Pauline Browes  (born May 7, 1938) is a former Canadian politician. She was a Member of Parliament between 1984 and 1993.

An educator by training, Browes was first elected to the House of Commons of Canada as the Progressive Conservative Member of Parliament for the riding of Scarborough Centre in the 1984 federal election. The PCs, led by Brian Mulroney, won power with the largest majority government in Canadian history.

She served as parliamentary secretary to the Minister of the Environment from 1986 to 1989, and as parliamentary secretary to both the Secretary of State for Canada and the Minister of State for multiculturalism and citizenship from 1989 until 1991. In that year, Mulroney appointed her Minister of State for the Environment.

In January 1993, she was moved to the position of Minister of State for Employment and Immigration. When Kim Campbell succeeded Mulroney as PC leader and Prime Minister of Canada in June 1993, she promoted Browes to Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development. However, in the subsequent 1993 federal election, the Campbell government was defeated and Browes lost her seat.

During the 1995 Ontario provincial election, she served as a special advisor to the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario election campaign won by Mike Harris, who became Premier of Ontario. Harris subsequently appointed her Vice Chair of the Ontario Environmental Review Tribunal.

On April 20, 2005, the National Post reported that Browes had been recruited by the Conservative Party of Canada as one of their star candidates in the 2006 federal election. She ran in the riding of Scarborough—Guildwood, coming second to Liberal incumbent John McKay with 11,790 votes (28.7%).

She currently sits on the Joint Political Advisory Committee of the North American trilateral Commission for Environmental Cooperation.

She is the daughter of former Member of Parliament, Earle Drope.

References

External links

1938 births
Living people
Members of the 24th Canadian Ministry
Members of the 25th Canadian Ministry
Members of the House of Commons of Canada from Ontario
Progressive Conservative Party of Canada MPs
Members of the King's Privy Council for Canada
Canadian Ministers of Indian Affairs and Northern Development
Women members of the House of Commons of Canada
Women in Ontario politics
Canadian Anglicans
York University alumni
People from Northumberland County, Ontario
Women government ministers of Canada
20th-century Canadian women politicians

Pauline Browes


Grzegorz Rozenberg (born 14 March 1942, Warsaw) is a Polish and Dutch computer scientist.

His primary research areas are natural computing,
formal language and automata theory, graph transformations, and concurrent systems.
He is referred to as the guru of natural computing, as he was promoting the vision of natural computing as a coherent scientific discipline already in the 1970s, gave this discipline its current name, and defined its scope.

His research career spans over forty five years. He is a professor at the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science of Leiden University, The Netherlands and adjoint professor at the department of computer science, University of Colorado at Boulder, USA. Rozenberg is also a performing magician, with the artist name Bolgani and specializing in close-up illusions. He is the father of well-known Dutch artist Dadara.

Education and career

Rozenberg received his Master and Engineer degrees in computer science from the Warsaw University of Technology in Warsaw, Poland. He obtained a Ph.D. in mathematics from the Polish Academy of Sciences also in Warsaw in 1968.
Since then he has held full-time positions at the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland (assistant professor), Utrecht University, The Netherlands (assistant professor), State University of New York at Buffalo, USA (associate professor), and University of Antwerp (UIA), Belgium (professor). Since 1979 he has been a professor of computer science at Leiden University, The Netherlands and adjoint professor at the Department of Computer Science of University of Colorado at Boulder, US.

Publications and editorial functions

Rozenberg has authored over 500 papers, 6 books, and (co-)edited over 100 books and special issues of scientific journals.

He was also a (co-)editor of four handbooks: "Handbook of Formal Languages" (3 volumes, Springer-Verlag), "Handbook of Graph Grammars and Computing by Graph Transformation", "Handbook of Membrane Computing" (Oxford University Press), and the "Handbook of Natural Computing" (4 volumes, Springer-Verlag).

He is on the editorial/advisory board of about 20 journals, and is the editor-in-chief and either the founder or a co-founder of the following journals and book series: International Journal on Natural Computing (Springer-Verlag), Theoretical Computer Science C: Theory of Natural Computing (Elsevier), Monographs in Theoretical Computer Science (Springer-Verlag), Texts in Theoretical Computer Science (Springer-Verlag), and Natural Computing book Series (Springer-Verlag).

Functions in the academic community

G. Rozenberg either founded or co-founded and/or was the chair of the following conferences: International Conference on Developments in Language Theory, International Conference on Graph Transformation, International Conference on Unconventional Computation, International Conference on Theory and Applications of Petri Nets, and the International Meeting on DNA Computing.

Rozenberg was president of the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science from 1985 to 1994 (the longest term in that position)  and the editor of the Bulletin of the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science from 1980 until 2003.
He also was the president of the International Society for Nanoscale Science, Computation and Engineering, the director of European Molecular Computing Consortium, and the chair of European Educational Forum.

Awards and recognition

G. Rozenberg is a Foreign Member of the Finnish Academy of Sciences and Letters, a member of Academia Europaea, and the holder of Honorary Doctorates of the University of Turku, Finland, the Technical University of Berlin, Germany, the University of Bologna, Italy, the Swedish University Åbo Akademi in Turku, Finland, and the Warsaw University of Technology, Poland. He has received the Distinguished Achievements Award of the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science "in recognition of his outstanding scientific contributions to theoretical computer science". He is an ISI highly cited researcher.

Several books and special issues of scientific journals have been dedicated to G. Rozenberg.
Also an annual award granted by International Society for Nanoscale Science, Computation, and Engineering was named after G. Rozenberg. It is called Rozenberg Tulip Award and it is awarded for outstanding achievements in the field of Biomolecular Computing and Molecular Programming.

In 2017, Grzegorz Rozenberg has been appointed Knight in the Order of the Netherlands Lion.

References

External links
Home page of Grzegorz Rozenberg .

1942 births
Living people
Dutch computer scientists
Academic staff of Leiden University
Members of Academia Europaea
Polish mathematicians
Polish computer scientists
Academic staff of the University of Antwerp
Warsaw University of Technology alumni
Members of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters

Grzegorz Rozenberg


Joseph Joachim Raff (27 May 182224 or 25 June 1882) was a German-Swiss composer, pedagogue and pianist.

Biography
Raff was born in Lachen in Switzerland. His father, a teacher, had fled there from Württemberg in 1810 to escape forced recruitment into the military of that southwestern German state  that had to fight for Napoleon in Russia. Joachim was largely self-taught in music, studying the subject while working as a schoolmaster in Schmerikon, Schwyz and Rapperswil. He sent some of his piano compositions to Felix Mendelssohn who recommended them to Breitkopf & Härtel for publication. They were published in 1844 and received a favourable review in Robert Schumann's journal, the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, which prompted Raff to go to Zürich and take up composition full-time.

In 1845, Raff walked to Basel to hear Franz Liszt play the piano. After a period in Stuttgart where he became friends with the conductor Hans von Bülow, he worked as Liszt's assistant at Weimar from 1850 to 1853. During this time he helped Liszt in the orchestration of several of his works, claiming to have had a major part in orchestrating the symphonic poem Tasso. In 1851, Raff's opera König Alfred was staged in Weimar, and five years later he moved to Wiesbaden where he largely devoted himself to composition. From 1878 he was the first Director of, and a teacher at, the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt. There he employed Clara Schumann and a number of other eminent musicians as teachers, and established a class specifically for female composers. (This was at a time when women composers were not taken seriously.) His pupils there included Edward MacDowell and Alexander Ritter.

He died in Frankfurt on the night of June 24/25, 1882. His tomb is in Frankfurt Main Cemetery.

Compositions

Raff was very prolific, and by the end of his life was one of the best known German composers, though his work is largely forgotten today. (Only one piece, a cavatina for violin and piano, is performed with any regularity today, sometimes as an encore.) He drew influence from a variety of sources - his eleven symphonies, for example, combine the Classical symphonic form, with the Romantic penchant for program music and contrapuntal orchestral writing which harks back to the Baroque. Most of these symphonies carry descriptive titles including In the Forest (No. 3), Lenore (No. 5) and To the Fatherland (No. 1), a very large-scale work lasting around seventy minutes. His last four symphonies make up a quartet of works based on the four seasons. A complete cycle of all his symphonies and many other orchestral works was recorded in the early 2000s by the Bamberg Symphony under Hans Stadlmair.

Raff's Symphony No. 3 "In the Forest" was enthusiastically received by the audience at that time, spread quickly to England and America and was one of the most played orchestral pieces in the world at the end of the 19th century. It fell into oblivion together with Raff himself, but influenced many later romantic composers including Tchaikovsky in his famous "Pathétique" for example. Arturo Toscanini conducted some performances of the symphony in 1931.

The Lenore symphony (No. 5), famous in its time, was inspired by a ballad of the same name by Gottfried August Bürger that also inspired works by several other composers, including Maria Theresia von Paradis (1789), Henri Duparc, Franz Liszt  (late 1850s, mentioned by Alan Walker in his Liszt biography vol. 2), for example. The world premiere recording of Lenore was made in 1970 by the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Bernard Herrmann, who championed Raff's orchestral music.  He described it as "one of the finest examples of the Romantic Programme School - it deserves a place alongside the Symphonie fantastique of Berlioz, Liszt's Faust Symphony and the Manfred Symphony of Tchaikovsky".

Richard Strauss was a pupil of Hans von Bülow, a friend of Raff's, and it has been said that Strauss was influenced in his early works by Raff.  For example, Raff's Symphony No. 7 In the Alps (1877) could be compared with Strauss's An Alpine Symphony (1915).  Much of Raff's music has been said to forecast the early works of Jean Sibelius.

Raff also composed in most other genres, including concertos, opera, chamber music and works for solo piano.  His chamber works include five violin sonatas, a cello sonata, a piano quintet, two piano quartets, a string sextet and four piano trios. Many of these works are now commercially recorded.  He also wrote numerous suites, some for smaller groups (there are suites for piano solo and suites for string quartet), some for orchestra and one each for piano and orchestra and violin and orchestra.

