shortershrift

Mozilla Foundation

2009-07-23T09:27:00.000-07:00

The Mozilla Foundation is a non-profit organization that exists to support and provide leadership for the open source Mozilla project. The organization sets the policies that govern development, operate key infrastructure and control trademarks and other intellectual property. It owns two taxable for-profit subsidiaries: the Mozilla Corporation, which employs several Mozilla developers and coordinates releases of the Mozilla Firefox web browser, and Mozilla Messaging, Inc., which primarily develops the Mozilla Thunderbird email client. The Mozilla Foundation is based in the Silicon Valley city of Mountain View, California, USA.

The Mozilla Foundation describes itself as "a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving choice and promoting innovation on the Internet". Mozilla Europe, Mozilla Japan and Mozilla China are non-profit organizations whose mission is to help promote and deploy Mozilla products and projects. They are independent of, but affiliated with, the Mozilla Foundation.

Mozilla Corporation

On August 3, 2005, the Mozilla Foundation launched a wholly owned subsidiary called the Mozilla Corporation to continue the development and delivery of Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird. The Mozilla Corporation takes responsibility for release planning, marketing and a range of distribution-related activities. It also handles relationships with businesses, many of which generate income. Unlike the Mozilla Foundation, the Mozilla Corporation is a taxable entity, which gives it much greater freedom in the revenue and business activities it can pursue.

Web application Technology

2009-07-13T12:55:00.000-07:00

Server 50938

Global Media Technology World Sphere

Icon Button Set For Navigation

Background, Business, Businessman, Caucasian, Cellphone

The internet shorthands

Hacker breaks into Ecuador’s presidential website

2009-07-07T17:41:00.000-07:00

Quito, Feb 11 (IANS) An investigation has been launched to find the hacker who broke into the website of Ecuador’s presidential office while it was undergoing maintenance, senior officials have said.

“Unscrupulous persons managed to enter the website and leave messages that had nothing to do with the national government,” said Carlos Medina, a member of the presidential communications office, Spain’s EFE news agency reported Monday.

The unidentified hacker entered the presidential website Saturday.

“We are currently conducting the necessary investigations to find out who was responsible,” Medina said.

According to media reports, the message left by the hacker on the presidential website expressed support for Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa and condemned corruption on the part of Jaime Nebot, the best-known opposition leader and mayor of Guayaquil, the largest and most populous city in the country.

However, the authorities quickly clarified that the message which appeared on the website did not represent the views of the government.

Web Application Security Consortium

2009-06-29T10:46:00.000-07:00

It can be Web Application Security Consortium (WASC) is in search of contributed 'Guest Articles' by industry professionals on the latest in trends, techniques, defenses, best practices and lessons learned relevant to the field of web application security.

The value of web application security has very much increased in recent years due to the exponential increase in threats plaguing the application layer of the network. To properly protect systems from application-level attacks, the understanding of today's issues has never been more critical. It's imperative the industry work together by sharing first-hand experiences to combat the growing number of issues. Your contributed articles will assist in the advancement of the field of web application security and the education of the issues we all face.

Contributed articles may include industry best practices, technical information about current issues, innovative defense techniques, etc. NO VENDOR PITCHES OR MARKETING GIMMICKS PLEASE. We are only soliciting concrete information from the experts on the front lines of the web application security field.

Goals & Objectives provide a venue for the information security community to publish and obtain up-to-date web security content.

Our readers are very important to WASC. The readers come from a wide range of professional backgrounds and have a high expectation for quality educational material. As such, WASC contributed articles are not to be used as a venue for marketing purposes. Articles are assumed op-ed; they should be succinct, and direct while presenting details and solutions.

Web Security Mailing List

2009-06-22T08:51:00.000-07:00

Web Security Mailing List is an open information discussion for discussing topics applicable to web security. Topics include, but are not limited to, industry news and technical discussions hard by web applications, proxies, honey pots, new attack types, methodologies, application firewalls, discoveries, experiences, web servers, application servers, database security, tools, solutions, and others.

The Web Security Mailing List is maintained by the Web Application Security Consortium (WASC)

The Web Application Security Consortium (WASC) is an international group of experts, industry practitioners, and organizational representatives who produce open source and widely agreed upon best-practice security standards for the World Wide Web.

As an active community, WASC facilitates the exchange ideas and organizes several industry projects. WASC consistently releases technical information, contributed articles, security guidelines, and other useful documentation. Businesses, educational institutions, governments, application developers, security professionals, and software vendors all over the world utilize our materials to assist with the challenges presented by web application security.

File Server Application

2009-06-15T10:00:00.001-07:00

In computing, a file server is a computer attached to a network that has the primary purpose of providing a location for the shared storage of computer files (such as documents, sound files, photographs, movies, images, databases, etc.) that can be accessed by the workstations that are attached to the computer network. The term server highlights the role of the machine in the client-server scheme, where the clients are the workstations using the storage. A file server is usually not performing any calculations, and does not run any programs on behalf of the clients. It is designed primarily to enable the rapid storage and retrieval of data where the heavy computation is provided by the workstations.

History of file servers

In the mid-1980s enterprises became increasingly interested in ways to connect a rapidly growing population of personal computers. Novell proposed an approach using software to connect each workstation to a network file server that would manage both the network and access to network resources. At the same time 3Com Corporation was creating Ethernet adapter cards, building hardware connectivity needed for such approach.

Novell grew upon the strength of its Netware operating system, used for file serving, and by the late 1980s had a 50% market share of local area networks. Seeing the potential growth in this arena IBM and Microsoft both introduced their own file server strategies.

Twenty years after its peak, Novell and 3Com have virtually disappeared from the Server market; today disk servers (a NAS or a SAN) supplied by one of the leading vendors such as EMC or NetApp are typically attached to a file server running the Microsoft Windows or Linux operating systems. Large data centers, that serve millions of customers (such as Google's), run server farms on specialized equipment with large, complex operating systems.

Server application

2009-06-04T08:47:00.000-07:00

A server is any arrangement of hardware or software designed to present services to clients. When used alone, the term typically refers to a computer which may be running a server operating system, but is commonly used to refer to any software or committed hardware capable of providing services.

Usage

The word server is used quite generally in information technology. Consider the multi platform software known as the "Apache HTTP Server". This software runs on many modern computers which may not normally be called servers (like laptops for instance), but the host computer is also a server. particularly, the combination of the
Hardware computer and the Apache software can be called a web server.

Inside the hardware sense, the word server classically designates computer models intended for running software applications under the heavy demand of a network surroundings. In this client-server configuration one or more machines, either a computer or a computer appliance, share information with each other with one acting as a host for the other.

While nearly any personal computer is skilled of acting as a network server, a committed server will contain features making it more suitable for production environments. These features may include a faster CPU, increased high-performance RAM, and typically more than one large hard drive. More obvious distinctions include marked redundancy in power supplies, network connections, and even the servers themselves.

Among the 1990s and 2000s an increase in the use of dedicated hardware saw the arrival of self-contained server appliances. One well-known creation is the Google Search Appliance, a unit which combines hardware and software in an out-of-the-box packaging. Simpler examples of such appliances include switches, routers, gateways, and print server, all of which are available in a near plug-and-play configuration.

Object animation

2009-05-29T09:56:00.000-07:00

Object animation is a form of end movement animation that involves the animated movements of any non-drawn objects such as toys, blocks, dolls, etc. which are not fully malleable, such as clay or wax, and not planned to look like a identifiable human or animal nature.

Object animation is measured a different form of animation distinct from model animation and puppet animation, as these two forms of stop-motion animation usually use recognizable characters as their subjects, rather than just objects like static toy soldiers, or construction toys such as Tinker Toys, LEGO brand bricks (Brick film), Lincoln Logs, Erector Sets, Play Mobil, etc.

Object animation is frequently combined with other forms of animation, usually for a more realistic effect (e.g., Model Animation or Puppet Animation to add more complex movement or depth to the characters). For example; A toy car can be animated, but is more often animated with a character easily seen driving the car.

An example of present object animation can be seen on Robot Chicken, part of the regular Adult Swim block on the Cartoon Network, which combines object animation with a variation of puppet animation, in this case the puppets are made to resemble plastic action figures from various TV shows, movies, and pop culture.

Traditional animation

2009-05-20T14:46:00.000-07:00

Traditional animation was the process used for most animated films of the 20th century. The individual frames of a traditionally animated film are photographs of drawings, which are first drawn on paper. To create the illusion of movement, each drawing differs slightly from the one before it. The animators' drawings are traced or photocopied onto transparent acetate sheets called cels, which are filled in with paints in assigned colors or tones on the side opposite the line drawings. The completed character cels are photographed one-by-one onto motion picture film against a painted background by a rostrum camera.

The traditional cel animation process became obsolete by the beginning of the 21st century. Today, animators' drawings and the backgrounds are either scanned into or drawn directly into a computer system. Various software programs are used to color the drawings and simulate camera movement and effects. The final animated piece is output to one of several delivery mediums, including traditional 35 mm film and newer media such as digital video. The "look" of traditional cel animation is still preserved, and the character animators' work has remained essentially the same over the past 70 years. Some animation producers have used the term "tradigital" to describe cel animation which makes extensive use of computer technology.

custom web application development

2009-05-11T13:18:00.000-07:00

Webworld Experts can develop customized web applications that are more useful than just a nice looking websites and customize the web applications to guarantee quality, competence and rapid development. Our web application development team brings experience in virtually all major platforms and environments to your custom applications.We can develop powerful web applications customized with features such as content management, shopping carts, forums, affiliate management, add/banner management, and much more.

We believe that clearly defined purpose and a careful planning are the keys to successful web application design and development, particularly when work is being done by a web application development team.After successful web application development and delivery of the project, as an after sale service offer, we also provide maintenance and minor changes of the web application at no cost. It is something which distinguishes us from other web development firms, and thus helps us deliver custom website solutions to all our customers.

Pesticide Disposal

2009-05-04T21:56:00.000-07:00

How to get rid of excess or unused pesticides, fungicides, rodenticides, and herbicides.

