Macintosh Toolbox

The Macintosh Toolbox implements many of the high-level features of the Classic Mac OS, including a set of application programming interfaces for software development on the platform. The Toolbox consists of a number of "managers," software components such as QuickDraw, responsible for drawing onscreen graphics, and the Menu Manager, which maintain data structures describing the menu bar. As the original Macintosh was designed without virtual memory or memory protection, it was important to classify code according to when it should be loaded into memory or kept on disk, and how it should be accessed. The Toolbox consists of subroutines essential enough to be permanently kept in memory and accessible by a two-byte machine instruction; however it excludes core "kernel" functionality such as memory management and the file system. Note that the Toolbox does not "draw" the menu onscreen: menus were designed to have a customizable appearance, so the drawing code was stored in a resource, which could be on a disk.
Advent and implementation.
On 68k systems.
The original Motorola 68000 family implementation of the Macintosh operating system executes system calls using that processor's illegal opcode exception handling mechanism. Motorola specified that instructions beginning with "1111" and "1010" would never be used in future 68000 family processors, thus freeing them for use as such by an operating system. Further, they each had their own dedicated interrupt vector, separate from the generic illegal opcode handler. As "1111" was reserved for use by "co"-processors such as the 68881 FPU, Apple chose "1010" (hexadecimal "A") as the prefix for operating system calls. Handling illegal instructions is known as "trapping", so these special instructions were called "A-traps". When the processor encounters such an instruction, it transfers control to the operating system, which looks up the appropriate task and performs it. There were two advantages to this mechanism:
The system was further optimized by allotting some bits of the A-trap instruction to store parameters to the most common functions. For example, memory allocation is a very common task, so it should be expressed in as few bytes of code as possible. Sometimes the programmer wants to clear the memory block to zeros, so either the allocation function should take a boolean parameter, or there should be two allocation functions. To pass a parameter would require an additional two-byte instruction, which would be inefficient. Having two functions would require at least an extra four bytes of RAM used for the address in the function look-up table. The most efficient solution is to map multiple A-traps to the same subroutine, which then uses the A-trap as a parameter. This is true of the most commonly used subroutines. However, the Toolbox was composed of the "less" commonly used subroutines. The Toolbox was defined as the set of subroutines which took no parameters within the A-trap, and were indexed from a 1024-entry, 4-kilobyte dispatch table. (Machines shipped with less than one megabyte of RAM use a single table of 512 entries, which corresponds to the 256-entry OS dispatch table of later ROM revisions.)
On PowerPC systems.
In 1994, Apple released Macintoshes using the PowerPC architecture, which lacked hardware support for the A-trap mechanism available on 68k systems. Because of their use in applying software patches, however, the dispatch tables were retained. The API library code underlying any Toolbox routine then does nothing except reference the dispatch table. The dispatch table linked only to emulated 68000 family code. Toolbox functions implemented in native PowerPC code have to first disable the emulator using the Mixed Mode Manager. For the sake of uniformity and extensibility, new function entries even continued to be added to the Toolbox after the PowerPC transition.
An alternative mechanism did exist, however, in the Code Fragment Manager, which was used to load and dynamically link native PowerPC programs. The PowerPC system call facility, analogous to the A-trap mechanism, was used to interface with the Mac OS nanokernel, which offered few services directly useful to applications.
Functionality.
Programming interfaces.
The Toolbox is composed of commonly used functions, but not the "most" commonly used functions. As a result, it grew into a hodgepodge of different API libraries. The Toolbox encompasses most of the basic functionality which distinguished the Classic Mac OS. Apple's references “Inside Macintosh: Macintosh Toolbox Essentials” and “Inside Macintosh: More Macintosh Toolbox”, similarly vague in scope, also document most of the Toolbox.
Use in booting.
Because much of the Toolbox is implemented in ROM, alongside the computer's firmware, it was convenient to use as a bootloader environment. In conjunction with resources stored on the ROM chip, the Toolbox can turn the screen gray, show a dialog box with the signature "Welcome to Macintosh" greeting, and display the mouse cursor. By using Toolbox to help boot the machine, a rudimentary Mac-like environment can be initialized before ever loading the System suitcase from disk (in fact before ROMs on NuBus cards were executed), which is when the decision to use 24-bit or 32-bit addressing has to be made. (System 7's support for 32-bit addressing requires 32-bit clean ROMs, as older Mac ROMs do not have support for this). The need for diagnostics as in the BIOS resident for IBM PC compatibles' boards is not necessary since the Macintosh has most of its diagnostics in POST and automatically reports errors via the "Sad Mac" codes.
The similarity between the boot-up environment and the actual operating system should not be confused with being identical, however. Although the "Classic Mac OS" boot process is convoluted and largely undocumented, it is not more limited than an IBM PC compatible BIOS. Like a PC's master boot record, a ROM-based Mac reads and executes code from the first blocks ("boot blocks") of the disk partition selected as the boot device. The boot blocks then verify that a suitable rudimentary environment exists, and use it to load the System suitcase. A different operating system with a different file system can boot by simply using its own code in the boot blocks. This system was not used for PowerPC Linux, however, because Open Firmware in New World ROM machines requires a bootloader within an HFS filesystem—a reason having nothing to do with the Toolbox or "old-fashioned" Macs in general. More narrowly, the Startup Disk control panel in the Classic Mac OS and macOS only allows the user to select a mounted filesystem with very particular constraints.
Legacy.
In Mac OS X, the Toolbox is not used at all, though the Classic Environment loads the Toolbox ROM file into its virtual machine. Much of the Toolbox was restructured and implemented as part of Apple's Carbon programming API, allowing programmers familiar with the Toolbox to port their program code more easily to Mac OS X.


Ron Gordon

Ron Gordon is an American entrepreneur and former president of Atari.
Education.
Ronald F. Gordon received his degree in Philosophy at the University of Colorado. During a talk he once gave at Stanford University one of the students asked where Gordon received his Engineering degree. He replied "Well I don’t have an engineering degree." The student asked, "How could you have invented and developed all of those products?" Gordon explained, "I think engineering is important and we must have engineers but that new products come from new ideas and new ideas come from one’s philosophy and not from engineering laws which often define what you cannot do instead of what you can do."
Atari.
In the mid-1970s, Ron Gordon took charge as president of Atari.
Atari founder Nolan Bushnell and engineer Allan Alcorn have reported how Gordon was hired initially as a consultant to help Atari develop in overseas markets, occupying the role of International Marketing Director. Later he was hired to stop cash attrition and repair the company's credit.
HHC Pocket Translator.
Gordon pioneered the pocket language translator, the "HHC", a 6502 based hand-held computer.
TeleLearning.
In September 1982, Gordon came back from his third retirement and founded San Francisco-based TeleLearning Systems, Inc., launching The Electronic University Network. He developed the technical and business concept and convinced colleges and universities to join the system. One of the lesser known, John F. Kennedy University, became the first accredited institution to offer an entire degree program, an MBA, online.
MindDrive.
Alongside his commercial ventures, Gordon has also operated his non-profit institute, The Other 90%. "I’ve always been fascinated by the brain and learning how to use the other 90 percent of our brain so we finally decided we’re going to get this." One of the products to come out of this research was the MindDrive - an interface technology to control devices, computers, games, wheelchairs, etc. with just one's thoughts.


Canon EOS 20D

The Canon EOS 20D is an 8.2-megapixel semi-professional digital single-lens reflex camera, initially announced on 19 August 2004 at a recommended retail price of US$1,499. It is the successor of the EOS 10D, and was succeeded by the EOS 30D in August 2006. It accepts EF and EF-S lenses and uses an APS-C sized image sensor.
Improvements.
The 20D features a new sensor and a greater megapixel count (8.2 megapixels instead of 6.3) and retains the Canon 1.6x crop factor. The 20D supports USB 2.0. The 20D has a larger buffer and can shoot more frames per second. It also uses the E-TTL II flash metering system and uses the DIGIC II image processor.
The EOS 20D (with appropriate firmware updates) can also accept the Canon Wireless File Transmitter WFT-E1/E1A for fast file transfer to a remote file server, either through an ethernet cable or a Wi-Fi network.
Resolution.
The Canon EOS 20D has several resolution settings:
Features.
The 20D is the first Canon prosumer camera to use the EF-S lens mount; the first Canon EOS camera to use the mount was the 300D (the Digital Rebel in North America).
EOS 20Da.
Canon released the EOS 20Da on 14 February 2005 in Japan. It is a variant of the 20D designed for astrophotography. On 1 June 2005 Canon announced that the 20Da would be made available worldwide.
The main differences between the 20Da and 20D are the replacement of the "hot mirror" infra-red (IR) filter which covers the CMOS sensor on the 20D and live view mode.
In conventional photography, the IR filter is used to make the spectral response of the CMOS sensor more like that of the human eye. In this way, the pictures gathered by the sensor more closely resemble the world as we see it. In astro-photography, many objects of interest emit strongly in the red H-α line, which is heavily attenuated by the IR filter on the 20D. The IR filter of the 20Da passes 2.5 times more light at around this 656 nm wavelength as the filter of the 20D, allowing more fine detail to be revealed in long exposures of emission nebulae. As a side effect, the color balance is slightly altered in normal daylight photography.
It is extremely difficult to focus an extremely dim image with a reflex viewfinder; locking the mirror up and opening the shutter (live view) was introduced in the 20Da to address this issue. When used the camera provides a live image of the center of the field of view to allow focusing on a bright star. Live view for this application requires a lens which supports fully mechanical focus in manual mode, and is not suitable for normal daytime use.
Reviews report that image noise in the 20Da is lower than in the 20D, and equivalent to that of the 5D MkII.
The EOS 20Da was discontinued when the 30D was introduced in 2006. Canon produced no similar model for astrophotography for years, resulting in many astrophotographers making similar aftermarket modifications to later Canon models.
In April 2012, Canon announced the EOS 60Da which is the successor to the EOS 20Da.
Firmware.
The latest firmware available for the 20D (and believed to be the final update) is version 2.0.3, made available 23 August 2005, which improves the communication reliability with some CF cards and other minor changes.


