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Wo Fat is the name of a fictional villain in the long-running CBS series Hawaii Five-O. He is the arch-nemesis of Steve McGarrett (Jack Lord), the head of Hawaii's (fictional) state police force, named "5-0" due to Hawaii being the fiftieth state admitted to the union. Wo Fat is a Red Chinese intelligence officer and a staunch communist. He appeared in eleven episodes of Hawaii Five-O including the TV-movie pilot and the final episode. Two of them were two-part episodes and three were two-hour specials later re-edited into two-parters for reruns. The series finale, Woe to Wo Fat was the character's first appearance in nearly four years. In it, the antagonist is depicted as an international super-criminal, more resembling Dr. Loveless of The Wild Wild West series than the Red Chinese intelligence figure as he had invariably been previously portrayed. Here, Wo Fat is finally arrested and jailed. However, in the final shot, he smiles and craftily produces a concealed key. It remains a perpetual cliffhanger.

Wo Fat was portrayed by actor Khigh Dheigh (born Kenneth Dickerson) who, despite looking sufficiently Asian for the role, was actually of mixed Anglo, Egyptian, and Sudanese ancestry.

In the first two-and-a-half years of the show's existence, Wo Fat made six appearances. However, presumably due to President Richard Nixon's visit to China in February 1972 and his talks with Mao Zedong that led to a period of détente between the two nations, his appearances after the historic event became far more sporadic: just five episodes in eight years.

George Mavrothalassitis is a chef and restaurateur known as one of the cofounders of Hawaii Regional Cuisine in the early 1990s. Mavrothalassitis is particularly known for exquisite individual pairings of wines with each dish in a multicourse meal.

Mavrothalassitis was born in Provence, and moved to the United States in 1985. In 1988 he came to Hawaii when he was recruited to be the executive chef of La Mer at the Halekulani Hotel in Honolulu, Hawaii. From 1995-1998 he was executive chef of the Four Seasons Hotel in Maui, and the chef de cuisine of Seasons Restaurant. In 1998 he opened his own restaurant, named for his nickname, Chef Mavro (restaurant) in Honolulu. In April 2007, Mavrothalassitis opened Cassis, a casual dining restaurant with French and Hawaiian influences, also in Honolulu.

Awards and accolades

In 2000, he appeared in the November cover story of Wine Spectator magazine as one of six selected chefs. In October 2002, Gourmet Magazine named his restaurant one of "America's Best Restaurants," the only mention from Hawaii. a In 2003 the James Beard Foundation awarded Mavrothalassitis Best Chef: Northwest/Hawaii. Chef Mavro is also the only Hawaii restaurant to make a place on Esquire Magazine’s “America’s Best New Restaurants” list.[1]

One of the most famous dishes at Chef Mavro are the lilikoi malasadas, or Portuguese donuts. They are served floating in a pool of fuchsia-hued guava coulis with pineapple-coconut ice cream. Mavrothalassitis has tried to remove them from the menu several times but they have always returned by popular demand. He has made numerous television appearances such as on CNN, The Food Channel, the PBS series Great Chefs in America, France's Antenne 2, and the Food Network.

In computer science and mathematics, a directed acyclic graph, also called a DAG, is a directed graphhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graph_(mathematics)#Directed_graph with no directed cycleshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycle_graph#Directed_cycle_graph; that is, for any vertex v, there is no nonempty directed path that starts and ends on v. DAGs appear in models where it doesn't make sense for a vertex to have a path to itself; for example, if an edge u→v indicates that v is a part of u, such a path would indicate that u is a part of itself, which is impossible. Informally speaking, a DAG "flows" in a single direction.

Each directed acyclic graph gives rise to a partial order ≤ on its vertices, where u ≤ v exactly when there exists a directed path from u to v in the DAG. However, many different DAGs may give rise to this same reachability relation. Among all such DAGs, the one with the fewest edges is the transitive reduction of each of them and the one with the most is their transitive closure. In particular, the transitive closure is the reachability order.

Terminology

A source is a vertex with no incoming edges, while a sink is a vertex with no outgoing edges. A finite DAG must have at least one source and at least one sink.

The depth of a vertex in a finite DAG is the length of the longest path from a source to that vertex, while its height is the length of the longest path from that vertex to a sink

Applications

Directed acyclic graphs have many important applications in computer science, including:

* Parse trees constructed by compilers
* Bayesian networks
* Reference graphs that can be garbage collected using simple reference counting
* Feedforward neural networks, and other feed-forward controller or classifier topologies
* Reference graphs of purely functional data structures (although some languages allow purely functional cyclic structures)
* Dependency graphs such as those used in instruction scheduling and makefiles
* Dependency graphs between classes formed by inheritance relationships in object-oriented programming languages
* Serializability Theory of Transaction Processing Systems
* Information categorization systems, such as file system directories
* Hierarchical scene graphs to optimise view frustum culling operations
* Forward chained rules systems (including business rules engines) such as the Rete algorithm, used by the rule engine Drools.
* Representing spacetime as a causal set in theoretical physics
* In bioinformatics, finding areas of synteny between two genomes, or representing evolution as phylogenetic networks
* Abstract process descriptions such as workflows and some models of provenance
* A pattern language as a DAG of patterns[3]
* Dynamic programming
* Optical character recognition
Directed acyclic word graph

A directed acyclic word graph (DAWG) is a data structure in computer science similar to a trie but much more space efficient. It is used to represent a set of strings and supports a constant time search operation. The lookup time is proportional to the length of the search string and is the same as an equivalent trie.

A DAWG is defined as a trie where isomorphic subtrees are identified, thus producing an acyclic directed graph instead of a tree structure. Each node in the graph represents a unique substring. Each outgoing edge from one node to the next is labeled with a letter and represents appending that letter to the substring represented by the first node to get the substring represented by the second node. There is one node having zero incoming edges; it represents the empty string. Similarly, the nodes representing entire strings that are not a substring of any other string (this can always be guaranteed by appending an otherwise unused character such as $ to the end of every string) have zero outgoing edges.

The primary difference between DAWG and trie is the elimination of suffix redundancy in storing strings. The trie eliminates prefix redundancy since all common prefixes are shared between strings, such as between doctors and doctorate the doctor prefix is shared. In a DAWG common suffixes are also shared, such as between desertion and desertification both the prefix deserti- and suffix -tion are shared. For dictionary sets of common English words, this translates into major memory usage reduction.

Acyclic deterministic finite automata (ADFA) are deterministic finite automata without cycles. In other words, they can only represent finite sets of strings. They can be used as a data structure for word storage with extremely fast search performance. Minimized ADFA can be very compact as well. The size of a minimized ADFA does not directly depend on the number of keys stored. In fact, after a certain point, as more words are stored in a minimized ADFA, its size can begin to decrease. Its size would actually appear to be related to how complex the set of strings is. A trie is a type of ADFA.

