United States dollar
The United States dollar is the official currency of the United States and its territories per the United States Constitution since 1792. In practice, the dollar is divided into 100 smaller cent units, but is divided into 1000 mills for accounting; the circulating paper money consists of Federal Reserve Notes that are denominated in United States dollars. Since the suspension in 1971 of convertibility of paper U. S. currency into any precious metal, the U. S. dollar is, de facto, fiat money. As it is the most used in international transactions, the U. S. dollar is the world's primary reserve currency. Several countries use it as their official currency, in many others it is the de facto currency. Besides the United States, it is used as the sole currency in two British Overseas Territories in the Caribbean: the British Virgin Islands and Turks and Caicos Islands. A few countries use the Federal Reserve Notes for paper money, while still minting their own coins, or accept U. S. dollar coins. As of June 27, 2018, there are $1.67 trillion in circulation, of which $1.62 trillion is in Federal Reserve notes.
Article I, Section 8 of the U. S. Constitution provides that the Congress has the power "To coin money". Laws implementing this power are codified at 31 U. S. C. § 5112. Section 5112 prescribes the forms; these coins are both designated in Section 5112 as "legal tender" in payment of debts. The Sacagawea dollar is one example of the copper alloy dollar; the pure silver dollar is known as the American Silver Eagle. Section 5112 provides for the minting and issuance of other coins, which have values ranging from one cent to 100 dollars; these other coins are more described in Coins of the United States dollar. The Constitution provides that "a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time"; that provision of the Constitution is made specific by Section 331 of Title 31 of the United States Code. The sums of money reported in the "Statements" are being expressed in U. S. dollars. The U. S. dollar may therefore be described as the unit of account of the United States.
The word "dollar" is one of the words in the first paragraph of Section 9 of Article I of the Constitution. There, "dollars" is a reference to the Spanish milled dollar, a coin that had a monetary value of 8 Spanish units of currency, or reales. In 1792 the U. S. Congress passed a Coinage Act. Section 9 of that act authorized the production of various coins, including "DOLLARS OR UNITS—each to be of the value of a Spanish milled dollar as the same is now current, to contain three hundred and seventy-one grains and four sixteenth parts of a grain of pure, or four hundred and sixteen grains of standard silver". Section 20 of the act provided, "That the money of account of the United States shall be expressed in dollars, or units... and that all accounts in the public offices and all proceedings in the courts of the United States shall be kept and had in conformity to this regulation". In other words, this act designated the United States dollar as the unit of currency of the United States. Unlike the Spanish milled dollar, the U.
S. dollar is based upon a decimal system of values. In addition to the dollar the coinage act established monetary units of mill or one-thousandth of a dollar, cent or one-hundredth of a dollar, dime or one-tenth of a dollar, eagle or ten dollars, with prescribed weights and composition of gold, silver, or copper for each, it was proposed in the mid-1800s that one hundred dollars be known as a union, but no union coins were struck and only patterns for the $50 half union exist. However, only cents are in everyday use as divisions of the dollar. XX9 per gallon, e.g. $3.599, more written as $3.599⁄10. When issued in circulating form, denominations equal to or less than a dollar are emitted as U. S. coins while denominations equal to or greater than a dollar are emitted as Federal Reserve notes. Both one-dollar coins and notes are produced today, although the note form is more common. In the past, "paper money" was issued in denominations less than a dollar and gold coins were issued for circulation up to the value of $20.
The term eagle was used in the Coinage Act of 1792 for the denomination of ten dollars, subsequently was used in naming gold coins. Paper currency less than one dollar in denomination, known as "fractional currency", was sometimes pejoratively referred to as "shinplasters". In 1854, James Guthrie Secretary of the Treasury, proposed creating $100, $50 and $25 gold coins, which were referred to as a "Union", "Half Union", "Quarter Union", thus implying a denomination of 1 Union = $100. Today, USD notes are made from cotton fiber paper, unlike most common paper, made of wood fiber. U. S. coins are produced by the United States Mint. U. S. dollar banknotes are printed by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and, since 1914, have been issued by t
Sega Genesis
The Sega Genesis, known as the Mega Drive in regions outside of North America, is a 16-bit home video game console developed and sold by Sega. The Genesis was the successor to the Master System. Sega released it as the Mega Drive in Japan in 1988, followed by North America as the Genesis in 1989. In 1990, it was distributed as the Mega Drive by Virgin Mastertronic in Europe, Ozisoft in Australasia, Tec Toy in Brazil. In South Korea, it was distributed by Samsung as the Super Gam*Boy and the Super Aladdin Boy. Designed by an R&D team supervised by Hideki Sato and Masami Ishikawa, the Genesis was adapted from Sega's System 16 arcade board, centered on a Motorola 68000 processor as the CPU, a Zilog Z80 as a sound controller, a video system supporting hardware sprites and scrolling, it plays a library of more than 900 games created by Sega and a wide array of third-party publishers and delivered on ROM-based cartridges. Several add-ons were released, including a Power Base Converter to play Master System games.
