id
stringlengths 3
8
| url
stringlengths 32
207
| title
stringlengths 1
114
| text
stringlengths 93
492k
|
|---|---|---|---|
61010924
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European%20High-Performance%20Computing%20Joint%20Undertaking
|
European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking
|
The European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) is a public-private partnership in High Performance Computing (HPC), enabling the pooling of European Union–level resources with the resources of participating EU Member States and participating associated states of the Horizon 2020 programme, as well as private stakeholders. The Joint Undertaking has the twin stated aims of developing a pan-European supercomputing infrastructure, and supporting research and innovation activities. Located in Luxembourg City, Luxembourg, the Joint Undertaking started operating in November 2018 and will remain operational until the end of 2026.
History
In June 2016, EU Member State leaders, meeting in the European Council called for greater coordination of EU efforts on high-performance computing as part of the EU's wider Digital Single Market strategy. The European Declaration on High-Performance Computing was launched in Rome in March 2017, initially signed by seven EU Member States (France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain) committed to upgrading European computing power. In June 2018, the Council of the EU endorsed the European Commission’s proposal to establish the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking. On 3 July 2018, the European Parliament voted in favour of the Commission’s proposal to create a European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking. The proposal was formally adopted by the Council of the European Union on 28 September 2018.
Funding and objectives
The Joint Undertaking will have a budget of €1 billion, half from the EU budget and half from participating states. Additional resources to the value of over €400 million will come from private partners.
The EuroHPC JU has the twin objectives of;
developing a pan-European supercomputing infrastructure: buying and deploying in the EU at least two supercomputers that will be among the top 5 in the world and at least two other that would today rank in the global top 25 for Europe's private and public users scientific and industrial users, for use in more than 800 scientific and industrial application fields;
supporting research and innovation activities: developing a European supercomputing ecosystem, stimulating a technology supply industry, and making supercomputing resources in many application areas available to a large number of public and private users, including small and medium-sized enterprises.
Programme
In June 2019, the EuroHPC JU governing board selected 8 sites for supercomputing centres located in 8 different EU Member States to host the new high-performance computing machines. The hosting sites will be located in Sofia (Bulgaria), Ostrava (Czechia), Kajaani (Finland), Bologna (Italy), Bissen (Luxembourg), Minho (Portugal), Maribor (Slovenia), and Barcelona (Spain). 3 of the 8 sites will host precursor to exascale machines (capable of executing more than 150 Petaflops, or 150 million billion calculations per second) that will be in the global top 5 supercomputers, and 5 petascale machines (capable of executing at least 4 Petaflops, or 4 million billion operations per second).
The precursor to exascale systems are expected to provide 4–5 times more computing power than the current top supercomputing systems of the Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe (PRACE). Together with the petascale systems, they will double the supercomputing resources available for European-level use, meaning that many more users will have access to them. All the new supercomputers will be connected to the GEANT high-speed pan-European network, like the existing supercomputers that are part of PRACE.
Bulgaria
"Discoverer", Bulgaria's supercomputer was the third launched under the program on October 21, 2021. Located on the territory of the Bulgarian Science and Technology Park "Sofia Tech Park" in Sofia, Bulgaria. The cost is co-financed by Bulgaria and EuroHPC JU with a joint investment of € 11.5 million completed by Atos. Discoverer has a stable performance of 4.5 petaflops and a peak performance of 6 petaflops.
Slovenia
The Slovenian "Vega" was the first of the EuroHPC JU supercomputers to be launched on 20 April 2021. The system, built by Atos, is located at the Institute of Information Science Maribor (IZUM) in Maribor, Slovenia. The Vega supercomputer was jointly financed by EuroHPC JU and the Institute of Information Science Maribor (IZUM) to the sum of €17.2 million euros. Vega has a stable performance of 6.9 petaflops and a peak performance of 10.1 petaflops.
Luxembourg
"Meluxina", Luxembourg's supercomputer was the second to be launched under the programme on 7 June 2021. Located at the LuxProvide data centre in Bissen, Luxembourg, the €30.4 million euros system was completed by Atos, with the Luxembourg government paying for two thirds of the associated costs, and the European Commission contributing the rest. Meluxina has a stable performance of 10 petaflops and a peak performance of 15 petaflops. The system is named after Melusine — a figure of Luxembourg and European folklore.
Finland
The LUMI supercomputer is currently under construction in Kajaani, Finland. The finished system will have a theoretical peak performance of 550 petaflops, which would make it one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world. The HPE Cray EX supercomputer is being supplied by Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), with joint funding by EuroHPC and the LUMI Consortium. The first run of the CPU partition is scheduled for September 2021, with full operations including the GPU partition planned for early 2022.
Members
The EuroHPC Joint Undertaking is composed of public and private members.
Public members
As of January 2020, public members of the Joint Undertaking include, the European Union (represented by the European Commission), 26 of the 27 EU Member States (Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden), and five non-EU associated states of the EU's Horizon 2020 programme (North Macedonia, Norway, Montenegro, Switzerland, and Turkey).
Other EU Member States or countries associated to Horizon 2020 are able to become members, provided that they accept the Statutes and financially contribute to the achievement of the objectives of the Joint Undertaking.
Observer states
Malta has been given "observer" status for the EuroHPC JU, allowing it to participate in deliberations of the Governing Board, but not receive a vote. The United Kingdom lost its observer status following its departure from the EU on 31 January 2020.
Private members
The Joint Undertaking's private members include the European Technology Platform for High Performance Computing (ETP4HPC) and the Big Data Value (BDVA) associations. Any legal entity established in a Member State or country associated to Horizon 2020 that supports research and innovation may apply to become a private member of the Joint Undertaking.
Governance
There are three bodies in the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking:
Governing board
The governing board is composed of representatives of the EU and participating states. The European Commission and each participating state appoint one representative in the Governing Board. Each representative may be accompanied by one expert. The EU holds 50% of the voting rights through the European Commission representative. The rest of the voting rights are distributed among the participating states according to the following lines;
for the general administrative tasks of the Joint Undertaking, the voting rights of the participating states should be distributed equally among them;
for the tasks corresponding to setting up the work plan for the acquisition of supercomputers, the selection of the hosting entity and the research and innovation activities of the Joint Undertaking, the voting rights of the participating states that are EU Member States are based on the principle of qualified majority. Participating states that are not EU Member States hold voting rights for the tasks corresponding to the research and innovation activities;
for the tasks corresponding to the acquisition and operation of supercomputers, only those participating states and the EU that contribute resources to the procurement of petascale supercomputers and the total cost of ownership of pre-exascale supercomputers have voting rights proportional to their contribution.
Industrial and scientific advisory board
The industrial and scientific advisory board consists of two Groups which provide independent advice to the Governing Board;
the Research and Innovation Advisory Group (RIAG) identifies key research priorities. It is composed of no more than 12 members, where no more than six are appointed by the Private Members, and no more than six are appointed by the Governing Board;
the Infrastructure Advisory Group (INFRAG) provides advice on the acquisition and operation of the petascale and pre-exascale supercomputers. It is composed of no more than 12 members appointed by the Governing Board.
Executive director
The executive director is the chief executive responsible for day-to-day management of the Joint Undertaking. The position is currently held by Anders Dam Jensen.
Headquarters
The EuroHPC Joint Undertaking is headquartered in the Drosbach Building, used by the European Commission, in the Luxembourg City quarter of Gasperich, Luxembourg.
See also
Digital Single Market
Horizon 2020
HPC Europa
Supercomputing in Europe
LUMI supercomputer
References
External links
Official website
Luxembourg government video on EuroHPC
Joint undertakings of the European Union and European Atomic Energy Community
Information technology organizations based in Europe
Supercomputing in Europe
Science and technology in Europe
European Union organisations based in Luxembourg
|
6269624
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command%20and%20Data%20modes%20%28modem%29
|
Command and Data modes (modem)
|
Command and Data modes refer to the two modes in which a computer modem may operate. These modes are defined in the Hayes command set, which is the de facto standard for all modems. These modes exist because there is only one channel of communication between the modem and the computer, which must carry both the computer's commands to the modem, as well as the data that the modem is enlisted to transmit to the remote party over the telephone line.
When a modem is in command mode, any characters sent to it are interpreted as commands for the modem to execute, per the Hayes command set. A command is preceded by the letters 'AT', which stand for 'Attention'. For example, if a modem receives 'ATDT5551212' while in the command mode, it interprets that as an instruction to dial the numbers 5551212 on the telephone, using touch-tone dialing. While in command mode, the modem may send responses back to the computer indicating the outcome of the command. For example, the modem may respond with the word "BUSY" in response to the ATDT command, if it hears a busy signal after dialing and is configured to listen for busy signals.
Any communication in command mode (in both directions) is terminated by a carriage return.
When a modem is in data mode, any characters sent to the modem are intended to be transmitted to the remote party. The modem enters data mode immediately after it makes a connection. For example, if ATDT5551212 resulted in a phone call that was answered by another computer modem, the modem would report the word "CONNECT" and then switch to data mode. Any further characters received over the serial link are deemed to be from the remote party, and any characters sent are transmitted to the remote party.
When a voice-capable modem is in "voice data" mode, any data sent to the modem is interpreted as audio data to be played over the phone line, rather than character bytes to be transmitted digitally to the other party.
Switching between modes
Modems always start out in command mode when powered up. Here are the ways a modem can switch to data mode:
After a successful dial-out connection in response to an "ATD" dial command in which the modem reaches another modem.
After answering the phone with the "ATA" answer command, if another modem is on the other end.
After answering the phone automatically for some pre-configured reason (such as auto-answer), and connecting to another modem. (Almost all modems support auto-answering when given the command "ATS0=1".)
After being given the "ATO" (that's three letters A-T-Oh, not A-T-zero) command after being put back in the command mode with an escape sequence (see below).
In response to similar dialing or connecting commands for fax or voice communications.
Modems switch back into command mode from data mode for the following reasons:
The connection got broken (for example, the other party hung up).
The computer issued an escape command, which is usually a 1-second pause, then the three characters "+++", then another 1-second pause. The connection remains, but the modem can accept commands, such as "ATH" for hangup. The computer can issue the "ATO" command to return to data mode.
The computer instructed the modem to terminate the call by setting the Data Terminal Ready (DTR) pin to an "off" state. (This is usually how computers invoke the termination of a modem call nowadays - the +++ escape sequence is rarely used, and usually disabled to avoid malfunction in case these characters are legitimately a part of the data stream).
Practical contemporary use
Today, most modems are configured with the characters "&C1&D2" in the initialization string, or otherwise behave this way by default. This causes the following behavior:
The modem uses the Data Carrier Detect (DCD) pin to signal whether it's connected to a host. The computer can generally just read the DCD pin at any time and always know if the modem is in command or data mode. DCD high means data mode, and low means command mode. DCD is a signal sent from the modem to the computer. (Note that DCD also remains high if in command mode after a +++ escape sequence, but in practice, software uses this so rarely, if at all, so it's not really an issue.)
The modem interprets the Data Terminal Ready (DTR) pin as a signal from the computer to know when it wants to terminate a call. DTR is a signal from the computer to the modem. The computer keeps DTR high at all times until it wants to terminate a call, at which time the computer lowers DTR for a second or two. The computer also keeps DTR low when no programs are running that want to use the modem - this keeps the modem from answering calls due to auto-answer or otherwise doing something unexpected or undesired. The computer may safely assume that after DTR has been brought low for a couple seconds, that the modem will be in command mode.
Data Link Escape (DLE) messages
For normal dial-up data communications, modems enter data mode only once - starting when the session connects, and ending when the session disconnects. However, when modems are used for fax and voice (audio) communication, they rapidly switch between command and data modes several times during a call. This is because the role of the modem changes more frequently - rather than simply handing bytes from point A to point B, it is either negotiating parameters and pages with a fax machine, or switching between recording, pausing, and playback audio modes.
In fax and voice data modes, sometimes events occur that the modem wishes to signal to the computer regardless of whether it's in command or data mode. An example of such an event is a caller pressing a touch-tone key in voice mode. Other common out-of-band messages are notifications from the modem that data was lost because the computer is sending data either too slow or too fast, or that the modem hears an unexpected dial-tone on the line (meaning the caller probably hung up), or that the extension handset was picked up or hung up.
This type of event is signalled with a DLE message, which is a single-character message preceded by a Data Link Escape code. DLE is a character sent from the modem to the computer whose definition is unrelated to either command or data mode, and which uses a specific ASCII code (0x10) which never occurs in any AT commands or responses, so that it can be isolated from the command/response stream on that merit alone. In these modes, whenever a DLE (0x10) is sent, the character following it has a special non-command and non-data meaning. For example, a DLE followed by the number 2 means the caller pressed the number 2 on his telephone keypad. This could happen in either command or data mode so long as the phone line is in use by the modem and someone is on the other end of the line.
The DLE character could appear in fax or audio data. To avoid misinterpreting a 0x10 data byte as a DLE "bit stuffing" is used. Stuffing is a common encoding scheme for modems and used to escape character in streams. In this case stuffing means two DLE's characters in a row are interpreted as one literal byte with value 0x10.
DLE is also used lightly in communication from the computer to the modem. One specific DLE event signals the end of a fax page, or the end of an audio file. That event returns the modem back into command mode. Unlike in standard dial-up data mode, dropping DTR isn't an appropriate way to resume command mode since a hangup is not desired, and an escape code with mandatory pauses isn't suitable either. Because of this, literal 0x10 bytes in data are doubled from the computer to the modem as well.
DLE is never used in standard modem-to-modem data modes such as the one used for dial-up Internet access, at least not by the modem itself. In these modes, DLE is passed over the line just like any other character. DLE (and DLE-escaped messages) are only used by a modem for fax and voice applications, when it is specifically placed in a fax or voice mode.
Modems
|
26830959
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocos2d
|
Cocos2d
|
Cocos2d is a free software framework. It can be used to build games, apps and other cross platform GUI based interactive programs.
Cocos2d contains many branches with the best known being Cocos2d-objc, Cocos2d-x, Cocos2d-html5 and Cocos2d-XNA. There are some independent editors in the cocos2d community, such as those contributing in the areas of SpriteSheet editing, particle editing, font editing and Tilemap editing as well as world editors including SpriteBuilder and CocoStudio.
Sprites and scenes
All versions of Cocos2d work using the basic primitive known as a sprite. A sprite can be thought of as a simple 2D image, but can also be a container for other sprites. In Cocos2D, sprites are arranged together to form a scene, like a game level or a menu. Sprites can be manipulated in code based on events or actions or as part of animations. The sprites can be moved, rotated, scaled, have their image changed, etc.
Features
Animation
Cocos2D provides basic animation primitives that can work on sprites using a set of actions and timers. They can be chained and composed together to form more complex animations. Most Cocos2D implementations let you manipulate the size, scale, position, and other effects of the sprite. Some versions of Cocos2D let you also animate particle effects, image filtering effects via shaders (warp, ripple, etc.).
GUI
Cocos2D provides primitives to representing common GUI elements in game scenes. This includes things like text boxes, labels, menus, buttons, and other common elements.
Physics system
Many Cocos2D implementations come with support for common 2D physics engines like Box2D and Chipmunk.
Audio
Various versions of Cocos2D have audio libraries that wrap OpenAL or other libraries to provide full audio capabilities. Features are dependent on the implementation of Cocos2D.
Scripting support
Support binding to JavaScript, Lua, and other engines exist for Cocos2D. For example, Cocos2d JavaScript Binding (JSB) for C/C++/Objective-C is the wrapper code that sits between native code and JavaScript code using Mozilla's SpiderMonkey. With JSB, you can accelerate your development process by writing your game using easy and flexible JavaScript.
Editor support
End of life support
SpriteBuilder: Previously known as CocosBuilder, SpriteBuilder is an IDE for Cocos2D-SpriteBuilder apps. SpriteBuilder is free and its development was sponsored by Apportable, who also sponsored the free Cocos2D-SpriteBuilder, Cocos3D, and Chipmunk physics projects. It was available as a free app in the Mac App Store. Its latest official version is 1.4. Its latest unofficial version is 1.5 which is compatible with cocos2d-objC 3.4.9. It supports Objective-C.
CocoStudio: a proprietary toolkit based on Cocos2d-x, containing UI Editor, Animation Editor, Scene Editor and Data Editor, together forming a complete system; the former two are tools mainly for artists while the latter are two mainly for designers. This is a proprietary project developed by Chukong Technologies. Its latest version is 3.10 which is compatible with cocos2d-X 3.10. It supports C++. In April 2016 it was deprecated and replaced with Cocos Creator.
Current support
Cocos Creator, which is a proprietary unified game development tool for Cocos2d-X. As of August 2017, it supports JavaScript and TypeScript only and does not support C++ nor Lua. It was based on the free Fireball-X. A C++ and Lua support for creator is under alpha-stage development since April 2017.
SpriteBuilderX, a free scene editor for Cocos2d-X with C++ support and runs on macOS only.
XStudio-365, a proprietary scene editor for Cocos2d-X with Lua support and runs on Windows only.
CCProjectGenerator: a project generator for Cocos2d-ObjC 3.5 that generates Swift or Objective-C projects for Xcode.
Supported platforms and languages
History
Cocos2d (Python)
February 2008, in the town Los Cocos, near Córdoba, Argentina, Ricardo Quesada, a game developer, and Lucio Torre created a 2D game engine for Python with several of their developer friends. They named it "Los Cocos" after its birthplace. A month later, the group released the version 0.1 and changed its name to "Cocos2d".
Cocos2d-iPhone
Attracted by the potential of the new Apple App Store for the iPhone, Quesada rewrote Cocos2d in Objective-C and in June 2008 released "Cocos2d for iPhone" v0.1, the predecessor of the later Cocos2d family.
Cocos2D-ObjC (formerly known as Cocos2D-iPhone and Cocos2D-SpriteBuilder), is maintained by Lars Birkemose.
Also, the English designer Michael Heald designed a new logo for Cocos2d (the Cocos2d logo was previously a running coconut).
Cocos2d-x
November 2010, a developer from China named Zhe Wang branched Cocos2d-x based on Cocos2d. Cocos2d-x is also a free engine under MIT License, and it allows for compiling and running on multiple platforms with one code base.
In 2013, Quesada left cocos2d-iPhone and joined in cocos2d-x team. In March 2017, Quesada was laid off from the Chukong company. In 2015, there are 4 cocos2d branches being actively maintained.
Cocos2d-x & Cocos2d-html5 is maintained and sponsored by developers at Chukong Technologies. Chukong is also developing CocoStudio, which is a WYSIWYG editor for Cocos2d-x and Cocos2D-html5, and a free Cocos3d-x fork of the Cocos3D project.
Other ports, forks, and bindings
Cocos2d has been ported into various programming languages and to all kinds of platforms. Among them there are:
ShinyCocos, in Ruby
Cocos2d-Android, in Java for Android
Cocos2d-windows, in C++ for Windows XP and Windows 7
CocosNet, in C# based on Mono
Cocos2d-javascript, in JavaScript for web browsers
Cocos2d-XNA was born in cocos2d-x community for supporting Windows Phone 7, but now it's branched to an independent project using C# and mono to run on multiple platforms. Jacob Anderson at Totally Evil Entertainment is leading this branch.
Cocos3d works as an extension on cocos2d-iPhone, written in Objective-C. Bill Hollings at Brenwill Workshop Ltd is leading this branch.
Games developed with cocos2d
FarmVille
Plague Inc.
Geometry Dash (cocos2d-x)
Miitomo (cocos2d-x)
Badland (cocos2d-iphone)
Shadow Fight 2 (cocos2d-x)
Cookie Run: OvenBreak
See also
Starling Framework
FlatBuffers
References
Further reading
External links
C Sharp libraries
Free computer libraries
Free game engines
Free software programmed in Objective-C
Free software programmed in Python
Python (programming language)-scriptable game engines
Software using the MIT license
Software using the BSD license
Video game development software
|
31918576
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distant%20minor%20planet
|
Distant minor planet
|
A distant minor planet, or distant object, is any minor planet found beyond Jupiter in the outer Solar System that is not commonly thought of as an "asteroid". The umbrella term is used by IAU's Minor Planet Center (MPC), which is responsible for the identification, designation and orbit computation of these objects. , the MPC maintains 3929 distant objects in its data base.
Most distant minor planets are trans-Neptunian objects and centaurs, while relatively few are damocloids, Neptune trojans or Uranus trojans. All distant objects have a semi-major axis (average distance from the Sun) greater than 6 AU. This threshold, which is just beyond the orbit of Jupiter (5.2 AU), ensures that the vast majority of "true asteroids" – such as the near-Earth, Mars-crosser, main-belt and Jupiter trojan populations – are excluded from the distant minor planets.
See also
Critical-list minor planet
Unusual minor planet
References
External links
Data base query form, Minor Planet Center
Orbital Plot – locations and orbits of distant objects, Minor Planet Center
|
4637939
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanti
|
Ivanti
|
Ivanti () is an IT software company headquartered in South Jordan, Utah. It produces software for IT Security, IT Service Management, IT Asset Management, Unified Endpoint Management, Identity Management and Supply Chain Management. It was formed in January 2017 with the merger of LANDESK and HEAT Software, and later acquired Cherwell Software.
History
LANDESK
LAN Systems was founded in 1985 and its software products acquired by Intel in 1991 to form its LANDESK division. LANDESK introduced the desktop management category in 1993. In 2002 LANDESK Software became a standalone company with headquarters near Salt Lake City, Utah. In 2006, Avocent purchased the company for $416 million. Also in 2006, LANDESK added process management technologies to its product line and extended into the consolidated service desk market with LANDESK Service Desk. In 2010 LANDESK was acquired by private equity firm Thoma Bravo.
LANDESK bought supply chain software company Wavelink in 2012, network vulnerability assessment and patch management company Shavlik in 2013, application software company Naurtech Corporation in 2014, data visualisation company Xtraction Solutions in 2015. and AppSense, a provider of secure user environment management technology, in 2016.
Lumension Security
Lumension Security, Inc was founded as High Tech Software in 1991 and headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona The company was rebranded as PatchLink Corporation in 1999. In 2016, Patrick Clawson was appointed Chairman, CEO and President The company then adopted the Lumension name in 2007.
In 2009 Lumension acquired Securityworks, and in 2012 acquired CoreTrace.
Through this period, industry awards included:
In 2014, "Lumension Endpoint Management and Security Suite" was "Highly Commended" in the Best Advanced Persistent Threat Protection category at the SC Magazine Awards Europe 2014.
In 2013, Lumension received the position as a "Visionary" on Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Endpoint Protection Platforms.
In 2012, 2011 and 2010 Lumension received the position as a "Visionary" on Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Endpoint Protection Platforms.
In 2011 "Lumension Power Management" was listed in the Manitoba Hydro Commercial Network Energy Management Program.
In 2010 Lumension was named a "Leader" in Vulnerability Management in the Forrester Wave report.
In 2010 "Lumension Risk Manager" was "Highly Commended" in the Best Security Management category at the SC Magazine Awards Europe 2010.
In 2008 Frost & Sullivan awarded Lumension the Global Market Penetration Leadership Award.
Lumension products traditionally competed in the endpoint management and security industry against Sophos, McAfee, Kaspersky Lab, Symantec and Trend Micro among others.
HEAT
HEAT software was a producer of software for IT Service Management and Endpoint Management formed in 2015 by the merger of FrontRange Solutions and Lumension Security.
Ivanti
In January 2017 Clearlake Capital Group, owner of HEAT Software, purchased LANDESK from Thoma Bravo. On January 23, 2017, LANDESK and HEAT Software merged to form Ivanti. The combined company has 1800 employees in 23 countries and markets some products with references to their original names such as Wavelink supply chain software and Ivanti patch product ‘powered by Shavlik’.
On April 12, 2017, Ivanti acquired Concorde Solutions, a UK based Software Asset Management company. In July 2017, Ivanti acquired RES Software, a US and Netherlands based company producing automation and identity management software.
In September 2020, Ivanti entered into an agreement to acquire US based Unified Endpoint Management company MobileIron for $872 million and San Jose, California based Pulse Secure, for undisclosed terms.
On December 1, 2020, Ivanti announced those acquisitions completed.
On January 26, 2021, Ivanti announced the intent to acquire Cherwell Software.
Products
Ivanti Package Studio based on Liquit Setup Commander
Ivanti patch management and security management applications for SCCM, third party applications, OS and servers
Ivanti Service Manager is an ITSM and Enterprise Service Management based on HEAT's products
IT Asset Management
Supply Chain management – based on Wavelink's products.
Endpoint Manager - based on LANDESK LDMS
Pulse Connect Secure, Policy Secure, Workspace, and Pulse Zero Trust Access - based on Pulse Secure's products
Controversies
2021 Pulse Connect Secure hack
On April 20, 2021, cybersecurity firm FireEye reported that hackers with suspected Chinese ties exploited Pulse Secure VPN to break into government agencies, defense companies and financial institutions in Europe and the US. The report detailed how hackers repeatedly took advantage of several known and one novel flaw in Pulse Secure VPN to gain access to dozens of organizations in the defense industrial sector. The US Department of Homeland Security confirmed the intrusions in a public advisory, urging network administrators to scan for signs of compromise. Ivanti published an emergency workaround which DHS urged network admins to install. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency ordered federal civilian agencies to take several steps to reduce risk from the suspected breach. FireEye reported that some of the intrusions using the vulnerabilities began as early as August 2020, conducted by those with suspected ties to the Chinese government. There were similarities between the hack and intrusions in 2014 and 2015 conducted by a Chinese espionage actor named APT5. After further examination, CISA discovered that at least 5 federal agencies had been breached, among 24 agencies that use the Pulse Connect Secure products.
References
Software companies based in Utah
Remote administration software
System administration
Software companies established in 1985
1985 establishments in Utah
Software companies of the United States
|
1418946
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-click
|
Double-click
|
A double-click is the act of pressing a computer mouse button twice quickly without moving the mouse. Double-clicking allows two different actions to be associated with the same mouse button. It was developed by Bill Atkinson of Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.) for their Lisa project. Often, single-clicking selects (or highlights) an object, while a double-click executes the function associated with that object. Following a link in a modern web browser is accomplished with only a single click, requiring the use of a second mouse button, "click and hold" delay, or modifier key to gain access to actions other than following the link. On touchscreens, the double-click is called "double-tap"; it's not used as much as double-click, but typically it functions as a zoom feature. ("triple-tap" sometimes used to zoom the whole screen.)
On icons
On most systems, double-clicking an icon in the file manager will perform a default action on the object represented by the icon. Double-clicking an application program will launch the program, and double-clicking a file icon will open the file in a default application for that file's type or format.
On text
In many programs, double-clicking on text selects an entire word, and possibly other characters, as defined in word boundaries. (In X Window, it will also copy that piece of text into a buffer separate from the system clipboard, as with all selected text. The selected text is not also put into clipboard until an overt cut or copy action takes place. A person can retrieve the information from this buffer, which is not the system clipboard, later by pressing the middle mouse button.)
Difficulties
New mouse users or the elderly often have difficulty with double-clicking due to a need for specific fine motor skills. They may have trouble clicking fast enough or keeping the mouse still while double-clicking.
Solutions to this may include:
Click once to select and press Enter on keyboard (on Windows systems).
Using keyboard navigation instead of a mouse.
Configuring the system to use single clicks for actions usually associated with double-clicks.
Configuring the system to allow for more delay time between the two clicks for it to be registered as a double-click (See below for how to on several operating systems)
Remapping the double-click function to a single click on an additional button, for example the often unused middle button. This effectively creates a Unix style 3-button scheme of select/action/context.
To prevent the mouse from moving during a double-click, bracing the mouse by putting the thumb on the side of the mouse and the bottom of the hand on the bottom of the mouse.
In Windows, the threshold of movement can be increased by changing the associated registry keys in HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Control Panel/Mouse
Additionally, applications and operating systems will often not require the mouse to be completely still. Instead, they implement hysteresis, allowing for a small amount of movement between the two clicks.
Another complication lies in the fact that some systems associate one action with a single click, another with a double-click, and yet another with a two consecutive single clicks. Even advanced users sometimes fail to differentiate between these properly. An example is the most common way of renaming a file in Microsoft Windows. A single click highlights the file's icon and another single click (on the filename, not the icon) makes the name of the file editable. A user who tries to execute this action may inadvertently open the file (a double-click) by clicking too quickly, while a user who tries to open the file may find it being renamed by clicking too slowly. This may be avoided by Windows' users by using the menu (or F2/Enter) to initiate renaming and opening rather than multiple clicks. In GNOME, this problem is avoided entirely by simply not allowing file renaming by this method. In the classic Mac OS, which originated this technique, moving the mouse after the first click would immediately highlight the name. This was the result of a bug in the first versions of the system, one that was deliberately continued after users had come to rely upon it.
Speed and timing
The maximum delay required for two consecutive clicks to be interpreted as a double-click is not standardized.
According to Microsoft's MSDN website, the default timing in Windows is 500 ms (half a second). The double-click time is also used as a basis for other timed actions.
The double-click timing delay can usually be configured by the user. For example, adjusting double-click settings can be done by:
Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 - Start > Control Panel > Mouse > Buttons (Start > Control Panel > Printers & Other Hardware > Mouse > Buttons if Control Panel is in Category view). If you prefer, you may use Start > Run > main.cpl.
macOS - Applications (or Apple menu) > System Preferences > Keyboard & Mouse > Mouse
In the KDE Desktop under Unix-like operating systems - K Menu > Control Center (or Alt+F2 "kcontrol") > Peripherals > Mouse > Advanced > Double-click interval
In the GNOME Desktop under Unix-like operating systems - System > Preferences > Mouse
Patent
In 2004, Microsoft was granted a patent on using a double-click on "limited resource computing devices". As a result of this, some observers fear that any U.S. company which uses double-clicking may have to change their product not to use the technology, pay licensing fees to Microsoft, or give Microsoft access to intellectual property.
See also
Single-click
Triple-click
References
User interface techniques
|
3520949
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AK-107
|
AK-107
|
The AK-107 is a Russian 5.45×39mm assault rifle developed from the AK-100-series. It features a "balanced" operating system, similar to that used in the AEK-971. In this case, the designation AK does not indicate Avtomat Kalashnikova but Alexandrov/Kalashnikov. The revised designation indicates the incorporation of a new gas system, designed by Youriy Alexandrov, for Kalashnikov-pattern rifles.
These new rifles were derived from the AL-7 experimental rifle of the early 1970s. The AL-7 utilized an innovative balanced gas operating system known as the Balanced Automatics Recoil System (BARS) developed by Peter Andreevich Tkachev of TsNIITochMash that was first used earlier on the AO-38 assault rifle of 1965 that essentially eliminated felt recoil and muzzle rise. The system was modified by Alexandrov, then a junior engineer at Izhmash, and prototypes were produced under the designation AL-7. The AL-7 was considered too expensive for production at the time and the Soviet Army selected the AK-74 instead as the new service rifle. No further development occurred until the mid-1990s when Alexandrov, by then a senior engineer, was directed to update his design for production as a less expensive alternative to the AN-94. The new rifle differs only slightly from the original AL-7. The AK-107 receiver is not fluted and a three-round burst feature has been added. There is otherwise little difference between it and the AL-7 prototypes.
Design details
The AK-107, AK-108, and AK-109 represent a significant change to the Kalashnikov operating system originally designed in the late 1940s. This system uses a recoil-reducing countermass mechanism with two operating rods that move in opposite directions, thereby providing "balance". One operating rod, the upper, has a gas piston facing forward while the lower also has a gas piston. The gas tube at the forward end of the handguard is double-ended to accommodate the two rods. The enlarged gas tube cover of the upper handguard guides both rods in their travel.
When the rifle is fired, gas is tapped from the gas port to enter the gas tube, driving the bolt carrier to the rear and the counter-recoil upper rail forward. The critical timing of the reciprocating parts is accomplished by a star-shaped sprocket that links and synchronizes both components, causing both to reach their maximum extension, or null point where forces are exactly equal, at exactly the same instant. The felt recoil is therefore eliminated, enhancing accuracy and assisting control during fully automatic fire. The travel distance of the AK-107 reciprocating parts is less than other Kalashnikov designs, so the cyclic rate is higher at 850–900 rounds/min rather than 600 rounds/min on other AK rifles. However, as the felt recoil is virtually eliminated, the manufacturer claims that accuracy is enhanced, especially during burst fire. An enhancement of 1.5 to 2 times, compared to the original AK-100 series, has been reported.
The AK-107 is a selective fire weapon, with a three-round burst capability in addition to semi-automatic and fully automatic firing modes. The system on the AK-107 resets to three-round burst each time the trigger is released, even if only one or two rounds were fired. External differences between the AK-107 and its predecessors are minor. They include a modified ejection port and a much thicker operating rod cover. The method of attaching the receiver cover now involves a rotating latch in place of the traditional Kalashnikov button at the rear of the receiver cover. The rear sight is also attached directly to the receiver cover rather than to the receiver itself and the selector has four positions instead of three. Optical and night sights can be installed, the rifle can also accept a 40 mm GP-25 grenade launcher.
The AK-108 is a version of the AK-107 chambered in 5.56×45mm NATO, and the AK-109 is a less known and produced version chambered in 7.62×39mm. Like the rest of the AK-100 series, these newer AKs use synthetic materials such as black fiberglass-reinforced polymer for the pistol grip and heat shield. This material is more cost efficient and much stronger than the original AKM/AK-74 wood furniture.
MK-107
In March 2013, Izhmash debuted a civilian version of the AK-107/AK-108 rifle designated the Saiga MK-107. The MK-107 features improvements over the original AK-107 design including a rounded ergonomic charging handle, a button-style safety above the trigger guard, AR-15-style pistol grip and stock (made by Israeli firm CAA Tactical), and full length top picatinny rail.
Users
Currently being tested by the Russian military with new features including an enhanced stock, top and side-mounted accessory rails, high-capacity Izhmash 60-round quad-stack magazine, and holographic sight.
See also
AEK-971
AK-12
AL-7
AN-94
AO-38
AO-63
Project Abakan
List of Russian weaponry
List of assault rifles
References
5.56×45mm NATO assault rifles
7.62×39mm assault rifles
Kalashnikov derivatives
Assault rifles of Russia
Kalashnikov Concern products
Weapons and ammunition introduced in 1994
|
4114066
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohio%20Scientific
|
Ohio Scientific
|
Ohio Scientific Inc. (also known as Ohio Scientific Instruments) was an Ohio-based computer company that built and marketed microcomputers from 1975 to 1981. Their best-known products were the Challenger series of microcomputers and Superboard single-board computer kits.
Products
One of their first products, launched in 1977, was the OSI Model 500 system, a very simple single board computer based on the MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor. It needed an external video monitor as it had an internal character-based video controller and ran Microsoft BASIC. Storage was to any cassette by FSK encoding.
The Challenger III, introduced in August 1977, had a maximum of 53 KB of static RAM and used 8" 370 KB floppy disks in its dual floppy drive system. It was also sold in an optional 4' high 19" rack mount cabinet with wheels, version C3-B, that included a hard drive. (Ohio was the first company to use a Winchester hard drive in its PCs.) This was intended for an office environment and used a standard computer terminal, like the Hazeltine 1420 (or 1500), which was optionally supplied through factory sales. The terminals were the same ones as used with mainframe computers of that era. With the largest hard drive available, 74MB, the system cost just under $13,000. The least expensive version without the rack or hard drive was $3995 MSRP, a phenomenal performance-to-cost ratio for the time. The Challenger III also had the capability to support non-floppy or hard drive Challenger 2P computers through a simple network using RS-232 links.
OSI's later products were also 6502-based, the Superboard II, Challenger 1P, Challenger 2P, Challenger 4P and Challenger 8P, introduced in 1979 and discontinued in 1981.
Original Ohio Scientific motherboard designs used 7400-series TTL chips. Instead of using a floppy disk controller IC, OSI used a Motorola MC6850 ACIA Serial Port ACIA chip and a Motorola MC6821 (PIA) chip for the Disk Drive Controller, which made OSI 8" & 5-1/4" Floppy Disks unreadable by other computer systems.
The Superboard II was the least expensive computer, retailing for around the $279 price range, with an onboard BASIC programming language. It came without a case or power supply. It was a single board computer with the keyboard integrated on the same printed circuit board. It was shipped with 4KB of RAM (upgradable to 8KB), a 2KB BIOS in ROM (known as SYNMON as the ROM was labeled 'SYN600' or 'SYNMON 1.0') and an early version of Microsoft 8K BASIC. OSI 6502 BASIC Version 1.0 Revision 3.2 (c) 1977 By Microsoft.
The version OSI C1P / 600D Superboard II (occasionally advertised as the 'Colorboard') featured an unpopulated socket for an extra 1k × 4-bits of video RAM to hold character color information. The implementation of this was detailed in the OSI user group newsletter which was published around four times a year. The 600D also featured two video modes: 32×32 (~24×24 visible) for 'graphics', or 64×16 (~48×15 visible) for text where each text line had a blank line between it and the next. The mode could be selected by a poke to the keyboard register. The included character set had the standard alphabet (upper/lower), numbers and punctuation - plus many small icons for game creation (tanks, airplanes, cannons, cars, playing card suits, trees, people, houses, and various shaped lines). The computer couldn't write to the video memory without glitching the display. There was an add-on graphics card for the Superboard that would display 256 by 256 pixels. It came with software to draw 3D graphics.The keyboard polling register (a simple 8-bit TTL Latch) was also used as a very crude digital-to-analog converter by means of a resistor ladder connected to an 'audio out' socket to the right of the keyboard.
Unusual for the day, but reflecting the home built nature of personal computers of this era, the company supplied full schematics of their hardware. This allowed the Computer Hobbyist or 3rd-party companies to create after-market field modifications, such as increased clock speed, increasing the cassette tape drive storage speed, and increased video line length, as well as reverse video (white screen with black text).
The C2P video systems did not have color graphics like the Apple II, just upper- and lower-case text, and some pseudo graphical characters, (comparable to the "PETSCII" character set of the Commodore PET) for drawing lines and supporting simple games.
The Challenger 4P (C4P-MF) came with color display output capability, using a TV or TV converted to have direct video input, and dual 5¼" floppy drives. It also had the ability to connect to external sensors or control external components, through a programmable I/O section mounted on the back. This was a feature no competitor had.
Software was also minimal for the non-disk drive versions of the C1P, C2P, and Superboard II. They contained an 8K Basic in ROM and used cassette tapes to load and store programs. Disk-based systems included a bare-bones "Disk Operating System" that was much handier than using compact cassettes at 1200 baud.
Mainly due to the popularity of a UK clone of the Superboard computer called the UK101, the bugs in the BASIC ROMs were eventually fixed, and at least two third-party companies produced their own version of the OS. One version was called 'CEGMON', the other was 'WEMON' produced by Watford Electronics in the UK. Both featured full screen editing (almost identical to the commodore PET), Named cassette file handling (like the PET) and a greatly Improved machine code monitor (also very similar to the Commodore PET).
The OSI Challenger III had three processors: a 6502, a 6800, and a Z80. These were software switchable, but only one would be running at a time. Because it had a Z80, the Challenger III could run CP/M, but it booted up in 6502 mode, and the bootstrap would switch processors.
The operating systems which ran on the CIII were OSI CP/M, OS-65D, and OS-65U. All three operating systems, at least in the later versions, had directories with file names. OS-65D supported only six-character long file names. The OS-65U operating system was geared toward business uses and supported multiple users. Each user had a 48K memory partition allocated to it and the operating system scheduled time for each user.
OSI/CPM had an assembler, FORTRAN and COBOL compiler, but to make a copy of the CP/M, one had to boot in OS-65D to copy the disk.
OS-65D had a Basic Interpreter, Assembler, Editor, Disassembler, and Disk Copy Utility.
OS-65U had a Basic Interpreter, and had some simple networking capability, but assembly programs had to be done in OS-65D and then ported over.
History
Origins
The company OSI was formed May 1975 by Mike and Charity Cheiky and a group of educators and engineers to produce a line of low cost educational aids. In November 1975, OSI entered the microprocessor field with products for education and the hobbyist. All of the staff members of OSI were alumni, former faculty members, or students of Hiram College. The OSI Computer Group was located at 11679 Hayden Street in Hiram, Ohio immediately adjoining the campus of Hiram College. OSI was a private enterprise which was not affiliated with Hiram College or any other parent organization. Their earliest products were MOS 6502-based systems, the same processor used in the MOS Technology KIM-1, Apple 1, Commodore PET, VIC-20 and many other early micros. The company initially sold a computer trainer, which consisted of the 6502 and enough circuitry to communicate with the processor using switches. This was first advertised for $99 in the February 1976 edition of Byte Magazine.
If the trainer was successfully assembled, the owner could trade it, along with another $10, for the company's "OSI 400 Superboard System", a fully developed single-board microcomputer that could run with either the 6502 or the Motorola 6800. The bare boards were available for as little as $29, or in a variety of kit versions with more or less of the parts needed to build it out. It could support up to eight National Semiconductor 2102 SRAM memory chips for 1024 bytes (1 KB) of RAM, 512 bytes of ROM, an ACIA serial interface chip for RS-232C or a 20 mA current loop interface for a teleprinter, a PIA for 16-parallel I/O lines, and a power supply. Adding a terminal or teletype completed the system. The company also sold one of the earliest floppy disk interfaces and a video card for use with a composite monitor.
Challenger
By 1978 the company introduced a new main CPU card design, the model 500. This was primarily sold as part of their new Challenger microcomputer systems, but was also available in the Superboard II form. The base model Superboard was essentially the same card as the Challenger, complete with the keyboard, however other versions were available that split out the functionality into separate cards connected together along an 8-connector backplane using 48-pin Molex connectors.
In 1984, the model 517 processor board was introduced. This board was purchased from the Portland Board Company in Portland, OR and was designed by Bob Ankeney. It provided multi-processor support with each board adding 2 users, each with 56K of memory and a 4MHz 6502C CPU. The OS-65U operating system was modified by Keith Brown to support multi-processor compatibility.
End of OSI
In March 1981 OSI was sold to M/A-Com Inc. of Burlington, Massachusetts. OSI then concentrated on business systems. In May 1982 the OSI name was changed to M/A-Com Office Systems Inc. In November 1983, the company was acquired by Investments A. B. Beijer of Sweden and renamed ISOTRON, Inc.
See also
Compukit UK101, a clone of the Superboard II
References
External links
Dave's OSI repository and forum
Mark's OSI and Compukit archive
Srecord program: multiplatform hex reader writer understands OS-65V hex dumps
Early microcomputers
Computer companies established in 1975
6502-based home computers
1975 establishments in Ohio
Computer companies disestablished in 1981
1981 disestablishments in Ohio
|
29482264
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin%20Sanders
|
Marvin Sanders
|
Marvin Sanders (born October 2, 1967) is an American football coach.
Playing career
Sanders played as a defensive back for the University of Nebraska–Lincoln from 1985 through 1989, earning a letter in each of his last three years. He graduated in 1990 with a Bachelor's Degree in Business Administration.
Coaching career
Sanders began his football coaching career as an assistant coach for Nebraska Wesleyan University just two years after he graduated from Nebraska, putting in two years as the Secondary Coach for the Prairie Wolves football team. He was appointed to continue as a Secondary Coach as well as Sports Information Director for the University of Minnesota Morris in Morris, Minnesota for the 1994 season, and then returned to the State of Nebraska as the Secondary Coach for the Mavericks at the University of Nebraska at Omaha for 1995. UNO promoted Sanders to Defensive Coordinator in 1997. During his five-year tenure with the Mavericks, the team won two North Central Conference championships, and made two appearances in the NCAA Division I Football Championship playoffs.
Sanders was hired into his first Division I-A football coaching position in 2000, when he was named by New Mexico State University Head Football Coach and fellow Nebraska alum Tony Samuel as the Defensive Ends and Outside Linebackers Coach for the Aggies. The following season, Colorado State University Head Football Coach Sonny Lubick named Sanders as the Secondary Coach for the Rams. The Rams went 7-5 in 2001, and defeated North Texas in the 2001 New Orleans Bowl. The 2002 season saw an improvement to 10-4 and a Mountain West Conference championship, though the Rams ended the season with a 3-17 loss to in the .
Nebraska under Frank Solich
Nebraska Head Football Coach Frank Solich brought Sanders back to Lincoln in 2003 amidst a staff shakeup following the Cornhuskers' first non-winning season since 1961. Sanders was now in charge of the defensive backs at Nebraska, where 47 takeaways on the season set a new school record, and the Nebraska Blackshirts set new school and league records with 32 interceptions, the nation's highest-ranked pass efficiency defense, and the nation's second-best scoring defense. Despite the turnaround, Solich was fired after finishing the regular season 9-3. Nebraska Defensive Coordinator Bo Pelini subsequently led the team to a 17-3 victory over Michigan State in the 2003 Alamo Bowl to finish the team's season at 10-3, but he and Sanders, along with nearly all of the remaining staff, were let go after Bill Callahan was appointed as Nebraska's 31st Head Football Coach.
North Carolina
Sanders was named as co-Defensive Coordinator and Defensive Backs Coach at the struggling North Carolina for 2004. After finishing just 2-10 in 2003 before his arrival, Sanders helped the Tar Heels improve to a 6-6 (5-3 ACC) record and posting the lowest yards allowed by a UNC defense in three years. Under Sanders direction, UNC improved over 60 spots nationally in total defense. UNC Head Football Coach John Bunting was fired halfway through the 2006 season, and replaced by Butch Davis for 2007. Davis did not retain Sanders in his new staff.
Nebraska under Bo Pelini
After a one-year absence from coaching, Sanders was again brought back to Nebraska following the firing of Bill Callahan after a four-year record of 27-22. Callahan's replacement was former Nebraska Defensive Coordinator Bo Pelini, who had also been let go along with most of Frank Solich's staff after 2003. Pelini installed Sanders as the Secondary Coach for the Cornhuskers as part of his effort to turn around a program that had struggled under Callahan. Nebraska's Blackshirts defense improved to rank as the second best in the Big 12 Conference in 2008 after languishing near the bottom of the pack nationally in the years prior. In 2009, two of Sanders' players were named to the All-Big 12 first team, and the Nebraska secondary was among the highest ranked in the nation with the highest-rated pass defense and highest-rated scoring defense, and among the top ten nationally in rushing defense, sacks, and total defense. The 2009 Nebraska secondary intercepted 18 times while only allowing seven touchdown passes all season.
Sanders resigned from Nebraska on February 3, 2011, citing personal and family reasons.
USC Trojans
After agreeing to be FAU's defensive coordinator under new head coach Carl Pelini (Bo's brother) on December 5, 2011, Sanders left to become the USC Trojans defensive backs coach on February 12, 2012 under head coach Lane Kiffin. USC had gone through the whole 2011 season without a defensive backs coach as former coach Willie Mack Garza left days before the season opened stemming from his connection to Willie Lyles while at Tennessee. Sanders was the first coach hired by Pelini, as the Owls defensive coordinator. As per USC policy being a private school, Sanders financial agreement was not released. Pelini praised Sanders when he announced the hiring, saying they shared the same philosophy and that he had been the only candidate for the job.
Sanders was relieved of his duties at USC after the school hired Clancy Pendergast to be their defensive coordinator.
Loyola
Sanders was officially hired as the head coach of one of the top high school football programs in the state of California, Loyola High School of Los Angeles, on February 24, 2013. In four years, he accumulated a 20–22 record and 1–1 in the CIF Division 1 playoffs.
Prior to the 2017 season, Loyola and the Los Angeles Times announced Sanders would not return to lead the Cubs' football program as the head coach.
Dallas Renegades
After one season as defensive coordinator of the Coastal Carolina Chanticleers football team, Sanders joined the XFL's Dallas Renegades in 2019 as defensive backs coach.
References
1967 births
Living people
American football defensive backs
Coastal Carolina Chanticleers football coaches
Colorado State Rams football coaches
Dallas Renegades coaches
Florida Atlantic Owls football coaches
Minnesota Morris Cougars football coaches
Nebraska Cornhuskers football coaches
Nebraska Cornhuskers football players
Nebraska Wesleyan Prairie Wolves football coaches
Nebraska–Omaha Mavericks football coaches
New Mexico State Aggies football coaches
North Carolina Tar Heels football coaches
USC Trojans football coaches
High school football coaches in California
Sportspeople from Chicago
Players of American football from Chicago
|
15591681
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vistaprint
|
Vistaprint
|
Vistaprint is a Dutch global, e-commerce company that produces physical and digital marketing products for small and micro businesses. It was one of the first businesses to offer its customers the capabilities of desktop publishing through the internet when it launched in 1999. Vistaprint is wholly owned by Cimpress plc, a publicly traded company based in Ireland.
Business
The company is based in Venlo, Netherlands and employs over 5,100 employees globally in its 13 offices and printing facilities.
History
Robert Keane founded a company in Paris in 1995 called Bonne Impression, a direct marketer of desktop publishing software and pre-printed laser-printer-compatible specialty papers for printing brochures, stationery and business cards, particularly for small businesses. In 1999, the company adopted an internet-based business model and changed its name to Vistaprint.
In September 2005, the company filed its initial public offering and began trading on the Nasdaq. It opened a European office in Barcelona, Spain in September 2006, and in 2009 relocated to Venlo, the Netherlands.
In November 2014, the company announced it would reorganize; Vistaprint continued operating under the Vistaprint brand while the parent company became Cimpress. As a result of the change, the company's ticker symbol was changed from VPRT to CMPR.
In November 2016, Cimpress announced that it would be opening a manufacturing facility in Reno, Nevada. The facility will serve as home to more than 20 brands, one of which is Vistaprint.
In August 2018, Vistaprint announced that it would continue to expand its presence in North America with a new facility in Dallas, Texas. This will be the second manufacturing facility in the U.S. Vistaprint plans to have the manufacturing fully completed by 2023.
Printing process
Orders are processed online and jobs are printed using a formula based on type of job, paper stock type, print run quantity, finishing (if any) and ship-by dates, among other factors. User-selectable options are minimised, printing standard types of printed materials, such as business cards or postcards. Within each category, only specific sizes, paper stocks and ink colours are supported. This results in higher numbers of similar jobs which can be ganged together. Changeover time is reduced because there's less need to change paper or inks between jobs.
Self-service design, proofing and ordering are handled at the front-end through the web, with controlled printing, cutting, packing and dispatching handled at the back-end through printing plants. Cimpress' proprietary process involves multiple software components, and the management of multiple production components, in an end-to-end production workflow from "click to ship". Vistaprint is vertically integrated with production facilities for North America in Windsor, Ontario and for Europe in Venlo, Netherlands. The company uses presses such as the Manroland 700 as part of its printing assembly line.
Computer-integrated manufacturing techniques help minimize human intervention and labour costs. Using browser-based desktop publishing environment, customers design and proofread the job. Jobs are routed for printing without intervention. The printing is done in a single pass on automated, high-volume, large-format professional quality presses. Once printed, the products are cut down to size using a computerized robotic cutter, assembled, packaged and addressed using proprietary software-driven processes, and shipped to the customer.
In a form of mass customization using as little as 60 seconds of production labour per order versus an hour or more for traditional printers, orders are printed faster and at lower costs than traditional printers. Their strategy is to target small-run orders usually excluded from conventional large printers.
Patents
One of the company's early hires was an in-house patent attorney. It currently holds over 100 patents worldwide. The company has described its objective as a "minefield of patents" and has been active in pursuing companies that it considers to be infringing on those patents.
In 2006, the company filed a patent infringement suit against Print24 GmbH and UnitedPrint.com AG. A German court ruled in favour of Vistaprint in July 2007. However, after appealing, the German Federal Patent Court ruled in favour of Unitedprint.com, rescinding Vistaprint’s controversial software patent in March 2009.
Separately, in May 2007, the company filed a patent infringement suit against two Taylor Corporation subsidiaries, 123Print and DrawingBoard.
Partnerships
In 2007, a strategic partnership was announced with OfficeMax to provide an in-store station in up to 900 OfficeMax stores in the US and Mexico. OfficeMax ImPress is an OfficeMax-branded web site for small business printing based on Vistaprint technologies. In 2008, Vistaprint announced a strategic partnership with Intuit, a supplier of accounting software, tying their service into Intuit's QuickBooks software using an Intuit-branded web site. In 2009, the company also announced it will supply services for the FedEx Office brand. The company announced in 2012 that it had entered into a strategic partnership with Staples Inc.
Controversies
Rewards program
In the US, Vistaprint was accused of enrolling customers into Vertrue's paid-membership reward plan without the customer's agreement. Credit card details were passed on to Vertrue (formerly Memberworks Incorporated) by Vistaprint, and charges were then made on those credit cards by Vertrue allegedly without the owner's consent. Numerous complaints were received by ConsumerAffairs.com and The Better Business Bureau by consumers objecting to these charges including the complaints of still being charged after canceling and that more than a year after cancelling membership, the charges began again.
Vistaprint's partnerships in the United Kingdom have attracted criticism. Critics have stated that Vistaprint's customers are enrolled without their knowledge in a reward voucher operated by an associated company, VPrewards.com, at a cost of £9.95 a month, and that no information is provided to customers subsequently. Additionally, it is up to the customers to detect the fact that they have been enrolled as members and to cancel unwanted membership.
In August 2008, four class-action lawsuits were filed against Vistaprint. The four complaints alleged that the defendants were in violation of the Electronic Funds Transfer Act (which protects from unauthorised charges) and the federal Electronic Communications and Privacy Act (which prohibits the unlawful access of financial information) for charging relatively small amounts from customers accounts "hoping that consumers just won't notice."
On November 30, 2009, the company announced that it had terminated its contract with an affiliate of Vertrue Inc., effective December 20, 2009, and that, it had ended all membership rewards or similar programs.
ASA investigations
In 2011, following complaints from UK customers, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) investigated pricing irregularities on Vistaprint's UK website and leaflet distributions. The ASA also upheld a complaint that Vistaprint was misleading customers in its '£40 worth of printing for a £10 spend' promotion.
Discriminatory mix-ups
In 2018, a recently married gay couple sued Vistaprint after they received anti-gay pamphlets, "Understanding Temptation: Fight the good fight of the faith", instead of the wedding programs they had ordered. Vistaprint CEO, Trynka Shineman, said that the wedding programs and the flyers were printed at the same time, and that the wrong shipping label was put on the boxes by a third-party partner. Vistaprint resolved the matter with the couple and the lawsuit was dropped, with an apology to the couple and to donations to LGBTQ organizations.
In June 2020, two fundraisers for Black Lives Matter found that their order for Black Lives Matter posters also came with All Lives Matter posters. In an interview with Buzzfeed News the customer said "this felt like very, very clear attempts to undermine our message and undermine the message we’re trying to put out". A Vistaprint representative said that an internal investigation "found that it was an error in the automated packaging process which combined two separate customer orders." In response, the customers said that they are skeptical of the explanation, especially since the LGBTQ incident in 2018 made this seem less like a one-off.
Security Lapse
In November 2019, security researcher Oliver Hough discovered an exposed database on the internet belonging to Vistaprint. The company quietly took the database offline after TechCrunch reached out to inform them about the discovery. Robert Crosland, a spokesperson for Vistaprint, said in a statement that the exposure affected customers in the US, the UK and Ireland.
See also
4imprint
References
External links
Promo Codes
Companies formerly listed on the Nasdaq
Companies of Bermuda
Printing companies of the Netherlands
Self-publishing online stores
Marketing companies established in 1995
Companies based in Limburg (Netherlands)
Buildings and structures in Venlo
|
3717
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain
|
Brain
|
A brain is an organ that serves as the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate and most invertebrate animals. It is located in the head, usually close to the sensory organs for senses such as vision. It is the most complex organ in a vertebrate's body. In a human, the cerebral cortex contains approximately 14–16 billion neurons, and the estimated number of neurons in the cerebellum is 55–70 billion. Each neuron is connected by synapses to several thousand other neurons. These neurons typically communicate with one another by means of long fibers called axons, which carry trains of signal pulses called action potentials to distant parts of the brain or body targeting specific recipient cells.
Physiologically, brains exert centralized control over a body's other organs. They act on the rest of the body both by generating patterns of muscle activity and by driving the secretion of chemicals called hormones. This centralized control allows rapid and coordinated responses to changes in the environment. Some basic types of responsiveness such as reflexes can be mediated by the spinal cord or peripheral ganglia, but sophisticated purposeful control of behavior based on complex sensory input requires the information integrating capabilities of a centralized brain.
The operations of individual brain cells are now understood in considerable detail but the way they cooperate in ensembles of millions is yet to be solved. Recent models in modern neuroscience treat the brain as a biological computer, very different in mechanism from an electronic computer, but similar in the sense that it acquires information from the surrounding world, stores it, and processes it in a variety of ways.
This article compares the properties of brains across the entire range of animal species, with the greatest attention to vertebrates. It deals with the human brain insofar as it shares the properties of other brains. The ways in which the human brain differs from other brains are covered in the human brain article. Several topics that might be covered here are instead covered there because much more can be said about them in a human context. The most important is brain disease and the effects of brain damage, that are covered in the human brain article.
Anatomy
The shape and size of the brain varies greatly between species, and identifying common features is often difficult. Nevertheless, there are a number of principles of brain architecture that apply across a wide range of species. Some aspects of brain structure are common to almost the entire range of animal species; others distinguish "advanced" brains from more primitive ones, or distinguish vertebrates from invertebrates.
The simplest way to gain information about brain anatomy is by visual inspection, but many more sophisticated techniques have been developed. Brain tissue in its natural state is too soft to work with, but it can be hardened by immersion in alcohol or other fixatives, and then sliced apart for examination of the interior. Visually, the interior of the brain consists of areas of so-called grey matter, with a dark color, separated by areas of white matter, with a lighter color. Further information can be gained by staining slices of brain tissue with a variety of chemicals that bring out areas where specific types of molecules are present in high concentrations. It is also possible to examine the microstructure of brain tissue using a microscope, and to trace the pattern of connections from one brain area to another.
Cellular structure
The brains of all species are composed primarily of two broad classes of cells: neurons and glial cells. Glial cells (also known as glia or neuroglia) come in several types, and perform a number of critical functions, including structural support, metabolic support, insulation, and guidance of development. Neurons, however, are usually considered the most important cells in the brain.
The property that makes neurons unique is their ability to send signals to specific target cells over long distances. They send these signals by means of an axon, which is a thin protoplasmic fiber that extends from the cell body and projects, usually with numerous branches, to other areas, sometimes nearby, sometimes in distant parts of the brain or body. The length of an axon can be extraordinary: for example, if a pyramidal cell (an excitatory neuron) of the cerebral cortex were magnified so that its cell body became the size of a human body, its axon, equally magnified, would become a cable a few centimeters in diameter, extending more than a kilometer. These axons transmit signals in the form of electrochemical pulses called action potentials, which last less than a thousandth of a second and travel along the axon at speeds of 1–100 meters per second. Some neurons emit action potentials constantly, at rates of 10–100 per second, usually in irregular patterns; other neurons are quiet most of the time, but occasionally emit a burst of action potentials.
Axons transmit signals to other neurons by means of specialized junctions called synapses. A single axon may make as many as several thousand synaptic connections with other cells. When an action potential, traveling along an axon, arrives at a synapse, it causes a chemical called a neurotransmitter to be released. The neurotransmitter binds to receptor molecules in the membrane of the target cell.
Synapses are the key functional elements of the brain. The essential function of the brain is cell-to-cell communication, and synapses are the points at which communication occurs. The human brain has been estimated to contain approximately 100 trillion synapses; even the brain of a fruit fly contains several million. The functions of these synapses are very diverse: some are excitatory (exciting the target cell); others are inhibitory; others work by activating second messenger systems that change the internal chemistry of their target cells in complex ways. A large number of synapses are dynamically modifiable; that is, they are capable of changing strength in a way that is controlled by the patterns of signals that pass through them. It is widely believed that activity-dependent modification of synapses is the brain's primary mechanism for learning and memory.
Most of the space in the brain is taken up by axons, which are often bundled together in what are called nerve fiber tracts. A myelinated axon is wrapped in a fatty insulating sheath of myelin, which serves to greatly increase the speed of signal propagation. (There are also unmyelinated axons). Myelin is white, making parts of the brain filled exclusively with nerve fibers appear as light-colored white matter, in contrast to the darker-colored grey matter that marks areas with high densities of neuron cell bodies.
Evolution
Generic bilaterian nervous system
Except for a few primitive organisms such as sponges (which have no nervous system) and cnidarians (which have a nervous system consisting of a diffuse nerve net), all living multicellular animals are bilaterians, meaning animals with a bilaterally symmetric body shape (that is, left and right sides that are approximate mirror images of each other). All bilaterians are thought to have descended from a common ancestor that appeared late in the Cryogenian period, 700–650 million years ago, and it has been hypothesized that this common ancestor had the shape of a simple tubeworm with a segmented body. At a schematic level, that basic worm-shape continues to be reflected in the body and nervous system architecture of all modern bilaterians, including vertebrates. The fundamental bilateral body form is a tube with a hollow gut cavity running from the mouth to the anus, and a nerve cord with an enlargement (a ganglion) for each body segment, with an especially large ganglion at the front, called the brain. The brain is small and simple in some species, such as nematode worms; in other species, including vertebrates, it is the most complex organ in the body. Some types of worms, such as leeches, also have an enlarged ganglion at the back end of the nerve cord, known as a "tail brain".
There are a few types of existing bilaterians that lack a recognizable brain, including echinoderms and tunicates. It has not been definitively established whether the existence of these brainless species indicates that the earliest bilaterians lacked a brain, or whether their ancestors evolved in a way that led to the disappearance of a previously existing brain structure.
Invertebrates
This category includes tardigrades, arthropods, molluscs, and numerous types of worms. The diversity of invertebrate body plans is matched by an equal diversity in brain structures.
Two groups of invertebrates have notably complex brains: arthropods (insects, crustaceans, arachnids, and others), and cephalopods (octopuses, squids, and similar molluscs). The brains of arthropods and cephalopods arise from twin parallel nerve cords that extend through the body of the animal. Arthropods have a central brain, the supraesophageal ganglion, with three divisions and large optical lobes behind each eye for visual processing. Cephalopods such as the octopus and squid have the largest brains of any invertebrates.
There are several invertebrate species whose brains have been studied intensively because they have properties that make them convenient for experimental work:
Fruit flies (Drosophila), because of the large array of techniques available for studying their genetics, have been a natural subject for studying the role of genes in brain development. In spite of the large evolutionary distance between insects and mammals, many aspects of Drosophila neurogenetics have been shown to be relevant to humans. The first biological clock genes, for example, were identified by examining Drosophila mutants that showed disrupted daily activity cycles. A search in the genomes of vertebrates revealed a set of analogous genes, which were found to play similar roles in the mouse biological clock—and therefore almost certainly in the human biological clock as well. Studies done on Drosophila, also show that most neuropil regions of the brain are continuously reorganized throughout life in response to specific living conditions.
The nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans, like Drosophila, has been studied largely because of its importance in genetics. In the early 1970s, Sydney Brenner chose it as a model organism for studying the way that genes control development. One of the advantages of working with this worm is that the body plan is very stereotyped: the nervous system of the hermaphrodite contains exactly 302 neurons, always in the same places, making identical synaptic connections in every worm. Brenner's team sliced worms into thousands of ultrathin sections and photographed each one under an electron microscope, then visually matched fibers from section to section, to map out every neuron and synapse in the entire body. The complete neuronal wiring diagram of C.elegans – its connectome was achieved. Nothing approaching this level of detail is available for any other organism, and the information gained has enabled a multitude of studies that would otherwise have not been possible.
The sea slug Aplysia californica was chosen by Nobel Prize-winning neurophysiologist Eric Kandel as a model for studying the cellular basis of learning and memory, because of the simplicity and accessibility of its nervous system, and it has been examined in hundreds of experiments.
Vertebrates
The first vertebrates appeared over 500 million years ago (Mya), during the Cambrian period, and may have resembled the modern hagfish in form. Jawed fish appeared by 445 Mya, amphibians by 350 Mya, reptiles by 310 Mya and mammals by 200 Mya (approximately). Each species has an equally long evolutionary history, but the brains of modern hagfishes, lampreys, sharks, amphibians, reptiles, and mammals show a gradient of size and complexity that roughly follows the evolutionary sequence. All of these brains contain the same set of basic anatomical components, but many are rudimentary in the hagfish, whereas in mammals the foremost part (the telencephalon) is greatly elaborated and expanded.
Brains are most simply compared in terms of their size. The relationship between brain size, body size and other variables has been studied across a wide range of vertebrate species. As a rule, brain size increases with body size, but not in a simple linear proportion. In general, smaller animals tend to have larger brains, measured as a fraction of body size. For mammals, the relationship between brain volume and body mass essentially follows a power law with an exponent of about 0.75. This formula describes the central tendency, but every family of mammals departs from it to some degree, in a way that reflects in part the complexity of their behavior. For example, primates have brains 5 to 10 times larger than the formula predicts. Predators tend to have larger brains than their prey, relative to body size.
All vertebrate brains share a common underlying form, which appears most clearly during early stages of embryonic development. In its earliest form, the brain appears as three swellings at the front end of the neural tube; these swellings eventually become the forebrain, midbrain, and hindbrain (the prosencephalon, mesencephalon, and rhombencephalon, respectively). At the earliest stages of brain development, the three areas are roughly equal in size. In many classes of vertebrates, such as fish and amphibians, the three parts remain similar in size in the adult, but in mammals the forebrain becomes much larger than the other parts, and the midbrain becomes very small.
The brains of vertebrates are made of very soft tissue. Living brain tissue is pinkish on the outside and mostly white on the inside, with subtle variations in color. Vertebrate brains are surrounded by a system of connective tissue membranes called meninges that separate the skull from the brain. Blood vessels enter the central nervous system through holes in the meningeal layers. The cells in the blood vessel walls are joined tightly to one another, forming the blood–brain barrier, which blocks the passage of many toxins and pathogens (though at the same time blocking antibodies and some drugs, thereby presenting special challenges in treatment of diseases of the brain).
Neuroanatomists usually divide the vertebrate brain into six main regions: the telencephalon (cerebral hemispheres), diencephalon (thalamus and hypothalamus), mesencephalon (midbrain), cerebellum, pons, and medulla oblongata. Each of these areas has a complex internal structure. Some parts, such as the cerebral cortex and the cerebellar cortex, consist of layers that are folded or convoluted to fit within the available space. Other parts, such as the thalamus and hypothalamus, consist of clusters of many small nuclei. Thousands of distinguishable areas can be identified within the vertebrate brain based on fine distinctions of neural structure, chemistry, and connectivity.
Although the same basic components are present in all vertebrate brains, some branches of vertebrate evolution have led to substantial distortions of brain geometry, especially in the forebrain area. The brain of a shark shows the basic components in a straightforward way, but in teleost fishes (the great majority of existing fish species), the forebrain has become "everted", like a sock turned inside out. In birds, there are also major changes in forebrain structure. These distortions can make it difficult to match brain components from one species with those of another species.
Here is a list of some of the most important vertebrate brain components, along with a brief description of their functions as currently understood:
The medulla, along with the spinal cord, contains many small nuclei involved in a wide variety of sensory and involuntary motor functions such as vomiting, heart rate and digestive processes.
The pons lies in the brainstem directly above the medulla. Among other things, it contains nuclei that control often voluntary but simple acts such as sleep, respiration, swallowing, bladder function, equilibrium, eye movement, facial expressions, and posture.
The hypothalamus is a small region at the base of the forebrain, whose complexity and importance belies its size. It is composed of numerous small nuclei, each with distinct connections and neurochemistry. The hypothalamus is engaged in additional involuntary or partially voluntary acts such as sleep and wake cycles, eating and drinking, and the release of some hormones.
The thalamus is a collection of nuclei with diverse functions: some are involved in relaying information to and from the cerebral hemispheres, while others are involved in motivation. The subthalamic area (zona incerta) seems to contain action-generating systems for several types of "consummatory" behaviors such as eating, drinking, defecation, and copulation.
The cerebellum modulates the outputs of other brain systems, whether motor-related or thought related, to make them certain and precise. Removal of the cerebellum does not prevent an animal from doing anything in particular, but it makes actions hesitant and clumsy. This precision is not built-in but learned by trial and error. The muscle coordination learned while riding a bicycle is an example of a type of neural plasticity that may take place largely within the cerebellum. 10% of the brain's total volume consists of the cerebellum and 50% of all neurons are held within its structure.
The optic tectum allows actions to be directed toward points in space, most commonly in response to visual input. In mammals, it is usually referred to as the superior colliculus, and its best-studied function is to direct eye movements. It also directs reaching movements and other object-directed actions. It receives strong visual inputs, but also inputs from other senses that are useful in directing actions, such as auditory input in owls and input from the thermosensitive pit organs in snakes. In some primitive fishes, such as lampreys, this region is the largest part of the brain. The superior colliculus is part of the midbrain.
The pallium is a layer of grey matter that lies on the surface of the forebrain and is the most complex and most recent evolutionary development of the brain as an organ. In reptiles and mammals, it is called the cerebral cortex. Multiple functions involve the pallium, including smell and spatial memory. In mammals, where it becomes so large as to dominate the brain, it takes over functions from many other brain areas. In many mammals, the cerebral cortex consists of folded bulges called gyri that create deep furrows or fissures called sulci. The folds increase the surface area of the cortex and therefore increase the amount of gray matter and the amount of information that can be stored and processed.
The hippocampus, strictly speaking, is found only in mammals. However, the area it derives from, the medial pallium, has counterparts in all vertebrates. There is evidence that this part of the brain is involved in complex events such as spatial memory and navigation in fishes, birds, reptiles, and mammals.
The basal ganglia are a group of interconnected structures in the forebrain. The primary function of the basal ganglia appears to be action selection: they send inhibitory signals to all parts of the brain that can generate motor behaviors, and in the right circumstances can release the inhibition, so that the action-generating systems are able to execute their actions. Reward and punishment exert their most important neural effects by altering connections within the basal ganglia.
The olfactory bulb is a special structure that processes olfactory sensory signals and sends its output to the olfactory part of the pallium. It is a major brain component in many vertebrates, but is greatly reduced in humans and other primates (whose senses are dominated by information acquired by sight rather than smell).
Reptiles
Birds
Mammals
The most obvious difference between the brains of mammals and other vertebrates is in terms of size. On average, a mammal has a brain roughly twice as large as that of a bird of the same body size, and ten times as large as that of a reptile of the same body size.
Size, however, is not the only difference: there are also substantial differences in shape. The hindbrain and midbrain of mammals are generally similar to those of other vertebrates, but dramatic differences appear in the forebrain, which is greatly enlarged and also altered in structure. The cerebral cortex is the part of the brain that most strongly distinguishes mammals. In non-mammalian vertebrates, the surface of the cerebrum is lined with a comparatively simple three-layered structure called the pallium. In mammals, the pallium evolves into a complex six-layered structure called neocortex or isocortex. Several areas at the edge of the neocortex, including the hippocampus and amygdala, are also much more extensively developed in mammals than in other vertebrates.
The elaboration of the cerebral cortex carries with it changes to other brain areas. The superior colliculus, which plays a major role in visual control of behavior in most vertebrates, shrinks to a small size in mammals, and many of its functions are taken over by visual areas of the cerebral cortex. The cerebellum of mammals contains a large portion (the neocerebellum) dedicated to supporting the cerebral cortex, which has no counterpart in other vertebrates.
Primates
The brains of humans and other primates contain the same structures as the brains of other mammals, but are generally larger in proportion to body size. The encephalization quotient (EQ) is used to compare brain sizes across species. It takes into account the nonlinearity of the brain-to-body relationship. Humans have an average EQ in the 7-to-8 range, while most other primates have an EQ in the 2-to-3 range. Dolphins have values higher than those of primates other than humans, but nearly all other mammals have EQ values that are substantially lower.
Most of the enlargement of the primate brain comes from a massive expansion of the cerebral cortex, especially the prefrontal cortex and the parts of the cortex involved in vision. The visual processing network of primates includes at least 30 distinguishable brain areas, with a complex web of interconnections. It has been estimated that visual processing areas occupy more than half of the total surface of the primate neocortex. The prefrontal cortex carries out functions that include planning, working memory, motivation, attention, and executive control. It takes up a much larger proportion of the brain for primates than for other species, and an especially large fraction of the human brain.
Development
The brain develops in an intricately orchestrated sequence of stages. It changes in shape from a simple swelling at the front of the nerve cord in the earliest embryonic stages, to a complex array of areas and connections. Neurons are created in special zones that contain stem cells, and then migrate through the tissue to reach their ultimate locations. Once neurons have positioned themselves, their axons sprout and navigate through the brain, branching and extending as they go, until the tips reach their targets and form synaptic connections. In a number of parts of the nervous system, neurons and synapses are produced in excessive numbers during the early stages, and then the unneeded ones are pruned away.
For vertebrates, the early stages of neural development are similar across all species. As the embryo transforms from a round blob of cells into a wormlike structure, a narrow strip of ectoderm running along the midline of the back is induced to become the neural plate, the precursor of the nervous system. The neural plate folds inward to form the neural groove, and then the lips that line the groove merge to enclose the neural tube, a hollow cord of cells with a fluid-filled ventricle at the center. At the front end, the ventricles and cord swell to form three vesicles that are the precursors of the prosencephalon (forebrain), mesencephalon (midbrain), and rhombencephalon (hindbrain). At the next stage, the forebrain splits into two vesicles called the telencephalon (which will contain the cerebral cortex, basal ganglia, and related structures) and the diencephalon (which will contain the thalamus and hypothalamus). At about the same time, the hindbrain splits into the metencephalon (which will contain the cerebellum and pons) and the myelencephalon (which will contain the medulla oblongata). Each of these areas contains proliferative zones where neurons and glial cells are generated; the resulting cells then migrate, sometimes for long distances, to their final positions.
Once a neuron is in place, it extends dendrites and an axon into the area around it. Axons, because they commonly extend a great distance from the cell body and need to reach specific targets, grow in a particularly complex way. The tip of a growing axon consists of a blob of protoplasm called a growth cone, studded with chemical receptors. These receptors sense the local environment, causing the growth cone to be attracted or repelled by various cellular elements, and thus to be pulled in a particular direction at each point along its path. The result of this pathfinding process is that the growth cone navigates through the brain until it reaches its destination area, where other chemical cues cause it to begin generating synapses. Considering the entire brain, thousands of genes create products that influence axonal pathfinding.
The synaptic network that finally emerges is only partly determined by genes, though. In many parts of the brain, axons initially "overgrow", and then are "pruned" by mechanisms that depend on neural activity. In the projection from the eye to the midbrain, for example, the structure in the adult contains a very precise mapping, connecting each point on the surface of the retina to a corresponding point in a midbrain layer. In the first stages of development, each axon from the retina is guided to the right general vicinity in the midbrain by chemical cues, but then branches very profusely and makes initial contact with a wide swath of midbrain neurons. The retina, before birth, contains special mechanisms that cause it to generate waves of activity that originate spontaneously at a random point and then propagate slowly across the retinal layer. These waves are useful because they cause neighboring neurons to be active at the same time; that is, they produce a neural activity pattern that contains information about the spatial arrangement of the neurons. This information is exploited in the midbrain by a mechanism that causes synapses to weaken, and eventually vanish, if activity in an axon is not followed by activity of the target cell. The result of this sophisticated process is a gradual tuning and tightening of the map, leaving it finally in its precise adult form.
Similar things happen in other brain areas: an initial synaptic matrix is generated as a result of genetically determined chemical guidance, but then gradually refined by activity-dependent mechanisms, partly driven by internal dynamics, partly by external sensory inputs. In some cases, as with the retina-midbrain system, activity patterns depend on mechanisms that operate only in the developing brain, and apparently exist solely to guide development.
In humans and many other mammals, new neurons are created mainly before birth, and the infant brain contains substantially more neurons than the adult brain. There are, however, a few areas where new neurons continue to be generated throughout life. The two areas for which adult neurogenesis is well established are the olfactory bulb, which is involved in the sense of smell, and the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus, where there is evidence that the new neurons play a role in storing newly acquired memories. With these exceptions, however, the set of neurons that is present in early childhood is the set that is present for life. Glial cells are different: as with most types of cells in the body, they are generated throughout the lifespan.
There has long been debate about whether the qualities of mind, personality, and intelligence can be attributed to heredity or to upbringing—this is the nature and nurture controversy. Although many details remain to be settled, neuroscience research has clearly shown that both factors are important. Genes determine the general form of the brain, and genes determine how the brain reacts to experience. Experience, however, is required to refine the matrix of synaptic connections, which in its developed form contains far more information than the genome does. In some respects, all that matters is the presence or absence of experience during critical periods of development. In other respects, the quantity and quality of experience are important; for example, there is substantial evidence that animals raised in enriched environments have thicker cerebral cortices, indicating a higher density of synaptic connections, than animals whose levels of stimulation are restricted.
Physiology
The functions of the brain depend on the ability of neurons to transmit electrochemical signals to other cells, and their ability to respond appropriately to electrochemical signals received from other cells. The electrical properties of neurons are controlled by a wide variety of biochemical and metabolic processes, most notably the interactions between neurotransmitters and receptors that take place at synapses.
Neurotransmitters and receptors
Neurotransmitters are chemicals that are released at synapses when the local membrane is depolarised and Ca2+ enters into the cell, typically when an action potential arrives at the synapse – neurotransmitters attach themselves to receptor molecules on the membrane of the synapse's target cell (or cells), and thereby alter the electrical or chemical properties of the receptor molecules.
With few exceptions, each neuron in the brain releases the same chemical neurotransmitter, or combination of neurotransmitters, at all the synaptic connections it makes with other neurons; this rule is known as Dale's principle. Thus, a neuron can be characterized by the neurotransmitters that it releases. The great majority of psychoactive drugs exert their effects by altering specific neurotransmitter systems. This applies to drugs such as cannabinoids, nicotine, heroin, cocaine, alcohol, fluoxetine, chlorpromazine, and many others.
The two neurotransmitters that are most widely found in the vertebrate brain are glutamate, which almost always exerts excitatory effects on target neurons, and gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), which is almost always inhibitory. Neurons using these transmitters can be found in nearly every part of the brain. Because of their ubiquity, drugs that act on glutamate or GABA tend to have broad and powerful effects. Some general anesthetics act by reducing the effects of glutamate; most tranquilizers exert their sedative effects by enhancing the effects of GABA.
There are dozens of other chemical neurotransmitters that are used in more limited areas of the brain, often areas dedicated to a particular function. Serotonin, for example—the primary target of many antidepressant drugs and many dietary aids—comes exclusively from a small brainstem area called the raphe nuclei. Norepinephrine, which is involved in arousal, comes exclusively from a nearby small area called the locus coeruleus. Other neurotransmitters such as acetylcholine and dopamine have multiple sources in the brain but are not as ubiquitously distributed as glutamate and GABA.
Electrical activity
As a side effect of the electrochemical processes used by neurons for signaling, brain tissue generates electric fields when it is active. When large numbers of neurons show synchronized activity, the electric fields that they generate can be large enough to detect outside the skull, using electroencephalography (EEG) or magnetoencephalography (MEG). EEG recordings, along with recordings made from electrodes implanted inside the brains of animals such as rats, show that the brain of a living animal is constantly active, even during sleep. Each part of the brain shows a mixture of rhythmic and nonrhythmic activity, which may vary according to behavioral state. In mammals, the cerebral cortex tends to show large slow delta waves during sleep, faster alpha waves when the animal is awake but inattentive, and chaotic-looking irregular activity when the animal is actively engaged in a task, called beta and gamma waves. During an epileptic seizure, the brain's inhibitory control mechanisms fail to function and electrical activity rises to pathological levels, producing EEG traces that show large wave and spike patterns not seen in a healthy brain. Relating these population-level patterns to the computational functions of individual neurons is a major focus of current research in neurophysiology.
Metabolism
All vertebrates have a blood–brain barrier that allows metabolism inside the brain to operate differently from metabolism in other parts of the body. Glial cells play a major role in brain metabolism by controlling the chemical composition of the fluid that surrounds neurons, including levels of ions and nutrients.
Brain tissue consumes a large amount of energy in proportion to its volume, so large brains place severe metabolic demands on animals. The need to limit body weight in order, for example, to fly, has apparently led to selection for a reduction of brain size in some species, such as bats. Most of the brain's energy consumption goes into sustaining the electric charge (membrane potential) of neurons. Most vertebrate species devote between 2% and 8% of basal metabolism to the brain. In primates, however, the percentage is much higher—in humans it rises to 20–25%. The energy consumption of the brain does not vary greatly over time, but active regions of the cerebral cortex consume somewhat more energy than inactive regions; this forms the basis for the functional brain imaging methods of PET, fMRI, and NIRS. The brain typically gets most of its energy from oxygen-dependent metabolism of glucose (i.e., blood sugar), but ketones provide a major alternative source, together with contributions from medium chain fatty acids (caprylic and heptanoic acids), lactate, acetate, and possibly amino acids.
Function
Information from the sense organs is collected in the brain. There it is used to determine what actions the organism is to take. The brain processes the raw data to extract information about the structure of the environment. Next it combines the processed information with information about the current needs of the animal and with memory of past circumstances. Finally, on the basis of the results, it generates motor response patterns. These signal-processing tasks require intricate interplay between a variety of functional subsystems.
The function of the brain is to provide coherent control over the actions of an animal. A centralized brain allows groups of muscles to be co-activated in complex patterns; it also allows stimuli impinging on one part of the body to evoke responses in other parts, and it can prevent different parts of the body from acting at cross-purposes to each other.
Perception
The human brain is provided with information about light, sound, the chemical composition of the atmosphere, temperature, the position of the body in space (proprioception), the chemical composition of the bloodstream, and more. In other animals additional senses are present, such as the infrared heat-sense of snakes, the magnetic field sense of some birds, or the electric field sense mainly seen in aquatic animals.
Each sensory system begins with specialized receptor cells, such as photoreceptor cells in the retina of the eye, or vibration-sensitive hair cells in the cochlea of the ear. The axons of sensory receptor cells travel into the spinal cord or brain, where they transmit their signals to a first-order sensory nucleus dedicated to one specific sensory modality. This primary sensory nucleus sends information to higher-order sensory areas that are dedicated to the same modality. Eventually, via a way-station in the thalamus, the signals are sent to the cerebral cortex, where they are processed to extract the relevant features, and integrated with signals coming from other sensory systems.
Motor control
Motor systems are areas of the brain that are involved in initiating body movements, that is, in activating muscles. Except for the muscles that control the eye, which are driven by nuclei in the midbrain, all the voluntary muscles in the body are directly innervated by motor neurons in the spinal cord and hindbrain. Spinal motor neurons are controlled both by neural circuits intrinsic to the spinal cord, and by inputs that descend from the brain. The intrinsic spinal circuits implement many reflex responses, and contain pattern generators for rhythmic movements such as walking or swimming. The descending connections from the brain allow for more sophisticated control.
The brain contains several motor areas that project directly to the spinal cord. At the lowest level are motor areas in the medulla and pons, which control stereotyped movements such as walking, breathing, or swallowing. At a higher level are areas in the midbrain, such as the red nucleus, which is responsible for coordinating movements of the arms and legs. At a higher level yet is the primary motor cortex, a strip of tissue located at the posterior edge of the frontal lobe. The primary motor cortex sends projections to the subcortical motor areas, but also sends a massive projection directly to the spinal cord, through the pyramidal tract. This direct corticospinal projection allows for precise voluntary control of the fine details of movements. Other motor-related brain areas exert secondary effects by projecting to the primary motor areas. Among the most important secondary areas are the premotor cortex, supplementary motor area, basal ganglia, and cerebellum. In addition to all of the above, the brain and spinal cord contain extensive circuitry to control the autonomic nervous system which controls the movement of the smooth muscle of the body.
Sleep
Many animals alternate between sleeping and waking in a daily cycle. Arousal and alertness are also modulated on a finer time scale by a network of brain areas. A key component of the sleep system is the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN), a tiny part of the hypothalamus located directly above the point at which the optic nerves from the two eyes cross. The SCN contains the body's central biological clock. Neurons there show activity levels that rise and fall with a period of about 24 hours, circadian rhythms: these activity fluctuations are driven by rhythmic changes in expression of a set of "clock genes". The SCN continues to keep time even if it is excised from the brain and placed in a dish of warm nutrient solution, but it ordinarily receives input from the optic nerves, through the retinohypothalamic tract (RHT), that allows daily light-dark cycles to calibrate the clock.
The SCN projects to a set of areas in the hypothalamus, brainstem, and midbrain that are involved in implementing sleep-wake cycles. An important component of the system is the reticular formation, a group of neuron-clusters scattered diffusely through the core of the lower brain. Reticular neurons send signals to the thalamus, which in turn sends activity-level-controlling signals to every part of the cortex. Damage to the reticular formation can produce a permanent state of coma.
Sleep involves great changes in brain activity. Until the 1950s it was generally believed that the brain essentially shuts off during sleep, but this is now known to be far from true; activity continues, but patterns become very different. There are two types of sleep: REM sleep (with dreaming) and NREM (non-REM, usually without dreaming) sleep, which repeat in slightly varying patterns throughout a sleep episode. Three broad types of distinct brain activity patterns can be measured: REM, light NREM and deep NREM. During deep NREM sleep, also called slow wave sleep, activity in the cortex takes the form of large synchronized waves, whereas in the waking state it is noisy and desynchronized. Levels of the neurotransmitters norepinephrine and serotonin drop during slow wave sleep, and fall almost to zero during REM sleep; levels of acetylcholine show the reverse pattern.
Homeostasis
For any animal, survival requires maintaining a variety of parameters of bodily state within a limited range of variation: these include temperature, water content, salt concentration in the bloodstream, blood glucose levels, blood oxygen level, and others. The ability of an animal to regulate the internal environment of its body—the milieu intérieur, as the pioneering physiologist Claude Bernard called it—is known as homeostasis (Greek for "standing still"). Maintaining homeostasis is a crucial function of the brain. The basic principle that underlies homeostasis is negative feedback: any time a parameter diverges from its set-point, sensors generate an error signal that evokes a response that causes the parameter to shift back toward its optimum value. (This principle is widely used in engineering, for example in the control of temperature using a thermostat.)
In vertebrates, the part of the brain that plays the greatest role is the hypothalamus, a small region at the base of the forebrain whose size does not reflect its complexity or the importance of its function. The hypothalamus is a collection of small nuclei, most of which are involved in basic biological functions. Some of these functions relate to arousal or to social interactions such as sexuality, aggression, or maternal behaviors; but many of them relate to homeostasis. Several hypothalamic nuclei receive input from sensors located in the lining of blood vessels, conveying information about temperature, sodium level, glucose level, blood oxygen level, and other parameters. These hypothalamic nuclei send output signals to motor areas that can generate actions to rectify deficiencies. Some of the outputs also go to the pituitary gland, a tiny gland attached to the brain directly underneath the hypothalamus. The pituitary gland secretes hormones into the bloodstream, where they circulate throughout the body and induce changes in cellular activity.
Motivation
The individual animals need to express survival-promoting behaviors, such as seeking food, water, shelter, and a mate. The motivational system in the brain monitors the current state of satisfaction of these goals, and activates behaviors to meet any needs that arise. The motivational system works largely by a reward–punishment mechanism. When a particular behavior is followed by favorable consequences, the reward mechanism in the brain is activated, which induces structural changes inside the brain that cause the same behavior to be repeated later, whenever a similar situation arises. Conversely, when a behavior is followed by unfavorable consequences, the brain's punishment mechanism is activated, inducing structural changes that cause the behavior to be suppressed when similar situations arise in the future.
Most organisms studied to date utilize a reward–punishment mechanism: for instance, worms and insects can alter their behavior to seek food sources or to avoid dangers. In vertebrates, the reward-punishment system is implemented by a specific set of brain structures, at the heart of which lie the basal ganglia, a set of interconnected areas at the base of the forebrain. The basal ganglia are the central site at which decisions are made: the basal ganglia exert a sustained inhibitory control over most of the motor systems in the brain; when this inhibition is released, a motor system is permitted to execute the action it is programmed to carry out. Rewards and punishments function by altering the relationship between the inputs that the basal ganglia receive and the decision-signals that are emitted. The reward mechanism is better understood than the punishment mechanism, because its role in drug abuse has caused it to be studied very intensively. Research has shown that the neurotransmitter dopamine plays a central role: addictive drugs such as cocaine, amphetamine, and nicotine either cause dopamine levels to rise or cause the effects of dopamine inside the brain to be enhanced.
Learning and memory
Almost all animals are capable of modifying their behavior as a result of experience—even the most primitive types of worms. Because behavior is driven by brain activity, changes in behavior must somehow correspond to changes inside the brain. Already in the late 19th century theorists like Santiago Ramón y Cajal argued that the most plausible explanation is that learning and memory are expressed as changes in the synaptic connections between neurons. Until 1970, however, experimental evidence to support the synaptic plasticity hypothesis was lacking. In 1971 Tim Bliss and Terje Lømo published a paper on a phenomenon now called long-term potentiation: the paper showed clear evidence of activity-induced synaptic changes that lasted for at least several days. Since then technical advances have made these sorts of experiments much easier to carry out, and thousands of studies have been made that have clarified the mechanism of synaptic change, and uncovered other types of activity-driven synaptic change in a variety of brain areas, including the cerebral cortex, hippocampus, basal ganglia, and cerebellum. Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and physical activity appear to play a beneficial role in the process.
Neuroscientists currently distinguish several types of learning and memory that are implemented by the brain in distinct ways:
Working memory is the ability of the brain to maintain a temporary representation of information about the task that an animal is currently engaged in. This sort of dynamic memory is thought to be mediated by the formation of cell assemblies—groups of activated neurons that maintain their activity by constantly stimulating one another.
Episodic memory is the ability to remember the details of specific events. This sort of memory can last for a lifetime. Much evidence implicates the hippocampus in playing a crucial role: people with severe damage to the hippocampus sometimes show amnesia, that is, inability to form new long-lasting episodic memories.
Semantic memory is the ability to learn facts and relationships. This sort of memory is probably stored largely in the cerebral cortex, mediated by changes in connections between cells that represent specific types of information.
Instrumental learning is the ability for rewards and punishments to modify behavior. It is implemented by a network of brain areas centered on the basal ganglia.
Motor learning is the ability to refine patterns of body movement by practicing, or more generally by repetition. A number of brain areas are involved, including the premotor cortex, basal ganglia, and especially the cerebellum, which functions as a large memory bank for microadjustments of the parameters of movement.
Research
The field of neuroscience encompasses all approaches that seek to understand the brain and the rest of the nervous system. Psychology seeks to understand mind and behavior, and neurology is the medical discipline that diagnoses and treats diseases of the nervous system. The brain is also the most important organ studied in psychiatry, the branch of medicine that works to study, prevent, and treat mental disorders. Cognitive science seeks to unify neuroscience and psychology with other fields that concern themselves with the brain, such as computer science (artificial intelligence and similar fields) and philosophy.
The oldest method of studying the brain is anatomical, and until the middle of the 20th century, much of the progress in neuroscience came from the development of better cell stains and better microscopes. Neuroanatomists study the large-scale structure of the brain as well as the microscopic structure of neurons and their components, especially synapses. Among other tools, they employ a plethora of stains that reveal neural structure, chemistry, and connectivity. In recent years, the development of immunostaining techniques has allowed investigation of neurons that express specific sets of genes. Also, functional neuroanatomy uses medical imaging techniques to correlate variations in human brain structure with differences in cognition or behavior.
Neurophysiologists study the chemical, pharmacological, and electrical properties of the brain: their primary tools are drugs and recording devices. Thousands of experimentally developed drugs affect the nervous system, some in highly specific ways. Recordings of brain activity can be made using electrodes, either glued to the scalp as in EEG studies, or implanted inside the brains of animals for extracellular recordings, which can detect action potentials generated by individual neurons. Because the brain does not contain pain receptors, it is possible using these techniques to record brain activity from animals that are awake and behaving without causing distress. The same techniques have occasionally been used to study brain activity in human patients suffering from intractable epilepsy, in cases where there was a medical necessity to implant electrodes to localize the brain area responsible for epileptic seizures. Functional imaging techniques such as fMRI are also used to study brain activity; these techniques have mainly been used with human subjects, because they require a conscious subject to remain motionless for long periods of time, but they have the great advantage of being noninvasive.
Another approach to brain function is to examine the consequences of damage to specific brain areas. Even though it is protected by the skull and meninges, surrounded by cerebrospinal fluid, and isolated from the bloodstream by the blood–brain barrier, the delicate nature of the brain makes it vulnerable to numerous diseases and several types of damage. In humans, the effects of strokes and other types of brain damage have been a key source of information about brain function. Because there is no ability to experimentally control the nature of the damage, however, this information is often difficult to interpret. In animal studies, most commonly involving rats, it is possible to use electrodes or locally injected chemicals to produce precise patterns of damage and then examine the consequences for behavior.
Computational neuroscience encompasses two approaches: first, the use of computers to study the brain; second, the study of how brains perform computation. On one hand, it is possible to write a computer program to simulate the operation of a group of neurons by making use of systems of equations that describe their electrochemical activity; such simulations are known as biologically realistic neural networks. On the other hand, it is possible to study algorithms for neural computation by simulating, or mathematically analyzing, the operations of simplified "units" that have some of the properties of neurons but abstract out much of their biological complexity. The computational functions of the brain are studied both by computer scientists and neuroscientists.
Computational neurogenetic modeling is concerned with the study and development of dynamic neuronal models for modeling brain functions with respect to genes and dynamic interactions between genes.
Recent years have seen increasing applications of genetic and genomic techniques to the study of the brain and a focus on the roles of neurotrophic factors and physical activity in neuroplasticity. The most common subjects are mice, because of the availability of technical tools. It is now possible with relative ease to "knock out" or mutate a wide variety of genes, and then examine the effects on brain function. More sophisticated approaches are also being used: for example, using Cre-Lox recombination it is possible to activate or deactivate genes in specific parts of the brain, at specific times.
History
The oldest brain to have been discovered was in Armenia in the Areni-1 cave complex. The brain, estimated to be over 5,000 years old, was found in the skull of a 12 to 14-year-old girl. Although the brains were shriveled, they were well preserved due to the climate found inside the cave.
Early philosophers were divided as to whether the seat of the soul lies in the brain or heart. Aristotle favored the heart, and thought that the function of the brain was merely to cool the blood. Democritus, the inventor of the atomic theory of matter, argued for a three-part soul, with intellect in the head, emotion in the heart, and lust near the liver. The unknown author of On the Sacred Disease, a medical treatise in the Hippocratic Corpus, came down unequivocally in favor of the brain, writing:
The Roman physician Galen also argued for the importance of the brain, and theorized in some depth about how it might work. Galen traced out the anatomical relationships among brain, nerves, and muscles, demonstrating that all muscles in the body are connected to the brain through a branching network of nerves. He postulated that nerves activate muscles mechanically by carrying a mysterious substance he called pneumata psychikon, usually translated as "animal spirits". Galen's ideas were widely known during the Middle Ages, but not much further progress came until the Renaissance, when detailed anatomical study resumed, combined with the theoretical speculations of René Descartes and those who followed him. Descartes, like Galen, thought of the nervous system in hydraulic terms. He believed that the highest cognitive functions are carried out by a non-physical res cogitans, but that the majority of behaviors of humans, and all behaviors of animals, could be explained mechanistically.
The first real progress toward a modern understanding of nervous function, though, came from the investigations of Luigi Galvani (1737–1798), who discovered that a shock of static electricity applied to an exposed nerve of a dead frog could cause its leg to contract. Since that time, each major advance in understanding has followed more or less directly from the development of a new technique of investigation. Until the early years of the 20th century, the most important advances were derived from new methods for staining cells. Particularly critical was the invention of the Golgi stain, which (when correctly used) stains only a small fraction of neurons, but stains them in their entirety, including cell body, dendrites, and axon. Without such a stain, brain tissue under a microscope appears as an impenetrable tangle of protoplasmic fibers, in which it is impossible to determine any structure. In the hands of Camillo Golgi, and especially of the Spanish neuroanatomist Santiago Ramón y Cajal, the new stain revealed hundreds of distinct types of neurons, each with its own unique dendritic structure and pattern of connectivity.
In the first half of the 20th century, advances in electronics enabled investigation of the electrical properties of nerve cells, culminating in work by Alan Hodgkin, Andrew Huxley, and others on the biophysics of the action potential, and the work of Bernard Katz and others on the electrochemistry of the synapse. These studies complemented the anatomical picture with a conception of the brain as a dynamic entity. Reflecting the new understanding, in 1942 Charles Sherrington visualized the workings of the brain waking from sleep:
The invention of electronic computers in the 1940s, along with the development of mathematical information theory, led to a realization that brains can potentially be understood as information processing systems. This concept formed the basis of the field of cybernetics, and eventually gave rise to the field now known as computational neuroscience. The earliest attempts at cybernetics were somewhat crude in that they treated the brain as essentially a digital computer in disguise, as for example in John von Neumann's 1958 book, The Computer and the Brain. Over the years, though, accumulating information about the electrical responses of brain cells recorded from behaving animals has steadily moved theoretical concepts in the direction of increasing realism.
One of the most influential early contributions was a 1959 paper titled What the frog's eye tells the frog's brain: the paper examined the visual responses of neurons in the retina and optic tectum of frogs, and came to the conclusion that some neurons in the tectum of the frog are wired to combine elementary responses in a way that makes them function as "bug perceivers". A few years later David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel discovered cells in the primary visual cortex of monkeys that become active when sharp edges move across specific points in the field of view—a discovery for which they won a Nobel Prize. Follow-up studies in higher-order visual areas found cells that detect binocular disparity, color, movement, and aspects of shape, with areas located at increasing distances from the primary visual cortex showing increasingly complex responses. Other investigations of brain areas unrelated to vision have revealed cells with a wide variety of response correlates, some related to memory, some to abstract types of cognition such as space.
Theorists have worked to understand these response patterns by constructing mathematical models of neurons and neural networks, which can be simulated using computers. Some useful models are abstract, focusing on the conceptual structure of neural algorithms rather than the details of how they are implemented in the brain; other models attempt to incorporate data about the biophysical properties of real neurons. No model on any level is yet considered to be a fully valid description of brain function, though. The essential difficulty is that sophisticated computation by neural networks requires distributed processing in which hundreds or thousands of neurons work cooperatively—current methods of brain activity recording are only capable of isolating action potentials from a few dozen neurons at a time.
Furthermore, even single neurons appear to be complex and capable of performing computations. So, brain models that don't reflect this are too abstract to be representative of brain operation; models that do try to capture this are very computationally expensive and arguably intractable with present computational resources. However, the Human Brain Project is trying to build a realistic, detailed computational model of the entire human brain. The wisdom of this approach has been publicly contested, with high-profile scientists on both sides of the argument.
In the second half of the 20th century, developments in chemistry, electron microscopy, genetics, computer science, functional brain imaging, and other fields progressively opened new windows into brain structure and function. In the United States, the 1990s were officially designated as the "Decade of the Brain" to commemorate advances made in brain research, and to promote funding for such research.
In the 21st century, these trends have continued, and several new approaches have come into prominence, including multielectrode recording, which allows the activity of many brain cells to be recorded all at the same time; genetic engineering, which allows molecular components of the brain to be altered experimentally; genomics, which allows variations in brain structure to be correlated with variations in DNA properties and neuroimaging.
Society and culture
As food
Animal brains are used as food in numerous cuisines.
In rituals
Some archaeological evidence suggests that the mourning rituals of European Neanderthals also involved the consumption of the brain.
The Fore people of Papua New Guinea are known to eat human brains. In funerary rituals, those close to the dead would eat the brain of the deceased to create a sense of immortality. A prion disease called kuru has been traced to this.
See also
Brain–computer interface
Central nervous system disease
List of neuroscience databases
Neurological disorder
Optogenetics
Outline of neuroscience
References
External links
The Brain from Top to Bottom, at McGill University
The Brain, BBC Radio 4 discussion with Vivian Nutton, Jonathan Sawday & Marina Wallace (In Our Time, May 8, 2008)
Our Quest to Understand the Brain – with Matthew Cobb Royal Institution lecture. Archived at Ghostarchive.
Organs (anatomy)
Human anatomy by organ
Animal anatomy
|
24941716
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John%20Ramsey%20%28announcer%29
|
John Ramsey (announcer)
|
John Jules Ramsey (July 26, 1927 – January 25, 1990) was a public address announcer best known as the original PA voice for the California Angels, Los Angeles Dodgers, Los Angeles Kings, Los Angeles Lakers and Los Angeles Raiders. He was also the PA voice for the Los Angeles Rams and USC Trojans football and basketball teams. He also announced four Super Bowls in Southern California and one in Palo Alto, California, as well as serving as the basketball PA voice during the 1984 Summer Olympics. His voice was also heard through seven World Series, the 1959, 1967 and 1980 Major League Baseball All-Star Games, ten NBA Finals, the 1963 and 1972 NBA All-Star Games.
Ramsey, a native of Berlin, New Hampshire, served in the United States Navy during World War II. When the war ended Ramsey moved to Los Angeles, attending El Camino College and then the University of Southern California, from where he graduated in 1954 and later obtained a master's degree in Business. Upon the Dodgers' move to Los Angeles in 1958, Ramsey was hired by the team to be their PA announcer. Two years later, the Lakers moved from Minneapolis and Ramsey became their PA announcer. From their inception in 1961 until the mid-1980s, Ramsey was also the PA announcer for the Angels during their tenancies at Wrigley Field and Dodger Stadium and after their move to Anaheim in 1966. And when the Los Angeles Kings began play in 1967, Ramsey became their original PA voice. Over the years Ramsey would also assume PA announcing duties for the Rams and the USC Trojans, with whom he remained until 1989. He also was the PA voice for the Raiders during their first year in Los Angeles. At one time Ramsey would often announce five sporting events over a three-day weekend, a feat rivaled only by Bruce Binkowski, who was a PA voice for San Diego sporting events.