Summary of Federal Requirements

Waste or excess pesticides must be disposed of as either hazardous waste or universal waste.

Disposal as a universal waste is only possible if they are pesticides that are either:

recalled pesticides that are stocks of a suspended and canceled pesticide that are a part of a voluntary or mandatory recall under FIFRA Section 19(b), including, but not limited to, those owned by the registrant responsible for conducting the recall,

the total amount of the restricted-use pesticide that was applied

recalled pesticide that are stocks of suspended or canceled pesticides, or a pesticide that is not in compliance with FIFRA, that are part of a voluntary recall by the registrant, or

stocks of other unused pesticide products that are collected and managed as a part of a waste pesticide collection.

FotoVision Web Application

2009-05-04T13:32:00.000-07:00

Different pages on the website

Web Application Overview

FotoVision Overview

Slideshow

2009-04-27T09:18:00.000-07:00

The Slideshow is a modern concatenation of "Slide Show". A slideshow is a display of a series of chosen images, which is done for artistic or instructional purposes. When Slideshows conducted by a presenter using an apparatus, such as a carousel slide projector, an overhead projector or in more recent years, a computer running presentation software. The term originates from the use of slides which have been around for many years. Slides originally were projected on movie theater screens by magic lanterns as part of the program of early moving picture shows.

A well organized slideshow allows a presenter to lend visual images to an oral presentation. The old adage "A picture is worth a thousand words" holds true, in that a single image can save a presenter from speaking a paragraph of descriptive details. As with any public speaking or lecturing, a certain amount of talent, experience, and rehearsal is required to make a successful slideshow presentation.

Web operating system

2009-04-15T10:22:00.000-07:00

In metacomputing, WebOS and Web operating system are terms that describe network services for internet scale distributed computing, as in the WebOS Project at UC Berkeley, and the WOS Project. In both cases the scale of the web operating system extends across the internet, like the web.

However, the terms WebOS and Web operating system have been employed more broadly and with far greater popularity in the context of "the web as in HTTP", and for many meanings ranging from singular systems to collections of systems. In April 2002, Tim O'Reilly spoke of "the emergent Internet operating system" as an open collection of Web services.

Common to uses for collections of systems, a Web operating system is distinct from Internet operating systems in that it is independent of the traditional individual computer operating system. This conception of the system reflects an evolution of research in the field of operating systems into the increasingly minimized (for example, TinyOS and Exokernel) and distributed (for example, Inferno), and for distributed systems increasingly defined in terms of the specification of their network protocols more than their implementations (for example, Plan9's 9P).

HTTP cookies

2009-04-06T08:28:00.000-07:00

HTTP cookies (also referred to as Web cookies, tracking cookies, or cookies) are small text files containing a user's settings and other data used by websites, and are stored on the user's computer. They are transmitted as parcels of text sent by a server to a Web client (usually a browser) and then sent back unchanged by client each time it accesses that server. HTTP cookies are used for authenticating, session tracking (state maintenance), and maintaining specific information about users, such as site preferences or the contents of their electronic shopping carts.

The term "cookie" is derived from "magic cookie," a well-known concept in UNIX computing which inspired both the idea and the name of HTTP cookies. Some alternatives to cookies exist, but each has its own uses, advantages, and drawbacks.

Speed up ur Acrobat Reader

2009-03-30T09:09:00.000-07:00

1. Go to the installation folder of acrobat reader

(C:\program files\adobe\acrobat\reader\.. whatever)

2. Move all the files and folders from the "plugins" directory to the "Optional" directory. (I repeat.. cut and paste the files NOT copy & paste).

Also make sure that acrobat reader is not open else it will lock the files and not allow you to move the files).Now your acrobat reader will load very fast and almost as good as notepad..

SWiSH Max

2009-03-23T08:02:00.000-07:00

SWiSH Max is a program that utilises Adobe Flash technology to create cross-platform compatible presentations. It is developed and distributed by Swishzone.com Pty Ltd, based in Sydney, Australia.

SWiSH Max is a reasonably high power program that incorporates many features which give the application a wide scope of uses.SWiSH Max primarily outputs to the .swf format created by Adobe Systems (formerly Macromedia) for the purposes of displaying their content on the web within the parameters set by the W3C. SWiSH Max uses a variation of ActionScript for scripting.

SWISH Max works, in particular, to make use of objects, vector graphics, keyframes and scripting. It incorporates a number of automated effects and transitions, which make building certain Flash elements such as buttons, advanced transition effects and interactive Flash sites possible.

Buffer

2009-03-16T15:29:00.000-07:00

A temporary storage area, usually in RAM. The purpose of most buffers is to act as a holding area, enabling the CPU to manipulate data before transferring it to a device.

Because the processes of reading and writing data to a disk are relatively slow, many programs keep track of data changes in a buffer and then copy the buffer to a disk. For example, word processors employ a buffer to keep track of changes to files. Then when you save the file, the word processor updates the disk file with the contents of the buffer. This is much more efficient than accessing the file on the disk each time you make a change to the file.

Note that because your changes are initially stored in a buffer, not on the disk, all of them will be lost if the computer fails during an editing session. For this reason, it is a good idea to save your file periodically. Most word processors automatically save files at regular intervals.

Buffers are commonly used when burning data onto a compact disc, where the data is transferred to the buffer before being written to the disc.

Multitier architecture

2009-03-09T09:30:00.000-07:00

In software engineering, multi-tier architecture (often referred to as n-tier architecture) is a client-server architecture in which, the presentation, the application processing and the data management are logically separate processes. For example, an application that uses middleware to service data requests between a user and a database employs multi-tier architecture. The most widespread use of "multi-tier architecture" refers to three-tier architecture.

The concepts of layer and tier are often used interchangeably. However, one fairly common point of view is that there is indeed a difference, and that a layer is a logical structuring mechanism for the elements that make up the software solution, while a tier is a physical structuring mechanism for the system infrastructure.

Typically, the user interface runs on a desktop PC or workstation and uses a standard graphical user interface, functional process logic may consist of one or more separate modules running on a workstation or application server, and an RDBMS on a database server or mainframe contains the computer data storage logic. The middle tier may be multi-tiered itself (in which case the overall architecture is called an "n-tier architecture").

LexisNexis Data Breach

2009-03-02T13:47:00.000-08:00

Classifications:

* Attack Method: Insufficient Anti-automation
* Country: USA
* Outcome: Leakage of Information
* Vertical: Information Services

The LexisNexis data breach is not new, but we have recently decided to start tracking abuse of insufficient automation measures and are adding historical incidents.

In this incident a group of people opened accounts at data broker LexisNexis and used automated tools to extract a large amount of personal information provided by the service.

As usual in such cases there is a question of whether the attack was a criminal activity, violation of the license agreement of the information provider or plainly legal. In this regard it is interesting to note that the group arrested in the incident was also responsible for the hacking to Paris Hilton Vodafone account, which was clearly an unlawful act.

Ascii

2009-02-23T10:17:00.000-08:00

Acronym for the American Standard Code for Information Interchange. Pronounced ask-ee, ASCII is a code for representing English characters as numbers, with each letter assigned a number from 0 to 127. For example, the ASCII code for uppercase M is 77. Most computers use ASCII codes to represent text, which makes it possible to transfer data from one computer to another.

For a list of commonly used characters and their ASCII equivalents, refer to the ASCII page in the Quick Reference section.

Text files stored in ASCII format are sometimes called ASCII files. Text editors and word processors are usually capable of storing data in ASCII format, although ASCII format is not always the default storage format. Most data files, particularly if they contain numeric data, are not stored in ASCII format. Executable programs are never stored in ASCII format.

The standard ASCII character set uses just 7 bits for each character. There are several larger character sets that use 8 bits, which gives them 128 additional characters. The extra characters are used to represent non-English characters, graphics symbols, and mathematical symbols. Several companies and organizations have proposed extensions for these 128 characters. The DOS operating system uses a superset of ASCII called extended ASCII or high ASCII. A more universal standard is the ISO Latin 1 set of characters, which is used by many operating systems, as well as Web browsers.

Ajax (programming)

2009-02-16T21:25:00.000-08:00

Ajax, or AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), is a group of interrelated web development techniques used to create interactive web applications or rich Internet applications. With Ajax, web applications can retrieve data from the server asynchronously in the background without interfering with the display and behavior of the existing page. The use of Ajax has led to an increase in interactive animation on web pages.

Data is retrieved using the XMLHttp Request object or through the use of Remote Scripting in browsers that do not support it. Despite the name, the use of JavaScript and XML is not actually required, nor do the requests need to be asynchronous. The acronym AJAX has thus changed to the term Ajax, which does not represent these specific technologies.

While the term AJAX was coined in 2005, alternative techniques for the asynchronous loading of content date back to the mid 1990s. Java applets were introduced in the first version of the Java language in 1995. These allow compiled client-side code to load data asynchronously from the web server after a web page is loaded.

Hacker

2009-02-09T12:51:00.000-08:00

In computing, a hacker is a person in one of several distinct (but not completely disjoint) communities and subcultures:

* People committed to circumvention of computer security. This primarily concerns unauthorized remote computer break-ins via a communication networks such as the Internet (black hats), but also includes those who debug or fix security problems (white hats), and the morally grey hats. See "Hacker (computer security)".

* A community of enthusiast computer programmers and systems designers, originated in the 1960s around the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)'s Tech Model Railroad Club (TMRC) and MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. This community is notable for launching the free software movement. The World Wide Web and the Internet itself are also hacker artifacts. The Request for Comments RFC 1392 amplifies this meaning as “person who delights in having an intimate understanding of the internal workings of a system, computers and computer networks in particular." See "Hacker (programmer subculture)".

* The hobbyist home computing community, focusing on hardware in the late 1970s (e.g. the Homebrew Computer Club) and on software (computer games, software cracking, the demo scene) in the 1980s/1990s. The community included Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Bill Gates and created the personal computing industry. See "Hacker (hobbyist)".

