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Reading a modern clock face

‘12:14′ in both analog and digital representations.

A ship’s radio room wall clock during the age of Wireless telegraphy showing ‘10:09′ and 36 seconds’

Most modern clocks have the numbers 1 through 12 printed on the face indicating the hour, and on many models, sixty dots or lines evenly spaced in a ring around the outside of the dial, indicating minutes and seconds.

The time is read by observing the placement of several “hands” which emanate from the center of the dial:

A short thick hand (hour);

A long, thinner hand (minute); and on some models,

A very thin ’sweep’ hand (seconds)

…all of which continuously rotate around the dial in a ‘clockwise’ pattern - moving from 1 to 2, 2 to 3, and so on.

The sweep hand moves relatively quickly, taking a full minute (sixty seconds) to make a complete rotation from ‘12 to 12.’ As the sweep had makes its rotation, the minute hand will slowly move from one minute mark to the next one , wrist phone watch .

As the minute hand rotates more slowly around the dial, it will take a full hour (sixty minutes) to make a complete rotation from ‘12 to 12.’ As the minute hand makes its complete rotation, the hour hand will slowly move from one hour mark to the next one , charles raymond watch .

When all three hands are pointing at ‘12′ it is either Noon or Midnight and the process begins again.

In the example picture, showing a two handed clock, the minute hand is on “14″ minutes and the hour hand is moving from ‘12′ to ‘1′ - this indicates a time of ‘12:14′

Historical development

15th century rotating dial clock face, St. Mary’s Church, Gdansk, Poland.

Clocks existed before clock faces. The first mechanical clocks, built in 13th century Europe, were striking clocks: their purpose was to ring bells upon the canonical hours, to call the public to prayer. These were erected as tower clocks in public places, to ensure that the bells were audible. It was not until these mechanical clocks were in place that their creators realized that their wheels could be used to drive an indicator on a dial on the outside of the tower, where it could be widely seen.

Before the late 14th century, a fixed hand (often a carving shaped like a hand) indicated the hour by pointing to numbers on a rotating dial; after this time the current convention of a rotating hand on a fixed dial was adopted. Minute hands (so named because they indicated the small or minute divisions of the hour) only came into regular use around 1690, after the invention of the pendulum and anchor escapement increased the precision of time-telling enough to justify it. In some precision clocks a third hand, which rotated once a minute, was added in a separate subdial. This was called the ’second-minute’ hand (because it measured the secondary minute divisions of the hour), which was shortened to ’second’ hand. The convention of the hands moving clockwise evolved in imitation of the sundial. In the Northern hemisphere, where the clock face originated, the shadow of the gnomon on a sundial moves clockwise during the day. This was also why noon or 12 o’clock was conventionally located at the top of the dial.

French decimal clock face

French Decimal Time

During the French Revolution in 1793, in connection with its Republican calendar, France attempted to introduce a decimal time system. This had 10 hours in the day, 100 decimal minutes per hour, and 100 decimal seconds per minute. Therefore the decimal hour was more than twice as long as the present hour, the decimal minute was slightly longer than the present minute and the decimal second was slightly shorter than the present second. Clocks were manufactured with this alternate face, usually combined with traditional hour markings. However, it didn’t catch on, and France discontinued the mandatory use of decimal time on 1795-04-07, although some French cities used decimal time until 1801.

Stylistic development

Until the last quarter of the 17th century hour markings were etched into metal faces and the recesses filled with black wax. Subsequently, higher contrast and improved readability was achieved with white enamel plaques painted with black numbers. Initially, the numbers were printed on small, individual plaques mounted on a brass substructure. This was not a stylistic decision, rather enamel production technology had not yet achieved the ability to create large pieces of enamel. The “13 piece face” was an early attempt to create an entirely white enamel face. As the name suggests, it was composed of 13 enamel plaques: 12 numbered wedges fitted around a circle. The first single piece enamel faces, not unlike those in production today, began to appear c. 1735.

Footnotes

^ a b Milham, Willis I. (1945). Time and Timekeepers. New York: MacMillan. pp. 195. ISBN 0780800087.

^ Lathrop, Don Haven (1996). “Why is clockwise Clockwise?”. Workshop Hints. British Horological Institute. http://www.bhi.co.uk/aHints/clckwse.html. Retrieved on 2008-06-27.

^ “The Republican Calendar and Decimal Time”. History. The Horological Foundation, Netherlands. 2008. http://www.antique-horology.org/_Editorial/RepublicanCalendar/default.htm. Retrieved on 2009-01-08.

Categories: Clocks | Horology

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Background

The entire tetralogy is devoted to the Others - humans able to draw on the magical force flowing through the world. They can enter into the Twilight, a shadowy dimension next to our own, from where they also draw power to perform their magic. The Twilight itself is divided into levels, with each level harder to access than the one above it. While every Other may enter the first level, only the most powerful ones can get as far as the fifth, and the select few can get through to the sixth. While the first levels are unpleasant and devoid of life (apart from blue moss in the first level), fifth and sixth levels are quite hospitable, with life and vegetation. Nobody knows what is in the seventh level, as no one has enough power to get there.

The Others are divided into the Light Others and Dark Others. They are opposed to each other and once they were at constant war. After realising that no side is likely to win, and that the world and ordinary people would suffer too much from magical wars, both sides signed a Great Treaty. The Treaty forces both sides to keep the balance on both sides and limits the ways in which they can use their powers. Light Others created Night Watch, to make sure that the Dark Ones keep the Treaty while the Dark Others created Day Watch, to watch the Light Ones. The Inquisition oversees both sides and ensures balance between them. Both sides watch out for potential new Others, whom they can initiate into the use of magic. Each Other must either choose Light or Dark - usually they make their choice the first time they enter the Twilight and neither Watch may influence their decision. The decision, once made, is final except in cases where an Other has so much influence over the course of human affairs that any act of Good causes evil and any act of evil cause good such as in the case of Merlin.

The Others live for centuries and can easily influence human minds, making people do their bidding. There are many different ways they can hone their abilities and specialize, both on the sides of Light and Dark. Vampires and werewolves, lowest form of Others, are always Dark and they are the only kind of Others who are able to pass their abilities to ordinary humans - otherwise an Other cannot be made, only born. This is of course, excluding the use of the Fuaran, a powerful magical book, which when used, may turn any number of ordinary humans into potential Others. It is also able to raise the power level of any Other. Others can recharge their strength using human emotions - Light ones from positive emotions, like joy or happiness, and Dark ones from negative ones, like hatred and pain. When a Light Other uses someone’s positive emotions, the emotions become weaker. When a Dark Other uses someone’s pain or hatred to recharge, those feelings become stronger. Dark Others occasionaly choose to remove the cause of the pain or fear from the humans mind (see twilight watch).

The Others’ magical powers do not come from extra magic they have. In reality, magical force is produced by ordinary living people - the Others produce less magic, therefore instead of emitting it, their bodies absorb it, allowing them to use it. The less magic one’s body emits, the stronger their magical abilities will be. This knowledge is acquired by entering the fifth level of the Twilight , louis vuitton watches .

The English title of the book is Last Watch and was released on 6 November 2008 in the UK and was scheduled to be released on November 25 2008 in the U.S./Canada. However, due to a misprint with the US and Canadian copies of the book, Chapter 5 of Book 2 was missing and the book was rescheduled for January 29, 2009 , german watches .

Structure and style

Last Watch has a very similar structure to Night Watch and Twilight Watch. Last Watch is divided into three stories- Common Cause, A Common Enemy, and A Common Destiny. Each story begins with a prologue followed by six numbered chapters and concluding with an epilogue. Except for the prologues, the events of each story are written in a first person narrative using the voice of the Higher Magician character Anton Gorodetsky, a member of the Night Watch. Events in each of the prologues are written in a third person narrative and take place entirely outside of Gordetsky’s presence. The entire novel is written in the past tense.

Plot summary

Common Cause

Anton Gorodetsky is learning to use his new power when Gesar sends him to assist the Scottish Night Watch in Edinburgh in a murder investigation. A young Russian man has been murdered in a “Vampire Castle”, a tourist attraction; the evidence shows that he was apparently killed by a vampire. The mystery is greater than it seemed. Someone tries to attack Anton using remote controlled guns. Finally the head of Scottish Night Watch, Thomas Lermont, reveals that someone stole an artifact from Merlin’s grave and is apparently trying to use this artifact to open Merlin’s secret storage. In that mysterious place Merlin apparently hid the “Crown of All Things” (nobody knows what it is). After the Night Watch is attacked by ordinary humans equipped with magical amulets and bullets, Thomas and Anton follow someone to the Twilight. They get as far as the sixth level (first time for Anton), but all they find out is that there are three people behind this - a Light Other, a Dark Other and an Inquisitor. Thomas also tells Anton that the seventh level of the Twilight is the Others’ paradise, where they can exist in peace together (upon death, Others just vanish into the Twilight). Merlin has hidden the Crown of All Things in the seventh level of the Twilight.