Although noted for an articulate, deliberate and unruffled announcing style, sometimes he would mess up, as evidenced when a 1960s Dodgers game was delayed: "Ladies and gentlemen, while our ballgame is being temporarily held up because of rainy weather here at Dodger Stadium, our well-known organist, who is located in the centerfield bleachers, is going to entertain you by diddling on his organ." (This announcement was recreated in Kermit Schaefer's 1974 documentary, Pardon My Blooper.)
In addition to Dodger Stadium, Ramsey could be heard at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and Sports Arena, Anaheim Stadium and the Forum. Ramsey left the Lakers and Kings in 1978. His successors included Dennis Packer, who became the PA voice of the Kings in 1979, the Raiders from 1983 until they returned to Oakland in 1995, the Angels during much of the 1980s, the Trojans' PA voice since 1990 and the San Diego Chargers replacing Binkowski; Lawrence Tanter, took over the Lakers and whose career as the Lakers' PA voice has eclipsed that of Ramsey; and Nick Nickson, who took over the Dodgers' and the Kings' PA announcing duties before switching to play-by-play announcing for the Kings in 1993. Former Angels, Clippers and Kings PA announcer David Courtney's career is owed to Ramsey; Courtney began his professional career as a PR assistant for the Kings in 1971 and occasionally filled in for Ramsey at the Forum before becoming a full-time PA announcer himself.
Ramsey could also be heard in various movies, including Two-Minute Warning.
In later years, Ramsey suffered from diabetes. He died on January 25, 1990 at Long Beach Veterans' Hospital of a heart attack at age 62.
John Ramsey's grandson, John Lamb, born seven months after Ramsey's death, made his Major League Baseball debut as the starting pitcher for the Cincinnati Reds at Dodger Stadium on August 14, 2015.
References
CLIPPERS:P.A. Announcer David Courtney.
John Ramsey, Voice of L.A. Sports, Dies
1927 births
1990 deaths
Los Angeles Angels personnel
Los Angeles Dodgers personnel
Los Angeles Rams personnel
Los Angeles Kings personnel
Los Angeles Lakers personnel
Los Angeles Raiders
Major League Baseball public address announcers
National Basketball Association public address announcers
National Football League public address announcers
National Hockey League public address announcers
People from Berlin, New Hampshire
Marshall School of Business alumni
United States Navy personnel of World War II
|
4263534
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectrum%20Software
|
Spectrum Software
|
Spectrum Software was a software company based in California, whose main focus is electrical simulation and analysis tools, most notably the circuit simulator Micro-Cap. It was founded in February 1980 by Andy Thompson. Initially, the company concentrated on providing software for Apple II systems.
One of the earliest products was Logic Designer and Simulator. Released in June 1980, this product was the first integrated circuit editor and logic simulation system available for personal computers. In many ways it was the forerunner of the Micro-Cap products. Its primary goal was to provide a “circuit creation and simulation” environment for digital simulation.
In August 1981, the analog equivalent of the first program, Circuit Designer and Simulator, was released. Its integrated text editor created circuit descriptions for a simple, linear, analog simulator. September 1982 saw the release of the first Micro-Cap package as a successor to the Circuit Designer and Simulator. The name Micro-Cap was derived from the term Microcomputer Circuit Analysis Program.
As of July 4, 2019, the company has closed and the software is now free.
References
Micro-CAP: An Analog Circuit Design System for Personal Computers
Spice Programs: Computerized Circuit Analysis For Analog EEs
Analysis of digital filters via SPICE-family programs
Modeling IIj Noise in HEMTS with SPICE-Based Micro-Cap
AC Analysis of Idealized Switched-Capacitor Circuits in Spice-Compatible Programs
White Paper: A New Zobel Network for Audio
Get more power with a boosted triode
External links
Spectrum Software Homepage
About Spectrum Software
Micro-Cap Application Notes
Software companies based in California
Companies based in Sunnyvale, California
Defunct software companies of the United States
|
28936955
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban%20%28development%29
|
Kanban (development)
|
Kanban (Japanese: , meaning signboard or billboard) is a lean method to manage and improve work across human systems. This approach aims to manage work by balancing demands with available capacity, and by improving the handling of system-level bottlenecks.
Work items are visualized to give participants a view of progress and process, from start to finish—usually via a kanban board. Work is pulled as capacity permits, rather than work being pushed into the process when requested.
In knowledge work and in software development, the aim is to provide a visual process management system which aids decision-making about what, when, and how much to produce. The underlying kanban method originated in lean manufacturing, which was inspired by the Toyota Production System. It has its origin in the late 1940s when the Toyota automotive company implemented a production system called just-in-time; which had the objective of producing according to customer demand and identifying possible material shortages within the production line. But it was Microsoft engineer David J. Anderson who realized how this method devised by Toyota could become a process applicable to any type of organizational process. Kanban is commonly used in software development in combination with other methods and frameworks such as Scrum.
Evolution and documentation of method
David Anderson's 2010 book, Kanban, describes an evolution of the approach from a 2004 project at Microsoft using a theory-of-constraints approach and incorporating a drum-buffer-rope (comparable to the kanban pull system), to a 2006–2007 project at Corbis in which the kanban method was identified. In 2009, Don Reinertsen published a book on second-generation lean product-development which describes the adoption of the kanban system and the use of data collection and an economic model for management decision-making. Another early contribution came from Corey Ladas, whose 2008 book Scrumban suggested that kanban could improve scrum for software development. Ladas saw scrumban as the transition from scrum to kanban. Jim Benson and Tonianne DeMaria Barry published Personal Kanban, applying kanban to individuals and small teams, in 2011. In Kanban from the Inside (2014), Mike Burrows explained kanban's principles, practices and underlying values and related them to earlier theories and models. In Agile Project Management with Kanban (2015), Eric Brechner provides an overview of kanban in practice at Microsoft and Xbox. Kanban Change Leadership (2015), by Klaus Leopold and Siegfried Kaltenecker, explained the method from the perspective of change management and provided guidance to change-initiatives. In 2016 Lean Kanban University Press published a condensed guide to the method, incorporating improvements and extensions from the early kanban projects.
Kanban boards
The diagram here shows a software development workflow on a kanban board. Kanban boards, designed for the context in which they are used, vary considerably and may show work item types ("features" and "user stories" here), columns delineating workflow activities, explicit policies, and swimlanes (rows crossing several columns, used for grouping user stories by feature here). The aim is to make the general workflow and the progress of individual items clear to participants and stakeholders.
As described in books on kanban for software development, the two primary practices of kanban are to visualize work and limit work in progress (WIP). Four additional general practices of kanban listed in Essential Kanban Condensed are to make policies explicit, manage flow, implement feedback loops, and improve collaboratively.
The kanban board in the diagram above highlights the first three general practices of kanban.
It visualizes the work of the development team (the features and user stories).
It captures WIP limits for development steps: the circled values below the column headings that limit the number of work items under that step.
It documents policies, also known as done rules, inside blue rectangles under some of the development steps.
It also shows some kanban flow management for the "user story preparation", "user story development", and "feature acceptance" steps, which have "in progress" and "ready" sub-columns. Each step's WIP limit applies to both sub-columns, preventing work items from overwhelming the flow into or out of those steps.
Managing workflow
Kanban manages workflow directly on the kanban board. The WIP limits for development steps provide development teams immediate feedback on common workflow issues.
For example, on the kanban board shown above, the "deployment" step has a WIP limit of five and there are currently five epics shown in that step. No more work items can move into deployment until one or more epics complete that step (moving to "delivered"). This prevents the "deployment" step from being overwhelmed. Team members working on "feature acceptance" (the previous step) might get stuck because they can't deploy new epics. They can see why immediately on the board and help with the current epic deployments.
Once the five epics in the "deployment" step are delivered, the two epics from the "ready" sub-column of "feature acceptance" (the previous step) can be moved to the "deployment" column. When those two epics are delivered, no other epics can be deployed (assuming no new epics are ready). Now, team members working on deployment are stuck. They can see why immediately and help with feature acceptance.
This workflow control works similarly for every step. Problems are visual and evident immediately, and re-planning can be done continuously. The work management is made possible by limiting work in progress in a way team members can see and track at all times.
Kanban metrics
Kanban uses specific metrics to measure team capacity and estimate project length.
Team velocity defines how many tasks a team can deliver in a given period of time, for example a week or iteration. Velocity is calculated periodically and to help with accuracy of the calculated velocity, teams aim to create tasks that are similar in size. Knowing team velocity helps better predict when a project is going to end.
Lead and Cycle time defines the average time it takes to complete a task. Lead time is calculated since the team gets a request from the client and cycle time is calculated since the team starts working on a task. Lead time is used to understand how long a client has to wait for their product and cycle time is used to understand how fast the team produces a product.
Actionable Agile metrics use cycle time to better predict when each project item is going to be finished. Created by Daniel S. Vacanti in 2015, actionable Agile metrics measure how much time it took to finish 50%, 85% and 95% of the tasks. This information can be used to help the team better predict and control task delivery dates.
See also
List of software development philosophies
References
Further reading
Kanban: Successful Evolutionary Change for Your Technology Business, David J. Anderson. (United States, Blue Hole Press, 2010.
Scrumban: Essays on Kanban Systems for Lean Software Development, Corey Ladas. (United States, Modus Cooperandi Press, 2009.
Agile Project Management with Kanban (Developer Best Practices), Eric Brechner. (United States: Microsoft Press, 2015). .
Kanban in Action, Marcus Hammarberg and Joakim Sunden. (Shelter Island, NY: Manning Publications, 2014). .
Lean from the Trenches: Managing Large-Scale Projects with Kanban, Henrik Kniberg. (Dallas, TX: The Pragmatic Programmers, 2012). .
Stop Starting, Start Finishing! Arne Roock and Claudia Leschik. (USA: Lean-Kanban University, 2012). .
Real-World Kanban: Do Less, Accomplish More with Lean Thinking, Mattias Skarin. (United States: Pragmatic Bookshelf, 2015). .
Agile software development
Japanese business terms
Software development philosophies
|
20016201
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EFM32
|
EFM32
|
EFM32 Gecko MCUs are a family of mixed-signal 32-bit microcontroller integrated circuits from Energy Micro (now Silicon Labs) based on ARM Cortex-M CPUs, including the Cortex-M0+, Cortex-M3 and Cortex-M4.
Overview
EFM32 microcontrollers have a majority of their functionality available down to their deep sleep modes, at sub-microamp current consumption, enabling energy efficient, autonomous behavior while the CPU is sleeping. EFM32 combines this with quick wakeups and efficient processing to reduce the impact of the CPU when code needs to be executed.
A good example of a deep sleep peripheral on EFM32 is the Low Energy Sensor Interface (LESENSE), which is capable of duty-cycling inductive, capacitive, and resistive sensors while autonomously operating in Deep Sleep mode. Another important aspect of the Gecko MCUs is that the peripherals have a direct connection between each other, allowing them to communicate without CPU wake up and intervention. This interconnect is known as the Peripheral Reflex System (PRS).
Significant functionality is available at the lower Stop and Shutoff energy modes. The Stop Mode includes analog comparators, watchdog timers, pulse counters, I2C links, and external interrupts. In Shutoff mode, with 20–100 nA current consumption, depending on product, applications have access to GPIO, reset, a real-time counter (RTC) and retention memory.
The EFM32 family consists of a number of sub-families, ranging from the EFM32 Zero Gecko, based on an ARM Cortex-M0+, to the higher performing EFM32 Giant Gecko and Wonder Gecko, based on Cortex-M3 and Cortex-M4 respectively. EFM32 technology is also the foundation for EFR32 Wireless Geckos, a portfolio of Sub-GHz and 2.4 GHz wireless system on a chip (SoC) devices.
Product families:
Key properties
The important advantage of the EFM32 MCU portfolio is energy efficiency. The energy efficiency stems from autonomous operations in deep sleep modes, low active and sleep currents, and fast wakeup times. EFM32 devices claim to be constructed to reduce development cycles. They are pin/software compatible, scalable across wide application requirements, and are compatible with multiple development platforms. Additionally, because the MCU architecture is the common fundamental piece of the wireless Gecko portfolio (EFR32) with both software and hardware (pin/package) compatibility, the EFM32 products offer a simplified pathway to wireless applications.
Features
At a low level, the MCU can be broken down into eight categories: the core and memory, clock management, energy management, serial interfaces, I/O ports, timers and triggers, analog interfaces, and security modules.
Features of the MCU include:
Low-energy modes.
Peripheral Reflex System (PRS), a peripheral interconnect system with eight triggers to handle task execution without CPU intervention.
CPU: ARM Cortex-M series, from the Cortex-M0+ to the Cortex-M4.
Clock rate: 4 MHz to 48 MHz.
Low frequency and ultralow frequency clocks.
Internal voltage regulators.
Flash memory: 4 kB - 1024 kB .
RAM: 2 kB - 128 kB.
Serial digital interfaces: USART, low energy UART, I2C, and USB.
Timer and triggers block of the MCU includes a cryotimer, low energy pulse counter (PCNT), and backup real-time-counter (RTC).
Analog modules : ADCs, DACs, operational amplifiers, and analog comparators.
Hardware cryptographic engines and cyclic redundancy checks (CRCs).
Up to 93 General-purpose Input/Output (GPIO) pins.
Some variants have LCD controllers.
Design and development resources
Design and development resources include: a freeware Integrated Development Environment (IDE), performance analysis tools, configuration tools and utilities, compilers and development platforms, software stacks, reference code and design examples, app notes, training videos, whitepapers, and more.
Silicon Labs Simplicity Studio is a freeware, Eclipse-based development platform with graphical configuration tools, energy-profiling tools, wireless network analysis tools, demos, software examples, documentation, technical support and community forums. It also includes compiler tool options, including GCC for ARM, Keil, IAR Embedded Workbench, and other third-party tools.
Tools within Simplicity Studio IDE include the Advanced Energy Monitor (AEM) and the Network Debugger called “Packet Trace”. The Advanced Energy Monitor is an EFM32 tool that allows developers to do energy profiling while their application is running. It also claims to allow direct code correlation to optimize both hardware and software. The Network Debugger is a tool that allows developers using the wireless Gecko MCUs to trace network traffic and packets throughout nodes on the network.
EFM32 is supported by multiple third-party Real-time operating system (RTOS) and software libraries, drivers, and stacks, like Micro-Controller Operating Systems (uC/OS) (Micrium), FreeRTOS, GNU Chopstx, embOS (Segger), and mbed OS (ARM). In October 2016, Silicon Labs acquired Micrium. In addition to IoT-critical middleware stacks such as TCP/IP, Micrium provides a RTOS that enables embedded IoT designs to handle task management in real time.
Getting started
EFM32 starter kits are available for evaluation purposes and to gain familiarity with the portfolio. Each starter kit contains sensors and peripherals that help illustrate device capabilities as well as serve as a starting point for application development. Using Simplicity Studio software also grants access to kit information and the ability to program the starter kit with demos and code examples. Most starter kits contain EEPROM with board IDs to enable automated setup when a kit is connected to Simplicity Studio IDE.
Some of the EFM32 kits are ARM mbed-enabled. These kits support ARM mbed out of the box, and are supported in Simplicity Studio development tools and community forums.
Featuring the Giant Gecko MCU with 1024KB of Flash and 93 GPIO, the EFM32 Giant Gecko Starter Kit, shown below, is one of the latest starter kit offerings in the EFM32 family.
Other EFM32 starter kits include:
Energy modes
The EFM32 is designed to achieve a high degree of autonomous operation in the low-energy modes. Multiple ultralow energy modes are available for turning energy usage and significantly reducing power consumption:
Energy Mode 0 — Active/Run Mode: The ARM Cortex-M CPU fetches and executes instructions from Flash or RAM, and all low-energy peripherals can be enabled. EFM32 can quickly enter one of the low-energy modes from EM0, effectively halting the CPU and Flash memory. After a wake up, all low-energy modes return to EM0 within 2 µs, making it easy to enter the low-energy mode and return to 32-bit performance when needed. | Power consumption in EM0: 114 µA/MHz
Energy Mode 1 – Sleep Mode: The clock to the CPU is disabled, effectively reducing the energy needed for operation while maintaining all low-energy peripheral (including Flash and RAM) functionality. By using the peripheral reflex system (PRS) and DMA, the system can collect and output peripheral data without CPU intervention. This autonomous behavior enables the system to remain in EM1 for long periods of time, thereby increasing battery life. Additionally, the low-leakage RAM ensures full data retention. | Power consumption in EM1: 48 µA/MHz
Energy Mode 2 – Deep Sleep Mode: EFM32 MCUs offer a high degree of autonomous operation while keeping energy consumption low. The high frequency oscillator is turned off in EM2; however, a 32 kHz oscillator and the real-time clock are available for the low energy peripherals. Since the ARM Cortex-M CPU is not running in EM2, the MCU performs advanced operations in sleep mode. The peripherals run autonomously due to intelligent interconnection of the modules and memory, the wake-up time to EM0 is only 2 µs and low-leakage RAM ensures full data retention in EM2. | Power consumption in EM2: 0.9 µA
Energy Sleep Mode 3 – Stop Mode: Energy Mode 3 (EM3) tailors the energy consumption of the EFM32 to maintain a very short wake-up time and respond to external interrupts. In EM3 the low-frequency oscillator is disabled, but the low-leakage RAM ensures full data retention and the low-power analog comparator or asynchronous external interrupts can wake-up the device. | Power consumption in EM3: 0.5 µA
Energy Sleep Mode 4 – Shutoff Mode: In this deepest energy mode available, the EFM32 MCU is completely shut down, and the only way to wake up is with a reset. This energy mode enables further energy savings for applications that do not require a RTC or RAM retention. Energy Mode 4 is available in select low-energy peripherals, including power-on reset and external interrupts | Power consumption in EM4: 20 nA
Core technology
To achieve its power and energy-efficiency features, EFM32 products utilize ultralow active and idle power, fast wakeup and processing times, and most important, the ability to intelligently interact with peripherals and sensors autonomously without waking up the CPU and consuming more power.
In active Run Mode, the EFM32 only consumes 114 µA/MHz while running real-life code at 32 MHz and 3V supply. This is also the mode where process time matters, which is one of the main benefits of a 32-bit MCU. Working against power consumption, however, is maximum clock speed. Silicon Labs carefully designs the EFM32s to optimize performance and low power together by designing for maximum clock speed of 48 MHz. MCUs with faster clocks in the 100 MHz+ range will inevitably consume more power in Active Mode.
Beyond the energy savings in Run Mode, the EFM32 is ideal for low duty cycle applications where it can take advantage of operating in lower energy states. The lower energy states are outlined in the section above as EM1 (Sleep), EM2 (Deep Sleep), EM3 (Stop), and EM4 (Shutoff). The Autonomous Peripherals, Peripheral Reflex System, and LESENSE are the core technologies that come into play in the lower energy modes.
The Autonomous Peripheral feature ensures that peripheral devices can operate without waking up the CPU. There is also extensive Direct Memory Address (DMA) support with up to 16 channels, depending on the EFM32.
The Peripheral Reflex System boosts the capability of the Autonomous Peripherals, allowing for flexible configuration to create complex and powerful interconnections that bypass the CPU.
LESENSE is a unique EFM32 feature that allows the MCU to monitor up to 16 sensors in Deep Sleep mode. The EFM32 can do resistive sensing, capacitive sensing, and inductive sensing in this mode.
If needed, the EFM32 can wake up from Deep Sleep and engage the CPU in less than two microseconds.
Application examples of low-energy Gecko technology
ADC sensing applications (temperature): In a demonstration with the Wonder Gecko MCU and a standard temperature thermistor, setting the ADC to sample the thermistor every second (at 1 Hz rate) equates to 1.3 μA average current. In the real world, this would equate to a 220 mA-hr CR2032 coin cell battery lasting for close to 20 years. This same application could be implemented with LESENSE and preset thresholds, instead of using regular time interval ADC samples. In the case of LESENSE and irregular triggers, a threshold trigger rate of 1 Hz would still produce average current of 1.5μA, which equates to 16.85-year battery life.
Low-energy pulse counter for metrology: Using the low energy pulse counter, the EFM32 could also be used in (pulsed) sensing applications. For example, with a magnetic Hall effect sensor, the EFM32 can convert rotational position to quantified speed or flow rate. This is a common situation in water or heat flow metering. The EFM32 can be used in Stop Mode (EM3) to count pulses and then calculate flow. Operating power consumption in this state could be as low as 650 nA (3Vdc), which has significant (positive) implications for battery-operated meters.
History
The EFM32 microcontroller family is one of the two products of Energy Micro. The other being EFR4D Draco SoC radios.
In April 2008, Energy Micro announced that it licensed the ARM Cortex-M3 core.
In October 2009, Energy Micro announced the EFM32 Gecko MCU family (EFM32G series) based on Cortex-M3.
In December 2009, Energy Micro announced development kit for its EFM32 Gecko MCU family.
In February 2010, Energy Micro announced EFM32 Tiny Gecko MCUs were announced.
In March 2010, Energy Micro announced the EFM32 Tiny Gecko MCU family (EFM32TG series) based on Cortex-M3.
In March 2010, Energy Micro announced low cost EFM32 Gecko starter kit.
In July 2010, Energy Micro announced the EFM32 Giant Gecko MCU family (EFM32GG series) based on Cortex-M3 for memory heavy applications.
In November 2010, Energy Micro announced the Simplicity Studio development suite.
In March 2011, Energy Micro announced the EFM32 Zero Gecko MCU family (EFM32ZG series) based on Cortex-M0+ for low cost applications.
In September 2011, Energy Micro announced the EFM32 Leopard Gecko MCU family (EFM32LG series) based on Cortex-M3.
In April 2013, Energy Micro announced the EFM32 Wonder Gecko MCU family (EFM32WG series) based on ARM Cortex-M4F.
In June 2013, Silicon Labs announced the intention to acquire Energy Micro.
In July 2013, Silicon Labs completed the acquisition of Energy Micro.
Development tools
The Gecko mbed compiler is available at: https://developer.mbed.org/compiler/#nav:/;
See also
ARM architecture, List of ARM microprocessor cores, ARM Cortex-M
Microcontroller, List of common microcontrollers
Embedded system, Single-board microcontroller
Interrupt, Interrupt handler, Comparison of real-time operating systems
JTAG, SWD
References
External links
EFM32 official documents
EFM32 application notes
EFM32 developer forum
ARM official documents
EFM32 starter kit videos
Wireless Gecko Multiprotocol Simplicity from Silicon Labs
Wireless Gecko - Introduction to EFR32 HW development tools
EFM32 Gecko Cortex-M3 Starter Kit from Silicon Labs
Wireless Gecko - Sub-GHz Design Practices from Silicon Labs
Using the BG Tool to Make RF Testing
Silicon Labs Wireless Gecko Family | Digi-Key Daily
EFM32 training videos
Simplicity Studio IDE
Mastering Simplicity Studio - Featuring Energy Profiler
Mastering Simplicity Studio - Configurator
Mastering Simplicity Studio - Network Analyzer
Mastering Simplicity Studio - Application Builder
EFM32 blog
Raising a Gecko
IoT Hero from Teenage Engineering Puts a New Spin on Music
IoT Hero: Tim Gipson from Mide
Students to Study a New Course Based on EFM32
Choose Wisely: An MCU is Only a Good as its Development Tools
Get More from our New Multiprotocol and Sub-GHz Wireless SoCs with Connect Networking Stack
Other
ARM: Energy Micro Licenses Cortex-M3 Processor
EETimes: ARM Extends to Low Power applications
Embedded microprocessors
Microcontrollers
ARM architecture
|
1273197
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centro%20de%20Ense%C3%B1anza%20T%C3%A9cnica%20Industrial
|
Centro de Enseñanza Técnica Industrial
|
The Centro de Enseñanza Técnica Industrial (Technical and Industrial Teaching Center), or CETI, is a public, decentralized and federal educative institution in Guadalajara, in the state of Jalisco, Mexico.
CETI is a university involved in the formation of professionals in technology, with self-initiative, quality and skills appropriate in generating and applying technology and innovation. It also promotes research and offers technological services in strategic areas for the development of the industrial sector in the region.
There exist three campuses in Guadalajara's Metropolitan Zone: Plantel Colomos, in the Fraccionamiento Providencia, Plantel Tonalá, in the Municipio de Tonalá and Plantel Rio Santigo in the Fracc. Urbi Paseos de Santiago II, also in the Municipio de Tonalá.
Currently it offers several degrees using the French-based Technologist Educative Model Tecnólogo, and various degrees in engineering (with specializations).
Technologist degrees
In Campus Colomos:
Tecnólogo en Desarrollo de Software (Software Development)
Tecnólogo en Control Automático e Instrumentación (Automatic Control and Instrumentation)
Tecnólogo en Construcción (Urban Building)
Tecnólogo en Electrónica y Comunicaciones (Electronics and Communications)
Tecnólogo en Electromecánica (Electromechanics)
Tecnólogo en Máquinas-Herramienta (Machine Tools and Machining)
Tecnólogo en Mecánica Automotriz (Automobile Mechanics)
Tecnólogo Químico en Fármacos (Medicine Processing and Manufacturing)
In Campus Tonalá:
Tecnólogo en Desarrollo de Software (Software Development)
Tecnólogo en Calidad Total y Productividad (Total Quality Control and Productivity)
Tecnólogo Químico Industrial (Industrial Chemistry)
Tecnólogo Químico en Alimentos (Food Processing and Manufacturing)
Tecnólogo Químico en Fármacos (Medicine Processing and Manufacturing)
Tecnólogo en Desarrollo Electrónico (Electronics Development and Design)
In Campus Rio Santiago:
Tecnólogo en Desarrollo de Software (Software Development)
Tecnólogo en Calidad Total y Productividad (Total Quality Control and Productivity)
Engineering degrees
In Campus Colomos:
Ingeniería Industrial (Industrial Engineering)
Ingeniería Mecatrónica (Mechatronics Engineering)
Ingeniería en Diseño Electrónico y Sistemas Inteligentes (Electronic Design and Intelligent Systems Engineering)
Ingeniería en Desarrollo de Software (Software Development Engineering)
Ingeniería Civil Sustentable
In Campus Tonalá:
Ingeniería Industrial (Industrial Engineering)
Ingeniería Mecatrónica (Mechatronics Engineering)
References
External links
Campus Colomos campus website
Campus Tonalá campus website
Campus Río Santiago
Universities and colleges in Jalisco
Universities in Guadalajara, Jalisco
Technical universities and colleges in Mexico
|
1937722
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White-Smith%20Music%20Publishing%20Co.%20v.%20Apollo%20Co.
|
White-Smith Music Publishing Co. v. Apollo Co.
|
White-Smith Music Publishing Company v. Apollo Company, 209 U.S. 1 (1908), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States which ruled that manufacturers of music rolls for player pianos did not have to pay royalties to the composers. The ruling was based on a holding that the piano rolls were not copies of the plaintiffs' copyrighted sheet music, but were instead parts of the machine that reproduced the music.
This case was subsequently eclipsed by Congress's intervention in the form of an amendment to the Copyright Act of 1909, introducing a compulsory license for the manufacture and distribution of such "mechanical" embodiments of musical works.
Issue and relevance
The main issue was whether or not something had to be directly perceptible (meaning intelligible to an ordinary human being) for it to be a "copy." Naturally, hardly anyone could perceive (read) music by looking at a roll of paper with holes in it. The 1976 Copyright Act later clarified the issue, defining a "copy" as a "material object . . . in which a work is fixed . . . and from which the work can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device." This case remains relevant because the 1976 Copyright Act makes an "otherwise inexplicable distinction between 'copies' and 'phonorecords.'"
Perhaps the greatest relevance of White-Smith, however, is that it foreshadowed the debate over whether object code (computer program code in the form of 0s and 1s encoded in a magnetic tape or disc or in an EPROM) was protected by US copyright law. In the early 1980s the issue was in considerable doubt, and initially several lower court decisions held that object code was not a "copy" of a computer program. Two court of appeals decisions involving copying of Apple computers and their software were influential in reversing the tide. They upheld the protectability of object code embodiments of computer programs and rejected the supposed requirement that a candidate for status as a work of authorship must communicate a message to human readers or perceivers. These decisions wrote the human-intelligibility requirement of White-Smith out of copyright law, as a qualification for investiture of copyright, although the "piano-roll amendment" had only established that human-intelligibility was not a requirement for an infringing "copy." In principle, what infringes could be broader than what gives rise to copyright, on the theory that works of authorship need a hedge or moat around them to assure adequate protection. But that does not appear to be the law.
The White-Smith case also appears to be the source of a legal metaphor used in US patent law relating to computer programs. As explained in greater detail in the Wikipedia article Piano Roll Blues, the legal fiction developed in US patent law that placing a new program in an old general-purpose digital computer creates a new computer and thus a "new machine" for purposes of section 101 of the US patent statute (listing patent-eligible subject matter). Critics of this argument derisively termed it the "Old Piano Roll Blues," meaning that the argument was equivalent to asserting that placing a new piano roll into an old player piano transformed it into a new player piano. The 2014 decision of the United States Supreme Court in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International appears to have extinguished the Piano roll blues argument by holding that simply saying “apply it with a computer” will not transform a patent-ineligible claim to an idea into a patent-eligible claim.
See also
List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 209
White, Smith & Company
References
External links
"Player Pianos and the Origins of Compulsory Licensing – Some Details of its Origins" by Zvi S. Rosen
United States Supreme Court cases
United States copyright case law
1908 in United States case law
United States Supreme Court cases of the Fuller Court
Abrogated United States Supreme Court decisions
|
16260775
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberethics
|
Cyberethics
|
Cyber ethics is the philosophic study of ethics pertaining to computers, encompassing user behavior and what computers are programmed to do, and how this affects individuals and society. For years, various governments have enacted regulations while organizations have defined policies about cyberethics.
Privacy history
In the late 19th century, the invention of cameras spurred similar ethical debates as the internet does today. During a seminar of Harvard Law Review in 1890, Warren and Brandeis defined privacy from an ethical and moral point of view to be:
"central to dignity and individuality and boyhood. Privacy is also indispensable to a sense of autonomy — to 'a feeling that there is an area of an individual's life that is totally under his or her control, an area that is free from outside intrusion.' The deprivation of privacy can even endanger a person's health."
Over 100 years later, the internet and proliferation of private data through governments and ecommerce is an area which requires a new round of ethical debate involving a person's privacy.
Privacy can be decomposed to the limitation of others' access to an individual with "three elements of secrecy, anonymity, and solitude."
Anonymity refers to the individual's right to protection from undesired attention. Solitude refers to the lack of physical proximity of an individual to others. Secrecy refers to the protection of personalized information from being freely distributed.
Individuals surrender private information when conducting transactions and registering for services. Ethical business practice protects the privacy of their customers by securing information which may contribute to the loss of secrecy, anonymity, and solitude. Credit card information, social security numbers, phone numbers, mothers' maiden names, addresses and phone numbers freely collected and shared over the internet may lead to a loss of Privacy.
Fraud and impersonation are some of the malicious activities that occur due to the direct or indirect abuse of private information. Identity theft is rising rapidly due to the availability of private information in the internet. For instance, seven million Americans fell victim to identity theft in 2002, and nearly 12 million Americans were victims of identity theft in 2011 making it the fastest growing crime in the United States.
Public records search engines and databases are the main culprits contributing to the rise of cybercrime.
Listed below are a few recommendations to restrict online databases from proliferating sensitive personnel information.
Exclude sensitive unique identifiers from database records such as social security numbers, birth dates, hometown and mothers' maiden names.
Exclude phone numbers that are normally unlisted.
Clear provision of a method which allows people to have their names removed from a database.
Banning the reverse social security number lookup services.
Private collection
Data warehouses are used today to collect and store huge amounts of personal data and consumer transactions. These facilities can preserve large volumes of consumer information for an indefinite amount of time. Some of the key architectures contributing to the erosion of privacy include databases, cookies and spyware.
Some may argue that data warehouses are supposed to stand alone and be protected. However, the fact is enough personal information can be gathered from corporate websites and social networking sites to initiate a reverse lookup. Therefore, is it not important to address some of the ethical issues regarding how protected data ends up in the public domain?
As a result, identity theft protection businesses are on the rise. Companies such as LifeLock and JPMorgan Chase have begun to capitalize on selling identity theft protection insurance.
Property
Ethical debate has long included the concept of property. This concept has created many clashes in the world of cyberethics. One philosophy of the internet is centered around the freedom of information. The controversy over ownership occurs when the property of information is infringed upon or uncertain.
Intellectual property rights
The ever-increasing speed of the internet and the emergence of compression technology, such as mp3 opened the doors to Peer-to-peer file sharing, a technology that allowed users to anonymously transfer files to each other, previously seen on programs such as Napster or now seen through communications protocol such as BitTorrent. Much of this, however, was copyrighted music and illegal to transfer to other users. Whether it is ethical to transfer copyrighted media is another question.
Proponents of unrestricted file sharing point out how file sharing has given people broader and faster access to media, has increased exposure to new artists, and has reduced the costs of transferring media (including less environmental damage). Supporters of restrictions on file sharing argue that we must protect the income of our artists and other people who work to create our media. This argument is partially answered by pointing to the small proportion of money artists receive from the legitimate sale of media.
We also see a similar debate over intellectual property rights in respect to software ownership. The two opposing views are for closed source software distributed under restrictive licenses or for free and open source software. The argument can be made that restrictions are required because companies would not invest weeks and months in development if there were no incentive for revenue generated from sales and licensing fees. A counter argument to this is that standing on shoulders of giants is far cheaper when the giants do not hold IP rights. Some proponents for open source believe that all programs should be available to anyone who wants to study them.
Digital rights management (DRM)
With the introduction of digital rights management software, new issues are raised over whether the subverting of DRM is ethical. Some champion the hackers of DRM as defenders of users' rights, allowing the blind to make audio books of PDFs they receive, allowing people to burn music they have legitimately bought to CD or to transfer it to a new computer. Others see this as nothing but simply a violation of the rights of the intellectual property holders, opening the door to uncompensated use of copyrighted media. Another ethical issue concerning DRMs involves the way these systems could undermine the fair use provisions of the copyright laws. The reason is that these allow content providers to choose who can view or listen to their materials making the discrimination against certain groups possible. In addition, the level of control given to content providers could lead to the invasion of user privacy since the system is able to keep tabs on the personal information and activities of users who access their materials. In the United States, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) reinforces this aspect to DRM technology, particularly in the way the flow of information is controlled by content providers. Programs or any technologies that attempt to circumvent DRM controls are in violation of one of its provisions (Section 1201).
Accessibility, censorship and filtering
Accessibility, censorship and filtering bring up many ethical issues that have several branches in cyberethics. Many questions have arisen which continue to challenge our understanding of privacy, security and our participation in society. Throughout the centuries mechanisms have been constructed in the name of protection and security. Today the applications are in the form of software that filters domains and content so that they may not be easily accessed or obtained without elaborate circumvention or on a personal and business level through free or content-control software. Internet censorship and filtering are used to control or suppress the publishing or accessing of information. The legal issues are similar to offline censorship and filtering. The same arguments that apply to offline censorship and filtering apply to online censorship and filtering; whether people are better off with free access to information or should be protected from what is considered by a governing body as harmful, indecent or illicit. The fear of access by minors drives much of the concern and many online advocate groups have sprung up to raise awareness and of controlling the accessibility of minors to the internet.
Censorship and filtering occurs on small to large scales, whether it be a company restricting their employees' access to cyberspace by blocking certain websites which are deemed as relevant only to personal usage and therefore damaging to productivity or on a larger scale where a government creates large firewalls which censor and filter access to certain information available online frequently from outside their country to their citizens and anyone within their borders. One of the most famous examples of a country controlling access is the Golden Shield Project, also referred to as the Great Firewall of China, a censorship and surveillance project set up and operated by the People's Republic of China. Another instance is the 2000 case of the League Against Racism and Antisemitism (LICRA), French Union of Jewish Students, vs. Yahoo! Inc (USA) and Yahoo! France, where the French Court declared that "access by French Internet users to the auction website containing Nazi objects constituted a contravention of French law and an offence to the 'collective memory' of the country and that the simple act of displaying such objects (e.g. exhibition of uniforms, insignia or emblems resembling those worn or displayed by the Nazis) in France constitutes a violation of the Article R645-1 of the Penal Code and is therefore considered as a threat to internal public order."
Since the French judicial ruling many websites must abide by the rules of the countries in which they are accessible.
Freedom of information
Freedom of information, that is the freedom of speech as well as the freedom to seek, obtain and impart information brings up the question of who or what, has the jurisdiction in cyberspace. The right of freedom of information is commonly subject to limitations dependent upon the country, society and culture concerned.
Generally there are three standpoints on the issue as it relates to the internet. First is the argument that the internet is a form of media, put out and accessed by citizens of governments and therefore should be regulated by each individual government within the borders of their respective jurisdictions. Second, is that, "Governments of the Industrial World... have no sovereignty [over the Internet] ... We have no elected government, nor are we likely to have one,... You have no moral right to rule us nor do you possess any methods of enforcement we have true reason to fear." A third party believes that the internet supersedes all tangible borders such as the borders of countries, authority should be given to an international body since what is legal in one country may be against the law in another.
Digital divide
An issue specific to the ethical issues of the freedom of information is what is known as the digital divide. This refers to the unequal socio-economic divide between those who had access to digital and information technology, such as cyberspace, and those who have had limited or no access at all. This gap of access between countries or regions of the world is called the global digital divide.
Sexuality and pornography
Sexuality in terms of sexual orientation, infidelity, sex with or between minors, public display and pornography have always stirred ethical controversy. These issues are reflected online to varying degrees. In terms of its resonance, the historical development of the online pornography industry and user-generated content have been the studied by media academics. One of the largest cyberethical debates is over the regulation, distribution and accessibility of pornography online. Hardcore pornographic material is generally controlled by governments with laws regarding how old one has to be to obtain it and what forms are acceptable or not. The availability of pornography online calls into question jurisdiction as well as brings up the problem of regulation in particular over child pornography, which is illegal in most countries, as well as pornography involving violence or animals, which is restricted within most countries.
Gambling
Gambling is often a topic in ethical debate as some view it as inherently wrong and support prohibition or controls while others advocate no legal . "Between these extremes lies a multitude of opinions on what types of gambling the government should permit and where it should be allowed to take place. Discussion of gambling forces public policy makers to deal with issues as diverse as addiction, tribal rights, taxation, senior living, professional and college sports, organized crime, neurobiology, suicide, divorce, and religion." Due to its controversy, gambling is either banned or heavily controlled on local or national levels. The accessibility of the internet and its ability to cross geographic-borders have led to illegal online gambling, often offshore operations. Over the years online gambling, both legal and illegal, has grown exponentially which has led to difficulties in regulation. This enormous growth has even called into question by some the ethical place of gambling online.
Related organizations
The following organizations are of notable interest in cyberethics debates:
International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP)
Association for Computing Machinery, Special Interest Group: Computers and Society (SIGCAS)
Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC)
Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)
International Center for Information Ethics (ICIE)
Directions and Implications in Advanced Computing (DIAC)
The Centre for Computing and Social Responsibility (CCSR)
Cyber-Rights and Cyber-liberties
International Journal of Cyber Ethics in Education (IJCEE)
The Center for Digital Ethics and Policy (CDEP)
Codes of ethics in computing
Four notable examples of ethics codes for IT professionals are listed below:
RFC 1087
In January 1989, the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) in RFC 1087 defines an activity as unethical and unacceptable if it:
Seeks to gain unauthorized access to the resources of the Internet.
Wastes resources (people, capacity, computer) through such actions.
Destroys the integrity of computer-based information, or
Compromises the privacy of users.
The Code of Fair Information Practices
The Code of Fair Information Practices is based on five principles outlining the requirements for records keeping systems. This requirement was implemented in 1973 by the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare.
There must be no personal data record-keeping systems whose very existence is secret.
There must be a way for a person to find out what information about the person is in a record and how it is used.
There must be a way for a person to prevent information about the person that was obtained for one purpose from being used or made available for other purposes without the person's consent.
There must be a way for a person to correct or amend a record of identifiable information about the person.
Any organization creating, maintaining, using, or disseminating records of identifiable personal data must assure the reliability of the data for their intended use and must take precautions to prevent misuses of the data.
Ten Commandments of Computer Ethics
The ethical values as defined in 1992 by the Computer Ethics Institute; a nonprofit organization whose mission is to advance technology by ethical means, lists these rules as a guide to computer ethics:
Thou shalt not use a computer to harm other people.
Thou shalt not interfere with other people's computer work.
Thou shalt not snoop around in other people's computer files.
Thou shalt not use a computer to steal.
Thou shalt not use a computer to bear false witness.
Thou shalt not copy or use proprietary software for which you have not paid.
Thou shalt not use other people's computer resources without authorization or proper compensation.
Thou shalt not appropriate other people's intellectual output.
Thou shalt think about the social consequences of the program you are writing or the system you are designing.
Thou shalt always use a computer in ways that ensure consideration and respect for your fellow humans.
(ISC)² Code of Ethics
(ISC)², a professional association which seeks to inspire a safe and secure cyber world, has further defined its own code of ethics. The code is based on four canons, under a general preamble.
Code of Ethics Preamble:
The safety and welfare of society and the common good, duty to our principles, and to each other, requires that we adhere, and be seen to adhere, to the highest ethical standards of behavior.
Therefore, strict adherence to this Code is a condition of certification.
Code of Ethics Canons:
Canon One: Protect society, the common good, necessary public trust and confidence, and the infrastructure.
Canon Two: Act honorably, honestly, justly, responsibly, and legally.
Canon Three: Provide diligent and competent service to principles.
Canon Four: Advance and protect the profession.
See also
References
External links
Association for Computing Machinery, Special Interest Group: Computers and Society website
International Center for Information Ethics website
The Centre for Computing and Social Responsibility website
Safer Internet Center which includes Awareness Node, Helpline and Hotline
Cyprus Safer Internet Helpline, Cyprus Safer Internet Hotline
Cyber-Rights and Cyber-Liberties website
IEEE Website
ACM website
ISC2 website
Internet Architecture Board
Ethics
Cyberspace
Computer ethics
|
55579
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAD%20%28programming%20language%29
|
MAD (programming language)
|
MAD (Michigan Algorithm Decoder) is a programming language and compiler for the IBM 704 and later the IBM 709, IBM 7090, IBM 7040, UNIVAC 1107, UNIVAC 1108, Philco 210-211, and eventually the IBM S/370 mainframe computers. Developed in 1959 at the University of Michigan by Bernard Galler, Bruce Arden and Robert M. Graham, MAD is a variant of the ALGOL language. It was widely used to teach programming at colleges and universities during the 1960s and played a minor role in the development of CTSS, Multics, and the Michigan Terminal System computer operating systems.
The archives at the Bentley Historical Library of the University of Michigan contain reference materials on the development of MAD and MAD/I, including three linear feet of printouts with hand-written notations and original printed manuals.
MAD, MAD/I, and GOM
There are three MAD compilers:
Original MAD, the compiler developed in 1959 at the University of Michigan for the IBM 704 and later the IBM 709 and IBM 7090 mainframe computers running the University of Michigan Executive System (UMES) and the Compatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS) operating systems. In the mid-1960s MAD was ported at the University of Maryland to the UNIVAC 1108. Versions of MAD were also available for the Philco 210-211 and UNIVAC 1107.
MAD/I, an "extended" version of MAD for the IBM System/360 series of computers running under the Michigan Terminal System (MTS). Work on the new compiler started in 1965 as part of the ARPA sponsored CONCOMP project at the University of Michigan. As work progressed it gradually became clear that MAD/I was a new language independent of the original 7090 version of MAD.
GOM (Good Old MAD), a reimplementation of the original 7090 MAD for the IBM System/370 series of mainframe computers running the Michigan Terminal System (MTS). GOM was created in the early 1980s by Don Boettner at the University of Michigan Computing Center.
History
While MAD was motivated by ALGOL 58, it does not resemble ALGOL 58 in any significant way.
Programs written in MAD included MAIL, RUNOFF, one of the first text processing systems, and several other utilities all under Compatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS). Work was done on a design for a MAD compiler for Multics, but it was never implemented.
The following is an interesting quote from An Interview with Brian Kernighan when he was asked "What hooked you on programming?":
I think that the most fun I had programming was a summer job at Project MAC at MIT in the summer of 1966, where I worked on a program that created a job tape for the brand new GE 645 in the earliest days of Multics. I was writing in MAD, which was much easier and more pleasant than the FORTRAN and COBOL that I had written earlier, and I was using CTSS, the first time-sharing system, which was infinitely easier and more pleasant than punch cards.
MAD was quite fast compared to some of the other compilers of its day. Because a number of people were interested in using the FORTRAN language and yet wanted to obtain the speed of the MAD compiler, a system called MADTRAN (written in MAD) was developed. MADTRAN was simply a translator from FORTRAN to MAD, which then produced machine code. MADTRAN was distributed through SHARE.
MAD/I has a syntactic structure similar to ALGOL 60 together with important features from the original MAD and from PL/I. MAD/I was designed as an extensible language. It was available for use under MTS and provided many new ideas which made their way into other languages, but MAD/I compilations were slow and MAD/I never extended itself into widespread use when compared to the original 7090 MAD.
GOM is essentially the 7090 MAD language modified and extended for the 360/370 architecture with some judicious tailoring to better fit current programming practices and problems. The MTS Message System was written in GOM.
MAD, MAD Magazine, and Alfred E. Neuman
In a pre-release version of the original MAD, as a reference to MAD's namesake, MAD magazine, when a program contained too many compile time errors the compiler would print a full-page picture of Alfred E. Neuman using ASCII art. The caption read, "See this man about your program--He might want to publish it. He never worries--but from the looks of your program, you should." This feature was not included in the final official version. However, it was included in the production version for the IBM 7040.
And Bernie Galler remembers:
By the time we designed the language that we thought would be worth doing and for which we could do a compiler, we couldn't call it Algol any more; it really was different. That's when we adopted the name MAD, for the Michigan Algorithm Decoder. We had some funny interaction with the Mad Magazine people, when we asked for permission to use the name MAD. In a very funny letter, they told us that they would take us to court and everything else, but ended the threat with a P.S. at the bottom - "Sure, go ahead." Unfortunately, that letter is lost.
"Hello, world" example
The "hello, world" example program prints the string "Hello, world" to a terminal or screen display.
PRINT FORMAT HELLOW
VECTOR VALUES HELLOW=$13h0Hello, world*$
END OF PROGRAM
The first character of the line is treated as logical carriage control, in this example the character "0" which causes a double-spaced line to be printed.
Alternatively, contractions can be used, and the compiler will expand them in the listing:
P'T HELLOW
V'S HELLOW=$13h0Hello, world*$
E'M
Language elements
MAD and GOM, but not MAD/I, are composed of the following elements:
Input format
MAD programs are a series of statements written on punched cards, generally one statement per card, although a statement can be continued to multiple cards. Columns 1-10 contains an optional statement label, comments or remarks are flagged using the letter "R" in column 11, and columns 73-80 are unused and could contain a sequence identifier. Spaces are not significant anywhere other than within character constants. For GOM input is free form with no sequence field and lines may be up to 255 characters long; lines that start with an asterisk (*) are comments; and lines that start with a plus-sign (+) are continuation lines.
Names
Variable names, function names, and statement labels have the same form, a letter followed by zero to five letters or digits. Function names end with a period. All names can be subscripted (the name followed by parentheses, with multiple subscripts separated by commas). For GOM names may be up to 24 characters long and may include the underscore (_) character.
Few keywords in the language are reserved words since most are longer than six letters or are surrounded by periods. There is a standard set of abbreviations which can be used to replace the longer words. These consist of the first and last letters of the keywords with an apostrophe between them, such as W'R for WHENEVER and D'N for DIMENSION.
Data types
MAD uses the term "mode" for its data types. Five basic modes are supported:
Integer written with or without a scale factor (1, +1, -1, 1K10, 1K) or as octal constants (to 7777777777777K);
Floating Point written with or without an exponent (0., 1.5, -0.05, +100.4, -4., .05E-2, -.05E2, 5E02, 5.E2);
Boolean (1B for true and 0B for false);
Statement Label, and
Function Name written as a name followed by a period (SQRT.).
The mode of a constant can be redefined by adding the character M followed by a single digit at the end of the constant, where 0 indicates floating point, 1 integer, 2 boolean, 3 function name, and 4 statement label.
For GOM six additional modes are added: CHARACTER, SHORT INTEGER, BYTE INTEGER, LONG INTEGER, POINTER, and DYNAMIC RECORD.
Alphabetic or character constants are stored as integers and written using the dollar sign as a delimiter ($ABCDEF$) with double dollar-signs used to enter a true dollar sign ($$$.56$ is 56 cents). Strings longer than six characters are represented using arrays.
Arrays and matrices
There is no limit on the number of dimensions.
Negative and zero as well as floating-point subscripts are allowed.
Matrices are storied in consecutive memory locations in the order determined by varying the rightmost subscript first.
Matrices may be referenced using a subscript for each dimension, NAME(s1,s2,s3), or using a single subscript, NAME(s1).
Input-output lists, VECTOR VALUES statements, and some subroutines allow the use of block notation, which has the form A,...,B or A...B, which is a reference to the entire region from A to B. inclusive. In terms of a vector, A(1)...A(N) would be A(1), A(2), A(3), ..., A(N).
There are facilities that allow changing dimensions at run-time; permitting the programmer to vary the location of the initial element in an array within the overall block which has been set aside for the array; and allowing an arbitrary storage mapping to be specified.
Operators
Arithmetic operators
.ABS. (unary absolute value)
+ (unary identity)
- (unary negation)
+ (addition)
- (subtraction)
* (multiplication)
/ (division)
.P. (exponentiation)
.N. (bitwise negation)
.A. (bitwise and)
.V. (bitwise or)
.EV. (bitwise exclusive or)
.LS. (left shift)
.RS. (right shift)
.REM. (remainder, GOM only)
Pointer operators (GOM only)
: (selection)
.LOC. (location)
.IND. (indirection)
Relational operators
.L. (less than)
.LE. (less than or equal)
.E. (equal)
.NE. (not equal)
.G. (greater than)
.GE. (greater than or equal)
Boolean operators
.NOT. (unary logical not)
.OR. (logical or)
.EXOR. (logical exclusive or)
.AND. (logical and)
.THEN. (implies)
.EQV. (equivalence)
Bit operators (GOM only)
.SETBIT. (set bit to 1)
.RESETBIT. (reset bit to 0)
.BIT. (test bit)
Declaration statements
Variables may be implicitly or explicitly declared. By default all implicitly declared variables are assumed to be floating point. The NORMAL MODE IS statement may be used to change this default.
FLOATING POINT var1, var2, ... (may include dimension information)
INTEGER var1, var2, ... (may include dimension information)
BOOLEAN var1, var2, ... (may include dimension information)
FUNCTION NAME name1, name2, ... (may include dimension information)
STATEMENT LABEL label1, label2, ... (may include dimension information)
MODE NUMBER n, var1, var2, ... (may include dimension information)
NORMAL MODE IS type-name (INTEGER, BOOLEAN, FLOATING POINT, STATEMENT LABEL, or FUNCTION NAME)
NORMAL MODE IS MODE NUMBER n
DIMENSION variable(max-dimension) (declares an array from 0...max-dimension)
DIMENSION variable(from...to)
DIMENSION variable(subscript1, subscript2, ..., subscriptn) (declares a multidimensional array)
VECTOR VALUES array(n) = c1, c2, c3, ...
VECTOR VALUES array(m) ... array(n) = constant
DOUBLE STORAGE MODE mode-list (doubles the amount of storage allocated for the modes listed)
EQUIVALENCE (a1, a2, ..., am), ...
PROGRAM COMMON a, b, c, ... (may include dimension information)
ERASABLE a, b, c, ... (may include dimension information)
PARAMETER A1(B1), A2(B2), ..., An(Bn)
SYMBOL TABLE VECTOR variable
FULL SYMBOL TABLE VECTOR variable
LISTING ON (the default)
LISTING OFF
REFERENCES ON
REFERENCES OFF (the default)
Executable statements
variable = expression (assignment)
TRANSFER TO statement-label
WHENEVER boolean-expression, executable-statement (simple conditional)
WHENEVER boolean-expression (compound conditional)
OR WHENEVER boolean-expression
OTHERWISE
END OF CONDITIONAL
CONTINUE (do nothing statement, usually used to carry a statement label)
THROUGH statement-label, FOR VALUES OF variable = expression-list (iteration)
(where variable may be any mode including floating-point)
SET LIST TO array-element, [ expression ]
SAVE DATA list
RESTORE DATA list
PAUSE NO. octal-integer (stop execution, print an octal number on the operators console, allow manual restart)
END OF PROGRAM (the last statement in all MAD programs)
Input and output statements
READ DATA (reads data using a self-defining format, var1=value1, var2=value2, ..., varN=valueN
READ AND PRINT DATA (similar to READ DATA, but data read is echoed to the printer)
READ FORMAT format, list
READ BCD TAPE n, format, list
READ BINARY TAPE n, list
PRINT RESULTS list
PRINT BCD RESULTS list
PRINT OCTAL RESULTS list
PRINT COMMENT $string$ (first character of string is carriage control)
PRINT FORMAT format, list
PRINT ON LINE FORMAT format, list (display a message for the machine operator)
WRITE BCD TAPE n, format, list
WRITE BINARY TAPE n, list
PUNCH FORMAT format, list
LOOK AT FORMAT format, list (read data without advancing to next record)
REWIND TAPE n
END OF FILE TAPE n
BACKSPACE RECORD OF TAPE n
BACKSPACE RECORD OF TAPE n, IF LOAD POINT TRANSFER TO statement
BACKSPACE FILE OF TAPE n
BACKSPACE FILE OF TAPE n, IF LOAD POINT TRANSFER TO statement
SET LOW DENSITY TAPE n
SET HIGH DENSITY TABLE n
REWIND TAPE n
UNLOAD TAPE n
FORMAT VARIABLE list (declaration, may include dimension information)
Functions
Function names end with a period. Internal and external functions are supported. Internal functions are compiled as part of the program in which they are used and share declarations and variables with the main program. External functions are compiled separately and do not share declarations and variables. A one statement definition of internal functions is permitted. Recursive functions are permitted, although the function must do some of the required saving and restoring work itself.
INTERNAL FUNCTION function-name.(argument-list) = expression (single statement definition)
INTERNAL FUNCTION function-name.(argument-list)
EXTERNAL FUNCTION function-name.(argument-list)
ENTRY TO NAME name.
END OF FUNCTION (last statement in a multiple line definition)
FUNCTION RETURN [ expression ]
ERROR RETURN (force an error return to a statement or to the operating system, if no error statement is given as last argument of the call)
SAVE RETURN
RESTORE DATA
RESTORE RETURN
EXECUTE procedure.(argument-list) (call a non-single valued function)
Operator definition and redefinition
One of the most interesting features in MAD is the ability to extend the language by redefining existing operators, defining new operators, or defining new data types (modes). The definitions are made using MAD declaration statements and assembly language mnemonics included following the declaration up to the END pseudo-instruction that implement the operation.
DEFINE BINARY OPERATOR defined-op, PRECEDENCE rank existing-op MODE STRUCTURE mode-options
DEFINE UNARY OPERATOR defined-op, PRECEDENCE rank existing-op MODE STRUCTURE mode-options
MODE STRUCTURE mode-no = mode-no existing-op mode-no
MODE STRUCTURE mode-no = mode-no existing-op mode-no SAME SEQUENCE AS mode-no existing-op mode-no
where:
rank is one of SAME AS, LOWER THAN, or HIGHER THAN; and
mode-options are the options that appear on the MODE STRUCTURE statement.
Three pre-defined packages of definitions (MATRIX, DOUBLE PRECISION, and COMPLEX) are available for inclusion in MAD source programs using the INCLUDE statement.
INCLUDE package
See also
ALGOL 58
ALGOL 60
Notes
References
An Abbreviated description of the MAD compiler language, Fernando J. Corbató, Jerome H. Saltzer, Neil Barta, and Thomas N. Hastings, M.I.T. Computation Center Memorandum CC-213, June, 1963.
CLSYS, a program to facilitate the use of the MAD translator for large (class-size) batches, Jerome H. Saltzer, M.I.T. Computation Center Memorandum CC-204. February, 1963.
A Computer Primer for the Mad Language, Elliott Irving Organick, 1961.
Internal organization of the MAD translator, Arden, B. W., Galler, B. A. and Graham, R. M., pp. 28–31, CACM Volume 4 No. 1 (Jan 1961)
An Introduction To Algorithmic Methods Using The MAD Language, Alan B. Marcovitz and Earl J. Schweppe, Macmillan, 1966.
An Introduction to Digital Computers and the MAD Language, Brice Carnahan, University of Michigan.
The Language of Computers, Bernard A. Galler, University of Michigan, McGraw-Hill, 1962.
MAD at Michigan: its function & features, Arden, B. W., Galler, B. A., and Graham, R. M., pp27–28, Datamation, Volume 7 No. 12 (Dec 1961)
Flow Charts of The Michigan Algorithm Decoder, by G. B. Smith, SHARE General Program Library, SHARE Distribution Number 1327 PA, 1961
External links
Eric Raymond's retrocompiler for MAD
A trivial example of a MAD program
Dave Pitts' IBM 7094 support – Has a CTSS environment that includes the MIT version of MAD.
ALGOL 58 dialect
Procedural programming languages
Programming languages created in 1959
|
25787868
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immunet
|
Immunet
|
Immunet is a free, cloud-based, community-driven antivirus application, using the ClamAV and its own engine. The software is complementary with existing antivirus software. In January 2011 Immunet was acquired by Sourcefire.
The application is free-of-charge, although a commercial version is available. It claims to be lightweight and provides always up-to-date protection against the threats. Virus signature files are stored in the cloud, not on individual computers, so signature downloads are not required. Once a virus is detected and blocked for one user, all other Immunet users receive the same protection almost instantly. The software is noted for its ability to allow individual users to easily author their own signatures.
Products
Immunet was previously provided by Sourcefire in two editions, Free (for personal use), and Plus (for commercial use). As of June 10, 2014, the commercial version was discontinued, though Cisco (having acquired SourceFire) continued to support the free version.
At version 3.0 , Immunet Free offers protection based upon the virus definitions in the cloud, and an option to include the ClamAV off-line virus definitions for use when not connected to the Internet. Immunet advises that the free version be used alongside another antivirus program, and supports several particular such programs in the sense that they co-install properly and work in tandem during normal operations without any obvious interference or resource drag. This is a significant difference between Immunet and other contemporary antivirus products.
Effectiveness
While independent testing has been performed, PCMag, in 2010, rated the product to be fair in its effectiveness.
Immunet's virus definitions are stored on servers available over the Internet, requiring less memory and system resource than antivirus programs that reside on the user's computer. Cloud protection has been known to give better protection and detection, on the other hand, offline protection is not particularly good. Overall, the effectiveness of the Free product is average; the company recommends that users employ the Free product as an additional protection, rather than using it alone.
In Windows 8.1 and 10, older versions of Immunet such as 3.x only satisfies Virus protection but not Spyware and unwanted software protection in Action Center alerts on toolbar unlike other commercial antiviruses which satisfy both.
See also
Comparison of antivirus software
References
External links
ClamAV website
Cisco Systems
Antivirus software
Cloud applications
Windows security software
|
367107
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List%20of%20CAx%20companies
|
List of CAx companies
|
This is a list of computer-aided technologies (CAx) companies and their software products.
Software using computer-aided technologies (CAx) has been produced since the 1970s for a variety of computer platforms. This software may include applications for computer-aided design (CAD), computer-aided engineering (CAE), computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) and product data management (PDM).
The list is far from complete or representative as the CAD business landscape is very dynamic: almost every month new companies appear, old companies go out of business, companies split and merge. Sometimes some names disappear and reappear again.
CAx software companies
Past CAD Brands
Acquired, orphaned, failed or rebranded.
AliasAcquired by Autodesk
AppliconAcquired by UGS Corporation
CADAMAcquired by Dassault Systèmes
CADCentreRebranded as Aveva
Baystate TechnologiesAcquired by Kubotek Corporation
BARCO NVNow called Ucamco for printed circuit board applications
CamscoAcquired by Gerber
CIS (Cambridge Interactive Systems)Acquired by Computervision
CADKEYAcquired by Baystate Technologies
CalmaAcquired by Computervision
ClarisPublished "ClarisCAD", abandoned in transition of company to FileMaker
ComputervisionAcquired by Parametric Technology Corporation
Diehl GraphsoftAcquired by Nemetschek
InvestronicaAcquired by Lectra
Matra DataVisionAcquired by Dassault Systèmes
Microdynamics Acquired by Gerber
Micro Engineering SolutionsPublished "Solution 3000" and "ADX", acquired by Autodesk
NC GraphicsAcquired by Parametric Technology Corporation
Revit Technology CorporationAcquired by Autodesk
Shape DataAcquired by Siemens
Spatial Corp.Acquired by Dassault Systèmes
SDRCAcquired by UGS Corporation
SRAC (Structural Research and Analysis Corporation) acquired by SolidWorks Corporation
SolidWorks CorporationAcquired by Dassault Systèmes
SDRC-IDEAS Acquired by Unigraphics Solutions
Unigraphics Solutions a.k.a. UGS CorporationAcquired by Siemens
In-house CAD software
Developed by companies for their own use. Some are no longer used as the organizations are now using commercial systems.
Open source CAD software projects
2D
SagCAD — Open source 2D CAD program. Maintained on SourceForge.
PythonCAD — Open source 2D CAD in Python on SourceForge.
JCAD — Open source 2D CAD in Java. Maintained on SourceForge.
RibbonSoft QCAD
Archimedes — Architectural CAD program.
LibreCAD Open source 2D CAD Program.
3D
avoCADo — Open source 3D CAD program in Java. Maintained on SourceForge. Last updated on 2013-04-26.
BRL-CAD
FreeCAD — a general purpose 3D CAD modeler, implementing Open CASCADE.
OpenSCAD
Wildcat CAD — Open source 3D solid modeler and CAD application. Not to be confused with Wildcat! BBS. Last updated in 2008.
IRIT — A solid modeling environment that allows one to model basic, primitive based models using Boolean operations as well as freeform surface's based models.
GuIrit - A graphical user interface for IRIT
SvLis — The Set-theoretic Kernel Geometric Modeller. A CSG modeller written in the C++ language and accessed through a call interface.
Open CASCADE and related projects
Open CASCADE — an SDK for 3D CAD, CAM, CAE, ...
HeeksCAD — a CAD application written by Dan Heeks. The solid modelling is provided by Open_CASCADE. Maintained on Google Code.
HeeksCNC — an add-on for HeeksCAD. Maintained on Google Code.
lignumCAD — a tool for designing furniture, based on Open CASCADE and Qt. Maintained on SourceForge.
NaroCAD - a parametric modeling CAD application.
PythonOCC — Python wrappers for Open CASCADE.
FreeCAD — an open source CAD/CAE, based on Open CASCADE, Qt and Python.
SolidModeller — a parametric solid modeller. Includes a constraint based parametric sketcher. Maintained on SourceForge.
CADMAI — a commercial CAD framework, based on Open CASCADE, which can either be used as a standalone CAD application or as an integration module for 3rd party applications or SOA environments.
Blender is a professional, free and open-source 3D computer graphics software toolset used for creating animated films, visual effects, art, 3D printed models, interactive 3D applications and video games.
PLM
OpenPLM - PLM framework based on Python (programming language) / Django (web framework), Open CASCADE, Xapian, Graphviz.
See also
List of EDA companies
Comparison of CAD software
CAD data exchange
CAD/CAM in the footwear industry
References
CAD companies, List of
CAx companies
Computer-aided manufacturing software
CAx
|
61616
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXT%20Computer
|
NeXT Computer
|
NeXT Computer (also called the NeXT Computer System) is a workstation computer that was developed, marketed, and sold by NeXT Inc. It was introduced in October 1988 as the company's first and flagship product, at a price of , aimed at the higher-education market. It was designed around the Motorola 68030 CPU and 68882 floating-point coprocessor, with a clock speed of . Its NeXTSTEP operating system is based on the Mach and BSD-derived Unix, with a proprietary GUI using a Display PostScript-based back end. The enclosure consists of a 1-foot () die-cast magnesium cube-shaped black case, which led to the machine being informally referred to as "The Cube".
The NeXT Computer was renamed NeXTcube in a later upgrade. The NeXTstation, a more affordable version of the NeXTcube, was released in 1990.
Launch
The NeXT Computer was launched in October 1988 at a lavish invitation-only event, "NeXT Introduction – the Introduction to the NeXT Generation of Computers for Education" at the Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco, California. The next day, selected educators and software developers were invited to attend—for a $100 registration fee—the first public technical overview of the NeXT computer at an event called "The NeXT Day" at the San Francisco Hilton. It gave those interested in developing NeXT software an insight into the system's software architecture and object-oriented programming. Steve Jobs was the luncheon's speaker.
Reception
In 1989, BYTE magazine listed the NeXT Computer among the "Excellence" winners of the BYTE Awards, stating that it showed "what can be done when a personal computer is designed as a system, and not a collection of hardware elements". Citing as "truly innovative" the optical drive, DSP and object-oriented programming environment, it concluded that "the NeXT Computer is worth every penny of its $6,500 market price". It was, however, not a significant commercial success, failing to reach the level of high-volume sales like the Apple II, Commodore 64, Macintosh, or Microsoft Windows PCs. The workstations were sold to universities, financial institutions, and government agencies.
Legacy
A NeXT Computer and its object-oriented development tools and libraries were used by Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau at CERN to develop the world's first web server (CERN httpd) and web browser (WorldWideWeb).
The NeXT platform was used by Jesse Tayler at Paget Press to develop the first electronic app store, called the Electronic AppWrapper, in the early 1990s. Issue #3 was first demonstrated to Steve Jobs at NeXTWorld Expo 1993.
Pioneering PC games Doom, Doom II, and Quake (with respective level editors) were developed by id Software on NeXT machines. Doom engine games such as Heretic, Hexen, and Strife were also developed on NeXT hardware using id's tools.
NeXT technology provisioned the first online food delivery system called CyberSlice, using GIS based geolocation, on which Steve Jobs performed the first online order of pizza with tomato and basil. CyberSlice was curated into the Inventions of the 20th Century, Computer Science at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.
See also
Previous, emulator of NeXT hardware
NeXTstation
NeXTcube
NeXTcube Turbo
NeXT character set
References
External links
Byte Magazine, November 1988: The NeXT Computer Facsimile, Full text
Simson Garfinkel's NeXT pages including NeXTWorld Magazine
The Best of NeXT Collection
NeXT Computer brochure (page 7 contains a full size image of the circuit board)
old-computers.com — NeXTcube
Photos of black hardware
Computer workstations
History of the Internet
NeXT
Steve Jobs
68k architecture
32-bit computers
|
3560982
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol%20spoofing
|
Protocol spoofing
|
Protocol spoofing is used in data communications to improve performance in situations where an existing protocol is inadequate, for example due to long delays or high error rates.
Note: In a computer security context, spoofing refers to various forms of falsification of data that are unrelated to the techniques discussed here. See spoofing attack.
Spoofing techniques
In most applications of protocol spoofing, a communications device such as a modem or router simulates ("spoofs") the remote endpoint of a connection to a locally attached host, while using a more appropriate protocol to communicate with a compatible remote device that performs the equivalent spoof at the other end of the communications link.
File transfer spoofing
Error correction and file transfer protocols typically work by calculating a checksum or CRC for a block of data known as a packet, and transmitting the resulting number at the end of the packet. At the other end of the connection, the receiver re-calculates the number based on the data it received and compares that result to what was sent from the remote machine. If the two match the packet was transmitted correctly, and the receiver sends an ACK to signal that it's ready to receive the next packet.
The time to transmit the ACK back to the sender is a function of the phone lines, as opposed to the modem's speed, and is typically about of a second on short links and may be much longer on long-distance links or data networks like X.25. For a protocol using small packets, this delay can be larger than the time needed to send a packet. For instance, the UUCP "g" protocol and Kermit both use 64-byte packets, which on a 9600 bit/s link takes about of a second to send. XMODEM used a slightly larger 128-byte packet, which takes about of a second to send.
The next packet of data cannot be sent until the ACK for the previous packet is received. In the case of XMODEM, for instance, that means it takes a minimum of of a second for the entire cycle to complete for a single packet. This means that the overall speed is only half the theoretical maximum, a 50% channel efficiency.
Protocol spoofing addresses this problem by having the local modem recognize that a data transfer is underway, often by looking for packet headers. When these are seen, the modem then looks for the end of the packet, normally by knowing the number of bytes in a single packet. XMODEM, for instance, has 132 bytes in a packet due to the header and checksum being added to the 128 bytes of actual data. When the modem sees the packet has ended, it immediately sends of spoofed ACK message back to the host. This causes the local computer to immediately send another packet, avoiding the latency of waiting for an ACK from the remote machine. The data for multiple packets is held in an internal buffer while the modem is sending it to the remote machine. This allows the packets to be sent continually, greatly improving channel efficiency. However, this also requires the link between the two systems to be error-free, as the modem has already ACKed the packets even before they have been sent. This was normally addressed by using a modem-level error correction protocol, like Microcom Networking Protocols.
Protocol spoofing was also widely used with another feature of earlier high-speed modems. Before the introduction of echo cancellation in v.32 and later protocols, high-speed modems typically had a very slow "backchannel" for sending things like these ACKs back to the sender. On the ~18,500 bit/s TrailBlazer, for instance, the modem could send as many as 35 UUCP packets a second to the receiver, but the backchannel offered only 75 bit/s, not nearly enough for the 35 bytes, 280 bits, of ACK messages generated by the remote host.
In this case, the spoofing allowed the sending modem to continue sending packets as fast as it could. At the same time, the modem on the remote receiving end dropped the ACK packets being generated by the local computer's software, keeping the backchannel clear. Since the channel efficiency only became a major problem at speeds over 2400 bit/s, and modems able to run faster than that typically had significant processing power anyway, protocol spoofing was mostly associated with these higher-speed systems.
TCP spoofing
TCP connections may suffer from performance limitations due to insufficient window size for links with high bandwidth-delay product, and on long-delay links such as those over GEO satellites, TCP's slow-start algorithm significantly delays connection startup. A spoofing router terminates the TCP connection locally and translates the TCP to protocols tailored to long delays over the satellite link such as XTP.
RIP/SAP spoofing
SAP and RIP periodically broadcast network information even if routing/service tables are unchanged. dial-on-demand WAN links in IPX networks therefore never become idle and won't disconnect. A spoofing router or modem will intercept the SAP and RIP broadcasts, and re-broadcast the advertisements from its own routing/service table that it only updates when the link is active for other reasons.
See also
TCP Westwood
TCP tuning
External links
UUCP `g' Protocol
Spoofing
|
2800542
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal%20Design%20for%20Learning
|
Universal Design for Learning
|
Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is an educational framework based on research in the learning sciences, including cognitive neuroscience, that guides the development of flexible learning environments and learning spaces that can accommodate individual learning differences.
Universal Design for learning is a set of principles that provide teachers with a structure to develop instructions to meet the diverse needs of all learners.
The UDL framework, first defined by David H. Rose, Ed.D. of the Harvard Graduate School of Education and the Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST) in the 1990s, calls for creating curriculum from the outset that provides:
Multiple means of representation to give learners various ways of acquiring information and knowledge,
Multiple means of expression to provide learners alternatives for demonstrating what they know, and
Multiple means of engagement to tap into learners' interests, challenge them appropriately, and motivate them to learn.
Curriculum, as defined in the UDL literature, has four parts: instructional goals, methods, materials, and assessments. UDL is intended to increase access to learning by reducing physical, cognitive, intellectual, and organizational barriers to learning, as well as other obstacles. UDL principles also lend themselves to implementing inclusionary practices in the classroom.
Universal Design for Learning is referred to by name in American legislation, such as the Higher Education Opportunity Act (HEOA) of 2008 (Public Law 110-315), the 2004 reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), and the Assistive Technology Act of 1998. The emphasis being placed on equal access to curriculum by all students and the accountability required by IDEA 2004 and No Child Left Behind legislation has presented a need for a practice that will accommodate all learners.
Origins
The concept and language of Universal Design for Learning was inspired by the universal design movement in architecture and product development, originally formulated by Ronald L. Mace at North Carolina State University. Universal design calls for "the design of products and environments to be usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialized design". UDL applies this general idea to learning: that curriculum should, from the outset, be designed to accommodate all kinds of learners. Educators have to be deliberate in the teaching and learning process in the classroom (e.g Preparing class learning profiles for each student). This will enable grouping by interest. Those students that have challenges will be given special assistance. This will enable specific multimedia to meet the needs of all students.
However, recognizing that the UD principles created to guide the design of things (e.g., buildings, products) are not adequate for the design of social interactions (e.g., human learning environments), researchers at CAST looked to the neurosciences and theories of progressive education in developing the UDL principles. In particular, the work of Lev Vygotsky and, less directly, Benjamin Bloom informed the three-part UDL framework.
Some educational initiatives, such as Universal Design for Instruction (UDI) and Universal Instructional Design (UID), adapt the Mace principles for products and environments to learning environments, primarily at the postsecondary level. While these initiatives are similar to UDL and have, in some cases, compatible goals, they are not equivalent to UDL and the terms are not interchangeable; they refer to distinct frameworks. On the other hand, UDI practices promoted by the DO-IT Center operationalize both UD and UDL principles to help educators maximize the learning of all students.
Implementation initiatives in the US
In 2006, representatives from more than two dozen educational and disability organizations in the US formed the National Universal Design for Learning Taskforce. The goal was to raise awareness of UDL among national, state, and local policymakers.
The organizations represented in the National Task Force on UDL include the National School Boards Association, the National Education Association (NEA), the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the National Association of State Directors of Special Education (NASDSE), the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), the National Down Syndrome Society (NDSS), the Council for Learning Disabilities (CLD),the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC), the National Center for Learning Disabilities (NCLD), the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP), Easter Seals, American Foundation for the Blind (AFB), Association on Higher Education and Disability, Higher Education Consortium for Special Education (HECSE), American Occupational Therapy Association, National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE), National Down Syndrome Congress (NDSC), Learning Disabilities Association of America (LDA), TASH, the Arc of the United States, the Vocational Evaluation and Career Assessment Professionals Association (VECAP), the National Cerebral Palsy Association, and the Advocacy Institute.
Activities have included sponsoring a Congressional staff briefing on UDL in February 2007 and supporting efforts to include UDL in major education legislation for both K–12 and postsecondary.
Research
Research evidence on UDL is complicated as it is hard to isolate UDL from other pedagogical practices, for example, Coppola et al. (2019) combines UDL with Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy, and Phuong and Berkeley (2017) combine it with Adaptive Equity Oriented Pedagogy (AEP). Coppola et al. provide phenomenological evidence that learners with a variety of needs find UDL helpful for their learning. Phuong and Berkeley, using a randomised controlled trial, found that AEP, which is based on UDL, led to a significant improvement in students’ grades, even when several confounding variables were controlled for.
Baumann and Melle (2019) report in a small-scale study of 89 students, 73 without specific educational needs and 16 with specific educational needs, that the inclusion of UDL enhanced both students’ performance and their enjoyment of the learning experience.
Assistive Technology for UDL
Assistive technology (AT) is a pedagogical approach that can be used to enforce universal design for learning (UDL) in the inclusive classroom. AT and UDL can be theorized as two ends of a spectrum, where AT is on one end addressing personal or individual student needs, and UDL is on the other end concerned with classroom needs and curriculum design. Around the center of this spectrum, AT and UDL overlap such that student individual needs are addressed within the context of the larger curriculum, ideally without segregation or exclusion. UDL provides educators with the framework for an educational curriculum that addresses students' diverse learning styles and interests via AT.
According to the Technology Related Assistance to Individuals with Disabilities Act of 1988 and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 2004, AT includes AT devices and services. AT devices are physical hardware, equipment or software used to improve a person's cognitive, emotional and/or behavioural experience. These devices differ from medical ones which may be implanted surgically. AT services aid a person in choosing and/or using AT devices.
Types of Assistive Technology
Low-tech
Assistive technology devices can be characterized as low-tech, mid-tech or high-tech. Low-tech devices are low in cost and students who use them do not usually need to participate in training. Low-tech devices include graphic organizers, visual aids, grid or stylized paper, pencil grips, among others. Low-tech AT would be a first step in addressing a student's needs.
Mid-tech
Should students require additional support, educators can try implementing mid-tech devices, which do not necessarily require additional training and usually function with a power source, but are more affordable than their high-tech alternative. Mid-tech devices include audiobooks, simple-phrase communication software, predictive text software (ex: WordQ), and some tablets.
High-tech
High-tech devices are more complex types of AT. These devices are higher in cost and require extensive user training. Some examples of high-tech devices are text-to-speech and speech-to-text software, wheelchairs with alternative navigation software, and alternative mouse software. It is important to provide students and their families with low-cost recommendations for high-cost devices.
Implementation of Assistive Technology
The variety of assistive technology is what supports teachers in implementing universal design for learning (UDL) in their classroom. The UDL framework promotes a flexible curriculum, which would be further supported by the implementation of various assistive technologies depending on the need of the student. For example, a student struggling in a language course might need digital AT to assist them in initiating or cueing the development of their ideas. However, from a UDL perspective, the teacher recognizes that the current version of the curriculum does not acknowledge forms of expression aside from manual writing. The teacher can adjust the curriculum to adapt to the needs of the students, and implement AT to assist each individual student with their unique learning needs.
Research shows that the use of physical or virtual manipulatives improve academic performance in students, but it is difficult to compare results between classrooms since each classroom differs in how they implement assistive technology. Generally, teachers and other staff members need to consider the students' internal and external factors when implementing AT devices or services. Internal factors involve assessing the individual needs of the student, sometimes with neuropsychological testing by the school's professional staff, and deciding what type of AT addresses their need. External factors involve considering whether the classroom environment and the student's home environment can support the implementation of the AT including space requirements and training for teachers, students and their families. More resources and attention need to be allocated towards teacher and staff training in using AT to support UDL practices in the classroom.
Notes
Pedagogy
Higher education
|
12026454
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farouk%20Kamoun
|
Farouk Kamoun
|
Farouk Kamoun (born October 20, 1946) is a Tunisian computer scientist and professor of computer science at the National School of Computer Sciences (ENSI) of Manouba University, Tunisia. He contributed in the late 1970s to significant research in the field of computer networking in relation with the first ARPANET network. He is also one of the pioneers of the development of the Internet in Tunisia in the early 1990s.
Contribution to computer science
The contribution of Dr. Kamoun in the domain of hierarchical routing begun in 1979 with his professor at the University of California UCLA, Leonard Kleinrock. They argued that the optimal number of levels for an router subnet is , requiring a total of entries per router. They also shown that the increase in effective mean path length caused by hierarchical routing is sufficiently small that it is usually acceptable.
The research work driven on Tunisia in the 1980s on network flow control based on buffer management is considered as a base to the now selective reject algorithms used in the Internet.
Education and career
He received a French engineering degree in 1970, a Master's and a PhD degree from the University of California at Los Angeles Computer Science Department.
His PhD work, undertaken under the supervision of Dr Leonard Kleinrock, a pioneer in the area of networking, was related to the design of large computer networks. They were among the first to introduce and evaluate cluster-based hierarchical routing. Results obtained then are still very relevant and have recently inspired considerable work in the area of ad hoc networking.
He returned to Tunisia in 1976 and was given the task to create and chair the first Computer Science School of the country (ENSI). From 1982 to 1993, he chaired the CNI, Centre National de l'Informatique, a Government Office in charge of IT policies and strategic development.
He promoted the field of networking in Tunisia, through the organization of several national conferences and workshops dealing with networks. As chairman of CNI, he represented Tunisia at the general assembly and executive board meetings of the Intergovernmental Bureau for Informatics (IBI) in Rome, in the '80s, as well as those of the UNESCO IT Intergovernmental Committee, with a focus on issues related to developing countries.
From 1993 till 1999, he served as Dean of ENSI, Ecole Nationale des Sciences de l'Informatique, a School of Engineering dedicated to the training of computer engineers. Since 1999, he continue teaching and serve as director of the CRISTAL Research Laboratory of the ENSI. He is also an advisor in IT fields to the Tunisian minister of Higher Education, Scientific Research and Technology.
External links
Scientific Publications of Farouk Kamoun
Presentation about ENSI Ecole Nationale des Sciences de l'Informatique
References
Internet pioneers
Living people
1946 births
Manouba University faculty
University of California, Los Angeles alumni
|
12115370
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison%20of%20e-book%20formats
|
Comparison of e-book formats
|
The following is a comparison of e-book formats used to create and publish e-books.
The EPUB format is the most widely supported e-book format, supported by most e-book readers except Amazon Kindle devices. Most e-book readers also support the PDF and plain text formats. E-book software can be used to convert e-books from one format to another, as well as to create, edit and publish e-books.
Format descriptions
Formats available include, but are not limited to:
Broadband eBooks (BBeB)
The digital book format originally used by Sony Corporation. It is a proprietary format, but some reader software for general-purpose computers, particularly under Linux (for example, Calibre's internal viewer), have the capability to read it. The LRX file extension represents a DRM encrypted eBook. More recently, Sony has converted its books from BBeB to EPUB and is now issuing new titles in EPUB.
Comic Book Archive file
Compiled HTML
CHM format is a proprietary format based on HTML. Multiple pages and embedded graphics are distributed along with metadata as a single compressed file. The indexing is both for keywords and for full text search.
DAISY – ANSI/NISO Z39.86
The Digital Accessible Information SYstem (DAISY) is an XML-based open standard published by the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) and maintained by the DAISY Consortium for people with print disabilities. DAISY has wide international support with features for multimedia, navigation and synchronization. A subset of the DAISY format has been adopted by law in the United States as the National Instructional Material Accessibility Standard (NIMAS), and K-12 textbooks and instructional materials are now required to be provided to students with disabilities.
DAISY is already aligned with the EPUB technical standard, and is expected to fully converge with its forthcoming EPUB3 revision.
Djvu
DjVu is a format specialized for storing scanned documents. It includes advanced compressors optimized for low-color images, such as text documents. Individual files may contain one or more pages. DjVu files cannot be re-flowed.
The contained page images are divided in separate layers (such as multi-color, low-resolution, background layer using lossy compression, and few-colors, high-resolution, tightly compressed foreground layer), each compressed in the best available method. The format is designed to decompress very quickly, even faster than vector-based formats.
The advantage of DjVu is that it is possible to take a high-resolution scan (300–400 DPI), good enough for both on-screen reading and printing, and store it very efficiently. Several dozens of 300 DPI black-and-white scans can be stored in less than a megabyte.
DOC
DOC is a document file format that is directly supported by few ebook readers. Its advantages as an ebook format is that it can be easily converted to other ebook formats and it can be reflowed. It can be easily edited using Microsoft software, and any of several other programs. Note that the format has changed several times since its original release, and there are numerous incompatibility difficulties between various releases and the assorted programs which attempt to read / write the format.
DOCX
DOCX is a document file format that is directly supported by few ebook readers. Its advantages as an ebook format are that it can be easily converted to other ebook formats and it can be reflowed. It can be easily edited.
EPUB
The .epub or OEBPS format is a technical standard for e-books created by the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF).
The EPUB format has gained some popularity as a vendor-independent XML-based e-book format. The format can be read by the Kobo eReader, BlackBerry devices, Apple's iBooks app running on Macintosh computers and iOS devices, Google Play Books app running on Android and iOS devices, Barnes & Noble Nook, Amazon Kindle Fire, Sony Reader, BeBook, Bookeen Cybook Gen3 (with firmware v2 and up), Adobe Digital Editions, Lexcycle Stanza, FBReader, PocketBook eReader, Aldiko, the Mozilla Firefox add-on EPUBReader, Lucifox, Okular and other reading apps.
Adobe Digital Editions uses .epub format for its e-books, with digital rights management (DRM) protection provided through their proprietary ADEPT mechanism. The ADEPT framework and scripts have been reverse-engineered to circumvent this DRM system.
eReader
Formerly Palm Digital Media/Peanut Press
eReader is a freeware program for viewing Palm Digital Media electronic books which use the pdb format used by many Palm applications. Versions are available for Android, BlackBerry, iOS, Palm OS (not webOS), Symbian, Windows Mobile Pocket PC/Smartphone, and macOS. The reader shows text one page at a time, as paper books do. eReader supports embedded hyperlinks and images. Additionally, the Stanza application for the iPhone and iPod touch can read both encrypted and unencrypted eReader files.
The program supports features like bookmarks and footnotes, enabling the user to mark any page with a bookmark and any part of the text with a footnote-like commentary. Footnotes can later be exported as a Memo document.
On July 20, 2009, Barnes & Noble made an announcement implying that eReader would be the company's preferred format to deliver e-books. Exactly three months later, in a press release by Adobe, it was revealed Barnes & Noble would be joining forces with the software company to standardize the EPUB and PDF eBook formats. Barnes & Noble e-books are now sold mostly in EPUB format.
FictionBook (fb2)
FictionBook is a popular XML-based e-book format, supported by free readers such as PocketBook eReader, FBReader, Okular, CoolReader, Bebook and STDU Viewer.
The FictionBook format does not specify the appearance of a document; instead, it describes its structure and semantics. All the ebook metadata, such as the author name, title, and publisher, is also present in the ebook file. Hence the format is convenient for automatic processing, indexing, and ebook collection management. This also is convenient to store books in it for later automatic conversion into other formats.
Founder Electronics
APABI is a format devised by Founder Electronics. It is a popular format for Chinese e-books. It can be read using the Apabi Reader software, and produced using Apabi Publisher. Both .xeb and .ceb files are encoded binary files. The Iliad e-book device includes an Apabi 'viewer'.
Hypertext Markup Language
HTML is the markup language used for most web pages. E-books using HTML can be read using a Web browser. The specifications for the format are available without charge from the W3C.
HTML adds specially marked meta-elements to otherwise plain text encoded using character sets like ASCII or UTF-8. As such, suitably formatted files can be, and sometimes are, generated by hand using a plain text editor or programmer's editor. Many HTML generator applications exist to ease this process and often require less intricate knowledge of the format details involved.
HTML on its own is not a particularly efficient format to store information in, requiring more storage space for a given work than many other formats. However, several e-Book formats including the Amazon Kindle, Open eBook, Compiled HTML, Mobipocket and EPUB store each book chapter in HTML format, then use ZIP compression to compress the HTML data, images, metadata and style sheets into a single, significantly smaller, file.
HTML files encompass a wide range of standards and displaying HTML files correctly can be complicated. Additionally many of the features supported, such as forms, are not relevant to e-books.
iBook (Apple)
The .ibooks format is created with the free iBooks Author ebook layout software from Apple Inc.. This proprietary format is based on the EPUB standard, with some differences in the CSS tags used in an ibooks format file, this making it incompatible with the EPUB specification. The End-User Licensing Agreement (EULA) included with iBooks Author states that "If you want to charge a fee for a work that includes files in the .ibooks format generated using iBooks Author, you may only sell or distribute such work through Apple". The "through Apple" will typically be in the Apple Apple Books store. The EULA further states that "This restriction does not apply to the content of such works when distributed in a form that does not include files in the .ibooks format." Therefore, Apple has not included distribution restrictions in the iBooks Author EULA for ibooks format ebooks created in iBooks Author that are made available for free, and it does not prevent authors from re-purposing the content in other ebook formats to be sold outside the iBookstore. This software currently supports import and export functionally for three formats. ibook, Plain text and PDF. Versions 2.3 and later of iBooks Author support importing EPUB and exporting EPUB 3.0.
IEC 62448
IEC 62448 is an international standard created by International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), Technical Committee 100, Technical Area 10 (Multimedia e-publishing and e-book).
The current version of IEC 62448 is an umbrella standard that contains as appendices two concrete formats, XMDF of Sharp and BBeB of Sony. However, BBeB has been discontinued by Sony and the version of XMDF that is in the specification is out of date. The IEC TA10 group is discussing the next steps, and has invited the IDPF organization which has standardized EPUB to be a liaison. It is possible that the current version of EPUB and/or the forthcoming EPUB3 revision may be added to IEC 62448. Meanwhile, a number of Japanese companies have proposed that IEC standardize a proposed new Japanese-centric file format that is expected to unify DotBook of Voyager Japan and XMDF of Sharp. This new format has not been publicly disclosed as of November 2010 but it is supposed to cover basic representations for the Japanese language. Technically speaking, this revision is supposed to provide a Japanese minimum set, a Japanese extension set, and a stylesheet language. These issues were discussed in the TC100 meeting held in October 2010 but no decisions were taken besides offering the liaison status to IDPF.
INF (IBM)
IBM created this e-book format and used it extensively for OS/2 and other of its operating systems. The INF files were often digital versions of printed books that came with some bundles of OS/2 and other products. There were many other newsletters and monthly publications (e.g.: EDM/2) available in the INF format too.
The advantage of INF is that it is very compact and very fast. It also supports images, reflowed text, tables and various list formats. INF files get generated by compiling the markup text files — in the Information Presentation Facility (IPF) format — into binary files.
Originally only IBM created an INF viewer and compiler, but later open source viewers like NewView, DocView and others appeared. There is also an open source IPF compiler named WIPFC, created by the Open Watcom project.
Kindle (Amazon)
With the release of the Kindle Fire reader in late 2011, Amazon.com also released Kindle Format 8, also known as .AZW3. The .azw3 file format supports a subset of HTML5 and CSS3 features, with some additional nonstandard features; the new data is stored within a container which can also be used to store a Mobi content document, allowing limited backwards compatibility.
Older Kindle e-readers use the proprietary format, AZW. It is based on the Mobipocket standard, with a slightly different serial number scheme (it uses an asterisk instead of a dollar sign) and its own DRM formatting. It also lacks some Mobipocket features such as JavaScript. .prc publications can be read directly on the Kindle.
Because the ebooks bought on the Kindle are delivered over its wireless system called Whispernet, the user does not see the AZW files during the download process. The Kindle format is available on a variety of platforms, such as through the Kindle app for the various mobile device platforms.
Microsoft LIT
DRM-protected LIT files are only readable in the proprietary Microsoft Reader program, as the .LIT format, otherwise similar to Microsoft's CHM format, includes Digital Rights Management features. Other third party readers, such as Lexcycle Stanza, can read unprotected LIT files.
The Microsoft Reader uses patented ClearType display technology. In Reader navigation works with a keyboard, mouse, stylus, or through electronic bookmarks. The Catalog Library records reader books in a personalized "home page", and books are displayed with ClearType to improve readability. A user can add annotations and notes to any page, create large-print e-books with a single command, or create free-form drawings on the reader pages. A built-in dictionary allows the user to look up words.
In August 2011, Microsoft announced they were discontinuing both Microsoft Reader and the use of the .lit format for ebooks at the end of August 2012, and ending sales of the format on November 8, 2011.
Mobipocket
The Mobipocket e-book format is based on the Open eBook standard using XHTML and can include JavaScript and frames. It also supports native SQL queries to be used with embedded databases. There is a corresponding e-book reader.
The Mobipocket Reader has a home page library. Readers can add blank pages in any part of a book and add free-hand drawings. Annotations – highlights, bookmarks, corrections, notes, and drawings – can be applied, organized, and recalled from a single location. Images are converted to GIF format and have a maximum size of 64K, sufficient for mobile phones with small screens, but rather restrictive for newer gadgets. Mobipocket Reader has electronic bookmarks, and a built-in dictionary.
The reader has a full screen mode for reading and support for many PDAs, Communicators, and Smartphones. Mobipocket products support most Windows, Symbian, BlackBerry and Palm operating systems, but not the Android platform. Using WINE, the reader works under Linux or Mac OS X. Third-party applications like Okular, Calibre, and FBReader can also be used under Linux or Mac OS X, but they work only with unencrypted files.
The Amazon Kindle can read unprotected .mobi files, as can Amazon's Kindle application for Windows and MacOS. Amazon has also developed an .epub to .mobi converter called KindleGen, and it supports IDPF 1.0 and IDPF 2.0 EPUB format.
Multimedia eBooks
A multimedia ebook is media and book content that utilizes a combination of different book content formats. The term can be used as a noun (a medium with multiple content formats) or as an adjective describing a medium as having multiple content formats.
The "multimedia ebook" term is used in contrast to media which only utilize traditional forms of printed or text books. Multimedia ebooks include a combination of text, audio, images, video, or interactive content formats. Much like how a traditional book can contain images to help the text tell a story, a multimedia ebook can contain other elements not formerly possible to help tell the story.
With the advent of more widespread tablet-like computers, such as the smartphone, some publishing houses are planning to make multimedia ebooks, such as Penguin.
Newton Digital Book
Commonly known as a Newton Book, but officially referred to as a Newton Digital Book; a single Newton package file can contain multiple books (for example, the three books of a trilogy might be packaged together). Newton Books are created using Newton Press, or, for more advanced content, Newton Book Maker and Newton Toolkit.
All systems running the Newton operating system (the most common include the Newton MessagePads, eMates, Siemens Secretary Stations, Motorola Marcos, Digital Ocean Seahorses and Tarpons) have built-in support for viewing Newton books, through a system service known as Newton Book Reader. The Newton package format was released to the public by Newton, Inc. prior to that company's absorption into Apple Computer. The format is thus arguably open and various people have written readers for it (writing a Newton book converter has even been assigned as a university-level class project).
Newton books have no support for DRM or encryption. They do support internal links, potentially multiple tables of contents and indexes, embedded gray scale images, and even some scripting capability using NewtonScript (for example, it's possible to make a book in which the reader can influence the outcome). Newton books utilize Unicode and are thus available in numerous languages. An individual Newton Book may actually contain multiple views representing the same content in different ways (such as for different screen resolutions).
Open Packaging Format
OPF is an XML-based e-book format created by E-Book Systems; it has been superseded by the EPUB electronic publication standard.
Portable Document Format
Invented by Adobe Systems, and first released in 1993, PDF became ISO 32000 in 2008. The format was developed to provide a platform-independent means of exchanging fixed-layout documents. Derived from PostScript, but without language features like loops, PDF adds support for features such as compression, passwords, semantic structures and DRM. Because PDF documents can easily be viewed and printed by users on a variety of computer platforms, they are very common on the World Wide Web and in document management systems worldwide. The current PDF specification, ISO 32000-1:2008, is available from ISO's website, and under special arrangement, without charge from Adobe.
Because the format is designed to reproduce fixed-layout pages, re-flowing text to fit mobile device and e-book reader screens has traditionally been problematic. This limitation was addressed in 2001 with the release of PDF Reference 1.5 and "Tagged PDF", but 3rd party support for this feature was limited until the release of PDF/UA in 2012.
Many products support creating and reading PDF files, such as Adobe Acrobat, PDFCreator and OpenOffice.org, and several programming libraries such as iText and FOP. Third party viewers such as xpdf and Nitro PDF are also available. Mac OS X has built-in PDF support, both for creation as part of the printing system and for display using the built-in Preview application.
Older PDF files are supported by almost all modern e-book readers, tablets and smartphones. Newer PDF files may not display properly on older e-readers, may not open, or may crash them. However, PDF reflow based on Tagged PDF, as opposed to re-flow based on the actual sequence of objects in the content-stream, is not yet commonly supported on mobile devices. Such Re-flow options as may exist are usually found under "view" options, and may be called "word-wrap".
Plain text files
The first e-books in history were in plain text (.txt) format, supplied for free by the Project Gutenberg community, but the format itself existed before the e-book era. The plain text format doesn't support digital rights management (DRM) or formatting options (such as different fonts, graphics or colors), but it has excellent portability as it is the simplest e-book encoding possible as a plain text file contains only ASCII or Unicode text (text files with UTF-8 or UTF-16 encoding are also popular for languages other than English). Almost all operating systems can read ASCII text files (e.g. Unix, Macintosh, Microsoft Windows, DOS and other systems) and newer operating systems support Unicode text files as well. The only potential for portability problems of ASCII text files is that operating systems differ in their preferred line ending convention and their interpretation of values outside the ASCII range (their character encoding). Conversion of files from one to another line-ending convention is easy with free software. DOS and Windows uses CRLF, Unix and Apple's OS X use LF, Mac OS up to and including OS 9 uses CR. By convention, lines are often broken to fit into 80 characters, a legacy of older terminals and consoles. Alternately, each paragraph may be a single line.
When Unicode is not in use, the size in bytes of a text file is simply the number of characters, including spaces, and with a new line counting for 1 or 2. For example, the Bible, which is approximately 800,000 words, is about 4 MB.
Plucker
Plucker is an Open Source free mobile and desktop e-book reader application with its own associated file format and software to automatically generate Plucker files from text, PDF, HTML, or other document format files, web sites or RSS feeds. The format is public and well-documented. Free readers are available for all kinds of desktop computers and many PDAs.
PostScript
PostScript is a page description language used in the electronic and desktop publishing areas for defining the contents and layout of a printed page, which can be used by a rendering program to assemble and create the actual output bitmap. Many office printers directly support interpreting PostScript and printing the result. As a result, the format also sees wide use in the Unix world.
RTF
Rich Text Format is a document file format that is supported by many ebook readers. Its advantages as an ebook format are that it is widely supported, and it can be reflowed. It can be easily edited. It can be easily converted to other ebook formats, increasing its support.
SSReader
The digital book format used by a popular digital library company 超星数字图书馆 in China. It is a proprietary raster image compression and binding format, with reading time OCR plug-in modules. The company scanned a huge number of Chinese books in the China National Library and this becomes the major stock of their service. The detailed format is not published. There are also some other commercial e-book formats used in Chinese digital libraries.
Text Encoding Initiative
TEI Lite is the most popular of the TEI-based (and thus XML-based or SGML-based) electronic text formats.
TomeRaider
The TomeRaider e-book format is a proprietary format. There are versions of TomeRaider for Windows, Windows Mobile (aka Pocket PC), Palm, Symbian and iPhone. Capabilities of the TomeRaider3 e-book reader vary considerably per platform: the Windows and Windows Mobile editions support full HTML and CSS. The Palm edition supports limited HTML (e.g., no tables, no fonts), and CSS support is missing. For Symbian there is only the older TomeRaider2 format, which does not render images or offer category search facilities. Despite these differences any TomeRaider e-book can be browsed on all supported platforms. The Tomeraider website claims to have over 4000 e-books available, including free versions of the Internet Movie Database and Wikipedia.
Open XML Paper Specification
Open XML Paper Specification (also referred to as OpenXPS) is an open specification for a page description language and a fixed-document format. Microsoft developed it as the XML Paper Specification (XPS). In June 2009, Ecma International adopted it as international standard ECMA-388.
The format is intentionally restricted to sequences of:
Glyphs (a fixed run of text),
Paths (a geometry that can be filled, or stroked, by a brush), and
Brushes (a description of a shaped brush used to in rendering paths).
This reduces the possibility of inadvertent introduction of malicious content and simplifies the implementation of compatible renderers.
Comparison tables
Features
Supporting platforms
See also
Comparison of e-book readers
Comparison of Android e-book reader software – includes software e-book readers for Android devices
Comparison of iOS e-book reader software – includes software e-book readers for iOS devices
Footnotes
References
Cope, B., & Mason, D. (2002). Markets for electronic book products. C-2-C series, bk. 3.2. Altona, Vic: Common Ground Pub.
Hanttula, D. (2001). Pocket PC handbook.
External links
ebook reader articles at Mobile Read Wiki
Daisy 3: A Standard for Accessible Multimedia Books
An E-Book Buyer's Guide to Privacy
Electronic documents
Electronic publishing
Computing comparisons
|
43392077
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pica8
|
Pica8
|
Pica8, Inc. is a computer networking company headquartered in Palo Alto, California, United States. Pica8 is a vendor of open-standards-based operating systems on white box network switches delivering software-defined networking (SDN) solutions for datacenter and cloud computing environments and traditional L2/L3 solutions for large enterprise customers. The company's products include a Linux-based L2/L3 and OpenFlow-supporting network operating system, PICOS, which is shipped as standalone software that can be loaded onto a range of 1/10/40/100 Gigabit Ethernet switches based on commoditized ("white box") switches purchased from original design manufacturers (ODMs).
The company's approach is to combine commodity network hardware (from manufacturers like Accton, Foxconn, Quanta) with Debian Linux, L2/L3 protocol stacks, a full enterprise feature set, OpenFlow controller and Open vSwitch (OVS) to create both a more "democratic" SDN solutions with competitive price compared to conventional embedded switches as well as more flexible and scalable disaggregated enterprise white box networking solutions.
History
The company was founded in 2009. It launched a family of OpenFlow-enabled Ethernet switches in August 2009 and has been selling products ever since.
In 2010, Pica8 was selling 48-port gigabit Ethernet and 10-gigabit Ethernet switches at half the price of comparable products of Force10 and Arista Networks. It achieved such result through combining open source software with merchant ASICs (from companies like Broadcom, Marvell, and Intel/Fulcrum) on switches from "white-box vendors".
In July 2011, Pica8 added support for the open source "Indigo" OpenFlow stack from Big Switch Networks to its switches as an alternative stack. In November 2011 it embedded Open vSwitch (OVS), developed by Nicira, into its operation system PicOS to enable more sophisticated network management from inside the switch.
In October 2012 Pica8 raised $6.6m in Series A funding from VantagePoint Capital Partners to support its sales and product development. On 10 December 2012 the company exited stealth mode with introduction of SDN reference architecture aimed at cloud providers.
By 2013, among about 100 Pica8's customers, including large service providers and hosting companies, were such companies as Baidu, Yahoo! Japan and NTT Communications.
In December 2013, the company launched the Pica8 SDN Starter Kit, an "out-of-the-box" kit that includes an open-source network controller, a programmable network tap, an open-source network intrusion detection system, and other components meant to give customers a complete SDN solution, which would be quick to implement.
In April 2014 Pica8 claimed to be the first vendor to support the latest version 1.4 of OpenFlow and to have over 300 customers globally.
By 2018, Pica8 grew to over 1,000 customers in over 40 countries, announcing a broad push into the enterprise campus and branch office markets in January.
Products
PICOS
PICOS (formerly known as XorPlus) is a network operating system (NOS) that Pica8 has developed based on XORP, an eXtensible Open Router Platform. The operation system works on an unmodified Linux kernel and is extended with a range of network and switching services.