Adobe Flash

2009-02-02T09:15:00.000-08:00

Adobe Flash (previously called Macro media Flash) is a multimedia platform created by Macro media and currently developed and distributed by Adobe Systems. Since its introduction in 1996, Flash has become a popular method for adding animation and interactivity to web pages; Flash is commonly used to create animation, advertisements, and various web page components, to integrate video into web pages, and more recently, to develop rich Internet applications.

Flash can manipulate vector and raster graphics and supports bi-directional streaming of audio and video. It contains a scripting language called Action Script. Several software products, systems, and devices are able to create or display Flash content, including Adobe Flash Player, which is available for most common web browsers, some mobile phones and other electronic devices (using Flash Lite). The Adobe Flash Professional multimedia authoring program is used to create content for the Adobe Engagement Platform, such as web applications, games and movies, and content for mobile phones and other embedded devices.

Drag-and-drop

2009-01-26T00:57:00.000-08:00

In computer graphical user interfaces, drag-and-drop or DnD is the action of (or support for the action of) clicking on a virtual object and dragging it to a different location or onto another virtual object. In general, it can be used to invoke many kinds of actions, or create various types of associations between two abstract objects.

As a feature, support for drag-and-drop is not found in all software, though it is sometimes a fast and easy-to-learn technique for users to perform tasks. However, the lack of affordances in drag-and-drop implementations means that it not always obvious that an item can be dragged.

Technical vulnerabilities

2009-01-19T08:23:00.000-08:00

• Unvalidated input:
o Tainted parameters - Parameters users in URLs, HTTP headers, and forms are often used to control and validate access to sensitive information.
o Tainted data
• Cross-Site Scripting flaws:
o XSS takes advantage of a vulnerable web site to attack clients who visit that web site. The most frequent goal is to steal the credentials of users who visit the site.
• Content Injection flaws:
o Data injection
o SQL injection - SQL injection allows commands to be executed directly against the database, allowing disclosure and modification of data in the database
o XPath injection - XPath injection allows attacker to manipulate the data in the XML database
o Command injection - OS and platform commands can often be used to give attackers access to data and escalate privileges on backend servers.
o Process injection
• Cross-site Request Forgeries

Web Applications Issues

2009-01-12T08:09:00.000-08:00

* Scripting issues
* Sources of input: forms, text boxes, dialog windows, etc.
* Multiple Charest Encoding (UTF-8, ISO-8859-15, UTF-7, etc.)
* Regular expression checks
* Header integrity (e.g. Multiple HTTP Content Length, HTTP Response Splitting)
* Session handling/fixation
* Cookies
* Framework vulnerabilities(Java Server Pages, .NET, Ruby On Rails, Django, etc.)
* Success control: front door, back door vulnerability assessment
* Penetration attempts versus failures.

Web Template System

2009-01-05T08:03:00.000-08:00

Dynamic web pages usually consist of a static part (HTML) and a dynamic part, which is code that generates HTML. The code that generates the HTML can do this based on variables in a template, or on code. The text to be generated can come from a database, thereby making it possible to dramatically reduce the number of pages in a site.

Consider the example of a real estate agent with 500 houses for sale. In a static web site, the agent would have to create 500 pages in order to make the information available. In a dynamic website, the agent would simply connect the dynamic page to a database table of 500 records.

In a template, variables from the programming language can be inserted without using code, thereby losing the requirement of programming knowledge to make updates to the pages in a web site. Syntax is made available to distinguish between HTML and variables. E.g. in JSP the tag is used to output variables, and in Smarty, {$variable} is used.

Many template engines do support limited logic tags, like IF and FOREACH. These are to be used only for decisions that need to be made for the presentation layer, in order to keep a clean separation from the business logic layer, or the model in the MVC pattern.

Web Application Framework

2008-12-29T07:57:00.000-08:00

A web application framework is a software framework that is designed to support the development of dynamic websites, Web applications and Web services. The framework aims to alleviate the overhead associated with common activities used in Web development. For example, many frameworks provide libraries for database access, tem plating frameworks and session management, and often promote code reuse.

As the design of the World Wide Web was not inherently dynamic, early hypertext consisted of hand-coded HTML that was published on web servers. Any modifications to published pages needed to be performed by the pages' author. To provide a dynamic web page that reflected user inputs, the Common Gateway Interface (CGI) standard was introduced for interfacing external applications with web servers. CGI could adversely affect server load, though, since each request had to start a separate process.

Programmers wanted tighter integration with the web server to enable high traffic web applications. The Apache HTTP Server, for example, supports modules that can extend the web server with arbitrary code executions (such as mod Perl) or forward specific requests to a web server that can handle dynamic content (such as mod jk). Some web servers (such as Apache Tomcat) were specifically designed to handle dynamic content by executing code written in some languages, such as Java.

Structure Of Web Application

2008-12-22T07:51:00.000-08:00

Applications are usually broken into logical chunks called "tiers", where every tier is assigned a role. Traditional applications consist only of 1 tier, which resides on the client machine, but web applications lend themselves to a n-tiered approach by nature. Though many variations are possible, the most common structure is the three-tiered application. In its most common form, the three tiers are called presentation, application and storage, in this order. A web browser is the first tier (presentation), an engine using some dynamic Web content technology (such as ASP, ASP.NET, CGI, Cold Fusion, JSP/Java, PHP, Perl, Python, Ruby on Rails or Struts2) is the middle tier (application logic), and a database is the third tier (storage). The web browser sends requests to the middle tier, which services them by making queries and updates against the database and generates a user interface.

For more complex applications, a 3-tier solution may fall short, and you may need a n-tiered approach, where the greatest benefit is breaking the business logic, which resides on the application tier, into a more fine-grained model. For example, creating a separate business logic tier. Or adding an integration tier that separates the data tier from the rest of tiers by providing an easy-to-use interface to access the data. For example, you would access the client data by calling a "list clients" function instead of making a SQL query directly against the client table on the database. That allows to replace the underlying database without changing the other tiers.

There are some who view a web application as a two-tier architecture. This can be a "smart" client that performs all the work and queries a "dumb" server, or a "dumb" client that relies on a "smart" server. The client would handle the presentation tier, the server would have the database (storage tier), and the business logic (application tier) would be on one of them or on both. While this increases the scalability of the applications and separates the display and the database, it still doesn't allow for true specialization of layers, so most applications will outgrow this model.

Technical considerations

2008-12-15T07:43:00.000-08:00

A significant advantage of building web applications to support standard browser features is that they should perform as specified regardless of the operating system or OS version installed on a given client. Rather than creating clients for MS Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and other operating systems, the application can be written once and deployed almost anywhere. However, inconsistent implementations of the HTML, CSS, DOM and other browser specifications can cause problems in web application development and support. Additionally, the ability of users to customize many of the display settings of their browser (such as selecting different font sizes, colors, and typefaces, or disabling scripting support) can interfere with consistent implementation of a web application.

Another approach is to use Adobe Flash or Java applets to provide some or all of the user interface. Since most web browsers include support for these technologies (usually through plug-ins), Flash- or Java-based applications can be implemented with much of the same ease of deployment. Because they allow the programmer greater control over the interface, they bypass many browser-configuration issues, although incompatibilities between Java or Flash implementations on the client can introduce different complications. Because of their architectural similarities to traditional client-server applications, with a somewhat "thick" client, there is some dispute over whether to call systems of this sort "web applications"; an alternative term is "Rich Internet Application" (RIA).

Feature Driven Development

2008-12-08T13:38:00.000-08:00

FDD was initially devised by Jeff De Luca to meet the specific needs of a 15 month, 50 person software development project at a large Singapore bank in 1997. Jeff De Luca delivered a set of five processes that covered the development of an overall model and the listing, planning, design and building of features. The first process is heavily influenced by Peter Coad´s approach to object modeling. The second process incorporates Peter Coad's ideas of using a feature list to manage functional requirements and development tasks. The other processes and the blending of the processes into a cohesive whole is a result of Jeff De Luca's experience. Since its successful use on the Singapore project there have been several implementations of FDD.

The description of FDD was first introduced to the world in Chapter 6 of the book Java Modeling in Color with UMLby Peter Coad, Eric Lefebvre and Jeff De Luca in 1999. In Stephen Palmer and Mac Felsing´s book A Practical Guide to Feature-Driven Development[2] (published in 2002) a more general description of FDD, decoupled from java modeling in color, is given.

The original and latest FDD processes can be found on Jeff De Luca´s website under the ´Article´ area. There is also a Community website available at which people can learn more about FDD, questions can be asked, and experiences and the processes themselves are discussed.

EPA Giving Shorter Shrift to Science

2008-11-07T14:29:00.001-08:00

If the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is known for one thing, it’s missing deadlines. The agency regularly misses deadlines for updating health standards and just as regularly gets sued by environmental groups over it.

However, EPA has now found the answer to this problem. If lengthy scientific review and debate is causing the agency to miss its deadlines, then cut back on the science and beef up the role of EPA’s political appointees (who presumably already know what they want and can speed things along to achieve it, science or no).

web application

2008-10-20T06:29:00.000-07:00

In software engineering, a web application or webapp is an request that is accessed via web browser over a network such as the Internet or an intranet. It is also a computer software submission that is coded in a browser-supported language and dependent on a common web browser to render the appliance executable.

Web applications are trendy due to the ubiquity of a client, at times called a thin client. The ability to update and keep web applications without distributing and install software on potentially thousands of client computer is a key reason for their popularity. Common web applications comprise webmail, online retail sales, online auctions, wikis, massively multiplayer online role-playing games and many other function.

Ajax :Disadvantages

2008-10-13T03:12:00.000-07:00

* Dynamically shaped pages do not register themselves with the browser's history engine, so clicking the browser's "back" button would not return the user to a previous state of the Ajax-enabled page, but would instead return them to the last page visit before it. Workarounds include the use of unseen IFrames to trigger change in the browser's history and varying the anchor bit of the URL when AJAX is run and monitoring it for change.

* Dynamic web page update also makes it hard for a user to bookmark a particular state of the application. Solutions to this problem exist, many of which use the URL fragment identifier to keep track of, and allow users to return to, the request in a given state.