Works

Raff's works include:

Symphonies
 Große Symphonie, WoO. 18 (before 1860; lost, scherzo and finale included in the Orchestral Suite No. 1, Op. 101)
 Symphony No. 1 in D major, Op. 96 "An das Vaterland" (1859–61)
 Symphony No. 2 in C major, Op. 140 (1866)
 Symphony No. 3 in F major, Op. 153 "Im Walde" (1869)
 Symphony No. 4 in G minor, Op. 167 (1871)
 Symphony No. 5 in E major, Op. 177 "Lenore" (1870–72)
 Symphony No. 6 in D minor, Op. 189 "Gelebt, Gestrebt, Gelitten, Gestritten, Gestorben, Umworben" (1874)
 Symphony No. 7 in B-flat major, Op. 201 "In den Alpen" (1875)
 Symphony No. 8 in A major, Op. 205 "Frühlingsklänge" (1876)
 Symphony No. 9 in E minor, Op. 208 "Im Sommer" (1878)
 Symphony No. 10 in F minor, Op. 213 "Zur Herbstzeit" (1879)
 Symphony No. 11 in A minor, Op. 214 "Der Winter" (1876, unfinished; completed by Max Erdmannsdörfer)

Concertos
Konzertstück "La Fée d'amour", for violin and orchestra Op. 67 (1854)
Konzertstück "Ode au printemps" in G major, for piano and orchestra, Op. 76 (1857)
Violin Concerto No. 1, Op. 161 (1870–71)
Suite for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 180 (1873)
Piano Concerto in C minor, Op. 185 (1873)
Cello Concerto No. 1, Op. 193 (1874)
Suite for Piano and Orchestra in E-flat, Op. 200 (1875)
Cello Concerto No. 2, WoO. 45 (1876)
Violin Concerto No. 2, Op. 206 (1877)

Orchestral suites
Suite for Orchestra No. 1, Op. 101 (1863)
Italian Suite for Orchestra in E minor, WoO. 35 (1871)
Suite for Orchestra No. 2 in F major "In ungarischer Weise", Op. 194 (1874)
Suite for Orchestra Aus Thüringen, WoO. 46 (1877)

Opera
 König Alfred, heroic opera in four acts (Weimar, 9 March 1851)
 Samson, musical drama in five acts (Weimar, 11 March 2022)
 Dame Kobold, comic opera in three acts (Weimar, 1870)
 Die Parole, comic opera in three acts (not performed)
 Benedetto Marcello, lyric opera in three acts, loosely on the life of the composer Benedetto Marcello (first concert performance, Metzingen 2002)
 Die Eifersüchtigen, opera in three acts (Arth (CH), 3 September 2022)

Other orchestral works
 Orchestral pieces, Op. 85
 Jubilee overture, Op. 103 (1864)
 Festival overture, Op. 117 1864)
 Concert overture, Op. 123 (1862)
 Eine feste Burg ist unser Gott, Ouvertüre zu einem Drama aus dem Dreißigjährigen Krieg (A mighty fortress is our God", Overture to a drama about the Thirty Years' War), Op. 127 (1854; revised 1865)
 Rhapsody for Orchestra "Abends", Op. 163b
 Festival March, Op. 139
 Sinfonietta, Op. 188
 Elegy for Orchestra, WoO. 48
 Orchestral Prelude to Shakespeare's "The Tempest", WoO. 50
 Orchestral Prelude to Shakespeare's "Macbeth", WoO. 51
 Orchestral Prelude to Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet", WoO. 52
 Orchestral Prelude to Shakespeare's "Othello", WoO. 53
 Grand Fugue for Orchestra, WoO. 57
 Overture to Benedetto Marcello
 Overture to Dame Kobold, Op. 154
 Overture to Die Parole
 Orchestration of Bach's Chaconne from Violin Partita No. 2

Chamber music
String Quartet No. 1, Op. 77
String Quartet No. 2, Op. 90
Suite in D minor for solo piano Op. 91
Piano Trio No. 1, Op. 102
Piano Quintet, Op. 107
Piano Trio No. 2, Op. 112
String Quartet No. 3, Op. 135
String Quartet No. 4, Op. 136
String Quartet No. 5, Op. 137
Piano Trio No. 3, Op. 155
Piano Trio No. 4, Op. 158
String Octet, Op. 176
String Sextet, Op. 178
Sinfonietta for 10 Wind Instruments, Op. 188 (2fl, 2ob, 2cl, 2bn, 2hn)
String Quartet No. 6, Op. 192 No. 1 "Suite in Ancient Style"
String Quartet No. 7, Op. 192 No. 2 "The Maid of the Mill" [Die Schöne Müllerin]
String Quartet No. 8, Op. 192 No. 3 "Suite in Canon Form"
Piano Quartet No. 1, Op. 202 No. 1
Piano Quartet No. 2, Op. 202 No. 2
Fantasy for Piano Quintet, Op. 207a

References
Notes

External links

An encyclopedic site devoted to Raff's works, with reviews, sound clips, and discussion forums Raff.org
 Sound-bites from String Quartet Nos.1 & 7, String Octet, and Piano Trio Nos.3 & 4

Sheet music

1822 births
1882 deaths
19th-century classical composers
19th-century classical pianists
19th-century German composers
19th-century German male musicians
Burials at Frankfurt Main Cemetery
Composers for piano
German classical pianists
German male classical composers
German male classical pianists
German opera composers
German Romantic composers
Academic staff of Hoch Conservatory
String quartet composers
Honorary Members of the Royal Philharmonic Society
Male opera composers
Oratorio composers
People from Rapperswil-Jona
Swiss classical composers
Swiss classical pianists

Joachim Raff


The Ranoidea are a superfamily of frogs in the order Anura. These frogs have a fused pectoral girdle bone in their chests, no ribs, and the males hold on to the female with an axillary grip during mating. The tadpoles have a single spiracle on the left side and complex mouthparts. Some species do not have tadpoles, and small frogs grow straight from eggs. Scientists disagree about exactly which frogs should be placed in which family and on exactly where Ranoidea belongs among groups of amphibians.  Amphibian scientists often change their minds about exactly which frogs are related to each other and how closely, usually when someone finds new information (Glaw,Vences, 2001).

This superfamily contains seventeen different families, each containing at least 2 species (some contain over 300 different species).

Families
These families are copied from  and

Ranixalidae
The family of Ranixalidae (Leaping Frogs) has one genus containing 10 different species. They live in central and southern India. They live in leaf litter and in tropical deciduous forests, near streams and can be found between 200 m and 1100 m above sea level.

Mantellidae
The family of Mantellidae (Malagasy Poison Frogs) has 3 different genera with 191 species total. They live in Madagascar and Mayotte Island. They are both terrestrial and tree frogs and live between 800 and 1000 m above sea level.

Rhacophoridae
The family of Rhacophoridae (Afroasian Tree Frogs) has two subfamilies, 14 genera, and a total of 321 species. They live in Sub-Saharan Africa, Madagascar, and South Asia. They are mainly tree frogs.

Pyxicephalidae
The family of Pyxicephalidae (African Bullfrogs) has two subfamilies, 13 genera, and 68 total species. They live in Sub-Saharan Africa. The two subfamilies are completely different. Cacosternine frogs are small and slender and live on the ground or in and out of water. Pyxicephaline frogs are large bullfrog-like frogs with thick bodies and fanglike bones on their lower jaws, used to smash their prey.

Petropedetidae
The family of Petropedetidae (African Water Frogs and Goliath Frog) has two genera with a total of 18 different species. They live in Sub-Saharan Africa. This family contains the world's largest living frog, the Conraua goliath.

Ptychadenidae
The family of Ptychadenidae (Grassland Frogs) has 3 genera with a total of 53 different species. They live in sub-Saharan Africa. They live in grasslands and savannas. They have slender bodies with long arms and legs.

Ceratobatrachidae
The family of Ceratobatrachidae (Triangle Frogs) has 5 genera with a total of 84 different species. They live in Malaysia, the Philippines, Borneo, New Guinea, and the Solomon Islands. Most have very angular bodies and are small to medium-sized. They live in the forests.

Brevicipitidae
The family of Brevicipitidae (Rain frogs) has 5 genera with 31 total species. They live in the southeast corner of Africa. They are typically small with round shaped bodies, which become even more round when they are disturbed because they inflate themselves.

References

Frogs
Taxonomy

Ranoidea


Adolph IX, Count of Holstein-Kiel, also known as Adolph VII, ( – 26 January 1390) was count of Holstein-Kiel and Holstein-Plön from 1359 until his death.

Life
His parents were John III "the Mild" ( – 27 September 1359) and Catherine (died 1327), the daughter of Duke Henry III of Glogów and the widow of Margrave John V of Brandenburg (1302–1317). In December 1362, Adolph IX married Anna of Mecklenburg-Schwerin (1343–1415), the daughter of Albert II, Duke of Mecklenburg.

Adolph's reign was mostly peaceful. In 1375, Prince-Archbishop Albert II of Bremen mortgaged the Haseldorf Marsh to him. The prince-archbishop of Bremen later failed to redeem the mortgage, and the Haseldorf Marsh has been part of Holstein ever since.

Adolph IX died without an heir on 26 January 1390. After his death, Count Nicholas of Holstein-Rendsburg and his nephews occupied Holstein-Kiel and Holstein-Plön. The Counts of the Holstein-Pinneberg branch of the House of Schauenburg objected and demanded a share of the inheritance. The dispute was settled amicably, with the counts in Pinneberg receiving monetary compensation, plus the district of Nienland (consisting of Neuland and the Lordship of Herzhorn) and some land along the Elbe. The Counts of Holstein-Rendsburg and Holstein-Pinneburg also concluded a treaty of mutual inheritance: if one line were to die out, the other would inherit all their possessions and hereditary fiefs.

Ancestors

References

Footnotes

Counts of Holstein
House of Schauenburg
1320s births
1390 deaths
Year of birth uncertain

Adolph IX, Count of Holstein-Kiel


Plitt Theaters was a major movie theater chain in the United States. It was originally the theater division of Paramount Pictures. This included a number of theater circuits acquired by Paramount, notably Balaban and Katz. In the late 1930s the United States government filed an antitrust lawsuit against five Movie studios. As a result Paramount was required to split off their theater chain.

On December 31, 1949, the theater business was spun off into an independent company called United Paramount Theaters (UPT). It was headed by Leonard Goldenson. In 1953 UPT purchased the American Broadcasting Company (ABC). This provided ABC's television network with a source of cash flow that allowed it to survive and eventually become competitive. The new company was named American Broadcasting-Paramount Theaters. In 1965 the corporation was renamed American Broadcasting Companies, Inc. The theater chain was renamed ABC Theaters. In 1974 ABC sold its movie theaters in the Midwest (a division called ABC Great States) to one of its executives, Henry Plitt, doing business as Plitt Theaters. Plitt subsequently bought the ABC Southern theater operations in 1978. In 1985, Plitt Theaters was sold to Cineplex Odeon Corporation.

Notes

References

Theatres in the United States
Defunct companies of the United States

Plitt Theatres


The Pali-Aike National Park is a park located in the Magallanes Region of Patagonia in Chile. Pali-Aike is a Tehuelche name that means Desolate Place. Created in 1970, it covers an area of  and includes part of the Pali-Aike Volcanic Field. The park draws its name from a prominent volcanic cone known as the Pali Aike Crater.

