MiniDisc is a magneto-optical disc-based data storage format offering a capacity of 60, 74 minutes and 80 minutes, of digitized audio or 1 gigabyte of Hi-MD data. Sony brand audio players were on the market in September 1992. Sony announced the MiniDisc in September 1992 and released it in November of that year for sale in Japan and in December in Europe, the US and other countries; the music format was based on ATRAC audio data compression, but the option of linear PCM digital recording was introduced to meet audio quality comparable to that of a compact disc. MiniDiscs were popular in Japan and found moderate success in Europe. Sony has ceased development of MD devices, with the last of the players sold by March 2013. US and foreign patents licensed from Dolby Laboratories. In 1983, just a year after the introduction of the Compact Disc, Kees Schouhamer Immink and Joseph Braat presented the first experiments with erasable magneto-optical Compact Discs during the 73rd AES Convention in Eindhoven.
It took, however 10 years before their idea was commercialized. Sony's MiniDisc was one of two rival digital systems, both introduced in 1992, that were targeted as replacements for the Philips Compact Cassette analog audio tape system: the other was Digital Compact Cassette, created by Philips and Matsushita. Sony had intended Digital Audio Tape to be the dominant home digital audio recording format, replacing the analog cassette. Due to technical delays, DAT was not launched until 1989, by the U. S. dollar had fallen so far against the yen that the introductory DAT machine Sony had intended to market for about $400 in the late 1980s now had to retail for $800 or $1000 to break putting it out of reach of most users. Relegating DAT to professional use, Sony set to work to come up with a simpler, more economical digital home format. By the time Sony came up with MiniDisc in late 1992, Philips had introduced a competing system, DCC; this created marketing confusion similar to the Betamax versus VHS battle of the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Sony attempted to license MD technology to other manufacturers, with JVC, Pioneer and others all producing their own MD systems. However, non-Sony machines were not available in North America, companies such as Technics and Radio Shack tended to promote DCC instead. Despite having a loyal customer base of musicians and audio enthusiasts, MiniDisc met with only limited success in the United States, it was popular in Japan and the United Kingdom during the 1990s, but did not enjoy comparable sales in other world markets. Since recordable CDs, flash memory and HDD and solid-state-based digital audio players such as iPods have become popular as playback devices; the initial low uptake of MiniDisc was attributed to the small number of pre-recorded albums available on MD as few record labels embraced the format. The initial high cost of equipment and blank media was a factor. Mains-powered hi-fi MiniDisc player/recorders never got into the lower price ranges, most consumers had to connect a portable machine to the hi-fi in order to record.
This inconvenience contrasted with the earlier common use of cassette decks as a standard part of an ordinary hi-fi set-up. MiniDisc technology was faced with new competition from the recordable compact disc when it became more affordable to consumers beginning around 1996. Sony believed that it would take around a decade for CD-R prices to become affordable – the cost of a typical blank CD-R disc was around $12 in 1994 – but CD-R prices fell much more than envisioned, to the point where CD-R blanks sank below $1 per disc by the late 1990s, compared to at least $2 for the cheapest 80-minute MiniDisc blanks; the biggest competition for MiniDisc came from the emergence of MP3 players. With the Diamond Rio player in 1998 and the Apple iPod, the mass market began to eschew physical media in favor of file-based systems. By 2007, because of the waning popularity of the format and the increasing popularity of solid-state MP3 players, Sony was producing only one model, the Hi-MD MZ-RH1 available as the MZ-M200 in North America packaged with a Sony microphone and limited Apple Macintosh software support.
The introduction of the MZ-RH1 allowed users to move uncompressed digital recordings back and forth from the MiniDisc to a computer without the copyright protection limitations imposed upon the NetMD series. This allowed the MiniDisc to better compete with MP3 players. However, most pro users like broadcasters and news reporters had abandoned MiniDisc in favor of solid-state recorders, due to their long recording times, open digital content sharing, high-quality digital recording capabilities and reliable, lightweight design. On 7 July 2011, Sony announced that it would no longer ship MiniDisc Walkman products as of September 2011 killing the format. On 1 February 2013, Sony issued a press release on the Nikkei stock exchange that it will cease shipment of all MD devices, with last of the players to be sold in March 2013. However, it would continue to offer repair services. MD Data, a version for storing computer data, was announced by Sony in 1993 but never gained significant ground, its media were incompatible with standard audio MiniDiscs, cited as one of the main reasons behind the format's failure.