* Septicemia in the Medical Encyclopedia, Medline Plus ("A service of the United States National Library of Medicine [NLM] and the National Institutes of Health [NIH]"). Updated October 27, 2005. Accessed August 31, 2007.
* Surviving Sepsis Campaign
* International Sepsis Forum
* Advances in Sepsis journal
* Sepsis.com
* Medscape Sepsis Resource Center
* AboutSepsis.com

Laju reaksi dipengaruhi oleh beberapa faktor, antara lain:
Luas permukaan sentuh

Luas permukaan sentuh memiliki peranan yang sangat penting dalam laju reaksi, sebab semakin besar luas permukaan bidang sentuh antar partikel, maka tumbukan yang terjadi semakin banyak, sehingga menyebabkan laju reaksi semakin cepat. Begitu juga, apabila semakin kecil luas permukaan bidang sentuh, maka semakin kecil tumbukan yang terjadi antar partikel, sehingga laju reaksi pun semakin kecil. Karakteristik kepingan yang direaksikan juga turut berpengaruh, yaitu semakin halus kepingan itu, maka semakin cepat waktu yang dibutuhkan untuk bereaksi ; sedangkan semakin kasar kepingan itu, maka semakin lama waktu yang dibutuhkan untuk bereaksi.
Suhu

Suhu juga turut berperan dalam mempengaruhi laju reaksi. Apabila suhu pada suatu rekasi yang berlangusng dinaikkan, maka menyebabkan partikel semakin aktif bergerak, sehingga tumbukan yang terjadi semakin sering, menyebabkan laju reaksi semakin besar. Sebaliknya, apabila suhu diturunkan, maka partikel semakin tak aktif, sehingga laju reaksi semakin kecil.
Katalis

Katalis adalah suatu zat yang mempercepat laju reaksi kimia pada suhu tertentu, tanpa mengalami perubahan atau terpakai oleh reaksi itu sendiri. Suatu katalis berperan dalam reaksi tapi bukan sebagai pereaksi ataupun produk. Katalis memungkinkan reaksi berlangsung lebih cepat atau memungkinkan reaksi pada suhu lebih rendah akibat perubahan yang dipicunya terhadap pereaksi. Katalis menyediakan suatu jalur pilihan dengan energi aktivasi yang lebih rendah. Katalis mengurangi energi yang dibutuhkan untuk berlangsungnya reaksi.

Katalis dapat dibedakan ke dalam dua golongan utama: katalis homogen dan katalis heterogen. Katalis heterogen adalah katalis yang ada dalam fase berbeda dengan pereaksi dalam reaksi yang dikatalisinya, sedangkan katalis homogen berada dalam fase yang sama. Satu contoh sederhana untuk katalisis heterogen yaitu bahwa katalis menyediakan suatu permukaan di mana pereaksi-pereaksi (atau substrat) untuk sementara terjerat. Ikatan dalam substrat-substrat menjadi lemah sedemikian sehingga memadai terbentuknya produk baru. Ikatan atara produk dan katalis lebih lemah, sehingga akhirnya terlepas.

Katalis homogen umumnya bereaksi dengan satu atau lebih pereaksi untuk membentuk suatu perantarakimia yang selanjutnya bereaksi membentuk produk akhir reaksi, dalam suatu proses yang memulihkan katalisnya. Berikut ini merupakan skema umum reaksi katalitik, di mana C melambangkan katalisnya:

A + C → AC (1)
B + AC → AB + C (2)
Meskipun katalis (C) termakan oleh reaksi 1, namun selanjutnya dihasilkan kembali oleh reaksi 2, sehingga untuk reaksi keseluruhannya menjadi :

A + B + C → AB + C

Beberapa katalis yang pernah dikembangkan antara lain berupa katalis Ziegler-Natta yang digunakan untuk produksi masal polietilen dan polipropilen. Reaksi katalitis yang paling dikenal adalah proses Haber, yaitu sintesis amoniak menggunakan besi biasa sebagai katalis. Konverter katalitik yang dapat menghancurkan produk emisi kendaraan yang paling sulit diatasi, terbuat dari platina dan rodium.

Radiasi elektromagnetik adalah kombinasi medan listrik dan medan magnet yang berosilasi dan merambat lewat ruang dan membawa energi dari satu tempat ke tempat yang lain. Cahaya tampak adalah salah satu bentuk radiasi elektromagnetik. Penelitian teoritis tentang radiasi elektromagnetik disebut elektrodinamik, sub-bidang elektromagnetisme.

Gelombang elektromagnetik ditemukan oleh Heinrich Hertz. Gelombang elektromagnetik termsuk gelombang transversal.

Setiap muatan listrik yang memiliki percepatan memancarkan radiasi elektromagnetik. Waktu kawat (atau panghantar seperti antena) menghantarkan arus bolak-balik, radiasi elektromagnetik dirambatkan pada frekuensi yang sama dengan arus listrik. Bergantung pada situasi, gelombang elektromagnetik dapat bersifat seperti gelombang atau seperti partikel. Sebagai gelombang, dicirikan oleh kecepatan (kecepatan cahaya), panjang gelombang, dan frekuensi. Kalau dipertimbangkan sebagai partikel, mereka diketahui sebagai foton, dan masing-masing mempunyai energi berhubungan dengan frekuensi gelombang ditunjukan oleh hubungan Planck E = Hν, di mana E adalah energi foton, h ialah konstanta Planck — 6.626 × 10 −34 J·s — dan ν adalah frekuensi gelombang.

Einstein kemudian memperbarui rumus ini menjadi Ephoton = hν.

Panjang gelombang adalah sebuah jarak antara satuan berulang dari sebuah pola gelombang. Biasanya memiliki denotasi huruf Yunani lambda (λ).

Dalam sebuah gelombang sinus, panjang gelombang adalah jarak antara puncak:

Berkas:Panjang_gelombang.PNG

Axis x mewakilkan panjang, dan I mewakilkan kuantitas yang bervariasi (misalnya tekanan udara untuk sebuah gelombang suara atau kekuatan listrik atau medan magnet untuk cahaya), pada suatu titik dalam fungsi waktu x.

Panjang gelombang λ memiliki hubungan inverse terhadap frekuensi f, jumlah puncak untuk melewati sebuah titik dalam sebuah waktu yang diberikan. Panjan gelombang sama dengan kecepatan jenis gelombang dibagi oleh frekuensi gelombang. Ketika berhadapan dengan radiasi elektromagnetik dalam ruang hampa, kecepatan ini adalah kecepatan cahaya c, untuku sinyal (gelombang) di udara, ini merupakan kecepatan suara di udara. Hubungannya adalah:\lambda = \frac{c}{f} di mana:

λ = panjang gelombang dari sebuah gelombang suara atau gelombang elektromagnetik

c = kecepatan cahaya dalam vakum = 299,792.458 km/d ~ 300,000 km/d = 300,000,000 m/d atau

c = kecepatan suara dalam udara = 343 m/d pada 20 °C (68 °F)

f = frekuensi gelombang
Persamaan Maxwell adalah himpunan empat persamaan diferensial parsial yang mendeskripsikan sifat-sifat medan listrik dan medan magnet dan hubungannya dengan sumber-sumbernya, muatan listrik dan arus listrik, menurut teori elektrodinamika klasik. Keempat persamaan ini digunakan untuk menunjukkan bahwa cahaya adalah gelombang elektromagnetik. Secara terpisah, keempat persamaan ini masing-masing disebut sebagai Hukum Gauss, Hukum Gauss untuk magnetisme, Hukum induksi Faraday, dan Hukum Ampere.

Keempat persamaan ini dengan Hukum Lorentz merupakan kumpulan hukum lengkap dari elektrodinamika klasik.