It includes native flora and fauna, with some species being exclusive to the region, not being found anywhere else in the world. The park has many rocky formations covered in 1000 year old lava.

Archaeology
Human crania from early prehistoric occupation have been recovered from a cave at the Pali Aike Crater.

This archaeological site goes back to the Paleo-Indian period. The stone tools from the cave are dated to around 11,000 years BP, and are among the oldest in South America.

Pali Aike cave has strong similarities to Fell's cave, located in the vicinity outside the reserve.

Three cremated human skeletons have been discovered here. The site was discovered and studied in the 1930s by Junius Bird. It represents a temporary encampment of early hunters. Pleistocene fauna remains have also been discovered.

These early peoples used the type of darts known as 'fluted fishtail points'.

Different kinds of other tools have also been found at the cave, among them cylindrical stones which seem to have had a ceremonial use. The stratigraphy of these sites goes back 8,600 to 11,000 years ago.

Petroglyphs and rock carvings have also been found in the area. Weathered volcanic rocks from the Pali-Aike volcanic field were used as red pigments.

These peoples hunted the mylodon (Mylodon listai), the American horse (Parahipparion saldasi), guanaco, fox, puma, birds, rodents, and also gathered ostrich eggs.

They used little or no marine products, despite being relatively close to the sea.

In 1998, the Pali Aike and Fell's Caves were jointly proposed to UNESCO as World Heritage Sites.

Gallery

See also
 Cueva Fell
 Lago Ana

Notes

References
 Teresa Moreno and Wes Gibbons (2007) The Geology of Chile, Geological Society of London, 414 pages
 George Wisner: In the footsteps of Junius Bird, Part I: Bird the person. Mammoth Trumpet 23(4), 2008, pp. 17–20.

External links

Archaeological sites in Chile
National parks of Chile
Protected areas of Magallanes Region
Protected areas established in 1970
1970 establishments in Chile

Pali-Aike National Park


Maharajapuram Santhanam, (20 May 1928 – 24 June 1992) was an Indian Carnatic music vocalist. He was awarded the Madras Music Academy's Sangeetha Kalanidhi in 1989. He was born in Sirunangur, a village in the state of Tamil Nadu. He followed the footsteps of his father Maharajapuram Viswanatha Iyer who was also a renowned Carnatic vocalist.

Career
Besides studying with his father, he was also a disciple of Melattur Sama Dikshitar. Maharajapuram Santhanam was also a distinguished composer. He wrote many songs on Lord Murugan and Kanchi Shankaracharya, Sri Chandrasekarendra Saraswati Swamigal (Maha Periyavar). He was the principal of Ramanathan College in Sri Lanka. Later he came and settled in Chennai. The songs which were popularised by Maharajapuram Santhanam are,"Bho Shambo" (Revati), "Madhura Madhura" (Bagheshri), both composed by Swami Dayananda Saraswati, "Unnai Allal" (Kalyani Raga), "Sadha Nin Padhame gathi, Varam onnru" (Shanmukhapriya), "Srichakra Raja" (Ragamalika), "Nalinakaanthimathim" (Ragamalika),"Ksheerabdi kannike" (Ragamalika), "Thillana (Revathy)" among others. The Maharajapuram Santhanam Day is celebrated on 3 December every year.

He died in a car accident near Chennai on 24 June 1992, which also killed a few other members of his family. His sons Maharajapuram S. Srinivasan, Maharajapuram S. Ramachandran, and his primary disciple Dr. R. Ganesh are now carrying on his musical tradition. His other most popular songs are Purandaradasa kritis: "Narayana ninna" (Shuddha Dhanyasi) and "Govinda ninna".  His rendition of "Vilayada ithu nerama muruga" was without parallel.  His renditions were full of Bhakthi.

In Chennai, Griffith Road in T.Nagar was renamed as 'Maharajapuram Santhanam Salai' in honor of Maharajapuram Santhanam. The street has the famous Krishna Gana Sabha and Muppathamman Temple.

Awards and titles
 Padma Shri - 1990
 Sangeetha Kalanidhi from the Madras Music Academy - 1989
 Sangeet Natak Akademi award - 1984
 Kalaimamani award by Tamil Nadu Government
 "Sangeetha Sudhakara" by the Yoga vedanta University at Rishikesh
 "Gana Kalanidhi" by Sri Chandrasekhara Bharati of Sringeri Sharada Peetha
 "Sangitha Sagaramritha Varshi" by Jayendra Saraswathi of Kanchi Kamakoti Peetham.
 A former "Asthana Vidwan" of the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams, Kanchi Kamakoti Peetham, Pittsburgh Venkatachalapathi Temple and the Ganapathi Sachidananda Ashrama

References

4.  ^ Maharajapuram Santhanam A Life of Music

External links
Maharajapuram musical family

1928 births
1992 deaths
Male Carnatic singers
Carnatic singers
Carnatic composers
Road incident deaths in India
20th-century Indian male classical singers
20th-century Indian composers
Indian male composers
Musicians from Tamil Nadu
Recipients of the Padma Shri in arts
Recipients of the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award

Maharajapuram Santhanam


Thomas Lewis Brittain (born near Chester, England, 1744; died at Hartpury Court, Hartpury, Gloucestershire 1827) was an English Dominican.

Life

Brittain's parents were Protestants, but at the age of sixteen Thomas became a Catholic. Shortly after his conversion he went to Picardy to pursue his studies, and later joined the Dominicans at Bornheim, near Antwerp, where he made his profession 22 October 1767. Brittain's studies were continued at the Catholic University of Leuven, and subsequently he taught at Bornheim, where he was made regent of studies. In 1790 the doctor's cap, with title of Master of Sacred Theology, was conferred on him.

The same year Brittain was transferred to Brussels where he became director of the exiled English Dominican nuns, an office he held for thirty-seven years. In 1794, when the French army was expected at Brussels, Father Brittain led the sisters to Bornheim; joined by eighteen Dominican fathers, they were then conducted by an American captain to England. Father Brittain secured a foundation for the sisters at Hartpury Court near Gloucester.

On 3 May 1814, Brittain was elected provincial of the Dominicans, an office he held for four years.

Works

He is the author of the following works:

"Rudiments of English Grammar" (London, 1790), considered authoritative in its day and recommended by Walker, the lexicographer;
"Principles of the Christian religion and Catholic Faith Investigated" (London, 1790);
"Collection of Poems Occasionally Written" (Cheltenham, 1822);
"The Divinity of Jesus Christ and beauties of His Gospels" (London, 1822);
unpublished manuscripts in the archives of the English province.

References

Attribution
 The entry cites:
Joseph Gillow, Bibl. Dict. of Eng. Cath., s.v.
C. F. Raymund Palmer, The Life of Cardinal Howard (London, 1867)

1744 births
1827 deaths
English Dominicans
18th-century English Roman Catholic priests
19th-century English Roman Catholic priests
People from Chester
People from Hartpury

Thomas Lewis Brittain


"White Bear" is the second episode of the second series of the British science fiction anthology series Black Mirror. It was written by the series creator and showrunner Charlie Brooker and directed by Carl Tibbetts. The episode follows Victoria (Lenora Crichlow), a woman who does not remember who she is, and wakes up in a place where almost everybody is controlled by a television signal. Along with some of the few other unaffected people (Michael Smiley and Tuppence Middleton), she must stop the "White Bear" transmitter while surviving merciless pursuers.

Brooker originally wrote the episode in an apocalyptic setting, but when the script was about to be filmed at a former Royal Air Force base, he changed it because of a fence he saw there. He rewrote the story in two days, removing some details he considered useful for a sequel story. The main change was the addition of a plot twist at the end of the script, which was noted as the most impressive aspect of the episode by several reviewers.

The episode, first aired on Channel 4 on 18 February 2013, was watched by 1.2 million viewers and was very well received by critics, particularly for its writing and Middleton's performance. The story draws parallels with real murder cases, primarily the 1960s Moors murders, in which five children were killed. Its horror aspects have been said to be reminiscent of the 1970s film The Wicker Man and the video game Manhunt, while some similarities with The Twilight Zone have also been noted. This dystopian episode reflects upon several aspects of contemporary society, such as media coverage of murders, technology's effects on people's empathy, desensitisation, violence as entertainment, vigilantism, the concept of justice and punishment, and the nature of reality.

Plot
A woman (Lenora Crichlow) wakes up with amnesia, in a house where television screens are showing an unknown symbol. Turning the screens off, she finds photos of herself and a man (Nick Ofield), along with one of a small girl (Imani Jackman) which she takes with her. She leaves the house and pleads for help, but people ignore her while recording her on their phones. When a masked man opens fire at her with a shotgun, she flees and meets Jem (Tuppence Middleton). Jem explains that the symbol began appearing on television and mobile phone screens, turning most people into passive voyeurs. The woman and Jem are unaffected, but they are also a target for the "hunters", unaffected humans who act sadistically. Jem plans to reach a transmitter at "White Bear" to destroy it.

As they travel, Baxter (Michael Smiley), a man who also seems unaffected, picks them up. He turns out to be another hunter, and holds them at gunpoint in a forest, where he tries to torture the woman, but Jem kills Baxter first. They continue travelling to the transmitter; when they reach it, two hunters attack them. The woman wrestles a shotgun away from a hunter and fires at her attacker, but the gun only sprays confetti. Walls open to reveal a seated audience; and that everything was staged, and Baxter is not only alive, but the event's master of ceremonies.

The woman is strapped to a chair and informed that her name is Victoria Skillane, and that the girl in the photograph is Jemima Sykes, whom Victoria and her fiancé, Iain Rannoch, had abducted and murdered, filming the crime. After the pair were arrested, Iain committed suicide in his cell, while Victoria was sentenced to undergo daily psychological punishment at the present facility, which is called White Bear Justice Park after a white teddy bear that Jemima owned.

Victoria is driven back to the compound past an outraged crowd and returned to where she awoke. As she is shown her own videotaped footage of Jemima prior to her murder, Baxter places electrodes on her head, simultaneously torturing her and wiping her memory of the day's events so that she will live the same day repeatedly as part of her punishment. Interspersed between the end credits, the next day's events are seen from the point of view of the park's staff, and its visitors who play the voyeurs.

