Card sharing, also known as control word sharing, is a method of allowing multiple clients or digital television receivers to access a subscription television network with only one valid subscription card. This is achieved by electronically sharing a part of the legitimate conditional access smart card's output data, enabling all recipients to gain simultaneous access to scrambled DVB streams, held on the encrypted television network.

Typically, a legitimate smart card is attached to a host digital television receiver, which is equipped with software to share the decrypted 64-bit "control word" key over a computer network, such as the Internet. Once a client receives this key, they can decrypt the encrypted content as though they were using their own subscription card.

The theory of card sharing as a potential attack vector on pay TV encryption was provided in the book European Scrambling Systems by John McCormac in 1996; leading to the term "McCormac Hack" to be used to describe early card-sharing systems.

Basic operation
The security of conditional access smart card technology is limited by the security of the DVB standard in which it operates. The standard practice of a legitimate smart card is to decrypt an ECM (Entitlement Control Message), which then provides the control word, which allows the viewing of scrambled material. With card sharing, however, the smart card and its security features are bypassed; software intercepts the decrypted control word and allows the user to share it across a computer network.

Pirate decryption
Card sharing has established itself as popular method of pirate decryption. Much of the development of card sharing hardware and software has taken place in Europe, where national boundaries mean that home users are able to receive satellite television signals from many countries but are unable to legally subscribe to them due to licensing restrictions on broadcasters.

Because the length of the complete control word is so small (64 bits), delivery of the control words to many different clients is easily possible on a home internet connection. This has sparked the creation of sharing network groups, in which users can access the group by sharing their subscription cards with the group, and in turn, being capable of receiving the channels which all users' cards can decrypt, as though the user owned every single subscription card connected to the network. Other networks have also been created, whereby one server has multiple legitimate subscription cards connected to it. Access to this server is then restricted to those who pay the server's owner their own subscription fee.

Multiple receiver use
An arguably legitimate use for card sharing is the sharing of the control word within a home network, where the subscriber is authorised by the subscription television network to decrypt their signal, using one smart card. Content providers usually provide means for viewing channels on a second smart card, provided at extra cost. An example of this is Sky Multiroom, used in the United Kingdom. However, in some cases the contract between the subscriber and the content provider implicitly or explicitly prohibits this kind of card sharing.

Countermeasures
Card sharing is a particular concern to conditional access providers, and their respective pay-TV companies, as well as the DVB consortium. Card sharing utilises the integral scrambling system of the DVB standard, DVB-CSA, meaning that every provider of scrambled DVB content has potential to be affected by it. In response, several counter measures have been implemented by various parties, with the aim of permanently preventing it.

Technical
One technical method, implemented by providers such as Irdeto and NDS, is to update the software of digital receivers provided by the subscription television service. This software implements a further decryption layer, held within the receiver. Rather than sending a plain text control word from the smart card to the receiver's microprocessor, which can be intercepted, the decrypted ECM will in fact be an encrypted control word, which can only be decrypted by a legitimate, non card sharing capable, receiver. A simpler method, used by several providers, is to simply increase the frequency of control word changes. With changes occurring as frequently as once every few seconds, extra stress is put onto the smart card sharing system, meaning that clients may be frustrated by short, frequent, missed viewing periods.
Another method gaining traction is "Card pairing". Effectively linking the card with the connected device (e.g the set-top box, CAM module or TV's decoding chipset) and locking the card to be used only on that device.

Legal
One significant problem for internet card sharing is that the activity can be traced, through tracing of the originating IP address - though this does not identify an individual it can lead to a specific ISP and/or TV service subscription. Cases of criminal charges have been brought against card sharing hosts. In August 2009, a Liverpool man was prosecuted for re-selling the services of a card sharing network to paying customers. It was the first such case of its type in the UK.  Two further raids occurred in the UK during early 2011, instigated by UK Cable Operator Virgin Media.

DVB-CSA3
In 2007, the DVB Project approved and began licensing a new scrambling system, CSA3, for protecting DVB content. This new system, upon implementation, will attempt to eradicate many of the flaws with the original DVB-CSA system, including introducing an AES based 128-bit key system. The system will reportedly be "hardware friendly and software unfriendly", indicating that reverse engineering of the system, required for the creation of card sharing applications, will be very difficult.

See also
 Smart card
 Pirate decryption

References

Digital television
Cable television technology

Card sharing


The Los Alamos Historical Museum is housed in the historic Guest House, located next to Fuller Lodge, of Los Alamos Ranch School, which was General Leslie Groves's favorite place to stay during the Manhattan Project.

The museum features exhibits on the geological history of the Pajarito Plateau, including the volcanic explosion that created the world's second largest caldera, known as the Valles Caldera. It also has displays on the early settlers of the area, the Ancestral Pueblo Indians and the early homesteaders. The museum displays the history of the Los Alamos Ranch School, an elite educational institution for wealthy boys. It was founded by Ashley Pond II using the methods of the Boy Scouts of America to build both the bodies and the minds of boys, who wore shorts as part of their school uniforms, even during the winter. The school closed in 1943 when the United States government seized the property for the Manhattan Project, the top secret project to create the atomic bomb. Photos and artifacts in the museum document this time and tell the stories of the people who lived it.

The museum also has an area for traveling exhibits which have featured a wide variety of exhibitions about New Mexico history and World War II.

References
 Chambers, Marjorie Bell and Linda Aldrich. Los Alamos New Mexico, A Survey to 1949. Los Alamos Historical Society.
 Church, Fermor S. and Peggy Pond. When Los Alamos Was A Ranch School. Los Alamos Historical Society, 1998.

External links
 Los Alamos Historical Museum - official site
 Fuller Lodge - The Manhattan Project, An Interactive History, retrieved April 2, 2008

Museums in Los Alamos County, New Mexico
Natural history museums in New Mexico
Education museums in the United States
Buildings and structures in Los Alamos County, New Mexico

Los Alamos Historical Museum


In statistical mechanics and thermodynamics the compressibility equation refers to an equation which relates the isothermal compressibility (and indirectly the pressure) to the structure of the liquid. It reads:where  is the number density, g(r) is the radial distribution function and  is the isothermal compressibility.

Using the Fourier representation of the Ornstein-Zernike equation the compressibility equation can be rewritten in the form:

where h(r) and c(r) are the indirect and direct correlation functions respectively. The compressibility equation is one of the many integral equations in statistical mechanics.

References

D.A. McQuarrie, Statistical Mechanics (Harper Collins Publishers) 1976

Statistical mechanics
Thermodynamic equations

Compressibility equation


The proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy happened with a normative act of the Savoyard Kingdom of Sardinia — the law 17 March 1861, n. 4761 — with which Victor Emmanuel II assumed for himself and for his successors the title of King of Italy. 17 March is commemorated annually by the anniversary of the unification of Italy, a national holiday established in 1911 on the occasion of the 50th anniversary, and also celebrated, in the Republican era, in 1961 and 2011.

History

Following the Second Italian War of Independence and the Expedition of the Thousand, led by Giuseppe Garibaldi, in the two-year period 1859-60, the goal of the unification of Italy had been largely achieved, with the sole exception of the Triveneto and Lazio. The annexation to the Kingdom of Sardinia of the various provinces had been sanctioned by a series of plebiscites. However, the new state still carried the name of Kingdom of Sardinia.

On 18 February 1861, the new Parliament, already known as the Italian Parliament, met in Turin, at Palazzo Carignano, formerly the seat of the Parliament of the Kingdom of Sardinia, even though it was numbered as VIII, thus continuing the numbering of the legislatures of the Kingdom of Sardinia. The Chamber of Deputies of the Kingdom of Italy also included parliamentarians elected in the "new provinces", while the Senate of the Kingdom of Italy, not elected but appointed by the king, had been integrated with appointments of senators from different parts of Italy.

The opening of the new legislature took place with the speech of the Crown pronounced by the King. The Senate in the reply voted on 26 February spoke explicitly of a new realm. The Chamber of Deputies in the response speech to Victor Emmanuel II of Savoy, written by Giuseppe Ferrari and dated 13 March 1861, already declared that:

Immediately after the start of the legislature, on 21 February, the then Prime Minister Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour presented to the Senate a bill, consisting of a single article, to formalize the new name of the King. This became law on 17 March 1861, with the publication in the Official Journal of the Kingdom of Italy n.67. 17 March is commemorated annually by the anniversary of the unification of Italy, a national holiday established in 1911 on the occasion of the 50th anniversary.

The law
The royal decree read:

In the Report Cavour recalled that

However, in the text approved by the Senate a second article also appears on the question of the heading of legislative acts. It was therefore established that:

The numeral of Victor Emmanuel of Savoy continued to be "second", not "first", as a sign of the continuity of the House of Savoy dynasty which had achieved Italian unification and of the continuity of the Statuto Albertino.

Citations

External links

Statutory law
Kingdom of Italy
Italian unification
Kingdom of Italy (1861–1946)
1861 documents

Proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy


Andrea Mazzucchi (born March 19, 1966) is an Italian American entrepreneur, network architect, and computer specialist

He played a significant role in the early development of Internet in Italy and other countries in Eastern Europe, such as Croatia.

Being interested in the regulatory side as well as the technical, he also played a key role in the Internet governance of Italy since 1985. He co-founded  in 1998 the ccTLD ".it" policy board (Naming Authority), where he eventually became Chair of the Board of Directors. In 2004, once the Naming Authority evolved into the Rules Committee, he was one of the appointed members.

Focused since the very beginning toward the Open Source, in 1992 he co-founded Nexus, the first ISP in Italy based exclusively on Linux and open technologies.

In 1993, Mazzucchi co-founded Gedi, one of the first companies in Italy for distance learning.

In 1995, he founded Istria On Line, the first ISP in Croatia, and worked on Internet pilot projects in Bulgaria and Hungary, mostly establishing TCP/IP over X.25 Internet connections for international businesses.