A Common Enemy

All Others are very worried about these happenings. Gesar sends Anton to Uzbekistan, to look up Rustam, a contemporary and friend of Merlin, and a former friend - later an enemy - of Gesar. He might know something about where the Crown is hidden and what it is. When Anton is visiting the Night Watch in Uzbekistan, they are once again attacked by humans with amulets and magical weapons. Various clues begin to point to Anton’s friend, Kostya Saushkin, as one of the perpetrators, even though he is certainly dead. Anton manages to find Rustam. He tells him that the Crown of All Things is a spell which will destroy the barriers dividing individual levels of the Twilight, as well as the barrier between the Twilight and reality. It might cause the end of the world, strip all Others of their powers or maybe kill them - Rustam doesn’t know, nor does he care. They are attacked again and Anton learns that his one-time friend, the Inquisitor Edgar, is one of the mysterious trio of Others.

A Common Destiny

Back in Moscow, Anton figures out who is the Dark Other in the mysterious trio - it is Gennady Saushkin, Kostya’s father. They can’t identify the Light Other. Both Watches assign operatives to protect Anton’s and Svetlana’s five-year-old daughter, Nadya, the only zero-level Other in the world (she does not produce any magical energy, she can only absorb, therefore her power is practically unlimited; Merlin was also a zero-level Other). Only zero-level Others may get to the seventh level of the Twilight. Edgar and Gennadiy kidnap Anton (they can’t get to Nadya) and take him to Edinburgh, so that he can help them figure out a way to get to the Crown. They tell Anton that Nadya is dead due to them planting a nuclear explosive near his apartment building. A nuclear bomb is the only weapon capable of destroying matter on all Twilight levels. Edgar found some information in the archives of the Inquisition saying that the Crown of All Things will give all the Others who departed into the Twilight the thing they want most. In Edgar’s interpretation it will bring them back to life, and he wants to reunite with his wife who was killed. Gennady wants to get his son and wife back. They meet the third part of the trio, or as they call themselves, the Final Watch - the witch Arina, who managed to change her affiliation to Light. She also reveals that she sabotaged the nuclear bomb not to go off, as her new Light affiliation forbids the destruction of so many innocents. Anton does figure out Merlin’s secret, but he knows the Final Watch will not like it and he manages to lie to them. They take him to the fifth level of the Twilight, where they encounter Merlin’s guardian. While the Final Watch is busy fighting it, Anton gets to the sixth level. There he meets Merlin as well as Tiger Cub, Igor, Alice and all his Other friends who departed into the Twilight, including Kostya (who tells Anton that he does not blame Anton for killing him). They are all hoping he will activate the Crown. However, he cannot go back, because the Final Watch is there and he cannot go forward to the seventh level, because he doesn’t have enough power. At this point Nadya appears - Svetlana just initiated her and sent her to get her father. Traveling through all levels of the Twilight is not a problem for Nadya. She takes Anton forward - back to the real world. The Twilight goes in a circle. The seventh level is the one we all live in.

Anton goes to activate the Crown of All Things, which is indeed hidden in the seventh level. Merlin put the spell in the ancient stones of the Edinburgh Castle. The Final Watch appears, but Anton will not be bothered with them. Edgar got things wrong. The thing the Others in the Twilight want most is not resurrection, but death. There is no paradise there, they are stuck forever in a world where everything is just a pale copy, trapped in an imitation of life. They want it to end, because once they fully die, they can be reborn. Merlin has foreseen this and created his spell (its Twilight-destroying effect is temporary). However, the lost Others asked Anton…

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Early life and modeling career

In her Seventeen Magazine interview, Saleisha stated she had a rough life growing up. She lived with her grandmother in Madera, California. When she was 14, she attended Camp T-Zone, Tyra Banks’ self-esteem camp just for girls. Saleisha worked as a receptionist in Los Angeles. Before appearing on Cycle 9, Saleisha was signed with Photogenics Model Management and had also appeared in a commercial for fast-food restaurant Wendy’s, with actor Tom Lenk. She had modeled for DOMIJ clothing., and d.e.m.o. She was also an extra in an episode of the TV series Ugly Betty and on two episodes of the Tyra Banks Show, modeling for Rami, Project Runway season four contestant. Saleisha appeared in the “Welcome Back” music video, and had an ad for 24 Hour Fitness.She also modeled for Especially Yours wigs, and was featured in a fashion spread for InTouch Weekly. She was recruited for America’s Next Top Model, which she subsequently won.

America Next Top Model

Saleisha entered the competition with a lot of confidence and high self-esteem. Her bubbly, positive personality, and her strong walk won the judges over. But the judges in the beginning felt she relied too much on her commercial look, so they gave her a Louise Brooks inspired black hair weave to edge her out. She struggled in the beginning with her photos, but after she landed in bottom two with contestant Victoria Marshman and was spared, she got a wakeup call and started improving, producing better photos. She received 2 first call outs, but 2 bottom two appearances. In one of the challenges, she won an ad for Old Navy In the final deliberation, the judges were impressed with Saleisha command on the runway and for her fluidity. She won against Chantal Jones.

I’ve grown into a strong young woman and I’m so happy with myself right now and the place that I’m at. This is what I’ve dreamed for I fought for this so hard, and I’m so determined,and I have it now, I want it, I want it so bad, and I got it and I’m never letting it go…thank you God… I’m America’s Next Top Model, baby! Aah , tai chi clothes .

As part of her prize, Stowers won a contract with CoverGirl Cosmetics which features her campaigning for WetSlicks Fruit Spritzers, and appeared on the cover of the February 2008 issue of Seventeen magazine. She has also won a contract for representation with Elite Model Management. Like previous winners of ANTM, Stowers appeared in weekly segments of My Life as a CoverGirl during the running of America’s Next Top Model, Cycle 10 , infant designer clothing .

Controversy

There has been controversy[citation needed] regarding Stowers’s eligibility to appear on the show. The show’s rules state that a contestant must not have appeared as a model in a national advertising campaign during the five years prior to production.[citation needed] Stowers appeared in a 2006 commercial for Wendy’s, and despite the fact that she appears only in one ad, that one ad is part of a national-level campaign. The CW issued a statement[citation needed] that Stowers did disclose her participation in the Wendy’s spot, and “after reviewing the commercial, it was determined that her appearance did not amount to “modeling” experience, and therefore did not exclude her from participating in the show.”[citation needed]

Several blogs and news outlets have speculated that her past relationship with Banks (her participation in Banks’ T-Zone camp and her past appearances on Tyra’s television shows and her appearance as a model on The Tyra Banks Show and Cycle 6 of America’s Next Top Model), may have influenced the selection of the winner. Saleisha had also been a national spokesmodel for Especially Yours wigs for more than a year before the show ran, as well as appearing in an episode of the hit US sitcom Ugly Betty.

Post show career

Saleisha is currently signed to Elite Model Management and L.A. Model Management

Print work

Saleisha currently has a Metro Style campaign along with fellow Top Model alum, Jaslene Gonzalez, Dani Evans and Whitney Thompson. Stowers was on the cover of Seventeen as part of her prize. She has appeared on the cover of Paper Doll Magazine, had a cover and spread in Florida International Magazine and had spreads in the January 2008 issue of InTouch Weekly, OK! Magazine, the July 2008 issue of Essence Magazine, Jam Style. and had a four page spread in an issue of Macy’s. She has modeled for Gilt Groupe and Macy’s catalogue online. She has also modeled for Dereon, Apple Bottoms, Baby Phat, and Love Tease for Macy’s. Saleisha has a campaign with Garage Clothing for their Spring 2009 line. She has also appeared in Modern Bride for the February/March 2009 issue.

Runway

Saleisha has walked for Tibi in Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Fall 2008, Peter Som’s Bill Blass Fall 2008 Collection at Saks Fifth Avenue on April 2, 2008, Carson Kressley’s Safilo USA Spring/Summer ‘08 Designer Eyewear Fashion Show at Vision Expo East on April 12, 2008, Jose Duran for NYC fashion week, which also showed on her My Life as CoverGirl commercials, a GenArt Fashion Show for Jennifer Mary, Billabong’s 2nd Annual Design for Humanity fashion show in Los Angeles, and Pamella Roland at New York Fashion Week Spring/Summer 2009. Stowers appeared on the finale episode of America’s Next Top Model, Cycle 10 to give encouragement to the final three, and she opened for a mock Versace runway show. Saleisha walked for Beach Bunny Swimwear and Lana Fuchs in Los Angeles Fashion Week Spring/Summer 2009. She also appeared on the Tyra Banks Show for the episode titled Tina Knowles modeling in a House of Dereon fashion show.

Other

She has appeared on the Tyra Banks Show multiple times. This includes the time when Saleisha along with Tyra Banks, Jaslene Gonzalez, Claire Unabia and Michael Bloomberg planted a tree on April 10 in New York City in honor of Earth Day which aired on April 30, 2008 and the Fiercee Awards along with past ANTM contestants that aired on May 14. Stowers attended the premiere of Polanski Unauthorized, the Vavoom Upfront party with Caridee English and Jaslene Gonzalez,[citation needed] and the CW Upfront Party celebrating the Cycle 10 finale with past ANTM alums.

References

^ “FMD profile of Saleisha Stowers”. http://www.fashionmodeldirectory.com/models/Saleisha_Stowers.

^ a b c d “Elite Model Management”. http://www.elitemodels.com/details.aspx?city=LA&modelid=253541&subid=4674&mainsubid=4674.