Production
Series creator Charlie Brooker came up with the idea while working on the 2008 zombie horror serial Dead Set. During filming, Riz Ahmed's character was being chased by zombies; some schoolchildren noticed the production and began watching, taking pictures on their phones. Brooker considered it to be "an interesting and frightening image, because they're standing there, not intervening". Brooker converted it to a script for Dead Set, in which a photograph goes viral on social media and "unlock[s] this primal urge for people to be voyeurs of agony". Although the idea was given the green light, they did not have the budget to do it.

The first conception of the episode was as "a straightforward apocalypse story", featuring a female journalist and taking inspiration from the 1967 science fiction horror film Quatermass and the Pit. The signal would have affected people all over the world, turning 90% of them into voyeurs and the rest into mad people who attacked each other; its source was never explained. It was to end with a public crucifixion.

The second version opened with a patient speaking to their psychiatrist about their nightmares and a recent urge to commit violence. The patient draws a glyph from their dreams, and the psychiatrist files it along with identical symbols drawn by her other patients. This glyph resembles an upside-down "Y" and was created by Brooker after much experimentation; it is the one used in the final episode. This draft had the character Baxter in it and resembled the 1973 horror film The Wicker Man. Executive producer Annabel Jones noted that the theme had shifted more towards voyeurism. By this point, director Carl Tibbetts was involved with the project.

After working on the other series two episodes "Be Right Back" and "The Waldo Moment", the latter of which was in production, there was little of the budget remaining for "White Bear". Filming was limited to a military base at RAF Daws Hill in southeast England, which was formerly a United States Air Force base. The base contained an abandoned housing estate and buildings that could be repurposed to look like shops and garages. The base was surrounded by chicken wire and Brooker considered that the fence could be there because the events of the episode were not real. Brooker believed that the public would watch certain people be tortured for such as Jimmy Savile, against whom hundreds of sexual abuse allegations have been made, or Myra Hindley, a serial killer who committed the Moors murders with her boyfriend, Ian Brady.

Brooker then rewrote the script in two days "in a bit of a fever dream". He noted that he had never changed a script so dramatically so late in the production process, and that this is the first major plot twist in a Black Mirror episode. Brooker considered making Victoria innocent, but settled on making her unknowingly guilty. Lenora Crichlow had already been cast as Victoria prior to the rewrite.

Prior to the twist, the episode is shown from Victoria's perspective. According to Tibbetts, handheld cameras were used to make the episode "very intense and personal" and to make the viewer identify with Victoria. Contrastingly, in the end credits scenes filming is "still and static" to resemble an observer's perspective. Flashback scenes were balanced to avoid giving away too much information before the twist. The scene in which Victoria is driven through the crowd was cut shorter in the final edit and many of the crowd members were added digitally. Brooker had the idea during editing of displaying Victoria's next day at the park during the credits. The episode is 42 minutes long, slightly shorter than Channel 4's standard of 45–48 minutes for an hour-long episode.

The episode's soundtrack was composed by Jon Opstad. The score is mostly electronic. To give a different character to the music played as Victoria lives her next day in the theme park, Opstad added acoustic elements, but feeling that this did not fit with the universe he used pizzicato cello music and overlaid "spidery" atonal lines.

Brooker had other ideas that were removed from the original script because they would be complicated to do. He said he could use these ideas in a sequel story which would involve the main character finding messages that she had left for herself on previous days as the process of erasing her mind starts not to function. However, as the location for the episode no longer exists, he felt it would be more practical to create a graphic novel instead of recreating the scenario.

Cultural references
Many reviewers identified an allusion to the Moors murders, committed by Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, a British couple who killed children in the 1960s. The A.V. Club David Sims emphasised the similarities between Victoria's video recording and the fact that Hindley audio-taped the torture of one of her and Brady's victims.

The influence of horror works was highlighted by critics and Brooker himself. Lambie found aspects of the forest scene reminiscent of 1970s exploitation films. He also felt there are several visual and thematic parallels to The Wicker Man and Kill List. Morgan Jeffery of Digital Spy agreed it is reminiscent of zombies and slasher films "and even has that unsettling Wicker Man feel with its notion of 'society gone wrong'." Brooker commented it is indeed "a Wicker Man–style horror", and Tibbetts commented that the film was "a big touchstone" for him. Because they have similar concepts, 28 Days Later and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre were also mentioned by reviewers as possible influences. Paul Brian McCoy of Comics Bulletin stated it "recalls any number of zombie apocalypse dramas, including Brooker's own Dead Set at times" and The Signal. While Brooker said the hunters' design was inspired by the horror video game Manhunt, McCoy felt its opening echoed another game, Resident Evil.

The Twilight Zone has been seen as an influence by some reviewers. Jeffery commented that Black Mirrors "roots in" the American anthology series "have never been more visible", while Sims noted that "White Bear" is "the most Twilight Zone-y episode of the show", and James Hibberd of Entertainment Weekly said it could even have been an episode of that series. Lyndsey Weber of Vulture made a "post-viewing guide" to Black Mirror, where she included The Twilight Zone episode "Five Characters in Search of an Exit" as "bonus watching" to "White Bear".

Themes
Despite the similarities to real murder cases, David Sims noted the focus is not any single case, arguing that when an "abhorrent crime" occurs people create "totem[s] of hatred and evil" from the figures involved in the crime. He said Brooker examines what he calls the "lurid media frenzy" trend. Lambie, as well as Aubrey Page of Collider, considered it was mainly directed towards tabloids' coverage of criminal cases that turns them into "witch hunts". Simon Cocks of Screen Anarchy agreed it is an allegory of the Internet, but also a discussion on how society processes information and treats shocking news stories. Paste Roxanne Sancto wrote it is aimed at the media's tendency "to turn horrific news stories into national spectacles, riling people up to the point of mass panic and violence in the process". Alfred Joyner of International Business Times stated "the argument is that in the media notorious criminals must be demonised to appease the public's insatiable appetite to see that 'justice' is served".

James Poniewozik of The New York Times identified vigilantism as a central concept in the story. Writing for Esquire, Corey Atad commented it is about the societal "appetite for punishment", while Sam Parker of The Huffington Post and Andrew Liptak of The Verge considered it represents "a cruel society's fantasy of 'real justice and a "perverted justice" respectively. More specifically, it deals with the remote punishment done via the anonymity of the Internet, according to some of TheWrap staff members and Page. While Sims stated there are parallels between Victoria's suffering and the crime she committed, Joyner considered these parallels to be central to the episode's critique. When her crime is revealed, Joyner wrote, "the construction of the White Bear centre becomes apparent now, as a real-life karmic experience for the general public who wish to see biblical retribution". Mark Monahan of The Telegraph wrote that the episode "mocked, above all, our insatiable, voyeuristic, neo-Medieval thirst for supposedly 'real-life' pain and humiliation repackaged as entertainment". Jeffery stated it depicted how society turns horror into entertainment, and Parker concluded, "The fact Victoria was a murderer allows them to accept her suffering, but it's the mobile phones that allow them to enjoy it—after all, she's just a character on their screens."

Liptak said it portrays people as victims of technology, while Joyner commented it denotes that "the way in which we are spoon-fed an almost constant stream of information through technology has turned us into passive consumers". Joyner believes that Brooker implicates the viewer with the story's credits scene, noting "we're the ones with the smartphones, passively absorbing abuses to human rights and decency, and yet revelling in the image from the safety of the screen". Jeffery and Parker theorised it contains the idea that people are preferring to document life rather than living it, as exemplified by "people who see violence break out ... and decide to film it rather than intervene." Leigh Alexander of Boing Boing said the episode reflects how violence is easily accessed on the Internet and quickly arouses people's attention. She noted, "you can view the episode as a critique of all kinds of themes: Mob mentality, reality television, even the complicated treatment of women in the justice system ... Primarily, though, this episode is a critique of our deep, often-unexamined mass desensitisation, or at least a dread portent of its potential to grow. It aims to ask: To what extent can you stand by and watch horror before you are complicit, punishable?"

Brooker commented that after watching the episode, the viewer feels "sympathetic towards [Victoria] but also repulsed by what [she] did". Tibbetts opined that the episode is "about not torturing people" and Victoria's guilt is irrelevant to whether one should take pleasure from her torture. Sims said Victoria's suffering was shown to make the viewer sympathise with her, but noted it is difficult to do so because she committed an unforgivable crime, although her mental state is not entirely clear because of the fact "her mind has been erased so many times that the crime is barely a memory". Lambie stated it was done to explore "how human empathy breaks down when individuals are reduced to an image on a screen", and concluded, "whether it's directed at the innocent or the guilty, cruelty is still cruelty". Atad asserted it ultimately leads viewers to choose between their "so-called justice and the competing value of empathy". Writing for Sabotage Times, Gareth Dimelow concluded it leaves the viewer to ponder: "If someone has no recollection of their crimes, can they be effectively punished? Does our societal bloodlust for vengeance make us just as dangerous as the criminals we seek to discipline?" GamesRadar's Richard Edwards found that Brooker was able to present a "morally complex idea" without taking a side on the discussion. Sancto felt the episode "plays with the viewer's emotions ... making it all the more difficult to find a moral stance on her story in the end".

Jones interpreted that Victoria is "incredibly remorseful" once she learns who she is, saying that Victoria's knowledge of what she did to the young girl is "obviously destroying her". In contrast, Brooker believes Victoria to only be feeling "confusion and animal fear" as her life is like "a nightmare in which society tells you're a child killer".

Joyner stated the episode uses "the idea of having what the viewers are led to believe as reality exposed as a sham". Alexander suggested this could be interpreted as questioning "the assumptions we bring to the things we see – we can capture nearly any issue from all angles and pin it to virtual glass forever, but still only own a piece of the story, the unknowable remainder filled in by our own preconceptions". Alasdair Stuart of Bleeding Cool commented it "builds on this idea of the reflection that you know is fake but can't look away from and internalizes it". With the plot twist, Stuart said, "we're shown exactly what's been a reflection of the truth all along; everything". He also stated it questions "our own fundamental need to be the hero or heroine of our own story".

Reception
"White Bear" was first broadcast in the United Kingdom on Channel 4 at 10pm on 18 February 2013. According to the Broadcasters' Audience Research Board, the episode was viewed by an estimated 1.2 million viewers, which was 7.2% of the British audience. This was lower than the second series premiere, "Be Right Back", which was watched by 1.6 million people (9%). Brooker opined that "White Bear" is definitely the episode that provides "the most visceral, holy shit reaction from viewers", while Hibberd deemed it a "fan-favorite".