PICOS includes a traditional Layer-2 / Layer-3 switching mode (L2/L3 Mode) and has support for OpenFlow protocol, standardized by the Open Networking Foundation (ONF), through Open vSwitch (OVS). OVS runs as a process on the Debian Linux distribution.
Additionally, PICOS has a hardware abstraction layer that lets it run atop networking ASICs from various switch silicon manufacturers. Therefore, the PICOS operating system can be unaware ("agnostic") about the underlying hardware and not tied to it.
PicaPilot
In addition to PICOS, Pica8 offers a second core technology solution called PicaPilot, which was announced in May 2018. PicaPilot is an automated white box switch configuration and management application that runs on Pica8-enabled switches alongside PICOS. Designed as a replacement for legacy Ethernet switch stacks and chassis switches, PicaPilot compresses dozens of access- and aggregation-layer leaf-spine topology switches into a single layer and allows them to be managed as a single logical switch with a single consolidated IP address.
CrossFlow
On 10 November 2014 Pica8 announced CrossFlow, a new feature in the PICOS NOS that enables network managers to integrate OpenFlow applications and business policies with existing layer 2/layer 3 networks. Users can run layer 2/layer 3 protocols and OpenFlow protocols on all the switch ports in a network at the same time. OpenFlow can be used for policy-driven applications to bring business logic to the network. The traditional network can optimize packet transport and performance with protocols, such as OSPF, Spanning Tree, and BGP.
Awards and recognitions
The 10 Coolest Networking Startups Of 2013 according to CRN (2013).
AlwaysOn OnDemand Companies to Watch (2013).
AlwaysOn OnDemand 100 Top Private Companies (2014).
AlwaysOn Global 250 Top Private Companies (2014, along with companies like Acquia, Couchbase, Dropbox, MongoDB).
See also
Linux
Network switch
Router
Packet switching
Circuit switching
Fully switched network
Cumulus Networks
Software-defined networking
Open Compute Project
Open-source computing hardware
References
Networking software companies
Networking hardware companies
Companies based in Palo Alto, California
Networking companies of the United States
|
18692
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lint%20%28software%29
|
Lint (software)
|
Lint, or a linter, is a static code analysis tool used to flag programming errors, bugs, stylistic errors and suspicious constructs. The term originates from a Unix utility that examined C language source code.
History
Stephen C. Johnson, a computer scientist at Bell Labs, came up with lint in 1978 while debugging the yacc grammar he was writing for C and dealing with portability issues stemming from porting Unix to a 32-bit machine. The term "lint" was derived from lint, the name for the tiny bits of fiber and fluff shed by clothing, as the command should act like the lint trap in a clothes dryer, detecting small errors to great effect. In 1979, lint was used outside of Bell Labs for the first time, in the seventh version (V7) of Unix.
Over the years, different versions of lint have been developed for many C and C++ compilers, and while modern-day compilers have lint-like functions, lint-like tools have also advanced their capabilities. For example, Gimpel's PC-Lint, introduced in 1985 and used to analyze C++ source code, is still for sale.
Overview
The analysis performed by lint-like tools can also be performed by an optimizing compiler, which aims to generate faster code. In his original 1978 paper, Johnson addressed this issue, concluding that "the general notion of having two programs is a good one" because they concentrated on different things, thereby allowing the programmer to "concentrate at one stage of the programming process solely on the algorithms, data structures, and correctness of the program, and then later retrofit, with the aid of lint, the desirable properties of universality and portability".
Even though modern compilers have evolved to include many of lint's historical functions, lint-like tools have also evolved to detect an even wider variety of suspicious constructs. These include "warnings about syntax errors, uses of undeclared variables, calls to deprecated functions, spacing and formatting conventions, misuse of scope, implicit fallthrough in switch statements, missing license headers, [and]...dangerous language features".
Lint-like tools are especially useful for dynamically typed languages like JavaScript and Python. Because the compilers of such languages typically do not enforce as many and as strict rules prior to execution, linter tools can also be used as simple debuggers for finding common errors (e.g. syntactic discrepancies) as well as hard-to-find errors such as heisenbugs (drawing attention to suspicious code as "possible errors"). Lint-like tools generally perform static analysis of source code.
Lint-like tools have also been developed for other aspects of language, including grammar and style guides.
Specialization
Fortran
Fortran compilers using space-squeezing techniques (e.g. IBM 1130) made it impossible for the compiler to see the problem with lines like:
.... DO 120 J=1.256 ... 120 CONTINUE
which is why programs like Lint for Fortran can be helpful.
See also
List of tools for static code analysis
References
Further reading
Static program analysis tools
Unix software
|
3172143
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge-based%20processor
|
Knowledge-based processor
|
Knowledge-based processors (KBPs) are used for processing packets in computer networks. Knowledge-based processors are essential for the long-term success of the IPv6 network. The buildout of the IPv6 network is inevitable as it provides the means to an improved and secure networking system. It has been built from the ground up to address the issues of available addressing and security concerns.
Standards
All networks are required to perform the following functions:
IPv4/IPv6 multilayer packet/flow classification
Policy-based routing and Policy enforcement (QoS)
Longest Prefix Match (CIDR)
Differentiated Services (DiffServ)
IP Security (IPSec)
Server Load Balancing
Transaction verification
All of the above functions must occur at high speeds in advanced networks. Knowledge-based processors contain embedded databases that store information required to process packets that travel
through a network at wireline speeds. Knowledge based processors are a new addition to intelligent networking that allow these functions to occur at high speeds and at the same time provide for lower power consumption.
Knowledge-based processors currently target the 3rd layer of the 7 layer OSI model which is devoted to packet processing. Knowledge-based processors may eventually be required at every node in the internet due to the demands placed upon it by the converging voice and video phenomena. Layer 7, where application functionality between browser, email, ftp download, and telnet applications occur, is likely the next layer that could make use of knowledge based processors.
Advantages
The advantages that knowledge based processors offer are the ability to execute multiple simultaneous decision making processes for a range of network-aware processing functions. These include routing, Quality of service (QOS), access control for both security and billing, as well as the forwarding of voice/video packets. These functions improve the performance of advanced Internet applications in IPv6 networks such as VOD (Video on demand), VoIP (voice over Internet protocol), and streaming of video and audio.
Knowledge-based processors use a variety of techniques to improve network functioning such as parallel processing, deep pipelining and advanced power management techniques. Improvements in each of these areas allows for existing components to carry on their functions at wireline speeds more efficiently thus improving the performance of the overall network.
The databases in a knowledge-based processor include classification tables, forwarding tables, and exact match tables- all of which are utilized by the CPU and network processors. Some companies use a glueless process enabling the quick installation of the knowledge based processor to the network system.
Knowledge based processors mainly process packet headers (20% of the packet approximately) which enables network awareness. Content processors, by contrast, allow for packet payload inspection (80% of the packet is data) and therefore must search "deeper" into the packet.
See also
Network processor
Multi core processor
Content processor
References
Computer networks
|
56162225
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NIST%20Post-Quantum%20Cryptography%20Standardization
|
NIST Post-Quantum Cryptography Standardization
|
Post-Quantum Cryptography Standardization is a program and competition by NIST to update their standards to include post-quantum cryptography. It was announced at PQCrypto 2016. 23 signature schemes and 59 encryption/KEM schemes were submitted by the initial submission deadline at the end of 2017 of which 69 total were deemed complete and proper and participated in the first round. Seven of these, of which 3 are signature schemes, have advanced to the third round, which was announced on July 22, 2020.
Background
Academic research on the potential impact of quantum computing dates back to at least 2001. A NIST published report from April 2016 cites experts that acknowledge the possibility of quantum technology to render the commonly used RSA algorithm insecure by 2030. As a result, a need to standardize quantum-secure cryptographic primitives was pursued. Since most symmetric primitives are relatively easy to modify in a way that makes them quantum resistant, efforts have focused on public-key cryptography, namely digital signatures and key encapsulation mechanisms. In December 2016 NIST initiated a standardization process by announcing a call for proposals.
The competition is now in its third round out of expected four, where in each round some algorithms are discarded and others are studied more closely. NIST hopes to publish the standardization documents by 2024, but may speed up the process if major breakthroughs in quantum computing are made.
It is currently undecided whether the future standards be published as FIPS or as NIST Special Publication (SP).
Round one
Under consideration were:
(strikethrough means it had been withdrawn)
Round one submissions published attacks
Guess Again by Lorenz Panny
RVB by Lorenz Panny
RaCoSS by Daniel J. Bernstein, Andreas Hülsing, Tanja Lange and Lorenz Panny
HK17 by Daniel J. Bernstein and Tanja Lange
SRTPI by Bo-Yin Yang
WalnutDSA
by Ward Beullens and Simon R. Blackburn
by Matvei Kotov, Anton Menshov and Alexander Ushakov
DRS by Yang Yu and Léo Ducas
DAGS by Elise Barelli and Alain Couvreur
Edon-K by Matthieu Lequesne and Jean-Pierre Tillich
RLCE by Alain Couvreur, Matthieu Lequesne, and Jean-Pierre Tillich
Hila5 by Daniel J. Bernstein, Leon Groot Bruinderink, Tanja Lange and Lorenz Panny
Giophantus by Ward Beullens, Wouter Castryck and Frederik Vercauteren
RankSign by Thomas Debris-Alazard and Jean-Pierre Tillich
McNie by Philippe Gaborit; Terry Shue Chien Lau and Chik How Tan
Round two
Candidates moving on to the second round were announced on January 30, 2019. They are:
Round three
On July 22, 2020, NIST announced seven finalists ("first track"), as well as eight alternate algorithms ("second track"). The first track contains the algorithms which appear to have the most promise, and will be considered for standardization at the end of the third round. Algorithms in the second track could still become part of the standard, after the third round ends. NIST expects some of the alternate candidates to be considered in a fourth round. NIST also suggests it may re-open the signature category for new schemes proposals in the future.
On June 7-9, 2021, NIST conducted the third PQC standardization conference, virtually. The conference included candidates' updates and discussions on implementations, on performances, and on security issues of the candidates. A small amount of focus was spent on intellectual property concerns.
Finalists
Alternate candidates
Intellectual property concerns
After NIST's announcement regarding the finalists and the alternate candidates, various intellectual property concerns were voiced, notably surrounding lattice-based schemes such as Kyber and NewHope. NIST holds signed statements from submitting groups clearing any legal claims, but there is still a concern that third parties could raise claims. NIST claims that they will take such considerations into account while picking the winning algorithms.
Adaptations
During this round, some candidates have shown to be vulnerable to some attack vectors. It forces this candidates to adapt accordingly:
CRYSTAL-Kyber and SABER may change the nested hashes used in their proposals in order for their security claims to hold.
FALCON side channel attack by . A masking may be added in order to resist the attack. This adaptation affects performance and should be considered while standardizing.
See also
Advanced Encryption Standard process
CAESAR Competition – Competition to design authenticated encryption schemes
NIST hash function competition
Notes
References
External links
NIST's official Website on the standardization process
Post-quantum cryptography website by djb
Cryptography standards
Cryptography contests
Post-quantum cryptography
|
2934471
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sri%20Krishna%20College%20of%20Engineering%20%26%20Technology
|
Sri Krishna College of Engineering & Technology
|
Sri Krishna College of Engineering & Technology (SKCET) is an autonomous institution at Sugunapuram, Palakkad-Coimbatore National Highway, near Kuniamuthur, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India with a twenty-acre campus. The college was started in 1998 with 180 students and 18 staff and offered four courses in the Bachelor of Engineering (B.E.). Qualifications are conferred by Anna University.
At present the college has more than 2,500 students and more than 200 faculty, as well as supporting staff.
Campus
The campus is about 8 km from the city of Coimbatore. The facilities include classrooms with multimedia equipment/overhead projectors, faculty and administrative blocks, a modern library and computer labs, and a three-storey student residence. There are separate blocks for respective departments of engineering fully equipped with modernised instruments to cultivate practical knowledge in every students. The mechanical department is largest and oldest department at SKCET with a wide range of faculty and students. The mechanical block is the largest among all. It has a research and development lab to design and build vehicles for students who are an active member of SAE (Society of automobile engineers-coimbatore chapter). The present Head of the department of mechanical is Dr. Ashoka Varthan, who has lectured for 25 years and is a scholar and an author. He has written many books in mechanical engineering subjects. He has also served in PRICOL (the speedometer industry) at Coimbatore. His presence adds a big advantage to the college especially for mechanical students.
Infrastructure
Approximately 5 lakh sq.ft. of instructional area in classrooms and laboratories
20 computer laboratories with 1,200 terminals
8 Mbit/s (1:1) leased line Internet connectivity; all the systems in the campus are networked
2 Mbit/s dedicated VPN connectivity between the college and Anna University, Coimbatore
55,000 sq.ft. of air conditioned central library block with approximately 42,000 volumes of books and 1,000 periodicals of international and national journals and magazines; Internet access to all the e-journals and e-books is enabled
Food Court
Library (Venkatraman Learning Centre)
Stationary, hotels and small book stores
Gym
Krishna Square
Sri Krishna Temple
Chat Cafe
Courses Offered
SKCET offers 8 Undergraduate courses, 9 Postgraduate Courses and 1 Integrated course.
Undergraduate Course
B.E. Mechanical Engineering
B.E. Mechatronics Engineering
B.E. Civil Engineering
B.E. Computer Science and Engineering
B.E. Electrical and Electronics Engineering
B.E. Electronics and Communication Engineering
B.Tech. Information Technology Engineering
B.Tech. Computer Science and Business Systems (Powered by TCS)
Postgraduate Course
M.E Computer Science and Engineering
M.E. Software Engineering
M.E. Applied Electronics
M.E. Communication Systems
M.E. Engineering Design
M.E. CAD/CAM
M.E. Power Electronics and Drivers
Master of Business Administration (MBA)
Master of Computer Application (MCA)
Integrated Course (5 Year)
M.Tech. Computer Science and Engineering (Powered by Virtusa)
Rankings
The National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) ranked it 83 among engineering colleges in 2020.
The National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) ranked it 78 among engineering Colleges in 2021.
References
External links
SKCET Official Website
Engineering colleges in Tamil Nadu
Colleges affiliated to Anna University
All India Council for Technical Education
Education in Coimbatore district
Educational institutions established in 1998
1998 establishments in Tamil Nadu
|
48666780
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veep%20%28season%204%29
|
Veep (season 4)
|
The fourth season of the American political comedy television series Veep premiered on April 12, 2015, on HBO in the United States. It consists of ten episodes each running approximately 28 minutes. The season's showrunner and series creator Armando Iannucci exited at the conclusion of the season.
Season four follows Selina Meyer in the role of President after her predecessor steps down to care for his wife. She attempts to pass a landmark bill supporting working mothers while navigating her presidential campaign, overseen by top campaign manager Bill Ericsson, portrayed by Diedrich Bader. Two of her staffers, Amy and Dan, abruptly exit the White House and begin work as lobbyists. Eventually, Selina is forced to choose a new running mate when Andrew Doyle unexpectedly drops out of the role. She chooses Senator Tom James, played by Hugh Laurie, whose popularity and political machinations come to irk her. After a campaign data breach puts her in jeopardy, Selina's team scapegoats Ericsson. The season finale centers on the night of the election, which concludes with an electoral college tie between Selina and her opponent, Senator Bill O'Brien.
The season received critical acclaim and was assigned a 90/100 on Metacritic. It received five Primetime Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Comedy Series, the second premium cable series to win the award. Julia Louis-Dreyfus received her fourth Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for Veep, and Tony Hale received his second Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series.
Plot
The fourth season follows Selina Meyer stepping into the role of president after President Hughes steps down to take care of his depressed wife. Selina's staffers' incompetence ruins her first State of the Union address by failing to load her completed speech on the teleprompter. She is determined to author a bill that will benefit working moms called Families First, although her team advises against it.
Gary struggles with his reduced role as Selina's bag man. Selina confronts Gary for ordering expensive decorations for a state dinner, and they reconcile after a screaming argument.
Her vice president, Andrew Doyle hires a chief of staff, Teddy, who continually sexually harasses Jonah. Jonah eventually reports the behavior and Teddy is fired.
Meanwhile, Amy manages Selina's presidential campaign in an unofficial capacity, and is frustrated when Selina hires the best political campaign manager in Washington, Bill Ericsson. Her campaign catches negative press attention after a data breach reveals the identity of an HIV-positive elementary school student. First a White House aide, Leigh, and then Dan are fired as scapegoats for the data breach. Dan goes to work for Sidney Purcell at a consulting firm.
When Andrew Doyle unexpectedly bows out of her ticket at the party's political convention, Selina's team scrambles to find a new running mate. Amy quits in frustration because of Selina's equivocating friend and new adviser, Karen Collins. After Amy leaves, Selina heeds her suggestion to ask Tom James to be her running mate. It is later revealed that Selina previously had romantic feelings for Tom. Dan gets Amy a job at his consulting firm, but Amy has difficulty managing her anger about her time in the White House.
After Selina's team successfully convinces her that the Families First bill is too big a political liability, they scramble to get the votes needed to make sure it will fail. A flu-ridden Selina directs their activities while sick in bed. Gary publicly meets with Dan and Amy and agrees to pay them to lobby against the bill. The episode "Testimony" depicts the staffers undergoing congressional hearings regarding the campaign's data breach, during which they each scapegoat Bill Ericsson. Selina takes steps to end Catherine's engagement to Jason, a 35-year-old political consultant.
The season finale ("Election Night") follows Selina and her team on election night. Jonah and Richard manage the Meyer-James rally, and Jonah turns his debacle with Teddy into a testicular health awareness campaign. Her running mate, Tom James, requests that she make him Treasury Secretary in addition to vice president if they win. After poor results prompt Selina to nearly concede, she and O'Brien tie for electoral college votes (269 each), which triggers the 20th Amendment and an impending vote by the House of Representatives. The episode discusses the possibility that in the case of another tie, the vice president of the Senate would become president, who happens to be her running mate, Tom James.
Cast and characters
Main
Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Selina Meyer
Anna Chlumsky as Amy Brookheimer
Tony Hale as Gary Walsh
Reid Scott as Dan Egan
Timothy Simons as Jonah Ryan
Matt Walsh as Mike McLintock
Sufe Bradshaw as Sue Wilson
Kevin Dunn as Ben Cafferty
Gary Cole as Kent Davison
Sam Richardson as Richard Splett
Recurring
Sarah Sutherland as Catherine Meyer
David Pasquesi as Andrew Meyer
Kathy Najimy as Wendy Keegan
Dan Bakkedahl as Congressman Roger Furlong
Nelson Franklin as Will
David Rasche as Speaker Jim Marwood
Paul Fitzgerald as Congressman Owen Pierce
Phil Reeves as Senator Andrew Doyle
Patton Oswalt as Teddy Sykes
Brad Leland as Senator Bill O'Brien
Hugh Laurie as Senator Tom James
Diedrich Bader as Bill Ericsson
Peter Grosz as Sidney Purcell
Brian Huskey as Leon West
Jessie Ennis as Leigh Patterson
Lennon Parham as Karen Collins
Randall Park as Minnesota Governor Danny Chung
Isiah Whitlock Jr. as General George Maddox
Episodes
Production
The series creator Armando Iannucci departed as showrunner at the end of the season, "citing the toll producing a series in the U.S. has taken on Iannucci and his London-based family." Additional executive producers for the season were Christopher Godsick, Frank Rich, Chris Addison, Becky Martin, Stephanie Laing, Simon Blackwell, Tony Roche, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus.
Iannucci is credited as story co-writer for every episode. Directors for the season included Addison, Martin, Laing, and Iannucci.
Release
The first episode of the season aired on April 12, 2015, on HBO and new episodes aired every Sunday until its finale on June 14, 2015.
Reception
Season four of Veep received critical acclaim. It received a 90/100 on review aggregator Metacritic, and a 100% on Rotten Tomatoes with the critical consensus: "Veep shows no signs of slowing down in its fourth season, thanks to sharp, funny, rapid-fire dialogue between POTUS and her hilariously incompetent staff."
Departing creator and showrunner Armando Iannucci was praised for the season by Newsweek, who called it the "funniest season yet." The acting and writing were received well, as in The Hollywood Reporter's review by Tim Goodman: "Veep enters its fourth season firmly established as one of television's best comedies, and then immediately does what seems impossible: It delivers its most thoroughly assured, hilarious and brilliantly written and acted episodes."
Matt Zoller Seitz wrote in Vulture of the titular character's acting: "Louis-Dreyfus is her usual Swiss-watch self, so confident that she seems to glide through her scenes." The comedic duo of Louis-Dreyfus and Tony Hale was also applauded; Ben Travers described them in IndieWire: "The duo’s chemistry continues to drive entire episodes with a few short moments, and if they’re kept apart too long, the rest of the team is there to fill gaps faster than you can spot them."
In a less positive review, Variety's Brian Lowry wrote "The series also remains a bit too precious in sidestepping issues of partisanship, a conceit that has grown somewhat more tolerable over time." David Hinckley of the New York Daily News also noted, "if you don't find awkward funny, you won't get "Veep.""
Veep was called the most accurate depiction of American politics by Dan Pfeiffer for Grantland, who stated that the show captures "the humanity, the banality, and the absurdity" of Washington D.C. He further stated: "The fact that real-life Washington loves the show but often doesn’t seem to truly get the joke may be the show’s most devastating critique of all."
Awards and nominations
References
External links
2015 American television seasons
Veep (TV series)
|
55395
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History%20of%20operating%20systems
|
History of operating systems
|
Computer operating systems (OSes) provide a set of functions needed and used by most application programs on a computer, and the links needed to control and synchronize computer hardware. On the first computers, with no operating system, every program needed the full hardware specification to run correctly and perform standard tasks, and its own drivers for peripheral devices like printers and punched paper card readers. The growing complexity of hardware and application programs eventually made operating systems a necessity for everyday use.
Background
The earliest computers were mainframes that lacked any form of operating system. Each user had sole use of the machine for a scheduled period of time and would arrive at the computer with program and data, often on punched paper cards and magnetic or paper tape. The program would be loaded into the machine, and the machine would be set to work until the program completed or crashed. Programs could generally be debugged via a control panel using dials, toggle switches and panel lights.
Symbolic languages, assemblers, and compilers were developed for programmers to translate symbolic program-code into machine code that previously would have been hand-encoded. Later machines came with libraries of support code on punched cards or magnetic tape, which would be linked to the user's program to assist in operations such as input and output. This was the genesis of the modern-day operating system; however, machines still ran a single job at a time. At Cambridge University in England the job queue was at one time a washing line from which tapes were hung with different colored clothes-pegs to indicate job-priority.
As machines became more powerful the time to run programs diminished, and the time to hand off the equipment to the next user became large by comparison. Accounting for and paying for machine usage moved on from checking the wall clock to automatic logging by the computer. Run queues evolved from a literal queue of people at the door, to a heap of media on a jobs-waiting table, or batches of punch-cards stacked one on top of the other in the reader, until the machine itself was able to select and sequence which magnetic tape drives processed which tapes. Where program developers had originally had access to run their own jobs on the machine, they were supplanted by dedicated machine operators who looked after the machine and were less and less concerned with implementing tasks manually. When commercially available computer centers were faced with the implications of data lost through tampering or operational errors, equipment vendors were put under pressure to enhance the runtime libraries to prevent misuse of system resources. Automated monitoring was needed not just for CPU usage but for counting pages printed, cards punched, cards read, disk storage used and for signaling when operator intervention was required by jobs such as changing magnetic tapes and paper forms. Security features were added to operating systems to record audit trails of which programs were accessing which files and to prevent access to a production payroll file by an engineering program, for example.
All these features were building up towards the repertoire of a fully capable operating system. Eventually the runtime libraries became an amalgamated program that was started before the first customer job and could read in the customer job, control its execution, record its usage, reassign hardware resources after the job ended, and immediately go on to process the next job. These resident background programs, capable of managing multi step processes, were often called monitors or monitor-programs before the term "operating system" established itself.
An underlying program offering basic hardware-management, software-scheduling and resource-monitoring may seem a remote ancestor to the user-oriented OSes of the personal computing era. But there has been a shift in the meaning of OS. Just as early automobiles lacked speedometers, radios, and air-conditioners which later became standard, more and more optional software features became standard features in every OS package, although some applications such as database management systems and spreadsheets remain optional and separately priced. This has led to the perception of an OS as a complete user-system with an integrated graphical user interface, utilities, some applications such as text editors and file managers, and configuration tools.
The true descendant of the early operating systems is what is now called the "kernel". In technical and development circles the old restricted sense of an OS persists because of the continued active development of embedded operating systems for all kinds of devices with a data-processing component, from hand-held gadgets up to industrial robots and real-time control-systems, which do not run user applications at the front-end. An embedded OS in a device today is not so far removed as one might think from its ancestor of the 1950s.
The broader categories of systems and application software are discussed in the computer software article.
Mainframes
The first operating system used for real work was GM-NAA I/O, produced in 1956 by General Motors' Research division for its IBM 704. Most other early operating systems for IBM mainframes were also produced by customers.
Early operating systems were very diverse, with each vendor or customer producing one or more operating systems specific to their particular mainframe computer. Every operating system, even from the same vendor, could have radically different models of commands, operating procedures, and such facilities as debugging aids. Typically, each time the manufacturer brought out a new machine, there would be a new operating system, and most applications would have to be manually adjusted, recompiled, and retested.
Systems on IBM hardware
The state of affairs continued until the 1960s when IBM, already a leading hardware vendor, stopped work on existing systems and put all its effort into developing the System/360 series of machines, all of which used the same instruction and input/output architecture. IBM intended to develop a single operating system for the new hardware, the OS/360. The problems encountered in the development of the OS/360 are legendary, and are described by Fred Brooks in The Mythical Man-Month—a book that has become a classic of software engineering. Because of performance differences across the hardware range and delays with software development, a whole family of operating systems was introduced instead of a single OS/360.
IBM wound up releasing a series of stop-gaps followed by two longer-lived operating systems:
OS/360 for mid-range and large systems. This was available in three system generation options:
PCP for early users and for those without the resources for multiprogramming.
MFT for mid-range systems, replaced by MFT-II in OS/360 Release 15/16. This had one successor, OS/VS1, which was discontinued in the 1980s.
MVT for large systems. This was similar in most ways to PCP and MFT (most programs could be ported among the three without being re-compiled), but has more sophisticated memory management and a time-sharing facility, TSO. MVT had several successors including the current z/OS.
DOS/360 for small System/360 models had several successors including the current z/VSE. It was significantly different from OS/360.
IBM maintained full compatibility with the past, so that programs developed in the sixties can still run under z/VSE (if developed for DOS/360) or z/OS (if developed for MFT or MVT) with no change.
IBM also developed TSS/360, a time-sharing system for the System/360 Model 67. Overcompensating for their perceived importance of developing a timeshare system, they set hundreds of developers to work on the project. Early releases of TSS were slow and unreliable; by the time TSS had acceptable performance and reliability, IBM wanted its TSS users to migrate to OS/360 and OS/VS2; while IBM offered a TSS/370 PRPQ, they dropped it after 3 releases.
Several operating systems for the IBM S/360 and S/370 architectures were developed by third parties, including the Michigan Terminal System (MTS) and MUSIC/SP.
Other mainframe operating systems
Control Data Corporation developed the SCOPE operating systems in the 1960s, for batch processing and later developed the MACE operating system for time sharing, which was the basis for the later Kronos. In cooperation with the University of Minnesota, the Kronos and later the NOS operating systems were developed during the 1970s, which supported simultaneous batch and time sharing use. Like many commercial time sharing systems, its interface was an extension of the DTSS time sharing system, one of the pioneering efforts in timesharing and programming languages.
In the late 1970s, Control Data and the University of Illinois developed the PLATO system, which used plasma panel displays and long-distance time sharing networks. PLATO was remarkably innovative for its time; the shared memory model of PLATO's TUTOR programming language allowed applications such as real-time chat and multi-user graphical games.
For the UNIVAC 1107, UNIVAC, the first commercial computer manufacturer, produced the EXEC I operating system, and Computer Sciences Corporation developed the EXEC II operating system and delivered it to UNIVAC. EXEC II was ported to the UNIVAC 1108. Later, UNIVAC developed the EXEC 8 operating system for the 1108; it was the basis for operating systems for later members of the family. Like all early mainframe systems, EXEC I and EXEC II were a batch-oriented system that managed magnetic drums, disks, card readers and line printers; EXEC 8 supported both batch processing and on-line transaction processing. In the 1970s, UNIVAC produced the Real-Time Basic (RTB) system to support large-scale time sharing, also patterned after the Dartmouth BASIC system.
Burroughs Corporation introduced the B5000 in 1961 with the MCP (Master Control Program) operating system. The B5000 was a stack machine designed to exclusively support high-level languages, with no software, not even at the lowest level of the operating system, being written directly in machine language or assembly language; the MCP was the first OS to be written entirely in a high-level language - ESPOL, a dialect of ALGOL 60 - although ESPOL had specialized statements for each "syllable" in the B5000 instruction set. MCP also introduced many other ground-breaking innovations, such as being one of the first commercial implementations of virtual memory. The rewrite of MCP for the B6500 is still in use today in the Unisys ClearPath/MCP line of computers.
GE introduced the GE-600 series with the General Electric Comprehensive Operating Supervisor (GECOS) operating system in 1962. After Honeywell acquired GE's computer business, it was renamed to General Comprehensive Operating System (GCOS). Honeywell expanded the use of the GCOS name to cover all its operating systems in the 1970s, though many of its computers had nothing in common with the earlier GE 600 series and their operating systems were not derived from the original GECOS.
Project MAC at MIT, working with GE and Bell Labs, developed Multics, which introduced the concept of ringed security privilege levels.
Digital Equipment Corporation developed TOPS-10 for its PDP-10 line of 36-bit computers in 1967. Before the widespread use of Unix, TOPS-10 was a particularly popular system in universities, and in the early ARPANET community. Bolt, Beranek, and Newman developed TENEX for a modified PDP-10 that supported demand paging; this was another popular system in the research and ARPANET communities, and was later developed by DEC into TOPS-20.
Scientific Data Systems/Xerox Data Systems developed several operating systems for the Sigma series of computers, such as the Basic Control Monitor (BCM), Batch Processing Monitor (BPM), and Basic Time-Sharing Monitor (BTM). Later, BPM and BTM were succeeded by the Universal Time-Sharing System (UTS); it was designed to provide multi-programming services for online (interactive) user programs in addition to batch-mode production jobs, It was succeeded by the CP-V operating system, which combined UTS with the heavily batch-oriented Xerox Operating System.
Minicomputers
Digital Equipment Corporation created several operating systems for its 16-bit PDP-11 machines, including the simple RT-11 system, the time-sharing RSTS operating systems, and the RSX-11 family of real-time operating systems, as well as the VMS system for the 32-bit VAX machines.
Several competitors of Digital Equipment Corporation such as Data General, Hewlett-Packard, and Computer Automation created their own operating systems. One such, "MAX III", was developed for Modular Computer Systems Modcomp II and Modcomp III computers. It was characterised by its target market being the industrial control market. The Fortran libraries included one that enabled access to measurement and control devices.
IBM's key innovation in operating systems in this class (which they call "mid-range"), was their "CPF" for the System/38. This had capability-based addressing, used a machine interface architecture to isolate the application software and most of the operating system from hardware dependencies (including even such details as address size and register size) and included an integrated RDBMS. The succeeding OS/400 (now known as IBM i) for the IBM AS/400 and later IBM Power Systems has no files, only objects of different types and these objects persist in very large, flat virtual memory, called a single-level store.
The Unix operating system was developed at AT&T Bell Laboratories in the late 1960s, originally for the PDP-7, and later for the PDP-11. Because it was essentially free in early editions, easily obtainable, and easily modified, it achieved wide acceptance. It also became a requirement within the Bell systems operating companies. Since it was written in the C language, when that language was ported to a new machine architecture, Unix was also able to be ported. This portability permitted it to become the choice for a second generation of minicomputers and the first generation of workstations, and its use became widespread. Unix exemplified the idea of an operating system that was conceptually the same across various hardware platforms. Because of its utility, it inspired many and later became one of the roots of the free software movement and open-source software. Numerous operating systems were based upon it including Minix, GNU/Linux, and the Berkeley Software Distribution. Apple's macOS is also based on Unix via NeXTSTEP and FreeBSD.
The Pick operating system was another operating system available on a wide variety of hardware brands. Commercially released in 1973 its core was a BASIC-like language called Data/BASIC and a SQL-style database manipulation language called ENGLISH. Licensed to a large variety of manufacturers and vendors, by the early 1980s observers saw the Pick operating system as a strong competitor to Unix.
Microcomputers
Beginning in the mid-1970s, a new class of small computers came onto the marketplace. Featuring 8-bit processors, typically the MOS Technology 6502, Intel 8080, Motorola 6800 or the Zilog Z80, along with rudimentary input and output interfaces and as much RAM as practical, these systems started out as kit-based hobbyist computers but soon evolved into an essential business tool.
Home computers
While many eight-bit home computers of the 1980s, such as the BBC Micro, Commodore 64, Apple II series, the Atari 8-bit, the Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum series and others could load a third-party disk-loading operating system, such as CP/M or GEOS, they were generally used without one. Their built-in operating systems were designed in an era when floppy disk drives were very expensive and not expected to be used by most users, so the standard storage device on most was a tape drive using standard compact cassettes. Most, if not all, of these computers shipped with a built-in BASIC interpreter on ROM, which also served as a crude command line interface, allowing the user to load a separate disk operating system to perform file management commands and load and save to disk. The most popular home computer, the Commodore 64, was a notable exception, as its DOS was on ROM in the disk drive hardware, and the drive was addressed identically to printers, modems, and other external devices.
Furthermore, those systems shipped with minimal amounts of computer memory—4-8 kilobytes was standard on early home computers—as well as 8-bit processors without specialized support circuitry like an MMU or even a dedicated real-time clock. On this hardware, a complex operating system's overhead supporting multiple tasks and users would likely compromise the performance of the machine without really being needed. As those systems were largely sold complete, with a fixed hardware configuration, there was also no need for an operating system to provide drivers for a wide range of hardware to abstract away differences.
Video games and even the available spreadsheet, database and word processors for home computers were mostly self-contained programs that took over the machine completely. Although integrated software existed for these computers, they usually lacked features compared to their standalone equivalents, largely due to memory limitations. Data exchange was mostly performed through standard formats like ASCII text or CSV, or through specialized file conversion programs.
Operating systems in video games and consoles
Since virtually all video game consoles and arcade cabinets designed and built after 1980 were true digital machines based on microprocessors (unlike the earlier Pong clones and derivatives), some of them carried a minimal form of BIOS or built-in game, such as the ColecoVision, the Sega Master System and the SNK Neo Geo.
Modern-day game consoles and videogames, starting with the PC-Engine, all have a minimal BIOS that also provides some interactive utilities such as memory card management, audio or video CD playback, copy protection and sometimes carry libraries for developers to use etc. Few of these cases, however, would qualify as a true operating system.
The most notable exceptions are probably the Dreamcast game console which includes a minimal BIOS, like the PlayStation, but can load the Windows CE operating system from the game disk allowing easily porting of games from the PC world, and the Xbox game console, which is little more than a disguised Intel-based PC running a secret, modified version of Microsoft Windows in the background. Furthermore, there are Linux versions that will run on a Dreamcast and later game consoles as well.
Long before that, Sony had released a kind of development kit called the Net Yaroze for its first PlayStation platform, which provided a series of programming and developing tools to be used with a normal PC and a specially modified "Black PlayStation" that could be interfaced with a PC and download programs from it. These operations require in general a functional OS on both platforms involved.
In general, it can be said that videogame consoles and arcade coin-operated machines used at most a built-in BIOS during the 1970s, 1980s and most of the 1990s, while from the PlayStation era and beyond they started getting more and more sophisticated, to the point of requiring a generic or custom-built OS for aiding in development and expandability.
Personal computer era
The development of microprocessors made inexpensive computing available for the small business and hobbyist, which in turn led to the widespread use of interchangeable hardware components using a common interconnection (such as the S-100, SS-50, Apple II, ISA, and PCI buses), and an increasing need for "standard" operating systems to control them. The most important of the early OSes on these machines was Digital Research's CP/M-80 for the 8080 / 8085 / Z-80 CPUs. It was based on several Digital Equipment Corporation operating systems, mostly for the PDP-11 architecture. Microsoft's first operating system, MDOS/MIDAS, was designed along many of the PDP-11 features, but for microprocessor based systems. MS-DOS, or PC DOS when supplied by IBM, was designed to be similar to CP/M-80. Each of these machines had a small boot program in ROM which loaded the OS itself from disk. The BIOS on the IBM-PC class machines was an extension of this idea and has accreted more features and functions in the 20 years since the first IBM-PC was introduced in 1981.
The decreasing cost of display equipment and processors made it practical to provide graphical user interfaces for many operating systems, such as the generic X Window System that is provided with many Unix systems, or other graphical systems such as Apple's classic Mac OS and macOS, the Radio Shack Color Computer's OS-9 Level II/MultiVue, Commodore's AmigaOS, Atari TOS, IBM's OS/2, and Microsoft Windows. The original GUI was developed on the Xerox Alto computer system at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in the early 1970s and commercialized by many vendors throughout the 1980s and 1990s.
Since the late 1990s, there have been three operating systems in widespread use on personal computers: Apple Inc.'s macOS, the open source Linux, and Microsoft Windows. Since 2005 and the Mac transition to Intel processors, all have been developed mainly on the x86 platform, although macOS retained PowerPC support until 2009 and Linux remains ported to a multitude of architectures including ones such as 68k, PA-RISC, and DEC Alpha, which have been long superseded and out of production, and SPARC and MIPS, which are used in servers or embedded systems but no longer for desktop computers. Other operating systems such as AmigaOS and OS/2 remain in use, if at all, mainly by retrocomputing enthusiasts or for specialized embedded applications.
Mobile operating systems
In the early 1990s, Psion released the Psion Series 3 PDA, a small mobile computing device. It supported user-written applications running on an operating system called EPOC. Later versions of EPOC became Symbian, an operating system used for mobile phones from Nokia, Ericsson, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, Samsung and phones developed for NTT Docomo by Sharp, Fujitsu & Mitsubishi. Symbian was the world's most widely used smartphone operating system until 2010 with a peak market share of 74% in 2006. In 1996, Palm Computing released the Pilot 1000 and Pilot 5000, running Palm OS. Microsoft Windows CE was the base for Pocket PC 2000, renamed Windows Mobile in 2003, which at its peak in 2007 was the most common operating system for smartphones in the U.S.
In 2007, Apple introduced the iPhone and its operating system, known as simply iPhone OS (until the release of iOS 4), which, like Mac OS X, is based on the Unix-like Darwin. In addition to these underpinnings, it also introduced a powerful and innovative graphic user interface that was later also used on the tablet computer iPad. A year later, Android, with its own graphical user interface, was introduced, based on a modified Linux kernel, and Microsoft re-entered the mobile operating system market with Windows Phone in 2010, which was replaced by Windows 10 Mobile in 2015.
In addition to these, a wide range of other mobile operating systems are contending in this area.
Rise of virtualization
Operating systems originally ran directly on the hardware itself and provided services to applications, but with virtualization, the operating system itself runs under the control of a hypervisor, instead of being in direct control of the hardware.
On mainframes IBM introduced the notion of a virtual machine in 1968 with CP/CMS on the IBM System/360 Model 67, and extended this later in 1972 with Virtual Machine Facility/370 (VM/370) on System/370.
On x86-based personal computers, VMware popularized this technology with their 1999 product, VMware Workstation, and their 2001 VMware GSX Server and VMware ESX Server products. Later, a wide range of products from others, including Xen, KVM and Hyper-V meant that by 2010 it was reported that more than 80 percent of enterprises had a virtualization program or project in place, and that 25 percent of all server workloads would be in a virtual machine.
Over time, the line between virtual machines, monitors, and operating systems was blurred:
Hypervisors grew more complex, gaining their own application programming interface, memory management or file system.
Virtualization becomes a key feature of operating systems, as exemplified by KVM and LXC in Linux, Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008 or HP Integrity Virtual Machines in HP-UX.
In some systems, such as POWER5 and POWER6-based servers from IBM, the hypervisor is no longer optional.
Radically simplified operating systems, such as CoreOS have been designed to run only on virtual systems.
Applications have been re-designed to run directly on a virtual machine monitor.
In many ways, virtual machine software today plays the role formerly held by the operating system, including managing the hardware resources (processor, memory, I/O devices), applying scheduling policies, or allowing system administrators to manage the system.
See also
Charles Babbage Institute
IT History Society
List of operating systems
Timeline of operating systems
History of computer icons
Notes
References
Further reading
Operating systems
History
History of computing
|
21426608
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unnaipol%20Oruvan%20%282009%20film%29
|
Unnaipol Oruvan (2009 film)
|
Unnaipol Oruvan () is a 2009 Indian Tamil-language thriller film directed by Chakri Toleti in his directorial debut. It stars Kamal Haasan and Mohanlal. The film was simultaneously made in Telugu as Eenadu () with Venkatesh playing Mohanlal's role, both remakes of the Hindi film A Wednesday!.
The film tells the story of Chennai City Police Commissioner/DGP (Mohanlal / Venkatesh) who gets an anonymous call. The caller (Kamal Haasan) demands that he release militants in exchange for information about many bombs planted across the city. The caller is serious as the police find a bomb planted very close to their headquarters. The commissioner is later cornered between releasing militants who had been responsible for killing innocent people and stopping bomb blasts around the city. Whatever he chooses forms the rest of the plot. Both Unnaipol Oruvan and Eenadu received positive reviews from the critics and was a commercial success. The Tamil version film was dubbed and released in Malayalam as Oru Budhanazhcha.
Plot
The recently dismissed police commissioner of Chennai (Hyderabad in Telugu version), Maraar (Eashwar Prasad in Telugu version) describes in a voice-over about his sudden termination for police, due to a common man who walked into his life. An unnamed man is shown strategically placing a travel bag in a train in the Chennai Central railway station and in a shopping mall. He proceeds to place another bag, under the pretence of lodging an FIR, in the toilet of a police station in Anna Salai, Chennai (Lakdi-ka-pool, Hyderabad in Telugu version). He then arrives on the rooftop of an under-construction building and sets up his base of operations, equipped with gadgets and instruments. He calls up Maraar and informs him that five bombs have been planted in locations throughout Chennai, which are programmed to explode simultaneously within four hours.
The caller demands that he would like to negotiate with a senior government official, who has the full authority. Maraar seeks the services of the chief secretary to act as the negotiator. Maraar also alerts his team involved in intelligence research and surveillance, tapping all the available resources in gathering preliminary information and tracing the location of the caller. Meanwhile, the caller tips off news reporter Natasha Rajkumar, telling her to reach Anna Salai police station immediately.
Maraar initially suspects the caller to be bluffing, but his doubts are dispelled as the caller, to prove his seriousness and the police force's helplessness, reveals that a bomb has been planted in the Anna Salai police station. When the bomb disposal squad find the bomb, there is only three minutes left. They manage to deactivate the bomb after following the caller's instructions. Natasha reaches the scene on the caller's instructions and reports about the situation. An intense debate ensues between Maraar and the chief secretary on who would act as the negotiator with the caller. The chief secretary appoints Maraar as the State's negotiator with unrestricted power for one day. The caller talks full of life logics and religious philosophy and finally asks Maarar to release three terrorists and one convicted arms seller, all who were arrested by him years ago.
Maraar's men realise that the caller is using advanced software to automatically switch the numbers and locations of his mobile phone SIM card every minute, rendering their manpower and the obsolete equipment useless and prompting them to employ the services of a young hacker, an IIT drop-out. In the meantime, Maraar is able to obtain a facial composite of the caller with help of the police officer to whom the caller had approached to lodge the fake FIR, but much of the time passes without any concrete results on the identity or the location of the caller.
Ultimately, Maraar agrees with the caller's demand and puts two of his best men, Arif Khan and Sethuraman (Gautham Reddy in Telugu version), in charge of handing over the four terrorists at the Sholavaram airstrip. Once there, the caller confirms the identity of the four men via a conference call with Arif and Maraar. He then asks Arif and Sethu to unlock their handcuffs and leave them alone at a particular spot. Sethu orders his men to do as told but, at the last moment, Arif decides not to hand over terrorist Abdullah, to ensure all the information regarding the locations of the bombs can be forced out from the caller. Sethu argues with Arif and demands he do as ordered, but Arif forcefully grabs Abdullah and starts walking away. The other three enter a car which explodes soon after, killing them. But the caller knows that Abdullah is alive.
The caller threatens to blow up the remaining bombs across the city unless Arif and Sethu kill Abdullah. The Chief Secretary tells Maraar that the Chief Minister has to know about the current situation but Maraar disagrees and tells her that he will face the consequences, and orders Arif to kill the terrorist. Arif kills Abdullah and Sethu shoots Arif in the hand to make it look like an attack for self-defense. The caller confirms it via the news and reveals that he was bluffing and there are no more bombs anywhere in Chennai. He tells that as terrorism is instant, justice and safety must be so. Then Maarar questions the IIT hacker to trace the caller, but he refuses. But Maraar looks in the hacker's computer, discovers the location, and leaves abruptly towards the site. The caller, meanwhile destroys all of his gadgets with a mini-bomb inside a drum. As he leaves his hideout with all his camouflage, Maarar catches up to him.
Both shake hands; in a voiceover, Maraar says the caller told him his real name, but does not reveal it as it does not have any significance. He adds that the higher most officials saved themselves by framing him as a recluse and the Chief Minister fired him. Maraar admits that they all knew the caller was disturbed because of the insecure environment and the incompetence of the governing authorities but he never imagined him to go to such lengths and have the guts to do something like that. He also repeats that the facts of this incident cannot be found in any written records but only in the memories of those who actually witnessed it. He acknowledges that although the incident has ambiguous moral significance, he personally feels that whatever happened, happened for the best.
Cast
Production
Casting
While Kamal Haasan was cast in the lead role; confirmation of Mohanlal's presence in the film followed. The film was announced as a bilingual film with Venkatesh reprising Mohanlal's role in the Telugu version. Ganesh Venkatraman, who debuted in the 2008 film Abhiyum Naanum, was later confirmed for a supporting role. Bharath Reddy, who played a cop in the Telugu film Siddam, is playing another supporting cop role.
UTV Motion Pictures distributed the film along with Raaj Kamal Films International, Haasan's home production company, which produced it. Unnaipol Oruvan was directed by Chakri, a US-based filmmaker and a close friend of Haasan. Chakri had previously played the role of Govind's friend, Sai Ram, in Dasavathaaram, and the role of a child who takes still photographs of Kamal in the 1983 Telugu film Saagara Sangamam. Neeraj Pandey wrote the film's dialogue and screenplay. The music was composed by Kamal Haasan's daughter, Shruthi Haasan.
The title was changed from Thalaivan Irukkiran to Unnaipol Oruvan in early April 2009, named after a novel by Jayakanthan.
Filming
Unnaipol Oruvan started its first filming schedule on 6 February 2009. It completed shooting in 65 days.
Themes
According to Kamal, Unnaipol Oruvan portrays the "common man's anger, angst and suffering".
Soundtrack
The music was composed by Shruti Haasan, daughter of Kamal Haasan. The album contains four songs and a remix. The songs are featured throughout the film. Kamal Haasan, singer Blaaze, and Manyusha Puthran contributed the lyrics. The audio launch was held on 6 September 2009 at Sathyam Cinemas.
Tamil Track List
Telugu Track List
Release
Unnaipol Oruvan was initially set to release on 12 August 2009, since the date coincided with the release of Kamal Haasan's first film Kalathur Kannamma. However, owing to technical and administrative difficulties, the release was postponed to 18 September. The film was given a U/A (Parental Guidance) rating from the Central Board of Film Certification, mainly because of its theme – terrorism. In 2015, Telugu version Eeenadu was screened at the Habitat Film Festival.
Critical reception
Unnaipol Oruvan
Unnaipol Oruvan received positive reviews from critics. The Hollywood Reporter wrote that Unnaipol Oruvan is "far more engaging and energetic than its predecessor" and that "superstar Mohanlal plays Chennai police commissioner Raghavan Maraar with rare finesse and extraordinary subtlety ... His screen presence is so overwhelming that an equally great Tamil superstar, Kamal Haasan, as the nameless Common Man, is overshadowed". Sify said that technically the film is picture-perfect and that both Kamal Haasan and Mohanlal coming together is worth the ticket money. It mentioned that unlike in the Hindi version where Naseeruddin Shah had an edge over Anupam Kher, here the best dialogues were almost equally given to Mohanlal as well, "what elevates the film to a new high is the crisp presentation and outstanding performances from the lead actors, mainly Kamal and Mohanlal, who simply rock".
Behindwoods rated that overall it was a brilliant work which will be appreciated by every socially responsible citizen of India. Indiaglitz commented that Unnaipol Oruvan deserves to be watched to see how Kamal & Mohanlal pit against Naseer & Kher. Kollywood Today praised that the movie was stupendously awesome and was a must-watch. Pavithra Srinivasan of Rediff.com provided 4 stars and also had the same comments.
Eenadu
Regarding the Telugu version, Rediff.com stated that "For the Telugu audience, Eenadu is a film which is out of the formulaic pattern and the hero warp Telugu cinema is in, and shows that films like it can be made too which can be seen and enjoyed with the audience taking home something extra too!" The Times of India gave the film 3 out of 5 stars and stated that "The much-awaited Eenadu lives up to the big expectations and carries the essence of the original (A Wednesday)".
Awards and nominations
Ananda Vikatan Cinema Awards
Mohanlal - Best Supporting Actor
57th Filmfare Awards South
Nominated
Filmfare Award for Best Actor – Telugu – Kamal Haasan
Filmfare Award for Best Supporting Actor – Telugu – Venkatesh
Filmfare Award for Best Supporting Actress – Telugu – Lakshmi
References
External links
2009 films
Indian films
Tamil-language films
Telugu-language films
2009 thriller films
Indian thriller films
Films about terrorism in India
Films set in Chennai
Films set in Hyderabad, India
Films about organised crime in India
Tamil remakes of Hindi films
Telugu remakes of Hindi films
Fictional portrayals of the Tamil Nadu Police
Fictional portrayals of the Andhra Pradesh Police
2000s Tamil-language films
2000s Telugu-language films
Indian multilingual films
UTV Motion Pictures films
2009 directorial debut films
Indian vigilante films
2009 multilingual films
Films directed by Chakri Toleti
2000s vigilante films
|
8231252
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedrick%20Ellis
|
Sedrick Ellis
|
Sedrick Dwayne Ellis (born July 9, 1985) is a former American football defensive tackle. He played college football for the University of Southern California (USC), and earned unanimous All-American honors. He was drafted by the New Orleans Saints seventh overall in the 2008 NFL Draft.
Early years
Ellis was born in Chino, California. Ellis prepped at Chino High School. He was involved with teams that went to back to back CIF title games 2000, 2001. Ellis, along with teammate Chris McFoy, who was on these Chino teams, played in the NFL. While in high school Ellis played defensive tackle and fullback in goal line situations.
College career
Ellis attended the University of Southern California, where he played for coach Pete Carroll's USC Trojans football team from 2003 to 2007. As an underclassman, he learned under All-American Mike Patterson Ellis finished his redshirt junior season at USC during the 2006 season. He was first team coaches and Rivals.com All-Pac-10 conference, first-team College Football News All-American and won the Morris Trophy. Ellis was a major force in USC's victory over then-No. 3 Michigan in the 2007 Rose Bowl, recording a season-high seven tackles, a sack and a pass deflection. Following the performance, Ellis considered making the jump to the NFL in the 2007 NFL Draft but decided to come back for his senior season and would go pro in 2008; part of his decision to stay was tied to classmate and highly touted defensive lineman Lawrence Jackson.
Bench pressing more than 500 pounds, he was the strongest player on the Trojans roster and was named one of the "Pac-10's Top 10 Players" by Sports Illustrated going into the 2007 season. At the end of the 2007 season, Ellis was voted the Pacific-10 Conference Defensive Player of the Year by league coaches, and was selected to the all-conference first team.
Ellis was recognized as a unanimous first-team All-American, having received first-team honors from the Associated Press, American Football Coaches Association, Football Writers Association of America, Walter Camp Football Foundation and The Sporting News, SI.com, Rivals.com.
Although Ellis was the strongest person on the 2007 Trojans and only the third player under Pete Carroll's Trojan tenure to lift over , he had only started lifting weights since he was 15 (10 years as of 2010) because his father would not allow him to lift at a younger age. In addition to benching a team-best , at the 2007 spring pro day Ellis hoisted 225 lb 42 times. Because of his strength, the Trojans had to purchase a set of 200-pound dumbbells for their weight room just to accommodate him (the previous high were 160s); Ellis would do sets of eight reps on the incline bench with the 200s.
Career statistics
Professional career
Pre-draft
Bench Press: ; Squat:
New Orleans Saints
Ellis was drafted by the New Orleans Saints seventh overall in the 2008 NFL Draft. The Saints original draft spot was 10th, but they traded up with the New England Patriots. The teams swapped first round picks, the Saints gave up their third round selection (78th) and the Pats gave back their fifth round selection (164th). The Patriots used the tenth pick to select linebacker Jerod Mayo.
Initially, New Orleans attempted to trade up for LSU DT Glenn Dorsey, whom they had valued higher than Ellis. They had purportedly offered a deal to the Kansas City Chiefs which included their first- and second-round picks and their first-round pick in the 2009 NFL Draft but the Chiefs decided to draft Dorsey instead.
In New Orleans, Ellis was reunited with Saints defensive line coach Ed Orgeron, who was his assistant coach at USC for his freshman year and responsible for recruiting him. Extended negotiations over contract details, not uncommon with high draft picks, led the defensive tackle to miss six days and 12 practices of training camp until a contract was agreed to on July 29. His initial five-year contract is worth a maximum value of $49 million, with $19.5 million in guarantees; however portions are based on hard-to-reach incentives that may bring the realized value of the agreement lower.
2008 season
Ellis started and played 13 regular season games in his rookie season for the Saints, who finished 8-8. Sedrick recorded 30 tackles (20 solo) and 4 sacks.
2009 season
Ellis started and played 10 regular season games in his second season with the Saints, who finished 13-3 and went on to win Super Bowl XLIV. He recorded 34 tackles (26 solo) and 2 sacks in the regular season. Ellis started at Defensive Tackle for the Saints in the Super Bowl, recording three tackles.
2010 season
Ellis started and played in all 16 regular season games for the Saints for the first time in his NFL career, recording 44 tackles (30 solo), which marked a career high. Ellis also led all Saints defenders with 6 sacks on the year. New Orleans finished 11-5, good for 2nd place in the NFC South. Ellis started at defensive tackle in the Saints' Wild Card playoff loss to the Seattle Seahawks, recording 3 total tackles.
2011 season
Ellis started all but one game during the Saints 13-3 run in 2011 that resulted in another NFC South title. He had 32 tackles (including playoffs) and four passes defended.
2012 season
Ellis started and played in all 16 regular season games, recording 36 tackles (23 solo).
Chicago Bears
On June 11, 2013, Ellis signed a one-year contract with the Chicago Bears, a team that had a top five defense in yards and point-per-game allowed the year prior.
On July 25, 2013, Ellis did not report to training camp and advised the Bears of his intention to retire from the NFL.
NFL statistics
Personal
References
External links
New Orleans Saints bio
USC Trojans bio
1985 births
Living people
All-American college football players
American football defensive tackles
Chicago Bears players
New Orleans Saints players
People from Chino, California
Sportspeople from San Bernardino County, California
USC Trojans football players
Players of American football from California
|
1923870
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The%20Pirate%20Bay
|
The Pirate Bay
|
The Pirate Bay (sometimes abbreviated as TPB) is an online index of digital content of entertainment media and software. Founded in 2003 by Swedish think tank Piratbyrån, The Pirate Bay allows visitors to search, download, and contribute magnet links and torrent files, which facilitate peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing among users of the BitTorrent protocol.
The Pirate Bay has sparked controversies and discussion about legal aspects of file sharing, copyright, and civil liberties and has become a platform for political initiatives against established intellectual property laws as well as a central figure in an anti-copyright movement. The website faced several shutdowns and domain seizures, switching to a series of new web addresses to continue operating.
In April 2009, the website's founders (Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, and Gottfrid Svartholm) were found guilty in the Pirate Bay trial in Sweden for assisting in copyright infringement and were sentenced to serve one year in prison and pay a fine. In some countries, Internet service providers (ISPs) have been ordered to block access to the website. Subsequently, proxy websites have been providing access to it. Founders Svartholm, Neij, and Sunde were all released by 2015 after having served shortened sentences.
History
The Pirate Bay was established in September 2003 by the Swedish anti-copyright organisation Piratbyrån (The Piracy Bureau); it has been run as a separate organisation since October 2004. The Pirate Bay was first run by Gottfrid Svartholm and Fredrik Neij, who are known by their nicknames "anakata" and "TiAMO", respectively. They have both been accused of "assisting in making copyrighted content available" by the Motion Picture Association of America. On 31 May 2006, the website's servers in Stockholm were raided and taken away by Swedish police, leading to three days of downtime. The Pirate Bay claims to be a non-profit entity based in the Seychelles; however, this is disputed.
The Pirate Bay has been involved in a number of lawsuits, both as plaintiff and as defendant. On 17 April 2009, Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm, and Carl Lundström were found guilty of assistance to copyright infringement and sentenced to one year in prison and payment of a fine of 30 million SEK (approximately 4.2m USD, 2.8m GBP, or 3.1m EUR), after a trial of nine days. The defendants appealed the verdict and accused the judge of giving in to political pressure. On 26 November 2010, a Swedish appeals court upheld the verdict, decreasing the original prison terms but increasing the fine to 46 million SEK. On 17 May 2010, because of an injunction against their bandwidth provider, the site was taken offline. Access to the website was later restored with a message making fun of the injunction on their front page. On 23 June 2010, the group Piratbyrån disbanded due to the death of Ibi Kopimi Botani, a prominent member and co-founder of the group.
The Pirate Bay was hosted for several years by PRQ, a Sweden-based company, owned by creators of TPB Gottfrid Svartholm and Fredrik Neij. PRQ is said to provide "highly secure, no-questions-asked hosting services to its customers". From May 2011, Serious Tubes Networks started providing network connectivity to The Pirate Bay. On 23 January 2012, The Pirate Bay added the new category Physibles. These are 3D files described as "data objects that are able (and feasible) to become physical" using a 3D printer. In May 2012, as part of Google's newly inaugurated "Transparency Report", the company reported over 6,000 formal requests to remove Pirate Bay links from the Google Search index; those requests covered over 80,500 URLs, with the five copyright holders having the most requests consisting of: Froytal Services LLC, Bang Bros, Takedown Piracy LLC, Amateur Teen Kingdom, and International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI). On 10 August 2013, The Pirate Bay announced the release of PirateBrowser, a free web browser used to circumvent internet censorship. The site was the most visited torrent directory on the World Wide Web from 2003 until November 2014, when KickassTorrents had more visitors according to Alexa. On 8 December 2014, Google removed most of the Google Play apps from its app store that have "The Pirate Bay" in the title.
On 9 December 2014, The Pirate Bay was raided by the Swedish police, who seized servers, computers, and other equipment. Several other torrent related sites including EZTV, Zoink, Torrage and the Istole tracker were also shut down in addition to The Pirate Bay's forum Suprbay.org. On the second day after the raid EZTV was reported to be showing "signs of life" with uploads to ExtraTorrent and KickassTorrents and supporting proxy sites like eztv-proxy.net via the main website's backend IP addresses. Several copies of The Pirate Bay went online during the next several days, most notably oldpiratebay.org, created by isoHunt.
On 19 May 2015, the .se domain of The Pirate Bay was ordered to be seized following a ruling by a Swedish court. The site reacted by adding six new domains in its place. The judgment was appealed on 26 May 2015. On 12 May 2016, the appeal was
dismissed and the Court ruled the domains be turned over to the Swedish state. The site returned to using its original .org domain in May 2016. In August 2016, the US government shut down KickassTorrents, which resulted in The Pirate Bay becoming once again the most visited BitTorrent website.
Website
Content
The Pirate Bay allows users to search for Magnet links. These are used to reference resources available for download via peer-to-peer networks which, when opened in a BitTorrent client, begin downloading the desired content. (Originally, The Pirate Bay allowed users to download BitTorrent files (torrents), small files that contain metadata necessary to download the data files from other users). The torrents are organised into categories: "Audio", "Video", "Applications", "Games", "Porn" and "Other". Registration requires an email address and is free; registered users may upload their own torrents and comment on torrents. According to a study of newly uploaded files during 2013 by TorrentFreak, 44% of uploads were television shows and movies, porn was in second place with 35% of uploads, and audio made up 9% of uploads. Registration for new users was closed in May 2019 following problems with the uploading of malware torrents.
The website features a browse function that enables users to see what is available in broad categories like Audio, Video, and Games, as well as sub-categories like Audio books, High-res Movies, and Comics. Since January 2012, it also features a "Physibles" category for 3D-printable objects. The contents of these categories can be sorted by file name, the number of seeders or leechers, the date posted, etc.
Piratbyrån described The Pirate Bay as a long-running project of performance art. Normally, the front page of The Pirate Bay featured a drawing of a pirate ship with the logo of the 1980s anti-copyright infringement campaign, "Home Taping Is Killing Music", on its sails instead of the Jolly Roger symbol usually associated with pirate ships.
Technical details
Initially, The Pirate Bay's four Linux servers ran a custom web server called Hypercube. An old version is open-source. On 1 June 2005, The Pirate Bay updated its website in an effort to reduce bandwidth usage, which was reported to be at 2 HTTP requests per millisecond on each of the four web servers, as well as to create a more user friendly interface for the front-end of the website. The website now runs Lighttpd and PHP on its dynamic front ends, MySQL at the database back end, Sphinx on the two search systems, memcached for caching SQL queries and PHP-sessions and Varnish in front of Lighttpd for caching static content. , The Pirate Bay consisted of 31 dedicated servers including nine dynamic web fronts, a database, two search engines, and eight BitTorrent trackers.
On 7 December 2007, The Pirate Bay finished the move from Hypercube to Opentracker as its BitTorrent tracking software, also enabling the use of the UDP tracker protocol for which Hypercube lacked support. This allowed UDP multicast to be used to synchronise the multiple servers with each other much faster than before. Opentracker is free software.
In June 2008, The Pirate Bay announced that their servers would support SSL encryption in response to Sweden's new wiretapping law. On 19 January 2009, The Pirate Bay launched IPv6 support for their tracker system, using an IPv6-only version of Opentracker. On 17 November 2009, The Pirate Bay shut off its tracker service permanently, stating that centralised trackers are no longer needed since distributed hash tables (DHT), peer exchange (PEX), and magnet links allow peers to find each other and content in a decentralised way.
On 20 February 2012, The Pirate Bay announced in a Facebook post that after 29 February the site would no longer offer torrent files, and would instead offer only magnet links. The site commented: "Not having torrents will be a bit cheaper for us but it will also make it harder for our common enemies to stop us." The site added that torrents being shared by fewer than ten people will retain their torrent files, to ensure compatibility with older software that may not support magnet links.
Funding
Early financing
In April 2007, a rumour was confirmed on the Swedish talk show Bert that The Pirate Bay had received financial support from right-wing entrepreneur Carl Lundström. This caused some consternation since Lundström, an heir to the Wasabröd fortune, is known for financing several far-right political parties and movements like Sverigedemokraterna and Bevara Sverige Svenskt (Keep Sweden Swedish). During the talk show, Piratbyrån spokesman Tobias Andersson acknowledged that "without Lundström's support, Pirate Bay would not have been able to start" and stated that most of the money went towards acquiring servers and bandwidth.
Donations
From 2004 until 2006, The Pirate Bay had a "Donate" link to a donations page which listed several payment methods, stated that funds supported only the tracker, and offered time-limited benefits to donors such as no advertisements and "VIP" status. After that, the link was removed from the home page, and the donations page only recommended donating "to your local pro-piracy group" for a time, after which it redirected to the site's main page. Billboard claimed that the site in 2009 "appeals for donations to keep its service running". In 2006, Petter Nilsson, a candidate on the Swedish political reality show Toppkandidaterna (The Top Candidates), donated 35,000 SEK (US$4,925.83) to The Pirate Bay, which they used to buy new servers.
In 2007, the site ran a fund intended to buy Sealand, a platform with debated micronation status. In 2009, the convicted principals of TPB requested that users stop trying to donate money for their fines, because they refused to pay them. In 2013, The Pirate Bay published its Bitcoin address on the site front page for donations, as well as Litecoin.
Merchandising
The site links to an online store selling site-related merchandise, first noted in 2006 in Svenska Dagbladet.
Advertising
Since 2006, the website has received financing through advertisements on result pages. According to speculations by Svenska Dagbladet, the advertisements generate about 600,000 SEK (US$84,000) per month. In an investigation in 2006, the police concluded that The Pirate Bay brings in 1.2 million SEK (US$169,000) per year from advertisements. The prosecution estimated in the 2009 trial from emails and screenshots that the advertisements pay over 10 million SEK (US$1.4M) a year, but the indictment used the estimate from the police investigation. The lawyers of the site's administrators counted the 2006 revenue closer to 725,000 SEK (US$102,000). The verdict of the first trial, however, quoted the estimate from the preliminary investigation.
, IFPI claims that the website is extremely profitable, and that The Pirate Bay is more engaged in making profit than supporting people's rights. The website has insisted that these allegations are not true, stating, "It's not free to operate a Web Site on this scale", and, "If we were making lots of money I, Svartholm, wouldn't be working late at the office tonight, I'd be sitting on a beach somewhere, working on my tan." In response to claims of annual revenue exceeding US$3 million made by the IFPI, the site's spokesman Peter Sunde argues that the website's high bandwidth, power, and hardware costs eliminate the potential for profit. The Pirate Bay, he says, may ultimately be operating at a loss. In the 2009 trial, the defence estimated the site's yearly expenses to be 800,000 SEK (US$110,000).
There have been unintentional advertisers. In 2007, an online ad agency placed Wal-Mart The Simpsons DVD ads "along with search results that included downloads of the series". In 2012, banner ads for Canada's Department of Finance Economic Action Plan were placed atop search results, as part of a larger "media buy", but were pulled "quickly".
Cryptocurrency mining
In 2017, The Pirate Bay embedded scripts on its website that would consume resources on visitors' computers in order to mine the Monero cryptocurrency. Visitors were initially not informed that these scripts had been added. After negative feedback, the operators published an announcement stating that it was a test to see if it could replace advertisements. The mining script appeared and disappeared from the website repeatedly over the following months through 2018.
Fee
According to the site's usage policy, it reserves the right to charge commercial policy violators "a basic fee of €5,000 plus bandwidth and other costs that may arise due to the violation". Co-founder Peter Sunde accused Swedish book publishers, who scraped the site for information about copyrighted books, of violating the usage policy, and asserted TPB's copyright on its database.
Projects
The team behind The Pirate Bay has worked on several websites and software projects of varying degrees of permanence.
In 2007, BayImg, an image hosting website similar to TinyPic went online in June.
Pre-publication images posted to BayImg became part of a legal battle when Conde Nast's network
was later allegedly hacked.<ref
name="Nr5ow">
</ref>
In July, "within hours after Ingmar Bergman's death", BergmanBits.com was launched, listing torrents for the director's films, online until mid-2008.
In August, The Pirate Bay relaunched the BitTorrent website Suprnova.org to perform the same functions as The Pirate Bay, with different torrent trackers, but the site languished; the domain was returned to its original owner in August 2010, and it now redirects to TorrentFreak.tv.
Suprbay.org was introduced in August as the official forum for ThePirateBay.org and the various sites connected to it. Users can request reseeding of torrents, or report malware within torrent files or illegal material on ThePirateBay.org.
BOiNK was announced in October in response to the raid on Oink's Pink Palace, a music-oriented BitTorrent website. A month later Sunde cancelled BOiNK, citing the many new music websites created since the downfall of OiNK.
A Mac dashboard widget was released in December, listing "top 10 stuff currently on TPB, either per category or the full list". SlopsBox, a disposable email address anti-spam service, also appeared in December, and was reviewed in 2009.
In 2008, Baywords was launched as a free blogging service that lets users of the site blog about anything as long as it does not break any Swedish laws. In December, The Pirate Bay resurrected ShareReactor as a combined eD2k and BitTorrent site. The same month, the Vio mobile video converter was released, designed to convert video files for playback on mobile devices such as iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, many Nokia and Windows Mobile devices.
In 2009, Pastebay, a note sharing service similar to Pastebin, was made available to the public as of 23 March. The Video Bay video streaming/sharing site was announced in June to be "The YouTube Killer", with content viewable in HTML 5-capable browsers. The site was in an "Extreme Beta" phase; a message on the homepage instructed the user "don't expect anything to work at all". The Video Bay was never completed and as of 28 April 2013, The Video Bay is inaccessible.
On 18 April 2011, Pirate Bay temporarily changed its name to "Research Bay", collaborating with P2P researchers of the Lund University Cybernorms group in a large poll of P2P users. The researchers published their results online on "The Survey Bay", as a public Creative Commons project in 2013. In January 2012, the site announced The Promo Bay; "doodles" by selected musicians, artists and others could be rotated onto the site's front page at a future date. Brazilian novelist Paulo Coelho was promoted, offering a collection of his books for free download. By November, 10,000 artists were reported to have signed up. TPB preserves a dated collection of exhibited logos. On 2 December 2012, some ISPs in the UK such as BT, Virgin Media, and BE started blocking The Promo Bay but stopped a few days later when the BPI reversed its position.
Purchases
In January 2007, when the micronation of Sealand was put up for sale, the ACFI and The Pirate Bay tried to buy it. The Sealand government, however, did not want to be involved with The Pirate Bay, as it was their opinion that file sharing represented "theft of proprietary rights". A new plan was formed to buy an island instead, but this too was never implemented, despite the website having raised US$25,000 (€15,000) in donations for this cause.
The P2P news blog TorrentFreak reported on 12 October 2007 that the Internet domain ifpi.com, which previously belonged to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, an anti-piracy organisation, had been acquired by The Pirate Bay. When asked about how they got hold of the domain, Sunde told TorrentFreak, "It's not a hack, someone just gave us the domain name. We have no idea how they got it, but it's ours and we're keeping it." The website was renamed "The International Federation of Pirates Interests" However, the IFPI filed a complaint with the World Intellectual Property Organization shortly thereafter, which subsequently ordered The Pirate Bay to return the domain name to the IFPI.
Cryptocurrency
On 12 May 2021 The Pirate Bay launched Pirate Token, a BEP-20 token,
to be used to sustain its community and develop tools for the website.
Incidents
May 2006 raid
On 31 May 2006, a raid against The Pirate Bay and people involved with the website took place as ordered by judge Tomas Norström, later the presiding judge of the 2009 trial, prompted by allegations of copyright violations. Police officers shut down the website and confiscated its servers, as well as all other servers hosted by The Pirate Bay's Internet service provider, PRQ. The company is owned by two operators of The Pirate Bay. Three peopleGottfrid Svartholm, Mikael Viborg, and Fredrik Neijwere held by the police for questioning, but were released later that evening. All servers in the room were seized, including those running the website of Piratbyrån, an independent organisation fighting for file sharing rights, as well as servers unrelated to The Pirate Bay or other file sharing activities. Equipment such as hardware routers, switches, blank CDs, and fax machines were also seized.
The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) wrote in a press release: "Since filing a criminal complaint in Sweden in November 2004, the film industry has worked vigorously with Swedish and U.S. government officials in Sweden to shut this illegal website down." MPAA CEO Dan Glickman also stated, "Intellectual property theft is a problem for film industries all over the world and we are glad that the local government in Sweden has helped stop The Pirate Bay from continuing to enable rampant copyright theft on the Internet." The MPAA press release set forth its justification for the raid and claimed that there were three arrests; however, the individuals were not actually arrested, only held for questioning. The release also reprinted John G. Malcolm's allegation that The Pirate Bay was making money from the distribution of copyrighted material, a criticism denied by the Pirate Bay.
After the raid, The Pirate Bay displayed a message that confirmed that the Swedish police had executed search warrants for breach of copyright law or assisting such a breach. The closure message initially caused some confusion because on 1 April 2005, April Fools' Day, The Pirate Bay had posted a similar message as a prank, stating that they were unavailable due to a raid by the Swedish Anti-Piracy Bureau and IFPI. Piratbyrån set up a temporary news blog to inform the public about the incident. On 2 June 2006, The Pirate Bay was available once again, with their logo depicting a pirate ship firing cannonballs at the Hollywood Sign.The Pirate Bay has servers in both Belgium and Russia for future use in case of another raid. According to The Pirate Bay, in the two years following the raid, it grew from 1 million to 2.7 million registered users and from 2.5 million to 12 million peers. The Pirate Bay now claims over 5 million active users.
Sweden's largest technology museum, the Swedish National Museum of Science and Technology, acquired one of the confiscated servers in 2009 and exhibited it for having great symbolic value as a "big problem or a big opportunity".
Autopsy photos
In September 2008, the Swedish media reported that the public preliminary investigation protocols concerning a child murder case known as the Arboga case had been made available through a torrent on The Pirate Bay. In Sweden, preliminary investigations become publicly available the moment a lawsuit is filed and can be ordered from the court by any individual. The document included pictures from the autopsy of the two murdered children, which caused their father Nicklas Jangestig to urge the website to have the pictures removed. The Pirate Bay refused to remove the torrent. The number of downloads increased to about 50,000 a few days later. On 11 September 2008, the website's press contact Peter Sunde participated in the debate program Debatt on the public broadcaster SVT. Sunde had agreed to participate on the condition that the father Nicklas Jangestig would not take part in the debate. Jangestig ultimately did participate in the program by telephone, which made Sunde feel betrayed by SVT. This caused The Pirate Bay to suspend all of its press contacts the following day.
"I don't think it's our job to judge if something is ethical or unethical or what other people want to put out on the internet", said The Pirate Bay's spokesperson Peter Sunde to TV4.
Legal issues
In September 2007, a large number of internal emails were leaked from anti-piracy company MediaDefender by an anonymous hacker. Some of the leaked emails discussed hiring hackers to perform DDoS attacks on The Pirate Bay's servers and trackers. In response to the leak, The Pirate Bay filed charges in Sweden against MediaDefender clients Twentieth Century Fox Sweden AB, EMI Sweden AB, Universal Music Group Sweden AB, Universal Pictures Nordic AB, Paramount Home Entertainment (Sweden) AB, Atari Nordic AB, Activision Nordic, Ubisoft Sweden AB, Sony BMG Music Entertainment (Sweden) AB, and Sony Pictures Home Entertainment Nordic AB, but the charges were not pursued. MediaDefender's stocks fell sharply after this incident, and several media companies withdrew from the service after the company announced the leak had caused $825,000 in losses.
Later, The Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde accused police investigator Jim Keyzer of a conflict of interest when he declined to investigate MediaDefender. Keyzer later accepted a job for MPAA member studio Warner Brothers. The leaked emails revealed that other MPAA member studios hired MediaDefender to pollute The Pirate Bay's torrent database. In an official letter to the Swedish Minister of Justice, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) requested assistance from the Swedish government to prevent The Pirate bay distributing video clips from the Beijing Olympics. The IOC claimed there were more than one million downloads of footage from the Olympics – mostly of the opening ceremony. The Pirate Bay, however, did not take anything down, and temporarily renamed the website to The Beijing Bay.
The trial against the men behind the Pirate Bay started in Sweden on 16 February 2009. They were accused of breaking Swedish copyright law.
The defendants, however, continued to be confident about the outcome. Half the charges against the Pirate Bay were dropped on the second day of the trial.
The three operators of the site and their one investor Carl Lundström were convicted in Stockholm district court on 17 April 2009 and sentenced to one year in jail each and a total of 30 million SEK (US$3.6 million, 2.7 million EUR, 2.4 million GBP) in fines and damages. The defendants' lawyers appealed to the Svea Court of Appeal and requested a retrial in the district court, alleging bias on the part of judge Tomas Norström.
On 13 May 2009, several record companies again sued Neij, Svartholm, Sunde and also The Pirate Bay's main internet service provider Black Internet. They required enforcement for ending The Pirate Bay's accessory to copyright infringement that had not stopped despite the court order in April, and in the complaint listed several pages of works being shared with the help of the site. The suit was joined by several major film companies on 30 July. The Stockholm district court ruled on 21 August that Black Internet must stop making available the specific works mentioned in the judgment, or face a 500,000 SEK fine. The company was notified of the order on 24 August, and they complied with it on the same day by disconnecting The Pirate Bay. Computer Sweden noted that the judgment did not order The Pirate Bay to be disconnected, but the ISP had no other option for stopping the activity on the site. It was the first time in Sweden for an ISP to be forced to stop providing access for a website. A public support fund fronted by the CEO of the ISP was set up to cover the legal fees of an appeal. Pirate Party leader Rickard Falkvinge submitted the case for Parliamentary Ombudsman review, criticising the court's order to make intermediaries responsible for relayed content and to assign active crime prevention tasks to a private party.
On 28 October 2009, the Stockholm District Court ordered a temporary injunction on Neij and Svartholm with a penalty of 500,000 SEK each, forbidding them from participating in the operation of The Pirate Bay's website or trackers.
On 21 May 2010, the Svea Court of Appeal decided not to change the orders on Black Internet or Neij and Svartholm.
On 1 February 2012, the Supreme Court of Sweden refused to hear an appeal in the conviction case, and agreed with the decision of the Svea Court of Appeal, which had upheld the sentences in November 2011.
On 2 September 2012, Pirate Bay co-founder Gottfrid Svartholm Warg was arrested in Cambodia. He was detained in Phnom Penh by officers executing an international warrant issued against him in April after he did not turn up to serve a one-year jail sentence for copyright violations. On 24 December 2012, administrators of TPB changed the homepage to urge users to send Warg, in jail, "gifts and letters".
In March 2013, The Pirate Bay claimed in a blog post that it had moved its servers to North Korea. The incident turned out to be a hoax. In April 2013, within a week The Pirate Bay had moved its servers from Greenland to Iceland to St. Martin, either in response to legal threats or preemptively. In December 2013, the site changed its domain to .ac (Ascension Island), following the seizure of the .sx domain. On 12 December, the site moved to .pe (Peru), on 18 December to .gy (Guyana). Following the site's suspension from the .gy domain, on 19 December The Pirate Bay returned to .se (Sweden), which it had previously occupied between February 2012 and April 2013.
Trial
The Pirate Bay trial was a joint criminal and civil prosecution in Sweden of four individuals charged for promoting the copyright infringement of others with The Pirate Bay site. The criminal charges were supported by a consortium of intellectual rights holders led by IFPI, who filed individual civil compensation claims against the owners of The Pirate Bay.
Swedish prosecutors filed charges on 31 January 2008 against Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm, and Peter Sunde; and Carl Lundström, a Swedish businessman who through his businesses sold services to the site. The prosecutor claimed the four worked together to administer, host, and develop the site and thereby facilitated other people's breach of copyright law. Some 34 cases of copyright infringements were originally listed, of which 21 were related to music files, 9 to movies, and 4 to games. One case involving music files was later dropped by the copyright holder who made the file available again on The Pirate Bay site. In addition, claims for damages of 117 million kronor (US$13 million, €12.5 million) were filed. The case was decided jointly by a judge and three appointed lay judges. According to Swedish media, the lead judge was involved in one pro-copyright organisation, and on the board of another, but denied that his involvement constituted a conflict of interest.
The trial started on 16 February 2009, in the district court (tingsrätt) of Stockholm, Sweden. The hearings ended on 3 March 2009 and the verdict was announced at 11:00 am on Friday 17 April 2009: Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm and Carl Lundström were all found guilty and sentenced to serve one year in prison and pay a fine of 30 million Swedish krona (app. €2.7 million or US$3.5 million). All of the defendants appealed the verdict.
The appeal trial concluded on 15 October 2010, and the verdict was announced on 26 November. The appeal court shortened sentences of three of the defendants who appeared in court that day. Neij's sentence was reduced to 10 months, Sunde's to eight, and Lundström's to four. However, the fine was increased from 32 to 46 million kronor.
On 1 February 2012, the Supreme Court of Sweden refused to hear an appeal in the case, prompting the site to change its official domain name to thepiratebay.se from thepiratebay.org. The move to a .se domain was claimed to prevent susceptibility to US laws from taking control of the site. On 9 April 2013, the site changed its domain name to thepiratebay.gl, under the Greenland TLD, in anticipation of possible seizure by Swedish authorities of its .se domain. The change proved to be short lived, as the site returned to the .se domain on 12 April 2013 after being blocked on the .gl domain by Tele-Post, which administers domains in Greenland. Tele-Post cited a Danish court ruling that the site was in violation of copyright laws.
Founders Svartholm, Neij, and Sunde were all released after having finished serving their sentences by 2015.
Service issues
In May 2007, The Pirate Bay was attacked by a group of hackers. They copied the user database, which included over 1.5 million users. The Pirate Bay claimed to its users that the data was of no value and that passwords and e-mails were encrypted and hashed. Some blogs stated that a group known as the AUH (Arga Unga Hackare, Swedish for "Angry Young Hackers") were suspected of executing the attack; however, the AUH stated on the Computer Sweden newspaper that they were not involved and would take revenge on those responsible for the attack.
On 27 April 2009, the website of The Pirate Bay had fibre IPv4 connectivity issues. There was widespread speculation this was a forced outage from the Swedish anti-piracy group, accelerated somewhat by TPB adding contact details for the Swedish anti-piracy group's lawyers to its RIPE database record. The site and its forums were still available via IPv6 at the time.
On 24 August 2009, one of The Pirate Bay's upstream providers was ordered to discontinue service for the website by a Swedish court in response to a civil action brought by several entertainment companies including Disney, Universal, Time Warner, Columbia, Sony, NBC, and Paramount. According to the TPB Blog, this caused a downtime of 3 hours; however, some users were unable to access the site immediately following the relocation due to unrelated technical difficulties. The site was fully operational again for everyone within 24 hours.
On 6 October 2009, one of the IP transit providers to The Pirate Bay blocked all Pirate Bay traffic causing an outage for most users around the world. The same day, the site was reportedly back online at an IP address at CyberBunker, located in the Netherlands. It is not known whether The Pirate Bay is actually located at CyberBunker or whether they are using the CyberBunker service that routes CyberBunker IP addresses to any datacenter around the world. These routes are not visible to the outside world.
CyberBunker was given a court injunction on 17 May 2010, taking the site offline briefly; later that day, hosting was restored by Sweden's Pirate Party. Former spokesman for the Pirate Bay, Peter Sunde, commented that it would now be very difficult to stop the site because it would now be seen as political censorship if anyone tries to shut it down.
On 8 July 2010, a group of Argentine hackers gained access to The Pirate Bay's administration panel through a security breach via the backend of The Pirate Bay website. They were able to delete torrents and expose users' IP-addresses, emails and MD5-hashed passwords. The Pirate Bay was taken offline for upgrades. Users visiting the website were met by the following message: "Upgrading some stuff, database is in use for backups, soon back again. Btw, it's nice weather outside I think."
On 16 May 2012, The Pirate Bay experienced a major DDoS attack, causing the site to be largely inaccessible worldwide for around 24 hours. The Pirate Bay said that it did not know who was behind the attack, although it "had its suspicions".
On 5 May 2015, The Pirate Bay went offline for several hours, apparently as a result of not properly configuring its SSL certificate.
Acquisition discussion
On 30 June 2009, Swedish advertising company Global Gaming Factory X AB announced their intention to buy the site for SEK 60 million (approximately US$8.5 million) (30m SEK in cash, 30m SEK in GGF shares).
The Pirate Bay founders stated that the profits from the sale would be placed in an offshore account where it would be used to fund projects pertaining to "freedom of speech, freedom of information, and the openness of the Internet". Assurances were made that "no personal data will be transferred in the eventual sale (since no personal data is kept)." Global Gaming Chief Executive Hans Pandeya commented on the site's future by saying "We would like to introduce models which entail that content providers and copyright owners get paid for content that is downloaded via the site", and announced that users would be charged a monthly fee for access to The Pirate Bay.
Global Gaming Factory's letter of intent expired at the end of September 2009, without the transaction having taken place. This may be due to the company's financial difficulties. "PC World" magazine regarded the deal's future as "doomed".
December 2014 raid
On 9 December 2014, police in Stockholm raided the company's premises and seized servers and other computers and equipment, which resulted in the website going offline. The raid was in response to a complaint from Rights Alliance, a Swedish anti-piracy group. The Pirate Bay was one of many peer-to-peer and torrent-related websites and apps that went down. One member of the crew was arrested. TorrentFreak reported that most other torrent sites reported a 5–10% increase in traffic from the displaced users, though the shutdown had little effect on overall piracy levels. In retaliation to the raid, a group of hackers claiming to be part of Anonymous allegedly leaked email log-in details of Swedish government officials. The Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde commented in a blog post that he was happy to see the website shut down, believing his successors have done nothing to improve the site, criticising in particular the increased use of advertisements. IsoHunt has since copied much of the original TPB database and made it accessible through oldpiratebay.org, a searchable index of old Pirate Bay torrents. IsoHunt also released a tool called The Open Bay, to allow users to deploy their own version of the Pirate Bay website. The tool is responsible for around 372 mirror sites. Since 17 December 2014, The Pirate Bay's Facebook page has been unavailable. On 22 December 2014, a website was resumed at the domain thepiratebay.se, showing a flip clock with the length of time in days and hours that the site had been offline, and a waving pirate flag. From this day TPB was hosted for a period in Moldova, on Trabia Network (Moldo-German company) servers. The Pirate Bay then began using the services of CloudFlare, a company which offers reverse proxy services. On 1 January 2015, the website presented a countdown to 1 February 2015. The website returned with a prominent phoenix logo displayed at the domain thepiratebay.se on 31 January 2015.
Error 522 downtimes
Beginning in October 2018, the clearnet Pirate Bay website started to be inaccessible in some locations around the world, showing Error 522. As the result, direct visits to the website dropped by more than 32 percent in October. The incident was found to be unrelated to internet provider blocking or domain name problem, but the exact cause has not been determined. The site's Tor domain and proxies remained unaffected.
The Error 522 problem occurred again in early March 2020, with the site's admins unable to say when it would be resolved.
After one month, the site's functionality was restored with an update of the domain records and the Cloudflare nameservers. It has survived numerous attempts to shut it down and is still active with official and unofficial mirror sites.
Censorship and controversies
Anti-copyright movement
The Pirate Bay has sparked controversies and discussion about legal aspects of file sharing, copyright, and civil liberties and has become a platform for political initiatives against established intellectual property laws and a central figure in an anti-copyright movement. The website faced several shutdowns and domain seizures which "did little to take the site offline, as it simply switched to a series of new web addresses and continued to operate".
Domain blocking by countries
The Pirate Bay's website has been blocked in some countries, despite the relative ease by which such blocks can be circumvented in most countries. While the URL to the Pirate Bay itself has been blocked in these countries, numerous mirror websites emerged to make the website available at different URLs, routing traffic around the block.
According to Google chairman Eric Schmidt, "government plans to block access to illicit filesharing websites could set a 'disastrous precedent' for freedom of speech"; he also expressed that Google would "fight attempts to restrict access to sites such as the Pirate Bay".
Sweden
On 13 February 2017, Sweden's Patent and Market Court of Appeal decided that the broadband provider Bredbandsbolaget must block its customers from accessing file sharing site The Pirate Bay, overruling a district court ruling to the contrary from 2015. This is the first time a site was openly blocked in Sweden. The rest of the ISPs are expected to follow the same court orders.
The ISP Telia was mandated to block the Pirate bay through a dynamic injunction on 12 December 2019. This means that when the rights holders find a website (IP and URL for the Pirate Bay) they can inform Telia who are legally required to block it in 2-3 weeks. Telia objected to this blocking order and attempted to appeal the injunction but lost on 29 June 2020 and must maintain the dynamic injunction for 3 years.
Censorship by corporations
Facebook
After The Pirate Bay introduced a feature in March 2009 to easily share links to torrents on the social networking site Facebook, Wired.com found in May that Facebook had started blocking the links. On further inspection, they discovered that all messages containing links to The Pirate Bay in both public and in private messages, regardless of content, were being blocked. Electronic Frontier Foundation lawyers commented that Facebook might be working against the US Electronic Communications Privacy Act by intercepting user messages, but Facebook chief privacy officer Chris Kelly said that they have the right to use blocks on links where there is a "demonstrated disregard for intellectual property rights", following users' agreement on their terms of service. Links to other similar sites have not been blocked.
Microsoft
In March 2012, Microsoft blocked Windows Live Messenger messages containing links to The Pirate Bay. When a user sends an instant message that contains a link to The Pirate Bay, Windows Live Messenger prompts a warning and claims "Blocked as it was reported unsafe". "We block instant messages if they contain malicious or spam URLs based on intelligence algorithms, third-party sources, and/or user complaints. Pirate Bay URLs were flagged by one or more of these and were consequently blocked", Microsoft told The Register in an emailed statement.
In media
The Pirate Bay is featured in Steal This Film (2006), a documentary series about society and filesharing, produced by The League of Noble Peers; in the Danish Documentary Good Copy Bad Copy, which explores the issues surrounding file copyright; and the documentary TPB AFK. The Pirate Bay has been a topic on the US-syndicated NPR radio show On the Media.
Björn Ulvaeus, member of the Swedish pop music group ABBA, criticised copyright infringing activities of The Pirate Bay supporters as "lazy and mean". In contrast, Brazilian best-selling author Paulo Coelho has embraced free sharing online. Coelho supports The Pirate Bay and offered to be a witness in the 2009 trial. He accounts much of his growing sales to his work shared on the Internet and comments that "a person who does not share is not only selfish, but bitter and alone".
See also
Comparison of BitTorrent sites
IPredator
Pirate Party
Sci-Hub - network of pirated research papers, "Sci-Hub can instantly provide access to more than two-thirds of all scholarly articles"
References
External links
BitTorrent websites
Notorious markets
Pirate parties
Tor onion services
Internet properties established in 2003
2003 establishments in Sweden
Internet services shut down by a legal challenge
Internet censorship
Intellectual property activism
Crypto-anarchism
Swedish brands
|
35025203
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dup%20%28system%20call%29
|
Dup (system call)
|
In Unix-like operating systems, (short for "duplicate") and system calls create a copy of a given file descriptor. This new descriptor actually does not behave like a copy, but like an alias of the old one.
C library POSIX definition
The dup and dup2 calls are standardized by the POSIX specification.
int dup (int oldfd);
int dup2 (int oldfd, int newfd);
The former allocates the first available descriptor, just like open() behaves; an alternative way to duplicate a file descriptor to an unspecified place is the fcntl system call with F_DUPFD command.
The latter places the copy into newfd. If newfd is open, it is closed first.
dup2 for input/output redirection
Unix shells use for input/output redirection. Along with pipe(), it is a tool on which Unix pipes rely.
The following example uses pipe() and dup() in order to connect two separate processes (program1 and program2) using Unix pipes:
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <unistd.h>
/* function prototypes */
void die(const char*);
int main(int argc, char **argv) {
int pdes[2];
pid_t child;
if(pipe(pdes) == -1)
die("pipe()");
child = fork();
if(child == (pid_t)(-1))
die("fork()"); /* fork failed */
if(child == (pid_t)0) {
/* child process */
close(1); /* close stdout */
if(dup(pdes[1]) == -1)
die("dup()");
/* now stdout and pdes[1] are equivalent (dup returns lowest free descriptor) */
if((execlp("program1", "program1", "arg1", NULL)) == -1)
die("execlp()");
_exit(EXIT_SUCCESS);
} else {
/* parent process */
close(0); /* close stdin */
if(dup(pdes[0]) == -1)
die("dup()");
/* now stdin and pdes[0] are equivalent (dup returns lowest free descriptor) */
if((execlp("program2", "program2", "arg1", NULL)) == -1)
die("execlp()");
exit(EXIT_SUCCESS);
}
return 0;
}
void die(const char *msg) {
perror(msg);
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
See also
File descriptor – how it works and other functions related to open
References
Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment by W. Richard Stevens
C POSIX library
System calls
|
47102661
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System%20virtual%20machine
|
System virtual machine
|
In computing, a system virtual machine is a virtual machine that provides a complete system platform and supports the execution of a complete operating system (OS). These usually emulate an existing architecture, and are built with the purpose of either providing a platform to run programs where the real hardware is not available for use (for example, executing on otherwise obsolete platforms), or of having multiple instances of virtual machines leading to more efficient use of computing resources, both in terms of energy consumption and cost effectiveness (known as hardware virtualization, the key to a cloud computing environment), or both. A VM was originally defined by Popek and Goldberg as "an efficient, isolated duplicate of a real machine".
System virtual machines
System virtual machine advantages:
Multiple OS environments can co-exist on the same primary hard drive, with a virtual partition that allows sharing of files generated in either the "host" operating system or "guest" virtual environment. Adjunct software installations, wireless connectivity, and remote replication, such as printing and faxing, can be generated in any of the guest or host operating systems. Regardless of the system, all files are stored on the hard drive of the host OS.
Application provisioning, maintenance, high availability and disaster recovery are inherent in the virtual machine software selected.
Can provide emulated hardware environments different from the host's instruction set architecture (ISA), through emulation or by using just-in-time compilation.
The main disadvantages of VMs are:
A virtual machine is less efficient than an actual machine when it accesses the host hard drive indirectly.
When multiple VMs are concurrently running on the hard drive of the actual host, adjunct virtual machines may exhibit a varying and/or unstable performance (speed of execution and malware protection). This depends on the data load imposed on the system by other VMs, unless the selected VM software provides temporal isolation among virtual machines.
Malware protections for VMs are not necessarily compatible with the "host", and may require separate software.
Multiple VMs running their own guest operating system are frequently engaged for server consolidation in order to avoid interference from separate VMs on the same actual machine platform.
The desire to run multiple operating systems was the initial motivation for virtual machines, so as to allow time-sharing among several single-tasking operating systems. In some respects, a system virtual machine can be considered a generalization of the concept of virtual memory that historically preceded it. IBM's CP/CMS, the first systems to allow full virtualization, implemented time sharing by providing each user with a single-user operating system, the CMS. Unlike virtual memory, a system virtual machine entitled the user to write privileged instructions in their code. This approach had certain advantages, such as adding input/output devices not allowed by the standard system.
As technology evolves virtual memory for purposes of virtualization, new systems of memory overcommitment may be applied to manage memory sharing among multiple virtual machines on one actual computer operating system. It may be possible to share "memory pages" that have identical contents among multiple virtual machines that run on the same physical machine, what may result in mapping them to the same physical page by a technique known as Kernel SamePage Merging. This is particularly useful for read-only pages, such as those that contain code segments; in particular, that would be the case for multiple virtual machines running the same or similar software, software libraries, web servers, middleware components, etc. The guest operating systems do not need to be compliant with the host hardware, thereby making it possible to run different operating systems on the same computer (e.g., Microsoft Windows, Linux, or previous versions of an operating system) to support future software.
The use of virtual machines to support separate guest operating systems is popular in regard to embedded systems. A typical use would be to run a real-time operating system simultaneously with a preferred complex operating system, such as Linux or Windows. Another use would be for novel and unproven software still in the developmental stage, so it runs inside a sandbox. Virtual machines have other advantages for operating system development, and may include improved debugging access and faster reboots.
Techniques
Different virtualization techniques are used, based on the desired usage. Native execution is based on direct virtualization of the underlying raw hardware, thus it provides multiple "instances" of the same architecture a real machine is based on, capable of running complete operating systems. Some virtual machines can also emulate different architectures and allow execution of software applications and operating systems written for another CPU or architecture. Operating-system-level virtualization allows the resources of a computer to be partitioned via kernel's support for multiple isolated user space instances, which are usually called containers and may look and feel like real machines to the end users. Some computer architectures are capable of hardware-assisted virtualization, which enables efficient full virtualization by using virtualization-specific hardware capabilities, primarily from the host CPUs.
Virtualization of the underlying raw hardware (native execution)
This approach is described as full virtualization of the hardware, and can be implemented using a type 1 or type 2 hypervisor: a type 1 hypervisor runs directly on the hardware, and a type 2 hypervisor runs on another operating system, such as Linux or Windows. Each virtual machine can run any operating system supported by the underlying hardware. Users can thus run two or more different "guest" operating systems simultaneously, in separate "private" virtual computers.
The pioneer system using this concept was IBM's CP-40, the first (1967) version of IBM's CP/CMS (1967–1972) and the precursor to IBM's VM family (1972–present). With the VM architecture, most users run a relatively simple interactive computing single-user operating system, CMS, as a "guest" on top of the VM control program (VM-CP). This approach kept the CMS design simple, as if it were running alone; the control program quietly provides multitasking and resource management services "behind the scenes". In addition to CMS communication and other system tasks are performed by multitasking VMs (RSCS, GCS, TCP/IP, UNIX), and users can run any of the other IBM operating systems, such as MVS, even a new CP itself or now z/OS. Even the simple CMS could be run in a threaded environment (LISTSERV, TRICKLE). z/VM is the current version of VM, and is used to support hundreds or thousands of virtual machines on a given mainframe. Some installations use Linux on IBM Z to run Web servers, where Linux runs as the operating system within many virtual machines.
Full virtualization is particularly helpful in operating system development, when experimental new code can be run at the same time as older, more stable, versions, each in a separate virtual machine. The process can even be recursive: IBM debugged new versions of its virtual machine operating system, VM, in a virtual machine running under an older version of VM, and even used this technique to simulate new hardware.
The standard x86 instruction set architecture as used in the modern PCs does not actually meet the Popek and Goldberg virtualization requirements. Notably, there is no execution mode where all sensitive machine instructions always trap, which would allow per-instruction virtualization.
Despite these limitations, several software packages have managed to provide virtualization on the x86 architecture, even though dynamic recompilation of privileged code, as first implemented by VMware, incurs some performance overhead as compared to a VM running on a natively virtualizable architecture such as the IBM System/370 or Motorola MC68020. By now, several other software packages such as Virtual PC, VirtualBox, Parallels Workstation and Virtual Iron manage to implement virtualization on x86 hardware.
Intel and AMD have introduced features to their x86 processors to enable virtualization in hardware.
As well as virtualization of the resources of a single machine, multiple independent nodes in a cluster can be combined and accessed as a single virtual NUMA machine.
Emulation of a non-native system
Virtual machines can also perform the role of an emulator, allowing software applications and operating systems written for another computer processor architecture to be run.
Operating-system-level virtualization
Operating-system-level virtualization is a server virtualization technology which virtualizes servers on an operating system (kernel) layer. It can be thought of as partitioning: a single physical server is sliced into multiple small partitions (otherwise called virtual environments (VE), virtual private servers (VPS), guests, zones, etc.); each such partition looks and feels like a real server, from the point of view of its users.
For example, Solaris Zones supports multiple guest operating systems running under the same operating system such as Solaris 10. Guest operating systems can use the same kernel level with the same operating system version, or can be a separate copy of the operating system with a different kernel version using Solaris Kernel Zones. Solaris native Zones also requires that the host operating system is a version of Solaris; other operating systems from other manufacturers are not supported. However, Solaris Branded Zones would need to be used to have other operating systems as zones.
Another example is System Workload Partitions (WPARs), introduced in version 6.1 of the IBM AIX operating system. System WPARs are software partitions running under one instance of the global AIX OS environment.
The operating system level architecture has low overhead that helps to maximize efficient use of server resources. The virtualization introduces only a negligible overhead and allows running hundreds of virtual private servers on a single physical server. In contrast, approaches such as full virtualization (like VMware) and paravirtualization (like Xen or UML) cannot achieve such level of density, due to overhead of running multiple kernels. From the other side, operating system-level virtualization does not allow running different operating systems (i.e., different kernels), although different libraries, distributions, etc. are possible. Different virtualization techniques are used, based on the desired usage. Native execution is based on direct virtualization of the underlying raw hardware, thus it provides multiple "instances" of the same architecture a real machine is based on, capable of running complete operating systems. Some virtual machines can also emulate different architectures and allow execution of software applications and operating systems written for another CPU or architecture. Operating-system-level virtualization allows the resources of a computer to be partitioned via kernel's support for multiple isolated user space instances, which are usually called containers and may look and feel like real machines to the end users. Some computer architectures are capable of hardware-assisted virtualization, which enables efficient full virtualization by using virtualization-specific hardware capabilities, primarily from the host CPUs.
Virtualization-enabled hardware
Examples of virtualization-enabled hardware include the following:
Alcatel-Lucent 3B20D/3B21D emulated on commercial off-the-shelf computers with 3B2OE or 3B21E system
ARM TrustZone
Boston Circuits gCore (grid-on-chip) with 16 ARC 750D cores and Time-machine hardware virtualization module.
Freescale PowerPC MPC8572 and MPC8641D
IBM System/360 Model 67, System/370, System/390, and zSeries mainframes
IBM Power Systems
x86:
AMD-V (formerly code-named Pacifica)
Intel VT-x (formerly code-named Vanderpool)
HP vPAR and cell based nPAR
GE and Honeywell Multics systems
Honeywell 200/2000 systems Liberator replacing IBM 14xx systems
Honeywell Level 62/64/66
IBM System/360 and System/370 models with emulators supporting programs for older IBM systems
Honeywell Level 6 minicomputers emulated predecessor 316/516/716 minis
Oracle Corporation (previously Sun Microsystems) SPARC sun4v (SPARC M6, T5, T4, T3, UltraSPARC T1 and T2) utilized by Oracle VM Server for SPARC, also known as "Logical Domains"
Xerox Sigma 6 CPUs were modified to emulate GE/Honeywell 600/6000 systems
See also
Amazon Machine Image
Linux containers
Storage hypervisor
Universal Turing machine
Virtual appliance
Virtual backup appliance
Virtual disk image
Virtual machine escape
Notes
References
Further reading
James E. Smith, Ravi Nair, Virtual Machines: Versatile Platforms For Systems And Processes, Morgan Kaufmann, May 2005, , 656 pages (covers both process and system virtual machines)
Craig, Iain D. Virtual Machines. Springer, 2006, , 269 pages (covers only process virtual machines)
External links
The Reincarnation of Virtual Machines, Article on ACM Queue by Mendel Rosenblum, Co-Founder, VMware
Operating system technology
|
1895055
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X2%3A%20The%20Threat
|
X2: The Threat
|
X2: The Threat is a space simulation video game developed by Egosoft for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. It is part of the X series. It was released in 2003 and is a sequel to X: Beyond the Frontier. Freeverse Software ported the game to Mac OS X in 2004/2005, while Linux Game Publishing produced their Linux port in 2005/2006.
