)
Across the Park b/w Sevens (digital 2021/7" 2022)
This Is The Show (2022)
with Dot Hacker
Dot Hacker EP (2012)
Inhibition (2012)
How's Your Process? (Work) (2014)
How's Your Process? (Play) (2014)
N°3 (2017)
Divination b/w Divination (Pre-production) (2021)
Neon Arrow b/w Rewire (2021)
with Chad Smith
"Jeepster/Monolith" (2019) (Record Store Day exclusive 7")
with Red Hot Chili Peppers
I'm with You (2011)
Red Hot Chili Peppers Live: I'm with You (2011)
Official Bootlegs (2011-2018)
2011 Live EP (2012)
Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Covers EP (2012)
I'm with You Sessions (2012–2013)
I'm Beside You (2013)
The Getaway (2016)
Live in Paris EP (2016)
with John Frusciante
Shadows Collide With People (2004)
The Will to Death (2004)
Automatic Writing as Ataxia (2004)
Inside of Emptiness (2004)
A Sphere in the Heart of Silence (2004) (credited to both Frusciante and Klinghoffer)
AW II as Ataxia (2007)
The Empyrean (2009)
with Bob Forrest
You Come and Go Like a Pop Song as The Bicycle Thief (1999)
California Clam Chowder as Thelonious Monster (2004)
Modern Folk and Blues: Wednesday as Bob Forrest (2006)
Rare as The Bicycle Thief (2014)
Birthday Cake Rarities as The Bicycle Thief (2020)
Oh That Monster as Thelonious Monster (2020)
with Golden Shoulders
Let My Burden Be (2002)
Friendship Is Deep (2004)
Get Reasonable (2009)
Could This Be the End (2019)
Other appearances
Song Yet to Be Sung – Perry Farrell (2001) "Did You Forget"
Blowback – Tricky (2001)
The Roads Don't Love You – Gemma Hayes (2005)
Dog Problems – The Format (2006)
The Peel Sessions 1991-2004 – PJ Harvey (2006)
A Loveletter to the Transformer / The Diary of Ic Explura Pt. 1 – Toni Oswald (2007)
Nun Lover! – Spleen (2007)
The Deep Blue – Charlotte Hatherley (2007)
Stainless Style – Neon Neon (2008)
The Odd Couple – Gnarls Barkley (2008)
The Blue God – Martina Topley-Bird (2008)
Exquisite Corpse – Warpaint (2008)
Chains – Pocahaunted (2008)
The Silence of Love – Headless Heroes (2008)
The Last Laugh – Joker's Daughter (2009)
"GJ and the PimpKillers" – Bambi Lee Savage (2009)
Pop Killer – Paul Oakenfold (2010)
The Danger of Light – Sophie Hunger (2012)
Emmaar – Tinariwen (2014)
Nothing Without Love – Nate Ruess (2015)
AhHa – Nate Ruess (2015)
Reward - Cate Le Bon (2019)
Earthling – Eddie Vedder (2022)
References
External links
Josh Klinghoffer Fansite
1979 births
Living people
Butthole Surfers members
Red Hot Chili Peppers members
Pearl Jam members
American multi-instrumentalists
American rock guitarists
American male guitarists
Guitarists from Los Angeles
Ataxia (band) members
Warpaint (band) members |
2265038 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caret%20notation | Caret notation | Caret notation is a notation for control characters in ASCII. The notation assigns to control-code 1, sequentially through the alphabet to assigned to control-code 26 (0x1A). For the control-codes outside of the range 1–26, the notation extends to the adjacent, non-alphabetic ASCII characters.
Often a control character can be typed on a keyboard by holding down the and typing the character shown after the caret. The notation is often used to describe keyboard shortcuts even though the control character is not actually used (as in "type ^X to cut the text").
The meaning or interpretation of, or response to the individual control-codes is not prescribed by the caret notation.
Description
The notation consists of a caret () followed by a single character (usually a capital letter). The character has the ASCII code equal to the control code with the bit representing 0x40 reversed. A useful mnemonic, this has the effect of rendering the control codes 1 through 26 as through . Seven ASCII control characters map outside the upper-case alphabet: 0 (NUL) is , 27 (ESC) is , 28 is , 29 is , 30 is , 31 is , and 127 (DEL) is .
Examples are "" for the Windows CR, LF newline pair, and describing the ANSI escape sequence to clear the screen as "".
Only the use of characters in the range of 63–95 ("") is specifically allowed in the notation, but use of lower-case alphabetic characters entered at the keyboard is nearly always allowed – they are treated as equivalent to upper-case letters.
The conversion is a bit-wise exclusive or with 0x40 (64). This is identical to adding 64 modulus 128, or adding 64 and masking with 0x7F. This same operation is done both to convert from a control code to the character to print after the caret, and the reverse to convert a character to a control code. When converting to a control character, except for '?', masking with 0x1F will produce the same result and also turn lower-case into the same control character as upper-case.
There is no corresponding version of the caret notation for control-codes with more than 7 bits such as the C1 control characters from 128–159 (0x80–0x9F). Some programs that produce caret notation show these as backslash and octal ("" through ""). Also see the bar notation used by Acorn Computers, below.
Use in software
Many computer systems allow the user to enter a control character by holding down and pressing the letter used in the caret notation. This is practical, because many control characters (e.g. EOT) cannot be entered directly from a keyboard. Although there are many ways to represent control characters, this correspondence between notation and typing makes the caret notation suitable for many applications.
Usually the need to hold down is avoided, for instance lower-case letters work just like upper-case ones. On a US keyboard layout produces DEL and produces ^@. It is also common for to produce ^@.
Caret notation is used to describe control characters in output by many programs, particularly Unix terminal drivers and text file viewers such as and commands. Although the use of control-codes is somewhat standard, some uses differ from operating system to operating system, or even from program to program. The actual meaning or interpretation of the individual control-codes is not prescribed by the caret notation, and although the ASCII specification does give names to the control-codes, it does not prescribe how software should respond to them.
Alternate notations
The GSTrans string processing API on the operating systems for the Acorn Atom and the BBC Micro, and on RISC OS for the Acorn Archimedes and later machines, use the vertical bar character in place of the caret. For example, (pronounced "control em", the same as for the notation) is the carriage return character, ASCII 13. is the vertical bar character code 124, is character 127 as above and adds 128 to the code of the character that follows it, so is character code .
See also
ASCII control characters
C0 and C1 control codes, which shows the caret notation for all C0 control codes as well as DEL
Control key
Control characters
Character sets |
6369308 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filip%20Trojan | Filip Trojan | Filip Trojan (born 21 February 1983) is a Czech former professional footballer who played as a midfielder. He coaches Dynamo Dresden's U-14 side.
Club career
On 20 March 2009, Trojan signed for the 1. FSV Mainz 05 who had been newly promoted to the Bundesliga.
International career
Trojan represented Czech Republic youth teams.
Honours
Schalke 04
UEFA Intertoto Cup: 2003
References
External links
1983 births
Living people
Czech footballers
Association football midfielders
Czech Republic youth international footballers
Czech Republic under-21 international footballers
FC Schalke 04 players
FC Schalke 04 II players
VfL Bochum players
FC St. Pauli players
1. FSV Mainz 05 players
MSV Duisburg players
Dynamo Dresden players
Bundesliga players
2. Bundesliga players
Czech expatriate footballers
Czech expatriate sportspeople in Germany
Expatriate footballers in Germany |
2175809 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost%20estimation%20in%20software%20engineering | Cost estimation in software engineering | Cost estimation in software engineering is typically concerned with the financial spend on the effort to develop and test the software, this can also include requirements review, maintenance, training, managing and buying extra equipment, servers and software. Many methods have been developed for estimating software costs for a given project.
Methods
Methods for estimation in software engineering include these principles:
Analysis effort method
Parametric Estimating
The Planning Game (from Extreme Programming)
ITK method, also known as Method CETIN
Model Based Cost Engineering (MBCE)
Proxy-based estimating (PROBE) (from the Personal Software Process)
Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT)
Putnam_model, also known as SLIM
PRICE Systems Founders of Commercial Parametric models that estimates the scope, cost, effort and schedule for software projects.
SEER-SEM Parametric Estimation of Effort, Schedule, Cost, Risk. Minimum time and staffing concepts based on Brooks's law
The Use Case Points method (UCP)
Weighted Micro Function Points (WMFP)
Wideband Delphi
Most cost software development estimation techniques involve estimating or measuring software size first and then applying some knowledge of historical of cost per unit of size. Software size is typically sized in SLOC, Function Point or Agile story points.
See also
Software development effort estimation
Software metric
Project management
Cost overrun
Risk
Comparison of development estimation software
External links
Software Estimation chapter from O'Reilly, Applied Software Project Management
Estimating With Use Case Points from Methods & Tools
Definition of Use Case Points method (UCP)
Roy K. Clemmons, Project Estimation With Use Case Points
Estimating techniques throughout the SDLC
COCOMO™ II
Mobile app development estimation tool |
20001873 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MapleSim | MapleSim | MapleSim is a Modelica-based, multi-domain modeling and simulation tool developed by Maplesoft. MapleSim generates model equations, runs simulations, and performs analyses using the symbolic and numeric mathematical engine of Maple. Models are created by dragging-and-dropping components from a library into a central workspace, resulting in a model that represents the physical system in a graphical form.
Maplesoft began development of MapleSim partly in response to a request from Toyota to produce physical modeling tools to aid in their new model-based development process.
The MapleSim library includes many components that can be connected together to model a system. These components are from areas of science and engineering such as electrical, mechanical, and thermal engineering fields. MapleSim also includes traditional signal flow components that can be combined with other physical components in the workspace. Thus, MapleSim is able to combine causal modeling methods with acausal techniques that do not require specification of signal flow direction between all components.
The use of Maple underneath MapleSim allows all of the system equations to be generated and simplified automatically. The user can explore their system in various ways, such as viewing the equations behind their model and performing parameter optimization. The use of the Maple mathematics engine also allows for MapleSim to incorporate such features as units management and solving of high-order DAEs that are typically encountered in complex acausal models.
Release history
Add-on libraries & tools
MapleSim Connector
ANSI C base Simulink S-function code generation
MapleSim Connector for FMI
FMU generation based on FMI Standard
B&R MapleSim Connector
Integration tool for B&R Automation Studio and MapleSim models
MapleSim Connector for LabVIEW and NI Veristand
Code generation for NI LabVIEW Software
MapleSim Connector for JMAG-RT
Import JMAG-RT file into MapleSim model
MapleSim CAD Toolbox
Import various CAD models into MapleSim then automatically recreating the model components in MapleSim
MapleSim Tire Library
Industry standard tire component library which includes Fiala, Calspan and Pacejka 2002 types.
MapleSim Driveline Library
Component library for powertrain modeling in automotive engineering such as differential, wheels and road loads.
MapleSim Battery Library
Supports electrochemical and equivalent-circuit models for battery system modeling
MapleSim Hydraulics Library from Modelon
Third-party version for Hydraulics component models
MapleSim Pneumatics Library from Modelon
Third-party version for Pneumatics component models
MapleSim Engine Dynamics Library from Modelon
Third-party version of Engine Dynamics Library which can be used for modeling and simulation for combustion engine in automotive applications.
MapleSim Heat Transfer Library from CYBERNET
System-level simulation for Heat Transfer effects in MapleSim model based on automatically generated discretization approach.
MapleSim Control Design Toolbox
Provides a set of commands for controller design such as PID working with plant models designed by MapleSim. These commands are used in Maple.
MapleSim Explorer
Viewer version of MapleSim that can run simulation of MapleSim models.
MapleSim Server
Web deployment option that can serve MapleSim models on web browser or tablets.
See also
AMESim
APMonitor
Computer simulation
Control engineering
Dymola
EcosimPro
EMSO simulator
Hardware-in-the-loop simulation
Maple (software)
Mechatronics
Model-based design
Modelica
SimulationX
Vehicle dynamics
Wolfram SystemModeler
References
External links
MapleSim home page
MapleSim Model Gallery
List of research papers that Maplesoft products are used
Maplesoft
Plotting software
Mathematical optimization software
Computer algebra system software for Linux
Computer algebra system software for Windows
Computer algebra system software for MacOS
Cross-platform software
Simulation software |
978101 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallpaper%20%28computing%29 | Wallpaper (computing) | A wallpaper or background (also known as a desktop wallpaper, desktop background, desktop picture or desktop image on computers) is a digital image (photo, drawing etc.) used as a decorative background of a graphical user interface on the screen of a computer, smartphone or other electronic device. On a computer, wallpapers are generally used on the desktop, while on a mobile phone they serve as the background for the home screen. Though most devices come with a default background image, modern devices usually allow users to manually change the background image.
The term "wallpaper" was used in Microsoft Windows before Windows XP (where it is called the "desktop background"), while macOS refers to it as "desktop picture". On older systems which allowed small repeated patterns to be set as background images, the term desktop pattern was used.
History
The X Window System was one of the earliest systems to include support for an arbitrary image as wallpaper via the xsetroot program, which at least as early as the X10R3 release in 1985 could tile the screen with any solid color or any binary-image X BitMap file. In 1989, a free software program called was released that allowed an arbitrary color GIF image to be used as wallpaper, and in the same year the free xloadimage program was released which could display a variety of image formats (including color images in Sun Rasterfile format) as the desktop background. Subsequently, a number of programs were released that added wallpaper support for additional image formats and other features, such as the xpmroot program (released in 1993 as part of fvwm) and the xv software (released in 1994).
The original Macintosh operating system only allowed a selection of 8×8-pixel binary-image tiled patterns; the ability to use small color patterns was added in System 5 in 1987. Mac OS 8 in 1997 was the first Macintosh version to include built-in support for using arbitrary images as desktop pictures, rather than small repeating patterns.
Windows 3.0 in 1990 was the first version of Microsoft Windows to come with support for wallpaper customization, and used the term "wallpaper" for this feature. Although Windows 3.0 only came with 7 small patterns (2 black-and-white and 5 16-color), the user could supply other images in the BMP file format with up to 8-bit color (although the system was theoretically capable of handling 24-bit color images, it did so by dithering them to an 8-bit palette) to provide similar wallpaper features otherwise lacking in those systems. A wallpaper feature was added in a beta release of OS/2 2.0 in 1991.
Due to the widespread use of personal computers, some wallpapers have become immensely recognizable and gained iconic cultural status. Bliss, the default wallpaper of Microsoft Windows XP has become the most viewed photograph of the 2000s.
Animated backgrounds
Animated backgrounds (sometimes referred to as live backgrounds or dynamic backgrounds) refers to wallpapers which feature a moving image or a 2D / 3D scene as an operating system background rather than a static image, it may also refer to wallpapers being cycled in a playlist, often with certain transition effects. Some operating systems, such as Android, provide native support for animated wallpapers.
Microsoft
Windows
Modern Windows systems can be configured to cycle through pictures from a folder at regular intervals. Windows does not natively support animated backgrounds, however, third-party software can be installed to have full support for placing animated images, video files, 2D or 3D scenes, and web pages as wallpapers. Similar functionality could be found in the Active Desktop feature of Windows 98 and later versions.
Google
Android
Live wallpapers have been introduced in Android Eclair to provide native support for animated wallpapers. From a technical point of view, live wallpapers are software applications which provide a moving background image and may allow for user interaction or utilize other hardware and software features within the device (accelerometer, GPS, network access, etc.).
Apple
macOS
macOS has built-in support, via the Desktop & Screen Saver panel in its System Preferences, for cycling through a folder collection of images on a timed interval or when logging in or waking from sleep. Since macOS Mojave, the user can also select a "Dynamic Desktop" that automatically updates to visually match the time of the day.
Additionally, macOS has the native ability to run a screen saver on the desktop; in this configuration, the screen saver appears beneath the desktop icons in place of the system wallpaper. However, macOS does not come with a built-in interface to do this; it must be done through Terminal commands or various third-party applications.
iOS
Dynamically animated backgrounds have also been introduced in iOS 7 and later versions, however they are restricted to the ones provided by Apple. Jailbroken iOS devices can download other dynamic backgrounds.
Linux / Unix
GNOME
GNOME 2 also can be set to cycle through pictures from a folder at regular intervals, similarly to Windows 7.
KDE
KDE version 4 and later provide various dynamic wallpapers, including a slideshow, and other options provided by plugins, such as fractals and Earth map.
Enlightenment
Enlightenment v17 supports image sequences, animated and interactive desktop backgrounds in its default configuration.
See also
Wallpaper group
References
Graphical user interface elements
Desktop environments |
39646150 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powernode%209080 | Powernode 9080 | The PowerNode 9080 was a dual processor 32-bit Superminicomputer produced by Fort Lauderdale, Florida based electronics company Gould Electronics in the 1980s. Its UTX/32 4.3BSD Berkeley Unix-based operating system was one of the first multi-processor shared memory implementations of Unix, although the processors operated in a Master-Slave configuration with a Mutual Exclusion (MutEx) lock on all Kernel IO resources. Machines could be configured for either single or dual processor operation.
The machine itself was housed in a number of 19 inch rack cabinets and the main CPUs consisted of 18 boards of ECL logic. The resulting system was capable of benchmark performances up to 20 MIPS, a very high rating at the time. The PowerNode systems were a very close relative of Gould's real time computer systems running their proprietary MPX real time operating system. Only about two boards differed between the Unix-running PowerNode machines and the MPX-running real time machines. The most significant of these was the Memory Management board which had virtual memory mapping abilities in the Unix-variant but not in the real-time variant.
A smaller model of the PowerNode was also available in the form of the Gould PowerNode 6032 and 6040 systems which achieved a 7 MIPS performance similar to the contemporary DEC VAX-11/780 and VAX-11/785.
The PowerNode series was replaced by the Gould NP-1 series. When Gould was purchased by Nippon Mining, the computer division was divested on the instructions of the US Government for National Security concerns and became part of Encore Computer.
Minicomputers |
3050716 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesh%20generation | Mesh generation | Mesh generation is the practice of creating a mesh, a subdivision of a continuous geometric space into discrete geometric and topological cells.
Often these cells form a simplicial complex.
Usually the cells partition the geometric input domain.
Mesh cells are used as discrete local approximations of the larger domain. Meshes are created by computer algorithms, often with human guidance through a GUI , depending on the complexity of the domain and the type of mesh desired.
A typical goal is to create a mesh that accurately captures the input domain geometry, with high-quality (well-shaped) cells, and without so many cells as to make subsequent calculations intractable.
The mesh should also be fine (have small elements) in areas that are important for the subsequent calculations.
Meshes are used for rendering to a computer screen and for physical simulation such as finite element analysis or computational fluid dynamics. Meshes are composed of simple cells like triangles because, e.g., we know how to perform operations such as finite element calculations (engineering) or ray tracing (computer graphics) on triangles, but we do not know how to perform these operations directly on complicated spaces and shapes such as a roadway bridge. We can simulate the strength of the bridge, or draw it on a computer screen, by performing calculations on each triangle and calculating the interactions between triangles.
A major distinction is between structured and unstructured meshing. In structured meshing the mesh is a regular lattice, such as an array, with implied connectivity between elements. In unstructured meshing, elements may be connected to each other in irregular patterns, and more complicated domains can be captured. This page is primarily about unstructured meshes.
While a mesh may be a triangulation, the process of meshing is distinguished from point set triangulation in that meshing includes the freedom to add vertices not present in the input. "Facetting" (triangulating) CAD models for drafting has the same freedom to add vertices, but the goal is to represent the shape accurately using as few triangles as possible and the shape of individual triangles is not important. Computer graphics renderings of textures and realistic lighting conditions use meshes instead.
Many mesh generation software is coupled to a CAD system defining its input, and simulation software for taking its output. The input can vary greatly but common forms are Solid modeling, Geometric modeling, NURBS, B-rep, STL or a point cloud.
Terminology
The terms "mesh generation," "grid generation," "meshing," " and "gridding," are often used interchangeably, although strictly speaking the latter two are broader and encompass mesh improvement: changing the mesh with the goal of increasing the speed or accuracy of the numerical calculations that will be performed over it. In computer graphics rendering, and mathematics, a mesh is sometimes referred to as a tessellation.
Mesh faces (cells, entities) have different names depending on their dimension and the context in which the mesh will be used. In finite elements, the highest-dimensional mesh entities are called "elements," "edges" are 1D and "nodes" are 0D. If the elements are 3D, then the 2D entities are "faces." In computational geometry, the 0D points are called vertices. Tetrahedra are often abbreviated as "tets"; triangles are "tris", quadrilaterals are "quads" and hexahedra (topological cubes) are "hexes."
Techniques
Many meshing techniques are built on the principles of the Delaunay triangulation, together with rules for adding vertices, such as Ruppert's algorithm.
A distinguishing feature is that an initial coarse mesh of the entire space is formed, then vertices and triangles are added.
In contrast, advancing front algorithms start from the domain boundary, and add elements incrementally filling up the interior.
Hybrid techniques do both. A special class of advancing front techniques creates thin boundary layers of elements for fluid flow.
In structured mesh generation the entire mesh is a lattice graph, such as a regular grid of squares. Structured mesh generation for regular grids is an entire field itself, with mathematical techniques applied to ensure high-polynomial-order grid lines follow the solution space smoothly and accurately.
In block-structured meshing, the domain is divided into large subregions, each of which is a structured mesh.
Some direct methods start with a block-structured mesh and then move the mesh to conform to the input; see Automatic Hex-Mesh Generation based on polycube. Another direct method is to cut the structured cells by the domain boundary; see sculpt based on Marching cubes.
Some types of meshes are much more difficult to create than others. Simplicial meshes tend to be easier than cubical meshes. An important category is generating a hex mesh conforming to a fixed quad surface mesh; a research subarea is studying the existence and generation of meshes of specific small configurations, such as the tetragonal trapezohedron. Because of the difficulty of this problem, the existence of combinatorial hex meshes has been studied apart from the problem of generating good geometric realizations. While known algorithms generate simplicial meshes with guaranteed minimum quality, such guarantees are rare for cubical meshes, and many popular implementations generate inverted (inside-out) hexes from some inputs.
Meshes are often created in serial on workstations, even when subsequent calculations over the mesh will be done in parallel on super-computers. This is both because of the limitation that most mesh generators are interactive, and because mesh generation runtime is typically insignificant compared to solver time. However, if the mesh is too large to fit in the memory of a single serial machine, or the mesh must be changed (adapted) during the simulation, meshing is done in parallel.
Cell topology
Usually the cells are polygonal or polyhedral and form a mesh that partitions the domain.
Important classes of two-dimensional elements include triangles (simplices) and quadrilaterals (topological squares).
In three-dimensions the most-common cells are tetrahedra (simplices) and hexahedra (topological cubes).
Simplicial meshes may be of any dimension and include triangles (2D) and tetrahedra (3D) as important instances.
Cubical meshes is the pan-dimensional category that includes quads (2D) and hexes (3D). In 3D, 4-sided pyramids and 3-sided prisms appear in conformal meshes of mixed cell type.
Cell dimension
The mesh is embedded in a geometric space that is typically two or three dimensional, although sometimes the dimension is increased by one by adding the time-dimension. Higher dimensional meshes are used in niche contexts. One-dimensional meshes are useful as well. A significant category is surface meshes, which are 2D meshes embedded in 3D to represent a curved surface.
Duality
Dual graphs have several roles in meshing. One can make a polyhedral Voronoi diagram mesh by dualizing a Delaunay triangulation simplicial mesh. One can create a cubical mesh by generating an arrangement of surfaces and dualizing the intersection graph; see spatial twist continuum. Sometimes both the primal mesh and its dual mesh are used in the same simulation; see Hodge star operator. This arises from physics involving divergence and curl (mathematics) operators, such as flux & vorticity or electricity & magnetism, where one variable naturally lives on the primal faces and its counterpart on the dual faces.
Mesh type by use
Three-dimensional meshes created for finite element analysis need to consist of tetrahedra, pyramids, prisms or hexahedra. Those used for the finite volume method can consist of arbitrary polyhedra. Those used for finite difference methods consist of piecewise structured arrays of hexahedra known as multi-block structured meshes.
4-sided pyramids are useful to conformally connect hexes to tets. 3-sided prisms are used for boundary layers conforming to a tet mesh of the far-interior of the object.
Surface meshes are useful in computer graphics where the surfaces of objects reflect light (also subsurface scattering) and a full 3D mesh is not needed. Surface meshes are also used to model thin objects such as sheet metal in auto manufacturing and building exteriors in architecture. High (e.g., 17) dimensional cubical meshes are common in astrophysics and string theory.
Mathematical definition and variants
What is the precise definition of a mesh? There is not a universally-accepted mathematical description that applies in all contexts.
However, some mathematical objects are clearly meshes: a simplicial complex is a mesh composed of simplices.
Most polyhedral (e.g. cubical) meshes are conformal, meaning they have the cell structure of a CW complex, a generalization of a simplicial complex. A mesh need not be simplicial because an arbitrary subset of nodes of a cell is not necessarily a cell: e.g., three nodes of a quad does not define a cell.
However, two cells intersect at cells: e.g. a quad does not have a node in its interior. The intersection of two cells may be several cells: e.g., two quads may share two edges. An intersection being more than one cell is sometimes forbidden and rarely desired; the goal of some mesh improvement techniques (e.g. pillowing) is to remove these configurations. In some contexts, a distinction is made between a topological mesh and a geometric mesh whose embedding satisfies certain quality criteria.
Important mesh variants that are not CW complexes include non-conformal meshes where cells do not meet strictly face-to-face, but the cells nonetheless partition the domain. An example of this is an octree, where an element face may be partitioned by the faces of adjacent elements. Such meshes are useful for flux-based simulations. In overset grids, there are multiple conformal meshes that overlap geometrically and do not partition the domain; see e.g., Overflow, the OVERset grid FLOW solver. So-called meshless or meshfree methods often make use of some mesh-like discretization of the domain, and have basis functions with overlapping support. Sometimes a local mesh is created near each simulation degree-of-freedom point, and these meshes may overlap and be non-conformal to one another.
Implicit triangulations are based on a delta complex: for each triangle the lengths of its edges, and a gluing map between face edges. (please expand)
High-order elements
Many meshes use linear elements, where the mapping from the abstract to realized element is linear, and mesh edges are straight segments.
Higher order polynomial mappings are common, especially quadratic.
A primary goal for higher-order elements is to more accurately represent the domain boundary, although they have accuracy benefits in the interior of the mesh as well.
One of the motivations for cubical meshes is that linear cubical elements have some of the same numerical advantages as quadratic simplicial elements.
In the isogeometric analysis simulation technique, the mesh cells containing the domain boundary use the CAD representation directly instead of a linear or polynomial approximation.
Mesh improvement
Improving a mesh involves changing its discrete connectivity, the continuous geometric position of its cells, or both. For discrete changes, for simplicial elements one swaps edges and inserts/removes nodes. The same kinds of operations are done for cubical (quad/hex) meshes, although there are fewer possible operations and local changes have global consequences. E.g., for a hexahedral mesh, merging two nodes creates cells that are not hexes, but if diagonally-opposite nodes on a quadrilateral are merged and this is propagated into collapsing an entire face-connected column of hexes, then all remaining cells will still be hexes.
In adaptive mesh refinement, elements are split (h-refinement) in areas where the function being calculated has a high gradient.
Meshes are also coarsened, removing elements for efficiency. The multigrid method does something similar to refinement and coarsening to speed up the numerical solve, but without actually changing the mesh.
For continuous changes, nodes are moved, or the higher-dimensional faces are moved by changing the polynomial order of elements. Moving nodes to improve quality is called "smoothing" or "r-refinement" and increasing the order of elements is called "p-refinement." Nodes are also moved in simulations where the shape of objects change over time. This degrades the shape of the elements. If the object deforms enough, the entire object is remeshed and the current solution mapped from the old mesh to the new mesh.
Research community
Practitioners
The field is highly interdisciplinary, with contributions found in mathematics, computer science, and engineering. Meshing R&D is distinguished by an equal focus on discrete and continuous math and computation, as with computational geometry, but in contrast to graph theory (discrete) and numerical analysis (continuous). Mesh generation is deceptively difficult: it is easy for humans to see how to create a mesh of a given object, but difficult to program a computer to make good decisions for arbitrary input a priori. There is an infinite variety of geometry found in nature and man-made objects. Many mesh generation researchers were first users of meshes. Mesh generation continues to receive widespread attention, support and funding because the human-time to create a mesh dwarfs the time to set up and solve the calculation once the mesh is finished. This has always been the situation since numerical simulation and computer graphics were invented, because as computer hardware and simple equation-solving software have improved, people have been drawn to larger and more complex geometric models in a drive for greater fidelity, scientific insight, and artistic expression.
Journals
Meshing research is published in a broad range of journals. This is in keeping with the interdisciplinary nature of the research required to make progress, and also the wide variety of applications that make use of meshes. About 150 meshing publications appear each year across 20 journals, with at most 20 publications appearing in any one journal. There is no journal whose primary topic is meshing. The journals that publish at least 10 meshing papers per year are in bold.
Advances in Engineering Software
American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Journal (AIAAJ)
Algorithmica
Applied Computational Electromagnetics Society Journal
Applied Numerical Mathematics
Astronomy and Computing
Computational Geometry: Theory and Applications
Computer-Aided Design, often including a special issue devoted to extended papers from the IMR (see conferences below)
Computer Aided Geometric Design (CAGD)
Computer Graphics Forum (Eurographics)
Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering
Discrete and Computational Geometry
Engineering with Computers
Finite Elements in Analysis and Design
International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering (IJNME)
International Journal for Numerical Methods in Fluids
International Journal for Numerical Methods in Biomedical Engineering
International Journal of Computational Geometry & Applications
Journal of Computational Physics (JCP)
Journal on Numerical Analysis
Journal on Scientific Computing (SISC)
Transactions on Graphics (ACM TOG)
Transactions on Mathematical Software (ACM TOMS)
Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (IEEE TVCG)
Lecture Notes in Computational Science and Engineering (LNCSE)
Computational Mathematics and Mathematical Physics (CMMP)
Conferences
(Conferences whose primary topic is meshing are in bold.)
Aerospace Sciences Meeting AIAA (15 meshing talks/papers)
Canadian Conference on Computational Geometry CCCG
CompIMAGE: International Symposium Computational Modeling of Objects Represented in Images
Computational Fluid Dynamics Conference AIAA
Computational Fluid Dynamics Conference ECCOMAS
Computational Science & Engineering CS&E
Conference on Numerical Grid Generation ISGG
Eurographics Annual Conference (Eurographics)] (proceedings in Computer Graphics Forum)
Geometric & Physical Modeling SIAM
International Conference on Isogeometric Analysis IGA
International Meshing Roundtable (IMR)
International Symposium on Computational Geometry SoCG
Numerical Geometry, Grid Generation and Scientific Computing (NUMGRID) (proceedings in Lecture Notes in Computational Science and Engineering)
SIGGRAPH (proceedings in ACM Transactions on Graphics)
Symposium on Geometry Processing SGP (Eurographics) (proceedings in Computer Graphics Forum)
World Congress on Engineering
Workshops
Workshops whose primary topic is meshing are in bold.
Conference on Geometry: Theory and Applications CGTA
European Workshop on Computational Geometry EuroCG
Fall Workshop on Computational Geometry
Finite Elements in Fluids FEF
MeshTrends Symposium (in WCCM or USNCCM alternate years)
Polytopal Element Methods in Mathematics and Engineering
Tetrahedron workshop
See also
Delaunay triangulation
Fortune's algorithm
Grid classification
Mesh parameterization
Meshfree methods
Parallel mesh generation
Principles of grid generation
Polygon mesh
Regular grid
Ruppert's algorithm
Stretched grid method
Tessellation
Types of mesh
Unstructured grid
References
.
.
.
CGAL The Computational Geometry Algorithms Library
Jan Brandts, Sergey Korotov, Michal Krizek: "Simplicial Partitions with Applications to the Finite Element Method", Springer Monographs in Mathematics, (2020). url="https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783030556761"
Grid Generation Methods - Liseikin, Vladimir D.
External links
Periodic Table of the Finite Elements
Literature on Mesh Generation
Conferences, Workshops, Summerschools
Mesh generators
Many commercial product descriptions emphasize simulation rather than the meshing technology that enables simulation.
Lists of mesh generators (external):
Free/open source mesh generators
Public domain and commercial mesh generators
ANSA Pre-processor
ANSYS
CD-adapco and Siemens DISW
Comet Solutions
CGAL Computational Geometry Algorithms Library
Mesh generation
2D Conforming Triangulations and Meshes
3D Mesh Generation
CUBIT
Gmsh
Hextreme meshes
MeshLab
MSC Software
Omega_h Tri/Tet Adaptivity
Open FOAM Mesh generation and conversion
Salome Mesh module
TetGen
TetWild
TRIANGLE Mesh generation and Delaunay triangulation
Multi-domain partitioned mesh generators
These tools generate the partitioned meshes required for multi-material finite element modelling.
MDM(Multiple Domain Meshing) generates unstructured tetrahedral and hexahedral meshes for a composite domain made up of heterogeneous materials, automatically and efficiently
QMDM (Quality Multi-Domain Meshing) produces a high quality, mutually consistent triangular surface meshes for multiple domains
QMDMNG, (Quality Multi-Domain Meshing with No Gap), produces a quality meshes with each one a two-dimensional manifold and no gap between two adjacent meshes.
SOFA_mesh_partitioning_tools generates partitioned tetrahedral meshes for multi-material FEM, based on CGAL.
Articles
Another Fine Mesh, MeshTrends Blog, Pointwise
Mesh Generation & Grid Generation on the Web
Mesh Generation group on LinkedIn
Research groups and people
Mesh Generation people on Google Scholar
David Bommes, Computer Graphics Group, University of Bern
David Eppstein's Geometry in Action, Mesh Generation
Jonathan Shewchuk's Meshing and Triangulation in Graphics, Engineering, and Modeling
Scott A. Mitchell
Robert Schneiders
Models and meshes
Useful models (inputs) and meshes (outputs) for comparing meshing algorithms and meshes.
HexaLab has models and meshes that have been published in research papers, reconstructed or from the original paper.
Princeton Shape Benchmark
Shape Retrieval Contest SHREC has different models each year, e.g.,
Shape Retrieval Contest of Non-rigid 3D Watertight Meshes 2011
Thingi10k meshed models from the Thingiverse
CAD models
Modeling engines linked with mesh generation software to represent the domain geometry.
ACIS by Spatial
Open Cascade
Mesh file formats
Common (output) file formats for describing meshes.
NetCDF
Genesis/Exodus
XDMF
VTK/VTU
MEDIT
MED/Salome
Gmsh
ANSYS mesh
OFF
Wavefront OBJ
PLY
STL
meshio can convert between all of the above formats.
Mesh visualizers
Blender
Mesh Viewer
Paraview
Tutorials
Cubit tutorials
Mesh generation people
Mesh generators
Geometric algorithms
Computer-aided design
Triangulation (geometry)
Numerical analysis
Numerical differential equations
Computational fluid dynamics
3D computer graphics |
16713211 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primavera%20Systems | Primavera Systems | Primavera Systems, Inc was a private company providing Project Portfolio Management (PPM) software to help project-intensive organizations identify, prioritize, and select project investments and plan, manage, and control projects and project portfolios of all sizes. On January 1, 2009 Oracle Corporation took legal ownership of Primavera.
History of Primavera Systems, Inc
Corporate
Joel Koppelman, Les Seskin and Dick Faris founded Primavera Systems, Inc. on May 1, 1983. It traded as a private company based in Pennsylvania (USA), developing software for the Project Portfolio Management market. To help expand its product capabilities, Primavera acquired Eagle Ray Software Systems in 1999, Evolve Technologies (a professional services automation vendor) in 2003, ProSight [2][3] (an IT portfolio management software vendor) in 2006, and, in the same year, Pertmaster (a project risk management software vendor).
In 2008 Oracle Corporation acquired Primavera, and turned it into its Primavera Global Business Unit (PGBU).
After a 27-year version life, Oracle ceased sales of the P3 and SureTrak versions on December 31, 2010.
In 2011, co-founder Joel Koppelman announced his retirement; Mike Sicilia, SVP and General Manager, succeeded him. Co-founder Dick Faris has retired in December 2014 as Senior Vice President, Customers.
In 2016, the Primavera Global Business Unit became Oracle Construction and Engineering Global Business Unit (CEGBU) following multiple acquisitions, including Skire (now Primavera Unifier), Instantis (Cloud based Project Portfolio Management) and Textura (a Chicago based company offering contract management and online payment tools for the construction industry).
More recently Australian-based Aconex joined the Construction and Engineering family, offering project controls, collaboration, document management and BIM capabilities.
See also
Primavera (software)
Project Portfolio Management
Project Management
External links
Oracle Construction and Engineering website
Oracle Construction and Engineering blog
References
Oracle software
Project management software
Defunct software companies of the United States
Oracle acquisitions |
14432911 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puppet%20%28software%29 | Puppet (software) | In computing, Puppet is a software configuration management tool which includes its own declarative language to describe system configuration. It is a model-driven solution that requires limited programming knowledge to use.
Puppet is produced by Puppet, Inc, founded by Luke Kanies in 2005. Its primary product, Puppet Enterprise, is a proprietary and closed-source version of its open-source Puppet software. They use Puppet's declarative language to manage stages of the IT infrastructure lifecycle, including the provisioning, patching, configuration, and management of operating system and application components in data centers and cloud infrastructures.
Puppet uses an open-core model; its free-software version was released under version 2 of the GNU General Public License (GPL) until version 2.7.0, and later releases use the Apache License, while Puppet Enterprise uses a proprietary license.
Puppet and Puppet Enterprise operate on multiple Unix-like systems (including Linux, Solaris, BSD, Mac OS X, AIX, HP-UX) and has Microsoft Windows support. Puppet itself is written in Ruby, while Facter is written in C++, and Puppet Server and Puppet DB are written in Clojure.
Design
Puppet is designed to manage the configuration of Unix-like and Microsoft Windows systems declaratively. The user describes system resources and their state, either using Puppet's declarative language or a Ruby DSL (domain-specific language). This information is stored in files called "Puppet manifests". Puppet discovers the system information via a utility called Facter, and compiles the Puppet manifests into a system-specific catalog containing resources and resource dependency, which are applied against the target systems. Any actions taken by Puppet are then reported.
Puppet consists of a custom declarative language to describe system configuration, which can be either applied directly on the system, or compiled into a catalog and distributed to the target system via client–server paradigm (using a REST API), and the agent uses system specific providers to enforce the resource specified in the manifests. The resource abstraction layer enables administrators to describe the configuration in high-level terms, such as users, services and packages without the need to specify OS specific commands (such as rpm, yum, apt).
Puppet is model-driven, requiring limited programming knowledge to use.
It comes in two versions, Puppet Enterprise and Open Source Puppet. In addition to providing functionalities of Open Source Puppet, Puppet Enterprise also provides GUI, API and command line tools for node management.
Architecture
Puppet usually follows client-server architecture. The client is known as an agent and the server is known as the master. For testing and simple configuration, it can also be used as a stand-alone application run from the command line.
Puppet Server is installed on one or more servers, and Puppet Agent is installed on all the machines to be managed. Puppet Agents communicate with the server and fetch configuration instructions. The Agent then applies the configuration on the system and sends a status report to the server. Devices can run Puppet Agent as a daemon, that can be triggered periodically as a cron job or can be run manually whenever needed.
The Puppet programming language is a declarative language that describes the state of a computer system in terms of "resources", which represent underlying network and operating system constructs. The user assembles resources into manifests that describe the desired state of the system. These manifests are stored on the server and compiled into configuration instructions for agents on request.
Puppet resource syntax:
type { 'title':
attribute => value
}
Example resource representing a Unix user:
user { 'harry':
ensure => present,
uid => '1000',
shell => '/bin/bash',
home => '/var/tmp'
}
Puppet allows users to configure systems in a platform-agnostic way by representing operating system concepts as structured data. Rather than specifying the exact commands to perform a system action, the user creates a resource, which Puppet then translates into system-specific instructions which are sent to the machine being configured. For example, if a user wants to install a package on three different nodes, each of which runs a different operating system, they can declare one resource, and Puppet will determine which commands need to be run based on the data obtained from Facter, a program that collects data about the system it is running on, including its operating system, IP address, and some hardware information. Providers on the node use Facter facts and other system details to translate resource types in the catalog into machine instructions that will actually configure the node.
A normal Puppet run has the following stages:
An agent sends facts from Facter to the master.
Puppet builds a graph of the list of resources and their inter-dependencies, representing the order in which they need to be configured, for every client. The master sends the appropriate catalog to each agent node.
The actual state of the system is then configured according to the desired state described in manifest file. If the system is already in the desired state, Puppet will not make any changes, making transactions idempotent.
Finally, the agent sends a report to the master, detailing what changes were made and any errors that occurred.
Vendor
Puppet's vendor Puppet, Inc, is a privately held information technology (IT) automation software company based in Portland, Oregon, USA.
In 2005, Puppet was founded by former CEO Luke Kanies. On Jan. 29, 2019 Yvonne Wassenaar replaced Sanjay Mirchandani as CEO. Wassenaar previously worked at Airware, New Relic and VMware.
In February 2011 Puppet released its first commercial product, Puppet Enterprise, built on its open-source base, with some extra some commercial components. In September 2011, the company released Puppet Enterprise 2.0, which introduced integration with MCollective, acquired by Puppet in 2010, as well as provisioning for virtual machines on Amazon EC2 and VMware. In June 2013, Puppet released Puppet Enterprise 3.0, which features a rewritten orchestration engine.
Puppet purchased the infrastructure automation firm Distelli in September 2017. Puppet rebranded Distelli's VM Dashboard (a continuous integration / continuous delivery product) as Puppet Pipelines for Applications, and K8S Dashboard as Puppet Pipelines for Containers. The products were made generally available in October, 2017.
Puppet released Puppet Discovery, a tool to discover and manipulate resources in hybrid networks, in May 2018. It is Puppet's third stand-alone enterprise product.
In June of 2018 Puppet raised $42 million for a total of $150 million in funding. The round was led by Cisco and included Kleiner Perkins, True Ventures, EDBI, and VMware.