The episode was very well received and appeared on several lists of the series' best episodes. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, it holds an approval rating of 88% based on 17 reviews, with an average rating of 8.20/10. The website's critics consensus reads: "'White Bear' makes up for its blunt social criticism with its intense scare factor and final twist." Sancto deemed it the best episode among the first seven because its theme was presented "in a chilling manner". Page rated it the fourth-best among the thirteen episodes, asserting that it has an "ability to truly disturb" and "has put off many a viewer as spinning on a cheap twist, but despite the fact that the episode's impact does turn on a reveal, there's little in the episode that even feels remotely done before." Mat Elfring of GameSpot placed it fifth out of thirteen, labelling it "the most successful horror episode [of the series] to date". Atad ranked it seven out of thirteen, saying it "begins a dystopian horror reminiscent of 28 Days Later, but where it ends up is far more disturbing". Out of the thirteen, Hibberd ranked it eighth, highlighting its plot twist and noting that "most [would] rank this episode much higher; I just happened to like the rest of the episodes better". Moreover, Stuart said it "may be one of the best hours of TV produced [in 2013]". He emphasised how it transits from "John Wyndham stuff" to horror and then action, and commended its final twist. He concluded: "The last fifteen minutes of White Bear are amongst the most blisteringly angry pieces of television I've ever seen."

It is considered to have "one of the most shocking twists on Black Mirror", as Jenelle Riley of Variety put it, before the third series aired. Writing before the third series, Margaret Lyons of The New York Times said it is "the most outright disturbing" episode of Black Mirror. Right after it aired, Cocks deemed it "the single darkest episode of Black Mirror so far" and considered its twist to be "nothing short of genius". Sims stated that it "is, by a significant margin, the most disturbing episode Black Mirror has produced". Although he praised the twist as "a smart one, brilliantly concealed and smartly revealed", he criticised it because "once the point is made, it is made over and over again." Lambie praised its "fearsome pace" and highlighted "its subtle approach", with sparse dialogue, that gives "the events and performances greater impact". He concluded: "its horror-infused drama leaves us unsure whom we can trust or what will happen next, and its last act is truly gut-wrenching". Monahan wrote that the twist was unpredictable and the episode "was an exciting and efficient piece of narrative rug-pulling".

Regarding the acting and the characters, Sims and Monahan praised Middleton's performance. By contrast, Crichlow's role was considered to be repetitive. Monahan stated she just wailed, and Parker called it "a harrowing performance with no arc or resolutions, just sheer fear and distress". Lambie said: "If there's a criticism to be levelled at the first two-thirds of White Bear, it's that Victoria's carried helplessly along by events." Simon said Crichlow's potential was wasted because of the script. Jeffery criticised the fact "Victoria maintains one emotional level across the episode ... she's tearful, panicked and terrified throughout", but he remarked it was not Crichlow's fault, while praising Middleton and Smiley as "uniformly excellent". Cocks was more favorable, praising Crichlow's commitment to her performance. He also attributed to her performance "one of the episode's greatest accomplishments ... how much it makes audience members feel as though they are in the position of [Victoria]". Edwards asserted she gave a "tour de force performance" that is "an excellent, convincing portrayal of a frightened, confused woman".

Some reviewers had mixed feelings about the episode. Jane Simon of the Daily Mirror said that "White Bear" lacked the "instant emotional tug" of the series opener. She commented that, a third of the way through the episode, she had lost hope that it would conclude effectively, "[...] the acting was unbelievable, the script was riddled with horror-film cliches, the violence was a bit over the top [...]", but that by the end she was positively surprised. Joyner praised it as "stylistically ... breath-taking" with "intense action", but felt "the themes come across as particularly flat" and "hardly original". He was disappointed until the twist, and concludes that Brooker has "crafted an hour of television more bold and daring than I've seen in a long time". Jeffery said "this is Black Mirror as full-blooded horror" and that it never gets boring, while criticising the characters and the final sequence as "a little overlong and obvious". TheWrap staff was divided; while some found it has a good social critique, others considered it to be "least effective when it goes for horror". Although Parker compared the first 45 minutes to "a low-budget, low-quality version of 28 Days Later", full of "horror movie clichés", he realised that was "the whole point". He was positive to its societal criticism and wrote: "So the reason it all felt like a rubbish horror movie for 45 minutes is because that's what it was, just with a real person in the centre of it." It was ranked eleventh out of the thirteen episodes by Charles Bramesco of Vulture, who said its message is "lost beneath a simplistic twist that pulls a switcheroo and [it] fails to do much else".

See also
 "Judgment Night" – a 1959 episode of The Twilight Zone with a similar premise and twist
 The Running Man – a 1987 film in which paid assassins hunt and kill prisoners as part of a television game show
 The Truman Show – a 1997 film in which the unsuspecting protagonist stars in a reality television program

References

External links

2013 British television episodes
Black Mirror episodes
Television episodes written by Charlie Brooker

White Bear (Black Mirror)


The 23rd Indian Infantry Division was an infantry division of the Indian Army during World War II. It fought in the Burma Campaign. It was then reformed as a division of the independent Indian Army in 1959.

History
The division was raised on 1 January 1942, at Jhansi in Central India. Its badge was a red fighting cock on a yellow circle. (The animal was chosen by Major General Reginald Savory, the division's first commander, as one which would offend neither the Moslem nor Hindu soldiers of the division.

In May that year, while the division was still forming, it was ordered to Imphal in Manipur, where Burma Corps was retreating, having been driven out of Burma by the Japanese. Imphal lay within the mountainous frontier between India and Burma, and the division was ordered to move while the monsoon season was at its height. Movement was difficult, and disease (mainly malaria, but also typhus) was rampant. The division's chief claim to respect lies in holding its positions in these trying conditions, while also trying to undertake basic training.

On 3 June 1943, Major General Savory was promoted and appointed Director of Infantry in India. The division was temporarily commanded by Brigadier Collingridge of 37th Brigade until 15 August, when Major General Ouvry Lindfield Roberts, who had gained widespread respect by his handling of operations in the Middle East, was appointed.

Battle of Imphal
In March, 1944, the Japanese launched a major attack on the British troops at Imphal. At the time, 23rd Division was the reserve unit for Indian IV Corps. After its previous service in Imphal, the division was no less than 5,000 men short of establishment (about 18,500). This was due mainly to disease, and poor administration in the rear areas in 1943, which prevented many recovering sick men from rejoining the division.

When the Japanese offensive began, Indian 17th Infantry Division was cut off in its forward position at Tiddim. One brigade of 23rd division was left to hold Imphal while the remainder of the division was sent to help extricate the 17th Division. Once the two divisions had linked up, they retreated to Bishenpur south of Imphal, being supplied by parachute drops.

The 23rd Division was then sent to Kanglatongbi, north of Imphal, where Japanese troops had cut the road linking Imphal with India and were threatening a major supply dump. The Japanese were held back while the dump was emptied of stores.

In June, all the divisions at Imphal were reorganised and repositioned. 23rd Division defended the Shenam Saddle southeast of Imphal against the last Japanese attacks in this area.

Operation Zipper
After the end of the Battle of Imphal, the division was withdrawn to India. After recuperating, it began training for future operations in Malaya. Major General Roberts was promoted to command Indian XXXIV Corps, and the division was commanded by Major General Douglas Hawthorn. In mid-1945, the division was due to take part in Operation Zipper, a landing on the west coast of Malaya, as part of XXXIV Corps. Although forestalled by the Japanese surrender, the landing took place unopposed, as the quickest means of sending troops to Malaya to enforce the surrender.

Later that year, the division was sent to Java, where the end of the war had brought widespread disorder and conflict between the restored Dutch East Indies colonial regime and pro-independence movements. The division was broken up in Java in 1947, and its units were merged into the Indian 5th Infantry Division.

Postwar
Current Divisional HQ is located at Dipatoli Cantonment, Ranchi in Jharkhand. The division was raised 1 September 1959 for the Nagaland insurgency when GOC Assam was redesignated as GOC 23rd Infantry Division.

Current  Status  of 23 Infantry Division
There are 4 brigades in 23 Infantry Division. They are:
 23 Artillery Brigade (Dipatoli Cantt, Ranchi, Jharkhand)
 61 Infantry Brigade (Dipatoli Cantt, Ranchi, Jharkhand)
 167 Infantry Brigade (Shahjahanpur Cantt, Shahjahanpur, Uttar Pradesh)
 301 Infantry Brigade (MONUSCO, South Africa)

23 Artillery Brigade
The artillery brigade is situated in Dipatoli Cantt, Ranchi, Jharkhand. The artillery brigade consists of 5 Artillery units they are 1 Field Regiment, 3 Medium Regiments and 1 Surveillance And Target Acquisitions Battery. Currently, assigned units are:
 44 Field Regiment
 299 Medium Regiment (Dhanush Howitzer)
 100 Field Regiment
 632 SATA Battery

61 Infantry Brigade
The infantry brigade was earlier situated in Namkom Military Station, Ranchi, Jharkhand. On 1 August 2019, the brigade is shifting to Dipatoli Cantt after the moving of 17 Corps to Panagarh, West Bengal. The brigade is assigned with 3 different Infantry Regiment. They are:
 10th Battalion The Sikh Light Infantry
 8th Battalion The Bihar Regiment
 8th Battalion The Jammu and Kashmir Rifles
 1st Battalion The Jammu and Kashmir Light Infantry
 9th Battalion The Mahar Regiment

167 Infantry Brigade
The brigade is situated in Shahjahanpur Military Station, Shahjahanpur, Uttar Pradesh. The brigade consists of 4 Infantry Regiments. They are:
 11th Battalion The Maratha Light Infantry
 14th Battalion The Jat Regiment
 21st Battalion The Kumaon Regiment
 27th Battalion The Rajput Regiment

301 Infantry Brigade
The brigade is situated in South Africa. The brigade is on the MONUSCO Mission from the year 2004 shifting from Ranchi to South Africa.