He is an active member of the Internet community, being co-founder, with Giancarlo Livraghi, of ALCEI, initially conceived as the Italian branch of EFF.
He is also co-founder of the Italian chapter of ISOC, where he served on the Board of Directors

References

Living people
1966 births
Businesspeople from Rome
Italian computer scientists
Scientists from Rome

External links
Naming Authority
Rules Committee
 ALCEI
ISOC it

Andrea Mazzucchi


William Orgain Allen (William Orgain; 1829–1875). At age two, he inherited the  Claremont Estate on the James River in Virginia from his granduncle Colonel William Allen (1768–1831). To satisfy the terms of his inheritance, his name was officially changed to William Allen in 1832.

At the time of his death, newspaper obituaries reported that prior to the Civil War Allen was the wealthiest man in Virginia and one of the wealthiest in the South. His property included Jamestown Island, vast plantations in three Virginia counties, lumber and shipping businesses, and a railroad. Initially a major supporter of the Confederacy, Allen resigned his military post in 1862, claiming to have already lost $450,000 in goods and material donated to the Confederate cause, as well as plantation property damaged by looters and occupying Union forces.

References
 Gregory, Eve S., Claremont Manor: A History, 1990.

External links
 Claremont Manor: A History web site

1829 births
1875 deaths
19th-century American landowners
People from Virginia
19th-century American businesspeople

William (Orgain) Allen


Constantius III was briefly Western Roman emperor in 421. He earned his position as Emperor due to his capability as a general under Honorius, achieving the rank of magister militum by 411. That same year, he suppressed the revolt of Constantine III, a Roman general who had declared himself emperor. Constantius then went on to lead campaigns against various barbarian groups in Hispania and Gaul, recovering much of both for the Western Roman Empire. Constantius married Honorius's sister Galla Placidia in 417, a sign of his ascendant status, and was proclaimed co-emperor by Honorius on 8 February 421. He reigned for seven months before dying on 2 September 421.

Life

Early life

Constantius was born in Naissus, Moesia (present-day Niš, Serbia) of Illyrian origin. Constantius served as a general under Honorius, rising to the rank of Magister militum (Master of the Soldiers) by 411.

Revolt of Constantine III
In 411 Constantius was sent by Honorius to put down the revolt of Constantine III, who had declared himself emperor in Britain in 407. Constantius thereafter led his soldiers to Arles, the capital and residence of Constantine. Upon arriving, he defeated the army of Gerontius, a general who was rebelling against Constantine, before besieging the city.

Constantine refused to surrender, hoping to last until the return of his general Edobichus, who was raising troops in northern Gaul. Edobichus did return to Arles, however he was swiftly defeated by Constantius. Constantine soon after lost much of the remainder of his forces, as his army which had been guarding the Rhine chose to support the usurper Jovinus instead, forcing Constantine to surrender. Despite Constantius' assurances that Constantine would be able to safely retire to a clerical office, Constantius had him imprisoned, and further had him beheaded during his return to Ravenna, in either August or September 411. Honorius' remaining rivals were soon defeated, with Gerontius committing suicide in Hispania, and Jovinus being defeated by Athaulf, king of the Visigoths. Despite this, Honorius was unable to regain control of Britain, nor was any Roman after him.

Campaigns
Constantius initiated a campaign against the Visigoths in northern Hispania in 416, blockading them in order to starve them and force their submission. Soon after, the Visigoth king, Wallia, surrendered to Rome, agreeing to return Galla Placidia (the sister of Honorius, who had been captured by Alaric  412, and been forced into marriage with Athaulf, who was by this time dead), and to wage war against the Vandals and other barbarians who the Romans were still in conflict with, in exchange for food supplies. Constantius then continued to campaign against various tribal groups, regaining control of much of Hispania and Gaul by 420.

Reign
During this time period, generals played a critical role in ensuring the continued reign of Roman Emperors, especially Western Roman Emperors. Constantius' position of magister militum and his skill as a commander allowed him to gain huge influence over the Western Roman Empire, comparable to the earlier Stilicho. For this reason, Honorius bestowed many honors upon Constantius, such as appointing him consul three times: in 414, alongside Constans; in 417, alongside Honorius; and in 420, alongside Theodosius II. In order to further ensure Constantius' loyalty, Honorius arranged the betrothal of his sister, Galla Placidia, to Constantius in 417. Later, on 8 February 421, Honorius made Constantius co-Western Emperor under himself. Constantius reigned as co-emperor only seven months before dying on 2 September 421, in Ravenna. Honorius ruled alone until his death in 423, whereupon Valentinian III, Constantius' son, assumed the throne, with Galla Placidia serving as regent.

References

Bibliography

|-

|-

421 deaths
5th-century Western Roman emperors
5th-century Roman consuls
Flavii
Imperial Roman consuls
Magistri militum
Patricii
People from Niš
Theodosian dynasty
Year of birth unknown

Constantius III


Robert Bernat (July 3, 1931 – December 3, 1994) was an American composer and the founder, artistic director, and conductorof the River City Brass Band in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His musical influences included his mentor, Aaron Copland, as well as other American composers including Leonard Bernstein, George Gershwin, and John Philip Sousa.

Biography
Bernat was born in Johnstown, Pennsylvania on July 3, 1931 to Pearl Willie and Andrew Bernat. His mother died when he was four. That same year, his maternal grandfather taught him to play the country fiddle. By the time he was a teenager, he was playing the clarinet and saxophone professionally in jazz bands. At 15, he composed his first sonata for violin and piano. He obtained his undergraduate degree from Carnegie Mellon University (then, Carnegie Tech) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and his Master of Fine Arts in Composition from Brandeis University.

In 1960, Bernat received a Crofts fellowship to attend the Boston Symphony Orchestra's Tanglewood Music Center in the Berkshires where he studied with composer Aaron Copland. He held academic posts at Bethany College, Brandeis University, Ohio State University and the University of Pittsburgh before finding a permanent teaching home in the music department at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. In 1966, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra commissioned him to compose In Memoriam: John F. Kennedy, a tribute to the late president. The piece was premiered on November 25, 1966. In the program notes, Bernat stated, "I tried to build the kind of piece that would be accessible to as many listeners as possible without compromising my own musical ideals." This musical philosophy was a common thread throughout Bernat's career. The Louisville Orchestra later recorded In Memoriam as part of their first edition series. From 1971-1972, Bernat was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow at California Institute for the Arts in Los Angeles, California where he studied electronic music. When he returned to Pennsylvania, he served as executive director of the Pennsylvania Council for the Arts from 1972 through 1975.

Composer and Brass Band
Bernat was commissioned in 1976 by British composer Elgar Howarth to write his first brass band composition, Dunlap's Creek.  The Grimethorpe Colliery Band premiered the piece in Uniontown, Pennsylvania and in New York City as part of the United States Bicentennial celebrations. Composing Dunlap's Creek inspired Bernat to learn more about these bands which enjoy great popularity in United Kingdom. In September 1978, he was the first composer selected by the state of Pennsylvania and the National Endowment for the Arts to participate in an arts exchange program with the United Kingdom. He moved to Sheffield, England for almost a year to study brass bands up close. He was so impressed by the bands' combination of musical virtuosity and accessibility that he made up his mind to bring the brass band movement to the US.

He began to execute his plan in 1980 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The Steel City was not only a perfect base for this blue collar music (traditionally the musicians were coal miners and mill workers), it also offered a deep pool of musical talent. In 1981, the River City Brass Band (RCBB) gave its debut performance at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Music Hall. Bernat served as the RCBB's conductor, artistic director and president. Under his direction, the RCBB's musicians brought a variety of music — everything from traditional marches and Broadway tunes to newly commissioned works—to Pittsburgh audiences.

During performances, Bernat would tell anecdotes about the various pieces and composers and encouraged audiences to join in for sing-a-longs. Bernat was diagnosed with lung cancer in May 1994. With the RCBB in its 15th season, Bernat handed over his baton to cornet player, Denis Colwell, but continued to work behind the scenes to ensure that his artistic vision was properly executed. He died on December 3, 1994 at the age of 63 in his home. His legacy continues today as the River City Brass Band (now River City Brass) plays nationally and internationally under the direction of conductor and artistic director, James Gourlay, an internationally renowned tuba player and former conductor of the Grimethorpe Colliery Band.

Personal
Bernat married Edwinna Bossler, a fellow Johnstown native, in 1954, and they had three daughters, Brenda, Rebecca (Becky), and June Elizabeth (Betsy). He eventually married four times. The former Nancy Buttermore was his wife at the time of his death.

Awards and honors
 Woodrow Wilson Fellow (1971)
 Man of the Year in Arts and Music, City of Pittsburgh (1989)
 Honorary Doctorate of the Arts, Washington & Jefferson College (1990)
 Achievement Award, City of Johnstown (1992)
 Composer's Radio Award, BMI, "Woodwind Quartet"

References

External links
 River City Brass Band

1931 births
1994 deaths
20th-century American composers
20th-century American conductors (music)
American male composers
American male conductors (music)
Brass band composers
Bethany College (West Virginia) faculty
Brandeis University faculty
Brandeis University alumni
California Institute of the Arts faculty
Carnegie Mellon University alumni
Indiana University of Pennsylvania faculty
Ohio State University faculty
University of Pittsburgh faculty
Deaths from lung cancer in Pennsylvania
People from Johnstown, Pennsylvania
20th-century American male musicians

Robert Bernat


Philips Classics was started in the 1980s as the new classics record label for Philips Records. It was successful with artists including Alfred Brendel, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Sir Neville Marriner and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, Mitsuko Uchida, Julian Lloyd Webber, Sir Colin Davis and André Rieu.

A significant release by the label was the 180-CD The Complete Mozart Edition, which featured all works by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, known at the set's publication in 1990–1991 for the bicentenary of the composer's death. It was re-released as the Complete Compact Mozart Edition.

Parent Universal Music Group, which was formed in 1999 from the merger of the PolyGram and MCA families of labels, merged the label into Decca Records, because the new parent did not have the rights to the Philips name, while PolyGram was a subsidiary of the Philips company. The name Philips Classics still exists but appears on no new recordings and the Philips Classics Internet presence is within Decca's Web site.