Quantel Paintbox

The Quantel Paintbox is a dedicated computer graphics workstation for composition of broadcast television video and graphics. Produced by the now-defunct British production equipment manufacturer Quantel, its design emphasized the studio workflow efficiency required for live news production. At a price of about $250,000 per unit (), they were used primarily by large TV networks such as NBC, while in the UK, Peter Claridge's company CAL Videographics was the first commercial company to purchase one. Following its initial launch in 1981, the Paintbox revolutionised the production of television graphics.
Artist Tony Redhead worked with Quantel's development team to develop the artist-oriented functionality and user interface, which remained virtually unchanged throughout the life of the product. The first generation Paintbox, the 1981 "DP-7001," was principally custom-designed hardware, while the second generation "V-Series" introduced in 1989 was able to take advantage of general purpose computer hardware combined with custom hardware elements. In 2002, the "generationQ" series of products introduced the last stand-alone Paintbox and the QPaintbox software for PCs. Eventually, "Paintbox" became a feature of Quantel's other, more powerful editing, media management and post-production products.
In the late 1980s, Quantel embarked on lawsuits against the Adobe Photoshop software package and the Spaceward Graphics Matisse system in an attempt to protect patented aspects of the Paintbox system. They won the initial case against Spaceward in 1990, but finally lost the case against Adobe in 1997 following depositions and demonstrations by a number of Computer Graphics pioneers including Alvy Ray Smith and Dick Phillips. Richard Shoup ported his 1973 paint program SuperPaint to Windows for demonstration purposes, and was able to demonstrate that Superpaint had particular features before Quantel's Paintbox. Shoup's port is available for download from his personal website.
Notable works.
The cover for "The Miracle", rock band Queen's studio album, was created by Richard Gray on a Quantel Paintbox in 1989. It was used by six artists and designers, including David Hockney and Richard Hamilton, to create original artwork in the 1987 BBC series "Painting with Light". Quantel also placed a number of Paintbox IV series systems in art schools in the UK, including Blackpool College where it was used extensively by artist Adrian Wilson to create digital images, including the James album cover for Gold Mother. Two of Wilson's Paintbox pieces were included in the pioneering Art & Computers exhibition at the Cleveland Art Gallery, England, September 1988 and he was sponsored by Quantel, who used his images for the cover of the Graphic Paintbox sales brochure. One recipient, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art had recently appointed the video artist Stephen Partridge as a lecturer who then established (1984) The Television Workshop to support artists and filmmakers' production and access to high-level broadcast technology. Over 400 productions were supported in this way from 1984 to 1992 until desktop video pre-empted the need. Artists and filmmakers using the workshop included Jeff Keen, Robert Cahen, Tamara Krikorian, Pictorial Heroes, Judith Goddard and many others. The music video for Dire Straits' "Money for Nothing" was created on a Bosch FGS-4000 3D animation system using a Quantel Paintbox for backgrounds and textures.
Demise of Quantel.
Despite becoming the industry standard TV graphics and post production computer with hundreds sold around the world, Quantel lost all its market share against cheaper systems and software. There is only one DPB- 7001 still exists and is currently being restored and repaired by Mark Nias on the 40th anniversary of its launch


Mark-8

The Mark-8 is a microcomputer design from 1974, based on the Intel 8008 CPU (which was the world's first 8-bit microprocessor). The Mark-8 was designed by Jonathan Titus, a Virginia Tech graduate student in Chemistry. After building the machine, Titus decided to share its design with the community and reached out to "Radio-Electronics" and "Popular Electronics". He was turned down by "Popular Electronics", but "Radio-Electronics" was interested and announced the Mark-8 as a 'loose kit' in the July 1974 issue of "Radio-Electronics" magazine.
Project kit.
The Mark-8 was introduced as a 'build it yourself' project in "Radio-Electronics"'s July 1974 cover article, offering a US$5 booklet containing circuit board layouts and DIY construction project descriptions, with Titus himself arranging for $50 circuit board sets to be made by a New Jersey company for delivery to hobbyists. Prospective Mark-8 builders had to gather the various electronics parts themselves from a number of different sources. A couple of thousand booklets and some one-hundred circuit board sets were eventually sold.
The Mark-8 was introduced in "R-E" as "Your Personal Minicomputer" as the word 'microcomputer' was still far from being commonly used for microprocessor-based computers. In their announcement of their computer kit, the editors placed the Mark-8 in the same category as the era's other 'minisize' computers. As quoted by an Intel official publication, "The Mark-8 is known as one of the first computers for the home."
Influences.
Although not very commercially successful, the Mark-8 prompted the editors of "Popular Electronics" magazine to consider publishing a similar but more easily accessible microcomputer project, and just six months later, in January 1975, they went through with their plans announcing the Altair 8800. According to a 1998 Virginia Tech University article, Titus' Mark-8 microcomputer now resides in the Smithsonian Institution's "Information Age" display


Apple II Plus

The Apple II Plus (stylized as Apple ][+ or apple ][ plus) is the second model of the Apple II series of personal computers produced by Apple Computer It was sold from June 1979 to December 1982. Approximately 380,000 II Pluses were sold during its four years in production before being replaced by the IIe in 1983.
Features.
Memory.
The Apple II Plus shipped with 16 KB, 32 KB or 48 KB of main RAM, expandable to 64 KB by means of the Language Card, an expansion card that could be installed in the computer's slot 0. The Apple's 6502 microprocessor could support a maximum of 64 KB of address space, and a machine with 48KB RAM reached this limit because of the additional 12 KB of read-only memory and 4 KB of I/O addresses. For this reason, the extra RAM in the language card was bank-switched over the machine's built-in ROM, allowing code loaded into the additional memory to be used as if it actually were ROM. Users could thus load Integer BASIC into the language card from disk and switch between the Integer and Applesoft dialects of BASIC with DOS 3.3's and commands just as if they had the BASIC ROM expansion card. The Language Card was also required to use LOGO, Apple Pascal, and FORTRAN 77. Apple Pascal and FORTRAN ran under a non-DOS operating system based on UCSD P-System, which had its own disk format and included a "virtual machine" that allowed it to run on many different types of hardware.
First-year Apple II Pluses retained the original Apple II's jumper blocks to select the RAM size, but a drop in memory prices during 1980 resulted in all machines being shipped with 48k and the jumper blocks being removed.
CP/M.
Shortly after the introduction of the II Plus in 1979, Microsoft came out with the Z-80 SoftCard, an expansion card for the Apple II line that allowed the use of CP/M and contained its own Z80 CPU and logic to adapt the Z80 CPU to the Apple bus. The SoftCard was extremely popular and Microsoft's single most successful product for two years, although on the downside, it was limited to using the Apple II's GCR disk format and thus CP/M software either had to be obtained on Apple format disks or transferred via serial link from a different machine running CP/M. The SoftCard shipped with CP/M 2.2 and a special version of MBASIC that supported a subset of Applesoft BASIC's graphics commands. Other third party CP/M cards for the Apple II offered additional memory, CP/M 3.0, and CPU speeds up to 8 MHz.
Onboard Applesoft BASIC.
The II Plus had the so-called "Autostart ROMs", meaning that it will attempt to boot from disk on power-up. If no system disk is present, Drive 0 will spin endlessly until the user presses Ctrl+Reset to enter Applesoft BASIC. If DOS has not been booted up, the user will only be able to load and save files to cassette from BASIC. The II Plus had a revised version of BASIC known as Applesoft II which incorporated most of the functionality from Integer BASIC, including HGR graphics commands.
Most II Pluses came with a "language card". This was completely different from the language card sold for the original II, which contained Applesoft BASIC in ROM. Since the II Plus already had Applesoft present in the ROMs on the system board, its language card contained RAM rather than ROM and if installed will boost the system to 64k. While on the original II, Integer BASIC resided in ROM at $E000, this area contains RAM on the II Plus if a language card is present. Integer BASIC is not in ROM on the II Plus and is instead loaded by DOS 3.x during boot up into the RAM at $D000 (if a language card is present, otherwise this step is skipped--II Pluses without a language card cannot run Integer BASIC). Normally, the RAM containing Integer BASIC is banked out and the Applesoft ROM is present at $D000. If the user types "INT", Integer BASIC is activated by swapping out the Applesoft ROM and switching in the RAM with Integer BASIC. By typing "FP", Integer BASIC is switched out and Applesoft switched back in. The machine language monitor at $F800 may also be banked out for RAM.
Substitute lowercase functionality.
Like the Apple II, the Apple II Plus has no lowercase functionality. All letters from the keyboard are upper-case, there is no caps lock key, and there are no lowercase letters in the text-mode font stored in the computer's ROM. To display lowercase letters, some applications run in the slower "hi-res graphics mode" and use a custom font, rather than running in the fast "text mode" using the font in ROM. Other programs, primarily those where both capitalization and text movement were important, such as word processors, use inverse text mode to represent text that would be uppercase when printed. Alternatively, users can install a custom ROM chip that contained lowercase letters in the font, or purchase one of several third-party "80-column cards" that enable a text mode that can display 80-column, upper- and lower-case text. The Videx Videoterm and its many clones were especially popular.
For lowercase input, since it is not possible to detect whether the keyboard's Shift keys are in use, the common "shift-key mod" connects the Shift key to one of the pins on the motherboard's paddle connector. Compatible applications, including nearly all word processors, can then detect whether the shift key was being pressed. This modification involves adding wires inside the Apple II; Apple distributed literature on how to build it, however, assuring readers that it was "the most simple and least expensive addition anyone could do". Most applications that support lower-case letters can also use the ESC key as a substitute lowercase toggle if the modification is not installed.
Repeat key.
The Apple II Plus, like its predecessor the Apple II, features a repeat key on its keyboard. The key is labeled "REPT" and is located just to the left of the "RETURN" key. The II Plus is the last Apple Computer to have this key, as later Apple computers would incorporate the ability to hold down a key for a period of time to repeat the key.
Electromagnetic shielding.
The II Plus has a plastic case with a brass mesh running along the inside of the case. This mesh helped reduce the electromagnetic interference emitted from the computer, keeping the machine in compliance with newly implemented FCC regulations covering microcomputers. Small grids of plastic pins, and sometimes Velcro, were used to hold the case's top onto the computer. In comparison, the original Apple II lacked RF shielding and was often unusable with certain TVs and monitors (Apple recommended Sony TVs as they had better RF insulation than other brands).
Variants.
Apple II Europlus and J-Plus.
After the success of the first Apple II in the United States, Apple expanded its market to include Europe and the Far East in 1978, with the Apple II Europlus (Europe) and the Apple II J-Plus (Japan). In these models, Apple made the necessary hardware, software and firmware changes in order to comply with standards outside of the US and Canada. The power supply was modified to accept the local voltage, and in the European model the video output signal was changed from color NTSC to monochrome PAL by changing some jumpers on the motherboard and using a slightly different frequency crystal oscillator — an extra video card (which only worked in slot 7) was needed for color PAL graphics, since the simple tricks designer Steve Wozniak had used to generate a pseudo-NTSC signal with minimal hardware did not carry over to the more complex PAL system. In the Japanese version of the international Apple, the character ROM and the keyboard layout were changed to allow for Katakana writing (full Kanji support was clearly beyond the capabilities of the machine), but in most other countries the international Apple was sold with an unmodified American keyboard; thus the German model still lacked the umlauts, for example, and had a QWERTY layout instead of the standard German QWERTZ. For the most part, the Apple II Europlus and J-Plus were identical to the Apple II Plus and software compatibility was near 100%. Production of the Europlus ended in 1983.
ITT 2020.
The ITT 2020 was an Apple II clone manufactured by ITT under license from Apple Computer (the first licensed clone), specifically for the European market.
In contrast to the Apple II Europlus, the ITT 2020 supported full PAL color graphics
Bell & Howell.
The Apple II Plus was also sold by Bell & Howell specifically to educational markets under special license from Apple. The standard Apple II Plus was not UL-listed because the top could be opened; the B&H model was the same as the consumer version sold by Apple except that it came in a black case, which could not be opened as easily, and a special A/V package allowing it to be sold as audio/visual equipment. Bell & Howell packaged the unit with optional "back packs" that offered various inputs and outputs for A/V equipment to easily interface with the II Plus. This was the only black computer Apple would manufacture until the Macintosh TV in 1993.
Military applications.
A TEMPEST-approved version of the Apple II Plus was created in 1980 by the Georgia Tech Research Institute for U.S. Army FORSCOM, and used as a component in the earliest versions of the Microfix system. Fielded in 1982, the Microfix system was the first tactical system using video disc (Laserdisc) map technology providing zoom and scroll over map imagery coupled with a point database of intelligence data such as order of battle, airfields, roadways, and bridges.