* Because most web crawlers do not carry out JavaScript code, web applications should give an alternative means of accessing the happy that would normally be retrieve with Ajax, to allow search engines to index it.

* Any user whose browser does not hold Ajax or JavaScript, or simply has JavaScript disable, will not be able to use its functionality. Similarly, devices such as mobile phones, PDAs, and screen readers may not have hold for JavaScript or the XMLHttpRequest object. Also, screen readers that are clever to use Ajax may still not be able to properly read the dynamically generate content.

* The same origin policy prevents Ajax from being used across domains, although the W3C has a draft that would allow this functionality.

* The lack of a standards body behind Ajax income there is no widely adopted best do to test Ajax applications. Testing gear for Ajax often do not appreciate Ajax event models, data models, and protocols.

Ajax Advantages

2008-10-05T23:26:00.000-07:00

In many cases, the pages on a website consist of much satisfied that is common between them. Using traditional methods, that content would have to be reloaded on every demand. However, using Ajax, a web application can request only the contented that needs to be updated, thus radically reducing bandwidth usage and load time.

The use of asynchronous needs allows the client's Web browser UI to be extra interactive and to respond quickly to inputs, and section of pages can also be reloaded individually. Users may recognize the application to be faster or more receptive, even if the application has not distorted on the server side.

The use of Ajax can reduce relations to the server, since scripts and style sheet only have to be request once.

Technologies :Ajax

2008-09-29T02:17:00.000-07:00

The term Ajax has come to stand for a broad group of web technologies that can be used to apply a web application that communicates with a server in the backdrop, without interfering with the current state of the page. In the article that coined the term Ajax, Jesse James Garrett explains that it refers specifically to these technologies:

* XHTML and CSS for presentation

* the Document Object Model for dynamic display of and interaction with data

* XML and XSLT for the interchange and manipulation of data, respectively

* the XMLHttpRequest object for asynchronous communication

* JavaScript to bring these technologies together

Since then, though, there have been a number of developments in the technology used in an Ajax application, and the definition of the term Ajax. In particular, it has been renowned that:

* JavaScript is not the only client-side scripting language that can be used for implement an Ajax application. Other languages such as VBScript are also capable of the necessary functionality.

* The XMLHttpRequest object is not necessary for asynchronous announcement. It has been noted that IFrames are capable of the same consequence.

* XML is not required for data exchange and therefore XSLT is not required for the treatment of data. JavaScript Object Notation is often used as an alternative format for data exchange, although extra format such as preformatted HTML or plain book can also be used.

Ajax

2008-09-21T23:50:00.000-07:00

Ajax is combination of both asynchronous JavaScript and XML, or AJAX, is a group of interconnected web development technique used for creating interactive web application or rich Internet application. With Ajax, web application can recover data from the server asynchronously in the setting without intrusive with the display and behavior of the obtainable page. Data is retrieve using the XMLHttpRequest object or all the way through the use of Remote Scripting in browsers that do not hold it. Despite the name, the use of JavaScript, XML, or its asynchronous use is not necessary.

Raga system

2008-09-08T03:22:00.000-07:00

A raga in Carnatic music prescribes a set of rules for build a melody very similar to the Western concept of mode. It specify rules for actions up and down, the scale of which notes should figure more and which notes should be used more scarcely, which notes may be sung with gamaka, which phrases should be used, phrases should be avoid, and so on. In effect, it is a series of necessary musical events which must be observed, either absolutely or with a particular frequency.

In Carnatic music, the sampoorna ragas are classify into a method called the melakarta, which groups them according to the kinds of comments that they have. There are seventy-two melakarta ragas, thirty six of whose madhyama is sadharana, the residual thirty-six of whose madhyama is prati. The ragas are group into sets of six, called chakras group according to the supertonic and mediant scale degrees. There is a scheme known as the katapayadi sankhya to establish the names of melakarta ragas.

Ragas may be divided into two modules: janaka ragas and janya ragas. Janya ragas are subclassified into different categories themselves.

Swara

2008-08-24T21:20:00.000-07:00

Swara refers to a kind of musical sound that is a sole note, which defines a relative location of a note, rather than a distinct frequency. Swaras too refer to the solfege of Carnatic music, which consist of seven notes, "sa-ri-ga-ma-pa-da-ni" . These names are abbreviation of the longer names shadja, rishabha, gandhara. madhyama, panchama, dhaivata and nishada. Unlike other music system, every part of the solfege has three variant. The exceptions are the drone notes, shadja and panchama , which contain only one form; and madhyama , which has two form. A 7th century stone writing in Kudumiyan Malai in Tamil Nadu shows vowel change to solfege secret code with ra, ri, ru etc. to signify the higher quarter-tones. In one scale, or ragam, there is regularly only one variant of each note here. The exceptions live in "light" ragas, in which, for artistic effect, there may be two, one rising and another downward.

Sruti

2008-08-17T22:31:00.000-07:00

Sruti generally refers to musical pitch. It is the near equivalent of a tonic in Western harmony; it is the message from which all the others are derivative. It is also used in the logic of grade pitches in an octave. While there is a countless number of sound falling within a size in Carnatic music, the quantity that can be notable by auditory perception is twenty-two. In this sense, while shruti is resolute by auditory observation, it is also an appearance in the listener's mind.

Carnatic Music

2008-08-10T21:25:00.000-07:00

Carnatic music also spelled Karnatak music or Karnatik music is known as one of the Indian classical music. Its classical institution is from the south part of India such as Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu.

The main emphasis of the Carnatic music is on choral music. Carnatic music consist of two main elements ie,raga, the modes or melody, and tala, the rhythmic cycles.

Important elements of Carnatic music :

Sruti
Swara
Raga system
Tala system
Improvisation

Yoga

2008-08-03T22:34:00.000-07:00

Yoga is one of the six schools of Hindu philosophy, focusing on meditation as a trail to self-knowledge and freedom. Yoga is seen as a means to mutually physiological and spiritual mastery. Outside India, Yoga has become mainly related with the practice of asanas of Hatha Yoga, although it has influenced the whole dharmic religions family and other spiritual practices throughout the world.

5,000 year old carvings from the Indus Valley Civilization represent a figure that archaeologists think represents a yogi sitting in meditation posture. The sitting in a conventional cross-legged yoga pose with its hands resting on its knees. The explorer of the seal, archaeologist Sir John Marshall, named the figure Shiva Pashupati.

A seal from the Indus Valley Civilization, The first known written reference to yoga is in the Rig Veda, likely by the western scholars to be at least 3,500 years old. The Upanishads, Bhagavad-Gita, and the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali also converse the concepts and teachings of yoga.

Solid Waste Storage

2008-07-27T22:22:00.000-07:00

Solid waste is generated at every Federal facility in the forms of office trash (primarily paper and
cardboard), food waste, plant waste, and garbage. Some Federal facilities also generate medical waste in the form of infectious waste or pathological wastes. The process of renovating or constructing new facilities are also sources of large amount of solid waste.

Focus Areas

Construction and Demolition Waste Waste generated during the renovation, demolition, or construction of facilities. This includes wood, insulation, brick, metal reinforcement, dry wall, concrete, piping, asphalt, roofing, wall board, carpet, and steel beams.
Food Waste This encompasses leftover food (human or animal), waste grease from cooking.
Garbage/Trash The disposal of paper, cardboard, toner cartridges, waste packaging, plastics, aluminum cans, and glass containers is usually the largest source of solid waste at a federal facility.
Medical Waste This includes the handling, storage, and management of sharps, blood, pathological waste and infectious waste both for humans and animals.
Open Dumping The disposal of unwanted items, whether the dumping is done by Federal personnel or facility neighbors and visitors.
Plant Waste Grass clipping, branches, and other organic waste generated in the process of landscape maintenance.
Recycling The re-use of wastes in the development of new items.
Waste Tires The disposal of tires from vehicles such as automobiles, bulldozers, cranes, trucks, motorcycles, bicycles, etc.

What is iMode

2008-05-19T04:05:00.000-07:00

iMode is a set of technologies that was developed by DoCoMo for its home turf, Japan. It's a service that makes use of a Telco’s existing data transmission services. On the basis of regular HTTP traffic over the internet, and of a specific HTML-like markup language, it allows mobile phone users equipped with special handsets to access textual, visual and interactive content. Functionally, it is very similar to the GSM association's ill-fated WAP, or to the more successful Live! service offered by Vodafone worldwide. It features an efficient micro-payment system, allowing content producers to levy small fees on some sections of their sites.
(Note: beyond iMode, most of the indications given in this article also apply to these other services and the competition, as well as to regular web access using other mobile platforms such as Opera on Symbian as featured on SonyEricsson's P910, or Palm One’s Treo handset and its mobile browser. The issue here is features and strategy, more than technology itself, which does differ.)
At this point, it is not sure at all that iMode will meet the same success in Europe or in the US as it has in Japan, for various reasons, including better billing methods, a much larger and consistent market, a huge offer, and DoCoMo's skill at creating a full ecosystem where many parties stand to benefit from the service. Japanese consumers seem to be very interested in data services, and content producers there have ensured that much interesting material is available. In Europe, no such takeoff has yet happened.
However, if it is successful, iMode will become another diffusion channel which web site owners will also need to serve. Being present on iMode is much more than just converting your site's technology or graphics. The difference in usage is radical, and the offer will need to adapt accordingly. In order to make the best of what iMode has to offer, web builders must be aware of the opportunities it creates as well as of its peculiarities.

BlackBerry

2008-05-05T02:27:00.000-07:00

The BlackBerry is a wireless handheld device introduced in 1999 which supports push e-mail, mobile telephone, text messaging, internet faxing, web browsing and other wireless information services. Developed by the Canadian company Research In Motion (RIM), it delivers information over the wireless data networks of mobile phone service companies.

BlackBerry first made headway in the marketplace by concentrating on e-mail. RIM currently offers BlackBerry e-mail service to non-BlackBerry devices, such as the Palm Treo, through the BlackBerry Connect software. The original BlackBerry device had a monochrome display, but all current models have color displays.