See also
 List of record labels

External links
Decca & Philips Classics

Classical music record labels
Defunct record labels of the United Kingdom
Universal Music Group
Decca Records

Philips Classics Records


Opus isodomum is an ancient technique of wall building. It uses perfectly cut, completely regular square stone blocks of equal height, and sometimes of the same length.

In classical antiquity this technique was perfected and widely used, especially for public buildings (temples, theaters, amphitheaters etc.). One of the most well-known examples is the Parthenon.

Vitruvius briefly described this technique in his De Architectura, 2nd book, 8th chapter as following: A wall is called "isodomum" when all the courses are of equal height.

Vitruvius further states that the stone blocks of opus isodomum are bound together by mortar, but more often they are not connected with mortar but with metal ties such as iron cramps, fixed in stone blocks with molten lead.

Completely regular isodomum is relatively rare, especially in the provinces. More frequent is isodomum made of stone blocks of the same height but not of the same length. In order to strengthen this type of wall, builders always take good care that the ends of stone blocks in alternating courses of the wall do not match.

Opus pseudoisodomum is a version of opus isodomum mentioned by Vitruvius, describing that it is a kind of stonemasonery in which "the rows of courses do not match but run unequally", referring to the height and length of the blocks, which are nevertheless still perfectly cut.

Vitruvius considered both types of wall construction as Greek, emphasizing that "both kinds are strong".

Footnotes

Bibliography
 Vitruvius 1990 - Marcus Vitruvius Pollio: Deset knjiga o arhitekturi, translated by Matija Lopac, Sarajevo, 1990, p. 41-46
Müller / Vogel 1999 - Werner Müller; Gunther Vogel: Atlas arhitekture 1, translated by Milan Pelc, Zagreb, 1999., p. 3, 31, 60, 61
Suić 1976 - Mate Suić: Antički grad na istočnom Jadranu, Zagreb, 1976, p. 108, 110

Walls

Opus isodomum


Roy W. Brown is a British-born engineer, humanist and human rights activist. He was president of the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) from 2003 to 2006 and was for a time its main representative at the United Nations, Geneva.

Early years

Roy Brown was born in London on 2 November 1947. He was educated at the Martin School, East Finchley and The Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School, an Independent school in Elstree in Hertfordshire, and the University of London where he read Engineering. He trained as an engineer with ITT in London working on the development of electronic systems, and the UK Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Orford Ness and Aldermaston where he was part of the team developing monitoring systems for the international Test Ban Treaty. After emigrating to Canada where he worked for four years with Canadian Marconi in Montreal on the design of airborne radar and navigation systems he returned to the UK as Chief Designer for Racal Research in Tewkesbury, pioneers in the field of Computer Aided Design.

Metier Management Systems

In 1976, with three colleagues: Richard (Dick) Evans, Robin Lodge and James Miller, Brown founded  Metier Management Systems in London, the first company to develop and market mini-computer-based systems for the management of large scale projects. Their first product, Apollo, launched in 1977, was the first Project Management System to run on a minicomputer but was limited to network planning and scheduling. It was joined in 1978 by a sister product, Artemis which incorporated cost and resource management, and became the world's first commercially successful relational database system.

By the early 1980s, Artemis systems were in use in over 30 countries providing management information for some of the world's largest civil, aerospace, nuclear and military projects, including the construction of off-shore oil platforms, aircraft development, the construction of five military cities in the Middle East, the maintenance of the US navy fleets at Long Beach and Norfolk Naval Yard, aerospace projects, nuclear power plant maintenance, and production scheduling in the UK and US automobile industries.

From 1978 until 1982, as the business grew, Metier developed Artemis systems for other platforms including Hewlett Packard and IBM mainframes. From 1980 Metier embarked on an ambitious programme to develop their own RISC-based computer hardware and a complete software rewrite, to be called Artemis 2.

By 1985 when the partners sold the company to the Lockheed Corporation, one of their biggest customers, Metier had 700 employees (of whom 70 were shareholders) and offices in 21 countries.

World Population Foundation

Brown moved to the Netherlands in 1984 where with his wife Diana he founded the World Population Foundation (WPF) to promote family planning: a major factor in improving the quality of life of women and families, and solving the problems of human development and rapid population growth in developing countries.

By 1993 WPF had become one of the leading population advocacy organisations in Europe,  and in 1994 played an important role in the Dutch delegation to the International Conference on Population and Development, (ICPD), held in Cairo.

In 1996, WPF became a founding member of Eurongo, the European network of NGOs working in the field of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights, Population and Development, an organisation first proposed in 1991 by Brown, Sjaak Bavelaar (at that time Executive Director of WPF), and Ann Allport of CARE International.

WPF played a significant role in persuading the Dutch government to treble its funding for population assistance in 1998, becoming the largest single donor to the UN Population Fund. In 1999 WPF became more widely known when it was chosen by the UN to host the Hague Forum on Population and Development.

WPF continued to grow under the direction of Executive Director Wouter Meijer and by 2004 when he retired, had projects in 16 countries and had opened offices in Pakistan and Viet Nam, employing around 60 staff worldwide.

In 1998 Brown handed over the chairmanship of WPF to Nicolaas Biegman, former Dutch ambassador to the UN, but remained on the board until 2012.

International Foundation for Population and Development

The family moved to Switzerland in 1987.

In 1999, together with Christine Magistretti, Charles Riolo and Frederick Naville, Brown became a founding member of the board of the International Foundation for Population and Development based in Lausanne Switzerland. Working with their partner organisation, the Centre for the Study of Social Change, CSSC, in Mumbai, India, IFPD created the WIN program, opening  20 clinics providing primary health care for mothers and their children, family planning, skills training and literacy classes for young women and girls in the slums around Bandra East. As of 2010, WIN was providing services to a population of over 80,000 people.

International Humanist and Ethical Union

Brown was brought up as a Methodist but became a Humanist when he met his second wife Diana. He became a life member of the British Humanist Association, the National Secular Society and the Council for Secular Humanism, but only became active in the Humanist movement after attending the 14th World Humanist Congress in Mumbai in 1999. He became a member of the IHEU Committee for Growth and Development later the same year and chair of the Committee in 2000. He was elected a vice-president of IHEU in 2001, and president in 2003. He served as president until 2006.

Prior to the 50th anniversary of the foundation of IHEU, Brown acted as co-ordinator of the project to update its founding document, the Amsterdam Declaration.  The Amsterdam Declaration 2002 was adopted unanimously that year by the 15th World Humanist Congress and the IHEU General Assembly as "the official defining statement of World Humanism".

As president of IHEU Brown initiated a process of decentralisation with the appointment of a number of regional representatives to work closely with the more than 100 IHEU member organisations in over 40 countries. In 2004 in Kampala, Uganda he inaugurated the launch of the African Humanist Alliance, uniting Humanist, secular and freethought organisations around Africa.

Human Rights at the UN

Since 2004 Brown has also served as IHEU Main Representative at the UN, Geneva, where he has worked at the UN Commission on Human Rights and its successor, the Human Rights Council. Brown has prepared written submissions and spoken at the plenary sessions of the Commission and Council on issues as diverse as Female Genital Mutilation, the plight of the Dalits in India, slavery in North Africa, witchcraft and witch hunts in Africa, freedom of expression, the concept of defamation of religion, the incompatibility of the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam with the Universal Declaration, and the role of the Holy See in attempting to cover up the child abuse scandal and its failure to honour its obligations under the International Convention on the Rights of the Child.

A Vision for Europe

In 2006 the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, announced plans to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the foundation of the European Union with a declaration to be known as the Berlin Declaration that was to make reference to Europe's "Christian roots". The declaration was to be signed by all 27 heads of government of the European Union and would become the preamble to the proposed new European Constitution.
Brown proposed a campaign to challenge this potentially divisive idea which promised to neglect not only other faiths but Humanism, secularism and Europe's debt to the Enlightenment.

IHEU agreed to work on a joint campaign, "A Vision for Europe", with the European Humanist Federation and the international NGO Catholics for a Free Choice to create an alternative to the Berlin Declaration, be called "the Brussels Declaration" to set out Europe's common heritage based on the values of the Enlightenment. Brown was appointed co-ordinator of the campaign.

The drafting process ran from October 2006 until January 2007 and involved hundreds of conversations and some 15 preliminary drafts.  The Brussels Declaration was presented to the representative of the European presidency at the European Parliament on 27 February 2007, one month before the date of the anniversary celebrations, and addressed to all 27 heads of government with a plea that the values set out in the Brussels Declaration be incorporated into the Berlin Declaration.

The campaign was successful.
When the Berlin Declaration was promulgated on 27 March 2007, three heads of government refused to sign because the declaration contained no reference to God, religion or Europe's supposed Christian heritage, and the declaration was eventually signed only by Angela Merkel as president of the European Council, Hans-Gert Pottering, president of the European Parliament, and Jose Maunuel Barroso, President of the European Commission. The declaration was then incorporated as the Preamble into the daft of the European Constitution.

One of the reasons for the success of the campaign was that rather than attempt to obtain a million or more signatures from ordinary citizens the campaign enlisted the support of 1000 leading Europeans including elder statesmen, religious leaders and Nobel laureates, all with considerable influence in their respective countries.

One not entirely unexpected result of the campaign was that a furious Pope Benedict XVI declared that "Europe has lost its soul" and demanded an invitation to address the European parliament. When the invitation was eventually received however the Pope declined, stating that the Parliament had become "too secular".

Awards

1999, with his wife Diana, Council for Secular Humanism "Distinguished Humanists" award

2006, the Free Press Prize of the Danish Free Press Society, together with the Norwegian-Pakistani comedian Shabana Rehman. The prize announcement stated that "Roy Brown has been a tireless advocate of free speech as part and parcel of human rights. He has thus made an invaluable contribution to the defence of the open society and freedom of expression."

In 2008, Brown received the IHEU Distinguished Service to Humanism award for, among other things, his work representing the IHEU at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.