MD Data could not write to audio-MDs, only the more expensive data blanks. In 1997, MD-Data2 blanks were introduced, they were only implemented in Sony's short-lived MD-based camcorder as well as a small number of multi-track recorders.
Siri Wålberg is a Norwegian musical artist performing as Sissy Wish. Wålberg studied music at Trøndertun Folk High School. In 2003 she won the NRK Urørt competition at by:Larm for the single The Six Feet Tall; the year after she released the album You May Breathe, recipient of the 2004 Spellemannprisen award in the category best Female pop artist. In 2005 she released her second album Tuning In followed up in 2007 with a third album Beauties Never Die. 2004: Spellemannprisen in the category best Female pop artist, for the album You May Breathe 2004: You May Breathe... 2005: Tuning In 2007: Beauties Never Die 2013: Happy Monster 2003: The Six Feet Tall EP 2007: Table 44 7" 2008: DWTS 7" 2011: Dance All Night With You Single With Sondre Lerche2009: Heartbeat Radio Official website
Möbius is a lunar impact crater, located on the Moon's far side, beyond the eastern limb and northeast of the Mare Marginis. It lies less than one crater diameter to the northwest of the larger, 90-km-diameter Hertz, just to the southeast of Popov. To the north of Mobius is the crater chain designated Catena Dziewulski, which takes its name from the crater Dziewulski to the north-northwest; this is a moderately worn crater formation, with a smaller crater intruding into the western rim and a small crater cutting across the rim at the southern end. The rim is low and the interior is marked only by a few tiny craterlets and some higher-albedo markings in the southwestern quadrant. Prior to naming in 1970 by the IAU, this crater was known as Crater 196. Andersson, L. E.. A.. NASA Catalogue of Lunar Nomenclature. NASA RP-1097. Blue, Jennifer. "Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature". USGS. Retrieved 2007-08-05. Bussey, B.. The Clementine Atlas of the Moon. New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-81528-4.
Cocks, Elijah E.. Who's Who on the Moon: A Biographical Dictionary of Lunar Nomenclature. Tudor Publishers. ISBN 978-0-936389-27-1. McDowell, Jonathan. "Lunar Nomenclature". Jonathan's Space Report. Retrieved 2007-10-24. Menzel, D. H.. "Report on Lunar Nomenclature by the Working Group of Commission 17 of the IAU". Space Science Reviews. 12: 136–186. Bibcode:1971SSRv...12..136M. Doi:10.1007/BF00171763. Moore, Patrick. On the Moon. Sterling Publishing Co. ISBN 978-0-304-35469-6. Price, Fred W.. The Moon Observer's Handbook. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-33500-3. Rükl, Antonín. Atlas of the Moon. Kalmbach Books. ISBN 978-0-913135-17-4. Webb, Rev. T. W.. Celestial Objects for Common Telescopes. Dover. ISBN 978-0-486-20917-3. Whitaker, Ewen A.. Mapping and Naming the Moon. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-62248-6. Wlasuk, Peter T.. Observing the Moon. Springer. ISBN 978-1-85233-193-1
The Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium is a football and Rugby union stadium in Port Elizabeth, Eastern Cape, South Africa, it is one the world class stadiums in South Africa, It hosted the 2010 FIFA World Cup matches and the third place play off, It is the home of Chippa United football club and Southern Kings a team of rugby union. The five-tier, R2 billion Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium was built overlooking the North End Lake, at the heart of the city, it is one of three coastal stadiums built to host the 2010 FIFA World Cup. It hosts large-scale rugby union and football matches; the stadium has been used as a concert venue. This is the first time; the city of Port Elizabeth did not have a large-scale football facility, as under the apartheid government, football was not given much funding. Football clubs in the city had to make use of smaller scale venues throughout the city. Before this stadium was built, most large football matches were played at the EPRU Stadium, the city's rugby ground; the EPRU Stadium was problematic for football, as it hosts rugby matches, thus the playing surface was not of a great standard.