The sequel to this game is X3: Reunion (2005).
Gameplay
As with the originals, X2: The Threat is a Space trading and combat simulator set in the fictional X-Universe, a network of sectors, linked by large space gates. The game features a new graphics engine, a much expanded Universe and 60 different flyable ships, along with a number of new missions available to the player. Unlike the expansion pack, X-Tension, which was almost entirely open-ended, X2: The Threat has a clear background story involving an aggressive alien race known as the Khaak. However, the game remains open-ended and the players are free to pursue the plot at their own pace, if at all.
Plot
The player takes the role of Julian Gardna, a Pirate and thief. Early on, the Khaak, a hostile alien race, emerge to threaten the X-Universe. The player is asked to undertake a series of missions to uncover their origins, their intentions, and to determine their connection to his missing father. Ultimately, Julian must fight off a massive attack by Khaak, rescuing numerous other characters in the process.
Key non-player characters include:
Bret Serra: rogue, pirate and Julian's closest friend;
Ban Danna: the head of Argon Secret Service who shares a close relationship with Julian's father dating back to the previous game, X: Beyond the Frontier;
Elena Kho, Chief Executive in the influential Terracorp corporation;
Saya Kho, daughter of Elena Kho;
Kyle Brennan, Julian's father, founder of Terracorp, and protagonist from the previous games.
Due to the expense of completing the plot, the players are periodically prompted to break away from the plot and increase their resources through trade and other open-ended play.
Open ended features
X2 is set within the X-Universe, which consists of 132 sectors connected by two-way jumpgates. After the plot has been completed, jump co-ordinates for an additional 5 sectors can be obtained. The main area of each sector typically contains several stations and at least one gate. The game is open-ended allowing the player to go where they like, when they like, doing whatever they like; a player is limited only by their in-game status and resources. As such, a driving force of the game is to acquire credits, the universal currency and status.
Using credits, a player can buy wares from a station. These wares may then be flown to another station where they can be sold, ideally for a higher price. The prices vary - from minute to minute, second to second - depending on demand. The less of a ware there is, the higher its price. As such, the X-Universe has a truly dynamic market-driven economy. A player can capitalize on emergent trends to make vast profits; or as easily, can waste money and time on a bad cargo choice. As a player builds profits they can buy equipment, weapons, ships and stations. The player can acquire an unlimited number of ships and stations, of varying size, shape and function. The player can build factories to produce goods (including weapons and shields) to sell or consume. As the factories require resources, the player can set up ships to perform trading tasks for factories such as buying resources from other stations or selling the product.
The game contains numerous races. Several races feature a full economy and can be interacted with by the player through trading, reputation and missions. Several hostile races limit the amount of interactivity to combat. Reputation between the player and the social races can be built up through missions, defending their space, or trading in their space. The reputation affects how these individuals of that races respond to the player, and what kind of missions are offered. A player status is categorized according to 'Mercantile' skill, 'Combat' skill, and a 'Notoriety' ranking for each race.
Expansion pack
An expansion pack called X2: The Return was in development but was cancelled in favour of X3.
Reception
X2: The Threat received "average" reviews according to the review aggregation website Metacritic. Many reviewers praised the graphics and the amount of freedom offered to the player. Common complaints were that the game, like its predecessors, was quite slow-paced and had a steep learning curve.
IGN gave the game an average review, praising the visuals and display, but expressing frustration with elements of gameplay: "There are better places to go for trading simulations, and better places to go for space combat. X2s ambitions in trying to meld both themes ended up falling short of what most people would find entertaining.... its complexity [as a trading simulator] is wasted when the money is really made with only one type of product". GameSpot referred to the game as a "diamond in the rough" for patient players, as well as "extremely ambitious but not very accessible". Eurogamer criticized the game for being for "hardcore fans only" because of its complexity, also calling it a "superbly ambitious game which achieves much of what it sets out to do".
See also
List of PC games
References
External links
Official page
2003 video games
Freeverse Inc.
Linux games
MacOS games
Space trading and combat simulators
Video game sequels
Video games developed in Germany
Windows games
X (video game series)
Space opera video games
Video games set in the 30th century
|
1590295
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syslog
|
Syslog
|
In computing, syslog is a standard for message logging. It allows separation of the software that generates messages, the system that stores them, and the software that reports and analyzes them. Each message is labeled with a facility code, indicating the type of system generating the message, and is assigned a severity level.
Computer system designers may use syslog for system management and security auditing as well as general informational, analysis, and debugging messages. A wide variety of devices, such as printers, routers, and message receivers across many platforms use the syslog standard. This permits the consolidation of logging data from different types of systems in a central repository. Implementations of syslog exist for many operating systems.
When operating over a network, syslog uses a client-server architecture where a syslog server listens for and logs messages coming from clients.
History
Syslog was developed in the 1980s by Eric Allman as part of the Sendmail project. It was readily adopted by other applications and has since become the standard logging solution on Unix-like systems. A variety of implementations also exist on other operating systems and it is commonly found in network devices, such as routers.
Syslog originally functioned as a de facto standard, without any authoritative published specification, and many implementations existed, some of which were incompatible. The Internet Engineering Task Force documented the status quo in RFC 3164. It was standardized by RFC 5424.
Various companies have attempted to claim patents for specific aspects of syslog implementations. This has had little effect on the use and standardization of the protocol.
Message components
The information provided by the originator of a syslog message includes the facility code and the severity level. The syslog software adds information to the information header before passing the entry to the syslog receiver. Such components include an originator process ID, a timestamp, and the hostname or IP address of the device.
Facility
A facility code is used to specify the type of system that is logging the message. Messages with different facilities may be handled differently. The list of facilities available is defined by the standard:
The mapping between facility code and keyword is not uniform in different operating systems and syslog implementations.
Severity level
The list of severities is also defined by the standard:
The meaning of severity levels other than Emergency and Debug are relative to the application. For example, if the purpose of the system is to process transactions to update customer account balance information, an error in the final step should be assigned Alert level. However, an error occurring in an attempt to display the ZIP code of the customer may be assigned Error or even Warning level.
The server process which handles display of messages usually includes all lower (more severe) levels when display of less severe levels is requested. That is, if messages are separated by individual severity, a Warning level entry will also be included when filtering for Notice, Info and Debug messages.
Message
In RFC 3164, the message component (known as MSG) was specified as having these fields: TAG, which should be the name of the program or process that generated the message, and CONTENT which contains the details of the message.
Described in RFC 5424, "MSG is what was called CONTENT in RFC 3164. The TAG is now part of the header, but not as a single field. The TAG has been split into APP-NAME, PROCID, and MSGID. This does not totally resemble the usage of TAG, but provides the same functionality for most of the cases." Popular syslog tools such as Rsyslog conform to this new standard.
The content field should be encoded in a UTF-8 character set and octet values in the traditional ASCII control character range should be avoided.
Logger
Generated log messages may be directed to various destinations including console, files, remote syslog servers, or relays. Most implementations provide a command line utility, often called logger, as well as a software library, to send messages to the log.
To display and monitor the collected logs one needs to use a client application or access the log file directly on the system. The basic command line tools are tail and grep. The log servers can be configured to send the logs over the network (in addition to the local files). Some implementations include reporting programs for filtering and displaying of syslog messages.
Network protocol
When operating over a network, syslog uses a client-server architecture where the server listens on a well-known or registered port for protocol requests from clients. Historically the most common transport layer protocol for network logging has been User Datagram Protocol (UDP), with the server listening on port 514. Because UDP lacks congestion control mechanisms, Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) port 6514 is used; Transport Layer Security is also required in implementations and recommended for general use.
Limitations
Since each process, application, and operating system was written independently, there is little uniformity to the payload of the log message. For this reason, no assumption is made about its formatting or contents. A syslog message is formatted (RFC 5424 gives the Augmented Backus–Naur form (ABNF) definition), but its MSG field is not.
The network protocol is simplex communication, with no means of acknowledging the delivery to the originator.
Outlook
Various groups are working on draft standards detailing the use of syslog for more than just network and security event logging, such as its proposed application within the healthcare environment.
Regulations, such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, PCI DSS, HIPAA, and many others, require organizations to implement comprehensive security measures, which often include collecting and analyzing logs from many different sources. The syslog format has proven effective in consolidating logs, as there are many open-source and proprietary tools for reporting and analysis of these logs. Utilities exist for conversion from Windows Event Log and other log formats to syslog.
Managed Security Service Providers attempt to apply analytical techniques and artificial intelligence algorithms to detect patterns and alert customers to problems.
Internet standard documents
The Syslog protocol is defined by Request for Comments (RFC) documents published by the Internet Engineering Task Force (Internet standards). The following is a list of RFCs that define the syslog protocol:
(obsoleted by )
See also
Audit trail
Common Log Format
Console server
Data logging
Log management and intelligence
Logparser
Netconf
Rsyslog
Security Event Manager
Server log
Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP)
syslog-ng
Web counter
Web log analysis software
References
External links
Internet Engineering Task Force: Datatracker: syslog Working Group (concluded)
SANS Institute: "The Ins and Outs of System Logging Using Syslog" (white paper)
National Institute of Standards and Technology: "Guide to Computer Security Log Management" (Special Publication 800-92) (white paper)
Network Management Software: "Understanding Syslog: Servers, Messages & Security"
Paessler IT Explained - Syslog
MonitorWare: All about Syslog
Internet protocols
Internet Standards
Network management
Log file formats
System administration
|
67106981
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List%20of%20Saekano%20characters
|
List of Saekano characters
|
The following is a list of characters for the light novel series Saekano: How to Raise a Boring Girlfriend.
Blessing Software
The main characters are members of a dōjin group named Blessing Software. They plan to produce a visual novel with a main heroine modeled by Megumi.
Tomoya Aki
The main viewpoint character. He is a student in class 2B of Toyogasaki Academy. As an otaku, he enjoys reading Manga and light novels, watching anime and playing galge. He recruits Megumi Kato, his childhood friend Eriri and student novelist Utaha on working a visual novel game. He serves as the producer, director and programmer for Blessing Software, and manages Michiru's band "Icy Tail".
Megumi Kato
Tomoya's classmate and the title character who, despite being good-looking, is otherwise so ordinary that she does not stand out in class at all. She knows little about the culture, but never keeps Tomoya at their length. Her attitude toward him is often described as an ordinary person, but is very close to him. She is the inspiration and working model for her, one of the main heroines of Blessing Software's game. She helps Tomoya with the program. She grows her hairstyle long, but cuts it short at the end of the series.
Eriri Spencer Sawamura
Tomoya's best friend and childhood friend, a student in class 2G and the most promising painter on the art club. Born to a British father and a Japanese mother, she has blond hair styled in twin tails. She is very popular at school, acting as a refined lady, but harbors a secret otaku lifestyle shared with Tomoya and making adult-themed manga under the pseudonym in a group called "Egoistic-Lily". Tomoya recruits her to be the illustrator of Blessing Software. Tomoya describes her as an astounding beauty, but upon peeling off her surface personality, she has a cruel, sadistic, passionate and animalistic nature. She harbours feelings for Tomoya but refuses to admit it. She and Tomoya became friends since childhood.
Utaha Kasumigaoka
A student in class 3C, and an up-and-coming young novelist under the pseudonym of . Her first light novel, Koisuru Metronome, was published under the Fushikawa Fantastic Bunko imprint and had sold over 500,000 copies. She has both intelligence and beauty, and is the brightest student in the school. Most of the students hold her in awe. Tomoya describes her as having long black-hair with an expressionless and quiet nature that gives her the appearance of a beauty, but harbors a sharp and critical tongue. She calls Tomoya , translated into English as "Mr. Ethical", after he flatly rejected her suggestion that he read the last volume of Koisuru Metronome before it is published. She develops feelings for Tomoya as the series progresses. She is in charge of writing the scenario for the game by Blessing Software. She shared with Tomoya her first kiss and she said she wanted to live with Tomoya in the future and give her life to him.
Izumi Hashima
A student in class 3A of Honoda Junior High, and is two years younger than Tomoya. She is an otaku and the member of the dōjin circle . It was through Tomoya's influence that she became interested in otaku culture. She is deeply grateful to Tomoya for this. She has loved , an otome video game series released by Sonar (a parody of Sony Interactive Entertainment) since Tomoya bought her Little Love Rhapsody 2 and a PlayStation Portable console on her birthday. There is a rivalry between Eriri and Izumi, and Izumi decides to compete with Eriri in the next Winter Comiket. Izumi made up her mind to be the illustrator for her brother Iori's dōjin circle "Rouge en rouge".
Michiru Hyodo
Tomoya's cousin and a student in class 3, in the second year of Tsubaki Girls' Senior High School. She is a very versatile girl, except for her poor performance in school. She is good at almost everything and does not stick to anything for long, but she absorbs in singing her favorite songs and playing the guitar in the band "Icy Tail" (an unintentional pun on the word "Aishiteru" (愛してる/I love you)) for the past year. Michiru had a prejudice against otaku culture and was not happy about Tomoya being an otaku until her bandmates revealed that they were both. Michiru composes the music for the Blessing Software game.
Secondary groups
Rouge en rouge
A well-known dōjin circle that plans to release the game with illustrations by Izumi at the next Winter Comiket. Its members include (), Izumi's older brother and the circle's representative, and (), the manga artist and founder of the group.
Fushikawa Shoten
A publishing company which has its own light novel publishing imprint , used by Utaha's editor ().
Icy Tail
An all-female band consisting of mostly otaku enthusiasts. Its members include Michiru Hyodo on guitar; , a petite girl who also plays guitar (voiced by Eri Suzuki), on bass (voiced by Rui Tanabe), and on drums (voiced by Yo Taichi). The band's name is a pun on the Japanese word .
Cherry Blessing
is the name of the visual novel that the Blessing Software group develops.
Seiji Azumi
The main protagonist. He is a reincarnation of Soma with vague memories of the ancestors. He is modeled on Tomoya.
Soma Hinoe
Seiji's great-grandfather. He inherited the supernatural ability to remember what his ancestors experienced, and he has vivid memories of his ancestors.
Meguri Kano
One of the two main heroines. She is Seiji's classmate and a reincarnation of Ruri with vague memories of her ancestors. She is modeled on Megumi.
Ruri Hinoe
One of the two main heroines. She is Meguri's great-grandmother. She is Soma's sister and his fiancée. She loves him deeply. She inherited the supernatural ability to remember what her ancestors experienced, and so she has vivid memories of distant ancestors of hers. Her personality is modeled on Utaha.
One of the heroines. She is Seiji's childhood friend. She is modeled on Eriri.
Kaho Hibarigaoka
One of the heroines. She calls Seiji . She is modeled on Utaha.
Miharu Endo
One of the heroines and Seiji's cousin. She is modeled on Michiru.
Other characters
Keiichi Kato
Voiced by Sōma Saitō
Megumi's cousin and a student at Johoku Medical School. Keiichi has short, spiky and quite straight brown hair that reaches to his ears and blue-sea eyes. He accompanies Megumi at a café where Tomoya works, but Tomoya mistook Keiichi for Megumi's boyfriend. However, Megumi quickly cleared the misunderstanding afterwards.
Sayuri Sawamura
Voiced by Mai Nakahara
Eriri's mother with a long dark purple hair, tied into two twintails laced with two ribbons on each side and brown eyes. Tomoya described Sayuri to be so similar to Eriri that they could be mistaken for twins. Sayuri is a kind, soft spoken and generous young woman. However, it is revealed that she is a fujoshi.
Yoshihiko Kamigo
Voiced by Yuuma Uchida
One of Tomoya's friends.
Japanese terminology and notes
Works cited
"LN" is shortened form for light novel and refers to a volume number of the Saekano light novels.
"Ch." and "Vol." is shortened form for chapter and refers to a chapter number of the Saekano manga.
References
Saekano: How to Raise a Boring Girlfriend
|
591100
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David%20Levy%20%28chess%20player%29
|
David Levy (chess player)
|
David Neil Laurence Levy (born 14 March 1945) is an English International Master of chess and a businessman. He is noted for his involvement with computer chess and artificial intelligence, and as the founder of the Computer Olympiads and the Mind Sports Olympiads. He has written more than 40 books on chess and computers.
Life and career
Levy was born in London and went to Queen Elizabeth's School, Barnet. He won the London Junior Chess Championship in 1965 and 1966. He won the Scottish Chess Championship in 1968. He tied for fifth place at the 1969 Praia da Rocha Zonal tournament, scoring over two-thirds and thereby obtaining the title of International Master. He played on Board One for the Scottish team at the 1972 Chess Olympiad in Skopje, Yugoslavia, scoring six wins, five draws, and seven losses (47.2%).
Levy became a professional chess writer in 1971. Several of his books were co-written with English Grandmaster Raymond Keene. Levy was married to Keene's sister Jacqueline for 17 years. He has functioned as literary agent for the escaped Great Train robber, Ronald Biggs and claims to have masterminded his escape from British justice.
In 1974, Levy together with Monty Newborn and Ben Mittman organized the first World Computer Chess Championship. In 1978, he co-founded the International Computer Chess Association.
In the late 1970s, Levy consulted with Texas Instruments on the development of the Chess module for the TI-99/4A Home Computer Project and went on to set up Intelligent Software to produce chess software and hardware for a number of companies including Milton Bradley. Intelligent Software would later collapse as a result of its involvement in the failed Enterprise home computer.
In 1997, he funded the team that won the Loebner Prize for the program called "CONVERSE".
The prize competition rewards the program that is best able to simulate human communication. Levy entered the contest again in 2009, and won.
From 1986 to 1992 and from 1999 to 2018, he was the president of the International Computer Games Association.
He was Chairman of the Rules and Arbitration Committee for the Kasparov vs Deep Junior chess match in New York City in 2003.
Levy once started a business called Tiger Computer Security with a computer hacker, Mathew Bevan.
Levy also wrote Love and Sex with Robots, published in the United States in 2007 by HarperCollins, and in paperback in 2009 by Duckworth in the UK. It is the commercial edition of his PhD thesis, which he defended successfully on 11 October 2007, at Maastricht University, Netherlands. On 17 January 2008, he appeared on the late night television show The Colbert Report to promote his book. In September 2009, Levy predicted that sex robots would hit the market within a couple of years. He defended his controversial views on the potential future wide use of sex robots by the public, and also by sex offenders, in an interview with The Guardian newspaper in December 2015. Levy has also been working on a range of sexually erotic chatbots, which have been created by a team based in a lab in Malaysia. However his research into human-robot sexual relations has not been viewed favourably by the Malaysian authorities who ruled the 2015 Congress on Love and Sex with Robots, which was due to be co-chaired by Levy, as illegal following the organisers' attempt to imply the Malaysian governments' endorsement by using the Tourism Malaysia logo on their website. The Congress on Love and Sex with Robots was again cancelled in 2018. Initially committee members of the International Conference on Advances in Computer Entertainment (ACE) objected to plans to partner the two events in Montana and Springer Nature cancelled plans to publish the proceedings due to a lack of academic papers. Further controversy then arose over the invitation of Steve Bannon to keynote at ACE leading to both events being cancelled.
Levy was brought in to a new company called Retro Computers Ltd, by his friend Sir Clive Sinclair. This company was formed after a meeting with Sinclair and Paul Andrews who conceived the Sinclair ZX Spectrum Vega games console. This was backed by members of the public on a crowd funding site raising over £150,000 in 2015, and delivered successfully to backers that same year. A second portable console, the ZX Spectrum Vega+, was proposed, and crowd funded again, but two of the four founding directors (Paul Andrews and Chris Smith) left the company in April 2016 before the crowd funding finished. They left citing irreconcilable differences between them and the last remaining director Levy. Levy continued with the company installing two replacement directors, Suzanne Martin and Dr. Janko Mrsic-Flogel, both long term associates of Levy. The Vega+ console was originally intended to be delivered to backers in September 2016, but as of August 2017 the device remained unreleased amid claims of "infighting and legal battles". Despite condensed accounts being filed for the company at Companies House no information has been provided to identify the status of funds. In September 2017 the company's bank statements were released showing that by 2017 all money raised via Indiegogo had been spent by RCL with no product to show for it, but calls from the backers for Levy to explain why the company had previously told The Inquirer that the missing funds were "safe" and "ring-fenced" went unanswered. On 23 January 2019 a Petition to wind up the company was filed by Private Planet Limited, owned by Dr Mrsic-Flogel. Liquidators were appointed 4 April 2019 leaving backers empty-handed.
Computer chess bet
In 1968, Levy and artificial intelligence (AI) pioneer John McCarthy were at a party hosted by Donald Michie. McCarthy invited Levy to play a game of chess which Levy won. McCarthy responded that 'you might be able to beat me, but within 10 years there will be a computer program that can beat you.' Levy suggested they bet on it, and Michie agreed to up the ante. Other AI experts signed on later, with the bet total reaching £1,250. In 1973, Levy wrote:
Researchers expected that a large network of computers would cooperate against Levy, until Chess 3.0, a program written by Larry Atkin, Keith Gorlen, and David Slate of Northwestern University, won the first United States Computer Chess Championship in 1970. Although Chess 4.0 in 1973 and 1974 achieved a United States Chess Federation rating higher than that of the average tournament player, until 1977 no computer program was good enough to pose a serious threat to Levy. In April 1977 he played a two-game match against Slate and Atkin's Chess 4.5, which had done well in human events, including winning the 1977 Minnesota Open, and had defeated Levy in blitz conditions. After Levy won the first game, the second was not played since Levy could not possibly lose the match. On 17 December, Levy played a two-game match against Kaissa; once again Levy won the first game and the match was terminated. In August 1978, Levy played a two-game match against MacHack; this time both games were played, Levy winning 2–0.
The final match necessary for Levy to win the bet also was played in August and September 1978 at the Canadian National Exhibition, against Chess 4.7, the successor to Chess 4.5. Levy won the bet, defeating 4.7 in a six-game match by a score of 4.5–1.5. The computer scored a draw in game two after getting a completely winning position but being outplayed by Levy in the endgame, and a win in game four—the first computer victory against a human master in a tournament—when Levy essayed the very sharp, dubious Latvian Gambit. He played the gambit after playing the local street player Josef Smolij the night before the game. Levy wrote, "I had proved that my 1968 assessment had been correct, but on the other hand my opponent in this match was very, very much stronger than I had thought possible when I started the bet." He observed that, "Now nothing would surprise me (very much)."
To further stimulate the growth of computer chess, Levy suggested to Omni magazine that he would offer $1,000 to the first program to beat him if they added $4,000 to this, for a total of $5,000. In 1989, the authors of the Deep Thought program won the prize when their program beat Levy.
In 1996, Popular Science asked Levy about Garry Kasparov's impending match against Deep Blue. Levy confidently stated that "...Kasparov can take the match 6 to 0 if he wants to. 'I'm positive, I'd stake my life on it.'" In fact, Kasparov lost the first game, and won the match by a score of only 4–2. The following year, he lost their historic rematch 2.5–3.5.
Rybka controversy
On 28 June 2011, David Levy and the International Computer Games Association (ICGA) concluded their investigation and determined that Vasik Rajlich in programming Rybka had plagiarised two other chess software programs: Crafty and Fruit. According to Levy and the ICGA, Vasik Rajlich failed to comply with the ICGA rule that each computer chess program must be the original work of the entering developer and that those "whose code is derived from or including game-playing code written by others must name all other authors, or the source of such code, in their submission details".
In response to the suspension, Vasik Rajlich was interviewed by Rybka fan Nelson Hernandez, in which he responded to the ICGA's allegations in a statement and answered questions about the controversy and his opinions on it.
In January 2012, ChessBase.com published an article by Dr. Søren Riis. Riis, a computer science professor at Queen Mary University of London, was critical of Levy's and the ICGA's decision, the investigation, the methods on which the investigation was based, and the panel members themselves. ICGA President David Levy and University of Sydney research fellow in mathematics Mark Watkins responded to Riis' publication with their own statements defending the ICGA panel and findings, respectively.
In February 2012, ChessBase published a two-part interview with Levy in which he answered many questions about the ICGA's decision to ban Rybka.
Bibliography
Keene, R. D. and Levy, D. N. L. Levy, Siegen Chess Olympiad, CHESS Ltd., 1970.
Keene, Ray and Levy, David, Chess Olympiad 1972, Doubleday, 1973, .
Levy, David, Gligoric's Best Games 1945–1970, R.H.M. Press, 1972. .
Levy, David, The Sicilian Dragon, Batsford, 1972.
Levy, David, How Fischer Plays Chess, R.H.M. Press, 1975. .
Levy, D.N.L., Howard Staunton 1810–74, The Chess Player, Nottingham, 1975,
Levy, David, Chess and Computers, Computer Science Press, Potomac, Maryland, 1976. .
Levy, David, 1975—US Computer Chess Championship, Computer Science Press, Potomac, Maryland.
Levy, David, 1976—US Computer Chess Championship, Computer Science Press, Potomac, Maryland.
Levy, David and Newborn, Monroe, More Chess and Computers: The Microcomputer Revolution, The Challenge Match, Computer Science Press, Potomac, Maryland, and Batsford, London, 1980. .
Computer Gamesmanship: Elements of Intelligent Game Design, by David Levy, 1983, Simon & Schuster, .
The Chess Computer Handbook
Heuristic Programming in Artificial Intelligence (with D. F. Beal), 1989.
How Computers Play Chess (with Monroe Newborn)
Computer Games I
Computer Games II
Computer Chess Compendium
How to Play the Sicilian Defence (with Kevin O'Connell)
Instant Chess (with Kevin O'Connell)
How to Play the King's Indian Defence (with Kevin O'Connell)
Play Chess Combinations and Sacrifices
Oxford Encyclopedia of Chess Games, Volume 1, 1485–1866 (with Kevin O'Connell), 1980, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Korchnoi's Chess Games (with Kevin O'Connell)
Sacrifices in the Sicilian
Levy, David, Karpov's Collected Games, Robert Hale & Company, 1975. .
Notes
External links
The History of Computer Chess: An AI Perspective. Watch Full Lecture – WMV 183MB | Google Video featuring Murray Campbell (IBM Deep Blue Project), Edward Feigenbaum, David Levy, John McCarthy, and Monty Newborn. at Computer History Museum
Levy and the hacker at crypt magazine
Author page at HarperCollins
Artificial Intelligence Researcher David Levy Predicts Human-Robot Marriages:
About.com interview (10/2007)
A critique of Love and Sex with Robots, by James Trimarco
Interview with David Levy about upcoming Kasparov-Junior match (circa 2003)
1945 births
Living people
Chess players from London
Chess International Masters
British chess writers
Artificial intelligence researchers
Computer chess people
|
53827270
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wes%20Flanigan
|
Wes Flanigan
|
Wes Flanigan is an American college basketball coach and current assistant coach for the Auburn Tigers men's basketball team. He is the former head coach for the Little Rock Trojans men's basketball team.
Playing career
Flanigan played at Auburn under Cliff Ellis, where he was an all-SEC selection his junior season. Flanigan finished his career second all-time in assists with 573, and scored 1,228 points, good for 22nd all-time.
Coaching career
Flanigan began his coaching career with a four-year stint at Northwest Mississippi Community College as an assistant coach, before joining Little Rock as an assistant for his first go-around. He followed that up with assistant coaching stops at UAB, Nebraska, and Mississippi St. before returning to Little Rock as an assistant under Chris Beard, where he was part of the Trojans' 2016 NCAA Tournament team which defeated Purdue in the first round.
When Beard left for the head coaching position at Texas Tech, Flanigan was elevated to the head coaching position.
In March 2018, the Trojans fired Flanigan after his second season with the team. A month later, on April 16, he was hired by Bruce Pearl to be assistant at his alma mater, Auburn.
Head coaching record
NCAA DI
References
1974 births
Living people
American men's basketball coaches
American men's basketball players
Auburn Tigers men's basketball players
Auburn Tigers men's basketball coaches
Basketball coaches from Arkansas
Basketball players from Arkansas
Junior college men's basketball coaches in the United States
Little Rock Trojans men's basketball coaches
Mississippi State Bulldogs men's basketball coaches
Nebraska Cornhuskers men's basketball coaches
Sportspeople from Little Rock, Arkansas
UAB Blazers men's basketball coaches
|
44559350
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacqui%20Irwin
|
Jacqui Irwin
|
Jacqui Irwin (born January 3, 1962) is an American politician currently serving in the California State Assembly. She is a Democrat representing the 44th Assembly District, which encompasses portions of Ventura County and the city of Westlake Village. Before being elected to the Assembly in 2014, Irwin worked as a systems engineer at Johns Hopkins University and Teledyne, then served as a two-term Mayor and three-term City Councilmember in Thousand Oaks.
Early life and education
Irwin was born in the Tarzana neighborhood of Los Angeles to Dutch immigrants John and Barbara Van Egmond, and grew up in the Woodland Hills neighborhood. She graduated with a systems engineering degree from the University of California, San Diego, where she was an Academic All American swimmer.
Career
After graduating from UC San Diego, Irwin worked as an engineer for three years at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab, then for five years at Teledyne. In 2003, Irwin was appointed to the Thousand Oaks Planning Commission, ran for City Council the following year, and became mayor of Thousand Oaks in 2008.
In 2014, Irwin successfully ran as a Democrat in the race to represent California's 44th State Assembly district, defeating Republican opponent Rob McCoy. Irwin was reelected in 2016, defeating Republican opponent Kerry Nelson. She was reelected again in 2018, defeating Republican opponent Ronda Baldwin-Kennedy.
Legislative tenure
Irwin is the Chair of the Assembly Committee on Veterans Affairs, and the Assembly Select Committee on Cybersecurity. She also serves on the Committees on Agriculture, Business & Professions, Higher Education, and Privacy and Consumer Protection.
Irwin has also been appointed to other significant roles including the Governor's Military Council, and as Co-Chair of the National Conference of State Legislature’s Task Force on Cybersecurity.
2015-2016 session
During her first term in office, Irwin passed significant legislation. Irwin improved the cybersecurity of the state by mandating state agencies undergo independent security assessments, she banned powdered alcohol, expanded the ability of University of California research to be turned into real-world applications, and worked with Attorney General Kamala Harris to create the OpenJustice Web portal to provide better access to criminal justice data.
2017-2018 session
During her second term in office, Irwin helped secure critical funding for infrastructure projects in Ventura County, including $68.6 million for a grade separation project at Rice Avenue in Oxnard, California, and $9.5 million for emergency wastewater treatment facility repairs in Oxnard, CA.
She continued her work passing significant cybersecurity legislation, enacting into law the first ever security requirement for Internet of Things devices. Irwin also significantly changed how California Community Colleges approached remedial education in an effort to get students into transfer level courses.
2019-2020 session
In 2019 Irwin focused heavily on gun violence prevention legislation in response to the Borderline Shooting in Thousand Oaks, CA. Her legislation strengthened Gun Violence Restraining Orders, in part by allowing them to extend up to five years. She also required law enforcement agencies to have policies about using Gun Violence Restraining Orders. Irwin also secured $3 million to support local law enforcement efforts to recover firearms from individuals listed in the Armed and Prohibited Possessors System.
Irwin also authored ACR-17 which renamed a portion of U.S. Route 101 in Thousand Oaks after Sgt. Ron Helus, from the Ventura County Sheriff's Office who died in the line of duty during the Borderline Shooting.
In 2020, Irwin shifted the majority of her efforts towards assisting her district's response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Irwin spearheaded efforts to collect personal protective equipment (PPE) for front line health care workers and organized blood drives during a local shortage.
Irwin also brought together local governments, academics, private businesses, and non-profits to conduct a COVID-19 antibody testing study in Ventura County. Irwin worked with the group to acquire reliable and available serology tests to be used for the study. She also helped identify and secure locations that would be utilized as testing sites for the countywide study which offered free COVID-19 antibody testing to residents. The antibody testing study was developed to not only understand the prevalence of COVID-19 in Ventura County, but was also modeled to understand the prevalence in targeted groups including first responders, low-income households, and those experiencing homelessness.
Thousand Oaks Memorial controversy
In October 2019, Irwin pulled out of attending a fundraising event for the family of an officer killed in the Borderline shooting. An organizer of the event claimed that Irwin's withdrawal was due to the planned attendance of Ronda Kennedy, a Republican who lost to Irwin in the 2018 election. After the Ventura County Sheriff's Office also withdrew from the fundraiser, citing a policy of non-participation in political events, the event was postponed indefinitely.
Personal life
Irwin married Jon Irwin, a corporate executive, in 1986, and has three children. After her efforts to remove provisions from the California Consumer Privacy Act in 2019, she received criticism for possible conflicts of interest based on her husband's position as COO of Ring. Irwin claimed that she consults with the Assembly's ethics officer on any potential conflicts of interest.
Elections
2014 California State Assembly
2016 California State Assembly
2018 California State Assembly
2020 California State Assembly
References
External links
Campaign website
Members of the California State Assembly
Living people
California Democrats
1962 births
21st-century American politicians
People from Encino, Los Angeles
University of California, San Diego alumni
American female swimmers
21st-century American women politicians
Women state legislators in California
Women in California politics
American people of Dutch descent
Mayors of places in California
Women mayors of places in California
California city council members
Women city councillors in California
Swimmers from California
|
28296423
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RETScreen
|
RETScreen
|
The RETScreen Clean Energy Management Software (usually shortened to RETScreen Expert) is a software package developed by the Government of Canada. RETScreen Expert was highlighted at the 2016 Clean Energy Ministerial held in San Francisco. The Government of Canada's Treasury Board Secretariat uses RETScreen Expert as its greenhouse gas reporting tool for all federal departments and agencies required to report emissions.
RETScreen Expert is the current version of the software and was released to the public on September 19, 2016. The software allows for the comprehensive identification, assessment and optimization of the technical and financial viability of potential renewable energy, energy efficiency and cogeneration projects; the measurement and verification of the actual performance of facilities; the identification of energy savings/production opportunities; and portfolio management of multiple facilities. "Viewer mode" in RETScreen Expert is free and permits access to significant functionality of the software. Unlike past versions of RETScreen, however, a new "Professional mode" (which allows users to save and print, as well as to access premium features) is now available on an annual subscription basis.
Unlike the previous RETScreen Suite, RETScreen Expert is one integrated software platform; utilizes detailed and comprehensive archetypes for assessing projects; and includes portfolio analysis capability. RETScreen Expert integrates a number of databases to assist the user, including a global database of climatic conditions obtained from 6,700 ground-based stations and NASA satellite data; benchmark database; cost database; project database; hydrology database and product database. The software contains extensive integrated training material, including an electronic textbook.
History
The first version of RETScreen was released on April 30, 1998. RETScreen Version 4 was launched on December 11, 2007 at Bali, Indonesia by Canada's Minister of the Environment. RETScreen Plus was released in 2011. RETScreen Suite (integrating RETScreen 4 and RETScreen Plus with numerous additional upgrades), was released in 2012. RETScreen Expert was released to the public on September 19, 2016. RETScreen Expert Version 8.1 was released on September 21, 2021.
Program requirements
This program requires Microsoft® Windows 7 SP1, Windows 8.1 or Windows 10; and Microsoft® .NET Framework 4.7.2 or higher. It is possible for the program to work on Apple computers using Parallels or VirtualBox for Mac.
Partners
RETScreen is managed under the leadership and ongoing financial support of the CanmetENERGY Varennes Research Centre of Natural Resources Canada, a department of the Government of Canada. The core team leverages collaboration with a number of other government and multilateral organisations, with technical support from a large network of experts from industry, government and academia. Principal external partners include NASA's Langley Research Center, Ontario's Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO), the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership (REEEP), UNEP's Energy Unit of the Division of Technology, Industry and Economics, the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the World Bank's Prototype Carbon Fund, and York University's Sustainable Energy Initiative.
Examples of use
As of August 2021, the RETScreen software had more than 750,000 users in every country and territory of the world.
An independent impact study estimated that by 2013, the use of the RETScreen software had been responsible, worldwide, for over $8 billion in user transaction cost savings, 20 MT per year of greenhouse gas emissions reductions, and has enabled at least 24 GW of installed clean energy capacity.
RETScreen is widely used to facilitate and implement clean energy projects. For example, RETScreen has been used:
to retrofit the Empire State Building with energy efficiency measures
at the manufacturing facilities of 3M Canada
extensively by the Irish wind industry to analyze potential new projects
to monitor the performance of hundreds of schools in Ontario
by Manitoba Hydro's combined heat & power (bioenergy optimization) program to screen project applications
to manage energy on university and college campuses
in a multi-year assessment and evaluation of photovoltaic performance in Toronto, Canada
to analyze solar air heating at U.S. Air Force installations
for municipal facilities, including identifying opportunities for energy efficiency retrofits in various Ontario municipalities.
An extensive collection of posts and articles detailing how RETScreen has been used in different contexts is available on RETScreen's LinkedIn page and archived website.
RETScreen is also used as a teaching and research tool by well-over 1,400 universities and colleges worldwide, and is frequently cited in academic literature. Examples of RETScreen's use in academia can be found under the “Publications and Reports” and "University and College Courses" sections of the RETScreen newsletter, accessible through the User manual in the downloaded software.
The use of RETScreen is mandated or recommended by clean energy incentive programs at all levels of government worldwide, including the UNFCCC and the EU; Canada, New Zealand and the UK; numerous American states and Canadian provinces; cities and municipalities; and utilities. National and regional RETScreen training workshops have been conducted upon the official request of the Governments of Chile, Saudi Arabia, 15 countries in West and Central Africa, and the Latin American Energy Organization (OLADE).
Awards and recognition
In 2010, RETScreen International was awarded the Public Service Award of Excellence, the highest award given by the Canadian government to its civil servants.
RETScreen and the RETScreen team have been nominated for and received numerous other prestigious awards including the Ernst & Young/Euromoney Global Renewable Energy Award, Energy Globe (National Award for Canada), and the GTEC Distinction Award Medal.
Reviews
An International Energy Agency review of the beta release of the hydropower part of the software described it as "very impressive". The European Environment Agency asserts that RETScreen an "extremely useful tool." RETScreen has also been called "one of the few software tools, and by far the best, available for evaluating the economics of renewable energy installations" and "a tool to enhance... market coherence" in clean energy worldwide.
See also
Renewable Energy
Energy management software
References
External links
RETScreen Clean Energy Management Software
Introduction to RETScreen Expert (2-min video)
Overview of RETScreen Expert Platform (20-min video)
RETScreen eLearning
RETScreen Expert - Benchmark Analysis (video)
RETScreen Expert - Feasibility Analysis (video)
RETScreen Expert - Performance Analysis (video)
RETScreen Expert - Portfolio Analysis (video)
Energy models
Renewable energy
Energy efficiency
Cogeneration
Solar thermal energy
Solar energy
Energy conservation
Emissions reduction
Energy policy
Wind power
Energy technology
Renewable energy technology
Low-carbon economy
|
7168208
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telepathy%20%28software%29
|
Telepathy (software)
|
Telepathy is a software framework which can be used to make software for interpersonal communications such as instant messaging, Voice over IP or videoconferencing. Telepathy enables the creation of communications applications using components via the D-Bus inter-process communication mechanism. Through this it aims to simplify development of communications applications and promote code reuse within the free software and open source communities by defining a logical boundary between the applications and underlying network protocols.
Implementations
There are free software implementations of various protocols that export Telepathy interfaces:
Gabble: for XMPP, including support for Jingle
Butterfly: for Windows Live Messenger
Idle: for Internet Relay Chat
Salut: for the link-local XMPP protocol
Haze: for accessing protocols supported by libpurple, the library used by the Pidgin messaging client. This was done as a Google Summer of Code project in 2007.
Spirit: for the Skype protocol on the Nokia N900 and Nokia N9
Rakia: for the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), using Nokia's open source Sofia-SIP library
Morse: for Telegram
Mission Control is the name of the component that provides a way for end-user applications to abstract some details of low level telepathy components such as connection managers.
Tubes are Telepathy's mechanism for supporting arbitrary data transfer and remote IPC.
Telepathy forms the basis of the instant messaging and voice/video calling software on the Nokia 770, N800, N810, N900, N9 and Jolla.
How Telepathy works
Protocol implementations provide a D-Bus service called a connection manager. Telepathy clients use these to create connections to services. Once a connection is established, further communication happens using objects called channels which are requested from the connection. A channel might be used to send and receive text messages, or represent the contact list, or to establish a VoIP call.
Applications
Empathy
KDE Telepathy
Sugar
See also
Farstream (formerly Farsight)
References
External links
Project website
"IM/VOIP Communications Framework" video download (77MB ogg) of talk by lead developer Robert McQueen on Telepathy. Streaming Flash video.
KDE-Telepathy actual 0.9.0
Telepathy Developer's Manual
Applications using D-Bus
Free instant messaging clients
Free network-related software
Freedesktop.org
|
8144370
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft%20Hard%20Real-Time%20Kernel
|
Soft Hard Real-Time Kernel
|
S.Ha.R.K. (the acronym stands for Soft Hard Real-time Kernel) is a completely configurable kernel architecture designed for supporting hard, soft, and non real-time applications with interchangeable scheduling algorithms.
Main features
The kernel architecture's main benefit is that an application can be developed independently from a particular system configuration. This allows new modules to be added or replaced in the same application, so that specific scheduling policies can be evaluated for predictability, overhead and performance.
Applications
S.Ha.R.K. was developed at RETIS Lab, a research facility of the Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, and at the University of Pavia, as a tool for teaching, testing and developing real-time software systems. It is used for teaching at many universities, including the Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies and Malardalens University in Sweden.
Modularity
Unlike the kernels in traditional operating systems, S.Ha.R.K. is fully modular in terms of scheduling policies, aperiodic servers, and concurrency control protocols. Modularity is achieved by partitioning system activities between a generic kernel and a set of modules, which can be registered at initialization to configure the kernel according to specific application requirements.
History
S.Ha.R.K. is the evolution of the Hartik Kernel and it is based on the OSLib Project.
See also
Real-time operating system
External links
The S.Ha.R.K. Project official site
Real-time operating systems
Free software operating systems
|
18949836
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic%20Frontier%20Foundation
|
Electronic Frontier Foundation
|
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is an international non-profit digital rights group based in San Francisco, California. The foundation was formed on 10 July 1990 by John Gilmore, John Perry Barlow and Mitch Kapor to promote Internet civil liberties.
The EFF provides funds for legal defense in court, presents amicus curiae briefs, defends individuals and new technologies from what it considers abusive legal threats, works to expose government malfeasance, provides guidance to the government and courts, organizes political action and mass mailings, supports some new technologies which it believes preserve personal freedoms and online civil liberties, maintains a database and web sites of related news and information, monitors and challenges potential legislation that it believes would infringe on personal liberties and fair use and solicits a list of what it considers abusive patents with intentions to defeat those that it considers without merit.
History
Foundation
The Electronic Frontier Foundation was formed in July 1990 by John Gilmore, John Perry Barlow and Mitch Kapor in response to a series of actions by law enforcement agencies that led them to conclude that the authorities were gravely uninformed about emerging forms of online communication, and that there was a need for increased protection for Internet civil liberties.
In April 1990, Barlow had been visited by a U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation agent in relation to the theft and distribution of the source code for a series of Macintosh ROMs. Barlow described the visit as "complicated by [the agent's] fairly complete unfamiliarity with computer technology. I realized right away that before I could demonstrate my innocence, I would first have to explain to him what guilt might be." Barlow felt that his experience was symptomatic of a "great paroxysm of governmental confusion during which everyone's liberties would become at risk".
Barlow posted an account of this experience to The WELL online community and was contacted by Mitch Kapor, who had had a similar experience. The pair agreed that there was a need to defend civil liberties on the Internet. Kapor agreed to fund any legal fees associated with such a defense and the pair contacted New York lawyers Rabinowitz, Boudin, Standard, Krinsky and Lieberman about defending several computer hackers from a Harper's magazine forum on computers and freedom who had been the target of Secret Service raids. This generated a large amount of publicity which led to offers of financial support from John Gilmore and Steve Wozniak. Barlow and Kapor continued to research conflicts between the government and technology and in June 1990, Barlow posted online the influential article entitled "Crime & Puzzlement" in which Barlow announced his and Kapor's plans to create an organization to "raise and disburse funds for education, lobbying, and litigation in the areas relating to digital speech and the extension of the Constitution into Cyberspace."
This generated further reaction and support for the ideas of Barlow and Kapor. In late June, Barlow held a series of dinners in San Francisco with major figures in the computer industry to develop a coherent response to these perceived threats. Barlow considered that: "The actions of the FBI and Secret Service were symptoms of a growing social crisis: Future Shock. America was entering the Information Age with neither laws nor metaphors for the appropriate protection and conveyance of information itself." Barlow felt that to confront this a formal organization would be needed; he hired Cathy Cook as press coordinator, and began to set up what would become the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation was formally founded on July 10, 1990, by Kapor and Barlow, who very soon after elected Gilmore, Wozniak, and Stewart Brand to join them on the Board of Directors. Initial funding was provided by Kapor, Wozniak, and an anonymous benefactor.
In 1990, Mike Godwin joined the organization as its first staff counsel. Then in 1991, Esther Dyson and Jerry Berman joined the EFF board of directors. By 1992, Cliff Figallo became the director of the original office, and in December 1992, Jerry Berman became the acting executive director of the organization as a whole, based in a new second office.
Early cases
The creation of the organization was motivated by the massive search and seizure on Steve Jackson Games executed by the United States Secret Service early in 1990. Similar but officially unconnected law-enforcement raids were being conducted across the United States at about that time as part of a state–federal task force called Operation Sundevil. GURPS Cyberpunk, one of the game company's projects, was mistakenly labeled as a handbook for computer crime, and the Secret Service raided the offices of Steve Jackson Games. The search warrant for the raid was deemed hastily issued, and the games company soon after claimed unauthorized access as well as tampering of their emails. While phone calls were protected by legislation, digital emails were an early concept and had not been considered to fall under the right to personal privacy. The Steve Jackson Games case was the EFF's first high-profile case, was the major rallying point around which the EFF began promoting computer- and Internet-related civil liberties.
The EFF's second big case was Bernstein v. United States led by Cindy Cohn, in which programmer and professor Daniel J. Bernstein sued the government for permission to publish his encryption software, Snuffle, and a paper describing it. More recently, the organization has been involved in defending Edward Felten, Jon Lech Johansen and Dmitry Sklyarov.
Expansion and development
The organization was originally located at Mitch Kapor's Kapor Enterprises offices. By the fall of 1993, the main EFF offices were consolidated into a single office, headed by Executive Director Jerry Berman. During this time, some of the EFF's attention focused on influencing national policy, to the dislike of some of the members of the organization. In 1994, Berman parted ways with the EFF and formed the Center for Democracy and Technology, while Drew Taubman briefly took the reins as executive director.
In 1995, under the auspices of Executive Director Lori Fena, after some downsizing and in an effort to regroup and refocus on their base of support,
the organization moved offices to San Francisco, California. There, it took up temporary residence at John Gilmore's Toad Hall, and soon afterward moved into the Hamm's Building at 1550 Bryant St. After Fena moved onto the EFF board of directors for a while, the organization was led briefly by Tara Lemmey, followed by Barry Steinhardt (who had come from the closely allied Technology and Liberty Program at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and eventually returned to the ACLU). Not long before EFF's move into new offices at 454 Shotwell St. in SF's Mission District, Mike Godwin departed, long-time Legal Director Shari Steele was appointed executive director, and staff attorney Cindy Cohn became the legal director.
In the spring of 2006, the EFF announced the opening of an office again in Washington, D.C., with two new staff attorneys. In 2012, the EFF began a fundraising campaign for the renovation of a building located at 815 Eddy Street in San Francisco, to serve as its new headquarters. The move was completed in April 2013. On April 1, 2015, Shari Steele stepped down as executive director. Cindy Cohn became the new executive director, Corynne McSherry became the legal director, and Kurt Opsahl became the general counsel.
DES cracker
By the mid-1990s the EFF was becoming seriously concerned about the refusal of the US government to license any secure encryption product for export unless it utilized key recovery and claims that governments could not decrypt information when protected by Data Encryption Standard (DES), continuing even after the public breaking of the code in the first of the DES Challenges. They coordinated and supported the construction of the EFF DES cracker (nicknamed Deep Crack), using special purpose hardware and software and costing $210,000. This brought the record for breaking a message down to 56 hours on 17 July 1998 and to under 24 hours on 19 January 1999 (in conjunction with distributed.net).
The EFF published the plans and source code for the cracker. Within four years the Advanced Encryption Standard was standardized as a replacement for DES.
Activities
Legislative activity
The EFF is a leading supporter of the Email Privacy Act.
Litigation
The EFF regularly brings and defends lawsuits at all levels of the US legal system in pursuit of its goals and objectives. The EFF has long taken a stance against strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPP) as attempts to stymie free speech and advocated for effective anti-SLAPP legislation. Many of the most significant technology law cases have involved the EFF, including MGM Studios, Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd., Apple v. Does, and others.
Patent Busting Project
The Patent Busting Project is an Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) initiative challenging patents that the organization claims are illegitimate and suppress innovation or limit online expression. The initiative launched on April 19, 2004, and involves two phases: documenting the damage caused by these patents, and submitting challenges to the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
Enfranchisement activism
The EFF has long been an advocate of paper audit trails for voting machines and testified in support of them after the United States presidential election 2004. Later, it funded the research of Hariprasad Vemuru who exposed vulnerabilities in a particular model. Since 2008, the EFF has operated the Our Vote Live website and database. Staffed by hotline volunteers, it is designed to quickly document irregularities and instances of voter suppression as they occur on an election day.
The EFF was active in the United States presidential election 2016 because of online phishing related to the controversy over fabrication of election results. J. Alex Halderman, a computer security professor at the University of Michigan, wrote an article that was published in Medium in 2016 stating he thought it was advisable to have a recount on some of the election results from states like Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, exclusively states Hillary Clinton lost. In retaliation against Halderman, a hacker sent anti-Semitic and racist emails to students at University of Michigan signed from Halderman. The EFF publicizes these controversies and promotes the reduction of online phishing.
Content moderation reform
In the spring of 2018, the EFF joined the Open Technology Institute (OTI), the Center for Democracy & Technology, the ACLU Foundation of Northern California and four academics in writing The Santa Clara Principles: On Transparency and Accountability in Content Moderation. The document sets out the following guidelines for social networks.
Statistics on removed posts should be publicly available.
Banned users or users who have had posts deleted should be notified with clear reasons.
Such users should have the opportunity to appeal and have that appeal read by a human.
Six months later, the same organizations sought the support of roughly 80 others, including Article 19, in calling for Facebook to adopt the Santa Clara Principles. This was later updated with a request for Facebook to warn users who have interacted with sock puppet law enforcement accounts.
In 2019, the EFF and OTI delivered testimony about the Online Harms White Paper in the United Kingdom. They commented that several proposals to increase the amount of regulation on social media were open to abuse. Also in 2019, the EFF launched the website "TOSsed out" to document cases of moderation rules being applied inconsistently. Cindy Cohn underscored their commitment to upholding free speech online, writing that "once you’ve turned it on, whether through pressure or threats of lawsuits, the power to silence people doesn’t just go in one direction."
Awards
The EFF organizes two sets of awards to promote work in accordance with its goals and objectives:
The EFF Pioneer Awards are awarded annually to recognize individuals who in its opinion are "leaders who are extending freedom and innovation on the electronic frontier." In 2017, the honorees were Chelsea Manning, Mike Masnick and Annie Game.
The EFF Cooperative Computing Awards are a series of four awards meant "to encourage ordinary Internet users to contribute to solving huge scientific problems," to be awarded to the first individual or group who discovers a prime number with a significant record number of decimal digits. The awards are funded by an anonymous donor.
The awards are:
$50,000 to the first individual or group who discovers a prime number with at least 1,000,000 decimal digits – Awarded April 6, 2000
$100,000 to the first individual or group who discovers a prime number with at least 10,000,000 decimal digits – Awarded October 14, 2009
$150,000 to the first individual or group who discovers a prime number with at least 100,000,000 decimal digits
$250,000 to the first individual or group who discovers a prime number with at least 1,000,000,000 decimal digits.
Publications
EFF publishes through several outlets such as the online periodical EFFector, as well as its websites, blogs, and on social networking services.
EFF's first book was published in 1993 as The Big Dummy's Guide to the Internet, a beginners' how-to manual by contracted technical writer Adam Gaffin, and made available for free download in many formats. MIT Press published it in paperback form in 1994 as Everybody's Guide to the Internet (). The online edition was updated regularly throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, and translated into dozens of languages.
The organization's second book, Protecting Yourself Online (), an overview of digital civil liberties, was written in 1998 by technical writer Robert B. Gelman and EFF Communications Director Stanton McCandlish, and published by HarperCollins.
A third book, Cracking DES: Secrets of Encryption Research, Wiretap Politics & Chip Design (), focusing on EFF's DES Cracker project, was published the same year by O'Reilly Media.
A digital book, Pwning Tomorrow, an anthology of speculative fiction, was produced in 2015 as part of EFF's 25th anniversary activities, and includes contributions from 22 writers, including Charlie Jane Anders, Paolo Bacigalupi, Lauren Beukes, David Brin, Pat Cadigan, Cory Doctorow, Neil Gaiman, Eileen Gunn, Kameron Hurley, James Patrick Kelly, Ramez Naam, Annalee Newitz, Hannu Rajaniemi, Rudy Rucker, Lewis Shiner, Bruce Sterling, and Charles Yu.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation's blog, DeepLinks, is a major section of its main website at EFF.org.
The EFF sent a video message of support to global grassroots movement CryptoParty.
Software
The EFF has developed some software and browser add-ons, including Switzerland, HTTPS Everywhere, and Privacy Badger.
Secure Messaging Scorecard
The EFF conducted a project named Secure Messaging Scorecard which "evaluated apps and tools based on a set of seven specific criteria ranging from whether messages were encrypted in transit to whether or not the code had been recently audited." , a revised version is under development.
Support
As of 2021, Charity Navigator has given the EFF an overall rating of four out of four stars, including four stars for its financial efficiency and capacity.
Financial
EFF had $23 million in assets, having received multiple grants or donations above 1 million dollars in its history. On February 18, 2004, the EFF announced that it had received a bequest of US$1.2 million from the estate of EFF member Leonard Zubkoff, a software developer and entrepreneur. It used $1 million of this money to establish the EFF Endowment Fund for Digital Civil Liberties.
Beginning in 2010, the EFF began regularly receiving income from the Humble Indie Bundle. In 2010, these donations made up 14% of EFF's total revenue. Between 2011 and 2014, the amount received from Humble Bundle reached $7.5 million or 23% of the EFF total revenues.
In 2011, the EFF received $1 million from Google as part of a settlement of a class action related to privacy issues involving Google Buzz.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center and seven other privacy-focused nonprofits protested that the plaintiffs' lawyers and Google had, in effect, arranged to give the majority of those funds "to organizations that are currently paid by Google to lobby for or to consult for the company". An additional $1 million was obtained from Facebook in a similar settlement.
In December 2014, the Adams Charitable Foundation granted EFF a $3 million endowment to fund the new Adams Chair for Internet Rights.
Other
The agitprop art group Psychological Industries has independently issued buttons with pop culture tropes such as the logo of the Laughing Man from the anime series Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (with the original The Catcher in the Rye quotation replaced with the slogan of Anonymous), a bleeding roller derby jammer, and the "We Can Do It!" woman (often misidentified as Rosie the Riveter) on a series of buttons on behalf of the EFF.
In late June 2014 the EFF flew a GEFA-FLUG AS 105 GD/4 blimp owned by, and in conjunction with, Greenpeace over the NSA's Bluffdale-based Utah Data Center in protest against its purported illegal spying.
See also
Clipper chip
Digital rights
European Digital Rights (EDRi)
Electronic Frontier Canada
Electronic Frontiers Australia
Freedom of the Press Foundation
Hardware restrictions
Information freedom
Internet censorship
League for Programming Freedom
OpenMedia.ca
Open Rights Group, (UK-based)
Protection of Broadcasts and Broadcasting Organizations Treaty
Reporters Without Borders
Notes
References
External links
EFF's Secure Messaging Scorecard (version 1.0)
also known by the titles:
Access to Knowledge movement
Articles containing video clips
Charities based in California
Civil liberties advocacy groups in the United States
Computer law organizations
Digital rights organizations
Foundations based in the United States
Freedom of expression organizations
Humble Bundle
Intellectual property activism
Internet privacy organizations
Internet-related activism
Mission District, San Francisco
Organizations based in San Francisco
Organizations established in 1990
Politics and technology
Privacy in the United States
Privacy organizations
|
43196901
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rookley%20Manor%2C%20Hampshire
|
Rookley Manor, Hampshire
|
Rookley Manor is a Grade II* listed country house, located in Up Somborne in Hampshire, England.
Background
Located within the fertile Test Valley as part of the parish of Godshill, Hampshire, it was first established as la Spaund Manor prior to 1203, under the control of the de Aula family. By the middle of the 13th century it was owned by William Russell, the Lord of Yaverland, leased to his nobleman John Rivers. By 1280 it was owned by William's son Richard Russell, who by 1316 had passed it to Barton Priory possibly for use as an Oratory; the hamlet still to this day has never had a church. By 1431 it was leased by John Roucle, who changed his name to the more anglophile John Rookley. Most of the present day farms surrounding the current hamlet of Rookley were first noted in the Middle Ages, but all were associated with the original manor house. At some point, the estate fell into the ownership of the Worsley baronets of Appuldurcombe House.
Structure
Although the current two-storey property is dated by some from the early 18th century, the core of the house is constructed around a late-Medieval timber frame farmhouse structure, dating it to the late 15th century and possibly as late as 1670, which has latterly been extensively reclad.
The rendered southwest facade dates from 1707, whilst the front which faces southeast was reconstructed in the late 1700s in a rough-rendered gothic architecture form. The north side is painted red brick, in English bond pattern which exposes the original timber frame, and is linked to a single-storey service wing. The whole house is topped by a hipped roof, into which windows on some sides extended, mainly using Yorkshire-style sash windows.
Internally entranced through a centrally located open porch on an extending angular bay, the four-panelled door leads to a marble-floored entrance hall and 17th century oak staircase. Many of the rooms retain 18th century fireplaces, whilst the main bedroom retains both its fireplace and complete oak panelling.
Externally, a 20th-century two-storey addition on the north links to an 18th-century two-storey cottage, which further extends to a similarly dated single-storey stable block. All are constructed in matching Flemish bond red brick, with casement windows. There are farming buildings, two walled gardens, two apple orchards and a Lime tree-lined avenue in the immediate surrounding of grounds. From 1795 enclosure of the surrounding farm lands had started to occur, and by 1837 the manor grounds including the associated farm were listed as having a total size of .
First listed in 1955, the farmhouse became Grade II* listed in August 1984.
Residents
Leased out from the estate of Worsley baronets of Appuldurcombe House, in the late 17th century the house was occupied by Thomas Hobbs (1647–1698), a physician to James II of England whose other clients included noted poet John Dryden.
From 1776 to 1783 it was leased as a hunting lodge to HRH Prince Henry, Duke of Cumberland and Strathearn (7 November 1745 – 18 September 1790), third son of Frederick, Prince of Wales, and grandson of King George II. His equerry from 1783 to 1790 was Thomas Boothby Parkyns MP (24 July 1755 – 17 November 1800), first son of Sir Thomas Parkyns, 3rd Parkyns Baronet, of Bunny Park, Notts. After Prince Henry's death in 1790, Parkyns took over the lease until his own death from oedema on 17 November 1800.
In 1854 Charles Anderson-Pelham, 2nd Earl of Yarborough sold the property to Mr. W.J. Lyle, who later sold it onwards to Mr. Reginald Freke Williams. In June 2014 it was put up for sale via agents Strutt & Parker.
George IV and Maria Fitzherbert
After the twice widowed Maria Fitzherbert entered London society, in spring 1784 she was introduced to George, Prince of Wales, six years her junior. Pursuing an affair, in part believed undertaken at Rookley Manor, on 15 December 1785 they illegally married under the Royal Marriages Act 1772 in the drawing room of her house in Park Street, Mayfair, London. Although George latter married his first cousin, Duchess Caroline of Brunswick who bore him a daughter Princess Charlotte of Wales, on 10 January 1796, George wrote his last will and testament, bequeathing all his "worldly property . . . to my Maria Fitzherbert, my wife, the wife of my heart and soul". During the summer of 1798, by which time he had separated from Caroline and was bored with his mistress, Frances Villiers, Countess of Jersey, the couple reconciled again after the Pope deemed their marriage legitimate, meeting again at previous tryst locations including Rookley. During the Regency era (1811–1820), George had so enjoyed the tennis court at Rookley, that he had it dug up and moved to nearby Crawley Court which he was leasing at the time. Before he died, Maria wrote to George wishing him well, whilst the King asked to be buried with Fitzherbert's eye miniature around his neck, which was done.
Vanity Fair
William Makepeace Thackeray was a successful 19th century writer and novelist by the time that he came to write Vanity Fair, but was also a virtual-widower as his wife had been held in a mental institute since 1842 due to severe depression. This made Thackeray, even with three young children in boarding school, a noted traveller/person of no fixed abode. Thackeray had strong ties to Hampshire, having in 1815 after his father died in India been sent to his grandmother's residence in Fareham for his education, and latterly resided there with his aunt. Having been friended by the elder Charles Anderson-Pelham, 1st Earl of Yarborough, it is hence strongly rumoured that as his father had allowed Thackeray to stay in other property that he owned in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, that after his father's death that Charles Anderson-Pelham, 2nd Earl of Yarborough allowed Thackeray to write Vanity Fair whilst temporarily resident at Rookley Manor. The later novel was first published as a series of extracts in Punch magazine between January 1847 and July 1848.
References
External links
Houses completed in the 15th century
Timber framed buildings in England
Country houses in Hampshire
Houses completed in the 18th century
Grade II* listed buildings in Hampshire
Grade II* listed houses
1203 establishments in England
|
6201076
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RVR%20%26%20JC%20College%20of%20Engineering
|
RVR & JC College of Engineering
|
R V R & J C College of Engineering (Rayapati Venkata Rangarao & Jagarlamudi Chandramouli) is an engineering college in Guntur, in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. It offers graduate (Masters) and undergraduate education (Bachelors) courses in engineering and technology. It is located in the west suburban region of Guntur City, India.
Established in 1985, RVR&JC is under the patronage of the Nagarjuna Education Society. Today eight educational institutions are functioning under the banner of the society, with RVR&JC as the flagship.
The college is today one of the largest engineering institutions in South India. The college offers eight B.Tech degree courses, six M.Tech degree courses, MCA and MBA courses.
The college is autonomous and affiliated to Acharya Nagarjuna University, Guntur. The institute attracts companies that take campus interviews for the students.
Departments
Undergraduate courses
Chemical Engineering,
Civil Engineering,
Computer Science and Engineering,
Electronics and Communication Engineering,
Electrical Engineering,
Information Technology,
Mechanical Engineering,
Computer Science and Business Systems
M.Tech courses
Computer Science & Engineering(CSE),
Power Systems (Electrical Engineering),
Structural engineering (Civil Engineering),
Machine Design(Mechanical Engineering).
Communication Engineering & Signal Processing(ECE).
Computer Science & Technology (CST),
MCA (Master of Computer Applications)
MBA (Master of Business Administration)
History
The college was established in 1985 in Guntur City. Later a larger and main campus was built in the western suburban area of Guntur City(Guntur district)in Chowdavaram. The college was developed up by NES trust.
Now in the `Silver Jubilee Year’ (2010–11), the R.V.R. & J.C. College of Engineering, Chowdavaram, Guntur trains undergraduate and postgraduate students in Engineering and Management for award of degree from Acharya Nagarjuna University.
Established by the Nagarjuna Education Society (1967) in the year 1985, the College drew its initial impetus from Peoples Representatives, local doctors, charitable trusts and commercial houses of Guntur District. Today, it enjoys flagship status among the eight constituent institutions that are governed by Nagarjuna Education Society.
Now in the 'Silver Jubilee Year’ (2010–11), the R.V.R. & J.C. College trains undergraduate and postgraduate students in Engineering and Management for award of degree from Acharya Nagarjuna University.
Accreditation
All branches of the college have received accreditation from the National Board of Accreditation. This is the only college in Andhra Pradesh to get accreditation for all branches. The College has been accredited by the National Board of Accreditation (NBA) of AICTE five times so far. The college underwent the accreditation process for the first time in 1998. Accreditation from NBA was renewed for all seven departments of the college in 2002 and again in 2007 and 2012. Accreditation was granted by NBA for the fifth time for CSE, IT, ECE, EEE & ME UG courses (2017-2018 to 2019-2020).
Ranking and recognition
The A.P. State Council of Higher Education (APSCHE) awarded the second best rating in 'Academic Audit and Grading’ in 2004. The College has consistently won the Best Performing U.G. College in the University Examinations under Acharya Nagarjuna University for the last four years. The College also figures in the Top-100 Engineering Colleges in India according to the latest Outlook survey and also rated as Top 100 Engineering Colleges in India 2013 surveyed by Way2College.
During academic year 2016-2017 the Andhra Pradesh Fee Regulatory Committee (APFRC) has fixed the fee structure for 350 private engineering colleges in the state, based on infrastructure, quality of admission, campus recruitment, quality of faculty and a few other parameters. The fee for RVR & JC College of Engineering was fixed as Rs.1, 08,000. This is highest fee collecting private engineering college in the state, followed by Gayatri Vidya Parishad College of Engineering Visakhapatnam (Rs. 1, 03,700), Velagapudi Ramakrishna Siddhartha Engineering College Vijayawada (Rs.1, 02,000) and GMR Institute of Technology Raajam (Rs. 1, 02,000).
References
External links
RVR Engineering College website
Colleges in Guntur
Engineering colleges in Andhra Pradesh
Educational institutions established in 1985
1985 establishments in Andhra Pradesh
Engineering colleges in Guntur district
|
1495667
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homebrew%20%28video%20games%29
|
Homebrew (video games)
|
Homebrew, when applied to video games, refers to games produced by hobbyists for proprietary video game consoles which are not intended to be user-programmable. Official documentation is often only available to licensed developers, and these systems may use storage formats that make distribution difficult, such as ROM cartridges or encrypted CD-ROMs. Many consoles have hardware restrictions to prevent unauthorized development. A non-professional developer for a system intended to be user-programmable, like the Commodore 64, is simply called a hobbyist (rather than a homebrew developer).
Homebrew development can include software made using unofficial, community maintained toolchains or games developed using official development kits such as Net Yaroze, Linux for PlayStation 2, or Microsoft XNA. Some targets for homebrew games include the Wii, Dreamcast, Game Boy Advance, PlayStation Portable, Nintendo Entertainment System, and Atari 2600.
Development
New games for older systems are typically developed using emulators. Development for newer systems usually involves actual hardware, given the lack of accurate emulators. Efforts have been made to use actual console hardware for many older systems, though. Atari 2600 programmers may burn an EEPROM to plug into a custom cartridge board or use audio transfer via the Starpath Supercharger. Game Boy Advance developers have several ways to use GBA flash cartridges in this regard.
First generation consoles
Odyssey
In 2009, Odball became the first game for the Magnavox Odyssey since 1973. It was produced by Robert Vinciguerra who has since written several other Odyssey games. On July 11, 2011, Dodgeball was published by Chris Read.
Second generation consoles
Atari 2600
Channel F
A handful of games have been programmed for the Fairchild Channel F, the first console to use ROM cartridges. The first known release is Sean Riddle's clone of Lights Out which included instructions on how to modify the SABA#20 Chess game into a Multi-Cartridge. There is also a version of Tetris and in 2008 "Videocart 27: Pac-Man" became the first full production game for the system since it was discontinued.
Third and fourth generation consoles
NES
Several compilers are available for the Nintendo Entertainment System, but like the Atari 2600, most development is done in 6502 assembly language. One impediment to NES homebrew development is the relative difficulty involved with producing physical cartridges, although third-party flash carts do exist, making homebrew possible on original NES hardware. Several varieties of custom processors are used within NES cartridges to expand system capabilities; most are difficult to replicate except by scavenging old cartridges.
While the original Famicom and its clones can play unlicensed games, the 10NES hardware lock-out mechanism of the NES complicates the production of physical cartridges. The 10NES chip can be permanently disabled by performing a minor change to the hardware. Nintendo's New-Style NES lacks the 10NES chip.
Genesis
The Sega Genesis has no physical lockout mechanism, making it easier to release software for the system. Rick Dangerous, Rick Dangerous 2, Pier Solar and the Great Architects, and a port of Teenage Queen were released as physical cartridges. Other games include Sacred Line Genesis, Coffee Crisis, and Frog Feast for the Genesis and Mighty Mighty Missile for the Sega Mega-CD. The 2018 game Tanglewood was developed using original Sega development hardware.
TurboGrafx-16/PC Engine
The TurboGrafx-16/PC Engine has a comparatively small homebrew scene. The first homebrew title released on CD was MindRec's Implode in 2002, a few years after the system's last official release (Dead Of The Brain I & II for the PC Engine in 1999). Two years later, MindRec released Meteor Blaster DX on CD-R. Official word was that it was unable to be pressed to CD proper due to the glass mastering software suddenly unable to handle the unorthodox style of CD layout that the system expects. Five years later, Aetherbyte Studios released Insanity, a Berzerk clone, on pressed CD, quelling the notion of unpressable CDs. Aetherbyte later went on to prototype and produce a new HuCard design called "AbCARD", which was fully compatible with the console.
There is one C compiler for the console known as HuC. It has not been officially updated since 2005. The MagicKit assembler is generally considered the de facto assembler for the console, and comes included with HuC. Additional libraries for HuC/MagicKit include Squirrel, a sound engine developed by Aetherbyte Studios, and the SGX/ACD library, developed by Tomatheous, that gives the developer easy access to the SuperGrafx video hardware as well as the Arcade Card.
The cc65 C compiler is compatible with the console, although there is no development library support for it.
SNES
Bung Enterprises released the Game Doctor SF hardware series. It allows users to copy games and run new games on SNES hardware. ROMs can be converted into the Game Doctor SF format and put onto a 3 1/2" floppy. Games as large as twelve megabits can be put on floppy disks formatted to 1.6 megabytes.
An alternative device is the Super Flash, by Tototek, which allows multiple games to be burned onto a flash memory chip in a cartridge. This allows games as large as 48 megabits.
The run and gun game, Alisha’s Adventure, used original Super Famicom development hardware.
Neo-Geo MVS, AES, and CD
The Neo-Geo Home Cart and Arcade Systems can be tough candidates for homebrew development. Neo-Geo AES and MVS cartridges have two separate boards: one for video, and one for sound. If programming a cartridge for the system were to occur, it would involve replacing the old ROM chips with one's newly programmed ones as the cartridges are in a sense, Arcade boards. NGDevTeam who have released Fast Striker and Gunlord found a workaround with this. What they did was print out their own board, and soldered their own ROM chips into them; this, however, can cause the Universe Bios logo to look corrupted if a custom bios were to be programmed. Programming for the Neo-Geo CD, however is easier than programming for cartridges. The CDs themselves can actually contain both sound and video respectively. Depending on the Megabit count for a game program, load times will vary. A CD game with low Megabit counts will load only one time; whereas a CD game with higher megabit counts could load in between scenes, or rounds. There are now some full games scheduled for release in physical form, such as Neo Xyx.
Programmer of the Neo-Geo Universe Bios, Razoola is currently working on a "Skeleton Game Driver" that supports two players. This ROM is meant to remedy the corrupted Universe Bios Screens, as well as work with an unmodified/stock Neo-Geo Multi-Video System (MVS), or Advanced Entertainment System (AES).
Fifth generation consoles
Jaguar
The first hobbyist-developed Atari Jaguar game was released in 1995: a version of Tetris called JSTetris. It was written using a hacked version of the Alpine Development Kit, one of the pieces of hardware used to program official Jaguar games. After purchasing all the intellectual property assets of Atari Corporation from JTS in 1998, Hasbro Interactive, on May 14, 1999, announced that they have released all rights to the Jaguar, declaring the console an open platform. Following the announcement, a few developers and publishers, such as AtariAge, B&C Computervisions, Piko Interactive, Songbird Productions, Telegames, and Video61, have released both previously unfinished games from the Jaguar's past as well as several brand new games.
Since emulation of the console is still limited, coding uses a real console through either the Skunkboard development cartridge, using a BJL modified Jaguar, or the official Alpine Development Kit. The commercial game BattleSphere Gold, also contains the JUGS (Jaguar Unmodified Game Server) aid to development.
Games are released in either cartridge, CD–or both–formats. Most developers have published their works either online on forums or in cartridge via independent publishers. Since both systems do not have regional locking, all of the titles are region free. Some of the earliest CD releases were not encrypted, requiring either B&C's Jaguar CD Bypass Cartridge or Reboot's Jagtopia (Freeboot) program burned into a CD in order to run unencrypted CD games, but Curt Vendel of Atari Museum released the binaries and encryption keys for both the cartridge and CD format, making it possible to run games without the need of development hardware. A cracked BIOS of the Jaguar CD can be soldered inside the system.
There are also ST-to-Jaguar conversions, which involves porting titles from the Atari ST to the Jaguar, which may include some enhancements. While they can be downloaded for free, select titles were sold on August 3, 2016 and others, as of date, are being licensed and sold in festivals dedicated to the system such as E-JagFest, JagFest or online via AtariAge.
PlayStation
Making games on the PlayStation is possible with any model of the system through the use of a modchip or the double 'Swap Trick'. Requirements consist of a PC, SDK, and a 'Comms Link' device to upload and download files to and from the console.
Another way of starting homebrew on the PlayStation is 'UniROM', which is a Softmod. UniROM works by being installed onto a cheat-device, which is connected via the parallel-port (on old consoles) and allows loading of custom code via burned CDs and the serial port.
Homebrew was originally promoted by Sony with the Net Yaroze, which had a large scene for quite some time. However, the official Net Yaroze site was shut down in mid-2009, and Sony stopped supporting the system as well as the users who still owned the console.
Saturn
All models of the Sega Saturn can be used for hobbyist development. Modchips for the Saturn Model 1 have been scarce for some time, as it seems that no one has produced any new modchips in years. As such, the only two options left are to either perform the swap trick or extensively modify a Saturn Model 2 modchip.
Running homebrew on the Model 2 can be accomplished by bridging two points on the modchip, soldering a wire from the modchip to the Saturn power supply, and inserting it where the CD-ROM ribbon cable inserts. The swap trick is more difficult to pull off on this Model due to the lack of an access light.
Another method is what is known as the "PseudoSaturn" unlocking method. It is a program created by CyberWarrior2000 that abuses the "Pro Action Replay" cartridge's firmware. It unlocks region, frequency, and CD protection of most Saturn models. Either a modded Saturn or a swap trick is required to run the installer, which loads the code in the FlashROM of the cartridge. Afterwards, the cartridge unlocks everything and most software can be run, from backups to homebrews. There is also now a new engine for development called the Jo-Engine created by Johannes Fetz to allow easy development of 2D games. This engine is currently able to compile 2D games without the Sega Graphic Libraries (SGL). Another engine by XL2, called the Z-Treme engine, led to the creation of a fully 3D Sonic The Hedgehog game called Sonic Z-Treme. Z-Treme uses Sega Basic Libraries (SBL) and Sega Graphic Libraries (SGL).
Virtual Boy
Nintendo's Virtual Boy has no region lock, but it wasn't until the flash carts FlashBoy and FlashBoy+ were released that the homebrew scene began to grow. Two previously unreleased games, Bound High! and Niko-Chan Battle (the Japanese version of Faceball) have been released.
Nintendo 64
The Nintendo 64 homebrew scene is small, but homebrew can still be played and developed through the use of a Doctor V64, (Acclaim used a Doctor V64 to help develop Turok,) the Everdrive 64 or 64drive.
Sixth generation consoles
Dreamcast
Despite its short commercial lifespan of less than two years in North America, the Dreamcast benefits from an active homebrew scene even ten years after its discontinuation. Due to a flaw in the Dreamcast BIOS, which was intended for use with MIL-CD's, the console can run software from CD-R without the use of a modchip. Sega reacted by removing MIL-CD support from the BIOS of the later produced Dreamcast consoles manufactured from November 2000 onwards.
The console is especially notable for its commercial homebrew scene. One notable project was the Bleemcast! emulator, which was a series of bootdisks made to play PlayStation games on the system, featuring visual enhancements over the original console. Newer independent releases include Last Hope, released by RedSpotGames in 2007, and DUX, both Shoot 'em up style games. These releases were written using the KallistiOS development system. A port of the freeware high-level development language Fenix and BennuGD is available for use in game development; many DIV Games Studio games have been ported and others were originally written for the system.
PlayStation 2
Early versions of the PlayStation 2 have a buffer overflow bug in the part of the BIOS that handles PS1 game compatibility; hackers found a way to turn this into a loophole called the PS2 Independence Exploit, allowing the use of homebrew software. Another option for homebrew development is the use of a modchip. Also, it is possible for developers to utilize a PS2 hard drive and HD Loader. In Europe and Australia, the PS2 came with a free Yabasic interpreter on the bundled demo disc for some time. This allows simple programs to be created for the PS2 by the end-user. This was included in a failed attempt to circumvent a UK tax by defining the console as a "computer" if it contained certain software. A port of the NetBSD project and BlackRhino GNU/Linux, an alternative Debian-based distribution, are also available for the PS2.
Using homebrew programs (e.g. 'SMS Media Player') it is possible to listen to various audio file formats (MP3, OMA, Ogg Vorbis, AAC, FLAC, AC3), and watch various video formats (DivX/XviD, MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG4-ASP in AVI Container) using the console. Media can be played from any device connected to the console i.e. external USB/FireWire/thumb drive/hard disk drive (FAT32 only), the internal hard disk on early revision consoles, optical CD-R(W)/DVD±R(W) disks (modded systems or patched disks), or network shares (Windows Network or PS2 host: protocol).
A more recent development (May 2008) called Free McBoot allows homebrew programs to be launched without a trigger disc required by the older exploit. This also allows use of homebrew on unmodded systems without a functional disc drive. However, installation of the exploit to each individual memory card requires either an already exploited/modded system in order to launch the installer, or boot image that can load an app that loads ELF files (network adapter and hard drive also required). Copying from one memory card to another will not work. This newer exploit will not work on the very newest PS2s (SCPH-9000x model with BIOS 2.30 and up) but will work on all models prior to that. The newest versions of Free McBoot, version 1.90 and newer, also have the ability to install and boot from both Sony and non-Sony HDDs when using a "fat" PS2 and network adapter. This support is called Free HDBoot or FHDB. With a few minor issues, it is now possible to game entirely from the HDD, without needing to use the optical disc drive nor a physical memory card.
Unlike the Independence Exploit, which requires a trigger disk, Free McBoot needs only a standard Memory Card, which allows it to be used on systems with broken optical drives. The installation is keyed to the Memory Card and will be usable on only the same version consoles that it was originally installed on, unless a Multi-Install is performed. The drawback of this exploit is that it needs to be installed/compiled on each individual memory card. Simply copying the exploit is not possible; this means that an already modded or exploited system is required to install FMCB on a Memory Card. After installing an exploit, unsigned executables (Executable and Linkable Format) may be launched from a Memory Card or a USB drive. Such programs include emulators, media players, hard drive management tools, and PC-based or NAS-based file shares. The exploit is also notable for allowing the user to copy PS1/PS2 save files from a Memory Card to a USB drive, a functionality normally only possible with tools such as a DexDrive.
Sony released a Linux-based operating system for the PS2 in a package that also includes a keyboard, mouse, Ethernet adapter and HDD. Currently, Sony's online store states that the Linux kit is no longer for sale in North America. However, as of July 2005, the European version was still available. The kit boots by installing a proprietary interface, the run-time environment, which is on a region-coded DVD, so the European and North America kits only work with a PS2 from their respective regions.
Homebrew emulators of older computer and gaming systems have been developed for the PS2.
GameCube
Homebrew development on the Nintendo GameCube tended to be difficult, since it uses a proprietary MiniDVD-based drive and media as opposed to the standard DVD drives of the PS2 and Xbox for piracy protection. Also, its connectivity is limited, as it does not feature a USB port or an HDD port like the PlayStation 2.
The barrier to burning Nintendo GameCube discs with a consumer DVD burner is the Burst Cutting Area, a "barcode" in the innermost ring of the disc, an area inaccessible to most burners and writeable only by very expensive disc pressing machines. For a long time the only way to run homebrew software on Nintendo GameCube was through a patching-system exploit of Phantasy Star Online Episode I & II, requiring users to find the game and a Broadband Adapter. Both of these are difficult to find because a follow-up has been released (under the name Phantasy Star Online Episode I & II Plus) and thus the original PSO was rarely sold after then, and because the Broadband Adapter was not often carried in stores due to the Nintendo GameCube's very limited selection of online games.
As of August 2019, the most common method is to use an Action Replay in conjunction with an SD card adapter inserted into the memory card slot, allowing the user to run homebrew from the SD card, or over Ethernet. Another method involves using a modchip to allow the GameCube to run homebrew from a MiniDVD-R via the disc drive. Another method uses a save game exploit which involves transferring modified game save files to a GameCube memory card that triggers arbitrary code execution when loaded by an official game, allowing custom software to be run from a memory card, SD card, or other media. As the Nintendo GameCube's case does not fit a full-size DVD-R, third party replacement cases are available.
Homebrew software for the Nintendo GameCube mainly consists of emulators for other systems, as well as several popular homebrew utilities. Swiss is an “all-in-one homebrew utility”, including a file browser, and the ability to force software to use different video modes that aren't officially supported, such as progressive scan or 16:9 widescreen. The Game Boy Interface is a homebrew software frontend for the Game Boy Player peripheral, and is often used for capturing high-quality footage from Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance games.
Xbox
The Xbox console uses several measures, including cryptographically signed code to obfuscate firmware. The primary method of executing homebrew code required installing a mod chip which could be flashed with a modified Microsoft BIOS. This BIOS allowed the system to boot unsigned executables (XBEs) and control several hardware variables, such as region coding and video mode. With the leak of Microsoft's official development kit (XDK), homebrew coders were able to write replacement Xbox GUIs (known as dashboards), games and applications for the Xbox.
A softmod, which uses a commercial game such as 007: Agent Under Fire, Mech Assault, or Splinter Cell, had been created to execute a persistent softmod installer without modification of the hardware. This method utilizes modified font and sound files to cause the Xbox to cause a stack buffer overflow and load a homebrew dashboard. Once in this condition, the Xbox is able to execute homebrew games and applications upon boot up.
Due to the Xbox using standard PC libraries, writing homebrew games is relatively easy and the vast majority of libraries available for a PC programmer are available to an Xbox homebrew programmer.
One of the more common type of homebrew games for the Xbox are ports of PC games whose source has been publicly released or leaked. Many classic PC games have been released for Xbox, but most are created with the XDK which limits their availability. The only places to find these ports are through IRC or peer-to-peer browsers.
The Xbox system is also very adept at running emulators which have been ported from PC, given its high processing power. The Xbox is able to emulate systems up to the previous generation, including the Nintendo 64 and the PlayStation. For this reason, many different emulators have been created for or ported to the Xbox.
Game Boy Advance
The popularity of homebrew development for the Game Boy Advance system since its release in 2001 is due to the availability of C compilers and ready-made, high-quality code libraries, and debugging features for Game Boy Advance emulators like the VisualBoyAdvance-M, the mgba, the No$gba GBA Emulator, John GBA and My Boy. Also contributing to the success is both the nostalgia for the system in general, the Pokémon Romhacking community, and the wide availability of Flash ROM cartridges and cartridge writers in online shops.
Seventh generation consoles
PlayStation Portable
Nintendo DS
Since the release of the Nintendo DS, a great deal of hacking has occurred involving the DS's fully rewritable firmware, Wi-Fi connection, game cards that allow SD storage, and software use. There are now many emulators for the DS, as well as the NES, SNES, Sega Master System, Sega Mega Drive, Neo-Geo Pocket, Neo-Geo MVS (arcade), and older handheld consoles like the Game Boy Color.
There are a number of cards which either have built-in flash memory, or a slot which can accept an SD, or MicroSD (like the DSTT, R4, AceKard and ez-flash V/Vi) cards. These cards typically enable DS console gamers to use their console to play MP3s and videos, and other non-gaming functions traditionally reserved for separate devices.
In South Korea, many video game consumers exploit illegal copies of video games, including for the Nintendo DS. In 2007, 500,000 copies of DS games were sold, while the sales of the DS hardware units was 800,000.
Another modification device called Action Replay, manufactured by the company Datel, is a device which allows the user to input cheat codes that allows it to hack games, granting the player infinite health, power-ups, access to any part of the game, infinite in game currency, the ability to walk through walls, and various other abilities depending on the game and code used.
Photographer Steve Chapman, looking for other ways to continue his photography work with smaller equipment, created DS-DSLR, an application that allowed him to control his camera without his bulky laptop. When his camera was connected to the DS through the GBA cartridge slot, DS-DSLR allowed him to execute many tasks, including controlled bracketing, custom interval shots, and timed long exposures. DS-DSLR even had a noise-activated shutter control which was activated when the DS mic detected noise.
With the DSi, it too has some homebrew exploits, some of which use DSiWare apps such as Flipnote (aka ugopwn), sudokuhax, using a game called Sudoku by EA Games, grtpwn, exidiahax, fieldrunhax, 4swordhax, UNO*hax, and a exploit using Petit Computer called petit-compwner. There is also systemflaaw, which uses the DSi-exclusive game System Flaw,
A user by the name of shutterbug2000 on GBAtemp has released 2 DSi exploits, one being called Memory Pit, an exploit using the DSi Camera app, and the Flipnote Lenny exploit (aka ugopwn), using Flipnote Studio.
Xbox 360
Microsoft has released a version of its proprietary Software Development Kit (SDK) for free, to would-be homebrew programmers. This SDK, called XNA Game Studio, is a free version of the SDK available to professional development companies and college students. However, to create Xbox 360 games one must pay for a premium membership to the XNA Creators Club. Once the games are verified, the games written with XNA Studio can be made available for 80, 240, or 400 Microsoft Points to all Xbox 360 owners (through Xbox Live). This allows creators of homebrew content access to their target audience of Xbox 360 owners. This content is available under the Indie Games section of the New Xbox Experience.
On March 20, 2007, it was announced that a hack using the previously discovered hypervisor vulnerability in the Xbox 360 kernel versions 4532 and 4548 had been developed to allow users to run XeLL, a Linux bootloader. The initial hack was beyond the average user and required an Xbox serial cable to be installed and a flashed DVD Drive firmware. Felix Domke, the programmer behind XeLL, has since announced a live bootable Linux CD suitable for novice users, with the capabilities to be installed to the SATA hard drive of the Xbox 360. Despite the availability of such a distribution, the Xbox 360 still isn't considered a popular platform for homebrew development, given the dependence of the exploit on the DVD-ROM being able to load a burnt DVD game, a modified version of the game King Kong, and two older kernel revisions of the console itself.
A group independent of Microsoft is working on the means to run homebrew code, as part of the Free60 project.
Note: The hypervisor vulnerability in the Xbox 360 kernel versions 4532 and 4548 was addressed by Microsoft with the release of the NXE system and dashboard update in 2008.
Homebrew was since re-enabled on any Xbox 360 with dash 2.0.7371.0 or lower via an exploit referred to as the JTAG / SMC hack but was promptly patched again by Microsoft with the 2.0.8495.0 update.
Homebrew has now become available on most Xbox 360 consoles due to the Reset Glitch Hack (excluding the late Winchester revision, which fixed this exploit with mitigations in hardware). It works on all current dashboards. As the Reset Glitch Hack requires a modchip, soldering skills are a necessity when attempting to use this exploit.
PlayStation 3
The PlayStation 3 was designed to run other operating systems from day one. Very soon after launch, the first users managed to install Fedora Core 5 onto the PlayStation 3 via the 'Install Other OS' option in the PlayStation 3's XMB (Xross Media Bar), which also allows configuring the PlayStation 3 to boot into the other OS installed by default.
So far, several Linux flavors have been successfully installed to the PlayStation 3, such as Fedora Core 5, Fedora Core 6, Gentoo, Ubuntu and Yellow Dog Linux (YDL). The latter comes installed with the Cell SDK by default, allowing programmers a low cost entry into Cell programming. See also: Linux for PlayStation 3
Originally, graphics support was limited to framebuffer access only (no access to the PlayStation 3's graphics chip RSX), yet some access to the RSX graphics processor was achieved (but Sony blocked this with firmware release 2.10).
As of firmware release 3.21, consumers are no longer able to access the 'Other OS' due to Sony removing the facility from the software in an update. Sony said this was in response to several 'security concerns'.
Homebrew developers do have access to the Cell microprocessor, including 6 of its 7 active Synergistic Processing Elements (SPEs). The Game OS resides under a hypervisor and prevents users from taking full control of the PlayStation 3's hardware. This is a security measure which helps Sony feel secure enough to allow users to install other operating systems on the PS3.
The Sixaxis controller has also been exposed to Linux and Windows, but no driver seems to have been successfully created yet that exposes its accelerometer functionality, except for Motioninjoy. However other drivers have successfully used it as a controller for gaming and other applications.
In May 2008, a vulnerability was found in the PlayStation 3 allowing users to install a partial debug firmware on a regular console. However, the debug functionality is disabled, so neither homebrew applications nor backup games can be run yet.
Another exploit was found on August 14, 2008, allowing users to boot some backup games from the PlayStation 3's HDD, although the exact instructions on how to do this were not released at that time. However, a different person posted instructions 10 days later, which explained the exploit.
On January 6, 2009 a hacking ring known as the "Sh4d0ws" leaked the jig files needed to launch the PlayStation 3 into service mode. Although the PlayStation 3 can be triggered into service mode, it is not yet of any use because the files needed to make changes to the console have not been leaked.
On August 31, 2010, PSGroove, an exploit for the PS3 through the USB port, was released and made open source. This exploit works on all of the PS3 models released up until then. A guide for the creation of the PSGroove is available through several online sources.
George Hotz, better known under his nickname "geohot", has recently appeared on Attack of the Show because he released the PlayStation 3's encryption keys, therefore any Homebrew or custom firmware can be signed. Once signed, homebrew can be natively run. It would be difficult for Sony to fix this because it would most likely require a voluntary recall and the most expensive parts would have to be replaced. In 2011, Sony, with help from law firm Kilpatrick Stockton, sued Hotz and associates of the group fail0verflow for their jailbreaking activities. Charges included violating the DMCA, CFAA, Copyright law, and California's CCDAFA, and for Breach of Contract (related to the PlayStation Network User Agreement), Tortious interference, Misappropriation, and Trespass.
Wii
In advance of the Wii's release, WiiCade was the first site to host Adobe Flash homebrew games specifically designed for the Wii and its remote, which could be played without any exploits using the Wii's Opera web browser. The Wii was hacked via a custom serial interface in December 2007. The goal of most Wii exploits is to install the Homebrew Channel, a custom channel that lets users run homebrew software on the console. The Homebrew Channel's first full release was in December 2008. Though Nintendo successfully patched various older exploits to install The Homebrew Channel, many exploits to run the channel on current firmware exist. This channel can be installed using exploits in games such as the NTSC version of Super Smash Bros. Brawl, an exploit on the Internet Channel, a DNS exploit with the EULA, or it can be installed via an exploit in the Wii's messaging system. Note that only exploits that use disc games are compatible with installing The Homebrew Channel on the vWii (virtual Wii) mode on a Wii U, with the exception of "wuphax", an exploit that installs the channel via Wii U specific system permission exploits. The Wii Opera software development kit let developers make their own games in JavaScript. The console's controller was also a popular target for modification. On August 9, 2010, Team Twiizers released an exploit called LetterBomb which uses a malformed mail letter (Buffer overflow) to load a boot.elf file into memory, which then installs The Homebrew Channel to run unsigned code.
In recent years, other methods exploiting the Internet Channel (Flashhax), the Wii's EULA (str2hax), and the Wii Message Board (letterbomb) have been released. In 2019, an exploit using Bluetooth called bluebomb was released. Bluebomb meant that the Wii Mini was hackable for the first time, as it was previously not possible due to the Wii Mini's Internet and Wii messaging capabilities, and SD slot removed.
Eighth generation consoles
3DS
The first public homebrew exploit for the Nintendo 3DS, ninjhax, allowed the user to scan a QR Code to exploit the game Cubic Ninja. Other ways to run The Homebrew Launcher have been discovered since then, including freakyhax, an exploit in the Deluxe edition of Freakyforms: Your Creations, Alive!, Doodlebomb, an exploit in the 1.1.1 and older versions of Swapdoodle, and smashbroshax, a New 3DS exclusive exploit for the 3DS version of Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U.
The majority of system updates that have "Further improvements to overall system stability and other minor adjustments have been made to enhance the user experience" in their changelog are simply to patch Homebrew Launcher (userland) exploits that require a specific version of a game or application are often patched in these updates by adding those exploited application versions to the "IsTitleAllowed" blacklist, which prevents outdated applications on the list from launching, forcing users to update those applications to the latest version to launch the application. For example, notehax only works on outdated versions of Flipnote Studio 3D. In the 11.6.0-39 system update, all regions of Flipnote Studio version <=1.0.1 in USA, <=1.2.0 in EUR, and <=1.3.1 in JPN were blocked from launching the application, patching the exploit on current firmware.
Unsigned software can be launched from the SD card without having to install custom firmware on the device by using an exploit to run The Homebrew Launcher. The Homebrew Launcher itself can be launched on system versions 9.0-11.13 on any 3DS system. However, without installing custom firmware, the user will need to run the exploit each time they want to access The Homebrew Launcher.
To directly install custom software onto the 3DS home menu, a custom firmware is needed. There are several custom firmware releases available, the most popular being Luma3DS. Requirements to install custom firmware involve using various exploits to run a boot ROM exploit called boot9strap, which executes custom code before boot ROM lockout. As of December 2020, the latest exploit uses an oversight in DSiWare, which can run the custom code from the DSiWare menu in the 3DS settings to install the 3DS hacks.
PlayStation Vita
In 2016, an exploit for the PlayStation Vita was released named "HENkaku". This exploit used a bug found on the 3.60 system firmware, allowing users to run unsigned software. It was installed by visiting a website and clicking on the install button on the PlayStation Vita web browser. This had to be done every time the user turned the system on. In the 3.61 system update, Sony patched the bug to make it impossible to run unsigned code on the Vita. However, in 2018, computer science student TheFloW (Andy Nguyen) found a kernel bug in firmware versions 3.65, 3.67, and 3.68 that allowed unsigned code to be run. Eventually, he developed an exploit called "h-encore" which allowed one to install the HENkaku hack on later PS Vita versions. The kernel bug was patched in firmware version 3.69, but the userland bug still works. Because HENkaku needs to be reinstalled everytime the device is turned on again, an optional flasher program named ensō can be used alongside HENkaku to flash it into the system, making the plugin stay permanently even after shutdown and reboot, until uninstalled through the ensō installer.
On February 13, 2019, TheFloW released a downgrader tool that can downgrade any Vita console to an older firmware down to its factory firmware.
Wii U
The Wii U currently has homebrew execution in both the PowerPC kernel and the ARM9 kernel (nicknamed IOSU by the community). The most common way to execute code on the Wii U for 5.5.5 and below is through vulnerabilities in the Wii U's built in web browser. There are many different userland and PowerPC kernel exploits in the Wii U internet browser. The earliest userland exploits used C code (on versions 2.0.0-5.3.2) and libstagefright bugs (on versions 5.4.0-5.5.1) to load custom code in the browser, with memory and permission limitations. The first kernel exploit found in the browser, called osdriver, only works on system versions 5.3.2 and lower, but this is no longer used as the 5.5.1 and lower exploit is more reliable. Currently, two different browser kernel exploits are used in the community. The first exploit found works on 5.5.1 and below and is very reliable. The other kernel exploit works on 5.5.2 and below, but due to its unreliability, it is only used on 5.5.2 to install a Wii U software exploit called Haxchi. Haxchi exploits the fact that DS Virtual Console game data is only checked when the game is installed. When installed to a DS VC game, Haxchi launches homebrew directly (such as the Wii U Homebrew Launcher) using an exploit installed in the game's file location. There is also an additional, optional, part of Haxchi called "Coldboot Haxchi" or CBHC. CBHC allows custom firmware to be enabled automatically each time the system is turned on by running the Virtual Console game directly on boot, whereas other exploits have to be run every time manually. However, CBHC has an increased risk of rendering the system inoperable as deleting the Virtual Console game, among other things, will brick the console.
Many homebrew applications that run via the Homebrew Launcher have been collected and hosted on wiiubru.com, which has a layout similar to that of the Wii U's own menu. These hosted applications can be downloaded directly on the Wii U using The Homebrew App Store app in the repository. Some of these applications utilize an IOSU exploit that was released by the WiiUbru team, which allows full access to any Wii U console. This IOSU exploit is often used to launch a console into a patched mode called CFW (custom firmware) sysNAND. In this patched mode, the system is able to launch any title, including unofficial titles and titles without valid signatures and virtual Wii games or injections that are shortcuts to vWii (Wii Mode) games or homebrew applications. All of the current CFWs allow editing of files stored on the Wii U via an internet connection and an FTP application as well.
The Wii U's built-in emulated Wii environment (often nicknamed vWii or Wii Mode) is capable of running Wii homebrew, such as The Homebrew Channel. However, vWii is much more fragile than a real Wii console and has a higher chance of being rendered inoperable if dangerous software is used. Also, due to changes made to the Wii operating system in vWii mode, previous exploits that utilized the Wii Menu itself to load the HackMii Installer, such as Letterbomb, do not work on vWii. However, exploits that launch the HackMii Installer via a game still work on vWii. The only way to hack vWii without one of the exploit games is by using an application called wuphax. Wuphax uses the public Wii U IOSU exploit to temporarily inject the HackMii installer into the Mii Channel so that The Homebrew Channel can be installed without an exploit game.
Switch
The Nintendo Switch got its first exploit with PegaSwitch on March 14, 2017; just 11 days after the console's release. It was developed by a team called ReSwitched, and it can be run through the browser included when connecting to a Wi-Fi network with a login page. Luca Todesco used the same exploit to jailbreak iOS 9 devices in 2016. It did not allow true homebrew to run on the system at the time, but it let developers look for other security bugs in the system. On October 1, 2017, ReSwitched announced many new exploits and tools allowing developers to start working on homebrew programs for the system even before they could be launched. At the 34c3 event, hackers Plutoo, Derrek, and Naehrwert announced a kernel exploit for the system (which they said would not be released) and said that a homebrew launcher was coming soon. On January 7, 2018, fail0verflow posted a video to Twitter showing a simple side-scrolling text program before booting the system, which shows that there is a way to run code before boot, opening up possibilities for new programs focused on development. A homebrew launcher application has been released as well, and a custom firmware called Atmosphere, has also been released. Access to a Japanese copy of Puyo Puyo Tetris is initially required to install a Fake News exploit to launch the CFW on 1.0.0. For later system versions, the ability to install depends on the age of the console, as new consoles first appearing in June 2018 and shipping with system version 4.1.0 have their boot ROMs patched against the TrustZone (full control) exploit that allows CFW to be installed. As long as the system does not have the patches (which can only be installed at the factory during console assembly), the exploit can be used to install CFW.
On March 29, 2018, SciresM, a respected developer in the homebrew community, announced that custom firmware called "Atmosphere" would be released for all available firmware versions at the time. Firmware above 1.0.0 are hackable via a cold boot exploit known as Fusée Gelée developed by the Reswitched team. This exploit takes advantage of a bug in the boot ROM on the Tegra X1 chip used by the Nintendo Switch. The exploit was also independently discovered by Fail0verflow under the name ShofEL2. Firmware version 1.0.0 will be hackable via a Trustzone exploit known as Jamais Vu. Atmosphere released its first public build in October 2018, which supports all system versions.
Xbox One
The Xbox One has a Dev Mode which, though intended to be used for retail game development, can be used to run unsigned homebrew software. It can be enabled on any retail Xbox One console. Dev Mode disables retail games and software while enabled. Homebrew software can be developed as Universal Windows Platform applications, allowing many programs designed to run on desktop editions of Windows 10 to run on the console including console emulators. In order to activate developer mode, one has first register for an app developer account, which has a fee of $19.
See also
Fangame
Mod (video gaming)
ROM hacking
Jailbreaking
Modchips
References
External links
Retro Video Gamer - publisher of Homebrew Heroes book
SSEGA Sega Genesis Homebrew section
gbadev.org
Skeetendo
VGB
Custom firmware
Video game development
Dedicated consoles
|
38203381
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%20QuickTake
|
Apple QuickTake
|
The Apple QuickTake (codenamed Venus, Mars, Neptune) is one of the first consumer digital camera lines. It was launched in 1994 by Apple Computer and was marketed for three years before being discontinued in 1997. Three models of the product were built including the 100 and 150, both built by Kodak; and the 200, built by Fujifilm. The QuickTake cameras had a resolution of 640 x 480 pixels maximum (0.3 Mpx).
Time magazine profiled QuickTake as "the first consumer digital camera" and ranked it among its "100 greatest and most influential gadgets from 1923 to the present" list. Although the greyscale Dycam Model 1 (also marketed as the Logitech FotoMan) was the first consumer digital camera to be sold in the US (starting in November 1990) and at least one other camera, the Fuji DS-X, was sold in Japan even earlier, in late 1989, the QuickTake was probably the first digicam to have wide consumer acceptance.