Highway Encounter

Highway Encounter is a video game published for the ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, MSX, Commodore 64, Sharp MZ, and Tatung Einstein by Vortex Software in 1985. It was written by Costa Panayi who also coded "", "Android Two", "TLL", "Cyclone", and "Revolution".
Summary.
"Highway Encounter" is a strategy/action game played from a 3D isometric perspective in which you must successfully chaperone a bomb along a long, straight stretch of highway and into the alien base at the end of it. There are thirty screens to pass through and most are filled with hazards that threaten to block your progress (such as barrels) or destroy you (aliens and explosive mines).
Players control a robotic "Vorton" (resembling a dalek from "Doctor Who") and one of the things that provides "Highway Encounter" with its unique appeal is that the bomb is constantly being pushed onwards by your extra lives - four more Vortons, who accompany you along the highway. A key strategic element to the game is for the player character to travel several screens ahead of the bomb to clear a safe path for it; normally this would be done by temporarily blocking the bomb's forward motion. However, if the bomb is left in an unsafe location, it is possible for all your extra lives to be lost without the player character being destroyed once. Once all spare lives are lost, the player character must manually push the bomb.
Reception.
The Spectrum version of the game was voted number 40 in the "Your Sinclair Official Top 100 Games of All Time".
Legacy.
There is an unfinished and officially unreleased, but available to download version for Atari ST made by Mark Haigh-Hutchinson and graphics by Costa Panayi, from 1990. Versions for Amiga and Sega Mega Drive were also planned but Hutchinson stated that the Mega Drive version was left unpublished.
"Highway Encounter" was followed by a sequel, "Alien Highway", in 1986.


RDI PowerLite

The RDI PowerLite is a series of SPARC-based laptop computers marketed by RDI Computer Corporation, now owned by Tadpole Computer.
PowerLite models were all based on Sun's sun4m architecture, and were fully compatible with all operating systems and software developed for them. All models had support for two 2.5" SCSI hard drives and one floppy drive or PCMCIA adapter, or three 2.5" SCSI hard drives. 104-key keyboards and trackballs were also included. In addition, there were docking stations available, with SBus slots and additional 3.5" hard drive bays.
A ruggedized model was also released, the RUGGEDIZED PowerLite, with one floppy drive and PCMCIA standard, and an optional CD-ROM or DAT drive.


Point-to-Point Protocol daemon

PPPD is the Point-to-Point Protocol daemon which is used to
manage network connections between two nodes on Unix-like operating systems. It is configured using command-line arguments and configuration files.
While it has initially been used to manage only dial-up access, it is also used to manage broadband connections such as DSL, if Point-to-Point Protocol over Ethernet (PPPoE) or Point-to-Point Protocol over ATM (PPPoA) is used.
The role of pppd is managing PPP session establishment and session termination.
During session establishment, pppd has the role of:
pppd terminates a PPP link when:
Some newer versions of pppd are also capable of handling Dial-on-demand routing, where pppd sets up a virtual network, captures the packages it receives and establishes a PPP connection and forwards the captured and not-yet transmitted packages over the link.


Samsung NX3000

The Samsung NX3000 is a rangefinder-styled digital mirrorless camera announced by Samsung on May 8, 2014.


Sega Power

Sega Power, initially known as S: The Sega Magazine, was a Future publication aimed at the Sega range of consoles, including the Master System, Mega Drive, Game Gear and later on the Mega-CD, 32X and Saturn. The magazine was later relaunched as Saturn Power when the other Sega consoles were discontinued.
"S: The Sega Magazine".
Edited by Steve Jarratt, Future plc's early Sega incarnation covered the Master System console and the page count was quite small compared to later issues of "Sega Power". Issue 10's cover heralded the arrival of the Mega Drive.
Issue 1 was sent out to owners who had registered their Sega Master Systems via warranty cards, with further early issues only being available via subscription and through select retailers. The launch issue was also obtainable for free with the purchase of a game from selected retailers. After 6 issues the magazine went on general sale.
"Sega Power".
After 12 issues the magazine was re-launched with its new name in readiness for the forecast boom in video games consoles. After surviving on low sales for over a year and thanks to rising Mega Drive/Sonic The Hedgehog sales, the magazine circulation more than doubled during the end of 1991. The magazine enjoyed many successful years as one of the biggest selling Sega titles, covering consoles such as the Mega Drive, Master System, Game Gear, Mega-CD, Sega 32X and the Saturn. In the spring of 1997, after 91 issues, the magazine was relaunched and renamed.
"Saturn Power".
With both the Mega Drive and Master System discontinued by 1997, the magazine was relaunched with its new name; "Saturn Power". Issue 1 was launched, cover dated June 1997 and came with a cover mounted demo disc. However, the magazine only lasted 10 issues before being pulled; the last being February 1998.
Cover mounted books.
As a variation on the free tips booklet often issued by computer games magazines, "Sega Power" released a string of novellas based on popular computer games. Titles in this range included: "Golden Axe", "Road Rash", "Super Monaco GP" and "Desert Strike". These titles were written by members of the "Sega Power" team and combined a fictional narrative, hung loosely around the linear plot of the game, with cheats, codes and hints for gamers.
As a result of the popularity of these stories, rival title "Sega Force" followed suit and released a spin-off of "Super Smash TV", which bore striking similarities to Stephen King's 'The Running Man'.


PC Format

PC Format was a computer magazine published in the United Kingdom by Future plc, and licensed to other publishers in countries around the world. In publication between 1991 and 2015, it was part of Future plc's "Format" series of magazines that include articles about games, entertainment and how to get the most out of the platform. Despite the occasional mention of alternatives, "PC Format" takes the term 'PC' to mean a Microsoft Windows-based computer.
Details.
Aimed at a reader with an age of around 30, "PCF" is far more irreverent and opinionated than its competition, edging it towards being a lifestyle magazine as well as a computing one. In its earlier days, it promoted itself as a PC entertainment magazine - meaning it was not aimed at the business market, and it was not aimed at solely games. This included content such as video editing, animation, web design, and others - many of which were not very common on the PC at the time.
"PC Format" has included a cover disk or cover CD, as many other computer magazines. Initially these were in 5¼" and 3½" inch floppy disk formats; this standard progressed to CD-ROM and DVD-ROM as technology advanced. Now however, the CD version does not exist, and only the DVD version remains. You cannot buy the magazine on its own without a disc.
"PC Format" has prided itself on being unbiased with its reviews, and has frequently given low scores to blockbuster, but poor quality, games. It uses the full range of 0-100% for its game reviews, rather than having 50% for a bad game and 100% for a great game. The magazine rarely awards anything between 30% and 50%, only showing radical scores for games since mediocre games are difficult to review. Scores over 90% are very rarely granted. If a game scores above 90% it receives a PCF Gold award. Before the magazine was redesigned in January 2007, the magazine also awarded 80% plus scores with a high score or top gear award.
Immediately prior to "PC Format"'s launch, the "Format" series encompassed three platforms - "Commodore Format", "ST Format" and "Amiga Format". The magazines in the 'Format' series today are "MacFormat" (launched 1993), "Linux Format" (launched 2000), and "PC Format".
PCFormat's website is part of the TechRadar.com network of sites, Future plc's technology portal.
Content.
The main content of the magazine includes previews and reviews of the latest games, software and hardware reviews, computing news, a wide range of tutorials and a technical help section. It also includes left-field and investigative features on wider computing culture. Since the redesign, the magazine has focused more on games (PLAY) and performance hardware (WIRED), instead of the greater range previously explored. There is now also a much greater emphasis on Overclocking and Modding articles, keeping in line with the new performance hardware and gaming focus.
The magazine has gradually shifted its focus away from games, concentrating more on hardware. As of the September 2010 issue, typically no more than four games are reviewed each month.


