Intel Itanium

Itanium is the brand name for 64-bit Intel microprocessors that implement the Intel Itanium architecture (formerly called IA-64). Intel has released two processor families using the brand: the original Itanium and the Itanium 2. Starting November 1, 2007, new members of the second family are again called Itanium. The processors are marketed for use in enterprise servers and high-performance computing systems. The architecture originated at Hewlett-Packard (HP) and was later developed by HP and Intel together.



Itanium's architecture differs dramatically from the x86 architectures (and the x86-64 extensions) used in other Intel processors. The architecture is based on explicit instruction-level parallelism, with the compiler making the decisions about which instructions to execute in parallel. This approach allows the processor to execute up to six instructions per clock cycle. By contrast with other superscalar architectures, Itanium does not have elaborate hardware to keep track of instruction dependencies during parallel execution - the compiler must keep track of these at build time instead.

After a protracted development process, the first Itanium was released in 2001, and more powerful Itanium processors have been released periodically. HP produces most Itanium-based systems, but several other manufacturers have also developed systems based on Itanium. As of 2007, Itanium is the fourth-most deployed microprocessor architecture for enterprise-class systems, behind x86-64, IBM POWER, and SPARC. Intel released its newest Itanium, codenamed Montvale, in November 2007.

Intel has extensively documented the Itanium instruction set and microarchitecture, and the technical press has provided overviews. The architecture has been renamed several times during its history. HP called it PA-WideWord. Intel later called it IA-64, then Itanium Processor Architecture (IPA), before settling on Intel Itanium Architecture, but it is still widely referred to as IA-64. It is a 64-bit register-rich explicitly-parallel architecture. The base data word is 64 bits, byte-addressable. The logical address space is 2^64 bytes. The architecture implements predication, speculation, and branch prediction. It uses a hardware register renaming mechanism rather than simple register windowing for parameter passing. The same mechanism is also used to permit parallel execution of loops. Speculation, prediction, predication, and renaming are under control of the compiler: each instruction word includes extra bits for this. This approach is the distinguishing characteristic of the architecture.

The architecture implements 128 integer registers, 128 floating point registers, 64 one-bit predicates, and eight branch registers. The floating point registers are 82 bits long to preserve precision for intermediate results.

Top Gear

www.bbc.co.uk/topgear

Top Gear is a BAFTA, multi-NTA and International Emmy Award-winning BBC television series about motor vehicles, mainly cars. It began in 1977 as a conventional motoring magazine show. Over time, and especially since a relaunch in 2002, it has developed a quirky, humorous style. The show is presented by Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, James May and The Stig, an anonymous test driver. The programme is estimated to have 385 million viewers worldwide. In 2007 it was one of the most pirated television shows in the world.



The show has received considerable acclaim for its visuals and presentation, as well as a number of criticisms for its content and comments made by presenters. Columnist A. A. Gill described the show as, "a triumph of the craft of programme-making, of the minute, obsessive, musical masonry of editing, the french polishing of colourwashing and grading." Groups such as the Environmental Investigation Agency have criticised the BBC for allowing Top Gear to film in environmentally sensitive areas such as the Makgadikgadi salt pan in Botswana.

New episodes are initially broadcast in the United Kingdom on BBC Two. Episodes of Top Gear are also broadcast on Dave, BBC America, and a number of other television channels around the world. The popularity of the show has led to the creation of two international versions, with local production teams and presenters, for Australia and the United States. Initial episodes of the Australian version is scheduled to be broadcast in the second half of 2008 while NBC is holding the American version for broadcast in February or March, 2009, as a possible mid-season replacement.

Awards and nominations

In November 2005, Top Gear won an International Emmy in the Non-Scripted Entertainment category. In the episode where the presenters showed the award to the studio audience, Clarkson joked that he was unable to go to New York to receive the award since he was too busy writing the script for the show.