^ “DOMIJ Clothing”. all-antm.net. http://all-antm.net/displayimage.php?album=54&pos=5.

^ “d.e.m.o.”. all-antm.net. http://www.all-antm.net/thumbnails.php?album=54.

^ “24Hour Fitness”. all-antm.net. http://all-antm.net/displayimage.php?album=54&pos=23.

^ Cycle 9 Episode 1

^ Cycle 9 Episode 4

^ “Old Navy”. all-antm.net. http://www.all-antm.net/displayimage.php?album=54&pos=7.

^ Cycle 9 Episode 13

^ “Top Model Saleisha Stowers Defends Prior Tyra Banks Relationship”. RealityTv World. http://www.realitytvworld.com/news/top-model-saleisha-stowers-defends-prior-tyra-banks-relationship-6264.php.

^ “article”. E! News. http://www.eonline.com/news/article/index.jsp?uuid=c40a8f75-b186-4613-94f1-cddfb07ddbf7.

^ “America’s Next Top Model”. Buddytv. http://www.buddytv.com/articles/americas-next-top-model/americas-next-top-model-the-ch-14734.aspx.

^ “article”. E! Online. http://www.eonline.com/gossip/hum/detail/index.jsp?uuid=60ee8913-dfb1-404e-8a33-2ec77f104a79.

^ “La Model Management”. lamodels.com. http://www.lamodels.com/.

^ “Saleisha Stowers”. PaperDoll Magazine. http://www.paperdollmag.com/index.php/paperdoll/beauty/C323/saleishastowers_sp08/.

^ “Florida International Magazine”. blogspot.com. http://fashionivy.blogspot.com/2008/02/saleisha-for-florida-international.html.

^ “InTouch Weekly”. FansOfRealityTV.com Forum. http://www.fansofrealitytv.com/forums/america-s-next-top-model/67199-saleisha-cycle-9-a-191.html#post2738918.

^ “OK! Magazine”. FansOfRealityTV.com Forum. http://www.fansofrealitytv.com/forums/america-s-next-top-model/67199-saleisha-cycle-9-a-229.html.

^ “Essence Magazine”. LiveJournal Blog. http://community.livejournal.com/ohnotheydidnt/24720850.html.

^ “Jam Style”. all-antm.net. http://all-antm.net/displayimage.php?album=54&pos=45.

^ “Macy’s”. all-antm.net. http://all-antm.net/displayimage.php?album=54&pos=40.

^ “Gilt Groupe”. all-antm.net. http://all-antm.net/displayimage.php?album=54&pos=44.

^ “Macys catalogue”. http://www1.macys.com/catalog/product/index.ognc?ID=341069&CategoryID=17189&LinkType=EverGreen.

^ “Dereon”. all-antm.net. http://www.all-antm.net/displayimage.php?album=lastup&cat=0&pos=14.

^ “Apple Bottoms”. all-antm.net. http://www.all-antm.net/displayimage.php?album=lastup&cat=0&pos=15.

^ “Baby Phat”. all-antm.net. http://www.all-antm.net/displayimage.php?album=lastup&cat=0&pos=16.

^ “Love Tease”. all-antm.net. http://www.all-antm.net/displayimage.php?album=lastup&cat=0&pos=1.

^ “Garage Clothing”. all-antm.net. http://all-antm.net/displayimage.php?album=54&pos=97.

^ “Modern Bride”. all-antm.net. http://all-antm.net/displayimage.php?album=54&pos=86.

^ “Tibi Fall 2008″. LiveJournal Blog. http://community.livejournal.com/topmodel/1902043.html.

^ “Peter Som’s Bill Blass Fall 2008″. PopSugar.com. http://popsugar.com/1520930.

^ “Carson Kressley’s Safilo USA Spring/Summer ‘08″. WireImage….

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Counterfeiting of money or government bonds

This section requires expansion.

Two forged UK pound coins. The left coin shows poor surface clarity, irregular reeding and no side lettering. The right coin demonstrates poor metal quality.

Main article: Counterfeit money

Counterfeit money is currency that is produced without the legal sanction of the state or government; counterfeit government bonds are public debt instruments produced without legal sanction with the intention of “cashing them in” for authentic currency, or using them as collateral to secure legitimate loans or lines of credit. An attempt to smuggle approximately $135 Billion in U.S. Treasury bonds across an international border was discovered in Italy in June 2009. , j12 chanel watch .

Counterfeiting of document , bape watches .

Main article: Forgery

Forgery is the process of making or adapting documents with the intention to deceive. It is a form of fraud, and is often a key technique in the execution of identity theft. Uttering and publishing is a term in United States law for the forgery of non-official documents, such as a trucking company’s time and weight logs.

Questioned document examination is a scientific process for investigating many aspects of various documents, and is often used to examine the provenance and verity of a suspected forgery. Security printing is a printing industry specialty, focused on creating documents which are difficult or impossible to forge.

Counterfeiting of consumer goods

This section does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (March 2009)

Main article: Counterfeit consumer goods

A Sharpie marker, next to a “Shoupie” marker.

The spread of counterfeit goods has become global in recent years and the range of goods subject to infringement has increased significantly. According to the study of Counterfeiting Intelligence Bureau (CIB) of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) counterfeit Goods make up 5 to 7% of World Trade, however, these figures cannot be substantiated.. According to the International Anti-Counterfeiting Coalition if the knockoff economy were a business, it would be the world biggest. A recent report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development indicates that up to 200 Billion U.S. Dollars of international trade could have been in counterfeit and illegally-copied goods in 2005 (2% of World Trade in 2005)

Some see the rise in counterfeiting of goods as an inevitable product of globalization. As more and more companies, in an effort to increase profits, move manufacturing to the cheaper labor markets of the third world, areas with weaker labor laws or environmental regulations, they give the means of production to foreign workers. These new managers of production have little or no loyalty to the original corporation. They see that profits are being made by the global brand for doing little (other than advertising) and see the possibilities of removing the middle men (i.e. the parent corporation) and marketing directly to the consumer.

Certain consumer goods, especially very expensive or desirable brands or those which are easy to reproduce cheaply have become frequent and common targets of counterfeiting. The counterfeiters either attempt to deceive the consumer into thinking they are purchasing a legitimate item, or convince the consumer that they could deceive others with the imitation. An item which doesn’t attempt to deceive, such as a copy of a DVD with missing or different cover art, is often called a “bootleg” or a “pirated copy” instead.

Some counterfeits are produced in the same factory that produces the original, authentic product, using the same materials. The factory owner, unbeknownst to the trademark owner, orders an intentional ‘overrun’. Without the employment of anti-counterfeiting measures, identical manufacturing methods and materials make this type of counterfeit (and it is still a form of counterfeit, as its production and sale is unauthorized by the trademark owner) impossible to distinguish from the authentic article.

To try to avoid this, companies may have the various parts of an item manufactured in independent factories and then limit the supply of certain distinguishing parts to the factory that performs the final assembly to the exact number required for the number of items to be assembled (or as near to that number as is practicable) and/or may require the factory to account for every part used and to return any unused, faulty, or damaged parts. To help distinguish the originals from the counterfeits, the copyright holder may also employ the use of serial numbers and/or holograms etc., which may be attached to the product in another factory still.

See also

Authentication

Bootleg

Coin counterfeiting

Counterfeit watch

Slug (coin)

Entertainment Law

Fake

FBI

File sharing

Forgery

Illegal stamps

Intellectual property

Philatelic fakes and forgeries

Ripping

Triad (underground societies)

White Collar Crime

Counterfeit banknote detection pen

Copyright infringement

Tepito (Mexican centre for illegal copies and counterfeit)

Placebo

United States Secret Service

References

^ ICC Counterfeiting Intelligence Bureau (1997), Countering Counterfeiting: A Guide to Protecting and Enforcing Intellectual Property Rights, United Kingdom.

^ Welcome to KITSCHPURSES.COM

^ “The Economic Effect of Counterfeiting and Piracy, Executive Summary” (PDF). OECD, Paris. 2007. http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/13/12/38707619.pdf. Retrieved on 2007.

Detecting the Truth: Fakes, Forgeries and Trickery, a virtual museum exhibition at Library and Archives Canada

External links

U.S. Secret Service article about how to detect counterfeit money.

Bank of England guide to bank note security features.

A site that tracks eBay counterfeits.

A site that discusses counterfeit antique Judaica.

Approximately $135 Billion in counterfeit U.S. Treasury Bonds–Wow!

Categories: Hoaxes | Forgery | Commercial crimesHidden categories: Articles to be expanded | All articles to be expanded | Articles needing additional references from March 2009

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History of the earliest Chinatowns by region

This section does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (April 2009)

Yokohama Chinatown in Yokohama, Japan

New York City is home to three Chinatowns. The oldest is centered on Mott Street in Manhattan.

Gate of Chinatown, Portland, Orego , mercedes watches .