Deskripsi konseptual

* Hukum Gauss menerangkan bagaimana muatan listrik dapat menciptakan dan mengubah medan listrik. Medan listrik cenderung untuk bergerak dari muatan positif ke muatan negatif. Hukum Gauss adalah penjelasan utama mengapa muatan yang berbeda jenis saling tarik-menarik, dan yang sama jenisnya tolak-menolak. Muatan-muatan tersebut menciptakan medan listrik, yang ditanggapi oleh muatan lain melalui gaya listrik

* Hukum Gauss untuk magnetisme menyatakan tidak seperti listrik tidak ada partikel "kutub utara" atau "kutub selatan". Kutub-kutub utara dan kutub-kutub selatan selalu saling berpasangan.

* Hukum induksi Faraday mendeskripsikan bagaimana mengubah medan magnet dapat menciptakan medan listrik. Ini merupakan prinsip operasi banyak generator listrik. Gaya mekanik (seperti yang ditimbulkan oleh air pada bendungan) memutar sebuah magnet besar, dan perubahan medan magnet ini menciptakan medan listrik yang mendorong arus listrik yang kemudian disalurkan melalui jala-jala listrik.

* Hukum Ampere menyatakan bahwa medan magnet dapat ditimbulkan melalui dua cara: yaitu lewat arus listrik (perumusan awal Hukum Ampere), dan dengan mengubah medan listrik (tambahan Maxwell).

Koreksi Maxwell terhadap Hukum Ampere cukup penting: dengan demikian, hukum ini menyatakan bahwa perubahan medan listrik dapat menimbulkan medan magnet, dan sebaliknya. Dengan demikian, meskipun tidak ada muatan listrik atau arus listrik, masih dimungkinkann buat memiliki gelombang osilasi medan magnet dan medan listrik yang stabil dan dapat menjalar terus-menerus. Keempat persamaan Maxwell ini mendeskripsikan gelombang ini secara kuantitatif, dan lebih lanjut lagi meramalkan bahwa gelombang ini mestilah memiliki laju tertentu yang universal. Laju ini dapat dihitung cukup dari dua konstanta fisika yang dapat diukur (konstanta elektrik dan konstanta magnetik)

Laju yang dihitung untuk radiasi elektromagnetik tepat sama dengan laju cahaya. Cahaya memang merupakan salah satu bentuk radiasi elektromagnetik (seperti juga sinar X, gelombang radio dan lain-lainnya). Dengan demikian, Maxwell memadukan dua bidang yang sebelumnya terpisah, elektromagnetisme dan optika.

Perumusan umum persamaan Maxwell

Persamaan-persamaan dalam bagian ini ditulis dalam satuan SI. Tidak seperti persamaan dalam mekanika misalnya, perumusan persamaan Maxwell berubah-ubah tergantung pada sistem satuan yang digunakan. Meskipun bentuk umumnya tetap, berbagai definisi berubah dan tetapan yang berbeda-beda muncul di tempat yang berbeda-beda pula. Selain satuan SI (yang umum digunakan dalam rekayasa), sistem satuan lain yang umum digunakan adalah satuan Gauss (didasarkan pada sistem CGS dan dianggap memiliki keuntungan teoretis dibandingkan SI [1]), satuan Lorentz-Heaviside (biasa digunakan dalam fisika partikel) dan satuan Planck (digunakan dalam fisika teori).

Ada dua perumusan umum persamaan Maxwell, yang dibeberkan di bawah. Kedua-duanya ekivalen. Perumusan pertama memisahkan muatan terikat dan arus terikat (yang muncul dalam konteks dielektrik dan/atau bahan magnet) dari muatan bebas dan arus bebas. Pemisahan ini berguna untuk perhitungan yang melibatkan bahan dielektrik dan magnet. Perumusan kedua memperlakukan semua muatan secara setara, menggabungkan baik muatan bebas dan terikat ke dalam muatan total (dan hal yang sama juga berlaku untuk arus). Ini adalah pendekatan yang lebih mendasar atau mikroskopis, dan terutama berguna bila tidak ada bahan dielektrik atau magnet.

Lambang dicetak tebal mewakili besaran vektor, sedangkan lambang dicetak miring mewakili besaran skalar
Persamaan Maxwell secara umum diterapkan pada rata-rata makroskopik dari medan, yang sangat bervariasi pada skala mikroskopik di sekitar masing-masing atom (di tempat tersebut medan juga mengalami efek kuantum). Hanya bila dipahami sebagai rata-rata kita dapat mendefinisikan besaran seperti permitivitas dan permeabilitas magnet bahan. Pada aras mikroskopik, persamaan Maxwell, dengan mengabaikan efek kuantum, mendeskripsikan medan, muatan dan arus dalam ruang hampa, namun pada level rincian ini kita harus memperhitungkan setiap muatan, bahkan pada level atomik, yang secara umum merupakan masalah yang tidak terpecahkan (intractable).

Cyanobacteria atau ganggang biru-hijau adalah filum (atau "divisi") bakteri yang mendapat energi melalui fotosintesis. Jejak fosil cyanobacteria telah ditemukan sejak 3,8 miliar tahun lalu. Cyanobacteria sekarang adalah salah satu kelompok terbesar dan terpenting bakteri di bumi.

Bentuk

Cyanobacteria ditemukan di hampir semua habitat yang bisa dibayangkan, dari samudera ke air tawar ke batu sampai tanah. Mereka bisa bersel tunggal atau koloni. Koloni dapat membentuk filamen ataupun lembaran. Cyanobacteria termasuk uniselular, koloni, dan bentuk filamen. Beberapa koloni filamen memiliki kemampuan untuk berdiferensiasi menjadi tiga tipe sel yang berbeda: sel vegetatif adalah yang normal, sel fotosintesis pada kondisi lingkungan yang baik, dan tipe heterokista yang berdinding tebal yang mengandung enzim nitrogenase.

Setiap individu sel umumnya memiliki dinding sel yang tebal, lentur, dan Gram negatif. Cyanobacteria tidak memiliki flagela. Mereka bergerak dengan meluncur sepanjang permukaan. Kebanyakan cyanobacteria ditemukan di air tawar, sedangkan lainnya tinggal di lautan, terdapat di tanah lembab, atau bahkan kadang-kadang melembabkan batuan di gurun. Beberapa bersimbiosis dengan lumut kerak, tumbuhan, berbagai jenis protista, atau spons dan menyediakan energi bagi inang.

Klasifikasi

Cyanobacteria secara tradisional diklasifikasikan menjadi lima kelompok, berdasar struktur tubuhnya yaitu: Chroococcales, Pleurocapsales, Oscillatoriales, Nostocales dan Stigonematales.

Fotosintesis

Cyanobacteria adalah satu-satunya kelompok organisme yang mampu mengurangi nitrogen dan karbon dalam kondisi tidak ada oksigen.

Risiko kesehatan

Beberapa spesies cyanobacteria memproduksi neutrotoksin, hepatotoksin, sitotoksin, dan endotoksin, membuat mereka berbahaya bagi hewan dan manusia.

Aflatoksin merupakan segolongan senyawa toksik (mikotoksin, toksin yang berasal dari fungi) yang dikenal mematikan dan karsinogenik bagi manusia dan hewan.

Spesies penghasilnya adalah segolongan fungi (jenis kapang) dari genus Aspergillus, terutama A. flavus (dari sini nama "afla" diambil) dan A. parasiticus yang berasosiasi dengan produk-produk biji-bijian berminyak atau berkarbohidrat tinggi. Kandungan aflatoksin ditemukan pada biji kacang-kacangan (kacang tanah, kedelai, pistacio, atau bunga matahari), rempah-rempah (seperti ketumbar, jahe, lada, serta kunyit), dan serealia (seperti gandum, padi, sorgum, dan jagung). Aflatoksin juga dapat dijumpai pada susu yang dihasilkan hewan ternak yang memakan produk yang terinfestasi kapang tersebut. Obat juga dapat mengandung aflatoksin bila terinfestasi kapang ini.