When Port Elizabeth was chosen as a host city for the 2010 FIFA World Cup, the city decided against upgrading the EPRU Stadium. This was because it would have needed to be completely rebuilt in order to meet FIFA requirements; the city decided on building a brand new, multipurpose stadium, in the heart of the city. There was a great deal of speculation about the status of stadium construction in the run-up to the 2010 FIFA World Cup, with the requirement that all the FIFA World Cup host stadiums had to be completed by January 2010; the Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium was the first of five new stadiums to start construction. The other new stadiums are in Cape Town, Durban and Nelspruit; the stadium is named after the administrative district which the stadium is within, the Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan Municipality, itself named after Nelson Mandela, the former President of South Africa. The Nelson Mandela Bay area is made up of the city of Port Elizabeth, the towns of Uitenhage and Despatch, as well as smaller settlements.
The stadium is sometimes incorrectly called the'Nelson Mandela Stadium' in the media. This may lead to confusion, as there is a Nelson Mandela Stadium in Uganda, it is sometimes mistakenly claimed that the stadium is named after Mandela, rather than the metropolitan area named in his honour. The stadium was designed by the Department of Public Works' National Construction Week Programme in 2006 with student from Holy Cross High School Thina Dlulane, Yandisa Dalamba, Inga Ngalonkulu and Siyabonga Nyezi form Umtata, their design, reviewed in the Mahlamba Ndlopfu Presidency House by the Public Work delegates and was the winning designed prototype concept and was the inspiration behind the design. The stadium has views over the North End Lake; the roof is made up of a series of white'petals' making it look like a flower. This is the reason for The Protea. There are not many stadiums in the world that are constructed overlooking a lake; the stadium building is 40m high and consists of six levels on the western side in addition to five on each of the north and east stands.
The main architecture was handled by Architectural Design AssociatesLtd and Dominic Bonnesse Architects cc. The stadium has three gates for entry, located on the northern and eastern sides of the stadium, the western side of the stadium leads to the North End Lake; the 3 gates are: gate A-B, in Milner Avenue, gate B-C, in Prince Alfred Road, gate C-D, in Fettes Road. The stadium seats 46,000 in addition to 4,000 extra seats temporarily installed for the 2010 FIFA World Cup; the seats are from light orange to dark red. They are arranged at random, but this was done to help the stadium appear full at all times, it means that sun damage is less of a problem and replaced seats are less noticeable. The stadium boasts 49 hospitality suites, two business lounges, a gymnasium, lecture and function rooms. There are two conference rooms situated on the first level, which are able to accommodate 200 people. There are four ramps for easy wheelchair access, three VIP/VVIP lifts, two in the West Stand and one in the East Stand, as well as four service lifts, two on the west and two on the east of the stadium.
Four additional lifts are planned for the legacy phase. There are 32 turnstiles and colour-coded gates on level 2 for spectators to access their seats and four ramps leading up from level 2 to level 5. Two big viewing screens were installed for live coverage of the activities on the field. There are a total of 74 toilet blocks – 36 blocks on level 2 – 4 blocks on level 3 – 14 blocks on level 4 and 20 blocks on level 5. Parking inside the stadium is provided across five parking zones, providing a total of 500 parkings utilised by working staff, anchor tenants, event organisers and hospitality guests; the playing surface was made of natural grass, grown off site, in the St Albans area. The areas surrounding the pitch are made of artificial turf; the field, laid was a mixture of kikuyu grass and rye grass. For the 2010 FIFA World Cup though, the field was made up of rye grass. Following the World Cup, a Desso GrassMaster system was installed, due to the high workload of hostiing both football and rugby matches.
The field was designed to be able to accommodate both rugby. The pitch is maintained by a grou
Congress Jananayaka Peravai was a political party in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It was founded in 2001 by former union finance minister P. Chidambaram, as a splinter group of the Tamil Maanila Congress, when the TMC allied itself with the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam. In the 2004 Lok Sabha elections Chidambaram ran as the Indian National Congress candidate from Sivagangai, won with 400 393 votes. On November 25, 2004 CJP merged into the Indian National Congress. Discussions about a merger had taken place during a long time, but the merger was resisted by the Tamil Nadu Congress leadership. In the end the merger was pushed through by the national Congress leadership. Indian National Congress breakaway parties
TV Azteca, S. A. B. de C. V. is a Mexican multimedia conglomerate owned by Grupo Salinas. It is the second-largest mass media company in Mexico after Televisa, it competes with Televisa and Imagen Televisión, as well as some local operators. It owns two national television networks, Azteca Uno and Azteca 7, operates two other nationally distributed services, adn40 and a+. All three of these networks have transmitters in most minor cities. TV Azteca operates Azteca Trece Internacional, reaching 13 countries in Central and South America, part of the Azteca América network in the United States, its flagship program is the newscast Hechos. In the early 1990s, the presidency of Carlos Salinas de Gortari privatized many government assets. Among them was the Instituto Mexicano de la Televisión, known as Imevisión, which owned two national television networks and three local TV stations. In preparation for the privatization, the Imevisión stations were parceled into a variety of newly created companies, the largest of, named Televisión Azteca, S.