References

English humanists
People from Finchley
Living people
1947 births
People educated at Haberdashers' Boys' School
Free speech activists
Alumni of the University of London
Engineers from London

Roy W. Brown


Fundamental modeling concepts (FMC) provide a framework to describe software-intensive systems. It strongly emphasizes the communication about software-intensive systems by using a semi-formal graphical notation that can easily be understood.

Introduction
FMC distinguishes three perspectives to look at a software system:
 Structure of the system
 Processes in the system
 Value domains of the system

FMC defines a dedicated diagram type for each perspective. FMC diagrams use a simple and lean notation. The purpose of FMC diagrams is to facilitate the communication about a software system, not only between technical experts but also between technical experts and business or domain experts. The comprehensibility of FMC diagrams has made them famous among its supporters.

The common approach when working with FMC is to start with a high-level diagram of the compositional structure of a system. This "big picture" diagram serves as a reference in the communication with all involved stakeholders of the project. Later on, the high-level diagram is iteratively refined to model technical details of the system. Complementary diagrams for processes observed in the system or value domains found in the system are introduced as needed.

Diagram Types
FMC uses three diagram types to model different aspects of a system:
Compositional Structure Diagram depicts the static structure of a system. This diagram type is also known as FMC Block Diagram
Dynamic Structure Diagram depicts processes that can be observed in a system. This diagram type is also known as FMC Petri-net
Value Range Structure Diagram depicts structures of values found in the system. This diagram type is also known as FMC E/R Diagram

All FMC diagrams are bipartite graphs. Each bipartite graph consists of two disjoint sets of vertices with the condition that no vertex is connected to another vertex of the same set. In FMC diagrams, members of one set are represented by angular shapes, and members of the other set are represented by curved shapes. Each element in an FMC diagram can be refined by another diagram of the same type, provided that the combined graph is also bipartite. This mechanism allows modeling all relevant layers of abstraction with the same notation.

Compositional Structure Diagram

Compositional structure diagrams depict the static structure of a system, and the relationships between system components. System components can be active or passive. Agents are active system components. They perform activities in the system. Storages and channels are passive components which store or transmit information.

The image to the right is an example of a compositional structure diagram. It contains the agents Order Processor, Supplier Manager, Supplier, Online Shop and an unnamed human agent. Agents are represented by rectangles. The dots and the shadow of the agent Supplier indicate that this agent has multiple instances, i.e. the Supplier Manager communicates with one or many suppliers. The so-called human agent represents a user interacting with the system.

The diagram contains the storages Orders, Purchase Order and Product Catalog. Storages are represented by curved shapes. Agents can read from storages, write to storages or modify the content of storages. The directions of the arrows indicate which operation is performed by an agent. In the diagram, the Supplier Manager can modify the content of the Product Catalog, whereas the Order Processor can only read the content of the Product Catalog.

Agents communicate via channels. The direction of information flow is either indicated by arrows (not shown in the picture), by a request-response-symbol (e.g. between Supplier Manager and Supplier) or omitted (e.g. between Order Processor and Supplier Manager).

Dynamic Structure Diagram
Dynamic structures are derived from petri nets.
"They are used to express system behavior over time, depicting the actions performed by the agents. So they clarify how a system is working and how communication takes place between different agents."

Value Range Structure Diagram
Value range structure diagrams (also known as FMC Entity Relationship Diagrams) can be compared with the Entity-relationship model.
"[They] are used to depict value range structures or topics as mathematical structures. Value range structures describe observable values at locations within the system whereas topic diagrams allow a much wider usage in order to cover all correlations between interesting points."

References

External links
FMC home page
FMC-Stencils for MS-Visio
FMC-Coaching & Training

Data modeling
Data modeling languages
Specification languages
Modeling languages

Fundamental modeling concepts


The Margaret Mitchell House is a historic house museum located in Atlanta, Georgia. The structure was the home of author Margaret Mitchell in the early 20th century. It is located in Midtown, at 979 Crescent Avenue. Constructed by Cornelius J. Sheehan as a single-family residence in a then-fashionable section of residential Peachtree Street, the building's original address was 806 Peachtree Street. The house was known as the Crescent Apartments when Mitchell and her husband lived in Apt. 1 on the ground floor from 1925 to 1932. While living there, Mitchell wrote the bulk of her Pulitzer Prize-winning 1936 novel, Gone with the Wind.

The house is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is also designated as a historic building by the City of Atlanta.

This house serves as the heart of Atlanta History Center's Midtown Campus and it houses permanent exhibitions that focus on various topics surrounding the building's history.

House history
The house was built as a single-family residence in 1899. Commercial development quickly overtook the neighborhood, however, and in 1907 the original family moved to Druid Hills. The house changed hands several times until the winter of 1913–14 when the house was moved onto a new basement story constructed on the rear of the lot. Given a Crescent Avenue address, the building was remodeled in 1919 and converted into a ten-unit apartment building, known as the Crescent Apartments, and "three brick stores" were built where the house had originally sat. Located in what was then Atlanta's largest business district outside of downtown, close to trolley lines, and walking distance from her parents' house, the Crescent Apartments was home to Margaret Mitchell and John Marsh when they married in July 1925. Unfortunately, the building's owner became over-extended, and it was sold at auction in 1926. The next owner, too, was driven to bankruptcy when the stock market crashed in 1929. Maintenance declined, contributing to Mitchell's characterization of their apartment as "the Dump." By the fall of 1931, there were only two occupied apartments in the building, one of which belonged to the Marshes, but they, too, moved to a larger apartment a few blocks away in the spring of 1932.

With a new owner, the Crescent Apartments were revived and continued to attract tenants until shortly after World War II. By then, the building was in poor condition, and in 1946 the porches were removed from the Crescent Avenue side of the building. (The original front porches were lost when the building was moved in 1913). By the 1950s, the building was mostly vacant and overdue for rehabilitation. There were a few commercial tenants, and the old apartments were popular with Georgia Tech students. In 1964, the opening nearby of Ansley Mall signaled the death knell for the old commercial district on Peachtree Street between 8th and 14th. But at the same time, the Crescent Apartments got a much-needed rehab and were reborn as the Windsor House Apartments.

In 1977, the last tenants were evicted and the building boarded up by a new owner who intended a major redevelopment of the area. By the time he and his company went bankrupt in the late 1980s, their only accomplishment was construction of a new office building at 10th and West Peachtree and the razing of dozens of historic buildings in the area.

The old Crescent Apartments continued to deteriorate, especially after a fire set in the southwest corner of the building did minor damage in the late 1980s. In 1989, Mayor Andrew Young helped secure Margaret Mitchell House's future by designating it a city landmark on the rolls of what is now the city's Office of Urban Design - Historic Preservation Division. When the decision was made to restore the property, the architectural history of the structure was taken into account, and the front of the house was restored as it was in 1899. The back of the building was restored as it was when Margaret Mitchell called it home.

However, another fire, presumed to be arson, destroyed much of the building in September 1994. Afterwards, Daimler-Benz Corporation, the German auto manufacturer, gave $4.5 million to restore the property and purchase its surrounding city block. With a Mercedes-Benz plant near Birmingham, Alabama, Daimler-Benz anticipated using the facility for hospitality events during the 1996 Summer Olympics.

In May 1996, only 40 days before the Centennial Games' Opening Ceremonies, the house again was victim of an arson attempt. This fire occurred at a point where the restoration was almost complete, and all but Margaret Mitchell's apartment was damaged or destroyed.

After the 1996 fire, $2 million collected from insurance allowed the restoration to continue. The House was dedicated on May 16, 1997.

It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1996.

See also
 National Register of Historic Places listings in Fulton County, Georgia

References

External links

 Official site
 National Register profile
 Atlanta, Georgia, a National Park Service Discover Our Shared Heritage Travel Itinerary
 Margaret Mitchell House historical marker

Margaret Mitchell
Houses completed in 1899
Historic house museums in Georgia (U.S. state)
Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Georgia (U.S. state)
Houses in Atlanta
Museums in Atlanta
Cinema museums in Georgia (U.S. state)
National Register of Historic Places in Atlanta
City of Atlanta-designated historic sites

Margaret Mitchell House and Museum


The Main Street–Albertson Street–Park Place Historic District is located in the residential neighborhood just west of US 9 near central Hyde Park, New York, United States. It is a predominantly residential area of  along the named streets, also including Hyde Park's library and a few former church buildings since converted into houses.

Its buildings were the core of Hyde Park in the 19th century, before later development and expansion shifted the center of Hyde Park to its current location just to the northeast. Many are in their original condition. In 1993 it was recognized as a historic district and added to the National Register of Historic Places.

Geography

The irregularly-shaped district boundaries are mostly lot lines and streets. It begins at the intersection of Main Street and Route 9, including all buildings fronting on Main for the two blocks west to Park Place. All the buildings on Park between Main and Albertson streets to the south are included, as well as some buildings at the west end of Albertson.

This includes 36 buildings and structures in all, only six of which are not considered contributing properties to the district. Most of them are frame houses and their outbuildings built between 1840 and 1860, a time of slow transition between the Federal and Greek Revival architectural styles at the vernacular level.

The most significant exception is the newest contributing property, the James Roosevelt Memorial Library at 2 Main Street, constructed of fieldstone in 1927 at the behest of Roosevelt's son Franklin, since his family made the donation that allowed for its construction. Buildings at 15 and 19 Park Place are the former Baptist Church and St. James Rectory, dating to the late 1840s. Across the street, 20 Park was likewise once a Methodist parsonage.

History

The area north of Poughkeepsie along the east bank of the Hudson was known as Hyde Park as early as the 1730s, but remained largely unsettled until the 1760s, when the first large estates that were initially used as summer residences were established. By the end of the century, both the present center of Hyde Park and Staatsburg had been established.

Hyde Park became a town in 1821. Fifteen years later, in 1836, Main Street established itself as a short route between what was then the Albany Post Road and today's Market Street. A hundred lots were subdivided, and by 1858 maps show a thriving community with churches, houses and businesses in the area of the present historic district. Most of their owners were local businessmen and craftsmen. Later, the influence of large estate-owning families like the Roosevelts and Vanderbilts grew to the point they played a major role in the local economy, and their workers resided in the houses. This culminated in 1927 with the Roosevelt Library's construction.