It was released in several different versions, some created by third parties. Sega created two network services to support the Genesis: Sega Channel. In Japan, the Mega Drive fared poorly against its two main competitors, Nintendo's Super Famicom and NEC's PC Engine, but it achieved considerable success in North America and Europe. Contributing to its success were its library of arcade game ports, the popularity of Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog series, several popular sports franchises, aggressive youth marketing that positioned the system as the cool console for adolescents; the release of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System two years after the Genesis resulted in a fierce battle for market share in the United States and Europe, termed as a "console war" by journalists and historians. As this contest drew increasing attention to the video game industry among the general public, the Genesis and several of its highest-profile games attracted significant legal scrutiny on matters involving reverse engineering and video game violence.
Controversy surrounding violent games such as Night Trap and Mortal Kombat led Sega to create the Videogame Rating Council, a predecessor to the Entertainment Software Rating Board. 30.75 million first-party Genesis units were sold worldwide. In addition, Tec Toy sold an estimated three million licensed variants in Brazil, Majesco projected it would sell 1.5 million licensed variants of the system in the United States, much smaller numbers were sold by Samsung in South Korea. By the mid-2010s, licensed third-party Genesis rereleases were still being sold by AtGames in North America and Europe. Many games have been rereleased in compilations or on online services such as the Nintendo Virtual Console, Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network, Steam; the Genesis was succeeded in 1994 by the Sega Saturn. In the early 1980s, Sega Enterprises, Inc. a subsidiary of Gulf & Western, was one of the top five arcade game manufacturers active in the United States, as company revenues surpassed $200 million between July 1981 and June 1982.
A downturn in the arcade business starting in 1982 hurt the company, leading Gulf & Western to sell its North American arcade manufacturing organization and the licensing rights for its arcade games to Bally Manufacturing. The company retained Sega's North American R&D operation, as well as its Japanese subsidiary, Sega Enterprises, Ltd. With its arcade business in decline, Sega Enterprises, Ltd. president Hayao Nakayama advocated that the company leverage its hardware expertise to move into the home console market in Japan, in its infancy at the time. Nakayama received permission to proceed with this project, leading to the release of Sega's first home video game system, the SG-1000, in July 1983; the SG-1000 was not successful. Sega estimated; the SG-1000 was replaced by the Sega Mark III within two years. In the meantime, Gulf & Western began to divest itself of its non-core businesses after the death of company founder Charles Bluhdorn, so Nakayama and former Sega CEO David Rosen arranged a management buyout of the Japanese subsidiary in 1984 with financial backing from CSK Corporation, a prominent Japanese software company.
Nakayama was installed as CEO of the new Sega Enterprises, Ltd. In 1986, Sega redesigned the Mark III for release in North America as the Sega Master System; this was followed by a European release the next year. Although the Master System was a success in Europe, in Brazil, it failed to ignite significant interest in the Japanese or North American markets, which, by the mid-to-late 1980s, were both dominated by Nintendo. With Sega continuing to have difficulty penetrating the home market, Sega's console R&D team, led by Masami Ishikawa and supervised by Hideki Sato, began work on a successor to the Master System immediately after that console launched. In 1987, Sega faced another threat to its console business when Japanese computer giant NEC released the PC Engine amid great publicity. To remain competitive against the two more established consumer electronics companies and his team decided they needed to incorporate a 16-bit microprocessor into their new system to make an impact in the marketplace and once again turned to Sega's strengths in the arcade industry to adapt the successful Sega System 16 arcade board into architecture for a home console.