History
Kodak had been developing CCD-based digital cameras since the mid-1970s, when Steve Sasson built a toaster-sized experimental model that recorded data to a cassette tape; the first digital photograph was captured at a resolution of 100 pixels square in December 1975. However, the first electronic still cameras to be marketed were shown early as 1981, when Sony demonstrated the prototype Pro Mavica. These early filmless cameras recorded still video frames instead of creating digital files; the Pro Mavica recorded its still frames on a proprietary floppy disk. By the late 1980s, the technologies were beginning to converge and mature; Fuji showed the DS-1P, a still video camera that stored its images in solid-state memory instead of a floppy, at Photokina 1988 and developed the technologies into the Fuji DS-X, which was first sold in 1989. Kodak introduced a prototype of its DCS 100, a digital SLR based on the Nikon F3 in 1986 and began commercial sales to news photographers in 1991; the DCS 100 used a CCD sensor and stored its images on a tethered hard drive.
The Dycam Model 1 was launched in 1991, capturing greyscale images into internal memory; CNN noted the Dycam's possibilities in a 1992 segment, touting its advantages over conventional film-based cameras. In 1992, Apple Computer started marketing plans for a digital camera codenamed Venus. At the time over $12 billion was spent annually in the United States on photography. Apple searched for a company to design and manufacture their QuickTake digital camera line. During this time, Apple entered into a set of non-disclosure agreements with Kodak to share its proprietary digital camera architecture and cooperate in its further development; Kodak contributed the CCD sensor to the final design. Later, Chinon Industries was added as the manufacturing/assembly partner, also responsible for the design of the optics and basic electronics. By October 1993, rumors of Venus and its capabilities had publicly tied Kodak, Apple, and Chinon together; the cost was anticipated to be relatively low compared to existing digital cameras.
QuickTake 100
The QuickTake 100 was first shown at Tokyo MacWorld on February 17, 1994, exhibited for the first time in America at the Photo Marketing Association trade show, and released for sale on June 20 of that year. The initial list price was . It was one of the first digital cameras marketed to consumers, emphasizing ease of use. It received a Product Design Award in 1995, and early reviews were enthusiastic about the industrial design and ease of use. Two separate models (for Macintosh or Windows) were sold; the bundled software and serial cable were specific to the host computer's operating system, but the camera hardware itself was identical. The Windows version of the QuickTake 100 was released by December 1994. The CCD sensor was claimed to be derived from the sensor fitted to the Kodak DCS 100.
The camera had a built-in flash, but no focus or zoom controls, as the fixed-focal length lens had an equivalent angle of view as a standard 50mm lens for a 35mm film camera; the fixed-focus lens captured a range from to infinity; autoexposure was set by the camera, which controlled both shutter speeds (ranging from to ) and aperture (from 2.8 to 16) using a film speed equivalent to ISO 85. The flash has a maximum range of .
The QuickTake 100 was capable of storing eight photos at 640×480 resolution, 32 photos at 320×240 resolution, or a mixture of both sizes. All photos were stored at 24-bit color. There was no way to preview them on the camera, nor was there any way to delete individual photos from the camera (though there was a recessed 'trash' button which would delete the entire contents of the camera). The bundled Apple QuickTake software was used to retrieve photographs from the camera's internal memory, providing basic editing tools (rotating, resizing, and cropping) and allowing the user to select a file format and color bit depth for export.
QuickTake 150
Apple improved the file compression technology and released the QuickTake 150 in April 1995, replacing the 100. The 150 uses the same hardware as the 100, and the improved compression enabled the QuickTake 150 to capture 16 best-quality or 32 standard-quality images, with either quality level now stored at the full resolution of 640×480 in the 1MB of built-in storage. Apple offered a factory upgrade to the QuickTake 100 changing the name to the QuickTake 100 Plus, which included all the functionality of the QuickTake 150.
At the same time, Kodak introduced its DC40, which used a similar design and hardware as the QuickTake 150, but captured images at an increased resolution to a larger internal storage. The QuickTake 150 sensor was the same as used in the DC40, but masked to a lower resolution; the DC40 used the entire sensor instead.
The QuickTake 150 kit also included PhotoFlash software (for Macintosh) or PhotoNow! (for Windows) and a separate close-up lens that changed the focus range to and diffused the flash appropriately. Apple also offered several different accessories for the QuickTake 150, including a travel case, AC adapter, battery booster pack (using 8×AA batteries), and a connection kit for Microsoft Windows.
QuickTake 200
The last QuickTake model was the Fujifilm-built QuickTake 200, released in 1996. The QuickTake 200 was a still video camera which captured images at 640×480 resolution. It was bundled with a 2MB SmartMedia flashRAM card (SSFDC), and an Apple-branded 4MB card was available as a separate accessory purchase; using the 2MB card, up to 20 (high-quality) or 40 (standard-quality) images could be captured.
Compared to the prior Kodak/Chinon-based models, the most noticeable change for the QuickTake 200 was an color LCD screen on the rear panel to preview stored photographs. The screen updated with a refresh rate of 30 Hz. In addition, the 200 added focus and aperture controls; apertures were now user-selectable, and although the lens was still a fixed-focus lens, three separate focus modes could be selected: close-up, ; portrait, ; and standard, to infinity.
Discontinuation and legacy
Although the QuickTake models sold well in the education and small business markets, other companies such as Kodak, Fujifilm, Canon, and Nikon shortly thereafter entered the digital market with brands that consumers associated with photography. The QuickTake line was discontinued in 1997 shortly after Steve Jobs came back to Apple. In an attempt to streamline Apple's operations, Jobs discontinued many non-computer products, including the Newton line of products, the LaserWriter printer line, and the QuickTake cameras. The Apple QuickTake camera has since become a collector's item for Apple enthusiasts.
The QuickTake name was later reused by Apple in iPhones released since 2018 as a feature in its camera app that allows videos to be recorded without switching out of still camera mode.
Specifications
Using QuickTake
The QuickTake 200 can be used with card-readers that can read 5V media cards. For users with an Apple Macintosh running System 7 up to Mac OS 9 with a serial port, the QuickTake 200 can be plugged directly into the computer using the Apple QuickTake camera software. The QuickTake 100 and 150 store images internally, not on cards, so they must be used with an Apple serial cable and the QuickTake driver software.
The 200 model is only officially compatible with the Apple Macintosh for direct connections, while the 100 and 150 model are compatible with both the Apple Macintosh and Microsoft Windows. Because the QuickTake 200 is almost identical to the Fuji DS-7 or to Samsung's Kenox SSC-350N, Fuji's software for that camera can be used to gain Windows compatibility for the QuickTake 200. Some other software replacements also exist as well as using an external reader for the removable media of the QuickTake 200.
QuickTake cameras cannot be directly connected to Macintoshes running Mac OS X as these machines do not support the old Apple Serial protocol, but image files in the QTK format can still be decoded on modern operating systems using the open source program dcraw or the OS X application GraphicConverter.
References
External links
Information about the QuickTake 100 and 360° shot
Apple Japanese QuickTake 150 Datasheet
WWW Publishing: Graphics - Quicktake 150
QuickTake camera manuals
Apple's Forgotten QuickTake Cameras
Apple Inc. hardware
Digital cameras
Products introduced in 1994
Apple Inc. peripherals
|
38203832
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web%20beacon
|
Web beacon
|
A web beacon is a technique used on web pages and email to unobtrusively (usually invisibly) allow checking that a user has accessed some content. Web beacons are typically used by third parties to monitor the activity of users at a website for the purpose of web analytics or page tagging. They can also be used for email tracking. When implemented using JavaScript, they may be called JavaScript tags.
Using such beacons, companies and organizations can track the online behaviour of web users. At first, the companies doing such tracking were mainly advertisers or web analytics companies; later social media sites also started to use such tracking techniques, for instance through the use of buttons that act as tracking beacons.
There is work in progress to standardize an interface that web developers can use to create web beacons.
Overview
A web beacon is any of several techniques used to track who is visiting a web page. They can also be used to see if an email was read or forwarded or if a web page was copied to another website.
The first web beacons were small digital image files that were embedded in a web page or email. The image could be as small as a single pixel (a "tracking pixel") and could have the same colour as the background, or be completely transparent. When a user opens the page or email where such an image is embedded, they might not see the image, but their web browser or email reader automatically downloads the image, requiring the user's computer to send a request to the host company's server, where the source image is stored. This request provides identifying information about the computer, allowing the host to keep track of the user.
This basic technique has been developed further so that many types of elements can be used as beacons. Currently, these can include visible elements such as graphics, banners, or buttons, but also non-pictorial HTML elements such as the frame, style, script, input link, embed, object, etc., of an email or web page.
The identifying information provided by the user's computer typically includes its IP address, the time the request was made, the type of web browser or email reader that made the request, and the existence of cookies previously sent by the host server. The host server can store all of this information, and associate it with a session identifier or tracking token that uniquely marks the interaction.
Framing
The use of framing added a new level of versatility to web beacons. Framing allows web pages to refer to content such as images or buttons or HTML elements that are located on other servers, rather than hosting this content directly on their own server. When a user sees the email or the web page, the user's email reader or web browser prepares the referred content for display. To do so it has to send a request to the third-party server to ask it to send the referred content. As part of that request, the user's computer then has to supply identifying information to the third-party server.
This protocol allows companies to embed beacons in content that they do not directly own or operate, and then use such beacons for tracking purposes. The beacons are embedded in an email or web page as images or buttons or other HTML elements, but they are hosted on a different server from the website where they are embedded, and it is to this third-party server that requests and identifying information are sent.
In this scenario, an advertisement for the fictitious company XYZ Widgets which is displayed as an image on a web page would not have its image file residing on the page's host server, but rather, on a server belonging to XYZ Widgets. When a user opens the page, the user's computer will send a request to download the advertisement from the page's host server, but will then be referred to XYZ Widgets' server, to which it will request to download the image. This request will require the user's computer to supply identifying information about itself to XYZ Widgets, not the host server.
This means a third-party site can gather information about visitors to the main sites, such as a news site or a social media site, even if users are not clicking on the third party's ads or other content. Since beacons are not just embedded in visible content, and can be embedded in completely invisible elements, a third party can gather information even if the user is completely unaware of the third party's existence.
Use by companies
Once a company can identify a particular user, the company can then track that user's behavior across multiple interactions with different websites or web servers. As an example, consider a company that owns a network of websites. This company could store all of its images on one particular server, but store the other contents of its web pages on a variety of other servers. For instance, each server could be specific to a given website, and could even be located in a different city. But the company could use web beacons requesting data from its one image server to count and recognize individual users who visit different websites. Rather than gathering statistics and managing cookies for each server independently, the company can analyze all this data together, and track the behavior of individual users across all the different websites, assembling a profile of each user as they navigate through these different environments.
Email-tracking
Web beacons embedded in emails have greater privacy implications than beacons embedded in web pages. Through the use of an embedded beacon, the sender of an email - or even a third party - can record the same sort of information as an advertiser on a website, namely the time that the email was read, the IP address of the computer that was used to read the email (or the IP address of the proxy server that the reader went through), the type of software used to read the email, and the existence of any cookies previously sent. In this way, the sender - or a third party - can gather detailed information about when and where each particular recipient reads their email. Every subsequent time the email message is displayed, the same information can also be sent again to the sender or third party.
"Return-Receipt-To" (RRT) email headers can also trigger sending of information and these may be seen as another form of a web beacon.
Web beacons are used by email marketers, spammers, and phishers to verify that an email is read. Using this system, they can send similar emails to a large number of addresses and then check which ones are valid. Valid in this case means that the address is actually in use, that the email has made it past spam filters, and that the content of the email is actually viewed.
To some extent, this kind of email tracking can be prevented by configuring the email reader software to avoid accessing remote images. Examples of email software able to do this include Gmail, Yahoo!, Hushmail, and SpamCop/Horde webmail clients; Mozilla Thunderbird, Claws Mail, Opera, Pegasus Mail, IncrediMail, Apple Mail, later versions of Microsoft Outlook, and KMail mail readers.
However, since beacons can be embedded in email as non-pictorial elements, the email need not contain an image or advertisement, or anything else related to the identity of the monitoring party. This makes the detection of such emails difficult.
One way to neutralize such email tracking is to disconnect from the Internet after downloading email but before reading the downloaded messages. (Note that this assumes one is using an email reader that resides on one's own computer and downloads the emails from the email server to one's own computer.) In that case, messages containing beacons will not be able to trigger requests to the beacons' host servers, and the tracking will be prevented. But one would then have to delete any messages suspected of containing beacons or risk having the beacons activate again once the computer is reconnected to the Internet.
The only way to completely avoid email tracking by beacons is to use a text-based email reader (such as Pine or Mutt), or a graphical email reader with purely text-based HTML capabilities (such as Mulberry). These email readers do not interpret HTML or display images, so their users are not subject to tracking by email web beacons. Plain-text email messages cannot contain web beacons because their contents are interpreted as display characters instead of embedded HTML code, so opening such messages does not initiate any communication.
Some email readers offer the option to disable all HTML in every message (thus rendering all messages as plain text), and this too will prevent tracking beacons from working.
More recently, many email readers and web-based email services have moved towards not loading images when opening a hypertext email that comes from an unknown sender, or that is suspected to be a spam email. The user must explicitly choose to load images. But of course, beacons can be embedded in non-pictorial elements of a hypertext email.
Web beacons can also be filtered out at the server level so that they never reach the end-user. MailScanner is an example of gateway software that can neutralize email tracking beacons for all users of a particular server.
Beacon API
The Beacon API (Application programming interface) is a candidate recommendation of the World Wide Web Consortium, the standards organization for the web. It is a standardized set of protocols designed to allow web developers to track the activity of users without slowing down website response times. It does this by sending tracking information back to the beacon's host server after the user has navigated away from the webpage.
Use of the Beacon API allows tracking without interfering with or delaying navigation away from the site, and is invisible to the end-user. Support for the Beacon API was introduced into Mozilla's Firefox browser in February 2014 and in Google's Chrome browser in November 2014.
See also
Do Not Track
Email fraud
Facebook Beacon
Internet privacy
Local shared object
Quantcast
Spy pixel
Surveillance capitalism
Web analytics
Web storage
Web visitor tracking
Notes
References
External links
The Web Bug FAQ from EFF
"Did they read it?" from the Linux Weekly News
Trojan Marketing
Slashdot on Web Bugs—Slashdot.org forum thread on blocking web bugs
Email
Internet privacy
Spamming
Web analytics
|
28250
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorcerer%20%28Linux%20distribution%29
|
Sorcerer (Linux distribution)
|
Sorcerer was a source-based Linux distribution. The distribution downloads and compiles source code to install and update installed software.
Instead of using abbreviations such as rpm (Red Hat) and dpkg (Debian), Sorcerer's tool terminology is based upon magic words. For example, a recipe for downloading, compiling, and installing software is called a "spell". Software to install is "cast" onto the computer. Installed software can be removed by "dispelling". Consequently, the command line tools for casting and dispelling software are called cast and dispel, respectively.
History
In 2000, Kyle Sallee created a source-based Linux distribution called Sorcerer GNU/Linux and released it under the GNU GPL. During this time Sorcerer was a technology demonstration rather than a stable distribution. Eventually the distribution tools, called sorcery, and the software catalog, called grimoire, were redesigned and rewritten to be stable and usable on production machines. Due to the effort involved in single-handedly creating and maintaining a distribution Sallee ceased "Sorcerer GNU/Linux" during the redesign and rewrite of sorcery and grimoire. A month or two before the rewrite happened, in early 2002, Chuck S. Mead, who had previously created a fork of RedHat, created a fork of Sorcerer GNU/Linux. The first fork of Sorcerer GNU/Linux was called by the same name as Mead's fork of RedHat. It was called either "Lunar Penguin" or Lunar Linux. This fork's timing was fortunate for system administrators, because it granted them an opportunity to continue deployment of the distribution that Sallee was about to discontinue.
The earliest versions of Sorcerer were named Sorcerer GNU/Linux, with key components licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL). However, from around 2002 and forward current versions of Sorcerer release some key components under the Sorcerer Public License and not the GPL, and the distribution has dropped the term GNU/Linux. Sorcerer has two ancient forks: Lunar Linux and Source Mage which are not based on nor compatible with the current sorcery code nor compatible with current grimoire. Their terminology also deviates from Sorcerer terminology.
Technical distinctions
Sorcerer is based almost exclusively on source code. While many other operating systems generally make use of a package that contains pre-compiled (executable) programs, Sorcerer compiles source code on the machine prior to installation.
A new "grimoire", which is a catalog of software supported for immediate installation, is made available daily. When new sources are available, the spells in the grimoire are updated. A user's desktop is updated by first installing a current grimoire. If necessary, the installed Sorcery is updated. Finally, installed software can be updated according to the user's decision. Users can also add new spells to the grimoire on their local machine and submit the new spell for inclusion in the general distribution.
Sorcery automatically recompiles installed software as necessary to ensure continued compatibility and usability when installed libraries are updated. Unlike a pre-compiled binary-based distribution that must always download new packages, Sorcery most often recompiles installed software from previously downloaded sources. When a new source is required and an older source was previously downloaded, then Sorcerer will download a tiny patch that transforms the old source tarball into a current source tarball. The practice of keeping old source tarballs and downloading patches for updates allows Sorcerer systems to be updated using less bandwidth than distributions that provide pre-compiled packages.
The minimum system requirements are given as 1 GB of RAM and 20 GB of hard disk space. This is suggested because compiling some sources will consume large amounts of resources. Sorcerer has recently started using cgroups to limit the impact of software compilation on the system performance. Therefore, Sorcerer installations are normally updated while still in multi-user mode while causing no interruption to services or downtime.
See also
Other source-based Linux distributions:
CRUX
Gentoo Linux
GoboLinux
Linux From Scratch
Lunar Linux
Source Mage
External links
Source-based Linux distributions
X86-64 Linux distributions
Linux distributions
|
2503798
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uddhav%20Thackeray
|
Uddhav Thackeray
|
Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray (Marathi pronunciation: [ud̪ʱːəʋ ʈʰaːkɾeː], born 27 July 1960) is an Indian politician who is the 19th and current Chief Minister of Maharashtra. He is also the president of Shiv Sena.
Early life
Uddhav Thackeray was born on 27 July 1960 as the youngest of politician Bal Thackeray and his wife Meena Thackeray's three sons. He did his schooling from Balmohan Vidyamandir and graduated from Sir J.J. Institute of Applied Art with photography as his main subject.
Political career
In 2002, Thackeray started his political career as campaign incharge of Shiv Sena in the Brihan Mumbai Municipal Corporation elections where the party performed well. In 2003, he was appointed as working president of Shiv Sena. Uddhav took over as chief editor of party mouthpiece Saamana (a daily Marathi-language newspaper published by Shiv Sena) in 2006 and resigned in 2019 before becoming chief minister of Maharashtra.
A split in Shiv Sena happened when his cousin Raj Thackeray left the party in 2006 to form his own party named Maharashtra Navnirman Sena. After the death of his father Bal Thackeray in 2012, he led the party and was elected as Shiv Sena president in 2013, and under his leadership Shiv Sena joined the NDA government in Maharashtra in 2014.
In 2019, Shiv Sena broke away with NDA and joined UPA. It formed a sub alliance called Maha Vikas Aghadi to form the government in Maharashtra with Uddhav Thackeray leading the ministry.
In 2022, during a party meeting, Uddhav Thackeray explained his move to pull out of NDA to join UPA. "We supported the BJP wholeheartedly to enable them to fulfill their national ambitions. The understanding was they will go national while we will lead in Maharashtra. But we were betrayed and attempts were made to destroy us in our home. So we had to hit back". Thackeray accused BJP of dumping its allies according to its political convenience. He said, "BJP doesn't mean Hindutva. I stand by my comment that Shiv Sena had wasted 25 years in alliance with BJP"
Chief Minister of Maharashtra
Though Thackeray never took any constitutional post in his political career initially, however after a brief political crisis, on 28 November 2019 he took the oath as 19th Chief minister of Maharashtra after being elected as the president of the newly formed post-poll coalition Maha Vikas Aghadi.
In a 2021 Prashnam Survey, Thackeray was ranked the most popular Chief Minister in India out of 13 states, with nearly half of all voters surveyed said that they will vote for him again.
Personal life
Thackeray has taken a keen interest in photography and has exhibited his collection of aerial shots of various forts of Maharashtra at the Jehangir Art Gallery in 2004. He has also published photo-books Maharashtra Desh (2010) and Pahava Vitthal (2011), capturing various aspects of Maharashtra and the warkaris during Pandharpur Wari respectively in the two books. On 16 July 2012, Uddhav Thackeray was admitted to Lilavati Hospital after he reported chest pain. He underwent an angioplasty and all the three blockages in his arteries were successfully removed.
Family
Thackeray is married to Rashmi Thackeray and has two sons, Aditya and Tejas.
Rashmi Thackeray (née Patankar) is the editor of Saamana and Marmik. She is the daughter of Madhav Patankar who runs his family business and comes from a middle-class family and also a RSS member. She lived in suburban Dombivli and did her Bachelor of Commerce degree from V G Vaze College in Mulund. She joined the Life Insurance Corporation of India as a contract employee in 1987. She became the friend of Raj Thackeray 's sister Jaywanti and through her came into contact with Uddhav Thackeray. Later they got married in 1989.
The elder son Aditya Thackeray is the president of the Yuva Sena. He is serving as Cabinet Minister of Tourism and Environment Government of Maharashtra.
The younger son Tejas Thackeray is an Indian conservationist and wildlife researcher.
See also
Uddhav Thackeray ministry
Political families of India
Political families of Maharashtra
Notes
References
External links
Maharashtra Chief Minister's profile
1960 births
Living people
Chief Ministers of Maharashtra
Marathi politicians
Maharashtra politicians
Shiv Sena politicians
Indian Hindus
Marathi people
Politicians from Mumbai
Bal Thackeray
Far-right politicians in India
Thackeray family (Maharashtra)
|
2268786
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc%20Stiegler
|
Marc Stiegler
|
Marc Stiegler (born 1 August 1954) is an American science fiction author and software developer. He co-authored Valentina: Soul in Sapphire (1984) with Joseph H. Delaney. The computer program, Valentina, was one of science fiction's earliest examples of sentient computer software, completely unlike mainframe AIs such as HAL and Colossus.
Stiegler also wrote the short story "The Gentle Seduction", based on Vernor Vinge's ideas about a technological "singularity," the exponential growth of future technology that will drastically affect the human condition. The story's characters are augmented with molecular nanotechnology. The 'seducer' is the technology itself, and perhaps the programmers of the technology. He realized the majority of mankind is more willing to swallow a pill that fixes one's back (this happens in the story) than take a pill that installs a computer in one's forehead (also from the story). He also realized that many humans do not have the mental fortitude to survive the Technological singularity. The heroine of "The Gentle Seduction" is a normal woman whose very elemental connection with her own identity is key in soothing humanity's jarring experience of finally meeting an alien mind.
His novel Earthweb takes place in a future where computers have been secured from attack, the Web has evolved to largely supplant government as the underpinning fabric of human civilization, and idea futures are used to make decisions about important future events.
Stiegler's software development career partly parallels his science fiction. His non-fiction work, "Hypermedia and the Singularity" predates the development of the Web and predicts that hypertext will play a key role in accelerating the evolution of knowledge. Shortly after writing this article, he took over management, of Project Xanadu, the hypertext system envisioned by Ted Nelson. Later software development efforts included the development of DecideRight (1995) which won the Software Publishing Association's CODIE Award for Best Numeric or Data Software Program. In the late 1990s his attention turned to computer security. Later he developed CapDesk, a capability-based desktop resistant to cyberattack, and invented the principles underlying Polaris, an overlay for the Windows operating system that secures the system against several important kinds of computer viruses and trojan horses. He gave talks on object capability security at the RSA Conference in 2012 and 2013. While at HP Labs, his research included approaches to security in planetary scale computing.
Bibliography
Books
Valentina: Soul in Sapphire (1984) (with Joseph H. Delaney)
Programming Languages: Featuring the IBM PC and Compatibles (1985) (with Bob Hanson)
David's Sling (1987)
Earthweb (1998)
The Braintrust Series
The Braintrust: A Harmony of Enemies (2017)
Crescendo of Fire (2018)
Rhapsody For the Tempest (2018)
Ode To Defiance (2019)
Braintrust: Requiem (2020)
Collection
The Gentle Seduction (1990)
"Masters of the Mortal God" (1990)
"Too Loving a Touch" (1982)
"Petals of Rose" (1981)
"The Bully and the Crazy Boy" (1980)
"Evolution of Entropic Error in Closed Conservative Systems" (1982) non-fiction article
"A Simple Case of Suicide" (1983)
"The Gentle Seduction" (1989)
"Hypermedia and the Singularity" (1989) non-fiction article
Anthologies containing stories by Marc Stiegler
Nanodreams (1995)
Short works
The following three stories comprise the novel Valentina: Soul in Sapphire:
"Valentina" (1984) (with Joseph H Delaney) Hugo nominee
"The Crystal Ball" (1984) (with Joseph H Delaney)
"The Light in the Looking Glass" (1984) (with Joseph H Delaney)
Awards
Hugo Award for Best Novella finalist (1985): "Valentina"
Prometheus Award Best Novel finalist (1988): David's Sling
Prometheus Award Best Novel finalist (1999): Earthweb
Prometheus Award Best Novel finalist (2018): The Braintrust
Prometheus Award Best Novel finalist (2019): Crescendo of Fire and Rhapsody for the Tempest,
Prometheus Award Best Novel finalist (2020): Ode to Defiance
Prometheus Award Best Novel finalist (2021): Braintrust: Requiem
References
External links
Marc Stiegler's website, with a selection of his fiction and non-fiction writings.
Marc Stiegler bibliography at the Locus Index to Science Fiction
20th-century American novelists
American male novelists
American science fiction writers
Living people
Internet pioneers
1954 births
American male short story writers
20th-century American short story writers
20th-century American male writers
|
3361346
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnus%20Manske
|
Magnus Manske
|
Heinrich Magnus Manske (born 24 May 1974) is a senior staff scientist at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge, UK and a software developer of one of the first versions of the MediaWiki software, which powers Wikipedia.
Early life
Manske was born in Cologne, Germany. He studied biochemistry at the University of Cologne and graduated in 2006 with a PhD; his dissertation was an open source tool for molecular biology called GENtle.
Career
As a student, Manske was one of the first contributors to the Internet encyclopedia Nupedia, the precursor to Wikipedia, and later wrote one of the first versions of the MediaWiki software that Wikipedia runs on. Manske has worked in Cambridge with the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute since April 2007, but remains active in the development of tools for Wikipedia and its sister projects Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons.
In 2012, Manske was co-author of a paper published in Nature that demonstrated new ways to identify areas where malaria parasites are evolving, and described techniques for mapping malarial drug resistance. The researchers developed a technique to extract the malaria parasite DNA directly from the blood, which minimizes errors in sequencing.
Development of MediaWiki
As a student, Manske was one of the most active contributors to the Nupedia project, submitting content on biology topics and developing tools and extensions for Nupedia. Later, unhappy with the existing software's limitations, Manske developed one of the first versions of what later became MediaWiki. His new version of the software was installed in 2002.
The wiki software that was initially used for Wikipedia was called UseModWiki and was written in Perl. With issues of scale starting to present themselves as Wikipedia grew, in the summer of 2001, Manske started work on a replacement for UseModWiki that would be database-backed and would contain "wikipedia-specific features". On 25 January 2002, Manske released the first version of a MySQL-based PHP wiki engine, called Phase II. One innovation implemented by Manske in Phase II was the use of namespaces in order to separate different types of pages, such as the "Talk" or "User" namespace, which distinguished it from older wiki software which didn't have different namespaces. Phase II also introduced a number of other features which are still present, including file upload, watchlists, automatic signatures, and user contributions list. Manske's re-write also made it easier to integrate photographs in Wikipedia articles, and created a new user group: administrators, empowered to delete pages and block vandals.
Manske was an adherent of open source and specifically, the GPL license, and his work on the early versions of MediaWiki was released under the GPL license.
Manske's Phase II software encountered load issues as Wikipedia continued to grow, so Lee Daniel Crocker did another re-write, which led to phase III, which was used from June 2002 and from 2003 onwards was called "MediaWiki". The resultant MediaWiki software is now used as the core platform for both Wikipedia and many Wikimedia sister projects, as well as in many organizations and institutions.
Manske continued to develop extensions for MediaWiki and tools used to build Wikipedia and its sister projects, including tools to map category membership, compute category intersections, and import images from Flickr to Commons. Manske also developed the Cite extension which brought an XML-like syntax to citation management.
Recognition
Manske is recognized as the creator of the first article in the German Wikipedia, which was on the polymerase chain reaction, first written by him in 2001.
Jimmy Wales in 2002 named 25 January as Magnus Manske day in honor of his contributions to Wikipedia, proclaiming that "Tonight at dinner, every Wikipedian should say a toast to Magnus and his many inventions."
Larry Sanger, in his memoir on the early history of Wikipedia, highlighted the contributions of Manske to the project and attributes the eventual success of Wikipedia to a core group of actors, with Manske playing an important role:
Manske, along with others, was recognized as a major contributor to MediaWiki by the USENIX Advanced Computing Technical Association in 2010 when MediaWiki and the Wikimedia Foundation were honoured with a STUG award (Software Tools User Group).
See also
List of Wikipedia people
References
External links
MagnusManske.de
Wikimedia tools written by Manske on Toolforge (In Hay's directory)
1974 births
German bioinformaticians
Free software programmers
German biochemists
German computer programmers
Living people
Scientists from Cologne
University of Cologne alumni
Wikipedia people
German Wikimedians
German expatriates in the United Kingdom
|
589755
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retrocomputing
|
Retrocomputing
|
Retrocomputing is the use of older computer hardware and software in modern times. Retrocomputing is usually classed as a hobby and recreation rather than a practical application of technology; enthusiasts often collect rare and valuable hardware and software for sentimental reasons. However, some do make use of it.
Historical retrocomputing
A more serious line of retrocomputing is part of the history of computer hardware. It can be seen as the analogue of experimental archaeology in computing. Some notable examples include the reconstruction of Babbage's Difference engine (more than a century after its design) and the implementation of Plankalkül in 2000 (more than half a century since its inception).
"Homebrew" computers
Some retrocomputing enthusiasts also consider the "homebrewing" (designing and building of retro- and retro-styled computers or kits), to be an important aspect of the hobby, giving new enthusiasts an opportunity to experience more fully what the early years of hobby computing were like. There are several different approaches to this end. Some are exact replicas of older systems, and some are newer designs based on the principles of retrocomputing, while others combine the two, with old and new features in the same package. Examples include:
Device offered by IMSAI, a modern, updated, yet backward-compatible version and replica of the original IMSAI 8080, one of the most popular early personal systems;
Several Apple 1 replicas and kits have been sold in limited quantities in recent years, by different builders, such as the "Replica 1", from Briel Computers;
A currently ongoing project that uses old technology in a new design is the Z80-based N8VEM;
The Arduino Retro Computer kit is an open source, open hardware kit you can build and has a BASIC interpreter. There is also a version of the Arduino Retro Computer that can be hooked up to a TV;
There is at least one remake of the Commodore 64 using an FPGA configured to emulate the 6502;
MSX 2/2+ compatible do-it-yourself kit GR8BIT, designed for the hands-on education in electronics, deliberately employing old and new concepts and devices (high-capacity SRAMs, micro-controllers and FPGA);
The MEGA65 will be a Commodore 65 compatible computer;
The Commander X16 is an ongoing project that hopes to build a new 8-bit platform inspired by the Commodore 64, using off the shelf modern parts.
The C256 Foenix and its different versions is a new retro computer family based on the WDC65C816. FPGAs are used to simulate CBM custom chips and has the power of an Amiga with its graphic and sound capabilities.
Vintage computers
The personal computer has been around since approximately 1971. But in that time, numerous technological revolutions have left generations of obsolete computing equipment on the junk heap. Nevertheless, in that time, these otherwise useless computers have spawned a sub-culture of vintage computer collectors, who often spend large sums to acquire the rarest of these items, not only to display but restore to their fully functioning glory, including active software development and adaptation to modern uses. This often includes so-called hackers who add-on, update and create hybrid composites from new and old computers for uses for which they were otherwise never intended. Ethernet interfaces have been designed for many vintage 8-bit machines to allow limited connectivity to the Internet; where users can access user groups, bulletin boards and databases of software. Most of this hobby centers on those computers manufactured after 1960, though some collectors specialize in pre-1960 computers as well.
MITS Inc.
Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS) produced the Altair 8800 in 1975, which is widely regarded as starting the microcomputer revolution.
IMSAI
IMSAI produced a machine similar to the Altair 8800, though considered by many to be a more robust design.
Processor Technology
Processor Technology produced the Sol-20. This was one of the first machines to have a case that included a keyboard; a design feature copied by many of later "home computers".
SWTPC
Southwest Technical Products Corporation (SWTPC) produced the SWTPC 6800 and later the SWTPC 6809 kits that employed the Motorola 68xx series microprocessors. The 68xx line was to be followed later by the 6502 processor that was used in many early "home computers", such as the Apple II.
Apple Inc.
The earliest of the Apple Inc. personal computers are among some of the most collectable. They are relatively easy to maintain in an operational state thanks to Apple's use of readily available off-the-shelf parts.
Apple I: The Apple-1 was Apple's first product and has brought some of the highest prices ever paid for a microcomputer at auction.
Apple II: The Apple II series of computers are some of the easiest to adapt, thanks to the original expansion architecture designed into them. New peripheral cards are still being designed by an avid thriving community, thanks to the longevity of this platform, manufactured from 1977 through 1993. Numerous websites exist to support not only the legacy users, but new adopters who weren't even born when the Apple II was discontinued by Apple.
Macintosh: Perhaps because of its friendly design and first commercially successful graphical user interface as well as its enduring Finder application that persists on the most current Macs, the Macintosh is one of the most collected and used of the vintage computers. With dozens of websites around the world, old Macintosh hardware and software is put into daily use. Many maintain vast collections of functional and non-functional systems, which are lovingly maintained and discussed on worldwide user forums. The Macintosh had a strong presence in many early computer labs, creating a strong nostalgia factor for former students who recall their first computing experiences.
RCA
The COSMAC ELF in 1976 was an inexpensive (about $100) single-board computer that was easily built by hobbyists. Many people who could not afford an Altair could afford an ELF, which was based on the RCA 1802 chip. Because the chips are still available from other sources, modern recreations of the ELF are fairly common and there are a number of fan web sites.
IBM
The IBM 1130 computing system from 1966 which still has a following of interested users, albeit via an emulator rather than the actual machine.
The 5100 also has an avid collector and fan base.
The PC series (5150 PC, 5155 Portable PC, 5160 PC/XT, 5170 PC/AT) has become very popular in recent years, with the earliest models (PC) being considered the most collectible.
Acorn BBC & Archimedes
The Acorn BBC Micro was a very popular British computer in the 1980s with home and educational users, and enjoyed near universal usage in British schools into the mid-1990s. It was possible to use 100K -inch disks, and it had many expansion ports.
The Archimedes series the de facto successor to the BBC Micro has also enjoyed a following in recent years, thanks to its status as the first computer to be based around ARM's RISC microprocessor.
Tandy/Radio Shack
The Tandy/RadioShack Model 100 is still widely collected and used as one of the earliest examples of a truly portable computer. Other Tandy offerings, such as the TRS-80 line, are also very popular, and early systems, like the Model I, in good condition can command premium prices on the vintage computer market.
Sinclair
The Sinclair ZX81 and ZX Spectrum series were the most popular British home computers of the early 1980s, with a wide choice of emulators available for both platforms. The Spectrum in particular enjoys a cult following due to its popularity as a games platform, with new games titles still being developed even today. Original "rubber key" Spectrums fetch the highest prices on the second hand market, with the later Amstrad-built models attracting less of a following. The earlier ZX81 is not as popular in original hardware form due to its monochrome display and limited abilities next to the Spectrum, but still unassembled ZX81 kits still appear on EBay occasionally.
MSX
Although nearly nonexistent in the United States, the MSX architecture has strong communities of fans and hobbyists worldwide, particularly in Japan (where the standard was conceived and developed), South Korea (the only country had a MSX based game console, Zemmix), Netherlands, Spain, Brazil, Argentina, Russia, Chile, the Middle East and others. New hardware and software are being actively developed to this day as well.
One of the latest fundamental (from hardware and software perspectives) revivals of the MSX is the GR8BIT.
Robotron
The Robotron Z1013 was an East German home computer produced by VEB Robotron. It had a U880 processor, 16 kByte RAM and a membrane keyboard.
The KC 85 series of computers was a modular 8 bit computer system used in East German schools.
Commodore
The Commodore 64 was the most sold singular model of computer in the world.
The Commodore PET was the first computer made by commodore, and is highly collectible.
The VIC-20 is the friendly computer and the first computer for Elon Musk and Linus Torvalds (creator of Linux).
Xerox
The Xerox Alto, designed and manufactured by Xerox PARC and released in 1973, was the first personal computer equipped with a graphic user interface. In 1979, Steve Jobs of Apple Inc. arranged for his engineers to visit Xerox in order to see the Alto. The design concepts of the Alto soon appeared in the Apple Lisa and Macintosh systems.
The Xerox Star, also known as the 8010/40, was made available in 1981. It followed on the Alto. Like the Alto, this machine was expensive and was only intended for corporate office usage. Therefore, being out of the price range of the average user, this product had little market penetration.
Silicon Graphics
The SGI Indy, built in 1993 for Silicon Graphics has a history of usage in the development of the Nintendo 64 as well as various CGI projects throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. The Indy and other machines in the SGI lineup have remained cult classics
In popular culture
In an interview with Conan O'Brien in May 2014, George R. R. Martin revealed that he writes his books using WordStar 4.0, an MS-DOS application dating back to 1987.
US-based streaming video provider Netflix recently released a multiple-choice movie branded to be part of their Black Mirror series, called Bandersnatch. The protagonist is a teenage programmer working on a contract to deliver a video-game adaptation of a fantasy novel for an 8-bit computer in 1984. The multiple storylines evolve around the emotions and mental health issues resulting from a reality-perception mismatch between a new generation of computer-savvy teenagers and twenty-somethings, and their care givers.
Education
Due to their low complexity together with other technical advantages, 8-bit computers are frequently re-discovered for education, especially for introductory programming classes in elementary schools. 8-bit computers turn on and directly present a programming environment; there are no distractions, and no need for other features or additional connectivity. The BASIC language is a simple-to-learn programming language that has access to the entire system without having to load libraries for sound, graphics, math, etc. The focus of the programming language is on efficiency; in particular, one command does one thing immediately (i.e., COLOR 0,6 turns the screen green).
Reception
Retrocomputing (and retrogaming as aspect) has been described in one paper as preservation activity and as aspect of the remix culture.
Internet
Though many retro computers pre-date widespread use of the Internet many enthusiasts find way to connect their machines using technologies such as Retronet that emulate the modems and X.25 protocol the machines were designed at the time to use.
See also
Computer Conservation Society
Computer History Museum
History of computing hardware
List of home computers by video hardware
Living Computers: Museum + Labs
Retrogaming
SIMH, the multi-system emulator
Vintage Computer Festival
References
"Preserving Computing's Past: Restoration and Simulation" Max Burnet and Bob Supnik, Digital Technical Journal, Volume 8, Number 3, 1996.
External links
Retro Computer Museum, a computer museum in Leicestershire, UK with regular "come and play" open days
Retrocomputing Museum for re-implementations of old programming languages
RETRO German paper mag about digital culture
The Centre for Computing History The Centre for Computing History UK Computer Museum
Living Computer Museum Request a Login from the LCM to interact with vintage computers over the internet.
bitsavers Software and PDF Document archive about older computers
Vintage Computing Resources Active resources for retrocomputing hobbyists
Learning to code in a “retro” programming environment
Beginning Programming Using Retro Computing
LOAD ZX Spectrum Museum, a retro computing museum in Portugal mostly focused on the Sinclair line of computers
History of computing
Nostalgia
|
1583887
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart%20Common%20Input%20Method
|
Smart Common Input Method
|
The Smart Common Input Method (SCIM) is a platform for inputting more than thirty languages on computers, including Chinese-Japanese-Korean style character languages (CJK), and many European languages. It is used for POSIX-style operating systems including Linux and BSD. Its purposes are to provide a simple and powerful common interface for users from any country, and to provide a clear architecture for programming, so as to reduce time required to develop individual input methods.
Goals
The main goals of the SCIM project include:
To act as a unified frontend for current available input method libraries. Bindings to uim and m17n library are available (as of August 2007).
To act as a language engine of IIIMF (an input method framework).
To support as many input method protocols/interfaces as existing and in common use.
To support multiple operating systems. (Currently, only POSIX-style operating systems are available.)
Architecture
SCIM was originally written in the C++ language but has moved to pure C since 1.4.14. It abstracts the input method interface to several classes and attempts to simplify the classes and make them more independent from each other. With the simpler and more independent interfaces, developers can write their own input methods in fewer lines of code.
SCIM is a modularized IM platform, and as such, components can be implemented as dynamically loadable modules, thus can be loaded during runtime at will. For example, input methods written for SCIM could be IMEngine modules, and users can use such IMEngine modules combined with different interface modules (FrontEnd) in different environments without rewrite or recompile of the IMEngine modules, reducing the compile time or development time of the project.
SCIM is a high-level library, similar to XIM or IIIMF; however, SCIM claims to be simpler than either of those IM platforms. SCIM also claims that it can be used alongside XIM or IIIMF. SCIM can also be used to extend the input method interface of existing application toolkits, such as GTK+, Qt and Clutter via IMmodules.
Related projects
SKIM is a separate project aimed at integrating SCIM more tightly into the K Desktop Environment, by providing a GUI panel (named scim-panel-kde as an alternative to scim-panel-gtk), a KConfig config module and setup dialogs for itself and the SCIM module libscim. It also has its own plugin system which supports on-demand loadable actions.
t-latn-pre and t-latn-post are two input methods that provide an easy way for composing accented characters, either by preceding regular characters with diacritic marks (in the case of t-latn-pre), or by adding the marks subsequently (in the case of t-latn-post). Their main advantage is the large number of composed characters from different languages that can be entered this way, rendering it unnecessary to install, for example, separate keyboard layouts. These input methods are available for SCIM through the M17n library.
See also
Input method
IBus
List of input methods for UNIX platforms
uim
References
External links
m17n Multilingualization
Freedesktop.org
Input methods
Free software programmed in C++
|
25640189
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workshop%20on%20Logic%2C%20Language%2C%20Information%20and%20Computation
|
Workshop on Logic, Language, Information and Computation
|
WoLLIC, the Workshop on Logic, Language, Information and Computation is an academic conference in the field of pure and applied logic and theoretical computer science. WoLLIC has been organised annually since 1994, typically in June or July; the conference is scientifically sponsored by the Association for Logic, Language and Information, the Association for Symbolic Logic, the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science and the European Association for Computer Science Logic.
Ranking
According to Computer Science Conference Ranking 2010, the conference is ranked "B" among over 1900 international conferences across the world. It is also ranked "B" on The CORE Conference Ranking Exercise - CORE Portal (2021). It is currently ranked 9th (Last 5 years), Field-Rating 1, Algorithms & Theory, at Microsoft Academic Search - Conferences. On Google Scholar, the conference gets a score of 11 as its h5-index, and a score of 21 as its h5-median.
History
1994: Recife, Brazil
1995: Recife, Brazil
1996: Salvador, Brazil
1997: Fortaleza, Brazil
1998: São Paulo, Brazil
1999: Itatiaia, Brazil
2000: Natal, Brazil
2001: Brasília, Brazil
2002: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
2003: Ouro Preto, Brazil
2004: Fontainebleau, France
2005: Florianópolis, Brazil
2006: Stanford, United States
2007: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
2008: Edinburgh, United Kingdom
2009: Tokyo, Japan
2010: Brasília, Brazil
2011: Philadelphia, USA
2012: Buenos Aires, Argentina
2013: Darmstadt, Germany
2014: Valparaiso, Chile
2015: Bloomington, Indiana, USA
2016: Puebla, Mexico
2017: London, United Kingdom
2018: Bogotá, Colombia
2019: Utrecht, The Netherlands
2020: Lima, Peru (cancelled)
2021: Online
Future Venues
The meetings alternate between Latin America and US/Europe/Asia. The following locations are planned for future meetings:
2022: Iași, Romania
2024: Bern, Switzerland
Proceedings
Logic, Language, Information and Computation - 27th International Workshop, WoLLIC 2021, Alexandra Silva, Renata Wassermann & Ruy de Queiroz (eds.), Virtual Event, October 5-8, 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer Berlin / Heidelberg, (Print) (Online), Volume 11541/2019, , .
Logic, Language, Information and Computation - 26th International Workshop, WoLLIC 2019, Rosalie Iemhoff, Michael Moortgat & Ruy de Queiroz (eds.), Utrecht, The Netherlands, July 2–5, 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer Berlin / Heidelberg, (Print) (Online), Volume 11541/2019, , .
Logic, Language, Information and Computation - 25th International Workshop, WoLLIC 2018, Lawrence S. Moss, Ruy de Queiroz & Maricarmen Martínez (eds.), Bogotá, Colombia, July 24–27, 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer Berlin / Heidelberg, (Print) (Online), Volume 10944/2018, , .
Logic, Language, Information and Computation - 24th International Workshop, WoLLIC 2017, Juliette Kennedy & Ruy de Queiroz (eds.), London, UK, July 18–21, 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer Berlin / Heidelberg, (Print) (Online), Volume 10388/2017, , .
Logic, Language, Information and Computation - 23rd International Workshop, WoLLIC 2016, Jouko Väänänen, Åsa Hirvonen & Ruy de Queiroz (eds.), Puebla, Mexico, August 16–19, 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer Berlin / Heidelberg, (Print) (Online), Volume 9803/2016, , .
Logic, Language, Information and Computation - 22nd International Workshop, WoLLIC 2015, Valeria de Paiva, Ruy de Queiroz, Lawrence Moss, Daniel Leivant & Anjolina de Oliveira (eds.), Bloomington, Indiana, USA, July 20–23, 2015. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer Berlin / Heidelberg, (Print) (Online), Volume 9160/2015, , .
Logic, Language, Information and Computation - 21st International Workshop, WoLLIC 2014, Ulrich Kohlenbach, Pablo Barceló & Ruy de Queiroz (eds.), Valparaíso, Chile, September 1–4, 2014. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer Berlin / Heidelberg, (Print) (Online), Volume 8652/2014, , .
Logic, Language, Information and Computation - 20th International Workshop, WoLLIC 2013, Leonid Libkin, Ulrich Kohlenbach & Ruy de Queiroz (eds.), Darmstadt, Germany, August 20–23, 2013. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer Berlin / Heidelberg, (Print) (Online), Volume 8071/2013, , .
Logic, Language, Information and Computation - 19th International Workshop, WoLLIC 2012, Luke Ong & Ruy de Queiroz (eds.), Buenos Aires, Argentina, September 3–6, 2012. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer Berlin / Heidelberg, (Print) (Online), Volume 7456/2012, , .
Logic, Language, Information and Computation - 18th International Workshop, WoLLIC 2011, Lev D. Beklemishev & Ruy de Queiroz (eds.), Philadelphia, PA, USA, May 18–20, 2011. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer Berlin / Heidelberg, (Print) (Online), Volume 6642/2011, , .
Logic, Language, Information and Computation - 17th International Workshop, WoLLIC 2010, A. Dawar & R. de Queiroz (eds.), Brasília, Brazil, July 6–9, 2010. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer Berlin / Heidelberg, (Print) (Online), Volume 6188/2010, , .
Logic, Language, Information and Computation - 16th International Workshop, WoLLIC 2009, H. Ono, M. Kanazawa & R. de Queiroz (eds.), Tokyo, Japan, June 21–24, 2009. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer Berlin / Heidelberg, (Print) (Online), Volume 5514/2009, , .
Logic, Language, Information and Computation - 15th International Workshop, WoLLIC 2008, W. Hodges & R. de Queiroz (eds.), Edinburgh, UK, July 1–4, 2008. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer Berlin / Heidelberg, (Print) (Online), Volume 5110/2008, , .
Logic, Language, Information and Computation - 14th International Workshop, WoLLIC 2007, D. Leivant & R. de Queiroz (eds.), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, July 2–5, 2007. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer Berlin / Heidelberg, (Print) (Online), Volume 4576/2007, , .
Proceedings of the 13th Workshop on Logic, Language, Information and Computation (WoLLIC 2006), Logic, Language, Information and Computation 2006. Stanford University, CA, USA. 18–21 July 2006. Edited by G. Mints and R. de Queiroz. Electronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science. . Volume 165, Pages 1–226 (22 November 2006). (Preface )
Proceedings of the 12th Workshop on Logic, Language, Information and Computation (WoLLIC 2005). Florianópolis, Santa Catarina, Brazil. 19–22 July 2005. Edited by R. de Queiroz, A. Macintyre and G. Bittencourt. Electronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science. . Volume 143, Pages 1–222 (6 January 2006). (Preface )
Proceedings of the 11th Workshop on Logic, Language, Information and Computation (WoLLIC 2004). Fontainebleau (Paris), France. 19–22 July 2004. Edited by R. de Queiroz and P. Cégielski. Electronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science. . Volume 123, Pages 1–240 (1 March 2005). (Preface )
WoLLIC'2003, 10th Workshop on Logic, Language, Information and Computation. Ouro Preto (Minas Gerais), Brazil. 29 July to 1 August 2003. Edited by R. de Queiroz, E. Pimentel and L. Figueiredo. Electronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science. . Volume 84, Pages 1–231 (September 2003). (Preface )
WoLLIC'2002, 9th Workhop on Logic, Language, Information and Computation. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. 30 July to 2 August 2002. Edited by Ruy de Queiroz, Luiz Carlos Pereira, Edward Hermann Haeusler. Electronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science. . Volume 67, Pages 1–314 (October 2002). (Preface )
Special Issues of Scientific Journals
Archive for Mathematical Logic, 24th Workshop on Logic, Language, Information and Computation (WoLLIC 2017). Edited by Juliette Kennedy and Ruy de Queiroz. Volume 60, Issue 5, Pages 525-681 (July 2021), Springer.
Annals of Pure and Applied Logic, 23rd Workshop on Logic, Language, Information and Computation (WoLLIC 2016). Edited by Jouko Väänänen and Ruy de Queiroz. Volume 170, Issue 9, Pages 921-1150 (September 2019), Elsevier.
Mathematical Structures in Computer Science, 22nd Workshop on Logic, Language, Information and Computation (WoLLIC 2015). Edited by Valeria de Paiva and Ruy de Queiroz. Volume 29, Issue 6, June 2019, Cambridge University Press.
Information and Computation, 21st Workshop on Logic, Language, Information and Computation (WoLLIC 2014). Edited by Ulrich Kohlenbach, Pablo Barcelò and Ruy de Queiroz. Volume 255, Part 2, Pages 193–334 (August 2017).
Journal of Computer and System Sciences, 20th Workshop on Logic, Language, Information and Computation (WoLLIC 2013). Edited by Leonid Libkin, Ulrich Kohlenbach and Ruy de Queiroz. Volume 88, Pages 1–290 (September 2017).
Theoretical Computer Science, Logic, Language, Information and Computation, 19th Workshop on Logic, Language, Information and Computation. Buenos Aires, Argentina. 3–6 September 2012. Edited by Luke Ong and Ruy de Queiroz. Volume 603, Pages 1–146 (25 October 2015).
Journal of Computer and System Sciences, 18th Workshop on Logic, Language, Information and Computation (WoLLIC 2011). Edited by Lev Beklemishev, Ruy de Queiroz and Andre Scedrov. Volume 80, Issue 6, Pages 1037-1174 (September 2014).
Journal of Computer and System Sciences, 17th Workshop on Logic, Language, Information and Computation (WoLLIC 2010). Edited by Anuj Dawar and Ruy de Queiroz. Volume 80, Issue 2, Pages 321-498 (March 2014).
Fundamenta Informaticae, Logic, Language, Information and Computation. Edited by Hiroakira Ono, Makoto Kanazawa and Ruy de Queiroz. Volume 106, Numbers 2-4, Pages 119-338, September 2011.
Journal of Computer and System Sciences, Workshop on Logic, Language, Information and Computation (WoLLIC 2008). Edited by Wilfrid Hodges and Ruy de Queiroz. Volume 76, Issue 5, Pages 281-388 (August 2010).
Information and Computation, Special issue: 14th Workshop on Logic, Language, Information and Computation (WoLLIC 2007). Edited by Daniel Leivant and Ruy de Queiroz. Volume 208, Issue 5, Pages 395-604, (May 2010).
Information and Computation, Special issue: 13th Workshop on Logic, Language, Information and Computation (WoLLIC 2006). Edited by Grigori Mints, Valeria de Paiva and Ruy de Queiroz. Volume 207, Issue 10, Pages 969-1094, (October 2009).
Annals of Pure and Applied Logic, 12th Workshop on Logic, Language, Information and Computation. Florianópolis, Santa Catarina, Brazil. 19–22 July 2005. Edited by R. de Queiroz and A. Macintyre. Volume 152, Issues 1-3, Pages 1–180 (March 2008).
Theoretical Computer Science, Logic, Language, Information and Computation, 11th Workshop on Logic, Language, Information and Computation. Paris, France. 19–22 July 2004. Edited by R. de Queiroz and P. Cégielski. Volume 364, Issue 2, Pages 143-270 (6 November 2006).
Theoretical Computer Science, Logic, Language, Information and Computation. Minas Gerais, Brazil. 29 July-1 August 2003. Edited by R. de Queiroz and D. Kozen. Volume 355, Issue 2, Pages 105-260 (11 April 2006).
Annals of Pure and Applied Logic, Papers presented at the 9th Workshop on Logic, Language, Information and Computation (WoLLIC’2002). 30 July-2 August 2002. Edited by R. de Queiroz, B. Poizat and S. Artemov. Volume 134, Issue 1, Pages 1–93 (June 2005).
Matemática Contemporânea. 8th Workshop on Logic, Language, Information and Computation - WoLLIC'2001. Universidade de Brasília, July -August 2001 - Brasília. Edited by John T. Baldwin, Ruy J. G. B. de Queiroz, Edward H. Haeusler. Volume 24, 2003.
Logic Journal of the Interest Group in Pure and Applied Logics. 7th Workshop on Logic, Language, Information and Computation - WoLLIC 2000. Natal (State of Rio Grande do Norte), August 15–18, 2000. Edited by Ruy J. G. B. de Queiroz. Volume 9, Issue 6, 2001.
Logic Journal of the Interest Group in Pure and Applied Logics. 6th Workshop on Logic, Language, Information and Computation - WoLLIC'99. Itatiaia National Park (State of Rio de Janeiro), May 25–28, 1999. Edited by Ruy J. G. B. de Queiroz. Volume 8, Issue 5, 2000.
References
External links
WoLLIC entry at DBLP.
ASL Sponsorship.
WoLLIC 2013 1-page Conference Report. The Bulletin of Symbolic Logic 20(2):266-267, June 2014. (Published online: 26 June 2014).
WoLLIC 2014 Conference Report. In Logic Journal of the Interest Group in Pure and Applied Logics, , Oxford University Press, 2015.
WoLLIC 2014 1-page Conference Report. The Bulletin of Symbolic Logic 21(2):241-242, June 2015.
WoLLIC 2015 Conference Report. In Logic Journal of the Interest Group in Pure and Applied Logics, , Oxford University Press, 2016.
WoLLIC 2015 1-page Conference Report. The Bulletin of Symbolic Logic 22(3):436-437, September 2016.
WoLLIC 2016 Conference Report. In Logic Journal of the Interest Group in Pure and Applied Logics, , Oxford University Press, December 2016.
WoLLIC 2016 1-page Conference Report. The Bulletin of Symbolic Logic 23(2):270-271, June 2017.
WoLLIC 2017 Conference Report. In Logic Journal of the Interest Group in Pure and Applied Logics, , Oxford University Press, May 2018.
WoLLIC 2017 1-page Conference Report. The Bulletin of Symbolic Logic 24(3):386–387, September 2018.
WoLLIC 2018 1-page Conference Report. The Bulletin of Symbolic Logic 24(4):548–549, December 2018.
WoLLIC 2018 Conference Report. In Logic Journal of the Interest Group in Pure and Applied Logics, , Oxford University Press, Apr 2019.
WoLLIC 2019 1-page Conference Report. The Bulletin of Symbolic Logic 25(3):421–422, September 2019.
WoLLIC 2019 Conference Report. In Logic Journal of the Interest Group in Pure and Applied Logics, , Oxford University Press, June 2021.
Theoretical computer science conferences
Recurring events established in 1994
|
20600449
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbian%20%28disambiguation%29
|
Symbian (disambiguation)
|
Symbian may refer to:
Symbian, mobile operating system and integrated software platform developed by the Symbian Foundation, originally a proprietary operating system developed by Symbian Ltd.
Symbian Ltd., software development and licensing company that produced Symbian OS between its foundation in 1998 and acquisition by Nokia in 2008
Symbian Foundation, non-profit foundation created by Nokia to develop the integrated Symbian platform
See also
Accredited Symbian Developer, accreditation program for software developers developing for the Symbian operating system
Sybian, autoerotic mechanical device
Symbion, genus of aquatic animals
|
2710081
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles%20Phillips%20%28businessman%29
|
Charles Phillips (businessman)
|
Charles E. Phillips (born June 1959) is an American business executive in the tech industry. From 2010 to 2019 he was the CEO of Infor, a company that specializes in enterprise software applications for specific industries. As of August 2019, he is Chairman of the board at Infor.
In his first three years as CEO of Infor, Phillips grew the company significantly through numerous strategic acquisitions, created an in-house design agency to improve software user interface and visual appeal, and updated and upgraded software to better meet niche-industry needs. In 2014, he led Infor to become the first industry cloud company – the first ERP vendor in the cloud offering complete software products for businesses and unique sub-industries – and by 2018 Infor was also the first ERP provider to make a complete transition to the cloud, with the majority of its customers, applications, and revenues cloud-based. In August 2019 he stepped down as CEO to "focus on strategy development, customer relationships, and new acquisitions", as Infor's Chairman.
Prior to joining Infor, Phillips was co-president and director of Oracle Corporation from 2003 through 2010, and a managing director in the technology group at Morgan Stanley from 1994 to 2003. He is also a director at Viacom Corporation.
Early life and education
Charles E. Phillips, Jr. was born in June 1959 in Little Rock, Arkansas, where his father was stationed in the Air Force. During his childhood his family moved often from state to state, and to Europe as well.
Phillips was fascinated by computers and technology from an early age, and spent his spare time during high school building computers. His father expected at least one of his four sons to join the Air Force, and Phillips enrolled at the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and earned a BS in computer science in 1981. When his eyesight did not meet the rigorous standard to be a pilot, he accepted a commission in the Marines. He joined as a second lieutenant, rising to the rank of captain, and was stationed at Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville, North Carolina, where he worked on computer systems.
Phillips obtained an MBA from Hampton University in 1986. He also attended New York Law School, obtaining a JD in 1993. In 2015 he received an honorary Doctor of Science from City University of New York's New York City College of Technology.
Career
Early career
From 1981 to 1986, Phillips was in the U.S. Marine Corps in the 2nd Battalion, 10th Marines artillery unit at Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville, North Carolina, managing computer systems. He had joined as a Second Lieutenant and rose through the ranks to become a Captain.
Phillips began his civilian career in 1986, and he and his wife Karen moved to New York, where his wife had relatives. He joined BNY Mellon as vice president of Software, and was at the company for four years. He then transferred to SoundView Technology Group, where he was senior vice president from 1990 through 1993, and Kidder Peabody, where he was senior vice president from 1990 through 1994.
In 1994, he joined Morgan Stanley as an enterprise software-industry analyst in the technology group, and he was promoted to managing director, a role in which he served through 2003.
Phillips spent his time on Wall Street nurturing relationships with hedge funders, venture capitalists, private equity executives, technology CEOs, and other business and financial leaders, and gained a reputation for being one of the most aggressive, connected, influential, and prolific technology investment analysts. Institutional Investor ranked him the number one Enterprise Software Industry Analyst for ten consecutive years, from 1994 to 2003.
Oracle
Among Phillip's industry contacts during his Wall Street years was Oracle Corporation CEO Larry Ellison, who invited him to join Oracle in 2003. Phillips accepted, and served as co-president and director of Oracle from 2003 to 2010.
Phillips led Oracle's field organization, and during his tenure he oversaw the company's revenue growth of nearly 300%. He also played a key role in Oracle's long series of acquisitions of 70 companies, including PeopleSoft, BEA Systems, Hyperion Solutions, and Siebel Systems, among others. Responsible for Oracle's sales and acquisitions, he utilized his networking, negotiation, and closing skills, and became one of the highest-profile African-Americans in the technology industry in the mid 2000s. In 2007, InformationWeek called him "Oracle's Secret Weapon". After seven years growing the company, Phillips resigned from Oracle in September 2010.
Infor
2010–2013
In October 2010 Phillips was announced as CEO of Infor, the world's third largest provider of enterprise applications and services, and the world's largest privately owned software company. He was joined by several high-ranking Oracle executives. Within four months of being hired, he led Infor's $2 billion acquisition of Lawson Software, a competitor focused on the health care industry, and continued Infor's acquisitions at the rate of two or more per year. In October 2011, Phillips moved Infor's headquarters from the Atlanta suburb of Alpharetta, Georgia to New York City's Silicon Alley.
He immediately set about re-directing Infor and its efforts, instilling a corporate culture of camaraderie, goodwill, and reward. He also focused Infor on excellent design and product coherence, establishing product usability and highly attractive modern interface as key components in Infor's software lines. To optimize user experience design, Phillips and his team formed Hook & Loop, an internal creative agency of writers, designers, developers, and filmmakers who develop software that is beautiful and user-friendly and has social-media type elements. Infor now maintains a design directive of "work is beautiful", and Hook & Loop is one of the largest digital design agencies in New York City.
To further differentiate Infor from its competitors, including Oracle and SAP, he focused Infor on niche acquisitions: smaller companies, and highly specialized divisions within large corporations that are applicable to "micro-verticals" or unique sub-industries. Under his direction Infor updated big industry-specific applications from older software languages to .Net and Java programming languages. Phillips also changed Infor's focus from building scale to innovation and products. He refocused Infor towards enhanced product integration, and to custom-creating and fine-tuning software for the specific needs of individual industries. Within three years of his leadership, Infor launched 300 new products and hired 1,500 new engineers. He also directed the company to open-source infrastructure.
2014–present
In 2014 Phillips announced his intention for Infor to be the world's first industry cloud company – the first ERP vendor in the cloud offering complete software solutions for businesses and unique sub-industries. At the 2014 Amazon Web Services Summit, he gave the keynote address, and announced the launch of Infor CloudSuite, the first group of industry-specific application suites to be available on Amazon Web Services's cloud. In 2014 Infor also launched Dynamic Science Labs, located in Kendall Square on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) campus, where a team of more than 70 PhD-level scientists develop applications for predictive analytics, machine learning, managing retail assortments, optimizing inventory, and planning segmented pricing for customers.
In October 2015 he launched Infor CloudSuite Retail, and Whole Foods became the first retailer to partner with Infor and utilize the suite.
Phillips continued to lead Infor's acquisitions, including the predictive talent-management software company PeopleAnswers (Talent Science) and the cloud-based CRM software Saleslogix in 2014, the cloud-based global trade, e-commerce, and supply-chain management network and platform GT Nexus in 2015, the retail predictive analytics provider Predictix and the retail software maker Starmount in 2016, the business intelligence specialist Birst in 2017, and the hospitality software maker Vivonet and the food-industry systems integrator Alfa-Beta Solutions in 2018. In 2017 Infor partnered with the marketing technology company Marketo, to jointly sell their products to companies in order to compete with sales and marketing software from Oracle, SAP, and Salesforce, and fully acquired IT consulting and services Ciber's Infor practice.
In 2016 Infor's in-house design agency that Phillips created in 2012, Hook & Loop, expanded to launch H&L Digital, which offers "digital-as-a service", working directly with customers to create end-to-end digital cloud solutions by strategizing, designing, assembling, and running client-specific software.
Beginning in 2015 he also focused Infor on networking different businesses and on analytics. This, in addition to his focus on artificial intelligence and machine learning, culminated in 2017 in the creation of Coleman AI, an artificial-intelligence platform named for Katherine Coleman Goble Johnson. Coleman AI allows Infor to leverage business data captured by its applications to provide predictive analytics, optimizations, industry benchmarks, and correlations; it was launched in 2018.
To develop more talent for the company, in 2014 he instituted Infor's Education Alliance Program, sponsoring courses at higher-education institutions which offer certifications on Infor's software suites plus opportunities for internships and other trainings that help students develop skills for careers in the tech industry. By 2017 the initiative had programs in 25 colleges in the U.S., and programs in China, India, Korea, and Thailand.
Under Phillips' leadership, by 2018 Infor became the first ERP provider to make a complete transition to the cloud, utilizing a model of multi-tenant, industry-specific software as a service (SaaS) CloudSuites.
Much of Infor's 2017–2018 expansion and innovation was fueled by a more than $2 billion investment from Koch Industries in early 2017; their company Georgia Pacific had been a longtime Infor customer. Koch Industries made a further investment of $1.5 billion in Infor in early 2019.
In late 2018, Phillips led Infor to team with #YesWeCode to form GenOne, an initiative to increase the diversity of the tech workforce.
In August 2019, Phillips became Chairman of the Board and was succeeded by his CFO Kevin Samuelson in the CEO role. As Chairman Phillips will "focus on strategy development, customer relationships, and new acquisitions".
Advisorships and philanthropy
Phillips has been on the board of directors of Viacom since 2004. He has been on the board of managers of Infor's subsidiary SoftBrands Holdings since December 2011. He is on the board of directors of Business Executives for National Security (BENS), the Posse Foundation, and the United States Air Force Academy Endowment. In the arts, he is on the board of directors of Jazz at Lincoln Center, and is vice chairman of the board of directors of the Apollo Theater. He is a member of Business Roundtable.
He is on the board of trustees of New York Law School, New York City Police Foundation, and the American Museum of Natural History. In 2017 he was appointed to the advisory board of the Transit Innovation Partnership, a public-private initiative launched by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the Partnership for New York City.
Phillips is on the International Advisory Board of Banco Santander, and he has been a Class B Director of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York since January 2018. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
He was a Democratic Party delegate from New York in 2004. In February 2009, Phillips was appointed as a member to the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board to provide President Barack Obama and his administration with advice and counsel in addressing the late-2000s recession. In 2017 he was a lead organizer of a new political action committee (PAC), which became the Black Economic Alliance in 2018; the PAC aims to help elect representatives who will vigorously push an economic agenda for African Americans, and Phillips is on its board of directors.
Phillips has made large contributions to non-profits, schools, community groups, and civic groups. In 2010, he combined several of his charities into the Phillips Charitable Organization (PCO), a non-profit foundation. PCO's primary focus is on helping single parents, wounded veterans, and students working towards engineering, science, technology, or mathematics degrees. PCO is a major backer of Harlem Village Academies.
Honors
Institutional Investor'''s #1 Enterprise Software Industry Analyst (1994–2003)
Black Enterprises "Top 50 African Americans on Wall Street" (2002)
Black Enterprise'''s "75 Most Powerful African Americans in Corporate America" (2005)
Arkansas Black Hall of Fame (2012)
Business Insiders "46 Most Important African-Americans In Technology" (2013)
Savoy Magazine's Top 100 Most Influential Blacks in Corporate America (2012–2014)
Crain's 200 Most-Connected Business People in New York (2014)
In 2016, Inside Philanthropy listed him among the Top 20 Philanthropists of Color
The Perlmutter Award for Excellence in Global Business Leadership, from the Perlmutter Institute for Global Business Leadership at the Brandeis International Business School (2017)
In 2017, Black Enterprise listed him among the 300 most powerful African American executives in corporate America
Personal life
Phillips and his wife Karen, whom he met in high school and married after college, live in Manhattan. They are jointly involved in philanthropy, including in particular the Phillips Charitable Organization, which they founded together in 2010. They have a son, Chas.
In 2010, Phillips was the subject of a series of billboards in New York City, San Francisco, and Atlanta. The billboards included images of him with a mistress, YaVaughnie Wilkins, and the URL of a website that detailed their affair. Wilkins claimed that she bought the billboards for $250,000 and created the website after discovering that Phillips was married. Phillips confirmed that he had had an eight and half year extramarital affair with Wilkins, which had since ended.
References
1959 births
American computer businesspeople
American technology chief executives
Hampton University alumni
Living people
New York Law School alumni
People associated with the American Museum of Natural History
United States Air Force Academy alumni
United States Marine Corps officers
Federal Reserve Bank of New York
Members of the Council on Foreign Relations
|
33835886
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romonet
|
Romonet
|
Romonet is a UK-based, privately held company, headquartered in London, UK that provides cloud-based solutions and services to data centers and associated technology. Romonet solves energy, water, capacity and financial challenges in data centers. It claims it makes the first software that accurately predicts total cost of ownership (TCO) and properly model energy flow. They began by creating a term called 'data center predictive modeling' (DCPM) that "Rather than collecting real-time data, they predict data center configuration and architecture." Romonet Inc was launched in 2011 to bring the product to the US market.
History
Romonet was founded in 2006 by Zahl Limbuwala and Liam Newcombe—initially to make software to analyze how much data centers cost to operate. Newcombe said, of IT cost, "The business is effectively prevented from managing operating costs or understanding the contribution to profitability." In 2009, they collaborated to release an open source engine with the British Computer Society’s Data Centre Specialist Group. Though the simulator was at an early stage, it was able to predict cost and power usage.
On 24 June 2011, Romonet opened two new offices in the United States, a US HQ in San Francisco and an office in the iconic Empire State Building in New York.
2009 - Partnered with British Computer Society and released a Beta of a Cost and Energy simulator
2009 June - Romonet & C-Net to partner to provide training on the EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres.
2009 Nov - Romonet board appoints Rick Skett, former Intel exec and 30-year veteran as chairman of the board.
2010 Nov - Romonet Launches Romonet Software Suite – the first ever software to predict energy use and cost over the entire lifecycle of a data center
2010 Nov - Computer Weekly featured a review of Romonet Software Suite
2011 Feb - Arup uses Romonet Software Suite to provide visibility into their data center
2011 Feb - Romonet announced Syska Hennessy Group and Skanska USA as official channel partners
2011 May - Zahl Limbuwala gives keynote speech at Google Data Center Efficiency event in Zurich
2011 June - Launch of Romonet Inc. in the United States
2011 June - Skanska partners with Romonet to design efficient Data Centers
2011 Oct - Romonet board appointed Michael J Fister, former Intel senior exec and CEO of Cadence, as director and member of the board
2011 Nov - Launches V2.0 of its DCPM software, Romonet Software Suite, which incorporates significant extra enhancements including ability to model using Typical Meteorological Year (TMY) data
2012 July - Romonet partners with Red Engineering Design
2012 Sep - Romonet partners with CS&I who specialize in critical systems typically associated with data center, hospital, and financial trading facilities.
2012 Nov - Launches Romonet Portal - a SaaS type product that is 'designed specifically to address the business and financial management needs of those that own and operate data centers.'
2012 Nov - Romonet partners with JCA Engineering
2012 Dec - Romonet's principal mission critical engineer, Dr. Ehsaan Farsimadan, wins 'Young Mission Critical Engineer of the Year' at DatacenterDynamics Datacenter Leaders Awards 2012
2013 April - i3 Solutions Group and Romonet partner 'to bring first lifecycle TCO analysis to enterprise data center operators'
2013 July - Launches Portal 2.0 - the latest version of its SaaS type product
2013 Nov - Announces that in partnership with Canara (formerly Intellibatt) it is now able to provide a fully managed remote monitoring service for data centers.
2014 Apr - Romonet CEO presents at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory on the subject 'Data Centers - From a Cottage Industry to an Industrial and Information Age Revolution'
2014 May - Romonet wins an inaugural Uptime Institute Brill Award (Product Services category) in conjunction with Compass Datacenters
2014 Oct - Romonet CEO publishes a controversial blog An open letter to data center investors, which gains considerable comment and feedback.
2015 Mar - Romonet updates capabilities of Operations Portal, its SaaS product
2015 Mar - Romonet partners with Vapor.io, 'the world’s first hyper collapsed and truly data defined data center solution' -
2016 Apr - Romonet launches the "world's only water analytics" for the data center
2017 Jan - Romonet launches its new certification program, Validated by ROMONET.
Products
The Romonet platform
Romonet claims they have the only cloud-based, big data software platform that models, simulates, and predicts data center investment and operational performance. They say their analytics platform enables energy, financial, investment, and profitability objectives.
In November 2010, Romonet introduced Romonet Software Suite as a predictive modeling tool for data center decisions. Romonet claims that it uses mathematical computation and computer aided simulation to perform non-intrusive, risk-free predictive modeling. It does not require that the software directly interact with the data center, and can model data centers in a simulated environment.
A Chief Architect at Intel said 'Romonet Software Suite could be a game-changer as the leading TCO/Predictive modeling solution for the data center industry.‛ and Roy Illsley, principal analyst at Ovum Ltd "Predictive modeling enables companies to analyze and compare scenarios and say whether the move makes sense or not. Such level of knowledge and information is a great basis to make decisions, based on better assessments." The company hopes that Romonet Software Suite will succeed in the growing field for data center infrastructure management (DCIM) tools.
In November 2012, Romonet introduced Romonet Operations Portal a cloud-based solution that they intend data centre operators to use to forecast, plan, and measure business performance.
Romonet Operations Portal
Romonet Operations Portal is an online view of data center performance that tracks several metrics and facilitates comparison of expected performance (as modeled) and actual performance as reflected from meter readings through the facility's BMS system.
Validated by ROMONET
January 2017 saw the launch of Validated by ROMONET, the "first independent certification process to measure the full end-to-end performance of the data center" throughout its lifecycle.
Corporate affairs
The company is run by a board of directors in the UK and US. The Board Members, as of November 2018, are Zahl Limbuwala, Liam Newcombe, Rick Skett and Rob Buchan.
Environment
Liam Newcombe and Zahl Limbuwala regularly contribute to forums such as The Green Grid, a consortium collaborating to improve the resource efficiency of data centers and business computing ecosystems.
Liam has actively been involved with and contributed to the EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres.
Both Romonet Software Suite and Operations Portal identify the amount of CO2 a Data Center produces to help organizations plan how to operate with less impact on the environment.
Sources
Software companies of the United Kingdom
Companies based in London
2006 establishments in the United Kingdom
Software companies established in 2006
Companies established in 2006
|
39119179
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List%20of%20Wikipedia%20controversies
|
List of Wikipedia controversies
|
Since the launch of Wikipedia in January 2001, a number of controversies have occurred. Wikipedia's open nature, in which anyone can edit most articles, has led to various concerns, such as the quality of writing, the amount of vandalism, and the accuracy of information on the project. The media have covered a number of controversial events and scandals related to Wikipedia and its funding organization, the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF). Common subjects of coverage include articles containing false information, public figures and corporations editing articles for which they have a serious conflict of interest, paid Wikipedia editing and hostile interactions between Wikipedia editors and public figures.
The Seigenthaler biography incident led to media criticism of the reliability of Wikipedia. This incident began in May 2005 with the anonymous posting of a hoax Wikipedia article with false, negative allegations about John Seigenthaler, a well-known American journalist. In March 2007, Wikipedia was again the subject of media attention with the Essjay controversy, which involved a prominent English Wikipedia editor and administrator who claimed he was a "tenured professor of religion at a private university" with a "Ph.D. in theology and a degree in canon law" when in fact he was a 24-year-old who held no advanced degrees.
The 2012 scandals involving paid consultancy for the government of Gibraltar by Roger Bamkin, a Wikimedia UK board member, and potential conflicts of interest have highlighted Wikipedia's vulnerabilities. The presence of inaccurate and false information, as well as the perceived hostile editing climate, have been linked to a decline in editor participation. Another controversy arose in 2013 after an investigation by Wikipedians found that the Wiki-PR company had edited Wikipedia for paying clients, using "an army" of sockpuppet accounts that purportedly included 45 Wikipedia editors and administrators. In 2015, the Orangemoody investigation showed that businesses and minor celebrities had been blackmailed over their Wikipedia articles by a coordinated group of fraudsters, again using hundreds of sockpuppets. Controversies within and concerning Wikipedia and the WMF have been the subject of several scholarly papers. This list is a collection of the more notable instances.
Overview
The nature of Wikipedia controversies has been analyzed by many scholars. For example, sociologist Howard Rheingold says that "Wikipedia controversies have revealed the evolution of social mechanisms in the Wikipedia community"; a study of the politicization of socio-technical spaces remarked that Wikipedia "controversies... become fully-fledged when they are advertised outside the page being debated"; and even one college discusses Wikipedia as a curricular tool, in that "recent controversies involving Wikipedia [are used] as a basis for discussion of ethics and bias."
Editing restrictions
Despite being promoted as an encyclopedia "anyone can edit", the ability to edit controversial pages is sometimes restricted due to "edit wars" or vandalism. To address criticism about restricting access while still minimizing malicious editing of those pages, Wikipedia has also trialed measures such as "pending changes" that would open contentious articles up for more people to edit, then subject their contributions to approval from more established members of the site.
2002
February 2002 – In late February 2002, the Spanish Wikipedia community decided to break away ("fork") from Wikipedia to protest against plans by co-founders Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger to sell advertising on Wikipedia sites. The fork, set up by volunteer Edgar Enyedy, was hosted at the University of Seville under the name Enciclopedia Libre Universal en Español. Most of the Spanish volunteers followed Enyedy, producing over 10,000 articles within a year. As a result, the Spanish Wikipedia was virtually inactive until mid-2003. Since this incident, the question of advertising has been a sensitive subject on Wikipedia. In an interview with Wired in January 2011, Wales categorically denied having supported the plans for advertising, prompting a public dispute with Sanger. "The suggestion that I demanded ads and that Jimmy Wales was opposed to them is, I am afraid, yet another self-serving lie from Wales", wrote Sanger. As late as 2006 Wales refused to deny that there would ever be advertising on Wikipedia. In January of that year he told a reporter from ClickZ that "the question is going to arise as to whether we could better pursue our charitable mission with the additional money [ads would bring]. We have never said there would absolutely never be ads on Wikipedia."
October 2002 – Derek Ramsey increased the number of Wikipedia articles by about 40% with the creation of a bot called Rambot that generated 33,832 Wikipedia stub articles from October 19 to 25 for every missing county, town, city, and village in the US, based on free information from the United States Census of 2000. In The Wikipedia Revolution, Andrew Lih called it "the most controversial move in Wikipedia history".
2005
September 2005
The Seigenthaler incident was a series of events that began in May 2005 with the anonymous posting of a hoax article in Wikipedia about John Seigenthaler, a well-known American journalist. The article falsely stated that Seigenthaler had been a suspect in the assassinations of U.S. President John F. Kennedy and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. Additionally, the article erroneously stated that Seigenthaler had lived in the Soviet Union for 13 years beginning in 1971. Seigenthaler, who had been a friend and aide to Robert Kennedy, characterized the Wikipedia entry about him as "Internet character assassination". The perpetrator of the hoax, Brian Chase, who was trying to fool a coworker as a prank, was identified by Wikipedia critic Daniel Brandt and reporters for The New York Times. The hoax was removed from Wikipedia in early October 2005 (although the false information stayed on Answers.com and Reference.com for another three weeks), after which Seigenthaler wrote about his experience in USA Today.
Professional book indexer Daniel Brandt started now defunct Wikipedia criticism website "wikipedia-watch.org" in response to his unpleasant experience while trying to get his biography deleted.
November/December 2005 – The IP address assigned to the United States House of Representatives was blocked from editing Wikipedia because of a large number of edits comprising a "deliberate attempt to compromise the integrity of the encyclopedia." According to CBS News these changes included edits to Marty Meehan's Wikipedia article to give it a more positive tone. The edits to Meehan's article prompted a former director of the United States Office of Government Ethics to say that "[t]hat kind of usage, plus the fact that they're changing one person's material, is certainly wrong and ought to be at a minimum the focus of some disciplinary action".
December 2005 – Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales was found to be editing his own Wikipedia article. According to public logs, he had made 18 edits to his biography, seven of which were alterations of information about whether Larry Sanger was a co-founder of Wikipedia. It was also revealed that Wales had edited the Wikipedia article of his former company, Bomis. "Bomis Babes", a section of the Bomis website, had been characterized in the article as "soft-core pornography", but Wales revised this to "adult content section" and deleted mentions of pornography. He said he was fixing an error, and did not agree with calling Bomis Babes soft porn. Wales conceded that he had made the changes, but maintained that they were technical corrections.
2006
February 1, 2006 – The Henryk Batuta hoax was uncovered by editors on the Polish Wikipedia. Batuta, an entirely made-up person, was claimed to be a Polish Communist revolutionary who was an associate of Ernest Hemingway. The article was published for 15 months and referenced in seventeen other articles before the hoax was uncovered. The hoax article was written by a group of Polish Wikipedia editors calling themselves the "Batuta Army." One of the group's members, who called himself "Marek", told The Observer that they had created the hoax article in order to draw attention to the ongoing use of the names of Soviet officials for streets and other public areas in Poland. Marek stated that "Many of these people were traitors and murderers who do not deserve such an honor".
March 2006 – Daniel Brandt found 142 instances of plagiarism on Wikipedia, arguing that the problem plagued the site.
Early to mid-2006 – A series of U.S. Congressional staff edits to Wikipedia were revealed in the press. These mostly involved various political aides trying to whitewash Wikipedia biographies of several politicians by removing undesirable information (including pejorative statements quoted, or broken campaign promises), adding favorable information or "glowing" tributes, or by replacing articles in part or whole by staff-authored biographies. The staff of at least five politicians were implicated: Marty Meehan, Norm Coleman, Conrad Burns, Joe Biden and Gil Gutknecht. In a separate but similar incident the campaign manager for Cathy Cox, Morton Brilliant, resigned after being found to have added negative information to the Wikipedia entries of political opponents.
July 2006 – MyWikiBiz was founded by Gregory Kohs and his sister to provide paid editing services on Wikipedia. Although Kohs, after some research, concluded that there were no Wikipedia policies forbidding this activity, his Wikipedia account was blocked shortly after the August publication of a press release announcing the establishment of the business. The salient Wikipedia policies were soon edited to regulate the kinds of activities in which MyWikiBiz was engaging. Jimmy Wales defended this decision and the permanent exclusion of Kohs from Wikipedia, even as he acknowledged that surreptitious paid editing continually occurred, saying that "[i]t's one thing to acknowledge there's always going to be a little of this, but another to say, 'Bring it on.'"
2007
January 2007
In January 2007, English-language Wikipedians in Qatar were briefly blocked from editing by an administrator, following a spate of vandalism, since they did not realize that the entire country's internet traffic is routed through a single IP address. Both TechCrunch and Slashdot reported that Wikipedia had banned all of Qatar from the site, a claim that was promptly denied by co-founder Jimmy Wales.
It was revealed that Microsoft had paid programmer Rick Jelliffe to edit Wikipedia articles about Microsoft products. In particular, Microsoft paid Jelliffe to edit, among others, the article on Office Open XML. A spokesman for Microsoft explained that the company thought the articles in question had been heavily biased by editors at Microsoft rival IBM and that having a seemingly independent editor add the material would make it more acceptable to other Wikipedia editors.
February 2007
On February 13, 2007, American professional golfer Fuzzy Zoeller sued the Miami foreign-credential evaluation firm of Josef Silny & Associates. The lawsuit alleged that defamatory statements had been edited into the Wikipedia article about Zoeller in December 2006 by someone using a computer at that firm.
Barbara Bauer, a literary agent, sued the Wikimedia Foundation, which runs the Wikipedia website and accepts donations for Wikipedia, for defamation and causing harm to her business, the Barbara Bauer Literary Agency. In Bauer v. Glatzer, Bauer claimed that information on Wikipedia critical of her abilities as a literary agent caused this harm. The Electronic Frontier Foundation defended Wikipedia and moved to dismiss the case. The case was dismissed by the judge in July 2008.
Taner Akçam, a Turkish academic who was one of the first to acknowledge and openly discuss the Armenian genocide, was detained in Canada at the airport in Montreal for nearly four hours after arriving on a flight from the United States. He was due to give a lecture at the invitation of the McGill University Faculty of Law and Concordia University. In explaining his detention, Taner Akçam says that Canadian authorities referred to an inaccurate version of his biography on Wikipedia from around December 24, 2006, which called him a terrorist.
March 2007 – The Essjay controversy was sparked when The New Yorker magazine issued a rare editorial correction saying that a prominent English Wikipedia editor and administrator known as "Essjay", whom they had interviewed and described in a July 2006 article as a "tenured professor of religion at a private university" who held a "Ph.D. in theology and a degree in canon law", was in fact a 24-year-old who held no advanced degrees. Essjay had invented a completely false identity for his pseudonymous participation in Wikipedia. In January 2007, however, Essjay became a Wikia employee and divulged his real name, Ryan Jordan; this was noticed by Daniel Brandt of Wikipedia Watch, who communicated Essjay's identity to The New Yorker. Jordan held trusted volunteer positions within Wikipedia known as "administrator", "bureaucrat", "checkuser", "arbitrator", and "mediator". Responding to the controversy, Jimmy Wales stated that he viewed Essjay's made-up persona like a pseudonym and did not really have a problem with it: "Essjay has always been, and still is, a fantastic editor and trusted member of the community... He has been thoughtful and contrite about the entire matter, and I consider it settled." The incident caused wide-ranging debates in the Wikipedia community, and saw Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger challenge Wales: "Jimmy, to call yourself a tenured professor, when you aren't one, is not a 'pseudonym'. It's identity fraud. And the full question is not why you appointed Essjay to ArbCom, but: why did you ignore the obvious moral implications of the fact that he had fraudulently pretended to be a professor – ignoring those implications even to the point of giving him a job and appointing him to ArbCom – until now?" As a result of the controversy, Wales eventually invited Jordan to relinquish his responsibilities on Wikipedia, which he did; Jordan also quit his job at Wikia.
June 2007 – In June 2007, a statement regarding Nancy Benoit's death was added to the wrestler Chris Benoit's English Wikipedia article fourteen hours before police discovered the bodies of Benoit and his family. This seemingly prescient addition was initially reported on Wikinews and later on Fox News Channel. The article originally read: "Chris Benoit was replaced by Johnny Nitro for the ECW World Championship match at Vengeance, as Benoit was not there due to personal issues, stemming from the death of his wife Nancy." The phrase "stemming from the death of his wife Nancy" was added at 12:01 a.m. EDT on June 25, whereas the Fayette County police reportedly discovered the bodies of the Benoit family at 2:30 p.m. EDT (14 hours, 29 minutes later). The IP address of the editor was traced to Stamford, Connecticut, which is also the location of WWE headquarters. After news of the early death notice reached mainstream media, the anonymous poster accessed Wikinews to explain his edit as a "huge coincidence and nothing more."
August 2007 – It became known that Virgil Griffith, a Caltech computation and neural-systems graduate student, created a searchable database that linked changes made by anonymous Wikipedia editors to companies and organizations from which the changes were made. The database cross-referenced logs of Wikipedia edits with publicly available records pertaining to the internet IP addresses edits were made from. Griffith was motivated by the edits from the United States Congress, and wanted to see if others were similarly promoting themselves. He was particularly interested in finding scandals, especially at large and controversial corporations. He said he wanted to, "create minor public relations disasters for companies and organizations I dislike (and) to see what 'interesting organizations' (which I am neutral towards) are up to." He also wanted to give Wikipedia readers a tool to check edits for accuracy and allow the automation and indexing of edits. Most of the edits Wikiscanner found were minor or harmless, but the site was mined to detect the most controversial and embarrassing instances of conflict of interest edits. These instances received media coverage worldwide. Included among the accused were the Vatican, the CIA, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Democratic Party's Congressional Campaign Committee, the U.S. Republican Party, Britain's Labour Party, Britain's Conservative Party, the Canadian government, Industry Canada, the Department of Prime Minister, Cabinet, and Defence in Australia, the United Nations, the United States Senate, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Montana Senator Conrad Burns, Ohio Governor Bob Taft, Prince Johan Friso and his wife Princess Mabel of the Netherlands, the Israeli government, Exxon Mobil, Walmart, AstraZeneca, Diebold, Dow Chemical, Disney, Dell, Anheuser-Busch, Nestlé, Pepsi, Boeing, Sony Computer Entertainment, EA, SCO Group, MySpace, Pfizer, Raytheon, DuPont, Anglican and Catholic churches, the Church of Scientology, the World Harvest Church, Amnesty International, the Discovery Channel, Fox News, CBS, The Washington Post, the National Rifle Association, News International, Al Jazeera, Bob Jones University, and Ohio State University. Although the edits correlated with known IP addresses, there was no proof that the changes actually came from a member of the organization or employee of the company, only that someone had access to their network. Wikipedia spokespersons received WikiScanner positively, noting that it helped prevent conflicts of interest from influencing articles as well as increasing transparency and mitigating attempts to remove or distort relevant facts. In 2008 Griffith released an updated version of WikiScanner called WikiWatcher, which also exploited a common mistake made by users with registered accounts who accidentally forget to log in, revealing their IP address and subsequently their affiliations. As of March 2012 WikiScanner's website was online, but not functioning.
September 2007
Auren Hoffman was noted by VentureBeat in 2007 as having edited his own Wikipedia profile under a pseudonym. Hoffman responded that he was editing his profile to remove inappropriate comments.
One thousand IPs were blocked in Utah in order to prevent further edits from a highly active user who had been banned from editing Wikipedia.
October 2007 – In their obituaries of recently deceased TV theme composer Ronnie Hazlehurst, many British media organizations reported that he had co-written the S Club 7 song "Reach". In fact, he had not, and it was discovered that this information had been sourced from a hoax edit to Hazlehurst's Wikipedia article.
December 2007 – In December 2007, it became known that the Wikimedia Foundation had failed to do a basic background check and hired Carolyn Doran as its chief operating officer. Doran had criminal records in three states for theft, drunken driving and fleeing the scene of a car accident. According to The Register, Doran left her position after yet another arrest for DUI; the Wikimedia Foundation lawyer, Mike Godwin, was quoted as saying, "We've never had any documentation of any criminal record on Carolyn Doran's part at all. As far as I'm concerned, I have no direct knowledge of [her criminal record] yet... We have, in our records, no evidence of any such thing." The Associated Press also reported that Doran had wounded her boyfriend "with a gunshot to the chest".
2008
February 2008 – A group of Muslims started an online petition demanding that Wikipedia remove images of the prophet Muhammad from Wikipedia articles about him since some followers of Islam believe that such images violate the precepts of the religion. Protesters also organized an email campaign to pressure the English Wikipedia into removing the offending images. By February 7, approximately 100,000 people had signed the petition and the article had been protected from editing by non-registered users. Jay Walsh, Wikimedia Foundation spokesman, told Information Week that "Noncensorship is an important tenet of the user community and the editing community" and Mathias Schindler, of Wikimedia Deutschland, said in response to efforts to have the images removed from the German language Wikipedia that "Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a venue for an inter-Muslim debate."
March 2008
Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales used Wikipedia to end a relationship he was having with conservative political columnist, television commentator and university lecturer Rachel Marsden, by adding a single sentence to his own Wikipedia user page stating "I am no longer involved with Rachel Marsden." This was interpreted as a wider Wikipedia controversy because of the suggestion (from released private chat logs purportedly between Marsden and Wales) that Wales had previously edited Marsden's biographical article on Wikipedia, at the request of Marsden (before they were romantically involved).
Jimmy Wales was accused by former Wikimedia Foundation employee Danny Wool of misusing the foundation's funds for recreational purposes. Wool also stated that Wales had his Wikimedia credit card taken away in part because of his spending habits, a claim Wales denied. Then-chairperson of the foundation Florence Devouard and former foundation interim Executive Director Brad Patrick denied any wrongdoing by Wales or the foundation, saying that Wales accounted for every expense and that, for items for which he lacked receipts, he paid out of his own pocket; in private, Devouard upbraided Wales for "constantly trying to rewrite the past".
It was claimed by Jeffrey Vernon Merkey that Wales had edited Merkey's Wikipedia entry to make it more favorable in return for donations to the Wikimedia Foundation, an allegation Wales dismissed as "nonsense".
May 2008 – A long-running dispute between members of the Church of Scientology and Wikipedia editors reached Wikipedia's arbitration committee. The church members were accused of attempting to sway articles in the church's interests, while other editors were accused of the opposite. The arbitration committee unanimously voted to block all edits from the IP addresses associated with the church; several Scientology critics were banned too.
June 2008
In 2007, Jim Prentice, then member of the Parliament of Canada for Calgary Centre-North and Minister of Industry, introduced copyright protection legislation, which was compared by many to the DMCA. The legislation was controversial and Prentice withdrew it in December 2007. By June 2008 there was a great deal of speculation in the Canadian press that Prentice would eventually succeed Stephen Harper as Prime Minister of Canada. Michael Geist, professor of internet law at the University of Ottawa, discovered that a series of anonymous edits to Prentice's Wikipedia article had been made in late May and early June from an IP address owned by Industry Canada, Prentice's ministry. The modifications removed critical mentions of Prentice's involvement with the copyright legislation and added generic positive claims about the minister. Geist announced on his blog his findings about the modifications, which one Canadian commentator called "hagiographic palaver extolling Prentice".
Australian press stated that American law firm Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft had threatened the Wikimedia Foundation on behalf of then-Telstra-CEO Solomon Trujillo. The letter allegedly contained: "If Wikipedia and Wikimedia do not remove the improper language by that time (7pm on March 7), and take the steps necessary to block its being reinserted, Mr (Trujillo) intends to commence litigation..." and reportedly demanded that the editor responsible for the defamatory material be blocked. Jimmy Wales denied that any such threat had been received, stating that "It is sad to see a media so irresponsible as to make it seem that Wikipedia would cave to a few lawyers letters objecting to legitimate criticism. It is even sadder to see Mr Trujillo attacked by that same irresponsible media for something he did not do."
August 2008 – Republican senator and then presidential candidate John McCain was accused of plagiarizing from Wikipedia some elements of a speech he gave about the Republic of Georgia. The Congressional Quarterly found that McCain's speech contained two passages which were substantially identical to passages in the Wikipedia article on the country and that a third passage "bore striking resemblances." McCain's speech was written by speechwriters rather than by the candidate himself. After the Congressional Quarterly's report was released, McCain's aides released a statement that contained: "there are only so many ways to state basic historical facts and dates and that any similarities to Wikipedia were only coincidental".
November 2008 – New York Times reporter David Rohde was kidnapped by the Taliban while reporting in Afghanistan. The Times feared that reporting of the matter would endanger Rohde's life, so they did not mention it in their pages. Statements about Rohde's kidnapping were edited into Wikipedia during the voluntary news blackout, however. Representatives of the Times called Jimmy Wales and asked him to suppress the information. He agreed to take care of it, but in order to avoid the scrutiny which attends his edits to Wikipedia, Wales asked an unnamed administrator on the site to delete the information instead. Wales told Times media reporter Richard Pérez-Peña, "We were really helped by the fact that it hadn't appeared in a place we would regard as a reliable source. I would have had a really hard time with it if it had." The Christian Science Monitor reported that Wales's actions were the subject of much criticism from bloggers and journalists, who argued that information suppression undermined the credibility of Wikipedia.
December 2008
In early December, the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) added the Wikipedia page about the album Virgin Killer to its blacklist of online material potentially illegal in the United Kingdom because it contains an image of a naked prepubescent girl. The IWF's blacklist is voluntarily enforced by 95% of British internet service providers. The issue eventually left most British residents unable to edit any page on Wikipedia. The Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) protested the blacklisting of the page even though, as the IWF stated at the time, "the image in question is potentially in breach of the Protection of Children Act 1978", and, in an "unprecedented" move, the IWF agreed to remove the page from its blacklist.
Professor T. Mills Kelly conducted a class project on "Lying About the Past", which resulted in the Edward Owens hoax. A biography was created about "Edward Owens" who was claimed to be an oyster fisherman that became a pirate during the period of the Long Depression, targeting ships in the Chesapeake Bay. It was revealed when media outlets began reporting the story as fact.
2009
January 20, 2009 – The Wikipedia article for West Virginia senator Robert Byrd was briefly edited to state, incorrectly, that he had died. Senator Edward Kennedy's article was also changed at this time to reflect his notional death. Shortly thereafter Jimmy Wales was quoted by Fox News as saying "This nonsense would have been 100% prevented by Flagged Revisions".
February 2009 – Scott Kildall and collaborator Nathaniel Stern created Wikipedia Art, a performance art piece as a live article on Wikipedia. Site editors quickly concluded that the project violated Wikipedia's rules and opted to delete it 15 hours after it was initially posted. A month later, Kildall and Stern received a letter from a law firm representing the Wikimedia Foundation, claiming the domain name, wikipediaart.org, infringed on their trademark. The ensuing controversy was reported in the national press. Wikipedia Art has since been included in the Internet Pavilion of the Venice Biennale for 2009. It also appeared in a revised form at the Transmediale festival in Berlin in 2011.
March 2009
Hours after the death of French composer Maurice Jarre, Irish student Shane Fitzgerald added a phony quote to Jarre's Wikipedia article. The quote said "One could say my life itself has been one long soundtrack. Music was my life, music brought me to life, and music is how I will be remembered long after I leave this life. When I die there will be a final waltz playing in my head, that only I can hear." The quote was quickly copy/pasted by journalists and incorporated into numerous obituaries of Jarre published in newspapers around the world, including The Guardian and The Independent.
May 2009 – Wikipedian David Boothroyd, a UK Labour Party member, created controversy in 2009, when Wikipedia Review contributor "Tarantino" discovered that he committed sockpuppeting, editing under the accounts "Dbiv", "Fys" and "Sam Blacketer", none of which acknowledged his real identity. Boothroyd regained Administrator status with the "Sam Blacketer" sockpuppet account in April 2007. Later in 2007, Boothroyd's Sam Blacketer account became part of the English Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee. Under the Sam Blacketer account, Boothroyd edited many articles related to United Kingdom politics, including that of rival Conservative Party leader David Cameron. Boothroyd then resigned as an administrator and as an arbitrator.
June 2009
Chris Anderson, editor of Wired, was accused by the Virginia Quarterly Review of plagiarizing material for his book Free: The Future of a Radical Price from Wikipedia. Anderson claimed that he had originally attributed the material properly but that due to disagreements with his publisher over formatting it had ended up in the published work without quotation marks. He took responsibility for the error, saying "That's my screw-up." Anderson announced that the attribution errors would be corrected in the online version of the book and in future publications. Anderson's book is not a defense of the notion of free information as exemplified by Wikipedia, but of the notion of zero-price digital works. However, due to confusion over the concept of free as in freedom versus free as in zero monetary cost (although both concepts apply to Wikipedia), the fact that he plagiarized material for it was seen by at least one commentator as "riddled with savage irony."
James Heilman, a Canadian doctor, uploaded to Wikipedia copies of all 10 inkblot images used in the Rorschach test, on the grounds that copyright to the images had expired. Heilman was widely criticized by psychologists who used the test as a diagnostic tool, because they were worried that patients with prior knowledge of the inkblots would be able to influence their diagnoses. In response to Heilman's posting of the images, a number of psychologists registered Wikipedia accounts to argue against their retention. Later that year two psychologists filed a complaint against Heilman with the Saskatchewan medical licensing board, arguing that his uploading of the images constituted unprofessional behavior.
July 2009 – The National Portrait Gallery in London issued a cease and desist letter for alleged breach of copyright against a Wikipedia editor who downloaded more than 3,000 high-resolution images from the gallery's website to upload them to Wikimedia Commons.
November 2009 – Convicted German murderers Wolfgang Werlé and Manfred Lauber sued the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) in German courts, demanding that their names be removed from the English Wikipedia's article on their victim, Walter Sedlmayr. German laws force compliance with such requests for suppression. Alexander H. Stopp, the two men's lawyer, succeeded in forcing the German Wikipedia to remove their names. Mike Godwin responded on behalf of the WMF, stating that the organization "doesn't edit content at all, unless we get a court order from a court of competent jurisdiction. [I]f our German editors have chosen to remove the names of the murderers from their article on Walter Sedlmayr, we support them in that choice. The English-language editors have chosen to include the names of the killers, and we support them in that choice."
December 2009 – Actor Ron Livingston, star of the 1999 film Office Space, filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles County Superior Court against a John Doe who had repeatedly edited Livingston's Wikipedia article to include statements that Livingston was gay and in a relationship with a (possibly notional) man named Lee Dennison. The lawsuit also claimed that the John Doe defendant had set up phony Facebook profiles for Livingston and his putative partner. The suit named neither Wikipedia nor Facebook, but was evidently intended to give Livingston the power to subpoena identifying information from the two organizations about the anonymous defendant. The lawsuit was followed by a manifestation of the Streisand effect as Livingston was targeted with accusations of homophobia. Jay Walsh, then head of communication for the Wikimedia Foundation, said that "This is a serious issue. We take it quite seriously. We understand real people are reflected in these articles.... Articles about living people are tough articles to manage. Someone who is a fan or an enemy might try to attack or vandalize those articles. This isn't a new scenario for us to witness."
2010
April 2010 and before – One of the largest disputes in the German Wikipedia about a simple sentence was about the Donauturm in Vienna. While the observation tower shares some architectural aspects with the Fernsehturm Stuttgart, it was never planned for TV broadcasting purposes. The German Wikipedia went through an approximately 600,000-character discussion about the suitable title and category. Some (often Austrian) authors denied the description of Donauturm as a "TV tower", which was defended by others. The Spiegel coverage of the issue cited a participant with "On good days, Wikipedia is better than any TV soap".