Praktis semua produk pertanian dapat mengandung aflatoksin meskipun biasanya masih pada kadar toleransi. Kapang ini biasanya tumbuh pada penyimpanan yang tidak memperhatikan faktor kelembaban (min. 7%) dan bertemperatur tinggi. Daerah tropis merupakan tempat berkembang biak paling ideal.

Toksin ini memiliki paling tidak 13 varian, yang terpenting adalah B1, B2, G1, G2, M1, dan M2. Aflatoksin B1 dihasilkan oleh kedua spesies, sementara G1 dan G2 hanya dihasilkan oleh A. parasiticus. Aflatoksin M1, dan M2 ditemukan pada susu sapi dan merupakan epoksida yang menjadi senyawa antara.

Aflatoksin B1, senyawa yang paling toksik, berpotensi merangsang kanker, terutama kanker hati. Serangan toksin yang paling ringan adalah lecet (iritasi) ringan akibat kematian jaringan (nekrosis). Pemaparan pada kadar tinggi dapat menyebabkan sirosis, karsinoma pada hati, serta gangguan pencernaan, penyerapan bahan makanan, dan metabolisme nutrien. Toksin ini di hati akan direaksi menjadi epoksida yang sangat reaktif terhadap senyawa-senyawa di dalam sel. Efek karsinogenik terjadi karena basa N guanin pada DNA akan diikat dan mengganggu kerja gen.

Pemanasan hingga 250 derajat Celsius tidak efektif menginaktifkan senyawa ini. Akibatnya bahan pangan yang terkontaminasi biasanya tidak dapat dikonsumsi lagi.

Association of Talent Agents
The Association of Talent Agents (ATA) is a non-profit trade association representing the talent agencies in the industry. ATA was founded in 1937. ATA agencies represent the vast majority of working artists, including actors, directors, writers, and other artists in film, stage, television, radio, commercial, literary work, and other entertainment enterprises.

History
Established over 65 years ago, ATA is a Los Angeles based nonprofit trade association of over 100 talent agencies mostly based in the New York and Los Angeles areas. Almost all of the agencies that deal with film, theater, television, and other forms of entertainment are part of the Association of Talent Agents. According to the company's website, virtually 1000 talent agents are represented by ATA.

Originally established in 1937 under the name, Artists Managers Guild, the ATA comes out of the the Wagner Act upheld by the Supreme Court which established many of the unions and guilds that regulate people who work in the entertainment industry such as the Screen Actors Guild, Directors Guild of America, and Writers Guild of America.

Talent Manager
A talent manager, also known as an artist manager, is an individual or company who guides the professional career of artists in the entertainment industry. The responsibility of the talent manager is to oversee the day-to-day business affairs of an artist; advise and counsel talent concerning professional matters, long-term plans and personal decisions which may affect their career.[1]

The roles and responsibilities of a talent manager vary slightly from industry to industry, as do the commissions to which the manager is entitled. For example, a music manager’s duties differ from those managers who advise actors, writers, or directors. A manager can also help artists find an agent, or help them decide when to leave their current agent and identify who to select as a new agent.[2] Talent agents have the authority to make deals for their clients while managers usually can only informally establish connections with producers and studios, but do not have the ability to negotiate contracts.

Facebook is a popular, free-access social networking website that is operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc.[1] Users can join networks organized by city, workplace, school, and region to connect and interact with other people. People can also add friends and send them messages, and update their personal profile to notify friends about themselves. The website's name refers to the paper facebooks depicting members of a campus community that some US colleges and preparatory schools give to incoming students, faculty, and staff as a way to get to know other people on campus.

Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook while he was a student at Harvard University.[5] Website membership was initially limited to Harvard students, but was expanded to other colleges in the Ivy League. It later expanded further to include any university student, then high school students, and, finally, to anyone aged 13 and over. The website currently has more than 140 million active users worldwide.[6]

Facebook has met with some controversy over the past few years. It has been blocked intermittently in several countries including Syria[7] and Iran.[8] It has also been banned at many places of work to increase productivity.[9] Privacy has also been an issue, and it has been compromised several times. It is also facing several lawsuits from a number of Zuckerberg's former classmates, who claim that Facebook had stolen their source code and other intellectual property.
History

Mark Zuckerberg founded "The Facebook", originally located at thefacebook.com, on February 4, 2004[10] while attending Harvard University as a sophomore.[11] The company dropped The from its name after purchasing the domain name facebook.com in 2005 for $200,000.[12]

Membership was initially restricted to students of Harvard College, and within the first month, more than half the undergraduate population at Harvard were registered on the service.[13] Eduardo Saverin (business aspects), Dustin Moskovitz (programmer), Andrew McCollum (graphic artist), and Chris Hughes soon joined Zuckerberg to help promote the website. In March 2004, Facebook expanded to Stanford, Columbia, and Yale.[14] This expansion continued when it opened to all Ivy League schools and gradually most universities in Canada and the United States.[15] In June 2004, Facebook moved its base of operations to Palo Alto, California.[14] In October 2008, Facebook announced that it was to set up its international headquarters in Dublin, Ireland. [16]

Facebook launched a high school version in September 2005, which Zuckerberg called the next logical step.[17] At that time, high school networks required an invitation to join.[18] Facebook later expanded membership eligibility to employees of several companies including Apple Inc. and Microsoft.[19] Facebook was then opened to everyone of ages 13 and older with a valid e-mail address on September 26, 2006.[20][21]

BusinessWeek has confirmed that Facebook, beginning in Autumn 2008, will allow its employees to sell stock at no more than a $3.75 billion valuation
Funding
Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto, California

Facebook received its first investment of US$500,000 in June 2004 from PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel.[23] This was followed a year later by $12.7 million in venture capital from Accel Partners, and then $27.5 million more from Greylock Partners.[23][24] A cash flow statement was leaked, showing that during the 2005 fiscal year, Facebook had a net loss of $3.63 million.[25] Microsoft approached Facebook in September 2007, proposing an investment in return for a 5% stake in the company. Microsoft would pay an estimated $300–500 million for the share.[26] Microsoft announced on October 24, 2007 that it purchased a 1.6% share of Facebook for $246 million.[27] On November 30, 2007, Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing invested $60 million in Facebook.[28]

BusinessWeek reported on March 28, 2006 that a potential acquisition of the website was under negotiation. Facebook reportedly declined an offer of $750 million from an unknown bidder, and it was rumored the asking price rose as high as $2 billion.[29] With the sale of social networking website MySpace to News Corp on July 19, 2005, rumors surfaced about the possible sale of Facebook to a larger media company.[30] Zuckerberg had already said he did not want to sell the company and denied rumors to the contrary.[31] In late September, serious talks between Facebook and Yahoo! took place concerning acquisition of the social network, with prices reaching as high as $1 billion.[32] Thiel, by then a board member of Facebook, indicated that Facebook's internal valuation was around $8 billion based on their projected revenues of $1 billion by 2015, comparable to Viacom's MTV brand, a company with a shared target demographic audience.[33] Other companies, including Google, expressed interest in September 2007 to buy a portion of Facebook.[34] Amid the rumors, Zuckerberg claimed that selling Facebook was unlikely because he wanted to keep it independent, stating on July 17, 2007, "We're not really looking to sell the company. [...] We're not looking to IPO anytime soon. It's just not the core focus of the company."[35]
Website
Facebook's new homepage features a login form on the top right for existing users and a registration form directly underneath for new visitors.