Autodesk Alias

Autodesk Alias (formerly known as Alias StudioTools) is a family of Computer-aided industrial design (CAID) software predominantly used in Automotive Design and Industrial Design for generating Class A surfaces using Bézier surface and NURBS modeling method.
The product is sold specifically as CAID rather than CAD, and its tools and abilities are oriented more towards the "styling" aspect of design - that is to say, the product's housing and outer appearance. It does not go into mechanical detail like other CAD programs such as Siemens NX, Inventor, CATIA,
Pro/ENGINEER and SolidWorks, but has a much more powerful set of tools for the creation of precisely sculpted curves and surfaces and all 'touch and feel' surfaces of any part that demands aesthetic finish.
History.
Alias Research.
Alias software was developed by four computer scientists: Stephen Bingham, Nigel McGrath, Susan McKenna and David Springer to create an easy-to-use software package to produce realistic 3D models.
In 1983, Alias Research was founded at Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Alias unveiled its first product Alias/1 in 1985 at SIGGRAPH '85 in San Francisco.
Initial versions ran only on Silicon Graphics computers and the Irix operating system, until late in the 1990s when the software was ported to Microsoft Windows. In 2011 Mac versions were launched, which were discontinued in 2019. The company was a leader in high-end 3D graphics software.
Under Silicon Graphics.
In 1995, Alias Research was purchased by Silicon Graphics and merged Wavefront Technologies, another 3D software graphics company founded in 1984 at Santa Barbara, California, to form Alias/Wavefront which was later renamed as Alias Systems Corporation.
Under Autodesk.
On October 4, 2005 Alias was acquired by Autodesk, StudioTools changed its name to Autodesk AliasStudio. It became part of Autodesk in 2006.
Products.
The product suite starts with Alias Design as the entry-level conceptual design system, progressing to Alias Surface, and then to Alias Automotive as the top-of-the-line product with all of the options.
Tools for sketching, modeling and visualization are combined in one software package. It meets the specialized needs of designers: sketching, freedom to experiment with shape and form, creating organic shapes, visualization for design review, and data exchange with CAD packages.
As of version 2021, Autodesk Alias was split into separate standalone products:
Usage and application.
Autodesk Alias is often used for design and styling in the automotive, marine, aircraft, sporting equipment, packaging electronic enclosure, children's toy, and fashion accessory markets.
Alias .wire data reads directly into Autodesk Inventor, Autodesk Showcase, Autodesk ImageStudio, Autodesk Maya and Autodesk VRED and It exports into several other 3D engineering packages via IGES or STEP such as Unigraphics, SolidWorks, Pro/ENGINEER, Siemens and CATIA for further downstream detailing and operations.
The program has two types of modelers within it: NURBS and polygons.


Leica M (Camera)


Galaga

 is a 1981 fixed shooter arcade game developed and published by Namco. In North America, it was released by Midway Manufacturing. It is the sequel to "Galaxian" (1979), Namco's first major video game hit in arcades. Controlling a starship, the player is tasked with destroying the Galaga forces in each stage while avoiding enemies and projectiles. Some enemies can capture a player's ship via a tractor beam, which can be rescued to transform the player into a “dual fighter” with additional firepower.
Shigeru Yokoyama led development with a small team. Initial planning took about two months to finish. Originally developed for the Namco Galaxian arcade board, it was instead shifted to a new system as suggested by Namco's Research and Development division. Inspiration for the dual fighter mechanic was taken from a film that Yokoyama had seen prior to development, where a ship was captured using a large circular beam. The project became immensely popular around the company, with Namco's president Masaya Nakamura even taking interest.
Although early location tests proved unsuccessful, "Galaga" received critical acclaim, and is one of the most-successful arcade games. It is widely regarded as a classic of the golden age of arcade video games and one of the greatest video games of all time. Critics applauded its gameplay, innovation, addictive nature and improvements made over its predecessor. Several home ports were released for a multitude of platforms, including the MSX, Atari 7800 and Nintendo Entertainment System, alongside releases on digital distribution platforms such as Xbox Live Arcade. "Galaga" is also included in many Namco compilations. It was followed by a sequel in 1984, "Gaplus".
Gameplay.
"Galaga" is a fixed shooter. The player mans a lone starfighter at the bottom of the screen, which must prevent the Galaga forces from destroying all of mankind. The objective of each stage is to defeat all of the Galaga aliens, which will fly into formation from the top and sides of the screen. Similar to "Galaxian", aliens will dive towards the player while shooting down projectiles; colliding with either projectiles or aliens will result in a life being lost.
Atop the enemy formation are four large aliens known as the "Boss Galaga", which take two shots to destroy. These aliens can use a tractor beam to capture the player's ship, returning with it to the top of the formation and costing the player a life. Should additional lives remain, the player has an opportunity to shoot down the Boss Galaga holding the captured ship. Shooting it down as it dives towards the player will result in the captured ship being rescued, and it will join the player's ship, transforming it into a "dual-fighter" with additional firepower and a larger hitbox. However, destroying a Boss Galaga with a captured ship while it is in formation will instead cause the fighter to turn against the player and act as an alien.
Some enemies can morph into new enemy types with different attack patterns, with one even taking the form of the Galaxian Flagship. Stages are indicated by emblems located at the bottom-right of the screen. Enemies become more aggressive as the game progresses, increasing their number of projectiles and diving down at a faster rate. The third stage and every fourth thereafter is a bonus stage, where the aliens fly in a preset formation without firing at the player.
Development.
"Galaga" was created by Japanese developer Shigeru Yokoyama, a long-time veteran of Namco. Namco's first big hit in arcades was "Galaxian" (1979), credited as one of the first video games to use RGB color graphics; the game's success led Namco to produce a large number of Namco Galaxian arcade boards to keep up with demand.
By the early 1980s the game was becoming harder to sell, so to help clear out inventory, Yokoyama was tasked with creating two new games that could run on the Namco Galaxian board. The first of these was "King & Balloon" (1980), a fixed shooter that is cited as the first video game to incorporate speech. The second game was instead made for newer hardware as suggested by Namco's Research & Development division. This new arcade board was named the Namco Galaga, and used in games including "Bosconian" (1981) and "Dig Dug" (1982). Although Yokoyama was not given explicit instructions to make a shooting game, management expressed desire for him to make a game similar to "Galaxian". Initial planning for the project took two months.
The idea for the dual fighter stemmed from Yokoyama wanting to create enemies with different attack styles. The tractor beam emitted by the Boss Galaga was inspired by a film in which a character's ship was captured by a circling laser. Yokoyama incorporated this idea into "Galaga", whereby an enemy could capture the player's ship with a beam and the ship would need to be rescued. Originally, rescuing a captured ship would award the player an extra life, but this was soon changed to having it fight alongside the player. This idea proved to be a problem at first; due to hardware limitations, the game could only display a limited number of sprites, resulting in the dual-fighter being unable to shoot any more missiles. As a workaround, Yokoyama made a 16x16 sprite for the ship and a 16x16 sprite for the bullets, reducing the total sprite count by two.
Inspired by the intermissions in "Pac-Man" (1980) and bonus stages in "Rally-X" (1980), Yokoyama added a special bonus level. While planning, lead programmer Tetsu Ogawa informed him of a bug whereby enemies would simply fly off the screen instead of moving into formation. Ogawa expressed interest in incorporating the idea into the game, leading to the inclusion of the Challenging Stages. Enemies originally flew in one type of pattern, with more being added to increase replay value. Graphic designer Hiroshi Ono designed many of the sprites, including the player's ship and the Boss Galaga alien.
Prior to location testing, the team focused on designing the instruction card, a sheet of paper that showed how the game was played. The text was done by the planners, while the actual design was handled by a graphic artist. The card originally showed the control layout and the basics of the game, which was stripped early on for being too boring. Yokoyama suggested that the card instead show off the dual fighter mechanic, as a means to draw in players. The team kept bringing in designs to Namco president Masaya Nakamura, who continued to reject them until he ordered the team to simply make it in front of him.
The team was allowed to set their own deadlines, due to Namco's then-laidback corporate structure. Feedback on the project was given by Nakamura and other employees, including "Pac-Man" creator Toru Iwatani. Despite the game's immense popularity around the company, early location tests failed to meet expectations due to players being able to progress a long way with only one coin, thus generating low income. Although Yokoyama stated that the game's popularity could still generate income, Namco executives instructed the team to increase the difficulty level. "Galaga" was released in Japan in September 1981. It was released in North America by Midway Games in October of that year.
Conversions.
"Sega-Galaga," the first home conversion of "Galaga," was published by Sega for the SG-1000 in 1983. An MSX version followed a year later in 1984. A conversion for the Family Computer was released in 1985 for Japan, which was later released internationally by Bandai for the Nintendo Entertainment System, subtitled "Demons of Death" in North America. Atari, Inc. published an Atari 7800 version as one of the console's thirteen launch games. In Europe, Aardvark Software released an unofficial port for the BBC Micro and Acorn Electron called "Zalaga" in 1983 which was described by "Computer and Video Games" as "true to the arcade original".
Namco published a Game Boy version in Japan in 1995, "Galaxian & Galaga," bundled with "Galaxian". Nintendo published the game outside Japan under the "Arcade Classic" brand. Two mobile phone versions were released, both confined to Japan; the first was for i-Mode in 2001, and the second for EZweb in 2006. The original arcade version was released for the Xbox Live Arcade service in 2006, featuring online leaderboards and achievements. The NES release was ported to the Wii Virtual Console in 2007, followed by the arcade version in 2009. A Roku port was published in 2011. In 2013, the NES version was released on both the 3DS and Wii U Virtual Console. "Galaga" was one of the four games released under the "Arcade Game Series" brand, which was published for the Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Microsoft Windows in 2016.
"Galaga" was included in Namco compilations including "Namco Museum Vol. 1" (1995), "Namco Museum 64" (1996), "Namco Museum 50th Anniversary" (2005), "Namco Museum Virtual Arcade" (2008), "Namco Museum Essentials" (2009), and "Namco Museum Megamix" (2010). The 2010 Wii game "Pac-Man Party" and its 2011 Nintendo 3DS version include "Galaga" as an extra, alongside the arcade versions of "Dig Dug" and "Pac-Man". In celebration of the game's 30th anniversary in 2011, a high-definition remake was released for iOS devices as part of "Galaga 30th Collection", which also included remakes of "Galaxian", "Gaplus" and "Galaga '88". Alongside the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 sequel "Galaga Legions", it was ported to the Nintendo 3DS in 2011 as part of "Pac-Man & Galaga Dimensions". The original version was also added to the iOS "Namco Arcade" compilation in 2012. The NES release is one of 30 games included in the NES Classic Edition.
Reception.
"Galaga" was met with acclaim, with many applauding the addictive nature, gameplay structure, innovation and improvements over its predecessor, and was a popular game during the golden age of arcade video games. It regularly appeared on the monthly sales chart of "RePlay" magazine from April 1980 to April 1987, being only outdone by Sega's "Monaco GP".
"Computer + Video Games" praised the challenge and improvements made over "Galaxian", while "Arcade Express" selected it as an "Honorable Mention" in their 1983 arcade awards. Japanese publication "Amusement Life" said that the sense of thrill and fast-paced action made "Galaga" a "must play", while also praising its unique dual-fighter mechanic and colorful graphics. "Vidiot" magazine listed it as the seventh best arcade game of 1983, saying that its gameplay variety, dual-fighter mechanic and bonus stages made it stick out from the crowd.
In a 1998 retrospective review, "AllGame" said the strategy stood out amongst other games of its type, describing the gameplay as "perfectly balanced shooting action." Reviewing the NES home version, "GameSpy" called "Galaga" a "must play for arcade freaks", praising the port's accurate representation of the arcade version in terms of its graphics, sound effects and gameplay. "IGN" also praised the NES port's element of strategy within the dual-fighter mechanic and addictive gameplay. "GameSpot", in their review for the Xbox 360 release, stated the gameplay was "as tricky as it ever was", praising the inclusion of online leaderboards and for being a faithful arcade conversion. "Eurogamer" agreed, citing that the leaderboards add to addictiveness.
Ports of "Galaga" received praise for their faithfulness to the arcade original. "Nintendo Life" praised the 3DS Virtual Console port of the NES version for remaining accurate to the original, stating that it "aged surprisingly well" and was worth revisiting. "Games" magazine praised the improvements over games such as "Space Invaders" and "Galaxian", commenting that "Galaga" still holds up years later. "Joystick" magazine praised the NES version's accurate portrayal of the arcade original, notably in its graphics and gameplay structure. "Famicom Tsūshin" commended the Game Boy version's faithful conversion alongside its support for the Super Game Boy peripheral, while "Electric Playground" stated that it should " be near the top of your Game Boy's next purchase list". Some publications expressed disappointment towards home releases for lacking extra features. "GameSpot" disliked the lack of online multiplayer in the Xbox 360 release, as well as the lack of an updated graphics setting, saying that the port was "awfully bare bones" compared to other XBLA releases. "Eurogamer" expressed distaste towards the Xbox 360 port's high price point, as well as the achievements for being "insultingly easy" to obtain. "Eurogamer" also agreed with "GameSpot" in the lack of online multiplayer.
"Galaga" has been listed by numerous publications among the greatest video games of all time. "Flux" magazine ranked it at #57 on their "Top 100 Video Games" in 1995, while "Game Informer" listed it at #23 in their "Top 200 Games of All Time" in 2010. "Next Generation" ranked it at #96 in their "Top 100 Games of All Time" for its innovation to shoot 'em up games as a whole, and at #17 in their "Top 50 Games of All Time". "Game Informer" labeled it the 19th greatest video game ever made in 2001, calling it the best game of the fixed-shooter genre. "Electronic Gaming Monthly" listed it at #20 in their "100 Best Games of All Time" in 1997 and "Top 100 Games of All Time" in 2001, and as #28 in their "Greatest 200 Videogames of Their Time" in 2006. GameFAQs users voted it the 15th greatest game ever made in 2004 and the 10th in 2009. "GameSpy" staff voted it the eighth best arcade game of all time in 2011. It was ranked at #93 in IGN's "Top 100 Games of All Time" for its addictive gameplay and long-standing appeal. The Killer List of Videogames listed it as #27 in their "Top 100 Video Games" list, as well as the 4th most collected arcade game and 2nd most popular on their website. "Electronic Gaming Monthly" listed "Ms. Pac-Man/Galaga - Class of 1981" as the second best arcade game of all time for its inclusion of both games.
Related media.
Shortly after the game's release, Namco produced miniature "Galaga" cabinets for buses and airplanes, housed in small 17-inch CRT monitors. In 2000, Namco released an arcade cabinet to celebrate the game's 20th anniversary, which was bundled with "Ms. Pac-Man" and titled "Ms. Pac-Man / Galaga - Class of 1981". A similar cabinet was released in 2005 that also included the original "Pac-Man", made to celebrate the latter's 25th anniversary. "Galaga" is also included in both "Pac-Man’s Arcade Party" (2010) and "Pac-Man’s Pixel Bash" (2019).
"Galaga" has made cameo appearances in films including "WarGames" (1983), "The Karate Kid" (1984), "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" (1987), "The Avengers" (2012), and "Pixels" (2015). A submarine named after the game appears throughout the ABC television series "Lost". Hallmark Cards released a "Galaga" arcade cabinet ornament in 2009, which played sound effects from the game. In 2019, researchers at North Carolina State University named an extinct species of shark Galagadon nordquistae, due to the shark's teeth bearing a resemblance to the "Galaga" aliens. "Galaga" is also the subject of several high score-based tournaments; as of 2020, the world record is held by Jordan Dorrington with a score of 20,980,450 points.
"Galaga" was used as a loading screen minigame in the PlayStation version of "Tekken". As a tie-in with the anime series "Space Dandy", an iOS remake, "Space Galaga", was released in 2015, featuring characters and starships from "Space Dandy" intermixed with "Galaga" gameplay. A similar crossover game, "Galaga: Tekken Edition," was released the same year, replacing enemies with characters from the "Tekken" franchise. A "Galaga"-themed costume is also available as downloadable-content in "LittleBigPlanet 3". The Boss Galaga appears as an item in "Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U" and its followup "Super Smash Bros. Ultimate", where it can capture an opponent and carry them off the screen. "Ultimate" also features a remix of the "Galaga" soundtrack. An animated television adaptation, "Galaga Chronicles", is confirmed to be in development.