April 2010 – Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger informed the FBI that a large amount of child pornography was available on Wikimedia Commons. Sanger told Fox News: "I wasn't shocked that it was online, but I was shocked that it was on a Wikimedia Foundation site that purports to be a reference site." Co-founder Jimmy Wales responded by claiming that a strong statement from the Wikimedia Foundation would be forthcoming. In the weeks following Sanger's letter, Wales responded by unilaterally deleting a number of images which he personally deemed to be pornographic. Wales's unilateral actions led to an outcry from the Wikipedian community, which in turn prompted Wales to voluntarily relinquish some of his user privileges.
July 2010 – Following the football World Cup, the FIFA president Sepp Blatter was awarded the Order of the Companions of O. R. Tambo for his contribution over the World Cup. The South African Government's webpage announcing the award referred to him as Joseph Sepp Bellend Blatter, the nickname having been taken from his vandalized Wikipedia article. "Bellend" is a British slang term for the tip of the penis.
August 2010 – After the Federal Bureau of Investigation requested that Wikipedia remove the FBI seal from Wikipedia (on grounds that the high-resolution graphic could facilitate creation of fake FBI badges) Wikimedia Foundation lawyer Mike Godwin sent a letter to the Bureau, denying their request and contending that the FBI had misinterpreted the law.
September 2010 – Right-wing radio presenter Rush Limbaugh broadcast a discussion of an upcoming hearing in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Florida courtroom of judge Roger Vinson of the case Florida et al v. United States Department of Health and Human Services, one of the cases brought by U.S. states challenging the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). Limbaugh told his audience that Vinson had previously killed three brown bears and mounted their heads over the door of his courtroom in order, according to Limbaugh, to "instill the fear of God into the accused." This, stated Limbaugh, "would not be good news" for supporters of Obamacare. However, the story was not only false, but had been edited into Vinson's Wikipedia article a scant few days before the broadcast. The bear-hunting information inserted into the Wikipedia article was sourced to a nonexistent story in the Pensacola News Journal. A spokesman for Limbaugh told the New York Times that a researcher for Limbaugh's show had found the information on the News Journal website, but that newspaper's managing editor told the Times that no such information had ever been published there.
2011
June 2011
Potential candidate for U.S. Vice President Sarah Palin described American Revolutionary War hero Paul Revere as "he who warned the British that they weren't going to be taking away our arms, by ringing those bells." This description, characterized by U.S. News and World Report (USN&WR) as "flummoxed ramblings", kicked off a battle over the contents of the English Wikipedia's article about Revere. Palin's remarks and various interpretations were added by Palin supporters to the Revere Wikipedia page and just as quickly removed by detractors, although at least one commentator opined that "in some cases people appeared to be attributing the claims to Ms. Palin in order to mock her." In the 10 days following Palin's remark, Revere's Wikipedia page received over a half million page views and led to extensive and inconclusive discussion on the article's talk page and in the national media about whether the episode had improved or harmed the article. Robert Schlesinger, writing in USN&WR, summarized the episode by saying that "[i]t used to be said of conservatism that it stood athwart history and yelled 'stop.' Increasingly it seems to stand beside reality while hitting the 'edit' button."
PR Week reported on a 'fixer', an unnamed London-based figure in the PR industry who offered his services to 'cleanse' Wikipedia articles for clients. Wikipedia entries this person was accused of changing included Carphone Warehouse co-founder David Ross, Von Essen Group chairman Andrew Davis, British property developer David Rowland, billionaire Saudi tycoon Maan Al-Sanea, and Edward Stanley, 19th Earl of Derby. According to PR Week, 42 edits were made from the same IP address, most of them removing negative or controversial information, or adding positive information.
September 2011 – British writer and journalist Johann Hari admitted using Wikipedia to attack his opponents by editing the online encyclopedia's articles about them under a pseudonym. Using a sockpuppet, Hari engaged in a six-year trolling spree where he would repeatedly paint himself in a flattering light while also inserting fabrications in the entries for people he considered enemies, such as Francis Wheen, Nick Cohen, Niall Ferguson, and Christina Odone, who he falsely said had been fired from her job at The Catholic Herald. Odone also suspects Hari of having made anonymous edits calling her an antisemite.
November 2011 – After the South African government passed the Protection of State Information Bill, a law which criminalized certain forms of speech in that country, the Wikipedia article about the ruling African National Congress (ANC) party was altered in protest. The protesters deleted phrases on the page which were critical of the ANC, presumably suggesting that they would be illegal under the new law. This was denied by ANC spokesman Keith Khoza, who stated that the edits were "conduct... not consistent with a civilised society."
2012
January 2012
British MP Tom Watson discovered that Portland Communications had been removing the nickname of one of its clients' products ("Wife Beater", referring to Anheuser-Busch InBev's Stella Artois beer) from Wikipedia. Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) CEO Jane Wilson noted, "Stella Artois is on the 'wife-beater' page because it is a nick-name in common currency for that brand of strong continental lager. The brand managers who want to change this have a wider reputational issue to address, editing the term from a Wikipedia page will not get rid of this association." Other edits from Portland's offices included changes to articles about another Portland client, the Kazakhstan's BTA Bank, and its former head Mukhtar Ablyazov. Portland did not deny making the changes, arguing they had been done transparently and in accordance with Wikipedia's policies. Portland Communications welcomed CIPR's subsequent announcement of a collaboration with Wikipedia and invited Jimmy Wales to speak to their company, as he did at Bell Pottinger. Tom Watson was optimistic about the collaboration: "PR professionals need clear guidelines in this new world of online-information-sharing. That's why I am delighted that interested parties are coming together to establish a clear code of conduct."
During the 2008 U.S. presidential race, changes made by both Barack Obama's and John McCain's campaigns to their Wikipedia pages made the news.
February 2012 – American labor historian Timothy Messer-Kruse, an expert on the Haymarket affair, published an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education describing his three-year struggle to edit the Wikipedia article on the subject. Messer-Kruse had discovered new primary sources which, in his professional opinion, cast doubt on the conventional view of the incident. In 2009, when he first tried to edit the article to include the new information, he was told by other editors that primary sources were not acceptable and that he would have to find published secondary sources. As he later said on NPR, "So I actually bided my time. I knew that my own published book would be coming out in 2011." When his book was published and he returned to insert his newly discovered material into the article, he was told that it was a minority view and could not be given "undue weight", even though he had proved in his book that the majority view was incorrect regarding major details of the case. Steven Walling of the Wikimedia Foundation told a NPR reporter that all of Wikipedia's rules had been followed, stating that "We do not rely on what exact, individual people say, just based on their own credibility." National security scholars Benjamin Wittes and Stephanie Leutert have used Messer-Kruse's experiences to illuminate the "broad question" of "whether Wikipedia's policies are encouraging an undue conservatism about sourcing."
March 2012 – The Bureau of Investigative Journalism uncovered that UK MPs or their staff had made almost 10,000 edits to the encyclopedia, and that the Wikipedia articles of almost one in six MPs had been edited from within Parliament. Many of the changes dealt with removing unflattering details from Wikipedia during the 2009 expenses scandal, as well as other controversial issues. British politician Joan Ryan admitted to changing her entry "whenever there's misleading or untruthful information [that has] been placed on it." Clare Short said her staff were "angry and protective" over mistakes and criticisms in her Wikipedia article and acknowledged they might have made changes to it. Labour MP Fabian Hamilton also reported having one of his assistants edit a page to make it more accurate in his view. MP Philip Davies denied making changes about removing controversial comments related to Muslims from 2006 and 2007.
July 2012
Attempts to delete an entry about the wedding dress of Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge led to a controversy on the English Wikipedia. Jimmy Wales used the example to illustrate his notion about a "gender gap" in Wikipedia on the Wikimania 2012. The issue received some press coverage.
Wikimedia UK chairperson and administrator of the English Wikipedia Ashley van Haeften was banned from the English Wikipedia for 6 months for sockpuppeting and other violations of Wikipedia's norms and policies. He was only the ninth Wikipedia sysop to be banned. Wikimedia UK's board fully supported van Haeften following the case, until van Haeften resigned as chair in August.
September 2012
Author Philip Roth published an open letter to Wikipedia, describing conflicts he experienced with the Wikipedia community while attempting to modify the Wikipedia article about his novel The Human Stain: although the character Coleman Silk had been inspired by the case of Melvin Tumin, many literary critics had drawn parallels between Silk and the life of Anatole Broyard, and Roth sought to remove statements that Broyard had been suggested as an inspiration; however, Roth's edits had been reverted on the grounds that direct statements from the author were a primary source, not a secondary. Wikipedia administrator and community liaison Oliver Keyes subsequently wrote a blog post criticizing both Roth and his approach, and pointed out that even prior to Roth's attempts to modify the article, it had already cited a published interview in which Roth stated that the inspiration for Coleman Silk had been Tumin rather than Broyard. Keyes also pointed out that the edits had been made via an anonymous IP address, with no evidence provided to support the claim that Roth was actually involved.
The Gibraltarpedia project, where editors created articles about Gibraltar, came under scrutiny due to concerns about Roger Bamkin, a Wikimedia UK board member who was head of the project, having a professional relationship with the government of Gibraltar in connection with Gibraltarpedia. Of primary concern was that the site's main page "Did You Know" section was allegedly being used for the promotional purposes of Bamkin's clients. Bamkin, under pressure, resigned from the board.
October 2012 – Asian soccer's governing body was forced to apologize to the United Arab Emirates soccer team for referring to them as the "Sand Monkeys"; the spurious nickname had been taken from a vandalized Wikipedia article.
November 2012 – Lord Justice Leveson wrote in his report on British press standards, "The Independent was founded in 1986 by the journalists Andreas Whittam Smith, Stephen Glover and Brett Straub..." He had used the Wikipedia article for The Independent newspaper as his source, but an act of vandalism had replaced Matthew Symonds (a genuine co-founder) with Brett Straub (an unknown character). The Economist said of the Leveson report, "Parts of it are a scissors-and-paste job culled from Wikipedia."
December 2012 – A discussion took place on the Wikipedia user talk page of Jimmy Wales about his connection with the Republic of Kazakhstan WikiBilim organization and the repressive government of the Republic of Kazakhstan. Wales unilaterally shut down the conversation when other Wikipedia editors questioned him about his friendship with Tony Blair, whose company provides paid consultancy services to the Kazakh government. Wales stated that the line of questioning was "just totally weird and irrelevant" and told Andreas Kolbe, a moderator at Wikipediocracy who edits Wikipedia under the username "Jayen466": "please stay off my talk page."
2013
January 2013
The discovery of a hoax article on the "Bicholim conflict" caused widespread press coverage. The article, a meticulously crafted but completely made-up description of a fictitious war in Indian Goa, had been listed as a "good article" – a quality award given to fewer than 1 percent of all articles on the English Wikipedia – for more than five years.
Wikipedia editors engaged in a protracted conflict for nearly two months concerning whether to capitalize the "I" in the title of the Wikipedia article on the film Star Trek Into Darkness, with some arguing that the title should be written as Star Trek into Darkness. The conflict, which spanned over 40,000 words on the article's talk page, mostly centered around the fact that there was no colon in the title, as there had been in every previous Star Trek film, throwing into relief the question of whether "Into Darkness" was a subtitle. The conflict received coverage in various media outlets who noted the conflict's pedantry and meaninglessness, with cartoonist Randall Munroe in particular writing a comic strip on xkcd in which an editor resolves the conflict by writing the title as StAr TrEk InTo DaRkNeSs. The conflict was eventually resolved in favor of capitalizing the "I", reflecting the consensus of primary and secondary sources.
February 2013 – Prison company GEO Group received media coverage when a Wikipedia editor using the name "Abraham Cohen" (who was, at the time, also GEO Group's Manager of Corporate Relations) edited the company's entry to remove information on its past controversies, following the announcement that it had obtained naming rights to Florida Atlantic University's new stadium.
March 2013 – Controversy arose in March 2013 after it emerged that large segments of the BP article had originated from a corporate employee who was a Wikipedia editor.
April 2013
The French-language Wikipedia article Station hertzienne militaire de Pierre-sur-Haute, about a military radio station, attracted attention from the French interior intelligence agency DCRI. The agency attempted to have the article about the facility removed from the French-language Wikipedia. After a request for deletion in March 2013, the Wikimedia Foundation had asked the DCRI which parts of the article were causing a problem, noting that the article closely reflected information in a 2004 documentary made by Télévision Loire 7, a French local television station, which is freely available online and had been made with the cooperation of the French Air Force. The DCRI refused to give these details, and repeated its demand for deletion of the article. The DCRI then pressured Rémi Mathis, a volunteer administrator of the French-language Wikipedia, and president of Wikimedia France, into deleting the article by threatening him with arrest. Later, the article was restored by another Wikipedia contributor living in Switzerland. As a result of the controversy, the article temporarily became the most read page on the French Wikipedia, with more than 120,000 page views during the weekend of April 6/7, 2013. For his role in the controversy, Mathis was named Wikipedian of the Year by Jimmy Wales at Wikimania 2013.
It was confirmed by a spokesperson for the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media that Wikipedia had been blacklisted over the Russian Wikipedia's article about cannabis smoking. Being placed on the blacklist gives the operator 24 hours to remove the offending material. If the website owner refuses to remove the material then either the website host or the network operator will be required to block access to the site in Russia. The New York Times had reported in March that Russia had begun to "selectively" block internet content that the government considered either illegal under Russian law or otherwise harmful to children.
The Sun alleged that Labour Party MP Chuka Umunna, in 2007 before his election, used the Wikipedia username "Socialdemocrat", to create and repeatedly edit his own Wikipedia page. Umunna told The Daily Telegraph that he did not alter his own Wikipedia page, but the paper quoted what they called "sources close to Umunna" as having told the newspaper that "it was possible that one of his campaign team in 2007, when he was trying to be selected to be Labour's candidate for Streatham in the 2010 general election, set up the page." On April 11, 2013, the Evening Standard alleged that an edit in January 2008 was made on a computer at the law firm at which he then worked. Umunna said that he had "no recollection" of doing so.
An edit war on the Wikipedia article of Canadian politician and leader of the New Democratic Party (NDP) in British Columbia, Adrian Dix, was widely reported in the Canadian press. Dix, while employed by Glen Clark, then premier of British Columbia, had falsified a memo related to a scandal involving casinos in which Clark was implicated, leading to Dix being fired from his post. The Wikipedia editor who led the effort to keep mention of the incident out of Dix's article was identified by Global News and the Vancouver Sun as Mike Cleven, who edits Wikipedia under the username Skookum1. Cleven denied that he was associated with the NDP, stating that "I am the editor who's spent the most energy on keeping the people pushing an inflammatory and undue-weight account of this. Whitewashing the article to prevent mention of this is not the aim here, it is to prevent articles being used for defamatory purposes... the BC Liberals have pulled this kind of crap on Wikipedia before; they can say it's not them, sure uh-huh, but the agenda of those claiming NOT to be them is too much like theirs to be worth explaining further."
Amanda Filipacchi wrote an op-ed for The New York Times on April 24, 2013, titled "Wikipedia's Sexism Toward Female Novelists", in which she noted that "editors have begun the process of moving women, one by one, alphabetically, from the 'American Novelists' category to the 'American Women Novelists' subcategory." She suggested the reason for the move might be to create a male-only list of 'American Novelists' on Wikipedia. The story was picked up by many other newspapers and websites and feminists said in response that they were disappointed and shocked by the action. Wikipedia editors initiated various responses soon after Filipacchi's article appeared, including the creation of a category for 'American men novelists' along with an immediate proposal to merge both categories back into the original 'American novelists' category. The 'American men novelists' category was criticized because the two categories together would have the effect of emptying the 'American novelists' category. When the 'American men novelists' category was first created, its only entries were Orson Scott Card and P. D. Cacek (who is female). A few days after the op-ed, Filipacchi wrote in the New York Times Sunday Review about the reaction to it, which included edits to the Wikipedia article about her that she suggested were retaliatory. In an article in The Atlantic responding to accounts that the edits she had initially complained of were the work of one rogue editor, Filipacchi detailed edit histories identifying seven other editors who had individually or collectively performed the same actions. Andrew Leonard, reporting for Salon.com, found that Filipacchi's articles were followed by what he called "revenge editing" on her article and articles related to her, including that of her father, Daniel Filipacchi. Leonard quoted extensively from talk page comments of Wikipedia editor Qworty, who, e.g., wrote on the talk page of Filipacchi's article: "Oh, by all means, let's be intimidated by the Holy New York Times. Because when the New York Times tells you to shut up, you have to shut up. Because that's the way 'freedom' works, and the NYT is all about promoting freedom all over the world, which is why they employed Judith Miller."
May 2013 – Andrew Leonard, writing in salon.com, revealed Wikipedia editor Qworty's real life identity to be Robert Clark Young, a novelist and writer. Qworty first drew attention to himself through his "revenge editing" on the Wikipedia article of novelist and Wikipedia critic Amanda Filipacchi. Young routinely made negative revisions to the pages of authors with whom he disagreed. Leonard was aided in his investigation by members of Wikipedia criticism site Wikipediocracy. According to Washington Monthly columnist Kathleen Geier, "The Qworty case reveals the Achilles' heel of the Wikipedia project. Anyone possessing enough time and resources, and who is obsessed enough, can post information on the site that is false, misleading, or extremely biased." Shortly after the publication of Leonard's article Qworty/Young was indefinitely blocked from editing Wikipedia and a sockpuppet investigation was opened in order to determine the extent of Young's editing with multiple accounts. Writing about the episode on his talk page, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales quoted Leonard's original article: "For those of us who love Wikipedia, the ramifications of the Qworty saga are not comforting." and went on to write that "That sums it up for me. More thoughts soon. I would have banned him outright years ago. So would many others. That we did not, points to serious deficiencies in our systems." Leonard's continued investigations into Young's editing revealed a years-long crusade against articles about topics and people related to modern Paganism. Leonard reported that one of the pagans whose article Young had nominated for deletion in 2012 nominated Young's article, in an act of revenge, for deletion after Young's revenge editing came to light. However, the pagan editor told Leonard "that he was unlikely to be successful in getting Young's page deleted, because Salon's series of articles on the Qworty affair had enshrined the entire saga as a notable moment in Wikipedia history." The Robert Clark Young article was, however, deleted in January 2017.
June 2013 – Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, asked other editors to post their suspicions about Edward Snowden's activities on Wikipedia to Wales' talk page, arguably violating Wikipedia's strict "outing" policy. No evidence of Snowden's editing was uncovered.
August 2013 – On August 22, 2013, Chelsea (then Bradley) Manning announced her intention to transition. Shortly thereafter, Manning's Wikipedia page was moved from "Bradley Manning" to "Chelsea Manning", and the page was rewritten to reflect Manning's female name and gender "with remarkably little controversy" at first. Within a day, however, a long move request had begun which found no consensus for the move, resulting in the page being returned to "Bradley Manning" until a second long move request in October found consensus that it should indeed be "Chelsea Manning". The same month (October), Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee heard a case about the disputes about the article, which resulted in several editors being topic-banned from editing transgender-related pages for either making transphobic remarks or accusing others of making such remarks. This led Trans Media Watch to criticize the Committee for implying that accusations of transphobia were as bad as actual transphobia.
September 2013
Lawyer Susan L. Burke who had represented Iraqi civilians against the private military company Blackwater Inc. (now known as Academi) sued to discover the identity of two Wikipedia editors who allegedly inserted misleading information into the Wikipedia article about her and who she alleged were associates of Blackwater Inc.
Croatian newspapers reported that the Croatian Wikipedia had been taken over by a clique of fascists who were rewriting Croatian history and promoting anti-gay sentiment. The Croatian Minister of Education, Science, and Sport, Željko Jovanović, made a public statement saying that the country's students should not rely on the Croatian Wikipedia: "[W]e have to point out that much of the content in the Croatian version of Wikipedia is not only misleading but also clearly falsified." In an interview with Croatian news agency HINA, Snježana Koren, a historian at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb, judged the disputed articles "biased and malicious, partly even illiterate", adding that "These are the types of articles you can find on the pages of fringe organizations and movements" and expressing doubts on the ability of its authors to distinguish good from evil.
October 2013
Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director Sue Gardner expressed concerns that too much money from Wikipedia donations was flowing to the various Wikimedia chapters around the world, funding bureaucracy rather than benefiting the encyclopedia. She also expressed concerns that Wikimedia's Funds Dissemination Committee process, being "dominated by fund-seekers, does not as currently constructed offer sufficient protection against log-rolling, self-dealing, and other corrupt practices."
Rand Paul was accused of quoting Wikipedia in some of his speeches. Specifically, Jeremy Peters of The New York Times accused Paul of plagiarizing the Wikipedia article on the sci-fi film Gattaca when Paul was giving a speech about eugenics. The Gattaca article was semi-protected soon after for a period of a week.
An investigation by Wikipedians found that the Wiki-PR company had operated "an army" of sockpuppet accounts to edit Wikipedia on behalf of paying clients. The company's website claimed that its "staff of 45 Wikipedia editors and admins helps you build a page that stands up to the scrutiny of Wikipedia's community rules and guidelines." The company's Twitter profile stated: "We write it. We manage it. You never worry about Wikipedia again." The Wikimedia Foundation subsequently sent Wiki-PR a cease-and-desist letter. After a Wikipedia sockpuppet investigation related to the company, more than 250 Wikipedia user accounts were blocked or banned.
Australian Environment Minister Greg Hunt made headlines in Australian media in an interview with the BBC World Service stating that he had "looked up what Wikipedia says about bushfires" and read there that bushfires were frequent events that had occurred in hotter months prior to European settlement. At the same time, meteorologists funded by the federal government, other scientists and politicians expressed concerns that increasingly extreme fire and flood events are linked to scientifically accepted climate change. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, Wikipedia's article about Hunt was edited to state that he uses Wikipedia for important policy research, and editing of the article was then disabled for new or unregistered users due to vandalism.
2014
January 2014
The Wikimedia Foundation announced that Program Evaluation Coordinator Sarah Stierch was "no longer an employee of the Wikimedia Foundation", after evidence was presented on a Wikimedia mailing list that she had been editing Wikipedia on behalf of paying clients, a practice the Wikimedia Foundation said was "frowned upon by many in the editing community and by the Wikimedia Foundation".
The Wikipedia page about North Carolina state senator Jim Davis was edited to state, incorrectly, that he had died of a heart attack.
There was concern that the Wikipedia article on the Hillsborough disaster had been vandalized with offensive comments posted from computers within various UK government departments.
July 2014
The Daily Telegraph reported that IP addresses belonging to the Russian government had edited articles relating to Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 to remove claims that it helped provide the missile system used to shoot down the aircraft. Among the pages edited was the Russian Wikipedia's article listing of civil aviation incidents, to claim that "the plane [Flight MH17] was shot down by Ukrainian soldiers".
The Wall Street Journal reported on a controversial article-writing program called Lsjbot that has created millions of articles on Swedish Wikipedia and several other language editions.
The 5-year-old Amelia Bedelia Cameroon "accidental hoax" about Amelia Bedelia, main character of its eponymous popular children's book series, was revealed by journalist EJ Dickson. Dickson, who authored the fabricated statements with a friend when they were "stoned", only rediscovered the hoax after it had been propagated tens of times by blogs, journalists, academics, as well as Amelia Bedelia's current author, causing debate about Wikipedia, the usage made of it, as well as responsibility regarding online sources in general. After the hoax was identified, the IP address which had been used to insert it was banned from Wikipedia.
August 2014 – Photographer David Slater sent a copyright takedown notice to the Wikimedia Commons over a photograph of a Celebes crested macaque taken on one of his cameras, which at the time was being operated by the macaque, resulting in a "monkey selfie". The Wikimedia Foundation dismissed the claims, asserting that the photograph, having been taken by a non-human animal, rather than Slater, is in the public domain per United States law. Subsequently, a court in San Francisco ruled copyright protection could not be applied to the monkey and a University of Michigan Law Professor said "the original monkey selfie is in the public domain."
2015
January 2015 – The Guardian reported that the English Wikipedia Arbitration Committee had banned five editors deemed to be breaking the site's rules from gender-related articles amid the Gamergate controversy. This gathered a response from outlets such as Gawker, Inquisitr, Think Progress, The Mary Sue, de Volkskrant, and Wired Germany. The accuracy of these reactions was promptly addressed by the Committee, which had not yet released its final decision. The Wikimedia Foundation also released a statement on its blog. On January 28, the Arbitration Committee issued a final ruling in the GamerGate case, in which one longtime editor was banned from the site and other editors were prohibited from editing articles related to Gamergate or gender.
February 2015 – Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee banned Wikipedia administrator Wifione after accusations that they had for years manipulated the Wikipedia article on the Indian Institute of Planning and Management, an unaccredited business school. The Wikipedia page was used as a marketing tool by the school. Indian journalist Maheswhar Peri said, "In my opinion, by letting this go on for so long, Wikipedia has messed up perhaps 15,000 students' lives."
June 2015 – Wikipedia administrator Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry, who in real life is Richard Symonds, a Liberal Democrat, was stripped of his advanced permissions on English Wikipedia after the site's Arbitration Committee found that he improperly blocked an account and attributed its edits to then Chairman of the Conservative Party Grant Shapps. The committee stated the account in question could not be connected to "any specific individual."
September 2015 – Wikipedia was hit by the Orangemoody blackmail scandal, as it came to light that hundreds of businesses and minor celebrities had faced demands for payment from rogue editors to publish, protect or update Wikipedia articles on them.
November 2015 – The Washington Examiner and several other outlets reported that editors associated with The Hunting Ground, a documentary on rape on college campuses, were discovered making edits to various Wikipedia articles "to make facts conform to the film." In response, Jimmy Wales started a discussion on his talk page about people who edit when they have a conflict of interest (COI) "I have long advocated that we should deal much more quickly and much more severely with COI editors. The usual objections (from some quarters – I think most people agree with me) have to do with it being hard to detect them, but in this case, the COI was called out, warnings were issued, and nothing was done."
December 2015 – The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees voted to remove board member James Heilman on December 28. Heilman was one of three members elected by the Wikipedia editing community in May of that year. The unclear circumstances of his dismissal led to a number of discussions critical of the Board, exacerbating long-standing tensions concerning its relationship with the community. Heilman suggested that his internal inquiry to make the Knight Foundation grant public was a factor in his dismissal from the WMF's Board of Trustees.
2016
January 2016 – On January 5, the Wikimedia Foundation announced the addition of Arnnon Geshuri, vice president of human resources at Tesla Motors, to its board of directors. The appointment was controversial among Wikipedia editors due to his prior role as senior director of human resources and staffing at Google, where he was involved with a "no cold call" arrangement between tech companies that ended with action by the Department of Justice. Nearly 300 editors signed a vote of no confidence, urging his removal from the board. On January 27, board president Patricio Lorente announced Geshuri would step down.
February 2016 – On February 25, owing to pressures presented by a "community revolt", Wikimedia Foundation executive director Lila Tretikov resigned from the organization. Sources attributed the resignation largely to concerns that the organization's leadership was not being transparent enough with a proposal to develop a search engine, which was seen by many as being outside the remit of the non-profit educational charity.
2018
May 2018 – In May 2018, Wikipedia user Bradv declined an AfC draft for Canadian laser physicist Donna Strickland. An entry only appeared after she jointly won a Nobel Prize for Physics in October 2018. Bradv analyzed the incident in the Signpost.
September 2018 – On September 27, 2018, the personal information of United States senators Lindsey Graham, Mike Lee, and Orrin Hatch were added to their respective Wikipedia articles during the hearing of Supreme Court Nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh. The information included their home addresses and phone numbers, and originated from the network located from within the United States House of Representatives. The edits were removed from Wikipedia and hidden from public view, upon acknowledgement of privacy, shortly afterwards. These edits were captured and automatically posted publicly to Twitter by an automated account. Twitter shortly removed the posts and suspended the account in response to the incident. An internal police investigation located the person who made the edits, and 27-year-old Jackson A. Cosko (a staffer for Congress paid by an outside institution) was arrested and charged with multiple felony crimes relating to the incident. He was later sentenced to 4 years in prison for the doxxing attack (which he intended to use to intimidate the Congressmen and their families) as well as the theft of personal data of Congressional employees.
2019
January 2019 – On January 11, 2019, in the midst of the 2019 Venezuelan presidential crisis, the Venezuelan state company CANTV started completely blocking Wikipedia, affecting 1.5 million users.
May 2019 – In May 2019, Leo Burnett Tailor Made, a marketing agency for The North Face Brazil, revealed that they had surreptitiously replaced photos of popular outdoor destinations on Wikipedia with photos featuring North Face products in an attempt to get these products to appear more prominently in search engine results. Following widespread media coverage and criticism from the Wikimedia Foundation, The North Face ended and apologized for the campaign, and the product placement was undone.
June 2019 – On June 10, 2019, the English Wikipedia administrator Fram was banned by the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) from editing the English Wikipedia for a period of 1 year. The ban would eventually be overturned. It was the first ever partial ban implemented by the WMF Trust and Safety team. According to Joseph Bernstein of Buzzfeed News, this took place "without a trial", and WMF did not "disclose the complainer nor the complaint" to the community. Some in the editor community expressed anger at the WMF not providing specifics, as well as skepticism as to whether Fram deserved the ban. An internal Wikipedia talk page called "Community response to the Wikimedia Foundation's ban of Fram" was created to discuss the controversy, and within weeks surpassed 470,000 words, more than the novel A Game of Thrones. A second administrator unblocked Fram, later citing "overwhelming community support", but the WMF reblocked Fram and revoked the administrative abilities of the administrator who unblocked Fram. A third administrator then unblocked Fram. Three weeks after the ban of Fram, 21 English Wikipedia administrators had resigned. An open letter to WMF Board by the Wikipedia Arbitration Committee on June 30 acknowledged and channelled some of the community dissatisfaction. A statement by the WMF board on July 2 opened up the Fram case for a review by the Arbitration Committee, and supported further community involvement in the "debate on toxic behavior" and how to deal with it; a commitment echoed by a July 3 statement from Wikimedia CEO Katherine Maher, who also acknowledged "that there are things that the Foundation could have handled better". The Arbitration Committee completed a review of the Foundation's confidential evidence in September 2019, and overturned the ban.
July 2019 - On the Russian Wikipedia a group of 12 users (meat puppets and sock puppets) was revealed, which coordinated their edits praising current Russian governments officials (mostly governors) and slandering Russian opposition activists, especially top Anti-Corruption Foundation activists Alexei Navalny and Lyubov Sobol, Russian non-government media and journalists critical to Russian government (e.g. Arkady Babchenko and Yevgenia Albats), using as references almost exclusively articles from media belonging to Yevgeny Prigozhin, an oligarch who reportedly is very close to Vladimir Putin and is rumored to be in charge of a social media bot network exercising state-sponsored Internet propaganda. Those users were initially noticed by an editor who saw them almost simultaneously apply for advanced user rights.
2020
August 2020 - a Reddit user publicized that a prolific Scots Wikipedia administrator did not speak the Scots language; tens of thousands of articles were in fact English with eye dialect spellings to suggest a Scottish accent, or word-by-word machine translations of articles from English Wikipedia. Wikimedia users debated recruiting fluent speakers of Scots to repair the articles, reverting all edits from the administrator in question, or — as the latter would entail removing nearly half the articles in the encyclopedia — even deleting and restarting Scots Wikipedia afresh. The Guardian attributed the problem to systemic issues in Wikipedia culture, suggesting that some administrators are afforded effectively unchecked power based on sheer volume of edits (rather than the quality of their work). Robyn Speer, chief scientist at Luminoso, expressed concern that artificial intelligence corpora which used Wikipedia for language-training data had been corrupted by the pseudo-Scots.
September 2020 - The Guardian published an experiment conducted by economists from Collegio Carlo Alberto in Italy and ZEW in Germany where they added content into articles about randomly selected cities in Spain. The researchers reported that adding photos increased the nights spent in those cities by 9%. The experiment resulted in the research team being barred from making further edits on Dutch Wikipedia.
2021
November 2021 - The English Wikipedia's entry for "Mass killings under communist regimes" was nominated for deletion, with some editors arguing that it has "a biased 'anti-Communist' point of view", that "it should not resort to 'simplistic presuppositions that events are driven by any specific ideology", and that "by combining different elements of research to create a 'synthesis', this constitutes original research and therefore breaches Wikipedia rules." This was criticized by historian Robert Tombs, who called it "morally indefensible, at least as bad as Holocaust denial, because 'linking ideology and killing' is the very core of why these things are important. I have read the Wikipedia page, and it seems to me careful and balanced. Therefore attempts to remove it can only be ideologically motivated – to whitewash Communism." Other Wikipedia editors and users on social media opposed the deletion of the article. The article's deletion nomination received considerable attention from conservative media. The Heritage Foundation, an American conservative think tank, called the arguments made in favor of deletion "absurd and ahistorical". On December 1, 2021, a panel of four administrators found that the discussion yielded no consensus, meaning that the status quo was retained, and the article was not deleted. The article's deletion discussion was the largest in Wikipedia's history.
See also
Censorship of Wikipedia
Conflict-of-interest editing on Wikipedia
Criticism of Wikipedia
Litigation involving the Wikimedia Foundation
Plagiarism from Wikipedia
Reliability of Wikipedia
Wikipedia in culture
References
Further reading
Legal citations of Wikipedia
Wikipedia:Wikipedia as a court source
Wikipedia and juries
Wikipedia
Wikipedia controversies
Controversies
Wikipedia
controversies
|
8158354
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Targeted%20threat
|
Targeted threat
|
Targeted threats are a class of malware destined for one specific organization or industry. A type of crimeware, these threats are of particular concern because they are designed to capture sensitive information. Targeted attacks may include threats delivered via SMTP e-mail, port attacks, zero day attack vulnerability exploits or phishing messages. Government organisations are the most targeted sector. Financial industries are the second most targeted sector, most likely because cybercriminals desire to profit from the confidential, sensitive information the financial industry IT infrastructure houses. Similarly, online brokerage accounts have also been targeted by such attacks.
Impact
The impact of targeted attacks can be far-reaching. In addition to regulatory sanctions imposed by HIPAA, Sarbanes-Oxley, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and other laws, they can lead to the loss of revenue, focus and corporate momentum. They not only expose sensitive customer data, but damage corporate reputations and incur potential lawsuits.
Detection and prevention
In contrast to a widespread spam attack, which are widely noticed, because targeted attacks are only sent to a limited number of organizations, these crimeware threats tend to not be reported and thus elude malware scanners.
Heuristics
Multiple-layered pattern scanning
Traffic-origin scanning. Targets known bad locations or traffic anomalies.
Behavior observation. Including desktop emulator solutions and virtual machine behavior analysis.
Examples
In one instance, Trojan horses were used as a targeted threat so that Israeli companies could conduct corporate espionage on each other.
The Hotword Trojan, the Ginwui and the PPDropper Trojans are additional examples of Trojans used for corporate espionage.
Targeted destination attacks use harvested IP addresses to send messages directly to recipients without an MX record lookup. It aims for specific sites and users by defeating hosted protection services and internal gateways to deliver e-mail with malicious payloads.
External links
An analysis of Targeted Attacks
Notes
Types of malware
ja:標的型攻撃
|
51505431
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandon%20Burks
|
Brandon Burks
|
Brandon Barnard Burks (born November 1, 1993) is an American gridiron football running back who is a free agent. He played college football at Troy. Burks was signed by the Green Bay Packers as an undrafted free agent in 2016.
College career
Burks attended Troy, where he played college football for the Trojans.
Professional career
Green Bay Packers
After going undrafted in the 2016 NFL Draft, Burks signed with the Green Bay Packers on May 9, 2016. On September 5, 2016, he was released by the Packers after initially making the 53-man roster the day before. Burks was signed to the Packers' practice squad on November 2, 2016. On November 11, 2016, he was released from the Packers' practice squad.
New York Jets
On December 14, 2016, Burks was signed to the Jets' practice squad. He was promoted to the active roster on December 28, 2016. On April 26, 2017, Burks was waived by the Jets.
Toronto Argonauts
In April 2018, Burks participated in The Spring League, a developmental league to highlight players in front of NFL and CFL scouts. Burks was the first player signed to a professional team when he agreed to terms with the Toronto Argonauts of the CFL on April 16. Burks made a splash during the preseason, recreating a Spring League play against the Hamilton Tiger-Cats where he reversed direction numerous times to avoid tackles for a loss before streaking for a large gain. In the two preseason games, Burks had 13 carries for 69 yards, as well as two catches for 42 yards and a score. As a result, Burks was assigned to the practice roster after the preseason, but was promoted to the active roster for the team's week 4 game against Edmonton. He was also called up in weeks 6 and 15, handling reserve running back and returner duties in all three games, before being demoted back to the practice roster. Following a season ending injury to starting running back James Wilder Jr., and the trade of backup Martese Jackson, Burks assumed the starting role as the Argos limped to a last place finish to the season. In eight games played, Burks produced 283 yards on 45 carries, 125 yards and a touchdown on 18 receptions, and 72 yards on four kick returns. He was released by the Argonauts on February 3, 2020.
Edmonton Eskimos
Burks signed with the Edmonton Eskimos on February 11, 2020.
References
External links
Green Bay Packers bio
Troy Trojans bio
1993 births
Living people
Players of American football from Alabama
People from Enterprise, Alabama
American football running backs
Troy Trojans football players
Green Bay Packers players
New York Jets players
Canadian football running backs
Toronto Argonauts players
Edmonton Elks players
|
16188858
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maressa%20Orzack
|
Maressa Orzack
|
Dr. Maressa Hecht Orzack (February 5, 1924 – November 10, 2010) was an American psychologist who was clinical associate in psychology at McLean Hospital; Coordinator of Behavior Therapy Affective Disease Program, also at McLean Hospital and assistant clinical professor of psychology, Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. She also held private practice at Newton Centre.
Orzack's research included various forms of computer addiction, including Internet addiction and computer game addiction. Recently, her research has focused on the addictive nature of MMORPG games.
Career
Orzack studied at Columbia University, where she worked as an experimental psychologist. From there, in the late 1950s she worked with Agnes N. O'Connel on setting up a research arm at the Wisconsin Central Colony and Training School, under a job share arrangement. It is understood that her later work involved experience with impulse control disorders such as eating disorders and gambling addiction. Her research into computer addiction started at around 1994 while she was treating patients for gambling addiction and substance abuse at McLean Hospital. From discussions with her colleagues and patients referred to her, in 1996. Orzack went on to found and coordinate computer addiction services and a study centre at the hospital. When the clinic first opened Orzack would see at most two patients a week, but later expanded to dozens a week. After that time, Orzack expanded her research from online sex to computer gambling addiction, through to computer game addiction.
Computer addiction
Maressa Orzack became aware of the concept of computer addiction when trying to learn how to use a new item of software. Frustrated with her progress, she started playing a common computer version of the card game solitaire. After a time she started using the computer more for playing the card game than actual work. From her previous experience, she recognized that she was demonstrating addictive behaviors. Orzack listed several symptoms of computer addiction, including using the computer for pleasure and relief from stress, feeling out of control and depressed when not using it, neglecting real life responsibilities and failure in attempts to cut down usage.
Following from this, Orzack continued her research in this area and contacting other academics in this field. Reactions towards her beliefs were mixed, as some stating she was crazy, yet other scientists were also concerned about the issue. She compared computer addiction to other forms of addiction, such as gambling and alcohol addiction, and eating disorders.
Internet addiction
Continuing from her studies in computer addiction, Maressa Orzack moved on to look at internet addiction. In her research, she again likened the addiction to alcoholism, and through studies of cases of extreme internet addiction, learned the severity of the matter. Included in the cases she encountered was where a male who had become heavily addicted to the Internet, resulting in him quitting his graduate degree, leaving his wife and ignoring friends. Although she did not consider Internet addiction to be a recognizable disorder, Orzack felt that it could eventually be categorized as an impulse control disorder in a similar way to kleptomania, compulsive shopping and compulsive gambling. Orzack documented the effects of internet addiction, with withdrawal, loss of control, and compulsive behavior being some of them. She also described that one in ten people become addicted to the internet, with the figure being compared to that of gambling and alcohol addiction. Many of her patients were later referred to a psychiatrist for prescriptions for antidepressant and antianxiety medication. Orzack believed that treatment for internet addiction should be carried out without the aid of computers, and argued that computer-based treatment would be like "having an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in a bar".
Computer gaming addiction
Following her work in internet addiction, Orzack returned to the area that originally started her research into addiction and started re-examining computer games. Orzack believes that the root of gaming addiction comes from the need of excitement in life, stating that "these people are avoiding their own problems. Some of them want excitement, some of them want relief". She also stated that the numbers of computer game addicts in the United States is high, although actual figures are unclear. Orzack felt that many of those she treated for computer game addiction were in their 40s or older, with them being almost exclusively male. She stated that she almost always heard of a case of this type after it has caused problems with someone's job or marriage.
Multiplayer game addiction
Orzack's continued research into computer game addiction started to focus on multiplayer computer games, such as The Sims, EverQuest and World of Warcraft. Describing one of her patients who was regularly missing college lessons and becoming violent, she said "Something is going on in his life that he is escaping. In the game, he finds a sense of belonging. Some say escape and some say fun, but most want to be part of an organization." Orzack then went on to say that these people are roleplaying and feel part of an organisation, something they may lack outside of the game. She also stated that some patients have been known to take drugs in order to continue playing, making her feel that the addiction is worse than that of drink or drugs. Withdrawal from gaming is not something Orzack recommended, as she felt this could lead to depression and violence.
On August 8, 2006, Orzack was quoted in an interview that she felt that over 40 percent of all World of Warcraft subscribers were addicted to the game. She went further by stating that she feels Blizzard Entertainment, the game's developer, structures the game to be deliberately addictive and designs it to keep people in. While she agreed that other personal issues can have an effect she felt that the cause of the problem was what she described as the game's "inherent addictiveness". Describing the addiction as similar to gambling, Orzack cited variable-ratio reinforcement as the mechanism that keeps people playing. Continuing, she added that she feels willpower or self control is not a factor, and that MMORPGs like World of Warcraft should carry warnings in a similar way to cigarettes. There was disagreement about Orzack's conclusions, with it being described a "ridiculous claim" that an addiction to an enjoyable activity and describe it a “serious mental disorder”. Other commentators were concerned that the term "addiction" was being used too frequently, and noting that at the time gaming and internet addiction were not included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
Orzack later described the 40 percent figure as an unscientific estimate, based on a group study of gamers called the Daedalus project and conducted by Nick Yee in California. She then went on to add that it may still be 40 percent who are addicted, but that she was willing to "cut back", concluding that "If you take over eight million people who play World of Warcraft, even if you cut it down to 10 to 15 per cent, that is a fair number of people".
Orzack died November 10, 2010 in Mystic, Connecticut after a long illness.
See also
Impulse control disorder
Computer addiction
Video game addiction
Internet addiction disorder
References
American women psychologists
Harvard Medical School faculty
Columbia University alumni
1924 births
2010 deaths
McLean Hospital people
American women academics
21st-century American women
|
31839460
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatigue%20detection%20software
|
Fatigue detection software
|
Fatigue detection software is intended to reduce fatigue related fatalities and incidents. Several companies are working on a technology for use in industries such as mining, road- and rail haulage and aviation. The technology may soon find wider applications in industries such as health care and education.
Fatigue in the operating environment
In an operational environment scenario where operating systems are dependent on human performance, fatigue can be defined as an inclination to degrade performance. Thus, fatigue is an indicator of baseline risk for the occurrence of errors and accidents.
Globally mining operations are at risk of fatigued workers. Sleepiness and fatigue increase human error and contribute to accidents which can be fatal. Factors compounding fatigue levels in mine workers include; disruptions in circadian rhythms due to shift work, exposure to noise, vibration and chemicals, monotonous and repetitive nature of tasks and night shift driving. Studies recognise a connotation between lifestyle and fatigue. Mine workers in developing countries depend on unreliable public transport systems which add additional commuting hours to their workday. These workers are more susceptible to poor quality and quantity of sleep.
Fatigue is a form of impairment. In 2011, Australian Coroner Annette Hennessy compared fatigue to drunk driving. Fatigued workers are simply less alert and more likely to exercise poor judgement. It's especially risky because often a tired operator is the worst judge of how fatigued he or she may be. David Edwards PhD, Global Mining Safety Solutions Manager at Caterpillar Inc. compares it to asking a drunk person if they believe they are too intoxicated to drive.
Vehicles and driving are recognised as a critical risk in mining environments. Vehicle to vehicle and vehicle to human interactions are generally fatal. The real monetary cost of accidents extends beyond compensation and insurance pay-outs, medical expenses and investigation costs. Fatal accidents often result in the temporary suspension of operations and loss of production. World class mining operations aspire to a fatality free environment and publish their annual safety performance in their Annual Report. There is a global expectation for mines to reduce injuries, eliminate fatalities and prevent catastrophic incidents.
Most mines and commercial truck fleets rely on soft controls such as procedures and other counter-measures to manage fatigue. Common counter-measures that could potentially alleviate fatigue and improve alertness levels in haul truck drivers include; rest days, sleep management, well-designed shift work schedules and structured breaks during the shift, health screening and counselling, education programmes, food and fluid intake and devices for measuring driver's alertness.
Consequences of fatigue
The consequences of fatigue are specifically evident in road traffic safety statistics. However, it is not only drivers of light and commercial vehicles that are at risk. Across all industries shift workers are vulnerable to fatigue-related incidents especially during night shift. Safety statistics are not always available and seldom record the causal factors of the incident. In this section road safety statistics are used to illustrate the context of the fatigue problem.
Driving fatigue generally refers to the state in which a driver possesses physiological and mental function deficiencies, and where driving skills decline objectively, usually after an extended period of driving. A driver that is asleep behind the wheel will not act to avoid a collision or accident and for this reason the accident is much more likely to cause severe injuries or death. Fatigue-related road accidents are three times more likely to result in severe injury or death. A great proportion of these accidents occur between the hours of 14h00-16h00 and 02h00-06h00. During these two time periods drivers are more likely to become drowsy, which increases the chance of accidents.
Statistics show that a leading cause of fatal or injury-causing traffic accidents is a diminished vigilance level. In the trucking industry, 57% of fatal truck accidents are due to driver fatigue. It is the number one cause of heavy truck crashes.
According to the National Sleep Foundation's 2005 Sleep in America poll, 60% of adult drivers – about 168 million people – say they have driven a vehicle while feeling drowsy in the past year and 13% of them admitted to have done so at least once a month.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) conservatively estimates that 100,000 police-reported crashes are the direct result of driver fatigue each year. This resulted in an estimated 1,550 deaths, 71,000 injuries, and $12.5 billion in monetary losses.
In Australia, 60–65% of truck haulage accidents are directly related to operator fatigue and 30% of all crashes are related to fatigue.
Technical and design challenges
The complex interaction of the major physiological factors responsible for sleepiness – circadian rhythms and the homeostatic drive for sleep – pose formidable technical challenges to the design and development of fatigue detection systems. The technology must be robust and capable of high accuracies in diverse operational environments with constantly changing conditions and varying customer needs.
To meet the requirements of efficiency and functionality the technology should comply with the following guidelines:
It should measure what it is operationally and conceptually intended to measure and be consistent in these measurements over time. Thus, a device designed to measure eye blinks (operationally) and alertness (conceptually) should measure these all the time for all drivers.
The software technology used in the device should be optimised for sensitivity and specificity. False negatives should be minimised through accurate and reliable detection of reduced alertness levels. False positives should be minimised through accurate and reliable identification of safe driving and operator vigilance.
The device should be robust, reliable and capable of continuous operation over extended periods, such as a shift. Maintenance and replacement cost should not be excessive.
Be capable of real time monitoring of driver or operator behaviour.
The device should be capable of accurately operating under various operational conditions during the day, at night and under illuminated conditions. Accuracy should not be compromised by conditions in the operator cab, such as humidity, temperature, vibration, noise, etc.
Audible warning signals should not startle the operator and should be adjustable over a reasonable range. The signals should be distinct and audible under operating conditions to not be confused with other alarms and signals.
User acceptance criteria
Irrespective of the obvious safety benefits fatigue detection devices offer, successful acceptance of the technology depends on whether the operator perceives the benefits as greater than the cost. User acceptance is influenced by the following factors:
Ease of use: the technology should be understandable and intuitive in its operation. The operator should be familiar with the capabilities, limitations and operational parameters in all operating conditions. The device output should be easily and correctly interpreted by operators with differing cognitive and physical ability. The operator's vision of the road and other controls should not be obscured.
Ease of learning: the success of the technology depends on its congruency with the mental model of the operator, how easy it is to understand, recall and retain the information and to react thereupon. Most importantly, the operator should trust the device's accuracy to maximise 'hits' and eliminate false or nuisance alarms.
Perceived value: the operator should perceive the technology as contributing to a safer and more alert driving experience, but at the same time it should not create a state of over-reliance. The device should benefit the operator in his own fatigue management programme. It should be clear that the device is completely safe to use without any negative side effects on the health of the operator. Operator data, captured and transmitted to a central control room should be completely confidential.
Advocacy: a critical component of user acceptance is measured by the willingness of operators to purchase and endorse the technology. For the perceived safety benefits of the device, market uptake will increase when it is supported by the intended users – operators, fleet managers, trucking associations, safety departments etc.
Driver behaviour: the allocation of the operator's attention to maintain safe driving should not be negatively influenced by interacting with the device. Extended exposure to the technology should create positive influence in driver behaviour as well as lifestyle changes with regard to fatigue management.
Fatigue detection and monitoring technologies
There were significant advancements in fatigue monitoring technology the past decade. These innovative technology solutions are now commercially available and offer real safety benefits to drivers, operators and other shift workers across all industries.
Software developers, engineers and scientists develop fatigue detection software using various physiological cues to determine the state of fatigue or drowsiness. The measurement of brain activity (electroencephalogram) is widely accepted as the standard in fatigue monitoring. Other technology used to determine fatigue related impairment include behavioural symptom measurements such as; eye behaviour, gaze direction, micro-corrections in steering and throttle use as well as heart rate variability.
Electroencephalography (EEG) technology
Fatigue detection software analyse behaviour and warning signs to determine the onset of fatigue. The technology has the potential to be a highly accurate tool for detecting the early stages of fatigue in drivers and minimise the likelihood of incidents. The technology allows operators in real time to visually identify their levels of alertness. Operators can proactively assess different approaches to maintain alertness and manage their fatigue levels.
Electroencephalography (EEG) is a technique that reports the electrical brain activity non-invasively. It was discovered by Hans Berger in 1924 and evolved over more than 90 years to the advanced technology of today. A dramatic reduction in size, weight and cost of EEG instrumentation and the potential to communicate wirelessly with other digital systems paved the way to extend the technology to previously unsuspected fields, such as entertainment, bio-feedback and support for learning and memory training. Experimentation and product development around this technology include fatigue detection applications.
New EEG fatigue detection software measures an individual's ability to resist sleep. Micro-sleep only occurs when an individual fails to resist sleep, it does not occur when an individual chooses to rest. Operators of heavy mobile equipment are accustomed to resist sleep; it comes natural and is almost a subconscious behaviour. However, when an individual's ability to resist sleep diminishes, there is a risk of a micro-sleep. The ability to resist sleep is therefore the most relevant safety measure for equipment operators. The underlying measurement behind the technology is brain activity. Electroencephalogram has been the gold standard in sleep and fatigue science. Being a more direct physiological measure, it provides improved accuracy by avoiding erroneous measurements related to the external environment.
Apart from developing practical wearable technology, the universal mapping of EEG information to a useful measurement is required for accurate fatigue monitoring in an operating environment. Although EEG analysis is well advanced, scientists found that due to natural physiological person-to-person variations, rigorous rules to interpret brain activity cannot effectively be applied to the entire population. This implies that a rule-based approach to EEG fatigue measurements would be impractical, as each physiological variation would require a specific rule applicable to a specific person.
To overcome this problem, scientists developed the Universal Fatigue Algorithm based on a data-driven approach. Drowsiness is a state determined by independent non-EEG measures. The Oxford Sleep Resistance Test (OSLER test) and the Psychomotor Vigilance Test (PVT) are the most commonly used measures in sleep research. Both tests were used to establish the sample dataset for development of the Universal Fatigue Algorithm. The algorithm was developed from real EEG of a large number of individuals. Artificial intelligence techniques were then used to map the multitude of individual relationships. The implication is that the result gets progressively universal and significant as more data from a wider range of individuals are included in the algorithm. In addition to an unseen-blinded experiment approach, testing of the algorithm is also subject to independent external parties.
Percentage eye openness tracking (PERCLOS)
PERCLOS is a drowsiness detection measure, referred to as the percentage of eyelid closure over the pupil over time and reflects slow eyelid closures or droops rather than blinks. Various real-time operator drowsiness detection systems use PERCLOS assessment and propriety developed software to determine the onset of fatigue. Each technology developer use a unique set-up and combination of hardware to improve the accuracy and ability to track eye movement, eyelid behaviour, head and face poses under all possible circumstances.
Some systems rely on a camera module on a rotating base that is mounted on the dashboard inside the cab. The device has a large field of view to accommodate operator head movements. The equipment uses eye-tracking software with a structured illumination approach that depends on the high contrast between the pupils and the face to identify and track the operator's pupils.
Alternatively, flexible and mobile tracking systems provide head and face tracking which include eye, eyelid and gaze tracking. These systems now provide real time feedback without the use of wire, magnets or headgear.
Although studies confirmed a correlation between PERCLOS and impairment, some experts are concerned by the influence which eye-behaviour unrelated to fatigue levels may have on the accuracy of measurements. Dust, insufficient lighting, glare and changes in humidity are non-fatigue related factors that may influence operator eye-behaviour. This system may therefore be prone to higher rates of false alarms and missed instances of impairment.
Facial features tracking
The computer vision system utilises an unobtrusive dashboard mounted camera and two infra-red illumination sources to detect and track the facial features of the operator. The system analyses eye closures and head poses to determine early onset of fatigue and distraction. The fatigue detection algorithm calculates AVECLOS. This is the percentage of time the eyes are fully closed during a one-minute interval.
The technology was developed for the domestic and commercial markets and is currently being tested in a Volvo demonstration vehicle.
Mobile platform
Recently, fatigue detection system software has been modified to run on Android mobile phones. The technology utilises the mobile phone camera which is mounted in a stand on the cab dashboard to monitor operator eye movement. The developers of the system preferred to use eyelid movement technique. The robust system is capable of tracking fast head movements and facial expressions. External illumination is limited which reduce operator interference. Other potential techniques were found to have drawbacks with the application of the specific hardware. Yawning detection makes it difficult to precisely detect lip positions. Detection of head nodding requires electrodes to be fixed to the scalp.
Further, deep learning methods for action recognition have also been successfully applied on mobile devices. Deep learning techniques do not require separate feature selection steps to identify eye, mouth or head positions and have the potential to further increase prediction accuracy.
App-based technologies have also been released that do not use cameras, but instead leverage the Bowles-Langley Test (BLT) through a simple 60-second game-like experience. Companies who have released fatigue impairment apps with this type of technology include Predictive Safety, based in Denver, Colorado, USA and Aware360 based in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
Driver drowsiness detection
The technologies discussed in previous sections, opened up the automotive safety landscape for various manufacturers to add new safety features to their production models. The drivers of the development of these features can be contributed as either regulatory pressure or the enhancement of the value offering of their product through added features.
New developments in the car industry is as follows:
Further development is undertaken by NVIDIA, the chip supplier to Audi, Mercedes, Tesla and others. NVIDIA is developing the co-pilot, an artificial-intelligence tool that can learn the behaviours of individual drivers and determine abnormal behaviour.
For early drowsiness detection, Plessey Semiconductors developed sensors, to be placed in a seat, that monitor changes in heart rate.
Bosch, a German supplier of technology to many automotive companies, is developing a camera-based system that will monitor head and eye movements, as well as, body posture, heart rate and body temperature.
Valeo, another supplier of automotive technology, is developing an infrared camera system that will monitor children in the rear seat as well as the driver's shoulder, neck and head movements, looking for deviations from the norm.
Mercedes's Attention Assist monitors a driver's behaviour for the first 20 minutes behind the wheel to get a baseline of behaviours. Then, the system checks those against as many as 90 indexes, such as steering wheel angle, lane deviation and external factors such as wind gusts and pothole avoidance.
The application for these systems are not only limited to car manufacturers, but third party technological companies as well. These companies have developed hardware like the Anti Sleep Pilot and Vigo. Anti-Sleep Pilot is a Danish device that can be fitted to any vehicle that uses a combination of accelerometers and reaction tests. The Vido is a smart Bluetooth headset that detects signs of drowsiness through eye and head motion to alert users.
By 2013 it was estimated that about 23% of new registered cars had various degrees of drowsiness detection systems in place. The importance of these systems can be contributed to safety regulatory bodies including these systems in their rating systems. Regulatory systems like the Euro NCAP system primarily focuses on occupant safety ratings, pedestrian rating and child occupant ratings through the release of an overall 5-star rating. In 2009 a new category was added in the form of Euro NCAP Advance safety assist systems, The Euro NCAP Advanced reviews active safety monitoring systems of new car models and aims to provide car buyers with clear guidance about the safety benefits offered by these new technologies.
Here is a list of some advanced safety systems recently developed by car manufacturers.
Steering pattern monitoring, Vision Enhancements and Autonomous Emergency braking
Primarily uses steering input from electric power steering system, radar systems and cameras. These systems could facilitate autonomous braking in the case of drowsiness or distraction, when a driver physically does not act quickly enough. It also has the facility of autonomous driving in the prevention of an accident, when the driver reacts too slowly or not at all.
Vehicle position in lane monitoring
Uses lane monitoring camera and radar sensors. These systems can assist and warn you when you unintentionally leave the road lane or when you change lane without indication, commonly due to fatigue. These features are commonly referred to as blind spot monitoring, lane keep assist or lane departure monitoring.
Driver eye/face monitoring
Requires a camera watching the driver's face, referred to as attention assist, these systems detect and warns drivers to prevent them falling asleep momentarily whilst driving.
Physiological measurement
Requires body sensors for measure parameters like brain activity, heart rate, skin conductance and muscle activity. It is not limited to car drivers only. Studies have also been done in assessing neuro-physiological measurements as a method to improve alertness of aircraft pilots.
Volkswagen
VW has incorporated a system to assist drivers in the physical and mental well being when behind the wheel. The system monitors driver behavior closely, noting deviations that may be warning signs to driver fatigue.
Volvo
Volvo has developed Driver Alert Control, a system that detects fatigued drivers and warns them before they fall asleep behind the wheel. Driver Alert Control was the first fatigue detection system developed by a car manufacturer, and has been on the market since 2007.
Stanford research
In 2009 Stanford University researched automatic fatigue detection systems, concluding that technology relying on eyelid movement can be effective in determining driver fatigue in automobiles, but more research needs to be completed to improve accuracy.
See also
Fatigue (safety)
Fatigue Avoidance Scheduling Tool
Shift work
References
Transport safety
Applications of computer vision
|
34823752
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012%20USC%20Trojans%20football%20team
|
2012 USC Trojans football team
|
The 2012 USC Trojans football team represented the University of Southern California in the 2012 NCAA Division I FBS college football season. The Trojans were led by third-year head coach Lane Kiffin, played their home games at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, and were members of the South Division of the Pac-12 Conference. USC returned 18 starters and 13 All-Conference performers from a team that finished the 2011 season ranked No. 6 in the AP Poll with a 10–2 record overall, and finished first in the South Division with a 7–2 record in Pac-12 play. However, as part of a two-year-post-season ban mandated by the NCAA, the Trojans could not claim the 2011 Pac-12 South Division title, participate in the conference championship game or play in a bowl game. The 2012 season was the first year under Kiffin that the Trojans were eligible for post-season play. They started the season ranked #1 in the AP Poll, but finished unranked—the first team to do so since the 1964 Ole Miss Rebels and the first to do so in the BCS-era. The Trojans finished the season 7–6, 5–4 in Pac-12 play, tied for second in the Pac-12 South Division. They were invited to the Sun Bowl where they were defeated 21–7 by Georgia Tech.
Before the season
On December 22, 2011, All-American quarterback Matt Barkley announced that he would be returning to USC for his senior season to complete some "unfinished business" for the Trojans.
Along with Barkley, who was a leading Heisman candidate, the Trojan offense returns nine starters, including 2011 All-Conference center Khaled Holmes, a thousand-yard rusher from 2011 in senior running back Curtis McNeal, and two thousand-yard receivers in Robert Woods and Marqise Lee. In addition, former Penn State running back Silas Redd transferred to USC and will be immediately eligible to play during the 2012 season. The addition of Redd means the USC offense now boasts two thousand-yard rushers, two thousand-year receivers, and a 3,500-yard passer from the 2011 season.
On defense, the Trojans return seven starters and four All-Conference players, including first-team All-Conference performers in safety T. J. McDonald and cornerback Nickell Robey-Coleman, senior defensive end Wes Horton, and the team's co-leading tacklers in sophomore linebackers Hayes Pullard and Dion Bailey, who was named the Pac-12 Freshman Defensive Player of the Year in 2011.
USC returns 18 starters and thirteen All-Conference performers in 2012. The most significant loss on offense came with the early departure of left offensive tackle Matt Kalil, who was drafted No. 4 overall in the First Round of the NFL Draft by the Minnesota Vikings. Kalil is expected to be succeeded at left offensive tackle by true sophomore Aundrey Walker. USC also graduated fullback Rhett Ellison, who was also drafted by the Vikings at No. 128 overall in the Fourth Round. Redshirt freshman Soma Vainuku is the leading contender to start at the fullback position. The most significant loss on defense came with the early departure of defensive end Nick Perry, who was drafted No. 28 overall in the First Round by the Green Bay Packers. Perry is expected to be replaced at Right Defensive End by senior Wes Horton. The Trojans also graduated defensive tackles DaJohn Harris and Christian Tupou, who are expected to be replaced in the starting lineup by sophomore George Uko and redshirt freshman Antwaun Woods.
On July 30, starting Left Defensive End Devon Kennard underwent surgery for a torn pectoralis major muscle. Team doctors told him that it would take approximately four months to fully recover from the surgery, which would make him a redshirt candidate and allow him to return to USC for a fifth year in 2013. Sophomore J.R. Tavai was moved to defensive end from nose tackle in fall camp, and will compete with redshirt freshman Greg Townsend to start at Left Defensive End.
On July 31, former Penn State running back Silas Redd announced his intent to transfer to USC in the wake of the NCAA sanctions given to the Nittany Lions relating to the Penn State child sex abuse scandal. Redd will be immediately eligible to play at USC during the 2012 season due to those sanctions. On August 5, Redd officially enrolled at USC.
On August 24, starting cornerback Isiah Wiley was declared academically ineligible by the NCAA. Sophomore Anthony Brown replaced Wiley in the starting lineup.
USC was ranked number one in The Associated Press’ preseason college football poll for the seventh time in school history and the first time in five seasons, edging out No. 2 Alabama and No. 3 LSU.
Personnel
Coaching Staff
Returning starters
USC returns 18 starters in 2012, including nine on offense, seven on defense, and both the starting kicker and punter. Key departures included offensive tackle Matt Kalil, fullback Rhett Ellison, running back Marc Tyler, defensive end Nick Perry, linebacker Chris Galippo, defensive tackle DaJohn Harris, and nose tackle Christian Tupou. Before the season, starting cornerback Isiah Wiley was declared academically ineligible, and starting left DE Devon Kennard suffered a pectoral injury that could force him to redshirt this season.
Offense (9)
Defense (7)
Special teams (2)
Roster
Depth chart
Recruiting class
Prior to National Signing Day on February 1, 2012, one junior college player and two high school players that graduated early enrolled for the spring semester in order to participate in spring practice. These early enrollments included: defensive end Morgan Breslin from Diablo Valley Community College, linebacker Scott Starr from Norco High School, and offensive tackle Chad Wheeler from Santa Monica High School. Safety/cornerback Joshua Shaw, who started three games at free safety for Florida in 2011, transferred to USC in the spring.
USC's recruiting class was highlighted by six players from the "Rivals 100": No. 16 Zach Banner (OT), No. 18 Nelson Agholor (WR), No. 29 Jordan Simmons (G), No. 40 Jabari Ruffin (LB), No. 46 Max Tuerk (OT), No. 53 Leonard Williams (DE), and No. 82 Kevon Seymour (CB). Despite being hampered by a 10-scholarship reduction imposed by the NCAA, USC still signed the No. 8 recruiting class according to Rivals.com, the tenth-consecutive year that USC has had a class ranked in the Top 10.
Schedule
Game summaries
Hawaii
USC, ranked No. 1 in the AP Poll, defeated Hawaii, 49–10. Matt Barkley kicked off his Heisman Trophy campaign with 372 yards passing and four touchdowns. Marqise Lee caught 10 passes for 197 yards, including a 75-yard touchdown on the first play from scrimmage, and returned a kickoff 100 yards for another score. Robert Woods added two touchdown catches.
1st quarter scoring: USC – Marqise Lee 75 Yd Pass From Matt Barkley (Andre Heidari Kick); USC: Robert Woods 20 Yd Pass From Matt Barkley (Andre Heidari Kick); USC: Hayes Pullard 27 Yd Interception Return (Two-Point Pass Conversion Failed)
2nd quarter scoring: USC: Silas Redd 31 Yd Run (Two-Point Pass Conversion Failed); USC: Robert Woods 2 Yd Pass From Matt Barkley (Two-Point Run Conversion Failed); USC: Andre Heidari 28 Yd FG
3rd quarter scoring: HAW: Scott Harding 18 Yd Pass From Sean Schroeder (Tyler Hadden Kick); USC: Marqise Lee 100 Yd Kickoff Return (Andre Heidari Kick); HAW: Tyler Hadden 36 Yd FG
4th quarter scoring: USC: Randall Telfer 11 Yd Pass From Matt Barkley (Andre Heidari Kick)
Syracuse
The game was played at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey. Matt Barkley tied his own school record with six touchdown passes, Marqise Lee caught three touchdown passes, Robert Woods had two, and Xavier Grimble had one. Dion Bailey had two interceptions on defense. At halftime, a line of thunderstorms rolled in, and the game was delayed an hour and nine minutes.
1st quarter scoring: None
2nd quarter scoring: USC: Marqise Lee 13 Yd Pass From Matt Barkley (Alex Wood Kick); USC – Robert Woods 29 Yd Pass From Matt Barkley (Alex Wood Kick); SYR – Ross Krautman 37 Yd FG
3rd quarter scoring: USC – Robert Woods 4 Yd Pass From Matt Barkley (Alex Wood Kick); SYR – Marcus Sales 3 Yd Pass From Ryan Nassib (Ross Krautman Kick); SYR – Prince-Tyson Gulley 8 Yd Run (Two-Point Conversion Failed)
4th quarter scoring: USC: Xavier Grimble 22 Yd Pass From Matt Barkley (Alex Wood Kick); USC – Marqise Lee 4 Yd Pass From Matt Barkley (Alex Wood Kick); SYR – Marcus Sales 17 Yd Pass From Ryan Nassib (Two-Point Conversion Failed); USC – Marqise Lee 3 Yd Pass From Matt Barkley (Alex Wood Kick); SYR – Ryan Nassib 1 Yd Run (Ross Krautman Kick)
Stanford
The Cardinal have won four of the last five meetings (the Trojans won the 2008 game), with USC seeking to avenge close losses to the Stanford Cardinal over the last two seasons. In 2010, Stanford defeated USC, 37–35, on a last-second field goal that was made possible when the clock operator mistakenly stopped running the clock on Stanford's game-winning drive. In 2011, Stanford defeated USC, 56–48, in triple overtime when USC running back Curtis McNeal fumbled in the red zone. With the game tied, 34–34, at the end of regulation, USC attempted to call a timeout in order to attempt a game-winning field goal, but time had run out
.
1st quarter scoring: USC – Silas Redd 1-yard run (Alex Wood kick); STAN – Stanfan Taylor 59-yard run (J. Williamson kick)
2nd quarter scoring: USC – Redd 1-yard run (Wood kick)
3rd quarter scoring: STAN – Taylor 23-yard pass from J. Nunes (Williamson kick)
4th quarter scoring: STAN – Z. Ertz 37-yard pass from Nunes (Williamson kick)
Stanford's running back Stepfan Taylor and defensive back Ben Gardner were named Pac-12 Conference Player-of-the-Week following this contest.
California
The Trojans have won the past 8 meetings against the California Golden Bears. In 2011, the Trojans defeated the Bears, 30–9.
1st quarter scoring: USC – Silas Redd 33-yard run (Andre Heidari kick)
2nd quarter scoring: CAL – Vincen D'Amato 24-yard field goal; USC – Marqise Lee 11-yard pass from Matt Barkley (Heidari kick); USC – Heidari 40-yard field goal
3rd quarter scoring: CAL – D'Amato 26-yard field goal; CAL – D'Amato 35-yard field goal
4th quarter scoring: USC – Heidari 41-yard field goal; USC – Lee 3-yard pass from Barkley (Heidari kick)
Utah
USC won the teams' last meeting in 2011, 23–14.
Washington
In 2011, USC beat Washington by a score of 40–17. USC came out strong in the 1st half with a 24–7 lead at halftime. The Trojans held off the Huskies 24–14 to win the game.
Colorado
USC beat Colorado, 42–17, in 2011 with Matt Barkley setting a school record with six touchdown passes. Both Matt Barkley and Robert Woods had record setting days as the Trojans cruised to a 50–6 victory.
Arizona
USC won the teams' last meeting in 2011, 48–41.
Oregon
In 2011, USC defeated the Oregon Ducks, 38–35.
1st quarter scoring: ORE – De'Anthony Thomas 16-yard pass from Marcus Mariota (Rob Beard Kick); USC – Andre Heidari 39-yard Field Goal; ORE – Josh Huff 21-yard pass from Mariota (Beard Kick)
2nd quarter scoring: ORE – Kenjon Barner 27-yard run (Beard kick); USC – Marqise Lee 75-yard pass from Matt Barkley (Heidari kick); ORE – Kenjon Barner 5-yard run (PAT blocked); USC – Robert Woods 7-yard pass from Barkley (Heidari kick); ORE – Daryle Hawkins 14-yard pass from Mariota (Beard kick); USC – Nelson Agholor 76-yard pass from Barkley (Heidari kick)
3rd quarter scoring: USC – Silas Redd 2-yard run (Heidari kick); ORE – Kenjon Barner 9-yard run (Beard kick); USC – Silas Redd 3-yard run (Heidari kick); ORE – Josh Huff 36-yard pass from Mariota (Beard kick)
4th quarter scoring: ORE – Kenjon Barner 5-yard run (Beard kick); USC – Randall Telfer 3-yard pass from Barkley (Heidari kick); ORE – Kenjon Barner 22-yard run (Beard kick); USC – Lee 3-yard pass from Barkley (Two-point conversion failed)
Arizona State
USC seeks to avenge a loss to the Arizona State Sun Devils in 2011.
UCLA
The matchup was the first time since 2005 that UCLA and USC met as ranked teams. It was also the first time since 2001 that the Bruins entered the game ranked higher than the Trojans.
1st quarter scoring: UCLA – Brett Hundley 1-yard run (Ka'i Fairbairn kick); UCLA – Fairbairn 23-yard field goal; UCLA – Joseph Fauria 17-yard pass from Hundley (Fairbairn kick).
2nd quarter scoring: UCLA – Johnathan Franklin 16-yard run (Fairbairn kick); USC – Nelson Agholor 33-yard pass from Matt Barkley (Andre Heidari kick); USC – Randall Telfer 2-yard pass from Barkley (Heidari kick).
3rd quarter scoring: USC – George Uko 0-yard fumble recovery (Heidari kick failed); UCLA – Hundley 3-yard run (Fairbairn kick).
4th quarter scoring: USC – Marqise Lee 14-yard pass from Barkley (Robert Woods pass from Barkley); UCLA – Franklin 29-yard run (Fairbairn kick).
Notre Dame
In 2011, USC defeated the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, 31–17. USC has won nine of the last ten meetings against Notre Dame. ESPN's "College GameDay" show was at the game.
Georgia Tech (Sun Bowl)
Reports surfaced weeks after the game of a postgame altercation in the locker room which may have started over the younger players criticizing Matt Barkley for not playing in the game and his leadership in general, which led to several upperclassmen, including T.J. McDonald, coming to his defense. It was another incident that marked the close of a disappointing season for USC.
Rankings
Statistics
Scores by quarter (Pac-12 opponents)
References
USC
USC Trojans football seasons
USC Trojans football
|
560910
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RealVNC
|
RealVNC
|
RealVNC is a company that provides remote access software. The software consists of a server (VNC Server) and client (VNC Viewer) application for the Virtual Network Computing (VNC) protocol to control another computer's screen remotely.
History
Andy Harter and other members of the original VNC team at AT&T founded RealVNC Limited in 2002. The automotive division of RealVNC spun out as a separate company (VNC Automotive) in 2018.
Platforms, editions, versions
For a desktop-to-desktop connection RealVNC runs on Windows, on Mac OS X, and on many Unix-like operating systems. A list of supported platforms can be found on the website. A RealVNC client also runs on the Java platform and on the Apple iPhone, iPod touch and iPad and Google Android devices. A Windows-only client, VNC Viewer Plus is available, designed to interface to the embedded server on Intel AMT chipsets found on Intel vPro motherboards.
For remote access to view one computer desktop on another, RealVNC requires one of three subscriptions:
Home – free registration and activation required
Professional – commercial version geared towards home or small-business users, with authentication and encryption, remote printing, chat and file transfer
Enterprise – commercial version geared towards enterprises, with enhanced authentication and encryption, remote printing, chat, file transfer, and command-line deployment
As of release 4.3 (released August 2007), separate versions of both the Personal and Enterprise editions exist for 32-bit and 64-bit systems. Release 4.6 included features such as HTTP proxy support, chat, an address book, remote printing, unicode support, and connection notification.
Users must activate each of the server versions ("Home", "Professional", "Enterprise").
With the release of VNC 5.0 late December 2013, RealVNC software editions used a single binary which superseded VNC Enterprise Edition and VNC Personal Edition.
In November 2016, RealVNC released the updated version of their software, now called VNC Connect (version 6.0). The new version introduces a cloud connection option using a subscription-based pricing model. Users can choose between three subscription levels; Home (free for non-commercial use), Professional and Enterprise. Home and Professional subscriptions are cloud connections only. The Enterprise subscription supports hybrid connections that include the traditional direct (peer to peer) connections and/or cloud connections.
Client (VNC Viewer)
RealVNC clients using vncviewer can run in full-screen mode; they use the F8 function-key as the default key for bringing up an options menu (which includes the option to, among other things, switch off full screen mode or to forward a Control-Alt-Delete key-sequence).
Server (VNC Server)
The server component of RealVNC allows a computer to be remotely controlled by another computer.
Connectivity
RealVNC uses the RFB protocol. RFB 6.0 defaults to TCP/UDP port 5900. When making a connection over the Internet, the user must open this port in the local firewall as well as configure port forwarding to forward TCP Port 5900 (or the customized port respectively) to the local machine address if behind a NAT Router.
As an alternative, one can tunnel VNC through SSH, avoiding the opening of additional ports and automatically traversing the NAT router. SSH also provides encryption of the connection between the VNC server and viewer.
After proposing remote access interface for Weston in October 2013, RealVNC published a Wayland developer preview in July 2014.
Limitations
The VNC protocol is pixel based. Although this leads to great flexibility (e.g., any type of desktop can be displayed), it is often less efficient than solutions that have a better understanding of the underlying graphic layout, like X11. Those protocols send graphic primitives or high-level commands in a simpler form (e.g., open window), whereas RFB just sends the raw pixel data.
References
External links
Companies based in Cambridge
Cross-platform software
Formerly free software
Internet Protocol based network software
MacOS remote administration software
Remote administration software for Linux
Remote administration software
Remote desktop software for Linux
Java (programming language) software
Virtual Network Computing
Windows remote administration software
|
18084456
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TekWar%20%28TV%20series%29
|
TekWar (TV series)
|
TekWar is a television series, based on the TekWar novels ghost-written by Ron Goulart from outlines by William Shatner and developed for television by Stephen Roloff. The series follows Jake Cardigan (played by Greg Evigan), a former police officer turned private investigator working for Cosmos, a private security firm owned and operated by Walter Bascom.
The series was broadcast in Canada on CTV and in the United States on USA Network and the Sci Fi Channel. The series, which was a co-production between Atlantis Films and Universal Television premiered on January 17, 1994 and ended on February 9, 1996.
Overview
Set in the year 2044, the series follows Jake Cardigan, a former police officer who lost his badge after being framed for dealing in tek (an illicit narcotic-like substance) and murdering his fellow officers on a bust. Sentenced to fifteen years in cryo-detainment, Jake is released after four years, three months, and twenty-seven days. Shortly after his release Jake is contacted by Sid Gomez, his former partner. Sid is now in the private sector, working as an investigator for the large security firm Cosmos. After Sid reveals that it was Cosmos's CEO, Walter Bascom, who arranged to have him released early, Jake agrees to meet him. At the meeting Jake agrees to work for Bascom as a private investigator going after Tek Lords, in return for Bascom's help in clearing his name.
Cast
Main cast
Greg Evigan as Jake Cardigan, a former police officer who, after being framed for crimes he did not commit goes to work for Walter Bascom at Cosmos. Jake uses a plasma propellant gun given to him by Bascom that fires non-lethal transparent pulses of plasma of varying intensities.
Eugene Clark as Sid Gomez, a former police officer and Jake's partner at Cosmos.
Catherine Blythe as Centra, Walter Bascom's assistant who provides technical support for Jake on his cases. She is a highly intelligent and a gifted technological expert.
Torri Higginson as Beth Kittridge, an android who possesses all of the memories of the real Beth Kittridge. The android Beth discovers that the real Beth was a witness to the murders of Jake's partners and his near-death from a massive Tek overdose, from which she saved him. She grows to care for him and ultimately sacrifices herself to save Jake from a kamikaze android in the form of Jake's son. Near the end of the first TekWar movie, the real Beth is revealed to be alive. She is a doctor and is romantically involved with Jake Cardigan.
Natalie Radford as Nika, another of Walter Bascom's assistants who provides technical support for Jake on his cases.
Maria del Mar as Sam Houston, a police lieutenant and later Jake's partner at Cosmos.
William Shatner as Walter Bascom, President and CEO of Cosmos. He is Jake's boss. He is shrewd, calculating and always seems to have an ulterior motive to his actions, but is a good man overall.
Recurring cast
Maurice Dean Wint as Lieutenant Winger, an android police lieutenant who has an ongoing feud with Jake Cardigan. He was re-programmed by Sonny Hokori and was also responsible for the murders of Jake's partners and Jake's near-death of a Tek overdose. He was destroyed by Jake as the end of TekWar.
David Hemblen as Inspector Winterguild, Winger's partner. He doesn't believe that Jake was framed by the Tek Lords.
Von Flores as Sonny Hokori, a Tek Lord. He framed Jake for dealing Tek and murder.
Marc Marut and Christian Campbell as Danny Cardigan, Jake and Kate Cardigan's fifteen-year-old son. Danny is initially resentful of Jake's sudden return in TekWar, but it is shown in TekLords that they are rebuilding their relationship.
Sonja Smits as Kate Cardigan, Jake's ex-wife and Danny's mother. She is married to wealthy industrialist, Bennet Sands.
Ray Jewers as Bennett Sands, a wealthy industrialist who is married to Kate Cardigan.
Dee McCafferty as Wiz, a criminal Jake knows from his time as a police officer. He introduces Jake to Wildside and Cowgirl.
Lexa Doig as Cowgirl, a hacker who frequently assists Jake on cases when he can't turn to Centra or Nika.
Richard Chevolleau as Wildside, a hacker who works with Cowgirl.
Dana Brooks as Shelley Grout, a government agent working for Government Special Services.
Ernie Grunwald as Spaz, a hacker who works with Cowgirl.
David Calderisi as Carlyle Rossi, CEO of Rossi Enterprises and foe of Jake Cardigan.
Episodes
Tekwar began as a series of four television films which originally aired from January 17, 1994 to May 9, 1994. These are often referred to as the show's "first season" by fans and in episode guides despite not technically being a proper season. The series proper, or the "second season" if counting the movies as a season, consists of 18 hour-long episodes which originally aired between December 22, 1994 and February 9, 1996.
Development and production
TekWar was based on the series of Tek novels written by Ron Goulart from outlines by William Shatner. The initial idea for the novels occurred to Shatner in the 1980s. He said, "In the beginning I planned TekWar as a screenplay for myself to star in. I had this idea of putting T.J. Hooker into a futuristic milieu." But it was not until the 1988 Writers Guild of America strike stalled production on Star Trek V: The Final Frontier that he found time to write. Shatner said, "I'd doodle with a paragraph and it would grow into two pages. Then I'd fiddle with the two pages and that would become 20 pages. Eventually the book sort of evolved by itself."
While the novels and the later television series follow the same general storyline, setting the story 200 years in the future almost derailed any film or television adaptation. When Shatner approached networks and studios to pitch the idea of a TekWar project, he was told that it would be too expensive to produce. Marvel Comics eventually approached Shatner with the idea of launching a series of TekWar comic books. William Shatner sold the rights to Marvel for a comic book series under the condition that it be set only 50 years in the future.
Following the first TekWar comic book, Shatner was approached by studios interested in a film. Shatner's own production company, Lemli Productions, took a deal with Atlantis Films. Shortly thereafter, Steven Roloff was hired to develop the series for television. Roloff explained his role by saying "I was just supposed to sit around and think about how we would actually try to create the future for television on a television budget with those restrictions, knowing that we wouldn't be financed like Star Trek, and to put together a pitch book. So, I did that over a period of a few months and put together a pitch document which included a series of images and a kind of written description of our world. That went out and, after a little bit of wheeling and dealing, Atlantis Films struck a deal with Universal."
Shatner began to have second thoughts about the project when both studios insisted that his name be attached for marketing reasons. He thought, "How would it be received? If it's a failure, it's awful because my name is right there. In fact, they advertised it as William Shatner's TekWar. My God, the responsibility!" Universal and Atlantis green-lit production on four two-hour TV movies for the show's first season. If they proved successful, an hour-long series would be commissioned to air in both Canada and the United States. Filming took place at Cinevillage Studios in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and on locations in Toronto including Eaton Centre to Ontario Place.
Broadcast history
The four movies were first broadcast in 1994 on CTV in Canada and in syndication in the United States as part of Universal Television's Action Pack. The US broadcasts came 7 – 10 days ahead of those in Canada, on January 17, 1994 and January 25, 1994, respectively. TekWar was a ratings success, with some US stations reporting an increase of 44% compared to the same timeslot in November. This success prompted CTV and Universal to commission eighteen hour-long episodes. While the series continued on CTV in Canada, Universal moved the series to USA Network.
The show's second season premiered on CTV on December 22, 1994 and on USA on January 7, 1995. The season premiered strongly, scoring a 3.4 rating, which at the time was the highest rated premiere in the history of basic cable. As time went viewership declined in both Canada and the United States with the season's fourth episode ("Promises To Keep") only attracting 600-700,000 viewers on CTV. Ratings continued to slide during the season. USA Network canceled the series on June 13, 1995. Due to a simulcast agreement, both CTV and USA Network pulled the series from their respective schedules shortly after airing the season's fourteenth episode ("Forget Me Not") on July 1, 1995, leaving four episodes unaired.
The Sci Fi Channel, a corporate sibling of USA Network, subsequently purchased the rights to rebroadcast the series and began airing the series in late 1995. In early 1996, as the Sci Fi Channel was about to begin broadcasting the four unaired episodes in the United States, CTV announced they would air the remaining episodes of TekWar. The four unaired episodes began airing on CTV and Sci Fi Channel on January 20, 1996 and concluded on CTV on February 9, 1996 and on the Sci Fi Channel on February 10, 1996.
Adult animated adaptation
A reboot as an adult animated adaptation was announced in September 2021. The project will be developed and written by Matt Michnovetz and produced by Pure Imagination Studios with Shatner's Shatner Universe.
Critical reception
TekWar received average reviews. The Los Angeles Times said of the series: "No one will confuse William Shatner's TekWar with serious science-fiction. With Greg Evigan as a disgraced ex-cop teaming with another ex-cop, who's black, and a female android, it's a lot like 'The Mod Squad Visits Wild Palms." The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette gave a negative review: "Keep the action flowing and the gizmos glowing and maybe no one will notice that your plot lacks the credibility of a politician's promise. It almost works for William Shatner, who has produced and directed the first of four telemovies based on his TekWar science-fiction novels."
Entertainment Weekly gave TekWar a grade of "D" saying: "This is basically your average cop show in a post-20th-century setting: Dullbladerunner. In this vision of the future, your house can be invested with enough artificial intelligence to tell you when your wife left to run errands, but society still hasn't found a cure for crime: there are a lot of rotten, poorly-shaven thugs out on those mean streets. Intended to be hard-boiled, the dialogue in TekWar is instead just pitiful. When a policeman tells Jake, 'I play by the rules,' our hero snaps back, 'Then start a band.' Huh?" Matt Roush of USA Today also gave a mixed review: "TekWar, the first of several futuristic B-thrillers based on William Shatner's genre novels, suggests a cross of Wild Palms with Starsky and Hutch. The gizmos and visual shimmer rarely disguise the fact this is just a gussied-up cop show. TekWar, directed by Shatner, gets the project off to a slick and zippy start, from the moment framed cop Jake Cardigan is revived after four years in cryo-submersion. Since Jake is played by plastic hunk Greg Evigan, awake is merely a relative term."
Home video releases
VHS releases
Universal Studios Home Entertainment and CIC Video released the TV movies, comprising the show's first season, on 4 VHS tapes in 1995 in the United Kingdom and the United States. CIC Video also released the first TV movie, TekWar, on VHS in Germany in 1995. The 18 hour-long episodes, which constitute the show's second season, were never released on VHS in the US, however one tape was released in the UK in 2000 by Universal/Sci-Fi under the Cult TV Classics branding. It contained three episodes, Killer Instinct, Chill Factor and Deadline.
DVD releases
Koch International released a DVD set titled TekWar - The Complete First Season (Volumes 1 - 5) in Canada on April 20, 2004. Despite its title, the set only contained the 18 hour-long episodes. Several years later, on June 10, 2008, Image Entertainment released a DVD set titled TekWar in the United States, also containing the 18 episodes.
After repeated delays, Alliance Home Entertainment released a DVD set in Canada titled TekWar - The Complete Series on May 24, 2011. The DVD set utilised cover art licensed from Image Entertainment. It was later reported that Alliance's DVD release did, in fact, include the four TV movies, billed on the set as being "the original 4 part pilot".
The series has yet to be released on DVD in Europe (Region 2).
There was also a DOS video game developed and published by Capstone, featuring digitized scenes recorded in front of a blue screen starring William Shatner. The first person shooter is considered one of the worst games made using the Build Engine, which was used to create other popular games such as Duke Nukem 3D and Blood.
International broadcasting
References
External links
Season 1
Season 2
Television series by Universal Television
1990s American science fiction television series
1994 American television series debuts
1996 American television series endings
1990s Canadian science fiction television series
1994 Canadian television series debuts
1996 Canadian television series endings
First-run syndicated television shows in Canada
First-run syndicated television programs in the United States
CTV Television Network original programming
Action Pack (TV programming block)
Syfy original programming
USA Network original programming
Simulcasts
English-language television shows
Television series set in the 2040s
Fiction set in 2045
|
47799519
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avery%20Ryan
|
Avery Ryan
|
FBI Deputy Director Avery Ryan, Ph.D. is a fictional character portrayed by Patricia Arquette. She was a psychologist in New York until she was hacked and one of her patients was murdered because of it. Avery made her first appearance during the backdoor pilot of CSI: Cyber which was entitled "Kitty". Avery is notable within the series for taking chances on former hackers (known as black hats) and for the fact that she herself has been hacked. Avery has appeared in 2 episodes of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, and every episode of CSI: Cyber.
Opening narration
Avery narrates the opening of CSI: Cyber season one.
"My name is Avery Ryan. I was a victim of cyber crime. Like you, I posted on social media, checked my bank account online and even kept confidential files of my psychological practice on my computer. Then I was hacked. And as a result one of my patients was murdered. My investigation into her death led me to the FBI where I joined a team of criminal experts who wage a war against a new breed of criminal hiding on the deep web. Infiltrating our daily lives in ways we never imagined. Faceless, nameless, lurking inside our devices. Just a keystroke away.... it can happen to you..."
Avery also narrates the opening of CSI: Cyber second season premiere episode.
"My name is Avery Ryan. I'm a cyber psychologist and special agent for the FBI. I lead a team of cyber experts and former blackhats, waging a war against a new breed of criminal. Online predators hiding in the deep web. Faceless, nameless. Hackers intruding into our digital lives. Lurking inside our devices, just a keystroke away."
Creation
Patricia Arquette's casting was announced on 6 March 2014. The character is based on Irish cyber psychologist Mary Aiken.
Background
Avery Ryan worked as a psychologist to 78 patients in New York when her practice database was hacked and a patient was murdered. After the FBI failed to catch the person responsible, she volunteered herself to head a division dedicated to solving Cyber Crime. Avery also had a daughter named Hannah, who died, and an ex-husband, whom she divorced as a result of the death.
Storylines
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
Seasons 14–15
Avery is introduced during "Kitty", in which she travels to Las Vegas to assist D.B. Russell and his team in the hunt for a cyber criminal manipulating powerful men into communicating with a "node", before blackmailing and threatening them. During the investigation, Ryan develops a strong working relationship with Russell, resulting in her consulting on the Gig Harbor case later that same year ("The Twin Paradox").
CSI: Cyber
Season 1
Avery Ryan heads a team of Special Agents and former black hat hackers who are recruited as part of her 'Hack for Good' program. In "Kidnapping 2.0", Ryan heads an investigation into a series of hacked baby monitors and the kidnapping of a child. Avery believes it may only be part of a wider conspiracy, and as such follows the case nationwide, eventually rescuing the kidnap victim. In "Killer En Route", when investigating murders using a taxi service app, Avery once again empathizes with the murderer when she had learned that he lost his child, while in "URL Interrupted", she helps one of her former patients when his daughter runs away due to being cyberbullied. It is later revealed that Avery becomes personally involved in cases involving children due to the death of her daughter ("Family Secrets"). During "Family Secrets", Avery finally meets and confronts the person who hacked her practice, it is revealed that the hacker has subsequently continued to stalk Ryan, and he takes her hostage. As her team try to track her down, it is revealed that she has an ex-husband, and their marriage broke up due to the death of her daughter.
Season 2
Following the departure of Simon Sifter, Avery gains autonomy over Cyber's budget and hires D.B. Russell, with whom she worked in Las Vegas. The two continue to have a strong working relationship, racing cockroaches and flying drones ("Why-Fi"). Ryan considers taking over Sifter's vacant position, but decides she is needed on the street. She and Russell are later caught in the crossfire when a small town erupts in racial tension ("Brown Eyes, Blue Eyes"). Ryan notes that since rejecting the Deputy Directorship, she is looked upon more unfavorably by senior FBI officials ("Red Crone"). In "Red Crone", when she and D.B. find out about Raven and Brody's secret relationship, she notes that while she values the rules she sets for her black-hats, she is also willing to overlook transgressions in order to facilitate their happiness. In "Gone in 6 Seconds", the FBI Director tells Avery that he believes she is the best candidate for the job of Deputy Director, and expresses his faith in her heading Cyber while still working the field. She is subsequently promoted.
Succession
References
CSI: Cyber characters
Fictional characters from New York City
Television characters introduced in 2014
Fictional Federal Bureau of Investigation personnel
Fictional psychologists
Crossover characters in television
|
15460859
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia%20Institute%20of%20Technology%20School%20of%20Computer%20Science
|
Georgia Institute of Technology School of Computer Science
|
The School of Computer Science is an academic unit located within the College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech). It conducts both research and teaching activities related to computer science at the undergraduate and graduate levels. These activities focus on the roots of the computing discipline, including mathematical foundations and system building principles and practices.
History
The School of Computer Science was formed in February 2007, when the former Computing Science and Systems Division was renamed and promoted to "School" status. Ellen Zegura was appointed as the school's first chair. Along with its sibling academic unit, the School of Interactive Computing, the School of Computer Science represents the first time a college-level computing program has delineated the field into separate but related bodies of study. In July 2012, Lance Fortnow, formerly at Northwestern University, replaced Zegura as school chair. During Fornow's time as chair, the number of pre-tenure faculty in the school more than doubled, and the total faculty grew to 37 members. Fortnow departed his role as chair in 2019 to accept a position as Dean of Science at the Illinois Institute of Technology. Mostafa Ammar served as interim chair until Vivek Sarkar was named school chair in July 2020.
Degrees offered
The School of Computer Science offers bachelor's degrees, master's degrees, and doctoral degrees in several fields. These degrees are technically granted by the School's parent organization, the Georgia Tech College of Computing, and often awarded in conjunction with other academic units within Georgia Tech.
Doctoral degrees
Ph.D. in Computer Science
Ph.D. in Bioengineering
Ph.D. in Bioinformatics
Ph.D. in Algorithms, Combinatorics & Optimization
Master's degrees
M.S. in Computer Science
M.S. in Bioengineering
M.S. in Information Security
Bachelor's degrees
B.S. in Computer Science
Notable faculty
Tom Conte
Lance Fortnow
Richard J. Lipton
Ralph Merkle
Dana Randall
Vijay Vazirani
Karsten Schwan
Santosh Vempala
Location
The School of Computer Science's administrative offices were located in the College of Computing Building on Georgia Tech's Central Campus. Additionally, many College of Computing faculty and graduate students had offices in this building until recently. In 2006, the Klaus Advanced Computing Building, donated by Georgia Tech alum Chris Klaus, was completed to provide additional offices, laboratories, and classrooms for the College of Computing. All of the School of Computer Science personnel have since moved to the second and third floor of the Klaus Building.
See also
Georgia Institute of Technology College of Computing
GVU Center
References
External links
Georgia Institute of Technology School of Computer Science
School of Computer Science
Computer science departments in the United States
Educational institutions established in 2007
2007 establishments in Georgia (U.S. state)
|
18056758
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley%20Timesharing%20System
|
Berkeley Timesharing System
|
The Berkeley Timesharing System was a pioneering time-sharing operating system implemented between 1964 and 1967 at the University of California, Berkeley. It was designed as part of Project Genie and marketed by Scientific Data Systems for the SDS 940 computer system.
It was the first commercial time-sharing which allowed general-purpose user programming, including machine language.
History
In the mid-1960s, most computers used batch processing: one user at a time with no interactivity. A few pioneering systems such as the Atlas Supervisor at the University of Manchester, Compatible Time-Sharing System at MIT, and the Dartmouth Time Sharing System at Dartmouth College required large expensive machines.
Implementation started in 1964 with the arrival of the SDS 930 which was modified slightly, and an operating system was written from scratch.
Students who worked on the Berkeley Timesharing System included undergraduates Chuck Thacker and L. Peter Deutsch and doctoral student Butler Lampson.
The heart of the system was the Monitor (roughly what is now usually called a kernel) and the
Executive (roughly what is now usually called a command-line interface).
When the system was working, Max Palevsky, founder of Scientific Data Systems, was at first not interested in selling it as a product. He thought timesharing had no commercial demand. However, as other customers expressed interest, it was put on the SDS pricelist as an expensive variant of the 930.
By November 1967 it was being sold commercially as the SDS 940.
By August 1968 a version 2.0 was announced that was just called the "SDS 940 Time-Sharing System".
Other timesharing systems were generally one-of-a-kind systems, or limited to a single application (such as teaching Dartmouth BASIC). The 940 was the first to allow for general-purpose programming, and sold about 60 units: not large by today's standards, but it was a significant part of SDS' revenues.
One customer was Bolt, Beranek and Newman.
The TENEX operating system for the PDP-10 mainframe computer used many features of the SDS 940 Time-Sharing System system, but extended the memory management to include demand paging.
Some concepts of the operating system also influenced the design of Unix, whose designer Ken Thompson worked on the SDS 940 while at Berkeley.
The QED text editor was first implemented by Butler Lampson and L. Peter Deutsch for the Berkeley Timesharing System in 1967.
Another major customer was Tymshare, who used the system to become the USA's best known commercial timesharing service in the late 1960s. By 1972, Tymshare alone had 23 systems in operation.
See also
Timeline of operating systems
Time-sharing system evolution
References
Further reading
Reprinted in Computer Structures, ed. Bell and Newell, McGraw-Hill, 1971, pp 291–300
External links
SDS-940 Simulator Configuration
Time-sharing operating systems
1960s software
University of California, Berkeley
|
27854740
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991%20USC%20Trojans%20football%20team
|
1991 USC Trojans football team
|
The 1991 USC Trojans football team represented the University of Southern California (USC) in the 1991 NCAA Division I-A football season. In their fifth year under head coach Larry Smith, the Trojans compiled a 3–8 record (2–6 against conference opponents), finished in eighth place in the Pacific-10 Conference (Pac-10), and were outscored by their opponents by a combined total of 276 to 229.
Quarterback Reggie Perry led the team in passing, completing 131 of 255 passes for 1,574 yards with three touchdowns and 12 interceptions. Deon Strother led the team in rushing with 129 carries for 614 yards and seven touchdowns. Johnnie Morton led the team in receiving with 49 catches for 662 yards and no touchdowns.
Schedule
Roster
References
USC
USC Trojans football seasons
USC Trojans football
|
50639093
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bright%20Computing
|
Bright Computing
|
Bright Computing, Inc. is a developer of software for deploying and managing high-performance (HPC) clusters, Kubernetes clusters, and OpenStack private clouds in on-prem data centers as well as in the public cloud.
History
Bright Computing was founded by Matthijs van Leeuwen in 2009, who spun the company out of ClusterVision, which he had co-founded with Alex Ninaber and Arijan Sauer. Alex and Matthijs had worked together at UK’s Compusys, which was one of the first companies to commercially build HPC clusters. They left Compusys in 2002 to start ClusterVision in the Netherlands, after determining there was a growing market for building and managing supercomputer clusters using off-the-shelf hardware components and open source software, tied together with their own customized scripts. ClusterVision also provided delivery and installation support services for HPC clusters at universities and government entities.
In 2004, Martijn de Vries joined ClusterVision and began development of cluster management software. The software was made available to customers in 2008, under the name ClusterVisionOS v4.
In 2009, Bright Computing was spun out of ClusterVision. ClusterVisionOS was renamed Bright Cluster Manager, and van Leeuwen was named Bright Computing’s CEO.
In February 2016, Bright appointed Bill Wagner as chief executive officer. Matthijs van Leeuwen became chief strategy officer, and then left the company and board of directors in 2018.
Bright chose not to attend the Supercomputing Conference in 2021 in St. Louis.
Customers
Early customers included Boeing, Sandia National Laboratories, Virginia Tech, Hewlett Packard, NSA, and Drexel University. Many early customers were introduced through resellers, including SICORP, Cray, Dell, and Advanced HPC.
As of 2019, the company has more than 700 customers, including more than 50 Fortune 500 Companies.
Products and services
Bright Cluster Manager for HPC lets customers deploy and manage complete clusters. It provides management for the hardware, the operating system, the HPC software, and users.
In 2014, the company announced Bright OpenStack, software to deploy, provision, and manage OpenStack-based private cloud infrastructures.
In 2016, Bright started bundling several machine learning frameworks and associated tools and libraries with the product, to make it very easy to get machine learning workload up and running on a Bright cluster.
In December 2018, version 8.2 was released, which introduced support for the ARM64 architecture, edge capabilities to build clusters spread out over many different geographical locations, improved workload accounting & reporting features, as well as many improvements to Bright's integration with Kubernetes.
Bright Cluster Manager software is frequently sold through original equipment manufacturer (OEM) resellers, including Dell and HPE.
Bright Computing WAS covered by Software Magazine and Yahoo! Finance, among other publications.
Awards
In 2016, Bright Computing was awarded a €1.5M Horizon 2020 SME Instrument grant from the European Commission.
Bright Computing was one of only 33 grant recipients from 960 submitted proposals. In its category only 5 out of 260 grants were awarded.
2015 HPCwire Editor’s Choice Award for “Best HPC Cluster Solution or Technology"
Main Software 50 “Highest Growth” award winner, 2013
Deloitte Technology Fast50 “Rising Star 2013” award winner
Bio-IT World Conference & Expo ‘13, Boston, MA, winner of “IT Hardware & Infrastructure” category of the “Best of Show Award” program
Red Herring Top 100 Global Award, 2013
References
Big data companies
Cloud computing
Cloud infrastructure
Cluster computing
Data management
Supercomputers
|
17171834
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer-aided%20assessment
|
Computer-aided assessment
|
Computer-aided (or computer-assisted) assessment includes all forms of assessments students' progress, whether summative (i.e. tests that will contribute to formal qualifications) or formative (i.e. tests that promote learning but are not part of a course's marking), delivered with the help of computers. This covers both assessments delivered on computer, either online or on a local network, and those that are marked with the aid of computers, such as those using Optical Mark Reading (OMR). There are number of open source online tools to handle exams conducted on OMR sheets.
Computer-aided assessment can be viewed in a few different ways. Technically, assignments that are written on a computer and researched online are computer-aided assessments. One of the most common forms of computer-aided assessment (in terms of e-learning) is online quizzes or exams. These can be implemented online, and also marked by the computer by putting the answers in. Many content management systems will have easy to set up and use systems for online exams. Such type of assessment supports various objective or multiple choice questions with images, fill in the blank, true false type questions. There are new technologies and tools coming up which can support subjective assessment of evaluation of the user. System can analyze theory answer written by the user.
It is also envisaged that computer-based formative assessment, in particular, will play an increasingly important role in learning, with the increased use of banks of question items for the construction and delivery of dynamic, on-demand assessments. This can be witnessed by current projects such as the SQA's SOLAR Project.
The effectiveness of these assessments has been frequently demonstrated in studies, both in the form of positive student feedback and improvement in student performance (see, for example, Einig (2013) or Marriott and Lau (2008)).
See also
Automated essay scoring
E-assessment
E-learning
eExam
References
External links
SQA SOLAR Project
The STACK computer aided assessment system for mathematics
Software for teachers
|
8399676
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pingus
|
Pingus
|
Pingus is an open-source video game programmed by German developer Ingo Ruhnke. It is a clone of Lemmings with penguins instead of lemmings.