Top Gear has also been nominated in three consecutive years (2004–2006) for the British Academy Television Awards in the Best Feature category. Clarkson was also nominated in the best "Entertainment Performance" category in 2006. In 2004 and 2005, Top Gear was also nominated for a National Television Award in the Most Popular Factual Programme category; it won the award in 2006 and 2007. Accepting the award in October 2007, Richard Hammond made the comment that they really deserved it this year, because he didn't have to crash to get some sympathy votes. Also, in Series 10, Richard Hammond won the award for the 'Best TV Haircut' and James May won the award for the worst, while James May also won an award for Heat magazine's "weirdiest celebrity crush" revealed during the news.

Phoenix

MRO (Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter) imaged Phoenix suspended from its parachute during descent through the Martian atmosphere.

phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu



Phoenix is a robotic spacecraft on a space exploration mission on Mars under the Mars Scout Program. The scientists conducting the mission are using instruments aboard the Phoenix lander to search for environments suitable for microbial life on Mars, and to research the history of water there. The multi-agency program is headed by the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona, under the direction of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The program is a partnership of universities in the United States, Canada, Switzerland, Denmark, Germany, the United Kingdom, NASA, the Canadian Space Agency, the Finnish Meteorological Institute, Lockheed Martin Space Systems, MacDonald Dettwiler & Associates (MDA) and other aerospace companies.



Phoenix is the sixth successful landing on Mars, out of twelve total attempts (seven of which were American). It is the third successful static lander and the first since Viking 2, and as of 2008 the most recent spacecraft to land successfully on Mars. It is also the first successful landing on a polar region of Mars.

My Dying Bride

mydyingbride.org

My Dying Bride is a British death/doom metal band formed in 1990. My Dying Bride was formed in June 1990 after lead guitarist Andrew Craighan left his former band Abiosis to join Aaron Stainthorpe (vocals), Calvin Robertshaw (guitar) and Rick Miah (drums). Adrian Jackson would join later on bass. After six months of rehearsing, the band recorded and released their demo, Towards the Sinister. Its title was taken from a line in the song "Symphonaire Infernus Et Spera Empyrium".

In the early 1990s My Dying Bride were part of what was known as the Peaceville Three with Paradise Lost and Anathema - all three bands hailing from the north of England. They also toured in 1995 with Iron Maiden as part of their European tour.

Their music is characterised by romantic, sensual lyrics and an obsessive attention to atmospheric detail. Early demos were death metal in a traditional sense, though much slower than most. However, their debut album As the Flower Withers saw the addition of violins and keyboards. Turn Loose the Swans built on that foundation, utilising clean as well as death grunts and, unusually, lead violin on several tracks. Trinity is a compilation of the three early EPs and a 7". The Angel and the Dark River saw the abandonment of death grunts altogether, this added a more traditional Doom feel to the songs. Like Gods of the Sun continued in that direction.

The somewhat experimental 34.788%...Complete was next, which along with the following The Light at the End of the World polarized fans over the band's new direction. My Dying Bride entered something of a hiatus after this, releasing two retrospective albums Meisterwerk 1 and Meisterwerk 2. These albums lay halfway between best of albums and rarity compilations.

It was not until 2001's The Dreadful Hours that My Dying Bride managed to win round the bulk of their former fans. More innovative than The Light at the End of the World, yet retaining all the key elements of the My Dying Bride sound, The Dreadful Hours was a slightly darker release. 2004's follow-up Songs of Darkness, Words of Light showed a band continuing to expand and refine their sound and purpose. A substantial increase in live performances - once an unheard-of rarity - has led to much greater recognition by a new generation of fans.

Between 2003 and 2004, the band's label, Peaceville, re-released their entire back-catalogue in digipak format, with rare bonus tracks (demos, remixes, live performances etc.) added to each release. The band's next release came in May 2005, when they released the fancifully-titled Anti-Diluvian Chronicles, a fully-fledged best of box set featuring three discs and thirty tracks.

My Dying Bride toured the UK in November 2005, playing shows at London Astoria and Bradford Rio. The band spent the winter of 2005/2006 writing material for new studio album A Line of Deathless Kings. The album was released on October 9, 2006. It was preceded by the EP Deeper Down on September 18. Shortly before the release of A Line of Deathless Kings, Shaun Taylor-Steels announced his permanent departure from the band due to persistent problems with his ankle.