The decision to use a Motorola 68000 as the system's main CPU was made late in development, while a Zilog Z80 was used as a secondary CPU to handle the sound due to f
The Washington Times
The Washington Times is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D. C. that covers general interest topics with a particular emphasis on national politics. Its broadsheet daily edition is distributed throughout the District of Columbia and in parts of Maryland and Virginia. A weekly tabloid edition aimed at a national audience is published; the Washington Times was founded on May 17, 1982, by Unification movement leader Sun Myung Moon and owned until 2010 by News World Communications, an international media conglomerate founded by Moon. It is owned by Operations Holdings, owned by the Unification movement. Throughout its history, The Washington Times has been known for its conservative political stance, it has drawn controversy for publishing racist content, including commentary and conspiracy theories about United States president Barack Obama and support for neo-Confederatism. It has published material promoting Islamophobia, it has published many columns which reject the scientific consensus on climate change, as well as ozone depletion and second-hand smoke.
The Washington Times was founded in 1982 by News World Communications, an international media conglomerate associated with the Unification movement which owns newspapers in South Korea and South America, as well as the news agency United Press International. Bo Hi Pak, the chief aide of church founder and leader Sun Myung Moon, was the founding president and the founding chairman of the board. Moon asked Richard L. Rubenstein, a rabbi and college professor who had written on the Holocaust, to serve on the board of directors; the Washington Times' first editor and publisher was James R. Whelan. At the time of founding of The Washington Times, Washington had only one major newspaper, The Washington Post. Massimo Introvigne, in his 2000 book The Unification Church, said that the Post had been "the most anti-Unificationist paper in the United States." In 2002, at an event held to celebrate The Washington Times' 20th anniversary, Moon said: "The Washington Times is responsible to let the American people know about God" and "The Washington Times will become the instrument in spreading the truth about God to the world."The Washington Times was founded the year after the Washington Star, the previous "second paper" of D.
C. went out of business. A large percentage of the staff came from the Washington Star; when The Washington Times began, it was unusual among American broadsheets in publishing a full color front page, along with full color front pages in all its sections and color elements throughout. It used ink that it advertised as being less to come off on the reader's hands than the type used by the Post; when The Washington Times began it had 125 reporters, 25 percent of them Unification Church members. Some former employees, including Whelan, have insisted that The Washington Times was always under Moon's control. Whelan, whose contract guaranteed editorial autonomy, left the paper when the owners refused to renew the contract. Three years editorial page editor William P. Cheshire and four of his staff resigned, charging that, at the explicit direction of Sang Kook Han, a top official of the Unification movement, then-editor Arnaud de Borchgrave had stifled editorial criticism of political repression in South Korea.
In 1982, The Washington Times refused to publish film critic Scott Sublett's negative review of the movie Inchon, sponsored by the Unification movement. After a brief editorship under Smith Hempstone, Arnaud de Borchgrave was executive editor from 1985 to 1991. Borchgrave was credited for encouraging energetic reporting by staff, but was known to make unorthodox journalistic decisions. During his tenure, The Washington Times mounted a fund-raising drive for Contras rebels in Nicaragua and offered rewards for information leading to the arrest of Nazi war criminals. President Ronald Reagan is said to have read The Washington Times every day during his presidency. In 1997 he said, "The American people know the truth. You, my friends at The Washington Times, have told it to them, it wasn't always the popular thing to do. But you were a powerful voice. Like me, you arrived in Washington at the beginning of the most momentous decade of the century. Together, we got to work. And—oh, yes—we won the Cold War."
Wesley Pruden was named executive editor of The Washington Times in 1991. He had been at The Washington Times since 1982, working as a correspondent and as managing editor. During his editorship, the paper took a conservative stance. Controversy ensued. In 1992 North Korean president Kim Il Sung gave his first and only interview with the Western news media to Washington Times reporter Josette Sheeran. In 1992, The Washington Times had only one-eighth the circulation of the Post and that two-thirds of its subscribers subscribed to the Post. In 1994, The Washington Times introduced a weekly national edition, it was distributed nationwide. In 1992 Walter Goodman, writing in the New York Times, said that the administration of George H. W. Bush was encouraging the political influence of The Washington Times and other Unification movement activism in support of United States foreign policy. In 1997 the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, critical of U. S. and Israeli policies, praised The Washington Times along with The Christian Science Monitor, owned by the Church of Christ and The Washington Times' sister publication The Middle East Times, for what it called their objective and informative coverage of Islam and the Middle East
Educational video game
An educational video game is a video game that provides learning or training value to the player. Edutainment describes an intentional merger of video games and educational software into a single product. In the narrower sense used here, the term describes educational software, about entertainment, but tends to educate as well and sells itself under the educational umbrella. Software of this kind is not structured towards school curricula and does not involve educational advisors. Educational video games play a significant role in the school curriculum for teachers who seek to deliver core lessons and new skills. Gamification of education allows learners to take active roles in learning and develop technological skills that are needed for their academic and professional careers. Several recent studies have shown that video games, whether violent or not can help children in the development of intellectual and emotional skills that support their academic achievement; these findings have made teachers all over the world recognize the numerous benefits of gaming and to include educational video game learning in their curricula.
