1.
San Francisco
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San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the cultural, commercial, and financial center of Northern California. It is the birthplace of the United Nations, the California Gold Rush of 1849 brought rapid growth, making it the largest city on the West Coast at the time. San Francisco became a consolidated city-county in 1856, after three-quarters of the city was destroyed by the 1906 earthquake and fire, San Francisco was quickly rebuilt, hosting the Panama-Pacific International Exposition nine years later. In World War II, San Francisco was a port of embarkation for service members shipping out to the Pacific Theater. Politically, the city votes strongly along liberal Democratic Party lines, San Francisco is also the headquarters of five major banking institutions and various other companies such as Levi Strauss & Co. Dolby, Airbnb, Weebly, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, Yelp, Pinterest, Twitter, Uber, Lyft, Mozilla, Wikimedia Foundation, as of 2016, San Francisco is ranked high on world liveability rankings. The earliest archaeological evidence of habitation of the territory of the city of San Francisco dates to 3000 BC. Upon independence from Spain in 1821, the became part of Mexico. Under Mexican rule, the system gradually ended, and its lands became privatized. In 1835, Englishman William Richardson erected the first independent homestead, together with Alcalde Francisco de Haro, he laid out a street plan for the expanded settlement, and the town, named Yerba Buena, began to attract American settlers. Commodore John D. Sloat claimed California for the United States on July 7,1846, during the Mexican–American War, montgomery arrived to claim Yerba Buena two days later. Yerba Buena was renamed San Francisco on January 30 of the next year, despite its attractive location as a port and naval base, San Francisco was still a small settlement with inhospitable geography. The California Gold Rush brought a flood of treasure seekers, with their sourdough bread in tow, prospectors accumulated in San Francisco over rival Benicia, raising the population from 1,000 in 1848 to 25,000 by December 1849. The promise of fabulous riches was so strong that crews on arriving vessels deserted and rushed off to the gold fields, leaving behind a forest of masts in San Francisco harbor. Some of these approximately 500 abandoned ships were used at times as storeships, saloons and hotels, many were left to rot, by 1851 the harbor was extended out into the bay by wharves while buildings were erected on piles among the ships. By 1870 Yerba Buena Cove had been filled to create new land, buried ships are occasionally exposed when foundations are dug for new buildings. California was quickly granted statehood in 1850 and the U. S. military built Fort Point at the Golden Gate, silver discoveries, including the Comstock Lode in Nevada in 1859, further drove rapid population growth. With hordes of fortune seekers streaming through the city, lawlessness was common, and the Barbary Coast section of town gained notoriety as a haven for criminals, prostitution, entrepreneurs sought to capitalize on the wealth generated by the Gold Rush
2.
California
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California is the most populous state in the United States and the third most extensive by area. Located on the western coast of the U. S, California is bordered by the other U. S. states of Oregon, Nevada, and Arizona and shares an international border with the Mexican state of Baja California. Los Angeles is Californias most populous city, and the second largest after New York City. The Los Angeles Area and the San Francisco Bay Area are the nations second- and fifth-most populous urban regions, California also has the nations most populous county, Los Angeles County, and its largest county by area, San Bernardino County. The Central Valley, an agricultural area, dominates the states center. What is now California was first settled by various Native American tribes before being explored by a number of European expeditions during the 16th and 17th centuries, the Spanish Empire then claimed it as part of Alta California in their New Spain colony. The area became a part of Mexico in 1821 following its war for independence. The western portion of Alta California then was organized as the State of California, the California Gold Rush starting in 1848 led to dramatic social and demographic changes, with large-scale emigration from the east and abroad with an accompanying economic boom. If it were a country, California would be the 6th largest economy in the world, fifty-eight percent of the states economy is centered on finance, government, real estate services, technology, and professional, scientific and technical business services. Although it accounts for only 1.5 percent of the states economy, the story of Calafia is recorded in a 1510 work The Adventures of Esplandián, written as a sequel to Amadis de Gaula by Spanish adventure writer Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo. The kingdom of Queen Calafia, according to Montalvo, was said to be a land inhabited by griffins and other strange beasts. This conventional wisdom that California was an island, with maps drawn to reflect this belief, shortened forms of the states name include CA, Cal. Calif. and US-CA. Settled by successive waves of arrivals during the last 10,000 years, various estimates of the native population range from 100,000 to 300,000. The Indigenous peoples of California included more than 70 distinct groups of Native Americans, ranging from large, settled populations living on the coast to groups in the interior. California groups also were diverse in their organization with bands, tribes, villages. Trade, intermarriage and military alliances fostered many social and economic relationships among the diverse groups, the first European effort to explore the coast as far north as the Russian River was a Spanish sailing expedition, led by Portuguese captain Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, in 1542. Some 37 years later English explorer Francis Drake also explored and claimed a portion of the California coast in 1579. Spanish traders made unintended visits with the Manila galleons on their trips from the Philippines beginning in 1565
3.
