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πŸ”— Extreme Programming

πŸ”— Computing πŸ”— Systems πŸ”— Systems/Software engineering πŸ”— Method engineering

Extreme programming (XP) is a software development methodology intended to improve software quality and responsiveness to changing customer requirements. As a type of agile software development, it advocates frequent releases in short development cycles, intended to improve productivity and introduce checkpoints at which new customer requirements can be adopted.

Other elements of extreme programming include programming in pairs or doing extensive code review, unit testing of all code, not programming features until they are actually needed, a flat management structure, code simplicity and clarity, expecting changes in the customer's requirements as time passes and the problem is better understood, and frequent communication with the customer and among programmers. The methodology takes its name from the idea that the beneficial elements of traditional software engineering practices are taken to "extreme" levels. As an example, code reviews are considered a beneficial practice; taken to the extreme, code can be reviewed continuously (i.e. the practice of pair programming).

πŸ”— Fosbury Flop

πŸ”— Athletics

The Fosbury flop is a jumping style used in the track and field sport of high jump. It was popularized and perfected by American athlete Dick Fosbury, whose gold medal in the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City brought it to the world's attention. The flop became the dominant style of the event; before Fosbury, most elite jumpers used the straddle technique, Western Roll, Eastern cut-off, or scissors jump to clear the bar. Though the backwards flop technique had been known for years before Fosbury, landing surfaces had been sandpits or low piles of matting and high jumpers had to land on their feet or at least land carefully to prevent injury. With the advent of deep foam matting, high jumpers were able to be more adventurous in their landing styles and hence more experimental with jumping styles.

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πŸ”— Robert Burnham Jr

πŸ”— United States πŸ”— Biography πŸ”— Biography/science and academia πŸ”— Astronomy πŸ”— United States/Arizona πŸ”— Astronomy/Solar System

Robert Burnham Jr. (June 16, 1931 – March 20, 1993) was an American astronomer, best known for writing the classic three-volume Burnham's Celestial Handbook. He is the discoverer of numerous asteroids including the Mars crossing asteroid 3397Β Leyla, as well as six comets.

Burnham's late years were tragic; he died destitute and alone. However, he is remembered by a generation of deep sky observers for his unique contribution to astronomy, the Celestial Handbook. The main-belt asteroid 3467Β Bernheim was named in his honor.

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πŸ”— Planet Vulcan

πŸ”— Astronomy πŸ”— History of Science πŸ”— Astronomy/Astronomical objects πŸ”— Astronomy/Solar System

Vulcan was a theorized planet that some pre-20th century astronomers thought existed in an orbit between Mercury and the Sun. Speculation about, and even purported observations of, intermercurial bodies or planets date back to the beginning of the 17th century. The case for their probable existence was bolstered by the support of the French mathematician Urbain Le Verrier, who had predicted the existence of Neptune using disturbances in the orbit of Uranus. By 1859 he had confirmed unexplained peculiarities in Mercury's orbit and predicted that they had to be the result of the gravitational influence of another unknown nearby planet or series of asteroids. A French amateur astronomer's report that he had observed an object passing in front of the Sun that same year led Le Verrier to announce that the long sought after planet, which he gave the name Vulcan, had been discovered at last.

Many searches were conducted for Vulcan over the following decades, but despite several claimed observations, its existence could not be confirmed. The need for the planet as an explanation for Mercury's orbital peculiarities was later rendered unnecessary when Einstein's 1915 theory of general relativity showed that Mercury's departure from an orbit predicted by Newtonian physics was explained by effects arising from the curvature of spacetime caused by the Sun's mass.

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πŸ”— SCO–Linux Disputes

πŸ”— United States πŸ”— Law πŸ”— Linux

In a series of legal disputes between SCO Group and Linux vendors and users, SCO alleged that its license agreements with IBM meant that source code IBM wrote and donated to be incorporated into Linux was added in violation of SCO's contractual rights. Members of the Linux community disagreed with SCO's claims; IBM, Novell, and Red Hat filed claims against SCO.