Most homes in the district were built in a modest Greek Revival style, three bays wide rather than the customary five, since the lots were narrow. Later on, in the late 1860s, two houses had mansard roofs added, in keeping with the Second Empire style growing in popularity at the time.

In the 20th century, the rise of the estates, the growth the area experienced after Franklin Roosevelt became President and spent his vacations in the area and the rise of the automobile changed the geography of downtown Hyde Park. Main Street was still unpaved in the 1930s; at that time Roosevelt spearheaded the construction of the new post office at the crossroads of what was now Route 9 and Market, where it joined a new firehouse. The center of the town shifted to that junction, northeast of the old downtown. The buildings of what had historically been Hyde Park remained largely untouched, with a few modern additions to the neighborhood in the later decades of the century.

See also

National Register of Historic Places listings in Dutchess County, New York

References

External links

Historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places in New York (state)
U.S. Route 9
Hyde Park, New York
National Register of Historic Places in Dutchess County, New York
Historic districts in Dutchess County, New York


Group 16 is the third last group in the periodic table. This group is called the oxygen family or the chalcogens. The elements in this group are oxygen, sulfur, selenium, tellurium, polonium and livermorium. The first two elements are nonmetals, elements are in between are metalloids and  the last two are metals  Polonium and livermorium are radioactive. Oxygen (as O2) is a colorless gas.

16

Group 16 element


Oleny Island (also spelt as Oleniy and Oleni) () is a single island in the Kara Sea just a few kilometers offshore, north of the coast of one of the arms of the Gyda Peninsula in North Siberia.
It is covered with tundra and swamps and it is 53 km in length and its average width is 27 km, having an area of 1197 km². Its latitude is 72° 24' N and the longitude 77° 45' E.

The sea surrounding Oleny Island is covered with pack ice in the winter and there are numerous ice floes even in the summer, so that it is often merged with the Gydan Peninsula in the Siberian mainland, from which is separated by a narrow, only 2 km wide, strait.

Oleny Island belongs to the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug which is the northern part of the Tyumen Oblast administrative division of the Russian Federation. Oleny is also part of the Great Arctic State Nature Reserve, the largest nature reserve of Russia .

This island is not to be confused with other single islands called "Oleny" or "Oleniy" (Russian: Ostrov Oleny), one of which is located in the Kara Sea itself, in the Plavnikovyye group, while the others are in the Barents Sea and in the White Sea.

Adjacent islands
Off Oleny Island's southwestern tip lie three small islands known as Proklyatye Islands (Проклятые острова; Proklyatye ostrova) at 72° 15' N of latitude and  77° 05' E of longitude.
Rovny Island is located close to the mainland coast, a few km east of the Proklyatye Islands.

References
 Location:
 Nature Reserve:

Islands of the Kara Sea
Islands of Tyumen Oblast

Oleny Island


Gerald Simpson Hillairet Rutland Vere de Gaury MC (1 April 1897 – 12 January 1984) was a British military officer, Arabist, explorer, historian and diplomat.

He served in the Hampshire Regiment in the First World War, where he fought at the Somme, and was wounded on several occasions, including in the Gallipoli Campaign. He was awarded the Military Cross in 1917:
"For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty. He displayed the greatest gallantry and initiative in organising and leading bombing attacks. Although subjected to heavy machine gun and rifle fire he captured an important enemy post. His fine example and disregard of danger were of great value to his men."

De Gaury served as the British political agent in Kuwait in the 1930s, and organized and took part in the official visit of Sir Andrew Ryan to Riyadh in November 1935, to present Ibn Sa'ud with the Order of the Bath. The previous year, while visiting Ibn Sa'ud in Riyadh, he had become one of the first half dozen Britons to enter that city.

He was a fluent speaker of Arabic and spent much time hunting with Ibn Sa'ud during his wartime assignment to the Nejd and Asir. During that time, he became a foremost authority on the region and wrote a number of books on the subject in later life.

An enthusiastic and skilled photographer, de Gaury is responsible for a large proportion of the photographs of the Arabian Peninsula from this period.  He was also an accomplished watercolorist and sketch artist, frequently drawing or painting scenes from memory only hours after they had occurred.

He was a close friend of Freya Stark and Lesley Blanch, who said of him:

"He spoke beautiful Arabic, and could talk Arabic lore. Living among, and as one of, the royal household in Arabia, he knew a great deal and could tell you marvellous legends."

For the last twenty years of his life he lived in Sussex Square, Brighton, where he died on 12 January 1984.

References
 Eid Al Yahya, Travellers in Arabia, (Stacey International, 2006).

Works
 Arabian Journeys and Other Desert Travels, (1950)
 Arabia Phoenix, (Kegan Paul, 1946).
 Faisal, King of Saudi Arabia,  (Praeger, 1967). ASIN B0007DUTRE
 Rulers of Mecca, (AMS Press, 1954).
 Three Kings in Baghdad: The Tragedy of Iraq's Monarchy, (I. B. Tauris, 2008).
 The Grand Captain, Gonzalo De Cordoba, (Longmans Green, 1955)

1897 births
1984 deaths
English explorers
English travel writers
Explorers of Asia
Explorers of Arabia
Royal Hampshire Regiment officers
British Army personnel of World War I
Recipients of the Military Cross

Gerald de Gaury


Sir David John Normington,  (born 18 October 1951) is a retired British civil servant. He served as the Permanent Secretary of the Department for Education and Skills from 2001 to 2005, and then of the Home Office until 2011. From 2011 until 2016 he served as both the First Civil Service Commissioner and the Commissioner for Public Appointments for the British government.

Career
Normington attended Bradford Grammar School. A graduate of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, Normington's career began in the Department of Employment. There he was responsible variously for the previous Government's programme of trade union reform, for measures to reduce unemployment, and for youth training. He was Principal Private Secretary to Tom King, Secretary of State for Employment in 1983 and 1984. He was also responsible for co-ordinating the efforts of central Government to regenerate the seven most deprived London boroughs.

In 1995, when the Department of Employment and Department of Education merged, he played a central role in the creation of the new Department for Education and Employment (DfEE). From there he moved on to become DfEE's Director-General for Strategy and Analytical Services and for the International Division in the run-up to the UK Presidency of the European Union. In 1998, Normington became the Director-General for Schools, bringing together responsibility for all schools policy and operations. He became Permanent Secretary in 2001 where he served for five years until joining the Home Office as its Permanent Secretary in January 2006.

He has been called "something more akin to James Bond than a top civil servant", and his nickname in his previous appointment as permanent secretary at the Department for Education and Skills was 'the smiling assassin'. He is also described as 'extremely charming', 'civilised and urbane' – and a 'tough nut'. One of Normington's lasting legacies in the DfES was his decision to reduce the Department's workforce by approximately a third, made in 2003. This decision came in advance of the subsequent budget announcing a large reduction of the civil service as a whole, leading some to speculate that Normington had made his own cuts early in an attempt to curry favour. He applied for the job of Cabinet Secretary but was beaten by Sir Gus O'Donnell.

Normington was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB) in the 2000 New Year Honours, promoted to Knight Commander of the same Order (KCB) in the 2005 New Year Honours, and promoted again to Knight Grand Cross of that Order (GCB) in the 2011 New Year Honours. In 2010 it was announced that he would retire from the Civil Service and become the First Civil Service Commissioner and Commissioner for Public Appointments, the first time the two roles had been combined.

Arrest of Damian Green

He was responsible for initiating the investigation that ended with the police arresting shadow immigration minister Damian Green, allegedly because Green told the press that the government had given licences to illegal workers, that an illegal worker was employed in the Houses of Parliament, and two more documents.

The complaint was dismissed by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), after MPs concluded "that growing frustration in both the Home Office and the Cabinet Office may have led officials to give an exaggerated impression of the damage done by the leaks that could reasonably be presumed to have emanated from the Home Office".

Scam alert
Illegitimate and unauthorised attempts have allegedly been made to exploit Normington's reputation by improperly using his name to sponsor or lend credibility to entry clearance and visa applications by foreign nationals seeking to come to the United Kingdom.

References

Permanent Under-Secretaries of State for Education and Skills
Permanent Under-Secretaries of State for the Home Department
Living people
1951 births
Alumni of Corpus Christi College, Oxford
Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Oxford
Knights Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath
Civil servants in the Department of Employment
Civil servants in the Department for Education and Employment
Private secretaries in the British Civil Service
Commissioners for Public Appointments

David Normington


The Poplar Rates Rebellion Mural is a mural in Hale Street, Poplar, London, London. It is painted on the wall of the depot of Tower Hamlets Parks Department.

The mural commemorates the Poplar Rates Rebellion of 1921, when Poplar Borough Council, led by former mayor George Lansbury, refused to pay precepts to London County Council, the Metropolitan Police, the Metropolitan Asylums Board and the Metropolitan Water Board, as a protest against the inequity of the system of local rates.  Poplar was a poor borough, with a high level of poverty and "outdoor relief" which the council was required to fund for itself under the poor laws.

The mural records that 30 councillors were imprisoned for contempt of court for refusing a comply with a court order requiring the precepts to be paid.  The council continued to hold meetings while the councillors were in prison, with women councillors in Holloway Prison taken by taxi to meet with the men in Brixton Prison.  The campaign was widely supported by the general public and trades unions, and in due course the councillors were released from prison.  Parliament quickly passed the Local Authorities (Financial Provisions) Act 1921 to try to equalise tax burdens between rich and poor boroughs.

The mural was painted by Mark Frances in 1990.  It has four panels, including an image of George Lansbury wearing his mayoral chain of office; placards reading "Can't Pay Won't Pay"', references reference to the campaign to abolish the 1990s era poll tax, and a list of the names of the imprisoned councillors.  It was restored in 2007 by David Bratby and Maureen Delenian.