Ninjam
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NINJAM stands for Novel Intervallic Network Jamming Architecture for Music. The software and systems comprising NINJAM provide a mechanism for exchanging audio data across the internet. It provides a way for musicians to jam together over the Internet and it was originally developed by Brennan Underwood, Justin Frankel, and Tom Pepper. Creating music naturally relies on players ability to time with each other. Latency between players causes natural time keeping to be thrown awry, the internet does not provide a low-latency data exchange mechanism that can be used over global distances. In order to approach latency-free collaboration, NINJAM extends the latency, the delay is based on the musical form. This synchronisation means that each player hears the others in a session, NINJAM defines the form in terms of the interval - the number of beats to be recorded before synchronising with other players. For example, with an interval of 16, four bars of time would be recorded from each player. The process was described in Wired as glitch-free, and designed for musicians who enjoy realtime collaboration, in MIT Technology Review, the softwares users are described as really loyal due to its free and open source status. Other music product vendors have added support for NINJAM, Expert Sleepers, each player in a NINJAM session feeds audio data from their client to a server via a TCP/IP connection to a specific port. Each player will also need some way of feeding audio information to the NINJAM client - either by using the client as a plugin in a DAW or by using the version with a direct audio input. Each clients data is synchronised against a distributed clock and this clocking is then used to distribute the data out to all the other clients so that they can play all the remote streams in sync. The server does little apart from manage connections, chat and data streaming, according to a review in Synthtopia, this is a subscription service relying on low latency internet connections. In contrast, NINJAM is not tied to a single supplier, according to articles in the San Francisco Chronicle and the BBC RocketPower is a subscription service relying on a central server. Appears to be track at a time, NINJAM calls this session mode in the REAPER-tied client, and this mode is only currently offered on the Cockos server. Appears to be track at a time collaboration system like RocketPower. All clients feed data at 0 dB to the server, regardless of local monitoring levels, when setting up, the NINJAM client local level is set to 0 dB. Local does not affect transmitted volume, the slider labelled local only affects what the user hears locally, not what others hear
4.
Digital audio
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Digital audio is technology that can be used to record, store, generate, manipulate, and reproduce sound using audio signals that have been encoded in digital form. A microphone converts sound to an electrical signal, then an analog-to-digital converter —typically using pulse-code modulation—converts the analog signal into a digital signal. This digital signal can then be recorded, edited and modified using digital audio tools, digital audio systems may include compression, storage, processing and transmission components. Conversion to a digital format allows convenient manipulation, storage, transmission, modern online music distribution depends on digital recording and data compression. The availability of music as data files, rather than as objects, has significantly reduced the costs of distribution. Before digital audio, the music industry distributed and sold music by selling copies in the form of records. With digital audio and online distribution systems such as iTunes, companies sell digital files to consumers. This digital audio/Internet distribution model is less expensive than producing physical copies of recordings, packaging them. An analog audio system captures sounds, and converts their physical waveforms into electrical representations of those waveforms by use of a transducer, the sounds are then stored, as on tape, or transmitted. The process is reversed for playback, the signal is amplified. Analog audio retains its fundamental wave-like characteristics throughout its storage, transformation, duplication, analog audio signals are susceptible to noise and distortion, due to the innate characteristics of electronic circuits and associated devices. Disturbances in a system do not result in error unless the disturbance is so large as to result in a symbol being misinterpreted as another symbol or disturb the sequence of symbols. A digital audio signal may be encoded for correction of any errors that occur in the storage or transmission of the signal. This technique, known as channel coding, is essential for broadcast or recorded digital systems to maintain bit accuracy, the discrete time and level of the binary signal allow a decoder to recreate the analog signal upon replay. Eight to Fourteen Bit Modulation is a code used in the audio Compact Disc. A digital audio system starts with an ADC that converts a signal to a digital signal. The ADC runs at a sampling rate and converts at a known bit resolution. CD audio, for example, has a rate of 44.1 kHz
5.