Facebook users may choose to join one or more networks, organized by city, workplace, school, and region.[36] These networks help users connect with members of the same network. Users can also connect with friends, giving them access to their friends' profiles.[37]

The website is free to users, but generates revenue from advertising. This includes banner ads.[38] Users can create profiles including photos and lists of personal interests, exchange private or public messages, and join groups of friends.[39] The viewing of detailed profile data is restricted to users from the same network or confirmed friends only when the appropriate Privacy settings have been altered. Without altering the Privacy settings a Facebook profile is viewable by anybody on Facebook.

Microsoft is Facebook's exclusive partner for serving banner advertising,[40] and as such Facebook only serves advertisements that exist in Microsoft's advertisement inventory. According to comScore, an internet marketing research company, Facebook collects as much data from its visitors as Google and Microsoft but considerably less than Yahoo! when compared with other web companies.[41]

Features
News Feed

On 6 September 2006, Ruchi Sanghvi announced a new home page feature called News Feed.[1] Originally, when users logged into Facebook, they were presented with a customizable version of their own profile. The new layout, by contrast, created an alternate home page in which users saw a constantly updated list of their friends' Facebook activity. News Feed highlights information that includes profile changes, upcoming events, and birthdays, among other updates. News Feed also shows conversations taking place between the walls of a user's friends. An integral part of the News Feed interface is the Mini-Feed, a news stream on the user's profile page that shows updates about that user. Unlike in the News Feed, the user can delete events from the Mini-Feed after they appear so that they are no longer visible to profile visitors.

Initially, the addition of the News Feed caused some discontent among Facebook users. Many users complained that the News Feed was too cluttered and full of undesired information. Others were concerned that the News Feed made it too easy for other people to track activities like changes in relationship status, events, and conversations with other users.[2] In response to this dissatisfaction, creator Mark Zuckerberg issued an apology for the site's failure to include appropriate customizable privacy features. Thereafter, users were able to control what types of information were shared automatically with friends.[3] Currently, users may prevent friends from seeing updates about several types of especially private activities, although other events are not customizable in this way.

Facebook also provides the option for users to comment items in their Friends' News Feed. The largest number of comments is 100 on a user being marked as 'in a relationship' posted at 22.17, 07/01/2009 - the actual number of comments was slightly higher, somewhere between 110-120, but once the 100 mark was reached earlier comments were deleted from the feed and the participants stopped commenting in order to preserve the discussion. Other users joined in, however, and several of the original comments were lost. The closed nature of facebook (only Friends can see or comment on a users News Feed) makes it difficult to verify if it is in fact the highest.

Recently, Facebook allows users to minimize how often they see certain types of stories and certain friends in their News Feed.

Wall

The Wall is a space on each user's profile page that allows friends to post messages for the user to see while displaying the time and date the message was written. One user's wall is visible to anyone with the ability to see their full profile, and different users' wall posts show up in an individual's News Feed. Many users use their friends' walls for leaving short, temporal notes. More private discourse is saved for Messages, which are sent to a person's Inbox, and are visible only to the sender and recipient(s) of the Message, much like email.

In July 2007, Facebook allowed users to post attachments to the wall,[4] whereas previously the wall was limited to text content only.

Photos

One of the most popular applications on Facebook is the Photos application, where users can upload albums of photos, tag friends, and comment on photos. According to Facebook,[5] there are

* 1.7 billion user photos
* 2.2 billion friends tagged in user photos
* 160 terabytes of photo storage used with an extra 60 terabytes available
* 60+ million photos added each week which take up 5 terabytes of disk space
* 3+ billion photo images served to users every day
* 100,000+ images served per second during peak traffic windows

Gifts
Some of Facebook's gifts, as displayed in the website's gift shop.

In February 2007, Facebook added a new gift feature to the website. Friends could send "gifts" -- small icons of novelty items designed by former Apple designer Susan Kare -- to each other by selecting one from Facebook's virtual gift shop and adding a message. Gifts given to a user appear on the recipient's wall with the giver's message, unless the giver decided to give the gift privately, in which case the giver's name and message is not displayed to other users. Additionally, all gifts (including private gifts) received by a user are displayed in the recipient's "gift box" (right above their wall on their profile), marked with either the first name of the user (for public gifts) or the word "Private." An "Anonymous" option is also available, by which anyone with profile access can see the gift, but only the recipient will see the message. None will see the giver's name, and the gift will go in the recipient's gift box but not the wall.

Facebook users are given one free gift to give upon account signup. Each additional gift given by a user costs US$1.00. The initial selection of gifts was Valentine's Day themed, and 50% of the net proceeds (after credit card processing fees were taken out, etc.) received through February 2007 were donated to the charity Susan G. Komen for the Cure. After the month of February, the proceeds were no longer donated. Soon after, Facebook began making one new gift available each day, most of which had a limited supply or were available for a limited time.

On November 8, 2008, Facebook changed the $1.00 per gift model to a micro-payment model of 100 "points" per $1.00, with the existing gifts costing 100 "points". They plan to allow a wider variety of gifts in the future.

With the advent of Applications came a way to subvert the required US$1.00 payment; however, the gifts in the "Free Gifts" application, created by Zachary Allia,[6] are not the same as the official gifts, as they are displayed in a different manner.
Marketplace

In May 2007, Facebook introduced the Facebook Marketplace allowing users to post free classified ads within the following categories: For Sale, Housing, Jobs, and Other. Ads can be posted in either available or wanted format.[7] The market place is available for all Facebook users and is currently free.[8]

[edit] Pokes

Facebook includes a "poke" feature that allows one user to send a "poke" to another. According to Facebook's FAQ section on the Poke Feature, "a poke is a way to interact with your friends on Facebook. When we created the poke, we thought it would be cool to have a feature without any specific purpose. People interpret the poke in many different ways, and we encourage you to come up with your own meanings." In principle, this is intended to be a "nudge" to attract the attention of the other user. However, while many Facebook users, as intended, use the feature to attract attention or say hello,[9] some users construe it as a sexual advance (which is hardly surprising, as "poke" has, for centuries, had the sexual meaning in colloquial English language). There are several applications such as "X Me" and "SuperPoke!" that allow users to put any action in place of the word "poke."

[edit] Status

Facebook has a micro-blogging feature called "status updates" which allows users to inform their friends of their current whereabouts, actions, or thoughts. For example "Billy visited Jen," "Sam called Jen," "Matt dated Jen," or "Jen is a total idiot." Facebook originally prompted the status update with "User name is..." and Facebook users filled in the rest. However, on December 13, 2007, the requirement to start a status update with "is" was removed. While "is" still appears by default, a user may backspace to delete it when entering a status update. [10]

Status updates are noted in the "Recently updated" section of a user's friend list. The three most updated statuses are shown in the top right of the news feed.

[edit] Events

Facebook events are a way for members to let friends know about upcoming events in their community and to organize social gatherings.[11] Events require an event name, tagline, network, host name, event type, start and end time, location & city, and a guest list of friends invited. Events can be open, closed, or secret. When setting up an event the user can choose to allow friends to upload photos, video, and posted items.