Samsung GX-20


HP Stream 7

The HP Stream 7 is a tablet computer designed by Hewlett-Packard that runs the Windows operating system. It was announced on September 29, 2014.
Design.
The HP Stream 7 uses plastic construction. The back cover, which has a "sparkly" pattern, can be removed for accessing the microSD card slot. The tablet has been described as "somewhat heavy" and that it has "slanted" sides and "significant flex to the back".
Specifications.
The HP Stream 7 has a 7-inch E-IPS LCD with 1280x800 resolution. It uses the Intel Atom Z3735G quad-core 1.33 GHz Bay Trail system on a chip supporting 1.83 GHz burst speed, and includes 1 GB of DDR3L-RS-1333 RAM memory and 32 GB of flash storage, expandable with a microSDHC card. It features a 2 MP rear-facing camera and a 0.3 MP front-facing camera. It supports Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n and Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity, USB 2.0, and Miracast. It uses a non-removable 3000 mAh battery. Windows 8.1 with Bing is preinstalled.
Reception.
The HP Stream 7 received mostly positive reviews. Brandon Chester of AnandTech gave a positive review, saying that the Stream 7 is "not the best tablet overall, but [is] the best tablet at its price point by a large margin". Strong points noted in the review include the use of an IPS display panel and its CPU performance, and weak points noted include the insufficient amount of RAM, bad build quality of the removable back cover, low battery life, and an "essentially unusable" 3.5mm audio jack which generates a great deal of static and noise. Florian Wimmer of NotebookCheck gave a score of 78%, also saying that the Stream 7 is suitable for users with a low budget.
History.
The HP Stream 7 was initially launched at a price of , though it has been sold at the price of in the Black Friday shopping period of 2014. In February 2015, ZDNet reported that the Microsoft Store was selling the Signature Edition of the Stream 7 for . The Stream 7 was launched alongside the Stream 8, with near-identical specifications other than having an 8" display and having HSPA+ cellular data connectivity.
In late 2015, after splitting into a devices and an enterprise company, Hewlett-Packard announced its exit from the low-end tablet market.
References.
Notes
Sources


Popular Computing Weekly

Popular Computing Weekly was a computer magazine in the UK published from 1982 to 1990. It was sometimes referred to as "PCW" (although that abbreviation is more commonly associated with "Personal Computer World" magazine).
Overview.
The magazine was first published on 23 April 1982. Its subject range was general, covering gaming, business, and productivity software. The founding company was Sunshine Publications based in London and the launch editor was Duncan Scot. During 1989 it incorporated "Computer Gamesweek".
It was noteworthy for being the UK's only national weekly computer magazine of the time, and for its back page being dominated by an advertisement in the form of a comic strip, "Piman", by the firm Automata UK between the years 1983 and 1986.
A further noteworthy feature of the early editions was the high-quality artwork on the magazine covers. These had disappeared by 1983.
One other noteworthy and regular column was about adventure games, notably text adventures. Reviews and cryptic spoilers were eagerly awaited. Readers who had completed the hugely successful text adventure The Hobbit, first released on the Sinclair ZX Spectrum were invited to add their names to a "Hobbit Hall of Fame." The magazine folded with the number 415 published in June 1990.