Digital audio workstation
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Regardless of configuration, modern DAWs have a central interface that allows the user to alter and mix multiple recordings and tracks into a final produced piece. DAWs are used for the production and recording of music, radio, television, podcasts, multimedia, early attempts at digital audio workstations in the 1970s and 1980s faced limitations such as the high price of storage, and the vastly slower processing and disk speeds of the time. In 1978, Soundstream built what could be considered the first digital audio workstation using some of the most current computer hardware of the time. Interface cards that plugged into the PDP-11s Unibus slots provided analog and digital input and output for interfacing to Soundstreams digital recorders. The DAP software could perform edits to the recorded on the systems hard disks. By the late 1980s, a number of consumer level computers such as the Apple Macintosh, Atari ST, soon, people began to use them for simple two-track audio editing and CD mastering. This combination of software and hardware was one of the earliest examples of a DAW. Many major recording studios finally went digital after Digidesign introduced its Pro Tools software, modeled after the traditional method, at this time, most DAWs were Apple Mac based. Around 1992, the first Windows based DAWs started to emerge from such as IQS Innovative Quality Software, Soundscape Digital Technology, SADiE, Echo Digital Audio. All the systems at this point used dedicated hardware for their audio processing, in 1993, German company Steinberg released Cubase Audio on Atari Falcon 030. This version brought DSP built-in effects with 8-track audio recording & playback using only native hardware, the first Windows based software-only product, introduced in 1993, was Samplitude Studio. In 1996, Steinberg introduced Cubase VST, which could record, Cubase not only modelled a tape-like interface for recording and editing, but also modelled the entire mixing desk and effects rack common in analog studios. This revolutionised the DAW world, both in features and price tag, and was imitated by most other contemporary DAW systems. An integrated DAW consists of a console, control surface, audio converter. Integrated DAWs were more popular before commonly available personal computers became powerful enough to run DAW software, as computer power and speed increased and price decreased, the popularity of costly integrated systems with console automation dropped. Systems such as the Orban Audicy became standard equipment at radio. This could be as simple as a mouse or as sophisticated as a piano-style MIDI controller keyboard or automated fader board for mixing track volumes, the computer acts as a host for the sound card/audio interface, while the software provides the interface and functionality for audio editing. The software controls all related components and provides a user interface to allow for recording, editing
6.
Nullsoft
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Nullsoft, Inc. was a software house founded in Sedona, Arizona in 1997 by Justin Frankel. Its products included the Winamp media player and the SHOUTcast MP3 streaming media server, in later years, their open source installer system, the Nullsoft Scriptable Install System became an alternative to commercial products like InstallShield. The companys name is a parody of Microsoft, mike the Llama is the companys mascot, this is frequently referred to in promotional material citing llamas. Frankel introduced the llama in Winamps startup sound clip, inspired by the lyrics of Wesley Willis, Winamp, Nullsoft was sold to AOL on June 1,1999, and thereafter existed as a subsidiary of America Online. After the acquisition, Nullsoft headquarters were moved to San Francisco and their later developments included the Nullsoft Streaming Video format, which was intended to stream media that used any audio or video codec. In 2002 the press reported a technology called Ultravox being developed by Nullsoft, although AOL tried to limit the distribution of Gnutella and WASTE, the Ultravox technology was reportedly used for some AOL radio services in 2003. A service called Nullsoft Television was announced in 2003 using NSV, Nullsoft released several new versions of the Winamp player, and grew its monthly unique subscriber base from 33 million users to over 52 million users by 2005. Nullsofts San Francisco offices were closed in December 2003, with a near-concurrent departure of Frankel, Nullsoft then became a division of AOL Music. In 2013, some AOL Music sites were shut down, in November 2013, an unofficial report surfaced that Microsoft was in talks with AOL to acquire Nullsoft. On January 14,2014, it was announced that Belgian online radio aggregator Radionomy had bought the Nullsoft brand. No financial details were publicly announced
7.