Puppet partners and has technology integrations with VMware, Amazon Web Services, Cisco, OpenStack, Microsoft Azure, Eucalyptus, Rightscale, and Zenoss.
See also
Comparison of open-source configuration management software
References
External links
Official Puppet Labs YouTube Channel
Pulling Strings with Puppet: Configuration Management Made Easy ()
Pro Puppet ()
Learning Puppet 4 ()
Companies based in Portland, Oregon
American companies established in 2005
Privately held companies based in Oregon
Information technology companies of the United States
2005 establishments in Oregon
Software companies established in 2005
2005 software
Orchestration software
Cross-platform free software
Free software programmed in Ruby
Software using the Apache license
Virtualization-related software for Linux |
36698787 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCE%20%28company%29 | VCE (company) | VCE (abbreviation for "Virtual Computing Environment") was a division of EMC Corporation that manufactured converged infrastructure appliances for enterprise environments. Founded in 2009 under the name Acadia, it was originally a joint venture between EMC and Cisco Systems, with additional investments by Intel and EMC subsidiary VMware. EMC acquired a 90% controlling stake in VCE from Cisco in October 2014, giving it majority ownership. VCE ended in 2016 after an internal division realignment and subsequent sale of EMC to Dell.
History
Cisco Systems, EMC Corporation and VMware (partially owned by EMC) unveiled a joint partnership in November 2009 to develop cloud computing platforms called Vblock Infrastructure Packages. The partnership was originally called the VMware-Cisco-EMC alliance, though the name was later shortened to VCE, for the “Virtual Computing Environment coalition”.
At the same EMC World trade show, Cisco and EMC introduced a joint venture named Acadia. The goal of Acadia, originally set up as a separate legal entity, was to build Vblock Infrastructure Packages in a standardized and repeatable fashion for customer data centers. Michael Capellas, who also was a board member of Cisco, was named chairman of Acadia, and its first chief executive officer (CEO) in May 2010. Sales initially encountered some confusion among customers (which often had different staffs for storage and networking, for example), and different fiscal quarter sales cycles.
By the end of 2010, Capellas told analysts the venture had 65 customers, with an average system costing about $2.5 million.
Acadia and the Virtual Computing Environment coalition combined into a single entity in January 2011, called VCE, the Virtual Computing Environment Company. Originally located in Silicon Valley and Dallas, Texas, an expansion was announced in March 2011 to Richardson, Texas with an investment from the Texas Enterprise Fund. In October 2011, another office opened in Marlboro, Massachusetts, close to VCE's EMC-owned manufacturing plant in Franklin, Massachusetts. In July 2012, Cisco executive Praveen Akkiraju was appointed CEO and Frank Hauck as president. It was estimated VCE had 1200 employees at the time, with undisclosed revenues but accumulated losses. Publicized customers included Babson College and the Mississippi Community College Board. The press debated if the venture should be considered a "startup company", with one headline joking "VCE = virtual cash erosion" and questioning millions of dollars of executive compensation. Others considered the arrangement to be a wise investment.
Through 2012, there was a mixture of some success (with speculation of layoffs), and continued confusion due to products from competing partners such as NetApp FlexPod and Xsigo Systems. Cisco had announced its own "framework" called CloudVerse in late 2011 that was not specific to VMware. In August 2012, EMC announced a VSPEX reference architecture and partnership with Lenovo and other distributors that was seen as competing with a lower-cost option.
In a November 2012 report by Gartner, VCE had a 57.4% share of integrated infrastructure systems in the second quarter of 2012 based on revenue. Gartner had previously tracked server, networking, and external controller-based storage as individual markets. VCE was named one of the “2013 Virtualization 50” by CRN Magazine. In May 2013, VCE estimated a $1 billion annual sales rate with more than 1,000 Vblock Systems sold. However, in US Securities and Exchange Commission filings, EMC accounted for a cumulative loss of over $430 million by September 2012, and Cisco a loss of $457 million by early 2013, since revenues are recorded to the owning companies, not VCE itself. EMC reported an investment of $667.2 million in cash and $13.2 million in stock-based compensation to VCE, for a stake of about 58%. Cisco reported a gross investment of $457 million, for a stake of about 35%.
By 2013, some of the same press writers that initially criticized VCE came to view the structure of VCE as being good business for investors. Other press highlighted VCE as a source of innovation and financial performance for investors. Total VCE for 2013 has been reported at over $1B with over a 50% year-over-year growth rate.
In October 2014, EMC announced that it had acquired majority control of the VCE venture, with Cisco maintaining a 10% stake.
In January 2016, EMC announced that VCE had become the Converged Platform Division of EMC with Chad Sakac as President.
On September 7, 2016, EMC was acquired by Dell. The Converged Platform Division of EMC is currently known as the Converged Platform and Solutions Division of Dell EMC.
Products and services
VCE marketed converged infrastructure servers known as , which combine VMware vSphere software running on Cisco Unified Computing Systems (UCS) connected with Cisco Nexus switches, attached to EMC Symmetrix storage. Despite the "block" in the name, the storage can be accessed as either a block device or a file server.
Vblock Systems are marketed for large-scale datacenters which run software applications such as Microsoft Exchange Server, Microsoft SharePoint or SAP ERP.
They are delivered in standard 19-inch rack units to aid in planning for cooling and power requirements.
The company initially manufactured converged datacenter units known as Vblock, which incorporate Cisco servers and networking hardware, EMC storage systems, and VMware for virtualization.
Later, VxBlock was added providing the ability for customers to run VMware NSX.
In 2015, VxRack and in 2016 VxRail were added as separate products.
Original systems
In 2009, the Virtual Computing Environment coalition announced three models of Vblock Infrastructure Packages. Vblock 2, intended for high-end data centers, was designed to support 3,000 to 6,000 virtual machines using Cisco UCS, Cisco Nexus 1000v and multilayer director switches (MDS), as well as EMC Symmetrix VMAX storage and VMware vSphere software. Vblock 1, intended for the midmarket, was designed for 800 to 3,000 virtual machines and had had a similar configuration to the Vblock 2, but with EMC Clariion storage rather than EMC Symmetrix VMAX. Vblock 0, the intended low-end configuration, was projected for release in 2010 to support 300 to 800 virtual machines and use a similar configuration, but with EMC Celerrastorage. The term "infrastructure package" was later changed to "infrastructure platform" and then just "Vblock System".
Vblock
Vblock is the brand name VCE uses for racks containing the components of its data center products. Prepackaging, called converged infrastructure, allows customers to select preconfigured and integrated solutions, with predictable units of power, weight, cooling, and geometry for data center planning purposes.
Vblock systems consist of storage and provisioning from EMC, switches and servers from Cisco, and VMware virtualization software running on the servers. In addition, Vblock system customers' support calls are handled by VCE.
Vblock had two series based on the following compositional elements:
EMC provides storage and provisioning
VNX
VMAX
Ionix UIM/P
Cisco provides compute and networking
UCS
Nexus
VMware provides virtualization
vSphere
with vDS provided via Cisco Nexus 1000V
with MPIO provided via EMC PowerPath/VE
Vblock brand naming changed since its inception. In 2009, the term Vblock Infrastructure Packages was announced by then Acadia (technical partnership), the Virtual Computing Environment coalition, as well as their primary investors. In late 2010 and continuing through 2011, the term Packages was replaced with Platforms. By mid-2012, the term, Infrastructure Platforms was replaced with Systems in wider circulation to arrive at, simply, Vblock™ Systems. Meanwhile, constituent elements and technology included upgrades to the product lines from Cisco, EMC, and VMware.
Infrastructure Packages
Originally, these combined a reference architecture with a physical and logical configuration step initially at a customer data center or colocation data center and later within a pre-manufacturing environment for shipment to a customer data center or colocation data center. Options were limited during the time these were marketed and sold.
Series
300: In contrast to the 0, 1, 1U later series were produced in manufacturing centers and then installed within a customer data center or colocation data center by a VCE partner or professional services team.
Models were named EX, FX, GX and HX, and later 320, 340, and 350.
500:The EMC XtremIO based model
700: This series offers an even larger number of options. Models were named LX and MX, and later 720 and 740.
Customers
No confirmed numbers were announced publicly by VCE or its investors until 2013 but when it was disclosed the numbers were provided conservatively as being over 800 customers in almost 60 countries with nearly 2000 VCE manufactured Vblock Systems sold. Because of the lack of a manufactured physical and logical build on an actual VCE manufacturing floor, previous deployments in 2009 and early 2010 of what were called or referred to as Vblock (often with various use of upper and lower case spelling) are not considered to be Vblock by some pundits and infrastructure professionals since these so-called reference architectures varied greatly from project to project when compared to late 2010 manufactured Vblock. Anecdotally, institutions and companies using Vblock have been involved in published testimonials.
Enterprise-level systems
In May 2011, the Vblock System Series 300 was announced with models EX, FX, GX and HX (smallest to largest). The Vblock 2 was renamed the 700 series.
The Vblock System 700 LX was announced at the EMC World May 2012 trade show, as the most expensive Vblock System, supporting thousands of virtual machines. VCE introduced the inclusion of EMC software for backup, recovery, replication, business continuity and data mobility for virtualized environments. Applications included EMC Avamar, EMC Data Domain, and EMC RecoverPoint. The Vblock System 700 included EMC VPLEX workload mobility and business continuity software, as well as support for new features in EMC Unified Infrastructure Manager, improved VMware integration, and centralized monitoring of multiple Vblock Systems.
In February 2013, VCE announced Vblock 300 and Vblock 700 models with increased performance and data throughput, using upgraded server and storage components.
Midmarket and entry level systems
In 2013 VCE announced products for the midrange and remote branch office market.
These models included the Vblock System 100 and Vblock System 200.
The Vblock 100 was designed to host up to 200 virtual machines in a 24U or 42U rack mount space with up to eight Cisco C220 M3 blade servers, two Cisco Catalyst 3750-X switches and up to 8 TB of storage capacity on an EMC VNXe3150 or VNXe3300 array. The Vblock 200 comes configured with up to 12 Cisco servers, two Nexus 5548UP unified Ethernet and SAN switches, a Cisco Catalyst 3750 management switch, and up to 105 hard drives via the included VNX 5300 array.
Specialized systems
VCE introduced a specialized system for SAP HANA in February 2013. It combined a Vblock System with SAP HANA in-memory computing and database application software. Later in September 2013 VCE introduced specialized system for high performance database for Oracle as well as extreme applications for both VMware and Citrix VDI environments.
Hyperconverged systems
Dell introduced a hyperconverged system at EMC World 2015 in February 2015. The first model is the VxRack 1032 based on EMC ScaleIO software defined storage. The second model was announced at VMware World in September 2015, called the VxRack 1034 based around VMware VSAN. Both models use commodity hardware (rumoured to be sourced from Quanta) with an attached local disk presented via ScaleIO or VSAN software.
Software
Desktop virtualization management software that uses VMware View called FastPath was announced in August 2011, and upgraded in June 2012.
In February 2013, VCE announced the management software application Vision Intelligent Operations Software.
VCE Vision software that enables a single management pane for the components in the Vblock Systems it manages via plugins for third party management, automation, and orchestration tools from VMware, Cisco, BMC, CA, and others via RESTful API, SNMP, and unified logging.
Services
VCE provides services through partners to plan, design, and deploy Vblock Systems.
References
External links
VCE Website
Software companies of the United States
Cloud computing providers
Computer companies established in 2009
Dell EMC
Software companies established in 2009
2014 mergers and acquisitions
Computer companies disestablished in 2016
Software companies disestablished in 2016 |
23310831 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discount-Licensing | Discount-Licensing | Discount-Licensing (formerly known as Disclic) is a Burton-upon-Trent, UK-based vendor or broker of secondhand Microsoft software licences. It is notable for being the first company to establish a secondary market in such licences which is accepted by Microsoft as being valid.
History
Discount-Licensing was founded as Disclic Ltd in July 2004 by Noel Unwin and Jonathan Horley. In 2006 Disclic Ltd changed its name to Discount-Licensing.com Ltd.
When Discount-Licensing launched, it was predicted that it, and other companies like it, would have a significant disruptive effect on Microsoft's pricing and its resellers and some resellers reacted with shock and anger however this disruption has not materialised and the secondhand licence market remains small compared to the primary market. Only a few other companies, such as German firms UsedSoft, preo Software and Susensoftware and British firm Value Licensing have sought to enter the market for secondhand Microsoft software. Instead, the secondhand licence market exists as a smaller "parallel market" selling to companies who require licences for specific previous versions of Microsoft products, or who might not otherwise have purchased licences due to the cost.
Business model
Discount-Licensing trades in Microsoft Open, Select, Enterprise volume as well as SAP licences. It typically obtains these from the liquidators of companies which have ceased trading or which are downsizing their IT requirements. These are then sold on to customers at a discount to the cost of new licences. This allows customers to purchase licences for non-current as well as current Microsoft versions, which they may have standardised on.
Only Microsoft products with licences that permit transfer (either explicitly or by means of legal loopholes in the licence) are offered. These include Microsoft Office, Windows Server licences and Client Access Licenses, Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft SQL Server but exclude any desktop versions of Windows or any rights under Software Assurance.
The actual licence transfer can sometimes be facilitated directly between the original owner and the new owner, without Discount-Licensing taking ownership of the licences. Licences are supplied in the form of licence agreement numbers which the recipient can register in Microsoft Volume Licensing Service Center in order to obtain the volume license keys. Following the completion of all paperwork, Microsoft updates it records to reflect the new user, but note that the VLSC does not necessarily show the legal owner. In the case of licences created after October 2007, the sale may sometimes require the creation and transfer of a "shelf company" which owns the licences.
Only whole licences may be transferred so the customer has to choose from the agreements available and may not be able to obtain exactly the combination of licences desired.
The company operates internationally and, following advice from Microsoft that it was permissible, has transferred licences between countries.
The legalities of the secondary-volume and digital-software markets were reaffirmed in a 3 July 2012 European Court of Justice ruling which involved the Exhaustion Principle and the Software Directive 2009.
Relationship with Microsoft
Microsoft has made it clear that it regards the resale of licences as exploiting an unintended loophole in the provisions for divestiture in its pre-2007 licence agreements. In October 2007 Microsoft introduced a clause prohibiting resale of all types of licences into its EULAs. This was intended to prevent licences issued after this date from being resold, however a further loophole was found to enable licences to continue to be sold, albeit in a more complicated way. Despite this game of cat and mouse, Microsoft accepts the legality of Discount-Licensing's business model and Discount-Licensing remains a Registered Microsoft Partner and authorised Microsoft Reseller. Discount-Licensing describes its relationship with Microsoft as "fairly good".
See also
Software license agreement
References
External links
Microsoft Volume Licensing
Microsoft Volume Licensing Service Center
Companies based in Burton upon Trent
British companies established in 2004
Privately held companies of the United Kingdom |
3407851 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical%20program | Mathematical program | The term mathematical program can refer to:
A computer algebra system which is a computer program that manipulates mathematical entities symbolically
Computer programs that manipulate numerical entities numerically, which are the subject of numerical analysis
A problem formulation of an optimization problem in terms of an objective function and constraints (in this sense, a mathematical program is a specialized and now possibly misleading term that predates the invention of computer programming) |
2696471 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew%20Fisher%20%28musician%29 | Matthew Fisher (musician) | Matthew Charles Fisher (born 7 March 1946) is an English musician, songwriter and record producer. He is best known for his longtime association with the rock band Procol Harum, which included playing the Hammond organ on the 1967 single "A Whiter Shade of Pale", for which he subsequently won a songwriting credit. In his later life he became a computer programmer, having qualified from Cambridge University.
Biography
Early life and career
Fisher was born and grew up in Addiscombe, Croydon. He attended Selhurst Grammar School. He started playing in bands in his teens, initially playing bass guitar, but around 1964, after hearing The Animals and Georgie Fame, he decided that he would prefer to be an organist instead. He briefly considered a career as a music teacher. He enrolled for classical training at the Guildhall School of Music, but after a year he dropped out, obtained two Vox Continental organs, and used them on tour with The Gamblers, the backing band to Billy Fury. After The Gamblers, he played with various local groups before joining Peter Jay and the Jaywalkers in 1966.
While on tour with the Jaywalkers, he met Ian McLagan, organist with Small Faces, and became fascinated with the sound of the Hammond M102 organ and Leslie speaker that McLagan used. After borrowing money from his grandmother, he bought the same model of Hammond and started advertising for gigs in the Melody Maker. He quickly discovered that owning a Hammond made him in great demand as a musician, saying "Having a Hammond was like having a licence to print money", and by the end of the year found regular work with Screaming Lord Sutch's backing group The Savages, playing alongside Ritchie Blackmore. Consequently, Gary Brooker and Keith Reid were keen to recruit him for their new group, Procol Harum, and decided to visit him at his Croydon home to discuss the formation of the band.
Procol Harum
Fisher joined Procol Harum at the start of 1967 though he kept touring with Sutch for a brief while. While all the band had experience in other groups, Fisher was the only one with formal music training. He recalls that "A Whiter Shade of Pale" was originally four verses and ten minutes long, with solos improvised in between by Fisher and Brooker. When it came to recording the song it was cut to two verses and it was decided that Fisher should do all the solos.
Furthermore, he felt, after seeing the sheet music to "A Whiter Shade of Pale", that he deserved a co-composition credit for coming up with the well-known introduction and solo passages throughout the song. Brooker and Reid, who had composed the basic structure of the song before recruiting Fisher, refused.
While "A Whiter Shade of Pale" was an immediate success, reaching number 1 in the UK charts for several weeks, Fisher doesn't recall the time as being a happy one for the band. Intending to be an underground band they were not accustomed to having a hit single, and he was unimpressed with the band's early gigs.
The arrival of guitarist Robin Trower and drummer B.J. Wilson to Procol Harum in mid-1967 seemed to bring some stability to the band. Fisher's first official songwriting credit was for the instrumental "Repent Walpurgis" on the band's debut album, which was transformed by Trower playing a blues-influenced solo over the top of Fisher's classically influenced organ lines. Nevertheless, in response to his lack of co-writing credits (particularly over "A Whiter Shade of Pale"), being at odds with Brooker, Trower and Wilson (who had all grown up together in Southend on Sea and previously played in The Paramounts), and still suffering from the death of his father in 1965, Fisher wanted to leave Procol Harum. Despite being talked out of it, he would continue to attempt to leave the band on several occasions over the next two and a half years until finally departing at the end of 1969.
Although no longer involved directly in recording and touring, Fisher continued as a producer for the group. After Trower left in 1971 for a solo career, he briefly rejoined the band, with bandmate Chris Copping moving full-time onto bass. He was unhappy with the financial situation of the band, and with Trower's replacement, Dave Ball, and so left again, this time acrimoniously, to become a full-time producer for CBS.
Production
In addition to his work with Procol Harum, he was producer to Robin Trower, James Dewar and Tir Na Nog (among others); and enjoyed a solo career, being especially popular in Greece, where his 1980 song "Why'd I Have to Fall in Love with You" is considered a classic. His solo albums include Journey's End (1973), I'll Be There (1974), Matthew Fisher (1980), Strange Days (1981) and A Salty Dog Returns (1990).
Two of the albums he produced for Trower, Bridge of Sighs (1974) and For Earth Below (1975), have been certified gold by the RIAA, — with Bridge going platinum two times eventually – whilst "A Whiter Shade of Pale" has enjoyed multi-platinum status. Fisher's Hammond organ playing on pianist David Lanz's instrumental version of "A Whiter Shade of Pale" from his 1988 CD, Cristofori's Dream, helped that album go gold as well. The year before, Fisher produced (for Primitive Records) and performed on the 12" single "All Washed Up" by Northampton Band 'Magnolia Siege' (singer Richard Jones or Rik Ramjet), playing honky-tonk piano on the B-side end of record reprise.
Fisher co-wrote and performed on the soundtrack of the 1968 avant-garde film, Separation, which was released on DVD in the UK in July, 2009 and in the US in March, 2010. Fisher's instrumental "Theme From Separation" on his album Journey's End is from that film, and the soundtrack also included an alternate arrangement of the piece for Hammond, bass and harpsichord.
Fisher co-produced an album by the group Prairie Madness in 1972, on which he also played organ and harpsichord. This was a piano-guitar duo with an accompanying band, but it achieved limited success. He has also played keyboards for Screaming Lord Sutch on his 1972 album, Hands of Jack the Ripper and played piano on David Bowie's tour in June and July 1972, with The Spiders from Mars. Fisher also appeared on the Roderick Falconer Album "New Nation" (1976) which he produced and arranged as well as playing keyboards.
Later career
Fisher quit Procol Harum in 1969 after the release of their third album, A Salty Dog, which he also produced. He rejoined the band in 1991 for the album The Prodigal Stranger and released two more albums with them, One More Time - Live in Utrecht 1992 and The Well's on Fire. In addition he appeared on two concert DVDs, Live in Copenhagen and Live at the Union Chapel, but quit the band again in 2004.
Having studied computer programming at Wolfson College, Cambridge and graduating in 1995, Fisher became a full-time computer programmer, writing databases.
Songwriting credits
In 2006, the High Court found Fisher to be joint-author and co-owner of Procol Harum's song "A Whiter Shade of Pale" by virtue of his contribution to the song in the form of his organ solo, despite waiting nearly 40 years since its release to make a claim. Fisher won the case on 20 December 2006 but was awarded 40% of the composers' share of the music copyright, rather than the 50% he was seeking and was not granted royalties prior to 2005.
References
External links
MatthewFisher.com
Matthew Fisher's fan page – at procolharum.com
Matthew Fisher at Discogs
1946 births
21st-century British male musicians
21st-century organists
21st-century pianists
Alumni of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama
Alumni of Wolfson College, Cambridge
British male pianists
British soft rock musicians
English keyboardists
English male singers
English organists
English pianists
English songwriters
Living people
People from Addiscombe
Procol Harum members
Screaming Lord Sutch and the Savages members
British male songwriters |
229603 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Background%20process | Background process | A background process is a computer process that runs behind the scenes (i.e., in the background) and without user intervention. Typical tasks for these processes include logging, system monitoring, scheduling, and user notification. The background process usually is a child process created by a control process for processing a computing task. After creation, the child process will run on its own, performing the task independent of the control process, freeing the control process of performing that task.
On a Windows system, a background process is either a computer program that does not create a user interface, or a Windows service. The former are started just as any other program is started, e.g., via Start menu. Windows services, on the other hand, are started by Service Control Manager. In Windows Vista and later, they are run in a separate session. There is no limit to how much a system service or background process can use system resources. Indeed, in the Windows Server family of Microsoft operating systems, background processes are expected to be the principal consumers of system resources.
On a Unix or Unix-like system, a background process or job can be further identified as one whose process group ID differs from its terminal group ID (TGID). (The TGID of a process is the process ID of the process group leader that opened the terminal, which is typically the login shell. The TGID identifies the control terminal of the process group.) This type of process is unable to receive keyboard signals from its parent terminal, and typically will not send output to that terminal. This more technical definition does not distinguish between whether or not the process can receive user intervention. Although background processes are typically used for purposes needing few resources, any process can be run in the background, and such a process will behave like any other process, with the exceptions given above.
Windows services
In Windows NT family of operating systems, a Windows service is a dedicated background process. A Windows service must conform to the interface rules and protocols of the Service Control Manager, the component responsible for managing Windows services.
Windows services can be configured to start when the operating system starts, and to run in the background as long as Windows runs. Alternatively, they can be started manually or by an event. Windows NT operating systems include numerous services which run in context of three user accounts: System, Network Service and Local Service. These Windows components are often associated with Host Process for Windows Services: svchost.exe. Since Windows services operate in the context of their own dedicated user accounts, they can operate when a user is not logged on.
Before Windows Vista, services installed as "interactive services" could interact with Windows desktop and show a graphical user interface. With Windows Vista, however, interactive services became deprecated and ceased operating properly, as a result of Windows Service Hardening.
The three principal means of managing Windows services are:
Services snap-in for Microsoft Management Console
sc.exe
Windows PowerShell
Daemon
A daemon is a type of background process designed to run continually in the background, waiting for event(s) to occur or condition(s) to be met. These processes typically use minimal system resources and perform tasks which require little to no input from the user. When launched with the daemon function, daemons are disassociated from their parent terminal.
Launch and resumption on Unix
From a Unix command line, a background process can be launched using the "&" operator. The bg utility can resume a suspended job (sending SIGCONT), running it in the background. Using the fg utility will also reconnect standard input its parent terminal, bringing it into the foreground. The jobs utility will list all processes associated with the current terminal and can be used to bring background processes into the foreground.
When a login session ends, via explicit logout or network disconnection, all processes, including background processes, will by default be terminated, to prevent them from becoming orphan processes. Concretely, when the user exits the launching shell process, as part of shutdown it sends a hangup signal (SIGHUP) to all its jobs, to terminate all the processes in the corresponding process group. To have processes continue to run, one can either not end the session, or end the session without terminating the processes. A terminal multiplexer can be used to leave a session running but detach a virtual terminal from it, leaving processes running as child processes of the session; the user can then reattach session later. Or, termination can be prevented by either starting the process via the nohup command (telling the process to ignore SIGHUP), or by subsequently running disown with the job id, which either removes the job from the job list entirely, or simply prevents SIGHUP from being sent. In the latter case when the session ends, the child processes are not terminated, either because they are not sent SIGHUP or because they ignore it, and thus become orphan processes, which are then adopted by the init process (the kernel sets the init process as their parent), and they continue running without a session, now called daemons.
Example
In this example running on Unix, the sleep utility was launched into the background. Afterward, the ps tool was run in the foreground, where it output the below text. Both were launched from the shell.
PID TT STAT TIME COMMAND
54659 10 S 0:00.06 su (zsh)
54703 10 IN 0:00.00 - sleep 1000
54852 10 R+ 0:00.00 - ps -U botty -axd
Smartphones
Many newer versions of smartphone and PDA operating systems now include the ability to start background processes. Due to hardware limits, background processes on mobile operating systems are often restricted to certain tasks or consumption levels. On Android, CPU use for background processes is bounded at 5 - 10%. Third-party applications on Apple's iOS are limited to a subset of functions while running in the background. On both iOS and Android, background processes can be killed by the system if they are using too much memory.
See also
Batch processing
Computer multitasking
Process group
References
Process (computing) |
3124675 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chennai%20Mathematical%20Institute | Chennai Mathematical Institute | Chennai Mathematical Institute (CMI) is a research and education institute in Chennai, India. It was founded by the SPIC Science Foundation in 1989, and offers undergraduate as well as postgraduate programmes in physics, mathematics and computer science, besides its key strength in the form of high-end research in Mathematics. CMI is noted for its research in the field of algebraic geometry, in particular in the area of moduli of bundles.
CMI was earlier located in T. Nagar in the heart of Chennai in an office complex. It moved to a new campus in Siruseri in October 2005.
In December 2006, CMI was recognized as a university under Section 3 of the University Grants Commission (UGC) Act 1956, making it a deemed university. Until then, the teaching program was offered in association with Bhoj Open University, as it offered more flexibility.
History
CMI began as the School of Mathematics, SPIC Science Foundation, in 1989. The SPIC Science Foundation was set up in 1986 by Southern Petrochemical Industries Corporation (SPIC) Ltd., one of the major industrial houses in India, to foster the growth of science and technology in the country.
In 1996, the School of Mathematics became an independent institution and changed its name to SPIC Mathematical Institute. In 1998, in order to better reflect the emerging role of the institute, it was renamed the Chennai Mathematical Institute (CMI).
From its inception, the institute has had a Ph.D. programme in Mathematics and Computer Science. In the initial years, the Ph.D. programme was affiliated to the BITS, Pilani and the University of Madras. In December 2006, CMI was recognized as a university under Section 3 of the UGC Act 1956.
In 1998, CMI took the initiative to bridge the gap between teaching and research by starting B.Sc.(Hons.) and M.Sc. programmes in Mathematics and allied subjects. In 2001, the B.Sc. programme was extended to incorporate two courses with research components, leading to an M.Sc. degree in mathematics and an M.Sc. degree in Computer Science. In 2003, a new undergraduate course was added, leading to a B.Sc. degree in physics.
In 2010, CMI launched a summer fellowship programme whereby they invited about 30 students from all over India to work under the faculty at CMI on various research projects.
Later, in 2012, the B.Sc. degree in Physics was restructured as an integrated B.Sc. degree in Mathematics and Physics.
Campus
CMI moved into its new campus on of land at the SIPCOT Information Technology Park in Siruseri in October, 2005. The campus is located along the Old Mahabalipuram Road, which is developing as the IT corridor to the south of the city.
The library block and the student's hostel were completed in late 2006 and become operational from January 2007.
In 2006, CMI implemented a grey water recycling system on its campus. The system was designed for CMI by Sultan Ahmed Ismail to treat waste water produced after cleaning, washing and bathing to be used for gardening or ground water recharge.
Construction is underway for a new building that will house an auditorium, accommodation for guests, as well as additional academic space - faculty offices, library and lecture halls. This construction is funded by a grant from the Ministry of Human Resource Development through the University Grants Commission.
Organisation and administration
Director
The founding director of CMI was C. S. Seshadri, who has worked in the area of algebraic geometry especially moduli problems and algebraic groups. He stepped down as Director of CMI in 2010. Rajeeva L. Karandikar was appointed as director of CMI
after C. S. Seshadri. C. S. Seshadri continued to be a part of CMI as "Director-Emeritus" from 1 January 2011 until his demise on 17 July 2020.
Funding
CMI's funding comes from both private and government sources.
Government funding
DAE: CMI receives support for its teaching programme from the Department of Atomic Energy, through the National Board of Higher Mathematics.
ISRO: The Indian Space Research Organization also funds CMI substantially.
DST and DRDO: For some of its projects, CMI receives funding from the Department of Science and Technology as well as the Defence Research and Development Organization.
Private funding
The Southern Petrochemical Industries Corporation (SPIC) was an important founder of CMI during its initial years. In fact, CMI started as the Spic Mathematical Institute.
Sriram Group of Companies is an important funder and also arranges for other funding for CMI.
Matrix Laboratories has made a major contribution to the new campus at the SIPCOT IT Park.
Infosys Foundation recently donated a large corpus to CMI to enhance faculty compensation and fellowships for students.
Academics
Academic programmes
CMI has Ph.D. programmes in Computer Sciences, Mathematics and Physics. Recently, CMI has introduced the possibility of students pursuing a part-time Ph.D. at the institute.
Since 1998, CMI has offered a B.Sc.(Hons) degree in Mathematics and Computer Science. This three-year program also includes courses in Humanities and Physics. Many students, after completion of the B.Sc. degree, have pursued higher studies in Mathematics and Computer Sciences from universities both in India and abroad. Some students also go into industry while others take up subjects such as finance.
In 2001, CMI began separate M.Sc. programmes in Mathematics and in Computer Science. In 2009, CMI began to offer a new programme M.Sc. in Applied Mathematics, which is scheduled to be replaced with a new M.Sc. in Data Science programme in 2018 .
In 2003, CMI introduced a new three-year programme in the form of a B.Sc.(Hons) degree in physics. The course topics are largely in theoretical physics. CMI now has its own physics laboratory. From the academic year 2007–2008, the Physics students are having regular lab courses right from the first year.
In the academic year 2005–2006, lab sessions for third-year students were conducted at IIT Madras based on an agreement. In the summer following their first year, physics students go to HBCSE (under TIFR) in Mumbai for practical sessions and in the second year, they go to IGCAR, Kalpakkam. However, in 2012, the B.Sc. degree in Physics was restructured as an integrated B.Sc. degree in Mathematics and Physics.
Degrees for the B.Sc. and M.Sc. programmes were earlier offered by MPBOU, the Madhya Pradesh Bhoj Open University and doctoral degrees by Madras University. After CMI became a deemed university, it gives its own degrees. CMI awarded its first official degrees in August 2007.
The batch sizes typically vary from 10 to 50 and the overall strength of CMI is about 150–200 students and 40–50 faculty members.
Nearly all the CMI programmes are run in conjunction and coordination with programmes at IMSc, an institute for research in Mathematics, Theoretical Computer Science and Theoretical Physics, located in Chennai.
Admission criteria
The entrance to each of these courses is based on a nationwide entrance test. The advertisement for this entrance test appears around the end of February or the beginning of March. The entrance test is held in the end of May and is usually scheduled so as not to clash with major entrance examinations. Results are given to students by the end of June.
Students who have passed the Indian National Mathematics Olympiad get direct admission to the programme B.Sc.(Hons.) in Mathematics and Computer Science, and those who have passed the Indian National Physics Olympiad are offered direct entry to the B.Sc.(Hons.) in Physics programme. However, these students are also advised to fill in and send the application form some time in March.
Students who pass the Indian National Olympiad in Informatics may be granted admission to the B.Sc.(Hons.) Mathematics and Computer Science programme. Admission is not guaranteed but is decided on a case-by-case basis by the admissions committee.
Fee structure and other payments
Till 2018, all students, including undergraduate students, were given a monthly stipend, subject to academic performance. The tuition was waived for students in good academic standing. In 2018, the fees were increased for all students with waivers available for students in good academic standing.
Arrangements with other Institutes
Till 2006, students received their B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees from MPBOU and their Ph.D. degrees from Madras University.
CMI conducts its academic programmes in conjunction with IMSc, so students from either institute can take courses at the other.
CMI has agreements with TIFR (Tata Institute of Fundamental Research) and with the Indian Statistical Institutes in Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai and Kolkata, for cooperation on the furtherance of mathematical sciences.
The physics programmes are run in conjunction with IMSc and IGCAR. The physics students spend one summer in HBCSE (under TIFR) in Mumbai and another in IGCAR, Kalpakkam, garnering practical experience.
CMI has a Memorandum of Understanding with the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. Under this memorandum, research scholars from the ENS spend a semester in CMI. In exchange, three B.Sc. Mathematics students, at the end of their third year, go to the ENS for two months.
The institute has a similar arrangement with École Polytechnique in Paris, whereby top-ranking senior B.Sc. Physics students spend the summer in Paris working with the faculty at École Polytechnique.
CMI has a Memorandum of Understanding with IFMR, the Institute of Financial Management and Research, located in Nungambakkam, Chennai. Students from CMI getting a CGPA of more than 8.50 are offered direct admission to IFMR's one-year programme in Financial Mathematics, which is sponsored by ICICI Bank. Faculty from CMI are involved in teaching this programme. In exchange, CMI gets its Economics professor from IFMR.
CMI is a part of ReLaX, an Indo-French joint research unit dedicated to research in theoretical computer science, its applications and its interactions with mathematics. This collaboration allows for collaborative work in computer science, academic visits for professors and graduate students, summer internship programs for students, and organizing conferences in the subject.
CMI has had two sponsored research projects with Honeywell Technology Solutions, Bangalore, both in the area of formal verification.
Research
In mathematics, the main areas of research activity have been in algebraic geometry, representation theory, operator algebra, commutative algebra, harmonic analysis, control theory and game theory. Research work includes stratification of binary forms in representation theory, the Donaldson-Uhlenbeck compactification in algebraic geometry, stochastic games, inductive algebras of harmonic analysis, etc.
The research activity in theoretical computer science at CMI has been primarily in computational complexity theory, specification and verification of timed and distributed systems and analysis of security protocols. A computer scientist at CMI extended the deterministic isolation technique for reachability in planar graphs to obtain better complexity upper bounds for planar bipartite matching.
In theoretical physics, research is being carried out mainly in string theory, quantum field theory and mathematical physics. In mathematical physics, research included developing a path integral approach to quantum entanglement. CMI string theorists study problems such as Big-bang like cosmological singularities, embeddings of BKL cosmology, dyons in super-Yang–Mills theories etc.
Student life
Hostel
The on-campus hostel was opened in January 2007. All students are expected to stay in the hostel. Security guards are posted in the campus round the clock, including women security guards for the girls wing on all floors. Washing machines are installed in the hostel which is managed by the students. A vehicle is parked in the campus at night for emergencies. Wi-fi facility is available in the campus.
Annual Inter-Collegiate Student Festival
The students of CMI organize an annual inter-collegiate student festival Tessellate (earlier known as Fiesta, renamed in 2018), supported by corporations, IT companies, and local businesses. Tessellate enjoys participation from students of several Chennai-based colleges including IIT Madras, SRM Institute of Science and Technology, Sathyabama University, KCG College of Technology. Tessellate comprises academic, cultural, technical and sports events. From 2018, Tessellate also includes a social initiative for the benefit of the underprivileged in Chennai.
S.T.E.M.S.
Also, as a part of Tessellate, a nationwide contest called S.T.E.M.S. (Scholastic Test of Excellence in Mathematical Sciences) is organised for students from 8th grade to Final year UG in different categories for the subjects: Mathematics, Physics and Computer Science. Toppers get to win exciting prizes and are invited to a fully funded 3-day camp at CMI.
Other activities
CMI faculty coordinate the training and selection of students to represent India at the International Olympiad in Informatics through the Indian Association for Research in Computing Science (IARCS). CMI hosts the official IARCS website. From September 2004, a monthly online programming competition has been conducted by the CMI faculty via the IARCS website.
Two of CMI's faculty members, Madhavan Mukund and Narayan Kumar, lead the Indian team to the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI). Madhavan Mukund is also the National Coordinator for the Indian Computing Olympiad.
Notes
External links
CMI homepage
Homepage for the annual inter-collegiate student festival Tessellate
Cover story for India Today: "From preaching to practice"
CMI in SIPCOT IT Park map
References
Mathematical institutes
Deemed universities in India
Indian mathematics
Research institutes in Chennai
Universities in Chennai
Mathematics education in India
Research institutes in Tamil Nadu
Academic institutions formerly affiliated with the University of Madras
1989 establishments in Tamil Nadu
Educational institutions established in 1989 |
21744494 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robotron%20Z1013 | Robotron Z1013 | The MRB Z1013 (Mikrorechnerbausatz = microcomputer kit) was an East German Single-board computer produced by VEB Robotron Riesa which was primarily intended for private use and educational institutions. It was powered by a U880 processor (a Z80 clone) and sold together with a membrane (flat foil) keyboard. Initially, the kit was equipped with 16-KByte DRAM, which was later replaced by a 64-KByte version.
The kits first became available for sale in 1985 and were distributed in a unique way at the time. To purchase, buyers had to send a postcard to the Robotron shop in Erfurt and wait six to 12 months to pick the kits up personally.
The package contained the assembled and tested motherboard, a membrane keyboard, various small parts and detailed technical documentation. This basic kit was shipped without a power supply or casing for the PCB. Most users tended to program the kit using the BASIC interpreter, which was loadable from a compact cassette or by using a ROM cartridge. The BASIC interpreter contained a common core binary, which was identical across home computer models. So the programs were widely compatible among different models of GDR-manufactured computers despite differences in capabilities.
Robotron was also the manufacturer of another line of computers, the Z9001, KC85/1 and KC87, which shared some of the same expansion modules – offering more options also for Z1013.
The system bus connector was based on the K1520 standard for 8-bit computers in the GDR. This conformity to one standard across computers, ranging from tank-sized mini computers to small home computers, allowed the reuse of hardware from minicomputers with the same bus interface. This meant that most of the hardware and binary code from one platform could be used across very different platforms and allowed the sharing of resources.
This groundbreaking standardization was due to the need for common standards and compatibility between computer users in the Eastern Bloc.
Opinion is divided over the widespread use and popularity of the MRB Z1013 in the GDR. With a total of 25,000 kits sold over its lifetime (from 1985 to mid-1990), it fared well in comparison to other models. However, some analysts put this success down to the relative ease of access to the kits compared to other computer offerings.
After all, the key point for the success was the simplistic makeup down to a bare minimum. It is still debatable if it repelled potential users or actually lead to a higher productions volume. Either which way, demand and production kept a kind of balance. To this extent, it was the only computer freely available for private purchase.
History
Despite the Cold War and the associated high-technology embargo CoCom the government pushed for an ambitious program to keep up with international development of engineering and microelectronics. That generated a huge interest among individuals who tried to develop electronics at work or at home aside from the government's economic programs. In 1984 the first two lines of home computers the Z9001 and HC900 were presented to the public. Due to small scale of production those devices were difficult to obtain. They were very expensive, but still could not satisfy the demand.
With a production yield of a few percent, a significant amount of circuits failed to pass the acceptance criteria. The components were called "Anfalltyp" or "rejects". Most of them were functional, but exceed allowed tolerances. Within limits, e.g. speed or access time, they may work fine. Therefore, the manufacturing companies pushed for a development of simple fault-tolerant learning or hobby computers which can make use of the rejects. The use of waste production could lower the reported reject rates and partly close gap in demand for home computers.
Following the same concept to sell rejects as a fraction of the original price, the computer design should only consist of the cheapest and easiest available circuits. As a result, three single board computers were brought to industrial production: the LC80 with calculator display and keyboard, the Polycomputer 880 with 8-digit seven-segment display and the more comfortable Z1013 with TV output.
The initiators of the Z1013 concept favored a caseless single-board computer with membrane keyboard. Through simple appearance and design the price had been kept under 1000 M for the targeted group of electronics amateurs. The development and production transferred to the well-established industry PCB manufacturer VEB Robotron Riesa in early 1984.
Development
The state planning targets for the mostly young engineers and employees of the corresponding group of developers ("youth research collective") of the VEB Robotron Riesa foresaw an expandable single board computer with a minimum of material and manufacturing costs. To reduce production costs, the device was designed as a kit without a housing whose prefabricated assemblies were end-mounted by the user.
The computer had to use home electronics such as televisions and tape recorders present in East-German households.
The narrow specifications with respect to the low production costs while using inferior electronics components and the demand for largely compatible interfaces and software of the Robotron small computer Z 9001 and KC 85/1 was only limited by a system architecture realized that at the most affordable and field-proven 8-bit microprocessor U880 together with standardized electronic wiring blocks at significantly reduced system clock.
Full-fledged graphics and interfaces for specific peripherals fell victim to cost pressure. However, the conception of the computer as a modular system saw the possibility of connecting additional peripherals, such as the expansion of memory by also being developed expansion modules before.