There can be defined strategy war games that include historical references, like the Total War franchise or the Age of Empires trilogy and an in-game encyclopaedia like Civilization. These games integrate education without being explicitly educational; these are games which were developed for adults or older children and which have potential learning implications. For the most part, these games provide simulations of different kinds of human activities, allowing players to explore a variety of social and economic processes. Examples: City-building games such as the SimCity series and Caesar invite players to explore the social and economic processes involved in city management. Geography games such as PlaceSpotting help players to find locations on earth according to some hints. Physics games such as Quantum Moves and A Slower Speed of Light aim to impart intuition for complicated physics concepts such as quantum mechanics and special relativity; the games have been enthusiastically received in some educational circles and are mentioned in academic literature.
A new category was started by Bot Colony. It can be used to practice English dialogue by conversing with intelligent robots as part of an adventure game. Many titles were developed and released from the mid-1990s onwards, aimed at the home education of young children. Iterations of these titles began to link educational content to school curricula such as England's National Curriculum; the design of educational games for home use has been influenced by gaming concepts – they are designed to be fun and educational. Examples of children's learning software which have a structured pedagogical approach orientated towards literacy and numeracy skills. Disney Interactive learning titles based on characters such as Winnie-the-Pooh, The Jungle Book and Mickey Mouse GCompris, contains numerous activities, from computer discovery to science Knowledge Adventure's JumpStart and Blaster Learning System series The Learning Company's Reader Rabbit, The ClueFinders and Zoombinis series. }} In September 1983 the Boston Phoenix reported that "edutainment" games were a new focus area for companies after end of growth of the Atari 2600 software market.
In 1983, the term "edutainment" was used to describe a package of software games for the Oric 1 and Spectrum Microcomputers in the UK. Dubbed "arcade edutainment" an advertisement for the package can be found in various issues of "Your Computer" magazine from 1983; the software package was available from Telford ITEC. The originator of the name was Chris Harvey. Since many other computer games such as Electronic Arts's Seven Cities of Gold, released in 1984, have used edutainment as a descriptive term. Most edutainment games seek to teach players by employing a game-based learning approach. Criticism as to which video games can be considered educational has led to the creation of "serious games" whose primary focus is to teach rather than entertain. Psychologist Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen researched the educational use and potential of computer games and has written many articles on the subject. One paper dealing with edutainment breaks it down into 3 generational categories to separate the cognitive methods most predominantly used to teach.
He is critical of the research, done on the educational use of computer games, citing their biases and weaknesses in method, which cause their findings to lack scientific validity. Games provide structure to problem-solving; this allows a player to "fail up", meaning that with the combination of challenging and fun and identity-building, the student will want to continue to persist on that problem until it is solved. It is a productive failure; this may take quite a few times before success is reached, but progress is obtained each time and so is knowledge on how to solve that problem. Iteration and discovery become two major aspects to learning through game playing. Many students have a "sweet spot" for gaming, which allows gaming in education to be successful in terms of grasping concepts
Famitsu
Famitsu Famicom Tsūshin, is a line of Japanese video game magazines published by Enterbrain, Inc. and Tokuma. Famitsu is published in both weekly and monthly formats as well as in the form of special topical issues devoted to only one console, video game company, or other theme. Shūkan Famitsū, the original Famitsū publication, is considered the most read and respected video game news magazine in Japan. From October 28, 2011 Enterbrain began releasing the digital version of the magazine on BookWalker weekly; the first issue of Famitsū was published on June 1986 as Famicom Tsūshin. It was published semiregularly thereafter, going through periods of monthly and quarterly publication. On July 19, 1991 the magazine was renamed to Shūkan Famicom Tsūshin and issues were published weekly thereafter. Alongside the weekly magazine, a monthly version called Gekkan Famicom Tsūshin was published. At the start of 1996 the magazines underwent another name change, truncating their titles to Shūkan Famitsū and Gekkan Famitsū.