Office Space
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Office Space is a 1999 American comedy film written and directed by Mike Judge. It satirizes the everyday life of a typical mid-to-late-1990s software company. It stars Ron Livingston, Jennifer Aniston, Gary Cole, Stephen Root, David Herman, Ajay Naidu, shot in Dallas and Austin, Texas, Office Space is based on Judges Milton cartoon series. It was his first foray into filmmaking and second full-length motion picture release, after Beavis. The films sympathetic depiction of ordinary IT workers garnered a following within that field, but also addresses themes familiar to white-collar employees. Although not a big success at the box office, making $12.8 million against a $10 million budget, the film was received by critics and sold well on home video. Peter Gibbons, a programmer at a company called Initech, is frustrated and unmotivated at his job and his co-workers include Samir Nagheenanajar and Michael Bolton, also programmers, and Milton Waddams, a meek collator who is mostly ignored by the rest of the office. Peters girlfriend, Anne, persuades him to attend an occupational hypnotherapy session, the following workday, Peter decides to skip work and asks Joanna, a waitress at Chotchkies, a nearby chain restaurant, out to lunch. Joanna and Peter bond over their shared loathing of idiotic management, the consultants, however, are impressed by his frank insights into the offices problems, and decide to promote him. On Michael and Samirs last day at Initech, Peter takes one last item, a frequently malfunctioning printer, at a barbecue, Peter learns that Joanna had previously slept with a colleague, identified as Lumbergh. Assuming it to be his boss, he becomes disgusted with Joanna and confronts her, after she questions his financial scheme and he writes a letter confessing everything and slips it and anonymous checks for the stolen money under the door of Lumberghs office late at night. Peter finally finds a job that he likes, doing work with his next-door neighbor. Samir and Michael both get jobs at Initechs competitor, Initrode, meanwhile, Milton lounges on the beach at a fancy Mexican resort, complaining about his beverage and threatening to take his business to a competitor. The setting of the film reflected a trend that Judge observed in the United States. It seems like every city now has these identical office parks with identical adjoining chain restaurants, he said in an interview. He remembers, There were a lot of people who wanted me to set this movie in Wall Street, or like the movie Brazil, but I wanted it very unglamorous, the kind of bleak work situation like I was in. Judge sold the film to 20th Century Fox based on his script and a cast that included Jennifer Aniston, Ron Livingston, and David Herman. Originally, the wanted to make a film out of the Milton character but Judge was not interested
8.
Open-source model
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Open-source software may be developed in a collaborative public manner. According to scientists who studied it, open-source software is a prominent example of open collaboration, a 2008 report by the Standish Group states that adoption of open-source software models has resulted in savings of about $60 billion per year to consumers. In the early days of computing, programmers and developers shared software in order to learn from each other, eventually the open source notion moved to the way side of commercialization of software in the years 1970-1980. In 1997, Eric Raymond published The Cathedral and the Bazaar and this source code subsequently became the basis behind SeaMonkey, Mozilla Firefox, Thunderbird and KompoZer. Netscapes act prompted Raymond and others to look into how to bring the Free Software Foundations free software ideas, the new term they chose was open source, which was soon adopted by Bruce Perens, publisher Tim OReilly, Linus Torvalds, and others. The Open Source Initiative was founded in February 1998 to encourage use of the new term, a Microsoft executive publicly stated in 2001 that open source is an intellectual property destroyer. I cant imagine something that could be worse than this for the software business, IBM, Oracle, Google and State Farm are just a few of the companies with a serious public stake in todays competitive open-source market. There has been a significant shift in the corporate philosophy concerning the development of FOSS, the free software movement was launched in 1983. In 1998, a group of individuals advocated that the free software should be replaced by open-source software as an expression which is less ambiguous. Software developers may want to publish their software with an open-source license, the Open Source Definition, notably, presents an open-source philosophy, and further defines the terms of usage, modification and redistribution of open-source software. Software licenses grant rights to users which would otherwise be reserved by law to the copyright holder. Several open-source software licenses have qualified within the boundaries of the Open Source Definition, the open source label came out of a strategy session held on April 7,1998 in Palo Alto in reaction to Netscapes January 1998 announcement of a source code release for Navigator. They used the opportunity before the release of Navigators source code to clarify a potential confusion caused by the ambiguity of the free in English. Many people claimed that the birth of the Internet, since 1969, started the open source movement, the Free Software Foundation, started in 1985, intended the word free to mean freedom to distribute and not freedom from cost. Since a great deal of free software already was free of charge, such software became associated with zero cost. The Open Source Initiative was formed in February 1998 by Eric Raymond and they sought to bring a higher profile to the practical benefits of freely available source code, and they wanted to bring major software businesses and other high-tech industries into open source. Perens attempted to open source as a service mark for the OSI. The Open Source Initiatives definition is recognized by governments internationally as the standard or de facto definition, OSI uses The Open Source Definition to determine whether it considers a software license open source
9.