Development work began in mid-1985. The first prototype with a memory of 16 kilobytes (KB) and membrane keyboard was presented to the responsible authorities in the fall of 1985 and started after its acceptance with the planning and preparations for series production, which lasted until November 1985. Because of the 'reject type' components to be used, the system clock was reduced from the 2 MHz usual in home computers to 1 MHz for higher reliability.
Z1013.01 and Z1013.12
The first batch of 150 kits with 16 KB memory went into production in December 1985. These were available at the end of the year exclusively on pre-order in the shop for home electronics of VEB Robotron Erfurt and in a shop of the state-owned Handelsorganisation (HO) in Riesa for 650M. In addition to the image output device and a tape recorder by the user an appropriately sized power supply was also to provide and to solder the connecting cable for the keyboard on the computer board before commissioning. The single-board computer was officially presented to a wider audience for the first time at the Leipzig Spring Fair in 1986.
In addition to the supply of the home computer market by 1987, a few kits with the designation Z1013.12 were manufactured for the industrial sector. It used regular "typed" circuits, an increased system clock of 2 MHz and 1 KB of static RAM as main memory.
Robotron developed additional components for internal usage, like a pixel graphic extension or a battery-backed 4KB memory. Even though those were not available via the official Robotron sales channel, the goal was provide that information as reference or enable independent reuse.
Despite extensive tests and multi-stage multi-day duration tests in production the installed reject types often led to disturbances and thus to complaints from users. The economic disadvantages due to the elaborate test procedures and subsequent repairs could no longer be outweighed by the reasonable price of used defective components and led to a rethinking by the person responsible. Production from July 1987 was changed to use in acceptably prices regular components sold as Z1013.16 .
Z1013.16 and Z1013.64
Since the differences between reject types and regular circuits limited only to their reliability, in 1987 decided to change the kits only regular components could without major changes to the board and are therefore made cost-saving. In addition to increased reliability of the produced from 1987 variant Z1013.16 also has a higher system clock of 2 MHz, which is equivalent to a doubling of computing power. In addition, the system software has been supplemented by appropriate program components for use with a much more comfortable block keyboard with 58 keys. Users of the older kits were according to procurement of components and the modified operating system also upgrade their systems with the aid of a soldering iron. [7]
An important aspect of revaluations made is - apart from the improved reliability - with the appropriate upgrade of memory producing the broadest compatibility of Z 1013.16 with minicomputers Z 9001, KC 85/1 and KC 87 In addition to the associated utilization of other software also stood their expansion modules, for example, to upgrade the memory, now the Z-1013-users. [7]
Through the interim relaxation of the CoCom embargo, falling prices in late 1988 was added a more modernized version of the Z-1013 series. This Z 1013.64 with 64 KB of memory was made until production ceased in mid-1990. [7]
Modern replicas
The simple and manageable architecture of the system, extensive documentation of the manufacturer and not least the free usage of the system software enable miniaturized replica of the Z 1013 with today's technical means, with a manageable effort. Such modern realization was the first time in 2013 - as well as other home computer systems - as an implementation of a programmable logic circuit (FPGA) in addition to embedded systems. The simulation using FPGA technology was initially intended only as a technical feasibility study, but in retrospect also their practical utility to the test. Due to the miniaturization and the possibility of battery operation, it is an easily stowable, reliably operating and portable alternative to the original schonenswerten technique
Technical Details
The Robotron fully assembled printed circuit board contains the CPU, the RAM and read-only memory, screen control and multiple peripheral connections. The main board measured 215 mm x 230 mm 80 mm x 160 mm with the keyboard together with connection cables, various small parts and documentation.
CPU
The system architecture is based on the U880 microprocessor, an unauthorized replica of the Z80 microprocessor from Zilog[9]. The Z1013.01 models were clocked with only 1 MHz as they used circuits which had passed limited quality criteria("reject types"). For the other models, fully qualified types like the 2 MHz U880 microprocessor were used. [10]
The CPU has access to a 64K address range, where by design 59 KB are available RAM for program use. To workaround that limits bank switching concepts or external RAM-discs has been used.
Memory allocation, RAM, ROM, and interfaces
The memory that is addressable by the CPU is segmented into regions for the system software, freely usable memory, pluggable extensions and the graphics memory. The system software often referred to simply as the "machine language monitor" is either flashed on a 2KB or 4KB ROM chip, depending on the computer model. The memory addresses for the system software range from $ F000 to $ F7FF or $ FFFF respectively. After power on the system software also uses the memory between $0000 and $0100 to store various variables, so this space should not be used by the user either.
The addresses of the freely usable memory (nearly 16KB) range from $0100 to $3FFF on the Z 1013.1 and the Z 1013.6 and can go up to $E000 if the system has been expanded with 16 KB RAM modules. The 64KB version Z 1013.64 further extends the memory range up to $EC00 where the video memory starts and takes up the address space to $EFFF. For programming of the computer the desired programming language, such as Tiny BASIC 87 with 3 KB or the significantly larger KC 87 BASIC with 10 KB, must be loaded into memory from cassette or added via a plug-in cartridge. Loading Tiny Basic from cassette for example reduces the freely available memory for writing BASIC programs to about 12 KB In the basic configuration with 16 KB RAM, so that a memory upgrade is recommended for larger programming projects. Is the programming language loaded from a plug-in module the usable memory at Z1013.01 and Z1013.16 does not change, though. [11]
For connecting peripherals to computers are equipped with a cassette interface and a user port (a built-in U855-PIO). These units are, in the case of Z1013.01 also to reject types. For expansion, there is a slot ("Bus Expansion") ready. [4]
Graphics, input and output
For the output of the computer graphics include factory only a character generator, the text or graphic symbols (in "quasi Graphics") with a 32 × 32 characters with 8 × 8 pixels can represent. The needed for this to ROM located fixed character set contains 96 alphanumeric and control characters and graphic symbols 146. [12] A pixel graphics mode ("graphic") is by default not available, but can be supplemented in DIY. For instructions were published in various magazines and books until the early 1990s. The black-and-white image is output through the coaxial RF antenna port on a standard TV, the backfitting of color representation are possible. The operation of the keyboard and the control of the tape recorder via the built-in computers input and output port U855-PIO (English Parallel Input Output).
Peripherals and extensions
In addition to the products sold by Robotron extensions are countless more, many of which were presented in printed publications.
Mass storage
In connection with mainly western home computers of the 1980s came mainly for data backup tape recorders and floppy drives also, in a professional environment with the personal computers increasingly hard - and removable disk drives used. The cheapest version of the data recording by compact cassette has the disadvantage of low data transfer rates and so long loading times, whereas the much faster and more reliable disks and disk drives were much more expensive to purchase, or in the case of the GDR were hardly available. Upon publication of the Z 1013 for data recording were merely tape recorder and tape systems available. Ports for connecting disk drives did not come until the reunification period on.
Cassette recorder
The Z-1013 computer equipped ex works with a cassette interface for storing programs and data on compact cassette by a standard cassette recorder with prescribed in the manual minimum requirements for contact configurations and the frequency response . Frequently used here were small-scale devices, such as the types Geracord, Datacord and later LCR-C DATA manufacturer VEB Elektronik Gera.
Floppy systems
A disk system 1013 was never intended by the developers of the Robotron-Z because of his hobby character and therefore its low economic priority, especially appropriate control electronics had to be imported until 1987 and that was expensive to purchase. With the publication of the circuit produced in the GDR U8272, a replica of the Intel developed floppy disk controller P8272A, suggestions and basic procedures for building your own floppy systems for the DDR home computers were also published. [13] The predominant in the GDR lack especially in the field of drive mechanisms are ordered and thus the construction of a floppy disk system for the economically insignificant Z 1013 made almost impossible, so building instructions were published until the reunification period. [14]
In the magazine amateur radio in mid-1992 a simple hardware interface along with listing was Disk Monitor presented for the operation of the Commodore 1541-II floppy with the Z 1013. There are up to four disk drives can be connected each with a capacity of 170 KB per disk side. The recording format is compatible with the Commodore computer so that data from both systems are easily interchangeable. [15]
Chassis and power supply module
The computers are used only for processing simple tasks due to their minimalist hardware. Further projects and applications require upgrades and enhancements. A special role is played by the subrack Z 1013.50, which provides four expansion slots along with appropriate amplification and control electronics. One of these wells, however, permanently from the power supply module Z 1013.40 substantiated as recommended by the manufacturer for the Z 1013 power adapter is not designed to operate additional modules. All slots of the rack are plug compatible with the extensions of the computer Z 9001, KC 85/1 and KC 87, wherein the modules must often be modified slightly for use. If the rack with the Z 1013.64 be operated at both respective changes should be made. [16]
Memory and additional interfaces
In order to upgrade the RAM, the manufacturer recommends the use of a RAM module, the computer Z 9001, KC 85/1 and 87 KC with the type designation 1.40.690003.5. In addition, there is a free unpopulated ROM module of Robotron, which can accommodate up to five EPROMs of the same type previously described by the user, each with a storage capacity of 2 KB.
With two expansion modules, the address range in which they are to be displayed by previously has DIP switches are set. The retrofitting of additional input and output interfaces are provided with the module Z 1013.30 which three freely usable I/O ports and a V.24 provides interface for control, for example printers. [17]
In addition to the modules sold by Robotron, user solutions that were prepared in larger quantities, and often as a mass storage replacement (existing RAM disk ), were used. The most widely used version of Präcitronic with 256 KB RAM (64 KB RAM and 192 KB memory bank), in 1988 in the journal Microprocessor Electronics, was presented together with PCB manufacturers and adapted shortly thereafter for use with the Z1013. With appropriately modified system software, RAM disks were often used as replacement cassette recorder used. [18] [19]
Keyboard and joystick port
The membrane keyboard of the Z-1013 computer had an 8 × 4 matrix of alphabetically arranged letters.
The membrane keyboard included in the kit needed to be connected by the user before first use via a ribbon cable to the computer circuit board. The keys were arranged alphabetically in matrix 4 × 8 and the contact in the membrane switch proved to be unsatisfactory, the keys tended to bounce . An effective work was almost impossible. [20] Soon, were part of many users desired alternatives and also developed. As a standard solution for connecting more comfortable keyboards with QWERTY arrangement of 1988 sat in the journal microprocessor technology to a broad public presented Brosig monitor with instructions for building a hardware interface through. Besides additional utilities and backward compatibility for system software from Robotron of 4KB comprehensive Brosig monitor also offers the ability to operate joysticks on the computers. [21]
With the help of an additional module available separately to the Z 1013.64 keyboards with 64 keys, as they were shipped with most DDR-office computers are operated. [22]
Graphics modules
The improvement of the graphical capabilities were devoted to various articles in magazines and brochures. These include instructions for building various extensions of varying scope and also the notes for acquisition by purchase of prefabricated modules. The spectrum ranges from improved character generator solutions (developed by the Computer Club Jena graphics card GDC 80 × 25 characters) monochrome high-resolution pixel graphics (256 x 256 solution KRT graphics in micro computer tips 11 [23] and 256 × 192 Card Spectrum graphics in the Journal Practic [24] ) to proposals of multicolored high-resolution versions (384 × 288 Card VIS3 with 16 colors of the Academy of Sciences [25] ). Robotron itself offered no such upgrades. [26]
Software
When existing software is mainly to in-house developments from the GDR. Machine-porting of programs western Z80-based home computer systems were very expensive due to technical differences in the rule. The easiest is the exchange program and the corresponding adaptation of software with the computers of the series Z 9001, KC 85/1 and KC 87
The proliferation of software and the exchange of experiences carried out mainly through private contacts as well as newspaper ads, trade shows, by insertion of programs in magazines and broadcast on the radio, such as in the broadcast Rem . [27] From the state was the creation software, for example, about the Society for Sport and Technology (GST) with their computer section Sports promoted. Often, the GST was also one of the organizers of meetings and conferences.
Restrictions on the disclosure by copyright protection or copy protection mechanisms did not exist in practice. Rather, the free distribution of software ("Amateur Software") was promoted and confirmed in relevant meetings. [28] For the Z 1013 more than 500 programs and hardware extensions have been developed and published. [29]
System Tools
To configure the computer hardware to drive the cassette interface and to enter and read-out of memory addresses that serves operating system contained in the ROM of the device monitor program 2:02 at Z 1013.01, Z 1013.12 and Z 1013.16 or monitor program A.2 at Z 1013.64. The system software of the Z 1013.64 enables a subsequent connection of a comfortable keyboard with 58 keys, in contrast to those of previous Z-1013 models, which include a maximum of 32 keys. [22]
Besides Robotrons monitor programs exist other system software from third parties that can be upgraded with the help of the user EPROM. This is particularly noteworthy in 1987 presented and subsequently widespread Brosig monitor, which is backward compatible with the system software of Robotron. In addition to useful utilities of 4KB comprehensive Brosig Monitor provides including the ability to operate the computer models Z and Z 1013.01 1013.16 with comfortable keyboards and joysticks. [22] [30] [21]
On computer models, which have a RAM disk, the operation is with the CP/M based system software SCP possible. Thus, some programs from the extensive library SCP are also available for the Z-1013 computer. [28]
Programming Languages and Applications
Due to the limited graphics and sound generating options, the Z-1013 machines were mainly used for programming and for applications such as word processing. There are also some games that get along with monochrome graphics and without background music, such as the chess programs Chess master and Cyrus-Chess.
For programming the Z 1013 different programming languages and tools are available. In addition assemblers ( 5.3 scf assembler, editor / assembler EDAS ) are high level languages such as Tiny-BASIC, KC-BASIC, BASICODE, Forth and Pascal available. [28]
Literature
Special magazines for the Z 1013 and other home computers in general there was not. Magazines such as Funkamateur, Jugend und Technik, MP – Mikroprozessortechnik und Practic regularly published news, reports, craft instructions for building your own additional hardware or upgrading and conversion of computer programs as well as for typing.
The VEB Robotron Elektronik Riesa served as editor of the written by Hannes Gutzer and Gerd Hutterer brochure BASIC with the Z 1013, which had the programming using the BASIC interpreter of Z in 1013 on the topic.
Even after the German reunification the same interests in private publications and from the late 1990s, within the following of DDR-computing technology also maintained in Internet forums further, to the creation of appropriate emulators. [31]
Emulation
After the end of Heimcomputerära the early 1990s and with the advent of powerful and affordable computing technology mid-1990s programs were strengthened by dedicated enthusiasts to emulate developed by home computers and their peripherals. To play old classics various home computer systems ranges with the help of emulators, a single modern system with data images ("Images") of the corresponding home computer programs. The advent of emulators sat thus, inter alia, an increased transfer of otherwise potentially lost software on modern storage media in transition, making an important contribution to the preservation of digital culture is made. [32]
To emulate the GDR small computer, especially the Z 1013, which runs under Windows and Linux emulation package was JKCEMU developed. [33]
Reception
Contemporary
In contrast to the computers of the KC series, was the Z 1013 also for private users - but only after ordering, long waiting time and personal pickup in Erfurt or Riesa - available. The reason for the restricted distribution was the refusal of international trade to drive the Z-1013 kit, on the grounds that a craft unit will encounter in the population to little interest. [34]
From the state-controlled magazines such as Radio Television electronics and amateur radio the appearance of the computer, however, was greeted: "As close to the hardware, reasonably priced and well documented system" he was perfectly suited to the "experimental appropriation of skills in the field of applied micro-computer technology". [35 ] [36] At the same time, however, was that initially the Z 9001 and KC 85/1 incompatible BASIC, incompatibilities of the cassette interface for the differently clocked variants and especially useless for extensive text input foil flat keyboard as "the weak point of the Z 1013" criticized. [37 ] [35] Overall, the Z 1013 was classified as a viable device "for electronics amateurs, beginners and advanced, amateur radio, and social support needs of teaching and training." [36]
The popularity of the computers in the population manifested itself in a variety of organized computer clubs with frequently held local meetings to high traffic national meetings that were held annually and serve for example for exchanging software, experience and set of programming standards. [38]
Retrospective
More recently, are developed and produced in the GDR computer, including in particular small computer and video gaming machines, again reinforced above all perceived in the media, on the Internet and also exhibited in special museums. Here, the Z 1013 is characterized as ajar to Western single-board self-development, despite the fact that many electronic components such as the microprocessor U880 is a copy of the Western Z80 microprocessor from Zilog. In contrast to the GDR minicomputers from Dresden and Mühlhausen was the Z 1013 "with open design available in several versions as a consumer over the entire production period, but without being able to meet the demand." Which examines the historical elaboration of Robotron computer technology working group in the Technical Collections Dresden characterizes the distribution of the environment Z in 1013 as follows:
"This relatively inexpensive microcomputer kit therefore came in the home but also in computer clubs and associations and in a few cases in the industry for the use. He was well suited for immediate get to know the internal workings of micro-computer technology, for learning programming, to build their own computer for creative hobby applications, and numerous hardware and software improvements and enhancements. "
- Klaus-Dieter way : product line home computers, mini-computers and computer education of the VEB Kombinat Robotron. [39]
Even if the kit in the GDR was very popular, the technological backwardness of the computer compared to the products of Western industrialized countries always about three to five years was at the time of their appearance: was defined as the production of the Z 1013 recorded in East Germany, were in the West already affordable 16-bit computers like the Atari ST and Commodore Amiga available for private households. [1] [40]
After the decline in demand, oversupply, despite considerable selling price reductions in 1989 and 1990. A continuation of the production of the MRB Z 1013 in 1990 in view of the expected range of other Western competitors no longer profitable, whereupon the production of the Z 1013 and mid-1990, set up the equipment in the warehouse remainder of scrapping was fed. [31]
Literature
Klaus-Dieter Weise: Erzeugnislinie home computers, mini-computers and computer education of the VEB Kombinat Robotron. history of the Robotron UAGworking group computing technology in the Technischen Sammlungen Dresden, Dresden 2005, (PDF; 590 KB).
References
Z1013.de (German)
Robotron Z1013 (English)
External links
J1013 (Java Z1013 emulator)
Mikrorechnerbausatz MRB Z1013
Z1013 software-database comprehensive collection of binaries and documentation
Home computers
Goods manufactured in East Germany
Science and technology in East Germany
Computers designed in Germany |
2481271 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet%20radio%20device | Internet radio device | An Internet radio device, also called network music player is a hardware device that is capable of receiving and playing streamed media from either Internet radio stations or a home network.
Background
Streaming media became mainstream with the advent of portable music players / MP3 player and the convenience of converting and compressing CD music into music file by the computer or the acquisition of products in such formats using on-line music stores like Amazon, iTunes, and 7digital.
The network music player is connected to a home router. For convenience a wireless router is often used. The router is connected to the internet and thus enables access to Internet streaming resources. Alternatively, the home network can access the user's collection of music on a computer or on a network-attached storage (NAS) device dedicated to store a user's music files.
Audio streaming
Audio streaming is one way of transmitting audio files on a continuous feed to a network music player. A common way today is to stream the audio from the computer to a network music player over the more convenient wireless technologies such as Wi-Fi in a networked environment.
The computer, which is typically used for storing the music file, acts as a music server by means of server software, often compliant to DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) standard. And the network music player is a typical receiver which starts playing an audio file as soon as some of the data has been received so that one does not have to wait for the entire audio file to finish downloading.
The MP3 music file is streamed to the network music player in digital format, commonly in the original MP3 format. Therefore, the audio details of the MP3 music are sent wirelessly in the home to the network music player as it is stored on the computer and without loss.
The MP3 music files are then converted back into audio signal by the network music player and played. As the MP3 music files are organized by the music server on the computer, the information is also sent to the network music player where the user can see all of the music track information.
Many companies working actively in bringing Internet radio into devices are organized in the Internet Media Device Alliance IMDA. In addition to the home networking standards of DLNA, IMDA compatibility standards dedicated to all aspects of Internet radio distribution.
Internet radio
Internet reaches many areas in the world, and thus does Internet radio. It has expanded enormously with an estimated 19,000 stations currently available, including many traditional FM /AM simulcasting their content over the Internet.
Online music services
Online music services usually offer millions of songs and thousands of artists for users to choose from. Network music players that support online music services let users access this vast selection of music tracks.
Station directory services keep a current list of active Internet radio stations, their URI and streaming formats and list them sorted by genre, location, language and other criteria. Many devices use either proprietary vendor-specific station list servers or dedicated directory services.
Categories
There are generally two types of network music players:
Those without speakers that need to be connected to an audio system in order to listen to the music. Examples of commercial devices are the Philips Streamium NP1100 and NP2500, the Logitech Squeezebox, the Roku SoundBridge (M500, M1000, M2000 and M1001), and the Grace Digital IRDT200.
Those with their own speakers. Examples of commercial devices are the Connected Flow range of devices from Pure Digital, TerraTec Noxon family, Philips Streamium NP2900 the Logitech Squeezebox Boom, the Roku SoundBridge Radio (R1000), and Grace Digital models IR1000-IR2500. Also many higher end audio devices such as AVRs and systems from Denon, Pioneer and Onkyo include Internet radio capability.
Hardware
Network music players usually have:
Broadband connection: an Ethernet and/or Wi-Fi network interface, with TCP/IP support for access to the Internet
USB port, where the user can connect an external MP3 player like iPod or external harddrive for MP3 files
LCD, remote control
Built-in amplifier/speaker, or AUX-out port, that can be used to connect to a HiFi or similar audio device
Rechargeable batteries for mobility with internal charger integrated
Favorite streams & contents can be saved as presets
Clock with lighted display, some with alarm settings and auto-time-sync
Some devices also have:
Memory card reader: SD or even SDHC card
XLR connectors
(MP3) stream encryption
See also
FM radio
Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB)
Digital photo frame
Network Media Player
Radio receiver
Smart speaker
References
Internet audio players |
2741316 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John%20Pinkerton%20%28computer%20designer%29 | John Pinkerton (computer designer) | John Maurice McClean Pinkerton (2 August 1919 – 22 December 1997) was a pioneering British computer designer. Along with David Caminer, he designed England's first business computer, the LEO computer, produced by J. Lyons and Co in 1951.
Personal life
John Pinkerton was educated at King Edward's School, Bath, and Clifton College, Bristol. He studied at Trinity College, Cambridge from 1937 to 1940, reading Natural Sciences, and graduating with first class honours. He joined the Air Ministry Research Establishment in Swanage, to work on radar, and went with it to Malvern where it was renamed the Telecommunications Research Establishment (where he met Maurice Wilkes). He returned to Cambridge as a research student at the Cavendish Laboratory.
In 1948 he married Helen McCorkindale. They had a son and a daughter.
Colleagues describe him as having "a disarming way of listening intently to what others said", a "quiet, dry sense of humour", a "fine, critical, but constructive intelligence", "an enviable ability to handle detail", and "friendliness and kindness". They also mention his knowledge of music and English literature and his lively appreciation of good food.
J. Lyons
The catering firm of J. Lyons was known in the high street for its tea and cakes; in the business world it was known for its innovative approach to supply chain management. As early as 1947 the firm decided that the future lay with computers, and since nothing suitable was available, they resolved to build one. They approached Wilkes in Cambridge, who suggested that they construct a copy of the EDSAC machine, and introduced them to Pinkerton whom they recruited as chief engineer.
Pinkerton's approach was to leave the design unchanged as far as possible, while improving reliability by identifying the points of failure (notably electronic valves) and developing test procedures that enabled component failures to be anticipated and prevented.
The machine went into operation in early 1951, and was used to its full capacity by 1954, at which point the company decided to build a second machine. They also saw the potential in building computers for use by other companies, and in 1955 set up a subsidiary, LEO Computers Ltd, with Pinkerton as technical director. In this capacity he was responsible for the development of the successor machines LEO II and LEO III.
By 1961 it was clear that the company did not have the resources to build its own computers indefinitely, so Lyons sold the operation to English Electric.
English Electric and ICL
Pinkerton was appointed head of research in English Electric Computers, which went through a series of mergers eventually becoming part of ICL in 1968.
In the 1970s Pinkerton, together with Conway Berners-Lee, developed and applied a queuing network model for optimising the price/performance of the new ICL's 'New Range' of computers (later the ICL 2900 Series). It was known as FAST – standing for Football Analogy for System Throughput.
He remained with the company until his retirement in 1984, in a variety of product strategy roles.
Maurice Wilkes wrote, "it is a sad fact that, although he remained active in ICL at a senior level, he never found a role that in any way matched his track record or gave full scope for his abilities."
He served for many years as president of ECMA, the European Computer Manufacturers' Association, helping to build it into an organisation respected for the quality and timeliness of its work.
Retirement
In retirement Pinkerton was one of the original court members (from 1988) of the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists and "the mainspring of their Apprenticeship Scheme". He was also editor of a series of technical books.
He edited the ICL Technical Journal between 1990 and 1996. His predecessor, Jack Howlett, commented: "John took the task of editing the journal with great seriousness, energy, and enthusiasm, and spared no effort in ensuring that the papers for each issue... met his exacting standards for content, presentation, and written English. He was very good indeed at discussing the content and form of a possible paper with a potential author, and, with an experienced author, ... helping to sort out the essential ideas and put them in the right logical order." He also frequently intervened with the managers of potential authors to allocate time and recognition for this activity.
He also made contributions to documenting the history of computing, for example through the
Science Museum's recorded interviews with UK pioneers.
Legacy
The Institution of Engineering and Technology holds an annual Pinkerton Lecture in their prestigious lecture series. Each year an Engineer of considerable repute is selected to make a computer related presentation. The inaugural lecture was given by Maurice Wilkes.
References
External links
Oral history interview with John M. M. Pinkerton, Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota. Pinkerton discusses his education and wartime work in radar technology, then describes work in the computer industry after World War II and specifically his work on the Leo computers. In this context he discusses the British computer firms J. Lyons and Company, English Electric, and International Computers Ltd.
IET Pinkerton Lecture, organised annually by the IET
Photograph of John Pinkerton with the LEO Computer
1919 births
1997 deaths
History of computing in the United Kingdom
People educated at Clifton College
Computer designers
Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge
International Computers Limited people
British computer specialists |
37553217 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaporizhzhia%20Polytechnic%20National%20University | Zaporizhzhia Polytechnic National University | Zaporizhzhia Polytechnic National University is a Ukrainian university in Zaporizhzhia.
History
Russian Empire
Zaporizhzhia Polytechnic National University started in 1900 as a seven-year mechanical technical vocational college, preparing technic - mechanics specialists. The sometime together with education creation of main buildings was carried out. Very quickly the main three-storied building was built. Currently the main building of ZNTU, this housed lecture rooms, physical and mechanical studies, laboratories, assembly hall and a shop selling ready-made products.
At the end of its first decade 240 people studied in the college. Graduates from the college successfully worked at machine-construction enterprises promoting the rise of the colleges reputation. It was considered to be one of the best not only in the Ukraine, but across Europe.
USSR
In 1920 the college was reorganized into Zaporizhzhia industrial technical school with four year studies (possessing some rights of high school). From November 1922 to 1930 the industrial school was the educational enterprise training engineer-mechanics for agricultural machine construction and general machine construction. Many graduates became leading industrial specialists and statesmen. In 1930 the technical school was reorganized into Zaporizhzhya Agricultural Engineering Institute training specialists in four subjects: tractor and agricultural engineering, metal treatment and foundry.
In the 10 years before the start of the World War II, 782 people got engineer's diplomas and worked at Zaporizhzhian plants. During the war, more than 500 students and lecturers went to the front, 52 people studied at the artillery academy named after F.E. Dzerzhinsky, 30 people finished accelerated courses of armored academy. More than 300 students and lecturers were awarded State orders and medals. More than 50 members of the technical school did not return from the front.
After Zaporizhzhia German forces were driven out in 1944 Zaporizhzhia automechanical institute was organized and three years later it became Zaporizhzhia Agricultural Engineering Institute, until 1957 when it was renamed Zaporizhzhia Machine Construction Institute (ZMI). In 1980 ZMI received the Badge of Honor for the preparation of highly qualified professionals. Between 1930-1990 institute prepared 40,000 engineers, including 825 for foreign countries.
Ukraine
Zaporizhzhia State Technical University was created by a Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine decision dated 20 April 1994. In August 2001 according to Ukrainian President's Decree ZSTU was awarded the status of a National institution.
During 2006-2007 separate structural units: Berdyansk machine construction college, Tokmak mechanical school, Zaporizhzhia college of radio electronics, Zaporizhzhia electrotechnical college and Humanitarian college entered the university.
Campuses and buildings
University campus occupies territory of 14,2 hectares including:
Educational zone – 7.8 hectares;
Living zone with hostels – 2.25 hectares;
Recreation zone – 3.8 hectares;
Other – 0.35 hectares.
Those territories include 7 educational buildings, sport complex, administrative and business buildings.
There are 5 hostels in the university with living space of 25 000 sq.m. ensuring 100% students accommodation. One of the hostels is used for married students’ couples.
The main building of the university hosts canteen, assembly hall, editorial and publishing departments, center of computer technologies as well as auditoriums, laboratories, computer classes. There are 43 computer classes governed by faculties and chairs. Computers are also used in many of university's laboratories, where laboratory equipment is combined with computers used for investigations of different algorithms and technologies. Total number of modern computers used for educational purposes equals 1430 units. Wi-Fi technologies are introduced in the university.
Besides. University leads Ukrainian high school using NTUU “KPI” cluster. Scientific supervisor of supercomputer calculation center A. Petrenko showed the application of cluster power by different organizations. According to diagram showed in this report in 2009 ZNTU used more than 15 percent processing time of NTUU “KPI” cluster.
University owns four scientific lending libraries, 8 reading halls with 454 seats. Library computer net equipped by 2 servers, 7 scanners, 7 printers, 2 copy machines and 76 computers connected into joint communicational net. Electronic library effectively increase sticking of funds with electronic text-books and methodical materials created by university lecturers.
Institutes and faculties
There are 6 institutes, 12 departments and center for skill improvement, extension and advanced courses.
Institute of Machine Construction
(director – L.I. Ivshenko, D.Sci., Prof.)
Machine Construction Department
(dean – V.I. Glushko, Cand. Sci., Assist.Prof.)
prepares professionals in the following specialties:
Machine Construction Technology;
Aviation Engines and Power plants Production Technology;
Metal-cutting Lathes and Systems;
Machine building Constructions Plastic making Equipment and Technology; Winding, Construction, Road Building Machines and Equipment;
engines and aircraft energy units.
Transportation and Logistics Department
(dean – V.F. Kozirev, Cand. Sci., Assist.Prof.)
prepares professionals in the following specialties:
Internal Combustion Engines;
Wheel and Caterpillar Vehicles;
Logistics and Transportation Management;
Traffic Organization and Regulation;
Transportation Systems.
Institute of Physics and Engineering
(director – V.V. Luniov, D.Sci., Prof.)
Physics and Engineering Department
(dean – O.V. Klimov, Cand Sci. Prof.)
prepares professionals in the following specialties:
Foundry Technologies of Ferrous and Nonferrous Metalsand Alloys;
Foundry Equipment and Technology;
Applied Material Science;
Welding Technology and Equipment;
Details and Constructions Restoration and Wearability.
Electrical Engineering Department
(dean – V.P. Metelsky, Cand. Sci., Prof.)
prepares professionals in the following specialties:
Electrical Machines and Apparatuses;
Electric Drive and Electromechanical Automation Systems;
Electrotechnical Systems of Energy Consumption;
Energy Management;
Electromechanical Equipment of Power-Consuming Plants.
Institute of Information Science and Radioelectronics
(director – D.M. Piza, D. Sci., Prof.)
Radioengineering Department
(dean – V.S. Kabak., Cand. Sci., Assist. Prof.)
prepares professionals in the following specialties:
Radio Engineering;
Computer Systems and Networks;
Information Technical Protection Systems and Information processing automation;
Informational and Communication Systems Security, Electronics;
Radio-electronic devices and equipment;
Intellectual technologies of microsystems radioelectronic technics;
Microelectronics and Semi-Conductor Devices;
Quality, Standardization and Certification.
Information Science and Computer Engineering Department
(dean – M.M. Kasyan, Cand.Sci., Assist.Prof.)
prepares professionals in the following specialties:
Computer Systems and Networks;
Customized Computer Systems;
Systems Software;
Systems of Artificial Intellect;
Engineering of Software;
Information Technology Design;
Systems Analysis and Management.
Institute of Economics and Humanities
(director – P.V. Gudz, D.Sci. Prof.)
Economics and Management Department
(dean – V.V. Korolkov, Cand. Sci. Assist. Prof.)
prepares professionals in the following specialties:
Organizational Management and Administration;
Marketing;
Finance and Credits;
Accounting and Audit.
Humanities Department
(dean – M.V. Dedkov, Cand.Sci.,Assist.Prof.)
prepares specialists in the following specialties:
International Relations;
Translation;
Design.
Law and Management Institute
(director – V.M. Zaytseva, Cand. Sci. Prof.)
International Tourism and Management Department
(dean – E.A. Vasylieva, Cand. Sci., Assist. Prof.)
prepares specialists in the following specialties:
tourism management,
human resources and work economy management.
Humanity and Law Department
(dean – T.A. Hayvoronskaya, Cand. Sci. Assist.Prof.)
prepares specialists in the following specialties:
law science;
psychology;
sociology;
Journalism.
Physical Culture and Sport Management Department
(dean – I.V. Pushina, Cand. Sci. Assist. Prof.)
prepares specialists in the following specialties:
physical training;
physical rehabilitation
Institute of Professional Training
(director – S.T. Yarimbash, Cand. Sci., Assist. Prof.)
Common Technical Department
(dean – E.P. Sokolov, Cand. Sci., Assist. Prof.);
Center for skill improvement, extension and Advanced Courses (director – N.N. Sytnikov, Cand. Sci., Assist. Prof.)
prepares specialists in the following specialties:
Computer Systems and Networks;
Automation Systems Software;
Organizational Management;
Finance and Credits;
Marketing;
Accounting and Audit.
Famous alumni
– former ZNTU Rector, Dr. Tech. Sci, Prof. Distinguished educator of Ukraine, Laureate of State Award in science and Technics
– industrial, scientific, public and political activist, Hero of Ukraine, People's Deputy of Ukraine. Since 1994 – head of administrative board, director-general JSV “Motor Sich”. Since 2011 – Head of directors council of JSV “Motor Sich”
– head of administrative board of JSV “Zaporizhzhia automobile plant”, deputy of Zaporizhzhia district council of VI convocation, vice-chairman of permanent commission on economical development, industrial policy and investments of district council
– Ukrainian statesman, Governor of Zaporizhzhia Oblast (1999, 2001-2003), Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Ambassador to Kazakhstan, Zaporizhzhia mayor (2003-2010)
Igor Kleiner – director – general of JST “Zaporizhtransformator” plant, deputy of Zaporizhzhia district council for Party of Regions Игорь Саулович Клейнер
Volodymyr Kuratchenko – director-general of production joint “Radiopribor” (1990-1997), Governor of Zaporizhzhia Oblast (1998-1999, 1999-2000), First Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine (1999)
Viktor Lakomsky – Associate Member of National Academy of sciences of Ukraine, head of department of plasmatechnologies in Electricwelding institute named after E.Paton
– soviet state and economical person, Deputy of Supreme Soviet of USSR (10-11 convocation), candidate of General Committee Communist Party member 1981–1986, member of General Committee Party 1986-1990
– Ukrainian statesman, member of National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine (1996-2002)
– director of Zaporizhzhia Motorbuilding Plant (1958-1974), director general of Zaporizhzhia production joint “Motorbuilding” (1974-1987), Dr. Sci.(1977), Prof.(1982), Honored Scientist of Ukraine (1978), Hero of Socialist Labour (1966), Honored Aviabuilder (1986)
Georgy Peychev – first deputy chief, chief engineer of state enterprise “Zaporizhzhia machinebuilding construction bureau Ivchenko-Progress”
– Governor of Zaporizhzhia Oblast (2010-2011), member of Political Council of the Party of Regions
Igor Presnyak – Director of State Enterprise “Scientific- industrial complex Iskra”
Yury Shulte – Dr. Tech. Sci., Prof., Associate member of Academy of Science of Ukraine, Laureate of Lenin's Award, Honored Specialist in Science and Technics.
Awards and reputation
Recent years several estimations of high school activities were done both by employers and on national level. In such ratings best high schools take part. According to integrated estimations Zaporizhzhia National Technical University gets marks above medium in Ukraine. University is a leading higher education center in South East of Ukraine. Possessing highest IV level of accreditation. Prepares highly qualified specialists in 51 specialties of technical, computer, economical and humanitarian directions.
References
External links
National University «Zaporizhzhia Polytechnic»
National universities in Ukraine
Universities and colleges in Zaporizhzhia |
6213536 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynth | Photosynth | Photosynth is a discontinued app and service from Microsoft Live Labs and the University of Washington that analyzes digital photographs and generates a three-dimensional model of the photos and a point cloud of a photographed object. Pattern recognition components compare portions of images to create points, which are then compared to convert the image into a model. Users are able to view and generate their own models using a software tool available for download at the Photosynth website.
History
Photosynth is based on Photo Tourism, a research project by University of Washington graduate student Noah Snavely. Shortly after Microsoft's acquisition of Seadragon in early 2006, that team began work on Photosynth, under the direction of Seadragon founder Blaise Agüera y Arcas.
Microsoft released a free tech preview version on November 9, 2006. Users could view models generated by Microsoft or the BBC, but not create their own models at that time. Microsoft teamed up with NASA on August 6, 2007 allowing users to preview its Photosynth technology showing the Space Shuttle Endeavour. On August 20, 2007, a preview showing the tiles of Endeavour during the backflip process was made available for viewing.
On August 20, 2008, Microsoft officially released Photosynth to the public, allowing users to upload their images and generate their own Photosynth models.
In March 2010, Photosynth added support for gigapixel panoramas stitched in Microsoft ICE. The panoramas use Seadragon based technology similar to the system already used in synths.
In July 2015, Microsoft announced it would be retiring the Photosynth mobile apps. As Photosynth prepared to shut down in early 2017, Mapillary, a crowdsourced street-level imaging platform, reached out to the Photosynth community with their Photosynth-to-Mapillary blog post, and the official Photosynth Twitter account suggested users "check them out". On 6 February 2017, Microsoft decommissioned the Photosynth website and services.
On 20 December 2017, Photosynth returned as a feature of the Microsoft Pix app.
In the development of Microsoft Flight Simulator, Microsoft's Photosynth technology returned to recreate buildings and terrain across the entire world.
Process
The Photosynth technology works in two steps. The first step involves the analysis of multiple photographs taken of the same area. Each photograph is processed using an interest point detection and matching algorithm developed by Microsoft Research which is similar in function to UBC's Scale-invariant feature transform. This process identifies specific features, for example the corner of a window frame or a door handle. Features in one photograph are then compared to and matched with the same features in the other photographs. Thus photographs of the same areas are identified. By analyzing the position of matching features within each photograph, the program can identify which photographs belong on which side of others. By analyzing subtle differences in the relationships between the features (angle, distance, etc.), the program identifies the 3D position of each feature, as well as the position and angle at which each photograph was taken. This process is known scientifically as bundle adjustment and is commonly used in the field of photogrammetry, with similar products available such as Imodeller and D-Sculptor. This first step is extremely computationally intensive, but only has to be performed once on each set of photographs.
The second step involves the display of and navigation through the 3D point cloud of features identified in the first step. This is done with the publicly downloadable Photosynth viewer. The viewer resides on a client computer and maintains a connection to a server that stores the original photographs. It enables a user to, among other things, see any of the photographs from their original vantage point. It incorporates DeepZoom technology Microsoft obtained through its acquisition of Seadragon in January 2006. The Seadragon technology enables smooth zooming into the high-resolution photographs without downloading them to the user's machine.
The Photosynth Direct 3D-based viewing software is only available to the Windows 7, Windows Vista and Windows XP operating systems. However, the team released a Silverlight version of the viewer which has succeeded the D3D viewer as the main option to view photosynths.
Mobile apps
As of March 2009, user uploaded Photosynth collections were available for viewing on iPhones using iSynth (3D) or Seadragon Mobile (2D only).
The Photosynth application was also available from the App Store to download on iPod Touch and iPhone. In May 2012, Microsoft released a Photosynth App for its mobile platform, Windows Phone. On July 10, 2015, Microsoft announced that they are retiring the Photosynth Mobile Apps, removing them from their stores, and are no longer supporting or updating them.
While the Photosynth platform was shut down in early 2017, its features re-appeared in the fall within the Microsoft Pix app for iOS, however as of late 2020, the Photosynth features appear to no longer be part of the Microsoft Pix app.
Capabilities
The latest generation of photosynths are easy to capture, as photographs taken by any regular digital camera or mobile phone can be uploaded to Photosynth. Users have the option to geotag their digital shots on sites such as Flickr and then upload them to the online Photosynth web service. Images uploaded on Photosynth give people the ability to seamlessly view landmarks, public spaces and objects from all sides.
Walk or fly through a scene to see photos from any angle
Zoom in or out of a photo
See where pictures were taken in relation to one another
Smoothly change viewing angle between nearby photos
Smoothly zoom in and out of high-resolution photos
Find similar photos to the one you're currently viewing
In the media
On April 30, 2008, Photosynth was featured in the episode Admissions of the television show CSI: New York.
CNN utilized Photosynth for a user-contributed 3D vision of the inauguration of Barack Obama as the President of the United States.
In the Angels & Demons "Path of Illumination Contest," Photosynth is used as well as advertised in the website.
In the MSN's coverage of the 70th anniversary of the RAF victory in the Battle of Britain, a Photosynth hangar of some of the fighter planes from the battle was built. A series of Photosynths have also been created for the Imperial War Museum Duxford so that web users could experience the planes up close from a range of angles.
See also
Microsoft Image Composite Editor — a free advanced panorama stitching system
Seadragon Software
Hugin (software) — a cross-platform open source panorama stitching system
QuickTime VR
MeshLab — a cross-platform open source mesh processing tool that allows to import point clouds reconstructed by Photosynth
References
External links
Official University of Washington Photo Tourism Site
Microsoft Live Labs
Microsoft software
Photo software
Photo stitching software
3D graphics software
Panorama software
Virtual reality
Discontinued Microsoft software
Photogrammetry software |
45694879 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary%20Clinton%20email%20controversy | Hillary Clinton email controversy | During her tenure as United States Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton drew controversy by using a private email server for official public communications rather than using official State Department email accounts maintained on federal servers. Clinton's server was found to hold over 100 emails containing classified information, including 65 emails deemed "Secret" and 22 deemed "Top Secret". An additional 2,093 emails not marked classified were retroactively designated confidential by the State Department.