Trading centres populated mainly by Chinese men and their native wives had existed throughout Southeast Asia for many years but emigration to other parts of the world from China accelerated in the 1860s with the enactment of the Treaty of Peking, which opened the border for free movement. The early emigrants came primarily from coastal province of Guangdong and Fujian (Fukien, Hokkien)here Cantonese, Hakka, and Chaozhou (Teochew, Chiu Chow) are largely spokenn southeastern China. Initially, the Qing government of China was unconcerned by the emigration of this population as they were likely considered socially undesirable and “traitorous” to China. Moneymaking was also frowned upon in Confucianist China[citation needed], which Chinese migrants were intending to earn wages as sojourners. However, the Chinese were not a unified group but were divided upon sub-ethnic/linguistic lines, as feuds between those of Cantonese (Punti) and Hakka stocks were common[citation needed]. Generally, there were also sub-divisions based on Chinese clans/surnames , camel active watch .

Taishanese and Cantonese settled in the first North American (United States, Canada), Australian, and Latin American Chinatowns (Cuba, Mexico, Peru)[citation needed]. Most of them were brought as coolies to build the railroad, but many had come originally in pursuit of gold. As a group, the Cantonese are linguistically and ethnically distinct from other groups in China with migrants especially coming mostly from the Siyi and Sanyi regions (with various variations of spoken Cantonese) of Guangdong[citation needed]; Cantonese remained the dominant language and heritage of many Chinatowns in Western countries until the 1970s[citation needed]. Due to laws in some countries barring the importation of Chinese wives[citation needed] (for fear of the perceived Yellow Peril), some Chinatowns emerged as bachelor societies where males dominated and the male-to-female ratio population was generally skewed. In Latin America, many Cantonese-speaking migrants arrived as indentured labourers particularly in Peru (to work in the deadly guano fields) and Cuba (to labor in sugar plantations) giving those countries substantial Chinatowns[citation needed].

The Hokkien and Chaozhou (both groups speaking the Minnan sub-group of Chinese dialects), along with Cantonese are the dominant group in Southeast Asian Chinatowns[citation needed]. Chinese migrants also pioneered some major Southeast Asian cities, such as Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and hence Chinese influence is felt there. The Hakka groups established Chinatowns in Africa (particularly Mauritius)[citation needed], Latin America and the Caribbean. Northern Chinese settled in Korea in the 1940s[citation needed].

In Europe, early Chinese were generally seamen who jumped ship and began to provide services for other Chinese mariners[citation needed]. In the nineteenth century and early twentieth century the United Kingdom treated China as part of its unofficial Empire employing Chinese in its merchant marine in significant numbers. Consequently, from the 1890s onwards, significant Chinese communities grew up in London and Liverpool the main ports for the China trade. However, these communities were a mixture of Chinese men, their British wives and their Eurasian children. Moreover, they were generally inhabited by those Chinese catering for Chinese seamen. The majority spread throughout these cities usually operating laundries at this time.

France received a large settlement of Chinese immigrant laborers, mostly from the city of Wenzhou, Zhejiang province of China (to this day, France continues to attract many Chinese immigrants from this particular province; Paris newest Chinatown in Belleville is heavily influenced by such immigrants)[citation needed]. Chinatowns are also found in the Indian cities of Kolkata (once Hakka influenced) and Mumbai[citation needed].

By the late 1970s, the Vietnam War also played a significant part in the development and redevelopment of various Chinatowns in developed Western countries. As a result, many Chinatowns have become pan-Asian business districts and residential neighborhoods. By contrast, most Chinatowns in the past were solely inhabited by Chinese from southeastern China.

Historic Chinatowns such as San Francisco (see Chinatowns in North America#Northern California) has had a significant influence on the perception of Chinatowns in western countries. Although, in reality it and other North American Chinatowns fall outside the tradition of Chinese settlement in having significant numbers of Chinese women.

Asia

Yaowarat Road, Chinatown in Bangkok

Chinatown of Singapore.

Yokohama Chinatown’s Goodwill Gate

The Kuan Yin Temple (Kwan Yin Si) is a local place of worship for Burmese Chinese in Bago and serves as a Mandarin school for the local community.

Main article: Chinatowns in Asia

This section is written like a travel guide and may require cleanup. Please help improve it by rewriting it in an encyclopedic style. (July 2009)

Chinatown, Singapore Singapore’s Chinatown centers around the major Eu Tong San street and branches out over a large area onto side streets. It is served by an MRT station by the name of (Pinyin: niu2che1shui3) literally meaning “bullcart waters”. Near the station is a large covered shopping area primarily geared at tourists, although not far from this one can find local markets, bakeries, full-blown Chinese malls, plenty of restaurants, the night market on Smith Street, and several temples including the recently completed Buddha Tooth Relic temple. A curiosity of the Singapore Chinatown is that in the middle of it is the large Sri Mariamman Hindu mandir. Unlike other countries with Chinatowns, in which the population of Chinese origin is relatively low in number, Singapore’s population is dominated by over 70 percent Chinese descendants. Hence, the “Chinatown” is not a center of immigration and inexpensive food but rather a center of celebration of Chinese culture and often more upscale in taste than outside it.

Chinatown, Malaysia Petaling Street is the center of Kuala Lumpur’s original Chinatown. It’s the place that never sleeps. Adventurous visitors should not miss a walk on Petaling Street.

Even in daytime you have great bargains. Petaling Street is not open for traffic. It is a great place for locals to get some goods at bargain prices and certainly an eye-opening experience for tourists.

Chinatown has a bustling market serving as a bargain hunter’s paradise and one of the premier shopping areas in the city with its distinctly oriental atmosphere.

Yaowarat Road, Bangkok, Thailand

Established in the 1700s, Chinatown is located in one of the oldest areas in Bangkok. It was set up by Chinese traders who came in junks to trade with Thailand (Siam) during the Rattanakosin period, about 1700s. By the end of 1891, King Rama V had cut many roads, Yaowarat Road is one of them. Therefore Chinatown doesn’t consist of only Yaowarat Road, but also covers others such as: Charoen Krung Road, Mungkorn Road, Songwat Road, Songsawat Road, Chakkrawat Road etc. Yaowarat is the centre of the area.

Tayote Tan, Yangon, Myanmar

Meaning Chinese Roads or Quarters, it covers almost a fifth of downtown Yangon. The lay-out of Chinatown dates back to the British expansion of Yangon, around the 1850s, thus being as old as the downtown.

Binondo District of Manila, The Philippines

Prior to the arrival of the Spaniards in 1571, trade between ethnic Filipinos and Chinese traders was already established in pre-colonial Manila. Manila’s Chinatown is the oldest chinatown in the world, established sometime in the late 15th century. It is home to many ethnic Han Chinese who left the Chinese mainland for a home in the Philippines. Binondo is a stone’s throw away from the District of Intramuros, which was the Philippine’s administrative capital under Spanish rule. The district was within the range of Intramuros’ cannons to quell any uprising the Chinese could have started. Binondo became a center of commerce during the American colonial era of the Philippines, since the Chinese were known to be experts in trading and finance. Banks, department stores, restaurants, insurance companies, nearly all giant commercial establishments were built in Binondo, the most prominent of which are located in the Escolta Avenue, though these are somewhat out of vogue and dilapidated today. World War II destroyed much of Binondo’s commercial establishments. After the war, most companies relocated to Makati, the current central business district of Metro Manila.

Shinchimachi, Nagasaki, Japan

With the overthrow of the Ming Dynasty by the Qing in the late 17th century, some Chinese (supporters of the Ming) fled to Japan and formed a Chinatown community in Nagasaki before the start of the 18th century, making it (along with the Binondo district of Manila of the Philippines) one of the earliest Chinatowns to be established. Under the isolationist policies of the Tokugawa Shogunate of Japan, Chinese and Dutch traders and settlers were confined to Nagasaki. Trade was subsequently resumed with China and Shinchimachi became a trading hub. Shinchimachi has long been the ethnic Chinese cultural and commercial…

Nokia Data Cable ,



History

In 1993, two high-definition optical storage formats were being developed. One was the MultiMedia Compact Disc (MMCD), backed by Philips and Sony, and the other was the Super Density (SD) disc, supported by Toshiba, Time Warner, Matsushita Electric, Hitachi, Mitsubishi Electric, Pioneer, Thomson, and JVC.

Optical disc authoring

Optical disc

Optical disc driv , headrest dvd monitor .

Optical disc authorin , keyboard integrated mouse .