Thompson shell

The Thompson shell is the first Unix shell, introduced in the first version of Unix in 1971, and was written by Ken Thompson.
It was a simple command interpreter, not designed for scripting, but nonetheless introduced several innovative features to the command-line interface and led to the development of the later Unix shells.
History.
The name "shell" for a command-line interpreter and the concept of making the shell a user program outside of the operating system kernel were introduced in Unix's precursor Multics.
An early feature of the Thompson shell was a compact syntax for input/output redirection. In Multics, redirecting the input or output of a command required separate commands to start and stop redirection; in Unix, one could simply add an argument to the command line consisting of the < symbol followed by a filename for input or the > symbol for output, and the shell would redirect I/O for the duration of the command. This syntax was already present by the release of the first version of Unix in 1971.
A later addition was the concept of pipes. At the suggestion of Douglas McIlroy, the redirection syntax was expanded so that the output of one command could be passed to the input of another command. The original pipe syntax, as described in the Version 3 manual, was:
 command1 >command2>
This syntax proved too ambiguous and was easily confused with redirection to and from files—the system cannot tell if "command2" is the command "command2" or the file "command2". By Version 4, the syntax had changed to use both the | and ^ symbols to denote pipes:
 command1 | command2
This produces exactly the same result as:
 command1 ^ command2
The > symbol changed into:
 command1 > file1
This would put the output of command1 into file1.
The Thompson shell syntax for redirection with < and >, and piping with |, has proven durable and has been adopted by most other Unix shells and command shells of several other operating systems, most notably on DOS, OS/2 and Microsoft Windows.
Decline and replacements.
The shell's design was intentionally minimalistic; even the "if" and "goto" statements, essential for control of program flow, were implemented as separate commands.
As a result, by the 1975 release of Version 6 Unix, it was becoming clear that the Thompson shell was inadequate for most serious programming tasks.
At this time, the developers of the Programmer's Workbench UNIX distribution, most notably John Mashey, began modifying the Thompson shell to make it more suitable for programming.
The result, known as the PWB shell or the Mashey shell, included more advanced flow-control mechanisms and introduced shell variables, but remained limited by the necessity to remain compatible with the Thompson shell.
Finally, the Thompson shell was replaced as the main Unix shell by the Bourne shell in Version 7 Unix and the C shell in 2BSD, both released in 1979. Since virtually all modern Unix and Unix-like systems are descended from V7 and 2BSD, the Thompson shell is generally no longer used. It is, however, available as open-source as part of several Ancient Unix source distributions, and has been ported to modern Unices as a historical exhibit.


Nikon E2N


Mistrum


Captain Blood (video game)

Captain Blood ("L'Arche du Captain Blood" in France) is a French video game made by ERE Informatique (soon relabeled with their short-lived "Exxos" label) and released by Infogrames in 1988. It was later re-released in the UK by Players Premier Software.
The game was first released on the Atari ST, and was later for the Commodore 64, Macintosh, Amiga, Apple II, PC, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, and Thomson TO8 and MO6 . The ST version is the only version that includes the full set of alien language sounds.
The title tune is a stripped down version of "Ethnicolor" by Jean-Michel Jarre.
Development.
"Captain Blood" was developed jointly by Didier Bouchon and Philippe Ulrich, both contributing design and scenario, and Bouchon graphics and programming for the Atari ST version. Bouchon originally designed covers for ERE informatique's "Gazoline Software" label, but he learned to program in assembly language for the Atari ST after Ulrich provided him with an assembler. Bouchon then created fractal-generated realtime graphics that inspired both to do a sci-fi inspired video game.
After ERE's absorption by Infogrames in summer of 1987 (partly justified by preliminary versions of "Captain Blood"), Ulrich and Bouchon isolated themselves in the Landes in order to have the game ready for Christmas. Many adaptations for both 16-bit and 8-bit machines were developed in successive months, although they were straight ports of the original Atari ST version in graphics, sound effects or music.
Story.
The titular character of the game is a 1980s video game designer, Bob Morlock, who had picked "Captain Blood" as a nickname in tribute to the film starring Errol Flynn of the same name. Morlock develops a new video game about aliens and space travel. While testing for the first time his new project, he becomes warped inside the spaceship of the very game he had designed. Soon after, Blood is forced to go into hyperspace mode and, due to an incident, gets accidentally cloned 30 times. For 800 years, Blood tracks down every clone, as each one took a portion of his vital fluid. When the game begins, Blood has successfully disintegrated 25 clones, but he needs to kill the last five clones who turned out to be the most difficult to track down or he will lose his last connection with the human species.
Gameplay.
The objective of the game is to track down and disintegrate five clones (referred to as Duplicates or Numbers depending on the version of the game) of Captain Blood. To find them, the player must speak to various aliens and gain their trust. Communication with aliens occurs via an icon-based interface known as UPCOM. This consists of around 150 icons, each representing a different concept. As each alien race discovered speaks its own language and reacts differently, the player must learn to negotiate using these UPCOM concepts in a style that suits each race.
Other unique facets of the gameplay of Captain Blood included changes in the player interface as the game progressed; as time wore on, the character's health deteriorated. This was represented in-game via an increasing amount of shaking of the mouse cursor, making the game more and more difficult to control. Disintegrating a clone would temporarily relieve the symptoms.
The player starts the game at the bridge of a biological ship, the "Ark". The ship begins in the vicinity of one of four predetermined planets, each inhabited by a single alien. To make contact with an alien, the player launches an OORXXa biological probeto the planet's surface. The player must successfully navigate the probe over a fractal landscape, eventually reaching the alien at the end of a valley. The UPCOM interface then appears so that the player may talk to the alien and find out more information—most importantly, the coordinates of other inhabited planets.
The "Ark" also has the capability to hyperspace to other planets, scan planets for defences, destroy planets and teleport aliens to an area known as the Fridgitorium, for disintegration or transportation to another planet. An alien can only be teleported to the "Ark" after it has consented to do so.
Reception.
"Computer Gaming World" gave the game a positive review for its unusual concept, execution, and graphics. Orson Scott Card praised "Captain Blood"s EGA graphics and science-fiction story, but wrote in "Compute!" that "as a game, this one sucks pond scum", citing a poor interface and obscure game play. Info magazine—January/February 1989—gave the game 5 out of 5 stars, remarking: "Captain Blood is a marvelously alien experience. The graphics & sound are first rate. The more we played, the more we wanted to continue playing, if only to meet more aliens. There is a fully realized universe here that's easy to become completely immersed in."
"Captain Blood" sold more than 100,000 copies worldwide.
Legacy.
"Captain Blood" was followed by the sequel "Commander Blood" in 1994 and later by "Big Bug Bang" in 1997, a French-only release.


Philips VG-8020

The VG 8020 was Philips' third MSX 1 computer, after the VG8000 (which did not even have a printer port) and the VG8010 computers.
This version had a real keyboard, not a chiclet keyboard like its predecessors. The VG-8020 was released in 1984 and featured a Zilog Z80A microprocessor clocked at 3.56 MHz, 64KB of RAM, 16KB of VRAM, and two cartridge slots.