References
 Poplar Rates Rebellion Mural, London Mural Preservation Society
 The 10 best murals, The Guardian, 12 December 2014
 The Poplar Rates Revolt, stevenwarren.co.uk

Murals in London
1990s murals
Poplar, London
1990 paintings

Poplar Rates Rebellion Mural


A sabra, Hebrew: צבר - tzabar, is a Jew who is born in Ottoman Palestine, Mandatory Palestine or in the State of Israel. As of 2015, about three quarters of the Israeli Jews are sabras.

The term "sabra" is derived from the prickly pear. Like this cactus a sabra is supposed to be hard on the outside but soft on the inside.

Sabra


Islamic theology deals with the beliefs of the Islamic faith.

Types of theology
Islamic theology comes from the Qur'an, Hadith, and the story of Muhammad's life (Sirah Rasul Allah).

Kalam

Kalam is the Islamic philosophy of seeking theological principles through dialectic. In Arabic, the word means "speech". A scholar of kalam is called a mutakallim (Muslim theologian; plural mutakallimiin).

Eschatology

Eschatology is understood as the last things or ultimate things, and in Muslim theology, eschatology is about the end of this world and what will happen in the next world. Eschatology covers the death of human beings, their souls after their bodily death, the destruction of this world, the resurrection of human souls, the final judgments of human deeds by Allah after the resurrection, and the rewards and punishments for the believers and non-believers. The places for the believers are known as Paradise and for the non-believers as Hell.

Comparative religion

Comparative religion in Muslim theology is about the differences and similarities between it and other theologies such as Christian and Jewish as explained in the Qur'an and the Prophetic traditions.

Differences between various Muslim groups
In the history of Muslim theology, there have been theological schools among Muslims with both similarities and differences with each other about their beliefs.

Sunni view
Sunni Muslims hold that there are six articles of belief: belief in Allah, in angels, in divinely revealed scripture] like Qur'an, in prophets, in the "Last Day" or end times, and in predestination.

Shia view
Shi`ite Muslims hold that there are five articles of belief: the Divine Oneness and Justice, the Prophethood, the Imamate, and eschatology.

Mu`tazilite view
In the relationship between humans and their creator, Mu`tazilites emphasize human free will over predestination and God's justice over God's omnipotence. Mu'tazilites also believe in the use of logic to decide the true meanings of the Qur'an. This and the principal of Ijtihad, led to their belief in dynamic Fiqh.

Islamic theology

Islamic theology


Google Books is a website run by Google. It lets you search and browse books and magazines that have been scanned in. The text of the books has been made searchable using optical character recognition (OCR). The site has been known under different names including Google Print and Google Book Search. It was announced and launched in 2004.

In 2005, book publishers sued Google for "massive copyright infringement" for scanning books without permission. Google claimed that this was fair use. Google has been sued in a number of countries over copyright issues related to Google Books.

Other websites

Books

Google Books


Ridgedale (also known as Washington Bottom Farm, Ridge Dale, and as the George W. Washington House and Farm) is a 19th-century Greek Revival plantation house and farm on a plateau overlooking the South Branch Potomac River north of Romney, West Virginia, United States. The populated area adjacent to Washington Bottom Farm is known as Ridgedale. The farm is connected to West Virginia Route 28 via Washington Bottom Road (West Virginia Secondary Route 28/3).

Ridgedale, constructed in 1835, was the residence of gentleman farmer George William Washington, a descendant of George Washington's great-great-grandfather Reverend Lawrence Washington. The farm is currently the private residence of Carol and Mike Shaw.

Architecture
The main residence at Ridgedale farm is a high-style Greek Revival structure. The three-story brick house stands on a brick foundation an has an L-shaped plan. The house has a hip roof with a central square cupola and a widow's walk. The cupola has a window on each side with a 4 over 4 double-hung sash, and brackets under the roof edge. On the roof are five chimneys, one at each corner and one in the back ell with a slightly flared edge of corbels at the top, and a recessed panel in the center face.

The front, or south elevation, has a center hipped wooden porch with steps. The porch has a spindled handrail, wooden posts and deck, and small brackets under the eave. The main entrance is centered with a single transom and has a Greek Revival feature of a wide trim piece over the doorway. The house has five bays on each floor. The windows on the house are all double-hung sash except for the third floor which has small lozenge windows of three vertical lights in the frieze section. With pine sills and brick lintels, the first floor windows are 6/9 sash and reach to the floor in the front two rooms. The second floor windows are 6/6 sash.

The residence's west elevation is divided into two sections with the front portion of the house and the rear ell. Each section has three bays on each floor with 6/6 sash windows on the first and second floor and lozenge windows on third floor of the front section. The rear ell is slightly set back from the facade and has a kitchen porch on the first floor with wooden posts. A lower level door leads into a basement room, and the first floor door leads into the kitchen. The basement windows are 3/3 sash windows

The north side of the ell is a blank brick wall with a single lower level entrance that has a brick stairwell and original beaded door. The north side of the main house has two 6/6 sash windows.

The east façade of the house has the front portion to the left with a small center porch
which matches the details on the front porch with wooden posts and a spindled handrail. There are small brackets under the eave and lattice covers the area under the porch. The porch is accessed from the two 6/9 sash windows from the front and back room, which reach to the floor. Above these openings are two 6/9 sash windows on the second floor and lozenge windows at the third floor. The right side of the house is recessed back for the rear ell which has a two-story porch. The porches were enclosed in the 1940s with glass windows, and were updated in 2010 with 4/4 casement windows and transoms and brick stairs. The wooden floor remains in its original condition.

The interior of the residence has good integrity with original wooden floors, wooden trim, a
wide center hall with curved stairs, 12'ceilings, and six panel doors, some of which have
graining. The trim on the second floor with 11' ceilings is simpler with narrow closets in the bedrooms having been added after 1939. The doorways on this floor have transoms opening into the hallway. 2 bathrooms were added at the front end of the hall with pocket doors and transoms. The 3rd floor has 9' ceilings which angle and the low lozenge windows and face nailed pine floor. A narrow dog-leg stairway leads to the cupola and a door opens out to the widow's walk. A dog-leg stairway also connects to the second floor of the rear porch.

History

Fort Williams
The land on which Ridgedale Farm is located can be traced back to Thomas Fairfax, 6th Lord Fairfax of Cameron, as can many of the large tracts in the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia. It was surveyed around 1749 by George Washington. The farm was first settled in 1725 by Peter Peters. On the parcel was located Fort Williams, established as a settler's fort in 1756 by Richard Williams. Williams and his family were living on the plantation of his father-in-law Peter Peters on the South Branch Potomac River in 1755 at the time of a Native American attack. Williams built his fort, Fort Williams, after he arrived home from Native American captivity, in the spring of 1756. From documentation, it appears to have been a settlers fort, although militia were stationed there at times during the course of the French and Indian War. In the spring of 1758, troops were
temporarily stationed at the fort, probably under the order of Captain Thomas Wagoner, of the
Virginia Regiment who was authorized by General George Washington to man any settler forts
which were in need of support. No archaeological evidence has been discovered for the fort which is documented by deeds.

George W. Washington
George W. Washington (1809–1876) was the son of Edward Washington, a descendant of George Washington's great-great-grandfather Reverend Lawrence Washington, and was born near Pohick Church in Fairfax County, Virginia. He was well-educated and highly respected. He married Sarah (Sally) A. Wright (1811–1886) on February 19, 1830. She was the daughter of John Wright and his wife Rebecca Lockhart of Loudoun County, Virginia and the granddaughter of Major Robert Lockhart, a native of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, where he served on the Committee of Public Safety in the American Revolution and was also a major in the county militia. Sarah Wright was born at "Wheatland" near Leesburg on April 22, 1811. She was educated at the Moravian Academy in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Major Robert Lockhart, her grandfather, devised Ridgedale and  to Sarah, her brother, and sister in 1817. This land came into the ownership of George and Sarah after their marriage.

Establishment of Ridgedale
The couple moved to the Ridgedale and constructed the single pen log cabin around 1832 where they lived until the spacious Greek Revival main house was completed. As their family and resources grew, they added to the farm and constructed the main house in 1835. They had 11 children: Edward, John W., Rebecca, Esther (also known as Etta and Ettie), John, Betty, George, Robert, and Sallie. Son John W. and daughter Sallie died when less than two years old, and the second John died during the American Civil War in which his brother Edward also fought.

George W. Washington's agricultural practices included raising beef cattle, sheep, and pigs. He owned many horses, including two registered Percheron mares. Most of his horses were purchased in England and brought to the farm. He grew corn, hay, soybeans, oats, wheat, and flax. He sold cured and fresh pork, along with corn, wool, and vegetables for farm income. The earliest standing farm outbuilding was constructed around 1850. If earlier log barns existed, their sites are unknown. A newspaper account from December 25, 1907, tells of the loss by fire of an "immense basement barn." It is the following year that new silos were added to two other existing barns.

Washington kept a daily journal from 1832 to 1876 which provides a few glimpses into life on the farm. He owned approximately 300 sheep, often bought and sold cattle and horses, and owned a team of oxen and mules. He tells of chopping ice from the river in January 1868 and storing it in the icehouse. The bottom land behind the house, which totaled over , was planted in hay and corn. The field in front of the house was called "the little meadow." Corn was grown in the bottom land, and timothy-grass grown and harvested in the meadow.
Washington speaks of the ridge, known as Middle Ridge (geologically a continuation of Mill Creek Mountain), which was used to pasture his cattle and sheep. This section is no longer part of the farm. Corn was also grown and harvested from a
high water island in the South Branch Potomac River known simply as "the island." It totals approximately , and not reachable by equipment is no longer farmed. Washington also kept bulls on a feed lot, near the barn area. This lot was used for feeding the dairy cattle into the 1950s by the Brinker family.

Slavery
George W. Washington and his family owned 16 slaves in 1850, and 20 are listed on the 1860 slave schedule census. Washington had inherited seven slaves in his father Edward's will dated April 8, 1813: Jesse, Duke, Reuben, Ella, Letty Seals, Jemima Seals, and Alfred.