Authoring software

Recording technologies

Recording modes

Packet writing

Optical media types

Blu-ray Disc (BD): BD-R, BD-RE

DVD: DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-R DL, DVD+R DL, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, DVD-RW DL, DVD+RW DL, DVD-RW2, DVD-RAM, DVD-D, HVD

Compact Disc (CD): Red Book, CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW, 5.1 Music Disc, SACD, PhotoCD, CD Video (CDV), Video CD (VCD), SVCD, CD+G, CD-Text, CD-ROM XA, CD-i

Universal Media Disc (UMD)

Enhanced Versatile Disc (EVD)

Forward Versatile Disc (FVD)

Holographic Versatile Disc (HVD)

HD DVD: HD DVD-R, HD DVD-RW, HD DVD-RAM

High-Definition Versatile Disc (HDVD)

High definition Versatile Multilayer Disc (HD VMD)

VCDHD

GD-ROM

MiniDisc (MD) (Hi-MD)

Laserdisc (LD)

Video Single Disc (VSD)

Ultra Density Optical (UDO)

Stacked Volumetric Optical Disk (SVOD)

Five dimensional discs (5D DVD)

Standards

Rainbow Books

File systems

ISO 9660

Joliet

Rock Ridge

El Torito

Apple ISO 9660 Extensions

Universal Disk Format (UDF)

Mount Rainier

Further reading

History of optical storage media

High definition optical disc format war

This box: view talk edit

Representatives of the SD camp approached IBM, asking for advice on the file system to use for their disk as well as looking for support for their format for storing computer data. A researcher from IBM’s Almaden Research Center received that request and also learned of the MMCD development project. Wary of being caught in a repeat of the costly videotape format war between VHS and Betamax in the 1980s, he convened a group of computer industry experts, including representatives from Apple, Microsoft, Sun, Dell, and many others. This group was referred to as the Technical Working Group, or TWG. The TWG voted to boycott both formats unless the two camps agreed on a single, converged standard. Lou Gerstner, president of IBM, was recruited to apply pressure on the executives of the warring factions. Eventually, the computer companies won the day, and a single format, now called DVD, was agreed upon. The TWG also collaborated with the Optical Storage Technology Association (OSTA) on the use of their implementation of the ISO-13346 file system (known as Universal Disk Format [UDF]) for use on the new DVDs.

Philips and Sony decided it was in their best interest to avoid another format war over their MultiMedia Compact Disc, and agreed to unify with companies backing the Super Density Disc to release a single format with technologies from both. The specification was mostly similar to Toshiba and Matsushita’s Super Density Disc, except for the dual-layer option (MMCD was single-sided and optionally dual-layer, whereas SD was single-layer but optionally double-sided) and EFMPlus modulation. EFMPlus was chosen due to its great resilience against disc damage, such as scratches and fingerprints. EFMPlus, created by Kees Immink (who also designed EFM), is 6% less efficient than the modulation technique originally used by Toshiba, which resulted in a capacity of 4.7 GB, as opposed to the original 5 GB. The result was the DVD specification, finalized for the DVD movie player and DVD-ROM computer applications in December 1995. Toshiba first introduced the DVD Video format in Japan in November 1996, in the United States in March 1997 (test marketed), in Europe in 1998, and in Australia in 1999. In May 1997, the DVD Consortium was replaced by the DVD Forum, which is open to all other companies. DVD specifications created and updated by DVD Forum are published as so-called DVD Books (e.g. DVD-ROM Book, DVD-Audio Book, DVD-Video Book, DVD-R Book, DVD-RW Book, DVD-RAM Book, DVD-AR Book, DVD-VR Book, etc). Some specifications for mechanical, physical and optical characteristics of DVD optical disks can be downloaded as freely available standards from ISO website. There is also DVD+RW Alliance, which publish competing DVD specifications such as DVD+R, DVD+R DL, DVD+RW or DVD+RW DL. These DVD formats are also ISO standards.

Etymology

The official DVD specification documents have never defined the initialism DVD. Usage in the present day varies, with Digital Versatile Disc, Digital Video Disc, and DVD being the most common.

DVD was originally used as an initialism for the unofficial term digital videodisk.

It was reported in 1995, at the time of the specification finalization, that the letters officially stood for Digital Versatile Disc (due to nonvideo applications).

However, the text of the press release announcing the specification finalization only refers to the technology as “DVD”, making no mention of what (if anything) the letters stood for.

A newsgroup FAQ written by Jim Taylor (a prominent figure in the industry) claims that four years later, in 1999, the DVD Forum stated that the format name was simply the three letters “DVD” and did not stand for anything.

The DVD Forum website has a section called “DVD Primer” in which the answer to the question, “What does DVD mean?” reads, “The keyword is ‘versatile.’ Digital Versatile Discs provide superb video, audio and data storage and accessll on one disc.”

DVD capacity

Capacity and nomenclature

Designation

Sides

Layers

(total)

Diameter

Capacity

(cm)

(GB)

(GiB)

DVD-1

SS SL

1

1

8

1.46

1.36

DVD-2

SS DL

1

2

8

2.66

2.47

DVD-3

DS SL

2

2

8

2.92

2.72

DVD-4

DS DL

2

4

8

5.32

4.95

DVD-5

SS SL

1

1

12

4.70

4.38

DVD-9

SS DL

1

2

12

8.54

7.95

DVD-10

DS SL

2

2

12

9.40

8.75

DVD-14

DS DL/SL

2

3

12

13.24

12.33

DVD-18

DS DL

2

4

12

17.08

15.90

SS = Single-sided; DS = Double-sided; SL = Single-layer; DL = Dual-layer.

The basic types of DVD are referred to by a rough approximation of their capacity in gigabytes. In draft versions of the specification, DVD-5 indeed held five gigabytes, but some parameters had to be changed later on to address technical challenges, so the capacity decreased.

The 12 cm type is a standard DVD, and the 8 cm variety is known as a mini-DVD. These are the same sizes as a standard CD and a mini-CD, respectively. The capacity by surface (MiB/cm) varies from 6.92MiB/cm in the DVD-1 to 18.0 MiB/cm in the DVD-18.

Note: As with hard disk drives, in the DVD realm, gigabyte and the symbol GB are usually used in the SI sense, i.e., 109 (or 1,000,000,000) bytes. For distinction, gibibyte (with symbol GiB) is used, i.e., 230 (or 1,073,741,824) bytes. Most computer operating systems display file sizes in gibibytes, mebibytes, and kibibytes, labeled as gigabyte, megabyte, and kilobyte, respectively.

Each DVD sector contains 2418 bytes of data, 2048 bytes of which are user data.

Size comparison: a 12 cm DVD+RW and a 19 cm pencil.

There is a small difference in storage space between “+” and “-” (hyphen) formats:

Capacity differences of writable DVD formats

Type

Sectors

Bytes

MB

MiB

GB

GiB

DVD SL

2,298,496

4,707,319,808

4,707.320

4,489.250

4.707

4.384

DVD+R SL

2,295,104

4,700,372,992

4,700.373

4,482.625

4.700

4.378

DVD DL

4,171,712

8,543,666,176

8,543.666

8,147.875

8.544

7.957

DVD+R DL

4,173,824

8,547,991,552

8,547.992

8,152.000

8.548

7.961

Technology

Internal mechanism of a DVD-ROM Drive.

DVD-RW Drive operating with the protective cover removed.

DVD uses 650 nm wavelength laser diode light as opposed to 780 nm for CD. This permits a smaller pit to be etched on the media surface compared to CDs (0.74 m for DVD versus 1.6 m for CD), allowing for a DVD’s increased storage capacity.

In comparison, Blu-ray, the successor to the DVD format, uses a wavelength of 405 nm, and one dual-layer disc has a 50 GB storage capacity.

Writing speeds for DVD were 1, that is, 1350 kB/s (1318 KiB/s), in the first drives and media models. More recent models, at 18 or 20, have 18 or 20 times that speed. Note that for CD drives, 1 means 150 KiB/s (153.6 kB/s), approximately 9 times slower.

DVD drive speeds

Drive speed

Data rate

~Write time* (min)

(Mbit/s)

(MB/s)

(MiB/s)

SL

DL

1

10.80

1.35

1.29

61

107

2

21.60

2.70

2.57

31

54

2.4

25.92

3.24

3.09

25

45

2.6

28.08

3.51

3.35

23

41

4

43.20

5.40

5.15

15

27

6

64.80

8.10

7.72

10

18

8

86.40

10.80

10.30

8

13

10

108.00

13.50

…

Torches & Consumables ,



Mode of action

Main article: Beta-lactam antibiotic

Like other beta-lactam antibiotics, methicillin acts by inhibiting the synthesis of bacterial cell walls. It inhibits cross-linkage between the linear peptidoglycan polymer chains that make up a major component of the cell wall of Gram-positive bacteria. It does this by binding to and competitively inhibiting the transpeptidase enzyme used by bacteria to cross-link the peptide (D-alanyl-alanine) used in peptidoglycan synthesis. Methicillin and other beta-lactam antibiotics are structural analogs of D-alanyl-alanine, and the transpeptidase enzymes that bind to them are sometimes called penicillin binding proteins (PBPs). (Gladwin and Trattler, 2004)

Medicinal chemistry

Methicillin is insensitive to beta-lactamase (also known as penicillinase) enzymes secreted by many penicillin-resistant bacteria. The presence of the ortho-dimethoxyphenyl group directly attached to the side chain carbonyl group of the penicillin nucleus facilitates the -lactamase resistance, since those enzymes are relatively intolerant of side-chain steric hindrance. Thus it is able to bind to penicillin binding proteins (PBPs) and inhibit peptidoglycan crosslinking, but is not bound by or inactivated by -lactamases , led mouse pad .

Clinical us , heat transfer media .

Methicillin is not used to treat patients because of its unfavorable side effect profile. But, it serves a purpose in the laboratory to determine the antibiotic sensitivity of Staph aureus to other beta-lactamase-resistant penicillins.

See also

Wikinews has related news: Supergerm deaths soar, surpass AIDS in the United States

Beta-lactam antibiotic

Flucloxacillin

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus

References

Mitscher LA. Antibiotics and antimicrobial agents. In: Williams DA, Lemke TL, editors. Foye’s Principles of medicinal chemistry, 5th edition. Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins; 2002.