[edit] Networks and groups

Facebook allows different networks and groups to which many users can join. It also allows privacy settings on basis of networks. Groups are used for discussions and events etc. Groups are a way of enabling a number of people to come together online to share information and discuss specific subjects. They are increasingly used by clubs, companies and public sector organizations to engage with stakeholders - be they members of the public, employees, members, service users, shareholders or customers. A group is comprised of but not limited to the following: the members who have joined, recent news contents, discussion board contents, wall contents, photos, posted items, videos and all associated comments of such items.

[edit] Video

During the time that Facebook released its platform, it also released an application[12] of its own for sharing videos on Facebook. Users can add their videos with the service by uploading video, adding video through Facebook Mobile, and using a webcam recording feature. Additionally, users can "tag" their friends in videos they add much like the way users can tag their friends in photos. Users also have the option of video messaging.

[edit] Chat

On April 5, 2008, Facebook pre-released Facebook Chat.[13][14] As of April 23, 2008, Facebook chat was released to the entire Facebook userbase. Users are only able to chat with their Facebook friends and on a one-to-one basis. Instant messaging clients that currently support facebook chat include Digsby, Adium, and Scrapboy, as well as Pidgin with a cross-platform plugin. Facebook Chat can also be run on the desktop using Gabtastik, a dedicated web chat browser. On May 13, 2008, a Facebook developer announced that they are working on XMPP support, allowing hundreds of instant messaging clients to interoperate with the service.[15]

[edit] Pages

Individuals or companies can create "pages" which allows users to "become a fan" of the individual, product, service, or concept. Pages are integrated with Facebook's advertising system, allowing Page owners to easily advertise to Facebook's users. Owners can send updates to their fans, which shows up on their news feeds. They also have access to insights and analytics of their fan base.[16]

[edit] Platform applications

On May 24, 2007, Facebook launched the Facebook Platform,[17] which provides a framework for third party developers to create applications that interact with core Facebook features. Even games such as chess are available. As of January 31, 2008, there are more than 14,000 applications.[18]

Third-party websites such as Adonomics, which provides application metrics, and blogs such as AppRate, Inside Facebook and Face Reviews have sprung up in response to the clamor for Facebook applications. On July 4, 2007, Altura Ventures announced the "Altura 1 Facebook Investment Fund," becoming the world's first Facebook-only venture capital firm.[19]

On August 29, 2007, Facebook changed the way in which the popularity of applications is measured, in order to give more attention to the more engaging applications, following criticism that ranking applications only by the number of users was giving an advantage to the highly viral, yet useless applications.[20] Tech blog Valleywag has criticized Facebook Applications, labeling them a "cornucopia of uselessness."[21] Others have called for limiting third-party applications so the Facebook "user experience" is not degraded.[22][23]

Primarily attempting to create viral applications is a method that has certainly been employed by numerous Facebook application developers. Stanford University even offered a class in the Fall of 2007, entitled, Computer Science (CS) 377W: "Create Engaging Web Applications Using Metrics and Learning on Facebook". Numerous applications created by the class were highly successful, and ranked amongst the top Facebook applications, with some achieving over 3.5 million users in a month.[24]

[edit] APIs

Different APIs are available for a third party application including authorizing APIs. Facebook offers "API calls" to third party to access facebook information, and Facebook Query Language (FQL) functions to fetch data.[25] Other than fetching user data, APIs for access to facebook core features like notifications, invites, feeds and adding profile boxes available.

[edit] Facebook Markup Language

Facebook Markup Language ("FBML") is a variant-evolved subset of HTML with some elements removed. It allows Facebook Application developers to customise the "look and feel" of their applications, to a limited extent. It is the specification of how to encode content so that Facebook's servers can read and publish it, which is needed in the Facebook-specific feed so that Facebook's system can properly parse content and publish it as specified.[26] The FBML for a profile box is set by calling profile.setFBML through the API. The FBML is cached on Facebook's server until profile.setFBML is called again through a canvas page. The official FBML documentation is hosted on the Facebook Developers Wiki.
Facebook Connect

Facebook Connect was announced on 23 July 2008 at Facebook's annual conference for developers and made available to users in December 2008. A single sign-on service that competes with OpenID[29], the service enables Facebook users to login to affiliated sites using their Facebook account and share information from such sites with their Facebook friends. Here is Facebook's own list of all the sites that have implemented Facebook Connect (partially only) with a full scale implementation of it at Brainfall.com

The Marathon Trilogy is a science fiction series of first-person shooter computer games from Bungie Software, originally released for the Macintosh. The name Marathon is derived from the fictional giant interstellar colony ship that provides the setting for the first game; the ship is constructed out of what used to be the Martian satellite Deimos. The three games in the series — Marathon (1994), Marathon 2: Durandal (1995), and Marathon Infinity (1996) — are widely regarded as spiritual predecessors of Bungie's Halo trilogy.
Story

Set in 2794, Marathon places the player as a security officer aboard an enormous human starship called the U.E.S.C. Marathon, orbiting a colony on the planet Tau Ceti IV. Throughout the game, the player attempts to defend the ship (and its crew and colonists) from a race of alien slavers called the Pfhor. As he fights against the invaders, he witnesses interactions among the three shipboard AIs (Leela, Durandal and Tycho), and discovers that all is not as it seems aboard the Marathon. Among other problems, Durandal has gone rampant and appears to be playing the humans against the Pfhor to further his own mysterious agenda; ultimately leading the S'pht, one of the races enslaved by the Pfhor, in a rebellion.

Seventeen years after the events of the first game, in Marathon 2: Durandal, the artificial intelligence, Durandal, sends the player and an army of ex-colonists to search the ruins of Lh'owon, the S'pht homeworld. Lh'owon was once described as a paradise but is now a desert world after first the S'pht Clan Wars and then the invasion by the Pfhor. He does not mention what information he is looking for, although he does let it slip that the Pfhor are planning to attack Earth, and that being on Lh'owon may stall their advance. Marathon 2 brings many elements to the game that can be considered staples of the series such as: a Lh'owon-native species known as F'lickta, the mention of an ancient and mysterious race of advanced aliens called the Jjaro, and a clan of S'pht that avoided enslavement by the Pfhor - the S'pht'Kr. At the climax of the game, the player activates Thoth, an ancient Jjaro AI. Thoth then contacts the S'pht'Kr, who in turn destroy the Pfhor armada.

Marathon Infinity, the final game in the series, includes more levels than Marathon 2, which are larger and part of a more intricate plot. The game's code changed little since Marathon 2, and many levels can be played unmodified in both games. The only significant additions to the game's engine were the Jjaro ship, multiple paths between levels, a new rapid-fire weapon that could be used underwater, and vacuum-enabled humans carrying fusion weapons (called "Vacuum Bobs" or "VacBobs"). The player traverses multiple timelines, attempting to find one in which the W'rkncacnter is not freed. In one timeline, the player is forced to destroy Durandal, and in another Durandal merges with Thoth. At the end of the game, an ancient Jjaro machine is activated that keeps the W'rkncacnter locked in the Lh'owon sun.

Elements of the plot and setting of Marathon are similar to The Jesus Incident by Frank Herbert and Bill Ransom. Both stories take place aboard colony ships orbiting Tau Ceti, where sentient computers have engaged crew and colonists in a fight for survival. While Ship in The Jesus Incident has achieved a higher level of omniscient consciousness, Durandal's rampancy parallels the “rogue consciousness” from Herbert's earlier Destination: Void.
Gameplay

Throughout the games the player accesses computer terminals through which he communicates with artificial intelligences, receives mission data, and gets teleported to other levels via "Jump Pads". Though contact with computers is how they are primarily utilized, they are a fundamental storytelling element; some terminals contain civilian/alien reports or diaries, database articles, conversations between artificial intelligences and even stories or poems. Messages may change depending on a player's progress in a certain level. The ultimate goal of most levels is not to merely reach the end but to complete the type(s) of objective(s) specified: extermination of all or specific creatures, exploration of a level or locating an area in the level, retrieving one or more item, hitting a certain "repair" switch, or preventing half of the civilians from being killed (a mission only present in two levels in the first game).