On August 10, 2007, a federal district court judge in SCO v. Novell ruled on summary judgment that Novell, not the SCO Group, was the rightful owner of the copyrights covering the Unix operating system. The court also ruled that "SCO is obligated to recognize Novell's waiver of SCO's claims against IBM and Sequent". After the ruling, Novell announced they had no interest in suing people over Unix and stated "We don't believe there is Unix in Linux". The final district court ruling, on November 20, 2008, affirmed the summary judgment, and added interest payments and a constructive trust.

On August 24, 2009, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit partially reversed the district court judgment. The appeals court remanded back to trial on the issues of copyright ownership and Novell's contractual waiver rights. The court upheld the $2,547,817 award granted to Novell for the 2003 Sun agreement.

On March 30, 2010, following a jury trial, Novell, and not The SCO Group, was unanimously found to be the owner of the UNIX and UnixWare copyrights. The SCO Group, through bankruptcy trustee Edward Cahn, decided to continue the lawsuit against IBM for causing a decline in SCO revenues.

On March 1, 2016, SCO's lawsuit against IBM was dismissed with prejudice; SCO filed an appeal later that month.

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πŸ”— Bleem

πŸ”— Video games πŸ”— Law

Bleem! (styled as bleem!) is a commercial PlayStation emulator released by the Bleem! Company in 1999 for IBM-compatible PCs and Dreamcast. It is notable for being one of the few commercial software emulators to be aggressively marketed during the emulated console's lifetime, and was the center of multiple controversial lawsuits.

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  • "Bleem" | 2024-03-08 | 13 Upvotes 1 Comments

πŸ”— WWII: Failed novelist becomes a spy for Germany, makes up a fake spy network

πŸ”— Biography πŸ”— Espionage πŸ”— Military history πŸ”— Military history/Military biography πŸ”— Biography/military biography πŸ”— Military history/Intelligence πŸ”— United Kingdom πŸ”— Military history/World War II πŸ”— Military history/German military history πŸ”— Military history/Spanish military history πŸ”— Spain πŸ”— Military history/European military history πŸ”— Military history/British military history

Juan Pujol GarcΓ­a (Spanish: [ˈxwan puˈʝol Ι£aɾˈθi.a]; 14 February 1912 – 10 October 1988), also known as Joan Pujol i GarcΓ­a (Catalan: [Κ’uˈan puΛˆΚ’Ι”l i Ι£Ι™ΙΎΛˆsi.Ι™]), was a Spanish spy who acted as a double agent loyal to Great Britain against Nazi Germany during World War II, when he relocated to Britain to carry out fictitious spying activities for the Germans. He was given the codename Garbo by the British; their German counterparts codenamed him Alaric and referred to his non-existent spy network as "Arabal".

After developing a loathing of political extremism of all sorts during the Spanish Civil War, Pujol decided to become a spy for Britain as a way to do something "for the good of humanity". Pujol and his wife contacted the British Embassy in Madrid, which rejected his offer.

Undeterred, he created a false identity as a fanatically pro-Nazi Spanish government official and successfully became a German agent. He was instructed to travel to Britain and recruit additional agents; instead he moved to Lisbon and created bogus reports about Britain from a variety of public sources, including a tourist guide to Britain, train timetables, cinema newsreels and magazine advertisements.

Although the information would not have withstood close examination, Pujol soon established himself as a trustworthy agent. He began inventing fictitious sub-agents who could be blamed for false information and mistakes. The Allies finally accepted Pujol when the Germans expended considerable resources attempting to hunt down a fictitious convoy. Following interviews by Desmond Bristow of Section V MI6 Iberian Section, Juan Pujol was taken on. The family were moved to Britain and Pujol was given the code name "Garbo". Pujol and his handler TomΓ‘s Harris spent the rest of the war expanding the fictitious network, communicating to the German handlers at first by letters and later by radio. Eventually the Germans were funding a network of 27 agents, all fictitious.