Some experts, officials, and members of Congress contended that Clinton's use of a private messaging system and a private server violated federal law, specifically 18 U.S. Code § 1924, regarding the unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or materials, as well as State Department protocols and procedures, and regulations governing recordkeeping. Clinton claimed that her use complied with federal laws and State Department regulations, and that former secretaries of state had also maintained personal email accounts (however Clinton was the only secretary of state to use a private server). News reports by NBC and CNN indicated that the emails discussed "innocuous" matters already available in the public domain. For example, the CIA drone program has been widely discussed in the public domain since the early 2000s; however, the existence of the program is technically classified, so sharing a newspaper article that mentions it would constitute a security breach, according to the CIA.
The controversy was a major point of discussion and contention during the 2016 presidential election, in which Clinton was the Democratic nominee. In May, the State Department's Office of the Inspector General released a report about the State Department's email practices, including Clinton's. In July, FBI director James Comey announced that the FBI investigation had concluded that Clinton had been "extremely careless" but recommended that no charges be filed because Clinton did not act with criminal intent, the historical standard for pursuing prosecution.
On October 28, 2016, eleven days before the election, Comey notified Congress that the FBI had started looking into newly discovered emails. On November 6, Comey notified Congress that the FBI had not changed its conclusion. Comey's timing was contentious, with critics saying that he had violated Department of Justice guidelines and precedent, and prejudiced the public against Clinton. The controversy received more media coverage than any other topic during the presidential campaign. Clinton and other observers argue that the reopening of the investigation contributed to her loss in the election. Comey said in his 2018 book A Higher Loyalty that his decision may have been unconsciously influenced by the fact that he considered it extremely likely that Clinton would become the next president.
On June 14, 2018, the Department of Justice's Office of the Inspector General released its report on the FBI's and DOJ's handling of Clinton's investigation, finding no evidence of political bias and lending support for the decision to not prosecute Clinton. A three-year State Department investigation concluded in September 2019 that 38 individuals were "culpable" in 91 instances of sending classified information that reached Clinton's email account, though it found "no persuasive evidence of systemic, deliberate mishandling of classified information".
Background
Clinton's use of BlackBerrys
Prior to her appointment as Secretary of State in 2009, Clinton and her circle of friends and colleagues communicated via BlackBerry phones. State Department security personnel suggested this would pose a security risk during her tenure. The email account used on Clinton's BlackBerry was then hosted on a private server in the basement of her home in Chappaqua, New York, but that information was not disclosed to State Department security personnel or senior State Department personnel.
Setting up a secure desktop computer in her office was suggested, but Clinton was unfamiliar with their use and opted for the convenience of her BlackBerry, not the State Department, government protocol of a secured desktop computer. Efforts to find a secure solution were abandoned by Clinton, and she was warned by State Department security personnel about the vulnerability of an unsecured BlackBerry to hacking. She affirmed her knowledge of the danger, and was reportedly told that the Bureau of Diplomatic Security had obtained intelligence about her vulnerability while she was on a trip to Asia, but continued to use her BlackBerry outside her office.
Domain names and email server
At the time of Senate confirmation hearings on Hillary Clinton's nomination as Secretary of State, the domain names clintonemail.com, wjcoffice.com, and presidentclinton.com were registered to Eric Hoteham, with the home of Clinton and her husband in Chappaqua, New York, as the contact address. The domains were pointed to a private email server that Clinton (who never had a state.gov email account) used to send and receive email, and which was purchased and installed in the Clintons' home for her 2008 presidential campaign.
The email server was located in the Clintons' home in Chappaqua, New York, from January 2009 until 2013, when it was sent to a data center in New Jersey before being handed over to Platte River Networks, a Denver-based information technology firm that Clinton hired to manage her email system.
The server itself runs a Microsoft Exchange 2010 server with access to emails over the internet being delivered by Outlook Web App. The web page is secured with a TLS certificate to allow information to be transmitted securely when using the website. However, for the first two months of its use – January 2009 through March 29, 2009 – the web page was reportedly not secured with a TLS certificate, meaning that information transmitted using the service was unencrypted and may have been vulnerable to interception.
Initial awareness
As early as 2009, officials with the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) expressed concerns over possible violations of normal federal government record-keeping procedures at the State Department under then-Secretary Clinton.
In December 2012, near the end of Clinton's tenure as Secretary of State, a nonprofit group called Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, filed a FOIA request seeking records about her email. CREW received a response in May 2013: "no records responsive to your request were located." Emails sent to Clinton's private clintonemail.com address were first discovered in March 2013, when a hacker named "Guccifer" widely distributed emails sent to Clinton from Sidney Blumenthal, which Guccifer obtained by illegally accessing Blumenthal's email account. The emails dealt with the 2012 Benghazi attack and other issues in Libya and revealed the existence of her clintonemail.com address.
Blumenthal did not have a security clearance when he received material from Clinton that has since been characterized as classified by the State Department.
In the summer of 2014, lawyers from the State Department noticed a number of emails from Clinton's personal account, while reviewing documents requested by the House Select Committee on Benghazi. A request by the State Department for additional emails led to negotiations with her lawyers and advisors. In October, the State Department sent letters to Clinton and all previous Secretaries of State back to Madeleine Albright requesting emails and documents related to their work while in office. On December 5, 2014, Clinton lawyers delivered 12 file boxes filled with printed paper containing more than 30,000 emails. Clinton withheld almost 32,000 emails deemed to be of a personal nature. Datto, Inc., which provided data backup service for Clinton's email, agreed to give the FBI the hardware that stored the backups.
As of May 2016, no answer had been provided to the public as to whether 31,000 emails deleted by Hillary Clinton as personal have been or could be recovered.
A March 2, 2015 New York Times article broke the story that the Benghazi panel had discovered that Clinton exclusively used her own private email server rather than a government-issued one throughout her time as Secretary of State, and that her aides took no action to preserve emails sent or received from her personal accounts as required by law. At that point, Clinton announced that she had asked the State Department to release her emails. Some in the media labeled the controversy "emailgate."
Use of private server for government business
According to Clinton's spokesperson Nick Merrill, a number of government officials have used private email accounts for official business, including secretaries of state before Clinton, but none have set up their own private domain to house their private email account.
State Department spokesperson Marie Harf said that: "For some historical context, Secretary Kerry is the first secretary of state to rely primarily on a state.gov email account." John Wonderlich, a transparency advocate with the Sunlight Foundation, observed while many government officials used private email accounts, their use of private email servers was much rarer. A notable exception was during the Bush administration, when dozens of senior White House officials conducted government business via approximately 22 million emails using accounts they had on a server owned by the Republican National Committee.
Dan Metcalfe, a former head of the Justice Department's Office of Information and Privacy, said this gave her even tighter control over her emails by not involving a third party such as Google and helped prevent their disclosure by Congressional subpoena. He added: "She managed successfully to insulate her official emails, categorically, from the FOIA, both during her tenure at State and long after her departure from it—perhaps forever," making it "a blatant circumvention of the FOIA by someone who unquestionably knows better."
According to Harf, use by government officials of personal email for government business is permissible under the Federal Records Act, so long as relevant official communications, including all work-related emails, are preserved by the agency. The Act (which was amended in late 2014 after Clinton left office to require that personal emails be transferred to government servers within 20 days) requires agencies to retain all official communications, including all work-related emails, and stipulates that government employees cannot destroy or remove relevant records. NARA regulations dictate how records should be created and maintained, require that they must be maintained "by the agency" and "readily found," and that the records must "make possible a proper scrutiny by the Congress." Section 1924 of Title 18 of the United States Code addresses the deletion and retention of classified documents, under which "knowingly" removing or housing classified information at an "unauthorized location" is subject to a fine, or up to a year in prison.
Experts such as Metcalfe agree that these practices are allowed by federal law assuming that the material is not supposed to be classified, or at least these practices are allowed in case of emergencies, but they discourage these practices, believing that official email accounts should be used.
Jason R. Baron, the former head of litigation at NARA, described the practice as "highly unusual" but not a violation of the law. In a separate interview, he said, "It is very difficult to conceive of a scenario—short of nuclear winter—where an agency would be justified in allowing its cabinet-level head officer to solely use a private email communications channel for the conduct of government business." Baron told the Senate Judiciary Committee in May 2015 that "any employee's decision to conduct all email correspondence through a private email network, using a non-.gov address, is inconsistent with long-established policies and practices under the Federal Records Act and NARA regulations governing all federal agencies."
May 2016 report from State Department's inspector general
In May 2016, the Department's Office of the Inspector General Steve A. Linick released an 83-page report about the State Department's email practices. The Inspector General was unable to find evidence that Clinton had ever sought approval from the State Department staff for her use of a private email server, determining that if Clinton had sought approval, Department staff would have declined her setup because of the "security risks in doing so." Aside from security risks, the report stated that "she did not comply with the Department's policies that were implemented in accordance with the Federal Records Act." Each of these findings contradicted what Clinton and her aides had been saying up to that point. The report also stated that Clinton and her senior aides declined to speak with the investigators, while the previous four Secretaries of State did so.
The report also reviewed the practices of several previous Secretaries of State and concluded that the Department's record keeping practices were subpar for many years. The Inspector General criticized Clinton's use of private email for Department business, concluding that it was "not an appropriate method" of document preservation and did not follow Department policies that aim to comply with federal record laws. The report also criticized Colin Powell, who used a personal email account for business, saying that this violated some of the same Department policies. State Department spokesman Mark Toner said the report emphasized the need for federal agencies to adapt "decades-old record-keeping practices to the email-dominated modern era" and said that the Department's record-retention practices had been improved under the current Secretary of State John F. Kerry, Clinton's successor. The report also notes that the rules for preserving work-related emails were updated in 2009.
Inspector General Linick wrote that he "found no evidence that staff in the Office of the Legal Adviser reviewed or approved Secretary Clinton's personal system," and also found that multiple State employees who raised concerns regarding Clinton's server were told that the Office of the Legal Adviser had approved it, and were further told to "never speak of the Secretary's personal email system again."
Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon issued a statement saying: "The report shows that problems with the State Department's electronic record-keeping systems were long-standing" and that Clinton "took steps that went much further than others to appropriately preserve and release her records." However, the Associated Press said, "The audit did note that former Secretary of State Colin Powell had also exclusively used a private email account. ... But the failings of Clinton were singled out in the audit as being more serious than her predecessor." The report stated that "By Secretary Clinton's tenure, the department's guidance was considerably more detailed and more sophisticated, Secretary Clinton's cybersecurity practices accordingly must be evaluated in light of these more comprehensive directives."
Server security and hacking attempts
Encryption and security
In 2008, before Hillary Clinton became Secretary of State, Justin Cooper, a longtime aide to Clinton's husband, former President Bill Clinton, managed the system. Cooper had no security clearance or expertise in computer security. Later, Bryan Pagliano, the former IT director for Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign, was hired to maintain their private email server while Clinton was Secretary of State. Pagliano had invoked the Fifth Amendment during congressional questioning about Clinton's server. In early 2016, he was granted immunity by the Department of Justice in exchange for cooperation with prosecutors. A Clinton spokesman said her campaign was "pleased" Pagliano was now cooperating with prosecutors. As of May 2016, the State Department remained unable to locate most of Pagliano's work-related emails from the period when he was employed by that department under Secretary Clinton.
Security experts such as Chris Soghoian believe that emails to and from Clinton may have been at risk of hacking and foreign surveillance. Marc Maiffret, a cybersecurity expert, said that the server had "amateur hour" vulnerabilities. For the first two months after Clinton was appointed Secretary of State and began accessing mail on the server through her BlackBerry, transmissions to and from the server were apparently not encrypted. On March 29, 2009, a digital certificate was obtained which would have permitted encryption.
Former Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency Michael T. Flynn, former United States Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and former deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency Michael Morell have said that it is likely that foreign governments were able to access the information on Clinton's server. Michael Hayden, former Director of the National Security Agency, Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence, and Director of the Central Intelligence Agency said "I would lose all respect for a whole bunch of foreign intelligence agencies if they weren't sitting back, paging through the emails."
Hacking attempts
Clinton's server was configured to allow users to connect openly from the Internet and control it remotely using Microsoft's Remote Desktop Services.
It is known that hackers were aware of Clinton's non-public email address as early as 2011. Secretary Clinton and her staff were aware of hacking attempts in 2011, and were reportedly worried about them.
In 2012, according to server records, a hacker in Serbia scanned Clinton's Chappaqua server at least twice, in August and in December 2012. It was unclear whether the hacker knew the server belonged to Clinton, although it did identify itself as providing email services for clintonemail.com. During 2014, Clinton's server was the target of repeated intrusions originating in Germany, China, and South Korea. Threat monitoring software on the server blocked at least five such attempts. The software was installed in October 2013, and for three months prior to that, no such software had been installed.
According to Pagliano, security logs of Clinton's email server showed no evidence of successful hacking. The New York Times reported that "forensic experts can sometimes spot sophisticated hacking that is not apparent in the logs, but computer security experts view logs as key documents when detecting hackers," adding the logs "bolster Mrs. Clinton's assertion that her use of a personal email account ... did not put American secrets into the hands of hackers or foreign governments."
In 2013, Romanian hacker Marcel Lehel Lazăr (aka "Guccifer") distributed private memos from Sidney Blumenthal to Clinton on events in Libya that he had acquired by hacking Blumenthal's email account. In 2016, Lazăr was extradited from Romania to the U.S. to face unrelated federal charges related to his hacking into the accounts of a number of high-profile U.S. figures, pleading guilty to these charges. While detained pending trial, Lazăr claimed to the media that he had successfully hacked Clinton's server, but provided no proof of this claim. Officials associated with the investigation told the media that they found no evidence supporting Lazăr's assertion, and Clinton press secretary Brian Fallon said "There is absolutely no basis to believe the claims made by this criminal from his prison cell." FBI Director James Comey later stated in a congressional hearing that Guccifer admitted his claim was a lie.
According to security researchers at Secureworks the email leak was caused by Threat Group-4127, later attributed to Fancy Bear, a unit that targets governments, military, and international non-governmental organizations. The researchers report moderate confidence that the unit gathers intelligence on behalf of the Russian government.
Deletion of emails
In 2014, months prior to public knowledge of the server's existence, Clinton chief of staff Cheryl Mills and two attorneys worked to identify work-related emails on the server to be archived and preserved for the State Department. Upon completion of this task in December 2014, Mills instructed Clinton's computer services provider, Platte River Networks (PRN), to change the server's retention period to 60 days, allowing 31,830 older personal emails to be automatically deleted from the server, as Clinton had decided she no longer needed them. However, the PRN technician assigned for this task failed to carry it out at that time.
After the existence of the server became publicly known on March 2, 2015, the Select Committee on Benghazi issued a subpoena for Benghazi-related emails two days later. Mills sent an email to PRN on March 9 mentioning the committee's retention request. The PRN technician then had what he described to the FBI as an "oh shit moment," realizing he had not set the personal emails to be deleted as instructed months earlier. The technician then erased the emails using a free utility, BleachBit, sometime between March 25 and 31. Bloomberg News reported in September 2015 that the FBI had recovered some of the deleted emails.
Since this episode, Clinton critics have accused her or her aides of deleting emails that were under subpoena, alleging the server had been "bleached" or "acid-washed" by a "very expensive" process in an effort to destroy evidence, with candidate Donald Trump stating the day before the 2016 election that "Hillary Clinton erased more than 30,000 emails as part of a cover-up." Trump reiterated his position as late as August 2018, asking "Look at the crimes that Clinton did with the emails and she deletes 33,000 emails after she gets a subpoena from Congress, and this Justice Department does nothing about it?"
Classified information in emails
In various interviews, Clinton has said that "I did not send classified material, and I did not receive any material that was marked or designated classified." However, in June and July 2016, a number of news outlets reported that Clinton's emails did include messages with some paragraphs marked with a "(c)" for "Confidential." The FBI investigation found that 110 messages contained information that was classified at the time it was sent. Sixty-five of those emails were found to contain information classified as "Secret;" more than 20 contained "Top-Secret" information. Three emails, out of 30,000, were found to be marked as classified, although they lacked classified headers and were only marked with a small "c" in parentheses, described as "portion markings" by Comey. He added it was possible Clinton was not "technically sophisticated" enough to understand what the three classified markings meant which is consistent with Clinton's claim that she wasn't aware of the meaning of such markings.
Clinton personally wrote 104 of the 2,093 emails that were retroactively found to contain information classified as "confidential." Of the remaining emails that were classified after they were sent, Clinton aide Jake Sullivan wrote the most, at 215.
According to the State Department, there were 2,093 email chains on the server that were retroactively marked as classified by the State Department as "Confidential," 65 as "Secret," and 22 as "Top Secret."
An interagency dispute arose during the investigation about what constitutes “classified” status when information acquired and considered “owned” by intelligence agencies is also independently and publicly available through “parallel reporting” by the press or others. In one reported instance, an email chain deemed by the intelligence community to contain classified information included a discussion of a New York Times article that reported on a CIA drone strike in Pakistan; despite wide public knowledge of the drone program, the CIA — as the "owning agency" — considers the very existence of its drone program to be classified in its entirety. Assistant Secretary of State for Legislative Affairs Julia Frifield noted, "When policy officials obtain information from open sources, ‘think tanks,’ experts, foreign government officials, or others, the fact that some of the information may also have been available through intelligence channels does not mean that the information is necessarily classified.”
State Department inspector general reports and statements
A June 29, 2015, memorandum from the Inspector General of the State Department, Steve A. Linick, said that a review of the 55,000-page email release found "hundreds of potentially classified emails." A July 17, 2015, follow-up memo, sent jointly by Linick and the Intelligence Community (IC) inspector general, I. Charles McCullough III, to Under Secretary of State for Management Patrick F. Kennedy, stated that they had confirmed that several of the emails contained classified information that was not marked as classified, at least one of which was publicly released.
On July 24, 2015, Linick and McCullough said they had discovered classified information on Clinton's email account, but did not say whether Clinton sent or received the emails. Investigators from their office, searching a randomly chosen sample of 40 emails, found four that contained classified information that originated from U.S. intelligence agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the National Security Agency (NSA). Their statement said that the information they found was classified when sent, remained so as of their inspection, and "never should have been transmitted via an unclassified personal system."
In a separate statement in the form of a letter to Congress, McCullough said that he had made a request to the State Department for access to the entire set of emails turned over by Clinton, but that the Department rejected his request. The letter stated that none of the emails were marked as classified, but because they included classified information they should have been marked and handled as such, and transmitted securely.
On August 10, 2015, the IC inspector general said that two of the 40 emails in the sample were "Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information" and subsequently given classified labels of "TK" (for "Talent Keyhole," indicating material obtained by aerial or space-based imagery sources and NOFORN). One is a discussion of a news article about a U.S. drone strike operation. The second, he said, either referred to classified material or else was "parallel reporting" of open-source intelligence, which might still be classified by the government "owning agency" that sourced the information by secret means even though the same information was also available in the public domain. Clinton's presidential campaign and the State Department disputed the letter, and questioned whether the emails had been over-classified by an arbitrary process. According to an unnamed source, a secondary review by the CIA and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency endorsed the earlier inspectors general findings concluding that the emails (one of which concerned North Korea's nuclear weapons program) were "Top Secret" when received by Clinton through her private server in 2009 and 2011, a conclusion also disputed by the Clinton campaign.
The IC inspector general issued another letter to Congress on January 14, 2016. In this letter he stated that an unnamed intelligence agency had made a sworn declaration that "several dozen emails [had been] determined by the IC element to be at the CONFIDENTIAL, SECRET, and TOP SECRET/SAP levels." Other intelligence officials added that the several dozen were not the two emails from the previous sample and that the clearance of the IC inspector general himself had to be upgraded before he could learn about the programs referenced by the emails. NBC News reported on January 20, 2016, that senior American officials described these emails as "innocuous" because—although they discussed the CIA drone program that is technically classified TOP SECRET/SAP—the existence of the CIA drone program had been widely known and discussed in the public domain for years. These officials characterized the IC inspector general as unfair in how he had handled the issue.
On January 29, 2016, the State Department announced that 22 documents from Clinton's email server would not be released because they contained highly classified information that was too sensitive for public consumption. At the same time, the State Department announced that it was initiating its own investigation into whether the server contained information that was classified at the time it was sent or received.
In February 2016, State Department IG Linick addressed another report to Under Secretary of State Kennedy, stating his office had also found classified material in 10 emails in the personal email accounts of members of former Secretary Condoleezza Rice's staff and in two emails in the personal email account of former Secretary of State Colin Powell. None of the emails were classified for intelligence reasons. PolitiFact found a year earlier that Powell was the only former secretary of state to use a personal email account. In February 2016, Clinton's campaign chairman issued a statement claiming that her emails, like her predecessors,' were "being inappropriately subjected to over-classification."
FBI investigation
July 2015 – Security referral
The State Department and Intelligence Community (IC) inspector generals' discovery of four emails containing classified information, out of a random sample of 40, prompted them to make a security referral to the FBI's counterintelligence office, to alert authorities that classified information was being kept on Clinton's server and by her lawyer on a thumb drive. As part of the FBI's Midyear investigation, at the request of the IC inspector general, Clinton agreed to turn over her email server to the U.S. Department of Justice, as well as thumb drives containing copies of her work-related emails. Other emails were obtained by the United States House Select Committee on Benghazi from other sources, in connection with the committee's inquiry. Clinton's own emails are being made public in stages by the State Department on a gradual schedule.
The New York Times ran a front-page story on July 24, 2015, with the headline "Criminal Inquiry Sought In Clinton's Use of Email," with the lead sentence stating, "Two inspectors general have asked the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation into whether Hillary Rodham Clinton mishandled sensitive government information on a private email account she used as secretary of state, senior government officials said Thursday." Shortly after the publication of the story, the Inspectors General of the Intelligence Community and the Department of State issued a statement clarifying, "An important distinction is that the IC IG did not make a criminal referral - it was a security referral made for counterintelligence purposes." The Times later made two corrections, first that Clinton was not a specific target of the referral, then later that the referral was not "criminal" in nature.
Clinton's IT contractors turned over her personal email server to the FBI on August 12, 2015, as well as thumb drives containing copies of her emails.
In a letter describing the matter to Senator Ron Johnson, Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, Clinton's lawyer David E. Kendall said that emails, and all other data stored on the server, had earlier been erased prior to the device being turned over to the authorities, and that both he and another lawyer had been given security clearances by the State Department to handle thumb drives containing about 30,000 emails that Clinton subsequently also turned over to authorities. Kendall said the thumb drives had been stored in a safe provided to him in July by the State Department.
August 2015 – Investigation continues; email recovery
On August 20, 2015, U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan stated that Hillary Clinton's actions of maintaining a private email server were in direct conflict with U.S. government policy. "We wouldn't be here today if this employee had followed government policy," he said, and ordered the State Department to work with the FBI to determine if any emails on the server during her tenure as Secretary of State could be recovered.
Platte River Networks, the Denver-based firm that managed the Clinton server since 2013, said it had no knowledge of the server being wiped. "Platte River has no knowledge of the server being wiped," company spokesman Andy Boian told the Washington Post. "All the information we have is that the server wasn't wiped." When asked by the Washington Post, the Clinton campaign declined to comment.
In September 2015, FBI investigators were engaged in sorting messages recovered from the server. In November 2015, the FBI expanded its inquiry to examine whether Clinton or her aides jeopardized national security secrets, and if so, who should be held responsible.
Conflicting media sources sized the FBI investigation from 12 to 30 agents as of March 2016.
May–July 2016 – Public statements
In May 2016, FBI Director James Comey said he was "not familiar with the term 'security inquiry'" as the Clinton campaign was characterizing the probe, adding that the word investigation is "in our name" and "We're conducting an investigation ... That's what we do. That's probably all I can say about it." Comey noted in his 2018 memoir that he did not publicly contradict Clinton's characterization of the investigation as a "security inquiry" while it was underway despite being directly prompted by a reporter to do so in May 2016. In April 2017 it became known that the FBI had, in fact, opened a criminal investigation on July 10, 2015, telling The New York Times they had received a "criminal referral," although the following day they issued a public statement: "The department has received a referral related to the potential compromise of classified information. It is not a criminal referral."
In late June 2016, it was reported that Bill Clinton met privately with Attorney General Loretta Lynch on her private plane on the tarmac at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. Officials indicated that the 30 minute meeting took place when Clinton became aware that Lynch's plane was on the same tarmac at the airport. When the meeting became public, Lynch stated that it was "primarily social" and "there was no discussion of any matter pending for the department or any matter pending for any other body." Lynch was criticized for her involvement in the meeting and was called on by some critics to recuse herself from involvement in the FBI's investigation of the email case. In response, she stated "The F.B.I. is investigating whether Mrs. Clinton, her aides or anyone else broke the law by setting up a private email server for her to use as secretary of state," but "the case will be resolved by the same team that has been working on it from the beginning" and "I will be accepting their recommendations."
On July 1, 2016, the New York Times reported in the name of a "Justice Department official" that Attorney General Loretta Lynch will accept "whatever recommendation career prosecutors and the F.B.I. director make about whether to bring charges related to Hillary Clinton's personal email server."
Clinton maintained she did not send or receive any confidential emails from her personal server. In a Democratic debate with Bernie Sanders on February 4, 2016, Clinton said, "I never sent or received any classified material." In a Meet the Press interview on July 2, 2016, she stated: "Let me repeat what I have repeated for many months now, I never received nor sent any material that was marked classified."
July 2016 – Investigation concludes and perjury referral
On July 5, 2016, FBI Director Comey announced in a statement he read to press and television reporters at FBI headquarters in Washington, DC, that the FBI had completed its investigation and was referring it to the Justice Department with the recommendation "that no charges are appropriate in this case." He added, "Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case."
With regard to mishandling of classified information, Comey said, "there is evidence that they [Clinton and her team] were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information." The investigation found 110 emails that should have been regarded as classified at the time they were sent; another 2,000 emails were retroactively classified which means they were not classified at the time they were sent. Comey said that "any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton's position, or in the position of those government employees with whom she was corresponding ... should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation."
The FBI learned that Clinton used her personal email extensively while outside the United States, both sending and receiving work-related emails in the territory of sophisticated adversaries. The FBI did not find "direct evidence that Secretary Clinton's personal e-mail domain ... was successfully hacked;" they assessed it "possible that hostile actors gained access" to it. Investigators found that State Department employees often used private emails to conduct business. Comey noted, "We also developed evidence that the security culture of the State Department in general, and with respect to use of unclassified e-mail systems in particular, was generally lacking in the kind of care for classified information found elsewhere in the government."
On July 6, 2016, Lynch confirmed that the investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of private email servers while secretary of state would be closed without criminal charges.
On July 10, 2016, Jason Chaffetz and chairman Bob Goodlatte referred Clinton to the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia to investigate whether Clinton lied to congress about her use of a private email server.
The New York Times reported in April 2017 that during the investigation the FBI was provided documents acquired by Dutch intelligence hackers which had previously been stolen by Russian intelligence. The classified documents were purported to be written by a Democratic operative who asserted Lynch would not allow the Clinton investigation to go too far, though it was not clear if the writer actually had insight into Lynch's thinking. The Times reported the documents raised concerns by Comey that if Lynch announced the closure of the investigation, and Russia subsequently released the document, it would cause some to suspect political interference. This reportedly led Comey, a longtime Republican, to decide to announce the closure himself, though some in the Obama Justice Department were skeptical of this account. In June 2021 it became known that the Trump Justice department had acquired by court order the phone logs of the four Times reporters who had written the article together, as part of a leak investigation.
October 2016 – Additional investigation
In early October 2016, FBI criminal investigators working on a case involving former Congressman Anthony Weiner sending sexually explicit texts to a fifteen-year-old girl discovered emails from Weiner's estranged wife, Huma Abedin, vice chair of Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign, that they considered potentially relevant to the Clinton server investigation. FBI officials reportedly decided to disclose the development despite its potential effect on the pending presidential election to preempt the possibility that it would be leaked in another way.
On October 28, 2016, Comey informed Congress that "in connection with an unrelated case, the FBI has learned of the existence of emails that appear pertinent to the investigation." He said the FBI will take "appropriate investigative steps designed to allow investigators to review these emails to determine whether they contain classified information, as well as to assess their importance to our investigation." He added that the FBI "cannot yet assess whether or not this material may be significant." The FBI obtained a new search warrant to allow them to review Abedin's emails.
Comey informed Congress of this additional investigation despite having been advised by Justice Department officials that such an announcement would violate department policies and procedures, including a policy not to comment on investigations close to an election. Comey later explained, in a letter to FBI employees, "We don't ordinarily tell Congress about ongoing investigations, but here I feel an obligation to do so given that I testified repeatedly in recent months that our investigation was completed." Law enforcement sources added that he feared he would be accused of concealing relevant information if he did not disclose it.
News of this renewed investigation being revealed shortly before the U.S. presidential election led to the announcement being described as an "October surprise," and prompted statements from both the Democratic and Republican campaigns. Donald Trump repeated his characterization that Hillary Clinton's email usage as secretary of state was "worse than Watergate." Clinton called for the FBI to immediately release all information about the newly discovered emails and said she was confident the FBI would not change its earlier conclusion that there is no basis for criminal prosecution. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) said she was "shocked" by the letter, saying it "played right into the political campaign of Donald Trump."
On November 6, in another letter to Congress, Comey stated that, after working "around the clock" to review all of the newly discovered emails, the FBI had not changed the conclusion it reached in July. An unnamed government official added that the newly discovered emails turned out to be either personal or duplicates of emails previously reviewed, and that Comey's letter represents a conclusion of the investigation. The following day, stock and currency markets around the world surged in response.
On November 12, during a conference call to top donors, Hillary Clinton attributed her presidential election loss to Comey's announcements, saying they stopped her momentum. In January 2017, the US Justice Department started an investigation of Comey's announcements. A 2019 study found that Comey's letter substantially increased Trump's probability of winning the 2016 election.
Senate probes Loretta Lynch interference
According to Comey's June 8, 2017, testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee, then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch had asked him to downplay the investigation into Clinton's emails by calling it a "matter" rather than an investigation. He said the request "confused and concerned" him. He added that Lynch's tarmac meeting with Bill Clinton also influenced his decision to publicly announce the results of the FBI probe.
On June 23, 2017, several members of the Senate Judiciary Committee opened a bipartisan inquiry into whether former Attorney General Lynch interfered in the FBI's investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server.
Internal State Department investigation
On July 7, 2016, the State Department resumed its review of whether classified information had been mishandled. The review had been suspended until the completion of the Justice Department investigation. The United States Department of State finished its investigation in September 2019, citing 588 security violations. The review found that 38 current and former State Department officials – some of whom may be punished – were culpable of mishandling classified information, but in 497 cases the culpability could not be established. The material was considered classified then or later, but none of the violations involved information marked classified. The investigation found Clinton's use of personal email server increased the risk of compromising State Department information, but "there was no persuasive evidence of systemic, deliberate mishandling of classified information".
Department of Justice Inspector General's report
The Inspector General of the Department of Justice (IG) launched an investigation into how the DOJ and FBI had handled the investigation into Clinton's email. On June 14, 2018, the IG issued a report that was highly critical of Comey's actions. Regarding his July press conference, in which he criticized Clinton even while announcing the investigation was over, the IG said it was "extraordinary and insubordinate for Comey to conceal his intentions (about the press conference) from his superiors," and that "we found none of his reasons to be a persuasive basis for deviating from well-established Department policies." Comey's October decision to send a letter notifying Congress that the investigation had been re-opened one week before the election was described as "ad-hoc" and "a serious error in judgment." However, in June 2018 the IG concluded that the decision to not prosecute Clinton was not affected by bias and "was consistent with the Department’s historical approach in prior cases under different leadership, including in the 2008 decision not to prosecute former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales for mishandling classified documents."
The IG report also commented on "highly classified information" in a purported Russian intelligence document obtained by the FBI that included an unconfirmed allegation that Attorney General Loretta Lynch assured a Clinton staffer that she would prevent the FBI investigation from digging too deeply into Clinton's affairs. The FBI long considered the document unreliable and a possible forgery, and Comey told IG investigators he knew the information was not true. The IG report stated: "Comey said that he became concerned that the information about Lynch would taint the public's perception of the [Clinton] investigation if it leaked, particularly after DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0 began releasing hacked emails in mid-June 2016," explaining why Comey chose to bypass Lynch and deputy AG Sally Yates to announce the FBI investigation findings himself. The Washington Post also stated that "current and former officials" told them that Comey relied on the questionable document in making his July decision to announce on his own without his superiors approval that the investigation was over.
Opinions of journalists and experts
According to the New York Times, if Clinton was a recipient of classified emails, "it is not clear that she would have known that they contained government secrets, since they were not marked classified." The newspaper reported that "most specialists believe the occasional appearance of classified information in the Clinton account was probably of marginal consequence". Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, said that inadvertent "spillage" of classified information into an unclassified realm is a common occurrence.
Reuters' August 2015 review of a set of released emails found "at least 30 email threads from 2009, representing scores of individual emails," which include what the State Department identifies as "foreign government information," defined by the U.S. government as "any information, written or spoken, provided in confidence to U.S. officials by their foreign counterparts." Although unmarked, Reuters' examination appeared to suggest that these emails "were classified from the start." J. William Leonard, a former director of the NARA Information Security Oversight Office, said that such information is "born classified" and that "[I]f a foreign minister just told the secretary of state something in confidence, by U.S. rules that is classified at the moment it's in U.S. channels and U.S. possession." According to Reuters, the standard U.S. government nondisclosure agreement "warns people authorized to handle classified information that it may not be marked that way and that it may come in oral form." The State Department "disputed Reuters' analysis" but declined to elaborate.
The Associated Press reported, "Some officials said they believed the designations were a stretch—a knee-jerk move in a bureaucracy rife with over-classification." Jeffrey Toobin, in an August 2015 New Yorker article, wrote that the Clinton email affair is an illustration of overclassification, a problem written about by Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan in his book Secrecy: The American Experience. Toobin writes that "government bureaucracies use classification rules to protect turf, to avoid embarrassment, to embarrass rivals—in short, for a variety of motives that have little to do with national security." Toobin wrote that "It's not only the public who cannot know the extent or content of government secrecy. Realistically, government officials can't know either—and this is Hillary Clinton's problem. Toobin noted that "one of Clinton's potentially classified email exchanges is nothing more than a discussion of a newspaper story about drones" and wrote: "That such a discussion could be classified underlines the absurdity of the current system. But that is the system that exists, and if and when the agencies determine that she sent or received classified information through her private server, Clinton will be accused of mishandling national-security secrets."
In an analysis of the Clinton email controversy published by the Brookings Institution, Richard Lempert wrote that "security professionals have a reputation for erring in the direction of overclassification." Elizabeth Goitein, co-director of the liberty and national security program at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, says that "The odds are good that any classified information in the Clinton emails should not have been classified," since an estimated 50 percent to 90 percent of classified documents could be made public without risking national security. Nate Jones, an expert with the National Security Archive at George Washington University, said: "Clinton's mistreatment of federal records and the intelligence community's desire to retroactively overclassify are two distinct troubling problems. No politician is giving the right message: Blame Clinton for poor records practices, but don't embrace overclassification while you do it."
Russian intelligence and Comey's pronouncements
A number of journalists (Philip Ewing and Jane Mayer Karoun Demirjian and Devlin Barrett) have commented on the connection between the alleged Russian intelligence document given to the FBI that suggested Attorney General Loretta Lynch would prevent the FBI investigation from digging too deeply into Clinton's affairs (see above), and Comey's July announcement of the FBI investigation findings by himself without Lynch's permission, which was later called "extraordinary and insubordinate" by the Department of Justice Inspector General's report. "Current and former officials" told Washington Post reporters Demirjian and Barrett that “Comey relied on the document in making his July decision to announce on his own,” because he feared its contents would be leaked, tainting the public's perception of the FBI investigation. This was despite the fact that Comey himself told investigators “he knew from the first moment” that the document “wasn't true” and the FBI was later unable to corroborate the document.
Ewing and Mayer note the document's effect on the election. According to Ewing, "to the degree" that the document "was intended to help disrupt the election, it worked". Jane Mayer describes the work of political scientist Kathleen Hall Jamieson who argues that Comey's "damaging public pronouncements" on Clinton's handling of classified e-mails" in July and later ten days before the election can "plausibly be attributed to Russian disinformation". While it is difficult to determine how many voters Clinton lost from the pronouncements, Mayer also quotes the Democratic ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, who states that if "the fake intelligence" motivated Comey, then the document was "probably was the most measurable" and "the most significant way in which the Russians may have impacted the outcome of the election."
House Oversight Committee hearing
On July 7, 2016, Comey was questioned for 5 hours by the United States House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Comey stated that there was "evidence of mishandling" of classified information and that he believed that Clinton was "extremely careless; I think she was negligent." He defended the FBI's recommendation against bringing charges because it "... would have been unfair and virtually unprecedented ..."
Responses and analysis
Clinton's initial response
Clinton's spokesman Nick Merrill defended Clinton's usage of her personal server and email accounts as being in compliance with the "letter and spirit of the rules."
Clinton herself stated she had done so as a matter of "convenience."
On March 10, 2015, while attending a conference at the headquarters of the United Nations in Manhattan, Clinton spoke with reporters for about 20 minutes. Clinton said she had used a private email for convenience, "because I thought it would be easier to carry just one device for my work and for my personal emails instead of two." It was later determined that Clinton had used both an iPad and a BlackBerry while Secretary of State.
Clinton turned over copies of 30,000 State Department business-related emails from her private server that belonged in the public domain; she later explained that she instructed her lawyer to err on the side of disclosure, turning over any emails that might be work-related. Her aides subsequently deleted about 31,000 emails from the server dated during the same time period that Clinton regarded as personal and private. State Department employees do have the right to delete personal emails.
Clinton has used humor to try to shrug off the scandals. In August 2015, when asked by a reporter whether she had "wiped" her server, Clinton laughed and said: "What? Like with a cloth or something? I don't know how it works digitally at all." In September 2015, Clinton was asked in an interview with Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show about the content of the emails. She laughed it off, saying there was nothing interesting and joking that she was offended people found her emails 'boring.'
Later responses
Clinton's responses to the question, made during her presidential campaign, evolved over time. Clinton initially said that there was no classified material on her server. Later, after a government review discovered some of her emails contained classified information, she said she never sent or received information that was marked classified. Her campaign claimed other emails contained information that is now classified, but was retroactively classified by U.S. intelligence agencies after Clinton had received the material. See also the section above on the May 2016 IG report for a number of Clinton statements that were contradicted by the report, and how she and her supporters responded afterward.
Campaign spokesman Brian Fallon said: "She was at worst a passive recipient of unwitting information that subsequently became deemed as classified." Clinton campaign spokeswoman Jennifer Palmieri has "stressed that Clinton was permitted to use her own email account as a government employee and that the same process concerning classification reviews would still be taking place had she used the standard 'state.gov' email account used by most department employees." Palmieri later stated: "Look, this kind of nonsense comes with the territory of running for president. We know it, Hillary knows it, and we expect it to continue from now until Election Day."
In her first national interview about the 2016 presidential race, on July 7, 2015, Clinton was asked by CNN's Brianna Keilar about her use of private email accounts while serving as Secretary of State. She said:
On September 9, 2015, Clinton apologized during an ABC News interview for using the private server, saying she was "sorry for that." Appearing on NBC's Meet the Press on September 27, 2015, Clinton defended her use of the private email server while she was secretary of state, comparing the investigations to Republican-led probes of her husband's presidential administration more than two decades ago, saying, "It is like a drip, drip, drip. And that's why I said, there's only so much that I can control."
Clinton and the State Department said the emails were not marked classified when sent. However, Clinton signed a non-disclosure agreement which stated that classified material may be "marked or unmarked." Additionally, the author of an email is legally required to properly mark it as classified if it contains classified material, and to avoid sending classified material on a personal device, such as the ones used exclusively by Clinton.
Clinton maintained that she did not send or receive any confidential emails from her personal server. In a Democratic debate with Bernie Sanders on February 4, 2016, Clinton said, "I never sent or received any classified material." In a Meet the Press interview on July 2, 2016, Clinton stated: "Let me repeat what I have repeated for many months now, I never received nor sent any material that was marked classified."
In an interview with Fox News in late July 2016, Clinton stated "Director Comey said my answers were truthful, and what I've said is consistent with what I have told the American people, that there were decisions discussed and made to classify retroactively certain of the emails." The Washington Post awarded Clinton four "Pinocchios", its worst rating, for her statement saying "While Comey did say there was no evidence she lied to the FBI, that is not the same as saying she told the truth to the American public."
In her 2017 book What Happened?, Clinton argued that the email controversy and FBI Director James Comey's actions contributed to her loss. A 2019 study in the journal Perspectives on Politics found little evidence to support the hypothesis.
In Venice at the "Hillary: The Hillary Clinton Emails", a work on display in a balcony jutting out over a supermarket at the Despar Teatro Italia during the 58th Biennale of Visual Arts, Clinton made a surprise visit on Tuesday September 10, 2019, to this work of political theater and performance art. The exhibition created by the American poet and artist Kenneth Goldsmith was displayed from May 9, 2019, until November 24, 2019, curated by Francesco Urbano Ragazzi. During her appearance, she said that the attention given to her emails was one of the "strangest" and most "absurd" events in U.S. political history, adding, "Anyone can go in and look at them. There is nothing there. There is nothing that should have been so controversial."
Democratic response
In August 2015, the New York Times reported on "interviews with more than 75 Democratic governors, lawmakers, candidates and party members" on the email issue. The Times reported, "None of the Democrats interviewed went so far as to suggest that the email issue raised concerns about Mrs. Clinton's ability to serve as president, and many expressed a belief that it had been manufactured by Republicans in Congress and other adversaries." At the same time, many Democratic leaders showed increasing frustration among party leaders of Clinton's handling of the email issue. For example, Edward G. Rendell, former governor of Pennsylvania, a Clinton supporter, said that a failure of the Clinton campaign to get ahead of the issue early on meant that the campaign was "left just playing defense." Other prominent Democrats, such as Governor Dannel P. Malloy of Connecticut, were less concerned, noting the campaign was at an early stage and that attacks on Clinton were to be expected.