Most levels contain platforms, defined as anything able to change its height. Though it is generally used to describe lifts, doors are included in this category. Doors may or may not show up on the player's automap and are usually opened with the action key. In cases where they are damaged or locked they can be opened by special designated triggers or switches. Switches control various functions such as lifts, doors and lighting and come in the form of manual switches that can be toggled with the action key, stations for computer chips or breakable circuitry. Some switches are "tag" switches that execute multiple functions at once or those that must be activated as part of "repair" missions. Another notable level feature is teleporters, able to send players who use them to different parts of a level or to other levels. Aliens are unable to use them.

As the player combats enemies, he will inevitably take damage and must replenish health by means of special panels that recharge his suit's shields. There are three types of such panels, recharging single (red), double (yellow) or triple (purple) shields. Occasionally a full "colour bar" of shield power can be recharged instantaneously by obtaining a powerup canister.

In Marathon 2 and Marathon Infinity, the player can swim in four different types of media: water, sewage, lava and acid/plasma — the latter two are damaging to health. Levels of the original Marathon did not contain media capable of swimming in. However, some did have floors textured with orange lava or green goo that will inflict damage on the player when standing upon them. When the player is submerged in liquids, the run key can be used in order to swim. In liquids or in "vacuum" areas, the player's oxygen depletes and it must be recharged using a special oxygen recharge station. Should the player lose all oxygen or health, he dies and is sent back to the last pattern buffer (a special terminal that according to the storyline saves molecular data) at which he saved. Because some levels do not have these devices, dying results in having to complete the entire level again.

Gravity is fairly low on some levels, and the correct application of the flamethrower or alien weapon allows the player to hover. "Hopping" with the grenade launcher or rockets can be used, but usually involves a fair amount of damage to the character.

The heads-up display has an inventory, health and oxygen bars, and a motion sensor. The motion sensor displays alien creatures as red triangles and friendly humans or robots as green squares; it tracks their motion relative to the player, represented by a square in the middle whenever the player moves. The brightness of the middle square represents how still the player is and how well he can be tracked. On some levels the motion sensor is erratic due to magnetic artificial gravity fields.

Marathon has five difficulty settings: Kindergarten, Easy, Normal, Major Damage, and Total Carnage. Differences involve the omission of some creatures from each level and creatures marked as minor in the game's physics model are promoted to their major versions or vice versa. On higher difficulty levels, creatures attack more frequently and have more vitality and on the highest setting (Total Carnage), the player is allowed to carry an unlimited amount of ammunition.

The Marathon Trilogy has received wide praise for its multiplayer mode, which was unique in that it not only had several levels specifically designed for multiplayer — as opposed to contemporaries that used modified single-player levels — but also because it offered unique gametypes beyond the deathmatch. Games can be free-for-all or team ordeals, and can be limited by time or number of kills, or they can have no limit whatsoever. The host of a game has the option of setting penalties for suicides and dying (once dead, players cannot be revived for a certain amount of time). The motion sensor (which displays a player's enemies as yellow squares and teammates as green ones) can be disabled and the map is able to show all of the players in the game. Upon the preference of the host, maps can be played with or without aliens. The difficulty level of each game is preset by the gatherer.

Marathon network games can be played over AppleTalk Remote, LocalTalk, TokenTalk, Ethernet, and more recently, a LAN network or the Internet. If a player's computer has a microphone, it is possible to use it to communicate with other players.

Every Man For Himself
This is the standard deathmatch. The winner is the person or team with the greatest score. A player loses a point if he dies but gains a point every time he kills. This is the only gametype present in the original Marathon; Bungie planned on adding the ones included in sequels, but could not due to time constraints.

Cooperative Play
This style of play has players assisting each other in completion of certain levels. Scores are based on percentages of how many aliens they kill. It has received little popularity.

Kill the Man With the Ball
In this game, the objective is to hold the ball (skull) for the longest amount of time. If holding the ball, a player cannot run or attack unless he drops the ball by pressing the "fire" key. The motion sensor, if enabled, acts as a compass to point players in the direction of the ball. This mode was succeeded by the Oddball gametype in the Halo series.

King of the Hill
Players try to stay located in a specially marked area for the longest amount of time. It was originally planned for a pedestal to indicate the location of the Hill but in the final version was indicated by a compass on the motion sensor.

Tag
The first player to be killed becomes "It." If a player is killed by "It," he becomes the new "It." The winner is the player who is "It" for the least amount of time. This might be a predecessor to the Halo gametype "Juggernaut", but in reverse.

Development
First Stages (1994-1999)

Marathon was first released for the Macintosh in 1994 and introduced many concepts now common in mainstream video games. These features included dual-wielded weapons and real-time voice chat in multiplayer sessions. It had the most sophisticated physics modeling built into a game engine up to that time, which allowed for such features as adjustable gravity. The physics could also be altered via fan-made physics files, that could be created with third-party applications and eventually with Anvil, Bungie Software's own official editor. It is also noted for a far more sophisticated plot than had previously been apparent in first-person shooters. The sequel, Marathon 2: Durandal, was released in 1995 and expanded the engine technologies and the story universe. Notable new features in the engine included ambient sounds and liquids that the player could swim through. Compared with its darker predecessor, Marathon 2 has often been perceived to be a brighter, more vivid and more atmospheric game. It introduced several new types of multiplayer modes beyond the deathmatch and cooperative game such as king of the hill. In 1996, the game was ported to Windows 95, and the third game in the trilogy, Marathon Infinity was released for the Macintosh only, built on a slightly modified Marathon 2 engine. The game additionally came with "Forge" and "Anvil", the applications used originally by Bungie Software to create the game's levels, physics, and to import the game's sounds and graphics. Within the next few years, Marathon 2's engine was reused by other developers to create the games ZPC, Prime Target and Damage Incorporated.

Marathon Open Source Project (2000-2004)

Just prior to its acquisition by Microsoft in 2000, Bungie released the source code to the Marathon 2 engine, and the Marathon Open Source project began, resulting in the new Marathon engine called Aleph One.

Aleph One (2005-Present)

The Marathon Open Source Project was renamed, and called, Aleph One. In 2005, Bungie released the full original Mac OS trilogy for free distribution online [1], allowing Aleph One to run the games in the trilogy on any of the supported platforms (Mac OS, Linux and Windows). Marathon 2 was re-released in an updated form as Marathon: Durandal for the Xbox 360's Xbox Live Arcade on August 1, 2007. It features a new HUD that fills less of the screen, support for online play, and optional high-resolution sprites and textures.[1]

While the fundamental technology underlying the Marathon engine is by now considered rather outdated, Aleph One has added significant improvements and a more modern polish to its capabilities and ported it to a wide variety of platforms, bringing Marathon and its derivatives far beyond their Mac roots. Aleph One and the Marathon series of games are unique amongst first-person shooters for their heavy emphasis on storytelling through the use of terminals, which are computer interfaces included within Marathon through which players not only learn and sometimes accomplish mission objectives, but also learn detailed story information about Marathon. The textual form of this communication allows for much richer information conveyance than typically short voice acting in other games.