A. de C. V. With the exception of Canal 22, spun off to Conaculta, one bidder won all of the stations. On July 18, 1993, Mexico's Finance Ministry, the Secretaría de Hacienda y Crédito Público, announced that Radio Televisora del Centro, a group controlled by Ricardo Salinas Pliego, was the winner of the auction to acquire the "state-owned media package", which included Imevisión's studios in the Ajusco area of Mexico City; the winning bid amounted to US$645 million. The new group soon took on the Televisión Azteca name for the entire operation and soon challenged Televisa, turning what had been a television monopoly into a television duopoly; the two conglomerates held 97 percent of the commercial television concessions in the country. In 1998, TV Azteca announced an investment of US$25 million in XHTVM-TV, owned by Javier Moreno Valle through concessionaire Televisora del Valle de México, S. A. de C. V. Under the deal, Azteca restructured TVM and took control of ad sales and most programming duties, while Moreno Valle's CNI news service retained some primetime space.
However, in 2000, Moreno Valle broke the contract with Azteca, alleging Azteca of filling up time allotted to CNI and not fulfilling the obligations in the contract. In December 2002, Azteca used private security guards to retake control of the XHTVM facilities on Cerro del Chiquihuite in Mexico City. However, the Mexican government stepped into the dispute and forced Azteca to relinquish control of XHTVM. In 2005, an employee strike that crippled CNI, Moreno Valle's mounting legal troubles, a deal with the 5% owner of the concessionaire allowed Azteca to buy the remainder of the station and retake control of XHTVM, under the name Proyecto 40, in 2006. On March 7, 2011, TV Azteca changed its name to Azteca, reflecting its growth into a multimedia company. However, in July 2015, the TV Azteca name was restored. TV Azteca is the second largest mass media company in México after Televisa; these two big organizations control the 97% of mass media in Mexico. TV Azteca was funded in 1993 by Ricardo Salinas Pliego.
TV Azteca has 31% of the 465 television concessions in México. The auction of the state channels and the granting of further concessions to TV Azteca further strengthen their connection, it owns Azteca banks, Azteca insurance, programing pay television, live theater, news channels, Azteca music, an acting school, Azteca consumer products, Azteca internet, Azteca series, Azteca sports, etc. TV Azteca is another company which serves the government however to a much lesser extent than Televisa. TV Azteca receives lucrative contracts from the Mexican government, therefore the information that emits is controlled by the actual government; the news, emitted by TV Azteca is 25% news bulletins that come from advertising, infotainment relying on celebrities and biased editorials. In Mexico: Outside Mexico: Azteca América: U. S. channel with programming from TV Azteca's three television national networks in Mexico and local news KAZA-TV used to be the flagship of Azteca America from 2001-2018 but was sold to Chicago-based Weigel Broadcasting, which stripped KAZA of its flagship status, was replaced by MeTV as an O&O. Az Noticias Az Clic!
Az Mundo Az Corazón Az Cinema Azteca Trece -1 hora Azteca Trece -2 horas Romanza+ África - African channel On 5 January 2005, the U. S. Securities and Exchange Commission accused TV Azteca executives of having profited from a multimillion-dollar debt fraud committed by TV Azteca and another company in which they held stock; the charges were among the first brought under the provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, introduced in the wake of the corporate financial scandals of that year. The Federal Radio and Television Law was a bill concerning the licensing and regulation of the electromagnetic spectrum; the LFRT was favorable to both TV Azteca and Televisa because it allowed them to renew their licenses without paying for them. According to The Economist, the Ley Federal de Radio y Televisión "raced through Congress confirming the country's longstanding television duopoly" and constituted a "giveaway of radio spectrum and a provision that allows broadcasting licenses to be renewed more or less automatically".
In February 2012, TV Azteca networks were dropped by Mexican cable-TV carriers representing more than 4 million subscribers in a carriage dispute over terms. Cable operators claimed that Azteca wanted to charge a fee by packaging its over-the-air stations with cable netw