Pujol had a key role in the success of Operation Fortitude, the deception operation intended to mislead the Germans about the timing, location and scale of the invasion of Normandy in 1944. The false information Pujol supplied helped persuade the Germans that the main attack would be in the Pas de Calais, so that they kept large forces there before and even after the invasion. Pujol had the distinction of receiving military decorations from both sides of the war – being awarded the Iron Cross and becoming a Member of the Order of the British Empire.

πŸ”— Thousand Character Classic

πŸ”— Korea πŸ”— China πŸ”— East Asia πŸ”— Writing systems πŸ”— Japan πŸ”— Japan/History πŸ”— Japan/Culture πŸ”— Korea/one or more inactive working groups πŸ”— Japan/Education

The Thousand Character Classic (Chinese: 千字文; pinyin: QiānzΓ¬ WΓ©n), also known as the Thousand Character Text, is a Chinese poem that has been used as a primer for teaching Chinese characters to children from the sixth century onward. It contains exactly one thousand characters, each used only once, arranged into 250 lines of four characters apiece and grouped into four line rhyming stanzas to make it easy to memorize. It is sung, much as children learning the Latin alphabet sing an "alphabet song." Along with the Three Character Classic and the Hundred Family Surnames, it has formed the basis of literacy training in traditional China.

The first line is Tian di xuan huang (traditional Chinese: ε€©εœ°ηŽ„ι»ƒ; simplified Chinese: ε€©εœ°ηŽ„ι»„; pinyin: TiāndΓ¬ xuΓ‘n huΓ‘ng; Jyutping: tin1 dei6 jyun4 wong4; lit. 'Heaven and Earth Dark and Yellow') and the last line, Yan zai hu ye (η„‰ε“‰δΉŽδΉŸ; Yān zāi hΕ« yΔ›; yin1 zoi1 fu4 jaa5) explains the use of the grammatical particles "yan", "zai", "hu", and "ye".

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πŸ”— Andrew Johnson's drunk vice-presidential inaugural address

πŸ”— United States πŸ”— Politics πŸ”— Spirits

Andrew Johnson was drunk when he made his inaugural address as Vice President of the United States on March 4, 1865. Multiple sources suggest Johnson had been drunk for at least a week prior, he drank heavily the night before the inauguration, and he consumed either three glasses of whisky or one glass of French brandy the morning of the ceremony. Witnesses variously described Johnson's speech as incoherent, inane, self-aggrandizing, repetitive, hostile, sloppy, and overly long. He kissed the Bible when he took the oath of office, and he was too drunk to administer the oath of office to incoming senators. The incident presaged some of Johnson's difficulties as chief executive when he succeeded to the presidency 42 days later, following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

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πŸ”— Abnormal Behaviour of Birds in Captivity

πŸ”— Birds πŸ”— Animal rights πŸ”— Veterinary medicine

Abnormal behavior of birds in captivity has been found to occur among both domesticated and wild birds. Abnormal behavior can be defined in several ways. Statistically, 'abnormal' is when the occurrence, frequency or intensity of a behaviour varies statistically significantly, either more or less, from the normal value. This means that theoretically, almost any behaviour could become 'abnormal' in an individual. Less formally, 'abnormal' includes any activity judged to be outside the normal behaviour pattern for captive birds of that particular class or age. For example, running rather than flying may be a normal behaviour and regularly observed in one species, however, in another species it might be normal but becomes 'abnormal' if it reaches a high frequency, or in another species it is rarely observed and any incidence is considered 'abnormal'. This article does not include 'one-off' behaviours performed by individual birds that might be considered abnormal for that individual, unless these are performed repeatedly by other individuals in the species and are recognised as part of the ethogram of that species.

Most abnormal behaviours can be categorised collectively (e.g., eliminative, ingestive, stereotypies), however, many abnormal behaviours fall debatably into several of these categories and categorisation is therefore not attempted in this article. Abnormal behaviours here are considered to be related to captive housing but may also be due to medical conditions. The article does not include behaviours in birds that are genetically modified to express abnormal behaviour.