Programmable calculator

Programmable calculators are calculators that can automatically carry out a sequence of operations under control of a stored program, much like a computer. The first programmable calculators such as the IBM CPC used punched cards or other media for program storage. Hand-held electronic calculators store programs on magnetic strips, removable read-only memory cartridges, flash memory, or in battery-backed read/write memory.
Since the early 1990s, most of these flexible handheld units belong to the class of graphing calculators. Before the mass-manufacture of inexpensive dot-matrix LCDs, however, programmable calculators usually featured a one-line numeric or alphanumeric display. The Big Four manufacturers of programmable calculators are Casio, Hewlett-Packard, Sharp, and Texas Instruments. All of the above have also made pocket computers in the past, especially Casio and Sharp.
Many calculators of this type are monochrome LCD, some are four-color (red or orange, green, blue, and black), or, in the case of some machines at the top of the line as of February 2015 color similar to monitors displaying 8 or 16 bit graphics. As they are used for graphing functions, the screens of these machines are pixel-addressable. Some have a touch screen, buzzers or other sound producers, internal clocks, modems or other connectivity devices including IrDA transceivers, several types of ports for peripherals like printers, and ports for memory cards of a number of types.
Calculator programming.
Programmable calculators allow the user to write and store programs in the calculator in order to solve difficult problems or automate an elaborate procedure.
Programming capability appears most commonly (although not exclusively) in graphing calculators, as the larger screen allows multiple lines of source code to be viewed simultaneously (i.e., without having to scroll to the next/previous display line). Originally, calculator programming had to be done in the calculator's own command language, but as calculator hackers discovered ways to bypass the main interface of the calculators and write assembly language programs, calculator companies (particularly Texas Instruments) began to support native-mode programming on their calculator hardware, first revealing the hooks used to enable such code to operate, and later explicitly building in facilities to handle such programs directly from the user interface.
Many programs written for calculators can be found on the internet. Users can download the programs to a personal computer, and then upload them to the calculator using a specialized link cable, infrared wireless link or through a memory card. Sometimes these programs can also be run through emulators on the PC.
Programming these machines can be done on the machine, on the PC side and uploaded as source code, or compiled on the PC side and uploaded as with Flash and some C/C++ implementations. In addition to computer-side language packages such as tigcc, hpgcc, and others, the PC link software available for TI, HP, Casio, and Sharp calculators contain program editors; there are also SDKs, emulators, and other tools for use on the computer side, and other manufacturer and third-party tools like the TI++ editor. Programs, data, and so forth can also be exchanged among similar machines via the same ports on the calculator used for PC connectivity. On-board programming tools which use non-native language implementations include the On-Board C Compiler for fx series Casio calculators and the TI-83 BBC Basic port.
One possibility arising from the above is writing interpreters, compilers, and translator programs for additional languages for programming the machines; BBC Basic has already been ported to the TI-83 and -84 series and other on-board languages and programming tools discussed by many include Fortran, awk, Pascal, Rexx, perl, Common Lisp, Python, tcl, and various Unix shells.
Commonly available programs for calculators include everything from math/science related problem solvers to video games, as well as so-called demos. Much of this code is user-created freeware or even open source, though commercial software, particularly for educational and science/engineering markets, is also available. Programmable calculators have major web sites with information, documentation, message boards, tools for download, and other things useful for this pursuit; the main sites for each manufacturer's calculators are run by third parties with varying degrees of collaboration from the companies themselves: namely HPCalc.org, TICalc.org, and CasioCalc.org, (qqv.) with the SharpCalc.org domain being recently purchased by an organisation which indicated intent to produce a site similar to the other three, plus information on Sharp pocket computers. The companies themselves also have sites such as TIEducation.com with information and tools for the machines.
Programming languages.
Keystroke programming.
In the early days most programmable calculators used a very simplified programming language, often based either on recording actual keystrokes or bytecode if the keystrokes were merged. Calculators supporting such programming were Turing-complete if they supported both conditional statements and indirect addressing of memory. Notable examples of Turing complete calculators were Casio FX-602P series, the HP-41 and the TI-59. Keystroke programming is still used in mid-range calculators like the HP 35s and HP-12C.
BASIC.
BASIC is a widespread programming language commonly adapted to desktop computers and pocket computers.
The most common languages now used in high range calculators are proprietary BASIC-style dialects as used by CASIO and TI . These BASIC dialects are optimised for calculator use, combining the advantages of BASIC and keystroke programming. They have little in common with mainstream BASIC. The version for the Ti-89 and subsequent is more fully featured, including the full set of string and character manipulation functions and statements in standard Basic.
A complete port of BBC Basic to the TI-83 subfamily of calculators is now available. It is installed via a cable or IrDA connection with a computer.
RPL.
RPL is a special Forth-like programming language used by Hewlett- Packard in its high range devices. The first device with RPL calculator was the HP-28C released in 1987.
The language PPL was introduced with the HP Prime calculator and is much like Pascal
Assembly.
An assembler integrated into the TI 89 and related calculators was announced and released in 2014.
Machine language programming was often discouraged on early calculator models; however, dedicated platform hackers discovered ways to bypass the built-in interpreters on some models and program the calculator directly in assembly language, a technique that was first discovered and utilized on the TI-85 due to a programming flaw in a mode-switching key. By the time the TI-83 came out, TI and HP had realized the need to address the support needs of homebrew programmers, and started to make assembly language libraries and documentation available for prospective developers. Software, particularly games, could now be nearly as fast and as graphical as their Game Boy counterparts, and TI in particular would later formalize assembly programming into support for packaged applications for future calculators such as the TI-83 Plus and TI-89; HP includes some onboard support for assembler programming on the HP-50g, its current top-of-the-line calculator model.
Programs and toolkits to allow on-board assembly-like programming (often Intel 80x86 even if the actual processor in the calculator is something completely different like a Zilog or Motorola chip) are in the beta stage in at least two implementations—the native Basic variant can be enhanced by user-defined functions and procedures as well as assembly and C modules developed on a computer and uploaded to the calculator which allow for writing and running "pseudo assembly" programs just as one would the Basic type ones. Other languages like Rexx, awk, Perl, and some Unix shells can also be implemented in this fashion on many calculators of this type.
Other Languages.
The GCC development suite is available for several models of Casio, HP, and TI calculators, meaning that C, C++, Fortran 77, and inline assembly language can be used to develop a program on the computer side and then upload it to the calculator.
Projects in development by third parties include on-board and/or computer-side converters, interpreters, code generators, macro assemblers, or compilers for Fortran, other Basic variants, awk, C, Cobol, Rexx, Perl, Python, Tcl, Pascal, Delphi, and operating system shells like DOS/Win95 batch, OS/2 batch, WinNT/2000 shell, Unix shells, and DCL.
Many TI, Casio, Sharp and HP models have Lua interpreters which are part of the default configuration or can be optionally added.
Some calculators run a subset of Fortran 77 called Mini-Fortran; the compiler is on the calculator so connecting to a PC to put programs onto the machine is not needed.
The OnCalc C Compiler for the Casio fx-9860 series is now available. The Sharp PC G850V pocket computer has an on-board C compiler in addition to an assembler and a Basic interpreter.
Persistent memory.
One important feature of programmable calculators is the availability of some form of persistent memory. Without persistent memory, programs have to be re-entered whenever power is lost, making the device cumbersome. Persistent memory can be internal or on a separate device. Some programmable calculators employ both schemes.
Magnetic card reader / writer.
Magnetic card readers were among the first persistent memory options available. The entered programs are stored on magnetic strips. Those were easy to transport, and the reader/writer was compact in size. However, the reader/writer as well as the magnetic strips were quite expensive. The last and most notable devices to use magnetic strips were the HP-41C and TI-59.
Continuous memory.
Continuous memory does not lose its content when the calculator is switched off. With continuous memory the user can, for example, change batteries without losing the entered programs.
Cassette tape.
Compact Cassettes offered a simple, inexpensive alternative to magnetic cards. Usually, an interface module, such as the Casio FA-1, was used to connect the calculator to an ordinary cassette recorder and digital data were encoded as frequency-shift keyed audio signals.
Sharp and Hewlett-Packard also sold dedicated micro- or mini-cassette recorders that connected directly to the calculator. These set-ups, while being more practical and reliable, were also more expensive.
Semi-continuous memory.
As memory demands rose, it became more difficult to create true continuous memory and developers sought alternatives. With semi-continuous memory memory content was only preserved if specific battery-changing rules were observed. The most common rules were:
PC-connection.
Programs and data are transferred to a personal computer for storage. The transfer is done by the following connection methods RS-232, IrDA and USB. This method has the advantage of being very cost efficient and is usually faster than cassette interface. These advantages are offset by the need of a personal computer. An early example of PC connection is the Casio FX-603P in conjunction with the Casio FA-6 interface. In this set-up transfer was done in plain text so the program and data could be stored and edited with a standard text editor.
Programmable calculators and pocket computers.
Throughout the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, programmable calculators stood in competition with pocket computers, with high-end calculators sharing many similarities. For example, both device types were programmable in unstructured BASIC and with few exceptions featured QWERTY keyboards. However, there were also some differences:
Companies often had both device types in their product portfolio. Casio, for example, sold some BASIC-programmable calculators as part of their "fx-" calculator series and pocket computer the dedicated "pb-" series while Sharp marketed all BASIC-programmable devices as pocket computers.
Related tools.
Some programmable calculators have one or more methods of connecting to a PC for interchange of data, programs, and software. These methods include IrDA, other wireless, serial ports -including USB or RS-232 via.125 inch or other size audio plugs, etc.
Some of the latest programmable calculators contain cellular modems as an additional channel of connectivity.
The programmable calculators can in many cases, via these connections, be used with peripherals such as data loggers and interfaces for instruments like thermometers, pH meters, weather instruments of all kinds, light meters, audio probes and microphones, dynamometers, pressure gauges, voltmeters, ammeters, ohm meters, atmospheric electricity measurement apparatus, ion counters, Geiger counters and scintillometers, altimeters, scales, accelerometers and many others. Some machines can be used with oscilloscopes and their peripherals as well. Others can be configured—for example, collecting bio-feedback data by connecting devices for pulse, blood pressure, oxygen saturation, galvanic skin resistance, body temperature, and even EKG and EEG probes to a data logger which is then connected to the calculator and, then or later, a PC.
The HP programmables and others have an IrDA interface which allows them to interface with the printers specially designed for the calculators, HP's main lines of laser printers, computers, other calculators, and other devices.
Also commonly available from many companies are small printers made specifically for calculators which tend to use cash register tape paper, ports and cables for connecting the calculators to a computer and/or another calculator, cassette recorders for recording programs and data, overhead projector displays and connectors for auxiliary display devices. The earlier programmable calculators as well as the pocket computers mentioned above also had such things as video interfaces for televisions and composite monitors, 2½ inch mini floppy disc drives, bar-code readers, and standard RS-232 connectivity which provided for other such things as modems, external hard drives and more. The printer selection for the pocket computers was a bit wider as well, including thermal, impact, dot matrix, daisy wheel, 4-colour pen, printers of the type used in simpler printing calculator. Some calculators and pocket computers had external 3½ and 5¼ inch floppy drives, cables for connecting two cassette recorders, cradles containing a printer and/or cassette recorder into which the machine slid, and so on.
It is also possible to connect some machines to certain electric typewriters for use as a printer (the typewriters are also able to be connected to PCs for this purpose, and the interface tends to be a standard RS-232 and/or DIN plug), and in some cases to access the typewriter's floppy or micro floppy drives.


Kernel Independent Transport Layer

Kernel Independent Transport Layer (KITL) is an interface in Microsoft WinCE "designed to provide an easy way for you to support any debugging service".


Dicomed

Dicomed (or DICOMED) was a computerized graphics technology company founded in 1968 and based in Minneapolis. In the early 1970s it became a leading manufacturer of precision color film recorders such as the D47 and D48.
The company went out of business in 1999.
Products.
One of Dicomed's first products was the D30, a digital image display utilizing a dark-trace CRT with a display resolution of 1024x1024, introduced in 1968. Even though it was capable of displaying any digitized image data, it was originally developed for the display of digitized medical X-ray images from x-ray films that were scanned and image-processed digitally (in order to enhance contrast and other parameters) via computer and stored on 9-track computer tape. A tape drive (or a computer itself) could then be interfaced to a D30 in order to display the processed image data.
The D30's dark-trace CRT made it possible for it to display an image continuously without the need for frame buffer memory to refresh the image from periodically as is the case for a standard phosphor-based CRT, for the image would be retained on the CRT's scotophor layer of the screen until cleared by heating it. This type of CRT is very similar in function to the DVBST CRT used by later graphics terminals such as the Tektronix 4010.
Dicomed would later produce several CRT-based film recorders, interfaced to computers to record graphic output from the computer's memory to film. Many of the early government (JPL, NCAR, NSA, CIA, Sandia Laboratories, "et al.") computer graphics applications had their imagery in output to a Dicomed. Most of these entities also had CRAY super computers with enough power to compute 4096 X 4096 color imagery.
A major role for the Dicomed D148 color film recorder, in 1984, was to image the work of 26 computer graphic animation specialists on to film for the production of the 15 minute IMAX film; the "Magic Egg".
Later in the 1980s, Dicomed became a producer of color workstations (D38, Producer, Imaginator, etc.) for artists and illustrators to create digital color imagery.
In the mid-1990s, Dicomed was a manufacturer of digital cameras.