At the October 2015 primary debate, Clinton's chief rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, defended Clinton, saying: "Let me say this. Let me say something that may not be great politics. But I think the secretary is right. And that is that the American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails!" Sanders later clarified that he thought Clinton's emails were a "very serious issue," but Americans want a discussion on issues that are "real" to them, such as paid family and medical leave, college affordability, and campaign finance reform.
"But her emails!" became a meme during and following the 2016 election, often used in a joking or mocking way to the perceived damage done by the Trump administration. Clinton herself echoed the phrase in June 2018, when the Justice Department's Inspector General issued a report on how the investigation of her use of email was conducted. It revealed that FBI Director Comey had used a personal email account to conduct FBI business; Clinton's response was a Twitter comment, "But my emails!"
Republican response
Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus said, in a statement regarding the June 30, 2015 email releases, "These emails ... are just the tip of the iceberg, and we will never get full disclosure until Hillary Clinton releases her secret server for an independent investigation." Trey Gowdy said on June 29, 2015, that he would press the State Department for a fuller accounting of Clinton's emails, after the Benghazi panel retrieved 15 additional emails to Sidney Blumenthal that the department had not provided to the committee.
On September 12, 2015, Republican Senators Charles Grassley and Ron Johnson, chairmen of the Senate Judiciary and Homeland Security committees, respectively, said they would seek an independent review of the deleted emails, if they were recovered from Clinton's server, to determine if there were any government related items among those deleted.
Comparisons and media coverage
Analyses by Columbia Journalism Review, the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, and the Shorenstein Center at the Harvard Kennedy School show that the Clinton email controversy received more coverage in mainstream media outlets than any other topic during the 2016 presidential election. The New York Times coverage of the email controversy was notoriously extensive; according to a Columbia Journalism Review analysis, "in just six days, The New York Times ran as many cover stories about Hillary Clinton's emails as they did about all policy issues combined in the 69 days leading up to the election (and that does not include the three additional articles on October 18, and November 6 and 7, or the two articles on the emails taken from John Podesta)." In attempting to explain the lopsided coverage, the Columbia Journalism Review speculates, "In retrospect, it seems clear that the press in general made the mistake of assuming a Clinton victory was inevitable, and were setting themselves as credible critics of the next administration."
Media commentators drew comparisons of Clinton's email usage to past political controversies. Pacific Standard Magazine published an article in May 2015, comparing email controversy and her response to it with the Whitewater investigation 20 years earlier.
In August 2015, Washington Post associate editor and investigative journalist Bob Woodward, when asked about Clinton's handling of her emails, said they remind him of the Nixon tapes from the Watergate scandal. On March 9, 2015, liberal columnist and Clinton supporter Dana Milbank wrote that the email affair was "a needless, self-inflicted wound" brought about by "debilitating caution" in "trying to make sure an embarrassing e-mail or two didn't become public," which led to "obsessive secrecy." Milbank pointed out that Clinton herself had justifiably criticized the George W. Bush administration in 2007 for its "secret" White House email accounts.
On Fox News Sunday, political analyst Juan Williams contrasted the media coverage of Clinton's emails to the coverage of the 2007 Bush White House email controversy which he claimed received "just about zero press coverage." PolitiFact found Williams' assertion to be "mostly false," concluding "We found hundreds of articles and television transcripts referencing the issue. Still, Williams has something of a point that compared to the extensive recent coverage of Clinton's use of private email, media coverage of the 2007 Bush White House email controversy was thin."
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel published an editorial opining that "the only believable reason for the private server in her basement was to keep her emails out of the public eye by willfully avoiding freedom of information laws. No president, no secretary of state, no public official at any level is above the law. She chose to ignore it, and must face the consequences." Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry wrote in The Week that "Clinton set up a personal email server, in defiance or at least circumvention of rules, with the probable motive of evading federal records and transparency requirements, and did it with subpar security."
On November 2, 2016, Fox News anchor Bret Baier reported that according to Fox's anonymous sources the FBI had discovered that Clinton's private server had been hacked by "five foreign intelligence agencies." Baier further reported that according to an anonymous source an FBI investigation of the Clinton Foundation was "likely" to lead to an indictment of Hillary Clinton. On November 4, 2016, he acknowledged that his assertions were a mistake, saying, "indictment obviously is a very loaded word," and that he was sorry.
House Select Committee on Benghazi
On March 27, 2015, Republican Congressman Trey Gowdy, Chairman of the Select Committee on Benghazi, asserted that some time after October 2014, Clinton "unilaterally decided to wipe her server clean" and "summarily decided to delete all emails." Clinton's attorney, David E. Kendall, said that day that an examination showed that no copies of any of Clinton's emails remained on the server. Kendall said the server was reconfigured to only retain emails for 60 days after Clinton lawyers had decided which emails needed to be turned over.
On June 22, 2015, the Benghazi panel released emails between Clinton and Sidney Blumenthal, who had been recently deposed by the committee. Committee chairman Gowdy issued a press release criticizing Clinton for not providing the emails to the State Department. Clinton had said she provided all work-related emails to the State Department, and that only emails of a personal nature on her private server were destroyed. The State Department confirmed that 10 emails and parts of five others from Sidney Blumenthal regarding Benghazi, which the committee had made public on June 22, could not be located in the Department's records, but that the 46 other, previously unreleased Libya-related Blumenthal emails published by the committee, were in the Department's records. In response, Clinton campaign spokesman Nick Merrill, when asked about the discrepancy said: "She has turned over 55,000 pages of materials to the State Department, including all emails in her possession from Mr. Blumenthal." Republican Committee members were encouraged about their probe, having found emails that Clinton failed to produce. Clinton campaign staff accused Gowdy and Republicans of "clinging to their invented scandal."
In response to comments that House Republican Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy made on September 29, 2015, about damaging Clinton's poll numbers, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi threatened to end the Democrats' participation in the committee. Representative Louise Slaughter (D-NY) introduced an amendment to disband the committee, which was defeated in a party-line vote. On October 7, the editorial board of The New York Times called for the end of the committee. Representative Alan Grayson (D-FL) took step towards filing an ethics complaint, calling the committee "the new McCarthyism", alleging it was violating both House rules and federal law by using official funds for political purposes. Richard L. Hanna, (R-NY), and conservative pundit Bill O'Reilly acknowledged the partisan nature of the committee.
On October 22, 2015, Clinton testified before the committee and answered members' questions for eleven hours before the Committee in a public hearing. The New York Times reported that "the long day of often-testy exchanges between committee members and their prominent witness revealed little new information about an episode that has been the subject of seven previous investigations ... Perhaps stung by recent admissions that the pursuit of Mrs. Clinton's emails was politically motivated, Republican lawmakers on the panel for the most part avoided any mention of her use of a private email server." The email issue did arise shortly before lunch, in "a shouting match" between Republican committee chair Trey Gowdy and two Democrats, Adam Schiff and Elijah Cummings. Late in the hearing, Republican Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio accused Clinton of changing her accounts of the email service, leading to a "heated exchange" in which Clinton said that she had erred in making a private email account, but denied having dealt with anything marked classified, instead seeking "to be transparent by publicly releasing her emails."
Freedom of Information lawsuits
Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State
Judicial Watch, a conservative activist group, filed a complaint against the Department of State in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on September 10, 2013, seeking records under the federal Freedom of Information Act relating to Clinton aide Huma Abedin (a former deputy chief of staff and former senior advisor at the State Department). Judicial Watch was particularly interested in Abedin's role as a "special government employee" (SGE), a consulting position which allowed her to represent outside clients while also serving at the State Department. After corresponding with the State Department, Judicial Watch agreed to dismiss its lawsuit on March 14, 2014. On March 12, 2015, in response to the uncovering of Clinton's private email account, it filed a motion to reopen the suit, alleging that the State Department had misrepresented its search and had not properly preserved and maintained records under the act. U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan granted the motion to reopen the case on June 19, 2015.
On July 21, 2015, Judge Sullivan issued supplemental discovery orders, including one that Clinton, Abedin, and former Deputy Secretary of State Cheryl Mills disclose any required information they had not disclosed already, and promise under oath that they had done so, including a description of the extent Abedin and Mills had used Clinton's email server for official government business.
On August 10, 2015, Clinton filed her declaration, stating "I have directed that all my emails on clintonemail.com in my custody that were or potentially were federal records be provided to the Department of State," and that as a result of this directive, 55,000 pages of emails were produced to the Department on December 5, 2014. She said in her statement that Abedin did have an email account through clintonemail.com that "was used at times for government business," but that Mills did not. The statement was filed as Clinton faced questions over fifteen emails in exchanges with Blumenthal that were not among the emails she gave to the department the previous year. She did not address the matter of those emails in the statement. On September 25, 2015, several additional emails from her private server surfaced which she had not provided to the State Department. These emails between Clinton and General David Petraeus, discussing personnel matters, were part of an email chain that started on a different email account before her tenure as Secretary of State, but continued onto her private server in late January 2009 after she had taken office. The existence of these emails also called into question Clinton's previous statement that she did not use the server before March 18, 2009.
In February 2016, Judge Sullivan issued a discovery order in the case, ruling that depositions of State Department officials and top Clinton aides were to proceed. On May 26, 2016, Judicial Watch released the transcript of the deposition of Lewis Lukens, on May 31, 2016, the transcript of Cheryl Mills, on June 7, 2016, the transcript of Ambassador Stephen Mull, and on June 9, 2016, Karin Lang, Director of Executive Secretariat Staff.
In March 2020, federal district court judge Royce Lamberth ruled that Clinton must provide a deposition. A three-judge panel of the DC Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously overturned Lamberth's ruling the following August. The full DC Circuit Court unanimously declined to hear an appeal in October, allowing the panel decision to stand.
The testimony of Clarence Finney, who worked in the department responsible for FOIA searches, said that he first became curious about Clinton's email setup after seeing the Texts from Hillary meme on the Internet.
Jason Leopold v. U.S. Department of State
In November 2014, Jason Leopold of Vice News made a Freedom of Information Act request for Clinton's State Department records, and, on January 25, 2015, filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia seeking to compel production of responsive documents. After some dispute between Leopold and the State Department over the request, U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras ordered rolling production and release of the emails on a schedule set by the State Department.
Over the next several months, the State Department completed production of 30,068 emails, which were released in 14 batches, with the final batch released on February 29, 2016. Both the Wall Street Journal and WikiLeaks independently set up search engines for anyone who would like to search through the Clinton emails released by the State Department.
It was revealed in October 2017 that during the 2016 US presidential election, Cambridge Analytica funder and GOP mega-donor Rebekah Mercer had proposed creating a searchable data base for Hillary Clinton emails in the public domain and then forwarded this suggestion to several people, including Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Nix, who personally emailed a request to Julian Assange for Clinton's emails. Assange responded to the report by saying he denied Nix's request.
The emails showed that Blumenthal communicated with Clinton while Secretary on a variety of issues including Benghazi.
Associated Press v. U.S. Department of State
On March 11, 2015, the day after Clinton acknowledged her private email account, the Associated Press (AP) filed suit against the State Department regarding multiple FOIA requests over the past five years. The requests were for various emails and other documents from Clinton's time as secretary of state and were still unfulfilled at the time. The State Department said that a high volume of FOIA requests and a large backlog had caused the delay.
On July 20, 2015, U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon reacted angrily to what he said was "the State Department for four years dragging their feet." Leon said that "even the least ambitious bureaucrat" could process the request faster than the State Department was doing.
On August 7, 2015, Leon issued an order setting a stringent schedule for the State Department to provide the AP with the requested documents over the next eight months. The order issued by Leon did not include the 55,000 pages of Clinton emails the State Department scheduled to be released in the Leopold case, or take into account 20 boxes given to the State Department by Philippe Reines, a former Clinton senior adviser.
Other suits and coordination of email cases
In September 2015, the State Department filed a motion in court seeking to consolidate and coordinate the large number of Freedom of Information Act lawsuits relating to Clinton and Clinton-related emails. There were at the time at least three dozen lawsuits pending, before 17 different judges.
In a U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia order issued on October 8, 2015, Chief U.S. District Judge Richard W. Roberts wrote that the cases did not meet the usual criteria for consolidation but: "The judges who have been randomly assigned to these cases have been and continue to be committed to informal coordination so as to avoid unnecessary inefficiencies and confusion, and the parties are also urged to meet and confer to assist in coordination."
In 2015, Judicial Watch and the Cause of Action Institute filed two lawsuits seeking a court order to compel the Department of State and the National Archives and Records Administration to recover emails from Clinton's server. In January 2016, these two suits (which were consolidated because they involved the same issues) were dismissed as moot by U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, because the government was already working to recover and preserve these emails.
In March 2016, the Republican National Committee filed four new complaints in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia stemming from Freedom of Information Act requests it had filed the previous year. These new filings brought the total number of civil suits over access to Clinton's records pending in federal court to at least 38.
In June 2016, in response to the Republican National Committee's complaints filed in March 2016, the State Department estimates it will take 75 years to complete the review of documents which are responsive to the complaints. It has been observed that a delay of this nature would cause the documents to remain out of public view longer than the vast majority of classified documents which must be declassified after 25 years.
In December 2018, judge Royce Lamberth of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia called Clinton's use of a private server for government business "one of the gravest modern offenses to government transparency".
See also
2016 Democratic National Committee email leak
Clinton Foundation–State Department controversy
White House FBI files controversy
References
External links
Press release by the National Archives and Records Administration
The Clinton Email Scandal Timeline created by the author of The Terror Timeline
Secretary Clinton Emails at the United States Department of State website
The Facts About Hillary Clinton’s Emails at the Hillary Clinton campaign website
Clinton E-Mail Investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation
2015 controversies in the United States
2015 in American politics
Articles containing video clips
Classified information in the United States
Computing-related controversies and disputes
Controversies of the 2016 United States presidential election
Diplomatic correspondence
Email
Federal Bureau of Investigation operations
Email
Obama administration controversies
Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections
Federal Bureau of Investigation controversies
Internet memes introduced in 2016
Political Internet memes |
32165280 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marin%20Software | Marin Software | Marin Software is an online advertising company headquartered in San Francisco.
History
Christopher Lien, Wister Walcott, and Joseph Chang founded Marin Software in April 2006. Lien and Walcott are still with the company, with Lien as the Chief Executive Officer and Walcott as Executive Vice President, Product and Technology.
Lien came up with the concept for Marin Software following a brief stint working for an online ad firm in 2005. He realised that search advertisers had no viable software for managing their online campaigns, especially larger advertisers. Lien shared his idea with Chang and a former high school classmate, Wister Walcott. Chang had built J. Drew’s website and was a co-worker with Lien at Bluelight.com, Kmart’s eCommerce site, when it launched in 1999. Walcott, who came from software giant Siebel, required a bit more convincing. Alongside Lien, the duo drove up and down California’s Highway 101 in early 2006, interviewing search marketers in Silicon Valley about their experience managing online ads. After a half-dozen interviews, they convinced Walcott that new software was necessary.
n April 2007, Marin Search Marketer made its debut and became commercially available in North America, signing Razorfish, Trouve Media, and ZipRealty. Marin Search Marketer has since become MarinOne. Search, social, and eCommerce are its uses.
Marin Software expanded into the European market with the opening of its UK office in early 2009.
Marin Software shared plans to expand into Asia Pacific with offices in Singapore and Shanghai in January 2011, this announcement coinciding with the announcement of a partnership with Baidu. In June 2011, Marin Software announced its expansion into Australia with the opening of an office in Sydney. The following year, they did the same but in Tokyo, Japan.
Between 2006 and 2012, Marin has raised more than $100M in funding. The company reported revenue of $36M in 2011 and $50M in 2012.
In late 2012, Marin Software's CEO, Chris Lien, remarked to MediaPost that the company would undergo an IPO in 2013. On February 13, 2013, Marin Software filed with the SEC for a $75M initial public offering.
Initial public offering
On March 22, 2013, the company went public, selling 7.5M shares at a price of $14 per share, raising $105M at a valuation of $425M.
On September 24, 2014, Marin Software announced the launch of the Marin Audience Marketing Suite. (MAMS). On June 12, 2018, Marin launched MarinOne, its next-generation advertising platform for advertisers and agencies, at SMX Advanced in Seattle. MarinOne enables marketers to integrate all digital advertising data into one central platform, align campaigns across publishers to maximize ROI, and amplify publisher tools to drive the best possible performance.
In 2020, Marin Software Incorporated (NASDAQ: MRIN) improved by 8.46% from its current selling price relative to the high 1-year valuation of $5.78 and fell by -309.93%, though MRIN stocks earned +15.57% over the last five trading sessions.
Acquisitions
The following is a list of acquisitions by Marin Software:
Perfect Audience (June 2014)
Social Moov (February 2015)
Funding
Marin Software raised $105M in its IPO – March 22, 2013
Marin Software received $30M in Series F funding (Temasek, Benchmark Capital, Crosslink Capital, DAG Ventures, SAP Ventures, and Triangle Peak Partners) – February 13, 2012
Marin Software received $16M in Series E funding (Crosslink Capital, DAG Ventures, Focus Ventures, Benchmark Capital, and Triangle Peak Partners) – April 5, 2011
Marin Software received $11.2M in Series D funding (Amicus Capital, Benchmark Capital, DAG Ventures, Focus Ventures, and Triangle Peak Partners) – June 2, 2010
Marin Software received $13M in Series C funding (Amicus Capital, Benchmark Capital, DAG Ventures, and Focus Ventures) – April 28, 2009
Marin Software received $7.25M in Series B funding (Benchmark Capital and Amicus Capital) – April 9, 2008
Marin Software received $2.5M in Series A funding (Amicus Capital) – October 5, 2006
References
External links
Marin Software Official Website
Companies listed on the Nasdaq
Software companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area
Companies based in San Francisco
Marketing companies established in 2006
Software companies established in 2006
2013 initial public offerings
Online advertising
Digital marketing companies of the United States
Software companies of the United States |
72155 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore%20VIC-20 | Commodore VIC-20 | The Commodore VIC-20 (known as the VC-20 in Germany and the VIC-1001 in Japan) is an 8-bit home computer that was sold by Commodore Business Machines. The VIC-20 was announced in 1980, roughly three years after Commodore's first personal computer, the PET. The VIC-20 was the first computer of any description to sell one million units. It was described as "one of the first anti-spectatorial, non-esoteric computers by design...no longer relegated to hobbyist/enthusiasts or those with money, the computer Commodore developed was the computer of the future."
The VIC-20 was called VC-20 in Germany because the pronunciation of VIC with a German accent sounds like the German expletives "fick" or "wichsen". The term VC was marketed as though it were an abbreviation of VolksComputer ("people's computer," similar to Volkswagen and Volksempfänger).
History
Origin and marketing
The VIC-20 was intended to be more economical than the PET computer. It was equipped with 5 KB of static RAM and used the same MOS 6502 CPU as the PET. The VIC-20's video chip, the MOS Technology VIC, was a general-purpose color video chip designed by Al Charpentier in 1977 and intended for use in inexpensive display terminals and game consoles, but Commodore could not find a market for the chip.
As the Apple II gained momentum with the advent of VisiCalc in 1979, Jack Tramiel wanted a product that would compete in the same segment, to be presented at the January 1980 CES. For this reason Chuck Peddle and Bill Seiler started to design a computer named TOI (The Other Intellect). The TOI computer failed to materialize, mostly because it required an 80-column character display which in turn required the MOS Technology 6564 chip. However, the chip could not be used in the TOI since it required very expensive static RAM to operate fast enough.
In the meantime, new engineer Robert Yannes at MOS Technology (then a part of Commodore) designed a computer in his home dubbed the MicroPET and finished a prototype with help from Al Charpentier and Charles Winterble. With the TOI unfinished, when Jack Tramiel was shown the MicroPET prototype, he immediately said he wanted it to be finished and ordered it to be mass-produced following a limited demonstration at the CES.
As the new decade began, the price of computer hardware was dropping and Tramiel saw an emerging market for low-price computers that could be sold at retail stores to relative novices rather than professionals or people with an electronics or programming background. Radio Shack had been achieving considerable success with the TRS-80 Model I, a relatively low-cost machine that was widely sold to novices and in 1980 released the Color Computer, which was aimed at the home and educational markets, used ROM cartridges for software, and connected to a TV set.
The prototype produced by Yannes had very few of the features required for a real computer, so Robert Russell at Commodore headquarters had to coordinate and finish large parts of the design under the codename Vixen. The parts contributed by Russell included a port of the operating system (kernel and BASIC interpreter) taken from John Feagans design for the Commodore PET, a character set with the characteristic PETSCII, an Atari CX40 joystick-compatible interface, and a ROM cartridge port. The serial IEEE-488-derivative CBM-488 interface was designed by Glen Stark. It served several purposes, including costing substantially less than the IEEE-488 interface on the PET, using smaller cables and connectors that allowed for a more compact case design, and also complying with newly-imposed FCC regulations on RFI emissions by home electronics (the PET was certified as Class B office equipment which had less stringent RFI requirements). Some features, like the memory add-in board, were designed by Bill Seiler.
Altogether, the VIC 20 development team consisted of five people led by Michael Tomczyk the product manager, who recruited the group and dubbed them the VIC Commandos. Commodore founder Jack Tramiel initially gave Tomczyk the title VIC Czar and later appointed him product manager. Tomczyk insisted on several features including full-size typewriter keys, programmable function keys and a built-in RS-232 interface. Michael later contracted and co-designed a $100 modem, the VICModem, which became the first modem to sell 1 million units. According to one of the development team, Neil Harris, "[W]e couldn't get any cooperation from the rest of the company who thought we were jokers because we were working late, about an hour after everyone else had left the building. We'd swipe whatever equipment we needed to get our jobs done. There was no other way to get the work done! [...] they'd discover it was missing and they would just order more stuff from the warehouse, so everybody had what they needed to do their work."
At the time, Commodore had a glut of SRAM chips, so Tramiel decided these should be used in the new computer. The end result was arguably closer to the PET or TOI computers than to Yannes' prototype, albeit with a 22-column VIC chip instead of the custom chips designed for the more ambitious computers. As the amount of memory on the VIC-20's system board was very small even for 1981 standards, the design team could get away with using more expensive SRAM due to its lower power consumption, heat output, and less supporting circuitry. The original Revision A system board found in all silver-label VIC-20s used 2114 SRAMs and due to their tiny size (only 512 bytes per chip), ten of them were required to reach 5 KB of system RAM. The Revision B system board, found in rainbow logo VIC-20s (see below) switched to larger 2048-byte SRAMs which reduced the memory count to five chips: 2× 2048-byte chips + 3× 2114 (the 1024 × 4 bits) chips.
While newer PETs had the upgraded BASIC 4.0, which had disk commands and improved garbage collection, the VIC-20 reverted to the 8 KB BASIC 2.0 used on earlier PETs as part of another of the design team's goals, which was limiting the system ROMs to only 20 KB. Since Commodore's BASIC had been designed for the PET which had only limited audiovisual capabilities, there were no dedicated sound or graphics features, thus VIC-20 programmers had to use large numbers of POKE and PEEK statements for this. This was in contrast to the computer's main competitors, the Atari 400 and TRS-80 Color Computer, both of which had full-featured BASICs with support for the machines' sound and graphics hardware. Supplying a more limited BASIC in the VIC-20 would keep the price low and the user could purchase a BASIC extender separately if he desired sound or graphics commands.
While the TRS-80 Color Computer and Atari 400 had only RF video output, the VIC-20 instead had composite output, which provided a sharper, cleaner picture if a dedicated monitor was used. An external RF modulator was necessary to use the computer with a TV set, and had not been included internally so as to comply with FCC regulations (Commodore lobbied for and succeeded in getting them relaxed slightly by 1982, so the C64 had an RF modulator built in).
In April 1980, at a meeting of general managers outside London, Jack Tramiel declared he wanted a low-cost color computer. When most of the GMs argued against it, preferring Peddle's more sophisticated design, he said: "The Japanese are coming, so we must become the Japanese!" (in reference to the threats of low-cost systems from Japan). This was in keeping with Tramiel's philosophy which was to make "computers for the masses, not the classes". The concept was supported at the meeting by Tomczyk, newly hired marketing strategist and assistant to the president; Tony Tokai, General Manager of Commodore Japan, and Kit Spencer, the UK's top marketing executive. Peddle disagreed with the decision and left the company with other engineers, so an engineering team in Commodore Japan led by Yash Terakura helped finish the design. The VIC-20 was marketed in Japan as VIC-1001 before VIC-20 was introduced to the US.
When they returned to California from that meeting, Tomczyk wrote a 30-page memo detailing recommendations for the new computer, and presented it to Tramiel. Recommendations included programmable function keys (inspired by competing Japanese computers), full-size typewriter-style keys, and built-in RS-232. Tomczyk insisted on "user-friendliness" as the prime directive for the new computer, to engineer Terakura, and proposed a retail price of . He recruited a marketing team and a small group of computer enthusiasts, and worked closely with colleagues in the UK and Japan to create colorful packaging, user manuals, and the first wave of software programs (mostly games and home applications).
Scott Adams was contracted to provide a series of text adventure games. With help from a Commodore engineer who came to Longwood, Florida, to assist in the effort, five of Adams's Adventure International game series were ported to the VIC. They got around the limited memory of VIC-20 by having the games reside in a ROM cartridge instead of being loaded into main memory via cassette as they were on the TRS-80 and other machines. The first production run of the five cartridges generated over $1,500,000 in sales for Commodore.
While the PET was sold through authorized dealers the VIC-20 primarily sold at retail, especially discount and toy stores, where it could compete directly with game consoles. It was the first computer to be sold in K-Mart. Commodore took out advertisements featuring actor William Shatner (of Star Trek fame) as its spokesman, asking: "Why buy just a video game?" and describing it as "The Wonder Computer of the 1980s". Television personality Henry Morgan (best known as a panelist on the TV game show I've Got a Secret) became the commentator in a series of Commodore product ads.
The "20" in the computer's name was widely assumed to refer to the text width of the screen (although in fact the VIC-20 has 22-column text, not 20) or that it referred to the combined size of the system ROMs (8 KB BASIC+8 KB KERNAL+4 KB character ROM). Bob Yannes claimed that "20" meant nothing in particular and "We simply picked '20' because it seemed like a friendly number and the computer's marketing slogan was 'The Friendly Computer'. I felt it balanced things out a bit since 'Vic' sounded like the name of a truck driver."
In 1981, Tomczyk contracted with an outside engineering group to develop a direct-connect modem-on-a-cartridge (the VICModem), which at US$99 became the first modem priced under US$100. The VICModem was also the first modem to sell over 1 million units. VICModem was packaged with US$197.50 worth of free telecomputing services from The Source, CompuServe and Dow Jones. Tomczyk also created a SIG called the Commodore Information Network to enable users to exchange information and take some of the pressure off of Customer Support inquiries, which were straining Commodore's lean organization. In 1982, this network accounted for the largest traffic on CompuServe.
Evolution
The VIC-20 went through several variations in its three and a half years of production. First-year models (1980) had a PET-style keyboard with a blocky font while most VIC-20s made during 1981 had a slightly different keyboard also shared with early C64s. The rainbow logo VIC-20 was introduced in early 1983 and has the newer C64 keyboard with gray function keys and the Revision B motherboard. It has a similar power supply to the C64 PSU, although the amperage is slightly lower. A C64 "black brick" PSU is compatible with Revision B VIC-20s; however, the VIC's PSU is not recommended on a C64 if any external devices, such as cartridges or user port accessories, are installed, as it will overdraw the available power. Older Revision A VIC-20s cannot use a C64 PSU or vice versa as their power requirement is too high.
Decline
The VIC-20 was a bestselling computer, becoming the first personal computer to sell over a million. In total, 2.5 million computers were manufactured. In summer 1982, Commodore unveiled the a more advanced machine with of RAM and considerably improved sound and graphics. Initial sales of the C64 were slow, but took off in mid-1983. The VIC-20 was widely available for under $90 by that time. Commodore discontinued the VIC-20 in January 1985.
Perhaps the last new commercially available VIC-20 peripheral was the VIC-Talker, a speech synthesizer. Ahoy! wrote in January 1986, "Believe it or not, a new VIC accessory...We were as surprised as you."
Applications
The VIC-20's BASIC is compatible with the PET's, and the Datasette format is the same. Before the computer's release, a Commodore executive promised it would have "enough additional documentation to enable an experienced programmer/hobbyist to get inside and let his imagination work". Compute! favorably contrasted the company's encouragement of "cottage industry software developers" to Texas Instruments discouraging third-party software. Because of its small memory and low-resolution display compared to some other computers of the time, the VIC-20 was primarily used for educational software and games. However, productivity applications such as home finance programs, spreadsheets, and communication terminal programs were also made for the machine.
The VIC had a sizable library of public domain and freeware software. This software was distributed via online services such as CompuServe, BBSs, as well as offline by mail order and by user groups. Several computer magazines sold on newsstands, such as Compute!, Family Computing, RUN, Ahoy!, and the CBM-produced Commodore Power Play, offered programming tips and type-in programs for the VIC-20.
An estimated 300 commercial titles were available on cartridge and another 500+ were available on tape. A handful of disk applications were released.
The VIC's low cost led to it being used by the Fort Pierce, Florida, Utilities Authority to measure the input and output of two of their generators and display the results on monitors throughout the plant. The utility was able to purchase multiple VIC and C64 systems for the cost of one IBM PC compatible.
Technical specifications
The VIC-20 shipped with RAM, but of this is used for the video display and dynamic aspects of the ROM-resident Commodore BASIC and KERNAL (a low-level operating system). Only 3,583 bytes of BASIC program memory for code and variables are actually available on an unexpanded machine.
Ports and sockets
The VIC-20 has card edge connectors for program/expansion cartridges and a PET-standard Datassette tape drive. The VIC-20 did not originally have a disk drive; the VIC-1540 disk drive was released in 1981.
There is one Atari joystick port, compatible with the digital joysticks and paddles used with Atari VCS and Atari 8-bit family; a serial CBM-488 bus (a serial version of the PET's IEEE-488 bus) for daisy chaining disk drives and printers; a TTL-level "user port" with both RS-232 and Centronics signals (most frequently used as RS-232, for connecting a modem).
The VIC has a ROM cartridge port for games and other software as well as for adding memory to the machine. Port expander boxes from Commodore and other vendors allow more than one cartridge to be attached at a time. Cartridge size ranges from in size, although the latter was uncommon due to its cost.
The VIC-20 can be hooked into external electronic circuitry via joystick port, the "user port," or the memory expansion cartridge port, which exposes various analog to digital, memory bus, and other internal I/O circuits to the experimenter. PEEK and POKE commands from BASIC can be used to perform data acquisition from temperature sensors, control robotic stepper motors, etc.
Graphics
The graphics capabilities of the VIC chip (6560/6561) are limited but flexible. At startup the screen shows 176×184 pixels, with a fixed-color border to the edges of the screen. Since a PAL or NTSC screen has a 4:3 width-to-height ratio, each VIC pixel is much wider than it is high. The screen normally shows 22 columns and 23 rows of 8-by-8-pixel characters; it is possible to increase these dimensions up to 27 columns, but the characters would soon run out the sides of the monitor at about 25 columns. Just as on the PET, two different 256 character sets are included, the uppercase/graphics character set and the upper/lowercase set, and reverse video versions of both. Normally, the VIC-20 operates in high-resolution mode whereby each character is 8×8 pixels in size and uses one color. A lower-resolution multicolor mode can also be used with 4×8 characters and three colors each, but it is not used as often due to its extreme blockiness.
The VIC chip does not support a true bitmap mode, but programmers can define their own custom character sets. It is possible to get a fully addressable screen, although slightly smaller than normal, by filling the screen with a sequence of different double-height characters, then turning on the pixels selectively inside the RAM-based character definitions. The Super Expander cartridge adds BASIC commands supporting such a graphics mode using a resolution of 160×160 pixels. It is also possible to fill a larger area of the screen with addressable graphics using a more dynamic allocation scheme, if the contents are sparse or repetitive enough. This is used by the port of Omega Race.
The VIC chip has readable scan-line counters but cannot generate interrupts based on the scan position. The two VIA timer chips can serve this purpose through an elaborate programming technique, allowing graphics to be mixed with text above or below it, two different background and border colors, or more than 200 characters for the pseudo-high-resolution mode.
The VIC chip can process a light pen signal via the joystick port, but few appeared on the market.
The VIC chip outputs Luma+Sync and Chroma video signals, which is combined to create the VIC-20's composite video output. Commodore did not include an RF modulator inside the computer's case because of FCC regulations. It can either be attached to a dedicated monitor or a TV set using the external modulator included with the computer.
Sound
The VIC chip has three pulse wave generators and a white noise generator with an overall volume control and mono output. Each pulse wave generator has a range of three octaves located on the scale about an octave apart, giving a total range of about five octaves.
Memory expansion
The VIC-20's RAM is expandable through the cartridge port via a RAM cartridge. RAM cartridges were available in several sizes: (with or without an included "Super Expander" BASIC extension ROM), , , and , the latter two only from third-party vendors. The internal memory map is dramatically reorganized with the addition of each size cartridge, leading to a situation where some programs only work if the right amount of memory is present (to cater to this, the cartridges had switches, and the cartridges had software setups, allowing the RAM to be enabled in user-selectable memory blocks). Since the VIC-20 was designed to use SRAM rather than DRAM, the system board has no provisions for DRAM refresh.
The memory mapping of the VIC-20 can vary depending on system configuration. With no expanders installed, free user memory starts at $1000 and extended up to $1DFF, with the video buffer placed at $1E00-$1FFF. Below $1000 was a gap from $400-$FFF which could be filled with of expansion RAM, which if installed would place the BASIC program area at $400. If an or larger expander was used, screen memory began at $1000 and BASIC program text at $1200.
The VIC-20 allows two locations for color RAM, either at $9600 or $9400. The default for unexpanded machines is at $9600, and with an or larger expander, the color RAM would be moved to $9400; however, the user can freely set it to either location via the register at $9002.
The normal location for ROM cartridges is at $A000–$BFFF. On power up, the kernel ROM checks for an ID header and if found jumps to the specified starting address. Larger cartridges use the second half of ROM either at $2000 or $6000. A few cartridges, including Scott Adams adventures, load entirely in the $2000-$7FFF area. Since the kernel can only autostart ROMs located at $A000, such programs has to be manually launched from BASIC via the SYS command.
Commodore's official RAM expansion cartridges were only available up to a maximum of worth of additional memory, but third party cartridges can provide up to and sometimes included DIP switches to map the additional RAM to user-selectable address space.
Unlike the PET, the VIC-20 does not include a machine language monitor, but Commodore offered them on disk, tape, or cartridge, with several different executables to load into various memory locations. The monitor programs were the same as the PET monitor, but added a mini-assembler instead of requiring the user to enter hexadecimal opcodes.
The cartridges allowed adding up to to the BASIC user memory; together with the built-in user memory, this gave a maximum of for BASIC programs and variables. The extra could usually be used in one of two ways, set by switches:
Either it could be mapped into the address space reserved for ROM cartridges, which sat "behind" the I/O register space and thus was not contiguous with the rest of the RAM. This allowed running many cartridge-based games from disk or tape and was thus very useful for software pirates; especially if the RAM expansion allowed switching off writing to its memory after the game was loaded, so that the memory behaved exactly like ROM.
Or, of the could be mapped into the same memory "hole" that the cartridge used, letting lie fallow. These were contiguous with the rest of RAM, but couldn't be used to expand BASIC space to more than , because the display data would have had to be moved to cartridge RAM, which was not possible.
Reception
Describing it as "an astounding machine for the price", Compute! in 1981 expected the VIC-20 would be popular in classrooms and homes with small children, with "excellent graphic and sound capabilities". While predicting the 22-column screen was "too small to support any but the most rudimentary business applications" the magazine observed that "at a price of $299, that is hardly the point", stating that "the VIC will provide very stiff competition to the TRS-80 Color Computer" and "is a much more valuable computer literacy tool than" other products like the TRS-80 Pocket Computer. Compute! concluded "VIC will create its own market, and it will be a big one". While also noting the small screen size and RAM, BYTE stated that the VIC 20 was "unexcelled as low-cost, consumer-oriented computer. Even with some of its limitations...it makes an impressive showing against...the Apple II, the Radio Shack TRS-80, and the Atari 800". The magazine praised the price ("Looking at a picture...might cause you to think $600 would be a fair price...But it does not cost $600—the VIC 20 retails for $299.95"), keyboard ("the equal of any personal-computer keyboard in both appearance and performance. This is a remarkable achievement, almost unbelievable considering the price of the entire unit"), graphics, documentation, and ease of software development with the KERNAL.
See also
VICE, a VIC-20 emulator
List of Commodore VIC-20 games
Footnotes
References
Further reading
BYTE in 1983 published a series of technical articles about the VIC-20:
External links
OLD-COMPUTERS.COM online-museum VIC-20 page
VIC-20 Programmers reference guide and more
6502-based home computers
Computer-related introductions in 1980 |
67037802 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ventoy | Ventoy | Ventoy is a free and open-source utility used for writing image files such as .iso, .wim, .img, .vhd(x), and files onto storage media to create bootable USB flash drives. Once Ventoy is installed onto a USB drive, there is no need to reformat the disk to update it with new installation files; it is enough to copy the .iso, , , , or file(s) to the USB drive and boot from them directly. Ventoy will present the user with a boot menu to select one of these files.
Features
Ventoy can be installed on a USB, local disk, SSD, NVMe, or SD Card and it will directly boot from the selected .iso, , , , or file(s) added. Ventoy does not extract the image file(s) to the USB drive, but uses them directly. It is possible to place multiple ISO images on a single device and select the image to boot from the menu displayed just after Ventoy boots.
MBR and GPT partition styles, x86 Legacy BIOS and various UEFI boot methods (including persistence) are supported. ISO files larger than 4 GB can be used. Ventoy supports various operating system boot and installation ISO files including Windows 7 and above, Debian, Ubuntu, CentOS, RHEL, Deepin, Fedora and more than a hundred of other Linux distributions, various UNIX releases, VMware, Citrix XenServer, etc.
See also
List of tools to create Live USB systems
References
External links
Github Repository
Softpedia: Ventoy
Linux Uprising Blog on Ventoy
Cross-platform software
Free system software
Linux installation software
Live USB |
1155993 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabre%20%28computer%20system%29 | Sabre (computer system) | Sabre Global Distribution System, owned by Sabre Corporation, is used by travel agents and companies around the world
to search, price, book, and ticket travel services provided by airlines, hotels, car rental companies, rail providers and tour
operators. Sabre aggregates airlines, hotels, online and offline travel agents and travel buyers.
Overview
The system's parent company is organized into three business units:
Sabre Travel Network: global distribution system
Sabre Airline Solutions: airline technology
Sabre Hospitality Solutions: hotel technology solutions
Sabre is headquartered in Southlake, Texas, and has employees in various locations around the world.
History
The company's history starts with SABRE (Semi-automated Business Research Environment), a computer reservation system which was developed to automate the way American Airlines booked reservations.
In the 1950s, American Airlines was facing a serious challenge in its ability to quickly handle airline reservations in an era that witnessed high growth in passenger volumes in the airline industry. Before the introduction of SABRE, the airline's system for booking flights was entirely manual, having developed from the techniques originally developed at its Little Rock, Arkansas, reservations center in the 1920s. In this manual system, a team of eight operators would sort through a rotating file with cards for every flight. When a seat was booked, the operators would place a mark on the side of the card, and knew visually whether it was full. This part of the process was not all that slow, at least when there were not that many planes, but the entire end-to-end task of looking for a flight, reserving a seat, and then writing up the ticket could take up to three hours in some cases, and 90 minutes on average. The system also had limited room to scale. It was limited to about eight operators because that was the maximum that could fit around the file. To handle more queries the only solution was to add more layers of hierarchy to filter down requests into batches.
American Airlines had already attacked the problem to some degree, and was in the process of introducing their new Magnetronic Reservisor, an electromechanical computer, in 1952 to replace the card files. This computer consisted of a single magnetic drum, each memory location holding the number of seats left on a particular flight. Using this system, a large number of operators could access information simultaneously, so the ticket agents could be told via phone if a seat was available. On the downside, a staff member was needed at each end of the phone line, and handling the ticket took considerable effort and filing. Something much more highly automated was needed if American Airlines was going to enter the jet age, booking many times more seats.
During the testing phase of the Reservisor a high-ranking IBM salesman, Blair Smith, was flying on an American Airlines flight from Los Angeles back to IBM in New York City in 1953. He found himself sitting next to American Airlines president C. R. Smith. Noting that they shared a family name, they began talking.
Just prior to this chance meeting, IBM had been working with the United States Air Force on their Semi Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) project. SAGE used a series of large computers to coordinate the message flow from radar sites to interceptors, dramatically reducing the time needed to direct an attack on an incoming bomber. The system used teleprinter machines located around the world to feed information into the system, which then sent orders back to teleprinters located at the fighter bases. It was one of the first online systems.
It was not lost on either man that the basic idea of the SAGE system was perfectly suited to American Airlines' booking needs. Teleprinters would be placed at American Airlines' ticketing offices to send in requests and receive responses directly, without the need for anyone on the other end of the phone. The number of available seats on the aircraft could be tracked automatically, and if a seat was available the ticket agent could be notified instantly. Booking simply took one more command, updating the availability and, if desired, could be followed by printing a ticket.
Only 30 days later IBM sent a research proposal to American Airlines, suggesting that they join forces to study the problem. A team was set up consisting of IBM engineers led by John Siegfried and a large number of American Airlines' staff led by Malcolm Perry, taken from booking, reservations, and ticket sales, calling the effort the Semi-Automated Business Research Environment, or SABRE.