Order of battle
as of 1 April 1944
GOC Major General Ouvry Roberts
1st Indian Infantry Brigade (Brigadier A. King)
 1st Battalion, Seaforth Highlanders
 1st Battalion, 16th Punjab Regiment
 1st Battalion, Patiala Infantry Regiment (State forces)
37th Indian Infantry Brigade (Brigadier P. C. Marindin)
 3rd Battalion, 3rd Gurkha Rifles
 3rd Battalion,  5th Royal Gurkha Rifles (Frontier Force)
 3rd Battalion, 10th Gurkha Rifles
49th Indian Infantry Brigade (Brigadier F. Esse)
 4th Battalion, 5th Mahratta Light Infantry
 6th Battalion, 5th Mahratta Light Infantry
 5th Battalion, 6th Rajputana Rifles
Divisional Units
 2nd Battalion, 19th Hyderabad Regiment (divisional reconnaissance unit)
 4th Battalion, 12th Frontier Force Regiment (divisional machine-gun unit)
 158th Field Assault Regiment, Royal Artillery (The Fighting Cock 23rd div history)
 3rd Field Regiment Royal Indian Artillery (IA)
 28th Mountain Regiment IA
 2nd Anti-Tank/Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment IA
 23rd Indian Infantry Division Provost Unit
 23rd Indian Infantry Division Signal Unit
 69th, 71st, 91st Field Companies Royal Indian Engineers (IE)
 305th Field Park Company IE
 21st, 24th, 50th, 61st Animal Transport Companies Indian Army Service Corps (IASC)
 121st, 122nd, 123rd General Purpose Transport Companies IASC
 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th Composite Units IASC
 24th, 47th, 49th Indian Field Ambulances, Indian Army Medical Corps (IAMC)
 23rd Ordnance Field Park, Indian Army Ordnance Corps (IAOC)
 38th, 61st Infantry Workshop Companies, Indian Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (IEME)
 23rd Indian Division Recovery Company IEME

Presently Units assigned in 23rd Infantry Division
 23 IDSR (Infantry Division Signal Regiment)
 23 IDOU (Infantry Division Ordnance Unit)
 23 IDPU (Infantry Division Provost Unit)
 51 Armoured Regiment
 100 (Independent) Tank Transporter Company (ASC)
 107 Engineers Regiment (Bombay Sappers)
 323 Field Hospital
 423 Field Hospital
 523 ASC Battalion
 623 EME Battalion

Assigned brigades
All these brigades were assigned or attached to the division at some time during World War II
63rd Indian Infantry Brigade
98th Indian Infantry Brigade
64th Indian Infantry Brigade
23rd Indian Infantry Brigade
1st Indian Infantry Brigade
49th Indian Infantry Brigade
123rd Indian Infantry Brigade
37th Indian Infantry Brigade
50th Indian Parachute Brigade
32nd Indian Infantry Brigade
37th Indian Infantry Brigade
268th Indian Infantry Brigade

References

Bibliography

Further reading
 Parrott, J. G. A., Role of the 49 Indian Infantry Brigade in Surabaya, Oct.-Nov. 1945, Australian thesis

External links

Burma Star organisation site

Indian World War II divisions
Divisions of the Indian Army
British Indian Army divisions
Military units and formations established in 1942
1942 establishments in the United States
Military units and formations of the British Empire in World War II
D
Military units and formations disestablished in 1947
Military units and formations established in 1959

23rd Indian Infantry Division


Emil Schallopp (1 August 1843, Friesack, Germany – 9 April 1919, Berlin) was a German chess master and author.  He became head of the shorthand department of the Reichstag. He wrote many books, including one on the Steinitz–Zukertort 1886 World Championship match. He is best known today as an author, particularly of the seventh edition (1891) of the Handbuch des Schachspiels.

Tournaments
Schallopp played in many international chess tournaments, especially in the 1880s, although he never won an important event. He placed fourth at Wiesbaden 1880, after Joseph Henry Blackburne, Berthold Englisch, and Adolf Schwarz, and ahead of James Mason, Szymon Winawer, Louis Paulsen, and nine others. He placed second at Nottingham 1886 to Amos Burn, and received the best game prize for his encounter with Zukertort.

Legacy
The Schallopp Defense to the King's Gambit Accepted (1.e4 e5 2.f4 exf4 3.Nf3 Nf6) is named after him.

The Schallopp Defense variation of the Slav Defense is named after him.

References

External links

 249 chess games of Emil Schallopp

1843 births
1919 deaths
German chess players
German chess writers
German male non-fiction writers
19th-century chess players

Emil Schallopp


Northeast Action (NEAction) is a United States political organization, with offices in Connecticut and Massachusetts, working in New England and New York State. It was founded in 1984 as part of the Citizen Action network. The group promotes democracy, social justice, and attempts to address cultural and racial issues.

It works with its six affiliated organizations on strategic direction and policy development, technical support and staff and leadership training. Its affiliates are involved in a wide variety of issue campaigns, including campaign finance reform, health care reform, corporate accountability, and leadership training for empowerment in communities of color.  The group publishes a variety of literature. NEAction's executive director is Cynthia Ward.

References

External links
 Northeast Action Homepage (official)
 Northeast Action affiliates:
 Citizen Action of New York
 Commonwealth Coalition (Massachusetts)
 Connecticut Citizen Action Group
 Dirigo Alliance (Maine)
 Maine Citizen Leadership Fund
 Maine People's Alliance
 Mass Voters for Clean Elections
 New Hampshire Citizens Alliance
 Ocean State Action (Rhode Island)
 Vermont Public Interest Research Group (not officially affiliated)

Political advocacy groups in the United States

Northeast Action


Blair Castle (in Scottish Gaelic: Caisteil Bhlàir) stands in its grounds near the village of Blair Atholl in Perthshire in Scotland. It is the ancestral home of the Clan Murray, and was historically the seat of their chief, the Duke of Atholl, though the current (12th) Duke, Bruce Murray, lives in South Africa. The castle stands in Glen Garry, and commands a strategic position on the main route (now the A9 road) through the central Scottish Highlands.

The castle is a category A listed building, and the grounds are included in the Inventory of Gardens and Designed Landscapes in Scotland, the national listing of significant gardens.

History

Blair Castle is said to have been started in 1269 by John I Comyn, Lord of Badenoch (died c. 1275), a northern neighbour of David I Strathbogie, Earl of Atholl (died 1270), who started building on the Earl's land while he was away on crusade. Upon his return, the Earl complained about the interloper to King Alexander III, won back his land, and incorporated the tower that had been built into his own castle. David II Strathbogie, Earl of Atholl (died 1326), forfeited the titles and estates after rebelling against King Robert the Bruce in 1308, and the King granted them to Niall mac Cailein. The earldom was granted to a number of individuals over the years until 1457 when James II granted it to his half-brother John Stewart (1440–1512). John Murray, son of the second Earl of Tullibardine, was created Earl of Atholl in 1629, and the title has since remained in the Murray family.

During the Wars of the Three Kingdoms of the 17th century, the Murrays supported the Royalist cause, which led to Blair Castle being taken by Oliver Cromwell's army following his invasion of 1650. The restored Charles II created the title Marquess of Atholl for John Murray, 2nd Earl of Atholl (1631–1703). The title Duke of Atholl was granted to the 2nd Marquess in 1703.

When Viscount Dundee launched the first Jacobite rising in April 1689, Atholl decided to remain loyal to the Government (although two of his sons joined the Jacobites). Atholl's factor, Patrick Stewart of Ballechin, held Blair Castle for King James, and Dundee visited in May. In July Ballechin refused entry to Atholl's whiggish son and heir, Lord John Murray. Murray laid siege to the castle, and General Mackay was approaching to join him and to seize it for the Williamites. Viscount Dundee relieved the castle, and the crucial Battle of Killiecrankie was fought because Dundee did not want to retreat and surrender the castle to Mackay. Dundee and his officers and clan chiefs held a Council of War at the castle on the eve of the battle, on 26 July. The next day, the Jacobites won the battle but Dundee was killed.

After the battle, Blair Castle remained in Jacobite hands for some time. It continued to play an important role: for example, the Jacobite Highland chiefs swore a bond there together in August, to continue the rising.

In the Forty-Five, Blair Castle was occupied twice by Prince Charles Edward Stuart and his Jacobite army: in early September 1745, for several days, and then in early February 1746, again for several days. However, the Jacobites then unwisely abandoned it and Government forces, including Lowland Clan Agnew then occupied it. They held Blair Castle against the Jacobites, who laid siege to the castle during the last stages of the rising, in March 1746 they were besieged to near starvation until the Jacobite forces withdrew to fight the British Government forces at the Battle of Culloden.

In 1844 Queen Victoria and her consort, Prince Albert visited and stayed at Blair Castle. It was after this she gave permission to establish the Atholl Highlanders.

Part of the castle was converted to a hospital in World War One; poet Hamish Henderson's mother had worked there as a nurse on her return from France.

Before his death in 1996, Iain Murray, 10th Duke of Atholl, placed Blair Castle and most of his estates in a charitable trust, shielding them from inheritance taxes and leaving them under Scottish control, as his heir John Murray, the 11th Duke, had indicated he had no desire to leave his native South Africa.

On the night of 10 March 2011 a fire broke out at the clock tower of castle (not part of the medieval fabric), causing the tower's roof and second floor to collapse into the first floor.  The clock tower was restored in 2012, with restoration work on the clock mechanisms performed by Smith of Derby Group.

The castle and gardens
The oldest part of the castle is the six-storey Cummings or Comyn's Tower, which may retain some 13th-century fabric, though it was largely built in the 15th century. The extensions which now form the central part of the castle were first added in the 16th century. The apartments to the south were added in the mid-18th century to designs by architects John Douglas and James Winter. The south-east range, incorporating the clock tower, was rebuilt by Archibald Elliot after a fire in 1814. Finally, the castle arrived at its present form in the 1870s, when David Bryce remodelled the whole building in a Scots Baronial style, and added the ballroom. It was further remodelled in 1885 when a new ballroom wing was added by James Campbell Walker.

During the Great War the castle was used as an auxiliary hospital and after 1922 the family found it more convenient to live in the private apartments. The castle has been open to the public since 1936. Its many rooms feature important collections of weapons, hunting trophies, souvenirs of the Murray clan, ethnographica, paintings, furniture, and needlework collected by the Murray family over many generations.

The castle also provides the garrison for the Atholl Highlanders, the private army of the Duke of Atholl, noted as the only legal private army in Europe. The Castle and the Atholl Estates were used in the 2008 reality television series Conquer the Castle.

Most Dukes of Atholl are buried in the family burial ground (photo) next to the ruins of St Bride's Kirk in the grounds of Blair Castle. St Bride's was the village church of Old Blair but fell into disuse after 1823 when the estate village was relocated to its current location.

In 2009, a Grand Fir (Abies grandis) in Diana's Grove in the grounds of the castle, was measured at , and declared the second-tallest tree in Britain.

Gallery

References

External links

 Official site

Castles in Perth and Kinross
Category A listed buildings in Perth and Kinross
Listed castles in Scotland
Inventory of Gardens and Designed Landscapes
Gardens in Perth and Kinross
Historic house museums in Perth and Kinross
Clan Murray
Country houses in Perth and Kinross

Blair Castle


Windows Millennium Edition, or Windows Me (marketed with the pronunciation of the pronoun "me"), often capitalized as Windows ME,  is an operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of Microsoft Windows operating systems. It was officially codenamed as Millennium. It is the successor to Windows 98, and was released to manufacturing on June 19, 2000, and then to retail on September 14, 2000. It was Microsoft's main operating system for home users until the introduction of its successor Windows XP in October 2001.