Gameplay
Pingus has 55 levels, grouped into 5 level sets, as well as 21 winter-themed tutorial levels. Pingus 0.7.2 introduced 'levelsets', which are lists of related levels; levels in levelsets usually must be completed in order. However, there are many more levels included with the game not accessible from its GUI, some with entirely different graphics.
Development
Work on the game began in 1998. Version 0.6 was released in 2003 for Linux, and featured new levels and a level editor. On February 11, 2006 the game began being ported from ClanLib to Simple DirectMedia Layer (SDL). On August 27, 2007 version 0.7.0 (the first version to use SDL) was released. In addition to Windows and Linux, the switch to SDL enabled Pingus to be easily built on other platforms, including Apple's OS X. On September 23, 2007 version 0.7.1 was released with a new level editor. On October 31, 2007, version 0.7.2 was released with a set of Halloween-themed levels. There is a Windows 0.7.6 and an Intel OS X binary of 0.7.2 available from the Pingus website. There is a PPC OS X binary of version 0.7.0, while version 0.7.3 contains minor bug fixes that allow the game to work better with the GNU Compiler Collection. The latest version, 0.7.6, adds additional Christmas and Halloween-themed level sets.
In July 2008, the game was relicensed from the GPL-2.0-or-later to the GPL-3.0-or-later.
Reception
This game was the first "Game of the Month" by The Linux Game Tome. Critics were favorable toward Pingus. TechGage named Pingus among the "Top 10 Free Linux games" in 2006. CNN and PC-Welt ranked it as one of the best free games available for Linux. Thinkdigit 2009-05 ranked Pingus among the "Most addictive Linux games". Linux For You September 2009 ranked Pingus 5/5. About.com called it a great game, while acknowledging its debt to Lemmings.
See also
List of free and open-source software packages
List of open source games
References
External links
Project home page
105 playable levels
Pingus project on gitlab
2003 video games
Fangames
Free educational software
Linux games
MacOS games
Puzzle video games
Open-source video games
Windows games
Video game clones
Video games developed in Germany
|
27664456
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List%20of%20Brooklyn%20College%20alumni
|
List of Brooklyn College alumni
|
This is a list of alumni of Brooklyn College, a senior college of the City University of New York, located in Brooklyn, New York, United States.
Academia
Chancellors, deans, and presidents
Walter Adams (B.A. 1942), economist and President of Michigan State University
Glenn Altschuler (B.A. 1971), Dean of the Cornell University School of Continuing Education and Summer Sessions, noted for his work on the history of American popular culture
Samuel Baskin (B.A. 1942), psychologist and educational reformer and first President of the Union Institute & University
Barbara Aronstein Black (B.A. 1953), Dean, Columbia University School of Law
Carmen Fariña (M.S.Ed. 1968), New York City Schools Chancellor
Leon M. Goldstein (died 1999), President of Kingsborough Community College, and acting Chancellor of the City University of New York
Alfred Gottschalk (B.A. 1952), President of Hebrew Union College and leader in the Reform Judaism movement
Donald Kagan (B.A. 1954), historian; Dean at Yale University
Barry Munitz (B.A. 1963), Chancellor, California State University (1991–98)
Steven Schwartz (B.A. 1967), Vice Chancellor of Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia
Lisa Staiano-Coico, aka Lisa S. Coico (B.S. 1976), president of City College of New York
Robert S. Stone (B.A. 1942), pioneering pathologist; Deans of the University of New Mexico School of Medicine, University of Oregon School of Medicine, and Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine; Director of The National Institutes of Health 1973–1975
Donald P. Zingale (B.A. 1967), president of the State University of New York at Cobleskill
Anthropology
Jerome H. Barkow (B.A. 1964), Canadian anthropologist at Dalhousie University, has made important contributions to the field of evolutionary psychology
Melvin Konner (B.A. 1966), Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Anthropology and Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Neurology at Emory University
Jeffrey Laitman (B.A. 1973), anatomist and physical anthropologist, Distinguished Professor of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, President-Elect of the American Association of Anatomists
Sidney Mintz (B.A. 1943), anthropologist, known for his studies of Latin America and the Caribbean
Marjorie Shostak (B.A. 1966), anthropologist; specialist in the !Kung San people of the Kalahari desert in south-western Africa
Richard J. Smith (B.A. 1969), Ralph E. Morrow Distinguished Professor of Physical Anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis
Economics
Paul Davidson (B.S. 1950), macroeconomist who has been one of the leading spokesmen of the American branch of the Post Keynesian school in economics
Israel Kirzner (B.A. 1954), economist
David Laibman (M.A. 1969), Professor Emeritus of Economics at Brooklyn College; Editor of Science & Society
History
Ann Marie Adams (B.A. 1999), professor of History at Rutgers University and author of books on race and education, antebellum civil rights movement, and civil rights in 20th-century America
Frank J. Coppa (B.A. 1960], historian, author, and educator who has written widely on the Papacy
Michael S. Cullen (B.A. 1962), historian, journalist and publicist, based in Berlin; credited with inspiring Christo and Jeanne-Claude to wrap the Reichstag
Jules Davids (B.A. 1942), Professor of Diplomatic History at Georgetown University, aided John F. Kennedy in writing Profiles in Courage
Theodore Draper (B.A. 1933), historian and political writer; wrote seminal works on the formative period of the American Communist Party, the Cuban Revolution, and the Iran-Contra Affair
Melvyn Dubofsky (B.A. 1955), professor of history and sociology at the Binghamton University, and a well-known labor historian
Yaffa Eliach (B.A. 1967), historian, author, and scholar of Judaic Studies and the Holocaust
John A. Garraty (B.A. 1941), historian, biographer, and president of the Society of American Historians
Eugene Genovese (B.A. 1953), historian of the American South and American slavery
Stuart D. Goldman (B.A. 1964), historian, author, and scholar in residence at the National Council for Eurasian and East European Research at the Wilson Center in Washington, DC
Judith R. Goodstein (B.A. 1960), historian of science, historian of mathematics, book author, and University Archivist Emeritus at the California Institute of Technology
Greg Grandin (B.A. 1991), historian; professor of history at New York University; winner of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for History
Oscar Handlin (B.A. 1934), Carl M. Loeb University Professor Emeritus, Harvard University; winner of the Pulitzer Prize in history, author
Gertrude Himmelfarb (B.A. 1942), historian and conservative cultural critic
Elisheva Carlebach Jofen (B.A. 1976), scholar of early modern Jewish history
David Kranzler (B.A. 1953), historian specializing in the rescue of Jews during the Holocaust
Aileen S. Kraditor (B.A. 1950) American historian, specializing in the history of feminism
Moses Rischin (B.A. 1947), Jewish historian and Emeritus Professor of History at San Francisco State University
Albert A. Sicroff (B.A. 1940), Hispanist, Professor of Spanish, Queens College
Joel H. Silbey (B.A. 1955), historian and President White Professor of History at Cornell University
Richard Slotkin (B.A. 1963), cultural critic and historian of the Western United States
Clarence Taylor (B.A. 1975), professor emeritus of History at Baruch College and author of books on racism, religion, and civil rights in 20th-century America
Law
Alan S. Becker (B.A. 1966), Attorney, member of the Florida House of Representatives, 1972–1978
Jules Coleman (B.A. 1968), scholar of law and jurisprudence and the Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld Professor of Jurisprudence and Professor of Philosophy at Yale Law School
Alan M. Dershowitz (B.A. 1959), Harvard Law School professor and author
Stephen Gillers (B.A. 1964), New York University School of Law professor and expert in legal ethics
Gerald Gunther (A.B. 1949), William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, among the 20 most widely cited legal scholars of the 20th century
Mary Noe (B.A. 1982), educator; writer; lecturer; Assistant Professor of Law, division of Criminal Justice and Legal Studies, St. John's University
Mathematics
Anatole Beck (B.A. 1951), mathematician, known for his Linear search problem
Paul Cohen (1953), winner of the Fields Medal
Elaine Koppelman (B.A. 1957), mathematician; James Beall Professor of Mathematics at Goucher College
Allen R Miller (B.S. 1965), mathematician and major contributor to the field of special functions, especially confluent hypergeometric functions
Teri Perl (B.A. 1947), American mathematics educator, co-founder of The Learning Company, pioneering educational software publisher
Richard M. Pollack (B.A. 1956), geometer and Professor Emeritus at the Courant Institute of New York University; founding co-editor of the journal Discrete and Computational Geometry
Irving Reiner (B.A. 1944), mathematician, dealt with representation theory of algebras and groups, and number theory
Theodore J. Rivlin (B.A. 1948), mathematician, specializing in approximation theory
Donald Solitar (B.A. 1953), American/Canadian mathematician, known for his work in combinatorial group theory
Henry Wallman (B.S. 1933), mathematician, known for his work in lattice theory, dimension theory, topology, and electronic circuit design
Gerard Washnitzer (B.S. 1947), mathematician
Philosophy
Allan Gotthelf (B.A. 1963), professor of philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh and specialist in Objectivism and Aristotle
Eli Hirsch (B.A. 1960), philosopher, the Charles Goldman Professor of Philosophy at Brandeis University
Christia Mercer (B.A. 1974), Gustave M. Berne Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Columbia University
Jay Newman (B.A. 1973), philosopher concerned with the philosophy of religion, philosophy of culture, and the ethics of mass communication
Ben-Ami Scharfstein (B.A. 1939), prominent Israeli philosopher; winner of the 2005 Israel Prize
Israel Scheffler (B.A. 1945), philosopher of science and education
Eli Uncyk (B.A., cum laude, 1967); Articles Editor, N.Y.U Law School Journal of International Law and Politics, attorney
Political science
Ada Finifter (B.A. 1959) American political scientist specializing in American public opinion and voting behavior
Dennis Hale (M.A. 1969), political scientist; Associate Professor of Political Science at Boston College
Milton Heumann (B.A. 1968), Professor of Political Science at Rutgers University
Marvin Schick (B.A. 1956), Hunter College and New School for Social Research political science and constitutional law professor, known for his work in Jewish education
Aaron Wildavsky (B.A. 1954), political scientist
Sociology
Helen A. Berger (B.A. 1971), American sociologist known for her studies of the Pagan community in the United States
Joseph Berger (B.A. 1949), theoretical sociologist and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution
Leo Bogart (B.A 1941), sociologist, media and marketing expert
Helen Fein (B.A. 1955), historical sociologist, professor, specialized on genocide, human rights, collective violence and other issues
Omar Lizardo (B.A. 1997), sociologist and LeRoy Neiman Term chair Professor of Sociology at UCLA
Seymour M. Miller (B.A. 1943), economic-political sociologist, activist, and emeritus professor of sociology at Boston University
Other
Joyce Sparer Adler (B.A. 1935), critic, playwright, teacher and Melville scholar
William Alfred (B.A. 1948), playwright and professor of English literature at Harvard University
Evelyn Torton Beck (B.A. 1954), scholar and activist who specializes in Women's Studies, Jewish Women's Studies, and Lesbian Studies
Livia Bitton-Jackson (B.A. 1961) academic, author and a Holocaust survivor
J. David Bleich (born 1936), rabbi and authority on Jewish law and ethics
Zvi Bodie (B.A. 1965), Boston University Norman and Adele Barron Professor of Management and expert in pension finance
Eva Brann (B.A. 1950), longest-serving tutor (1957–present) at St. John's College, Annapolis and a 2005 recipient of the National Humanities Medal
Jules Chametzky (B.A. 1950), literary critic, writer, editor, and unionist
Jonathan Chaves (B.A. 1965), Professor of Chinese Language and Literature at the George Washington University and translator of Classical Chinese poetry
Patricia Cronin (M.F.A. 1995), Rome Prize-winning feminist visual artist.
Doris Malkin Curtis (B.S. 1933), paleontologist, stratigrapher, geologist and first woman president of the Geological Society of America
Dorothy Dinnerstein (B.A. 1943), feminist academic and activist
Kenneth B. Eisenthal (B.A. 1954), Mark Hyman Professor of Chemistry Chair at Columbia University and pioneering physical chemist
Sandra Feldman (B.A 1960), President, American Federation of Teachers
Aryeh Frimer (B.A. 1968), Professor of Chemistry at Bar-Ilan University
Marc Goldstein (B.S. 1968), urologist and the Matthew P. Hardy Distinguished Professor of Reproductive Medicine, and Urology at Weill Cornell Medical College of Cornell University
Martin Haberman (B.A. 1953), educator and Distinguished Professor at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee who developed interviewing techniques for identifying teachers and principals who will be successful in working with poor children.
Linda Heywood (B. A. 1973), professor of African American studies and history at the University of Boston
Raul Hilberg (B.A. 1948), Austrian-born American political scientist and historian, author of The Destruction of the European Jews (1961)
Zoia Horn (B.A. 1939), first librarian ever jailed for refusing to divulge information that violated her belief in intellectual freedom
Ellis Horowitz (B.S. 1964), computer scientist and Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at the University of Southern California (USC)
Paul Ilie (B.A. 1954), specialist in modern and contemporary Spanish literature
Eva Kollisch (B.A. 1951), writer, literary scholar, pacifist and feminist
Annette Kolodny (B.A. 1962), feminist literary critic and activist
Sheldon Krimsky (B.S. 1963), Professor of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning at Tufts University
Joel Lebowitz (B.A. 1952), mathematical physicist acknowledged for his contributions to statistical physics and statistical mechanics, George William Hill Professor of Mathematics and Physics at Rutgers University
Sandra Leiblum (B.A. 1965), author, lecturer, and researcher in sexology
Leslie Libow (B.A. 1954), professor of geriatrics and palliative medicine at the Icahn Mount Sinai School of Medicine, author of one of the first geriatric-medicine textbooks in the United States
Edith H. Luchins (B.A. 1942), Gestalt psychologist and mathematician; first female professor at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Nancy Lynch (B.A. 1968), mathematician and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; winner of the 2007 Knuth Prize for contributions to the foundations of computer science
Leonard Mirman (B.A. 1963), mathematician and economist at the University of Virginia, known for his contributions to economics of uncertainty
Joseph Natoli (B.A. 1966), academic, known for works on postmodernism
Cindy Nemser (B.A. 1959, M.A. 1964), art historian and writer; founder and editor of the Feminist Art Journal
John Parascandola (B.A. 1963), medical historian
Alan W. Pollack (B.A. 1970), musicologist, known for having musically analyzed every Beatles song released
Ellen Prince (B.A. 1964), linguist; President of the Linguistic Society of America; pioneer in linguistic pragmatics
Dennis Raphael (B.S. 1972), health policy professor at York University in Toronto
Buddy Ratner(B.S. 1967), professor of chemical engineering and bioengineering and director of the Research Center for Biomaterials at the University of Washington
Stuart A. Rice (B.S. 1952), physical chemist, Frank P. Hixon Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago, Wolf Prize in Chemistry
Robert Rosen (B.A. 1955), theoretical biologist and Professor of Biophysics at Dalhousie University
Jack M. Sasson (B.A. 1962), emeritus Mary Jane Werthan Professor of Jewish Studies and Hebrew Bible at Vanderbilt Divinity School whose research focuses primarily on Assyriology and Hebrew Scriptures
Allen Schick (B.A. 1956), governance fellow of the Brookings Institution, professor of political science at the Maryland School of Public Policy of University of Maryland, College Park and founding editor of the journal, Public Budgeting and Finance
Ivan Schulman (B.A. 1953), major scholar of Spanish American Modernismo and the leading US scholar of the works of José Martí.
Salvatore J. Stolfo (B.S. 1974), professor of computer science at Columbia University and an expert in computer security
Albert Szabo (B.A. 1948), architect, educator, artist, and professor of architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design
Robert H. Tamarin (B.A. 1963), emeritus professor of biology, former Dean of the College of Sciences at the University of Massachusetts; developed radioisotope, electrophoretic and DNA fingerprinting techniques for use in the study of small mammals
Jay Tischfield (B.A. 1967), MacMillan Professor and the Chair of the Department of Genetics at Rutgers University
Frank P. Tomasulo (B.A. 1967), film professor, author, and academic administrator at Ithaca College, Georgia State University, Southern Methodist University, and Florida State University; Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Film & Video and Cinema Journal
Regina Weinreich (B.A. 1970), writer, journalist, teacher, and scholar of the artists of the Beat Generation
Bruce Winick (B.A. 1965), the Silvers-Rubenstein Distinguished Professor of Law and Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Miami and theorist on mental health law
Jitu Weusi (M.S. 1996), American educator, community leader, writer, activist, and jazz and arts promoter.
Joel B. Wolowelsky (B.S. 1967), Modern Orthodox rabbi, professor, author, and dean of faculty at the Yeshiva of Flatbush high school
Frieda Zames (B.A. 1954), disability rights activist and mathematics professor
Rose Zimbardo (B.A., 1956), professor of English literature
Business
Fred Bass (B.A. 1949), owner of New York City's Strand Bookstore
Charles Biderman (B.A. 1967), founder and CEO of TrimTabs Investment Research, Inc.
Joseph Cassano (B.A. 1977), head of Financial Product division at American International Group 1987–2008
Bruce Chizen (B.S. 1978), President and CEO of Adobe Systems
Bernard Cornfeld (B.A. 1950), businessman and international financier, sold investments in mutual funds
Robert A. Daly, CEO of Warner Bros. and Los Angeles Dodgers
Benjamin Eisenstadt (B.A. 1954), creator of Sweet'N Low, designer of the modern sugar packet, and the founder of Cumberland Packing Corporation
Irwin Federman (B.S. 1956), businessman, philanthropist and General Partner of U.S. Venture Partners
Jerry Della Femina (A.A. 1957), Chairman and CEO, Della Femina, Jeary and Partners
Richard LaMotta (B.A. 1969), inventor and principal promoter of the Chipwich ice cream sandwich
Marjorie Magner (B.S. 1969), Chairman of Gannett
Jerry Moss (B.A. 1957), co-founder of A&M Records
Ira Rennert (B.A. 1955), billionaire investor and businessman
Steve Riggio (B.A. 1974), CEO of Barnes & Noble, Inc.
George H. Ross (B.A. 1951), Executive Vice President and Senior Counsel of the Trump Organization
Barry Salzberg (B.S. 1974), chief executive officer Deloitte, member of Deloitte's U.S. board of directors, the Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Global Executive Committee, the DTT Global board of directors, Deloitte LLP
Richard L. Sandor (B.A. 1962), businessman, economist, and entrepreneur, recognized as the "father of financial futures"
Charlie Shrem (B.A. 2012), co-founder and CEO of the Bitcoin startup company BitInstant
Agnes Varis (B.A. 1950), President and founder of Agvar Chemicals Inc. and Aegis Pharmaceuticals
Lester Wunderman (B.A. 1938), advertising executive considered the creator of modern-day direct marketing
Sigi Ziering (B.S. 1953), German-born American business executive, playwright and philanthropist
Entertainment
Letty Aronson (B.A. 1964), film producer; sister of Woody Allen
Obba Babatundé (B.A. 1974), Emmy and Tony Award-nominated actor
Sandy Baron (B.A. 1957), comedian, stage, film, and television actor
Saul Bass, graphic designer and filmmaker, won the Academy Award for Documentary Short Subject
Sarah Benson (M.F.A.), theatre director, artistic director of SoHo Rep
Alvin Boretz (B.A. 1942), television writer for GE Theater, Playhouse 90, Armstrong Circle Theatre, Dr. Kildare, The Defenders, and Kojak
Mel Brooks (born Melvin Kaminsky; 1946), Academy Award, Emmy Award, and Tony Award-winning director, writer, and actor
Henry Chan (M.S. 1973), film and television director
Jordan Charney (B.A. 1961), character actor
Dominic Chianese (B.A. 1961), film, television and theatre actor, known for his role as Corrado "Junior" Soprano on the HBO TV series The Sopranos
Joan Cullman (born Joan Paley), Tony Award Broadway producer
Jon Cypher (B.A. 1953), actor, known for his role as Chief of Police Fletcher Daniels in the police drama Hill Street Blues
Alfred Drake (B.A. 1936), musical theater actor and singer
Joel Eisenberg (B.A. 1985), author, screenwriter, and producer
James Franco (M.F.A. 2010), Golden Globe Award-winning film and TV actor, author
Richard Frankel (B.A. 1968), six-time Tony Award-winning theatrical producer
Devery Freeman (B.A. 1935), prolific screenwriter, novelist and union activist who helped to establish the Writers Guild of America
Takeshi Fukunaga (B.A. 2007), Japanese filmmaker; Out of My Hand
Philip S. Goodman (B.A. 1948), screenwriter, producer, and director
Erica Hayden (M.A. 2008), radio personality, television host and psychotherapist
Tijana Ibrahimovic (B.A. 2008), Serbian entertainment journalist and TV personality
C. Bernard Jackson (B.A. 1948), playwright who founded the Inner City Cultural Center in Los Angeles
Marvin Kaplan (B.A. 1947), character actor, president of Los Angeles chapter of American Federation of Television and Radio Artists 1989–95; 2003–05
Robert Kerman (B.A. 1970), actor
Woodie King, Jr. (M.F.A. 1999), director and producer of stage and screen, and founding director of the New Federal Theatre
Mousa Kraish (B.A. 1998), actor and director
Tuli Kupferberg (B.A. 1948), counterculture poet, author, cartoonist, pacifist anarchist, publisher and co-founder of the band The Fugs
Jean-Claude La Marre (B.A. 1992), Haitian-American writer, director, and film and television actor
Obafemi Lasode (M.A. 1984), Nigerian veteran film actor, songwriter, playwright, film producer and director
Ken Lerner (B.A. 1970), television and film actor
Michael Lerner (B.A. 1962), Academy Award-nominated actor
Edie Locke, editor-in chief of Mademoiselle
Michael Lynne (B.A. 1961), co-founder and CEO of New Line Cinema
Steve Malzberg (B.A. 1982), conservative radio broadcaster and host of The Steve Malzberg Show on the WOR Radio Network
Paul Mazursky (B.A. 1951), Academy Award-nominated filmmaker, known for An Unmarried Woman, Harry and Tonto and Down and Out in Beverly Hills, among others; producer; actor
Neil Meron (B.A. 1976), film producer, won Academy Award for Chicago in 2003
Jared Mezzocchi (M.F.A. 2009), multimedia theater director, theatrical designer
Bruce Morrow (born Bruce Meyerowitz), known as Cousin Brucie, radio performer, National Radio Hall of Fame
Oren Moverman (B.A. 1992), Academy Award-nominated filmmaker
Larry Namer (B.A. 1971), founder of E! Entertainment TV Network
Eric Overmyer (M.F.A. 1982), television writer and producer; The Wire
Gil Portes (M.S. 1971), award-winning Filipino film director, film producer and screenwriter
Richard Portnow (B.A. 1967), actor, known for recurring role in The Sopranos
Dennis Prager (B.A. 1970), syndicated radio talk show host, columnist, author, ethicist, and public speaker, founder of PragerU.
Brian "Q" Quinn, comedian, stars in the popular TV show Impractical Jokers
Mark Rappaport (B.A. 1964), independent/underground film director
David Rayfiel (B.A. 1947), screenwriter, frequent collaborator of director Sydney Pollack
Richard Reicheg (B.A. 1962, MA 1973), actor, folk singer, and songwriter, known for the song "Looking for an Echo"
Jason Reischel (M.A. 2016), singer-songwriter who sometimes goes by the stage name My Cousin, The Emperor.
Howard Rosenman (B.A. 1965), producer and motion picture executive
Marc Salem (B.A. 1975), mentalist and mind reader
George Schindler (B.A. 1952), stage magician, magic consultant, and ventriloquist, "lifetime dean" of the Society of American Magicians
Steve Schirripa (B.A. 1980), actor known for his role as Bobby Baccalieri on the HBO TV series The Sopranos
Citizen Kafka (Richard Shulberg), (B.A. 1969), radio personality and folk musician
Roger S. H. Schulman (B.A. 1980), film and television writer and producer, co-wrote the animated feature Shrek
Stuart Seide (B.A. 1967), artistic director of the Théâtre du Nord in Lille, France, and the first American to direct the Comédie-Française
Jimmy Smits (B.A. 1980), actor, NYPD Blue and L.A. Law; won Emmy Award in 1990
Frank Tarloff (B.A. 1936), blacklisted American screenwriter who won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for Father Goose
Elliot Tiber (attended, but did not graduate), screenwriter, "saved" Woodstock Festival
Adrianne Tolsch (B.A. 1961), comedian long associated with Catch a Rising Star
Frank P. Tomasulo, PhD (B.A. 1967), award-winning film and media professor, noted journal editor and critic
Tom Topor (B.A. 1961), playwright, screenwriter, and novelist
Adam Wade (M.A. '87), singer, drummer, and television actor, noted for his stint as the host of the 1975 CBS game show Musical Chairs, which made him the first African-American game show host
Naren Weiss (M.F.A. 2015), actor, playwright, and model
Andrew D. Weyman (B.A. 1973), television director and producer
Fawn Yacker (B.A. 1973), founding member of The Nuclear Beauty Parlor, filmmaker, producer and cinematographer, known for her 2009 documentary Training Rules
Joel Zwick (B.A. 1962), theater and television producer, Family Matters, director of My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002)
Music
Benjamin Bierman (M.M. 2002), jazz trumpeter, composer, and bandleader
Susan Birkenhead (B.A. 1957), lyricist
Benjamin Boretz (B.A. 1954), 20th- and 21st-century composer and music theorist
Oscar Brand (B.S. 1942), folk singer, radio host, musicologist
Isidore Cohen (B.A 1941), chamber musician, violinist, and member of the Juilliard String Quartet and Beaux Arts Trio
Alex Coletti (B.A. 1987), executive producer and director for MTV Networks, now an independent producer
Eddie Daniels (B.A. 1963), jazz clarinet and alto and tenor saxophone player; also a classical music clarinetist
Deborah Drattell (B.A. 1976), composer, best known for opera
Rebekah Driscoll (M.M. 2012), composer
Sylvia Fine (B.A. 1933), lyricist; wife of comedian Danny Kaye
Gary William Friedman (B.A. 1958), musician and composer of musical theater
David Geffen, business magnate, co-created Asylum Records, Geffen Records, DGC Records, and DreamWorks SKG
Daniel Glass (B.A. 1977), music industry producer
Henry Gross (B.A. 1972), singer-songwriter and founding member of the retro pop group Sha Na Na
Fred Hellerman (B.A. 1949), folk singer, guitarist, producer and songwriter, primarily known as one of the members of The Weavers
Cihan Kaan (B.S. 1999), musician; filmmaker; author; recorded electronic music under the alias "8Bit"
Kim Ji-hyun, South Korean singer
Harvey Lichtenstein (B.A. 1951), President and Executive Producer of the Brooklyn Academy of Music
Bob Margolis (B.A. 1974, M.M. 1977), composer of concert music and owner of Manhattan Beach Music Publishers
Gladys Smuckler Moskowitz (B.A. 1949), folk singer (as Gladys Young), composer and teacher
Jerry Moss (B.A., 1957), co-founder of A & M Records
Enisa Nikaj (B.B.A. 2017), also known as Enisa, Montenegrin-American singer songwriter
Sonny Ochs (B.A. 1970), music producer, radio host, sister of singer-songwriter Phil Ochs
Arturo O'Farrill (BMus 1996), jazz musician and current pianist, composer, and director for the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra
Lee Pockriss (B.A. 1948), songwriter who wrote many well-known popular songs, including "Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini"
Doc Pomus (attended, 1943–45), blues singer, songwriter and member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
Rafael Scarfullery (B.M. 1993), Dominican classical guitarist
Harrison Sheckler (M.M. 2021), pianist and composer
Maynard Solomon (B.A. 1950), co-founder of Vanguard Records, music producer, and musicologist
Jason Stanyek (B.M. 1990), ethnomusicologist, composer, and guitarist; professor at the University of Oxford
Dirk Weiler (M.M. 2002), singer and actor
Walter Yetnikoff (B.A. 1955), CEO of CBS Records, Columbia Records/Sony Music executive
Government, law, and public policy
General
Cy A Adler (B.A. 1950), president of Shorewalkers, Inc.; author, organizer, and conservationist, advocate for shoreline issues in and around New York City
Dionisia Amaya (Adv. Cert. 1987), teacher and Honduran Garifuna community activist
Bill Baird (B.A. 1955), reproductive rights activist and co-director of the Pro Choice League
Barbara P. Berman (B.A. 1959), Democratic Party politician who served in the New Jersey General Assembly for a single term, where she represented the 6th Legislative District from 1978 to 1980
Dorothy Blum (B.A. 1944), computer scientist, cryptanalyst, and National Security Agency officer
Barbara Boxer (née Barbara Levy; B.A. 1962), United States Representative and United States Senator (D – California)
Frank J. Brasco (B.A. 1955), member of the United States House of Representatives 1967–75
Marshall Brement (B.A. 1951), career United States Foreign Service officer; United States Ambassador to Iceland 1981–1985
Shirley Chisholm (B.A. 1946), first African-American U.S. Congresswoman, 1968–82
Gwyndolen Clarke-Reed (B.S. 1973), educator and representative for District 92 of the Florida House of Representatives
Manuel F. Cohen (B.S. 1933), Chairman, Securities and Exchange Commission, 1964–69
William Colton (MSed 1971), represents District 47 in the New York Assembly
Victoria Cruz (B.A. 1982), LGBT rights activist and retired domestic violence counselor
Donald J. Devine (M.A. 1965), political scientist; author; former director of the United States Office of Personnel Management
Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel (B.A. 1952), author, preservationist, curator, and chairwoman of the New York State Council on the Arts
Martin Malave Dilan (B.A. 1984), represented District 17 in the New York State Senate 2009-19
Stanley Fink (B.A. 1956), member of the New York State Assembly 1969–1986; Speaker 1979–1986
Leonard Garment (B.A. 1946), White House Counsel
Phillip Goldfeder (B.A. '04), Democratic New York State Assembly member from the borough of Queens, 2011–2016.
Victor Gotbaum (B.A. 1948), labor leader
Ari Harow (B.A. 2000), former Chief of Staff of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
Syed Fahad Hashmi (B.A. 2003), convicted terrorist
Dov Hikind (M.A. 1981), New York State Assemblyman representing Brooklyn's Assembly District 48
Herbert E. Horowitz (B.A. 1952), American Ambassador to Gabon (1986–1989)
Rhoda Jacobs (B.A. 1962), represents District 42 in Brooklyn in the New York State Assembly, where she serves as Assistant Speaker
Ellen Jaffee (B.A. 1965), represents District 55 in the New York State Assembly
Kimberly Jean-Pierre (B.F.A. 2006), represents the 11th Assembly District in the New York State Assembly
Meir Kahane (B.A. 1954), Israeli-American Orthodox rabbi, writer, and ultra-nationalist politician who co-founded the Jewish Defense League and served one term in Israel's Knesset
Roberta Kalechofsky (B.A. 1952), writer, feminist, and animal rights activist; founder of Jews for Animal Rights
Vera Katz (B.A. 1955), mayor of Portland, Oregon, 1993–2005
Ivan Lafayette (B.A. 1951), member of the New York State Assembly since 1977 and Deputy Speaker of the New York State Assembly since 2006
Sy Landy (B.A. 1952), Trotskyist politician, co-founder of the League for the Revolutionary Party
Howard L. Lasher (B.A. 1965), New York State Assemblyman and New York City Councilman; first Orthodox Jew elected to state office in New York
Burton Levin (B.A. 1952), US Ambassador to Burma
Mark Lowenthal (B.A. 1969), CIA's Assistant Director of Central Intelligence for Analysis and Production 2002–2005, where he was a key coordinator and valuator of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq leading up to Operation Iraqi Freedom
Alan Maisel (Adv. Cert. 1990), New York State Assemblyman representing District 59
Marty Markowitz (B.A. 1970), New York State Senator; Brooklyn Borough President (2001–2013)
George Martinez (B.A 1998), educator, activist, artist, and hip-hop political pioneer
Mel Miller (B.A. 1961), member of the New York State Assembly 1971–1991; Speaker 1987–1991
Joan Millman (B.A. 1962), New York State Assemblywoman representing District 52
Elvin Nimrod, Grenada Minister for Legal Affairs and Minister of Foreign Affairs
Manfred Ohrenstein (B.A. 1948), New York State Senate Minority Leader
Joseph Pennacchio (B.S. 1976), represents the 26th Legislative district in the New Jersey Senate
N. Nick Perry (B.A. 1978), New York State Assemblyman representing District 58
Mary Pinkett (B.A. 1974), first African-American New York City Councilwoman, serving the 28th and 35th districts from 1974 to 2001
Harvey Pitt (B.A. 1965), Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission
Robert Rosenthal (B.A. 1938), highly decorated World War II pilot and assistant to the U.S. prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials
Gene Russianoff (B.A. 1974), staff attorney and chief spokesman for the Straphangers Campaign, New York City-based public transport advocacy group
Edward Sagarin (B.A. 1961), sociologist, pseudonymously wrote The Homosexual in America: A Subjective Approach (1951), considered one of the most influential works in the history of the gay rights movement
John L. Sampson (B.A. 1987), represents District 19 in the New York State Senate where he serves in a leadership position as chairman of the Democratic Conference.
Bernie Sanders (attended 1959–1960), United States Senator for Vermont
James Sanders, Jr. (B.A. 1984), represents the 10th Senatorial District in the New York State Senate
Bernice Sandler (B.A. 1948), the 'Godmother of Title IX'
Sam Schwartz, aka "Gridlock Sam" (B.S. 1969), transportation engineer, believed responsible for popularizing the word gridlock
Frank Serpico (A.A. 1959), New York City Police Department (NYPD) officer famous for testifying against police corruption
Al Sharpton (1975), civil rights activist
Norman Siegel (B.A. 1965), director of the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU), 1985–2000
Susan Silbey (B.A. 1962), sociologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, best known for her work on popular legal consciousness
David Sive (B.A. 1943), attorney, environmentalist, and professor of environmental law, who has been recognized as a pioneer in the field of United States environmental law
Eleanor Sobel (B.A. 1967), State Representative in the Florida House of Representatives, 1998–2006
Pamela Talkin (B.S. 1968, M.A. 1971), Marshal of the Supreme Court of the United States and the first woman to hold this position
William L. Taylor (B.A. 1952), attorney and civil rights advocate
Seymour R. Thaler (B.A. 1940), member of the New York State Senate 1959–1971
Mark Treyger (B.A. 2005, M.A. 2009, M.S.Ed 2012), member of the New York City Council, representing District 47
Beatrice N. Vaccara (B.A. 1943), economist and economic statistician; head of the Bureau of Industrial Economics at the United States Department of Commerce
Eliezer Waldman (B.A. 1959), Israeli rabbi and former politician who served as a member of the Knesset for Tehiya between 1984 and 1990
Benjamin Ward (B.A. 1960), first African American New York City Police Commissioner, 1983–89
Iris Weinshall (B.A. 1975), vice chancellor at the City University of New York and Commissioner of the New York City Department of Transportation
Moses M. Weinstein (B.A. 1934), lawyer and politician
Warren Weinstein (B.A. 1963), contractor; director in Pakistan for J.E. Austin Associates kidnapped by al-Qaeda in August 2011 and killed in January 2015 by a US-led drone strike on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border
Saul Weprin (B.A. 1948), member of the New York State Assembly 1973–1994; Speaker 1991–1994
Jumaane Williams (B.A. 2001, M.A. 2005), Democratic politician, member of the New York City Council
Lynne Williams (M.A. 1975), Maine politician and former chairperson of the Maine Green Independent Party
Maxine Wolfe (B.A. 1961), activist for AIDS, civil rights, lesbian rights, and reproductive rights
Stanley Yolles (B.A. 1939), psychiatrist head of the National Institute of Mental Health from 1964 to 1970
Judges
Noach Dear (B.S. 1975), New York Supreme Court judge
Patricia DiMango (B.A. 1973), television personality and former justice of the Supreme court of Kings County, New York
David Friedman (B.A. 1971), Associate Justice of the New York Appellate Division of the Supreme Court, First Judicial Department
Arthur Gonzalez (M.S. 1976), United States Bankruptcy Court Judge for the Southern District of New York, presided over the bankruptcy proceedings for WorldCom, Enron, and Chrysler
Sterling Johnson, Jr. (B.A. 1963), senior United States District Judge for the Eastern District of New York
Edward R. Korman (B.A. 1963), Senior Judge, United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York
Doris Ling-Cohan (B.A. 1976), judge on the New York State Supreme Court
Rosemary S. Pooler (B.A. 1959), Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
Deborah Poritz (B.A. 1958), first female Chief Justice, New Jersey State Supreme Court; first female New Jersey Attorney General, 1994–96
Jason K. Pulliam (B.A. 1995; M.A. 1997), United States federal judge for the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas
Joel Harvey Slomsky (B.A. 1967), United States federal judge for the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania
William C. Thompson (B.A. 1949), Brooklyn's first African American State Senator; Justice of the New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division
Jack B. Weinstein (B.A. 1943), Columbia Law School professor and Senior Judge, United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York
Attorneys
Benjamin Brafman (B.A. 1971), prominent criminal defense attorney
George Carroll (B.A. 1943), lawyer who was important civic figure in Contra Costa County, California and the city of Richmond
Jay Goldberg (B.A. 1954), trial attorney, formerly a member of the Justice Department in the Kennedy administration
Robert M. Kaufman (B.A. 1951), attorney, partner with the law firm Proskauer Rose, and former president of the New York City Bar Association
Harvey R. Miller (B.A. 1954), bankruptcy lawyer with Weil, Gotshal & Manges
Jay Neveloff (B.A.1971), real estate lawyer with the law firm Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel known for representing Donald Trump and his companies.
Emanuel Quint (B.A. 1949), rabbi, lawyer, and co-founder of Touro College
Journalism
Madeline Amgott (B.A. 1942), television news television producer
Charlotte Brooks (B.A. 1940), photographer and photojournalist
Stu Bykofsky (B.A. 1965), journalist and columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News
Thom Calandra (B.A. 1979), founding editor and chief columnist for CBS MarketWatch.com
John Cigna (A.A. 1956), radio personality at KDKA-AM in Pittsburgh, 1973–2001
Stan Fischler (B.A 1954), journalist, historian, hockey broadcaster, five-time Emmy award winner, and member of the Hockey Hall of Fame
Sylvan Fox (B.A. 1951), journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner
Marc Frons (B.A. 1977), Chief Technology Officer of The New York Times
Dele Giwa (B.A. 1977), Nigerian journalist, editor and founder of Newswatch magazine; killed by mail bomb in his home
Robert Greenfield (B.A. 1967), author, journalist and screenwriter
Dorie Greenspan (B.A. 1969), American author of cookbooks, New York Times columnist, James Beard Foundation Award award winner.
Yossi Klein Halevi (B.A. 1975), Israeli journalist; columnist for The New Republic
Charles Lachman (B.A. 1974), Executive Producer of the news magazine program Inside Edition
Victor Lasky (B.A 1940), Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and syndicated newspaper columnist
Victoria Law (B.A. 2002), anarchist activist, and writer; co-founder of Books Through Bars
Don Lemon (B.A. 1996), news anchor, CNN
Marvin E. Newman (B.A. 1949), artist and photographer
Stanley Newman (B.S. 1973), puzzle creator, editor, and publisher
Stanley Penn, journalist, won a Pulitzer Prize for National Affairs Reporting
Ekerete Udoh (M.A. 2006), Nigerian politician, former columnist in ThisDay Newspaper, and Chief Press Secretary to Udom Gabriel Emmanuel, the Ibom State Governor
Abraham Rabinovich (B.A. 1956), Israeli historian and journalist
Milt Rosenberg (B.A. 1946), host of Extension 720 on WGN Radio in Chicago, Illinois.
Harold Schonberg (B.A. 1937), Pulitzer Prize-winning music critic and journalist, most notably for The New York Times
Allan Sloan (B.A. 1966), financial journalist; Senior Editor-at-Large for Fortune Magazine
Dorothy Sucher [B.A. 1954], her reporting for a Maryland newspaper led to landmark Supreme Court case, Greenbelt Cooperative Publishing Assn., Inc. v. Bresler, which the paper won; author
Barry Sussman (B.A. 1956), editor, author, and public opinion analyst; city news editor at The Washington Post at the time of the Watergate break-in
Maia Szalavitz (B.A. 1991), reporter, author of Help at Any Cost: How the Troubled-Teen Industry Cons Parents and Hurts Kids
Glenn Thrush (B.A. 1990), journalist, pundit, and author. He has been the White House correspondent for The New York Times since 2017
Gina Trapani (M.S 1998), tech blogger, web developer, writer, and founder of the Lifehacker blog
Ann Marie Adams (B.A. 1999), journalist, pundit, author, and historian. She has been the White House Correspondent for The Hartford Guardian since 2013. She is also founder of the first nonprofit hyperlocal news publication in New England and the tri-state area. She was also the first Black editor of the Excelsior and the first Black Editor-in-Chief of The Kingsman.
Literature and the arts
Kwesi Abbensetts (B.A. 2012), Guyanese photographer based in New York City
Cecile Abish (B.A. 1953), artist known for sculpture and photography
Sam Abrams (B.A. 1958), "The Old Pothead Poet", Rochester Institute of Technology professor, Whitman scholar
Jack Adler (B.A. 1942), award-winning cover artist and colorist for DC Comics
Jack Agüeros (B.A. 1964), Puerto Rican community activist, poet, writer, translator, and director of the Museo del Barrio in New York City
Saladin Ahmed (M.F.A. 2002), Arab-American science fiction and fantasy writer and poet
Mario Amaya (B.A. 1954), art critic; shot by Valerie Solanas during her assassination attempt on Andy Warhol
Suzanne Anker (B.A. 1967), visual artist, theorist and pioneer in Bio Art
Rilla Askew (M.F.A 1989), Oklahoma-based short story writer and novelist
Helène Aylon (B.A. 1960), multimedia ecofeminist artist
Annie Baker (M.F.A. 2009), Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright
Huáscar Barradas (B.M. 1987), Venezuelan flautist and Professor of flute at the Instituto Universitario de Estudios Musicales in Caracas
Jennifer Bartlett (M.A. 2004), poet, editor, and disability activist
Gina Beavers (M.SEd, 2005), Greek-American painter, whose subject include food, makeup, and viral images, often in bas-relief
Paul Beatty (M.F.A. 1989), African American poet, novelist, and critic
Betty T. Bennett (B.A. 1962), scholar on the life of Frankenstein author Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Distinguished Professor of Literature and Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at American University
Eddie Berganza (B.A. 1986), Group Editor for DC Comics
Karen Berger (B.A. 1979), editor of DC Comics' Vertigo imprint
Anselm Berrigan (M.F.A. 1998), poet and teacher and artistic director of the St. Mark's Poetry Project from 2003 to 2007
Florence Bonime (B.A. 1975), American novelist; published under the name Florence Cummings
Michael Bradford (M.F.A. 2000), playwright and former artistic director of the Connecticut Repertory Theatre
Himan Brown (B.A. 1934), radio pioneer; producer of radio programming, including the Inner Sanctum Mysteries and the CBS Radio Mystery Theater
Anatole Broyard (attended 1937–41, did not graduate), writer, literary critic and editor for The New York Times
Madelyn Byrne (M.M. 1993), noted composer of both acoustic and computer music
Emil Cadoo (B.A. 1952), American photographer
Sylvia Cassedy (B.A. 1951), children's and young adult fiction author, best known for her 1983 novel Behind the Attic Wall
Allen Cohen (B.A. 1962), poet, founder and editor of the San Francisco Oracle underground newspaper (1966–68)
Garrard Conley (M.F.A. 2020), American author and LGBTQ activist known for his autobiography Boy Erased: A Memoir
Michael Corris (B.A. 1970), artist, art historian, and writer on art
Patricia Cronin (M.F.A. 1988), Rome Prize-winning feminist visual artist
Amanda Davis (M.F.A. 1998), writer; author of "Wonder When You'll Miss Me"
J. M. DeMatteis (B.A. 1976), writer of comic books
Max Desfor, Pulitzer Prize winning photographer
Thomas Devaney (MFA 1998), poet and 2014 Pew Fellow in the Arts
Dan DiDio (B.A. 1983), comic book editor and executive for DC Comics
Sante D'Orazio (B.A. 1978), fashion photographer
Natalie Edgar(B.A. 1953), abstract expressionist painter, former critic for ARTnews
Hillard Elkins (B.A. 1950), theatre and film producer
Stanley Ellin (B.A. 1936), Edgar Award-winning mystery author
Yevgeniy Fiks (B.F.A. 1997), multidisciplinary, Post-Soviet conceptual artist
Jane Freilicher (B.A. 1947), representational painter and member of the informal New York School
Robert Friend (B.A. 1934), Israeli poet and translator
Alice Friman (B.A. 1954), poet; Poet-in-Residence at Georgia College
Gregory William Frux (M.F.A. 1985), traditional realist artist, working mainly in the landscape genre
Elizabeth Gaffney (M.F.A. 1997), novelist and staff editor of The Paris Review, 1989–2005
Elliott Galkin (B.A. 1943), music critic of The Baltimore Sun, director of the Peabody Institute, and sometime conductor of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
Mike Garson (B.A. 1970), pianist; has worked with David Bowie, Nine Inch Nails, Billy Corgan, Free Flight, and The Smashing Pumpkins
Ja'Tovia Gary (B.A. 2012), American artist and filmmaker whose works explore black feminist themes
Joe Glazer (B.A. 1938), folk musician often referred to as "labor's troubadour"
David Gordon (B.F.A. 1956), dancer, choreographer, theatre director, writer
Shirley Gorelick (B.A. 1944), painter of psychological realism
Richard Grayson (B.A. 1973, M.F.A. 1976), writer, political activist and performance artist
Irving Greenfield (B.A. 1950), prolific author of more than 300 novels
Roya Hakakian (B.S. 1990), Jewish Iranian-American writer
John Harlacher (B.A. 2000), actor, stage director, and filmmaker responsible for the horror film Urchin (2007)
Irving Harper (B.A. 1937), noted 20th-century industrial designer
Marvin Heiferman (B.A. 1968), influential American photography curator and writer
Michelle Herman (B.A. 1976), writer and Professor of English at Ohio State University, and director of the M.F.A. Program in Creative Writing
Lee Israel (B,A, 1961), noted author who became a literary forger and thief
Chester Kallman (B.A. 1941), poet, librettist, and translator; collaborator with W. H. Auden
Howard Kaminsky (B.A. 1961), publisher, author and film producer
Karen Karnes (B.A. 1946), ceramist, known for her earth-toned stoneware ceramics
Ben Katchor (B.A. 1975), cartoonist, creator of Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer
Ada Katz (B.S. 1950), wife and model of Alex Katz
Sibyl Kempson (M.F.A. 2007), playwright and performer
Daniel Keyes (B.A. 1950. M.A. '61), author known for his Hugo award-winning short story and Nebula award-winning novel Flowers for Algernon
Amirtha Kidambi (M.M. 2012), Jazz musician (vocal, harmonium, composition)
Binnie Kirshenbaum (M.F.A. 1984), novelist, short story writer, Columbia University creative writing professor
Sibyl Kempson (M.F.A. 2007), playwright and performer
Frances Kornbluth (B.A. 1940), abstract expressionist painter
Marni Kotak (M.F.A. 2006), artist known for her durational performance/exhibition "The Birth of Baby X," in which she gave birth to her son
Margia Kramer (B.A. 1961), documentary visual artist, writer and activist
Albert Kresch (B.A. 1943), New York School painter and one of the original members of the Jane Street Gallery
Bernard Krigstein (B.A. 1940), illustrator and gallery artist who received acclaim for his innovative and influential approach to comic book art, notably in EC Comics
Mort Künstler (B.A. 1946), painter and illustrator of the American Civil War
Ezra Laderman (B.A. 1950), composer of classical music
Gabriel Laderman (B.A. 1952), painter and important exponent of the Figurative revival
Abshalom Jac Lahav (M.F.A. 2008) Israeli-born, New York City–based artist known for his portraits of historical figures in modern contexts
Young Jean Lee (M.F.A. 2005), OBIE Award-winning playwright and director of experimental theater, Artistic Director of Young Jean Lee's Theater Company
Alan Lelchuk (B.A. 1960), novelist
Sam Levenson (B.A. 1934), humorist, author
Fred Lonberg-Holm (B.M. 1988), cello player and composer
Leonard Lopate (B.A. 1967), host of the public radio talk show The Leonard Lopate Show, broadcast on WNYC
Robert Lyons (M.F.A. 2010), writer, playwright and director, best known as the artistic director the two-time OBIE Award-winning New Ohio Theatre in New York City
Jackson Mac Low (B.A. 1958), poet, performance artist, composer and playwright
Rajendra Ramoon Maharaj (M.F.A. 2011), Indo-Afro-Caribbean American theater director, playwright, producer and activist.
John Mahon (B.A. 1952), historian, author of New York's Fighting 69th
Wallace Markfield (B.A. 1947), comic novelist, film critic
Paule Marshall (B.A. 1953), author, novelist (Brown Girl, Brownstones (1959), Praisesong for the Widow (1983))
Cris Mazza (M.F.A. 1983), novelist, short story and non-fiction writer
Frank McCourt (M.A. 1967), Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Angela's Ashes and 'Tis
Dennis McFarland (B.A. 1975), novelist; The Music Room (1990)
Michael McKenzie (B.A. 1973), artist, publisher, curator, and writer
Murray Mednick (B.A. 1962), playwright
Sharon Mesmer (M.F.A. 1990), writer and poet of the Flarf poetry movement
Annette Michelson (B.A. 1948), art and film critic and writer whose work contributed to the fields of cinema studies and the avant-garde in visual culture.
Richard P. Minsky (B.A. 1968), scholar of bookbinding and a book artist
Emily Mitchell (M.F.A. 2005), Anglo-American novelist
Gloria Naylor (B.A. 1981), novelist; Winner National Book Award
Peter Nero (born Bernard Nierow; B.A. 1956), Grammy Award-winning pianist; conductor; composer
Harold Norse (B.A. 1938), poet and novelist
Marco Oppedisano (B.M. 1996), guitarist and composer of electroacoustic music
Maia Cruz Palileo (M.F.A. 2008), artist
Angelo Parra (M.F.A. 1995), playwright
Benjamin Jason Parris (B.S. 1984), educator, museum planner, and author of fantasy series Wade of Aquitaine
Lincoln Peirce (M.F.A. 1987), cartoonist of the comic strip Big Nate
Jed Perl (M.F.A. 1974), art critic, formerly with The New Republic from 1994 to 2014
Robert Phillips (M.A. 1982), Classical guitarist, composer, educator, and Head of Performing Arts at All Saints' Academy
Rosalie Purvis (M.F.A. 2007), Dutch American theatre director and choreographer
Anna Rabinowitz (B.A. 1953), poet, librettist, editor and editor emerita of American Letters & Commentary
Burton Raffel (B.A. 1948), teacher, poet and translator of Beowulf, Horace, Rabelais and Cervantes
Naomi Ragen (B.A. 1971), American-Israeli author, playwright and women's rights activist
Elaine Reichek (B.A. 1963), New York-based visual artist, whose work often concerns the history of the embroidered sampler.
Naomi Rosenblum (B.A. 1948), historian of photography, author of A World History of Photography (1984) and A History of Women Photographers (1994)
Martha Rosler (B.A. 1965), artist active in video, photo-text, installation, and performance
Norman Rosten (B.A. 1935), poet, playwright, novelist, Poet Laureate of Brooklyn (1979–1995)
Matthue Roth (M.F.A. 2014), columnist, author, poet, spoken word performer, video game designer, and screenwriter.
Theodore Isaac Rubin (B.A. 1946), psychiatrist and author; wrote story for the film David and Lisa (1962)
Howard Sackler (B.A. 1950), Pulitzer Prize-winning screenwriter and playwright, known for 1967 play The Great White Hope
Ellen R. Sandor (B.A. 1963), new media artist and photography collector; proponent of PHSColograms, art that combines photography, holography, sculpture, and computer graphics
Kristina "Tina" Satter (M.F.A. 2008), playwright and director
Sapphire (M.F.A. 1995), author and performance poet, author of the novel Push (1996)
Millicent Selsam (B.A. 1932), children's author
Irwin Shaw (born Irwin Shamforoff; B.A. 1934), playwright, screenwriter, and short-story author and novelist (The Young Lions, Rich Man, Poor Man); winner of two O. Henry Awards
Sara Shepard (M.F.A. 2005), author known for the bestselling Pretty Little Liars and The Lying Game book series; both were developed into television series on ABC Family
Shraga Silverstein (B.A. 1940, M.A. 1954) Rabbi, educator and prolific author and translator
Walter Skolnik (B.A. 1955), composer and musical educator
Jan Slepian (B.A. 1971), author of books for children and young adult fiction
Robert Kimmel Smith (B.A. 1951), children's author, known for Chocolate Fever (1972) and Jane's House (1982)
Sasson Soffer (B.A. 1954), abstract painter and sculptor
Gilbert Sorrentino (B.A. 1957), novelist, short story writer, poet, literary critic, and editor
Laurie Spiegel (B.A. 1975), electronic-music composer, inventor
Jason Starr (M.F.A. 1990), Anthony Award- and Barry Award-winning author of crime fiction novels and thrillers
Claire Sterling (B.A. 1940), author and journalist, author of The Terror Network (1981)
Ronald Tavel (B.A. 1957), screenwriter, director, novelist, poet and actor, known for his work with Andy Warhol and The Factory
David Trinidad (M.F.A. 1990), poet
Alan Vega (B.A. 1960), vocalist for 1970s and 80s electronic protopunk duo Suicide
Leah Vincent (B.A. 2007), author and memoirist; Cut Me Loose: Sin and Salvation After My Ultra-Orthodox Girlhood (2014)
Chiqui Vicioso (B.A. 1979), poet, writer, sociologist and Dominican diplomat
Malvin Wald (B.A. 1936), screenwriter, authored the 1948 police drama The Naked City
Nari Ward (M.F.A. 1992), Jamaican-born artist based in New York City whose work is often composed of found objects from his neighborhood, and "address issues related to consumer culture, poverty, and race"
Marion Winik (M.F.A. 1983), journalist and author, best known for her work on NPR's All Things Considered
Richard Winston (B.A. 1939) and Clara Brussel Winston (B.A. 1939), translators of Thomas Mann, Franz Kafka, Hannah Arendt, Albert Speer, Hermann Hesse, and Rolf Hochhuth.
Leah Nanako Winkler (M.F.A. 2018), Japanese American playwright whose play God Said This won the 2018 Yale Drama Series Prize.
Adrianne Wortzel (B.A. 1964), contemporary artist who uses robotics
Jeffrey Cyphers Wright (M.F.A 1987), New Romantic poet associated with St. Mark's Poetry Project
John Yau (M.F.A. 1978), critic, essayist, poet, and prose writer
Rafi Zabor (B.A. 1967), music journalist- and musician-turned-novelist
Malcah Zeldis (B.A. 1972), twentieth century Jewish American folk painter
Harriet Zinnes (M.A. 1944), American poet, fiction writer, translator, art critic, literary scholar and professor
Religion
J. David Bleich (B.A. 1960), authority on Jewish law and ethics, including Jewish medical ethics
Bhikkhu Bodhi (B.A. 1966), American Buddhist monk, second president of the Buddhist Publication Society, 1984–2002
Reeve Brenner (B.A. 1958), Reform rabbi, inventor and author
Mariano Di Gangi (B.A. 1943), prominent minister of the Presbyterian Church in Canada (PCC)
Theodore Drange (B.A. 1955), philosopher of religion and Professor Emeritus at West Virginia University, noted for his Argument from nonbelief
Sylvia Ettenberg (B.A 1938), Jewish educator and one of the founders of the Camp Ramah camping movement
Susie Fishbein (B.A. 1986), Orthodox Jewish kosher cookbook author, and cooking teacher
Satsvarupa dasa Goswami (B.A. 1961), senior disciple and biographer of A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, founder of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON)
Blu Greenberg (B.A. 1957), co-founder and first president of the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance; active in the movement to bridge Judaism and feminism
Jonathan Greenstein, antique Judaica authentication expert
David Weiss Halivni (B.A. 1953), American-Israeli rabbi, scholar in the domain of Jewish Sciences and professor of Talmud
Norma Joseph (B.A. 1966), Canadian professor, Orthodox Jewish feminist, and activist
Adina Miles (B.A. 2009, MS 2012), better known as FlatbushGirl, comedian, activist and political candidate, who has attracted attention for her challenges to Orthodox Jewish standards for women
Rabbi Yaakov Perlow (B.A. 1955), Hasidic rebbe and rosh yeshiva, current Novominsker Rebbe
Shais Rishon (B.A. 2005), pen name MaNishtana, an African-American Orthodox rabbi, activist, and writer
Larry Rosenberg (B.A. 1954), American Buddhist teacher and proponent of anapanasati (mindful breath meditation)
Henry Rosenblum (B.A. 1969), hazzan (cantor) of the Forest Hills Jewish Center in Queens, NY and Dean of the H.L. Miller Cantorial School of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America 1998–2010
Jacob J. Schacter (B.A. 1973), University Professor of Jewish History and Jewish Thought and Senior Scholar at the Center for the Jewish Future at Yeshiva University
Pinchas Stolper (B.A. 1952), Orthodox rabbi, writer, and spokesman
Herbert Tarr (B.A. 1949), Reform rabbi who left his pulpit to become a novelist and humorist
Eliezer Waldman(B.A. 1959), Israeli Orthodox rabbi and former politician, who served as a member of the Knesset for Tehiya between 1984 and 1990
Tzvi Hersh Weinreb (B.A. 1962), Executive Vice President Emeritus of the Orthodox Union
Chaim Dovid Zwiebel (B.A. 1975), Executive Vice President of Agudath Israel of America
Science and technology
Biochemistry and chemistry
Stanley Cohen (B.A. 1943), biochemist and Nobel laureate (Physiology or Medicine, 1986)
Martha Greenblatt (B.S. 1962), chemist at Rutgers University, received the 2003 American Chemical Society's Garvan-Olin Medal
Jerry March (M.S. 1953), chemist and author of March's Advanced Organic Chemistry
Barnett Rosenberg (B.S. 1948), chemist, known for his discovery of the anti-cancer drug cisplatin
Howard Sachs (B.S. 1949), biochemist; pioneer the study of neuroendocrinology
Nicholas Sand (B.A. 1966), clandestine chemist and early proponent of psychedelics
Seymour Shapiro (B.S. 1935), organic chemist, known for his pioneering work on a class of drugs used to treat symptoms of adult-onset diabetes
Karen Joy Shaw (B.S. 1976), American microbiologist and discoverer of novel antifungal and antibacterial compounds.
Computer science
Martin Goetz (B.A. 1953), pioneer in the development of the commercial software industry; holds the first U.S. software patent
Lawrence Landweber (B.S. 1963), Internet pioneer, helped develop CSNET, founding member and president of the Internet Society
Jack Minker (B.S. 1949), authority in artificial intelligence, deductive databases, logic programming and non-monotonic reasoning
George Radin (B.A. 1951) computer scientist, helped develop the PL/I programming language and design the OS/360 and TSS/360 systems
Gerard Salton (B.S. 1950), pioneering computer scientist in the field of information retrieval
Joan Targ (B.A. 1960), pioneer in computer education and older sister of chess champion Bobby Fischer
Mathematics
Milton Abramowitz (B.A. 1940, M.S. 1942), mathematician, co-author of the Handbook of Mathematical Functions with Formulas, Graphs, and Mathematical Tables (1964)
Ruth Aaronson Bari (B.A. 1939), mathematician known for her work in graph theory and homomorphisms
Richard Bellman (B.A. 1941), applied mathematician and inventor of dynamic programming
Sol Garfunkel (B.A. 1963), mathematician and long-time executive director of the Consortium for Mathematics and Its Applications
Edna Grossman (B.S. 1968), mathematician
Frank Harary (B.A. 1941, M.A. 1945), mathematician, specializing in graph theory
William Kantor (B.S. 1964), mathematician, specializing in group theory and geometry.
Julian Keilson (B.S. 1947), mathematician, known for his work in probability theory
Seymour Lipschutz (B.A. 1952, M.A. 1956), author of technical books on pure mathematics and probability, including a collection of Schaum's Outlines
Abraham Nemeth (B.S. 1940), mathematician and inventor; developed the Nemeth Braille Code for Mathematics and Science Notation
Gloria Olive (B.A. 1944), New Zealand academic mathematician
Stanley Osher (B.A. 1962), pioneering mathematician in applied mathematics, computational science, and scientific computing
Donald Solitar (B.A. 1953), mathematician, known for his work in combinatorial group theory; the Baumslag–Solitar groups are named after him and Gilbert Baumslag, after their joint 1962 paper on these groups
Meteorology
Frank Field (B.S. 1947), meteorologist and science editor
Seymour Hess (B.A. 1941), meteorologist and planetary scientist
Lester Machta (B.A. 1939) American meteorologist, first director of the Air Resources Laboratory (ARL) of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Raphael Miranda (B.S. 2006), meteorologist and weather producer at WNBC in New York City
Physics
Alexander Calandra (B.A 1935), scientist, educator, and author, professor of physics at Washington University in Saint Louis
Esther M. Conwell (B.S. 1942), physicist, contributed to development of semiconductors and lasers
Stanley Deser (B.S. 1949), physicist known for his contributions to general relativity, especially as co-developer of ADM formalism, Ancell Professor of Physics at Brandeis University
Robert Ehrlich (B.S. 1959), American particle physicist and educator; author of books about the tachyon, a hypothetical particle that travels faster than light
Jerry Goldstein (B.S. 1993), space physicist and professor
David L. Goodstein (B.S. 1960), physicist, educator, and Vice-Provost and Frank J. Gilloon Distinguished Teaching and Service Professor of the California Institute of Technology
Abraham Klein (B.A. 1947), theoretical physicist
Arthur Oliner (B.A. 1941), physicist and electrical engineer, best known for his contributions to engineering electromagnetics and antenna theory
Leon Pape (B.S. 1949), medical physicist specializing in biophysics, radiological health physics, electron microscopy, and membrane biophysics
Charles M. Sommerfield (B.S. 1953), high-energy physicist and one of the namesakes of the Bogomol'nyi–Prasad–Sommerfield bound
Larry Spruch (B.A. 1943), physicist specializing in theoretical atomic physics and astrophysics
Sheldon Stone (B.S. 1967), physicist at Syracuse University best known for his work in experimental elementary particle physics, including the Large Hadron Collider beauty experiment
Martin Summerfield (B.S. 1936), physicist and rocket scientist, co-founder of Aerojet, and the inventor of regenerative cooling for liquid rocket engines
Psychiatry and Psychology
David Bakan (B.A. 1942), Professor of Psychology at the University of Chicago and York University
Robert A. Baron (B.A. 1964), Professor of Psychology and Wellington Professor of Management at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's Lally School of Management
William Breitbart (B.S. 1973), psychiatrist, leader in the fields of psychosomatic medicine, psycho-oncology, and palliative care
Emory L. Cowen (B.A. 1944), psychologist who pioneered the promotion of wellness in mental health
Leah J. Dickstein (B.A. 1955, M.A. 1961), American psychiatrist; founder and president of the Association of Women Psychiatrists
Jack Drescher (B.A. 1972), psychiatrist and psychoanalyst known for his work on sexual orientation and gender identity
Charles Epstein (B.A. 1978), counseling psychologist; NYC hypnotherapist
Herbert J. Freudenberger (B.A. 1952), psychologist, first to describe the symptoms of exhaustion professionally and conduct a comprehensive study on burnout
Marvin Goldfried (B.A. 1957), psychologist, co-founder of the Society for the Exploration of Psychotherapy Integration
Howard E. Gruber (B.A. 1943), psychologist and pioneer of the psychological study of creativity
Howard S. Hoffman (M.A. 1953), experimental psychologist
David Kantor (B.A 1950, M.A. 1952), systems psychologist
Louise Kaplan (B.A. 1950), psychologist and psychoanalyst best known for her research into sexual perversion and fetishism
Saul Kassin (B.A. 1974), psychologist, author, and distinguished professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York
Howard H. Kendler (B.A. 1940), psychologist who conducted research on latent and discrimination learning
Stanley Milgram (B.A. 1954), social psychologist
Carol Nadelson (B.A. 1957), American psychiatrist; first female president of the American Psychiatric Association
Ira Progoff (B. A. 1941), psychotherapist, best known for his development of the Intensive Journal Method
Leanne Rivlin (B.A. 1952), pioneer in environmental psychology
Milton Rokeach (B.A. 1941), professor of social psychology and developer of the Rokeach Value Survey
Julian Rotter (B.A. 1937), psychologist, pioneered research on locus of control
Francine Shapiro (B.A. 1968, MA, 1972), psychologist and educator who originated and developed EMDR
Roberta Temes (B.A. 1962), author, psychotherapist, and clinical hypnotist
Dorothy Tennov (B.A. 1950), psychologist, introduced the term "limerence" to describe the state of being in love
Hans Toch (B.A. 1952), prolific author and social psychologist involved in criminology and criminal justice administration
Rhoda Unger (B.A. 1960), feminist psychologist, pioneering figure in the Association for Women in Psychology
Beatrice A. Wright (B.A. 1938), psychologist known for her work in rehabilitation counseling
Philip Zimbardo (B.A. 1954), social psychologist and designer of the Stanford Prison Experiment
Other
Annette Aiello (B.A. 1972), entomologist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute; specialist in butterflies
Seymour Benzer (B.A. 1942), physicist, molecular biologist and behavioral geneticist.
Baruch Brody (B.A. 1962), bioethicist and director of the Center for Ethics, Medicine and Public Issues at The Baylor College of Medicine
Wylie Burke (B.A. 1970), bioethicist and Professor Emerita at the University of Washington, authority on the translation of novel genomic technologies
Florence Comite (B.A. 1973), endocrinologist who has developed therapies for osteoporosis, endometriosis, fibroid disease, and infertility
Felice Frankel (B.S. 1966), photographer of scientific images who has received multiple awards, both for the aesthetic quality of her science photographs
Eli Friedman (B.S. 1953), nephrologist, inventor of the first portable dialysis machine
Herbert Friedman (B.S. 1936), pioneer in the use of sounding rockets to conduct research for solar physics, aeronomy, and astronomy; Wolf Prize in Physics
Leon Glass, (B.S. 1963), scientist; pioneered mathematical and physical methods to study biological systems, with special interest in vision, cardiac arrhythmia, and genetic networks
Aaron Goldberg (B.A. 1939), botanist; parasitologist; known for the Goldberg system, a treatise on the classification, evolution and phylogeny of the Monocotyledon and Dicotyledons
Jay M. Gould, (B.A. 1936), statistician and epidemiologist, founded the Radiation and Public Health Project
Leonard Herzenberg (B.S. 1952), developed the fluorescence-activated cell sorter which revolutionized the study of cancer cells and is the basis for purification of adult stem cells; recipient of the Kyoto Prize in 2006
Edith Kaplan (B.A. 1949), creator of several important neuropsychological tests, including the Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination and the Boston Naming Test
Selna Kaplan (B.S. 1948), pediatric endocrinologist
Sol Katz (B.A. 1978), geologist, computer scientist, and early pioneer of Geospatial Free and Open Source Software
Joel S. Levine (B.S. 1964), planetary scientist at NASA, author, and research professor in applied science at the College of William & Mary
Stephen P. Maran (B.S. 1959), astronomer and popularizer; author of Astronomy for Dummies
Arthur Nowick (B.A. 1943), materials scientist
William E. Paul (B.A. 1956), immunologist and co-discoverer of interleukin 4
Fredy Peccerelli (B.S. 1996), forensic anthropologist, Director of the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation
George Plafker (B.A. 1949), geologist and seismologist, known for pioneering research in subduction, tsunami, and the geology of Alaska
Estelle Ramey (B.A. 1936), endocrinologist, physiologist, and feminist
Michael Salzhauer (B.A. 1993), cosmetic and plastic surgeon, author and inventor
Joseph D. Schulman (B.S. 1962), specialist in human genetics and infertility; founder the Genetics & IVF Institute
Henry Spira (B.A. 1958), pioneering animal rights activist
Dennis P. Tarnow (B.A. 1968), dentist and pioneer in implant research
Edward Taub (B.S. 1953), behavioral neuroscientist on faculty at the University of Alabama at Birmingham
Armin Tehrany (B.A. 1991), orthopaedic surgeon and film producer
Wolf V. Vishniac (B.A. 1945), microbiologist; inventor of the "Wolf Trap," which tests for the possibility of life existing on other planets; namesake of the crater Vishniac on Mars
Sports
Baseball
Hy Cohen, Major League Baseball pitcher for the Chicago Cubs
Saul Katz (B.A. 1960), President/CEO of the New York Mets
Sam Nahem (attended 1933–35), Major League Baseball pitcher
Marius Russo (attended 1932–34), Major League Baseball pitcher for the New York Yankees (1939–43, 1946); All-Star in 1941
Eddie Turchin, Major League Baseball player
Richard Wilpon (B.A. 1960), Member of the New York Mets board of directors
Basketball
Alex Crisano, basketball player for the Philippine Patriots
Phil Farbman (1924–1996), basketball player in the Basketball Association of America (BAA) as a member of the Philadelphia Warriors and Boston Celtics
Nat Frankel, basketball player in the Basketball Association of America (BAA) and the American Basketball League (ABL)
Fran Fraschilla (B.A. 1980), basketball coach at Manhattan College, St. John's University and University of New Mexico; now ESPN broadcast analyst
Bill Green (M.A. 1967), basketball All-American
Mel Hirsch (B.A. 1943), professional basketball player who played for the Boston Celtics, 1946–47
Marvin Kratter (1937), owner of Boston Celtics
Johnny Most (B.A. 1947), sports announcer; radio voice of the Boston Celtics
Tom Sealy, basketball player for the Harlem Globetrotters and in the National Basketball League
Chess
Gata Kamsky (B.A. 1999), Soviet-born American chess grandmaster, five-time U.S. Champion, current World Rapid Chess Champion, current US Chess Champion
Alex Lenderman (attended 2007–2009), Russian-American chess grandmaster; U16 (under 16 years old) 2005 world chess champion
Max Pavey (M.A. 1948), chess master
Raymond Weinstein (B.A. 1963), chess player and International Master; US Junior Chess Champion
Bernard Zuckerman, chess International Master
Soccer
Jonathan Akpoborie, Nigerian soccer player
Mirsad Huseinovic (attended 1988–92), Yugoslavian-born U.S. soccer player
Ernest Inneh, Nigerian-American soccer player
Antonio Superbia (B.S. 1994), retired Brazilian-American soccer player and coach.
Other
Karen Allison (B.A. 1961), American-Canadian bridge player, winner of five national championships
Donald Aronow (B.A. 1950), designer, builder and racer of the Cigarette, Donzi, and Formula speed boat
Nikki Franke (B.S. 1972), Olympic foil fencer and fencing coach
Ralph Goldstein (1913–1997), Olympic épée fencer
Pearson Jordan (B.S. 1990), Barbadian sprinter who competed in the men's 100 metres at the 1976 Summer Olympics
Allie Sherman, (B.A. 1943), President of OTB; NFL player and coach of the New York Giants football team, 1961—68
Sydne Vogel (B.S. 2009), former competitive figure skater, 1997 World Junior champion
References
Brooklyn College
Brooklyn College alumni
|
1408956
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer%20ethics
|
Computer ethics
|
Computer ethics is a part of practical philosophy concerned with how computing professionals should make decisions regarding professional and social conduct.
Margaret Anne Pierce, a professor in the Department of Mathematics and Computers at Georgia Southern University has categorized the ethical decisions related to computer technology and usage into three primary influences:
The individual's own personal code.
Any informal code of ethical conduct that exists in the work place.
Exposure to formal codes of ethics.
Foundation
Computer ethics was first coined by Walter Maner, a professor at Bowling Green State University. Maner noticed ethical concerns that were brought up during his Medical Ethics course at Old Dominion University became more complex and difficult when the use of technology and computers became involved. The conceptual foundations of computer ethics are investigated by information ethics, a branch of philosophical ethics promoted, among others, by Luciano Floridi.
History
The concept of computer ethics originated in the 1940s with MIT professor Norbert Wiener, the American mathematician and philosopher. While working on anti-aircraft artillery during World War II, Wiener and his fellow engineers developed a system of communication between the part of a cannon that tracked a warplane, the part that performed calculations to estimate a trajectory, and the part responsible for firing. Wiener termed the science of such information feedback systems, "cybernetics," and he discussed this new field with its related ethical concerns in his 1948 book, Cybernetics. In 1950, Wiener's second book, The Human Use of Human Beings, delved deeper into the ethical issues surrounding information technology and laid out the basic foundations of computer ethics.
A bit later during the same year, the world's first computer crime was committed. A programmer was able to use a bit of computer code to stop his banking account from being flagged as overdrawn. However, there were no laws in place at that time to stop him, and as a result he was not charged. To make sure another person did not follow suit, an ethics code for computers was needed.
In 1973, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) adopted its first code of ethics. SRI International's Donn Parker, an author on computer crimes, led the committee that developed the code.
In 1976, medical teacher and researcher Walter Maner noticed that ethical decisions are much harder to make when computers are added. He noticed a need for a different branch of ethics for when it came to dealing with computers. The term "computer ethics" was thus invented.
In 1976 Joseph Weizenbaum made his second significant addition to the field of computer ethics. He published a book titled Computer Power and Human Reason, which talked about how artificial intelligence is good for the world; however it should never be allowed to make the most important decisions as it does not have human qualities such as wisdom. By far the most important point he makes in the book is the distinction between choosing and deciding. He argued that deciding is a computational activity while making choices is not and thus the ability to make choices is what makes us humans.
At a later time during the same year Abbe Mowshowitz, a professor of Computer Science at the City College of New York, published an article titled "On approaches to the study of social issues in computing." This article identified and analyzed technical and non-technical biases in research on social issues present in computing.
During 1978, the Right to Financial Privacy Act was adopted by the United States Congress, drastically limiting the government's ability to search bank records.
During the next year Terrell Ward Bynum, the professor of philosophy at Southern Connecticut State University as well as Director of the Research Center on Computing and Society there, developed curriculum for a university course on computer ethics. Bynum was also editor of the journal Metaphilosophy. In 1983 the journal held an essay contest on the topic of computer ethics and published the winning essays in its best-selling 1985 special issue, “Computers and Ethics.”
In 1984, the United States Congress passed the Small Business Computer Security and Education Act, which created a Small Business Administration advisory council to focus on computer security related to small businesses.
In 1985, James Moor, professor of philosophy at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, published an essay called "What is Computer Ethics?" In this essay Moor states the computer ethics includes the following: "(1) identification of computer-generated policy vacuums, (2) clarification of conceptual muddles, (3) formulation of policies for the use of computer technology, and (4) ethical justification of such policies."
During the same year, Deborah Johnson, professor of Applied Ethics and chair of the Department of Science, Technology, and Society in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences of the University of Virginia, got the first major computer ethics textbook published. Johnson's textbook identified major issues for research in computer ethics for more than 10 years after publication of the first edition.
In 1988, Robert Hauptman, a librarian at St. Cloud University, came up with "information ethics", a term that was used to describe the storage, production, access and dissemination of information. Near the same time, the Computer Matching and Privacy Act was adopted and this act restricted United States government programs identifying debtors.
In the year 1992, ACM adopted a new set of ethical rules called "ACM code of Ethics and Professional Conduct" which consisted of 24 statements of personal responsibility.
Three years later, in 1995, Krystyna Górniak-Kocikowska, a professor of philosophy at Southern Connecticut State University, Coordinator of the Religious Studies Program, as well as a senior research associate in the Research Center on Computing and Society, came up with the idea that computer ethics will eventually become a global ethical system and soon after, computer ethics would replace ethics altogether as it would become the standard ethics of the information age.
In 1999, Deborah Johnson revealed her view, which was quite contrary to Górniak-Kocikowska's belief, and stated that computer ethics will not evolve but rather be our old ethics with a slight twist.
Post 20th century, as a result to much debate of ethical guidelines, many organizations such as ABET offer ethical accreditation to University or College applications such as "Applied and Natural Science, Computing, Engineering and Engineering Technology at the associate, bachelor, and master levels" to try and promote quality works that follow sound ethical and moral guidelines.
In 2018 The Guardian and The New York Times reported that Facebook took data from 87 million Facebook users to sell to Cambridge Analytica.
In 2019 Facebook started a fund to build an ethics center at the Technical University of Munich, located in Germany. This was the first time that Facebook funded an academic institute for matters regarding computer ethics.
Concerns
Computer crime, privacy, anonymity, freedom, and intellectual property fall under topics that will be present in the future of computer ethics.
Ethical considerations have been linked to the Internet of Things (IoT) with many physical devices being connected to the internet.
Virtual Crypto-currencies in regards to the balance of the current purchasing relationship between the buyer and seller.
Autonomous technology such as self-driving cars forced to make human decisions. There is also concern over how autonomous vehicles would behave in different countries with different culture values.
Security risks have been identified with cloud-based technology with every user interaction being sent and analyzed to central computing hubs. Artificial intelligence devices like the Amazon Alexa and Google Home are collecting personal data from users while at home and uploading it to the cloud. Apple’s Siri and Microsoft’s Cortana smartphone assistants are collecting user information, analyzing the information, and then sending the information back to the user.
Internet privacy
Computers and information technology have caused privacy concerns surrounding collection and use of personal data. For example, Google was sued in 2018 for tracking user location without permission.
A whole industry of privacy and ethical tools has grown over time, giving people the choice to not share their data online. These are often open source software, which allows the users to ensure that their data is not saved to be used without their consent.
Ethical standards
Various national and international professional societies and organizations have produced code of ethics documents to give basic behavioral guidelines to computing professionals and users. They include:
Association for Computing Machinery
ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct
Australian Computer Society
ACS Code of Ethics
ACS Code of Professional Conduct
British Computer Society
BCS Code of Conduct
Code of Good Practice (retired May 2011)
Computer Ethics Institute
Ten Commandments of Computer Ethics
IEEE
IEEE Code of Ethics
IEEE Code of Conduct
League of Professional System Administrators
The System Administrators' Code of Ethics
See also
References
Further reading
External links
American Philosophical Association's Newsletter on Philosophy and Computers.
Ethics in Computing - a list of links to ethical discussions in Computer Science courtesy of North Carolina State University Undergraduates with guidance from Dr. Edward F. Gehringer
IEG, the Information Ethics research Group at Oxford University
The Research Center on Computing & Society
The International Journal of Cyber Ethics in Education (IJCEE)
An ELIZA emulator
Ethics
Professional ethics
Ethics of science and technology
|
20811873
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strand%20Life%20Sciences
|
Strand Life Sciences
|
Strand Life Sciences, formerly Strand Genomics, is a Bengaluru, India-based in silico technology company. Strand focuses in data mining, predictive modeling, computational chemistry, software engineering, bioinformatics, and research biology to develop software and services for life sciences research. Strand also offers custom solutions based on its intellectual property. In August 2007, Strand and Agilent Technologies, Inc. entered an agreement in which Strand develops and supports Agilent's GeneSpring software which Agilent obtained through Silicon Genetics acquisition in August 2004. In October 2010, Strand and Agilent renewed the agreement for Strand to expand the scope of Agilent's GeneSpring across multiple life sciences disciplines.
History
Strand Life Sciences was founded in October 2000 by Professors Vijay Chandru, Ramesh Hariharan, Swami Manohar, and V. Vinay. It was registered as Strand Genomics, but was later renamed to Strand Life Sciences as it dealt with various other aspects of life sciences. In August 2007, Strand and Agilent Technologies, Inc. entered an agreement in which Strand develops and supports Agilent's GeneSpring software which Agilent obtained through Silicon Genetics acquisition in August 2004. In October 2010, Strand and Agilent renewed the agreement for Strand to expand the scope of Agilent's GeneSpring across multiple life sciences disciplines.
Software
Strand NGS (formerly Avadis NGS) is a software platform for next-generation sequencing data analysis.
GeneSpring GX (version 9.0.0 onwards), GeneSpring Workgroup (version 7.0.0 onwards), and Mass Profiler Pro are developed by Strand's R&D division in Bangalore.
Avadis is a data mining and visualization platform.
Sarchitect is a platform for modeling and predicting drug-relevant properties of molecules in silico.
ArrayAssist was developed for Stratagene, Inc., based on the Avadis platform. The production was stopped after Stratagene was acquired by Agilent Technologies, Inc. in 2007.
References
External links
Strand Life Sciences
Biotechnology companies of India
Software companies of India
Biotechnology companies established in 2000
Information technology companies of Bangalore
Privately held companies of India
2000 establishments in Karnataka
|
69631186
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022%20Little%20Rock%20Trojans%20baseball%20team
|
2022 Little Rock Trojans baseball team
|
The 2022 Little Rock Trojans baseball team will represent the University of Arkansas at Little Rock during the 2022 NCAA Division I baseball season. The Trojans will play their home games at Gary Hogan Field and are to be led by eighth-year head coach Chris Curry. They are members of the Sun Belt Conference.
Preseason
Signing Day Recruits
Sun Belt Conference Coaches Poll
The Sun Belt Conference Coaches Poll was released on February 9, 2022. Little Rock was picked to finish eighth with 63 votes.
Preseason All-Sun Belt Team & Honors
Miles Smith (USA, Sr, Pitcher)
Hayden Arnold (LR, Sr, Pitcher)
Tyler Tuthill (APP, Jr, Pitcher)
Brandon Talley (LA, Sr, Pitcher)
Caleb Bartolero (TROY, Jr, Catcher)
Jason Swan (GASO, Sr, 1st Base)
Luke Drumheller (APP, Jr, 2nd Base)
Eric Brown (CCU, Jr, Shortstop)
Ben Klutts (ARST, Sr, 3rd Base)
Christian Avant (GASO, Sr, Outfielder)
Josh Smith (GSU, Jr, Outfielder)
Rigsby Mosley (TROY, Sr, Outfielder)
Cameron Jones (GSU, So, Utility)
Noah Ledford (GASO, Jr, Designated Hitter)
Roster
Coaching staff
Schedule and results
Schedule Source:
*Rankings are based on the team's current ranking in the D1Baseball poll.
References
Little Rock
Little Rock Trojans baseball seasons
Little Rock Trojans baseball
|
2288187
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anand%20Agricultural%20University
|
Anand Agricultural University
|
Anand Agricultural University (AAU) is located in the western Indian state of Gujarat between the cities of Vadodara and Ahmedabad. This was formerly the Anand Campus of Gujarat Agricultural University, which is now independent. It has three constituent colleges, for agriculture, veterinary science and animal husbandry and dairy science. The jurisdiction of the university covers Kheda, Anand, Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Dahod and Panchmahal districts. It was set up to provide education support to the farming community in areas such as Agriculture, Horticulture, Engineering, Information technology and Business Studies.
History
Anand Agricultural University was previously a part of Gujarat Agricultural University, a benchmark project initiated by Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and K.M munsi by incorporating Krushi-Go-Vidhya Bhavan or the Institute of Agriculture, in 1938. The institute was popularly known as Khetiwadi; it became part of Gujarat Agricultural University in 1972.
The B. A. College of Agriculture, established in 1947, was initially affiliated to Bombay University until 1956, followed by Gujarat University until 1962 and Sardar Patel University along with the Sheth M.C College of Dairy Science. In 1972 they became integral institutions of Gujarat Agricultural University along with the Government College of Veterinary Science and Animal Husbandry, Anand, which was established in 1964. The activities of the Anand zone of the erstwhile Gujarat Agricultural University have been transferred to the Anand Agricultural University with effect from 2004.
Centers for education
Bansilal Amritlal College of Agriculture, Anand
Sheth M. C. College of Dairy Science, Anand
College of Veterinary Science and Animal Husbandry, Anand
College of Agricultural Engineering and Technology, Godhara
College of Agricultural Information Technology, Anand
College of Food Processing Technology and Bio Energy, Anand
College of Horticulture, Anand (Established as wing under B.A. College of Agriculture)
College and Polytechnic of Agriculture, Vaso (Established as wing under B.A. College of Agriculture)
College of Agriculture, Jabuagm (Established as wing under B.A. College of Agriculture)
Sheth M. C. Polytechnic in Agriculture, Anand
Polytechnic in Horticulture, Vadodara
Polytechnic in Agricultural Engineering, Dahod
Polytechnic in Food Science and Home Economics, Anand
Research centers
AAU Incubator, Agri & Food Business Incubator,AAU,Anand
Regional Research Station, Anand
Bidi Tobacco Research Station, Anand
Main Forage Research Station, Anand
Reproductive Biology Research Unit, Anand
Main Vegetable Research Station, Anand
Medicinal and Aromatic Plant Research Center, Boriavi
Bio control Project, Anand
Weed Control Project, Anand
Micronutrient Project, Anand
Animal Nutrition Research, Anand
Center of Excellence in Agricultural Biotechnology, Anand
AINP on Pesticide Residues, ICAR, Unit-9
Rice Research Station
Main Maize Research Station, Godhara
Regional Research Station, Arnej
Agricultural Research Station, Dahod
Regional Cotton Research Station, Viramgam
Agricultural Research Station, Derol
Agricultural Research Station, Dhandhuka
Agricultural Research Station for Irrigated Crops, Thasra
Pulse Research Station, Vadodara
Paddy Research Station, Dabhoi
Castor and Seed Spices Research Station, Sanand
Narmada Irrigation Research station, Khandha
Extension education centers
School of Baking, Anand
Sardar Smruti Kendra, Anand
Agriculture Information Technology Center, Anand
Centre for Communication Net work, Anand
Farm Advisory Service, Anand
Extension Education Institute, Anand
Poultry Training Centre, Anand
Mali Training Centre, Anand
Transfer of Technology Centre, Anand, Arnej
Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Devataj (Sojitra)
Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Arnej
Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Dahod
Tribal Training Centre, Devagadhbaria
Tribal Training, Dahod
Rankings
The university was ranked 67 among universities in India by the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) in 2019 and in the 96 band overall.
See also
Agricultural Universities in India
References
External links
Agricultural universities and colleges in Gujarat
Universities in Gujarat
Education in Anand district
Educational institutions established in 2004
2004 establishments in Gujarat
|
2658308
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endgame%20tablebase
|
Endgame tablebase
|
An endgame tablebase is a computerized database that contains precalculated exhaustive analysis of chess endgame positions. It is typically used by a computer chess engine during play, or by a human or computer that is retrospectively analysing a game that has already been played.
The tablebase contains the game-theoretical value (win, loss, or draw) in each possible position, and how many moves it would take to achieve that result with perfect play. Thus, the tablebase acts as an oracle, always providing the optimal moves. Typically the database records each possible position with certain pieces remaining on the board, and the best moves with White to move and with Black to move.
Tablebases are generated by retrograde analysis, working backward from a checkmated position. By 2005, all chess positions with up to six pieces (including the two kings) had been solved. By August 2012, tablebases had solved chess for every position with up to seven pieces (the positions with a lone king versus a king and five pieces were omitted because they were considered to be "rather obvious"). , work is still underway to solve all eight-piece positions.
The solutions have profoundly advanced the chess community's understanding of endgame theory. Some positions which humans had analyzed as draws were proven to be winnable; in some cases the tablebase analysis could find a mate in more than five hundred moves, far beyond the horizon of humans, and beyond the capability of a computer during play. For this reason, tablebases also called into question the 50-move rule since many positions are now seen to exist that would be a win for one side but are drawn because of the 50-move rule; initially, as individual cases were found, exceptions to the rule were introduced, but when more extreme cases were later discovered the exceptions were removed. Tablebases have enhanced competitive play and facilitated the composition of endgame studies. They provide a powerful analytical tool.
While endgame tablebases for other board games like checkers, chess variants or nine men's morris exist, when a game is not specified, it is assumed to be chess.
Background
Physical limitations of computer hardware aside, in principle it is possible to solve any game under the condition that the complete state is known and there is no random chance. Strong solutions, i.e. algorithms that can produce perfect play from any position, are known for some simple games such as Tic Tac Toe/Noughts and crosses (draw with perfect play) and Connect Four (first player wins). Weak solutions exist for somewhat more complex games, such as checkers (with perfect play on both sides the game is known to be a draw, but it is not known for every position created by less-than-perfect play what the perfect next move would be). Other games, such as chess and Go, have not been solved because their game complexity is far too vast for computers to evaluate all possible positions. To reduce the game complexity, researchers have modified these complex games by reducing the size of the board, or the number of pieces, or both.
Computer chess is one of the oldest domains of artificial intelligence, having begun in the early 1930s. Claude Shannon proposed formal criteria for evaluating chess moves in 1949. In 1951, Alan Turing designed a primitive chess playing program, which assigned values for material and mobility; the program "played" chess based on Turing's manual calculations. However, even as competent chess programs began to develop, they exhibited a glaring weakness in playing the endgame. Programmers added specific heuristics for the endgame – for example, the king should move to the center of the board. However, a more comprehensive solution was needed.
In 1965, Richard Bellman proposed the creation of a database to solve chess and checkers endgames using retrograde analysis. Instead of analyzing forward from the position currently on the board, the database would analyze backward from positions where one player was checkmated or stalemated. Thus, a chess computer would no longer need to analyze endgame positions during the game because they were solved beforehand. It would no longer make mistakes because the tablebase always played the best possible move.
In 1970, Thomas Ströhlein published a doctoral thesis with analysis of the following classes of endgame: , , , , , and . In 1977 Thompson's KQKR database was used in a match versus Grandmaster Walter Browne.
Ken Thompson and others helped extend tablebases to cover all four- and five-piece endgames, including in particular , , and . Lewis Stiller published a thesis with research on some six-piece tablebase endgames in 1991.
More recent contributors have included the following people:
Eugene Nalimov, after whom the popular Nalimov tablebases are named;
Eiko Bleicher, who has adapted the tablebase concept to a program called "Freezer" (see below);
Guy Haworth, an academic at the University of Reading, who has published extensively in the ICGA Journal and elsewhere;
Marc Bourzutschky and Yakov Konoval, who have collaborated to analyze endgames with seven pieces on the board;
Peter Karrer, who constructed a specialized seven-piece tablebase () for the endgame of the Kasparov versus The World online match;
Vladimir Makhnychev and Victor Zakharov from Moscow State University, who completed 4+3 DTM-tablebases (525 endings including KPPPKPP) in July 2012. The tablebases are named Lomonosov tablebases. The next set of 5+2 DTM-tablebases (350 endings including KPPPPKP) was completed during August 2012. The high speed of generating the tablebases was because of using a supercomputer named Lomonosov (top500). The size of all tablebases up to seven-man is about 140 TB. Later on, Syzygy tablebase managed to reduce that to 18.4 TB.
The tablebases of all endgames with up to seven pieces are available for free download, and may also be queried using web interfaces (see the external links below). Nalimov tablebase requires more than one terabyte of storage space.
Generating tablebases
Metrics: Depth to conversion and depth to mate
Before creating a tablebase, a programmer must choose a metric of optimality – in other words, they must define at what point a player has "won" the game. Every position can be defined by its distance (i.e. the number of moves) from the desired endpoint. Two metrics are generally used:
Depth to mate (DTM). A checkmate is the only way to win a game.
Depth to conversion (DTC). The stronger side can also win by capturing material, thus converting to a simpler endgame. For example, in KQKR, conversion occurs when White captures the Black rook.
Haworth has discussed two other metrics, namely "depth to zeroing-move" (DTZ) and "depth by the rule" (DTR). A zeroing-move is a move which resets the move count to zero under the fifty-move rule, i.e. mate, a capture, or a pawn move. These metrics support the fifty-move rule, but DTR tablebases have not yet been computed. 7-man DTZ tablebases were made publicly available in August 2018.
The difference between DTC and DTM can be understood by analyzing the diagram at right. How White should proceed depends on which metric is used.
According to the DTC metric, White should capture the rook because that leads immediately to a position which will certainly win (DTC = 1), but it will take two more moves actually to checkmate (DTM = 3). In contrast according to the DTM metric, White mates in two moves, so DTM = DTC = 2.
This difference is typical of many endgames. Usually DTC is smaller than DTM, but the DTM metric leads to the quickest checkmate. Exceptions occur where the weaker side has only a king, and in the unusual endgame of two knights versus one pawn; then DTC = DTM because either there is no defending material to capture or capturing the material does no good. (Indeed, capturing the defending pawn in the latter endgame results in a draw, unless it results in immediate mate.)
Step 1: Generating all possible positions
Once a metric is chosen, the first step is to generate all the positions with a given material. For example, to generate a DTM tablebase for the endgame of king and queen versus king (KQK), the computer must describe approximately 40,000 unique legal positions.
Levy and Newborn explain that the number 40,000 derives from a symmetry argument. The Black king can be placed on any of ten squares: a1, b1, c1, d1, b2, c2, d2, c3, d3, and d4 (see diagram). On any other square, its position can be considered equivalent by symmetry of rotation or reflection. Thus, there is no difference whether a Black king in a corner resides on a1, a8, h8, or h1. Multiply this number of 10 by at most 60 (legal remaining) squares for placing the White king and then by at most 62 squares for the White queen. The product 10×60×62 = 37,200. Several hundred of these positions are illegal, impossible, or symmetrical reflections of each other, so the actual number is somewhat smaller.
For each position, the tablebase evaluates the situation separately for White-to-move and Black-to-move. Assuming that White has the queen, almost all the positions are White wins, with checkmate forced in no more than ten moves. Some positions are draws because of stalemate or the unavoidable loss of the queen.
Each additional piece added to a pawnless endgame multiplies the number of unique positions by about a factor of sixty which is the approximate number of squares not already occupied by other pieces.
Endgames with one or more pawns increase the complexity because the symmetry argument is reduced. Since pawns can move forward but not sideways, rotation and vertical reflection of the board produces a fundamental change in the nature of the position. The best calculation of symmetry is achieved by limiting one pawn to 24 squares in the rectangle a2-a7-d7-d2. All other pieces and pawns may be located in any of the 64 squares with respect to the pawn. Thus, an endgame with pawns has a complexity of 24/10 = 2.4 times a pawnless endgame with the same number of pieces.
Step 2: Evaluating positions using retrograde analysis
Tim Krabbé explains the process of generating a tablebase as follows:
"The idea is that a database is made with all possible positions with a given material [note: as in the preceding section]. Then a subdatabase is made of all positions where Black is mated. Then one where White can give mate. Then one where Black cannot stop White giving mate next move. Then one where White can always reach a position where Black cannot stop him from giving mate next move. And so on, always a ply further away from mate until all positions that are thus connected to mate have been found. Then all of these positions are linked back to mate by the shortest path through the database. That means that, apart from 'equi-optimal' moves, all the moves in such a path are perfect: White's move always leads to the quickest mate, Black's move always leads to the slowest mate."
The retrograde analysis is only necessary from the checkmated positions, because every position that cannot be reached by moving backward from a checkmated position must be a draw.
Figure 1 illustrates the idea of retrograde analysis. White can force mate in two moves by playing 1. Kc6, leading to the position in Figure 2. There are only two legal moves for black from this position, both of which lead to checkmate: if 1...Kb8 2. Qb7#, and if 1...Kd8 2. Qd7# (Figure 3).
Figure 3, before White's second move, is defined as "mate in one ply." Figure 2, after White's first move, is "mate in two ply," regardless of how Black plays. Finally, the initial position in Figure 1 is "mate in three ply" (i.e., two moves) because it leads directly to Figure 2, which is already defined as "mate in two ply." This process, which links a current position to another position that could have existed one ply earlier, can continue indefinitely.
Each position is evaluated as a win or loss in a certain number of moves. At the end of the retrograde analysis, positions which are not designated as wins or losses are necessarily draws.
Step 3: Verification
After the tablebase has been generated, and every position has been evaluated, the result must be verified independently. The purpose is to check the self-consistency of the tablebase results.
For example, in Figure 1 above, the verification program sees the evaluation "mate in three ply (Kc6)." It then looks at the position in Figure 2, after Kc6, and sees the evaluation "mate in two ply." These two evaluations are consistent with each other. If the evaluation of Figure 2 were anything else, it would be inconsistent with Figure 1, so the tablebase would need to be corrected.
Captures, pawn promotion, and special moves
A four-piece tablebase must rely on three-piece tablebases that could result if one piece is captured. Similarly, a tablebase containing a pawn must be able to rely on other tablebases that deal with the new set of material after pawn promotion to a queen or other piece. The retrograde analysis program must account for the possibility of a capture or pawn promotion on the previous move.
Tablebases assume that castling is not possible for two reasons. First, in practical endgames, this assumption is almost always correct. (However, castling is allowed by convention in composed problems and studies.) Second, if the king and rook are on their original squares, castling may or may not be allowed. Because of this ambiguity, it would be necessary to make separate evaluations for states in which castling is or is not possible.
The same ambiguity exists for the en passant capture, since the possibility of en passant depends on the opponent's previous move. However, practical applications of en passant occur frequently in pawn endgames, so tablebases account for the possibility of en passant for positions where both sides have at least one pawn.
Using a priori information
According to the method described above, the tablebase must allow the possibility that a given piece might occupy any of the 64 squares. In some positions, it is possible to restrict the search space without affecting the result. This saves computational resources and enables searches which would otherwise be impossible.
An early analysis of this type was published in 1987, in the endgame , where the Black bishop moves on the dark squares (see example position at right). In this position, we can make the following a priori assumptions:
If a piece is captured, we can look up the resulting position in the corresponding tablebase with five pieces. For example, if the Black pawn is captured, look up the newly created position in KRPKB.
The White pawn stays on a2; capture moves are handled by the 1st rule.
The Black pawn stays on a3; capture moves are handled by the 1st rule.
The result of this simplification is that, instead of searching for 48 * 47 = 2,256 permutations for the pawns' locations, there is only one permutation. Reducing the search space by a factor of 2,256 facilitates a much quicker calculation.
Bleicher has designed a commercial program called "Freezer," which allows users to build new tablebases from existing Nalimov tablebases with a priori information. The program could produce a tablebase for positions with seven or more pieces with blocked pawns, even before tablebases for seven pieces became available.
Applications
Correspondence chess
In correspondence chess, a player may consult a chess computer for assistance, provided that the etiquette of the competition allows this. Some correspondence organizations draw a distinction in their rules between utilizing chess engines which calculate a position in real time and the use of a precomputed database stored on a computer. Use of an endgame tablebase might be permitted in a live game even if engine use is forbidden. Players have also used tablebases to analyze endgames from over-the-board play after the game is over. A six-piece tablebase (KQQKQQ) was used to analyze the endgame that occurred in the correspondence game Kasparov versus The World.
Competitive players need to know that some tablebases ignore the fifty-move rule. According to that rule, if fifty moves have passed without a capture or a pawn move, either player may claim a draw. FIDE changed the rules several times, starting in 1974, to allow one hundred moves for endgames where fifty moves were insufficient to win. In 1988, FIDE allowed seventy-five moves for KBBKN, KNNKP, KQKBB, KQKNN, KRBKR, and KQPKQ with the pawn on the seventh rank, because tablebases had uncovered positions in these endgames requiring more than fifty moves to win. In 1992, FIDE canceled these exceptions and restored the fifty-move rule to its original standing. Thus a tablebase may identify a position as won or lost, when it is in fact drawn by the fifty-move rule. In 2013, ICCF changed the rules for correspondence chess tournaments starting from 2014; a player may claim a win or draw based on six-man tablebases. In this case the fifty-move rule is not applied, and the number of moves to mate is not taken into consideration.
Haworth has designed a tablebase that produces results consistent with the fifty-move rule. However most tablebases search for the theoretical limits of forced mate, even if it requires several hundred moves.
Computer chess
The knowledge contained in tablebases affords the computer a tremendous advantage in the endgame. Not only can computers play perfectly within an endgame, but they can simplify to a winning tablebase position from a more complicated endgame. For the latter purpose, some programs use "bitbases" which give the game-theoretical value of positions without the number of moves until conversion or mate – that is, they only reveal whether the position is won, lost or draw. Sometimes even this data is compressed and the bitbase reveals only whether a position is won or not, making no difference between a lost and a drawn game. Shredderbases, for example, used by the Shredder program, are a type of bitbase, which fits all 3-, 4- and 5-piece bitbases in 157 MB. This is a mere fraction of the 7.05 GB that the Nalimov tablebases require. Some computer chess experts have observed practical drawbacks to the use of tablebases. In addition to ignoring the fifty-move rule, a computer in a difficult position might avoid the losing side of a tablebase ending even if the opponent cannot practically win without himself knowing the tablebase. The adverse effect could be a premature resignation, or an inferior line of play that loses with less resistance than a play without tablebase might offer.
Another drawback is that tablebases require a lot of memory to store the many thousands of positions. The Nalimov tablebases, which use advanced compression techniques, require 7.05 GB of hard disk space for all 5-piece endings. The 6-piece endings require approximately 1.2 TB. The 7-piece Lomonosov tablebase requires 140 TB of storage space.
Some computers play better overall if their memory is devoted instead to the ordinary search and evaluation function. Modern engines analyze far enough ahead conventionally to handle the elementary endgames without needing tablebases (i.e., without suffering from the horizon effect). It is only in more complicated endgames that tablebases will have any significant effect on an engine's performance.
Syzygy tablebases were developed by Ronald de Man, released in April 2013, in a form optimized for use by a chess program during search. This variety consists of two tables per endgame: a smaller WDL (win/draw/loss) table which contains knowledge of the 50-move rule, and a larger DTZ table (distance to zero ply, i.e., pawn move or capture). The WDL tables were designed to be small enough to fit on a solid-state drive for quick access during search, whereas the DTZ form is for use at the root position to choose the game-theoretically quickest distance to resetting the 50-move rule while retaining a winning position, instead of performing a search. Syzygy tablebases are available for all 6-piece endings, and are now supported by many top engines, including Komodo, Deep Fritz, Houdini, and Stockfish. Since August 2018, all 7-piece Syzygy tables are also available.