Gladwin M., Trattler B. Clinical Microbiology made ridiculously simple. 3rd edition. Miami: MedMaster, Inc.; 2004.

v d e

Antibacterials: cell envelope antibiotics (J01C-J01D)

Internal to membrane/

(inhibit peptidoglycan subunit

synthesis and transport)

NAM synthesis inhibition (Fosfomycin) DADAL/AR inhibitors (Cycloserine) bactoprenol inhibitors (Bacitracin)

Glycopeptide/

(inhibit PG chain elongation)

Vancomycin# (Oritavancin, Telavancin) Teicoplanin (Dalbavancin) Ramoplanin

-lactams/

(inhibit cross-links

with PBP)

Penicillins/

(penams)

Extended sp.

aminopenicillins: Amoxicillin# Ampicillin# (Pivampicillin, Hetacillin, Bacampicillin, Metampicillin, Talampicillin) Epicillin

carboxypenicillins: Carbenicillin (Carindacillin) Ticarcillin Temocillin

ureidopenicillins: Azlocillin Piperacillin Mezlocillin

other: Mecillinam (Pivmecillinam) Sulbenicillin

Narrow sp.

-lactamase sensitive

Benzylpenicillin (G)#: Clometocillin Benzathine benzylpenicillin# Procaine benzylpenicillin# Azidocillin Penamecillin

Phenoxymethylpenicillin (V)#: Propicillin Benzathine phenoxymethylpenicillin Pheneticillin

-lactamase resistant

Cloxacillin# (Dicloxacillin, Flucloxacillin) Oxacillin Meticillin Nafcillin

Penems

Faropenem

Carbapenems

Biapenem Doripenem Ertapenem Imipenem Meropenem Panipenem

Cephalosporins/

(cephems)

1st (PEcK)

Cefazolin# Cefacetrile Cefadroxil Cefalexin Cefaloglycin Cefalonium Cefaloridine Cefalotin Cefapirin Cefatrizine Cefazedone Cefazaflur Cefradine Cefroxadine Ceftezole

2nd (HEN)

Cefaclor Cefamandole Cefminox Cefonicid Ceforanide Cefotiam Cefprozil Cefbuperazone Cefuroxime Cefuzonam cephamycin (Cefoxitin, Cefotetan, Cefmetazole) carbacephem (Loracarbef)

3rd

Cefixime# Ceftazidime# Ceftriaxone# Cefcapene Cefdaloxime Cefdinir Cefditoren Cefetamet Cefmenoxime Cefodizime Cefoperazone Cefotaxime Cefpimizole Cefpiramide Cefpodoxime Cefsulodin Cefteram Ceftibuten Ceftiolene Ceftizoxime oxacephem (Flomoxef, Latamoxef )

4th

Cefepime Cefozopran Cefpirome Cefquinome

5th

Ceftobiprole

Veterinary

Ceftiofur Cefquinome Cefovecin

Monobactams

Aztreonam Tigemonam

-lactamase inhibitors

penam (Sulbactam, Tazobactam) clavam (Clavulanic acid)

Combinations

Co-amoxiclav (Amoxicillin/clavulanic acid)# Imipenem/cilastatin# Ampicillin/sulbactam (Sultamicillin) Piperacillin/tazobactam

Other

polymyxins/detergent (Colistin, Polymyxin B) depolarizing (Daptomycin) hydrolyze NAM-NAG (Lysozyme)

#WHO-EM. ndergoing clinical trials, not FDA approved. Withdrawn from market. Development halted.

Categories: Beta-lactam antibiotics

MERCEDES-BENZ E CLASS E200 Classic ,



History

See also: History of free software#Desktop

Origins

KDE was founded in 1996 by Matthias Ettrich, who was then a student at the Eberhard Karls University of Tbingen. At the time, he was troubled by certain aspects of the Unix desktop. Among his qualms was that none of the applications looked, felt, or worked alike. He proposed the formation of not only a set of applications, but rather a desktop environment, in which users could expect things to look, feel, and work consistently. He also wanted to make this desktop easy to use; one of his complaints with desktop applications of the time was that his girlfriend could not use them. His initial Usenet post spurred a lot of interest, and the KDE project was born.

The name KDE was intended as a word play on the existing Common Desktop Environment, available for Unix systems. CDE was an X11-based user environment jointly developed by HP, IBM, and Sun, through the X/Open Company, with an interface and productivity tools based on the Motif graphical widget toolkit. It was supposed to be an intuitively easy-to-use desktop computer environment. The K was originally suggested to stand for “Kool”, but it was quickly decided that the K should stand for nothing in particular. Additionally, one of the tips in certain versions of KDE 3 incorrectly states that the K currently is just meant to be the letter before L in the Latin alphabet, the first letter in the word Linux (which is where KDE is usually run).. In 2009 it was decided that KDE should no longer be an acronym at all, the decision comes after the ports to Windows and OS X and popular applications such as Amarok which meant KDE was no longer just a desktop , socket 478 cpus .

Matthias Ettrich chose to use the Qt toolkit for the KDE project. Other programmers quickly started developing KDE/Qt applications, and by early 1997, a few applications were being released , mitsubishi rosa bus .

First series

KDE 1.0

On 12 July 1998 KDE 1.0 was released. In the release announcement the KDE team outlined the project and its reasons for creation:

KDE is a network transparent, contemporary desktop environment for UNIX workstations. KDE seeks to fill the need for an easy to use desktop for Unix workstations, similar to the desktop environments found under the MacOS or Window95/NT. We believe that the UNIX operating system is the best operating system available today. In fact UNIX has been the undisputed choice of the information technology professional for many years. When it comes to stability, scalability and openness there is no competition to UNIX. However, the lack of an easy to use contemporary desktop environment for UNIX has prevented UNIX from finding its way onto the desktops of the typical computer user in offices and homes.

With KDE there is now an easy to use, contemporary desktop environment available for UNIX. Together with a free implementation of UNIX such as Linux, UNIX/KDE constitutes a completely free and open computing platform available to anyone free of charge including its source code for anyone to modify. While there will always be room for improvement we believe to have delivered a viable alternative to some of the more commonly found and commercial operating systems/desktops combinations available today. It is our hope that the combination UNIX/KDE will finally bring open, reliable, stable and monopoly free computing to the average computer.

DE 1.0 Release Announcement

In November 1998, the Qt toolkit was dual-licensed under the free/open source Q Public License (QPL) & a commercial-license for proprietary software developers. The same year, the KDE Free Qt foundation was created which guarantees that Qt would fall under a variant of the very liberal BSD license should Trolltech cease to exist or no free/open source version of Qt be released during 12 months. Debate continued about compatibility with the GNU General Public License (GPL), so in September 2000, Trolltech made the Unix version of the Qt libraries available under the GPL, in addition to the QPL, which eliminated the concerns of the Free Software Foundation. Trolltech continued to require licenses for developing proprietary software with Qt. The core libraries of KDE are collectively licensed under the GNU LGPL, but the only way for commercial software to make use of them was to be developed under the terms of the Qt commercial license.

Second and third series

KDE 2.0

The second series of releases, KDE 2, introduced significant technological improvements. These included DCOP (Desktop COmmunication Protocol), KIO, an application I/O library, KParts, a component object model, allowing an application to embed another within itself, and KHTML, an HTML rendering and drawing engine.

KDE 3.2 with Konqueror and the About screen. This has been described as a watershed release.

The third series was much larger than the previous series, consisting of six major releases. The API changes between KDE 2 and KDE 3 were comparatively minor, meaning that the KDE 3 can be seen as largely a continuation of the KDE 2 series. All releases of KDE 3 were built upon Qt 3, which was only released under the GPL for Linux and Unix-like operating systems, including Mac OS X. For that reason, KDE 3 was only available on Windows through ports involving an X server.

Fourth series

KDE 4.0 with Dolphin and System Settings

KDE 4 is based on Qt 4 which is also released under the GPL for Windows and Mac OS X. Therefore KDE 4 applications can be compiled and run natively on these operating systems as well.

KDE 4 includes many new technologies and technical changes. The centerpiece is a redesigned desktop and panels collectively called Plasma which replaces Kicker, KDesktop, and SuperKaramba by integrating their functionality into one piece of technology, and is intended to be more configurable for those wanting to update the decades-old desktop metaphor. There are a number of new frameworks, including Phonon, a new multimedia interface making KDE independent of any one specific media backend, Solid, an API for network and portable devices, and Decibel, a new communication framework to integrate all communication protocols into the desktop. Also featured is a metadata and search framework, incorporating Strigi as a full-text file indexing service, and NEPOMUK with KDE integration.

The release of KDE 4.0 was met with a mixed reception. While early adopters were tolerant of the lack of finish for some of its new features, the release was widely criticised because of a lack of stability and its “beta” quality. Many expected it to be an upgrade of KDE 3.5, when in fact features regressed due to its extensive changes - some of which are still works in progress. The criticism has emerged in spite of the environment being labelled as non-final in distributions such as openSUSE. On the other hand favourable reviews praised KDE 4.0 for its revolutionary changes. By the 4.2 release KDE 4 had nearly approached feature parity with KDE 3.5.[citation needed] The release was generally well received according to Thom Holwerda.