GNU General Public License
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The GNU General Public License is a widely used free software license, which guarantees end users the freedom to run, study, share and modify the software. The license was written by Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation for the GNU Project. The GPL is a license, which means that derivative work can only be distributed under the same license terms. This is in distinction to permissive free licenses, of which the BSD licenses. GPL was the first copyleft license for general use, historically, the GPL license family has been one of the most popular software licenses in the free and open-source software domain. Prominent free software licensed under the GPL include the Linux kernel. In 2007, the version of the license was released to address some perceived problems with the second version that were discovered during its long-time usage. To keep the license up to date, the GPL license includes an optional any later version clause, developers can omit it when licensing their software, for instance the Linux kernel is licensed under GPLv2 without the any later version clause. The GPL was written by Richard Stallman in 1989, for use with programs released as part of the GNU project, the original GPL was based on a unification of similar licenses used for early versions of GNU Emacs, the GNU Debugger and the GNU C Compiler. These licenses contained similar provisions to the modern GPL, but were specific to each program, rendering them incompatible, Stallmans goal was to produce one license that could be used for any project, thus making it possible for many projects to share code. The second version of the license, version 2, was released in 1991, version 3 was developed to attempt to address these concerns and was officially released on 29 June 2007. Version 1 of the GNU GPL, released on 25 February 1989, the first problem was that distributors may publish binary files only—executable, but not readable or modifiable by humans. To prevent this, GPLv1 stated that any vendor distributing binaries must also make the source code available under the same licensing terms. The second problem was that distributors might add restrictions, either to the license, the union of two sets of restrictions would apply to the combined work, thus adding unacceptable restrictions. To prevent this, GPLv1 stated that modified versions, as a whole, had to be distributed under the terms in GPLv1. Therefore, software distributed under the terms of GPLv1 could be combined with software under more permissive terms, according to Richard Stallman, the major change in GPLv2 was the Liberty or Death clause, as he calls it – Section 7. The section says that licensees may distribute a GPL-covered work only if they can all of the licenses obligations. In other words, the obligations of the license may not be severed due to conflicting obligations and this provision is intended to discourage any party from using a patent infringement claim or other litigation to impair users freedom under the license
10.