A formal development arrangement was signed in 1957. The first experimental system went online in 1960, based on two IBM 7090 mainframes in a new data center located in Briarcliff Manor, New York. The system was a success. Until this point, it had cost the astonishing sum of $40 million to develop and install (about $350 million in 2000 dollars). The SABRE system by IBM in the 1960s was specified to process a very large number of transactions, such as handling 83,000 daily phone calls. The system took over all booking functions in 1964, when the name had changed to SABRE.
In 1972, SABRE was migrated to IBM System/360 systems in a new underground location in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Max Hopper joined American Airlines in 1972 as director of SABRE, and pioneered its use. Originally used only by American Airlines, the system was expanded to travel agents in 1976.
With SABRE up and running, IBM offered its expertise to other airlines, and soon developed Deltamatic for Delta Air Lines on the IBM 7074, and PANAMAC for Pan American World Airways using an IBM 7080. In 1968, they generalized their work into the PARS (Programmed Airline Reservation System), which ran on any member of the IBM System/360 family and thus could support any sized airline. The operating system component of PARS evolved into ACP (Airlines Control Program), and later to TPF (Transaction Processing Facility). Application programs were originally written in assembly language, later in SabreTalk, a proprietary dialect of PL/I, and now in C and C++.
By the 1980s, SABRE offered airline reservations through the CompuServe Information Service, and the Prodigy Internet Service GEnie under the Eaasy SABRE brand. This service was extended to America Online (AOL) in the 1990s.
American and Sabre separated on March 15, 2000. Sabre had been a publicly traded corporation, Sabre Holdings, stock symbol TSG on the New York Stock Exchange until taken private in March 2007. The corporation introduced the new logo and changed from the all-caps acronym "SABRE" to the mixed-case "Sabre Holdings", when the new corporation was formed. The Travelocity website, introduced in 1996, was owned by Sabre Holdings. Travelocity was acquired by Expedia in January 2015. Sabre Holdings' three remaining business units, Sabre Travel Network, Sabre Airline Solutions and Sabre Hospitality, today serves as a global travel technology company.
Other airline systems
In 1982, Advertising Age reported that "United Airlines operates a similar system, Apollo, while Eastern operates Mars and Delta operates Datas." Braniff International's Cowboy system was considered by Electronic Data Systems for building an airline-neutral system.
Controversy
A 1982 study by American Airlines found that travel agents selected the flight appearing on the first line more than half the time. Ninety-two percent of the time, the selected flight was on the first screen. This provided a huge incentive for American to manipulate its ranking formula, or even corrupt the search algorithm outright, to favor American flights.
At first this was limited to juggling the relative importance of factors such as the length of the flight, how close the actual departure time was to the desired time, and whether the flight had a connection, but with each success American became bolder. In late 1981, New York Air added a flight from La Guardia to Detroit, challenging American in an important market. Before long, the new flights suddenly started appearing at the bottom of the screen. Its reservations dried up, and it was forced to cut back from eight Detroit flights a day to none.
On one occasion, Sabre deliberately withheld Continental's discount fares on 49 routes where American competed. A Sabre staffer had been directed to work on a program that would automatically suppress any discount fares loaded into the computer system.
Congress investigated these practices and in 1983 Bob Crandall, president of American, was the most vocal supporter of the systems. "The preferential display of our flights, and the corresponding increase in our market share, is the competitive raison d'être for having created the system in the first place," he told them. Unimpressed, in 1984 the United States government outlawed screen bias.
Even after biases were eliminated, travel agents using the system leased and serviced by American were significantly more likely to choose American over other airlines. The same was true of United and its Apollo system. The airlines referred to this phenomenon as the "halo" effect.
The fairness rules were eliminated or allowed to expire in 2010. By then, none of the major distribution systems was majority owned by the airlines.
In 1987 Sabre's success of selling to European travel agents was inhibited by the refusal of big European carriers led by British Airways to grant the system ticketing authority for their flights even though Sabre had obtained IATA Billing and Settlement Plan (BSP) clearance for the UK in 1986. American brought High Court action which alleged that after the arrival of Sabre on its doorstep British Airways immediately offered financial incentives to travel agents who continued to use Travicom and would tie any override commissions to it. Travicom was created by Videcom, British Airways and British Caledonian and launched in 1976 as the world's first multi-access reservations system based on Videcom technology which eventually became part of Galileo UK. It connected 49 subscribing international airlines (including British Airways, British Caledonian, TWA, Pan American World Airways, Qantas, Singapore Airlines, Air France, Lufthansa, SAS, Air Canada, KLM, Alitalia, Cathay Pacific and JAL) to thousands of travel agents in the UK. It allowed agents and airlines to communicate via a common distribution language and network, handling 97% of UK airline business trade bookings by 1987.
British Airways eventually bought out the stakes in Travicom held by Videcom and British Caledonian, to become the sole owner. Although Sabre's vice-president in London, David Schwarte, made representations to the U.S. Department of Transportation and the British Monopolies Commission, British Airways defended the use of Travicom as a truly non-discriminatory system in flight selection because an agent had access to some 50 carriers worldwide, including Sabre, for flight information.
See also
Travelocity
List of global distribution systems
Passenger name record
Code sharing
Electronic Recording Machine, Accounting (ERMA) – another pioneering early system. ERMA, SAGE and SABRE helped legitimize computers in business.
Real-time operating system – SABRE was one of the first such systems
Perry O. Crawford Jr.
Travel technology
Galileo CRS
Navitaire
Travelport
References
Robert V. Head, "Getting Sabre off the Ground", IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, vol. 24, no. 4, pp. 32–39, Oct.-Dec. 2002,
Further reading
Robert V. Head, Real-Time Business Systems, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York, 1964. "This book embodies many of the lessons learned about new technology application management while working on the ERMA and Sabre systems".
D.G. Copeland, R.O. Mason, and J.L. McKenney, "Sabre: The Development of Information-Based Competence and Execution of Information-Based Competition," IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, vol. 17, no. 3, Fall 1995, pp. 30–57.
R.D. Norby, "The American Airlines Sabre System," in James D. Gallagher, Management Information Systems and the Computer, Am. Management Assoc. Research Study, 1961, pp. 150–176.
IBM General Information Manual, 9090 Airlines Reservation System, 1961.
External links
Oral history interview with R. Blair Smith. Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Smith discusses how a chance meeting with C. R. Smith, president of American Airlines, eventually led to the development of the SABRE system.
The Mad Men's Best Friend Was SABRE on Wired.com
Sabre at IBM100
Sabre Holdings
Virtually There public site for viewing reservations made through Sabre.
Some History features a history of ACP/TPF the Operating System used on SABRE
Travel technology
Assembly language software
American Airlines
Computer reservation systems |
67889466 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fillia%20Makedon | Fillia Makedon | Fillia S. Makedon is a Greek-American computer scientist whose research has spanned a broad variety of areas in computer science, including VLSI design, graph algorithms, numerical linear algebra, sensor networks, algorithm visualization, bioinformatics, recommender systems, and human–robot interaction. She is Jenkins-Garrett Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Texas at Arlington.
Early life and education
Makedon is originally from Samos, and came to the US as a Fulbright Scholar to study biochemistry at Skidmore College, graduating in 1968. After a master's degree in biophysics at Penn State York in 1971, she shifted to graduate study in computer science at Northwestern University, earning a second master's degree in 1979 and completing her Ph.D. in 1982.
Career
She was a postdoctoral researcher with Christos Papadimitriou at the National Technical University of Athens, and joined the faculty at the Illinois Institute of Technology in 1983. She moved to the University of Texas at Dallas in 1985, and in the same year took up an affiliate faculty position with the University of Patras. At UT Dallas, she founded the Computer Learning Research Center (CLEAR) in 1987.
She moved to Dartmouth College in 1991, as a professor of computer science, director of the Dartmouth Experimental Visualization Laboratory (DEVLAB), and director of the Summer Institute for Advanced Graduate Studies (DAGS), at the same time holding an adjunct position at the University of the Aegean. She became a program director in the Office of Cyber-Infrastructure at the National Science Foundation in 2005, and returned to academia with her present position as Jenkins-Garrett Professor at the University of Texas at Arlington in 2006. At UT Arlington, she became the founding director of the Integrative Computational Science Program, director of the Human Centered Computing Laboratory (HERACLEIA), and headed the department of computer science and engineering from 2006 to 2013.
Selected publications
References
Year of birth missing (living people)
Living people
Greek computer scientists
Greek women computer scientists
American computer scientists
American women computer scientists
Skidmore College alumni
Pennsylvania State University faculty
Northwestern University alumni
Illinois Institute of Technology faculty
University of Texas at Arlington faculty
People from Athens
21st-century American women |
841031 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HostAP | HostAP | HostAP was one of the most popular IEEE 802.11 device drivers for Linux and since November 2016 is officially obsolete in Linux kernel. It works with cards using the Conexant (formerly Intersil) Prism 2/2.5/3 chipset and support Host AP mode, which allows a WLAN card to perform all the functions of a wireless access point.
The driver code was written by Jouni Malinen, hired by Atheros in 2008, and was included into the main kernel tree in Linux 2.6.14.
See also
Hostapd
wpa supplicant
Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG AP Driver for Linux, an open source 802.11 b/g access point driver for the ipw2200 and ipw2915
References
External links
HostAP Homepage
Network overview by Rami Rosen
Wi-Fi
Linux drivers |
7688189 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oktoberfest | Oktoberfest | The Oktoberfest () is the world's largest Volksfest, featuring a beer festival and a travelling funfair. It is held annually in Munich, Bavaria, Germany. It is a 16- to 18-day folk festival running from mid- or late-September to around the first Sunday in October, with more than six million people from around the world attending the event every year. Locally, it is called , after the colloquial name for the fairgrounds, Theresienwiese. The Oktoberfest is an important part of Bavarian culture, having been held since the year 1810. Other cities across the world also hold Oktoberfest celebrations that are modeled after the original Munich event.
During the event, large quantities of Oktoberfest Beer are consumed. For example, during the 16-day festival in 2014, were served. Visitors also enjoy numerous attractions, such as amusement rides, sidestalls, and games. There is also a wide variety of traditional foods available.
The Munich Oktoberfest originally took place in the 16-day period leading up to the first Sunday in October. In 1994, this longstanding schedule was modified in response to German reunification. As such, if the first Sunday in October falls on the 1st or the 2nd, then the festival would run until 3 October (German Unity Day). Thus, the festival now runs for 17 days when the first Sunday is 2 October and 18 days when it is 1 October. In 2010, the festival lasted until the first Monday in October (4 October), to mark the event's bicentennial.
History
Kronprinz Ludwig (1786–1868), later King Ludwig I (reign: 1825–1848), married Princess Therese of Saxe-Hildburghausen on 12 October 1810. The citizens of Munich were invited to attend the festivities held on the fields in front of the city gates to celebrate the royal event. The fields were named ("Theresa's Meadow") in honour of the Crown Princess, and have kept that name ever since, although the locals have abbreviated the name simply to . Horse races, in the tradition of the 15th-century (Scarlet Race at Karlstor), were held on 18 October to honor the newlyweds. It is widely believed that Andreas Michael Dall'Armi, a Major in the National Guard, proposed the idea. However, the origins of the horse races, and Oktoberfest itself, may have stemmed from proposals offered by Franz Baumgartner, a coachman and Sergeant in the National Guard. The precise origins of the festival and horse races remain a matter of controversy. However, the decision to repeat the horse races, spectacle, and celebrations in 1811 launched what is now the annual Oktoberfest tradition.
The fairground, once outside the city, was chosen due to its natural suitability, which it still holds today. The Sendlinger Hill (today ) was used as a grandstand for 40,000 race spectators. The festival grounds remained undeveloped, except for the king's tent. The tastings of "Traiteurs" and other wine and beer took place above the visitors in the stands on the hill. Before the race started, a performance was held in homage of the bridegroom and of the royal family in the form of a train of 16 pairs of children dressed in costumes, and costumes from the nine Bavarian townships and other regions. This was followed by the punishing race with 30 horses on an 11,200-foot (3,400 meter)-long racetrack, and concluded with the singing of a student choir. The first horse to cross the finish line belonged to Franz Baumgartner (one of the purported festival initiators). Horse racing champion and Minister of State Maximilian von Montgelas presented Baumgartner with his gold medal.
Transformation into a public festival
19th century
In 1811, a show was added to promote Bavarian agriculture. In 1813, the festival was canceled due to the involvement of Bavaria in the Napoleonic Wars, after which the Oktoberfest grew from year to year. The horse races were accompanied by tree climbing, bowling alleys, and swings and other attractions. In 1818, carnival booths appeared; the main prizes awarded were of silver, porcelain, and jewelry. The city fathers assumed responsibility for festival management in 1819, and it was decided that Oktoberfest become an annual event. In 1832, the date was moved some weeks later, as a Greek delegation came. It inspired them for the Zappas Olympics which became in 1896 the modern Olympic Games. Later, the Oktoberfest was lengthened and the date pushed forward because days are longer and warmer at the end of September. The horse race continued until 1960, and the agricultural show still exists today and is held every four years in the southern part of the festival grounds.
To honour the marriage of Prince Ludwig and Therese of Saxe-Hildburghausen, a parade took place for the first time in 1810. Since 1850, the parade has become an annual event and an important component of the Oktoberfest. Eight thousand people—mostly from Bavaria—and dressed in traditional costumes walk from Maximilian Street through the centre of Munich to the Oktoberfest grounds. The march is led by the Münchner Kindl.
Since 1850, the statue of Bavaria has watched over the Oktoberfest. This worldly Bavarian patron was first sketched by Leo von Klenze in a classic style and Ludwig Michael Schwanthaler romanticised and Germanised the draft.
The statue was constructed by Johann Baptist Stiglmaier and Ferdinand von Miller.
In 1853, the Bavarian Ruhmeshalle was completed. In 1854, the festival was cancelled after 3,000 residents of Munich including the queen consort died during a cholera epidemic. There was no Oktoberfest in 1866 because Bavaria was involved in the Austro-Prussian War. In 1870, the Franco-Prussian War again forced the cancellation of the festival. In 1873, the festival was cancelled due to yet another cholera epidemic. In 1880, electric light illuminated more than 400 booths and tents. In 1881, booths selling Bratwurst opened and the first beer was served in glass mugs in 1892.
At the end of the 19th century, a re-organization took place. Until then, there were games of skittles, large dance floors, and trees for climbing in the beer booths. Organizers wanted more room for guests and musicians which resulted in the booths becoming beer halls which are still used today.
In 1887, the parade of the Oktoberfest staff and breweries took place for the first time. This event showcases the splendidly decorated horse teams of the breweries and the bands that play in the festival tents. This event always takes place on the first Saturday of the Oktoberfest and serves as the official prelude to the Oktoberfest celebration.
20th century
At the 100th anniversary of Oktoberfest in 1910, an estimated 120,000 litres of beer were consumed. Three years later, the was founded, which at that time was the largest pavilion to have ever been built, accommodating approximately 12,000 people.
Due to World War I, Oktoberfest was temporarily suspended from 1914 to 1918. The two years after the war, in 1919 and 1920, Oktoberfest was replaced by the so-called (which can be translated as "smaller autumn celebration"), and in 1923 and 1924 the Oktoberfest was cancelled due to hyperinflation.
During National Socialism, Oktoberfest was used as part of Nazi propaganda. In 1933, Jews were forbidden to work on the . Two years later, Oktoberfest's 125th anniversary was celebrated with all the frills. The main event was a big parade.
The slogan proud city—cheerful country was meant to show the alleged overcoming of differences between social classes, and can be seen as an example of the regime's consolidation of power. In 1938, after Hitler had annexed Austria and won the Sudetenland via the Munich Agreement, Oktoberfest was renamed to (Greater German folk festival), and as a showing of strength, the Nazi regime transported people from Sudetenland to the by the score.
During World War II, from 1939 to 1945, no Oktoberfest was celebrated. Following the war, from 1946 to 1948, Munich celebrated only the "Autumn Fest". The sale of proper Oktoberfest beer—2% stronger in gravity than normal beer—was not permitted; guests could only drink normal beer.
Since its foundation, there have been 26 years in which it was declined.
Beginning in 1950, the festival has always been opened with the same traditional procedure: At noon, a 12-gun salute is followed by the tapping of the first keg of Oktoberfest beer by the Mayor of Munich with the proclamation "" ("It's tapped!" in the Austro-Bavarian dialect). The Mayor then gives the first litre of beer to the Minister-President of the State of Bavaria. The first mayor to tap a keg was Thomas Wimmer.
Before the festival officially starts, parades are held with the traditional marksmen's clubs, beer-tent waitresses, and landlords participating. There are two different parades which both end at the . They start around 9:45 a.m. to 10.50 am.
During Oktoberfest, some locals wear Bavarian hats (), which contain a tuft of chamois hair (Gamsbart). Historically, in Bavaria chamois hair was highly valued and prized. The more tufts of chamois hair on one's hat, the wealthier one was considered to be. Due to modern technology, this tradition has declined with the appearance of chamois hair imitations on the market.
For medical treatment of visitors, the Bavarian branch of the German Red Cross operates an aid facility and provides emergency medical care on the festival grounds, staffed with around 100 volunteer medics and doctors per day.
They serve together with special detachments of Munich police, the fire department and other municipal authorities in the service centre at the (authorities' court), a large building specially built for the Oktoberfest at the east side of the , just behind the tents. There is also a station for lost and found children, a lost property office, a security point for women and other public services.
Since the 1970s, local German gay organizations have organized "Gay Days" at Oktoberfest, which since the 21st century always begin in the tent on the first Sunday.
1980 bombing
A pipe bomb was set off in a dustbin near the toilets at the main entrance on 26 September 1980 at 22:19. The bomb consisted of an empty fire extinguisher filled with 1.39 kilograms of TNT and mortar shells. Thirteen people were killed and over 225 were injured, 68 seriously.
This is the second-deadliest terrorist attack in the history of Germany, after the Munich massacre.
Governmental authorities initiated numerous official inquiries, concluding that a right-wing extremist, Gundolf Köhler, from Donaueschingen, a social outcast who was killed in the explosion, was the sole perpetrator. However, both this account and the number of perpetrators are strongly disputed by various groups.
Oktoberfest today
To keep the Oktoberfest, and especially the beer tents, amicable for the elderly and families, the concept of the "quiet Oktoberfest" was developed in 2005. Until 6:00 pm, the orchestras in the tents only play brass music, for example traditional folk music. Only after that may Schlager pop or electric music be played, which had led to excessively raucous behaviour in earlier years. The music played in the afternoon is limited to 85 decibels. With these rules, the organisers of the Oktoberfest were able to curb the tumultuous party mentality and preserve the traditional beer-tent atmosphere.
In 2005 Germany's last travelling enterprise amusement ride, the , returned to the Oktoberfest.
Starting in 2008, a new Bavarian law was passed to ban smoking in all enclosed spaces open to the public. Because of problems enforcing the anti-smoking law in the big tents, an exception was granted to the Oktoberfest in 2008, although the sale of tobacco was not allowed. After heavy losses in the 2008 local elections, with the smoking ban being a big issue in political debates, the state's ruling party implemented general exemptions to beer tents and small pubs.
The change in regulations was aimed in particular to benefit the large tents of the Oktoberfest: smoking in the tents is still legal, but the tents usually have non-smoking areas. The sale of tobacco in the tents is now legal, but is widely boycotted by mutual agreement. However, in early 2010, a referendum held in Bavaria as a result of a popular initiative re-instituted the original, strict, smoking ban of 2008; thus, no beer will be sold to people caught smoking in the tents.
The blanket smoking ban did not take effect until 2011, but all tents instituted the smoking ban in 2010 to do a "dry run" to identify any unforeseeable issues.
The year 2010 marked the Oktoberfest Bicentennial. For the anniversary, a horse race in historical costumes was held on opening day. A so-called (historical Oktoberfest) took place, starting one day earlier than usual on the southern part of the festival grounds. A specially brewed beer (solely available at the tents of the historical Oktoberfest), horse races, and a museum tent gave visitors an impression of how the event felt two centuries ago.
In 2013, 6.4 million people visited Oktoberfest, and visitors were served 6.7 million litres of beer.
On 21 April 2020, Bavarian Minister-President Markus Söder and the mayor of Munich, Dieter Reiter, announced the official cancellation of the 2020 Oktoberfest due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. On 3 May 2021, Minister-President Söder and Mayor Reiter announced that the Oktoberfest hiatus will be extended, deferring the next one to 2022. Söder noted the unfeasibility of social distancing in the festival's beer tents, adding, "Imagine there was a new wave and it then became a super-spreader event. The brand would be damaged forever and we don't want that."
On the occasion of the 200th anniversary in 2010 a so-called (Historical Oktoberfest) was designed on the site of the Central Agricultural Festival at the south end of the Theresienwiese. It opened one day before the official Oktoberfest with the traditional keg tapping by the Lord Mayor.
The comprehensive five acres of fenced grounds presented historic rides, beer tents and other historical attractions such as a Steckerlfisch grilling, a chain swing and a cotton candy stand. Included in the price of admission, an animal tent and the racecourse could be visited next to the museum.
The animal tent included, among other things, a petting zoo, and was managed by the Hellabrunn Zoo and the Bavarian Farmers Association. The Munich Stadtmuseum took over the design of the museum tent. The Oktoberfest anniversary was accompanied by an artistic and cultural program, in which for example the Biermösl Blosn (local entertainers) performed.
The bands performing in the relatively small Festzelt—offering 850 seats—had to do without electrical amplification.
The fest-tent name derives from a famous stage character of the actor Jörg Hube, who died in 2009.
The six main Munich breweries Augustiner, Hacker-Pschorr, Hofbräu, Löwenbräu, Paulaner and Spaten presented a special exclusively brewed dark beer, which was made after a historic recipe from the early 19th century.
The beer mugs in the beer tents did not have the company logo of the breweries, but rather the inscription "Munich beer". Unlike the usual Oktoberfest, the Historic closed at 8 pm. Instead of the 300,000 guests estimated by the city council, well over half a million visitors came. The festival site had to be temporarily closed several times due to overcrowding.
According to the Munich City Council Decision on 16 October 2012, the entry fee for the Historical Oktoberfest, now called (Bavarian for "old fairground"), in 2013 was to be three euros again. For the first time a re-entry was possible with the tickets. The historic rides in 2013 required a 1 Euro fee.
Other changes made at that Munich City Council meeting were that the musicians' tent increased the number of indoor seats from 1000 to 1,500. Outside tent seating increased from 800 to 1,000. They also supported the Showman Foundation with a contribution of €200,000, so it could run a museum tent, a velodrome, as well as a children's program. Also in 2013, the total festival area was enlarged and attractive entrances were added.
Lastly, according to a City Council decision, there will be an again in 2015 before the Central Agricultural Exhibition claims the location again on the Theresienwiese in 2016.
The , also known as Gay Oktoberfest, refers to a number of annual LGBT events which take place throughout the Oktoberfest period in Munich. The main feature event is in the Bräurosl (Hacker-Pschorr) tent on the first Sunday and is sometimes called 'Gay Sunday'. Other events take place throughout the weeks of the festival with some requiring a pre-booking. These include meet and greets, Lion's night (), brunches and cultural programmes.
The tradition of traces its origins to the 1970s when friends of the Munich Lion's Club, MLC (), a leather and fetish society first booked the balcony at the festival tent and were mistaken to have been a football club, however the group was welcomed by the owners and waiters who enjoyed having them, and so the meet-up became an annual event. is now one of the major events in the LGBT calendar in Germany with Gay Sunday alone attracting over 8,000 LGBT festival-goers. It is now the second-biggest LGBT event to take place after Christopher Street Day.
Highlights
Entry of the restaurateurs and breweries
The story of the entry of the Oktoberfest restaurateurs and breweries for the opening of the Oktoberfest began in 1887, when the then manager, Hans Steyrer, first marched from his meadow to the Tegernseer Landstraße with his staff, a brass band and a load of beer to the .
In its current form, the parade has taken place since 1935, where all the breweries first took part. Since then, the parade is led by the Münchner Kindl, followed by the incumbent mayor of Munich in the Schottenhammel family carriage since 1950. This is followed by the decorated horse carriages and floats of the breweries and the carriages of the other restaurateurs and showmen. The music bands from the beer tents accompany the parade.
Beer barrel tapping
After the parade of the restaurateurs on carriages from downtown to the festival grounds, at exactly 12:00 clock the lord mayor opens the first beer barrel in the Schottenhammel tent. With the initial pass and the Bavarian exclamation, "!" (—It has been tapped!) the Oktoberfest is declared opened.
Twelve gunshots are then fired on the stairway of Ruhmeshalle. This is the signal for the other restaurateurs to start with the serving of beer. Traditionally, the Bavarian Minister-President is served the first litre of beer. Then in the other tents, the first barrels are tapped and beer is served to the visitors.
Every year, visitors eagerly await to see how many strokes the mayor needs to use before the first beer flows. Bets are even made. The best performance is still two strokes (Christian Ude, 2005, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013; Dieter Reiter, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019), and there was also 19 strokes required (Thomas Wimmer, 1950).
Costume and riflemen parade
In honor of the silver wedding anniversary of King Ludwig I of Bavaria and Princess Therese, a traditional costume parade took place in 1835 for the first time. In 1895, the Bavarian novelist Maximilian Schmidt organized another parade with 1,400 participants in 150 traditional costume groups. Another parade was organized for the 100th anniversary celebrations in 1910 by Julius and Moritz Wallach, promoters of the Dirndl and Lederhosen as fashion.
From 1950 to 2019 & resuming in 2022, this parade is organized annually and has become one of the highlights of the Oktoberfest and one of the world's largest parades of its kind. On the first festival Sunday, 8000 participants march in the parade in their historic festival costumes from the Maximilianeum on a seven kilometer stretch to the festival grounds.
This parade is also led by the ; followed by notables of the city council and the city administration and the state of Bavaria, usually the minister-president and his wife, traditional costume and rifle clubs, musical bands, marching bands, flag-wavers and about 40 carriages with decorated horses and carts. The clubs and groups come mostly out of Bavaria, but also from other German states, Austria, Switzerland, Northern Italy and other European countries. The entry of the (innkeepers) and the traditional costume and marksmen procession is organized by the Festring München.
Beers
Only beer conforming to the Reinheitsgebot, and brewed within the city limits of Munich, can be served at the Munich Oktoberfest.
Beers meeting these criteria are designated Oktoberfest Beer although the name 'Oktoberfest beer' also denotes two distinct beer styles: a traditional Märzen lager and a paler that is now more commonly served at Oktoberfest itself.
The breweries that can produce Oktoberfest beer under the aforementioned criteria are:
Augustiner-Bräu
Hacker-Pschorr-Bräu
Löwenbräu
Paulaner
Spatenbräu
Hofbräu-München
Oktoberfest Beer is a registered trademark by the Club of Munich Brewers, which consists of the above six breweries.
Facts and data
Size
The Oktoberfest is known as the largest (folk festival) in the world.
In 1999 there were six and a half million visitors to the 42-hectare Theresienwiese. 72% of visitors are from Bavaria. 15% of visitors come from foreign countries including surrounding EU countries and other non-European countries such as the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and East Asia.
Besides the Oktoberfest, there are other public festivals that take place at the same location. In April and May the Munich (spring festival) is held and the Tollwood Festival is held in December with 650,000 visitors.
After the Oktoberfest the next largest public fairs in Germany are: the Cannstatter Volksfest in Stuttgart with about 4.5 million visitors each year; the Cranger Kirmes in Herne (Wanne-Eickel) (the largest fair in North Rhine-Westphalia) with 4.4 million visitors; the Rheinkirmes in Düsseldorf (called the largest fair on the Rhine); and the Freimarkt in Bremen (the biggest fair in northern Germany) with over 4 million visitors per year each. Also noteworthy is the , the world's largest marksmen's fun fair in Hannover with over 1 million visitors per year, and the Kiel Week, the world's biggest sailing event and in Kiel, with about 3 million visitors.
Dates
Since 1994, the Oktoberfest runs for 16 days with the last day being the first Sunday in October. However, if day 16 falls before 3 October (German Unity Day), then the festival will continue until the 3rd. (see table below)
* (Bavarian Central Agriculture Fair)
Security at the Oktoberfest
Technical accidents have rarely occurred throughout Oktoberfest history. The rides are extensively tested in advance, and the examination is performed by the cableways and temporary structures department of today's TÜV SÜD.
On 30 September 1996, there was a collision on the Euro Star roller coaster, which injured 30, and was caused by a worn safety brake that went unnoticed during inspection. The Munich prosecutor tried to accuse the engineer, from TÜV Munich, of negligent injury, but the proceedings did not come to a conclusion.
To reduce the number of thefts, fights, and sexual assault cases during Oktoberfest, protection measures for visitors have been improved in recent years. For example, in 2003 the campaign (Safe Oktoberfest for Girls and Women) was launched.
In 2004, a new service center was placed in the authorities court, in which the police, the Munich Fire Department, medical services, and a department of district administration is located. During the Oktoberfest, a police station specifically for the festival is installed, and can be reached with the emergency number 5003220.
Due to the numerous Italian visitors to the Oktoberfest, since 2005 officers from Bolzano, Italy have also been present. For decades, the Bavarian Red Cross has been responsible for medical service at the Oktoberfest.
Additional medical services are located in the tent (Aicher Ambulance), and the Munich U-Bahn has commissioned additional backups in the rapid transit station provided by the Johanniter-Unfall-Hilfe. In the authorities court, an ambulance and miniature hospital, complete with operating theater, are readily available. During the Oktoberfest, additional emergency vehicles are on the alert at the control centers, and extra staff is on hand in case they are needed.
In 2010, as a public safety measure, a dog and animal ban was put into place. 2012 brought the banning of glass bottles after the increase in the number of injuries and cuts.
The safety concepts of the event have been modified and adapted continuously over the past decades:
After the bombing in 1980, the main entrance of the Oktoberfest was redesigned in 1981.
In 2001, a few weeks after 9-11 attacks, security checkpoints were added at the main entrance.
In 2008, the was closed off to the public during the construction of the Oktoberfest.
In 2009, road blocks were raised, and access controls during the festival, due to the perceived threat of attacks by Islamists, were increased.
2010 brought the implementation of advances to the security plan, including three lockdown rings around the as well as access control and flight bans over the festival grounds.
In addition, 52 high concrete bollards were placed in the access roads and pedestrian entrances to prevent vehicle-ramming attacks.
In 2011, the security measures were once again increased, this time with 170 partially retractable bollards also designed to prevent forcible access to the festival grounds with a vehicle.
The Bavariaring is closed off to allow security forces adequate space to react. Police can quickly divert the crowds if needed through radio communication, as well as closing down train stations.
Following the 2016 Munich shooting, a retractable security fence was added. Previously, of the Oktoberfest were still unfenced.
Up to 450 security guards will stand at the 13 official entrances and check all incoming guests. Also, backpacks and bags with a volume of more than are no longer allowed on the festival grounds.
In addition, the front exit of the subway station has been closed off.
Energy supply
The Oktoberfest is powered via 43 kilometers of cable and 18 partially underground transformer stations. The Oktoberfest's power consumption totals approximately 2.7 million kilowatt hours, not including assembly and dismantling of the attractions. This amounts to about 13% of the daily electrical needs of the City of Munich. A large marquee requires an average of 400 kilowatts, and 300 kilowatts is required for bigger rides.
To supply the tents with natural gas, a four-kilometer long network of gas lines was built. The gas consumption amounts to 180,000 cubic meters for the kitchens of various catering establishments, and 20,000 cubic meters to heat the beer gardens. Most festival tents and rides use green electricity from (Munich City Utilities) to reduce pollution.
Because even a short power outage could lead to panic, all power supplies have redundancy and are fed separately. Even the lights of the individual marquees are supplied from two different substations. Despite all the precautions, on 25 September 2007, several hours of power failure occurred after a cable channel had been flooded due to heavy rains.
Since the power outage occurred in the morning, there were service shortages in the catering areas, but no panic resulted.
To ensure sufficient capacity of cellular networks, each year several mobile masts are set up in the lawn areas surrounding the festival.
Transportation
The Münchner Verkehrsgesellschaft (Munich Transport Company) reports transporting almost four million visitors, to and from, the festival grounds each Oktoberfest. Especially at night, the U- and S-Bahn trains are full. The underground station, Theresienwiese, has trains arriving at rush hour in three-minute intervals. The station occasionally needs to be closed due to overcrowding after the closure of the beer tents. To ensure smooth operation and safety of passengers, the and the Deutsche Bahn have increased their security personnel. People are also encouraged to use the nearby stations Goetheplatz, Schwanthalerhöhe and Hackerbrücke (the latter of the S-Bahn) or walk the short distance from the main railway station on foot.
There are significant negative effects pertaining to traffic. Since numerous festival goers make their way home by car despite having consumed alcohol, the Bavarian State Police carries out large-scale DUI controls. The city ring roads and highways around Munich are periodically blocked to allow only one lane of through traffic, which leads to massive traffic congestion.
Especially during the middle weekend of the festival, many Italians arrive with caravans (this weekend is therefore referred to by the residents of Munich as "the Italians' weekend").
In response, the government imposes camping bans in many parts of the city. At the same time, special parking outside the city is established, which can be reached by public transportation. Large parking areas are available, for example, close to the Allianz Arena. Nevertheless, the parking situation around the festival grounds is critical. As a consequence, the effort for controls and towing services is substantial.
2010, in coordination with the new security concept, taxi stands were relocated. They are now found outside of the security ring further away from the fairground.
Trash and toilets
Nearly 1,000 tons of trash result annually from the Oktoberfest. The mountains of trash are hauled away and the ways washed down each morning. The cleaning is paid for in part by the city of Munich and in part by the sponsors.
In 2004, the queues outside the toilets became so long that the police had to regulate access. To keep traffic moving through the toilets, men headed for the toilets were directed first to the urinals (giant enclosed grates) if they only needed to urinate. Consequently, the number of toilets was increased by 20% in 2005. Approximately 1,800 toilets and urinals are available today.
Many guests visit the quiet stalls to use their mobile phones. For this reason, there were plans in 2005 to install a Faraday cage around the toilets or to use Mobile phone jammers to prevent telephoning with those devices. Jamming devices are, however, illegal in Germany, and Faraday cages made of copper would have been too expensive, so these ambitious plans were dropped, and signs were placed instead, warning toilet users not to use cellular phones in the stalls. More recently, amplifying live music in the toilets has led to them no longer representing a quiet retreat for telephoning.
Tents
There are currently fourteen large tents and twenty small tents at the Oktoberfest. The tents are wooden non-permanent structures which are constructed for and only used during the festival. The beer (or wine) served in each is in the accompanying table.
Large tents
—one of the larger tents, it is the first tent that many visitors see. Traditionally, in the evening, the Oktoberfest band plays Oktoberfest classics.
—translates as the "Crossbowman's Tent", a competition that has been a part of the Oktoberfest since 1895.
Hofbräu-Festzelt—the counterpart to the famous , this tent is especially popular with Americans, Australians and New Zealanders.
—one of the largest tents on the , they have a rock band that plays during the brass band's evening break. This tent markets itself as (Heaven of the Bavarians).
—reckoned to be the most important tent at the Oktoberfest, mainly because it is located at the beginning. On the first Saturday of the event, no beer is allowed to be served until the Mayor of Munich (currently Dieter Reiter) taps the first keg, at exactly high noon. Only then can the other tents begin to serve beer. The tent is very popular among younger people. A substantial part of the tent is guaranteed to traditional Studentenverbindungen (a particular form of student fraternities) and outfitted with their distinctive colors and coats of arms.
—literally translates as "Winzerer's little flag" and refers to the name of an old crossbowmen's guild, itself referring to a military unit for the Thirty Years' War: being a 16th-17th century German word for the equivalent of a company/battalion of approximately 400 mercenary soldiers. Kaspar III. Winzerer was the famous Bavarian captain of such a unit. This tent is noted for its huge tower, with a of Paulaner beer sitting atop it.
—this is a mid-sized tent. Situated under the Bavaria statue, the current tent was newly built in 2004.
—the smallest of the large tents at the Oktoberfest, it is frequented by celebrities, and is known for its especially good—and expensive—food. In contrast to the other tents (which must close by 11 pm), it is open until 12:30 am, and it can be very difficult to gain admittance.
—translates as "wine tent". This tent offers a selection of more than 15 wines, as well as .
—above the entrance is a 4.50-meter (15 foot)-high lion who occasionally drinks from his beer. This is overshadowed by yet another tower where an even larger drinking lion sits.
(Hacker-Pschorr)—translates as "brewer's Rosemary". Named after the daughter of the original brewery owner (Pschorr), this tent has the usual brass band and yodeler. On the first Sunday of the festival, this tent hosts the hugely popular gay and lesbian party, .
—considered by many locals to be the best tent, due to the fact it sells the favourite local brew, Augustiner, from individually-tapped wooden kegs rather than stainless steel vats used by the other tents.
—true to its name, this tent offers a great variety of roasted ox dishes.
—translates as "Fisher's Veronika". Another of the smaller tents. is the German word for fish and this tent carries a huge selection on its menu. The main dish is Steckerlfisch, which is grilled outside of the tent.
Small tents
—resembling a large Bavarian hut, the "calf kitchen" has a lively party atmosphere.
—in 1885, poultry dealer Joseph Ammer was allowed to construct his small booth at the Oktoberfest, creating the world's first chicken roastery. Duck is offered as well.
—this tent offers exotic cocktails, Prosecco, champagne, coffee, donuts, ice cream, pastries, and strudel variations of all kinds.
—created by Rischart, the café holds a daily commemoration of the occasion of the first Oktoberfest—the wedding of Ludwig I and Therese of Saxony.
—since 1950 Café Mohrenkopf has been baking cakes and pies fresh daily in the Oktoberfest tent.
—cheese and everything that complements it is the specialty of the house in this tent.
—decorated with oil paintings, antique instruments and cooking utensils.
—very popular among the locals, Heimer's is a family-friendly tent.
—since 1906, the Heinz sausage and chicken grill has been a fixture on the , specializing in authentic Oktoberfest tradition.
—barbecue experts prepare pork knuckles in the only (pork knuckle roaster) at the Oktoberfest.
—the dumpling is an icon of Bavarian cuisine, and "preserving and spreading the dumpling culture" is the motto of this smaller tent.
—Poschner's roasted chicken and duck have been a tradition of the for four generations.
—with seating for about 100, Schiebl's coffeehouse tent is a meeting place for the whole family. is the Bavarian term for a (coffee or tea) mug or pot.
—a Guglhupf is a German cake, like an English bundt cake; this slowly moving carousel bar is easy to spot because it's shaped like one.
—owned by the Wildmoser family since 1981, this small tent has been adopted and popularized by the Munich locals.
—the newest tent at Oktoberfest, featuring intricately detailed woodwork and a hunting lodge ambiance.
—"The is as essential as beer, radish and chicken," former mayor Christian Ude once wrote: "An Oktoberfest without is inconceivable."
—famous for its traditional duck and roasted chicken dishes, atmosphere, and daily entertainment.
—debuting in 2007, the Hochreiter family has brought back the former .
Other information
Experienced waiters need an average of only one and a half seconds to fill a Maß.
Letters which are placed in the Oktoberfest mailboxes receive a special stamp from the post office.
One attraction, which does not exist at other festivals, is the flea circus. It has been an attraction at the since 1948 and a "team" of about 60 fleas provide for the entertainment especially for the children.
After the attacks on 11 September 2001, in the same year, the traditional beer tapping was omitted, instead there was a contemplative celebration in tent.
Since 2009, the is closed off during the construction and dismantling of the festival. The city of Munich wants to prevent any accident to visitors at the construction site that the city would be accountable for.
In 2015, the festival officially served of beer; for perspective, that is enough to fill nearly three (2.9) Olympic-size swimming pools.
One famous song in a beer tent is "" which means translated "A toast to cheer and good times". The band leader plays this song several times to invite the guests to toast and drink.
With the cancellation of the Oktoberfest since 2020 due to the Coronavirus pandemic, this is the first year that the Oktoberfest has not taken place since 1949.
In popular culture
A German historical drama called Oktoberfest: Beer and Blood was released in 2020. Set in 1900, it focuses on the showman brewer Curt Prank as he transforms the festival into a global tourist attraction by replacing the local brewery stands with one large pavillion. Critics have compared the show's graphic violence and German new wave music soundtrack to Peaky Blinders. A second season was announced by head writer Ronny Schalk in 2021.
Gallery
See also
Beer and Oktoberfest Museum
Schunkeln (sway dance)
References
External links
Oktoberfest website
Oktoberfest Map
Oktoberfest Traditions
1810 establishments in Bavaria
Annual events in Munich
Autumn festivals
Beer festivals in Germany
Festivals in Munich
German folklore
October events
September events
Tourist attractions in Munich
Festivals established in 1810
COVID-19 pandemic in Germany |
215824 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambas | Gambas | Gambas is the name of an object-oriented dialect of the BASIC programming language, as well as the integrated development environment that accompanies it. Designed to run on Linux and other Unix-like computer operating systems, its name is a recursive acronym for Gambas Almost Means Basic. Gambas is also the word for prawns in the Spanish, French, and Portuguese languages, from which the project's logos are derived.
History
Gambas was developed by the French programmer Benoît Minisini, with its first release coming in 1999. Benoît had grown up with the BASIC language, and decided to make a free software development environment that could quickly and easily make programs with user interfaces.
The Gambas 1.x versions featured an interface made up of several different separate windows for forms and IDE dialogues in a similar fashion to the interface of earlier versions of the GIMP. It could also only develop applications using Qt and was more oriented towards the development of applications for KDE. The last release of the 1.x versions was Gambas 1.0.19.
The first of the 2.x versions was released on January 2, 2008, after three to four years of development. It featured a major redesign of the interface, now with all forms and functions embedded in a single window, as well as some changes to the Gambas syntax, although for the most part code compatibility was kept. It featured major updates to existing Gambas components as well as the addition of some new ones, such as new components that could use GTK+ or SDL for drawing or utilize OpenGL acceleration. Gambas 2.x versions can load up and run Gambas 1.x projects, with occasional incompatibilities; the same is true for Gambas 2.x to 3.x, but not from Gambas 1.x to 3.x.