While including the usual PDA applications (address book, calendar, to-do lists, etc.) as well as telephone capabilities on newer models, the BlackBerry is primarily known for its ability to send and receive e-mail wherever it can access an atmosphere wireless network of certain cellular phone carriers. It has a built-in keyboard, optimized for "thumbing", the use of only the thumbs to type. System navigation is primarily accomplished by the trackwheel (or "thumbwheel"), a scrolling wheel with a "CLICK" function, located on the right side of the device. Newer models are now utilizing a trackball in the middle of the device as Research In Motion has moved from the trackwheel to the trackball. Some models (currently, those manufactured for use with Nextel, TELUS, and other iDEN networks) also incorporate a two-way radio. Some BlackBerry devices don't depend on mobile phone service coverage and are Wi-Fi compatible like similar handheld devices that are on the marketplace.

Modern BlackBerry handhelds incorporate an ARM 7 or 9 processor, while older BlackBerry 950 and 957 handhelds used Intel 80386 processors. The latest GSM BlackBerry models (8100 and 8700 series) have an Intel PXA901 312 MHz processor, 64 MB flash memory and 16 MB SDRAM. CDMA BlackBerries are based on Qualcomm MSM6x00 chipsets which also include the ARM 9-based processor and GSM 900/1800 roaming(as the case with the 8830). The devices are very popular with some businesses, where they are primarily used to provide e-mail access to roaming employees. To fully integrate the BlackBerry into a company's systems, the installation of BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) is required.

On April 11, 2007, RIM announced the number of BlackBerry subscribers had reached 8 million.

Sony Ericsson K800i: Licensed To Shoot

2008-04-21T15:27:00.000-07:00

If you wish to buy a handset with excellent imaging power then, Sony Ericsson K800i fits the bill perfectly. Loaded with high-class imaging features, this Sony mobile phone takes snaps like a digital camera. With a range of supportive features, shooting quality images is as easy as it can get. The mobile phone also boasts of a range of intuitive features to make your mobile communique pleasurable.Sony Ericsson K800i is endowed with imaging options which makes shooting quality snaps easy and comfortable. Also known as a Cyber-Shot digital camera, the mobile phone features a 3.2 megapixel camera with built-in xenon flash and auto focus. In addition, it is also equipped with an integrated video stabilizer. Shooting in dull light also gets possible due to xenon flash. With Bestpic function you can select and save the best image.

Sharing videos and images is hassle-free with Sony Ericsson K800i. Just connect your mobile phone to a PictBridge compatible printer and get prints of your favourite images. You can also transfer the desired images to your computer by connecting you mobile phone to the computer by using a USB cable. With Bluetooth and MMS facility, sending pictures and other mobile content to your friends is just a click away. Browse Internet on your mobile and that too, at high speed- all with 3G technology. The powerful technology also offers fast downloading of multimedia content and a range of interesting features like video-calling and photo blogging. Providing you the best in digital entertainment, Sony Ericsson K800i boasts of an in-built music player and a FM radio to help you listen your favourite music, whichever part of the world you are.

Open mobile OS efforts abound

2008-04-17T15:12:00.000-07:00

At least three industry consortium are attempting to ease development efforts for mobile application builders with Linux-based, open mobile operating system development initiatives. These efforts carry noble and productive intentions. But if there are multiple ones, leaving one "open" platform to differ from the next, will we be back to where we started?

Three organizations with at least a few overlap members are out to help build an open mobile OS with associated middleware and starter applications that would drive application originality across multiple handset platforms. What’s not clear is how having several such efforts will really help complete the platform-independent goals that would free developers from underlying hardware constraint.

latest phone reviews

2008-04-07T23:21:00.000-07:00

Nokia N78 - packed with only the best technics
Nokia N78 is designed to take many advantage of the new suite of Nokia services, including the Nokia Music Store, Nokia Maps, and Share on Ovi,etc.....

The Nokia N78 packs a powerful range of technologies, including integrated A-GPS, with free Nokia Maps, WLAN and high-speed HSPDA 3G connectivity, a 3.2 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics, and support for microSD memory card, currently available at up to 8 GB. The novelties of the N78 are geotagging of photos and an integrated FM transmitter that allows music to be played on any FM radio, in a car or at home.

The N78 is expected to start shipping during the second quarter of 2008, with an estimated retail price of approximately 350 euors,before taxes.... Nokia N78 is the smart mobile with all the advantages of nokia services......

Mobile Phone Radiation and Health

2008-03-23T18:31:00.000-07:00

Since the beginning of mobile phones, apprehensions have been raised about the potential health forces from regular use. As mobile phone penetrations grew past fixed landline penetration levels in 1998 in Finland and from 1999 in Sweden, Denmark and Norway, the Scandinavian health authorities have run permanent long term studies of effects of mobile phone radiation effects to humans, and in particular children. Numerous studies have reported no significant relationship among mobile phone use and health. Studies from the Institute of Cancer Research, National Cancer Institute and researchers at the Danish Institute of Cancer Epidemiology in Copenhagen for model showed no link between mobile phone use and cancer. The Danish study only covered analog mobile phone tradition up through 1995, and subjects who started mobile phone tradition after 1995 were counted as non-users in the study. The health concerns have grown as mobile phone saturation rates throughout Europe reached 80%–90% levels earlier in this decade and prolonged experience studies have been carried out in almost all European countries again most reporting no effect, and the most alarming studies only coverage a possible effect. However, a study by the International Agency for Research on Cancer of 4,500 users found a borderline statistically important link between tumor frequency on the same side of the head as the mobile phone was used on and mobile phone usage.

The Telephone

2008-03-16T20:08:00.000-07:00

The telephone is a telecommunications device that is used to transmit and receive sound (most commonly speech), generally two people conversing but occasionally three or more. It is one of the most universal household appliances in the world today. Most telephones operate through transmission of electric signals over a complex telephone network which allows almost any phone user to communicate with almost anyone.

Cross-disciplines

2008-03-05T23:54:00.000-08:00

The distinctions linking the natural science disciplines is not always sharp, and they share a number of cross-discipline fields. Physics plays a significant role in the additional natural sciences, as represented by astrophysics, geophysics, physical chemistry and biophysics. Similarly chemistry is represented by such fields as biochemistry, geochemistry and astrochemistry.

A exacting example of a scientific discipline that draws upon multiple natural sciences is environmental science. This field studies the interactions of physical, chemical and biological components of the environment, with a exacting regard to the effect of human activities and the impact on biodiversity and sustainability. This science also draws upon knowledge from other fields such as economics, law and social sciences.

A comparable discipline is oceanography, as it draws upon a alike breadth of scientific disciplines. Oceanography is sub-categorized into additional specialized cross-displines, such as physical oceanography and marine biology. As the marine ecosystem is very big and diverse, marine biology is further divided into many subfields, including specializations in particular species.

Natural Science

2008-03-03T17:56:00.000-08:00

Natural sciences form the foundation for the applied sciences. Together, the natural and applied sciences are distinguished starting the social sciences on the one hand, and from the humanities, theology and the arts on the other. Though Mathematics, statistics, and computer science are not considered natural sciences, they supply many tools and frameworks used within the natural sciences.

Alongside this established usage, the phrase natural sciences is also sometimes used more narrowly to refer to its everyday usage, that is, related to natural history. In this sense "natural sciences" may refer to the biology and perhaps also the earth sciences, as illustrious from the physical sciences, including astronomy, physics, and chemistry.

Within the natural sciences, the word hard science is sometimes used to describe those sub-fields that rely on experimental, quantifiable data or the scientific method and focus on accuracy and objectivity. These generally include physics, chemistry and many of the sub-fields of biology. By contrast, soft science is often used to explain the scientific fields that are more reliant on qualitative research, including the social sciences.

There is some explore, collectivelly known as graphism thesis, that indicates that natural science relies on graphs more than soft sciences and mathematics do.

Paper

2008-02-24T18:03:00.000-08:00

Paper is thin material habitually used for writing upon, printing upon or packaging. It is formed by the amalgamation of fibers, characteristically vegetable fibers composed of cellulose, which are subsequently held together by hydrogen bonding. While the fibers are generally natural in origin, a wide variety of synthetic fibers, such as polypropylene and polyethylene, may be incorporated into paper as a way of imparting desirable physical properties. The most general source of these kinds of fibers is wood pulp from pulpwood trees. Vegetable fiber resources such as cotton, hemp, linen, and rice are also used.

Daisy wheel printers

2008-02-17T17:35:00.000-08:00

Daisy-wheel printers operate in much the same style as a typewriter. A hammer strikes a wheel with petals (the daisy wheel), every petal containing a letter form at its tip. The letter form strikes a ribbon of ink, depositing the ink on the page and thus printing a character. By rotating the daisy wheel, various characters are selected for printing.

These printers were also referred to as letter-quality printers since, for the duration of their heyday, they could produce text which was as clear and crisp as a typewriter (though they were nowhere near the quality of printing presses). The fastest letter-quality printers printed at 30 font per second.

Computer Printer

2008-02-10T17:55:00.000-08:00

A computer printer, or more generally a printer, produces a hard copy (permanent human-readable text and/or graphics) of documents stored in electronic form, usually on physical print media such as paper or transparencies. Many printers are mainly used as local computer peripherals, and are attached by a printer cable to a computer which serves as a document source. Some printers, commonly known as network printers, have built-in network interfaces (typically wireless or Ethernet), and can provide as a hardcopy device for any user on the network. Individual printers are often designed to support both local and network linked users at the same time.

In addition, many modern printers can straight interface to electronic media such as memory sticks or memory cards, or to image capture devices such as digital cameras, scanners; some printers are combined with a scanners and/or fax machines in a single unit. Printers that contain non-printing features are sometimes called Multi-Function Printers (MFP) or Multi-Function Devices (MFD).

A printer which is shared with a scanner can function as a photocopier if so designed. Most MFPs include printing, scanning, and copying among their features.

Printers are planned for low-volume, short-turnaround print jobs; requiring virtually no setup time to achieve a hard copy of a given document. However, printers are usually slow devices (30 pages per minute is considered fast; and many consumer printers are far slower than that), and the cost-per-page is relatively high.