The magazine was published by ASCII from its founding through March 2000 when it was sold to Enterbrain, Inc. The name Famitsū is a portmanteau abbreviation of Famicom Tsūshin; the first issue was published on June 6, 1986. Today, Shūkan Famitsū features multi-platform coverage. Shūkan Famitsū is a weekly publication concentrating on video game news and reviews, is published every Thursday with a circulation of 500,000 per issue. Gekkan Famitsū is published monthly. Famitsū magazine covers alternately feature pop idols or actresses on even-numbered issues and the Famitsū mascot, Necky the Fox in odd-numbered issues. Year-end and special editions all feature Necky dressed as popular contemporary video game characters. Necky is the cartoon creation of artist Susumu Matsushita, he takes the form of a costumed fox; the costumes worn by Necky reflect current popular video games. Necky's name was chosen according to a reader poll, it derives from a complex Japanese pun: "Necky" is the reverse of the Japanese word for fox, キツネ, his original connection to Famicom Tsūshin is intended to evoke the bark of the fox, the Japanese onomatopoeia of, コンコン.
Necky makes a cameo appearance in Super Mario Maker. Famitsū publishes other magazines dedicated to particular consoles. In circulation are: Entamikusu is written for an older audience and covers retrogaming, it has been published monthly since November 2010. Famitsū Connect! On reports on online gaming. Famitsū DS+Wii reports on Nintendo platforms; the magazine was known as Famitsū 64 and Famitsū Cube based on whatever platforms Nintendo was producing games for at the time. Famitsū GREE reports on mobile gaming via GREE. Famitsū Mobage reports on mobile gaming via Mobage. Famitsū spin-offs that are no longer in circulation include: Famitsū Bros. was written for younger audiences and concentrated on video game hints and strategy. It was published monthly and went defunct in September 2002. Famicomi was a comic and manga magazine published irregularly between 1992 and 1995. Famitsū DC covered the Dreamcast. Previous incarnations of this magazine included Sega Saturn Tsūshin which covered the Sega Saturn, with earlier issues covering earlier Sega platforms.
Famitsū Sister covered bishōjo games. Satellaview Tsūshin covered the Satellaview, it was published monthly and ran for only 12 issues from May 1995 to May 1996. Its inaugural issue was the May 1995 issue of Gekkan Famicom Tsūshin. Virtual Boy Tsūshin covered the Virtual Boy. Only one issue was published in 1995. Famitsū PS began publication in May 1996, reported on Sony platforms news, it was known as Famitsū PS2 and Famitsū PSP+PS3 before being discontinued in March 2010. Famitsū Wave DVD covered events and previews; each magazine included a DVD disc with video game footage. It was published monthly and went defunct in May 2011. Famitsū Xbox 360 reported on Xbox 360 news, it went defunct in 2013. Video games are graded in Famitsū via a "Cross Review" in which a panel of four video game reviewers each give a score from 0 to 10; the scores of the four reviewers are added up for a maximum possible score of 40. From the twenty-four games awarded with a perfect score as of 2017, three are for the Nintendo DS and five are for the Wii.
The PlayStation 3 has five games with a perfect score and the Xbox 360 has four, with both consoles having four titles in common. The others are for different platforms with only one title each. Franchises with multiple perfect score winners include The Legend of Zelda with four titles, Metal Gear with three titles, Final Fantasy with two titles; the most recent game to receive a perfect score is Dragon Quest XI. As of 2016, all but two games with perfect scores are from Japanese companies, nine being published/developed by Nintendo, four by Square Enix, three by Sega, three by Konami and one by Capcom; as of 2016, the only two foreign games to achieve a perfect score are The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim by Bethesda Softworks and Grand Theft Auto V, from Rockstar Games. Other foreign games that have achieved near-perfect scores are L. A. Noire, Red Dead Redemption and Grand Theft Auto IV – all three of which came from Rockstar Games.