The next major iteration of Gambas, the 3.x versions, was released on December 31, 2011. A 2015 benchmark published on the Gambas website showed Gambas 3.8.90 scripting as being faster to varying degrees than Perl 5.20.2 and the then-latest 2.7.10 version of Python in many tests. Version 3.16.0 released on April 20, 2021, featured full support for Wayland using the graphical components, as well as parity between the Qt 5 and GTK 3 components.
Features
Gambas is designed to build graphical programs using the Qt (currently Qt 4.x or 5.x since 3.8.0) or the GTK toolkit (GTK 3.x also supported as of 3.6.0); the Gambas IDE is written in Gambas. Gambas includes a GUI designer to aid in creating user interfaces in an event-driven style, but can also make command line applications, as well as text-based user interfaces using the ncurses toolkit. The Gambas runtime environment is needed to run executables.
Functionality is provided by a variety of components, each of which can be selected to provide additional features. Drawing can be provided either through Qt and GTK toolkits, with an additional component which is designed to switch between them. Drawing can also be provided through the Simple DirectMedia Layer (originally version 1.x, with 2.x added as of 3.7.0), which can also be utilized for audio playback through a separate sound component (a component for the OpenAL specification has also been added). GPU acceleration support is available through an OpenGL component, as well as other hardware functionally provided by various other components. There are also components for handling other specialized tasks.
With Gambas, developers can also use databases such as MySQL or PostgreSQL, build KDE (Qt) and GNOME GTK applications with DCOP, translate Visual Basic programs to Gambas and run them under Linux, build network solutions, and create CGI web applications. The IDE also includes a tool for the creation of installation packages, supporting GNU Autotools, slackpkg, pacman, RPM, and debs (the latter two then tailored for specific distributions such as Fedora/RHEL/CentOS, Mageia, Mandriva, OpenSUSE and Debian, Ubuntu/Mint).
Gambas since version 3.2 IDE has integrated profiler and it started to use Just-in-time compilation technology.
Differences from Visual Basic
Gambas is intended to provide a similar experience as developing in Microsoft Visual Basic, but it is not a free software clone of the popular proprietary program. The author of Gambas makes it clear that there are similarities to Visual Basic, such as syntax for BASIC programs and the integrated development environment; Gambas was written from the start to be a development environment of its own and seeks to improve on the formula.
Its object model, each class being represented in a file, as well as the archiver to package the program is all inspired by the Java programming language. Gambas is intended to be an alternative for former Visual Basic developers who have decided to migrate to Linux. There are also other important distinctions between Gambas and Visual Basic. One notable example is that in Gambas array indexes always start with 0, whereas Visual Basic indexes can start with 0 or 1. Gambas also supports the += and -= shorthand not found in classic Visual Basic. Both of these are features of Visual Basic .NET however.
Adoption
Several programs and many forms of example code have been written using and for Gambas. , Freecode (formerly Freshmeat) listed 23 applications that were developed using Gambas, while the Gambas wiki listed 82; several other specialized sites list Gambas applications and code. A Gambas written application, named Gambas3 ShowCase, acted as a software center to download or install Gambas 3 applications. It has since been discontinued following the launch of the first party Gambas Software Farm integrated into the IDE since 3.7.1, which contains nearly 500 applications and demos. Several community sites, including community forums and mailing lists, also exist for Gambas. A notable application written in Gambas is Xt7-player-mpv, a GUI frontend for mpv player contained in a number of Linux software repositories.
Availability
Gambas is included in the repositories of a number of Linux distributions, such as Debian, Fedora, Mandriva Linux and Ubuntu. A Microsoft Windows version of Gambas was run under the Cygwin environment, although this version was significantly less tested than its Linux counterparts and was command-line only; Cooperative Linux and derivatives have also been used, as well as specialized Linux virtual machines. An independent contributor, François Gallo, also worked on porting Gambas 3.x to Mac OS X and FreeBSD, based on using local versions of the X11 system. Gambas from version 3.2 can run on Raspberry Pi, and offers just-in-time compilation there from version 3.12.
In November 2013, the future portability of Gambas was discussed, listing the main concerns being Linux kernel features utilized in the interpreter, components using Linux specific software and libraries, and primarily X11-tying in the Qt, GTK and desktop integration components. However, partly due to the need to upgrade to newer toolkits such as GTK 3 (added as of 3.6.0) and Qt 5 (as of 3.8.0), future versions would be less X11 tied, making projects like Cygwin or utterly native versions on other platforms more possible. Benoît Minisini stated that he intended to "encapsulate" X11 specific code to aid in any attempt to replace it, with the X11 support in the desktop component moved to its own component as of 3.6.0.
On October 27, 2016, a screenshot and setup guide was released from the main page for running Gambas fully through Cygwin, including most components, graphical toolkits, and the complete IDE. The relevant patches were mainlined as of version 3.9.2. This replaces the prior recommended method of using freenx forwarding from a Linux server. It has also been successfully run using the Windows Subsystem for Linux., this is usually done using an X terminal emulator such Mobaxterm on Windows as WSL does not support X11 graphics directly.
Example code
A "Hello, World!" program with graphical user interface.
Public Sub Main()
Message("Hello, World!")
End
Program that computes a 100-term polynomial 500000 times, and repeats it ten times (used for benchmarking).
Private Sub Test(X As Float) As Float
Dim Mu As Float = 10.0
Dim Pu, Su As Float
Dim I, J, N As Integer
Dim aPoly As New Float[100]
N = 500000
For I = 0 To N - 1
For J = 0 To 99
Mu = (Mu + 2.0) / 2.0
aPoly[J] = Mu
Next
Su = 0.0
For J = 0 To 99
Su = X * Su + aPoly[J]
Next
Pu += Su
Next
Return Pu
End
Public Sub Main()
Dim I as Integer
For I = 1 To 10
Print Test(0.2)
Next
End
See also
List of BASIC dialects
Comparison of integrated development environments#BASIC
GNAVI
Lazarus
References
Further reading
Mark Alexander Bain (Apr 28, 2006) An Introduction to Gambas, Linux Journal, issue 146, June 2006 (in print)
Mark Alexander Bain (Dec 3, 2004) Gambas speeds database development, Linux.com
Mark Alexander Bain (Dec 12, 2007) Creating simple charts with Gambas 2.0, Linux.com
Fabián Flores Vadell (Nov, 2010) How to Program with Gambas
External links
Gambas source code
Gambas Documentation
Gambas Mailinglist
Gambas Almost Means Basic
Gambas Magazine — Linux Software Development with Gambas
BASIC compilers
BASIC interpreters
BASIC programming language family
Free integrated development environments
Free software
Free software programmed in BASIC
Linux integrated development environments
Linux programming tools
Object-oriented programming languages
Procedural programming languages
Programming languages created in 1999
Self-hosting software
Software that uses Qt
Software using the GPL license
User interface builders |
30277035 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silliman%20University%20College%20of%20Computer%20Studies | Silliman University College of Computer Studies | The Silliman University College of Computer Studies, abbreviated as CCS is one of the constituent colleges of Silliman University, a private university in Dumaguete City, Philippines. Designated as a Center of Development in Information Technology Education by the Commission on Higher Education, the college confers three undergraduate degrees and one graduate degree.
Background
Brief history
The College's origins can be traced to the year 1988 when the then Silliman University Computer Center (SUCC) was established to consolidate under one department all computer-related courses offered by the University. Back then, the computer center acted as a delivery unit for courses offered by other colleges such as the Bachelor of Business degree Major in Business Computer Applications then offered by the College of Business Administration.
To centralize its course offerings in one institution and to comply with the Commission on Higher Education’s thrust to regulate the number of Information Technology Education degrees, a separate college named as the College of Information Technology and Computer Sciences was established by the University in 2001 which offered Bachelor of Science degrees in Information Technology and Computer Science. In 2002, a Bachelor of Science degree in Information Management was also added. In 2006 the College was renamed as the College of Computer Studies.
Facilities
The College is housed in two buildings, the one-storey Uytengsu Foundation Computer Center, and the three-storey Uytengsu Foundation Computer Studies Hall, and is part of Silliman University's Local Area Network that uses an extensive network of fiber-optic cables. Silliman is one of only two universities in the Philippines that has an extensive fiber-optic backbone and the only school in the country that owns its fiber-optic system. Costing US $2.5 million in 1997, this backbone connects all buildings in the campus. Silliman was also the first school in the country to use wireless Wi-Fi B2B LAN technology.
To reinforce the College's course offerings, Silliman University formed partnerships with Microsoft and IBM. The Microsoft Developer Network Academic Alliance has given the College a 3-year complimentary MSDNAA subscription which allows it to download available software in MSDNAA for free to all students and faculty for teaching and learning purposes, while the College's partnership with IBM resulted in the introduction of the IBM Academic Exchange Offering. Electives under the program are developed for junior and graduating students majoring in Information Technology, Information Systems and Computer Science.
Academics
The College is accredited with the Philippine Accrediting Association of Schools, Colleges and Universities and has been designated as a Center of Development by the Commission on Higher Education. At present, the College confers three undergraduate degrees and one graduate degree.
Undergraduate
B.S. in Computer Science
B.S. in Information Technology
B.S. in Information Systems
Graduate
M.S. in Information Systems
Footnotes
External links
Silliman University official website
Computer Studies |
31005126 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Todd%20Packer%20%28The%20Office%29 | Todd Packer (The Office) | "Todd Packer" is the eighteenth episode of the seventh season of the American comedy television series The Office, and the show's 144th episode overall. It originally aired on NBC on February 24, 2011. The episode was written by Amelie Gillette and directed by Randall Einhorn.
The series depicts the everyday lives of office employees in the Scranton, Pennsylvania branch of the fictional Dunder Mifflin Paper Company. In this episode, traveling salesman Todd Packer (David Koechner) comes to Dunder Mifflin looking for a desk job in the office. However, the office is unsure if they want him to work there due to his previous behavior. Jim Halpert (John Krasinski) and Dwight Schrute (Rainn Wilson) eventually team up and develop a scheme that rids the office of Packer. Meanwhile, after dealing with computer problems, Andy Bernard (Ed Helms) confronts Pam Halpert (Jenna Fischer) about getting a new computer.
The episode was the first entry in the series to be written by Gillette, who had written for the online entertainment newspaper and website The A.V. Club. The episode received mixed reviews from critics; while many did not enjoy the character of Todd Packer, others praised the temporary alliance between Jim and Dwight. "Todd Packer" was viewed by 6.121 million viewers and received a 3.2 rating among adults between the age of 18 and 49, making it the season's lowest-rated episode. Despite this, the episode was the highest-rated NBC series of the week that it aired.
Plot
Traveling salesman Todd Packer (David Koechner) comes to Dunder Mifflin looking for a desk job in the office. However, most of the office does not want him to work there due to his previous inappropriate behavior, Jim Halpert (John Krasinski) in particular is horrified at the idea. Holly Flax (Amy Ryan) gives him a job as a salesman, forcing Dwight Schrute (Rainn Wilson) to leave his desk and move to the annex. Packer repeatedly offends everybody with his jokes, especially Kevin Malone (Brian Baumgartner), although Kevin pretends to play along. Only Michael Scott (Steve Carell), Packer's longtime friend, is not offended by Todd. Jim and Dwight decide to prank Packer, but Dwight hates Jim's best idea; to make it so that his desk drawer only opens two inches. Jim instead pranks Dwight, by giving him an extremely long list of nonsensical pranks, and pulling the drawer prank on Dwight. Holly, who was at first excited to have Packer in the office per Michael's recommendations, discovers how insensitive Packer is and asks Michael to get him under control. Michael and Packer have coffee in the lobby, where Packer says he wants to be a better person. Michael gets Packer to apologize, but everyone can tell that the apologies are insincere. Having finally reached an understanding, Dwight and Jim scheme to get rid of Packer. They call him, pretending to be corporate offering him a job in Tallahassee, Florida, a job which Packer readily accepts. Michael overhears the call and goes to tell Packer that Dwight and Jim have tricked him. Before he has a chance, however, Packer insults Holly, and Michael decides to keep Dwight and Jim's scheme a secret and allow Packer to take the "job" in Florida. As Michael and Holly witness Packer drive away from the view in his office, Michael admits that Packer is "an ass" before they embrace.
When office administrator Pam Halpert (Jenna Fischer) gets a new computer for the receptionist's desk to replace the older model, Andy Bernard (Ed Helms) wants a new computer, too. Pam points out that if she were to get a new computer for one sales rep, she would have to get one for every sales rep, as compared to reception, a one-person department. Unwilling to let it go, Andy convinces Erin Hannon (Ellie Kemper) into trading computers with him. Pam is angry when she finds out, and forces him to switch the computers back. In addition to continue pushing for a new computer, Andy confronts Pam about "humiliating" him in front of the office. In order to make it up to him, she tells him that the only way he can get a new computer is if his breaks. To accomplish this, he accepts all cookies, intentionally opens pop-up ads, and places food in the disc drive. Giving up, Pam then buys Andy a new computer, but they scratch it up to make it not look brand new. When they pretend to argue about it in front of the office, Pam claims that she found it in the warehouse. Darryl Philbin (Craig Robinson) confronts Pam later regarding finding the computer in the warehouse. As he knows everything that is in the warehouse and where it is stored, he leverages Pam into giving him more sick days. Pam gleefully tells the interviewers that she is now "full-on corrupt".
Production
This episode was written by Amelie Gillette, her first writing credit of the series. She was a writer for The A.V. Club before being hired for The Office. The episode was directed by longtime series director Randall Einhorn, and was his second credit for the season after "The Sting". The cold open, which featured Jim and Dwight arguing about canned foods, was actually filmed for the previous season and is featured in the blooper reel on the sixth season DVD and Blu-ray sets.
The Season Seven DVD contains a number of deleted scenes from this episode. The cut scenes include a sequence of Erin being excited after receiving her new computer, Michael expressing his desire for Holly and Packer to become friends, Packer telling Holly that Scranton is his hometown, Kevin hinting that he would like some of Dwight's leftover pizza, Andy telling Pam about his high school "backseat" adventures, Michael and Holly arguing about Packer, and Jim trying to not let Dwight move back into his old desk.
Cultural references
Packer pretends to mistake Holly for actress Jennifer Aniston. Dwight angrily throws out Holly's miniature zen gardens and remarks, "What do you grow in this, bullcrap?" Packer calls Kevin, Holly, and Dwight, the "three muske-queers", a homophobic slur referencing the 1844 novel The Three Musketeers. Dwight notes that, had Kevin grown up in sumo culture, he would be considered a "promising up-and-comer". Holly makes a list of humorous individuals, ranging from most humorous to least: "Bill Cosby, Steve Martin, 'Charlie Bit My Finger,' Michael Scott […] Todd Packer". When asked if he would like hot chocolate, Packer notes that the only "hot chocolate" he likes is Vivica A. Fox. Jim mentions Justin Bieber, and Dwight says "Who is Justice Beaver?" This leads Jim to say sardonically, "A crime-fighting beaver". Following the episode's air date, the term "Justice Beaver" became a popular trend on Twitter, and led to a website in honor of the quote. When prank-calling Packer, Dwight continuously makes references to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Orlando, Florida.
Reception
In its original American broadcast, "Todd Packer" was viewed by an estimated 6.121 million viewers and received a 3.2 rating/9% share. This means that it was seen by 3.2% of all 18- to 49-year-olds, and 9% of all 18- to 49-year-olds watching television at the time of the broadcast. This marked the lowest number of viewers for the series since the second season episode "Boys and Girls", which was viewed by 5.42 million viewers, as well as the lowest Nielsen rating for the series since the first season. Despite this, the episode became the highest-rated NBC program for the original week it aired and also became the sixteenth most-watched show for the week of broadcast among adults aged 18–49.
Myles McNutt of The A.V. Club, Gillette's former employer, awarded the episode a "B–" and noted that he did not like Todd Packer, nor the episodes where his character is intentionally supposed to be vile. He did, however, enjoy the fact that Packer's antics caused Jim and Dwight to unite in the face of a common enemy, a plot that McNutt said "had a scrappy feel to it". McNutt also called Kevin being "slowly broken by Packer's cruelty" an effective way to show how terrible Packer was to the morale of the office. He was, however, critical of Holly seeming unaware that "Michael may not be the best judge of whether or not someone is funny". At the end of his review, McNutt reminded readers that The A.V. Club specifically selected him as their new reviewer for the show because he did not know Gillette, thus avoiding a conflict of interest.
IGN writer Cindy White enjoyed the episode, but criticized the ending for being too similar to a scene from the original British version of The Office in which David Brent tells traveling salesman Chris Finch to "fuck off". She spoke highly of Jim and Dwight's storyline, writing that "I wish their final ruse had been a bit more original, but it served the purpose of getting rid of Packer". She gave the episode a 7.5 out of 10 rating, denoting a "good" episode.
Matt Richenthal of TV Fanatic awarded the episode four out of five stars and praised it for its temporary teaming up of Jim and Dwight. Alan Sepinwall enjoyed the continued exploration of Michael's maturation, but felt that because Packer was so infrequently seen on the show, he was stuck as "the American version of Finchy" from the original British series, and as such, did not fit into the show's dynamics. Sepinwall was further critical of the main story, calling it "flat and uncomfortable". However, he enjoyed the later part of Pam and Andy's storyline, as well as Jim and Dwight teaming up to beat Packer.
References
External links
"Todd Packer" at NBC.com
The Office (American season 7) episodes
2011 American television episodes |
54518929 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fman | Fman | fman is a dual-pane file manager for Windows, macOS and Linux. It is extensible, supporting custom plug-ins for customization. The developer gives an "open-source promise", meaning, should he stop development of the app, he will open-source the source code. Licenses cost $18, updates are offered as a subscription for $12/year. fman is actively developed by its creator Michael Herrmann.
Reception
Softpedia rated fman as 3 out of 5 stars, describing the app as extensible via plugins but "minimalistic".
TechRepublic highlighted fman's focus on keyboard shortcuts and described it as "intriguing and worthy of continued use".
During its launch, fman appeared in the top 10 of Product Hunt. The CTO of Product Hunt expressed his happiness about the project. Other people criticised that fman is not open source and pointed to free alternatives such as Midnight Commander and Far Manager.
References
External links
File managers
File managers for Microsoft Windows
File managers for Linux
Proprietary commercial software for Linux
Proprietary software that uses Qt |
435201 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanotix | Kanotix | Kanotix, also referred to as KANOTIX, is an operating system based on Debian, with advanced hardware detection. It can run from an optical disc drive or other media i.e. USB-stick without using a hard disk drive.
Kanotix uses KDE Software Compilation as the default desktop environment. Since 2013 the newer releases ship with LXDE as a second lightweight desktop environment. Unlike other similar Linux-distributions Kanotix is a rolling release. Nightly builds are automated builds every night of the latest development code of KANOTIX and with the latest packages from the repositories. The name "Kanotix" is derived from the founder's nickname "Kano". Kanotix's mascot is a fangtooth.
Content
Kanotix is based on the newest Debian stable (the last published version is Kanotix "Silverfire 2019" based on Debian 10 "Buster". It also provides its own packages and scripts and many backports.
Kanotix also provides an optimized kernel with additional patches.
Kanotix includes about 1,500 software packages, among others
KDE Software Compilation, the default desktop environment and LXDE the lightweight version
Amarok, Video Disk Recorder
Internet access software, including KDE Network Manager, KPPP dialer, Wireless LAN-driver and NdisWrapper
Firefox web browser, Thunderbird mail/news client, Pidgin instant messenger
K3b, for CD (and DVD) authoring and backup
GIMP, an image-manipulation program, also Inkscape a free and open-source vector graphics editor
GParted and other tools for data rescue and system repair
Network analysis and administration tools
LibreOffice, the office suite (backports)
Programming and development tools
NTFS-3G used by default
Automatic installation of graphic-drivers with nvidia and fglrx-scripts with dkms support.
Scripts for additional multimedia support (current mplayer-versions)
Wine (Software) updated to newest versions
Usage
Kanotix is designed for multiple-purpose usage so that it can be used in live mode on different types of media (DVD, hard disk, and USB flash drive) and includes an installation tool for installing Kanotix to the hard drive. The distribution ships with the latest kernel which is carefully patched with fixes and drivers for most modern hardware. Kanotix is an ideal tool for testing, data rescue, or for working and safe surfing and mailing on different machines e.g. in an Internet cafe.
Live mode
The Live mode allows it to work without any installation. As Kanotix comes with unionfs and aufs-support one can "install" additional packages by using APT (via connection to the Internet).
For USB-users the so-called "persistent mode" allows to save data changes back to the USB storage device and the stored data and customized settings can used again on following boots. Using USB flash drive (when supported by BIOS), is of course much faster than booting from CD or DVD.
Installation
Kanotix can be installed to the hard disk using the (graphical) acritoxinstaller, which, depending on optical drive, hard disk and processor speed, can take around 10–20 minutes.
The acritoxinstaller is a KDE/Qt frontend and a bash backend and comes with a user-friendly interface and several advanced features: e.g. LVM support, dmraid support, automatic partitioning (including ntfsresize-support), installation to USB-HDDs.
Versions
History (2003–2006)
The distribution derived from "Kano's Scriptpage for Knoppix". He wrote about Knoppix: "I like it much, but I had to improve it :)". One of the main differences from Knoppix was the support of hard disk installation.
The first "Kanotix"-preview was released at 24 December 2003 "KANOTIX XMAS 2003 PREVIEW".
In 2004 and 2005 KANOTIX was a popular distribution ranking in the top 20 of distrowatch.com. In 2004 the releases were named "Bug Hunter" (Bug Hunter-01-2004 - X-2004).
After problems with the stability in 2006 Jörg "Kano" Schirottke decided to move from Debian Sid to a less volatile basis.
The co-developer and other of the Kanotix-Team wanted to stay with Debian-Sid and left the project, to start sidux, a new distribution based on Debian sid. The last Kanotix release based on Debian Sid was 2006-01-RC4.
Versions based on Debian stable (2007–current)
Kanotix-Thorhammer-Release 2007
The first Release based on Debian-stable was the Kanotix-Thorhammer in 2007. After the Debian-Etch-Release in April 2007 Kanotix was no longer compatible with Debian Sid. So a Howto was given, "Steps to update right", to move a KANOTIX-installation to the new base by dist-upgrade.
After 3 months of development and several beta Releases the new Kanotix-2007-Thorhammer-RC6 was publicly available for download.
The last published version was Kanotix-2007-Thorhammer-RC7.
The development in 2008 featured continuously kernel-updates and a lot of backports in the Thorhammer-repository.
Some of the additional packages were adaptations for netbooks and notebooks. A highlighted additional backport was OpenOffice.org 3.2.x
Kanotix-Excalibur-2010
The (old) stable Release 2010 Kanotix-Excalibur was based on Debian 5 ("Lenny") and had compared to Thorhammer some basic changes (based on Debian-Live, bootloader Grub2). Furthermore, Kanotix-Excalibur was available for 32-Bit and 64-Bit architecture and a 2in1 iso with both. Additionally there are Kanotix Excalibur 2010 KDE4 (KDE SC 4.3.2) versions available and an "all-in-one"-DVD.iso. Kanotix-Excalibur contains the more up-to-date Ubuntu-kernels 2.6.32-BFS with special patches. During the development most of the Kanotix-Excalibur-test.iso were not published but accessible to the community. A first "Preview"-Version was published on December 27, 2009. The final Kanotix-Excalibur-2010 was released on 8 June 2010, just in time for LinuxTag 2010.
Kanotix-Hellfire-2011-2012
The next stable version, code-name Kanotix-Hellfire is based on Debian 6 ("Squeeze"). It ships with KDE Software Compilation 4 for 32-Bit and 64-Bit architecture and a complete new branding stuff, new kernel (2.6.38), LibreOffice 3.3.2 and more.
An updated version Kanotix-Hellfire 2011-05 was released with the project's presentation at LinuxTag 2011 in Berlin
and again with version Kanotix-Hellfire 2012-05 one year later during the LinuxTag 2012
With the so-called "GFX overlays" that enables to use Nvidia or ATI 3D graphics driver in live mode, Kanotix-Hellfire provides this new feature first time.
Kanotix-Dragonfire-2012-2014
This version, ("old stable") code-name Kanotix-Dragonfire is based on Debian 7 ("Wheezy"). A Preview of this Kanotix-Version was offered at LinuxTag 2012 in several versions in 32 and 64 bit. Also a new repository for Kanotix-Dragonfire was added with backported KDE4.8 packages (amd64 and i386).
New features in Kanotix-Dragonfire are: booting from/with DVD, USB, UEFI (PCs, Intel Macs), an embedded USB-Stick ImageWriter for Mac OS X and the USB-Stick with Hybrid-ISO can now be made persistent from the live-system.
A preview of the current release "Kanotix-acritox-trialshot" was announced on 14 February 2013. A special "CeBIT" edition was released "as a Technology Demonstration" on 8 March 2013.
A new official Kanotix-Dragonfire was announced from LinuxTag 2013 in Berlin. Beside KDE as default desktop environment the new release ships with LXDE as a second lightweight desktop environment.
In the KDE-Special version the extra 3D graphics drivers from nvidia and AMD and the Steam-client are already preinstalled.
An updated release of the stable Kanotix was presented at LinuxTag 2014 in Berlin.
Kanotix-Spitfire-2014-2016
Kanotix Spitfire is based on Debian 8 ("Jessie"). Several Kanotix-LinuxTag images for 32 and 64 bit were offered for download.
After the Release of Debian GNU/Linux 8.0 (2015-04-26) a reset of the "nightly builds" with the official Debian kernel-version 3.16.7 started Kanotix-Spitfire as a "rolling release" of the current stable Kanotix. The Images are maintained by developer Kano and offered for download "Kanotix Downloads" and on kanotix.acritox.com
The latest Kanotix modification of Kanotix-Spitfire has been presented at OpenRheinRuhr 2015 in Oberhausen.
Kanotix-Steelfire-2017-2019
Kanotix Steelfire is based on current stable Debian 9 ("Stretch").
Two months after the Release of Debian GNU/Linux 9.0 (2017-06-17) the first iso-images of Kanotix-steelfire-nightly-LXDE were released. The KDE-modification of Kanotix-Spitfire was releast and presented later at OpenRheinRuhr 2017 in Oberhausen. (2017-11-4/5)
All Images of "Kanotix-Steelfire" are available as KDE and LXDE versions in 32 and 64 bit.
Kanotix-Silverfire-2019-2020
Kanotix-Silverfire is based on Debian 10 ("Buster"). Just like its Debian base Kanotix-Silverfire was in the "testing"-mode. Some "previews" with KDE and LXDE in 32- and 64-bit variants are linked on the homepage. With the Release of Debian-10 (Buster), Kanotix-Siverfire became stable too.
Release timeline
See also
Debian
Linux
Parsix
References
External links
Official website
Debian-based distributions
LiveDistro
Live USB
X86-64 Linux distributions
Knoppix
KDE
Linux distributions |
52222652 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive%20city | Cognitive city | Cognitive city is a term which expands the concept of the smart city with the aspect of cognition or refers to a virtual environment where goal-driven communities gather to share knowledge. A physical cognitive city differs from conventional cities and smart cities in the fact that it is steadily learning through constant interaction with its citizens through advanced information and communications technologies (ICT) based ICT standards and that, based on this exchange of information, it becomes continuously more efficient, more sustainable and more resilient. A virtual cognitive city differs from social media platforms and project management platforms in that shared data is critical for the group's performance, and the community consists of members spanning diverse expertise, backgrounds, motivations, and geographies but with a common desire to solve large problems. The virtual cognitive city is steadily learning through constant metadata generated by activity in the user community.
Definition
Cognitive cities are based on advanced ICTs which support the steady automation of daily urban processes. Additionally, learning processes are added to the underlying systems of the city which allow a system to learn from its past – meaning, the past behavior of the user – and to adapt to changes in the environment and thus to new requirements. The city learns by collecting data that has been provided by the citizens through the available ICT and by subsequently analyzing them. Both, citizens and the city, profit from this continuous interaction as well as from the ongoing learning process and they steadily develop themselves whereby also the collective intelligence within the city is increased.
Challenges
Just like smart cities, cognitive cities should facilitate the response to the economic, social, ecologic, cultural and political challenges of the urban development. The focus here lies especially on problems caused by increasing population growth, demographic transition, scarcity of resources, pollution of the environment, global warming and financial uncertainties.
The most important component of all challenges of a city are the citizens themselves. Therefore, it is important to include every single inhabitant in the urban development process. This means, that by taking into account every single citizen (cf. citizen as sensors) a city can further develop itself in such a way that it can fulfill the requirements of the citizens and stay attractive for current as well as potential citizens. Only a collaboration between the city and its citizens makes a successful urban development possible.
Interaction between citizen and city
Such a collaboration can take place through different paths:
Question-answering-system: As a knowledge-based system, a question-answering-system is able to give answers to questions asked in natural language. Thus, an efficient dialogue between human and system should be enabled. On the basis of the collected data (cf. big data), the city is able to see which topics the citizens engage with.
Internet of Things (IoT): The whole urban environment is equipped with sensors that make all recorded data available in the cloud (cloud computing). In this way, a permanent interaction between citizens and the technology that surrounds them is developed. The citizens thus become a part of the technological infrastructure of a city. The Web of Things uses web standards to overcome IoT-challenges.
Cloud based social feedback, crowdsourcing and predictive analytics: Developments such as cloud based social feedback, crowdsourcing and predictive analytics allow the creation of cities which actively and independently learn to build a memory, to search and also to expand that memory when new information is added to the already existing. In this way, the city acquires the ability to recognize behavioral patterns and changes, maybe even to predict them and to react to them (possibly with new solution strategies).
The cognition of a city
The cognitive city pursues one main goal: improved information exchange for the development of knowledge, the so-called collective intelligence. Hereby not only individual experiences and perceptions are important but also the experiences and perceptions of others. In order to attain this goal, the city, among other things, applies cognitive computing.
Characteristics of cognitive computing
The theory of connectivism implies that humans do not only learn based on their own experiences but also based on the experiences of others. Thus, the knowledge base can be continually expanded. This theory emphasizes the importance of the interaction of humans and computer systems in a city as the constant interaction between city and its citizens increases their common existing knowledge.
A further base for cognitive computing is computational thinking. The goal of computational thinking is to find solutions to complex problems (problem solving) within a city and to get an understanding of human behavior with the help of computer science. Computational thinking allows to operate on different levels of abstraction and to mechanize them through precise notation and models.
The concept of the intelligence amplification loop, another important component of cognitive computing, implies that human and computer system continually learn from each other through interaction. A “learning loop” is developed in which the knowledge of human and system is continually expanded. Thus, the collective intelligence of a city is steadily increasing. The process of the intelligence amplification loop is characterized by the emergence which refers to the spontaneous formation of new and connected insights through interaction.
Most data which can be collected in a city and from its citizens are only available in natural language, which are thus imprecise. For most of today's computer systems it is difficult (or impossible) to directly process vague inputs. The processing and analysis of the existing data is absolutely necessary. For this reason, soft computing is applied. Contrary to traditional methods of calculation, soft computing techniques allow the inclusion of values which are described in natural language. This enables a nature-based precision of imprecise information which does justice to the perceptions of human beings. This is a necessary precondition for the application of cognitive computer systems and thus for cognitive cities.
Virtual cognitive cities
Virtual cognitive cities are goal-driven communities made up of members who gather in a digital medium to share knowledge, data, and tools. The virtual environment is used to facilitate collaboration among community members who -- outside of a shared mission -- are otherwise disparate in their expertise, backgrounds, motivations, geographies, and potentially other characteristics. Virtual environments support the identification of graph patterns among metadata created by interactions between the users and the digital medium, which can then be used to understand and improve community processes.
References
Cognition |
224700 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audit | Audit | An audit is an "independent examination of financial information of any entity, whether profit oriented or not, irrespective of its size or legal form when such an examination is conducted with a view to express an opinion thereon.” Auditing also attempts to ensure that the books of accounts are properly maintained by the concern as required by law. Auditors consider the propositions before them, obtain evidence, and evaluate the propositions in their auditing report.
Audits provide third-party assurance to various stakeholders that the subject matter is free from material misstatement. The term is most frequently applied to audits of the financial information relating to a legal person. Other commonly audited areas include: secretarial and compliance, internal controls, quality management, project management, water management, and energy conservation. As a result of an audit, stakeholders may evaluate and improve the effectiveness of risk management, control, and governance over the subject matter.
Auditing has been a safeguard measure since ancient times, and has since expanded to encompass so many areas in the public and corporate sectors that academics have started identifying an "Audit Society".
Etymology
The word "audit" derives from the Latin word audire which means "to hear".
History
During medieval times, when manual bookkeeping was prevalent, auditors in Britain used to hear the accounts read out for them and checked that the organization's personnel were not negligent or fraudulent. In 1951, Moyer identified that the most important duty of the auditor was to detect fraud. Chatfield documented that early United States auditing was viewed mainly as verification of bookkeeping detail.
The Central Auditing Commission of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union () operated from 1921 to 1990.
Information technology audit
An information technology audit, or information systems audit, is an examination of the management controls within an Information technology (IT) infrastructure. The evaluation of obtained evidence determines if the information systems are safeguarding assets, maintaining data integrity, and operating effectively to achieve the organization's goals or objectives. These reviews may be performed in conjunction with a financial statement audit, internal audit, or other form of attestation engagement.
Accounting
Financial auditives (including taxation, misselling and other forms of fraud) to misstate financial information, auditing has become a legal requirement for many entities who have the power to exploit financial information for personal gain. Traditionally, audits were mainly associated with gaining information about financial systems and the financial records of a company or a business.
Financial audits are performed to ascertain the validity and reliability of information, as well as to provide an assessment of a system's internal control. As a result, a third party can express an opinion of the person / organization / system (etc.) in question. The opinion given on financial statements will depend on the audit evidence obtained.
A statutory audit is a legally required review of the accuracy of a company's or government's financial statements and records. The purpose of a statutory audit is to determine whether an organization provides a fair and accurate representation of its financial position by examining information such as bank balances, bookkeeping records, and financial transactions.
Due to constraints, an audit seeks to provide only reasonable assurance that the statements are free from material error. Hence, statistical sampling is often adopted in audits. In the case of financial audits, a set of financial statements are said to be true and fair when they are free of material misstatements – a concept influenced by both quantitative (numerical) and qualitative factors. But recently, the argument that auditing should go beyond just true and fair is gaining momentum. And the US Public Company Accounting Oversight Board has come out with a concept release on the same.
Cost accounting is a process for verifying the cost of manufacturing or producing of any article, on the basis of accounts measuring the use of material, labor or other items of cost. In simple words, the term, cost audit means a systematic and accurate verification of the cost accounts and records, and checking for adherence to the cost accounting objectives. According to the Institute of Cost and Management Accountants, cost audit is "an examination of cost accounting records and verification of facts to ascertain that the cost of the product has been arrived at, in accordance with principles of cost accounting."
In most nations, an audit must adhere to generally accepted standards established by governing bodies. These standards assure third parties or external users that they can rely upon the auditor's opinion on the fairness of financial statements or other subjects on which the auditor expresses an opinion. The audit must therefore be precise and accurate, containing no additional misstatements or errors.
Integrated audits
In the US, audits of publicly traded companies are governed by rules laid down by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), which was established by Section 404 of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002. Such an audit is called an integrated audit, where auditors, in addition to an opinion on the financial statements, must also express an opinion on the effectiveness of a company's internal control over financial reporting, in accordance with PCAOB Auditing Standard No. 5.
There are also new types of integrated auditing becoming available that use unified compliance material (see the unified compliance section in Regulatory compliance). Due to the increasing number of regulations and need for operational transparency, organizations are adopting risk-based audits that can cover multiple regulations and standards from a single audit event. This is a very new but necessary approach in some sectors to ensure that all the necessary governance requirements can be met without duplicating effort from both audit and audit hosting resources.
Assessments
The purpose of an assessment is to measure something or calculate a value for it. An auditor's objective is to determine whether financial statements are presented fairly, in all material respects, and are free of material misstatement. Although the process of producing an assessment may involve an audit by an independent professional, its purpose is to provide a measurement rather than to express an opinion about the fairness of statements or quality of performance.
Auditors
Auditors of financial statements & non-financial information (including compliance audit) can be classified into various categories:
External auditor/Statutory auditor is an independent firm engaged by the client subject to the audit to express an opinion on whether the company's financial statements are free of material misstatements, whether due to fraud or error. For publicly traded companies, external auditors may also be required to express an opinion on the effectiveness of internal controls over financial reporting. External auditors may also be engaged to perform other agreed-upon procedures, related or unrelated to financial statements. Most importantly, external auditors, though engaged and paid by the company being audited, should be regarded as independent and remain third party.
Cost auditor/Statutory cost auditor is an independent firm engaged by the client subject to the cost audit to express an opinion on whether the company's cost statements and cost sheet are free of material misstatements, whether due to fraud or error. For publicly traded companies, external auditors may also be required to express an opinion on the effectiveness of internal controls over cost reporting. These are Specialized Persons called Cost Accountants in India & CMA globally either Cost & Management Accountants or Certified Management Accountants.
Government Auditors review the finances and practices of federal agencies. These auditors report their finds to congress, which uses them to create and manage policies and budgets. Government auditors work for the U.S. Government Accountability Office, and most state governments have similar departments to audit state and municipal agencies.
Secretarial auditor/Statutory secretarial auditor is an independent firm engaged by the client subject to the audit of secretarial and applicable laws/compliances of other applicable laws to express an opinion on whether the company's secretarial records and compliance of applicable laws are free of material misstatements, whether due to fraud or error and inviting heavy fines or penalties. For bigger public companies, external secretarial auditors may also be required to express an opinion on the effectiveness of internal controls over compliances system management of the company. These are Specialized Persons called Company Secretaries in India who are the members of Institute of Company Secretaries of India and holding Certificate of Practice. (http://www.icsi.edu/)
Internal auditors are employed by the organizations they audit. They work for government agencies (federal, state and local); for publicly traded companies; and for non-profit companies across all industries. The internationally recognized standard setting body for the profession is the Institute of Internal Auditors - IIA (www.theiia.org). The IIA has defined internal auditing as follows: "Internal auditing is an independent, objective assurance and consulting activity designed to add value and improve an organization's operations. It helps an organization accomplish its objectives by bringing a systematic, disciplined approach to evaluate and improve the effectiveness of risk management, control, and governance processes". Thus professional internal auditors provide independent and objective audit and consulting services focused on evaluating whether the board of directors, shareholders, stakeholders, and corporate executives have reasonable assurance that the organization's governance, risk management, and control processes are designed adequately and function effectively. Internal audit professionals (Certified Internal Auditors - CIAs) are governed by the international professional standards and code of conduct of the Institute of Internal Auditors. While internal auditors are not independent of the companies that employ them, 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. As described often in the professional literature for the practice of internal auditing (such as Internal Auditor, the journal of the IIA) -, or other similar and generally recognized frameworks for management control when evaluating an entity's governance and control practices; and apply COSO's "Enterprise Risk Management-Integrated Framework" or other similar and generally recognized frameworks for entity-wide risk management when evaluating an organization's entity-wide risk management practices. Professional internal auditors also use control self-assessment (CSA) as an effective process for performing their work.
Consultant auditors are external personnel contracted by the firm to perform an audit following the firm's auditing standards. This differs from the external auditor, who follows their own auditing standards. The level of independence is therefore somewhere between the internal auditor and the external auditor. The consultant auditor may work independently, or as part of the audit team that includes internal auditors. Consultant auditors are used when the firm lacks sufficient expertise to audit certain areas, or simply for staff augmentation when staff are not available.
The most commonly used external audit standards are the US GAAS of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and the International Standards on Auditing (ISA) developed by the International Auditing and Assurance Standard.
Performance audits
Performance audit refers to an independent examination of a program, function, operation or the management systems and procedures of a governmental or non-profit entity to assess whether the entity is achieving economy, efficiency and effectiveness in the employment of available resources.
Safety, security, information systems performance, and environmental concerns are increasingly the subject of audits. There are now audit professionals who specialize in security audits and information systems audits. With nonprofit organizations and government agencies, there has been an increasing need for performance audits, examining their success in satisfying mission objectives.
Quality audits
Quality audits are performed to verify conformance to standards through review of objective evidence. A system of quality audits may verify the effectiveness of a quality management system. This is part of certifications such as ISO 9001. Quality audits are essential to verify the existence of objective evidence showing conformance to required processes, to assess how successfully processes have been implemented, and to judge the effectiveness of achieving any defined target levels. Quality audits are also necessary to provide evidence concerning reduction and elimination of problem areas, and they are a hands-on management tool for achieving continual improvement in an organization.
To benefit the organization, quality auditing should not only report non-conformance and corrective actions but also highlight areas of good practice and provide evidence of conformance. In this way, other departments may share information and amend their working practices as a result, also enhancing continual improvement.
Project audit
A project audit provides an opportunity to uncover issues, concerns and challenges encountered during the project lifecycle. Conducted midway through the project, an audit affords the project manager, project sponsor and project team an interim view of what has gone well, as well as what needs to be improved to successfully complete the project. If done at the close of a project, the audit can be used to develop success criteria for future projects by providing a forensic review. This review identifies which elements of the project were successfully managed and which ones presented challenges. As a result, the review will help the organization identify what it needs to do to avoid repeating the same mistakes on future projects
Projects can undergo 2 types of Project audits:
Regular Health Check Audits: The aim of a regular health check audit is to understand the current state of a project in order to increase project success.
Regulatory Audits: The aim of a regulatory audit is to verify that a project is compliant with regulations and standards. Best practices of NEMEA Compliance Centre describe that, the regulatory audit must be accurate, objective, and independent while providing oversight and assurance to the organization.
Other forms of Project audits:
Formal: Applies when the project is in trouble, sponsor agrees that the audit is needed, sensitivities are high, and need to be able prove conclusions via sustainable evidence.
Informal: Apply when a new project manager is provided, there is no indication the projects in trouble and there is a need to report whether the project is as opposed to where its supposed to Informal audits can apply the same criteria as formal audit but there is no need for such a in depth report or formal report.
Energy audits
An energy audit is an inspection, survey and analysis of energy flows for energy conservation in a building, process or system to reduce the amount of energy input into the system without negatively affecting the output(s).