The Community

The Aleph One Community, is constantly making new things for Marathon. The game lacks certain features such as: Jumping, Decent Graphics, and game problems. The community is constantly making the game better and better even after about 13 Years. Now the community has made addons that feature: The ability to jump, HighRes Graphics, Better Online Gameplay, OpenGL Support, etc.

Online Gaming

With the continual improvement of Aleph One, true online multiplayer was added to the engine. The servers allowing online play are normally hosted by Marius.net
Reception and legacy

The Marathon Trilogy has often been looked upon as a symbol of Macintosh gaming for its innovative technologies previously unseen in mainstream games on the Macintosh platform. It was released to much anticipation and received praise from many reviewers. Marathon entered the market at a time when Doom, a PC game by id Software, was receiving much attention, and despite the fact that Marathon was technologically superior[3], it was by and large eclipsed by its competitor. After Marathon Infinity was released in 1996, players began to create total conversions using Forge and Anvil. These may use custom maps, shapes, sounds or physics files and may or may not be set in the Marathon universe. Such conversions are still created to this day.

Bungie produced a compilation of all three games of the series called the Marathon Trilogy Box Set in 1997. The collection was on two discs. The first contained all three Marathon games as well as Pathways Into Darkness, an earlier Bungie game and the spiritual prequel to the series. This disc also contains manuals for all three games, QuickTime 2.0 and other things necessary to run the game. There are beta versions of Marathon on this disc as well. The second disc of this contains thousands of pieces of user-created content, including maps, total conversions, shape and sound files, cheats, mapmaking tools, physics files, and other applications. The boxed set was also notable for removing copy protection, allowing unlimited network play, and including a license allowing the set to be installed on as many computers at a site as desired.

In January 2000, Bungie released the Marathon 2: Durandal source code under the GPL license. Various projects have continued the legacy of the series by adding enhancements to Bungie's original code, such as Internet play, support for Lua and markup language and large resolutions. The most prominent and developed of these is called Aleph One, which is compatible not only with Macintosh, but with Windows, Linux and even the Sega Dreamcast.

The Marathon Trilogy was finally released as freeware in early 2005, along with Forge and Anvil, although Bungie retained the copyright to the actual game data.[4]

In June 2000, the principals of Bungie sold their company to Microsoft, including the rights to develop the Marathon series[citation needed]; but in October 2007 they split from Microsoft and reacquired the rights.

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RSS is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format.[2] An RSS document (which is called a "feed", "web feed",[3] or "channel") includes full or summarized text, plus metadata such as publishing dates and authorship. Web feeds benefit publishers by letting them syndicate content automatically. They benefit readers who want to subscribe to timely updates from favored websites or to aggregate feeds from many sites into one place. RSS feeds can be read using software called an "RSS reader", "feed reader", or "aggregator", which can be web-based or desktop-based. A standardized XML file format allows the information to be published once and viewed by many different programs. The user subscribes to a feed by entering the feed's URI (often referred to informally as a "URL", although technically, those two terms are not exactly synonymous) into the reader or by clicking an RSS icon in a browser that initiates the subscription process. The RSS reader checks the user's subscribed feeds regularly for new work, downloads any updates that it finds, and provides a user interface to monitor and read the feeds.

RSS formats are specified using XML, a generic specification for the creation of data formats. Although RSS formats have evolved since March 1999,[4] the RSS icon ("") first gained widespread use between 2005 and 2006.
The RSS formats were preceded by several attempts at web syndication that did not achieve widespread popularity. The basic idea of restructuring information about websites goes back to as early as 1995, when Ramanathan V. Guha and others in Apple Computer's Advanced Technology Group developed the Meta Content Framework.[7] For a more detailed discussion of these early developments, see the history of web syndication technology.

RDF Site Summary, the first version of RSS, was created by Guha at Netscape in March 1999 for use on the My.Netscape.Com portal. This version became known as RSS 0.9.[4] In July 1999, Dan Libby of Netscape produced a new version, RSS 0.91,[2] which simplified the format by removing RDF elements and incorporating elements from Dave Winer's scriptingNews syndication format.[8] Libby also renamed RSS "Rich Site Summary" and outlined further development of the format in a "futures document".[9]

This would be Netscape's last participation in RSS development for eight years. As RSS was being embraced by web publishers who wanted their feeds to be used on My.Netscape.Com and other early RSS portals, Netscape dropped RSS support from My.Netscape.Com in April 2001 during new owner AOL's restructuring of the company, also removing documentation and tools that supported the format.[10]

Two entities emerged to fill the void, with neither Netscape's help nor approval: The RSS-DEV Working Group and Winer, whose UserLand Software had published some of the first publishing tools outside of Netscape that could read and write RSS.

Winer published a modified version of the RSS 0.91 specification on the UserLand website, covering how it was being used in his company's products, and claimed copyright to the document.[11] A few months later, UserLand filed a U.S. trademark registration for RSS, but failed to respond to a USPTO trademark examiner's request and the request was rejected in December 2001.[12]

The RSS-DEV Working Group, a project whose members included Guha and representatives of O'Reilly Media and Moreover, produced RSS 1.0 in December 2000.[13] This new version, which reclaimed the name RDF Site Summary from RSS 0.9, reintroduced support for RDF and added XML namespaces support, adopting elements from standard metadata vocabularies such as Dublin Core.

In December 2000, Winer released RSS 0.92[14] a minor set of changes aside from the introduction of the enclosure element, which permitted audio files to be carried in RSS feeds and helped spark podcasting. He also released drafts of RSS 0.93 and RSS 0.94 that were subsequently withdrawn.[15]

In September 2002, Winer released a major new version of the format, RSS 2.0, that redubbed its initials Really Simple Syndication. RSS 2.0 removed the type attribute added in the RSS 0.94 draft and added support for namespaces.

Because neither Winer nor the RSS-DEV Working Group had Netscape's involvement, they could not make an official claim on the RSS name or format. This has fueled ongoing controversy in the syndication development community as to which entity was the proper publisher of RSS.

One product of that contentious debate was the creation of an alternative syndication format, Atom, that began in June 2003.[16] The Atom syndication format, whose creation was in part motivated by a desire to get a clean start free of the issues surrounding RSS, has been adopted as IETF Proposed Standard RFC 4287.

In July 2003, Winer and UserLand Software assigned the copyright of the RSS 2.0 specification to Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society, where he had just begun a term as a visiting fellow.[17] At the same time, Winer launched the RSS Advisory Board with Brent Simmons and Jon Udell, a group whose purpose was to maintain and publish the specification and answer questions about the format.[18]

In December 2005, the Microsoft Internet Explorer team[19] and Outlook team[20] announced on their blogs that they were adopting the feed icon first used in the Mozilla Firefox browser . A few months later, Opera Software followed suit. This effectively made the orange square with white radio waves the industry standard for RSS and Atom feeds, replacing the large variety of icons and text that had been used previously to identify syndication data.

In January 2006, Rogers Cadenhead relaunched the RSS Advisory Board without Dave Winer's participation, with a stated desire to continue the development of the RSS format and resolve ambiguities. In June 2007, the board revised their version of the specification to confirm that namespaces may extend core elements with namespace attributes, as Microsoft has done in Internet Explorer 7. According to their view, a difference of interpretation left publishers unsure of whether this was permitted or forbidden.