Application checkpointing

Checkpointing is a technique that provides fault tolerance for computing systems. It basically consists of saving a snapshot of the application's state, so that applications can restart from that point in case of failure. This is particularly important for the long running applications that are executed in the failure-prone computing systems.
Checkpointing in distributed systems.
In the distributed computing environment, checkpointing is a technique that helps tolerate failures that otherwise would force long-running application to restart from the beginning. The most basic way to implement checkpointing, is to stop the application, copy all the required data from the memory to reliable storage (e.g., parallel file system) and then continue with the execution. In case of failure, when the application restarts, it does not need to start from scratch. Rather, it will read the latest state ("the checkpoint") from the stable storage and execute from that. While there is ongoing debate on whether checkpointing is the dominating I/O workload on distributed computing systems, there is general consensus that checkpointing is one of the major I/O workloads.
There are two main approaches for checkpointing in the distributed computing systems: coordinated checkpointing and uncoordinated checkpointing. In the coordinated checkpointing approach, processes must ensure that their checkpoints are consistent. This is usually achieved by some kind of two-phase commit protocol algorithm. In the uncoordinated checkpointing, each process checkpoints its own state independently. It must be stressed that simply forcing processes to checkpoint their state at fixed time intervals is not sufficient to ensure global consistency. The need for establishing a consistent state (i.e., no missing messages or duplicated messages) may force other processes to roll back to their checkpoints, which in turn may cause other processes to roll back to even earlier checkpoints, which in the most extreme case may mean that the only consistent state found is the initial state (the so-called "domino effect").
Implementations for applications.
Save State.
One of the original and now most common means of application checkpointing was a "save state" feature in interactive applications, in which the user of the application could save the state of all variables and other data to a storage medium at the time they were using it and either continue working, or exit the application and at a later time, restart the application and restore the saved state. This was implemented through a "save" command or menu option in the application. In many cases it became standard practice to ask the user if they had unsaved work when exiting the application if they wanted to save their work before doing so.
This sort of functionality became extremely important for usability in applications where the particular work could not be completed in one sitting (such as playing a video game expected to take dozens of hours, or writing a book or long document amounting to hundreds or thousands of pages) or where the work was being done over a long period of time such as data entry into a document such as rows in a spreadsheet.
The problem with save state is it requires the operator of a program to request the save. For non-interactive programs, including automated or batch processed workloads, the ability to checkpoint such applications also had to be automated.
Checkpoint/Restart.
As batch applications began to handle tens to hundreds of thousands of transactions, where each transaction might process one record from one file against several different files, the need for the application to be restartable at some point without the need to rerun the entire job from scratch became imperative. Thus the "checkpoint/restart" capability was born, in which after a number of transactions had been processed, a "snapshot" or "checkpoint" of the state of the application could be taken. If the application failed before the next checkpoint, it could be restarted by giving it the checkpoint information and the last place in the transaction file where a transaction had successfully completed. The application could then restart at that point.
Checkpointing tends to be expensive, so it was generally not done with every record, but at some reasonable compromise between the cost of a checkpoint vs. the value of the computer time needed to reprocess a batch of records. Thus the number of records processed for each checkpoint might range from 25 to 200, depending on cost factors, the relative complexity of the application and the resources needed to successfully restart the application.
Fault Tolerance Interface (FTI).
FTI is a library that aims to provide computational scientists with an easy way to perform checkpoint/restart in a scalable fashion. FTI leverages local storage plus multiple replications and erasures techniques to provide several levels of reliability and performance. FTI provides application-level checkpointing that allows users to select which data needs to be protected, in order to improve efficiency and avoid space, time and energy waste. It offers a direct data interface so that users do not need to deal with files and/or directory names. All metadata is managed by FTI in a transparent fashion for the user. If desired, users can dedicate one process per node to overlap fault tolerance workload and scientific computation, so that post-checkpoint tasks are executed asynchronously.
Berkeley Lab Checkpoint/Restart (BLCR).
The Future Technologies Group at the Lawrence National Laboratories are developing a hybrid kernel/user implementation of checkpoint/restart called BLCR. Their goal is to provide a robust, production quality implementation that checkpoints a wide range of applications, without requiring changes to be made to application code. BLCR focuses on checkpointing parallel applications that communicate through MPI, and on compatibility with the software suite produced by the SciDAC Scalable Systems Software ISIC. Its work is broken down into 4 main areas: Checkpoint/Restart for Linux (CR), Checkpointable MPI Libraries, Resource Management Interface to Checkpoint/Restart and Development of Process Management Interfaces.
DMTCP.
DMTCP (Distributed MultiThreaded Checkpointing) is a tool for transparently checkpointing the state of an arbitrary group of programs spread across many machines and connected by sockets. It does not modify the user's program or the operating system. Among the applications supported by DMTCP are Open MPI, Python, Perl, and many programming languages and shell scripting languages. With the use of TightVNC, it can also checkpoint and restart X Window applications, as long as they do not use extensions (e.g. no OpenGL or video). Among the Linux features supported by DMTCP are open file descriptors, pipes, sockets, signal handlers, process id and thread id virtualization (ensure old pids and tids continue to work upon restart), ptys, fifos, process group ids, session ids, terminal attributes, and mmap/mprotect (including mmap-based shared memory). DMTCP supports the OFED API for InfiniBand on an experimental basis.
Collaborative checkpointing.
Some recent protocols perform collaborative checkpointing by storing fragments of the checkpoint in nearby nodes. This is helpful because it avoids the cost of storing to a parallel file system (which often becomes a bottleneck for large-scale systems) and it uses storage that is closer. This has found use particularly in large-scale supercomputing clusters. The challenge is to ensure that when the checkpoint is needed when recovering from a failure, the nearby nodes with fragments of the checkpoints are available.
Docker.
Docker and the underlying technology contain a checkpoint and restore mechanism.
CRIU.
CRIU is a user space checkpoint library.
Implementation for embedded and ASIC devices.
Mementos.
Mementos is a software system that transforms general-purpose tasks into interruptible programs for platforms with frequent interruptions such as power outages. It was designed for batteryless embedded devices such as RFID tags and smart cards which rely on harvesting energy from ambient background sources. Mementos frequently senses the available energy in the system and decides whether to checkpoint the program due to impending power loss versus continuing computation. If checkpointing, data will be stored in a non-volatile memory. When the energy becomes sufficient for reboot, the data is retrieved from non-volatile memory and the program continues from the stored state. Mementos has been implemented on the MSP430 family of microcontrollers. Mementos is named after Christopher Nolan's "Memento".
Idetic.
Idetic is a set of automatic tools which helps application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) developers to automatically embed checkpoints in their designs. It targets high-level synthesis tools and adds the checkpoints at the register-transfer level (Verilog code). It uses a dynamic programming approach to locate low overhead points in the state machine of the design. Since the checkpointing in hardware level involves sending the data of dependent registers to a non-volatile memory, the optimum points are required to have minimum number of registers to store. Idetic is deployed and evaluated on energy harvesting RFID tag device.


Avid Matador

Matador (meaning killer in Spanish) was a paint application targeted at the television and film production markets. Running on Silicon Graphics workstations, its main features were paint, mask creation/rotoscoping, animation, and image stabilization/tracking.
Matador was originally developed by Gareth Griffith, Chris Steele, Dominic Jackson and Andrew Ballingall of Parallax Software in the UK beginning in 1989. Adopted by production studios and visual effects houses such as ILM, Digital Domain, Sony Pictures and many others, Matador was used on hundreds of feature films throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, including "Jurassic Park", "Forrest Gump", and "The Mask". In 1995 Parallax Software was acquired by Avid Technology, which continued to market Matador into the early 2000s, eventually incorporating its functionality into Softimage and Media Illusion.
Feature List.
Paint: Resolution-independent 2D paint system supporting 64-bit color depth. Customizeable pressure-sensitive brushes, cloning, image filters, layers, vector shapes, color correction, 2D and 3D text, and macros.
Masking/Rotoscoping: Chromakey masking via luminance/chroma/component/hue, multi-layered rotoscoping with animatable rotosplines and automatic traveling mattes.
Animation: Keyframeable animation of all functions, hierarchical animation with unlimited layers and in-betweening, realtime linetest.
Stabilization/Tracking: Motion tracking using up to 256 reference points; image stabilization tools.


David Shannon Morse

David Shannon Morse (April 15, 1943 – November 2, 2007) was the cofounder of Amiga. In 1982, he left Tonka Toys (where he was Vice-President of Marketing) and became the Chief Executive Officer at Hi Toro, Inc., which he co-founded and which later that year morphed into Amiga, Inc. which he led through the development of the Lorraine Project (a codename inspired by David's wife Lorraine), ultimately, the Amiga 1000 computer. In the 1980s he was a software manager at Epyx, a video game developer and publisher and help to create the Atari Lynx, being credited with designing the graphics chip.


Mkfs

In computer operating systems, mkfs is a command used to format a block storage device with a specific file system. The command is part of Unix and Unix-like operating systems. In Unix, a block storage device must be formatted with a file system before it can be mounted and accessed through the operating system's filesystem hierarchy.
History.
The command was originally implemented in the first version of Unix as a method to initialize either a DECtape (using the "t" argument) or an RK03 disk pack (using the "r" argument). The initialization process would write formatting data to the device so that it contained an empty file system. It created the super-block, i-list, and free list on the storage device and established the root directory with entries for "." and ".." (self and parent, respectively). The RK03 disk packs had 4872 available blocks after initialization, while the tapes had 578 blocks (at 512 bytes/block). The mkfs executable was kept in the /etc directory instead of a binary directory so it would not be inadvertently called and destroy information.
Later implementations of Unix-like operating systems included the mkfs command, including HP-UX, Minix, SunOS and Linux.
Syntax.
The basic syntax of the command, which is common to all modern implementations, is:
$ mkfs -t <fs type> <device>
where 'codice_1' is the type of the filesystem and 'codice_2' is the target UNIX device to write the filesystem data to. Usually the "device" is a drive partition. Often the command is simply a wrapper for another command that performs the formatting for a specific file system. For example,
$ mkfs -t ext3 /dev/sda1
would call the command codice_3 while passing along the appropriate arguments to format the device codice_4 with the ext3 filesystem. The default options for the command are stored in the file codice_5, usually in the codice_6 directory. Depending on the implementation and the specific file system requested, the command may have many options that can be specified such as inode size, block size, volume label, and other features. (See file system for details)
The filesystem-specific commands that mkfs calls may be invoked directly by the user from the command line. In Linux, the convention has been to name the filesystem-specific commands as: codice_7. Where codice_8 is an abbreviation for the file system, e.g., codice_9, codice_10, codice_11, etc. File systems supported by the command vary by implementation and include: MSDOS, SCO bfs, CPM, ext2, ext3, ext4, minix, fat (vfat), HFS, VXFS, RF disk, RK disk, DECtape, and NTFS.