In contrast, the printing press (which serves much the same function), is planned and optimized for high-volume print jobs such as newspaper print runs--printing presses are capable of hundreds of pages per minute or more, and have an incremental cost-per-page which is a fraction of that of printers.

The printing press remains the machine of option for high-volume, professional publishing. However, as printers have improved in excellence and performance, many jobs which used to be done by professional print shops are now done by users on local printers; see desktop publishing.

The world's first computer printer was a 19th century mechanically driven tools invented by Charles Babbage for his Difference Engine.

In 2007, a study exposed that toner-based printers produced pollution as harmful as that from cigarettes.

Systems Engineering

2008-02-05T18:05:00.000-08:00

Systems engineering is an interdisciplinary pasture of engineering, that focuses on the development and organization of complex artificial systems. Systems engineering integrates additional disciplines and specialty groups into a team effort, forming a structured development process that proceeds from concept to production to operation and disposal. Systems engineering considers equally the business and the technical needs of all customers, with the goal of providing a quality product that meets the user needs.

purely way in Croydon

2008-01-27T17:38:00.000-08:00

Purley Way is a section of the A23 trunk road in Croydon, London and has given its name to the out-of-town shopping locale alongside it with a catchment area covering most of South London. It was designed as a sidestep for Croydon and was opened in April 1925. In 1932 Purley Way became the first road in the United Kingdom to be lit with sodium lights. Industry History The IKEA chimneysCroydon Airport (operational 1928 - 1959) is situated on Purley Way. The opening of Purley Way attracted industry to the area and it became the main industrial area of Croydon. Industry concerned to the area included Redwing Aircraft Ltd, Trojan Ltd (car manufacturers) and Tizer Ltd. There were also more than a few metal companies including Standard Steel Co, Croydon Foundry Ltd, Metal Propellers Ltd and Southern Foundries Ltd. Croydon 'B' Power Station was built in the behind 1940s and opened in 1950. It shut down in 1984, was demolished in 1991 and an IKEA amass was opened on the site. The huge chimneys of the power station were retained and remain a local landmark. Retail history The first retail warehouse on Purley Way, Queensway furniture store, opened in 1980. Sainsbury's opened its first Homebase hoard in 1981. The initial PC World opened on Purley Way in 1991. The retail units were not division of the local planning guidance and were part of a national trend towards out of town shopping. These retail parks were not officially recognised by Croydon Council until the publication of its 1997 Unitary Development Plan.

After 1944 in Croydon Airport

2008-01-17T17:48:00.000-08:00

In 1944, Croydon became the base of RAF Transport Command, and in outstanding course civil aircraft operations began again. In February 1946, the airport returned to civilian organize. Gradually it became obvious that with technical advances, post-war airliners were going to be bigger and the use of airports serving capital cities would intensify. Croydon, however, had no room for further development and would shortly be too small to meet evident travel demands. Heathrow was therefore designated as London's airport and a resolution to close Croydon's airport was made in 1952. Blackbushe in Hampshire and Northolt Aerodrome in Middlesex also served airlines in service European scheduled flights during the 1950s. Croydon's most recent scheduled flight departed on 30 September 1959. The De Havilland Heron external Airport HouseThe site may still be seen. Much of it has been built over, but several of the terminal buildings near the main road are still visible, obviously identifiable as to their former purpose, and a De Havilland Heron, a small (fewer than 20 seats) airliner of the 1950s, is currently (2002) displayed outside on struts flanking the entry path. A Tiger Moth in RAF training scheme livery is suspended within the preserved booking hall which functions as a dining room when necessary. A memorial to the Battle of Britain stands somewhat to the south. Although Croydon Airport has long ceased operation, the two ends of Plough Lane that had been separated have never been reunited, the area having been urbanized instead into parkland, playing fields and the Roundshaw residential estate with its roads aptly named after aviators and aircraft.

Croydon Airport in 1939

2008-01-09T17:57:00.000-08:00

A further item that caught the eye of visitor and traveller alike was the time zone be head and shoulders above in the booking hall with its dials depicting the times in different parts of the world. The aerodrome was known the world over, its fame being extend by the many aviators and pioneers who touched down at Croydon. Here is a list of them: Alan Cobham, who flew from Croydon to Cape Town and back in 1925-6; Charles Lindbergh, who flew into Croydon in 1927 shortly later than completing the first solo trans-Atlantic flight; Bert Hinkler, who made the initial flight from Croydon to Darwin, Australia in 1928; Charles Kingsford Smith, who beat Hinkler's record; Amy Johnson, the first woman to fly from Croydon to Australia, later to return to Croydon to a jubilant welcome. When war was stated in September 1939, Croydon Airport was closed to civil aviation. It played a very important role as a fighter station during the Battle of Britain and was attacked in the first major raid over the London area. Factories in its instant vicinity were approximately destroyed with the loss of six airmen and over 60 civilians

Croydon Airport

2007-12-30T17:48:00.001-08:00

Croydon Airport is in south London on the restrictions of the London Boroughs of Croydon and Sutton. It was once the main airport for London, previous to it was replaced by Northolt Aerodrome, London Heathrow Airport and London Gatwick Airport.. Beddingt on Aerodrome, one of a numeral of small airfields around London which had been created for protection against the Zeppelin raids in about May 1915, and Waddon Aerodrome of 1918, a test-flight aerodrome adjoining National Aircraft Factory No1. At the end of that war, the two airfields were shared into London's official airport as the gateway for all international flights to and from the capital. Croydon Aerodrome opened on 29 March 1920, in the mid 1920s, the landing field was extended, some adjacent roads being permanently closed to allow heavier airliners to land and depart safely. A new complex of buildings was constructed adjoining Purley Way, together with the first purpose-designed air terminal in the world, the Aerodrome Hotel and extensive hangars, all opening on 2 May 1928. The terminal building, the booking hall within it with its colonnade balustraded in the geometrical design typical of the period, and the Aerodrome hotel were all built in the Art Deco style of the 1920s and 1930s.

Qantas Empire Airways

2007-12-23T22:19:00.000-08:00

In Australia in 1934 Imperial and Qantas (Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services Ltd) created Qantas Empire Airways Limited to extended services in Southeast Asia. But it was not until 1937 with the Short Empire flying boats that majestic could offer an 'all air' service from Southampton to the Empire. The journey to the Cape consisted of flights to Marseille, Rome, Brindisi, Athens, Alexandria, Khartoum, Port Bell, Kisumu and beyond by land-based craft to Nairobi, Mbeya and eventually Cape Town. Survey flights were also completed across the Atlantic and to New Zealand. By mid-1937 Imperial had completed its thousandth service to the Empire. Speed Wings Over the World, statue on a portal above the Empire Terminal's main entrance; by Eric Broadbent The Empire Air Mail Program began in July 1937, delivering anyplace for 1½ d./oz. By mid-1938 a hundred tons of mail had been delivered to India and a related amount to Africa. In the same year, construction was started on the Empire Terminal, intended by A. Lakeman and with a statue by Eric Broadbent, Speed Wings Over the World gracing the entrance above the main entrance. The terminal provided train associations to flying boats at Southampton and to the since closed Croydon Airport. The terminal operated as recently as 1980. Imperial Airways Speedbird logoCompared to extra operators it was lagging behind in Europe and it was suggested that all European operations be handed over to British Airways Ltd (founded in 1935) which had more contemporary aircraft and better organization. However in November 1939 both Imperial and British Airways Ltd were compound into a new state-owned national carrier: British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC). The new carrier adopted the Imperial Speedbird logo, which has evolved into the current British Airways Speedmarque, and the term continues to be used as BA's call sign.

Commercial Flight

2007-12-16T17:15:00.001-08:00

The first commercial flight was in April 1924, when a on a daily basis London-Paris service was opened. Additional services to other European destinations were started all the way through the summer. The first fresh airliner was commissioned by Imperial Airways in November 1924. In the first year of process the company carried 11,395 passengers and 212,380 letters. The extension of service to the British Empire was not begun until 1927 when, with the adding of six new aircraft, a service was instituted from Cairo to Basra. But the first service from London for Karachi did not start until 1929 using recently purchased Short S.8 Calcutta flying boats, even then the passengers were transported by train from Paris to the Mediterranean where the Short flying boats were. In February 1931 a weekly service stuck between London and Tanganyika was started as part of the proposed route to Cape Town and in April an experimental London-Australia air mail flight took place; the mail was transferred at the Netherlands East Indies, and took 26 days in total to reach Sydney. The buy of the 8 Handley Page 42 four-engined airliners boosted the range of services, in 1932 the service to Africa was extended to Cape Town.

Imperial Airways

2007-12-11T16:51:00.000-08:00

Imperial Airways Imperial Airways was an near the beginning British commercial air transport company, operating from 1924 to 1939. Created following the advice of the government Hambling commission in 1923- that the main existing aircraft companies should be merged to create a company which would be strong enough to develop Britain's external air services and presented a £1m subsidy over ten years if they merged. Imperial Airways Limited was created in March 1924 from the British Marine Air Navigation Company Ltd (three aircraft), the Daimler Airway (five aircraft), Handley-Page Transport Ltd (three aircraft) and the Instone Air Line Ltd (two aircraft). The land operations were fully based at Croydon Airport.

Privatisation - British Airways

2007-11-25T17:40:00.000-08:00

Sir John King, later Lord King, was selected as Chairman in 1981 with the mission of preparing the airline for privatisation.When King knew Colin Marshall as CEO in 1983. King was credited with turning just about the loss-making giant into one of the most profitable air carriers in the world, boldly claiming to be "The World's Favourite Airline", while many other large airlines struggled. The airline's flotilla and route map were overhauled in the early years of King's tenure, with brand and advertising experts being recruited to overhaul the airline's image. Over 23,000 jobs were shed in the early 1980s, though King managed the extensive trick of boosting staff morale and modernise operations at the same time. Lord King also recognised the importance of Concorde to the company's business plan, and used the supersonic airliner to win business customers by guaranteeing a certain number of Concorde upgrades in return for corporate accounts with BA.