In early 2007, Jackson announced his departure and session-drummer John Bennett could no longer stay, citing a lack of time due to work commitments. Replacements were found in Lena Abé on bass and Dan Mullins on drums.

Pre-production has begun for My Dying Bride's next album. The band has entered the Futureworks studio in Manchester. Andrew Craighan stated that there are no song or album titles yet, but the feel of the album is, in his words, 'heading for empty and bleak with flashes of rage.'

Due to Sarah's pregnancy she has been replaced on keyboards by Katie Stone, announced on June 28th as an official member of the band. Katie is also a trained violinist and will play the parts Martin Powell used to play in live performances. It has been confirmed that she will perform violin on the upcoming album as well.

Current members

* Aaron Stainthorpe - Vocals (1990-)
* Hamish Glencross - Guitar (1999-)
* Andrew Craighan - Guitar (1990-)
* Sarah Stanton - Keyboards (2002-)
* Lena Abé - Bass (2007-)
* Dan Mullins - Drums (2007-)
* Katie Stone - Violin, Keyboards (live) (2008-)

One-time pad

In cryptography, the one-time pad (OTP) is an encryption algorithm where the plaintext is combined with a random key or "pad" that is as long as the plaintext and used only once. A modular addition is used to combine the plaintext with the pad. (For binary data, the operation XOR amounts to the same thing.) It was invented in 1917 and patented a couple of years later. If the key is truly random, never reused, and kept secret, the one-time pad provides perfect secrecy. It has also been proven that any cipher with perfect secrecy must use keys with the same requirements as OTP keys. The key normally consists of a random stream of numbers, each of which indicates the number of places in the alphabet (or number stream, if the plaintext message is in numerical form) which the corresponding letter or number in the plaintext message should be shifted. For messages in the Latin alphabet, for example, the key will consist of a random string of numbers between 0 and 25; for binary messages the key will consist of a random string of 0s and 1s; and so on.

The "pad" part of the name comes from early implementations where the key material was distributed as a pad of paper, so the top sheet could be easily torn off and destroyed after use. For easy concealment, the pad was sometimes reduced to such a small size that a powerful magnifying glass was required to use it. Photos accessible on the Internet show captured KGB pads that fit in the palm of one's hand, or in a walnut shell. To increase security, one-time-pads were sometimes printed onto sheets of highly flammable nitrocellulose.

The one-time pad is derived from the Vernam cipher, named after Gilbert Vernam, one of its inventors. Vernam's system was a cipher that combined a message with a key read from a paper tape loop. In its original form, Vernam's system was not unbreakable because the key could be reused. One-time use came a little later when Joseph Mauborgne recognized that if the key tape was totally random, cryptanalytic difficulty would be increased.

There is some term ambiguity due to the fact that some authors use the term "Vernam cipher" synonymously for the "one-time-pad", while others refer to any additive stream cipher as a "Vernam cipher", including those based on a cryptographically secure pseudorandom number generator (CSPRNG).

Doris Lessing

dorislessing.org

Doris Lessing CH OBE (born Doris May Tayler in Kermanshah, Persia, (now Iran) on 22 October 1919) is a British writer, author of works such as the novels The Grass is Singing and The Golden Notebook.

In 2007, Lessing won the Nobel Prize in Literature. She was described by the Swedish Academy as "that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny". Lessing is the eleventh woman to win the prize in its 106-year history, and also the oldest person ever to win the literature award.

Writing career

Because of her campaigning against nuclear arms and South African apartheid, Lessing was banned from that country and from Rhodesia for many years. Lessing moved to London with her youngest son in 1949 and it was at this time her first novel, The Grass Is Singing, was published. Her breakthrough work, written in 1962, was The Golden Notebook.

In 1984, she attempted to publish two novels under a pseudonym, Jane Somers, to demonstrate the difficulty new authors faced in trying to break into print. The novels were declined by Lessing's UK publisher, but accepted by another English publisher, Michael Joseph, and in the US by Alfred A. Knopf.

She declined a damehood, but accepted a Companion of Honour at the end of 1999 for "conspicuous national service". She has also been made a Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature.