Winamp
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Since version 2 it has been sold as freemium and supports extensibility with plug-ins and skins, and features music visualization, playlist and a media library, supported by a large online community. Version 1 of Winamp was released in 1997, and grew popular with over 3 million downloads. Winamp 2.0 was released on September 8,1998, the 2. x versions were widely used and made Winamp one of the most downloaded Windows applications. By 2000, Winamp had over 25 million registered users, a poor reception to the 2002 rewrite, Winamp3, was followed by the release of Winamp 5 in 2003, and a later release of version 5.5 in 2007. Playback formats Winamp supports music playback using MP3, MIDI, MOD, MPEG-1 audio layers 1 and 2, AAC, M4A, FLAC, WAV, Winamp was one of the first widely used music players on Windows to support playback of Ogg Vorbis by default. It supports gapless playback for MP3 and AAC and ReplayGain for volume leveling across tracks, CD support includes playing and importing music from audio CDs, optionally with CD-Text, and burning music to CDs. The standard version limits maximum speed and datarate, the Pro version removes these limitations. Winamp supports playback of Windows Media Video and Nullsoft Streaming Video, for MPEG Video, AVI, and other unsupported video types, Winamp uses Microsofts DirectShow API for playback, allowing playback of most of the video formats supported by Windows Media Player. 5.1 Surround sound is supported where formats and decoders allow, Media Library At installation, Winamp scans the users system for media files to add to the Media Library database. It supports full Unicode filenames and Unicode metadata for media files, in the Media Library user interface pane, under Local Media, several selectors permit display of subsets of media files with greater detail. Adding album art and track tags Get Album Art permits retrieval of cover art, autotagging analyzes a tracks audio using the Gracenote service and retrieves the songs ID2 and ID3 metadata. Podcatcher Winamp can also be used as an RSS media feeds aggregator capable of displaying articles, downloading, SHOUTcast Wire provides a directory and RSS subscription system for podcasts. Media Monitor Winamp Media Monitor allows web-based browsing and bookmarking music blog websites, the Media Monitor is preloaded with music blog URLs. Winamp Remote Winamp Remote allows remote playback of unprotected media files on the users PC via the Internet, Remote adjusts bitrate based on available bandwidth, and can be controlled by web interface, Wii, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and mobile phones. Plug-ins In February 1998, Winamp was rewritten as an audio player with a plug-in architecture. This feature was received well by reviewers, development was early, diverse, and rapid,66 plugins were published by November 1998. The Winamp software development kit allows developers to create seven different types of plug-ins. Input. Output, sends data to devices or files
11.
Kaillera
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Kaillera is middleware designed to aid networked multiplayer play for emulators. The word Kaillera, also spelled kaïra, is the verlan of the French word racaille which is used in reference to hooligans. This is accentuated by the fact that not using the Kaillera P2P modification. Kaillera was developed by Christophe Thibault in the years 2001-2003 and his most recent entry was the Kaillera Client library and SDK on 14 April 2003. Later in early 2006, rights and source code of Kaillera were sold to an online gaming advertising company called TC. On 17 June 2006, Christophe Thibault himself publicly confirmed the sale of Kaillera, ads. no longer had anything to do with the Kaillera project and that Etai Hugi is the only owner. On 20 November 2006, Etai Hugi announced that a new version of Kaillera would be released in the several months. His announcement also suggested that the new version would be much better, in July 2007, he posted on the official forums and sent emails to the forum administrator announcing that the next official release would occur in 3-4 months. This announcement coincided with a revamp of the forums and the posting of new unofficial builds created by others for download, on 4 November 2007, it was announced that due to unforeseen bugs the imminent release would be postponed for a time. It was later announced that the new version of Kaillera would be released on 7 April 2008, however, the official Kaillera website along with existing Kaillera master servers list was taken down a few days prior to the release date. Later when it came back up, no explanations for the downtime was given, Etai Hugi an Israeli developer purchased Kaillera from Christophe Thibault in 2006. Like most networked multiplayer gaming systems, Kaillera is implemented to work on client–server architecture, the client is implemented as a small library with a typical GUI which is incorporated with the emulator. Its simple self-explanatory API consisting of only 8 functions allow emulators to perform functions such as specify the list of games it supports. Everything after enabling the client to starting the game is managed by the client, the client can only make requests to server on users input and react to servers response. On the other hand, the server takes the role of managing all the users. Users can join servers if their conditions are satisfactory, then they are allowed to chat and make games on the server which other users can join. A maximum of 8 players are allowed to participate in a game, once a game starts, the server is also responsible for scheduling and mix matching data sent by emulators in a manner befitting users ping and connection configuration. 1964 Atari800Win PLus Bliss CCS64 Demul DolphinNP, a version of Dolphin Emukon ePSXe *Requires a Netplay plugin such as CyberPad or PS4NET
12.