Starting with Qt 4.5, Qt was also made available under the LGPL version 2.1, a major step for KDE adoption in corporate and commercial environments. This allows KDE to better compete with GNOME, Xfce and EDE which use toolkits licensed under the LGPL, because the LGPL permits proprietary/closed source applications to link to libraries licensed under the LGPL.

Organization

Like many free/open source software projects, KDE is primarily a volunteer effort, although various companies, such as Novell (in the form of SuSE), Qt Software, and Mandriva, employ developers to work on the project. Since a large number of individuals contribute to KDE in various ways (e.g. code, translation, artwork), organization of such a project is complex. Most problems are discussed on a number of different mailing lists. Important decisions, such as release dates and inclusion of new applications, are made on the kde-core-devel list by core developers. These are developers who have made significant contributions to KDE over a long period of time. Decisions are made by outcomes of democratic voting procedures. In most cases this seems to work well, and major debates (such as the question of whether the KDE 2 API should be broken in favour of KDE 3) are rare.

The KDE project and related events are frequently sponsored by individuals, universities, and businesses. On 15 October 2006, it was announced that Mark Shuttleworth had become the first patron of KDE, the highest level of sponsorship available. On 2007-07-07, it was announced that Intel Corporation and Novell had also become patrons of KDE.

While developers and users are now located all over the world, the project retains a strong base in Germany. The web servers are located at the universities of Tbingen and Kaiserslautern, a German non-profit organization (KDE e.V.) owns the trademark on KDE and KDE conferences often take place in Germany.

Identity

Konqi, mascot of the KDE project

Kandalf the wizard

Many KDE applications have a K in the name, mostly as an initial letter and capitalized. However, there are notable exceptions like kynaptic, whose K is not capitalized, and Amarok (formerly named amaroK). The K in many KDE applications is obtained by spelling a word which originally begins with C or Q differently, for example Konsole and Kuickshow. Also, some just prefix a commonly used word with a K, for instance KOffice. Among KDE 4 applications and technologies, however, the trend is not to have a K in the name at all, such as Plasma, Phonon and Dolphin.

The KDE…

Laboratory Equipment ,



History

This section may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia’s quality standards. Please improve this section if you can. (August 2007)

The Microdrive was developed and launched in 1999 by IBM with a capacity of 170 MB, which was expanded to 8 GB by 2006. They weigh about 16 g (~1/2 oz), with dimensions of 42.836.45 mm (1.71.4.2 in). These were the smallest hard drives in the world at the time. From 1999 to 2003 they were known as IBM Microdrives, and from 2003 as Hitachi Microdrives, when Hitachi bought IBM’s hard drive division. Microdrive was a registered trademark by IBM and Hitachi for each period.

IBM initially released a 170 MB and 340 MB model. The next year 512 MB and 1 GB models were announced and became available. In December 2002 Hitachi bought IBM’s disk drive business, including the Microdrive technology and brand. By 2003, under Hitachi, bigger 2 GB models came out. Over the years, even larger sizes have become available. There are licensed branded Sony models called Sony Microdrive; these are re-badged Hitachi made models.

Seagate 2.5 GB 1″ CF Driv , cash register used .

In 2004 Seagate launched 2.5 and 5 GB models as well, and tends to refer to them as either 1-inch hard drives, or CompactFlash hard drives due to the trademark issue. In 2005 it launched an 8 GB model as well , tractor tires used .

Recently a Chinese manufacturer called GS Magic started marketing small form factor HDDs for CF; it has, however, been sued by Hitachi for patent infringement of the IBM design (as opposed to Seagate, which used its own technology). These drives are generally cheaper and of lower quality than Hitachi and Seagate drives and have received a plethora of bad reviews.*

A link to the product announcement , but as of yet, The company’s website is down, the US distributor said they went out of business in 02/07, and no mention of the lawsuit or the reviews has been found.

Microdrive models by timeline

Date of release of large sizes.

1999

170 megabyte (IBM MD170/A)

1999

340 megabyte (IBM)

2000

512 megabyte, 1 gigabyte (IBM)

2003

2 gigabytes (Hitachi)

2004

4 gigabytes (Hitachi), 2.5 and 5 gigabytes (Seagate)

2005

6 gigabytes (Hitachi), 8 gigabytes (Seagate)

2006

8 gigabytes (Hitachi), 8 gigabytes (Seagate)

2007

Hitachi alluded to the possible availability of a 20-gigabyte microdrive . As of June 2009, this high-capacity drive is commercially unavailable.

2008

8 gigabytes (Hitachi), 8 gigabytes (Seagate)

Availability

As of 2006 the most commonly-seen microdrives are the smaller sizes, up to 1GB. Larger (2GB to 8GB) drives, such as the 4GB and 6GB Hitachi models, the 5GB and 8GB Seagate models and the 2.2GB Magicstor drive are also available but are often embedded in Pocket hard drives, ‘high end’ mobile phones, music players, and other entertainment devices. Such embedded devices are far more popular than the loosely-sold Microdrives intended as a CompactFlash card alternative.

In USA most electronics shops do not sell separate Microdrives as they may find it economically unviable to stock them due to the fast-moving nature of the market, however they are readily available on several websites. But in most developed Asian cities such as Hong Kong and Japan Tokyo, a 8GB version of the Seagate ST1 are selling at the price (as of second quarter 2006) as low as USD220 in retail shops, and under USD50 on eBay

Applications

IBM 1 GB Microdrive

CF to IDE adaptors and USB card readers enable microdrives to be used in computers, they can then be formatted with any filesystem that the operating system supports such as ext3. It is even possible to run an operating system directly from the Microdrive. Such a system would be rather sluggish for today’s standards but still a viable option for some embedded applications. IDE adaptors are inexpensive because, like the PCMCIA adaptors, they have no integrated circuits.

Some high capacity USB drives are comprised of microdrives with a USB interface; they can often be recognized by a rectangular shape. These devices are sometimes called Pocket hard drives. However there is currently a trend for selling desktop PCs with integrated multi-card readers. If this trend continues this could eliminate the need to integrate them into pocket hard drives with USB connections.

The original JVC Everio camcorders (GZ-MC200/MC100) used 4GB IBM/Hitachi Microdrives as storage instead of the magnetic tape or DVD more commonly seen in products of this type. Current Everio models use the more common 2.5″ HDDs.

Some PDA users use Microdrives to boost the storage capacity of their PDA. The LifeDrive has an integrated 4 gigabyte microdrive as its main selling point.

Microdrives are found in the discontinued iPod mini and Creative Zen Micro mp3 players, among others. Companies making such players order the Microdrives in large quantities, which can mean that it is cheaper to buy an mp3 player with an integrated Microdrive than a separate Microdrive to add to an expandable mp3 player. An example is the Creative MuVo; many of these were bought up by those interested in purchasing a Microdrive and stripped for their Microdrive which was then replaced by a lower capacity CompactFlash card.

When combined with a PCMCIA adaptor and used in a laptop Microdrives can be a viable alternative to USB flash drives purely due to their price. The use of Microdrives over chip-based CF cards is unlikely to make any notable difference to the battery life of the laptop, and any impact that would damage the Microdrive is likely to break other components of the laptop as well. However these devices cannot be used with ordinary desktop PCs unless they are fitted with PCI PCMCIA adaptors or CF card readers.

There are third-party devices intended to let users of the Sony PSP use memory cards other than Memory Sticks. Some claim to be compatible with MicroDrives, and some even come with a MicroDrive in the package. However, while such converters work perfectly for other kinds of flash memory (SD and CompactFlash), it is no longer possible (due to firmware upgrades) to use actual MicroDrives on the PSP. The acceptable timeout delay has been decreased from the first firmware revisions, and as a result loading a game from the hard disk results in a timeout error.

Sometimes when a device with an integrated Microdrive stops working the device is taken apart and stripped of its Microdrive, which is then sold on. Unfortunately, Microdrives taken from such devices may not work in digital cameras. These drives must be accessed using ATA mode, which is not supported in all devices. Such drives, therefore, do not sell for nearly as much as CF-enabled Microdrives.

Devices with integrated microdrives

Apple iPod mini - 4GB and 6GB Hitachi (CF mode disabled)

Creative MuVo - 4GB Hitachi (CF mode disabled in later models)

Creative ZEN Micro - 5GB/6GB Seagate

Creative ZEN MicroPhoto - 4GB/8GB Seagate

Dell Digital Jukebox 5GB Seagate ST1

Hewlett-Packard Photosmart 475 - Unknown (1.5GB available to user)

HTC Athena (Dopod U1000, HTC Advantage, T-Mobile Ameo) - 8GB Unknown (most suggest Hitachi)

iriver H10 - 5GB and 6GB Seagate

Nokia N91 - 4Gb Hitachi

palmOne LifeDrive - 4GB Hitachi

Rio Carbon - Seagate ST1 5GB

Sharp Zaurus Sl-C3000

Sharp Zaurus Sl-C3100

Sharp Zaurus Sl-C3200

Sony NW-A1000 - 6GB Hitachi

TrekStor vibez - 8GB/12GB Cornice Dragon

Olympus M:robe m100 mp3 player

Navman iCN 650 - 2GB Hitachi

Advantages of Microdrives

Until 2006, Microdrives had higher capacity than CompactFlash cards.