On 11 October 2007, Lessing was announced as the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. At 87, she is the oldest person to have received the literature prize and the third oldest Nobel Laureate in any category. She also stands as only the eleventh woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature by the Swedish Academy in its 106-year history. She told reporters outside her home "I've won all the prizes in Europe, every bloody one, so I'm delighted to win them all. It's a royal flush."In a 2008 interview for the BBC's Front Row, she stated that increased media interest following the award had left her without time for writing.

Awards

* Somerset Maugham Award (1954)
* Prix Médicis étranger (1976)
* Austrian State Prize for European Literature (1981)
* Shakespeare-Preis der Alfred Toepfer Stiftung F. V. S., Hamburg (1982)
* W. H. Smith Literary Award (1986)
* Palermo Prize (1987)
* Premio Internazionale Mondello (1987)
* Premio Grinzane Cavour (1989)
* James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography(1995)
* Los Angeles Times Book Prize (1995)
* Premi Internacional Catalunya (1999)
* Order of the Companions of Honour (1999)
* Companion of Literature of the Royal Society of Literature (2000)
* David Cohen British Literary Prize (2001)
* Premio Príncipe de Asturias (2001)
* S.T. Dupont Golden PEN Award (2002)
* Nobel Prize in Literature (2007)

F-8 Crusader

The F-8 Crusader (originally F8U) was a single-engine aircraft carrier-based fighter aircraft built by Chance-Vought of Dallas, Texas, USA. It replaced the Vought F-7 Cutlass. The first F-8 prototype was ready for flight in February 1955, and was the last American fighter with guns as the primary weapon. The RF-8 Crusader was a photo-reconnaissance development and operated longer in U.S. service than any of the fighter versions. RF-8s played a crucial role in the Cuban Missile Crisis, providing essential low-level photographs impossible to acquire by other means. Naval Reserve units continued to operate the RF-8 until 1987.

In September 1952, United States Navy announced a requirement for a new fighter. It was to have a top speed of Mach 1.2 at 30,000 ft (9,150 m) with a climb rate of 25,000 ft/min (127 m/s), and a landing speed of no more than 100 mph (160 km/h). Korean War experience had demonstrated that 0.50 in (12.7 mm) machine guns were no longer sufficient and as the result the new fighter was to carry a 20 mm (0.8 in) cannon. In response, the Vought team led by John Russell Clark created the V-383. Unusual for a fighter, the aircraft had a high-mounted wing which allowed for short and light landing gear.


NASA's F-8C digital fly-by-wire testbed.

The most innovative aspect of the design was the variable-incidence wing which pivoted by 7° out of the fuselage on takeoff and landing. This afforded increased lift due to a greater angle of attack without compromising forward visibility because the fuselage stayed level. Simultaneously, the lift was augmented by leading-edge slats drooping by 25° and inboard flaps extending to 30°. The rest of the aircraft took advantage of contemporary aerodynamic innovations with area ruled fuselage, all-moving stabilators, dog-tooth notching at the wing folds for improved yaw stability, and liberal use of titanium in the airframe. Power came from the Pratt & Whitney J57 afterburning turbojet and the armament, as specified by the Navy, consisted of four 20 mm cannon, a retractable tray with 32 unguided Mighty Mouse FFARs, and cheek pylons for two AIM-9 Sidewinder air-to-air missiles. Vought also presented a tactical reconnaissance version of the aircraft called the V-382. The F-8 Crusader would be the last U.S. fighter designed with guns as its primary weapon.

Major competition came from Grumman with the F-11 Tiger, McDonnell with upgraded twin-engine F3H Demon (which would eventually become the F-4 Phantom II), and North American with their F-100 Super Sabre adopted for carrier use and dubbed the Super Fury.

In May 1953, the Vought design was declared a winner and in June, Vought received an order for three XF8U-1 prototypes (after adoption of the unified designation system in September 1962, the F8U became the F-8). The first prototype flew on 25 March 1955 with John Konrad at the controls. The aircraft exceeded the speed of sound during its maiden flight. The development was so trouble-free that the second prototype, along with the first production F8U-1, flew on the same day, 30 September 1955. On 4 April 1956, the F8U-1 performed its first catapult launch from USS Forrestal.