Windows Me was targeted specifically at home PC users, and included Internet Explorer 5.5 (later default was Internet Explorer 6), Windows Media Player 7 (later default was Windows Media Player 9 Series) and the new Windows Movie Maker software, which provided basic video editing and was designed to be easy to use for consumers. Microsoft also incorporated features first introduced in Windows 2000, which had been released as a business-oriented operating system seven months earlier, into the graphical user interface, shell and Windows Explorer. Although Windows Me was still ultimately based around MS-DOS like its predecessors, access to real-mode DOS was restricted to decrease system boot time.

Windows Me initially received a generally positive reception when it was released, however it soon garnered a very negative reception from many users due to stability problems. Windows Me became infamously known by many as one of the worst versions of Windows ever released, being unfavorably compared with its predecessor, Windows 98, several years before.  In October 2001, Windows XP was released to the public, having already been under development at the time of Windows Me's release, and incorporated most, but not all, of the content of Windows Me, while being far more stable because of it being based on the Windows NT kernel. After the release of Windows XP in 2001, mainstream support for Windows Me ended on December 31, 2003, followed by extended support on July 11, 2006.

Development history
At the 1998 Windows Hardware Engineering Conference, Microsoft CEO Bill Gates stated that Windows 98 would be the last iteration of Windows to use the Windows 9x kernel, with the intention for the next consumer-focused version to be based on the Windows NT kernel, unifying the two branches of Windows. However, it soon became apparent that the development work involved was too great to meet the aim of releasing before the end of 2000, particularly given the ongoing parallel work on the eventually-canceled Neptune project. The Consumer Windows development team was therefore re-tasked with improving Windows 98 while porting some of the look-and-feel from Windows 2000. Microsoft President Steve Ballmer publicly announced these changes at the next Windows HEIC in 1999.

On July 23, 1999, the first alpha version of Windows Me was released to testers. Known as Development Preview 1, it was very similar to Windows 98 SE, with the only major change being a very early iteration of the new Help and Support feature that would appear in the final version. Three more Development Previews were released over the subsequent two months.

The first beta version was released to testers and the industry press on September 24, 1999, with the second coming on November 24 that year. Beta 2 showed the first real changes from Windows 98, including importing much of the look-and-feel from Windows 2000, and the removal of real-mode DOS. Industry expert Paul Thurrott reviewed Beta 2 upon release and spoke positively of it in a review. By early 2000, Windows Me was reportedly behind schedule, and an interim build containing the new automatic update feature was released to allay concerns about a delayed-release.

In February 2000, Paul Thurrott revealed that Microsoft had planned to exclude Windows Me, as well as new releases of Windows NT 4.0, from CD shipments for MSDN subscribers. The reason given in the case of Me was that the OS was designed for consumers. However, Thurrott alleged that the real motivation behind both case to force software developers to move to Windows 2000. Three days later, following a write-in and call-in campaign by hundreds of readers, Microsoft announced that Windows Me (including development versions) would ship to MSDN subscribers after all. Microsoft also apologized personally to Thurrott, claiming he received misinformation, though in a follow-up article he stated that it was "clear that the decision [...] actually changed".

Beta 3 was released on April 11, 2000, and this version marked the first appearance of its final startup and shutdown sounds derived from Windows 2000, as the previous betas used Windows 98's startup and shutdown sounds.

Release
Although Microsoft signed off on the final build of Windows Me on June 28, 2000, after trialing three Release Candidate builds with testers, the final retail release was pushed back to September 14 for reasons that were not clear.

Shortly after Windows Me was released to manufacturing on June 19, 2000, Microsoft launched a marketing campaign to promote it in the U.S., which they dubbed the Meet Me Tour. A national partnered promotional program featured the new OS, OEMs and other partners in an interactive multimedia attraction in 25 cities.

Windows Me was released for retail sale on September 14, 2000. At launch time, Microsoft announced a time-limited promotion from September 2000 to January 2001 which entitled Windows 98 and Windows 98 SE users to upgrade to Windows Me for $59.95 instead of the regular retail upgrade price of $109. Non-upgrade versions cost $209, the same as Windows 98 on its release. In October 2001, Microsoft released Windows XP, which also included the ZIP folders, the Spider Solitaire game and Internet Explorer 6 by default, all while being based on the Windows NT kernel, which on XP was an evolution of the one in Windows 2000.

New and updated features

User interface
Windows Me featured the shell enhancements inherited from Windows 2000 such as personalized menus, customizable Windows Explorer toolbars, auto-complete in Windows Explorer address bar and Run box, Windows 2000 advanced file type association features, displaying comments in shortcuts as tooltips, extensible columns in Details view (IColumnProvider interface), icon overlays, integrated search pane in Windows Explorer, sort by name function for menus, Places bar in common dialogs for Open and Save, cascading Start menu special folders, some Plus! 95 and Plus! 98 themes, and updated graphics. The notification area in Windows Me and later supported 16-bit high color icons. The Multimedia control panel was also updated from Windows 98. Taskbar and Start Menu options allowed disabling of the drag and drop feature and could prevent moving or resizing the taskbar, which was easier for new users.

Hardware support improvements
 Faster boot times: Windows Me features numerous improvements for improving cold boot time, pre and post-logon boot times and time required for resuming from hibernation. Processing of real mode configuration files, CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT, is bypassed at startup and essential real mode drivers like HIMEM.SYS and SMARTDRV.EXE are embedded into IO.SYS. The registry is loaded only once; for efficient loading, the registry is split into three files instead of two (SYSTEM.DAT and USER.DAT), with the new file CLASSES.DAT containing the contents of the hive HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT required for boot loaded initially. Plug and Play device enumeration is more parallelized than in Windows 98. Boot time is not affected due to unavailability of a DHCP server or other network components. There are also optimizations to prevent boot slowdown due to BIOS POST operations.
 USB Human Interface Device Class: Generic support for 5-button mice is also included as standard and installing IntelliPoint allows reassigning the programmable buttons.
 Windows Image Acquisition: Windows Me introduced the Windows Image Acquisition API for a standardized method of allowing Windows applications to transparently and more easily communicate with image acquisition devices, such as digital cameras and scanners. WIA intended to improve the configuration and the user interface for interacting with scanners and such devices, (which were previously supported by the TWAIN standard) and simplify writing device drivers for developers. WIA also includes support for USB still image capture device classes such as scanners and cameras through the Picture Transfer Protocol.
 Improved power management and suspend/resume operations: The OEM version of Windows Me supports OS-controlled ACPI S4 sleep state (hibernation) and other power management features without manufacturer-supplied drivers.
 USB and FireWire support improvements: Windows Me is the only operating system in the Windows 9x series that includes generic drivers for USB mass storage devices and USB printers. Support for FireWire SBP-2 scanners and storage devices is also improved.
 The , DirectSound, and DirectShow APIs support non-PCM formats such as AC-3 or WMA over S/PDIF.

Digital media
 Windows Movie Maker: This utility is based on DirectShow and Windows Media technologies to provide Microsoft Windows computer systems with basic video capture and edit capabilities. It provides users with the ability to capture, edit, and re-encode media content into the Windows Media format, a tightly compressed format that requires a minimal amount of storage space on the computer's hard disk when compared to many other media formats.
 Windows Media Player 7: The new version of the Windows multimedia player software introduces jukebox functionality featuring the Media Library, support for CD burning, an integrated media encoder, and the ability to transfer music directly to portable devices. Another new feature is its radio tuner that can be used to search for and connect to radio stations over the internet. Users can also customize the look and feel of the user interface through interactive skins. Windows Me can be upgraded to Windows Media Player 9 Series, which was later included in Windows XP SP2.
 Windows DVD Player: The software DVD player in Windows Me is a redesigned version of the one featured in Windows 98 which, unlike its predecessor, does not require a dedicated decoder card for DVD playback. Instead, it supports software decoding through a third-party decoder.

Networking technologies
 Net Crawler: Windows Me introduced a net crawling feature which automatically searches out and creates shortcuts to network shares and printers in My Network Places. This can be controlled using the Automatically search for network folders and printers option. Shortcuts that are added by the net crawler but not detected again on the network in a reasonable time period are aged out and deleted.
 New TCP/IP Stack: Windows Me includes the Windows 2000 networking stack and architecture.
 The Home Networking Wizard is designed to help users to set up a computer that is running Windows Me for use on a small home network. This includes setting up Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) on a computer running Windows Me so the computer can share a connection to the Internet with other computers on the home network.
 Dial-up Networking component was updated in Windows Me and provides several enhancements while maintaining the desired features of prior releases of the operating system. The user interface had been reworked to provide all configurable parameters in one convenient location. The user interface now included three new tabs: Networking, Security and Dialing. To improve dial-up networking, Windows Me includes built-in support for the Connection Manager dial-up client. Using the Connection Manager Administration Kit (an optional networking component in Windows 2000 Server), network administrators can pre-configure and deploy dial-up networking connections, by means of a Connection Manager service profile, to Windows Me–based client machines.
 Network Driver Interface Specification (NDIS) version 5.0 for Windows Me was enhanced to provide programming interface parity with NDIS version 5.0 in Windows 2000. This means that the programming interfaces that the author of a network device driver uses are the same for both of these Windows platforms.
 Universal Plug and Play: Windows Me introduced support for Universal Plug and Play (UPnP). Universal Plug and Play and NAT traversal APIs can also be installed on Windows 98 and Windows 98 SE by installing the Windows XP Network Setup Wizard.