The flag carrier was privatised and floated on the London Stock Exchange in February 1987 by the traditional government, with the initial share offering being 11 times oversubscribed. In April 1988 British Airways effected the contentious takeover of Britain's second-force airline British Caledonian, and in 1992 absorbed Gatwick-based carrier Dan-Air.

British Airways

2007-11-18T17:14:00.000-08:00

British Airways is the major airline of the United Kingdom. It is also one of the biggest airlines in the world, with more flights from Europe across the Atlantic than any other operator. Its main hubs are London Heathrow and London Gatwick, with wide-reaching European and conjugal shorthaul networks, including smaller hubs at other UK airports including Manchester, from which some longer-haul flights are also operated.

The airline's origins go back to the birth of civil aviation and the original days after the First World War. On 25 August 1919 its predecessor company, Aircraft Transport and Travel, launched the world's first daily international scheduled air service, between London and Paris. On 31 March 1924, Britain's four hatchling airlines - Instone, Handley Page, Daimler Airways and British Air Marine Navigation - merged to form Imperial Airways, which developed its Empire routes to Australia and Africa.

Luxury box

2007-11-11T18:43:00.001-08:00

Luxury box or luxury group is the North American term for a special seating section in arenas, stadiums and additional sports venues. In the United Kingdom the provisions second-hand are corporate box, executive box and private box. They are characteristically in the mid-section of the stadium, affording the best views of the sporting event. Some have glass panels that can be retracted, in order for the spectators to feel closer to the action of the sporting event. The inside of a luxury box characteristically includes a bar, several televisions sets, a row of seats and a private bathroom. The boxes are usually catered, with shrimp and sushi being common foods. The rent to a box also comes with a personal parking space, and a private entrance.

C. Richard Vaugh Towers, luxury boxes at Carter-Finley StadiumMost luxury boxes are rented by contract on a yearly basis, though some are bought in a manner similar to that for a condominium. These methods usually grant access to the box by the leaseholder or owner for every event held at the venue. Only some stadiums rent them on a per-event basis. Prices vary from US$5,000 up to the millions of dollars.

Knife box

2007-11-04T18:45:00.000-08:00

The knife-box is one of the most pleasant of the minor pieces of furniture which we owe to the artistic taste and mechanical ingenuity of the English cabinet-makers of the final quarter of the 18th century. Some of the most graceful were the works of Adam, Hepplewhite and Sheraton. Occasionally flat-topped boxes, they were most regularly either rod-shaped, or tall and narrow with a sloping tip necessitated by a series of raised veins for exhibiting the handles of knives and the bowls of spoons. Mahogany and satinwood were the woods most regularly employed, and they were occasionally inlaid with marqueterie or edged with boxwood. These attractive receptacles still exist in large numbers; they are often converted into stationery cabinets.

Shoebox

2007-10-28T21:44:00.000-07:00

A shoebox is, exactly as its name implies, a cardboard box which holds a double of shoes. It is usually acquired when one purchases a pair of shoes. Shoeboxes have long been cherished for their versatility and are usually used for many tasks around the house, such as holding trading cards, photos, and just about anything else.

It can also be used as an adjective to describe being unfairly treated. An example would be "Don't you shoebox me!" It is also used to describe someone with a closed minded to way of thinking who prefers to generalize others unfavorably.

Types of Boxes

2007-10-21T19:57:00.000-07:00

Permanent Boxes

Numerous types of boxes are used in eternal installations. Some types are designed to be for the time being inhabited by workers.
Permanent boxes include the following:
Equipment boxes - Fuse box
Compartments - Luxury box , Mailbox
Shelters or booths - Police box , Signal box , Telephone box

Permanent boxes

2007-10-15T20:00:00.000-07:00

Numerous types of boxes are used in stable installations. Some types are designed to be provisionally inhabited by workers.

Permanent boxes include the following:

Equipment boxes

· Fuse box

A distribution board (known in the United States as a (circuit) breaker panel, panelboard, or load center or for old ones, fuse box) is a growing enclosure for several electrical circuit breakers. These are usually placed in two columns. Small single-phase boxes, with the waves in just one row, are known as consumer units in Britain. Distribution boards are characteristically found in central locations inside buildings and often serve as the point at which electricity is distributed within a building. Circuit breakers can be used to physically de-energize electrical circuits when the downstream wiring is being serviced.

Circuit breaker panels are constantly dead front, that is, the operator of the circuit breakers cannot contact live electrical parts. During servicing of the sharing board itself, though, when the cover has been detached and the cables are visible, North American breaker panels commonly have some live parts exposed. British distribution boards usually have the live parts enclosed to IP20, even when the cover has been removed for servicing.

Box

2007-10-08T00:16:00.000-07:00

This article is about the container or vessel called a box. For other uses, see Box (disambiguation).

An elaborate wooden box Boxes are extremely variable receptacles. When no shape is described, a typical rectangular box may be expected. Nevertheless, a box may have a horizontal cross section that is square, elongated, round or oval; sloped or domed top surfaces, or non-vertical sides. A box normally may be opened by raising, sliding or removing the lid, which may be hinged and/or secure by a catch, clasp, or lock. Whatever its shape or purpose or the material of which it is formed, it is the direct descendant of the chest, one of the most ancient articles of marital furniture. Its uses are innumerable, and the name, preceded by a qualifying adjective, has been given to many objects of imaginative or antiquarian interest. Objects are often placed inside boxes, for a multiplicity of reasons - see storage.

Krill fishery

2007-09-24T21:32:00.001-07:00

Krill fishery is the profitable fishery of krill, small shrimp-like marine animals that live in the oceans world-wide. Estimates for how much krill there is vary wildly, depending on the methodology used. They range from 125–725 million tones of biomass globally. The total global harvest of krill from all fisheries amounts to 150 – 200,000 tones annually, mainly Antarctic krill (Euphausia superb) and North Pacific krill (E. Pacifica).

Krill are rich in protein (40% or more of dry weight) and lipids (about 20% in E. superb). Their exoskeleton amounts to some 2% of dry weight of chitin. They also contain traces of a wide array of hydrolytic enzymes such as proteases, carbohydrates, nucleases and phospholipids, which are intense in the digestive gland in the cephalothoraxes of the krill.

Abiotic pollination

2007-09-17T22:17:00.000-07:00

It occurs when pollination is mediated without the participation of other organisms. For illustration, anemophily is pollination by wind. This form of pollination is very common in grasses, most conifers, and a lot of deciduous trees. Hydrophily is pollination by water and occurs in aquatic plants which let go their seeds directly into the surrounding water. About 80% of all plant pollination is biotic, of the 20% of abiotically pollinated species, 98% is by wind and 2% by water

Stratosphere

2007-09-10T21:24:00.001-07:00

From the Latin word "stratus" meaning a scattering out. The stratosphere extends from the troposphere's 7 to 17 km (23,000 – 60,000 ft) range to about 50 km (160,000 ft). Temperature in crease through height. The stratosphere contains the ozone layer, the division of the Earth's atmosphere which contains comparatively high concentrations of ozone. "Relatively high" means a few parts per million—much higher than the concentrations in the lower atmosphere but still small compare to the main components of the atmosphere. It is frequently located in the lower portion of the stratosphere from approximately 15 to 35 km (50,000 – 115,000 ft) above Earth's surface, although the thickness varies seasonally and geographically.

Software tools

2007-09-04T22:49:00.000-07:00

Software tools for distributed processing include standard APIs such as MPI and PVM, and open source-based software solutions such as Beowulf and openMosix which make easy the creation of a supercomputer from a collection of ordinary workstations or servers. Technology like ZeroConf (Rendezvous/Bonjour) can be used to make ad hoc computer clusters to for specialized software such as Apple's shake compositing application. An easy programming language for supercomputers leftovers an open research topic in computer science.

Carrot

2007-08-27T22:04:00.000-07:00

The carrot (Daucus carota subsp. sativus) is a root vegetable, usually orange or white, or pink in color, with a crunchy texture when fresh. The suitable for eating part of a carrot is a taproot. It is a cultivated form of the wild carrot Daucus carota, national to Europe and southwestern Asia. It has been bred for its very much inflamed and more palatable, less woody-textured edible taproot, but is still the similar species.

It is a biennial plant which grows a rosette of leaves in the spring and summer, while building up the fat taproot, which stores big amounts of sugars for the plant to flower in the second year. The peak stem grows to about 1 m tall, with an umbel of white flowers.

Carrots can be eaten raw, whole, chopped, grate, or added to salads for color or texture. They are also often chopped and boiled, fried or steamed, and cooked in soups and stews, as well as fine baby foods and choose pet foods. A well recognized dish is carrots julienne. Grated carrots are used in carrot cakes, as healthy as carrot puddings, an old English dish thought to have originated in the early 1800s.

Leather jacket

2007-08-19T21:29:00.000-07:00

A leather jacket is a type of clothes, a jacket made of leather. The jacket has naturally a brown, dark grey or black color. Leather jackets can be styled in a range of ways and different versions have been linked with different subcultures in places and times. For example, the leather jacket have often been associated with bikers, military aviators, punks, metal heads, and police, which have worn versions intended for protective purposes and often for their potentially intimidating appearance.

In the 20th century the leather jacket achieve iconic status, in major part through film. Examples include Marlon Brando's Johnny Storable character in The Wild One (1953), Michael Pare in Eddie and the Cruisers, as well as James Dean in Rebel without a Cause. As such, these all serve to popularize leather jackets in American and British childhood from the "greaser" subculture in the 1950s and early 1960s. A later description of this style of jacket and time was "The Fonz" in the television series "Happy Days" which was shaped in the 1970s and 1980s but depicted life in the 1950s and 1960s. The Fonz's leather jacket is at the present housed in the Smithsonian Institution, and the Grease movie duo has also since popularized leather jackets with their T-Birds male clique.

The leather jackets worn by aviators and members of the military were brown in color and regularly called "Bomber jackets" as seen on frequent stars in the 1940s and 1950s such as Jimmy Stewart in the 1957 film, Night Passage.