ROM cartridge
A ROM cartridge referred to as a cartridge or cart, is a removable memory card containing ROM designed to be connected to a consumer electronics device such as a home computer, video game console and to a lesser extent, electronic musical instruments. ROM cartridges can be used to load software such as other application programs; the cartridge slot could be used for hardware additions, for example speech synthesis. Some cartridges had battery-backed static random-access memory, allowing a user to save data such as game progress or scores between uses. ROM cartridges allowed the user to load and access programs and data without the expense of a floppy drive, an expensive peripheral during the home computer era, without using slow and unreliable Compact Cassette tape. An advantage for the manufacturer was the relative security of the software in cartridge form, difficult for end users to replicate. However, cartridges were expensive to manufacture compared to making a floppy disk or CD-ROM; as disk drives became more common and software expanded beyond the practical limits of ROM size, cartridge slots disappeared from game consoles and personal computers.
Cartridges are still used today with handheld gaming consoles such as the Nintendo DS, Nintendo 3DS, PlayStation Vita, the tablet-like hybrid console Nintendo Switch. Due to its widespread usage for video gaming, ROM cartridges were colloquially referred to as a game cartridge. ROM cartridges were popularized by early home computers which featured a special bus port for the insertion of cartridges containing software in ROM. In most cases the designs were crude, with the entire address and data buses exposed by the port and attached via an edge connector; the Texas Instruments TI 59 family of programmable scientific calculators used interchangeable ROM cartridges that could be installed in a slot at the back of the calculator. The calculator came with a module that provides several standard mathematical functions including solution of simultaneous equations. Other modules were specialized for financial calculations, or other subject areas, a "games" module. Modules were not user-programmable.
The Hewlett-Packard HP-41C had expansion slots which could hold ROM memory as well as I/O expansion ports. Notable computers using cartridges in addition to magnetic media were the Commodore VIC-20 and 64, MSX standard, the Atari 8-bit family, the Texas Instruments TI-99/4A and the IBM PCjr; some arcade system boards, such as Capcom's CP System and SNK's Neo Geo used ROM cartridges. The modern take on game cartridges was invented by Jerry Lawson as part of the Fairchild Channel F home console in 1976; the cartridge approach gained more popularity with the Atari 2600 released the following year. From the late 1970s to mid-1990s, the majority of home video game systems were cartridge-based; as compact disc technology came to be used for data storage, most hardware companies moved from cartridges to CD-based game systems. Nintendo remained the lone hold-out. SNK still released games on the cartridge-based Neo Geo until 2004, with the final official release being Samurai Shodown V Special. Nintendo's handheld consoles, continued to use cartridges due to their faster loading times and minimal equipment for data reading being beneficial for playing video games in short, several-minute intervals.
ROM cartridges can not only additional hardware expansion as well. Examples include the Super FX coprocessor chip in some Super NES game paks, The SVP chip in the Sega Genesis Version Of Virtua Racing, voice and chess modules in the Magnavox Odyssey². Micro Machines 2 on the Genesis/Mega Drive used a custom "J-Cart" cartridge design by Codemasters which incorporated two additional gamepad ports; this allowed players to have up to four gamepads connected to the console without the need for an additional multi-controller adapter. The ROM cartridge slot principle continues in various mobile devices, thanks to the development of high density low-cost flash memory. For example, a GPS navigation device might allow user updates of maps by inserting a flash memory chip into an expansion slot. An E-book reader can store the text of several thousand books on a flash chip. Personal computers may allow the user to boot and install an operating system off a USB flash drive instead of CD ROM or floppy disks.
Digital cameras with flash drive slots allow users to exchange cards when full, allow rapid transfer of pictures to a computer or printer. Storing software on ROM cartridges has a number of advantages over other methods of storage like floppy disks and optical media; as the ROM cartridge is memory mapped into the system's normal address space, software stored in the ROM can be read like normal memory. Software run directly from ROM uses less RAM, leaving memory free for other processes. While the standard size of optical media dictates a minimum size for devices which can read disks, ROM cartridges can be manufactured in different sizes, allowing for smaller devices like handheld game systems. ROM cartridges can be damaged, but they are more robust and resistant to damage than optical media.