William Bias, one of the Washington family's slaves, and his wife Ann, took the surname Washington and were conveyed by Susan Blue Parsons  from Wappocomo plantation on November 7, 1874. William and Ann Washington's home, known as Washington Place, was one of the first residences in Hampshire County built by freed slaves. William Washington later acquired other properties on the hills north of Romney along what is now West Virginia Route 28 and became the first African-American land developer in the state of West Virginia. One of his subdivisions is the "Blacks Hill" neighborhood of Romney, adjacent to the Washington Place homestead.

American Civil War

"Camp Washington"
Ridgedale was the scene of activity during the American Civil War. Companies of cavalry camped in the yard, which they dubbed "Camp Washington."  The Washington family hid Confederate soldiers in the house. Early in Summer 1861, Confederate General Turner Ashby and his command occupied a position on the South Branch Potomac River "upon the estate of Col. George Washington." According to Washington family tradition, General Ashby had his headquarters at or near Ridgedale. As a compliment to George W. Washington, Ashby named his headquarters "Camp Washington." His brother, Captain Richard Ashby, was carried on a litter to the Washington home at Ridgedale after he was mortally wounded at the Battle of Kelley's Island on June 28, 1861. Another account places Captain Ashby's mortal wounding by a bayonet thrust at a battle with Union forces at Dans Run along the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad on June 26, 1861. He was placed in a room associated with Ridgedale's ballroom and died there after about a week. He was cared for until he died on July 3, 1861. At his request, he was supposedly buried under an oak tree at the Indian Mound Cemetery in Romney. After the war, he was reinterred with his brother Turner Ashby at Stonewall Cemetery in Winchester, Virginia, in 1866. Their grave is marked "The Brothers Ashby."

George W. Washington kept a journal of the happenings of this period, which has preserved valuable information concerning the period of the American Civil War in Hampshire County.
Washington's sons, Edward and John, both joined the Hampshire Guards before the American Civil War began, and left for Harpers Ferry in May 1861. John was killed in the Battle of Cold Harbor the following year. His son Edward was wounded in the Battle of Antietam and acted as a courier for Generals Stonewall Jackson and Jubal Anderson Early and later took part in the capture of General George Crook and Benjamin Franklin Kelley when he acted as a guide for the McNeill's Rangers. Two of Edward's sisters, Rebecca and Etta, were sent from Hampshire County to carry a message to General Jackson, then stationed near Winchester, that the Union forces were in possession of Romney. They rode horseback for their entire journey and carried the message under the saddle.

Southern Methodist support
Washington was an early supporter of the Southern Methodists in Hampshire County, of which he alludes to in his 1868 journal. He was one of the trustees who purchased land in 1851 in the town of Springfield to construct a church building for the Methodist Episcopal Church South, after Methodists split into northern and southern factions in 1846. Washington states that he and his family had not been able to attend the Springfield Methodist Church while it was in the process of being repaired after the American Civil War.

Robert M. Washington

George W. Washington died on February 6, 1876, and his will was proved four days later. His wife Sally died in 1886. They are buried at Indian Mound Cemetery in Lot 78 in Romney. The farm continued in son Robert's hands when he purchased it in January 1879 from the other heirs and devisees of his father. Those signing the conveyance were the following: his mother Sally; Edward Washington and his wife Susan; James B. Rees and wife Rebecca (Washington); Ettie Washington; George W. Washington and wife Ann E.; John J. Inskeep and wife Bettie Washington; and Sallie G. Washington. Robert retained ownership of the farm until his death in 1930. Approximately  of the farm were sold in 1936 by Washington's heirs to the Brinker brothers of Cumberland, Maryland.

Baltimore and Ohio Railroad
The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad built a line near the farm in 1883. This line served the communities from Green Spring, West Virginia, to Petersburg. The railroad had a siding on the farm to drop supplies as needed, such as fencing and other materials. This was in place until 1930. The South Branch Valley Railroad continues to operate on the old Baltimore and Ohio line near Washington Bottom Farm.

Brinker family
Brothers Fred, George, and Joseph Brinker had owned a machinery dealership in Cumberland. They converted the horse barn into a dairy barn and began to operate a dairy business in 1940. In 1943, Fred's son Charles W. and wife Dorothy and two children moved from Baltimore, Maryland, to Springfield, West Virginia, to help operate the dairy farm. In 1950, they purchased a half interest, and after the accidental farm-related death of Fred Brinker, they acquired the remaining interest in the farm from family members. Charles and Dorothy Brinker lived at the farm for fifty years and operated the dairy with the help of their four children: Fred, Maryann, Robert, and Terry.

Washington Bottom Farm was then owned by Robert C. Brinker and his wife, Loretta. With their sons, Matthew and Michael, the farm was expanded in fall 2001, and the dairy was returned to operation. A milking parlor was installed in the original horse barn to handle 400 head of Holstein cattle. The main crops harvested were corn and hay to support the herd. This operation continued until 2003 when the farm was sold to Carol and Mike Shaw. Although the farm once had , it now has a total of  associated with the early
residence and farm buildings.

Since the Shaw's purchased the farm, Ridgedale has undergone an extensive restoration project partially funded from both the West Virginia Division of Culture and History and the United States Department of the Interior through the National Park Service.
The Shaw's use the home as their private residence and give tours upon request.

Archaeology
A small Indian mound, is to the east of the house.

See also
List of historic sites in Hampshire County, West Virginia
National Register of Historic Places listings in Hampshire County, West Virginia

References

External links
George W. Washington House at Historic Hampshire.org
George William Washington Diary: Transcribed by Walter & Roberta McJilton & Mrs. Carol J. Guth, February 1999

American Civil War sites in West Virginia
Archaeological sites on the National Register of Historic Places in West Virginia
Farms on the National Register of Historic Places in West Virginia
Federal architecture in West Virginia
Greek Revival houses in West Virginia
Hampshire County, West Virginia, in the American Civil War
Historic districts in Hampshire County, West Virginia
Houses completed in 1835
Houses in Hampshire County, West Virginia
Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in West Virginia
National Register of Historic Places in Hampshire County, West Virginia
Plantation houses in West Virginia
Plantations in West Virginia
Washington family residences
South Branch Valley Railroad
1835 establishments in Virginia
Historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places in West Virginia

Washington Bottom Farm


Cloud computing is when computing services are provided by a company or place outside of where they are being used. It is like the way in which electricity is sent to users: they simply use the electricity that is sent to them and do not need to worry where the electricity is from or how it is made and brought to them. Every month, they pay only for what they used and nothing more. The idea behind cloud computing is similar: The user can simply use storage, computing power, or development environments, without having to worry how they work behind the scenes.

The cloud is a metaphor for the Internet based on how it is described in computer network diagrams. Just as how in the real world, clouds hide parts of the sky from sight, the cloud in computing hides the complex infrastructure that makes the Internet work. It is a type of computing in which IT-related actions are provided "as a service", allowing users to access these services through the Internet ("in the cloud"). They do not have to know or control the technologies behind them, preventing them from running into ethical and legal problems.

According to the IEEE, cloud computing is a concept where information is placed on servers and sent over the Internet to other devices, such as computers, laptops, handhelds, and sensors. It includes the idea of having software as a service (SaaS), such as Web 2.0, that depend on the Internet to meet the needs of their users. For example, Google has made several office suite apps which are accessed from a web browser. Unlike other software that does the same tasks, including Microsoft Office, the software and data are stored on Google's servers, not on the machine in which they are used.

Brief

Comparisons
Cloud computing is often confused with other ideas:
 grid computing: a form of distributed computing whereby a "super and virtual computer" is composed of a cluster of networked, loosely-coupled computers, working together to perform very large tasks
 utility computing: the packaging of computing resources, such as computation and storage are provided as a measured service that have to be paid similar to a traditional public utility such as electricity
 autonomic computing: computer systems capable of self-management.

Cloud computing often uses grid computing, has autonomic characteristics and is billed like utilities, but cloud computing can be seen as a natural next step from the grid-utility model.  Some successful cloud architectures have little or no centralised infrastructure or billing systems including peer-to-peer networks like BitTorrent and Skype.

Architecture
The majority of cloud computing infrastructure currently consists of reliable services delivered through data centers that are built on computer and storage virtualization technologies. The services are accessible anywhere in the world, with The Cloud appearing as a single point of access for all the computing needs of consumers. Commercial offerings need to meet the quality of service requirements of customers and typically offer service level agreements. Open standards and open source software are also critical to the growth of cloud computing.

Characteristics
As customers generally do not own the infrastructure or know all details about it, mainly they are accessing or renting, so they can consume resources as a service, and may be paying for what they do not need, instead of what they actually do need to use. Many cloud computing providers use the utility computing model which is analogous to how traditional public utilities like electricity are consumed, while others are billed on a subscription basis. By sharing consumable and "intangible" computing power between multiple "tenants", utilization rates can be improved (as servers are not left idle) which can reduce costs significantly while increasing the speed of application development.

A side effect of this approach is that "computer capacity rises dramatically" as customers do not have to engineer for peak loads. Adoption has been enabled by "increased high-speed bandwidth" which makes it possible to receive the same response times from centralized infrastructure at other sites.

Providers
Cloud computing is being driven by providers including Google, Amazon.com, and Yahoo! as well as traditional vendors including IBM, Intel, Microsoft, HP and SAP. It can adopted by all kinds of users, be they individuals or large enterprises. Most internet users are currently using cloud services, even if they do not realize it. Webmail for example is a cloud service, as are Facebook and Wikipedia and contact list synchronization and online data backups.

History
The Cloud is a metaphor for the Internet, or more generally components and services which are managed by others.

The underlying concept dates back to 1960 when John McCarthy expressed his opinion that "computation may someday be organized as a public utility"  and the term Cloud was already in commercial use in the early 1990s to refer to large ATM networks. By the turn of the 21st century, cloud computing solutions had started to appear on the market, though most of the focus at this time was on Software as a service.

Amazon.com played a key role in the development of cloud computing when upgrading their data centers after the dot-com bubble and providing access to their systems by way of Amazon Web Services in 2002 on a utility computing basis. They found the new cloud architecture resulted in significant internal efficiency improvements

2007 observed increased activity, including Google, IBM and a number of universities starting large scale cloud computing research project, around the time the term started gaining popularity in the mainstream press. It was a hot topic by mid-2008 and numerous cloud computing events had been scheduled.