Fuel and propulsion technologies

2007-08-12T23:30:00.000-07:00

Most automobiles in use nowadays are propelled by gasoline is also known as petrol or diesel internal combustion engines, which are known to reason for air pollution and are also blamed for contributing to climate change and global warm. Increasing costs of oil-based fuels and tapering environmental laws and restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions are propelling work on substitute power systems for automobiles. Efforts to get better or replace these technologies include hybrid vehicles, electric vehicles and hydrogen vehicles.

The computer

2007-08-06T04:01:00.000-07:00

A computer is a machine for manipulate data according to a list of commands known as a program. Computers are tremendously adaptable. In fact, they are universal information-processing machines. According to the Church–Turing theory, a computer with a positive minimum entrance capability is in principle capable of performing the responsibilities of any other computer. Therefore, computers with capability ranging from those of a personal digital supporter to a supercomputer may all achieve the same tasks, as long as time and memory capacity are not consideration. Therefore, the same computer design may be modified for tasks ranging from doling out company payrolls to controlling unmanned spaceflights. Due to technical progression, modern electronic computers are exponentially more capable than those of preceding generations. Computers take plentiful physical forms. Early electronic computers were the size of a large room, while whole modern embedded computers may be lesser than a deck of playing cards. Even today, huge computing conveniences still exist for focused scientific computation and for the transaction processing necessities of large organizations. Smaller computers designed for personage use are called personal computers. Along with its convenient equivalent, the laptop computer, the personal computer is the ubiquitous in order processing and communication tool, and is typically what is meant by "a computer".

However, the most general form of computer in use today is the embedded computer. Embedded computers are usually comparatively simple and physically small computers used to control one more device. They may control equipment from fighter aircraft to industrial robots to digital cameras. In the beginning, the term "computer" referred to a person who performed numerical calculations, frequently with the aid of a mechanical calculating device or analog computer. In 1801, Joseph Marie Jacquard made an improvement to the presented loom designs that used a series of punched paper cards as a program to weave involved patterns. The resulting Jacquard loom is not considered a true computer but it was an essential step in the growth of modern digital computers.

Mobile phone

2007-07-29T22:15:00.001-07:00

The introduction of cells for mobile phone base stations, invented in 1947 by Bell Labs engineers at AT&T, was further industrialized by Bell Labs during the 1960s. Due to their low establishment expenses and fast exploitation, mobile phone networks have since spread hastily throughout the world, outstripping the growth of fixed telephony.

The zero generation (0G) of mobile telephones was introduced in 1945. 0G mobile telephones, such as Mobile Telephone Service, were not officially categorized as mobile phones, since they did not sustain the automatic change of channel frequency during calls, which allows the user to shift from one cell (the base station coverage area) to another cell, an attribute called "handover".

The first marketable cellular network was launched in Japan by NTT in 1979. Fully automatic cellular networks were first introduced in the beginning to mid 1980s (the 1G generation) with the Nordic Mobile Telephone (NMT) system in 1981. This was followed by an explosion in mobile telephone habit, particularly in Northern Europe.

The first "modern" network technology on digital 2G (second generation) cellular technology was launched by Radiolinja (now part of Elisa Group) in 1991 in Finland on the GSM standard which also striking the beginning of competition in mobile telecoms when Radiolinja challenged current Telecom Finland (now part of TeliaSonera) who ran a 1G NMT network. A decade after, the first commercial commence of 3G (Third Generation) was again in Japan by NTT DoCoMo on the WCDMA standard. However, Martin Cooper, a Motorola engineer, is accredited with the innovation of the modern mobile phone in the 1990s. Until the early 1990s, most mobile phones were too large to be carried in a jacket pocket, so they were normally installed in vehicles as car phones. With the miniaturization of digital apparatus, mobile phones have become more and handier over the years.

Fertilisation

2007-07-22T23:03:00.000-07:00

Fertilisation or fertilization also known as conception, fecundation and syngamy, is fusion of gametes to form a new organism of the same variety. In animals, the process involves a sperm fuse with an ovum, which finally leads to the development of an embryo. Depending on the animal species, the process can occur within the body of the female in interior fertilisation, or outside in the case of external fertilisation.

The entire process of development of new persons is called procreation, the act of species reproduction.

Nonfood uses

2007-07-15T21:05:00.000-07:00

Because fruits have been such a major part of the human diet, different cultures have urbanized many different uses for various fruits that they do not depend on as being edible. Many dry fruits are used as streamer or in dried flower arrangements, such as unicorn plant, lotus, wheat, annual honesty and milkweed. Ornamental trees and shrubs are frequently refined for their colorful fruits, as well as holly, pyracantha, viburnum, skimmia, beautyberry and cotoneaster.

Fruits of opium poppy are the basis of the drugs opium and morphine. Osage orange fruits are used to keep away cockroaches. Bayberry fruits provide a wax frequently used to make candles. Many fruits give natural dyes, e.g. walnut, sumac, cherry and mulberry. Dried up gourds are used as streamer, water jugs, bird houses, musical instruments, cups and dishes. Pumpkins are imprinted into Jack-o'-lanterns for Halloween. The spiny fruit of burdock or cocklebur were the motivation for the invention of Velcro.

Coir is a fiber from the fruit of coconut that is used for doormats, brushes, mattresses, floortiles, sacking, lagging and as a growing medium for container plants. The shell of the coconut fruit is used to make memento heads, cups, bowls, musical instruments and bird houses.

Waka

2007-07-10T20:18:00.000-07:00

In the Maori language, waka are Maori watercraft, usually canoes. Similar craft are encounter in Polynesia, with connected names such as vaka. Waka range is from small, lightweight canoes, such as waka tiwai used for fishing individuals, during very large waka taua, manned by up to eighty paddlers and up to fourty mtrs in length, large double-hulled canoes for oceanic voyaging.

Many waka are single-hulled vessels locate from hollowed tree trunks. Small waka consist of an only piece as large waka typically consist of some pieces jointed and lashed together. Some waka, mainly in the Chatham Islands, were not usual canoes but were constructed from raupo stalks. Ocean waka, Paddled could be in any size, but were usually propelled by sail. Waka taua are paddled to put across their mana.

Small efficient waka are commonly plain and simple. Superior canoes waka taua in testing are extremely carved. Waka taua are no longer used in fighting but frequently for official purposes.

Riverboat

2007-06-17T21:56:00.001-07:00

A riverboat is a specialized watercraft (vessel) intended for operating on inland waterways. While a ferryboat is often used to cross a river, a riverboat is used to traverse it, while carrying passengers as well as goods for returns.

Rivers present particular hazards to vessels. They usually have varying water flows that alternately direct to high speed water flows or protruding rock hazards. Changing siltation patterns may cause the rapid manifestation of shoal waters, and often floating or sunken logs and trees (called snags) can endanger the hulls and propulsion of riverboats. Riverboats are usually of thin draft, being wide of beam and rather square in plan, with a short freeboard and high topsides. Riverboats can continue to exist with this type of design as they do not have to survive the high winds or large waves that are seen on large lakes, seas or oceans.
In most nations, riverboats are for tourist attraction. In a few countries, such as China, riverboats offer authentic traveler and consignment transport — something a traveler (as opposed to a tourist) would think about for transport.

Pleasure craft

2007-06-10T22:20:00.000-07:00

A pleasure craft is a boat used for individual leisure or sometimes sporting purpose. Typically such watercrafts are automatic and are used for holidays, for example on a river or canal. Enjoyment craft are normally kept at a marina. They are not essentially intended for speed. They may comprise accommodation for use while moored to the bank. Many narrow boats have been transformed into pleasure craft from their previous use for cargo transport on canals.

Dugout

2007-06-05T00:00:00.000-07:00

A dugout is a boat which is essentially a hollowed tree trunk; other names for this type of boat are logboat and monoxylon. Monoxylon (Pl: monoxyla) is Greek -- mono (single) + xylon (tree) -- and is frequently used in classic Greek texts.
Dugouts are the oldest boats archaeologists contain found. Within Germany they are called Einbaum (English translation: One tree). Einbaum dug-out boat finds in Germany day back to the limestone Age. The length of bark and hide canoes, these dugout boats were used by American Indians. This is probably because they are made of enormous pieces of wood, which tend to preserve better than, e.g., bark canoes.
Construction of a dugout begins with the collection of a log of appropriate dimensions. Sufficient wood needed to be removed to make the vessel comparatively light in weight and buoyant, yet still strong enough to support the crew and cargo. Particular types of wood were often favorite based on their strength, durability, and weight. The shape of the boat is then fashioned to reduce drag, with sharp ends at the bow and stern.
First the bark is detached from the exterior. Before the exterior of metal tools, dugouts were then hollowed-out using controlled fires. The burnt wood was then detached using an adze. Another method using tools is to chop out parallel notches crossways the interior span of the wood, then split out and remove the wood from between the notches. Once hollowed out, the core was dressed and smoothed out with a knife or adze.
For traveling the rougher waters of the ocean, dugouts can be fitted with outriggers. One or two smaller logs are mounted parallel to the major hull by long poles.

Ketch

2007-05-27T23:26:00.001-07:00

A ketch is a marine craft with two masts: a main mast, and a shorter mizzen mast abaft (rearward of) the main mast. Both masts are rigged mostly fore-and-aft. From one to three jibs may be approved forward of the main mast when going to windward. If a ketch is not rigged for jibs is known as cat ketch, sometimes called per auger. On older, larger ketches the major mast may in addition carry one or more square rigged topsails, alike to a sloop. A ketch may also carry further sails, see below.

The lowest fore-and-aft sail on the major mast is called the mainsail, while that on the mizzen is called the mizzen sail. These may be any kind of fore-and-aft sail, in any grouping. The Scots Zulu, for example, had a dipping lug main with a position lug mizzen.
The ketch is popular among long distance cruisers as the additional sail allows for a better balance, and a smaller more simply handled mainsail for the same overall sail area. It also allows sailing on mizzen and jib only without introducing extreme lee helm, and in an emergency can be quite well steered without use of the rudder.