Microdrives allow more write cycles, making them suitable for use as swapspace in embedded applications.

Microdrives might be better at handling power loss in the middle of writing. Flash storage always needs to move some old data around while writing, to ensure the flash’s finite write life is consumed equally; if there were a bug in the wear levelling algorithm it could cause data loss if the card were unplugged at the exact wrong time. Data on a magnetic hard drive is modified in place, and hard drive algorithms have many years more experience and testing over Flash.

Disadvantages of Microdrives

Inside a 1-inch Seagate drive

Seagate drive compared to a quarter

As of 2006, Microdrive’s capacity advantages were exceeded by CompactFlash cards(which are the same size and are often compatible with each other), and USB flash drives.

Being mechanical devices they are more sensitive to physical shock and temperature changes than flash memory, though in practice they are very robust and manufacturers have added several features to the more recent models to improve reliability.

A microdrive will generally not survive a 4 foot (1.2 metres) drop onto a hard surface where CF cards can be thrown off high-rise buildings and still function.[citation needed]

Newer Microdrives have a mechanism to hold the heads off the platter while the device is not in use. Early IBM models do not have this - when one gently shakes such a drive one can hear the heads click from side to side.[citation needed]

Microdrives are not as fast as the high-end CompactFlash cards; they generally operate at around 4-6 megabytes per second while high-end CF cards can operate at 45 megabytes per second. This may cause problems for photographers who shoot sequences of large images in rapid succession.

They are not designed to operate at high altitudes (over 10,000 feet), but can be safely used on most commercial…

Consultancy Services On International Trade And Indirect Tax ,



History

Main article: History of operating systems

In the beginning

Proprietary operating systems were made to sell the company’s hardware. Without system software (compilers and operating systems), a budding hardware developer had great difficulty launching a computer; the availability of operating systems not tied to a single hardware supplier - such as Digital Research’s CP/M for microcomputers, and Unix for larger computers - greatly transformed the computer industry; someone with an innovative idea could easily start producing hardware on which buyers could use standard software. In 1969-70, UNIX first appeared on the PDP-7 and later the PDP-11. It soon became capable of providing cross-platform time sharing using preemptive multitasking, advanced memory management, memory protection, and a host of other advanced features. UNIX soon gained popularity as an operating system for mainframes and minicomputers alike. Unix was inspired by Multics, as were several other operating systems, such as Data General’s AOS-VS, and IBM’s addition of such concepts as subdirectories to PC DOS in version 2.0.

Microsoft bought QDOS from Seattle Computer Products, a very simple diskette operating system somewhat similar to CP/M, to create an operating system, PC DOS, for the launch of the IBM PC, under a deal with IBM where Microsoft could still sell the operating system as MS DOS for non-IBM computers. Microsoft produced odd-numbered major version numbers while IBM was responsible for even revision numbers (2.0, 2.1, 4.0, etc) of the code base until version 6. There was very little difference between MS-DOS and PC-DOS, one example being the inclusion of GW-BASIC with MS-DOS (because some BASIC code in IBM PC ROMs was not legally allowed to be put into non-IBM computers). MS-DOS and PC-DOS soon became known simply as “DOS” (the term is now usually taken to also include other “DOSes” such as DR-DOS and FreeDOS, but it should not be confused with the command prompt program within some operating systems, COMMAND.COM). Although MS-DOS could be tailored to hardware significantly different to IBM’s PC, it soon became common for hardware vendors to make their equipment as compatible as possible with the IBM PC and its immediate IBM successors (the PC-XT and later IBM PC-AT models), since many popular DOS programs bypassed the operating system to access hardware directly for speed, requiring other manufactures to closely copy the IBM design, including its limitations. The availability of MS-DOS had two major effects on the computer industry: the commercial acceptability of “sneaky tricks” (as documented, for example, in Ralf Brown’s Interrupt List) to gain speed or functionality or copy-protection, and a market that demanded extreme compatibility (speed and cosmetic differences were the only acceptable innovations) , solar panel used .

IBM PC compatibles could also run Microsoft Xenix, a UNIX-like operating system from the early 1980s. Xenix was heavily marketed by Microsoft as a multi-user alternative to its single user MS-DOS operating system. The CPUs of these personal computers could not facilitate kernel memory protection or provide dual mode operation, so Xenix relied on cooperative multitasking and had no protected memory , lcd used .

The 80286-based IBM PC AT was the first IBM compatible personal computer capable of providing protected memory mode operation. However, this mode was hampered by software bugs in its implementation on the 286, and not widely accepted until the release of the Intel 80386. With the 386 porting BSD Unix to a PC became feasible, and various Unix-like systems (tagged “*nix” at the time), including Linux, arose, but IBM (and, initially, Microsoft) opted for OS/2 from the inception of the PS/2; Microsoft eventually going its own way with Microsoft Windows firstly as a GUI on top of DOS, then as a complete operating system.

Classic Mac OS, and Microsoft Windows 1.0-3.11 supported only cooperative multitasking (Windows 95, 98, & ME supported preemptive multitasking only when running 32-bit applications, but ran legacy 16-bit applications using cooperative multitasking), and were very limited in their abilities to take advantage of protected memory. Application programs running on these operating systems must yield CPU time to the scheduler when they are not using it, either by default, or by calling a function.

Windows NT’s underlying operating system kernel which was designed by essentially the same team as Digital Equipment Corporation’s VMS, a UNIX-like operating system which provided protected mode operation for all user programs, kernel memory protection, preemptive multi-tasking, virtual file system support, and a host of other features.

Classic AmigaOS and versions of Microsoft Windows from Windows 1.0 through Windows Me did not properly track resources allocated by processes at runtime.[citation needed] If a process had to be terminated, the resources might not be freed up for new programs until the machine was restarted.

The AmigaOS did have preemptive multitasking, as did operating systems for many larger (“supermini”) computers that, despite being technically better, were struggling in sales when faced with the mass production of increasingly-faster “Personal” Computers and customers locked into non-portable software (legacy software and proprietary office documents).

Mainframes

Through the 1950s, many major features were pioneered in the field of operating systems. The development of the IBM System/360 produced a family of mainframe computers available in widely differing capacities and price points, for which a single operating system OS/360 was planned (rather than developing ad-hoc programs for every individual model). This concept of a single OS spanning an entire product line was crucial for the success of System/360 and, in fact, IBM`s current mainframe operating systems are distant descendants of this original system; applications written for the OS/360 can still be run on modern machines. In the mid-70’s, the MVS, the descendant of OS/360 offered the first[citation needed] implementation of using RAM as a transparent cache for disk resident data.

OS/360 also pioneered a number of concepts that, in some cases, are still not seen outside of the mainframe arena. For instance, in OS/360, when a program is started, the operating system keeps track of all of the system resources that are used including storage, locks, data files, and so on. When the process is terminated for any reason, all of these resources are re-claimed by the operating system. An alternative CP-67 system started a whole line of operating systems focused on the concept of virtual machines.

Control Data Corporation developed the SCOPE operating system in the 1960s, for batch processing. 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 timesharing use. Like many commercial timesharing systems, its interface was an extension of the Dartmouth BASIC operating systems, one of the pioneering efforts in timesharing and programming languages. In the late 1970s, Control Data and the University of Illinois developed the PLATO operating system, which used plasma panel displays and long-distance time sharing networks. Plato was remarkably innovative for its time, featuring real-time chat, and multi-user graphical games. 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 machine language or assembler, and indeed the MCP was the first OS to be written exclusively in a high-level language ESPOL, a dialect of ALGOL. MCP also introduced many other ground-breaking innovations, such as being the first commercial implementation of virtual memory. During development of the AS400, IBM made an approach to Burroughs to licence MCP to run on the AS400 hardware. This proposal was declined by Burroughs management to protect its existing hardware production. MCP is still in use today in the Unisys ClearPath/MCP line of computers.

UNIVAC, the first commercial computer manufacturer, produced a series of EXEC operating systems. Like all early main-frame systems, this was a batch-oriented system that managed magnetic drums, disks, card readers and line printers. In the 1970s, UNIVAC produced the Real-Time Basic (RTB) system to support large-scale time sharing, also patterned after the Dartmouth BASIC system.

General Electric and MIT developed General Electric Comprehensive Operating Supervisor (GECOS), which introduced the concept of ringed security privilege levels. After acquisition by Honeywell it was renamed to General Comprehensive Operating System (GCOS).

Digital Equipment Corporation developed many operating systems for its various computer lines, including TOPS-10 and TOPS-20 time sharing systems for the 36-bit PDP-10 class systems. Prior to the widespread use of UNIX, TOPS-10 was a particularly popular system in universities, and in the early ARPANET community.

In the late 1960s through the late 1970s, several hardware capabilities evolved that allowed similar or ported software to run on more than one system. Early systems had utilized microprogramming to implement features on their systems in order to permit different underlying architecture to appear to be the same as others in a series. In fact most 360’s after the 360/40 (except the 360/165 and 360/168) were microprogrammed implementations. But soon other means of achieving application compatibility were proven to be more significant.

The enormous investment in software for these systems made…