K-Meleon
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K-Meleon is an open-source web browser for Microsoft Windows. It is released under the GNU General Public License and this approach is similar to that of Galeon and Epiphany, and Camino. Omitting XUL makes K-Meleon less resource-intensive than other Gecko-based browsers on Windows, the first version, K-Meleon 0.1, was originally written by Christophe Thibault and released to the public on August 21,2000. Dorian Boissonnade eventually took over as the developer of the project. After many major release versions from 0.1 to 0.9. x, K-Meleon 1.0 introduced major modifications. The most notable change was the main K-Meleon code being updated to accommodate the Gecko 1.8.0. x rendering engine, as used in the latest releases of Mozilla Firefox and SeaMonkey. This update to the engine brought significant improvements to security and usability, including support for favicons. Some themes and macros from version 0.9 were still compatible with 1.0, although the macro system was updated. The macro system was updated further in K-Meleon 1.1, a true tabbed interface was introduced in version 1.5. These open pages were called layers instead of tabs, in 2010, K-Meleon was one of the twelve browsers offered to European Economic Area users of Microsoft Windows. As of 2012, the project was reported as being on indefinite hold. This has since been clarified, as development continued, in late 2013, the K-Meleon group began developing new versions based on Mozillas XULRunner 24 runtime environment in place of the discontinued Gecko Runtime Environment. K-Meleon 74 was the first stable release to use updated versions of this environment, K-Meleon 75 was released in mid-2015 with a Mozilla 31 backend, new skin and toolbar implementation, spellcheck, and form autocompletion. K-Meleon has a flexible interface design. All the menus and toolbar buttons can be customized using text-format configuration files and this feature is useful in environments where the browser must be customized for general public use, such as in a public library or Internet café. Although individual toolbars can be repositioned, users must edit toolbar configuration files to any changes to button layouts as there is no graphical user interface to customize them. The use of the native Windows interface means that K-Meleon does not support Mozilla-formatted browser themes, compatibility with Mozilla extensions is also limited, with only a few extensions that can be integrated. However, K-Meleon has its own plugins and browser themes, which can extend the functionality, there is also a macro plugin which allows users to extend the browser functionality without having to know the C programming language
13.
Blizzard Entertainment
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Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. is an American video game developer and publisher based in Irvine, California, and is a subsidiary of the American company Activision Blizzard. The company was founded on February 8,1991, under the name Silicon & Synapse by three graduates of the University of California, Los Angeles, Michael Morhaime, Frank Pearce, and Allen Adham. In 1994 the company became Chaos Studios, then Blizzard Entertainment, shortly thereafter, Blizzard released Warcraft, Orcs & Humans. On July 9,2008, Activision merged with Vivendi Games, on July 25,2013, Activision Blizzard announced the purchase of 429 million shares from majority owner Vivendi. As a result, Activision Blizzard became an independent company. Blizzard Entertainment was founded by Michael Morhaime, Allen Adham, and Frank Pearce as Silicon & Synapse on February 8,1991, in the early days, the company focused on creating game ports for other studios. Ports include titles such as J. R. R, tolkiens The Lord of the Rings, Vol. I and Battle Chess II, Chinese Chess, in 1993, the company developed games such as Rock n Roll Racing and The Lost Vikings. In early 1994, they were acquired by distributor Davidson & Associates for $6.75 million and that same year the company briefly changed its name to Chaos Studios, before finally settling on Blizzard Entertainment. Shortly thereafter, Blizzard shipped their breakthrough hit Warcraft, Orcs & Humans, Blizzard has changed hands several times since then. Davidson was acquired along with Sierra On-Line by a company called CUC International in 1996, CUC then merged with a hotel, real-estate, and car-rental franchiser called HFS Corporation to form Cendant in 1997. In 1998 it became apparent that CUC had engaged in accounting fraud for years before the merger, cendants stock lost 80% of its value over the next six months in the ensuing widely discussed accounting scandal. The company sold its consumer operations, Sierra On-line to French publisher Havas in 1998. Blizzard was part of the Vivendi Games group of Vivendi, in July 2008 Vivendi Games merged with Activision, using Blizzards name in the resulting company, Activision Blizzard. In 1996, Blizzard acquired Condor Games, which had been working on the game Diablo for Blizzard at the time, Condor was renamed Blizzard North, and has since developed the games Diablo, Diablo II, and its expansion pack Lord of Destruction. Blizzard North was located in San Mateo, California, the company originated in Redwood City, California. Blizzard launched their online gaming service Battle. net in January 1997 with the release of their action role-playing game Diablo, in 2004, Blizzard opened European offices in the Paris suburb of Vélizy, Yvelines, France. On May 16,2005, Blizzard announced the acquisition of Swingin Ape Studios, the company was then merged into Blizzards other teams after StarCraft, Ghost was postponed indefinitely