Renminbi
The renminbi is the official currency of the People's Republic of China. The yuan is the basic unit of the renminbi, but is used to refer to the Chinese currency especially in international contexts where "Chinese yuan" is used to refer to the renminbi; the distinction between the terms renminbi and yuan is similar to that between sterling and pound, which refer to the British currency and its primary unit. One yuan is subdivided into 10 jiao, a jiao in turn is subdivided into 10 fen; the renminbi is issued by the People's Bank of the monetary authority of China. Until 2005, the value of the renminbi was pegged to the US dollar; as China pursued its transition from central planning to a market economy, increased its participation in foreign trade, the renminbi was devalued to increase the competitiveness of Chinese industry. It has been claimed that the renminbi's official exchange rate was undervalued by as much as 37.5% against its purchasing power parity. More however, appreciation actions by the Chinese government, as well as quantitative easing measures taken by the American Federal Reserve and other major central banks, have caused the renminbi to be within as little as 8% of its equilibrium value by the second half of 2012.
Since 2006, the renminbi exchange rate has been allowed to float in a narrow margin around a fixed base rate determined with reference to a basket of world currencies. The Chinese government has announced that it will increase the flexibility of the exchange rate; as a result of the rapid internationalization of the renminbi, it became the world's 8th most traded currency in 2013, 5th by 2015. On 1 October 2016, the RMB became the first emerging market currency to be included in the IMF's special drawing rights basket, the basket of currencies used by the IMF; the ISO code for renminbi is CNY, or CNH when traded in off-shore markets such as Hong Kong. The currency is abbreviated RMB, or indicated by the yuan sign ¥; the latter may be written CN¥ to distinguish it from other currencies with the same symbol. In Chinese texts the currency may be indicated with the Chinese character for the yuan, 圆; the renminbi is legal tender in mainland China, but not in Hong Macau. However, Renminbi is accepted in Hong Kong and Macau, are exchanged in the two territories, with banks in Hong Kong allowing people to maintain accounts in RMB and withdraw RMB banknotes from ATM terminals.
In 1889, the yuan was equated at par with the Mexican peso, a silver coin deriving from the Spanish dollar which circulated in southeast Asia since the 17th century due to Spanish presence in the Philippines and Guam. It was subdivided into 1000 cash, 100 cents or fen, 10 jiao, it replaced. The sycees were denominated in tael; the yuan was valued at 0.72 tael. Banknotes were issued in yuan denominations from the 1890s by several local and private banks, along with the Imperial Bank of China and the "Hu Pu Bank", established by the Imperial government. During the Imperial period, banknotes were issued in denominations of 1, 2 and 5 jiao, 1, 2, 5, 10, 50 and 100 yuan, although notes below 1 yuan were uncommon; the earliest issues were silver coins produced at the Guangdong mint, known in the West at the time as Canton, transliterated as Kwangtung, in denominations of 5 cents, 1, 2 and 5 jiao and 1 yuan. Other regional mints were opened in the 1890s producing similar silver coins along with copper coins in denominations of 1, 2, 5, 10 and 20 cash.
Other regional mints were opened in the 1890s. The central government began issuing its own coins in the yuan currency system in 1903. Banknotes were issued in yuan denominations from the 1890s by several local and private banks, along with banks established by the Imperial government; the central government began issuing its own coins in the yuan currency system in 1903. These were brass 1 cash, copper 2, 5, 10 and 20 cash, silver 1, 2 and 5 jiao and 1 yuan. After the revolution, although the designs changed, the sizes and metals used in the coinage remained unchanged until the 1930s. From 1936, the central government issued 1⁄2 yuan coins. Aluminium 1 and 5 fen pieces were issued in 1940. A variety of currencies circulated in China during the Republic of China era, most of which were denominated in the unit yuán; each was distinguished by a currency name, such as the fabi, the "gold yuan", the "silver yuan". The renminbi was introduced by the People's Bank of China in December 1948, about a year before the establishment of the People's Republic of China.
It was issued only in paper money form at first, replaced the various currencies circulating in the areas controlled by the Communists. One of the first tasks of the new government was to end the hyperinflation that had plagued China in the final years of the Kuomintang era; that achieved, a revaluation occurred in 1955 at the rate of 1 new yuan = 10,000 old yuan. As the Communist Party of China took control of larger territories in the latter part of the Chinese Civil War, its People's Bank of China began in 1948 to issue a unified currency for use in Communist-controlle