System utilities
 System Restore: Windows Me introduced the "System Restore" logging and reversion system, which was meant to simplify troubleshooting and solve problems. It was intended to work as a rollback and recovery feature so that if the installation of an application or a driver adversely affected the system, the user could undo the installation and return the system to a previously working state. It does this by monitoring changes to Windows system files and the registry. System Restore protects only the operating system files, not documents, and therefore is not a substitute for a backup program.
 System File Protection: First introduced with Windows 2000 (as Windows File Protection), and expanding on the capabilities introduced with System File Checker in Windows 98, System File Protection aimed to protect system files from modification and corruption silently and automatically. When the file protection is in effect, replacing or deleting a system file causes Windows Me to silently restore the original copy. The original is taken from a hard drive backup folder (%WinDir%\Options\Install) or from the Windows Me installation CD, if the cached copy of files on the hard disk has been deleted. If no installation CD is in the drive, a dialog box alerts the user about the problem and requests that the CD be inserted. System File Protection is a different technology from System Restore and should not be confused with the latter. System Restore maintains a broad set of changed files including added applications and user configuration data stored repeatedly at specific points in time restored by the user, whereas System File Protection protects operating system files with no user input.
 System Configuration Utility allows users to manually extract and restore individual system files from the Windows Me setup files. It has also been updated with three new tabs called "Static VxDs", "Environment" and "International". The Static VxDs tab allows users to enable or disable static virtual device drivers to be loaded at startup, the Environment tab allows users to enable or disable environment variables, and the International tab allows users to set international language keyboard layout settings that were formerly set via the real mode MS-DOS configuration files. A Cleanup button on the Startup tab allows cleaning up invalid or deleted startup entries.
 System Monitor has been updated with a Dial-Up Adapter section. Users can now monitor items such as Connection Speeds, Bytes Received or Transmitted / Second.
 SCANDISK runs from within Windows upon an improper shutdown before the Windows Shell loads.
 Automatic Updates: The Automatic Updates utility automatically downloads and installs critical updates from the Windows Update Web site with little user interaction. It is set up to check Windows Update once every 24 hours by default. Users can choose to download which update they want, although high-priority updates must be downloaded and installed.
 Compressed Folders: Windows Me includes native support for ZIP files through the 'Compressed Folders' Explorer extension. This extension was originally introduced in the Plus! 98 collection for Windows 98, but is included in the base operating system in Windows Me.
 A new Help and Support program has also been added, replacing the HTML Help-based documentation in Windows 2000 and Windows 98. The Help and Support Center is entirely HTML-based and takes advantage of a technology called Support Automation Framework (SAF), that can show support information from the internet, allows collecting data for troubleshooting via WMI and scripting and for third parties to plug into Windows Help and Support. Several other support tools also shipped with Windows Me.
 Windows Me also includes Internet Explorer 5.5, which supports a new Print Preview feature. It also shipped with the MSN Messenger Service.

Accessibility features
 On-Screen Keyboard: Originally introduced with Windows 2000, On-Screen Keyboard makes it possible to input characters using the mouse instead of the keyboard.
 The Mouse Control Panel incorporates IntelliPoint features, namely ClickLock (selecting or dragging without continuously holding down the mouse button), hiding the pointer while typing, and showing it by pressing Ctrl.
 The cursor (system caret) can be set to a thicker width.
 Increased Active Accessibility support in utilities such as Calculator and Magnifier.

Removed features

Real mode DOS
Windows Me restricted support for real mode MS-DOS. As a result, IO.SYS in Windows Me disregards CONFIG.SYS, COMMAND.COM and WIN.COM and directly executes VMM32.VXD. In its default configuration the system would neither boot into an MS-DOS command prompt nor exit to DOS from Windows; real mode drivers such as ANSI.SYS could not be loaded and older applications that require real mode could not be run. Microsoft argued that the change improved the speed and reliability of the boot process.

In Windows Me, the CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files are used only to set global environment variables. The two files (if present) are scanned for settings relating to the environment variables, and any other commands present are moved into a Windows registry key (see below). The two files thus contain only settings and preferences which configure the "global environment" for the computer during the boot phase or when starting a new virtual DOS machine (VDM).

To specify or edit other startup values (which, in Windows 98, would be present in the AUTOEXEC.BAT file) the user must edit the following Windows registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\SessionManager\Environment

For troubleshooting and crash recovery, both the Windows Me CD-ROM and the Windows Me startup disk (a user-creatable floppy disk, known as the Emergency Boot Disk (EBD)) allowed booting into real mode MS-DOS.

It is possible to restore real mode DOS functionality through various unofficial means. Additionally, a registry setting exists that re-enables the "Restart in MS-DOS mode" option in the shutdown dialog box; however, unless patched unofficially with third-party software, Windows Me cannot be booted to MS-DOS real mode.

Other components
Unlike previous versions of Windows 9x, Windows Me was entirely aimed at home users, and thus had certain enterprise-oriented features removed. Several features of its predecessors did not work or were officially unsupported by Microsoft on Windows Me, including Automated Installation, Active Directory client services, System Policy Editor, Personal Web Server and ASP. These features were supported on its predecessors, Windows 98 and Windows 95. A Resource Kit publication, targeted towards system administrators, was never published for Windows Me.

Other features that were removed or never updated to work with Windows Me included Microsoft Fax, QuickView and DriveSpace, as well as the GUI FAT32 conversion tool. Several Windows Explorer commands were also modified in Windows Me, matching the menu structure in Windows 2000. While some were simply moved to a different location, certain functionality of the Go menu, as well as the Find command on the Tools menu, are no longer available. For the latter change Microsoft recommends using a variety of similar functionality labeled Search.

Windows Me, like Windows 98 Second Edition, did not ship with the WinG API or RealPlayer 4.0, unlike the original release of Windows 98, due to both of these having been superseded by DirectX and Windows Media Player, respectively.

Upgradeability
Windows Me could have its components upgraded or have new components installed up to the latest versions:

 Internet Explorer 6 SP1 and Outlook Express 6 SP1
 Windows Media Format Runtime and Windows Media Player 9 Series (including Windows Media Encoder 7.1 and the Windows Media 8 Decoding Utility)
 MSN Messenger 7.0
 Windows Installer 2.0
 DirectX 9.0c (the latest compatible runtime is from October 2007.)
 Microsoft .NET Framework up to and including version 2.0 (2.0 SP1 and higher versions are not supported.)
 Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 runtime
 Text Services Framework
 Several other components such as MSXML 3.0 SP7, Microsoft Agent 2.0, NetMeeting 3.01, MSAA 2.0, ActiveSync 3.8, WSH 5.6, Microsoft Data Access Components 2.81 SP1, WMI 1.5 and Speech API 4.0.
 Office XP is the last version of Microsoft Office that is compatible with Windows Me.
 The Microsoft Layer for Unicode can be installed to allow certain Unicode applications to run on the operating system.

System requirements

The /nm setup switch can be used at the DOS command line to bypass the minimum system requirement checks, allowing for installation on a CPU as low as the 16 MHz 80486SX.

Limitations
Windows Me is only designed to handle up to 512 MB of RAM without changes. Systems with larger RAM pools may lose stability; however, depending on the hardware and software configuration, it is sometimes possible to manually tweak the installation to continue working with somewhat larger amounts of RAM as well. The maximum amount of memory the operating system is designed to use is up to 1 GB of RAM. Systems with more than 1.5 GB of RAM may continuously reboot during startup.

Support lifecycle
Compared with other releases of Windows, Windows Me had a short shelf-life of just over a year. Windows 2000 and Windows Me were eventually succeeded by newer Microsoft operating systems: Windows Me by Windows XP Home Edition, and Windows 2000 Professional by Windows XP Professional. Windows XP is noteworthy that the first preview build of Windows XP (then codenamed "Whistler") was released to developers on July 13, 2000, two months before Windows Me's general availability date.

Microsoft originally planned to end support for Windows Me on December 31, 2004. However, in order to give customers more time to migrate to newer Windows versions, particularly in developing or emerging markets, Microsoft decided to extend support until July 11, 2006. Microsoft ended support for Windows Me (and Windows 98) on this date because the company considered the operating system to be obsolete and prone to security risks, and recommended customers to upgrade to a newer version of Windows such as Windows XP for the latest security improvements.

Retail availability for Windows Me ended on December 31, 2003. The operating system is no longer available from Microsoft in any form (through MSDN or otherwise) due to the terms of Java-related settlements Microsoft made with Sun Microsystems.

The Windows Update website continued to be available after Windows Me's end of support date, however, during 2011, Microsoft retired the Windows Update v4 website and removed the updates for Windows Me from its servers.

Support for Office XP on Windows Me ended on July 12, 2011, ending support for all versions of Office on Windows Me.

Microsoft announced in July 2019 that the Microsoft Internet Games services on Windows Me (and XP) would end on July 31, 2019.

Reception
Windows Me initially received generally positive reviews, with reviewers citing the operating system's integrity protection (branded as "PC Health") and the new System Restore feature as steps forward for home users. Despite this, however, users' real-world experience did not bear this out, with industry publications receiving myriad reports of problems with the "PC Health" systems, PCs refusing to shut down cleanly, and general stability problems.

As time went on, the reception became even more negative, to the point where it was heavily panned by users, mainly due to stability and bug problems. Because of its many bugs and glitches, Windows Me is now infamously viewed as one of the worst operating systems of all time, both in critical and retrospect, being unfavorably compared to its immediate predecessor and successor. A PC World article infamously dubbed Windows Me as "Mistake Edition" and placed it 4th in their "Worst Tech Products of All Time" feature in 2006. The article states:  "Shortly after Me appeared in late 2000, users reported problems installing it, getting it to run, getting it to work with other hardware or software, and getting it to stop running."  Consequently, in response to these heavy criticisms, most home users ultimately opted to stick with its predecessor, Windows 98 Second Edition, for the remainder of Windows Me's lifecycle until the release of Windows XP in 2001, while some moved over to Windows 2000 Professional despite the latter operating system being primarily marketed towards the high-end business and enterprise market at the time. In the Netherlands, Windows Me has been mockingly nicknamed "Windows Meer Ellende" (Dutch for "more suffering").

System Restore suffered from a bug in the date-stamping functionality that could cause System Restore to incorrectly date-stamp snapshots that were taken after September 8, 2001. This could prevent System Restore from locating these snapshots and cause the system restore process to fail. Microsoft released an update to fix this problem.

Byron Hinson and Julien Jay, writing for ActiveWin, took an appreciative look on the operating system. On the removal of real mode DOS support, they had noted "The removal of DOS has clearly made a difference in Windows Me in terms of stability (far less Blue screen of death are seen now) and booting speed has greatly increased." In a recommendation of the operating system upgrade for users of Windows 95 and 98, they had stated "If Windows Me isn't a revolutionary OS it's clear that Microsoft has focused its efforts to make it more user-friendly, stable and packed full of multimedia options. The result is great and the enhancements added are really worth the wait." The new features that Windows Me introduced were also praised and have since remained part of subsequent Windows versions.

Along with Windows 2000 from the Windows NT family, Windows Me was the last version of Windows that lacked product activation.

References

External links
 GUIdebook – Graphical User Interface gallery
 Interview with Nicolas Coudière, Chief Product Manager: Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition
 Windows Me home page: The official Windows Me home page from Wayback Machine
 Windows 9x Member Projects

ME
DOS variants
2000 software
Products and services discontinued in 2006
Microsoft criticisms and controversies
Turn of the third millennium
IA-32 operating systems

Windows Me