Operations audit
An operations audit is an examination of the operations of the client's business. In this audit the auditor thoroughly examines the efficiency, effectiveness and economy of the operations with which the management of the entity (client) is achieving its objective. The operational audit goes beyond the internal controls issues since management does not achieve its objectives merely by compliance of satisfactory system of internal controls. Operational audits cover any matters which may be commercially unsound.
The objective of operational audit is to examine Three E's, namely:
Effectiveness – doing the right things with least wastage of resources.
Efficiency – performing work in least possible time.
Economy – balance between benefits and costs to run the operations
A control self-assessment is a commonly used tool for completing an operations audit.
Forensic audits
Also refer to forensic accountancy, forensic accountant or forensic accounting.
It refers to an investigative audit in which accountants with specialized on both accounting and investigation seek to uncover frauds, missing money and negligence.
See also
Academic audit
Accounting
Audit plan
Big Four accounting firms
Clinical audit
Comptroller, Comptroller General, and Comptroller General of the United States
Continuous auditing
Cost auditing
COSO framework, Risk management
EarthCheck
Financial audit, External auditor, Certified Public Accountant (CPA), and Audit risk
Information technology audit, History of information technology auditing, and Information security audit
Internal audit
International Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions (INTOSAI)
Lead auditor, under the Chief audit executive or Director of audit
Mainframe audit
Management auditing
Operational auditing
Peer review
Quality audit
Risk-based internal audit
Technical audit
SOFT audit
References
Further reading
Amat, O. (2008). Earnings management and audit adjustments: An empirical study of IBEX 35 constituents. Available at SSRN 1374232. |
46875443 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS%209 | IOS 9 | iOS 9 is the ninth major release of the iOS mobile operating system developed by Apple Inc., being the successor to iOS 8. It was announced at the company's Worldwide Developers Conference on June 8, 2015, and was released on September 16, 2015. It was succeeded by iOS 10 on September 13, 2016.
iOS 9 incorporated many feature updates to built-in apps. Most notably, Notes received the ability to draw sketches with different tools, image insertion, prominent visual appearance for website links and map locations, and advanced list formatting; an all-new Apple News app aggregates articles from different sources; and Apple Maps received mass transit support, although in a limited number of locations at launch. Major new system updates include proactivity, where Siri and advanced search are combined to make the operating system more contextually aware of information (such as time and location), and can provide the user with information ahead of time. For searching, the proactive intelligence can display instant results in a widget-like format, including weather, sports, news, and more. iOS 9 also added multiple forms of multitasking to the iPad. In iOS 9.3, Apple added a Night Shift mode that changes the color of the device's display to a warmer, less "blue light" containing shade, to reduce any negative eye health effects on users' circadian rhythms. Additionally, iOS 9 brought new user experience functions, including Quick Actions, and Peek and Pop, based on the touch-sensitive display technology in the iPhone 6S. Quick Actions are shortcuts on home screen app icons. Users can preview ("Peek") at content without moving away from the current screen before they enter ("Pop") the previewed content into full view.
Reception of iOS 9 was positive. Critics praised proactivity and Siri for making the Notification Center a central location for all information, and the potential for future updates to improve the functionality. The new multitasking features for the iPad were complimented, as were drawing and photo insertion in the Notes app. However, Apple News was criticized for a low number of decent-looking articles, and Apple Maps was criticized for the limited geographical availability of mass transit support.
Five days after release, Apple announced that iOS 9 had been installed on more than 50% of "active" iOS devices, which Apple described as the "fastest adoption rate ever for a new operating system".
History
Introduction and initial release
iOS 9 was introduced at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference on June 8, 2015, with the first beta made available to registered developers after the keynote, and a public beta made available in July. This marked the first time that the general public had been able to test new versions of iOS before official release, with Eddy Cue, Apple's Senior Vice President of Internet Software and Services, telling Fast Company that the public beta program was started "because of Maps", referring to the company's Apple Maps launch that had significant issues in its early days.
iOS 9 was officially released on September 16, 2015.
Updates
System features
3D Touch
On the iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S Plus, a touch-sensitive display feature called 3D Touch is incorporated into iOS 9. It is similar to Force Touch, which can be found on the trackpad of some Apple MacBook computers. Quick Actions and shortcuts are added to apps that support the 3D Touch feature and are triggered by pressing slightly harder on the app icon. It also introduces actions known as Peek and Pop, which lets users firmly hold to preview ("Peek") any kind of content in a hovering window, before they optionally apply more pressure to enter ("Pop") the content into full view.
The taptic engine in the iPhone 6S provides haptic feedback each time users press the screen harder.
Battery
iOS 9 comes with two important battery-saving updates. When a phone has been placed face-down, the screen will not light up upon receiving notifications. Apple has also added Low Power Mode, which modifies the amount of energy dedicated to background services and animations. For example, background app refresh and push email are paused during Low Power Mode. When a phone reaches 20% battery level, users are automatically prompted to turn on Low Power Mode, which changes the color of the battery icon in the top row status bar on the screen to yellow. When the battery goes higher than the 80% level, Low Power Mode automatically turns back off.
Design
San Francisco, a new system font, replaced Helvetica Neue as the system typeface of iOS.
iOS 9 added a new battery widget to the Notification Center that displayed the battery life and charging status of any connected Bluetooth device.
When the shift button is inactive, lowercase letters are displayed on the keyboard, instead of the all-caps representation on previous iOS versions.
Installation
iOS 9 is a smaller update than iOS 8, requiring 1.3 GB of space, compared to 4.58 GB for iOS 8. Additionally, iOS 9 includes an option to temporarily delete apps to allow the update to install. Once the update has been installed, the apps will be automatically restored. iOS 9 also features "app thinning" functionality, whereby only the necessary assets needed to run apps on each individual device is downloaded rather than the entire app, potentially saving space.
Multitasking
iOS 9 adds a number of features to the iPad to improve productivity. These include Slide Over, Split Screen, and Picture in Picture, for enhanced multitasking, similar to the experience found on OS X El Capitan. Slide Over allows the user to pull in a second app with a swipe from the right edge of the display. This app takes up 1/3 of the screen and sticks to the right side of the screen, while interactivity within the full-screen app is disabled while left inactive in the background. The feature allows users to perform quick tasks and then dismiss the app again.
If the user taps on the handle next to the Slide Over window or extends the window further towards the left of the screen, the user enters Split Screen, which allows them to interact with two apps simultaneously side-by-side in a 50/50 split. Users can also switch to another app in either Slide Over mode or Split Screen view by pulling down on the handle on top of either app and selecting another app from the list to replace the existing one.
Picture in Picture mode allows users to minimize FaceTime calls or supported videos to a smaller window and continue watching them while doing other tasks on the iPad.
The Split Screen multitasking feature is only available for iPad Air 2, iPad mini 4, and iPad Pro, while the Slide Over and Picture in Picture features are available on the iPad Air, iPad Air 2, iPad mini 2 and newer, and the iPad Pro.
When banner notifications are tapped, causing another app to open, a back button at the top-left corner of the screen has been added, bringing the user back to the previous app.
Night Shift
Night Shift is a display mode introduced in iOS 9.3. The mode shifts the colors of the device's display to be warmer, similar to F.lux, a popular program for Microsoft Windows and Apple macOS computers. When enabled, it uses the device's clock and geographic location to determine when to turn the feature on or off. Optionally, the user can set a manual schedule, or not have a schedule at all. For ease of access, there is a new Night Shift toggle in the Control Center. The settings for Night Shift are located under "Display and Brightness" in the Settings app, and on top of enabling the feature and setting a schedule, the user can also set the warmth of the display.
Despite being introduced in iOS 9.3 in March 2016, it wasn't possible to use Night Shift and Low Power Mode simultaneously until the release of iOS 9.3.2 two months later. Night Shift requires a 64-bit processor only found in the Apple A7 or newer chips, which means older iOS devices, including the iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, iPhone 5C, iPad 2, iPad 3, iPad 4, first-generation iPad Mini, and 5th generation iPod Touch, do not receive Night Shift mode.
Performance
iOS 9 includes performance and speed improvements thanks to the expanded use of the Metal API. Metal was introduced in iOS 8 and was previously limited to game developers. In iOS 9, the use of Metal is expanded to let it handle many of the core user interface elements and graphics.
Proactivity
Intelligence is one of the main features in iOS 9, consisting of the newly integrated Siri and Search (previously known as Spotlight), as well as "proactivity" throughout the operating system. iOS is now more aware of contextual information (such as time and location), and proactively provides the user with what they may need in advance to save them time and effort. When typing, Search has also been improved to display instant answers in an at-a-glance, widget-like format, similar to that provided in the Siri interface. Search can display current weather, sports scores, news, and more. The Search screen with proactive suggestions can be accessed either by pulling down the notifications window, in the Safari web browser through the search bar, and to the left on the home screen.
The intelligence also extends into apps. For instance, in Mail, events can be automatically added to Calendar if details are found in the message content, and likely additional recipients are suggested during message composition. Siri is also aware of what is currently on screen when it is engaged by holding down the home button.
Security
iOS 9 introduces multiple security enhancements. It introduces a 6-digit passcode as a default, an extra two digits from the previous 4-digit default, as well as support for two-factor authentication.
The original iOS 9 release in September 2015 fixed a security issue within previous iOS versions where a "flaw allowed anyone within range of an AirDrop user to install malware on a target device and tweak iOS settings so the exploit would still work if the victim rejected an incoming AirDrop file".
Settings
The Settings app in iOS 9 has a search bar that makes it easier to find settings and options. The user also has options to have notifications be grouped by which app they came from, and the ability to turn on or off Shake to Undo.
Other changes
On iPad, a two-finger drag on the keyboard moves the cursor freely like a traditional trackpad, making positioning the cursor and selecting text easier. The keyboard-to-trackpad feature is also extended to iPhone 6S and 6S Plus, in which users can 3D Touch (force press) the keyboard to enable the trackpad. Also on the iPad, a shortcut bar has been added for cut, copy, paste, undo, and redo functions, and folders display 16 apps per page in a 4-by-4 arrangement, compared to 9 on the iPhone, allowing for an increased total of 240 apps in a single folder.
iOS 9 introduced Wi-Fi Assist, a feature, on by default, that automatically switches the phone to cellular data when the Wi-Fi connection is spotty.
Whenever the user is presented with flight information, the user can click on a link to view a preview for that flight.
App features
iBooks
As of iOS 9.3, PDFs saved to the iBooks application via Safari or iTunes can be synced with iCloud.
iCloud
iOS 9 has a setting that enables an iCloud Drive app on the home screen. iCloud Drive lets the user save and browse files and folders in iCloud.
Health
The Health app, introduced in iOS 8, has received landscape mode on iPhone. It also added support for reproductive health, UV exposure, water intake and sedentary state data types.
In iOS 9.3, it also tracks sleep, exercise, and weight from the Apple Watch.
Messages
The Messages (previously iChat) app allows the user to search for text and have that text be highlighted (and scrolled).
Maps
Apple Maps adds support for transit directions in Baltimore, Berlin, Chicago, London, Los Angeles, Mexico City, New York City, Paris, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Toronto, and Washington D.C., along with "over 300 locations in China."
The Maps app now also has enhanced location details, including a Nearby feature that recommends shops, restaurants and places to drink in close proximity to the user. For places serving food, users can specify exactly what type of food they want.
News
iOS 9 includes a new Apple News app (replacing the Newsstand app), which aggregates news from different sources in a similar style as Flipboard. The app features a "mobile-formatted layout that loads quickly and has informative animations and full-bleed images". Additionally, News supports RSS feeds from the Safari web browser. At launch, the News app was only available in the United States, but it was expanded to the United Kingdom and Australia with the iOS 9.1 update.
In March 2016, Apple opened the News platform to all news agencies, including independent bloggers.
Notes
The Notes app has received a number of enhancements in iOS 9, including the ability to draw sketches with a number of different tools, including a ruler for straight lines. Images can also be added, and links to websites and Map locations get a more prominent, visual appearance when added to notes. On the iPad, and on iPhone in landscape mode, Notes has a range of color options for drawing, as well as an eraser. Advanced formatting options including checked, bulleted, dashed and numbered lists.
The app also supports iCloud and allows for easy folder creation.
A secure notes feature, introduced in iOS 9.3, lets an iOS user protect their notes with either a passcode or Touch ID.
Photos
The Photos app on iOS 9 included the improved scrubber bar in the photo viewer, "Screenshots" and "Selfies" albums, and the ability to hold and select multiple photos easily, without having to delete them individually. It also allows the user to hide sensitive material through a new Hide option. The app also allows the user to pinch to zoom while playing a video.
Safari
With the release of iOS 9, the Safari web browser allows for third-party content blocking apps. Safari also allows users to customize the appearance of the Reader mode, with options for font and background color.
A few days after the release of iOS 9, ad blocking software had topped the App Store charts, with Marco Arment, developer of a Peace app, saying that "web advertising and behavioral tracking is out of control. They're unacceptably creepy, bloated, annoying, and insecure, and they're getting worse at an alarming pace."
Wallet
The Passbook application was renamed Wallet in iOS 9 and includes many new changes, such as support for store loyalty cards, gift cards, Discover credit/debit cards, and Apple Pay in the UK. The Wallet app can also be accessed from the lock screen.
Developer APIs
In iOS 9.3, a "Music API" allows developers to integrate apps into the Apple Music streaming service.
Reception
iOS 9 received mostly positive reviews. Dan Seifert of The Verge praised the improvements in Proactivity and Siri, highlighting how the notification drop-down contains most, if not all, the information the user needs. Although he pointed out that Google's Google Now and Microsoft's Cortana personal assistants offer similar services, sometimes with "better and more varied ways" of achieving results, the improvements to iOS "lay the foundation for even more capabilities in the future." Chris Velazco of Engadget liked the "small, thoughtful" design changes, but was most impressed by the new multitasking features for the iPad, referring to Split Screen as a "lovely little feature." He did, however, criticize the low number of decent-looking articles in Apple News, writing that "you'll notice a discrepancy in how some articles are handled – most are just formatted text on a white background with the outlet's logo up top" and also noted the limited number of locations in Apple Maps that, at launch, supported mass transit directions. Matt Swider of TechRadar wrote that Siri and Proactivity lists were "robust," and enjoyed that notifications were sorted chronologically rather than by app. Samuel Gibbs of The Guardian welcomed the changes to the built-in apps such as drawing and photo insertion in Notes, unknown number identification from emails through Phone, and Siri automatically launching the Music app upon plugging in headphones. He also praised the updates to the keyboard, calling it "much easier to use."
Apple is facing a $5 million lawsuit over allegedly slowing the iPhone 4S with iOS 9. This is because according to the lawsuit, the iOS 9 update slowed down the iPhone 4S to the point that the phone was unusable (as performance was sluggish) and that Apple knew this fact (planned obsolescence).
On September 21, 2015, Apple announced that iOS 9 had been installed on more than 50% of "active" iOS devices, as measured by the App Store. According to Apple, this was "the fastest adoption rate ever for a new operating system".
Problems
Error 53 bricking issue
In February 2016, news outlets reported that users who updated to iOS 9 on a particular device that had components repaired by a third-party (notably the Touch ID fingerprint recognition sensor) rendered their phone unusable. The issue, named "Error 53", was, according to iFixIt, limited to iPhone 6 and 6 Plus devices. Apple stated:
We protect fingerprint data using a secure enclave, which is uniquely paired to the Touch ID sensor. When iPhone is serviced by an authorised Apple service provider or Apple retail store for changes that affect the Touch ID sensor, the pairing is re-validated. ... This check ensures the device and the iOS features related to Touch ID remain secure. Without this unique pairing, a malicious Touch ID sensor could be substituted, thereby gaining access to the secure enclave. When iOS detects that the pairing fails, Touch ID, including Apple Pay, is disabled so the device remains secure.
Apple released a new version of iOS 9.2.1 later in February to fix the issue.
Date reboot issue
In February 2016, a bug was discovered that could render 64-bit devices unusable. The bug, caused by setting the time to January 1, 1970, would cause the device to get stuck in a reboot process until the battery died or the time setting shifted past January 1. A similar bug also applies to 32-bit devices, where the battery would report 0% of charge, and the Wi-Fi would be disabled. iOS 9.3, released on March 21, 2016, fixed the issue.
9.7-inch iPad Pro bricking issue
In May 2016, Apple released iOS 9.3.2. The update was followed by reports that it bricked some 9.7-inch iPad Pros, with a "Connect to iTunes" message, and an "Error 56" message in iTunes that it couldn't restore the tablet.
Apple temporarily stopped offering the 9.3.2 update, until a re-release of the version in June 2016 fixed the issue.
iBooks crash
The release of iOS 9.3.3 in July 2016 was followed by reports that the iBooks store crashed. However, Apple explained in August that the timing was a coincidence, and the iBooks app crash was a result of a server issue, not the software update.
Spyware attack
The release of iOS 9.3.5 in August 2016 fixed three critical security vulnerabilities. The vulnerabilities could be exploited to silently enable a jailbreak and allow the malicious installation of a spyware called "Pegasus". Pegasus could intercept and read text messages, emails, track calls, trace phone location, activate the microphone, and gather information from apps, including (but not limited to) iMessage, Gmail, Viber, Facebook, WhatsApp, Telegram, and Skype.
The discovery of the vulnerabilities dated 10 days before the 9.3.5 update was released. Arab human rights defender Ahmed Mansoor received a suspicious text message with a link and sent it to Citizen Lab. An investigation ensued with collaboration from Lookout that revealed that if Mansoor clicked the link, it would have jailbroken his phone and implanted it with the spyware. Citizen Lab linked the attack to an Israeli surveillance company known as NSO Group that sells Pegasus to governments for "lawful interception."
Regarding how widespread the issue was, Lookout explained in a blog post: "We believe that this spyware has been in the wild for a significant amount of time based on some of the indicators within the code" and pointed out that the code shows signs of a "kernel mapping table that has values all the way back to iOS 7."
News of the spyware received significant media attention, particularly for being called the "most sophisticated" smartphone attack ever, and for being the first time in iPhone history that a remote jailbreak exploit has been detected.
"Broadpwn" Wi-Fi vulnerability
In July 2017, information on a critical Wi-Fi security vulnerability affecting 1 billion iOS and Android devices was published. The issue, named "Broadpwn", allows an attacker to remotely take control of nearby vulnerable devices and turn affected devices into "rogue access points", further spreading the infection to other nearby devices. Apple released a security patch for the issue as part of its iOS 10.3.3 update, though older devices running iOS 9, including the iPad 2, 3rd generation iPad, iPhone 4S, the first-generation iPad Mini, and the 5th generation iPod Touch were left without an available update, causing concerns over the safety of the iPad 2, 3rd generation iPad, and the first-generation iPad Mini in schools.
iPhone 4S lawsuit
On December 22, 2015, Apple faced a class-action lawsuit for crippling the iPhone 4S with the iOS 9 update, with some people even going so far as to say that iOS 9 rendered their devices unusable. The 4S only had 512MB of RAM, so it could not handle the iOS 9 update.
Supported devices
With this release, Apple did not drop support for any iOS devices, with all devices supporting iOS 8 also able to run iOS 9.
iPhone
iPhone 4S
iPhone 5
iPhone 5C
iPhone 5S
iPhone 6
iPhone 6 Plus
iPhone 6S
iPhone 6S Plus
iPhone SE (1st generation)
iPod Touch
iPod Touch (5th generation)
iPod Touch (6th generation)
iPad
iPad 2
iPad (3rd generation)
iPad (4th generation)
iPad Air
iPad Air 2
iPad Mini (1st generation)
iPad Mini 2
iPad Mini 3
iPad Mini 4
iPad Pro (12.9-inch 1st generation)
iPad Pro (9.7-inch)
References
External links
iOS 9 release notes
9
2015 software
Tablet operating systems |
1717878 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhongguancun | Zhongguancun | Zhongguancun () is a technology hub in Haidian District, Beijing, China.
Zhongguancun occupies a band between the northwestern Third Ring Road and the northwestern Fourth Ring Road, in the northwestern part of Beijing. Zhongguancun is sometimes known as "China's Silicon Valley". The place is also the center of Beijing-Tianjin-Shijiazhuang Hi-Tech Industrial Belt.
History
Chen Chunxian envisioned Zhongguancun, which then became a well-known technology hub 30 years later. Chunxian, a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), conceived of a Silicon Valley in China following a government-sponsored trip to Boston and Silicon Valley, United States.
Zhongguancun became known as "Electronics Avenue" () from the early 1980s on, due to its information technology markets along a central, crowded street.
Zhongguancun was recognized by the central government of China in 1988, and officially named "Beijing High-Technology Industry Development Experimental Zone". In 1999, Zhongguancun became the "Zhongguancun Science & Technology Zone", with seven parks: Haidian, Fengtai, Changping, Electronics City (in Chaoyang), Yizhuang, Desheng, and Jianxiang. The original Zhongguancun became known as Haidian Park of the Zhongguancun Zone.
Notable education and research centres
Zhongguancun has an association with China's two most prestigious universities, Peking University and Tsinghua University, along with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, all of which are in close proximity.
Secondary schools in Zhongguancun include Affiliated High School of Peking University and High School Affiliated to Renmin University of China.
Government infrastructure
The Zhongguancun Administrative Committee oversees the city.
The State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs (SAFEA) has its headquarters in Zhongguancun.
Notable companies and landmarks
Hailong Market, Guigu Market, Taipingyang Market, Dinghao Market and Kemao Market are prominent IT and electronics technology bazaars, noted for "shops with a shop", where bargaining is the norm. According to the 2004 Beijing Statistical Yearbook, there were over 12,000 high-tech enterprises operating in Zhongguancun's seven parks, with 489,000 technicians employed.
The most notable companies that grew up in Zhongguancun are Stone Group, Founder Group, and Lenovo Group, each founded during 1984 to 1985. Stone was the first successful technology company to be operated by private individuals outside of the government of China. Founder is a technology company that spun off Peking University. Lenovo Group spun off from Chinese Academy of Sciences with Liu Chuanzhi, a hero of Zhongguancun and current chairman, eventually taking the helm. Lenovo purchased IBM's PC division with $1.75 billion in 2005, making it the world's third-largest PC maker. Both Founder and Lenovo Group maintain strong connections to their academic backers, who are significant shareholders.
Many world-renowned technology companies built their Chinese headquarters and research centers in Zhongguancun Technology Park, such as Google, Intel, AMD, Oracle Corporation, Motorola, Cogobuy Group, IBM, MySpace, Sony, Solstice, and Ericsson. Microsoft has built its Chinese research headquarters in the park that costs $280 million and can accommodate 5000 employees, which was completed in April, 2011, and now houses Microsoft Research Asia.
The development center of Loongson, which is China's first general-purpose microprocessor design, is also in the Zhongguancun area.
Everbright International has its Beijing office in the Beijing International Building (北京国际大厦) in Zhongguancun.
Mny conferences are held in this location, including the annual ChinICT conference - which is the largest Information technology Development and Entrepreneurship event in China.
A frequent tourist destination is the Haidian Christian Church, designed by Hamburg-based architects Gerkan, Marg and Partners.
Transportation
Beijing Subway Line 4 runs through the Zhongguancun area with stops at Zhongguancun Station and Haidianhuangzhuang Station. Haidianhuangzhuang is also a transfer station with Line 10. In addition, Zhongguancun is served by many of Beijing's buses.
See also
List of technology centers around the world
China Beijing Equity Exchange
China Milan Equity Exchange
Zhongguancun Administrative Committee
Further reading
References
External links
Article with photos of Zhongguancun's development since the 1980s
Obituary for Chen Chunxian
Zhongguancun Management Committee
Zhongguancun Parks
Travel Introduction to Zhongguancun
Michael Rogers MSNBC Article on Zhongguancun
Hilon Market Building (in Chinese)
Economy of Beijing
Haidian District
Science parks in China
Information technology places
Neighbourhoods of Beijing
Township-level divisions of Beijing |
146012 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Player%20piano | Player piano | A player piano (also known as a pianola) is a self-playing piano, containing a pneumatic or electro-mechanical mechanism that operates the piano action via programmed music recorded on perforated paper, or in rare instances, metallic rolls, with more modern implementations using MIDI. The rise of the player piano grew with the rise of the mass-produced piano for the home in the late 19th and early 20th century. Sales peaked in 1924, then declined as the improvement in phonograph recordings due to electrical recording methods developed in the mid-1920s. The advent of electrical amplification in home music reproduction via radio in the same period helped cause their eventual decline in popularity, and the stock market crash of 1929 virtually wiped out production.
Predecessors
As of 1876, in Philadelphia, three working devices were exhibited that between them contained almost all the components that the final player piano would require. However, it was to be 20 years before all these aspects were combined. Surprisingly, the missing component was the pneumatic reading of the roll. This was in all probability due to the lack of suitably flexible airtight material to translate the air flow into the mechanical movement needed to trigger the player device. It was Edwin S. Votey who invented in 1896 the first practical pneumatic piano player, called the Pianola.
That mechanism finally came into widespread use in the 20th century and was all-pneumatic, with foot-operated bellows providing a source of vacuum needed to operate a pneumatic motor driving the take-up spool while each small inrush of air through a hole in the paper roll was amplified in two pneumatic stages (the so-called double valve mechanism) to sufficient strength to strike a loud note.
Development
1900–1910
The Pianola was advertised in one of the highest-profile campaigns ever, making unprecedented use of full-page color advertisements. It cost $250 (). Other, cheaper makes were launched. A standard 65-note format evolved, with rolls and holes spaced 6 to the inch, although several player manufacturers used their own form of roll incompatible with other makes.
Huge sums were spent: by 1903, the Aeolian Company had more than 9,000 roll titles in their catalog, adding 200 titles per month. Many companies' catalogs ran to thousands of rolls, mainly of light, religious or classical music. Ragtime music did feature, but not commonly: in this period, the player was being sold on its artistic capabilities to rich buyers.
The pioneer of this decade was Melville Clark, who introduced two key ideas: the full-scale roll which could play every note on the piano keyboard, and the internal player as standard. Both ideas were ridiculed by his competitors as unnecessary or impractical, but Clark rapidly won both battles.
By the end of the decade, the piano player device was obsolete, as was the 65-note format. This was a major catastrophe for many small manufacturers, who had spent all their capital on setting up 65-note player operations, and the result was rapid consolidation in the industry.
A new full-scale roll format, playing all 88 notes, was agreed at an industry conference in Buffalo, New York in 1908, the so-called Buffalo Convention. This kept the 11¼-inch roll, but now had smaller holes spaced at 9 to the inch. Any player made anywhere in the world could now play any make of roll. Understanding the need for compatibility was the defining moment of the player industry. The consensus was key to avoiding a costly format war, which plagued almost every other form of entertainment media that followed roll music.
While the player piano matured in America, a young inventor in Germany, Edwin Welte, was working on a player which would reproduce all the aspects of the performance automatically, so that his machine would play back a recorded performance exactly as if the original pianist were sitting at the piano keyboard. Known as a Reproducing Piano, this device, the Welte-Mignon, was launched in 1904. It created new marketing opportunities, as manufacturers could now get the foremost pianists and composers of the day to record their performances on a piano roll, allowing owners of player pianos to experience such a performance in their own homes on their own instruments, exactly as the original pianist had played it.
From the early days, manufacturers sought to create mechanisms which would pick out the melody of a musical composition over the background of the rest of the music in the same manner as a live pianist. The true player piano was designed to be a fully interactive musical experience rather than merely an automatic instrument, and hence they are fitted with interactive control levers intended for the "player pianist" or "pianolist" to create a music performance to their own taste. The player piano would provide aspiring pianists and music lovers with the technical dexterity they lacked while permitting them to control the musical performance interactively as if they were an accomplished pianist.
Aeolian introduced Metrostyle in 1901 and the Themodist in 1904, the latter being an invention "bringing out the melody clearly above the accompaniment." With sales growing rapidly, and the instruments themselves relatively mature, this decade saw a wider variety of rolls become available. Two major advances were the introduction of the hand-played roll, both classical and popular, and the word roll.
Hand-played rolls introduced musical phrasing into the rolls, so that player pianists did not have to introduce it through the use of tempo controls something that few owners ever felt much inclination to do.
Word rolls, a significant 1916 innovation, featured printed lyrics in the margins, making it simple to use players to accompany singing in the home, a very popular activity in the years before radio and acceptable disc recordings became available.
The other major advance was the arrival in America of two major commercial rivals for the Welte-Mignon Reproducing Piano: the Ampico (from 1911 but fully 're-enacting' by 1916) and the Duo-Art (1914). Artrio-Angelus also introduced a reproducing player from 1916. When World War I came in 1914, German patents were seized in the US. In England, Aeolian had a huge factory and sales network, so easily outsold the Ampico. Other makers of Reproducing systems were successful in Europe: Hupfeld Meisterspiel DEA (1907) and Philipps Duca (c 1909). Hupfeld perfected an 88 note reproducing system, the Triphonola, in 1919 It is estimated that perhaps 5% of players sold were Reproducing Pianos.
In America by the end of the decade, the new 'jazz age' and the rise of the fox-trot confirmed the player piano as the instrument of popular music, with classical music increasingly relegated to the reproducing piano. Most American roll companies stopped offering large classical catalogs before 1920, and abandoned 'instrumental' rolls (those without words) within a few years.
Things were somewhat different in England, where the Aeolian Company continued to promote classical material to a receptive public. Word rolls never became the norm in England, always being charged at a 20% premium over non-word rolls. As a result, post-World War I American and British roll collections look very different.
1950–present
During the early 1950s, a number of collectors began to rescue player pianos and all the other instruments of the 1920s and earlier. Among them was Frank Holland, who formed his collection while working in Canada. On returning to England he located a number of like-minded enthusiasts and started to hold meetings at his house in west London. In 1959 this was formalized as 'The Player Piano Group'. By the early 1960s, Frank Holland had formed the British Piano Museum (now the Musical Museum) in Brentford.
In America, another collector was Harvey Roehl, who was so enthused by the players that in 1961 he published a book called Player Piano Treasury. This sold by the tens of thousands, and was followed by books on how to rebuild and restore these instruments. Harvey Roehl's Vestal Press was a major driving force in raising awareness of the player piano within the general population.
Other societies worldwide were formed to preserve and study all aspects of mechanical music, such as the Musical Box Society International (MBSI) and the Automatic Musical Instruments Collector's Association (AMICA) in the USA.
In 1961, Max Kortlander died of a heart attack, and QRS was run by his wife until she sold the company to Ramsi Tick in 1966, in whom it found another stalwart champion whose business philosophy was not so much profit as to limit losses. QRS's presence ensured that owners of newly awakened players could purchase rolls of the latest titles, so ensuring that the instrument remained current, not just a historical curiosity.
So great was the revival that in the 1960s, production of player pianos started again. Aeolian revived the Pianola, albeit this time in a small spinet piano suited to post-war housing. Other manufacturers followed, and production has continued intermittently ever since. QRS today offer a traditional player piano in their Story and Clark piano.
In recent years, there has been greater focus on full rebuilding as original instruments finally stop working. Early enthusiasts could often get by with limited patching, but the repair requirements have slowly risen, although even to this day it is possible to find original 1920s instruments that still work after a fashion a tribute to their quality, and an indication of their continued popularity.
Types
While there are many minor differences between manufacturers, a player piano is a piano that contains a manually controlled pneumatically operating piano player mechanism. It is intended that the operator manually manipulates the control levers in order to produce a musical performance. Various aids to the human operator were developed:
Split stack control These instruments (the vast majority of all player pianos) have the pneumatic player mechanism divided into two approximately equal halves. The operator can lower the volume of either half of the keyboard independently of the other in order to create musical effects.
Theme control These instruments have peripheral pneumatic hardware systems fitted which, when used in conjunction with special music rolls, are able to highlight those notes in the score which are intended to be accented away from those whose volume it is desired to subdue. Basic theme pianos subdue all notes and release full power to only those notes which are aligned with special music roll "theme" perforations. Subtler systems (such as Hupfeld's "Solodant" and Aeolian's "Themodist") have a graduated theme control where the background subdued level and the foreground melody level are both controllable. The nature of the mechanism is such that where a chord occurs notes to be emphasised have to be advanced slightly away from their neighbors in order for the mechanism to identify them.
Isolated theme The hardware of these pianos is able to pick out the melody notes away from their background accompaniment within the entire range of the keyboard without the necessity for breaking up chords i.e. a software workaround. Manufacturers of these systems were the UK "Dalian" and "Kastonome" and the US "Solo Carola".
Expression player The hardware of these pianos is able to generate a broad general musical dynamic from roll coding. The pneumatic stack operates at fixed pre-set tension levels depending on the coding giving a general effect of musical dynamics. Examples of this system are "Recordo" and "Empeco"
Reproducing pianos These are fully automated versions of the player piano requiring no human manual control in order to produce the illusion of a live musical performance. This is achieved by the utilization of music rolls where tempo mapping is fully incorporated into the music rolls i.e. the note lengths of a live performance have been captured. The volume dynamics are created by peripheral pneumatic expression accessories under control of system-specific music roll coding. This obviates the need for human manipulation of the manual dynamic control levers. Typically an electric motor provides power to remove the human operator from the necessity to provide motive power by treadling. Most reproducing pianos are capable of manual over-ride operation, and many are constructed for dual functionality both as regular player pianos and also as reproducing pianos. Numerous companies made these utilizing different technology. The first successful instrument was called the "Mignon" launched by Welte in 1904.
Music rolls
Music rolls for pneumatic player pianos, often known as piano rolls, consist of a continuous sheet of paper rolled on to a spool. The spool fits into the player piano spool box whereupon the free end of the music sheet is hooked onto the take-up spool which will unwind the roll at an even pace across the reading mechanism (the "tracker bar") The music score to be played is programmed onto the paper by means of perforations. Different player systems have different perforation sizes, channel layouts and spool fittings though the majority conform to one or two predominant formats latterly adopted as the industry standard.
Music is programmed via a number of methods.
the music is marked out on master stencil on a purely metronomic basis direct from the printed sheet music with the player-pianists being left to create their own music performance
the music stencil is created metronomically via a piano-keyboard operated punch machine
a live performance is played onto a special piano connected to an electronically operated marking mechanism, and a physical stencil is produced from this live output, either as-is or after some general regularisation of tempo where necessary
modern computer software and MIDI software can be used to create piano roll stencils for operating modern-day perforating machines and create new titles.
The player piano sold globally in its heyday, and music rolls were manufactured extensively in the US, as well as most European countries, South America, Australia and New Zealand. A large number of titles from all manufacturers survive to this day, and rolls still turn up regularly in large quantities.
It was reported that the last remaining mass producer of piano rolls in the world, QRS Music, temporarily halted production of the rolls on December 31, 2008.
However, QRS Music still list themselves as the only roll manufacturer remaining, and claim to have 45,000 titles available with "new titles being added on a regular basis".
The Musical Museum in Brentford, London, England houses a nationally significant collection of piano rolls, with over 20,000 rolls, as well as an extensive collection of instruments which may be seen and heard.
Preservation and restoration
Roll scanning has made significant advances in recent years, applying technology to possibly the most obvious yet hardest of all conservation and preservation topics, the replication of aging and disintegrating piano rolls.
Roll scanning is the process of reading a music roll into a computerized form that can be used for any purpose, such as cutting new rolls or operating old or new instruments directly. This uses the same technology as domestic flatbed scanners, hence the term roll scanner. The ubiquity of computers makes scanning fundamental to the preservation of rolls of all types, as well as providing the basis for secondary activities such as operating instruments directly.
Roll master re-creation is the process of understanding how the roll was originally manufactured so that errors arising from the scanning are removed, and the computer works to the same accuracy as the original perforators in the roll factory. This allows exact replica rolls to be made, and maximizes the accuracy of any secondary activity.
Replication of the original master from which a perforated paper roll was created is the highest aim of roll scanning. Roll masters are not literally replicated, because they were originally large cardboard rolls, but re-created in a computerized form. The rationale is that starting with the master in this form, anything can be done with the music – cut new rolls, operate player pianos fitted with electronic valves, or simulate a performance for playing on modern instruments – all without introducing any errors.
This is the case because virtually all rolls were punched in fixed rows, where punches will occur only in one row or the next, but never in between: the roll is effectively a digital storage medium. Scanning simply counts the distance from the start of the roll to each note event, giving an analogue, and hence inaccurate, representation of the roll. If instead the rows are counted, the result is an exact representation of the original roll – a perfect digital copy. This can be done by applying knowledge about the original roll's creation to the scan.
Once the master computerized copy has been recreated, all of the information in the roll is retained, and anything done after this can be done with the accuracy of the original roll. When using the analogue version, all its timing errors are carried through to whatever is done with it. This is particularly true when making recut rolls, where imposing the punch-row spacing of the perforator over the (different) row spacing of the original roll causes surprisingly obvious and audible errors. However, even analogue uses of the scan, such as operating instruments directly, benefits from the recreated master because of the way it removes timing errors from the basic scan, and in so doing allows the accuracy of the scanner itself to be calibrated.
Roll scanning itself is not of major significance – it simply adds optical technology to the pneumatic, electrical and mechanical technologies previously used to extract data from perforated paper. The ability to store the extracted data on electronic media marked the start of the modern era of scanning, but did little more than act as a substitute for the paper roll. The most familiar such system is the Marantz Pianocorder, but at least two systems were produced, by Wayne Stahnke and Peter Phillips, to operate pneumatic pianos.
From having the performance in "streaming" form on a tape to extracting the note events into a list in a computer is a fairly small step. Such computerisation of the scanned data adds the ability to edit and manipulate it. The key advance is the manipulation that converts the analogue scan data to a replica of the perforation master.
The first serious and sustained roll master replication exercise was probably that of Wayne Stahnke, who described his by-then completed methods in the Mechanical Music Digest in March 1996, and used them to practical advantage in his Rachmaninoff-Bösendorfer CDs. He started with a pneumatic roll reader (from the mid-1970s, for the IMI Cassette Converter system and later projects) and later moved to an optical system. He has been offering commercial scanning and roll master re-creation since the mid-1990s.
Within UK Player Piano Group circles, the topic of recreating roll masters was already well established by 1996. Rex Lawson had raised the topic as part of his work developing a perforation-level roll editor software suite for his Perforetur rolls, and the topic was publicly discussed in the PPG bulletin during winter 1994/5 when Lawson explained precisely why rolls should be copied punch-for-punch, digitally.
Richard Stibbons started his roll-scanning attempts in the mid-1990s, and described his progress in PPG article “The PC Pianola” in December 1995. Soon afterwards he adopted the master replication idea, described very thoroughly in September 2000. This led directly to the launch of the Rollscanners group in February 2001.
The aim of this group has been to focus and publicise scanning efforts worldwide, encouraging sharing of progress and knowledge, a radical shift from the earlier essentially private attempts.
Modern implementations
Later developments of the reproducing piano include the use of magnetic tape and floppy disks, rather than piano rolls, to record and play back the music; and, in the case of one instrument made by Bösendorfer, computer assisted playback.
In 1982, Yamaha Corporation introduced the "Piano Player", which was the first mass-produced, commercially available reproducing piano that was capable of digitally capturing and reproducing a piano performance using floppy disk as a storage medium. The Piano Player was replaced in 1987 by the Yamaha Disklavier and since 1998, the Disklavier PRO models are capable of capturing and reproducing "high-resolution" piano performances of up to 1024 velocity levels and 256 increments of positional pedaling using Yamaha's proprietary XP (Extended Precision) MIDI specification.
Almost all modern player pianos use MIDI to interface with computer equipment. Most modern player pianos come with an electronic device that can record and playback MIDI files on floppy disks and/or CD-ROMs, and a MIDI interface that enables computers to drive the piano directly for more advanced operations. The MIDI files can trigger electromechanical solenoids, which use electric current to drive small mechanical plungers mounted to the key action inside the piano. Live performance or computer generated music can be recorded in MIDI file format for accurate reproduction later on such instruments. MIDI files containing converted antique piano-rolls can be purchased on the Internet.
, several player piano conversion kits are available (PianoDisc, PNOmation, etc.), allowing the owners of normal pianos to convert them into computer controlled instruments. The conversion process usually involves cutting open the bottom of the piano to install mechanical parts under the keyboard, although one organization—Logos Foundation—has manufactured a portable, external kit. A new player piano conversion kit was introduced in 2007-08 by Wayne Stahnke, the inventor of the Bösendorfer SE reproducing system, called the "LX".
Steinway now manufactures a player piano based on Wayne Stahnke's Live Performance LX system. Live Performance Model LX, was sold to Steinway in 2014 and re-branded as Spirio. In contrast to other piano brands, a recording option was not originally available in Steinway Spirio pianos. However, in 2019 Steinway introduced the Spirio | r, which is capable of both reproducing and recording piano music for later playback.
Edelweiss is a British upcomer on the player piano market offering totally bespoke pianos, available in luxury department store Harrods since 2017 and according to the Financial Times YouTube channel 'How to Spend it', Edelweiss is "regarded as the most upmarket of today's breed of the self-playing piano".
Comparison to electric pianos
A player piano is neither an electric piano, electronic piano, nor a digital piano. The distinction between these instruments lies in the way sounds are produced. A player piano is an acoustic piano where the sound is produced by hammer strikes on the piano strings. Electrical or electronic components are limited to moving the keys or hammers mimicking the actions of a person; no sound is produced from electrically amplified audio.
See also
Mechanical organ
Punched tape
Virtual piano
Circus Galop, a piano piece specifically designed for the player piano
Conlon Nancarrow, a significant composer for the player piano
References
Further reading
Reblitz, Arthur A. Player Piano Servicing and Rebuilding. Lanham, Maryland: Vestal Press, 1985.
Reblitz, Arthur A. The Golden Age of Automatic Musical Instruments. Woodsville, New Hampshire: Mechanical Music Press, 2001.
White, William Braid. Regulation and Repair of Piano and Player Mechanism together with Tuning as Science and Art. New York: Edward Lyman Bill, 1909.
External links
The Pianola Forum The Pianola Forum
The Pianola Institute London, England
The Musical Museum in London, England
The Music House Museum in Traverse City, Michigan, USA
The Player Piano Group England
Mechanical musical instruments
Piano
Pneumatics
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