In August 2008 Gartner observed that "organizations are switching from company-owned hardware and software assets to per-use service-based models" and that the "projected shift to cloud computing will result in dramatic growth in IT products in some areas and in significant reductions in other areas".

Political issues
Clouds cross many country borders and "may be the ultimate form of globalisation". As such it is the subject of complex geopolitical issues, whereby providers must satisfy  many legal restrictions in order to deliver service to a global market. This dates back to the early days of the Internet, where libertarian thinkers felt that "cyberspace was a distinct place calling for laws and legal institutions of its own"; author Neal Stephenson envisaged this as a tiny island data haven in his science-fiction classic novel Cryptonomicon.

Although there have been efforts to match the legal environment (such as US-EU Safe Harbor), providers like Amazon Web Services usually deal with international markets (typically the United States and European Union) by deploying local infrastructure and allowing customers to select their countries. However, there are still concerns about security and privacy for individual through various governmental levels, (for example the USA PATRIOT Act and use of national security letters and title II of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the Stored Communications Act).

Legal issues
In March 2007, Dell applied to trademark the term '"cloud computing" in the United States. It received a "Notice of Allowance" in July 2008 which was subsequently canceled on August 6, resulting in a formal rejection of the trademark application in less than a week later.

In November 2007, the Free Software Foundation released the Affero General Public License (abbreviated as Affero GPL and AGPL), a version of GPLv3 designed to close a perceived legal loophole associated with Free software designed to be run over a network, particularly software as a service.  According to the AGPL license application service providers are required to release any changes they make to an AGPL open source code.

Architecture

Cloud architecture is the systems architecture of the software systems involved in the delivery of cloud computing (e.g. hardware, software) as designed by a cloud architect who typically works for a cloud integrator. It typically involves multiple cloud components communicating with each other over application programming interfaces (usually web services).

This is very similar to the Unix philosophy of having multiple programs doing one thing well and working together over universal interfaces. Complexity is controlled and the resulting systems are more manageable than their monolithic counterparts.

Cloud architecture extends to the client where web browsers and/or software applications are used to access cloud applications.

Cloud storage architecture is loosely coupled where metadata operations are centralized enabling the data nodes to scale into the hundreds, each independently delivering data to applications or users.

Key characteristics
 Capital expenditure minimized, therefore low barrier to entry as infrastructure is owned by the provider and does not need to be purchased for one-time or infrequent intensive computing tasks. Services are typically being available to or specifically targeting retail consumers and small businesses.
 Device and location independence which enables users to access systems regardless of location or what device they are using (for example PC, mobile,... etc.).
 Multitenancy enabling sharing of resources (and costs) among a large pool of users, allowing for:
 Centralization of infrastructure in areas with lower costs (e.g. real estate, electricity)
 Peak-load capacity increases (users need not engineer for highest possible load levels)
 Utilization and efficiency improvements for systems that are often used only 10-20%.
 Performance is monitored and consistent but can be affected by insufficient bandwidth or high network load.
 Reliability by way of multiple redundant sites, which makes it suitable for business continuity and disaster recovery, however IT and business managers are able to do little when an outage hits them. Historical data on cloud outages is tracked in the Cloud Computing Incidents Database .
 Scalability which meets changing user demands quickly, without having to engineer for peak loads. Massive scalability and large user bases are common but not an absolute requirement.
 Security which typically improves due to centralization of data, increased security-focused resources, etc. but which raises concerns about loss of control over certain sensitive data. Accesses are typically logged but accessing the audit logs themselves can be difficult or impossible.
 Sustainability through improved use of resources, more efficient systems and carbon neutrality.

Security and privacy
Cloud computing poses privacy concerns because the service provider can access the data that is in the cloud at any time.  It could accidentally or deliberately alter or delete information. Many cloud providers can share information with third parties if necessary for purposes of law and order without a warrant. That is permitted in their privacy policies, which users must agree to before they start using cloud services. Solutions to privacy include policy and legislation as well as end-users' choices for how data is stored.

Components

Application
A cloud application influences The Cloud model of software architecture, often eliminating the need to install and run the application on the customer's own computer, thus reducing software maintenance, ongoing operations, and support. For example:
 Peer-to-peer/volunteer computing (Bittorrent, SETI@home, Skype)
 Web application (Facebook)
 Software as a service (Google Apps, Salesforce)
 Software plus services (Microsoft Online Services)

Client
A cloud client is computer hardware and/or computer software which relies on The Cloud for application delivery, or which is specifically designed for delivery of cloud services, and which is in either case essentially useless without a Cloud. For example:
 Mobile (Android, iPhone, Windows Mobile)
 Thin client (CherryPal, Zonbu gOS based systems)
 Thick client/Web browser (Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox)

Infrastructure
Cloud infrastructure (e.g. Infrastructure as a service) is the delivery of computer infrastructure (typically a platform virtualization environment) as a service. For example:
 Full virtualization (GoGrid, Skytap)
 Grid computing (Sun Grid)
 Management (RightScale)
 Paravirtualization (Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud)

Platform
A cloud platform (e.g. Platform as a service) (the delivery of a computing platform and/or solution stack as a service) facilitates deployment of applications without the cost and complexity of buying and managing the underlying hardware and software layers. For example:
 Web application frameworks
 Python Django (Google App Engine)
 Ruby on Rails (Heroku)
 Web hosting (Mosso)
 Proprietary (Azure, Force.com)

Service
A cloud service (e.g. Web Service) is "software system[s] designed to support interoperable machine-to-machine interaction over a network" which may be accessed by other cloud computing components, software (e.g. Software plus services) or end users directly. For example:
 Identity (OAuth, OpenID)
 Integration (Amazon Simple Queue Service)
 Mapping (Google Maps, Yahoo! Maps)
 Payments (Amazon Flexible Payments Service, Google Checkout, PayPal)
 Search (Alexa, Google Custom Search, Yahoo! BOSS)
 Others (Amazon Mechanical Turk)

Storage
Cloud storage is the delivery of data storage as a service (including database-like services), often billed on a utility computing basis (e.g. per gigabyte per month). For example:

 Database (Amazon SimpleDB, Google App Engine's BigTable datastore)
 Network attached storage (MobileMe iDisk component, Nirvanix CloudNAS)
 Synchronisation (Live Mesh Live Desktop component, MobileMe push functions)
 Web service (Amazon Simple Storage Service, Nirvanix SDN)

Traditional storage vendors have recently begun to offer their own flavor of cloud storage, sometimes in conjunction with their existing software products (e.g. Symantec's Online Storage for Backup Exec ). Others focus on providing a new kind of back-end storage optimally designed for delivering cloud storage (EMC's Atmos), categorically known as Cloud Optimized Storage.

Roles

Provider
A cloud computing provider or cloud computing service provider owns and operates cloud computing systems serve someone else. Usually this needs building and managing new data centers. Some organisations get some of the benefits of cloud computing by becoming "internal" cloud providers and servicing themselves, though they do not benefit from the same economies of scale and still have to engineer for peak loads. The barrier to entry is also significantly higher with capital expenditure required and billing and management creates some overhead. However, significant operational efficiency and quickness advantages can be achieved even by small organizations, and server consolidation and virtualization rollouts are already in progress.  Amazon.com was the first such provider, modernising its data centers which, like most computer networks were using as little as 10% of its capacity at any one time just to leave room for occasional spikes.  They opened it up to outsiders as Amazon Web Services in 2002 on a utility computing basis.

A user is a consumer of cloud computing.  The privacy of users in cloud computing has become of increasing concern.  The rights of users is also an issue, which is being addressed via a community effort to create a bill of rights (currently in draft ).

Vendor
A vendor sells products and services that facilitate the delivery, adoption and use of cloud computing. For example:
 Computer hardware (Dell, HP, IBM, Sun Microsystems)
 Storage (3PAR, EMC, MogileFS)
 Infrastructure (Solace Systems, Layer 7 Technologies, F5 Networks)
 Computer software (3tera, GigaSpaces, Hadoop)
 Operating systems (Windows Azure, Linux and Solaris)
 Platform virtualisation (Citrix, Microsoft, VMware, Sun xVM)

Standards
A cloud standard is one of a number of existing (typically lightweight) open standards that have facilitated the growth of cloud computing, including:
 Application
 Communications (HTTP, XMPP)
 Security (OAuth, OpenID, SSL/TLS)
 Syndication (Atom)
 Client
 Browsers (AJAX)
 Offline (HTML 5)
 Infrastructure
 Virtualization (OVF)
 Platform
 Solution stacks (LAMP, Space-based architecture)
 Service
 Data (XML, JSON)
 Web Services (REST)
 Storage

References

Other websites

 Jones, M. Tim, Cloud Computing with Linux from IBM DeveloperWorks (2008-09-10).
 Kaye, Russell, Cloud Computing (QuickStudy) from ComputerWorld (2008-05-08).
 Martin & Hoover, Guide to Cloud Computing  from InformationWeek (2008-07-21).
 Cloud Computing Community Wiki is a "new resource put together by several industry executives and bloggers".
 Cloud Computing Incidents Database (CCID)  tracks and "provides historical data on cloud outages".

Computer science
Internet
Metaphors
Cloud computing
Databases
Servers
Software

Cloud computing


Sue Kedgley is a New Zealand politeecian, an a member o the kintra's pairlament in Wellington, representin the Green Pairty.  She is a leet member o the pairlament unner the proportional representation seestem.

1948 births
Green Pairty o Aotearoa New Zealand MPs
Livin fowk
Wellington Ceety Cooncillors
Wellington Regional Cooncillors
New Zealand activists
New Zealand feminists
Varsity o Otago alumni
Victoria Varsity o Wellington alumni
Weemen members o the New Zealand Hoose o Representatives
New Zealand leet MPs
Members o the New Zealand Hoose o Representatives
New Zealand Weemen o Influence Awaird recipients
21st-century New Zealand politeecians
21st-century weemen politeecians

Sue Kedgley