Current status of the tablebases is summarized in the following table:
Research on creating an eight-piece tablebase is ongoing. It is assumed that a 1000-move mate in one of the 8-man endgames may be found. During an interview at Google in 2010 Garry Kasparov said that "maybe" the limit will be 8 pieces. Because the starting position of chess is the ultimate endgame with 32 pieces, he claimed that there is no chance that chess can be solved by computers.
Endgame theory
In contexts where the fifty-move rule may be ignored, tablebases have answered longstanding questions about whether certain combinations of material are wins or draws. The following interesting results have emerged:
KBBKN — Bernhard Horwitz and Josef Kling (1851) proposed that Black can draw by entering a defensive fortress, but tablebases demonstrated a general win, with maximum DTC = 66 or 67 and maximum DTM = 78. (Also see pawnless chess endgame.)
KNNKP – Maximum DTC = DTM = 115 moves.
KNNNNKQ – The knights win in 62.5 percent of positions, with maximum DTM = 85 moves.
KQRKQR – Despite the equality of material, the player to move wins in 67.74% of positions. The maximum DTC is 92, and the maximum DTM is 117. In both this endgame and KQQKQQ, the first player to check usually wins.
KRNKNN and KRBKNN — Friedrich Amelung had analyzed these two endgames in the 1900s. KRNKNN and KRBKNN are won for the stronger side in 78% and 95% of the cases, respectively. Stiller's DTC tablebase revealed several lengthy wins in these endgames. The longest win in KRBKNN has a DTC of 223 and a DTM of 238 moves (not shown). Even more interesting is the position at right, where White wins starting with 1. Ke6! Stiller reported the DTC as 243 moves, and the DTM was later found to be 262 moves.
For some years, a "mate-in-200" position (first diagram below) held the record for the longest computer-generated forced mate. (Otto Blathy had composed a "mate in 292 moves" problem in 1889, albeit from an illegal starting position.) In May 2006, Bourzutschky and Konoval discovered a KQNKRBN position with an astonishing DTC of 517 moves. This was more than twice as long as Stiller's maximum, and almost 200 moves beyond the previous record of a 330 DTC for a position of KQBNKQB_1001. Bourzutschky wrote, "This was a big surprise for us and is a great tribute to the complexity of chess." Later, when the Lomonosov 7-piece tablebase was being completed a position was found with a DTM of 546 (third diagram below). Among 8-piece endgames, a record DTC of 581 moves has been reported.
Many positions are winnable although at first sight they appear to be non-winnable. For example, the position in the middle diagram is a win for Black in 154 moves (the white pawn is captured after around 80 moves).
In August 2006, Bourzutschky released preliminary results from his analysis of the following seven-piece endgames: KQQPKQQ, KRRPKRR, and KBBPKNN.
Endgame studies
Since many composed endgame studies deal with positions that exist in tablebases, their soundness can be checked using the tablebases. Some studies have been proved unsound by the tablebases. That can be either because the composer's solution does not work, or else because there is an equally effective alternative that the composer did not consider. Another way tablebases cook studies is a change in the evaluation of an endgame. For instance, the endgame with a queen and bishop versus two rooks was thought to be a draw, but tablebases proved it to be a win for the queen and bishop, so almost all studies based on this endgame are unsound.
For example, Erik Pogosyants composed the study at right, with White to play and win. His intended main line was 1. Ne3 Rxh2 2. 0-0-0#! A tablebase discovered that 1. h4 also wins for White in 33 moves, even though Black can capture the pawn (which is not the best move – in case of capturing the pawn black loses in 21 moves, while Kh1-g2 loses in 32 moves). Incidentally, the tablebase does not recognize the composer's solution because it includes castling.
While tablebases have cooked some studies, they have assisted in the creation of other studies. Composers can search tablebases for interesting positions, such as zugzwang, using a method called data mining. For all three- to five-piece endgames and pawnless six-piece endgames, a complete list of mutual zugzwangs has been tabulated and published.
There has been some controversy whether to allow endgame studies composed with tablebase assistance into composing tournaments. In 2003, the endgame composer and expert John Roycroft summarized the debate:
[N]ot only do opinions diverge widely, but they are frequently adhered to strongly, even vehemently: at one extreme is the view that since we can never be certain that a computer has been used it is pointless to attempt a distinction, so we should simply evaluate a 'study' on its content, without reference to its origins; at the other extreme is the view that using a 'mouse' to lift an interesting position from a ready-made computer-generated list is in no sense composing, so we should outlaw every such position.
Roycroft himself agrees with the latter approach. He continues, "One thing alone is clear to us: the distinction between classical composing and computer composing should be preserved for as long as possible: if there is a name associated with a study diagram that name is a claim of authorship."
Mark Dvoretsky, an International Master, chess trainer, and author, took a more permissive stance. He was commenting in 2006 on a study by Harold van der Heijden, published in 2001, which reached the position at right after three introductory moves. The drawing move for White is 4. Kb4!! (and not 4. Kb5), based on a mutual zugzwang that may occur three moves later.
Dvoretsky comments: Here, we should touch on one delicate question. I am sure that this unique endgame position was discovered with the help of Thompson’s famous computer database. Is this a 'flaw,' diminishing the composer's achievement? <p> Yes, the computer database is an instrument, available to anyone nowadays. Out of it, no doubt, we could probably extract yet more unique positions – there are some chess composers who do so regularly. The standard for evaluation here should be the result achieved. Thus: miracles, based upon complex computer analysis rather than on their content of sharp ideas, are probably of interest only to certain aesthetes.
"Play chess with God"
On the Bell Labs website, Ken Thompson once maintained a link to some of his tablebase data. The headline read, "Play chess with God."
Regarding Stiller's long wins, Tim Krabbé struck a similar note: Playing over these moves is an eerie experience. They are not human; a grandmaster does not understand them any better than someone who has learned chess yesterday. The knights jump, the kings orbit, the sun goes down, and every move is the truth. It's like being revealed the Meaning of Life, but it's in Estonian.
Nomenclature
Originally, an endgame tablebase was called an "endgame data base" or "endgame database". This name appeared in both EG and the ICCA Journal starting in the 1970s, and is sometimes used today. According to Haworth, the ICCA Journal first used the word "tablebase" in connection with chess endgames in 1995. According to that source, a tablebase contains a complete set of information, but a database might lack some information.
Haworth prefers the term "Endgame Table", and has used it in the articles he has authored. Roycroft has used the term "oracle database" throughout his magazine, EG. Nonetheless, the mainstream chess community has adopted "endgame tablebase" as the most common name.
Books
John Nunn has written three books based on detailed analysis of endgame tablebases:
Tables
See also
Computer chess
EG magazine
Shannon number
Solving chess
Zobrist hashing
Notes
References
External links
Guide to the use of Computer Chess Endgame Tablebases by Aaron Tay
Downloading tablebases
Torrent site for Gaviota, Scorpio, and Syzygy 3,4,5 and 6-men EGTB's
Torrent for Nalimov Tablebases (3+4+5+6) complete
Distribution site for tablebases up to six pieces
3-4-5 pieces on Robert Hyatt's FTP site
Querying tablebases on the web
Web query server for Nalimov tablebases by Eiko Bleicher (up to six pieces)
Web query server for Nalimov tablebases at ChessOK (up to six pieces)
Web query server for Nalimov tablebases by Lokasoft (up to six pieces)
Web query server for Syzygy tablebases by Niklas Fiekas (up to seven pieces)
Maximal positions, i.e. longest DTM positions for endgames with up to five pieces and some with six pieces, compiled by Kirill Kryukov
Chess terminology
Computer chess
Types of databases
|
28128274
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digimap
|
Digimap
|
Digimap is a web mapping and online data delivery service developed by the EDINA national data centre for UK academia. It offers a range of on-line mapping and data download facilities which provide maps and spatial data from Ordnance Survey, British Geological Survey, Landmark Information Group and OceanWise Ltd Ltd., (marine mapping data and charts from the UK Hydrographic Office), Getmapping Ltd, the Environment Agency, OpenStreetMap, CollinsBartholomew Ltd, and various other sources.
Digimap is available to members of subscribing higher and further education institutions in the UK. The service is free at the point of use but requires individual registration. Institutional subscription fees are based on an institutional banding system devised by JISC Collections.
History
Digimap started as a project under the eLib (Electronic Libraries) Programme in 1996 offering Ordnance Survey maps to 6 trial universities: Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Newcastle, Oxford and Reading. The full service was launched in 2000 and won the AGI Award for Technological Progress in 2000.
In mid-2010 Digimap for Schools was launched, providing on-line maps to the schools sector. The service won a Gold Certificate for the best overall resource in the Geographical Association’s 2011 Publishers’ Awards.
Structure
The Digimap service has four collections for higher and further education; Ordnance Survey, Historic, Geology and Marine. There is also the Digimap for Schools service, which is available to primary and secondary education institutions.
Digimap: Ordnance Survey Collection
When Digimap was first launched this was the only collection of data available. Originally, the service consisted of a simple mapping client, first known as Lite then re-launched as Classic; an advanced mapping facility, Digimap Carto, which is a Java Applet; and a data download facility. Additional facilities for downloading boundary and postcode data, as well as postcode and gazetteer querying tools, were included later.
In 2007 a separate download facility was developed to allow the download of OS MasterMap data.
In 2009 the simple mapping client (Classic) was replaced with a new interface, Roam, which makes use of OpenLayers "slippy map" technology.
Historic Digimap
The scanned and georeferenced images of old Ordnance Survey maps were added as a new collection to Digimap in April 2005. The collection was scanned by Landmark Information Group and comprises the Ordnance Survey County Series maps and the National Grid maps covering the period up to the release of the digital Land-Line product in 1996. Along with the scanned maps Landmark also created a mosaic for each map series and each of its revisions, these mosaics have then been cut up into the current Ordnance Survey national grid squares.
The service originally consisted of a single interface for viewing maps and downloading either the national grid squares or the original scanned sheets as GeoTIFF images.
In 2010 a new facility called Ancient Roam was released as a beta service to provide a "slippy maps" style interface for viewing the maps. A separate download interface was also added which allows a greater number of maps to be taken in a single session. At this time the most detailed historic Ordnance Survey maps, the Town Plans, were also offered through the service.
A separate viewer for the Dudley Stamp Land-use Survey maps from the 1930s is also included in the collection.
Geology Digimap
Geology Digimap was launched in January 2007 to provide access to British Geological Survey (BGS) mapping data.
The service contains the BGS DiGMapGB (Digital Geological Map of Great Britain) Data at three scales: 1:625,000, 1:250,000 and 1:50,000 and uses grey-scale Ordnance Survey mapping as a backdrop for the online mapping facilities. Geology Digimap provides a data download facility in addition to online mapping. This offers the ability to download BGS data for onward use in GIS application software.
In 2010 Geology Digimap a new interface, Geology Roam, was developed to enable slippy map browsing, changes in the opacity of the geology over the backdrop mapping and additional zoom levels.
Marine Digimap
Marine Digimap was released in January 2008 and contains vector and raster mapping datasets from SeaZone. The service offers Hydrospatial data which is a vector data product created from various hydrographic surveys and data agencies. There is also the Charted Raster dataset, which contains scanned and georeferenced Admiralty Charts from the UK Hydrographic Office.
Digimap for Schools
Digimap for Schools was launched by Baroness Joan Hanham CBE, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government and Dr Vanessa Lawrence CB, Director General and Chief Executive of Ordnance Survey at Graveney School in Wandsworth, London on Wednesday 10 November 2010. The service was offered free to all schools with 11-year-old pupils until the end of 2011, as part of the Free maps for 11-year-olds scheme. The service is very similar to Digimap Roam for Higher Education, allowing teachers and pupils to view the majority of Ordnance Survey's mapping products on-line, and print them out.
Environment Digimap
Environment Digimap, offering the LandCover data from the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH), was added to the suite of Digimap services in October 2013. Initially the service only included data for Great Britain but Northern Irish data was included in March 2014.
Aerial Digimap
Aerial Digimap was added to the collections in October 2016. This service has added national coverage of 25 cm resolution aerial images from Getmapping. One key difference between this Digimap Data collection and the others is that it is not Jisc funded and subscriptions are directly with EDINA.
Other Collections
Digimap also offers Global (2019), Society (2019) and Lidar Collections (2017), providing a variety of open and licensed data.
Technology
Digimap uses both open source and proprietary software to provide a range of facilities. JavaScript and Java Applet mapping tools are used to present data from PostGIS databases via MapServer and TileCache (Tile Map Service) software. Maps from the TileCache and customised maps specified by the user are created on demand using Cadcorp's GeognoSIS software and presented to the user via an OpenLayers and MapFish interface. In 2010 the EDINA Geoservices Team received a "Highly Commended" in the Innovation & Best Practice (Charitable Status) Award from the AGI, for its implementation of its new technical infrastructure.
In 2007 Snowflake Software's Go Publisher and an Oracle database were added to the software supporting the delivery of Ordnance Survey's OS MasterMap GML data.
The Digimap service is OGC standards compliant and EDINA is an active member of the Open Geospatial Consortium, hosting a meeting in June 2006.
References
External links
edina.ac.uk
digimap.edina.ac.uk
digimapforschools.edina.ac.uk
Digital library projects
Geologic maps
Information technology organisations based in the United Kingdom
Ordnance Survey
Science and technology in Edinburgh
University of Edinburgh
Web Map Services
|
34040115
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache%20OpenOffice
|
Apache OpenOffice
|
Apache OpenOffice (AOO) is an open-source office productivity software suite. It is one of the successor projects of OpenOffice.org and the designated successor of IBM Lotus Symphony. It is a close cousin of LibreOffice and NeoOffice. It contains a word processor (Writer), a spreadsheet (Calc), a presentation application (Impress), a drawing application (Draw), a formula editor (Math), and a database management application (Base).
Apache OpenOffice's default file format is the OpenDocument Format (ODF), an ISO/IEC standard. It can also read and write a wide variety of other file formats, with particular attention to those from Microsoft Office although, unlike LibreOffice, it cannot save documents in Microsoft's post-2007 Office Open XML formats, but only import them.
Apache OpenOffice is developed for Linux, macOS and Windows, with ports to other operating systems. It is distributed under the Apache-2.0 license. The first release was version 3.4.0, on 8 May 2012. The most recent significant feature release was version 4.1, which was made available in 2014. The project has continued to release minor updates that fix bugs, update dictionaries and sometimes include feature enhancements. The most recent maintenance release was 4.1.11 on October 6, 2021.
Difficulties maintaining a sufficient number of contributors to keep the project viable have persisted for several years. In January 2015 the project reported a lack of active developers and code contributions. There have been continual problems providing timely fixes to security vulnerabilities since 2015. Downloads of the software peaked in 2013 with an average of just under 148,000 per day, compared to about 50,000 in 2019 and 2020.
History
After acquiring Sun Microsystems in January 2010, Oracle Corporation continued developing OpenOffice.org and StarOffice, which it renamed Oracle Open Office. In September 2010, the majority of outside OpenOffice.org developers left the project due to concerns over Sun's, and then Oracle's, management of the project, to form The Document Foundation (TDF). TDF released the fork LibreOffice in January 2011, which most Linux distributions soon moved to, including Oracle Linux in 2012.
In April 2011, Oracle stopped development of OpenOffice.org and laid off the remaining development team. Its reasons for doing so were not disclosed; some speculate that it was due to the loss of mindshare with much of the community moving to LibreOffice while others suggest it was a commercial decision. In June 2011 Oracle contributed the OpenOffice.org trademarks and source code to the Apache Software Foundation, which Apache re-licensed under the Apache License. IBM, to whom Oracle had contractual obligations concerning the code, appears to have preferred that OpenOffice.org be spun out to the Apache Software Foundation above other options or being abandoned by Oracle. Additionally, in March 2012, in the context of donating IBM Lotus Symphony to the Apache OpenOffice project, IBM expressed a preference for permissive licenses, such as the Apache license, over copyleft license. The developer pool for the Apache project was seeded by IBM employees, who, from project inception through to 2015, did the majority of the development.
The project was accepted to the Apache Incubator on 13 June 2011, the Oracle code drop was imported on 29 August 2011, Apache OpenOffice 3.4 was released 8 May 2012 and Apache OpenOffice graduated as a top-level Apache project on 18 October 2012.
IBM donated the Lotus Symphony codebase to the Apache Software Foundation in 2012, and Symphony was deprecated in favour of Apache OpenOffice. Many features and bug fixes, including a reworked sidebar, were merged. The IAccessible2 screen reader support from Symphony was ported and included in the AOO 4.1 release (April 2014), although its first appearance in an open source software release was as part of LibreOffice 4.2 in January 2014. IBM ceased official participation by the release of AOO 4.1.1.
In September 2016, OpenOffice's project management committee chair Dennis Hamilton began a discussion of possibly discontinuing the project, after the Apache board had put them on monthly reporting due to the project's ongoing problems handling security issues.
Naming
By December 2011, the project was being called Apache OpenOffice.org (Incubating); in 2012, the project chose the name Apache OpenOffice, a name used in the 3.4 press release.
Features
Components
Fonts
Apache OpenOffice includes OpenSymbol, DejaVu, the Gentium fonts, and the Apache-licensed ChromeOS fonts Arimo (sans serif), Tinos (serif) and Cousine (monospace).
OpenOffice Basic
Apache OpenOffice includes OpenOffice Basic, a programming language similar to Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). Apache OpenOffice has some Microsoft VBA macro support. OpenOffice Basic is available in Writer, Calc, Draw, Impress and Base.
File formats
Apache OpenOffice inherits its handling of file formats from OpenOffice.org, excluding some which were supported only by copyleft libraries, such as WordPerfect support. There is no definitive list of what formats the program supports other than the program's behaviour. Notable claimed improvements in file format handling in 4.0 include improved interoperability with Microsoft's 2007 format Office Open XML (DOCX, XLSX, PPTX) — although it cannot write OOXML, only read it to some degree.
Use of Java
Apache OpenOffice does not bundle a Java virtual machine with the installer, as OpenOffice.org did, although the suite still requires Java for "full functionality".
Supported operating systems
Apache OpenOffice 4.1.0 was released for x86 versions of Microsoft Windows XP or later, Linux (32-bit and 64-bit), and Mac OS X 10.7 or later.
Other operating systems are supported by community ports; completed ports for 3.4.1 included various other Linux platforms, FreeBSD, OS/2 and Solaris SPARC, and ports of 3.4.0 for Mac OS X v10.4–v10.5 PowerPC and Solaris x86. OpenOffice has also been ported to OS/2, and derivatives such as ArcaOS.
Development
Apache OpenOffice does not "release early, release often"; it eschews time-based release schedules, releasing only "when it is ready".
Apache OpenOffice has lost its initial developer participation. During March 2014 March 2015 it had only sixteen developers; the top four (by changesets) were IBM employees, and IBM had ceased official participation by the release of 4.1.1.
In January 2015, the project reported that it was struggling to attract new volunteers because of a lack of mentoring and badly in need of contributions from experienced developers. Industry analysts noted the project's inactivity, describing it as "all but stalled" and "dying" and noting its inability to maintain OpenOffice infrastructure or security. Red Hat developer Christian Schaller sent an open letter to the Apache Software Foundation in August 2015 asking them to direct Apache OpenOffice users towards LibreOffice "for the sake of open source and free software", which was widely covered and echoed by others.
The project produced two minor updates in 2017, although there was concern about the potential bugginess of the first of these releases. Patricia Shanahan, the release manager for the previous year's update, noted: "I don't like the idea of changes going out to millions of users having only been seriously examined by one programmer — even if I'm that programmer." Brett Porter, then Apache Software Foundation chairman, asked if the project should "discourage downloads". The next update, released in November 2018, included fixes for regressions introduced in previous releases.
The Register published an article in October 2018 entitled "Apache OpenOffice, the Schrodinger's app: No one knows if it's dead or alive, no one really wants to look inside", which found there were 141 code committers at the time of publication, compared to 140 in 2014; this was a change from the sustained growth experienced prior to 2014. The article concluded: "Reports of AOO's death appear to have been greatly exaggerated; the project just looks that way because it's moving slowly."
Security
Between October 2014 and July 2015 the project had no release manager. During this period, in April 2015, a known remote code execution security vulnerability in Apache OpenOffice 4.1.1 was announced (), but the project did not have the developers available to release the software fix. Instead, the Apache project published a workaround for users, leaving the vulnerability in the download. Former PMC chair Andrea Pescetti volunteered as release manager in July 2015 and version 4.1.2 was released in October 2015.
It was revealed in October 2016 that 4.1.2 had been distributed with a known security hole () for nearly a year as the project had not had the development resources to fix it.
4.1.3 was known to have security issues since at least January 2017, but fixes to them were delayed by an absent release manager for 4.1.4. The Apache Software Foundation January 2017 Board minutes were edited after publication to remove mention of the security issue, which Jim Jagielski of the ASF board claimed would be fixed by May 2017. Fixes were finally released in October 2017. Further unfixed problems showed up in February 2019, with The Register unable to get a response from the developers, although the existing proof-of-concept exploit doesn't work with OpenOffice out-of-the-box.
Version 4.1.11 was released in October 2021 with a fix for a remote code execution security vulnerability () that was publicly revealed the previous month. The project had been notified in early May 2021. The security hole had been fixed in LibreOffice since 2014.
Releases
Oracle had improved Draw (adding SVG), Writer (adding ODF 1.2) and Calc in the OpenOffice.org 3.4 beta release (12 April 2011), though it cancelled the project only a few days later.
Apache OpenOffice 3.4 was released on 8 May 2012. It differed from the thirteen-month-older OpenOffice.org 3.4 beta mainly in license-related details. Notably, the project removed both code and fonts which were under licenses unacceptable to Apache. Language support was considerably reduced, to 15 languages from 121 in OpenOffice.org 3.3. Java, required for the database application, was no longer bundled with the software. 3.4.1, released 23 August 2012, added five languages back, with a further eight added 30 January 2013.
Version 4.0 was released 23 July 2013. Features include merging the Symphony code drop, reimplementing the sidebar-style interface from Symphony, improved install, MS Office interoperability enhancements, and performance improvements. 4.0.1 added nine new languages.
Version 4.1 was released in April 2014. Various features lined up for 4.1 include comments on text ranges, IAccessible2, in-place editing of input fields, interactive cropping, importing pictures from files and other improvements. 4.1.1 (released 14 August 2014) fixed critical issues in 4.1. 4.1.2 (released in October 2015) was a bugfix release, with improvements in packaging and removal of the HWP file format support associated with the vulnerability . 4.1.3 (September 2016) had updates to the existing language dictionaries, enhanced build tools for AOO developers, a bug fix for databases on macOS, and a security fix for vulnerability . 4.1.4 contained security fixes. Version 4.1.5 was released in December 2017, containing bug fixes.
Distribution
As a result of harmful downloads being offered by scammers, the project strongly recommends all downloads be made via its official download page, which is managed off-site by SourceForge. SourceForge reported 30 million downloads for the Apache OpenOffice 3.4 series by January 2013, making it one of SourceForge's top downloads; the project claimed 50 million downloads of Apache OpenOffice 3.4.x as of 15 May 2013, slightly over one year after the release of 3.4.0 (8 May 2012), 85,083,221 downloads of all versions by 1 January 2014, 100 million by April 2014, 130 million by the end of 2014 and 200 million by November 2016.
As of May 2012 (the first million downloads), 87% of downloads via SourceForge were for Windows, 11% for Mac OS X and 2% for Linux; statistics for the first 50 million downloads remained consistent, at 88% Windows, 10% Mac OS X, and 2% Linux.
Apache OpenOffice is available in the FreeBSD ports tree.
Derivatives
Derivatives include AndrOpen Office, a port for Android, and Office 700 for iOS, both ported by Akikazu Yoshikawa.
LibreOffice also used some changes from Apache OpenOffice. In 2013, 4.5% of new commits in LibreOffice 4.1 came from Apache contributors; in 2016, only 11 commits from Apache OpenOffice were merged into LibreOffice, representing 0.07% of LibreOffice's commits for the period. LibreOffice earlier rebased its LGPL-3.0-or-later codebase on the Apache OpenOffice 3.4 source code (though it used MPL-2.0, not the Apache-2.0) to allow wider (but still copyleft) licensing under MPL-2.0 and LGPL-3.0-or-later.
Older versions of NeoOffice included stability fixes from Apache OpenOffice, though NeoOffice 2017 and later versions are based on LibreOffice 4.4.
References
External links
2012 software
OpenOffice
Cross-platform free software
Formerly proprietary software
Free PDF software
Free software programmed in C++
Free software programmed in Java (programming language)
Office suites for macOS
Office suites for Windows
Open-source office suites
OpenOffice
Portable software
Software using the Apache license
Unix software
Office suites
|
32966723
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung%20Galaxy%20Note%20%28original%29
|
Samsung Galaxy Note (original)
|
The Samsung Galaxy Note is an Android smartphone produced by Samsung Electronics. Unveiled at IFA Berlin 2011, it was first released in Germany in late October 2011, with other countries following afterwards. The Galaxy Note was distinguished by its unusually large form factor—later referred to using the term "phablet"—which straddled the size of the average smartphone at the time, and that of a small tablet: it features a 5.3-inch display, and is bundled with a stylus branded as the "S Pen", which can be used to navigate the device's user interface, and write or draw in supported apps.
Specifications
Hardware
The Galaxy Note's hardware design is similar to the Samsung Galaxy S II, with a plastic-based construction, a hardware home button and capacitive menu and back keys. It was made available in "Carbon Blue", "Ceramic White", and pink colour finishes.
The device is 9.7 mm thick with a weight of 178 g. Power and volume keys are located on the horizontal sides of the device, the headphone jack is located on the top, and a compartment for the stylus is located on the bottom corner. The rear cover can be exposed to access the battery compartment, as well as SIM and microSD card slots. The device includes a removable 2500 mAh Li-On battery.
The Galaxy Note features a 5.3-inch HD Super AMOLED Wide XGA display, with a display resolution of 800 x 1280 (285 pixels per inch), as well as Mobile High-Definition Link (MHL). It is sized between smartphones such as the Galaxy S II and the Galaxy Tab 7.0 tablet; this form factor was nicknamed a "phablet" by the press. The Galaxy Note uses a dual-core Exynos system-on-chip, with two ARM Cortex-A9 CPU cores clocked at 1.4 GHz, a Mali-400 MP graphics core, and 1 GB of RAM. It includes either 16 or 32 GB of internal storage expandable via a microSD card. The Galaxy Note includes an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera, and a 2-megapixel front-facing camera.
The Galaxy Note includes a stylus branded as the S Pen, which is stored in a compartment on the lower panel of the phone. The Galaxy Note's display includes an active digitizer by Wacom, with 128 levels of pressure sensitivity. The pen can replace the use of a finger in situations where precision is needed, but the device is also bundled with apps designed for use with the stylus. A button on the side of the pen can be used to activate special pen-oriented features and gestures in the system software.
Software
The Galaxy Note originally shipped with Android 2.3 "Gingerbread" and Samsung's proprietary TouchWiz software suite. The home screen was tweaked to take advantage of the larger screen size, using a five-column grid for app shortcuts and widgets rather than four. The software includes features designed for use with the stylus, including handwriting input, and "Quick Memo" (accessed by double-tapping the screen when holding the stylus button down), which opens a virtual sticky note in a window on top of the current app. Quick Memo notes are saved in the S Memo app, which allows users to type, write, or draw notes and drawings, attach voice messages, and annotate screenshots. The device is also bundled with Polaris Office, and the game Crayon Physics Deluxe—which can leverage the pressure sensitivity of the stylus.
In May 2012, Samsung began to distribute an update to Android 4.0.4 "Ice Cream Sandwich" (which itself added system-level support for pen input) to the Galaxy Note. It upgrades the TouchWiz software to match the version introduced by the Galaxy S III.
In October 2012, Samsung began to distribute Android 4.1 "Jelly Bean" for the Galaxy Note in South Korea and some other parts of the world.
The Android 4.1 "Jelly Bean" update (Android 4.1.2) became the last shipping official OTA update for the Galaxy Note, retrofitting functionality such as pop-up play, the ability to play video in a movable and resizeable floating picture-in-picture pop-up window.
Some unofficial Android OS (Custom ROM) development for the Galaxy Note such as third-party fork Lineage OS is available on XDA Forums.
Variants
Several different model variants of the Galaxy Note were sold, with most variants differing only in support for regional network types and bands. In some regions, the Exynos system-on-chip was substituted for a Qualcomm Snapdragon S3 model, while an LTE-capable model was sold in North America that also contains noticeable design changes.
Samsung have made available a collection of accessories such as a clip-on screen cover (which replaces the back panel), a docking station, and spare chargers and styluses.
SGH-I717
Another variant of the Galaxy Note capable of LTE connectivity was released exclusively in the United States and Canada. The variant was first released on AT&T on 19 February 2012 in the US, while being simultaneously released on Telus, Bell, and Rogers on 14 February 2012 in Canada. Although commonly referred to as the Galaxy Note LTE, the official model number is SGH-I717, differentiating it from the original N7000 and the Korea-exclusive LTE variant. In addition to LTE connectivity, Samsung made several modifications to the phone. Externally, the physical "home" button and the two touch-sensitive buttons on the front of the phone were replaced by four touch-sensitive buttons. Internally, the chipset was changed to the Qualcomm MSM8660 Snapdragon, which is significantly slower than the original Exynos 4 Dual 45 nm (4210) chipset. The Snapdragon 3 SoC features a dual-core 1.5 GHz Scorpion CPU and an Adreno 220 GPU. FM radio was removed. All other phone specifications remained identical to the original N7000.
Reception
The Galaxy Note received positive reviews, but with critics divided on user acceptance of its polarizing form factor; Pocket-lint remarked that the device was "positively gargantuan" in comparison to an iPhone 4S and that users would look "like a fool" if they held it to their face to take a call. At the same time, the HD Super AMOLED display was considered one of the best that Samsung had ever used in a device—praising its increased resolution and clarity over that of the Galaxy S II, its "vibrant and searing" colors, and its convenience for watching video whilst travelling. The presence of a stylus was compared to PDAs and early Windows Mobile devices, but with the addition of pressure sensitivity and the "versatile" S Memo app. However, beyond bundled apps and others in the S Choice portal, the device was criticized for not having enough software designed around the S Pen on launch. In conclusion, the Galaxy Note was considered to be a capable device and potentially "the best handheld games console around" due to its screen size, but showed concerns over whether it would appeal to a mainstream audience. However, it was argued that the Galaxy Note could appeal best to enterprise users, as it can "[replace] a tablet with gusto. As useful as a larger device, yet more portable."
GSMArena felt that the Galaxy Note "may be out of many people's comfort zone", but praised the device's high-end performance and large screen, and felt that the stylus and TouchWiz UI were added "value" to the device. In regard to its market positioning, it was felt that web browsing felt more comfortable on the Galaxy Note's 5.3-inch screen than watching video (in comparison to a 10.1-inch screen), explaining that "not necessarily the perfect choice for any situation, the Note will have you covered for most of the applications of modern day smart devices." The Galaxy Note was considered to be a niche device distinct from other recent attempts at large phones (such as the Dell Streak and HTC Sensation XL), concluding that "we don't think all phones will look like the Galaxy Note any time soon. Samsung are just pushing a little bit further than the rest. Stretching the comfort zone. The Galaxy Note is not what you're used to. You can take it as a warning. Or an invitation."
In a follow-up review in October 2012 after the release of the Galaxy Note II and the update to Android 4.0, Techradar praised the quality of the Galaxy Note's display and Samsung's "intuitive" system software. The camera was praised for its quality and number of options available, but it was noted that the large form factor made it trickier to use the camera one-handed. The lack of a dedicated shutter button was also criticized, as well as the extrusion of the camera lens itself, which made it susceptible to scratching. The S Pen was considered "handy", but was criticized for having inconsistent performance, while the design of the stylus itself was criticized for feeling "like writing with a twiglet for people like us with shovel-like hands." Techradar concluded that there "aren't many things we can complain about with the Galaxy Note", but showed concerns that the size of the device may alienate users who are not used to the concept of a large phone: it was argued that the device would appeal best to users more interested in web browsing and multimedia consumption as opposed to those who primarily want to use their phone as a communications device. Noting that the device's marketability was questioned on launch, it was felt that the success of the Galaxy Note II proved there was a legitimate consumer interest in the concept of a phablet.
Sales
In December 2011, Samsung announced that one million Galaxy Notes were shipped in less than two months, and that a North American variant would be available in February 2012. In January 2012, the US model of the Galaxy Note was featured at the 2012 CES in Las Vegas, allowing press to get an early look at the new device.
As of the first quarter of 2012 from January to March, 5 million had been sold. As of 1 June 2012, Samsung announced that 7 million had been shipped. As of 15 August 2012, Samsung announced that 10 million devices had been sold.
Camera: test photos from rear-facing
See also
Pen computing
Tablet computing
Mobile devices
References
External links
Smartphones
Galaxy Note 01
Galaxy Note 01
Phablets
Tablet computers
Mobile phones introduced in 2011
Tablet computers introduced in 2011
Computer-related introductions in 2011
Products introduced in 2011
Discontinued smartphones
Mobile phones with stylus
Mobile phones with user-replaceable battery
|
25465701
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMSN
|
AMSN
|
aMSN is a free Windows Live Messenger clone. aMSN attempts to emulate the look and feel of Windows Live Messenger, and supports many of its features. It has been downloaded approximately 40 million times as of January 2011, making it the 21st most downloaded project on SourceForge.
aMSN is available for any system that supports Tcl/Tk 8.5 or higher, including Microsoft Windows, Macintosh and any UNIX/Linux variant, including Maemo (Nokia's internet tablets) and OpenSolaris. A portable version for Windows is available by PortableApps.
History
aMSN was based on a previous application named Compu's Messenger (ccmsn), released on September 21, 2001 by Dave Mifsud. Features in this application were quite limited and development seemed to be stopped. Alvaro Iradier made a fork of the development with his own version, aMSN (Alvaro's Messenger). At the time Didimo E. Grimaldo was also working on his own branch of ccMSN until both Alvaro and Didimo heard of each other in a development forum and decided to merge their improvements into one version. The first version of aMSN was released on May 22, 2002 on SourceForge.
After several successful releases of their join effort, Didimo E. Grimaldo decided to take leave as a developer due to other pressing responsibilities and lack of time. ccMSN/aMSN was in fact the last of several free and open source projects in which Didimo worked.
More developers joined the project, like Philippe G. Khalaf and later Youness Alaoui. Today, the project keeps going thanks to the effort and help of an increasing number of developers, translators, and designers.
aMSN is well known for quickly implementing most of the official client's features, often being the only third-party client that supports them. For example, it is the only client that supports video conferencing on Mac. It has been reviewed by many software-specialized websites. Its releases have appeared on several well-known blogs, its developers have been interviewed, and it has even appeared on a few TV series internationally.
Removal of video call and webcam functionality
With the release of Windows Live Messenger 2009, Microsoft made changes to the protocol used by Windows Live Messenger. These changes included the use of P2P SIP instead of using an external server. As a result of this, the video call function to aMSN was made unusable and was removed from versions 0.98.3 and 0.98.4 of aMSN.
In late 2010, Microsoft released Windows Live Messenger 2011, which removed one-way webcam functionality, meaning that aMSN is left with no practical webcam function.
Features
Features present in the Microsoft client
Support for the MSN Protocol 15 (although it also allows use of both old and new protocols)
Personal messages;
"What I'm listening to" personal messages (from a third-party plugin; includes support for music programs like Amarok or XMMS in Linux);
Contact list and display name retrieval from Microsoft servers;
Offline messaging (fully functional in development release);
Logging in under any status;
File transfers, sending and receiving;
Replication of Windows Live Messenger's look and feel;
Nudges (included as a plugin where you may adjust various options);
Winks (from a third party plugin);
Full voice and video conversations (no longer available due to changes in Microsoft SIP servers);
Sending and receiving of voice clips;
Webcam send and receive; (No longer functional due to removal from official client)
Display pictures, including a manager that saves old display pictures like the one in the official client;
Chat logging;
Ability to start a conversation while appearing offline;
Support for email checking. A plugin allowing the program to check non-hotmail POP3 addresses is also available;
Complete emoticon support, including custom emoticons;
Group conversations.
Extra features not present in the Microsoft client
Custom statuses that can include auto-messages for when user is away;
Skins;
Tabbed chat windows;
Games that can be played between two aMSN clients (from a plugin);
Plugins offer various other features as well;
Shows when contacts don't have you on their list, as well as contacts that have you on their list but are not in yours;
This is no longer possible since Microsoft fixed this bug in its protocol. Note that newly added contacts will show up as if they don't have you in their list, but older contacts will show up as they have you in their list.
Webcam sessions recording;
Encrypted chats (from the third party Kryptonite plugin);
Automatic storing of contacts' display pictures;
A chat window pops up when the other person opens a window with you, even if they haven't typed anything yet;
A message in the chat window informs you when the person closes their chat window.
See also
Comparison of instant messaging clients
References
External links
aMSN project on SourceForge
2002 software
Free instant messaging clients
Free software programmed in Tcl
Instant messaging clients for Linux
Windows instant messaging clients
Videotelephony
Portable software
Software that uses Tk (software)
|
8315229
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neathawk%20Dubuque%20%26%20Packett
|
Neathawk Dubuque & Packett
|
Neathawk Dubuque & Packett is an American full-service advertising, marketing and public relations agency with offices in Richmond and Roanoke, VA, Chattanooga, TN, Charlotte and Durham, NC, and Tampa, FL, with an array of clients including VCU Medical Center, Bliley’s, Jefferson Hotel, Virginia Tech, Loma Linda University Medical Center, Kindred Healthcare, Volkswagen Group of America, Massachusetts General Hospital and Meggitt Training Systems.
ND&P was named one of Richmond, VA's top ten advertising firms by Richmond.com.
History
In 1963, Howard Packett founded Brand Edmonds Packett, which was later changed to The Packett Group. Roger Neathawk, Susan Dubuque, and Chuck Miller founded Market Strategies Inc. in 1984, changing the name to Neathawk Dubuque in 2000. In 2004, the Richmond, VA based Neathawk Dubuque merged with the Roanoke-based Packett Group to form Neathawk Dubuque & Packett. In 2007, Neathawk Dubuque & Packett acquired Chattanooga, Tennessee based ddN. In 2009, ND&P expanded to Tampa, Florida and Durham, North Carolina, boasting more than 50 employees in five states. On February 1, 2010, they acquired new media gurus, 3HD.
References
Advertising agencies of the United States
Companies based in Virginia
Economy of Richmond, Virginia
Roanoke, Virginia
Economy of Chattanooga, Tennessee
Companies based in Charlotte, North Carolina
|
32707655
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koforidua%20Technical%20University
|
Koforidua Technical University
|
Koforidua Technical University is one of the ten Technical Universities established in every region in Ghana. It was founded in 1997. Since 1999 it has produced graduates with HND in accountancy, (secretaryship and management studies), marketing, purchasing and supply, statistics and computer science.
Introduction
The institution has five faculties and one institute: Faculty of Business and Management Studies, Faculty of Applied Sciences and Technology, Faculty of Engineering, Faculty of Built and Natural Environment, Faculty of Health and Allied Sciences and the Institute of Open and Distance Learning. Since its establishment the University, its number of HND programs have increased from 2 to 14. 6 of the programs are offered by the School of Business and Management Studies, 6 from the Faculty of Engineering and 4 from the School of Applied Science and Technology.
To fulfill its 2010-2014 strategic plans, it now offers Bachelor of Technology programs for only 2 courses-procurement and Automotive Engineering. Other courses are looking to be added. Koforidua Technical University has the support of a number of institutions which includes Ministry of Education and its agencies, National Council for Tertiary Education, National Accreditation Board, National Board for Professional and Technician Examinations, [./Http://www.getfund.gov.gh/ Ghana Education Trust Fund] and the Council for Technical and Vocational Education and Training.
Koforidua Technical university is now offering below undergraduate courses
Faculty of Business and Management Studies
Department of Accountancy
Bachelor of Technology Accounting
HND Accounting
Department of Purchasing & Supply
Bachelor of Technology Procurement & Supply Chain Management
HND Purchasing & Supply
Department of Marketing
Bachelor of Technology Marketing
HND Marketing
Department of Secretaryship & Management Studies
Bachelor of Technology Secretaryship & Management Studies
HND Secretaryship & Management Studies
Department of Professional Studies
The department runs Diploma in Business Studies (DBS) with various options;
DBS Statistics
DBS Information Technology (IT)
DBS Entrepreneurship
DBS Accounting
DBS Purchasing & Supply
DBS Banking & Finance
DBS Marketing
DBS Secretarial
Department of Liberal Studies
Faculty of Applied Science and Technology
Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech)
HND Statistics
HND Computer Science
HND Network Management
HND Hospitality Management
HND Food Technology (Morning only)
HND Postharvest Technology (Morning only)
HND Fashion Design and Textiles (in collaboration with Cape Coast Polytechnic)
Faculty of Engineering
B.Tech Automotive Engineering
B.Tech Civil Engineering
B.Tech Mechatronics Engineering
B.Tech Telecommunication Engineering
B.Tech Renewable Energy Systems Engineering
HND Environmental Management Technology
HND Automotive Engineering
HND Mechanical Engineering
HND Renewable Energy Systems Engineering
HND Electrical/Electronic Engineering
HND Civil Engineering
Construction Technician Course I, II, and III
Electrical Engineering Technician I, II, and III
Motor Vehicle Technician I, II, and III
Mechanical Engineering Technician I, II, and III
Faculty of Built and Natural Environment
The aspect of engineering and social sciences, built environment, or built world, directly point to the human-made environment that provide the setting for human activity, commencing in scale from buildings to cities and over. It refers to "the human-made space in which people live, work and recreate on a day-to-day basis."
The sciences of the built environment cover architecture, urbanism, building technology, civil engineering, landscaping and the management of built stock mutations and operations. The built environment comprehends places and spaces enacted or amended by people to serve their needs of accommodation, organisation and representation. Below are its related courses;
B.Tech. Building Technology
HND Building Technology
HND Environmental Management Technology
Faculty of Health and Allied Sciences
HND Statistics
HND Hospitality Management
HND Computer Science
HND Network Management
Cookery 812/1 & 2
Food and Beverage Service
Fashion and Designing
CISCO
Faculty of Engineering
Dean: Dr. John Bonney (PhD. (London), MSc. (Kumasi), BSc. (Kumasi)
Non HND Programmes
CTC I, II & III
EET I, II & III
MVT I, II & III
MET I, II, III
Pre HND OR Access Course
School of Applied Science and Technology
Dean: Dr Seth Okyere Darko (PhD (China), MSc. (Kumasi), Bsc (Kumasi), GSA
Non HND Programmes
Cookery 812/1 & 812/2 and food beverage services
CISCO
ICDL
School of Business and Management Studies
Dean: Dr. Regina Bekoe-Biney PhD (Costa Rica), MA, PgDp (Cape coast), BEd, Dip, CIAMC-Ghana
Non-HND Programes
DBS Accounting
DBS Secretarial
DBS Purchasing
DBS Marketing
DBS Statistics
DBS Management
DBS Computer Science
DBS Computer Engineering
Panorama
References
Polytechnics in Ghana
Koforidua
Educational institutions established in 1997
1997 establishments in Ghana
Education in the Eastern Region (Ghana)
|
13227332
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl%20UTS
|
Amdahl UTS
|
UTS is a discontinued implementation of the UNIX operating system for IBM mainframe (and compatible) computers. Amdahl created the first versions of UTS, and released it in May 1981, with UTS Global acquiring rights to the product in 2002. UTS Global has since gone out of business.
System requirements
UTS Release 4.5 supports the following S/390 model processors and their successors:
Amdahl 5990, 5995A, 5995M series of ECL processors
Amdahl Millennium Global Server series of CMOS processors
Fujitsu Global Server
IBM ES/9000/9021 series of ECL processors
IBM G4, G5 & G6 Servers (the 9672 R and X series of CMOS processors)
History
The UTS project had its origins in work started at Princeton University in 1975 to port UNIX to the IBM VM/370 system. Team members there were Tom Lyon, Joseph Skudlarek, Peter Eichenberger, and Eric Schmidt. Tom Lyon joined Amdahl in 1978, and by 1979 there was a full Version 6 Unix system on the Amdahl 470 being used internally for design automation engineering. In late 1979 this was updated to the more commonly ported Version 7.
In 1980 Amdahl announced support for Unix on the System 470. Five years later, IBM announced its own mainframe Unix, IX/370, as a competitive response to Amdahl.
The commercial versions of UTS were based on UNIX System III and UNIX System V. In 1986, Amdahl announced the first version to run natively on IBM/370-compatible hardware, UTS/580 for its Amdahl 580 series of machines; previous Unix ports always ran as "guests" under the IBM VM hypervisor. Version 4.5 was based on Unix System V, Release 4 (SVR4).
See also
Linux on IBM Z
OpenSolaris for System z
UNIX System Services in OS/390 and its successors
References
External links
UTS Global home page (archived page at Archive.org, April 2008)
Unix variants
1981 software
|
27301061
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian%20Kemp
|
Brian Kemp
|
Brian Porter Kemp (born November 2, 1963) is an American businessman and politician serving as the 83rd governor of Georgia since January 2019. A Republican, he was the 27th secretary of state of Georgia from 2010 to 2018 and a member of the Georgia State Senate from 2003 until 2007.
Born in Athens, Georgia, Kemp is a graduate of the University of Georgia. Prior to entering politics, Kemp owned several agribusinesses, financial services, and real estate companies. In 2002, he was elected to the Georgia State Senate. In 2010, Kemp was appointed secretary of state of Georgia by Governor Sonny Perdue following the resignation of Karen Handel to run for the governorship. Kemp was subsequently elected to a full term as Georgia secretary of state in 2010; he was reelected in 2014.
Kemp was criticized after a data breach of over six million voters' personal information to twelve organizations occurred in 2015. During the 2016 election, Kemp was the only state official to reject help from the Department of Homeland Security to guard against Russian interference. Kemp was criticized by voting rights advocates for purging 1.4 million inactive voters from voter rolls during his tenure, including 668,000 in 2017. In 2018, he was a candidate for governor, where he faced Democratic nominee Stacey Abrams. A few weeks before the election, Kemp was criticized for putting 53,000 voter registration applications on hold, with 70% of the applicants being African American. He refused to resign as secretary of state while campaigning for governor, which stirred controversy and accusations of abuse of power. Following the general election on November 6, Kemp was declared the winner with 50.2% of the vote, and resigned as secretary of state on November 8. Abrams suspended her campaign on November 16 but did not concede, accusing Kemp of voter suppression, which he denied.
As governor, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Kemp forbade cities and counties from implementing face mask mandates in spite of public health guidance that supported such mandates.
After the 2020 presidential election in Georgia, Kemp faced criticism from President Donald Trump for following the state law which required him to certify the results, in spite of Trump's repeated false claims of fraud in the election. In 2021, Kemp signed into law the Election Integrity Act of 2021, which increased the state government's control over local election officials and placed restrictions on absentee voting and the number of ballot drop boxes per county. He is currently being challenged in the Republican primary of the 2022 Georgia gubernatorial election by former U.S. senator David Perdue.
Early life
Kemp was born in Athens, Georgia, the son of William L. Kemp II, into a prominent family with a history of political power. Kemp's grandfather, Julian H. Cox, was a member of the Georgia Legislature, and his eighteenth-century ancestor James Habersham successfully lobbied to institute slavery in Georgia, becoming the colony's governor and building a fortune from the family's slave-worked rice plantations of Silk Hope, Forest Dean, and Beverley.
Kemp went to the private Athens Academy until the ninth grade, when he transferred to Clarke Central High School to play football for Billy Henderson; he graduated in 1983. He later graduated from the University of Georgia, where he majored in agriculture.
Early career
Kemp was a home builder and developer before entering politics.
He served as a Georgia State Senator from 2003 to 2007 after defeating the Democratic incumbent Doug Haines. In 2006, Kemp ran for Agriculture Commissioner of Georgia. He ran second in the primary, but lost a runoff to Gary Black. Kemp initially declared intent to run for State Senate District 47 when incumbent Ralph Hudgens planned to run for Congress in Georgia's 10th congressional district. Hudgens instead ran for reelection, changing Kemp's plans.
Georgia Secretary of State
In early 2010, Kemp was appointed to Georgia Secretary of State by then-Governor Sonny Perdue. Kemp won the 2010 election for a full term as Georgia Secretary of State with 56.4% of the vote, to 39.4% for his Democratic opponent, Georganna Sinkfield. Four years later, Kemp was reelected.
Kemp rejects the conclusion by the United States Intelligence Community that Russia interfered in the 2016 election. Amid Russian interference in the 2016 election, Kemp denounced efforts by the Obama administration to strengthen the security of election systems, including improving access to federal cybersecurity assistance. He denounced the Obama administration's efforts, saying they were an assault on states' rights.
After narrowly winning in the 2018 gubernatorial election, he resigned his office of Secretary of State in anticipation of becoming Governor.
Federal efforts to secure state voting systems
As evidence mounted that Russian hackers were attempting to disrupt the 2016 elections, President Obama directed Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson to work with states to secure their voting systems as "critical infrastructure." Kemp was the only state election official who declined the help. In a 2017 interview, Kemp denounced the effort as an assault on states' rights, stating, "I think it was a politically calculated move by the previous administration," adding "I don't necessarily believe" Russia had attempted to disrupt the elections. In August 2016, amid Russian attempts to disrupt the 2016 elections, Kemp said that an intrusion by Russian hackers into voting systems was "not probable at all, the way our systems are set up" and accused federal officials of exaggerating the threat of Russian interference.
Georgia is one of fourteen states which uses electronic voting machines which do not produce a paper record, which election integrity experts say leaves the elections vulnerable to tampering and technical problems. The 2018 indictment against Russian hackers (as part of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe into 2016 interference) said that the Russian hackers targeted county websites in Georgia.
In December 2016, Kemp accused the Department of Homeland Security of attempting to hack his office's computer network, including the voter registration database, implying that it was retribution for his previous refusal to work with DHS. A DHS inspector general investigation found there was no hacking, but rather it was "the result of normal and automatic computer message exchanges generated by the Microsoft applications involved."
Exposure of personal voter data
In October 2015, the Georgia Secretary of State's office, under Kemp's leadership, illegally disclosed the personal information (including Social Security numbers and dates of birth) of 6.2 million registered Georgia voters. This data breach occurred when the office sent out a CD with this information to 12 organizations that purchase monthly voter lists from the office. The office was not aware of the breach until the following month, and did not publicly acknowledge the mishap until The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported the class action lawsuit against the office as a result of the data breach. Within a month of the breach becoming publicly known, it had cost taxpayers $1.2 million in credit monitoring services for those whose data had been compromised, and $395,000 for an audit into Kemp's handling of the unauthorized data disclosure.
Kemp drew criticism again in 2017 when it was revealed that a flaw in the state voting system exposed the personal information of over six million Georgia voters, as well as passwords used by county election officials to access voter files, to researchers at Kennesaw State University. The security flaw was fixed six months after it was reported to election authorities. After a lawsuit was filed, a server at the center of the controversy was wiped, preventing officials from determining the scope of the breach. Kemp denied responsibility, instead saying researchers at Kennesaw State University, who managed the system, had acted "in accordance with standard IT procedures" in deleting the data.
Accusations of voter suppression
Kemp was accused of voter suppression during the 2018 governor election between him and Stacey Abrams. Political scientists Michael Bernhard and Daniel O'Neill described Kemp's actions as the worst case of voter suppression in that election year. The allegations arose from Kemp's actions as Secretary of State: a few weeks before the election, he put 53,000 voter registration applications on hold, with 70% of the applicants being African American, and he purged 1.4 million inactive voters from voter rolls during his tenure, including 668,000 in 2017. Kemp denied engaging in voter suppression, stating that he was following federal and state law to update voter rolls with accurate information.
Kemp introduced a controversial "exact match" policy during his first year as Secretary of State in 2010. Under the system, eligible Georgians were dropped from voter rolls for an errant hyphen or if "a stray letter or a typographical error on someone's voter registration card didn't match the records of the state's driver's license bureau or the Social Security office." In a 2010 explanation defending the practice to the Department of Justice, Kemp's office said the policy was "designed to assure the identity and eligibility of voters and to prevent fraudulent or erroneous registrations." The policy was initially rejected by the Department of Justice, but allowed to go into place with additional safeguards, though a later lawsuit claimed "it is not apparent that the Secretary of State ever followed the safeguards." The process was halted after a lawsuit in 2016, but the State legislature passed a modified form of the policy in 2017 and the process began again.
These types of "exact match" laws are considered by critics to be a form of voter suppression designed to disproportionately target minorities, and African-American, Asian, and Latino voters accounted for 76.3% of the registrations dropped from voter rolls between July 2015 and July 2017. Critics say that minority names are more likely to contain hyphens and less common spellings that lead to clerical mistakes, resulting in rejection of the registration. In a 2018 ruling against Kemp, District Judge Eleanor Ross said the system places a "severe burden" on voters.
After changes to the Voting Rights Act in 2012 gave states with a history of voter suppression more autonomy, Kemp's office oversaw the closing of 214 polling locations, or 8% of the total number of locations in Georgia. The closings disproportionately affected African-American communities. In majority minority Randolph County, a consultant recommended that 7 of the 9 county polling locations be closed ahead of the 2018 midterm election for failure to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act. After the plan was challenged by the American Civil Liberties Union the locations were allowed to remain open. Kemp denied knowledge of the plan, but a slide from a presentation given by the consultant stated "Consolidation has come highly recommended by the Secretary of State and is already being adopted by several counties and is being seriously considered and being worked on by many more." Officials claim the locations were closed as a cost-saving measure.
Georgia has been the most aggressive state in removing registered voters from voter rolls for not voting in consecutive elections. Between 2012 and 2018, Kemp's office cancelled over 1.4 million voters' registrations, with nearly 700,000 cancellations in 2017 alone. On a single night in July 2017, half a million voters, or approximately 8% of all registered Georgia voters, had their registrations cancelled, an act described by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution as what "may represent the largest mass disenfranchisement in US history." Kemp oversaw the removals as Secretary of State, and did so eight months after he declared that he was going to run for governor.
By early October 2018, more than 53,000 voter registration applications had been put on hold by Kemp's office, with more than 75% belonging to minorities. The voters are eligible to re-register assuming they still live in Georgia, and they have not died. An investigative journalism group run by Greg Palast found that of the approximately 534,000 Georgians whose voter registrations were purged between 2016 and 2017 more than 334,000 still lived where they were registered. The voters were given no notice that they had been purged. Palast ultimately sued Kemp, claiming over 300,000 voters were purged illegally. Kemp's office denied any wrongdoing, saying that by "regularly updating our rolls, we prevent fraud and ensure that all votes are cast by eligible Georgia voters."
Kemp's office was found to have violated the law before and immediately after the 2018 midterm elections. In a ruling against Kemp, U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg found that Kemp's office had violated the Help America Vote Act and said an attempt by Kemp's office to expedite the certification of results "appears to suggest the Secretary's foregoing of its responsibility to confirm the accuracy of the results prior to final certification, including the assessment of whether serious provisional balloting count issues have been consistently and properly handled." Kemp said the expedited certification was necessary to facilitate his transition to the role of Governor.
After Totenberg's ruling thousands of voting machines were sequestered by local election officials on Election Day in 2018, an action that critics say was designed to increase wait times at polling locations. The sequestration of machines disproportionately affected counties that favored Kemp's opponent and caused voters in some locations to have to wait in line for hours in inclement weather in order to vote. Other locations suffered delays because machines had been delivered without power cords. Kemp himself experienced technical problems attempting to vote in the election.
Kemp opposes automatic voter registration, a change that advocates say would help make voting easier for eligible citizens and help prevent voter suppression. In a leaked 2018 recording Kemp can be heard saying that attempts to register all eligible voters "continues to concern us, especially if everybody uses and exercises their right to vote." In a separate 2018 recording made by a progressive group he can be heard saying "Democrats are working hard ... registering all these minority voters that are out there and others that are sitting on the sidelines, if they can do that, they can win these elections in November."
On November 4, 2018, 48 hours before his gubernatorial election, Kemp's office of Secretary of State published the details of a zero day flaw in the State registration website, accusing Democrats of attempted hacking for investigating the problem but providing no evidence. Critics say the announcement was further evidence of voter suppression and gave hackers a window of opportunity during which voter registration records could be changed. In response to criticisms of the announcement, Kemp said "I'm not worried about how it looks. I'm doing my job." In a ruling on the matter, Judge Totenberg criticized Kemp for having "delayed in grappling with the heightened critical cybersecurity issues of our era posed [by] the state's dated, vulnerable voting system" and said the system "poses a concrete risk of alteration of ballot counts." In December 2018, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution found that Kemp made the hacking claims without any evidence to support the allegations. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution said that Kemp may have made the unsubstantiated accusations against Democrats as a ploy and diversion to help him win the election; the "examination suggests Kemp and his aides used his elected office to protect his political campaign from a potentially devastating embarrassment. Their unsubstantiated claims came at a pivotal moment, as voters were making their final decisions in an election that had attracted intense national attention."
As a result of the controversies surrounding the 2018 Georgia midterms Kemp's gubernatorial victory has been referred to by critics as illegitimate, with others, such as Senator Cory Booker, going so far as to say the election was "stolen."
Massage Envy controversy
On September 5, 2018, an attack ad was released claiming that Kemp chose not to pursue accusations of sexual assault against therapists employed by Massage Envy during his time overseeing the Georgia Board of Massage Therapy because of donations made by franchisee owners to Kemp's campaign. The offenders were able to renew their Board licenses after the accusations. Republican State Senator Renee Unterman said that there "appears to be a direct connection between campaign support from Massage Envy franchisees in exchange for non-action and suppression" and asked U.S. Attorney B.J. Pak to investigate "what seems to be a quid pro quo scheme being perpetrated through the secretary of state's office and the Kemp for governor campaign." Kemp said that he had done nothing illegal.
In response to the accusations, a spokesperson for Kemp's campaign asserted that Unterman was "mentally unstable" and suggested she "seek immediate medical attention before she hurts herself or someone else". The Kemp campaign was criticized for its apparent reference to Unterman's history of depression, about which she had spoken publicly. In response, Unterman said she would not be "intimidated, blackmailed, belittled, or sexually harassed" into silence by Kemp's campaign. The campaign did not apologize for the remarks.
2018 gubernatorial campaign
Primary campaign
In March 2017, Kemp announced his candidacy in the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial election. In a field of six candidates, Kemp and Lieutenant Governor Casey Cagle came in the two top places in a six-way Republican primary in May 2018, advancing to a runoff election.
During the runoff campaign, Cagle sought to portray Kemp as an incompetent Secretary of State, whereas Kemp sought to portray Cagle as scandal-prone and corrupt. Cagle frequently criticized Kemp's behavior during the campaign, and accused him of "dirty tricks" and of launching a "sexist attack" against one of Cagle's supporters.
During the primary and primary runoff campaigns, Kemp ran sharply to Cagle's right, benefiting from provocative campaign advertising (with a tag line "Yep, I just said that"), as well as by an endorsement from President Donald Trump late in the campaign, which Trump made at the request of Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue. In the runoff election, Kemp was endorsed by the GeorgiaCarry.org and the Family Research Council as well as by Republican candidates who were eliminated in the primary, Michael Williams, Clay Tippins, and Hunter Hill. Many believe Perdue's support for Kemp was in response to Governor Nathan Deal's endorsement of Cagle.
In the runoff election, Kemp defeated Cagle by a broad margin, receiving 408,595 votes (69.5%) to Cagle's 179,712 (30.6%).
General election campaign
Kemp ran against Democratic nominee Stacey Abrams, the minority leader of the Georgia House of Representatives, in the 2018 general election. During the gubernatorial campaign, Kemp embraced Trump-like policies and themes. Kemp ran on a policy of imposing a state spending cap, opposing Medicaid expansion, and implementing the "strictest" abortion laws in the country. Kemp favors repealing the Affordable Care Act, describing it as "an absolute disaster," and supports litigation seeking to eliminate the law's protections for persons with a pre-existing condition. He has said he would sign a bill of "religious freedom and restoration", vetoed twice by governor Nathan Deal, which would allow refusal of contraception to women or services to LGBT couples on the basis of religious beliefs.
Kemp provoked controversy for multiple campaign ads, including one where he posed with rifles and a shotgun that he jokingly pointed at teenager who "wanted to date his daughter", and another where Kemp said his truck was for "rounding up criminal illegals". The lack of proper gun safety in handling the shotgun in the "Jake" ad attracted criticism from the National Law Enforcement Partnership to Prevent Gun Violence, which said that the ad "delivers a message perpetuating domestic violence and misogyny while modeling egregiously unsafe behavior," and prompted criticism that the ad depicted irresponsible handling of guns. Kemp's supporters, by contrast, viewed the campaign ad as a "lighthearted portrayal of a protective, gun-wielding Southern father vetting a potential suitor" and Kemp dismissed the criticism, telling critics to "Get over it."
During the 2018 campaign, former President of the United States Jimmy Carter, as well as a number of Georgia-based organizations, such as the Georgia NAACP and Georgia Common Cause, called upon Kemp to resign as Secretary of State while running for governor, thus ensuring that he would not be overseeing his own election. Kemp declined to do so.
Almost a week before election day, Kemp canceled a scheduled debate so that he could instead attend a Trump rally in Georgia. Kemp blamed Abrams for the cancellation, saying that she was unwilling to reschedule it. The date of the debate had been agreed upon since mid-September.
Two days before the election, Kemp's office announced that it was investigating the Georgia Democratic Party for unspecified "possible cybercrimes"; the Georgia Democratic Party stated that "Kemp's scurrilous claims are 100 percent false" and described them as a "political stunt." A 2020 investigation by the Georgia Attorney General's office concluded that there was no evidence for Kemp's claims. Later that year, it was revealed that the supposed cybercrime that his office had been the victim of was in fact a planned security test that Kemp has himself signed off on three months prior.
Congressional investigation
On December 4, 2018, U.S. Representative Elijah Cummings, the incoming chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, announced that he would like to call Kemp before Congress to testify about the fairness of his actions during the 2018 elections. "I want to be able to bring people in, like the new governor-to-be of Georgia, to explain ... to us why is it fair for wanting to be secretary of state and be running [for governor]," Cummings said.
On March 6, 2019, it was revealed that both Kemp and his successor as Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, were under investigation by the House Oversight and Reform Committee for alleged voter suppression in the 2018 elections. Cummings oversaw the investigation as chairman of the committee. Kemp was given until March 20, 2019, to comply with document requests or face a subpoena.
Governor of Georgia
Kemp was inaugurated as governor in a public ceremony in Atlanta on January 14, 2019.
Abortion
In May 2019, Kemp signed into law a highly controversial bill that would prohibit abortions after a heartbeat can be detected in a fetus, which is usually when a woman is six weeks pregnant; the legislation was one of the country's strictest anti-abortion laws. The legislation was blocked by the federal courts, which held the legislation unconstitutional: a preliminary injunction entered in October 2019 blocked the legislation from going into effect, and a permanent injunction entered in July 2020 permanently voided the law.
Election law
In April 2019, Kemp signed legislation into law addressing some criticisms that arose from the contested 2018 election; the new law provides that polling places cannot be changed 60 days before an election, that county election officials cannot reject absentee ballots because of mismatched signatures, and that a voter whose voter registration application information does not match other government databases will not be removed from the voter rolls for this reason.
In March 2021, Kemp signed SB 202, which expanded early in-person voting, enacted a ban on no-excuse absentee voting, gave the legislature power to overrule or replace local election officials, and banned anyone other than election workers from providing food or water to voters waiting in line.
Economy
Kemp visited Swainsboro in September 2019 to announce the creation of a rural "strike team" focusing on economic development in rural areas of the state.
Health care
Kemp has supported efforts to overturn the Affordable Care Act, as well as efforts to hinder the functioning of the Affordable Care Act for Georgia residents. Kemp and Republicans in the Georgia legislature have opposed full Medicaid expansion. has Kemp has sought to introduce work requirements for Medicaid recipients.
Key appointments
After Johnny Isakson announced that he would resign from the U.S. Senate on December 31, 2019, Kemp chose businesswoman Kelly Loeffler to fill Isakson's vacancy on December 4. Loeffler was sworn into office on January 6, 2020, but lost the seat to Democrat Raphael Warnock in the January 2021 runoff to the special election held for it.
State judiciary
Kemp appointed Carla Wong McMillian to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court of Georgia caused by the retirement of Robert Benham.
Despite a regular election to the Supreme Court of Georgia being scheduled for November 2020, Kemp cancelled the election when Judge Keith R. Blackwell announced he would retire between the scheduled election and the end of his term.
COVID-19 pandemic
On April 1, 2020, Kemp announced a statewide stay-at-home order to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. Kemp was among the last governors to issue a stay-at-home order, as a national emergency was declared three weeks earlier on March 13. As he issued the order, Kemp said he had become aware the coronavirus could be spread by asymptomatic people only that day, despite warnings from health officials made months earlier. At the end of April, Kemp lifted the stay-at-home order, doing so over the opposition of mayors and against the advice of public health experts and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
While many other states were implementing face mask mandates, Kemp prohibited localities from implementing stricter public health measures than the state. In response, localities filed lawsuits against Kemp. In July, Kemp prohibited cities and counties in Georgia from requiring face masks to halt the spread of the coronavirus. At the time, coronavirus cases were surging in many states, and other states were implementing statewide face mask mandates. By mid-July 2020, more than 127,000 COVID-19 cases had been reported in Georgia, with 3,000 deaths.
In March 2021, Kemp expressed opposition to a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill passed by Congress.
Public opinion
A July 2019 poll showed that Kemp had a 52% job approval rating among Georgians, ranked as the 22nd most popular governor in the United States. A May 2020 Ipsos poll showed that Kemp's job approval rating had declined to 39% among Georgians, making him among the nation's least popular governors; Kemp's low popularity was attributed to his handling of the coronavirus crisis. As of November 2020, Kemp's approval ratings have fallen further, to 37% approval and 44% disapproval, according to a IAG/Fox 5 Poll.
Donald Trump
After the 2020 United States presidential election in Georgia in December 2020 his honorary family member Harrison Deal died on the way to attend an event with Vice President Mike Pence.
In January following the calling of the election for President-elect Joe Biden, he faced criticism from outgoing President Donald Trump for certifying the results. This had resulted in speculation he would face a Trump-backed Republican primary challenge with Kemp running for reelection in 2022.
In an interview on Fox News in November 2020, Trump said that he was "ashamed" for having supported Kemp during his 2018 run for governor. Trump added that Kemp had "done absolutely nothing" to challenge the final result of the November 2020 election in Georgia in which Biden defeated Trump by 11,779 votes, the first time Georgia voted for the Democratic nominee for president since 1992. Kemp and Lieutenant Governor Geoff Duncan put out a joint statement explaining that calling a joint session of the Georgia General Assembly to appoint their own electors to send to the United States Electoral College would be unconstitutional.
In December 2020, Trump called for the resignation of Governor Kemp. That same month, attorney Lin Wood, acting separately from the Trump campaign, called for the imprisonment of Kemp along with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
In March 2021, Kemp said he would back a campaign by Trump to run for the presidency again in 2024.
In September 2021, Trump indicated at a rally in Perry, Georgia that he would prefer Kemp's previous Democratic opponent Stacey Abrams to replace him. Trump said, “Stacey, would you like to take his place? It’s OK with me.”
Personal life
Kemp married Marty Argo, daughter of longtime Georgia House of Representatives member Bob Argo, on January 8, 1994; they have three daughters. The family belongs to Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Athens.
In May 2018, Kemp was sued for failure to repay $500,000 in business loans. The suit was related to Kemp having personally guaranteed $10 million in business loans to Hart AgStrong, a Kentucky-based canola crushing company. The company was under investigation after making guarantees using assets it did not own and repaying suppliers using proceeds from insurance settlements. An attorney for the Georgia Department of Agriculture said these actions "may be a felony under Georgia law." No charges were filed, and Kemp and the plaintiff reached a settlement agreement shortly before he became governor.
In October 2018, Atlanta television station WAGA-TV reported that companies owned by Kemp owed more than $800,000 in loans to a community bank where he is a founding board member and stockholder. Such "insider loans" are legal, so long as they are on the same terms as the bank would extend to any other borrower. Kemp's campaign declined to publicize the terms of the loan.
Electoral history
References
External links
Campaign website
Brian P. Kemp – Georgia state website
Brian P. Kemp – briankemp.com
|-
|-
|-
|-
|-
|-
|-
1963 births
21st-century American politicians
American Episcopalians
Georgia (U.S. state) Republicans
Georgia (U.S. state) state senators
Living people
Politicians from Athens, Georgia
Republican Party state governors of the United States
Secretaries of State of Georgia (U.S. state)
University of Georgia alumni
|
9691973
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LeanCMMI
|
LeanCMMI
|
LeanCMMI is an approach to software engineering process improvement that integrates agile computing methods with process design and deployment for organization's wishing to improve software engineering capability and achieve a maturity level two or three rating based upon the Software Engineering Institute's Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI).
Developed by Broadsword, LeanCMMI is based on Lean Engineering and the same concepts that spawned Extreme Programming (XP), Scrum, and Crystal, and traces its roots back to Edward Demings' "Theory of Profound Knowledge." Based upon the principle of "Just Enough Not Too Much," LeanCMMI maps the software process improvement journey across three major releases, each with seven iterations based on three "dimensions" of software process improvement each with equal weight and with equal importance to the success of the program.
Three Dimensions of Process Deployment
Dimension 1: Design - Design and build the process along with all of its artifacts
Virtual teams develop a set of common, standard process deliverables that meet the requirements of their process area
Dimension 2: Communicate - Determine who received what message when
Virtual teams develop a strategy for communicating their work including identifying what message is delivered to each stakeholder group
Dimension 3: Educate - Determine who receives what training, at what level, at which time
Virtual teams develop training strategy and materials including identifying what level or training is delivered to each stakeholder group
Acceptance Test
LeanCMMI uses a series of CMMI SCAMPI B and C Appraisals to be performed at the end of each Release in order to validate the contents of the Release and identify any gaps in the processes as it relates to the CMMI model. This additive approach reduces risk and helps to ensure that a successful SCAMPI A Appraisal can be performed at the conclusion of the program.
Virtual Enduring Teams
LeanCMMI requires an enduring virtual organization approach that levels the effort across all stakeholders with a five percent re-direct effort estimated for the duration of the program. Organized into virtual teams called Special Interest Groups, or SIGs, these teams are Encapsulated Process Objects that own responsibility for the process, its data, maintenance, training, and communications. An enduring virtual Software Engineering Process Group, or SEPG, serves as the Process Owner, and provides oversight, direction, and authority for the program.
Membership in the SIGs and SEPG is by opt-in and can rotate but the organizations endure as owners of the process. This approach is designed to speed cultural adoption of the process by including as many practitioners as possible in the design and deployment phase.
References
Software development process
|
55953081
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyler%20Technologies
|
Tyler Technologies
|
Tyler Technologies, Inc., based in Plano, Texas, is a provider of software to the United States public sector. Tyler Technologies has offices in 17 states and one in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
History
Tyler Technologies was founded by Joseph F. McKinney in 1966 as Saturn Industries after buying three government companies from Ling-Temco-Vought. In 1968, the company acquired Tyler Pipe, a manufacturer of iron pipes, which eventually became the company's main source of annual revenue. Tyler Pipe was later renamed Tyler Corporation as a result of its success. In 1969, Saturn Industries was listed on the New York Stock Exchange. In 1970, the company changed its name to Tyler Corporation. Tyler Corporation entered the government software market in 1998. Tyler Corporation changed its name to Tyler Technologies in 1999.
Acquisitions
Since 1998, the company has acquired:
Business Resources Corporation (BRC) in Minneapolis, MN and Interactive Computer Designs, Inc. (Incode) in Lubbock, TX, and The Software Group, Inc. in Plano, TX were acquired in 1998.
Eagle Computer Systems, Inc. in Eagle, CO, Micro Arizala Systems, Inc. (Fundbalance) in Ann Arbor, MI, Process Incorporated d/b/a Computer Center Software (Munis) in Falmouth, ME, Gemini Systems (a subsidiary of Essex Technology Group, Inc. in Rochelle Park, NJ), and Cole Layer Trumble Company (CLT) in Dayton, OH, were acquired in 1999.
Eden Systems, Inc. in Renton, WA and GBF Information Systems in Portland, ME, were acquired in 2003.
MazikUSA, Inc. (Mazik Global, Inc.), in Park Ridge, IL and TACS, Inc. in Indianapolis, IN, were acquired in 2006.
Advanced Data Systems, Inc. in Bangor, ME, EDP Enterprises, Inc. in Longview, TX, and Chandler Information Systems in Cameron, TX, were acquired in 2007.
Versatrans in Latham, NY, Olympia Computing Company, Inc. in Olympia, WA, and School Information Systems in St. Louis, MO, Inc., were acquired in 2008.
PulseMark, LLC in St. Louis, MO, Assessment Evaluation Services, Inc. in San Diego, CA, and Parker-Lowe & Associates in Ocracoke, NC, were acquired in 2009
Wiznet, Inc. in Delray Beach, FL, acquired in 2010
Yotta MVS Inc. in Kansas City, MO and Windsor Management Group (Infinite Visions) in Tempe, AZ for $23.5 million, were acquired in 2011.
Akanda Innovation, Inc. in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, UniFund, LLC in Nashua, NH, Computer Software Associates, Inc. in Billings, MT, and EnerGov Solutions in Duluth, GA, were acquired in 2012
SoftCode, Inc. in Marlborough, MA, acquired in 2014
Brazos Technology Corporation in College Station, TX and New World Systems in Troy, MI, were acquired in 2015.
ExecuTime Software, LLC in Tulsa, OK, acquired in 2016.
Modria Inc. in San Jose, CA, Digital Health Department, Inc. in Charlotte, NC, and Radio 10-33 in Plymouth, MN were acquired in 2017.
Socrata in Seattle, WA, Sage Data Security, LLC in Portland, ME, CaseloadPro in Modesto, California, MobileEyes of Troy, Michigan and Atlanta, and SceneDoc in Mississauga, ON, were acquired in 2018.
MicroPact in Herndon, Virginia, and MyCivic in Seal Beach, California for $3.9 million, were acquired in 2019
NIC Inc. was acquired in April 2021.
Products
The company's public sector software includes eight categories: appraisal and tax software and services, integrated software for courts and justice agencies, data and insights services, enterprise financial software systems, planning/regulatory/maintenance software, public safety software, records/document management software solutions, and transportation software solutions for schools.
Appraisal and Tax Services
AES
CLT Appraisal Services
Eagle
iasWorld
Incode
Munis
Orion
Tax-Wise
Tyler Verify
Courts & Justice
Incode
Modria
Odyssey
SoftCode
Tyler Supervision
Data & Insights
Socrata Connected Government Cloud
Socrata Data Platform
Performance Optimization Cloud
Financial Insights Cloud
Operational Intelligence Cloud
Open Data & Citizen Engagement Cloud
ERP | Financial
Eden
Fundbalance
Incode
Munis
New World ERP
Tyler CAFR Statement Builder
Tyler Citizen Transparency
Tyler Parks & Rec
Planning, Regulatory & Maintenance
EnerGov
Munis
New World ERP
Tyler EAM
Public Safety
Brazos
Incode Public Safety
New World Public Safety
Odyssey
SoftCode
Records & Documents
Eagle
Document Pro
Tyler Content Manager
Tyler Meeting Manager
School
Incode
Infinite Visions
Munis
Traversa
Tyler Drive
Tyler Incident Management
Tyler Pulse
Tyler SIS
Tyler Special Ed
Versatrans
References
Companies based in Plano, Texas
Software companies based in Texas
Public sector in the United States
Companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange
Software companies of the United States
American companies established in 1966
Software companies established in 1966
1966 establishments in Texas
1960s initial public offerings
|
504123
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PartitionMagic
|
PartitionMagic
|
PartitionMagic is a utility software program for hard disk drive partitioning originally made by PowerQuest, but subsequently owned by Symantec. As of December 8, 2009, the Symantec website stated that they no longer offer Partition Magic.
The program runs on pre-Vista Microsoft Windows operating systems including Windows 2000 and Windows XP, but the application is incompatible with Windows Vista and later versions (although Microsoft added resizing). In any of these cases, existing partitions can be resized without loss of data.
Details
PartitionMagic is capable of resizing NTFS, FAT16 or FAT32 partitions without data loss, and can copy and move partitions, including to other disks. It also has various other features, including being able to convert between FAT16, FAT32 and NTFS, modify the cluster size of FAT16, FAT32 and NTFS filesystems, and merge adjacent FAT or NTFS filesystems (all without data loss, though some NTFS-only metadata is lost on conversion to FAT). Additionally, it had somewhat limited support for ext2 and ext3 partitions. PartitionMagic was the first commercial product of its kind containing patented technology.
The first version of PartitionMagic was released with DOS and OS/2 support. Versions 2–3 were offered with DOS, OS/2 and Windows support. Symantec's PartitionMagic version 8 dropped the OS/2 version. Server versions were also offered under the name Server Magic for Windows and Novell NetWare servers.
The stable version of PartitionMagic 8.05 also included a rescue floppy disk with an additional DOS version of PartitionMagic. The DOS version (which included DR-DOS or MS-DOS) came on one 2.88 MB or two 1.44 MB floppy disks.
The Windows version of PartitionMagic could also be integrated in BartPE (Bart's Preinstalled Environment) a Windows XP based Live CD created by using the PE Builder. To integrate PartitionMagic into BartPE a PE Builder plug-in for PartitionMagic was available.
History
PowerQuest's Partition Magic originated in 1993; Version 2.0 was available for purchase by January 1995. An OS/2 version was available by September 1995.
Version 3.02 came out early 1997.
PartitionMagic, while under PowerQuest, was updated regularly, adding new features.
Once Symantec purchased the application in 2003, there were no new releases, and Symantec stated that it had no plans on releasing a new version. As of October 13, 2011, the Symantec website stated, "Sorry, we no longer offer Norton Partition Magic."
Competition
A product named Partition Commander (from VCOM Products) was not Partition Magic's only competitor. There was also Paragon Partition Manager
Compatibility issues
PartitionMagic is compatible with Windows NT, 95/98, ME, 2000, and XP desktop editions. However, it is not compatible with server editions of Windows NT, 2000, nor 2003 by design – a more expensive product from the same manufacturer, ServerMagic, would handle these – nor does it run on Windows Vista and later versions.
PartitionMagic 2.0.5, VolumeManager 7 and VolumeManager 8 cannot resize dynamic disks.
See also
Disk partitioning
List of disk partitioning software
ntfsresize
resize2fs
References
External links
Download Partition Magic 8 Demo - Softpedia
Disk partitioning software
NortonLifeLock software
Proprietary software
Discontinued software
Utilities for Windows
|
6136248
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hercules%20Computer%20Technology
|
Hercules Computer Technology
|
Hercules Computer Technology, Inc. was a manufacturer of computer peripherals for PCs and Macs founded in 1982.
History
Hercules was formed in 1982 in Hercules, California, by Van Suwannukul and Kevin Jenkins and was one of the major graphics card companies of the 1980s. Its biggest products were the MDA-compatible Hercules Graphics Card (HGC) and Hercules Graphics Card Plus (HGC+) and the associated standard, which was widely copied and survived into the 1990s. The Hercules Graphics Card included a "Centronics compatible" parallel printer port, the same as the IBM Monochrome Display and Printer Adapter board that the card was based on. The company also produced CGA compatible cards, and with the unsuccessful Hercules InColor Card, it tried to go head-to-head with EGA.
After low sales with InColor, Hercules stopped making its own graphics core and bought graphics chipsets coming from other manufacturers. The company name gradually declined in the 1990s while graphics chipsets firms such as Tseng Labs, S3 Graphics, 3Dfx, nVidia and ATI Technologies became popular, but Hercules sales of graphic cards were still at US$20 million in 1998. An acquisition of Hercules by German graphics card maker ELSA fell through in 1998 after the companies could not agree on terms. The Hercules brand was then acquired by the French-Canadian based Guillemot Corporation for $1.5 million. In 2000 Hercules became the brand name for Guillemot 3D Prophet graphic cards, based on nVIDIA chipsets in 2000, then switching to ATI Technologies chipsets in 2002.
In 2000, Guillemot also introduced a new sound card, Game Theater XP, with the Hercules brand name, and Hercules gradually became the computer peripherals brand in Guillemot Corporation.
In 2004, Guillemot announced it would cease to produce graphics cards. Within the Guillemot group, computer peripherals (audio interfaces, speakers, webcams, networking) are designed by the Hercules division and given the Hercules brand, while game peripherals are designed by the Thrustmaster division and receive the Thrustmaster brand.
In 2010, the Hercules brand is used on computer speakers, computer DJ controllers, webcams and wireless networking peripherals.
Hercules turnover was €40.9 million (US$56.5 million) in 2010.
Organization
Headquarters: in France (President: Claude Guillemot),
Research and development: offices in Canada, France, Hong-Kong and Romania,
Sales: via Guillemot sales branches in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, UK, USA,
Distribution to retailers: through distributors,
Technical support: customer phone and email support by Guillemot technical support team.
Products
Computer DJing: DJ Console – controllers with audio interface (DJ Console Mk2, Mk4, Rmx, 4-Mx) / DJ Control = DJ controllers without audio (DJ Control MP3, MP3 e2, Steel)
Netbooks: eCafe ec-800, 900, 1000W, 1010W
Speakers: XPS: Stereo, 2.1, for iPod and 5.1
Webcams: DualPix: Classic, Infinite, Exchange, Emotion
Networking: Wireless (WiFi) and ePlug (PowerLine)
Former products: Graphic cards
Hercules based: Hercules Graphics Card (HGC), Hercules Graphics Card Plus (HGC+ with RAMFONT), Hercules InColor Card, Hercules Network Card Plus, Hercules Color Card
Tseng Labs based: Dynamite Pro
Rendition based: Thriller 3D
3Dfx based: Stingray 128/3D
S3 based: Terminator Professional, 64, Beast, Beast SuperCharged
nVidia based: Dynamite (before 1999) TNT, TNT2, TNT2 Ultra
nVidia based: Maxi Gamer Phoenix & Xentor (TNT, TNT2, Vanta)
nVidia based: 3D Prophet (after 2000) DDR-DVI, 3D Prophet 2, 2-Mx, 2 Ultra, 3
ATI based: 3D Prophet 7000, 75000, 8500, 9200, 9500, 9600, 9700
ST Kyro based: 3D Prophet 4000, 4000XT, 4500
Former products: Sound cards
DIGIFIRE 7.1
Guillemot Maxi Sound Muse
Hercules Gamesurround Muse Pocket USB
Hercules Game Theater XP 6.1, 7.1
Hercules Gamesurround Muse XL
Hercules Gamesurround Muse LT
Hercules Gamesurround Muse 5.1 DVD
Hercules Gamesurround Fortissimo II Digital Edition
Hercules Gamesurround Fortissimo III 7.1
References
External links
Hercules technical support
Hercules hot line
Hercules Company Website
Hercules DJ Mix Room
Hercules eCafe
Hercules Sound cards
American companies established in 1982
American companies disestablished in 1998
Companies based in Fremont, California
Computer companies established in 1982
Computer companies disestablished in 1998
Defunct companies based in California
Defunct computer companies of the United States
Defunct computer hardware companies
Graphics hardware companies
Sound cards
Technology companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area
|
530313
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University%20of%20Bamberg
|
University of Bamberg
|
The University of Bamberg () in Bamberg, Germany, specializes in the humanities, cultural studies, social sciences, economics, and applied computer science.
Campus
The university is mainly housed in historical buildings in Bamberg's Old Town. These include the former Jesuit college (Theology), the former Hochzeitshaus (History), the old slaughterhouse (Earth Science), the former Bauhof (Communication Studies), and the former fire station (Oriental Studies). The departments of Languages and Literature are partly housed in buildings which once belonged to the Kaiser-Heinrich High School.
The Social Sciences and Economics department and the Business Information Technology and Applied Computer Science department, which accommodate a large proportion of the students, are in Feldkirchenstrasse. The former ERBA cotton mill, on an island in the Regnitz, has been acquired to create student apartments in the red-brick building, as well as in an adjoining new 14,000m2 building.
Organization
The university today has four faculties:
Faculty of Humanities
Faculty of Social Sciences, Economics and Business Administration
Faculty of Human Sciences and Education
Faculty of Information Systems and Applied Computer Science
An agreement between Bavaria and the Vatican saw the faculty of Catholic Theology restructured as an institute which places a greater emphasis on teacher training. In 2005, the Social Work course transferred to Coburg University of Applied Sciences.
Academics
Disciplines
Language-based area studies, including Oriental Studies and Slavonic Studies
Medieval Studies; Archaeology (Prehistoric, Roman Provinces, Medieval); Cultural Heritage Conservation
Behavioural sciences: Sociology, Political Science, Psychology
Economics and Business Administration, with an emphasis on European Economics
Applied Computer Science
The main areas of curricular focus, to which subjects across faculties contribute, are:
Education and Life Planning
The Individual and Society
Languages and Cultures
Business and Markets
Rankings and reputation
In the 2012 Wirtschaftswoche ranking, the Faculty of Social Sciences, Economics, and Business Administration is ranked 20th in business administration (Betriebswirtschaftslehre) and 11th in economics (Volkswirtschaftslehre).
Partner universities
The University of Bamberg currently has cooperation agreements with approximately 300 academic institutions in more than 60 countries (March 2018).
The European network includes the University of Cambridge and the University of Oxford. The University holds partnerships in Australia with the University of Sydney, in the US with Harvard University, as well as in Asia with the Chinese Xi'an Jiaotong University, the Korea University, and the Japanese Sophia University.
Johann Baptist von Spix International Professorship
The University of Bamberg created the Johann Baptist von Spix professorship in 2015. The professorship is named for an alumnus of the university and eminent biologist and ethnographer. The professorship was created in an effort to increase the institution's international scholarly collaboration. Recipients of the professorship teach a class, conduct research, provide professional development opportunities to graduate students, and offer public presentations.
Notable faculty
Thomas Weißer, ethics
Notable alumni
Lisa Badum, member of the Bundestag
Nabila Espanioly, Arab-Israeli clinical psychologist and activist
Alexander Filipović, German ethicist, focusing on media and the digital transformation
Meinolf Finke, German writer and poet
Nora-Eugenie Gomringer, German and Swiss poet and writer
Brigitte Mohn, German businesswoman and entrepreneur
Wolf-Dieter Montag, German physician, sports medicine specialist, mountain rescue doctor, and international sports administrator
Franz Naegele, German obstetrician
Ursula Reutner, German linguist
Andreas Röschlaub, German physician
Corine Schleif, professor and art historian
You Xie, Chinese-German politician, journalist and author
See also
List of early modern universities in Europe
List of Jesuit sites
List of universities in Germany
References
External links
University of Bamberg
International Office (Akademisches Auslandsamt)
Student website with information on degree programs, extra-curricula activities, etc.
DAAD CHE University Ranking
Educational institutions established in the 1640s
University of Bamberg
1647 establishments in the Holy Roman Empire
Universities and colleges in Bavaria
|
990027
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharp%20PC-1500
|
Sharp PC-1500
|
The Sharp PC-1500 was a pocket computer produced by Sharp during 1981-1985. A rebadged version was also sold as the TRS-80 Pocket Computer PC-2.
The whole computer was designed around the LH5801, an 8-bit CPU similar to the Zilog Z80, but all laid-out in power-saving CMOS circuits. Equipped with 2KB of on-board RAM, the programming language is BASIC. Later German engineers provided an assembler for the machine. Later even a C compiler followed.
An external slot is available and accept memory (from 4 KB to 32 KB) and rom modules.
Eight versions of this pocket computer with 2 KB memory:
Sharp PC-1500 - Japanese version (1981)
Sharp PC-1500 - Japanese version with blue paint around LCD. Known as PC-1500D (1984)
Sharp PC-1500 - European, Australasian and North American version (1982)
Sharp PC-1500 RP2 - Brazilian version (1982)
HiradasTechnika PTA-4000 - Hungarian licence.
HiradasTechnika PTA-4000+16 - Hungarian licence (with internal 16 KB memory extension)
Tandy TRS-80 PC-2
Nanfeng PC-1500A - Chinese license (CKD assembly from Japanese components)
Two versions with 8 KB memory:
Sharp PC-1501 - Japanese rework with 8 KB memory (1984)
Sharp PC-1500A - Western rework with 8 KB memory (1984)
Technical specifications
156×7 pixel LCD
Integrated speaker
Integrated RTC
Memory/cartridge slot
60-pin expansion port for printer and tape drive
Battery slot (4×AA)
Connector for external power supply (Official adaptor is Sharp EA-150, rated at 500 mA at 9 V, comes with the CE-150 printer interface.)
Accessories
CE-150 4-colour printer/plotter and cassette interface in travel case. Known as KA-160 with PTA-4000.
CE-151 4 KB memory module
CE-152 Cassette recorder (as external storage) (same as General Electric 3-5160A)
CE-153 Software board
CE-154 Wallet dedicated to PC-1500 + CE-150 + CE-152 + CE-153
CE-155 8 KB memory module
CE-156 Tape with Katakana software
CE-157 4 KB memory module with CR2032 battery data backup and Katakana chars ROM
CE-158 Communication dock with RS-232C and parallel interface with (4 rechargeable, shrink-wrapped, permanently built-in) NiCd battery (AA) as additional power supply for the computer.
CE-159 8 KB memory module with CR2032 battery data backup
CE-160 7.6 KB read only memory module with CR2032 battery data backup
CE-161 16 KB memory module with CR2032 battery data backup
CE-162E Tape and parallel port interface
CE-163 32 KB (2x16 KB) dual-page memory module with CR2032 battery data backup. Only one page (16 KB) can be accessed at a time, switchable via the following command in PROG mode:
Page 0 [enter] POKE&5804,0 [enter]
Page 1 [enter] POKE&5804,1 [enter]
Related Sharp pocket computers
Sharp PC-1210
Sharp PC-1211
Sharp PC-1251
Sharp PC-1500
Sharp PC-1500A upgrade version with 8 KB onboard RAM
Sharp PC-1501 Japanese version of PC-1500A
Sharp PC-1600 with more memory and larger multi-line LCD display and more graphics capabilities
BASIC compatibility with early models
Some earlier model PC-1500s will show a value 1 less in the FOR...NEXT counter on exiting the loop compared to later PC-1500s and the PC-1600.
For example:
10 FOR K=1 TO 10
20 NEXT K
30 PRINT K
K will be set to 11 on later model PC-1500s and PC-1600s, but will be 10 on early PC-1500s.
Consider this example:
10 S=0
20 FOR K=1 TO 10 STEP 4
30 S=S+1
40 NEXT K
50 PRINT S
S will be set to 3 on later model PC-1500s and PC-1600s, but will be 4 on early PC-1500s.
Early model PC-1500s evaluate IF...THEN statements differently. The behaviour can be summarised thus:
An early model PC-1500 can be detected by using the command: PEEK&C5C0.
If the value returned is 6, it is an early model.
Example program in BASIC
1 ARUN 10
5 REM "PC1500 VAT Program:"
10 INPUT "Price: ";P
20 PRINT P;" ";P*V;" ";P*V*M
30 GOTO 10
40 END
The PC-1500 allows special abbreviations, and the syntax can also look as follows:
20 PRINT P;" ";PV;" ";PVM
Usage of variables
P = Purchase Price
V = VAT (%/100) - To be input by hand before calculation begins, e.g.: V=1.14 (Enter)
M = Markup (%/100) - To be input by hand before calculation begins, e.g.: M=1.15 (Enter)
Display of the answers are as follows
Answer1; Answer2; Answer3
Purchase Price; VAT Price; Sales Price
Value: P; Value: P*V; Value: P*V*M
Program description
Significance
The design of initial prototypes of EMKE series of public transport cash registers were built around customized versions of the PC-1500 and its Hungarian clone PTA-4000. The series production models used almost exclusively in Hungarian regional and national bus services up to present day, are built around a version designed by EMKE and are heavily influenced by the PC-1500 design.
Emulation
With the SHARP PC-1500A emulator and the PockEmul you can emulate a PC-1500A.
See also
Sharp pocket computer character sets
References
External links
Sharp Programmables
PC-1500 Data Sheet
PC-1500
Sharp PC-1500 computer (TRS-80 PC-2) resource page
pc-1500.info Sharp computer (and clones) resource site
www.promsoft.com/calcs Sharp Pocket Computers
PockEmul - is a Sharp Pocket Computer emulator.
SHARP PC-1500A Emulator
PC-1500
PC-1500
|
31554412
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sara%20Kiesler
|
Sara Kiesler
|
Sara Beth (Greene) Kiesler is the Hillman Professor Emerita of Computer Science and Human Computer Interaction in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. She is also a program director in the Directorate for Social, Behavioral & Economic Sciences at the US National Science Foundation, where her responsibilities include programs on Future of Work at the Human-Technology Frontier, Training-based Workforce Development for Advanced Cyberinfrastructure, and Smart and Connected Communities . She received an M.A. degree in psychology from Stanford in 1963, and a Ph.D., also in psychology, from Ohio State University in 1965.
Areas of Research
Kiesler has broad interests in the design and social impact of computing ranging from computer-mediated communication and computer-supported cooperative work to human-robot interaction. In her early studies with Lee Sproull and her colleagues and students, she examined how computer networking changed group dynamics and social interaction. Their influential 1992 book, Connections described the indirect, secondary effects of using email in organizations. Through field observations and experiments they demonstrated the influence of computer-mediated communication phenomena such as status equalization, personal connections and flaming. Research with Robert E. Kraut from the 1990s showed that everyday use of the Internet increased users' depression and decreased their social connections. Later research showed that the psychological consequences of Internet use depend fundamentally on how it is used: communication with friends and family online has positive psychological consequences, while communication with strangers has negative effects. Her ongoing projects include studies of collaboration and virtual organization in science, of collaborative analysis online, of the cognitive and social aspects of human-robot and digital agent interaction, and of how people perceive and try to protect their privacy online. Her publications can be found on her website and in Google Scholar.
Awards and honors list
elected to the CHI Academy, 2002
CHI Lifetime Achievement Award, the most prestigious award by SIGCHI, 2009
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Fellow, 2010
Allen Newell Award for Research Excellence, 2013
International Communication Association Williams Prize, 2015
InGROUP McGrath Lifetime Award, 2016
elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2018
Human Robot Interaction Lifetime Service Award, 2018
elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering (2019) for leadership, technical innovation, and identification of social trends with the adoption of computers and robots in work and society
She regularly serves on the ACM SIGCHI, CSCW, and HRI conference program committees. She is a past board member of the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board of the National Academy of Sciences, and past Editor of the Journal of Human Robot Interaction. She is a fellow of the American Psychological Association and of the Association for Computing Machinery, and a founding member of the American Psychological Society. She also is a director of the nonprofit research company, American Institutes for Research.
References
External links
Human-Computer Interaction Institute
Human–computer interaction researchers
Social psychologists
Living people
Human-Computer Interaction Institute faculty
Carnegie Mellon University faculty
Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery
Fellows of the American Psychological Association
Year of birth missing (living people)
|
427439
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service%20Location%20Protocol
|
Service Location Protocol
|
The Service Location Protocol (SLP, srvloc) is a service discovery protocol that allows computers and other devices to find services in a local area network without prior configuration. SLP has been designed to scale from small, unmanaged networks to large enterprise networks. It has been defined in RFC 2608 and RFC 3224 as standards track document.
Overview
SLP is used by devices to announce services on a local network. Each service must have a URL that is used to locate the service. Additionally it may have an unlimited number of name/value pairs, called attributes. Each device must always be in one or more scopes. Scopes are simple strings and are used to group services, comparable to the network neighborhood in other systems. A device cannot see services that are in different scopes.
The URL of a printer could look like:
service:printer:lpr://myprinter/myqueue
This URL describes a queue called "myqueue" on a printer with the host name "myprinter". The protocol used by the printer is LPR. Note that a special URL scheme "service:" is used by the printer. "service:" URLs are not required: any URL scheme can be used, but they allow you to search for all services of the same type (e.g. all printers) regardless of the protocol that they use. The first three components of the "service:" URL type ("service:printer:lpr") are also called service type. The first two components ("service:printer") are called abstract service type. In a non-"service:" URL the schema name is the service type (for instance "http" in "http://www.wikipedia.org").
The attributes of the printer could look like:
(printer-name=Hugo),
(printer-natural-language-configured=en-us),
(printer-location=In my home office),
(printer-document-format-supported=application/postscript),
(printer-color-supported=false),
(printer-compression-supported=deflate, gzip)
The example uses the standard syntax for attributes in SLP, only newlines have been added to improve readability.
The definition of a "service:" URL and the allowed attributes for the URL are specified by a service template, a formalized description of the URL syntax and the attributes. Service templates are defined in RFC 2609.
SLP allows several query types to locate services and obtain information about them:
It can search for all services with the same service type or abstract service type
The query can be combined with a query for attributes, using LDAP's query language.
Given its URL, the attributes of a service can be requested. In standard SLP the attributes are not returned in the query result and must be fetched separately. The Attribute List Extension (RFC 3059) fixes this problem.
A list of all service types can be obtained
A list of all existing scopes can be requested.
Roles
SLP has three different roles for devices. A device can also have two or all three roles at the same time.
User Agents (UA) are devices that search for services
Service Agents (SA) are devices that announce one or more services
Directory Agents (DA) are devices that cache services information. They are used in larger networks to reduce the amount of traffic and allow SLP to scale. The existence of DAs in a network is optional, but if a DA is present, UAs and SAs are required to use it instead of communicating directly.
Today most implementations are daemons that can act both as UA and SA. Usually they can be configured to become a DA as well.
Network protocol
SLP is a packet-oriented protocol. Most packets are transmitted using UDP, but TCP can also be used for the transmission of longer packets. Because of the potential unreliability of UDP, SLP repeats all multicasts several times in increasing intervals until an answer has been received.
All devices are required to listen on port 427 for UDP packets, SAs and DAs should also listen for TCP on the same port. Multicasting is used extensively by SLP, especially by devices that join a network and need to find other devices.
The operation of SLP differs considerably, depending on whether a Directory Agent (DA) is in the network or not. When a client first joins a network it multicasts a query for DAs on the network. If no DA answers it will assume that it is in a network without DAs. It is also possible to add DAs later, as they multicast a 'heartbeat' packet in a predefined interval that will be received by all other devices. When an SA discovers a DA, it is required to register all services at the DA. When a service disappears the SA should notify the DA and unregister it.
In order to send a query in a network without a DA, the UA sends a multicast UDP packet that contains the query. All SAs that contain matches will send a UDP answer to the UA. If the answer is too large to fit into a single UDP packet, the packet will be marked as "overflown" and the UA is free to send the query directly to the SA using TCP, which can transmit packets of any size.
In order to send a query in a network with a DA, the UA will send the query packet to the DA using either UDP or TCP. As every SA must register all services with the DA, the DA is able to fulfill the request completely and simply sends the result back to the UA.
Security
SLP contains a public-key cryptography based security mechanism that allows signing of service announcements. In practice it is rarely used:
The public keys of every service provider must be installed on every UA. This requirement defeats the original purpose of SLP, being able to locate services without prior configuration.
Protecting only the services is not enough. Service URLs contain host names or IP addresses, and in a local network it is almost impossible to prevent IP or DNS spoofing. Thus only guaranteeing the authenticity of the URL is not enough if any device can respond to the address.
As addresses can be spoofed, the authenticity of the device must be proven at a different level anyway, e.g. in the application protocol (e.g. with SSL) or in the packet layer (IPsec). Doing it additionally in SLP does not provide much additional security.
Adoption
SLP is frequently used for locating printers and supported by printing systems such as CUPS.
SLP is often found in LAN-enabled printers, so that they are discoverable out of the box. Some client print drivers can use this for printer discovery.
ACN, a protocol being developed for entertainment control, uses SLP to find different devices such as dimmers and intelligent lights.
The classic Mac OS, and Mac OS X up to version 10.1, used SLP to locate file shares and other services. However, features introduced with Mac OS X (version 10.2 onwards) use Zeroconf.
Netware Core Protocol (NCP) clients in a pure IP environment use SLP to locate Novell NetWare and Novell Open Enterprise Server (OES) servers.
SUSE Linux supports SLP for a variety of services since version 9.1.
Sun Microsystems supports SLPv1 and SLPv2 including SA, UA and DA functionality.
The Distributed Management Task Force has standardized discovery of WBEM Services via SLP.
The Storage Networking Industry Association has mandated the use of SLP for services discovery in the Storage Management Initiative - Specification.
See also
Avahi
Bonjour
Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol
Jini
Link-Local Multicast Name Resolution
OSGi Alliance
Universal Plug and Play (UPnP)
WS-Discovery
Zero-configuration networking (Zeroconf)
References
Silvia Hagen, Guide to Service Location Protocol, Podbooks.Com LLC,
James Kempf, Robert St. Pierre, Pete St. Pierre: Service Location Protocol for Enterprise Networks: Implementing and Deploying a Dynamic Service Finder, John Wiley & Sons,
Golden G. Richard: Service and Device Discovery : Protocols and Programming, McGraw-Hill Professional,
Johan Hjelm: Creating Location Services for the Wireless Web, John Wiley & Sons,
Anna Hac: Mobile Telecommunications Protocols for Data Networks, John Wiley & Sons,
External links
The LiveTribe SLP/OSGi Module
Service Location Protocol Project
Service Location Protocol Enhancements
OpenSLP
jSLP - A pure Java SLP implementation.
SBLIM CIM Client for Java - includes an RFC 2614 compliant SLP implementation in Java.
A Comparison Of Service Discovery Protocols And Implementation Of The Service Location Protocol
https://web.archive.org/web/20050312060250/http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/svrloc-charter.html -- IETF SRVLOC working group, which created the SLP standard
WBEM Discovery Using SLP by DMTF
WBEM SLP Template by DMTF
Automate Client Management with the Service Location Protocol a developerWorks article by M. Tim Jones
Internet protocols
Internet Standards
|
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.